Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ajay Pandey, Senior Lecturer (Intelligent Bionics and Soft Robotics), Queensland University of Technology

We have robots that can walk, see, talk and hear, and manipulate objects in their robotic hands. There’s even a robot that can smell.

But what about a sense of touch? This is easier said than done and there are limitations to some of the current methods being looked at, but we’re developing a new technique that can overcome some of those problems.

For humans, touch plays a vital role when we move our bodies. Touch, combined with sight, is crucial for tasks such as picking up objects – hard or soft, light or heavy, warm or cold – without damaging them.

In the field of robotic manipulation, in which a robot hand or gripper has to pick up an object, adding the sense of touch could remove uncertainties in dealing with soft, fragile and deformable objects.

Read more: Why you should always shake hands with a robot

The quest for smart skin

Quantifying touch in engineering terms not only requires the precise knowledge of the amount of external force applied to a touch sensor, but you also need to know the force’s exact position, its angle, and how it will interact with the object being manipulated.

Then there is the question about how many of these sensors a robot would need. Developing a robot skin that could contain hundreds or even thousands of touch sensors is a challenging engineering task.

Understanding the physical mechanisms of touch sensing in the biological world provides great insights when it comes to designing the robotic equivalent, a smart skin.

But a significant barrier for the development of smart skin is the electronics required.

Everyday force and touch measurement

The sense of touch is generally measured by a sensor that can translate pressure into a small electrical signal. When you use a digital scale to weigh yourself or measure out ingredients in your kitchen, the scales are probably using a piezoelectric transducer.

This is a device that turns a force into electricity. The tiny electrical current from the transducer is then run through wires to a small microchip that reads the strength of the current, converts that into a meaningful weight measurement, and displays it on a screen.

Despite being able to sense different levels of force, these electronic devices have several limitations that make then impractical for smart skin. In particular, they have a relatively slow response time to the force.

There are other types of touch sensors based on a material changing its other electric characteristics, such as capacitance or resistance. Your mobile phone screen may have this technology built in, and if you use a trackpad on your computer it will certainly use touch sensors.

Read more: A robot that can touch, eat and sleep? The reality of cyborgs like Alita: Battle Angel

Soft and flexible force sensing

There has been great progress in recent years in making touch sensors that can be embedded into soft and flexible materials. This is exactly what we need for smart skin.

But many of these developments completely fail (due to the sensing type) in the presence of moisture. (Have you ever tried a wet finger on your smart phone’s touch screen?)

Medical applications are now a main driver behind the demand for flexible and robust force sensing. For example, smart skin could be used to restore sensory feedback to patients with skin damage or peripheral neuropathy (numbness or tingling). It could also be used to give prosthetic hands basic touch-sensing ability.

Recently, researchers from MIT and Harvard have developed a scalable tactile glove and combined it with artificial intelligence. Sensors uniformly distributed over the hand can be used to identify individual objects, estimate their weight, and explore the typical tactile patterns that emerge while grasping them.

The researchers created a glove with 548 sensors assembled on a knitted fabric containing a piezoresistive film (which also reacts to pressure or strain) connected by a network of conductive thread electrodes.

This is the first successful attempt at recording such signals at large scale, revealing important insights that can be used in future design of prosthetics and robot grasping tools.

But just like almost all other touch interfaces that are designed with capacitive, resistive or piezoelectric techniques, this tactile technology does not work well with wet fingers or underwater.

Read more: Sex robots are here, but laws aren’t keeping up with the ethical and privacy issues they raise

Optical force sensing on the horizon

To address this problem, we have developed a new form of tactile sensor that uses nanometre-thin films of organic LEDs (OLED) and organic photodiodes (OPD) for measuring soft touch.

OLED technology is normally found in television and smartphone screens. Our approach to measuring the sense of touch is based on optical force sensing.

The OLED elements (called diodes or pixels) are actually fully reversible. This means that as well as being able to produce light (like in a TV screen), these pixels can also detect light.

Using this principle we can manufacture a tiny, opaque, flexible dome with a reflective coating that is placed above some OLED pixels. Light emitted from the central pixel is uniformly distributed across all other pixels under the dome if the dome is not disturbed.

But if the dome is pressed – by touching something – it will deform, resulting in an unequal response from the pixels being used to detect the reflected light. Combining the responses from dozens of these domes in the area of contact it will be possible to estimate the force being applied.

This approach is a significant step towards simplifying the smart skin layout for large area applications and we hope that we will soon see robots that can have full body sensing in the air, when wet or even underwater.

– ref. It’s not easy to give a robot a sense of touch – http://theconversation.com/its-not-easy-to-give-a-robot-a-sense-of-touch-118111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Jackson, Education Policy Lead, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

A report released last week showed quality preschool would deliver a two-for-one return on investment for Australia: that is, for every dollar governments invest in preschool, two dollars will be returned to the economy.

Commissioned by early childhood research organisation the Front Project, and conducted by data analysts PwC, the analysis looked at the impact of Australia’s current system, which provides 15 hours a week of early childhood education in the year before school.

The report is the first comprehensive Australian analysis of the economic impact of early childhood education. It adds a uniquely Australian perspective to the international evidence base about the benefits of investing in preschool.

Research on return on investment in early learning became prominent in the mid-2000s, and drove a global reform agenda to invest more in early childhood education and care. US economist James Heckman has since famously found high-quality support for early learning can deliver US$13 for every dollar spent over a lifetime.

But the promised returns on investment in preschool won’t just happen. They depend on a complex chain of events, from preschool through to adulthood, involving the child and their family.

The chain of events

Here’s what needs to happen for an Australian child, and the Australian economy, to reap the two-for-one return.

First, the child must have access to a preschool in their local area, and a family willing and able to enrol them. Their family must also be able to transport them to and from the preschool each day.

The economic benefits increase if the adults in the family decide to increase their hours of paid work while the child attends preschool. This depends on meaningful work being available for parents, which would fit with the availability of the preschool program.

Second, the preschool must be of high-enough quality to make a difference to the child’s learning and development. International studies emphasise benefits are most likely to be delivered by quality preschools – low-quality preschools will not have the same impact.

Read more: Both major parties are finally talking about the importance of preschool – here’s why it matters

Quality preschools run play-based learning programs in which children are encouraged to discover and explore. These play experiences provide opportunities for children to develop essential skills such as co-operation, concentration, problem-solving and self-control.

Quality standards for Australian preschools are set out in the National Quality Standard.

Third, if the preschool gets the child off to a good start, then the school system must also be of sufficient quality to sustain the gains in their learning. This is easiest if the child lives in a family where there is strong support for learning, but harder to sustain when home support is limited.

Fourth, if the child can sustain their learning advantage, the next set of economic benefits are delivered through their participation in tertiary education. To realise this benefit, there needs to be a place for them in university, or in quality vocational education and training.

And finally, the full set of economic benefits are delivered when that child (now a young adult) takes their tertiary qualification into the labour market. For these benefits to be realised, there needs to be a healthy supply of jobs for tertiary graduates for which the young adult is well-prepared.

Read more: Jobs are changing, and fast. Here’s what the VET sector (and employers) need to do to keep up

Strengthening the chain in Australia

Every weak link in this chain reduces the overall economic gains. A quick scan of the Australian policy environment shows some clear opportunities for the chain to be strengthened.

National funding for access to preschool in the year before school continues to be agreed year-by-year, rather than as a sustained commitment. So the very first link in the chain is loose. Despite major gains in participation, around 10% of Australian children still don’t attend preschool.

Of the early childhood services that provide preschool, 7% of stand-alone preschools and 21% of long day care services don’t yet meet the National Quality Standard.

Lower-quality early childhood services are disproportionately located in poorer communities, where they are needed the most.

Read more: Preschool benefits all children, but not all children get it. Here’s what the government can do about that

Australia’s schools deliver unequal benefits for learners from different backgrounds. The widening gap between wealthier and poorer children suggests schools aren’t sufficiently equipped to support children who need extra support to sustain their learning.

Overall participation rates in tertiary education are projected to decline under current policy settings. If we produce more great learners at earlier stages of learning, there need to be tertiary places for them.

Lastly, Australia’s labour market is facing significant challenges in providing meaningful full-time work for young people, even those with a tertiary qualification. The costs of youth unemployment are significant, and mean the potential economic benefits of their education are squandered.

It’s about more than dollars

Even with weak links in the chain, investment in preschool can still deliver returns. The Front Project report tests a number of versions of its economic modelling and finds preschool is still a worthwhile investment, even under less optimistic scenarios about its long-term effects.

Investment in early learning is not just about economic returns. At the centre of each scenario is a child who has a right to receive support from the government to help them learn and thrive.

Read more: Three things Australia’s next education minister must prioritise to improve schools

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia ratified in 1990, recognises children’s right to education, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals recognise the importance of quality early childhood education and care in delivering that right to all children.

Governments willingly invest in school education, recognising the right to education means they have an obligation to their youngest citizens. Yet government investment in early childhood education in Australia still seems to depend heavily on economic arguments.

While these arguments may be important for engaging policy-makers with their eye on the budget, there are other compelling reasons to provide Australian children with quality early learning.

– ref. Report finds every $1 Australia spends on preschool will return $2, but this won’t just magically happen – http://theconversation.com/report-finds-every-1-australia-spends-on-preschool-will-return-2-but-this-wont-just-magically-happen-120217

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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has cut deeming rate for large investments from 3.25% to 3%, and for smaller ones from 1.75% all the way down to 1%, backdated to the start of July.

But exactly is a deeming rate, and why does it matter so much to about one million Australians on benefits, among them around about 630,000 age pensioners?

It’s a topic I covered in The Conversation mid last week in an explainer that went all the way back to the beginning, or at least the most recent beginning, when treasurer Paul Keating brought deeming rates back to Australia’s benefits system in 1991.

Read more: Deeming rates explained. What is deeming, how does it cut pensions, and why do we have it?

Before that, applicants for the pension were able to pass income tests by ensuring that their assets didn’t earn much income, a service banks and other institutions were happy to provide for them.

From 1991, on applicants for the age pension (and later other benefits) were “deemed” to have earned from their financial assets amounts set by the government, whatever they actually earned.

Of late, deeming rates haven’t kept up

For most of the past two decades both the high deeming rate (which at the moment applies to financial assets in excess of A$51,800 for singles and $86,200 for couples) and also the low deeming rate (for lesser assets) have been below the Reserve Bank’s cash rate, benefiting applicants who could earn more than those low rates while continuing to get benefits.

Deeming rates versus RBA cash rate, July 1996 – July 2019, per cent

Then, beginning with prime minister Kevin Rudd (who, to be fair to him, in 2019 delivered the biggest ever increase in the pension – $100 a fortnight for singles and $76 for couples) and continuing under his successors Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrision, the government adjusted the deeming rate more slowly, meaning that as the Reserve Bank’s cash rate fell, both the high and low deeming rates ended up above it.

The decisions announced by Frydenberg on Sunday go a long way to putting things right.

The lower deeming rate will once more be close to the cash rate (exactly at the cash rate, for as long as the cash rate stays at 1%). The higher deeming rate will not be, but then it probably shouldn’t be.

The higher rate applies to the return on financial assets (including shares) worth more than $51,800. As Frydenberg pointed out on Sunday, many of those assets return much more, not much less, than the deeming rate:

It could apply to superannuation returns, and that’s averaging around 5.5%. Or to yields on ASX 200 stocks, which are averaging about 4.5%

The low deeming rate is on the face of it unfair, because few bank deposits pay 1%. The special retirees accounts offered by ANZ and the Commonwealth pay 0.25%. Many deposit accounts pay nothing.

But the low rate applies to financial assets all the way up to $51,800 ($86,200 for couples), and to all types of assets. Many pension applicants are likely to earn a total return on those assets well above 1%.

Deeming is by design, rough and ready. There will always be complaints, and of late those complaints had force. They are now back broadly where they should be.

Read more: Deeming rates explained. What is deeming, how does it cut pensions, and why do we have it?

– ref. They’ve cut deeming rates, but what are they? – http://theconversation.com/theyve-cut-deeming-rates-but-what-are-they-120333

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

Michelle Grattan talks with University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Professor Deep Saini about the government’s proposal to put a referendum this term to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution. They discuss whether Indigenous leaders are likely to make the concession to not include the Voice in the Constitution, and the chances of reaching a bipartisan agreement on the referendum question itself. They also canvass the ongoing John Setka saga.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the government’s plans for Indigenous recognition – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-governments-plans-for-indigenous-recognition-120231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne

Sign up to the Beating Around the Bush newsletter here, and suggest a plant we should cover at batb@theconversation.edu.au.

River red gums, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, are among the most iconic of Australia’s eucalypts. They are the most widely distributed of all the eucalypts. They grow along rivers, creeks, waterways and flood plains where many Australians like to picnic, so most of us get to know and love them.

Read more: This centuries-old river red gum is a local legend – here’s why it’s worth fighting for

Formerly known as Eucalyptus rostrata, the species was one of the first eucalypts encountered in parts of Australia by European settlers. Curiously, the name camaldulensis comes from the Italian monastery of Camaldoli near Naples, where a specimen grown from seed in a private garden was given the name Eucalyptus camaldulensis in 1832. No one knows how the seed got to be there!

River red gums can be very large spreading trees with huge trunks more than 5 metres around. In parts of Australia, such as along the Murray River, they can be very erect trees reaching more than 45m tall.

Most specimens have smooth bark with a mottling of multiple colours ranging from creams to orange and red, but there may be a skirt of fibrous grey bark for the first few metres of the base. They are called river red gums because they grow along rivers and their wood when freshly exposed is a bright red; almost blood-coloured.

River red gums have been used by Indigenous people for canoes, bowls, shields, and other utensils. The wood is red is because it contains very high levels of chemicals such as polyphenols, which are a natural antiobiotic when combined with air.

These chemicals not only protect the living tree from disease and some pest attacks, but make the timber very durable. These chemicals meant river red gums were used for medicinal purposes by Indigenous people. The wood has been widely used for railway sleepers, fence posts, and piers and wharfs where durability and water resistance are desirable. They have been widely planted overseas and in some countries pose a serious weed problem.

The trees can have very long lives, and may reach 1,000 years of age. They grow very rapidly when conditions are favourable and so become large trees quite quickly. But as they get older it is very difficult to age them without damaging the tree and putting it at risk of disease and decay. So their ages are estimated, as no one wants to be responsible for killing a grand old tree just to confirm its age!

Older specimens almost always develop large hollows, which can take centuries to form. The hollows provide refuges for birds, mammals and reptiles. The nesting sites are often raucously defended by brightly coloured parrots. The trees and the nectar from their small white flowers are also very important for honey production – a large tree in full flower over the warmer months can attract so many bees that the whole tree can be heard humming from many metres away; it’s a wonder the tree doesn’t take off.

At certain times of the year, often during summer, river reds can be very heavily grazed by insects to the point where their leaves are skeletonised. The trees look as though they are about to die, but they are very resilient and a few months later most are back to a full and healthy canopy. Another insect, the psyllid, also feeds on and skeletonises the leaves. It has a sweet, waxy covering called a lerp that protects the vulnerable insect nymphs beneath. Some Indigenous groups scrape off the lerps, roll them into a ball, and eat them like a lolly.

Surviving floods and driving rain

Any tree that can live for a millennium must be adaptable, so like some other eucalypt species, river red gums can shed up to two-thirds of their foliage when soils dry out during a drought, which reduces water demand and prevents the trees from wilting. This shedding often causes people to complain about the trees when they grow in towns and cities, but when the rains come a few months later they rapidly produce new leaves and are soon once again in full canopy.

Read more: The glowing ghost mushroom looks like it comes from a fungal netherworld

River red gums can tolerate immersion in flood waters for up to nine months. They do this by having extensive roots, some of which contain a spongy, air-filled tissue called aerenchyma that allows for the accumulation and transport of much-needed oxygen in waterlogged soils. This adaptation to stressed soils also means river red gums can do quite well in disturbed urban soils when the urban sprawl impinges on their natural domain.

River red gums readily seed after flooding events and great numbers of young trees may germinate. However, relatively few survive to maturity due to competition from other red gums, other trees, and weeds. They may also struggle to survive in some places due to a lack of water.

Because river reds occur in some of the driest and harshest parts of the Australian mainland, you might think they are very efficient users of water. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The trees can have very deep, spreading and searching root systems, which tap into subterranean water, even if the water is many metres from the trunk. They are luxury water users with very little capacity for water use control. If water becomes really limiting, they simply wilt.

Territorial trees

E. camaldulensis produces a water-soluble chemical that is washed from its leaves by rain. These chemicals inhibit the growth of other plants, including river red gum seedlings, under the canopy. This phenomenon is called allelopathy, and along with a dense canopy inhibits plant growth under the trees. These chemicals are washed from the soil by flood water, which makes way for the germination of seedlings after floods. This is a wonderful mechanism that ensures seedlings do not germinate when conditions are dry and where they would compete with the parent tree for limited water, but germination is facilitated when there is plenty of water and soils are wet.

Some people think river red gums are dangerous because they shed large limbs without warning on calm, still, summer days. There is no doubt this does happen, but there is no clear evidence they shed limbs more often than other species.

The problem is complex, because they tend to grow everywhere people want to go. They provide shade along waterways on a hot, dry continent. In going to places where the trees grow, people tend to compact the soil with their vehicles and footpaths, which can be causes of limb shedding. The compaction of the soil affects soil moisture and aeration, which can lead to limb shedding.

Read more: Warrigal greens are tasty, salty, and covered in tiny balloon-like hairs

In other contexts such as farms where limbs are shed, many old river red gums are growing in highly disturbed or changed ecosystems. Furthermore, many of these remnant specimens are often stressed and getting older and so more prone to shedding.

River red gums trace the watercourses of mainland Australia, and are easily seen from aeroplanes as you cross the continent. They connect the continental fringes with its arid heart. Their lives can span many human generations and it is nice to think that the majestic old trees that pull at our heartstrings have done the same to previous generations and, if we and they are lucky, will continue to do so for generations of Australians yet to come.

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. The river red gum is an icon of the driest continent – http://theconversation.com/the-river-red-gum-is-an-icon-of-the-driest-continent-118839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Canberra

The proposed ban on some textured breast implants announced by the Australian pharmaceuticals and medical devices regulator earlier this week tells us something very disquieting about the effectiveness of consumer protection.

It will not reassure women living with breast implants concerned about their risk of cancer, or anyone else with an implantable medical device regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

It also exposes inadequacies in the regulatory system that have been apparent for years.

What’s new?

The proposed ban relates to the import and distribution of certain types of breast implants with a textured surface because of their well documented link with a rare type of cancer known as anaplastic large cell lymphoma. The proposal is unsurprising given bans in Europe.

But Australia’s proposal comes after months of criticism by consumers, medical specialists and legal academics who wanted to see an earlier and and better-communicated ban.

The TGA also says it is seeking advice from Allergan, the manufacturer whose implants were the focus of restrictions in Europe.

Yet concerns about the safety of a succession of implants and the inadequacy of Australia’s regulatory responses are not new. Advice from Allergan should have been sought a year ago.

Here’s what we asked the TGA last year

In responding last year to our queries about implants, the TGA indicated that although importation of the textured implants had been stopped after the ban in France there were no restrictions on implanting those devices in Australia.

The TGA was unaware of how many implants were available for implantation. (Unawareness about what is on the shelf was also evident regarding pelvic mesh, a similar regulatory failure).

The TGA was not going to inform potential recipients of the implants, something that is at odds with its new-found recognition that patients are concerned about potential harms.

What we have now is a proposed rather than actual ban. It is driven by criticism rather than TGA initiative and does not provide much reassurance about the TGA’s capacity to prevent harms rather than slowly respond to harms.

What if you are living with these implants?

The proposal announced this week is restricted to import and distribution. It does not require removing all breast implants or all textured breast implants. It does however mean that people with the implants listed on the TGA website should be watchful.

The TGA lists the affected breast implants on its website, and says the risk of anaplastic large cell lymphoma associated with these is between 1-in-1,000 and 1-in-10,000.

Yet it’s likely many women will experience fear, alongside anger or bewilderment that the TGA has taken so long to act.

Some people will deal with that fear through preemptive surgery: removal of the implants after getting specialist advice. Costs will come out of their own pockets. Some will talk to lawyers.

What’s the legal issue?

Uniquely, consumers cannot sue the TGA if it gets things wrong. The TGA has a special exemption in its Act regarding civil litigation.

However, people who are injured by implanted medical devices can take manufacturers and medical specialists to court. Their challenge is to prove that the devices caused cancer or other injury.

Litigation in Australia with defective joint implants demonstrates that manufacturers have deep pockets and will be adversarial when it comes to class actions (litigation by groups of injured people) or individual victims. Litigation will often take years. Injury compensation will sometimes be inadequate.

That is one reason why better regulation is fundamental. We need to prevent the injury through timely action by government agencies rather than trying to fix a foreseeable serious harm via legal action once it has occurred (and hope victims have the strength to fight for their rights).

How engaged is the regulator?

The TGA is funded by the businesses it regulates. Like its counterpart the FDA in the United States, it is underfunded and demoralised. It views its mission through the eyes of those businesses, an example of regulatory capture. It has been the subject of numerous inquiries about its performance.

Regrettably, the TGA has been described as unresponsive. It is comfortable dealing with the businesses it is supposed to regulate. It is uncomfortable dealing with the public. It faces ongoing criticism about its apparent indifference. In response to such criticism it belatedly announced an action plan regarding oversight of devices. There hasn’t been much action.

In practice, meaningful regulation of devices is being left to investigative journalists, academics with a specialisation in law and medicine, and consumer advocates. Neither the Coalition nor the ALP have wanted to grasp the TGA hot potato, but reform is necessary.

What is needed?

Our forthcoming research demonstrates the cost of running the TGA is dwarfed by the cost to patients, national productivity and the taxpayer of the TGA’s failures.

TGA legislation needs to be amended, in particular to ensure that the protection of consumers comes ahead of relations between the regulator and business. Independence of manufacturers is imperative. Adequate resourcing is essential. So is a cultural change within the TGA, including meaningful engagement with consumers rather than closed-door consultations with business.

Underpinning those changes we need a comprehensive database of implants and incidents, one readily accessible by epidemiologists.

We need trust in the health system and in gatekeepers such as the TGA. Anyone with an implant or considering an implant needs to know that the TGA will actively minimise harms rather than relying on assurances from businesses that have a vested interest in minimising disclosure. Good regulation involves more than a quiet life for regulators.

– ref. The TGA’s proposed breast implant ban exposes a litany of failures, and fails to protect women – http://theconversation.com/the-tgas-proposed-breast-implant-ban-exposes-a-litany-of-failures-and-fails-to-protect-women-120281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa Christensen, Lecturer in Criminology & Justice | Co-leader of the Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit (SVRPU), University of the Sunshine Coast

Jeffrey Epstein, a powerfully connected American financier, is facing charges of sex trafficking, bringing underage girls as young as 14 years old into homes in various locations across the US.

He reportedly had a network of more than 50 victims, and evidence against him included hundreds of lewd photographs of girls and young women.

Read more: Human trafficking and slavery still happen in Australia. This comic explains how

Accusations against high-profile people such as Epstein temporarily raise awareness of this significant human rights violation. But regardless of the outcome of this case, the ugly truth is this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Child sex trafficking is a critical issue affecting more than one million children worldwide, many of whom are left to suffer in silence.

Some consider human trafficking as the world’s fastest-growing crime. Worldwide, about 20% of trafficking victims are children, with up to 100% in some regions.

Sex trafficking is the most common form of human trafficking. Globally, an estimated 4.8 million people are forced into sexual exploitation.

And this industry produces $99 billion in profits a year for traffickers.

Who is targeted?

Most child trafficking victims are girls and often between the ages of 12 to 16. Although, when children under 12 are the victim, boys have been found to outnumber girls in some samples.

While trafficking often implies “transporting” across borders, trafficking can very often be a domestic matter with little to no transportation. For example, one study found more than 80% of sex trafficking incidents in the United States involved US citizens.

A child can become a victim of commercial sexual exploitation when they’re vulnerable, and some of the risk factors include: substance abuse, poverty, exposure to family violence or criminality, running away or told to leave home, abuse and neglect (including sexual victimisation), involvement in delinquency, poor mental health, and involvement in child protective services.

Read more: 4 questions answered on sex trafficking in the US

While these are some common risk factors, it’s important to note that there is no definitive set of risk factors – or single risk factor – that can determine whether a child will become a victim.

How are victims recruited?

Traffickers may recruit victims through “guerrilla pimping”. This involves aggression, threats and violence to engage and enslave the victim.

In other instances, recruitment through what appears to be kindness and compassion is shrouded in manipulation from food, money, shelter or drugs. This is referred to as “finesse pimping”. These exploited children, often victim to abuse and neglect in childhood, are promised shelter, love, and protection.

And some children might fall victim to “survival sex”, with no other option to attain food, money, shelter, or drugs. Such vulnerability places these children in high-risk situations where they may be manipulated and forced into exploitation.

Traffickers quite frequently use “recruiters” to identify vulnerable youth. While these recruiters might be other adults, victims themselves can eventually become involved in the recruitment. “Friends” may recruit peers into the commercial sex trafficking population through their social networks.

In fact, some research has found almost half were recruited by “friends” into the commercial exploitation industry as opposed to adults “preying” on susceptible youth. Recruitment to the industry by friends is particularly dangerous, as youth are less suspecting of their peers compared with adults.

Read more: Sex trafficking’s tragic paradox: when victims become perpetrators

In some instances, youth involved in sex trafficking will even be given financial incentives, to introduce their friends to the exploitation population. Epstein allegedly used this tactic, paying his victims to recruit other girls.

As a consequence, victims can suffer long-term physical, psychological, and even neurological trauma, which can continue for their whole lives.

And the impacts of the trauma can also affect others, including families and wider society.

Why can’t victims just leave?

Once recruited, it’s difficult to leave. Experts have drawn parallels between the theoretic constructs of human trafficking to that of intimate partner violence, in terms of power and control.

In particular, the victim may be isolated as well as controlled emotionally and physically. The victim can easily become entangled through such controlling techniques or even through “traumatic bonding”. This is where the victim has appreciation towards the trafficker for being able to live, coupled with entrenched fear.

In some instances, a victim recruited through “finesse pimping” might feel indebted and obliged to stay with the trafficker.

Read more: Study shines light on how vulnerable children are trafficked in Nigeria

Other tactics to maintain control can include food deprivation or forced drugs. And older victims have reportedly been threatened that if they don’t cooperate, or if they don’t earn a certain sum of money that day, the victim’s child will be sold.

The ability to maintain total control over the victim may also be compounded by their vulnerability to manipulation (for example, by virtue of age), and potentially complicated by substance use problems, learning disabilities, and poor mental health.

With sex traffickers being strategic in their recruitment and ability to entangle the victim physically and psychologically, it’s not difficult to see how victims become entrapped.

– ref. Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest is the tip of the iceberg: human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing crime – http://theconversation.com/jeffrey-epsteins-arrest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-human-trafficking-is-the-worlds-fastest-growing-crime-120225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey Thomas, Lecturer in Behaviour Management, University of Tasmania

Classroom management is consistently seen as a source of stress for beginning teachers. It’s also one of the main reasons cited for teachers leaving the profession.

So, it’s no surprise teachers try to use classroom management strategies that appear to be effective at changing problematic student behaviour.

Group, or collective, punishment is one such approach. Collective punishment in schools is when a group of students, for example a whole class or a whole grade, is punished for the actions of a few.

Common examples include minutes being taken off recess or lunch break if a class is noisy, or the whole school being banned from using the playground if it’s too messy.

While group punishment is used in Australian schools, it is unfair and unlikely to improve behaviour – so why is it still acceptable in most education department policies?

Why do people use collective punishment?

Collective punishment appears to be immediately effective in promoting compliance. For instance, making the whole grade pick up rubbish instead of having free time is likely to result in a clean yard, and probably less rubbish the next day.

All punishments rely on the idea the experience imposed by the teacher will be unpleasant enough to condition the students to modify their behaviour in the future.

Behaviourists first used this technique successfully with rats and other animals in the 1960s. Behaviour modification strategies were then adopted into classrooms in various forms and are still used extensively today.

Read more: Teachers are more depressed and anxious than the average Australian

As well as the idea of punishment modifying behaviour for individuals, collective punishment may be seen to be even more effective due to peer pressure. Collective punishments take some of the heavy lifting from the teacher and place it on the peers to impose social sanctions.

No one likes the kid who takes away their lunchtime.

Another reason teachers might use collective punishment is, ironically, to promote a stronger sense of cohesion in the class. The idea is that by the whole group taking responsibility for each individual’s actions, the group will be brought closer together.

This is a common strategy in sports and the military. In a classroom situation, the theory is that the whole class may bond and will accordingly act more responsibly in the future.

Why is collective punishment a bad idea?

While we might see initial compliance from collective punishment, there are two main reasons why this strategy should be dropped. First, it’s morally questionable and second, it’s unlikely to produce more positive behaviour in the long run.

The idea a group should be responsible for the actions of an individual is fundamentally at odds with the theories of individual responsibility in western, liberal societies. Legally and morally, each individual has ownership for their own actions and must bear the consequences of those actions individually.

Read more: Help disruptive students, don’t just suspend them

On a more basic level, it is not fair or reasonable to punish one child for the actions of another. Both of these moral concerns would not be acceptable in wider society, so why would they be acceptable in a school environment?

Second, there is now clear evidence punishments are not effective in improving problematic behaviour.

Research suggests punitive responses actually increase future problematic student behaviour. A student often misbehaves when they feel disengaged and disengagement can come from feeling excluded from peers and teachers.

The negative peer pressure associated with collective punishment compounds the likelihood of further social exclusion exacerbating the transgressing student’s disengagement.

One imagines this would especially be the case for students being punished for something they didn’t do.

What other options do teachers have?

Teachers mainly use collective punishments when students are disruptive such as when the class is noisy, or students aren’t completing work, dropping rubbish and talking out of turn.

Because such behaviour happens mostly when students are disengaged, the first thing schools can do is actively promote engagement. Engagement includes students’ sense of belonging, enjoyment in class and the value they place on education.

Read more: Schools’ tough approach to bad behaviour isn’t working – and may escalate problems

Ways to promote engagement include prioritising individual student well-being, explicitly designing classes to be interesting, and creating a safe and enjoyable learning environment. If a student wants to be at school, he or she is much more likely to behave well.

Teaching practices such as universal design for learning (which includes giving students various ways to acquire knowledge), or inquiry based learning (where students are helped to make meaning out of what they learn), and cultivating an inclusive, positive school climate, may result in fewer behaviours that come from disengagement.

When disengaged behaviours do occur, teachers need to implement strategies that don’t further disengage students, such as rule reminders or quiet chats. These strategies should be tailored to the individual students to address the underlying causes for the behaviour – which may be something outside of the student’s control.

After all, it is possible the reason behind the misbehaviour was a previous collective punishment.

– ref. Group punishment doesn’t fix behaviour – it just makes kids hate school – http://theconversation.com/group-punishment-doesnt-fix-behaviour-it-just-makes-kids-hate-school-120219

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

This article is part of our occasional long read series Zoom Out, where authors explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.

“Design” has been one of the big words of the twentieth century. To say that an object has been designed implies a level of specialness. “Designer items” are invested with a particular kind of expertise that is likely to make them pleasing to use, stylish, or – less common in late-capitalist society – well made.

Due to this positive association, design has become an “elevator word”, to borrow a phrase used by philosopher of science Ian Hacking. Like the words “facts”, “truth”, “knowledge”, “reality”, “genuine” and “robust”, the word design is used to raise the level of discourse.

“Repair” hasn’t had such a glossy recent history. We don’t have universities or TAFEs offering degrees in repair, churning out increasingly large numbers of repairers. Repair exists in the shadow of design, in unfashionable, unofficial pockets. And, until recently, repair mostly passed unremarked.

British literary scholar Steven Connor points to the ambiguous status of repair in his analysis of “fixing”. Connor discusses fixing and fixers in the context of related figures, such as the tinker, bodger and mender, all of which share outsider status.

Read more: Why can’t we fix our own electronic devices?

One might be forgiven for thinking “design” and “repair” were opposing forces. The former word has become so bound up with notions of newness, improvement, performance and innovation that it emphatically signals its difference from the seamful, restorative connotations of repair.

If repair is hessian and twine, design is sleek uniformity. Repair is about upkeep. Design is about updating. Repair is ongoing and cyclical. Design is about creative “genius” and finish. To design is, supposedly, to conceive and complete, to repair is to make do.

But perhaps design and repair are not, or ought not to be, as divergent as such a setting of the scene suggests. Thinking metaphorically of repair as design, and design as repair, can offer new and useful perspectives on both of these important spheres of cultural activity.

Repair and design have a lot in common

As a surface sheen that soothes us, design distracts us from any uncomfortable reminders of the disastrous excesses of global capitalist consumption and waste. The acquisition of new “designs” becomes addictive, a quick hit of a fresh design assures us that life is progressing.

As each new object is designed into existence and used over time, it is accompanied by an inevitable need for repair that evolves in parallel. Repair, where possible, cleans up the mess left by design.

Design and repair are different though related approaches to the common problem of entropy. Repair might seem only to be about returning an object to its previous state, whether for functional or decorative purposes. But maintaining that state is a hard fought affair, no less invested by collective or personal value.

The act of repair is also a determinate of worth. Whether at an individual or collective scale, choosing to repair this, and discard or neglect that, shares much in common with the process of selection, which informs the design of objects, images, garments or spaces.

Apple is revered for its design

Apple’s outgoing Chief Design Officer Jonathan Ive’s influence at Apple is among the most popularised examples of “successful design”, to which other designers and design students have long aspired. With Ive’s departure from Apple this year, we have an opportunity to take a long view of his legacy.

Since the distinctive bubble iMac in 1998, Ive shifted computing away from the beige, boxy uniformity of the IBM PC era, aligning computing with “high design” and investing it with deep popular appeal.

Even prior to Ive’s influence – take for example the 1977 Apple II – Apple’s industrial design has played a fundamental role in transforming computers from machines for tinkerers, into desirable objects of self-actualisation, blending leisure and labour with incomparable ease.

The iPhone is one among a suite of Apple products that have changed cultural expectations around consumer electronics, and other smart phone manufacturers have followed suit.

Read more: Understanding the real innovation behind the iPhone

The ubiquity of iPhones makes it increasingly difficult to appreciate their strangeness. Not only do they appear sealed beyond consumer access, they almost induce a forgetting of seals altogether. The glistening surface expresses an idea of inviolability which is completely at odds with the high likelihood of wear and tear.

The iPhone is perhaps the ultimate example of a “black box”, an object that exhibits a pronounced distinction between its interior mechanics, which determine its functionality, and its exterior appearance. It gives nothing away, merely reflecting back at us through its “black mirror”, to borrow the title of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian television series.

The design of the iPhone – among other similar devices – forecloses against repair, both through its physical form, and also through the obsolescence built into its software and systems design, which defensively pits individuals against the power of a giant multinational company.

‘Right to repair’ is gaining ground

Apple deliberately discourages its customers using independent repair services. It has a track record of punishing people who have opted for independent repairs, rather than going through Apple (at much greater expense). This is an example of the company’s attempt to keep its customers in an ongoing cycle of constant consumption.

This has put Apple – along with the agricultural equipment company John Deere – in the crosshairs of the growing Right to Repair movement in the United States. Right to Repair is centred on a drive to reform legislation in 20 US states, targeting manufacturers’ “unfair and deceptive policies that make it difficult, expensive, or impossible for you to repair the things you own”.

The movement could perhaps be criticised for focusing too much on libertarian individualism. Other groups advocate more community-focused repair strategies, such as the global proliferation of Repair Cafes, and Sweden’s groundbreaking secondhand mall, ReTuna Recycling Galleria.

Either way, there is agreement that something must be done to reduce the staggering amounts of e-waste we produce. In Australia alone, 485,000 tonnes of e-waste was generated in 2016/2017, and the annual rates are increasing.

This legacy of digital technology’s “anti-repairability” has been accepted as inevitable for some time, but the tide is turning. For example, the Victorian government has banned e-waste from landfill from July 1.

Designing for the future

Considering the increasing importance of responsible production and consumption, it is easily imaginable that, in a not too distant future, designers and design historians might point to the iPhone as naive, regressive and destructive. An example of design with thoroughly dated priorities, like the buildings in the Gothic revival style that provoked the ire of modernist architects.

Obscuring the wastage of valuable resources through sleek design could be decried as an outrageous excess, rather than celebrated for its “simiplicity”. With the benefit of hindsight, we might finally see that the iPhone was the opposite of minimalism.

Read more: Mending hearts: how a ‘repair economy’ creates a kinder, more caring community

Perhaps the revered objects of this imagined future will be launched by an entrepreneur who spruiks features and services associated with repair, rather than pacing the stage, championing an object because of its slimness, sleekness and speed. Hackability, ease of access, modularity, spare parts and durability might be touted as a product’s best features.

Alternatively, if the use of an object is decoupled from individual ownership, the responsibility for repair and waste might fall back on the producer. Perhaps “repair bins” will become a taken for granted feature of the urban landscape like curbside recycling bins are today.

To compel the pragmatists among us, such wishful thinking needs to remain mindful of the power multinationals have demonstrated in thwarting dreams of open access. Repair-oriented practices still face vast challenges when it is seemingly so convenient to waste. But to use one of the words of the day, aspirations need to be articulated if we, collectively, want to have the chance of living the dream.

– ref. Design and repair must work together to undo our legacy of waste – http://theconversation.com/design-and-repair-must-work-together-to-undo-our-legacy-of-waste-119932

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jaelea Skehan, Conjoint Teaching Fellow in the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

Victoria’s royal commission into mental health today turns its attention to the families and carers of people living with mental illness.

An estimated 2.8 million Australians provide practical day-to-day and emotional support for someone they care about. Of those informal carers, around 240,000, or 8.6%, are looking after someone with a mental illness.

And this number is likely an underestimate. Carers often support loved ones with multiple difficulties. So while they may report looking after someone with a physical illness, this person could be experiencing mental health challenges, too.

Read more: Here’s how much it would cost the government to pay everyone who takes care of family with mental illness

And, people providing care and support for someone with a mental illness don’t always recognise themselves as “carers”. They are likely to view their role more simply as that of a partner, parent, sibling, flatmate or friend.

We’ve been working to better understand the needs of people who provide care and support to the one million Australians who experience depression each year, as well as those who provide support to the 65,000 Australians who attempt suicide.

The demands placed on these carers can be constant and overwhelming. We urgently need to better support the invisible work family and friends do every day in caring for Australians living with mental illness.

The impact of caring

As the largest non-clinical workforce we have for Australians experiencing mental illness, carers provide human and economic returns to the community every day.

It was recently estimated that mental health carers save the Australian government in excess of A$13 billion every year. But this group is often unsupported and unpaid (with the exception of a Centrelink carer allowance, in some cases).

The practical, physical, economic and emotional demands of being a carer can be enormous.

Informal carers of people with mental illness might assist their loved ones to manage their illness, for example by identifying symptoms, working out symptom management strategies, and organising appointments and medications for them.

They will often provide practical assistance, for example by taking on more household or financial responsibilities. Finally, they provide ongoing emotional support, such as being available to listen and letting the person know they are loved.

Research has shown carers often report high emotional distress, challenges with their relationships, engage in fewer social activities, feel lonely and isolated, and have fewer education and employment opportunities.

Caring has also been associated with immediate risk of mental health problems, with carers consistently reporting levels of psychological distress significantly higher than the overall Australian population.

Read more: Why caring for Australia’s carers should be a government priority

The case for prevention

Getting people to identify themselves as “carers” and take time out from their caring role to prioritise their own well-being is an ongoing challenge.

Ensuring programs are available in all communities that are fit-for-purpose and cost effective is another challenge.

A survey released last month by the Butterfly Foundation suggested carers recognised there were impacts on their mental health. But they often didn’t seek support, citing a lack of time, a lack of knowledge about available supports and the cost associated among the reasons why.

There have been increasing calls for national investment in the development of prevention programs that address the specific needs of those who care for someone with mental illness, regardless of whether they see their role as a traditional caring one or not.

National charities like SANE Australia have been working to engage and support those caring for someone with complex mental illness. The Butterfly Foundation recently dedicated their annual MAYDAYS awareness and advocacy campaign to carers of people with an eating disorder.

Read more: Stroke survivors and their carers often have poor mental health. Here’s how we can help them

We’ve been involved in the national roll out of a program called Partners in Depression, a six-week group program designed to support carers of people with depression. Participants learn about depression and its treatment and how to provide positive support to their loved ones. There is also significant focus on the importance of looking after their own physical and mental health, and reaching out early if they need support.

Reports from participants tell us this approach can reduce psychological distress, and help facilitate improvements in well-being and relationships.

The increasing availability of digital and e-health programs in treating mental illness and improving mental health provides an opportunity to think differently about services provided to families, friends and carers.

A call to action

People who love, live with and care for someone with a mental illness need timely and equitable access to interventions that enhance their well-being and prevent the onset of mental health problems.

We need a national agenda that recognises the rights of those who care for someone affected by mental illness not to have their own mental health and well-being compromised because of the vital caring role they play.

Read more: When it’s easier to get meds than therapy: how poverty makes it hard to escape mental illness

The Victorian royal commission, as well as the national productivity commission inquiry into mental health, provide an opportunity to recognise the important role carers play in our mental health service system, the right of those in caring roles to be involved in service delivery, and importantly, the right of carers to have their own mental health and well-being supported.

Whether supports are provided online, face-to-face, by NGOs, through primary care or via peers, the time for coordinated, available and evidence-based responses is now.

If this article has raised issues for you or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. Looking after loved ones with mental illness puts carers at risk themselves. They need more support – http://theconversation.com/looking-after-loved-ones-with-mental-illness-puts-carers-at-risk-themselves-they-need-more-support-116349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hurley, Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

Students – whether at university or school – can get help from many places. They can go to a tutor, parent, teacher, a friend or consult a textbook.

But at which point does getting help cross the line into cheating?

Sometimes it’s clear. If you use a spy camera or smartwatch in an exam, you’re clearly cheating. And you’re cheating if you get a friend to sit an exam for you or write your assignment.

At other times the line is blurry. When it’s crossed, it constitutes academic misconduct. Academic misconduct is any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for yourself or others.

What about getting someone else to read a draft of your essay? What if they do more than proofread and they alter sections of an assignment? Does that constitute academic misconduct?

Learning, teaching or cheating?

There are a wide range of activities that constitute academic misconduct. These can include:

• fabrication, which is just making things up. I could say “90 % of people admit to fabricating their assignments”, when this is not a fact but a statement I just invented

• falsification, which is manipulating data to inaccurately portray results. This can occur by taking research results out of context and drawing conclusions not supported by data

• misrepresentation, which is falsely representing yourself. Did you know I have a master’s degree from the University of Oxford on this topic? (Actually, I don’t)

• plagiarism, which is when you use other people’s ideas or words without appropriate attribution. For instance, this list came from other people’s research and it is important to reference the source.

Sometimes students and teachers have different ideas of academic misconduct. One study found around 45% of academics thought getting someone else to correct a draft could constitute academic misconduct. But only 32% of students thought the same thing.

Read more: Assessment design won’t stop cheating, but our relationships with students might

In the same survey, most academics and students agreed having someone else like a parent or friend identify errors in a draft assignment, as opposed to correcting them, was fine.

Generally when a lecturer, teacher or another marker is assessing an assignment they need to establish the authenticity of the work. Authenticity means having confidence the work actually relates to the performance of the person being assessed, and not of another person.

The Australian government’s vocational education and training sector’s quality watchdog, for instance, considers authenticity as one of four so-called rules of evidence for an “effective assessment”.

The rules are:

• validity, which is when the assessor is confident the student has the skills and knowledge required by the module or unit

• sufficiency, which is when the quality, quantity and relevance of the assessment evidence is enough for the assessor to make a judgement

• authenticity, where the assessor is confident the evidence presented for assessment is the learner’s own work

• currency, where the assessor is confident the evidence relates to what the student can do now instead of some time in the past.

Generally speaking, if the assessor is confident the work is the product of a student’s thoughts and where help has been provided there is proper acknowledgement, it should be fine.

Why is cheating a problem?

It’s difficult to get a handle on how big the cheating problem is. Nearly 30% of students who responded to a 2012 UK survey agreed they had “submitted work taken wholly from an internet source” as their own.

In Australia, 6% of students in a survey of 14,000 reported they had engaged in “outsourcing behaviours” such as submitting someone else’s assignment as their own, and 15% of students had bought, sold or traded notes.

Getting someone to help with your assignment might seem harmless but it can hinder the learning process. The teacher needs to understand where the student is at with their learning, and too much help from others can get in the way.

Read more: Children learn from stress and failure: all the more reason you shouldn’t do their homework

Some research describes formal education as a type of “signal”. This means educational attainment communicates important information about an individual to a third party such as an employer, a customer, or to an authority like a licensing body or government department. Academic misconduct interferes with that process.

How to deal with cheating

It appears fewer cheaters are getting away with it than before. Some of the world’s leading academic institutions have reported a 40% increase in academic misconduct cases over a three year period.

Technological advances mean online essay mills and “contract cheating” have become a bigger problem. This type of cheating involves outsourcing work to third parties and is concerning because it is difficult to detect.

Read more: 15% of students admit to buying essays. What can universities do about it?

But while technology has made cheating easier, it has also offered sophisticated systems for educators to verify the work is a person’s own. Software programs such as Turnitin can check if a student has plagiarised their assignment.

Institutions can also verify the evidence they are assessing relates to a student’s actual performance by using a range of assessment methods such as exams, oral presentations, and group assignments.

Academic misconduct can be a learning and cultural issue. Many students, particularly when they are new to higher education, are simply not aware what constitutes academic misconduct. Students can often be under enormous pressure that leads them to make poor decisions.

It is possible to deal with these issues in a constructive manner that help students learn and get the support they need. This can include providing training to students when they first enrol, offering support to assist students who may struggle, and when academic conduct does occur, taking appropriate steps to ensure it does not happen again.

– ref. When does getting help on an assignment turn into cheating? – http://theconversation.com/when-does-getting-help-on-an-assignment-turn-into-cheating-120215

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Salman Shooshtarian, Research Fellow, RMIT University

The Australian construction industry has grown significantly in the past two decades. Population growth has led to the need for extensive property development, better public transport and improved infrastructure. This means there has been a substantial increase in waste produced by construction and demolition.

In 2017, the industry generated 20.4 million tons (or megatonnes, MT) of waste from construction and demolition, such as for road and rail maintenance and land excavation. Typically, the waste from these activities include bricks, concrete, metal, timber, plasterboard, asphalt, rock and soil.

Between 2016 and 2017, more than 6.7MT of this waste went into landfills across Australia. The rest is either recycled, illegally dumped, reused, reprocessed or stockpiled.

But with high social, economic and environmental costs, sending waste to landfill is the worst strategy to manage this waste.

Read more: With the right tools, we can mine cities

What’s more, China introduced its “National Sword Policy” and restricted waste imports, banning certain foreign waste materials and setting stricter limits on contamination. So Australia’s need for solutions to landfill waste has become urgent.

China has long been the main end-market for recycling materials from Australia and other countries. In 2016 alone, China imported US$18 billion worth of recyclables.

Their new policy has mixed meanings for Australia’s waste and resource recovery industry. While it has closed China’s market to some of our waste, it encourages the development of an Australian domestic market for salvaged and recycled waste.

But there are several issues standing in the way of effective management of Australia’s construction and demolition waste.

Read more: A crisis too big to waste: China’s recycling ban calls for a long-term rethink in Australia

The producers should take more responsibility

In Australia, the main strategy to reduce the waste sent to landfill is the use of levies. But the effectiveness of levies has been questioned in recent years by experts who argue for smarter strategies to manage waste from construction and demolition. They say that imposing a landfill levy has not achieved the intended goals, such as a reduction in waste disposal or an increase in waste recovery activities.

One effective strategy Australia should expand is extended producer responsibility (EPR).

The idea originated in Germany in 1991 as a result of a landfill shortage. At the time, packaging made up 30% by weight and 50% by volume of Germany’s total municipal waste stream.

To slow down the filling of landfills, Germany introduced “the German Packaging Ordinance”. This law made manufacturers responsible for their own packaging waste. They either had to take back their packaging from consumers and distributors or pay the national packaging waste management organisation to collect it.

Australia has no specific EPR-driven legal instrument for the construction and demolition waste stream, nor any nationally adopted EPR regulations.

But some largely voluntary approaches have had an impact. These include the national Product Stewardship Act 2011, New South Wales’ Extended Producer Responsibility Priority Statement 2010 and Western Australia’s 2008 Policy Statement on Extended Producer Responsibility.

These schemes have provided an impetus for industry engagement in national integrated management of some types of waste, such as e-waste, oil, batteries and fluorescent lights. Voluntary industry programs also cover materials such as PVC, gypsum, waffle pod and carpet.

Read more: Indonesia has sent Australia’s recycling home – it’s time to clean up our act

For instance, since 2002, the Vinyl Council of Australia has voluntarily agreed to apply EPR principles. Armstrong Australia, the world’s largest manufacturer of resilient PVC flooring products, collects the offcuts and end-of-life flooring materials for recycling and processing into a new product. These materials would otherwise have been sent to landfill.

In another example, CSR Gyprock uses a take-back scheme to collect offcuts and demolition materials. After installation, the fixing contractor arranges collection with CSR Gyprock’s recycling contractor who charges the builder a reasonable fee.

Connecting industries

But extending producer responsibility in a sustainable way comes with a few challenges.

Everyone in the supply chain should be included: those who produce and supply materials, those involved in construction and demolition, and those who recover, recycle and dispose of waste.

The goal of our work is to connect organisations and industries across the country so waste can be traded instead of sent to landfill.

Read more: The 20th century saw a 23-fold increase in natural resources used for building

But the lack of an efficient supply chain system can discourage stakeholders from taking part in such schemes. An inefficient supply chain increases the costs associated with labour and admin staff at construction sites, transport, storage, separation of waste and insurance premiums.

All of these are not only seen as a financial burden but also add complexities to an already complicated system.

Australia needs a system with a balanced involvement of producers, consumers and delivery services to extend producer responsibility.

How can research and development help?

In our research, we’re seeking to develop a national economic approach to deal with the barriers preventing the effective management of construction and demolition waste in Australia, such as implementing an extended producer responsibility.

And a project aimed to find ways to integrate supply chain systems in the construction and demolition waste and resource recovery industry is supporting our efforts.

The goal is to ensure well-established connections between all parts in the construction supply chain. A more seamless system will boost markets for these materials, making waste recovery more economically viable. And that in turn will benefit society, economy and the environment.

– ref. We create 20m tons of construction industry waste each year. Here’s how to stop it going to landfill – http://theconversation.com/we-create-20m-tons-of-construction-industry-waste-each-year-heres-how-to-stop-it-going-to-landfill-114602

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

In an enormous week for economic news at the start of the month, parliament passed the government’s three-stage personal income tax plan, and the Reserve Bank cut official interest rates to an unprecedented low of 1%.

It happened against the backdrop of a flagging economy in dire need of stimulus.

As the bank cut rates to a record low, its governor Philip Lowe again warned about the waning power of rates (monetary policy) to lift the economy.

At the Darwin community dinner after the board meeting he said:

Monetary policy does have a significant role to play and our decisions are helping support the Australian economy. But, we should not rely on monetary policy alone. We will achieve better outcomes for society as a whole if the various arms of public policy are all pointing in the same direction.

Lowe and many others – including yours truly – have repeatedly pointed out that spending on physical and social infrastructure can do what lower rates can’t do well – boost the economy while lifting its productivity. So, too would other productivity-enhancing reforms, particularly in the labour market.

And, of course, the government’s tax cuts will also stimulate the economy when they come into effect.

With tax cuts, timing’s the thing…

The obvious problem is that much of stimulus from those tax cuts will happen years from now, rather than today.

What the government should have done was insist on enacting all three stages of their tax plan immediately. Not staggered over several years, not in 2024-25. Now.

That would have, of course, pushed the budget into deficit in the short run, and that would would have run counter to the government’s narrative about being responsible economic managers.

But how responsible is it to prioritise one’s own political brand over the economic health of the nation?

Read more: Ultra-low unemployment is in our grasp. How Philip Lowe became the governor who lifted our ambition

Let’s not forget where the timing of the government’s tax plan came from. 2024-25 is outside the budget’s so-called “forward estimate” period and thus the impact on the deficit or surplus projections is not apparent.

It was the same rationale that underpinned the glacial, decade-long pace at which the government’s “enterprise tax plan” was to move to a 25% company tax rate. And it is the same set of dodgy accounting tricks that Wayne Swan was a master of for everything from health to education spending commitments.

…and the timing could be immediate

Productive infrastructure spending is hard to enact quickly. Spending on social infrastructure like education and training has a long lead time.

And structural reform of the industrial relations system might is probably the hardest and longest of all to put in place.

They are real constraints.

The Reserve Bank faces another, the so-called “zero lower bound” of conventional monetary policy and the complexities and uncertainties of unconventional policies such as quantitative easing.

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

But a government which won a mandate for its tax policies, and who frankly has the Labor opposition in a tailspin, could have insisted on all three stages of the tax cuts immediately.

The only thing standing between the economy and the aggressive fiscal stimulus it needs is the government’s obsession with balancing the budget regardless of the circumstances.

We’re not in the best of times

Don’t get me wrong, I think debt and deficits most certainly do matter. The government deserves credit for chipping away at the structural budget deficit, and we shouldn’t be running deficits in good economic times.

But we’re not in good economic times. We’re standing on the precipice of the first recession in nearly three decades. We’re looking at highly uncertain global conditions, domestic economic growth that has slowed to a trickle, sluggish wages growth, persistently high underemployment, and even the possibility of Japanese-style deflation.

The irony is that if, with the failure to enact sufficiently bold stimulus, we do tip into a recession, the red ink will flow all through the budget. Unemployment benefits and welfare payments will rise, personal and corporate income receipts will fall, GST revenue will drop. And young people who enter the labour market during a recession will suffer for years to come.

The downsides of not enacting sufficient fiscal stimulus far outweigh whatever benefits there are of a glide to path to budget balance while avoiding a recession.

It’s certainly not the time for hand-wringing

Coming back to Lowe’s admonition that we need the “various arms of public policy…pointing in the same direction”, here’s where we currently stand: The bank has acted, but far too late. For years it told us that 5% unemployment was as good as it could get long-term, to be patient and to wait for higher wage growth and inflation.

It’s been a mere five weeks since Lowe stopped impersonating Charles Dickens’ character Wilkins Micawber, who was fond of saying “something will turn up”.

Read more: Buckle up. 2019-20 survey finds the economy weak and heading down, and that’s ahead of surprises

Now the treasurer Josh Frydenberg is giving us his version of the same routine. On one hand he says personal income tax cuts are crucial to boosting employment and spending. On the other hand, he says we’d better wait.

The Australian economy can’t afford to wait for aggressive stimulus. The government has shown more concern for its political brand than for our economic health.

It isn’t what a responsible steward would do.

– ref. Vital signs: we need those tax cuts now, all of them. The surplus can wait – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-we-need-those-tax-cuts-now-all-of-them-the-surplus-can-wait-120218

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Goldlust, Phd candidate in environmental history, La Trobe University

The term “self-sufficiency” commonly evokes images of communes, yurts and 1970s hippies, most likely living off the land in northern New South Wales. More recently, it has been linked to an explosion of interest in solar powered “off-grid” living, tiny houses, ethical food networks and complementary health practices, along with a hipster-driven return to the artisanal and hand-made.

But these are just a small part of a much larger story. Australians have, in fact, dreamt of going back-to-the-land since the latter part of the 19th century. Those who embraced an ethic of self-sufficiency included anarchists, suffragists seeking opportunities for unemployed women, Catholic agrarians wanting to nurture both the soul and the soil, and a grassroots collection of organic farmers trying to bring attention to “Mother Earth”.

Each of these pioneers looked beyond “unhealthy” cities to the land as a source of salvation, seeking answers and alternatives to some of the problems of industrial modernity, and sharing in a vision of “the good life”.

Dirty, corrupt cities

The story begins in the late 19th century when urban reformers across North America, England, Europe and Australia started to identify a decline in societal values and standards, sparked by economic insecurity and rapid social change. With growing anxiety around “dirty and corrupt” cities, a transported image of the English “rural idyll” became a ready source of inspiration.

In Australia, this idea was equally shaped by the romance of bush ballads, alongside the popular landscape art movement. But rather than simply gaze at the landscape or go bush-walking on weekends, a number of urban Utopians wanted to get back to nature, hoping to reimagine and reconstruct society.

David Andrade was one of them. Born to Jewish merchants in Collingwood in 1859, he grew up with an acute sensitivity to the inequalities he saw around him. After co-founding the first Anarchist Club in Australia and spending years publishing and speaking across Melbourne, Andrade came up with a bold vision he called “Social Pioneering”. It envisaged opening up “agricultural, pastoral and industrial pursuits” for people with no access to land, bringing them closer to nature and basic subsistence living to avoid the dangerous economic fluctuations of the market.

In 1893, during a worsening economic depression, Andrade established “Liberty Hall” in central Melbourne. This radical venture housed a progressive “bookery”, the earliest vegetarian restaurant and hosted numerous lectures on topics like socialism, mesmerism, vaccination, free thought and spiritualism.

Andrade laid out plans for a co-operative community called “Freedom” on Lake Boga along the Murray River as an “enlightened salve for poor city wage-slaves”.

However, with little support for such a wild venture, in 1894, he and his wife Emily instead moved to the newly opened settlement of Sassafras in the nearby Dandenong Ranges with their three children, and a fourth on the way. Under a government scheme known as Village or Closer Settlement, which opened up large tracts of arable but often difficult land to the urban unemployed, the Andrades were among thousands who looked to small-scale farming on small rural “homesteads”.

Sadly their dream of agricultural independence and collective Utopia remained elusive. In 1897, devastating fires burnt out the settlement. David was committed to Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum soon after with his “reason having been broken down”. Emily and the children were forced to move back to the city and much of the radicalism of Andrade’s pioneering ventures soon faded.

Still, many others continued to battle capricious natural elements, poor soils, and the harsh realities of making a living from the land, buoyed by the potential of subsistence agriculture and the autonomy of working for oneself.

Womanly but not weak

While it was acceptable for both urban and rural women to garden domestically, it was hard for women to make a living from their gardens in the cities. Away from city dwellers’ conventions and expectations, they had more luck.

In December 1892, suffragist Mary Sanger Evans began promoting silk growing, or sericulture, as an ideal vocation for “womanly agriculture” pursuits as the Depression set in. Defying the view that “real men do real farming”, sericulture was promoted as a feminine practice. Soon after, Evans formalised her ideas into the Women’s Cooperative Silk Growing and Industrial Association. It had a charter to

open up new fields of productive industry for workless women of all classes, from the refined gentlewoman, thrown perhaps suddenly to depend on her own exertions, to the factory girl or motherless waif – industries healthful and elevating, and, if properly carried out, highly profitable – all of them too, productive from the soil direct.

With the support of prominent women such as the wife of NSW Governor Robert Duff, the organisation purchased a 44-acre farm lease at Wyee, north of Sydney. They called it “Wirawidar”, the Indigenous name for “woman’s ground”. Continuing to farm until 1901 during drought and difficult economic conditions, their efforts inspired urban women to look away from the cities towards the power of the soil.

With the support of her brother Justice Henry Higgins, suffrage activist Ina Higgins also realised that women could gain “autonomy and freedom” from a rural smallholding. After years agitating for a course to be made available for women at the Burnley Horticulture College, Ina became one of its first graduates in 1900. She then became Australia’s first professional female landscape gardener.

With the support of fellow suffrage and peace activists Vida Goldstein, Adela Pankhurst and Cecilia Ann John, Ina set up a farm in Mordialloc on the fringe of metropolitan Melbourne in 1913. Members of the Women’s Rural Industries Cooperative worked variously in an orchard, a nursery, raising poultry and horses, bee-keeping, and growing flowers and vegetables. Like Wirawidar, it was established for single or divorced women to provide for themselves, their children, and earn an income.

Paying no attention to class or dress dictums, they scandalised the public with their “rational dress” of a “brown knickerbocker suit.” While Higgins gave instruction on horticulture, the press reported that one co-op member, Cecelia John, was “as good as a man” since she could “drive a car, paint a house, erect poultry sheds, and [is] planning on turning a corner of the big barn into a bathroom at the least expense.”

With only six permanent workers, the farm managed to survive and succeed until the end of the war, but failed due to lack of capital and shortages of water. Higgins later continued educating young women in horticulture at Dookie Agricultural College, and paved the way for future “women of the soil” such as renowned landscaper Edna Walling.

The gospel of simplicity

During the 1930s a “lure of the pastoral” found popular resurgence through a nation-wide Country Life Movement. It united public and political sentiment, reaffirming the moral and political superiority of rural areas and small towns.

Within this push, aspiring political activist Bob Santamaria helped launch the National Catholic Rural Movement in 1938. He advocated for a form of “cottage Catholicism” within a new social order that was neither capitalist nor communist, but would bring the “countryside back to Christ”. The movement believed that in order to find the “true” source of one’s religious being, one had to embrace “honest, wholesome toil”.

Out of these ideas emerged the agricultural community of Whitlands. Established in 1941 near the base of Victoria’s Mount Buffalo, it celebrated the “dignity of manual labour” within a strong monastic tradition. By the end of the war, its valiant and charismatic leader Ray Triado had attracted dozens of young urban Catholics – men, women and their families – away from their comfortable city lives.

An acclaimed track athlete, and later an associate to a High Court Judge, at 30, Triado traded this world for a life of hunting, building and farming. A troubadour and storyteller, his community was built around simple daily rituals, of song, prayer and work. Numbering a few dozen in its later years, a variety of people were drawn to create a “world of the village around and permeated by God’s presence.”

Whitlands quickly became notorious amongst Melbourne’s high society for its radical departure from comfortable, conventional Catholicism, and its rejection of the materialistic culture of modern Australia. Some, such as regular visitor and journalist Niall Brennan supported the program and reported in the Catholic press of male “monks” in overalls, working shirts and shorts who “chanted Matins, Lauds and Prime, milked cows, cut wood and lit fires”.

Single women were also drawn to the farm as they saw a vital opportunity to escape the monotony of urban domesticity. Though the women maintained separate living quarters, such a scandalous situation led to calls from within Catholic institutions to dissolve the community.

In 1950, a dozen dedicated Whitlands members made a “pilgrimage” of over 250km from the farm to Melbourne to petition Archbishop Mannix against its closure. They succeeded in keeping the farm open – but the early idealism was soon lost. Many members moved on, while a few families settled nearby.

Soil and Civilisation

Long before the rise of the modern environment movement, farmer Elyne Mitchell (author of The Silver Brumby) published Soil and Civilisation in 1946. This book was an early attempt to explain to Australians the importance of the connection between human and ecosystem health. In addressing problems facing industrial agriculture and society at large, she wrote that, divorced from his roots, (i.e the earth) “man loses his psychic stability.”

Her sentiment echoed a growing movement of farmers across southern Australia that had united from the mid-1940s through the Living Soil Association in Tasmania, Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society of NSW and the Victorian Compost Society.

Drawing on the work of British organic pioneers such as Lord Albert Howard, they argued that all organic wastes, such as plant matter and animal manure, must be returned to the soil to decay and replenish soil humus. They also felt that nature’s “law of return” could be used as a model to alleviate some of the problems faced by ever growing, all consuming cities.

Challenging the dominant vision of agricultural progress, particularly the use of artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides, the organic growers looked to the model of the small, family farm for salvation. Though not strictly a call “back-to-the-land” since many were already farming, or working their suburban gardens, these campaigns encouraged ordinary people and producers to consider the origins of their food, and contemplate the wider outcomes of its production.

Michael J. Roads was one of these early proponents. He had moved from England to Tasmania in 1963 with his family. After years farming cattle, Roads saw how problems of greed, the rapid commercialisation of life, and a spiral of harmful farming practices were affecting both individuals and society as a whole.

In 1970 he published A Guide to Organic Living in Australia. It reflected on a growing movement “back to the earth” seeking solace in the bush and the simplicity of self-provision. In it, he shared his own story of spiritual transformation that had occurred when he began to revere the power of nature.

Spreading his message that nature, the soil and human happiness are inextricably linked, Roads continues to publish, travel the world, and teach others the insights he learned as a small farmer on a secluded mountain in Tasmania.

Roads was joined soon after by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren who transformed this philosophy into the practice of Permaculture. In turn, it helped motivate the counter-cultural movement as growing food organically for self-sufficiency became a critical way to rebel and achieve social change.

The 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival established self-sufficiency as central to its political and social doctrine. From this point on, personal self-sufficiency was seen as a means of survival, but also of achieving broader political, social and environmental reform. It continues to stand for a way of reducing consumption, getting back to basics, engaging with DIY projects, using renewable energies, and fostering community networks today.

– ref. Friday essay: the Australians who pioneered self-sufficiency, generations before Nimbin – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-australians-who-pioneered-self-sufficiency-generations-before-nimbin-114594

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anoosh Soltani, PhD candidate, University of Waikato

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s decision to wear a headscarf following the Christchurch mosque attacks in March has earned her worldwide praise. But in an online backlash, critics pointed out that women in conservative Muslim countries have no choice and risk public rebuke, fines or even arrest if they don’t cover up.

This is a longstanding controversy around the Muslim veil. Is it a tool for oppressing women or can it also carry other meanings?

Our explorative research, based on interviews with young Muslim women living in a New Zealand city, shows how they use their everyday lives and identity to change stereotypes of oppression.

Read more: How a growing number of Muslim women clerics are challenging traditional narratives

Controversial covering

In the aftermath of the September 11 (9/11) 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and the subsequent “war on terror”, veiled Muslim women received much attention from Western politicians, media and academics. Debates tended to frame Muslim women, their culture and their veils either as symbols of oppression by Islam, or as part of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

A perception of oppression of Muslim women continues today, but what is often missing in these hegemonic debates is the way in which many contemporary Muslim women reinterpret, understand and perform Islam.

Technology and social networking sites allow Muslim women to show there are many ways of understanding and practising Islam and veiling. In our study, we present two main ways in which young Muslim women use Instagram and Facebook to offer alternative discourses about Muslimness and womanhood.

Read more: Islamophobia and media stigma is having real effects on Muslim mothers in maternity services

Hashtag hijab fashion

The young Muslim women we interviewed join their sisters from all over the globe in promoting Islamic fashion. This movement aims to challenge the popular culture in which Islamically defined modesty and the veil are presumed to be ugly, oppressive and inimical to fashion, including the wearing of fashionable clothes designed to draw attention to the body.

Young Muslim women consciously mobilise social networks, posting photos and using hashtags that show them as fashion savvy consumers. Nurul Shamul is the first veiled woman in New Zealand to participate in the Miss Universe New Zealand beauty pageant contest. She explains:

As a Muslim woman, we need to be modest and we should not be chasing validation or approval from others by trying to look beautiful. But it was important for me to enter the contest with the intentions that I wanted to pave the way for girls and show that it is possible to look beautiful and fashionable but modest at the same time. It is better that there is someone like me that other Muslim girls can look up to and relate to.

Hashtag Hijabista

Nurul uses social networks to break the stereotypes and refute a binary view of the veil and fashion. Another young Muslim woman, Hassun Ali, uses Facebook and Instagram to change the discourse of veiled Muslim women. In several posts, Ali appears with stylish, colourful headscarves to suit her body-wrapping dresses and high-heeled footwear.

Ali always accompanies her photos with hashtags such as #muslimahfashion, #hijabista and #hijabfashion.

Most of the veiled participants stated that the Quran is the most valid source of information that requires Muslim women to wear the veil (hijab). Ali’s posts suggest that they reinterpret the Quranic verses (which call on Muslim women to display their beauty and draw their veils over their bosom) and rework their hijabs.

Young Muslim women in Hamilton do not wear the hijab to necessarily hide their femininity in public. Instead, they revisit the precepts of Islamic veiling and create multiple styles of modesty that are intriguing and draw attention.

Socially integrated Muslimas

Stereotypes say Muslim women are docile, self-segregated, and their faith and hijab prevent them from engaging in public life. Our interviewees reject such assumptions and actively use social media to change those negative images.

Read more: Five truths about the hijab that need to be told

Yasmin Borhan, a primary school teacher, explains:

At this specific time, after 9/11, I feel I have much more responsibilities as a Muslim woman in the society. I wonder, even though I am a New Zealander, to people here I am not a true New Zealander. I find out I have to present who I am. I feel like I have to act in a really good manner.

Most of Borhan’s posts focus primarily on her involvement with broader communities in Hamilton. In one post, she appears with a big smile while collecting donations as a volunteer for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.

Several other young interviewees also post their everyday lives on Facebook and Instagram. Their main aspiration is to change hegemonic views of Muslim women as powerless and excluded from social life. They also hope their posts encourage other Muslim women to become more socially active. For example, interviewee Mona Nabilah says:

I think in terms of Muslim women’s confidence, we could do more to raise their awareness of how important it is to be out there. I feel because the media is working to our disadvantage all the time, Muslim women stick together into their own communities because they are too afraid or they’re too shy.

Muslim women are working hard, online and offline, to reflect and increase their active presence in public arenas and break down stereotypes. Social media are the communicative spaces through which Muslim women show, verbally and visually, who they are and what their lives look like. Their posted photos are colourful, inspired by fashion, yet daring, thought provoking, and tend to reveal their everyday lives.

For us, the phenomena of hijab fashion and socially engaged Muslim women, and especially the current social media chapter, open opportunities for women to exercise their power and authority on matters pertaining to Muslim women’s bodies. Far from a binary categorisation of the oppressed and the oppressor, these phenomena signal a world in which Muslim women hybridise their faith and piety with modern ideas of feminism, activism and consumerism.

– ref. How Muslim women break stereotypes by mixing faith and modesty with fashion – http://theconversation.com/how-muslim-women-break-stereotypes-by-mixing-faith-and-modesty-with-fashion-110767

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

If the Morrison government manages to have a referendum passed to give Australia’s Indigenous people constitutional recognition it will be truly remarkable.

A prime minister who has previously taken little interest in this area, at least publicly, would have done something that proved beyond Tony Abbott, for whom it was a cause.

Scott Morrison and his minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, would have stared down conservative colleagues, cut a deal with Labor, and persuaded enough Indigenous leaders to get on board.

Finally, the government would have overcome the public’s inherent negativity towards referendums.

It would, one might say, be another miracle.

But miracles are rare and on present indications this one will be extraordinarily hard to land.

We are yet to see how seriously committed Morrison will be to the recognition push. For a chance of success, he’ll need to put his back into it.

Read more: The Morrison government proposes an Indigenous recognition referendum this term

His appointment of Wyatt, a man of Noongar, Wongi, and Yamatji heritage, was a statement in itself. The nomination of recognition for early attention was a surprise – and another indication that we have yet to get a grasp on Morrison as prime minister (as distinct from campaigner).

There has been much talk about his lack of an agenda but the unveiling of a couple of significant priorities – industrial relations and now Indigenous recognition – suggests there might be more there than we suspected.

It’s important to be clear about what Wyatt – who outlined his proposals in a speech on Wednesday – is saying. The government’s ambit hope is to put a referendum for recognition during this parliamentary term. But this will only happen if two conditions are met: it can get consensus on the content of what would go into the constitution, and there’s a high probability of a favourable outcome. The latter means winning not just the overall vote but the vote in four of the six states. Both content and potential support will present major problems.

What of the timetable? If the government really wants to give constitutional change a red hot go, there is a case for pushing it hard and quickly. Support doesn’t necessary build as time passes – beyond a certain point, it can erode.

But judging whether and when there would be sufficient likely public backing for a Yes vote would be tricky. Post May 18, everyone has become rather chary of polls. And things could quickly change in the final countdown.

History shows the voters’ penchant to say No. Despite the triumph of the 1967 referendum to give the federal government power to make laws for Aboriginal people and count them in the census (carried overwhelmingly in every state), in general referendums fail. Only eight have been passed – the last in 1977.

Read more: Listening with ‘our ears and our eyes’: Ken Wyatt’s big promises on Indigenous affairs

Formulating the question will be an extremely challenging hurdle to climb over.

A constitutional change that acknowledged Australia’s First Peoples but didn’t go much beyond that would be easiest to get through government ranks and the popular vote.

It is hard to see either Indigenous leaders or Labor accepting just that.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in their 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the constitution”.

But the indications are a Voice would not be part of the government’s constitutional model. Wyatt does want a Voice at the national level, but he is vague about its form, and the official line is that Morrison has “no plans” for the Voice.

Labor was committed at the election to putting into the constitution a Voice – which would be an input to the political process, not any sort of third chamber of Parliament – and the ALP would come under attack from Indigenous leaders if it walked away from this.

Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday Labor’s Pat Dodson, shadow assistant minister for reconciliation and constitutional recognition (and an Indigenous man dubbed “the father of reconciliation”) declared:

We either deliver the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full or continue down the failed path of soft reconciliation measures.

The shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney (also Indigenous), who is working closely with Wyatt and will do some travelling with him, may be more flexible than Dodson. Nevertheless she said after Wyatt’s speech:

We are at a point in our development, in our history where a Voice to the parliament absolutely has to be entrenched in the Australian Constitution.

Morrison has had talks with Anthony Albanese to pursue bipartisanship on Indigenous issues and the Labor leader was optimistic on Thursday that a successful recognition referendum in the next three years was “absolutely realistic and doable”.

Read more: Constitutional reform made easy: how to achieve the Uluru statement and a First Nations voice

But former deputy prime minister John Anderson, a member of the review panel Abbott set up to examine possible pathways to constitutional recognition, says that while he’s sympathetic to what Wyatt is undertaking, “finding the necessary national unity to avoid hurt and disappointment will be far from easy”. One huge problem, Anderson believes, will be getting Aboriginal people to come together on an agreed model.

Those in the Coalition party room and in the right wing commentariat who are critical of the move for recognition will use the spectre of the Voice as a scare tactic.

The recognition issue will be one test of whether the right, though tamed since Malcolm Turnbull’s overthrow, will seriously arc up within the Liberal party in this term.

But Wyatt has attracted enthusiasm from some colleagues. NSW Liberal John Alexander was quick to declare, “I’m with Ken on this, he has my full support for the process he has initiated and I hope it can conclude with a successful referendum vote and form of ‘Voice’ we can all be proud of”.

Of particular importance, many big corporations, including mining companies, now have progressive positions on indigenous affairs and will swing in behind the move. Wyatt has indicated he would be looking to them to help carry the debate, particularly in his home state of Western Australia, where a referendum would potentially be a hard sell.

He’d be encouraged by sentiments such as from Woodside, which said the company was “proud to give our support to this process as we continue to walk together with courage towards a reconciled Australia”.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Ken Wyatt on constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians

As with same-sex marriage, indeed probably more so, the corporate world is talking up an important social issue and prodding the politicians to act.

If Morrison has to retreat on Indigenous recognition, it is unlikely to make a great amount of difference to him. It won’t affect the outcome of the next election.

For Wyatt the issue is different. This is a fight he is undertaking for his people. The stakes are personal, and must feel frightening high.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: When it comes to Indigenous recognition, Ken Wyatt will have to close multiple gaps – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-when-it-comes-to-indigenous-recognition-ken-wyatt-will-have-to-close-multiple-gaps-120230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Assistant professor, University of Canberra

In 1960 DC Comics introduced the “Bizarro” planet of “Htrae”. Created with a duplicating ray, the planet’s inhabitants are all imperfect versions of Superman and Lois Lane, doing “opposite of all Earthly things”.

They go to bed when the alarm clock rings. They eat only the peel of a banana. They earn degrees by failing subjects. And they invest in “bizarro bonds” that are “guaranteed to lose money”.

Today a bizarro bond is no longer comic-book fantasy.

Now the governments of Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland are selling ten-year bonds with negative interest yields.

The normal attraction of a bond is that, for an upfront payment, the issuer pays you back more – paying interest on the principal over a given number of years, and the principal at the end.

Government bonds – which are the main way governments fund deficits – have been particularly attractive to investors wanting minimum risk, because a government can generally be relied on to pay its debts.

But bonds with a negative interest rate mean bond holders are effectively paying governments to hold their money for them.

The existence of these bizarro bonds, and the fact anyone wants to buy them, tells us much about how strange global economics now are, and that expectations are low about things changing any time soon.

Read more: Explainer: why the Japanese economy is stuck in a holding pattern

Negative positives

Why would anyone want to buy such a bond? The main reason is still the same. A government bond is safe. It’s just that now the bond doesn’t guarantee a minimum return but a minimum loss.

Take, for example, the Swiss government bond that currently costs SFr103.15, pays no interest and will return just SFr100 when it “matures” in June 2029. The holder knows they’ll lose more than 0.3% over a decade, but no more. A term deposit in a Swiss bank is no better, with interest rates of about -0.3%, and less safe. Buying shares or gold might return more, but carry a bigger risk of losing a lot more.

Read more: Negative interest rates – are there any positives?

For foreign purchasers there is an additional consideration – they may be hoping the Swiss franc will strengthen against their local currency – but for Swiss citizens it largely comes down to paying the government to keep their money safe.

Short-term rates

Bond yields reflect a number of factors, but the most crucial one is expectations about short-term interest rates as well as inflation.

Right now interest rates around the world are at historically low levels, and there is is little expectation they will increase any time soon.

This is important because an investor can weigh the value of buying a ten-year bond against any other investment, particularly against buying a one-year government bond and then, when it matures next year, buying another one-year bond, and so on.

Suppose interest rates are about 1% but everyone buying bonds expects rates to rise. The ten-year bond would then need to offer a yield more than 1% to be competitive with simply buying one-year bonds and rolling them over (on the basis the yield offered will more than 1% next year). The ten-year yield would need to match the average expected returns from one-year bonds over a decade.

The market for negative yields on ten-year government bonds in Japan and Europe therefore implies that most investors are expecting near-zero or negative interest rates will be maintained by central banks for some years to come.

The yields on government bonds still in positive territory imply something similar. In Australia, for example, where the ten-year yield hit a historic low below 1.3% in June, the implication is that markets expect the Reserve Bank Australia to keep the cash rate at or below its current all-time low of 1% for a considerable period.

All this suggests markets are not optimistic about global economic growth (possibly due to concerns about higher US tariffs). It is the same with other long-term interest rates, such as term deposits offered by banks.

Implications

Negative interest rates are extremely rare. Even rates as low as 1% are historically unusual. In his epic study of interest rates, A History of Interest Rates (1963), author Sidney Homer suggests rates lower than 3% were virtually unknown in ancient Mespotamia, Greece or Rome, or in medieval and renaissance Europe.

Bank of England data show there were just three months between 1935 and 2012 when the yield on ten-year UK government bonds dropped below 2%. Since mid-2015, they have not been above 2%, and are now below 1%.

For governments, this could be a rare opportunity. It’s an ideal time to borrow. This should make infrastructure projects more economically viable.

In Australia, the Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has argued quite forcefully for more spending on infrastructure. “This spending not only adds to demand in the economy, but it also adds to the economy’s productive capacity,” he said in June.

But “debt and deficit disaster” and “back in the black” rhetoric may mean the Australian government does not seize this opportunity.

A government doing the opposite of the good advice given to it by a trusted central bank governor would be just what one expects in a Bizarro world.

– ref. ‘Guaranteed to lose money’: welcome to the bizarro world of negative interest rates – http://theconversation.com/guaranteed-to-lose-money-welcome-to-the-bizarro-world-of-negative-interest-rates-119994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eddie Synot, Senior Research Assistant, Griffith University

Recently, I wrote that Ken Wyatt’s appointment as the minister for Indigenous Australians was a momentous occasion in Australian history. The appointment showed the government is committed to doing things differently when it comes to its responsibilities and obligations to Indigenous Australians.

It is still incredibly early days, but Wyatt has delivered his first major speech at a significant time – in the middle of National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week.

For Indigenous communities, the speech held much promise and provided key details on what the Morrison government’s approach to Indigenous affairs will look like over the next three years. This is major turning point that could result in real change after years of little progress.

New language on Indigenous affairs

Perhaps most significant was the rhetoric Wyatt used – it mirrored the language long used by many Indigenous Australians, but notably lacking in previous government addresses on these issues. Wyatt noted how previous governments have failed Indigenous Australians, acknowledging how even the

most well-intentioned modern policies and programs have still tended to take a top-down, command and control approach.

Wyatt echoed legitimate concerns with the way the government approached its Indigenous policies in the past, noting that it had been as

if Aboriginal people didn’t know what they needed or wanted.

He further noted that dominant attitudes toward Indigenous affairs had ignored “proud members of one of the world’s longest-lived civilisations,” pretending as if they

had nothing to say, no wisdom to offer, about what would help their families thrive and their communities flourish.

The significance of a cabinet minister, especially one responsible for Indigenous affairs, highlighting these aspects of Australian history and society is massive. The change in comparison to earlier ministers who ignored or dismissed these truths is remarkable.

The Constitution remains key

Another major shift for the Coalition government: there is no longer a disregard for the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a First Nations voice being entrenched in the Constitution.

While Wyatt demurred on specific details, emphasising a “consensus option,” he did otherwise commit to a referendum within three years. This is another significant step toward implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

It is important to note that the final report of the Referendum Council, as well as the bi-partisan, parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition, both affirmed that a First Nations voice as called for by the Uluru Statement was the most sensible and widely supported option for reform.

Also supporting the conclusions of the Referendum Council and the Joint Select Committee, Wyatt emphasised that “the constitution remains key.” Both found that current representative mechanisms for Indigenous peoples were not working. And both agreed that only a First Nations voice would provide the type of representation required to empower Indigenous peoples and communities.

A move away from top-down policy

Wyatt touched on many other issues that are important to Indigenous communities and are aimed at bringing more local input to policy-making.

On the issue of truth telling, he poignantly recognised that without truth

there can be no agreement on where and who we are in the present, how we arrived here and where we want to go in the future.

More details were also provided on the role of the new coordinating agency called the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA). The NIAA aims to coordinate efforts across all levels of government and Indigenous communities to allow Indigenous peoples to empower themselves.

Wyatt specifically indicated that he doesn’t intend policy to come from the NIAA or his office. Rather, policy actions are to be supported by all levels of community and the state and territory governments to enable communities to own their own policy actions.

This is continued movement away from what Wyatt described as the history of “a top-down, command and control approach” that has failed Indigenous Australians.

Wyatt emphasised this by saying that his intention is “to have genuine conversations, not only with Indigenous leaders and peak bodies, but with families, individuals and community organisations so that I can hear their voices.”

This addresses the long history of Indigenous peoples not being listened to and rather being told what will happen. Wyatt noted again that

the most important thing that I and the agency will do is to listen – with our ears and with our eyes.

One area of concern

The speech also raised the priority issues of youth suicide, the revival and maintenance of Indigenous languages (with a pledged A$10 million), and the expansion of programs aimed at supporting Indigenous businesses, such as the Indigenous Procurement Policy, which provides incentives for Indigenous businesses to grow.

Wyatt also reemphasised the creation of the new position of a national suicide prevention adviser to coordinate and advise on already announced funding and increased support service delivery.

It is still early and only time will tell whether these actions will help, but at least one area of the speech raises concern: Wyatt’s commitment to revamp the the Community Development Program aimed at employment, training and development for Indigenous communities. By creating community advisory boards, Wyatt claimed that the

CDP has been reformed to ensure communities have a say in the way the programme is run.

The problem, however, hasn’t just been how the program is run. Many have been advocating for the abolishment of the CDP, rather than its reform.

Too many Indigenous people in the program work significant hours for less than minimum wage and face punitive punishments for non-compliance with regulatory requirements. This includes being fined for failing to show for work, which impacts the participants’ ability to purchase life necessities.

In attempting to force participants into work, the CDP fails to understand the challenges of remote communities and, as such, unfairly discriminates against Indigenous people. The CDP is effectively a “work-for-the-dole” program that punishes poverty rather than empowering communities.

Overall, Wyatt’s speech continued to build on the early optimism surrounding his appointment. His notable change in rhetoric from previous governments and his commitment for early action to build on reforms, such as the Council of Australian Governments’ partnership agreement with peak Indigenous organisations to close the gap in health, education and employment opportunities and the Indigenous Advancement Strategy Evaluation Framework, are welcome.

Most importantly, Wyatt’s recommitment to constitutional reform moves the nation one step closer to achieving those important reforms of voice, treaty and truth from the Uluru Statement from the Heart. As Wyatt noted, this is

too important to get wrong, and too important to rush.

But the crucial thing to remember is how far we have come since the Turnbull government’s response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, just two short years ago.

– ref. Listening with ‘our ears and our eyes’: Ken Wyatt’s big promises on Indigenous affairs – http://theconversation.com/listening-with-our-ears-and-our-eyes-ken-wyatts-big-promises-on-indigenous-affairs-120165

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney

The news of a fatal dog-bite incident in Melbourne last night has shocked dog lovers around the country.

A 61 year old man was dead by the time police arrived at the property in Mill Park; his 58 year old wife is in hospital with serious injuries. The dog in question, a Staffordshire terrier, belonged to the couple’s son.

At first glance, the dog seems almost to have led a “double life” – strongly vouched for as a deeply loyal animal who would defend its family members and protect familiar children, and yet also be capable of sudden viciousness.

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

While, of course, we cannot know what exactly happened, this horrifying attack raises many questions. Are some dogs not suitable as family pets? What can we do to prevent further cases like this?

The Staffy problem

The American Staffordshire terrier is a breed (that can be registered) whereas, its cousin, the American pit bull terrier is a type (that cannot be registered and has no strict breed standard for breeding purposes). The pit bull was bred to fight other dogs: it is strong and fast, with powerful jaws. In the fighting pit, they also needed to be impulsive and quick to engage with their opponents.

However, it’s an over-simplification to declare an entire breed “too dangerous”. In every incident like this, many factors lead to the first bite and even more factors feed into a second and third bite. This is why most veterinarians call for a “deed-not-breed” approach, arguing that blaming a dog because of its genes overlooks the role of nurture and circumstance.

The reality is that any breed can defend itself when pushed. A case in point is a report from Oklahoma last year, in which a pack of dachshund crosses killed a middle-aged female neighbour.

Unfortunately for Staffordshire (bull) terriers, many muscular breeds have attracted an unhelpful fan-base among people who feel their dog should reflect their personal machismo.

But reliable data on aggressive dogs are very difficult to come by.

“Bites” and “attacks” are both reported by local councils or counties, and the difference between the two may be significant. In Australia, dogs can be declared dangerous or menacing by local councils based on a single disputed claim or without ever injuring a person.

Hospitals record data on patients who have been physically attacked or bitten by dogs severely enough to require medical attention. However, hospitals do not investigate these cases, so the accuracy of such data is questionable.

That said, it is estimated that less than 50% of dog bites are reported to a medical or legal authority.

Social media may offer a chance to gather better first-hand data. A fascinating analysis of 143 dog-bites posted on YouTube has revealed how dogs behaved before biting people and how the people involved over-looked warnings from the dogs.

A doggy personality

Recent studies suggest domesticated dogs are uniquely good at communicating with humans. The extremely wide variety in breeds also makes them an interesting research model for investigating both human and canine genes.

Obsessive compulsive disorder is a terrific example: tail-chasing dogs are ideal models for research that may help humans afflicted with repetitive tendencies, such as compulsive hand-washing.

As it happens, the so-called “bull breeds” are over-represented in studies of tail-chasing.

In many ways, veterinary behavioural medicine has developed along similar lines to the human psychiatric field. One area particularly relevant area is the study of individual motivation and personality.

This is the focus of a series of studies by Dr Jacqui Ley, an Australian veterinary behaviour specialist. She asked more than 1,000 owners to rate their companion dogs on more than 60 personality adjectives.

Statistical analysis identified five underlying characteristics that could be used to cluster the owners’ responses into the following categories: extraversion, neuroticism (or cautiousness), self-assuredness/motivation, training focus and amicability.

These are remarkably similar to the so-called Big Five personality types described in humans: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.

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

It will be interesting to see how successful these five labels are in describing the traits of dogs as scored by behavioural tests, and how stable this system of labelling is over the life of a dog.

Impulsivity in dogs is also increasingly considered in the context of aggressive behaviour. It refers to the relative lack of impulse control and has prompted the development of a psychometric tool to assess the trait in one’s own dog.

The importance of temperament

Even though the selective pressures humans have applied to dogs over the centuries have changed, we’ve been steadily filtering out genes that weren’t useful to us.

The earliest proto-dogs were those that could tolerate being close to humans to forage in their waste. Of course, any of these ancestors unable to adapt to the human household have been removed from the gene pool, especially if they were inappropriately aggressive.

These days, responsible pet owners are encouraged to desex even the most well-adapted companion dogs. While this has brought about a welcome reduction in unwanted canine pregnancies, it has also meant a greater proportion of dogs in our community are the product of dog breeders who don’t prioritise adaptability and social skills. Instead, they select for characteristics of appearance.

So, to generalise, we now have something of a mismatch: humans who are less experienced at interacting with, training and managing dogs than their forebears, are being matched with dogs bred more for aesthetics rather than easy-going temperaments.

The clash of these cultures undoubtedly makes it all too easy for tragic attacks to take place. The media then vilifies dogs, making people fearful – which can, in turn, worsen the dog-human relationship.

Dogmanship

Dogmanship, or perhaps more correctly dogpersonship, is an emerging science that considers the role of humans in the dog-human relationship and explores why some people are much better with dogs than others.

Drawing heavily on the science of emotional intelligence, it investigates how people can read the signals each dog is giving and respond accordingly.

Common advice from education programs includes how and when to approach dogs, how to recognise dog body language that may signal fear, anxiety, uneasiness, conflict, or aggression, and how to keep safe when approached by a strange dog, as well as parental supervision at all times.

In an attempt to outlaw powerful dogs originally bred for fighting, breed-specific legislation has been introduced in many countries, but it is very controversial – not least because so many of the dogs targeted are arguably types rather than breeds.

Read more: How to talk to your dog – according to science

As our understanding of dog behaviour traits improves and as we better appreciate what characterises good dogmanship, we can expect to see fewer dog bites. Then we won’t need to wait for dogs to bite people before we identify them as a risk and begin to manage them accordingly.

Paul McGreevy is the author of A Modern Dog’s Life (2009), published by NewSouth.

– ref. Understanding dog personalities can help prevent attacks – http://theconversation.com/understanding-dog-personalities-can-help-prevent-attacks-120224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McInerney, Research Fellow, La Trobe University

For nine hours, my colleague Michael Shackleton and I held onto our scooters for dear life while being slapped in the face by spiked jungle plants in the mountains of Cambodia. We only disembarked either to help push a scooter up a slippery jungle path or to stop it from sliding down one.

With our gear loaded up on nine scooters – 200 metres of fishing nets, two inflatable kayaks, food for five days, hammocks, preservation gear for collection of DNA, and other assorted scientific instruments – we at last arrived at one of the few remaining sites known to harbour the critically endangered Siamese crocodiles.

Read more: If a croc bite doesn’t get you, infection will

The Siamese crocodile once lived in Southeast Asian freshwater rivers from Indonesia to Myanmar. But now, fewer than 1000 breeding individuals remain.

In fact, during the 1990s the species was thought to be completely extinct in the wild. Then, in 2000, scientists from Fauna and Flora International found a tiny population in the remote Cardamom Mountains region of Cambodia.

We travelled to this remote wilderness in 2017 to determine habitat suitability for the reintroduction of captive-bred juvenile Siamese crocodiles. We wanted to understand the food web there to see whether it contains enough fish to sustain the young crocs.

Our journey would not have been possible without the help of Community Crocodile Wardens – local community members who patrol the jungle sanctuaries for threats and record crocodile presence. Wardens also conduct crocodile surveys further afield to discover new populations or to identify new areas of potential suitable crocodile habitat for juvenile releases.

Our recent study found to ensure the species survives, reintroduction locations must be protected from fishing pressure – both from a food supply perspective, but also from risk of entanglement in nets.

A species in decline

When we arrived at our site, northwest of the village of Thmor Bang, our day was capped by what we came to know as the standard evening downpour, despite assurances that we had, in fact, timed our trip for the dry season.

Kayaks were inflated, nets set, and sampling was underway. This proved laborious – to ensure crocodiles didn’t drown, we couldn’t leave nets unattended in the water overnight, but instead checked them every hour until morning.

Siamese crocodiles are generally not aggressive to humans, but they come into conflict with people when caught in fishing nets.

This often leads to the crocodile drowning and the fishing net being ruined. It’s a disaster on both counts, because fish is the only source of protein for many local communities in Cambodia.

Like many other apex predators around the world, the Siamese crocodile is also in decline because of habitat destruction and poaching for their skins.

Their potential large size and generally placid nature means they are highly prized by crocodile farmers who use the skins for handbags and footwear. Crocodile farmers also often hybridise the Siamese crocodiles with other non-native crocodile species.

Read more: Scientists at work: bridging the divide between development and conservation in Cambodia

This means programs for Siamese crocodile reintroduction and breeding must carefully genetically screen all young crocodiles bred in captivity to make sure they’re not actually hybrids, so the “genetically pure” wild populations can remain.

Finding fish bones in croc poo

Despite a pretty good understanding of captive Siamese crocodile behaviour and biology, very little is known about Siamese crocodiles in the wild, such as what they eat or how much food they need to raise an egg to adulthood.

Our only reliable indication of diet comes from scats (crocodile poo or “shit of croc” as we came to call it) collected along the river banks inhabited by remnant populations.

Carefully collected poo samples containing scales and bones tell us fish and snakes make up a significant proportion of the Siamese crocodile diet.

But the shrouded, mystical, extremely remote and virtually inaccessible jungle in the Cardamom Mountains has ensured we know next to nothing about fish communities within habitats set for the release of captive crocodile. And this information is particularly important for prioritising release locations for captive bred juveniles.

Read more: Banning exotic leather in fashion hurts snakes and crocodiles in the long run

We spent four days sampling fish communities and then repeated the process at two other equally remote locations within the Cardamoms, requiring two days travel between each.

We saw groups of gibbons moving through the forest and macaques climbing down from trees to drink at the river. But at last we spotted a wild Siamese crocodile after dark, swimming in our morning bathing pool, on our second-last day.

Ultimately, we distinguished 13 species of fish from the Cardamom Mountains, confirming the presence of two previously unconfirmed species groups for the region.

What’s more, we found fish density was highest in areas with more Siamese crocodiles, and lowest in areas with more human fishing pressure.

Read more: Staying safe in crocodile country: culling isn’t the answer

Understanding the food web of crocodile reintroduction sites is important, because conservation managers need to understand the ecological carrying capacity of the system – the number of individual crocodiles that can be supported in a given habitat. Learning this is especially important when historical information does not exist.

Preservation of fish stocks within Siamese crocodile habitats is critical for survival of the species. But a key challenge for natural resource managers of the Cardamom Mountains is balancing crocodile density with local fishing necessity, and to do this, we need more information on Siamese crocodile biology.

– ref. In the remote Cambodian jungles, we made sure rare Siamese crocodiles would have enough food – http://theconversation.com/in-the-remote-cambodian-jungles-we-made-sure-rare-siamese-crocodiles-would-have-enough-food-118264

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.

Why is the Sun orange when white stars are hottest? – Rain, age 6, Toowoomba.

Hi Rain. Thanks for sending in your excellent question.

The reason the Sun shines so bright is that it’s hot. And the colour it glows depends on how hot it is.

You are right that a star that glows white is hotter than one that glows orange.

And it’s true the Sun often looks orange. But it isn’t really orange. It is white. Well, it’s a bit on the yellow side but it’s mostly white.

But even white stars aren’t the hottest.

Read more: Curious Kids: What existed before the Big Bang? Did something have to be there to go boom?

The blue giants that burn bright and briefly

The very hottest stars actually glow blue. We call them blue giant stars.

These blue giants are around 80 times larger than our Sun – so they are really, really big. They live and die very quickly. They are so hot and so big they burn through their fuel very quickly and last just a few million years.

That might sound like a long time but it’s not much compared to how long our Sun will live.

When our Sun was a million years old, it was still just a child. It’s about 5 billion years old now and will live to about 10 billion years. So you could say the Sun is now middle-aged. It’s about halfway through its life.

So blue giants are hottest, white stars are very hot, but there are also orange stars that burn less hot. There are even red stars, which are a bit cooler again. They are a half or even a quarter the size of our Sun and while they are still burning hot, they are nowhere near as hot as our lovely Sun.

So why does the Sun look orange, then?

A lot of the pictures we take of the Sun make it look orange because of special filters we use to take the photo. The Sun is putting out so much light that we would not be able to photograph the detail on its surface unless we cut some of the brightness out. That’s what the filters do.

At sunrise and sunset, the Sun can look especially orange to our eyes. That’s because, at those times of day, its light has to travel through a lot of the Earth’s atmosphere (the layer of swirling air that surrounds our planet). And all the dust and stuff in the atmosphere makes the light scatter and change so it looks less blue and more orangey-red.

Only Bored Astronomers Find Gratification Knowing Mnemonics

In the olden days, astronomers used letters to try to sort different types of stars. As we learned more about stars, the order changed, and labels became quite mixed up! Today we still use this naming system to remember the order of stars from hottest to least hot. It goes like this: O, B, A, F, G, K, M. (Some versions have more letters at the end).

The O-stars are the blue giants, while our Sun is a “G-class” star. That means it’s not the hottest but it’s not the coolest either.

Those letters are hard to remember, so astronomers came up with different tricks to remember it. One memory trick is called a “mnemonic” where you pretend each letter stands for a word. It’s easier to remember a sentence instead of a bunch of letters.

One student in my class came up with this mnemonic: “Only Bored Astronomers Find Gratification Knowing Mnemonics” (gratification means something like happiness).

Another one I like is: “Orange Butterflies And Frogs Get Knitted Mittens”.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do stars twinkle?

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: why is the Sun orange when white stars are the hottest? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-is-the-sun-orange-when-white-stars-are-the-hottest-120216

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Associate Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University

Indigenous public policy fails consistently. The research evidence is compelling. Across post-settler colonial societies like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, schooling is not as effective for Indigenous citizens, employment and housing outcomes are not as good, and health outcomes are worse.

In Canada, the government says the solution lies in stronger nation-to-nation relationships between the state and First Nations. In Australia, the federal government proposes stronger consultation to “close the gaps in Indigenous disadvantage”.

In New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi is broadly accepted as an agreement offering solutions to policy failure. It protects the Māori right to self-determination and obliges the state to ensure that public policy is as effective for Māori as it is for everybody else.

Last week, the Waitangi Tribunal affirmed both these general principles in respect to health policy, but in its comprehensive report on the primary health care system, it found that despite clear intentions, the state fails to deliver good outcomes for Māori.

Read more: Racism alleged as Indigenous children taken from families – even though state care often fails them

Lack of self-determination

In effect, the tribunal found the state fails because it does not stand aside to allow Māori self-determination to prevail. Self-determination is a right that belongs to everybody. Under the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which New Zealand accepts as an “aspirational” document, self-determination means that:

Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development. In particular, Indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing and other economic and social programmes affecting them and, as far as possible, to administer such programmes through their own institutions (Article 23).

Under the Treaty of Waitangi the right to self-determination may be expressed in at least two ways. Firstly, the treaty affirms Māori rangatiratanga, or chiefly authority over their own affairs. Secondly, it gives Māori the “rights and privileges of British subjects”.

The latter was a relatively meaningless status in 1840, when the treaty was signed by representatives of the Crown and Māori tribes. But in 2019, citizenship has replaced subjecthood as a substantive body of political rights and capacities for many New Zealanders, though not always for Māori.

Read more: Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi

Proposal for Māori health authority

The tribunal’s Health Services and Outcomes Inquiry report is explicit. Poor Māori health persists because health policy doesn’t honour the treaty. Solutions, it says, lie in the treaty partnership between Māori and the Crown.

The idea of a treaty partnership is well established in New Zealand policy. But the tribunal report reinforces the idea that it is an unequal partnership, with the Crown acting as a senior party and crowding out space for Māori policy leadership. On the other hand, it makes at least two potentially transformative recommendations.

The first is that the Crown and Māori claimants in health care agree on a methodology for assessing underfunding of Māori health providers. The tribunal found that underfunding is in breach of the treaty and one of the variables that explains poor Māori health outcomes.

Secondly, the tribunal recommended the Crown and claimants “explore the possibility of a standalone Māori health authority”. This authority could become the principal funder of primary health services for Māori citizens. Māori health providers would make bids for contestable funding to the authority which, unlike District Health Boards, would have a predominantly Māori membership.

The authority would assess self-defined Māori health needs against established Māori cultural values. It could also have the capacity to commission research and contribute to national policy debate.

Māori at centre of policy decisions

This parallels a recommendation made to Kevin Rudd’s government in Australia in 2009 by a National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission.

Services would be purchased from Aboriginal community controlled health services, mainstream primary health care services and hospitals, and other services. The authority would ensure that all purchased services meet set criteria including clinical standards, cultural appropriateness, appropriately trained workforce, data collection and performance reporting against identified targets such as the national Indigenous health equality targets.

The proposal’s rejection was never fully explained. But it remains instructive to New Zealand as a way of making Māori policy work through self-determination.

Independent Māori decisions about which health programmes to fund, and from which providers, potentially brings Māori people and values to the centre of the policy process. It means that Māori people are not the subjects of state policy. They become its agents, exercising meaningful citizenship and the right to take responsibility for their own affairs. The concept of Māori as junior partners to the Crown is replaced by decision making authority.

An independent funding agency could also strengthen democratic accountability to Māori people who would not need to wait for an invitation to join the policy process, but would be at its centre. Liberal democracies exclude Indigenous people and perspectives as a way of protecting majority interests. But as the tribunal found, exclusion can explain why policy fails.

Meanwhile, Indigenous Australians have proposed a constitutionally enshrined “voice” to parliament, a truth telling commission and treaties between Indigenous nations and the state to acknowledge enduring Indigenous sovereignty. Victoria and the Northern Territory have started the process of treaty negotiation, but last year, a new government in South Australia “paused” the negotiations begun by its predecessor. It didn’t think that treaties could contribute to better lives for Indigenous people.

In Zealand, the treaty is not a panacea for better lives for Māori. But in 2019, it remains as the Māori government minister, Sir Apirana Ngata, put it in 1922.

[It] is widely discussed on all marae. It is on the lips of the humble and the great, of the ignorant and of the thoughtful.

Ultimately, the treaty’s transformative capacity depends on how it is interpreted, especially whether self-determination is allowed to trump partnership.

– ref. How to improve health outcomes for Indigenous peoples by making space for self-determination – http://theconversation.com/how-to-improve-health-outcomes-for-indigenous-peoples-by-making-space-for-self-determination-120070

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eleanor Malbon, Research Fellow, UNSW

While the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has made incredible improvements to the lives of many Australians living with disabilities, not everyone is benefiting from the scheme in the same way.

Our review, published recently in journal BMC Public Health, found the structure of the NDIS may be exacerbating existing social inequities. Women, rural and regional Australians, and those from poor households are more likely to miss out on disability care than their peers.

In a survey of of economically disadvantaged people with a disability, 31% were not even aware of the NDIS. A further 41% had heard of the NDIS and were eligible but had not applied due to bureaucratic complexities.

Read more: Understanding the NDIS: how does the scheme work and am I eligible for funding?

Women make up 49% of Australians with a disability but just 37% of NDIS participants. Further research is underway to help us understand why this is the case but it’s likely a reflection of broader gender inequities.

Men are also more likely to successfully secure NDIS services than women, which allows them to negotiate better deals and services from their allocated funds.

Accommodating the diversity of people’s circumstances is essential for the NDIS to achieve its goal of improving the lives of Australians with disability.

Market-based policies can exacerbate inequities

A 2018 Senate inquiry into NDIS readiness found there were often too few providers equipped to deliver disability support services, especially in remote and regional areas.

Without enough good-quality providers with space to take on more clients, people may miss out on services. Our review found this was more likely to occur for women, people with lower education levels, and those in remote and regional areas.

Where markets are failing or thin, those who are most equipped to get in early and establish service contracts are at an advantage over those who cannot.

A local service provider can only take on so many customers before it hits limits on staffing and resources. Those who get in early manage to secure services for themselves. Those who don’t may miss out on services entirely, especially where there are only a few specialist providers.

There are many reasons why someone might not get in early, such as having other care duties, living remotely, living in unstable housing, or not having the energy to work through the complicated system.

Self-managers get better services

Every NDIS participant is allocated a personal budget that matches their needs and goals. There are three ways for participants to manage NDIS budgets:

1. administered by the participant (self-managed)
2. chosen by the participant but administrated through a plan manager who pays invoices on behalf of the participant (plan-managed)
3. NDIA managed, where services are chosen by the participant from registered NDIS providers only.

Or the participant may opt for a combination of these options.

The 24% of self-managed participants carry the most administrative burden. They manage contracts and invoices themselves. But they also have the most flexibility to secure services, negotiate with service providers on price and access tailored services.

Read more: Here’s what needs to happen to get the NDIS back on track

Many service providers are declining to take on contracts with people who do not self-manage, because these participants take more time and pay less. This leaves those least able to manage their services without access to the most flexible and boutique services.

Up to 40% of NDIS participants with an intellectual disability would like more training on NDIS tasks so they can better self-manage or choose services. In particular, they want to develop their skills in looking after money, using computers, finding the right service, making choices and ensuring they’re heard.

The system privileges an ‘ideal norm’

The NDIS system is bureaucratically complex, and many people find it difficult to navigate. In this way, it seems be catering to a concept of an “ideal norm”: a person who can navigate the NDIS bureaucracy and take on complex additional administrative burdens.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA, the agency charged with implementing the NDIS), for example, has been sending letters to blind people in formats they cannot read, such as printed letters without braille and PDF files that are incompatible with screen readers. This is due to to be rectified this month.

Control over services may also be limited for people who are geographically or socially isolated, or do not have the skills to navigate NDIS systems to access plans, run budgets and find services.

What can be done?

Addressing market failures and a scarcity of providers is essential to ensuring the benefits of the NDIS are equitable.

Supporting people to navigate bureaucratic complexity in the scheme will level the playing field.

The recent pricing changes for service providers to travel to remote and regional areas may help address provider shortfalls. Further, plans to maintain critical supports for essential services such as feeding and bathing in areas with too few providers will help address market failure.

Read more: The NDIS is delivering ‘reasonable and necessary’ supports for some, but others are missing out

Greater funding support is needed for advocacy groups to help NDIS participants, including those economically disadvantaged and homeless, to access and navigate the NDIS bureaucracy.

Finally, to allow better assessment of equity in the NDIS, we need better data. We need a large-scale evaluation of the performance of the NDIS, similar to the previous evaluation of NDIS trials. Existing data held within government on NDIS access should be reported publicly.

We need such actions to bridge the gap between Australians who are socially and financially equipped to navigate the NDIS and those who are not, or else people with critical needs may go without services and support.

– ref. Women, rural and disadvantaged Australians may be missing out on care in the NDIS – http://theconversation.com/women-rural-and-disadvantaged-australians-may-be-missing-out-on-care-in-the-ndis-120081

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Batty, Professor of Creative Writing, University of Technology Sydney

Why do we tell stories, and how are they crafted? In this series, we unpick the work of the writer on both page and screen.

One of the major considerations when creating an ongoing television series is its “story world”, made up by its place, people, themes, style and tone. Central to this world is the setting, known in television writing as the “hub” or “precinct”, which serves the need for constant generation of characters and storylines.

Well-known examples of a hub or precinct include Ramsay Street (Neighbours), Sun Hill Police Station (The Bill), the White House (West Wing) and the eponymous Happy Valley.

With its high turnover of criminals, and the pressure-cooker effect of locking up many characters within the same walls, a prison is a particularly useful story hub for a TV drama series. The Melbourne-set and produced series Wentworth, now in its seventh season on Foxtel in Australia, is a good example of how this can work.

Wentworth reimagines cult show Prisoner, bringing together cold killers, pretty criminals and correctional officers – some of them also corrupt – in the one space. With a series of “top dogs” ruling the roost – from fiery mum Bea Smith (Danielle Cormack) to vigilante leader Kaz Proctor (Tammy Macintosh) – personalities clash, friendships and relationships evolve, and death threats, set-ups and escape attempts are frequently made.

TV series are often called “returning series”, usually because the setting plays such a vital role in structuring the story. Each week we come back to the same village, hospital, police station or school to see how the characters react to new challenges.

For prison dramas such as Wentworth, mostly the characters do not so much return as remain. Confined within cells, rec rooms, canteens and exercise yards, characters find themselves creating their own dramas, defining their own hierarchies, and of course dreaming up ways to get out (legally or otherwise).

Writers can introduce new characters at any time – for any crime – and mainstay characters can be dispatched with little narrative contrivance, because the prisoners’ lack of control over their own movement is a given.

Many TV series creators have explored the possibilities of detention as a story hub, generating shows such as Porridge (1974-77), Prison Break (2005-17) and most recently Orange is the New Black (2013-present). Mostly shot in a few indoor spaces, prison stories are cheaper to produce than many other scripted television series.

Characters in Wentworth have much at stake in each encounter. From eating breakfast to exercising in the yard, they may lose their freedom, social position, familial ties and even their lives. The prison corridor can readily become a place for compassion or conflict, solidarity or rioting.

Queueing to use the public telephone, where we typically see teary connections with loved ones, can easily slip into hierarchical games among the inmates, and sometimes violence. Because of the setting, the extreme stakes and emotional power of melodrama are never far from the surface.

Female-focused storytelling

Wentworth’s story hub is distinctive, because it brims with women. Wentworth Correctional Centre is a (fictional) social space constructed primarily by and for women. This allows for a variety of female identities and experiences to be played out.

As part of a global movement to better represent women on screens (and behind the scenes), including Screen Australia’s Gender Matters program, this show is very timely. Not only does it increase representation of women on screen, it also demands a greater breadth of female characters simply because all of the inmates – and the majority of the staff – identify as female. Women are Governors and “Top Dogs”, the brutalised and the perpetrators.

All of these character types, backgrounds and motivations come together within the powerful female world of Wentworth. In the first season, the prison functions as a magnetic narrative force, drawing the characters towards their incarcerated state. The causes of their custodial sentences are dramatised via flashbacks, so we see their various positions in society before they become levelled as prisoners.

In later seasons, the prison functions as a kind of decentralising force as the narrative follows selected characters trying to establish new lives on parole. For example, Liz Birdsworth (Celia Ireland) is released to a halfway house, where she must deal with violence and theft; and inmate Franky’s (Nicole da Silva) attempt to establish a legal career after her release is told over two seasons.

The sheer number of female characters also demands diversity: there are women of various ages, ethnicities, social classes, body shapes, genders, religions and sexualities. This creates a world in which social norms, power dynamics and gender categories can be disrupted and challenged.

Many of the central characters in Wentworth are lesbian or bisexual. When Franky and her psychologist Bridget develop a strong relationship in season three, for example, the forbidden couple became a fan favourite tagged “Fridget”.

The frequency of representing taboo and marginalised sexualities is a major contributing factor in the enduring appeal of women-in-prison stories.

But the prison of this television series is still an imaginary world, where characters and stories are played for the tastes and thrills of mainstream audiences, rather than to compassionately illuminate the experiences of the 43,000 Australians who live in our prisons. Although Wentworth features more major Indigenous characters than the average Australian television series (the current season features two Indigenous Australian main characters in an ensemble of ten), it still fails to adequately represent or address the horrifically high rate of Indigenous incarceration here.

Wentworth has been praised elsewhere as “a striking example of how to make strongly dramatic, addictive TV using a confined setting”, in a series that is “dark, tense and fully female-centric”.

Inbuilt with drama, rivalries, collusions, hierarchies and forced interactions between characters, Wentworth epitomises how a TV series is not just haphazardly set somewhere, but rather how its precinct can be pivotal in supplying all the necessary elements of drama.

By placing women at the centre of the narrative, Wentworth’s female-centric world also creates opportunities for real industry change.

– ref. Inside the story: writing the powerful female world of Wentworth – http://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-writing-the-powerful-female-world-of-wentworth-119878

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

The first Indigenous minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, says on the government’s proposal to constitutionally recognise Indigenous Australians: “I’m optimistic about achieving the outcome because if the words are simple, but meaningful, then Australians will generally accept an opportunity to include Aboriginal people in the Constitution.”

But he concedes Indigenous leaders would not take the same minimalist approach he is advocating for, but says it is “pragmatic”.

What I want to see us make some gains. Later on as we mature as a nation, then we can have another debate of what the next phase is.

He admits getting support for the constitutional referendum in his home state of Western Australia would be difficult but he would be looking to the big mining companies – which have been supportive of the Uluru Statement of the Heart – to help make the case there.

As for issues affecting Indigenous communities, such as high youth suicide rates, he says there is “a sense of futility for some young people. The issue of broken relationships. The way in which young people have expressed the need for their culture to be valued”.

On the way forward, he is looking into “support structures that need to go into place on the ground” and thinks “there is a way that we can have some of this with existing resources”.

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Additional audio

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

Image:

Rohan Thomson/AAP

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Ken Wyatt on constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-ken-wyatt-on-constitutional-recognition-for-indigenous-australians-120167

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Smith, Research Fellow, Department of Pacific Affairs, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National 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.

One of the earliest guests I had on The Little Red Podcast, the podcast I co-host with former China correspondent Louisa Lim, said something that stuck with me about the view of China in the rest of the world. John Fitzgerald, a well-known historian of China’s diaspora, confidently declared that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “couldn’t care less” about what non-Chinese Australians thought of it and its actions.

Looking through the results of the recent Lowy Institute Poll on Australians’ attitudes toward China, this is probably a good thing for the party.

The Australian public’s confidence in China’s ability to act as a responsible power has fallen off a cliff. In just one year, it dropped from more than half of Australians to just 32%. That’s a dire number.

That wasn’t the only surprise in the poll. Four-fifths of respondents agreed with the proposition “China’s infrastructure investment projects across Asia are part of China’s plans for regional domination”, and 73% believed Australia should try to prevent China from expanding its influence in the Pacific.

The poll was released in late June, at a time when China’s image was taking a hit internationally. Millions of people took to the streets in Hong Kong to protest a now-defeated extradition bill that could have seen Hong Kong residents sent to China on suspicion of crimes.

Then came news in Australia that the wife of an Australian writer who has been detained since January was herself interrogated by Chinese officials and blocked from leaving the country.

Even for a country that purportedly doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks, trust is hard to come by these days.

A matter of trust

It’s not entirely clear why so many Australians now distrust the Chinese state to the point where they believe our government should actively counter it (although perhaps not go to war with it).

There’s little evidence to suggest that one issue alone has caused this sharp decline in trust. For instance, the Communist Party’s most egregious recent violation of human rights, the detention of up to 1.5 million Uyghurs simply for being, well, Uyghurs has touched relatively few Australians.

Nor has the Australian government felt the need to act – it has said little on the matter.

Read more: Xi Jinping’s grip on power is absolute, but there are new threats to his ‘Chinese dream’

Rather, the decline in trust seems to be the result of an accumulation of negative news on China — some well-informed, some half-baked (such as the 60 Minutes expose on a Chinese “military base” in Vanuatu). And for some, it’s based on personal experiences.

Last month, for instance, Australian National University revealed a massive data breach in the school’s computer system, including tax file numbers, bank accounts and passport details. The sophistication of the attack, which came after multiple attempts, meant there was only possible one suspect, according to senior intelligence officials: China.

Stealing people’s bank details might be profitable for the hacking team, but it doesn’t win hearts and minds for the Chinese state. Actions like this do more to damage China’s image than the words of noted China critics Clive Hamilton and Clive Palmer.

This sort of intimidation has been on the rise under Xi’s leadership in recent years. Academics who are critical of China now expect to be targeted by the CCP.

A podcast like mine, banned in China, doesn’t help. In the wake of an episode about China’s real-time censorship of its own historical record, I was hit by a denial-of-service attack that our university’s IT service struggled to fix. I gave up doing research inside China a while ago, after it became clear that my former colleagues and friends in rural China were increasingly at risk.

Even colleagues who have signed petitions calling on the Australian government take an evidence-based approach to China policy have been warned off continuing their in-country research by their Chinese research partners, ending collaborations which often stretched back decades.

To the outside world, this obsession with control looks like weakness rather than strength. A sanitised image of life inside China will do nothing to build trust in China as a responsible power.

Misplaced attempts at soft power

So how does China go about winning back a 20-point drop in trust?

To answer this question, I have to borrow a famous line from the film, The Princess Bride:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

When it comes to the concept of soft power, the Chinese state misses the basic point that it doesn’t work particularly well. Money can’t buy you love, or in Joseph Nye’s terms, if your ideology and your culture have no appeal, cash won’t fix that.

Yet, the Communist Party is now a firm believer in soft power, built around its confidence that China’s ancient culture can return it to its legitimate status as the preeminent civilisation in the world. This confidence may be misplaced, as anyone who sat through the ponderous, state-backed, blockbuster film The Great Wall can testify.

To date, the target of China’s soft power push appears to be a largely Chinese audience. The purpose of its designated soft power tools, from Confucius Institutes to the English-language news service CGTN, is to impress on both the domestic constituency and Chinese communities abroad that China now looks and acts like a rejuvenated great power.

Read more: Explainer: what are Confucius Institutes and do they teach Chinese propaganda?

This officially approved cultural soft power package might not sell to non-Chinese audiences in Australia or, well, anywhere. But China has recently been trying another tactic – economic soft power. This is specifically aimed at the developing world: China positions itself as a nation that overcame colonial oppression to emerge from grinding poverty and become an economic powerhouse.

Under former President Hu Jintao, the party tiptoed away from the notion that China would pursue a “peaceful rise”, because they worried the word “rise” sounded threatening, even preceded by “peaceful.”

Now, under Xi’s watch, there is a new catchphrase to describe China’s rise. Anchors on CGTN happily ask European and African interlocutors about the merits of “the China model” for economic development, in which the state acts as chess master, guiding the economy and society at every turn.

Some nations are buying into this. Last weekend, a taskforce of Solomon Islands MPs and bureaucrats presented their recommendation to parliament over whether to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. While many Solomon Islanders, including Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, are reluctant to switch, the country’s close economic ties with China make such a move feel inevitable.

A Chinese development model that promises an escape from poverty has appeal across the Pacific – and beyond.

Trust on both sides of the wall

Whether Beijing is able to turn around this trust problem depends, in part, on how much China begins to trust itself in the rest of the world.

Forthcoming research my ANU colleagues and I are conducting with Hong Kong-based researchers examines attempts by Chinese state actors to influence the 2019 Australian federal election.

Read more: With China’s swift rise as naval power, Australia needs to rethink how it defends itself

Preliminary results indicate that the Communist Party didn’t give a hoot which party won. The goal of Chinese propaganda during the election, rather, was to create a sense of distrust among Australian-Chinese communities by depicting Australia as a racist, unwelcoming place.

We should be mindful of attempts by elements of the Communist Party to influence our political processes. Yet it’s crucial to remember the CCP targets many groups in Australia, including private businesses run by former Chinese citizens, religious groups and student organisations, not because they are all loyal party stooges, but because the party does not trust them.

The challenge for China, if it wants to be trusted by the rest of the world, is how to move beyond Mao Zedong’s famous dictum:

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the utmost importance for the revolution.

This thinking should have no place in a globalised world, but in CCP circles, it’s back in vogue.

The challenge for Australia’s leaders is to recognise China’s current political reality, but not be drawn into the same binary, simplistic thinking. There’s enough of that going around.

– ref. The world has a hard time trusting China. But does it really care? – http://theconversation.com/the-world-has-a-hard-time-trusting-china-but-does-it-really-care-119807

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milovan Savic, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology

TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms on the planet, with more than 500 million active users. Only YouTube, Facebook and Instagram boast more.

TikTok allows users to create short videos with music, filters and other features. But while it’s now used globally by young people, many adult social media users have never heard of it. That’s by design.

In 2016, we conducted an ethnographic study on social media use among families with preteen children in Melbourne. Although most young participants in the study were considered by their parents to be “too young” for social media, some had accounts on a new platform called Musical.ly – now known as TikTok.

We soon realised that the preteen demographic was central to Musical.ly’s success – and to its evolution. The rapid increase of smartphone ownership among preteens presented a relatively uncaptured potential user base for social media.

Many big players have made recent attempts to capture this particular audience. Snapchat’s SnapKidz, YouTube Kids and most recently Facebook’s Messenger Kids all focused on creating a “child-friendly” version of the main app.

The creators of Musical.ly did their homework. They not only identified potential future users of the app, but also non-users that might hamper their success. In order to reach preteen audiences, social media apps need to get past the gatekeepers of preteen online engagement: the parents.

Read more: TikTok is popular, but Chinese apps still have a lot to learn about global markets

Billing itself as a tool for creativity

From the beginning, Musical.ly presented itself as a tool for creativity and play rather than a social media platform. This tactic enabled Musical.ly to alleviate parental concerns associated with childrens’ use of social media. The app store description reads: “the world’s largest creative platform.”

Childrens’ engagement with digital devices is often driven by their desire for creative expression, entertainment and social interaction. Musical.ly successfully engineered playfulness and performativity as its key features.

For example, its cleverly coined “best fan forever” feature mimics elements of popular teen culture allowing users to establish a special connection with features like duet videos. “BFFs” individually record their videos of the same song, which the app then combines into a duet. In this way, users are incentivised to spend more time interacting together on the app.

Everything you can do on Instagram

While TikTok still bills itself a “community of global creators”, it’s more than just a toy for children. TikTok allows users to follow and interact with “public” profiles. They can follow each other (reciprocity not required), like and comment on videos, and send direct messages to each other.

In other words, TikTok meets all elements of a social networking site. In fact, the app’s infrastructure largely resembles Instagram.

Read more: How Tencent became the world’s most valuable social network firm – with barely any advertising

From Musical.ly to TikTok

The user base is the most valuable asset of any social media platform. During 2016 and 2017, Musical.ly, a social media start-up from China, was trending among most downloaded apps on both Apple and Google’s app stores.

This led to its acquisition by the Chinese media giant ByteDance for US$1 billion. We have seen similar scenarios before, when a successful start-up is acquired by a bigger player on the market.

When it acquired Musical.ly, ByteDance was mostly focused on news and was largely absent from social media landscape. But it did own a short-video sharing platform branded as Douyin. At the time, Douyin was not well known outside of China.

In 2018, ByteDance decided to merge Douyin and Musical.ly under the name TikTok. While the merger brought some new features, the process was virtually undetectable to users, who kept their accounts and all preexisting content and followers.

In other words, overnight the Musical.ly user database became the TikTok user database. While Musical.ly was more popular among global north, TikTok dominated the Asian market, positioning the newly merged app for a wider global audience reach.

Unwanted attention

In its early days TikTok managed to fly under the radar, but its rapid growth and growing user base has brought the app unwanted public scrutiny.

In 2018 the Indonesian government temporarily banned the app amid accusations it was disseminating pornography and blasphemy. In February 2019, India’s High court requested both Google and Apple remove TikTok from Indian app stores following accusations the platform was spreading pornographic and violent content.

Possibly the largest hit came earlier this year when US Federal Trade Commission fined TikTok a record-setting US$5.7 million (A$8.2 million) for collecting and storing the personal information of people under the age of 13 without obtaining parental consent (as required by law).

As TikTok has come to the public’s attention, parents and commentators have increasingly expressed concerns regarding potential predatory behaviour, bullying and exposure to the age-inappropriate content on the app.

Read more: Thinking of taking up WeChat? Here’s what you need to know

Challenging US social media dominance

Some may see TikTok as just another social media platform that will soon disappear, but it’s more than that. It’s the first social media platform based in China that commands unparalleled popularity in both Asian and Western markets.

This undermines the dominance of US companies on the global social media market. TikTok’s challenge going forward will be to live up to the promise of networked play and creativity, while ensuring the personal safety and data security of its users.

– ref. Most adults have never heard of TikTok. That’s by design – http://theconversation.com/most-adults-have-never-heard-of-tiktok-thats-by-design-119815