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.
Who came up with the first letters? – Chase, age 6, Adelaide, SA.
This is a great question, Chase!
We don’t know exactly who invented the first letters. The Phoenician alphabet is considered the first known alphabet, but experts think it has its roots in an earlier Old Canaanite tradition.
You’re probably wondering: who are the Phoenicians? What does Old Canaanite mean? You’re right – these are unfamiliar terms to most people today. To explain, let’s look a little deeper into human history.
Humans began to communicate using speech some 50,000 years ago but writing has only been a part of the human story for the last 5,000 years.
Writing wasn’t just invented once by a single person. Many different ancient societies invented writing at different times and places.
It seems writing was such a great idea, it just kept being created by humans living in all different parts of the world.
Writing was invented in different places
Thousands of years ago, people lived in Mesopotamia (near the modern day Middle East), Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica (near what we now call Central America). These different groups all invented their own kind of writing independently.
For example, the ancient Mayans in Mesoamerica had their own written language, which would have looked strange to the Sumerian people who lived in Mesopotamia. They had their own writing style, called cuneiform.
There were also ancient people who lived in the Indus River valley (near what we now call Pakistan and India) who also developed their own kind of writing. Ancient people in Elam (near what we now call Iran) invented another type of writing.
There is also the mysterious Rongorongo script from the people of Easter Island (also called Rapa Nui), which no one has been able to read – at least, not yet!
There was also plenty of copying and borrowing among ancient writers who came across other writing systems when they travelled.
This is true for the English letters we write with today. We call these letters the Roman alphabet because a long time ago, they were used by the people of ancient Rome (in Italy) to write Latin
Many early styles of writing involved hundreds of symbols, pictures, and signs.
In one of the earliest types of writing, called cuneiform, a single sign could be used for a word, or a sound, or even give a hint about the type of word to follow. These scripts could be quite difficult to read.
Then came alphabets. An alphabet is a set of letters or symbols that can represent the sounds we make when we talk. The different parts of the alphabet can be put together to make different words, just like LEGO pieces that can be clicked together in different ways.
You know our alphabet, I’m sure, but other languages may have their own alphabet.
The Canaanites lived in an area of the ancient world called the Levant, in what we now call the Middle East.
The Old Canaanite script appeared around 3,500 years ago, and the Phoenician alphabet came after.
Unlike the art of writing more broadly, it is thought that all known alphabets (including our own) are in some way related to the Phoenician system.
The Phoenicians lived in what we now call the Middle East. They invented an alphabet with 22 consonants and no vowels (A, E, I, O or U). Vowels only became part of the alphabet much later.
The Phoenicians were great traders, buying and selling things like wood, perfumes, honey and a type of purple dye worn by kings and queens.
The busy trading of the Phoenicians meant their inventions quickly spread to their trading partners. People soon realised writing was a good way to keep track of what they bought and sold.
So as you can see, writing has changed a lot over time. And it is still changing today!
The Pyrgi gold tablets are inscribed with Phoenician and Etruscan. The Etruscan alphabet seems to be derived from the Greek alphabet.By Sailko – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY
In most countries, the question of whether to produce guns or butter is a metaphor for whether a country should put its efforts into defence or well-being. In New Zealand, this debate is much more literal and has been won easily by butter.
Relative geostrategic isolation means New Zealand’s security has been more about ensuring global trade routes stay open for exports, like butter. But climate change is now challenging that notion as environmental change is expected to generate instability in the South Pacific.
Big ticket items such as warships and military aircraft last for decades and purchases are often years in the planning. Platforms purchased for the New Zealand military, including some acquired during the Vietnam War, are now reaching the end of their life.
New Zealand is facing significant bills as major aircraft, ships and army vehicles will need to be purchased in the next few years. The timing is particularly awkward for the government as it is shifting its spending towards well-being.
The first purchase to come consists of new C-130J-30 Super Hercules transport planes. They will replace the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s existing C-130s which are now more than 50 years old. At the time of writing, all five of these planes have been grounded due to maintenance problems. A major justification for the upgrades is greater need for a variety of relief, monitoring and peacekeeping missions caused by the effects of climate change.
A recent New Zealand Defence Force report warned that extreme weather patterns will threaten water, food and energy security in the region and shortages could spark violence. New Zealand’s military provides humanitarian aid and disaster relief in the Pacific and the climate crisis is shifting the rationale for defence spending and the politics of defence in general.
Criticism from the opposition National Party has been less about the plan and more about whether it fits with the government’s overall well-being approach. But the real flak has come from the coalition government’s Green Party support partner.
This shows the complexity of defence politics in New Zealand, as different political parties represent distinct strands of public opinion on the role of the military.
Balancing pacifist and martial traditions
The last 50 years have seen significant disagreement over how the country should engage with the rest of the world and what it should do with its military in particular. Decisions over big purchases and overseas deployments can open up major divisions over New Zealand’s strategic identity.
New Zealand’s strong martial and pacifist traditions are both represented in the current government and major defence decisions have to be made with care. Jacinda Ardern’s coalition is managing this complex balancing act. The coalition is made up of the centre-left Labour Party and the moderately populist New Zealand First Party, with the Green Party providing confidence and supply.
NZ First is the strongest supporter of the country’s martial traditions. It has always had a hawkish attitude towards China, which has become more relevant in recent years.
While Labour is generally seen as more dovish than the National Party, the differences have been largely over tone rather than substance. Attitudes towards anti-nuclear policies, the scrapping of the RNZAF fighter wing, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been major points of difference in the past.
Labour has generally differentiated itself by being slightly more willing to criticise allies and placing more faith in collective security, the United Nations and disarmament.
To limit criticism that it is spending on “tanks not teachers”, Ardern’s coalition has skilfully outsourced the job of replacing ageing defence equipment to NZ First’s minister of defence Ron Mark. It was probably no coincidence that last year’s announcement that NZ$2.3 billion would be spent on new maritime patrol aircraft was made by NZ First leader Winston Peters while Ardern was on maternity leave.
Ardern has let NZ First claim the political credit and take the political risk with expensive defence replacements, lest they take the shine off Labour’s focus on social policies. That balancing was on show again last week when Ardern announced that New Zealand was ending its military training deployment to Iraq.
Pacifism in the age of climate change
By sitting outside cabinet, the Greens are able to represent the pacifist end of the political spectrum. The party has its roots in the Values Party of the 1970s, which helped make anti-nuclear attitudes mainstream in New Zealand and, by 1984, Labour Party policy.
The party’s defence spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman described the transport plane purchase as “war making capability” when New Zealand is good at humanitarian aid delivery, monitoring and supporting Antarctic research. She reconfirmed the Green Party’s commitment to peacekeeping through the UN.
This attitude is problematic as it forgets that the tools for war fighting are the same as those for peacekeeping and disaster relief. As the focus of Green movements worldwide has shifted to climate change, the commitment to disarmament is becoming more at odds with the realities of climate change. Rising sea levels, crop failures and mass migration will be massively destabilising to the international system.
It is not tenable to criticise the purchase of aircraft that will be largely used to send relief missions to the Pacific, scientists to Antarctica and peacekeepers to UN missions, simply because they could be used to send soldiers into combat. The challenge for the Greens will be to find a coherent message on the military that tackles the climate crisis and represents the views of its pacifist base.
The challenge for New Zealand’s allies will be to understand and respect how these contradictory threads of New Zealand’s strategic culture direct and constrain its defence spending.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will J Grant, Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
In an ideal world, people would look at issues with a clear focus only on the facts. But in the real world, we know that doesn’t happen often.
People often look at issues through the prism of their own particular political identity – and have probably always done so.
In research published today in Environmental Communication, my colleague Matthew Nurse and I report that even some of the smartest among us will simply refuse to acknowledge facts about climate change when we don’t like them.
The research took place just before Australia’s 2019 federal election.
We asked 252 people who were planning to vote for the Greens and 252 people who were planning to vote for One Nation to consider some data we’d put together. To understand that data, they would need to do some mental maths, just like you would when looking at a typical scientific report.
While there was no significant difference in the mathematical ability between the two groups of voters overall, it seemed that political affiliations can have an impact on how people answered a mathematical question, depending on the subject.
For example, in one experiment we told participants that data in the scientific report was about whether a new skin cream would cure a rash, as shown below.
We asked them to indicate whether the experiment shows that using the new cream is more likely to make the skin condition better or worse. Participants in our study got the correct mathematical answer 48% of the time.
However, when we showed them exactly the same data but said it was about whether closing coal-fired power stations would significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the local area (by 30% or more), we got a very different set of answers.
For example, when the report showed CO₂ emissions would go down significantly, only 27% of One Nation supporters got the right answer.
When the report showed CO₂ emissions would not significantly go down, only 37% of Greens voters got it right.
So it seems our participants were less likely to answer a question correctly when it went against their political ideology.
We decided to find out whether numeracy – maths ability – played a role in people getting the wrong answers. First, we looked at those with below-average numeracy.
We found many of these people just gave their preferred, ideologically aligned answers when it came to the climate change question. This is a well-known effect called motivated reasoning.
But surely the more numerate groups of people, those better at maths, would fare better? Well, not really.
The groups of people with above-average numeracy sometimes did worse than the less numerate groups. Some did no better than chance at 50%, and some did far, far worse than that, as the graph below shows.
More numerate people are more polarised about climate change data.Matt Nurse, Author provided
When we showed people reports about CO₂ emissions, the more numerate people were much more politically polarised than any other group. For example, the participants considered a report showing that CO₂ would go down significantly, a One Nation supporter with a numeracy score of seven (out of nine) was only 5% as likely to provide the correct answer as a Greens supporter in the same numeracy category.
Motivations change brain function
This is counterintuitive, but this isn’t the first study to reveal this effect.
These findings build on research previously done by a Yale professor, Dan Kahan. The phenomenon is a type of motivated reasoning called motivated numeracy.
While Kahan’s previous research focused on the politically polarising issue of gun control in the United States, some people suggested the same thing might happen with other topics, particularly climate change.
These findings build on the theory that your desire to give an answer in line with your pre-existing beliefs on climate change can be stronger than your ability or desire to give the right answer.
In fact, more numerate people may be better at doing this because they are have more skills to rationalise their own beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence.
So what?
You might ask whether it really matters if people sometimes get the wrong answer on questions like this.
We’d argue yes, it does matter. Successful democracies rely on a majority of voters being able to identify and understand risks, and make the appropriate voting choices.
If people remain entrenched in their ideological corners when threats come along, and are unwilling to face facts, societal problems can fester, potentially becoming much more difficult to resolve later.
Just imagine scientists had discovered human activity was damaging our atmosphere. They said this problem would cause Earth’s climate to get hotter and threaten our livelihoods. Politicians and the people they represented saw this as a legitimate issue worth acting on, regardless of their political views. Imagine the world united to fix this problem, even though it would cost a lot of money.
In fact, we don’t need to imagine too much, as this isn’t just a hypothetical situation. It actually happened when scientists found evidence the use of industrial chemicals was depleting the ozone layer.
In 1987, for the first and only time, all 197 members of the United Nations agreed to sign the Montreal Protocol regulating the man-made chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. More than 30 years later we can measure the benefits of this agreement in our planet’s atmosphere.
A matter of science, not politics
Unlike the current climate change debate, people largely saw this risk as a matter of science, not politics.
But it seems people are increasingly encouraged to see risks like this through a political frame. When this happens, facts can become irrelevant because no matter how smart people are, many will simply deny the evidence to protect their side of the political debate.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mihiri Silva, Paediatric dentist, Senior Lecturer and Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
If you imagine a teething child, what do you see? An irritable tot with a fever, in pain, and generally unwell?
Teething is when new teeth emerge through the gums, and usually starts at about six months of age.
A review of 16 studies found that although teething was linked with signs and symptoms, these were usually mild involving gum irritation, irritability, and drooling.
Although body temperature may be slightly raised, the review found poor evidence to suggest teething caused fever. Many symptoms linked to teething, like irritability, sleep disturbance and drooling, are difficult to measure objectively and are based on what parents report, which is subjective and may be inaccurate.
And, as teething comes and goes, and its timing is relatively unpredictable, recording even measurable symptoms like temperature changes in a reproducible, reliable way is virtually impossible.
Other biological triggers may in fact explain the symptoms traditionally linked to teething. Teething coincides with normal changes in children’s immunity; the mother’s antibodies are transferred to babies in pregnancy and help protect the baby in the first 6-12 months of life, but start to wane at about the same time as teething.
This, together with behavioural changes as infants start to explore their surroundings, increases the chances of catching viral infections with symptoms like those reported for teething.
Separation anxiety and normal changes in sleep patterns may also account for irritability and sleep disturbances, which may be mistakenly attributed to teething.
As teething symptoms are generally likely to be mild and focused on the mouth, parents are warned against presuming that signs of illness in other parts of the body are due to teething. That’s because this may delay the detection of potentially serious infections that may need medical attention. It may also delay parents getting help settling their child to sleep.
How about teething gels?
The search for solutions to the perceived problem of teething may lead parents to pin their hopes on gels, toys and other products, none of which have been scientifically assessed to alleviate teething symptoms.
Nevertheless, teething gels usually contain a variety of ingredients that help relieve supposed teething-related symptoms. Some, such as the recently discontinued Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital Teething Gel, contain the anaesthetic lidocaine.
Very little lidocaine is absorbed into the body when applied to the gums, and only minor complications like vomiting have been reported in Australia. However, accidental swallowing and applying too much can lead to poisoning, resulting in seizures, brain injury, and heart problems.
The decision to discontinue the gel follows a 2014 warning issued by the US Food and Drug Administration against using teething gels with topical anaesthetics, after reports of infant and child hospitalisation and death.
There have also been warnings about teething gels containing benzocaine. This is another anaesthetic applied to the gums that can lead to a dangerous and fatal blood condition called methaemoglobinaemia, which affects the blood’s ability to carry oxygen.
Another common ingredient in popular teething gels is choline salicylate, an anti-inflammatory similar to aspirin. This increases the risk of liver disease and brain injury if the child eats too much. This may also carry the risk of Reye syndrome, a rare but serious condition that can lead to seizures, loss of consciousness and death. Reye syndrome has been linked to the use of aspirin in children, particularly during viral infections.
A number of young Australian children who used too much salicylate-containing teething gel have also reportedly been hospitalised with side-effects. But the products are still available in Australia.
How about ‘natural’ products?
Although a range of “natural” and homeopathic teething solutions are heavily marketed to parents of young children, these too have risks.
A manufacturer recently recalled a range of natural teething gels after cases of reported poisoning. And US regulatory authorities found the same range contained higher than reported levels of belladonna, a poisonous plant that despite its dangers is used as a homeopathic pain killer and sedative.
In searching for “natural” therapies, parents are also turning to amber teething necklaces that supposedly relieve teething symptoms. Amber is a fossilised tree resin that has historically been suggested to have anti-inflammatory properties.
Amber ‘teething’ necklaces are a choke hazard and there’s no evidence they work.from www.shutterstock.com
However, several widely reported cases of strangulation have led to warnings from both US and Australian regulatory authorities. There is currently no scientific evidence these necklaces work.
…colourful and playful in design, and may be confused with toys.
All toys for children aged 36 months and below, including teething toys, are strictly regulated by Australian standards. As the ACCC warns, teething necklaces are unlikely to fulfil this requirement.
What to do?
So what are the best options to relieve teething symptoms? With a lack of any good-quality evidence to recommend any specific therapy, experts suggest the best remedy is affection and attention.
Rubbing a clean finger on the gum, or applying gentle, firm pressure with a cooled (but not frozen), clean washcloth or teething ring may provide some relief. Although it’s hard to know exactly how these work, they are unlikely to lead to serious problems.
Teething can be a difficult time, but it will eventually pass. In the meantime, it is important that parents avoid falling prey to supposed cures that are not only unproven, but are also potentially dangerous.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Zaphir, Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project; and Online Teacher at Education Queensland’s IMPACT Centre, The University of Queensland
This essay is part of a series of articles on the future of education.
For much of human history, education has served an important purpose, ensuring we have the tools to survive. People need jobs to eat and to have jobs, they need to learn how to work.
Education has been an essential part of every society. But our world is changing and we’re being forced to change with it. So what is the point of education today?
The ancient Greek model
Some of our oldest accounts of education come from Ancient Greece. In many ways the Greeks modelled a form of education that would endure for thousands of years. It was an incredibly focused system designed for developing statesmen, soldiers and well-informed citizens.
Most boys would have gone to a learning environment similar to a school, although this would have been a place to learn basic literacy until adolescence. At this point, a child would embark on one of two career paths: apprentice or “citizen”.
On the apprentice path, the child would be put under the informal wing of an adult who would teach them a craft. This might be farming, potting or smithing – any career that required training or physical labour.
In Ancient Greece, boys would become either apprentices or citizens. Women and slaves didn’t get any education.Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The path of the full citizen was one of intellectual development. Boys on the path to more academic careers would have private tutors who would foster their knowledge of arts and sciences, as well as develop their thinking skills.
The private tutor-student model of learning would endure for many hundreds of years after this. All male children were expected to go to state-sponsored places called gymnasiums (“school for naked exercise”) with those on a military-citizen career path training in martial arts.
Those on vocational pathways would be strongly encouraged to exercise too, but their training would be simply for good health.
Until this point, there had been little in the way of education for women, the poor and slaves. Women made up half of the population, the poor made up 90% of citizens, and slaves outnumbered citizens 10 or 20 times over.
These marginalised groups would have undergone some education but likely only physical – strong bodies were important for childbearing and manual labour. So, we can safely say education in civilisations like Ancient Greece or Rome was only for rich men.
While we’ve taken a lot from this model, and evolved along the way, we live in a peaceful time compared to the Greeks. So what is it that we want from education today?
We learn to work – the ‘pragmatic purpose’
Today we largely view education as being there to give us knowledge of our place in the world, and the skills to work in it. This view is underpinned by a specific philosophical framework known as pragmatism. Philosopher Charles Peirce – sometimes known as the “father of pragmatism” – developed this theory in the late 1800s.
There has been a long history of philosophies of knowledge and understanding (also known as epistemology). Many early philosophies were based on the idea of an objective, universal truth. For example, the ancient Greeks believed the world was made of only five elements: earth, water, fire, air and aether.
Peirce, on the other hand, was concerned with understanding the world as a dynamic place. He viewed all knowledge as fallible. He argued we should reject any ideas about an inherent humanity or metaphysical reality.
Pragmatism sees any concept – belief, science, language, people – as mere components in a set of real-world problems.
Charles Peirce is sometimes known as the ‘father of pragmatism’.
In other words, we should believe only what helps us learn about the world and require reasonable justification for our actions. A person might think a ceremony is sacred or has spiritual significance, but the pragmatist would ask: “What effects does this have on the world?”
Education has always served a pragmatic purpose. It is a tool to be used to bring about a specific outcome (or set of outcomes). For the most part, this purpose is economic.
Why go to school? So you can get a job.
Education benefits you personally because you get to have a job, and it benefits society because you contribute to the overall productivity of the country, as well as paying taxes.
But for the economics-based pragmatist, not everyone needs to have the same access to educational opportunities. Societies generally need more farmers than lawyers, or more labourers than politicians, so it’s not important everyone goes to university.
You can, of course, have a pragmatic purpose in solving injustice or creating equality or protecting the environment – but most of these are of secondary importance to making sure we have a strong workforce.
Pragmatism, as a concept, isn’t too difficult to understand, but thinking pragmatically can be tricky. It’s challenging to imagine external perspectives, particularly on problems we deal with ourselves.
How to problem-solve (especially when we are part of the problem) is the purpose of a variant of pragmatism called instrumentalism.
Contemporary society and education
In the early part of the 20th century, John Dewey (a pragmatist philosopher) created a new educational framework. Dewey didn’t believe education was to serve an economic goal. Instead, Dewey argued education should serve an intrinsic purpose: education was a good in itself and children became fully developed as people because of it.
Much of the philosophy of the preceding century – as in the works of Kant, Hegel and Mill – was focused on the duties a person had to themselves and their society. The onus of learning, and fulfilling a citizen’s moral and legal obligations, was on the citizens themselves.
But in his most famous work, Democracy and Education, Dewey argued our development and citizenship depended on our social environment. This meant a society was responsible for fostering the mental attitudes it wished to see in its citizens.
Dewey’s view was that learning doesn’t just occur with textbooks and timetables. He believed learning happens through interactions with parents, teachers and peers. Learning happens when we talk about movies and discuss our ideas, or when we feel bad for succumbing to peer pressure and reflect on our moral failure.
Learning would still help people get jobs, but this was an incidental outcome in the development of a child’s personhood. So the pragmatic outcome of schools would be to fully develop citizens.
Today’s educational environment is somewhat mixed. One of the two goals of the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians is that:
All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
By lifting outcomes, the government helps to secure Australia’s economic and social prosperity.
A charitable reading of this is that we still have the economic goal as the pragmatic outcome, but we also want our children to have engaging and meaningful careers. We don’t just want them to work for money but to enjoy what they do. We want them to be fulfilled.
And this means the educational philosophy of Dewey is becoming more important for contemporary society.
Part of being pragmatic is recognising facts and changes in circumstance. Generally, these facts indicate we should change the way we do things.
On a personal scale, that might be recognising we have poor nutrition and may have to change our diet. On a wider scale, it might require us to recognise our conception of the world is incorrect, that the Earth is round instead of flat.
When this change occurs on a huge scale, it’s called a paradigm shift.
The paradigm shift
Our world may not be as clean-cut as we previously thought. We may choose to be vegetarian to lessen our impact on the environment. But this means we buy quinoa sourced from countries where people can no longer afford to buy a staple, because it’s become a “superfood” in Western kitchens.
If you’re a fan of the show The Good Place, you may remember how this is the exact reason the points system in the afterlife is broken – because life is too complicated for any person to have the perfect score of being good.
Michael explains to the judge how life is so complicated, people can never really be good enough.
All of this is not only confronting to us in a moral sense but also seems to demand we fundamentally alter the way we consume goods.
And climate change is forcing us to reassess how we have lived on this planet for the last hundred years, because it’s clear that way of life isn’t sustainable.
Contemporary ethicist Peter Singer has argued that, given the current political climate, we would only be capable of radically altering our collective behaviour when there has been a massive disruption to our way of life.
If a supply chain is broken by a climate-change-induced disaster, there is no choice but to deal with the new reality. But we shouldn’t be waiting for a disaster to kick us into gear.
Making changes includes seeing ourselves as citizens not only of a community or a country, but also of the world.
As US philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, many issues need international cooperation to address. Trade, environment, law and conflict require creative thinking and pragmatism, and we need a different focus in our education systems to bring these about.
If you’re taking a certain subject at school or university, have you ever been asked: “But how will that get you a job?” If so, the questioner sees economic goals as the most important outcomes for education.
They’re not necessarily wrong, but it’s also clear that jobs are no longer the only (or most important) reason we learn.
Enrolments to Australian public universities boomed during the last decade. This was due to a government policy known as “demand driven funding”, which between 2012 and 2017 allowed universities to enrol unlimited numbers of domestic bachelor-degree students.
In 2017, 45% more students started a bachelor degree than a decade earlier.
Boosting higher education participation rates, particularly for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, was one of the policy’s aims. But the Productivity Commission has today given the demand driven system a “mixed report card”.
The report estimates that six in ten school leavers now go to university by age 22, up from a little over half in 2010. But student outcomes deteriorated from their pre-demand driven peaks. Drop-out rates increased while employment rates decreased (although the mostrecent data suggests positive trends).
It’s important to note, however, that higher education participation rates have been trending up in Australia and around the world for decades, despite significant differences in funding policies. Demand driven funding just led to a particularly quick surge in Australia.
As student enrolments in university are likely to increase, so are the downsides that come with this. The system needs to put in place better measures to help students at risk of dropping out.
The Productivity Commission’s report
Many of the broad conclusions of The demand driven university system: a mixed report card are not new. But the Productivity Commission explored them in depth by tracking young Australians through their final years of school and up to age 25, using the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY).
The report used the LSAY data to perform what’s known as a multivariate regression analysis to calculate the “additional students” – which are the students who probably wouldn’t have gone to university without demand driven funding. It compared them to “other students”, who would have enrolled anyway.
Additional student analysis can be useful because, at a system level, good outcomes can hide poor results for more vulnerable groups of students.
The analysis revealed significant differences between the two groups. Nearly three-quarters of additional students had no ATAR or an ATAR below 70, compared to just over one quarter of other students.
Additional students were more likely to come from a low socioeconomic status background (which was one of the aims of demand driven funding), to have attended a government school, and to be the first in their family to attend university.
But additional students were less likely to come from a regional area.
Productivity Commission, The demand driven university system: a mixed report card (screenshot)
Compared to the students who would have gone to university anyway, overall outcomes for additional students were less positive. They were more likely to drop out, and if they did finish their course, were slightly less likely to work in a professional or managerial job than other students.
On average, additional students earned just over A$100 a week less at age 25 than other students. Rates of full-time work were identical for the two groups at 75%.
Because university participation rates are trending upwards anyway, the relevance of additional student analysis goes beyond debates about demand driven funding, which Labor promised to restore if it won office in the May 2019 election. Each wave of expansion brings similar concerns about entry requirements and outcomes, which means we need to think about how to better help at-risk students.
On the Productivity Commission’s analysis, a clear majority of additional students did get benefits. Most of them (68%) completed a course, while 59% found the professional or managerial work to which university students typically aspire.
But additional students also faced an elevated risk, compared to other students, of not getting the hoped-for outcomes.
Although that greater risk is not surprising, we should do what we can to reduce it. The Productivity Commission’s report observes improved school achievement would make a difference to poor outcomes, such as university drop out rates.
This is because, on its analysis, weaker academic preparation is the source of much – but not all – of the participation and achievement gap between student groups.
But the Commission also acknowledges improving school achievement is not easy. It has been the generally unsuccessful goal of schools policy for a long time. There are other, easier, ways to manage student risk, which can be done quickly, and would provide immediate benefits.
We can also give students better advice on the practicalities of study. Studying part-time creates a high risk of not completing a course. If students were aware how high that risk was – less than 30% of bachelor-degree students who continuously study part-time finish a course – they might find a way to enrol full-time, or decide to do something else.
When study plans aren’t working out, we can do more to protect students from unnecessary costs and debt. The report suggests course counselling so that students “fail fast, fail cheap”. But we can also act before students fail.
Universities could be required to check that students are on track by the census date – the day usually about four weeks into the teaching term when students become liable to pay their student contribution. If students aren’t actively studying, or have no realistic prospect of passing a subject, they should be encouraged to drop it before they incur a debt.
While many students take advantage of the census date, Grattan Institute research found it was not as well understood as it should be. As a result, students end up paying for subjects they don’t want to complete.
A simple name change to highlight the census date’s financial significance, such as “payment date” would help.
Practical measures such as these would preserve the benefits of expanded access to higher education, while reducing its costs and risks. They are worth doing whether we keep current government controls on enrolment expansion or go back to the demand driven system.
Do you think you are paying more than you should for energy, banking, insurance, internet and phone services? You are not alone, and you are probably right.
Companies offer a growing number of deals that supposedly enable you to choose what is best for you. Every basic economics textbook tells us greater choice should deliver cheaper prices. But in reality this isn’t necessarily the case.
So what’s going on?
A big part of the answer is that businesses are taking advantage of the behavioural phenomenon of “consumer paralysis” to maximise profits.
They provide us with many plans and deals to make us feel like we are in control, but too many choices actually leads most of us to make a bad (or no) choice.
Energy pricing
Let’s consider how this works in the context of Australia’s electricity market.
In most areas of the country, residential customers have at least half a dozen retailers to choose from.
Nonetheless, according to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, electricity prices and profit margins are among the highest in the world, and rising. The consumer watchdog calculates that in the decade to 2018 the average residential electricity bill increased by 55% (or 35% in real terms) – and only a very small part of that had to do with alleged culprits such as renewable energy.
Australia’s biggest electricity company, AGL, made a net profit of A$1.6 billion in 2018 – 194% more than the year before.
Depending on where you live, AGL offers up to 11 energy plans to residential customers. There’s the “Savers” plan, “Savers Online”, “Everyday”, “Freedom”, “Standing Offer”, “Essentials”, “Essentials Plus”, and so on.
Each plan, in turn, has four to eight tariff type options: “Flexible Price”, “Time of Use Interval”, “5 Day Time of Use”, “Single Rate”, “Two rate: single rate with controlled load”, “Single Rate Demand Opt-in”, and so on.
That adds up to literally dozens of price plans from just one retailer. Other companies are hardly better. For a customer in inner Sydney, there are more than 350 retail plans to choose from.
All this “choice” gives the appearance of a competitive market, but its effect is the opposite. It give retailers wriggle room to charge more, not less.
Experiments in choice behaviour
Many experiments over the past three decades have demonstrated the ubiquity of too much choice leading to consumer paralysis.
One classic experiment was run by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper in a San Francisco supermarket in 1999. Customers visiting the store were given a chance to sample jams. Half the time they were allowed to taste up to six jams; the other half they could taste up to 24 jams.
Traditional economics says a consumer is much more likely to find a jam they really like with a sample of 24 rather than six. So offering 24 jams should lead to more jam purchases.
Yet exactly the opposite was found. Of the consumers who chose to taste jams, only 3% of those who could sample 24 jams ended up buying jam, whereas 30% (or 10 times more) of those who could sample just six jams ended up buying.
More choices provided, more paralysis.
Sheena Iyengar explains the jam problem.
More recently, in 2012, Iyengar’s Columbia University colleague Eric Johnson and others reported on an experiment with much greater consequences.
They asked people to choose health insurance coverage from a set of four or eight options. The options varied on monthly premiums and deductibles. When given four options, 42% of subjects chose the best value option. On average their choices cost about $200 more than the best option on offer.
When given eight options, only 21% chose the best option – no better than simply making a random choice.
Given the massive number of products and plans available in the energy, banking, insurance, internet and mobile phone sectors, the time and effort needed to choose the best deal leaves us feeling overwhelmed and overloaded. In response, we rely on shortcuts (rules of thumb) to save both time (and our sanity).
But these shortcuts can also cause biases that result in further paralysis, including:
Present bias – we put much greater weight on the present than the future. Since the cost of making decisions happens in the present (like the time and effort to compare options and switch services) while the benefits happen later (like saving money), we minimise the time we spend making decisions
Status quo bias – we tend to stick with a chosen option or default, even when a much better option may be available
Loss aversion – we place much greater weight on losses and often overestimate the chance of a bad outcome.
There is considerable evidence pointing to how these biases lead to consumer paralysis in the retail banking and energy sectors.
In 2017, Britain’s energy regulator, Ofgem, ran a randomised control trial involving more than 130,000 electricity customers. Participants received personalised letters either from Ofgem or their current provider offering substantially better electricity deals.
The result: compared with the control group in which only 1% switched tariffs within the next month, 3.4% of those who received an offer from their electricity provider switched to a better deal. Even when presented with notable savings, more than 96% stuck with the status quo.
Results of Ofgem’s Cheaper Market Offers Letter (CMOL) trial.Ofgem
Other Ofgem research shows that among those who have not switched energy plans, 51% consider it a hassle they don’t have time for, and 48% worry that things would go wrong.
Yvette Hartfree and her colleagues at the University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre have noted similar fears among bank customers: “The biggest concern for those considering switching is that something will go wrong at some point in the process of switching.”
We should not be surprised that energy companies and others use an avalanche of choice to confuse us. It is a brilliant business strategy: it seems more competitive from a traditional assessment, yet actually reduces competition.
So what can you do?
On your own, you will need to make a conscious effort to overcome paralysis. You need to devote the time to carefully compare offers.
Fortunately, you can find tools that can help, such as the Australian government’s energy comparison website. However, be wary of commercial “switching services” and websites that provide comparisons. These operations are often being paid by retailers. Their motives are not necessarily to direct you to the best deal.
What can we do collectively?
One option is government action to ensure switching services are trustworthy. At a minimum, there should be guidelines that switching services not take payments from retailers, and only charge you when you actually save money.
Another option is to form “consumer unions”, which can bargain collectively to get members better deals. The potential of community groups to leverage bulk-buying arrangements has been demonstrated in other contexts. In Victoria’s Gippsland region, for example, local organisations have banded together to offer discounts on renewable energy technology.
There’s no reason something similar could not be done to overcome the choice problems induced by big energy retailers and the like.
When the Australian constitution was written in the 1890s, the authors did not envision an independent nation, but a self-governing dominion of the British empire. As such, the preamble does not contain flowery language about national values. Instead it is a dry, legalistic introduction simply noting that some of her majesty’s “possessions” have federated. One unsuccessful attempt to change it was made in a 1999 referendum.
In March 2019, 120 high school students from around Australia met in Canberra for the 24th National Schools Constitutional Convention. Their mission was to write a new preamble, with the authors of this article serving as facilitators. Over two days of lively debate, sometimes heated but always civil, a final version was drafted.
In a referendum-style vote, a majority of students and a majority from each state ratified the preamble (83 “yes”, 34 “no”, two voted informal, one abstained). The students’ preamble was presented to the federal Senate on April 2 and entered into Hansard.
The referendum result.
The students’ preamble
We the Australian people, united as an indissoluble Commonwealth, commit ourselves to the principles of equality, democracy and freedom for all and pledge to uphold the following values that define our nation.
We stand alongside the traditional custodians of the land and recognise the significance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in shaping the Australian identity, their sovereignty was never ceded.
As a nation and indeed community, we are united under the common goal to create a society catered to all, regardless of heritage or identity.
We pledge to champion individual freedom and honour those who have served and continue to serve our nation.
As Australians, we stand for the pursuit of a democratic state that upholds the fundamental principles of human values as set out by this Constitution.
The student’s preamble differs enormously from the one written in the 19th century. It is noteworthy that it includes the words “democratic” and “freedom” twice – neither are in the current preamble or the constitution. From the students’ preamble, three elements emerge that young people want to see enshrined.
Acknowledging First Nations
During the debates, the most contested issue was whether to explicitly recognise First Nations people and if so, how. Ultimately, the students, including a representative group of Indigenous students, voted strongly in favour of constitutional recognition. In particular, the phrase “sovereignty was never ceded” is significant.
It is a rallying cry for many First Nations people and a rejection of assimilation. Indigenous Australians are still fighting for self-determination and the right to be heard. The Voice to Parliament put forward by the Uluru Statement is still being debated. Constitutional recognition that sovereignty was never ceded is a more radical proposal. It suggests that Indigenous justice is important to young Australians.
Egalitarianism is still key
The egalitarian ideal has a long history in Australia. The concept of the “fair go” is mythical in one sense, but a cherished part of the collective imagination.
The first line of the students’ preamble commits the nation to the principle of equality. The third line stresses the importance of a “society catered to all”.
Although not explicitly stated, the word “identity” suggests the LGBT community was in mind. Young Australians overwhelmingly supported the same-sex marriage plebiscite in 2017. The government is currently considering new religious freedom laws in response to the sacking of Israel Folau by Rugby Australia.
It is significant, then, that young Australians place such value on society being catered for all, “regardless of heritage or identity”.
Values matter
What permeates through the students’ preamble is the message that values matter. Unlike the original constitutional writers, young people want their preamble to be a mission statement that articulates the “values that uphold the nation”. The trident of “equality, democracy and freedom” are highlighted.
The preamble also notes the twin priorities of a free state that sit together though sometimes in tension. As the third line notes, Australia is a “nation and indeed community”. But the fourth line tempers this with a commitment to “champion individual freedom”. The ideal democratic state for these young Australians places value on both the individual and the collective.
Dr Benjamin T Jones addresses the convention.
Time for change?
At the 1999 referendum, Prime Minister John Howard, despite being against a republic, campaigned in favour of a new preamble. The one he and republican Les Murray authored did not gain much popularity. But it is significant that even an ardent monarchist like Howard was convinced the preamble needed to be updated.
The authors of the students’ preamble were mainly in Year 11 and too young to vote in the May election. Nevertheless, they are thoughtful, intelligent citizens and the future of our democracy. Their voice is worth listening to.
Australians love our iconic coastal lifestyle. So many of our settlements are spread along our huge coastline. Real estate prices soar where we can catch a view of the water.
But where there are crowded communities, there is sewage. And along the coast it brings a suite of problems associated with managing waste, keeping the marine environment healthy, and keeping recreational swimmers safe.
Sewage is not a sexy topic. People often have an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude. But where does sewage go, and is it treated and disposed of in the waters that we Australians love?
The bigger the coastal community, the bigger the volume of sewage. Disposal of human waste into the ocean might solve one problem, but we now realise that the “waste” is as precious as the ocean it pollutes.
We should be treating and recycling sewage to a drinkable level.shutterstock
Understanding the problem from a national perspective
Such problems play out continuously along our coastline. Each isolated community and catchment issue arises and is resolved, often in ignorance of and isolation from similar issues somewhere else.
At present, places where sewage impacts are generating community concern include Merimbula, Warrnambool and, perhaps most bizarrely, Vaucluse and Diamond Bay in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs.
It’s hard to believe this location has raw and untreated sewage from 3,500 people discharged directly into the Tasman Sea. Sydney Water pledged in 2018 to fix this unsightly pollution by transferring the flow to the nearby Bondi sewage treatment plant.
Community group Clean Ocean Foundation has worked with the Marine Biodiversity Hub to start the process of viewing outfall pollution – where a drain or sewer empties into the sea – as part of a bigger picture. It’s a first step towards understanding from a national perspective.
Together they have produced the National Outfall Database to provide the first Australia-wide comparison.
The best and worst offenders
Previously the information available to the public was sketchy and often not easily accessed. The database shows how differently Australia manages coastal sewage with information on the outfalls.
Clean Ocean Foundation CEO John Gemmill said:
Water authorities in the main do a great job with severe funding constraints. But they can be reticent to divulge information publicly.
One authority, suspicious of the research project, initially refused to give the location of the outfall, claiming it would be vandalised by enraged “surfies and fishermen”.
Sydney has Australia’s biggest outfall. It provides primary treatment at Malabar, New South Wales, and serves about 1.7 million people. The outfall releases about 499 megalitres (ML) per day of treated sewage, called “effluent”.
That’s about eight Olympic-sized swimming pools of effluent an hour. It is discharged to the Pacific Ocean 3.6 kilometres from the shoreline at a depth of 82 metres.
The cleanest outfall (after sustained advocacy over decades from the Clean Ocean Foundation) is Boags Rock, in southern Melbourne. It releases tertiary-treated sewage with Class A+ water. This means the quality is very suitable for reuse and has no faecal bacteria detected (Enterococci or E.coli).
Recycling sewage
Treated sewage is 99% water. The last 1% is what determines if the water will harm human and environmental health. Are we wasting a precious resource by disposing of it in the ocean?
As desalination plants are cranking up in Sydney and Melbourne to extract pure water from salty ocean, why shouldn’t we also recycle sewage?
Clean Ocean Foundation has released a report showing it would pay to treat sewage more thoroughly and reuse it. This report finds upgrading coastal sewage outfalls to a higher level of treatment will provide tens of billions of dollars in benefits.
Industry analysis suggests that, for a cost outlay of between A$7.3 billion and A$10 billion, sewage treatment upgrades can deliver between A$12 billion and A$28 billion in net benefits – that is, the financial benefits above and beyond what it cost to put new infrastructure in place.
Then there are non-economic benefits such as improved ecological and human health, and improved recreational and tourism opportunities by use of suitable recycling processes.
What the rest of Australia can learn from WA
Clean Ocean Foundation president Peter Smith said Australia’s key decision-makers now, more than before, have a “golden opportunity” to adopt a sea change in water reform around coastal Australia based on good science and sound economic analysis.
In the context of the drought of southeast Australia, recycling water from ocean outfalls is an option that demands further debate.
As expensive desalination plants are switched on, Sydney proposes to double the size of its desalination plant – just a few kilometres from massive ocean outfalls that could provide so much recycled water. And to our shame, NSW ocean outfalls are among the lowest in standards of treatment.
Western Australia, on the other hand, leads the push to recycle wastewater as it continues to struggle with diminishing surface water from climate change.
In fact, in 2017 the Water Corporation announced massive investment in highly treated sewage being used to replenish groundwater supplies. Perth now sources 20% of its drinking water from groundwater, reducing its reliance on two desalination plants. A key factor was successful engagement with affected communities.
The discharge of poorly treated sewage to rivers, estuaries and oceans is a matter of national environmental significance and the Commonwealth should take a coordinating role.
Our oceans do not respect state boundaries. The time is ripe for a deliberate national approach to recycling sewage and improved systems to manage outfalls.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Robertson, Innovation Fellow and Lecturer, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Monash University
The payment for ecosystem services (PES) model is supporting a new wave of self-determined construction on Aboriginal homelands.
With no secure strategy for government infrastructure investment in homelands, particularly in new housing or new homelands, PES provides an alternative approach to support meaningful livelihoods on Country. Importantly, revenue from PES can support self-determined and appropriate building there.
PES can attract funding from government, such as for ranger programs, and from private sources, in the form of carbon credits and corporate social responsibility funds. Research suggests it’s also “crucial for improving social outcomes for Indigenous communities”.
Other researchers argue that PES is “most effective” on remote Aboriginal homelands and outstation settlements where it fundamentally values cultural knowledge and where the vastness of the landscape allows for economies of scale.
Indigenous PES enterprises can harness both traditional Indigenous knowledge and contemporary science for land management that improves environmental quality. Examples include activities like carbon abatement, feral animal management and biodiversity conservation and restoration.
On remote Aboriginal land, PES is often one of the few enterprise opportunities. That’s due to such restrictions as distance from economic centres, poor access, skilled labour shortages and limitations on Aboriginal land tenure, in particular the limited capital and security held. Commonwealthlaws prevent the buying and selling of this land.
The example of Kabulwarnamyo outstation
Kabulwarnamyo outstation is a remote settlement of about 50 people on Nawarddeken Country in West Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.Hannah Robertson (2015), Author providedKabulwarnamyo is a remote community in West Arnhem Land.Google Maps
Kabulwarnamyo outstation displays how PES activities simultaneously cause and provide a way of meeting the demand for buildings on remote Aboriginal land. And often this happens in ways that are more responsive to the local context than current government-provided alternatives.
Kabulwarnamyo is a small outstation of about 50 people on Warddeken Country in West Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, about an eight-hour drive from Jabiru. It is extremely remote and cut off for up to five months of the year during the wet season.
The self-built office at Kabulwarnamyo includes doors painted with totems in the traditional X-ray style.Hannah Robertson (2015), Author provided
PES activities – namely carbon abatement and biodiversity conservation – are the core business of Warddeken. However, it also built 14 dwellings on the outstation using an A$80,000 grant from the NT government and PES funds from the sale of carbon credits to multinational energy company ConocoPhillips.
The flexibility of the carbon credit funds meant Warddeken could build in ways that directly responded to the needs of the people, rather than adhering to centrally determined regulations, which typically drive up building costs.
To establish Kabulwarnamyo, the Warddeken rangers, who are traditional owners and residents of the outstation, self-built an office and 14 balabbala (traditional Warddeken shade shelters). A number of versions have been developed over time. Each balabbala consists of a raised timber platform floor on steel rails with local cypress pine posts and two trucking tarpaulins as a roof.
An early version of the balabbala at Kabulwarnamyo. The double-layered tarpaulin shades provide cross-flow ventilation and reduce passive heat gain.Hannah Robertson (2015), Author provided
Dome or safari tents are pitched on the platforms to provide sleeping spaces and privacy for occupants. The structures have solar-powered electricity and hotplates for cooking using bottled gas. A creek-fed pump provides water. A separate structure houses a shower and long-drop toilet.
Excluding wages for construction staff, each balabbala costs A$15,000. These simple structures do not adhere to public housing standards, but do meet crucial local needs. The balabbala project has allowed Warddeken rangers to conduct PES activities and maintain cultural connections to Wardekken Country in the absence of government funding for services support.
Evolving to meet local community needs
As Warddeken’s business has developed, so too have the building typologies. In 2015, Warddeken self-built a school to enable children to also return to living on Country. The school is a modified and extended balabbala, built using Warddeken Land Management core funds.
The Kabulwarnamyo school is a modified balabbala with a central truss that eliminates the need for a central pole.Hannah Robertson (2015), Author provided
A crowdfunding campaign raised ongoing teaching funds. Financing the running costs of the school remains a challenge. Unlike remote non-Indigenous townships, there is little NT government support for homeland education.
The school, like the balabbalas, represents this community’s reinvestment of PES-derived funds to meet their crucial needs in innovative ways. The Nawarddeken Academy was formally registered as an independent school in December 2018. It is clear these unconventional buildings are fit for purpose and satisfy the registration requirements of the NT Department of Education.
The self-built independent school has been formally registered with the NT Department of Education.Image: Bjorn Everts/Nawarddeken Academy, Author provided (No reuse)
PES-enabled balabbala are not the ideal solution for building development on homelands. But here they are appropriate because they are simple and largely suited to the environment and the cost of building them matches available funds. Warddeken CEO Shaun Ansell has said:
What we do at Kabulwarnamyo is appropriate for our resourcing, environment and capacity, but it’s not proper housing. If we had the capacity to build beautiful mud brick houses for everyone we would.
There are long-term plans to improve the balabbala using locally sourced stone for half-walling. This will retain the structures’ passive ventilation properties while improving protection during the wet season and cold weather. The structures can therefore be seen as staged projects, improved as resources become available.
A newer version balabbala under construction. The rails are now steel so the structure lasts longer and the white tarp has higher reflectivity than the darker versions.Hannah Robertson (2015), Author provided
Most importantly, the balabbala provide significant social returns to local Nawarddeken. A 2014 report by Social Ventures Australia, commissioned by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, documented significant social, environmental, economic and cultural benefits as a result of PES investments at Kabulwarnamyo. It estimated the value of these outcomes at A$55.4 million for the financial years 2009-15 – a return on investment of $3.40 for every dollar invested.
The Warddeken experience shows us the policy conditions that could support building and PES enterprises on other remote Aboriginal lands. These are:
implementing government policies that recognise, or at least do not inhibit, self-driven building initiatives
loosening restrictions on using PES carbon credits and Working on Country funds to support building that directly responds to needs arising from living on Country
providing incentives for urban-based corporates to support remote PES partners and a widespread environmental strategy
recognising the value PES creates beyond an environmental return
continuing government support for PES economies in remote Australia.
As Warddeken has shown, buildings play a critical role in enabling PES. The flip side of this is that PES supports building in response to locally identified needs.
PES provides extensive environmental benefits, but it is the broader social and cultural returns, such as maintaining connections to Country and creating sustainable livelihoods, that are most meaningful on remote Aboriginal land.
The Conversation is co-publishing articles with Future West (Australian Urbanism), produced by the University of Western Australia’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts. These biannual collections of articles look towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. The latest series looks at the notion that urbanism is shaped by design enterprise. You can read other articles here.
The New York Times has announced it will no longer be running daily political cartoons in its international edition, amid a continuing controversy over anti-Semitism in its pages. This brings the international paper in line with the domestic edition, which stopped featuring daily political cartoons several years ago.
It follows an earlier decision to end syndicated cartooning (“syndicates” represent collectives of cartoonists, looking to have work placed in a variety of publications). The Times said that a “faulty process” and lack of oversight led to a syndicated cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump (which was condemned by many as anti-Semitic) slipping through the net on April 25.
The decision has caused international consternation and prompted doom-laden predictions about the death of cartooning, or even of free speech itself. The paper’s former in-house cartoonists – Patrick Chappatte and Heng Kim Song – have taken to Twitter and the web to defend their careers and their profession.
But this decision should be seen less an overreaction by a newspaper frightened of (of all things) bad press, than a wake-up call. It’s a moment to acknowledge the new realities of cartooning, globally. As The Times’ editors have asserted, this has been a long time coming.
Indeed, the writing has been on the wall for at least a decade. The hallowed cartooning traditions of the 20th century cannot continue without facing up to fundamental changes in the industry. Although this decision doesn’t spell the end of cartooning as we know it, this may very well be a tipping point for the global cartooning industry.
Headquarters of New York Times, New York 2014. The newspaper’s editors recently announced they will no longer publish daily political cartoons in the international edition.Shutterstock
A borderless world
Chappatte has said: “Cartoons can jump over borders.” But I’d go further: for cartoons, there are no longer any borders. There haven’t been for about a decade or so. And cartoonists have to understand that what they produce for one set of readers in one particular context will inevitably now be seen by people far away, with a very different set of views.
Remember the 2005 controversy over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten? Initial low-level grumbling soon turned into worldwide outrage. Of course, it took a full decade for the worst reaction to manifest itself.
The French satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo – which had not only reprinted the original Danish cartoons, but continued to print deliberately offensive anti-Islamic cartoons in subsequent years – was firebombed in 2011, and then the unthinkable: the shootings at the magazine’s offices in January 2015.
And Australia cannot stand aloof. Remember Mark Knight’s caricature of Serena Williams from 2018? The cartoon dropped like a stone until picked up by J.K. Rowling, and American readers in particular. The global reach of the Murdoch press ensured it would become a battleground for issues of press freedom versus “political correctness”.
Australian cartoonist Mark Knight with his prize winning cartoon at the National Museum in Canberra in 2004. Knight was at the centre of a controversy for his depiction of Serena Williams in 2018.Alan Porritt/AAP
Rupert Murdoch himself took to Twitter in 2012 to defend the London-based Sunday Times after a Gerald Scarfe cartoon depicted Netanyahu building a wall with the bodies of Palestinians (plus ça change…?). Michael Leunig weighed in, claiming the need for cartoonists to “give balance”, rather than present a balanced opinion; reworking Martin Niemöller’s “first they came” in controversial style. Leunig himself had a cartoon in 2002 refused on the basis of likely backlash from the Jewish community.
The point is that globalisation and information technology have changed the business of cartooning. Cartoonists wedded to the old-school, in-house ways of the 20th century can throw tantrums about free speech as much as they like. If they do not recognise the way the world has changed – and is changing – then they will be left behind as their profession moves forward.
History is not on their side. Just as 18th-century copperplate engravings were replaced by lithograph prints, and standalone caricatures were replaced by cartoons in 19th-century humour magazines, and they in turn by 20th-century newspaper cartoons, the web cartoon has well and truly arrived in the 21st century.
So, although a blow to an older way of doing things, The New York Times decision won’t halt the ever-greater expansion of cartooning in its online form. The Times hasn’t really been known for its cartoon content (and actually been quite dismissive of the artform, historically).
The Portuguese anti-Netanyahu cartoonist – António Moreira Antunes – doesn’t even work for the Times. He is one of an army of cartoonists who work without borders, without much of the self-censorship that has always characterised the profession, and without the limitations of the past.
That comes at a cost: job security, a greater reliance on volunteer labour, and a decline in professionalism. But it’s where the future lies.
Paradoxically, the syndication that has been such a part of US cartooning culture for more than a century may provide a model for the future of the profession. The great press barons of the early 20th century – Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst (“Citizen Kane”) – were among the pioneers.
Rather than individual papers employing in-house staff cartoonists, the syndicate model looks remarkably like the “gig” economy of freelancers and short-term contracts. The Times has dealt with CartoonArts International – founded in 1978 – for many years. By divesting itself of that relationship, it may actually be taking a backward step.
But beyond this one paper, cartooning will continue. Talented artists will continue to create brilliant comments on the news of the day; less talented amateurs can always knock up a truly witty meme. Check your Facebook or Twitter feed – there’s more cartooning happening now than ever.
The government almost certainly would have to obtain the support of Tasmanian crossbench senator Jacqui Lambie to amend or repeal the medevac legislation.
Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton on Sunday claimed Labor was reconsidering its position on the legislation, but that was quickly dismissed by his opposite number Kristina Keneally.
The Coalition would need four of the six non-Green crossbench Senate votes, assuming the ALP and Greens opposed.
The government could rely on One Nation, which will have two senators, and Cory Bernardi from the Australian Conservatives.
But that would leave it one vote short. Stirling Griff, one of the two Centre Alliance senators, said Centre Alliance was “100% opposed” to repeal or amendment of the legislation. That position was “non-negotiable”, Griff said.
This would put Lambie, who is returning to the Senate after having to quit in the citizenship crisis, as the swing vote. Her spokeswoman said she was not giving answers on anything yet.
The government said in the election campaign that it would repeal the legislation.
It claimed when the medevac bill was passed – against Coalition opposition during the period of minority government – that it would lead to a flood of transfers from Manus and Nauru, including of people accused of serious crimes. It reopened Christmas Island and said any transferees under the medevac legislation would be sent there.
Dutton said on Sunday just over 30 people had come under the new law, none of whom had been sent to Christmas Island. Asked on the ABC whether they included any criminals or people charged with offences Dutton said he didn’t know. When pressed he said, “we don’t bring anyone to our country where we can’t mitigate the risk”.
Dutton continued to insist the government could be compelled under the legislation to transfer criminals, although the medevac legislation gives the minister power to veto people on security grounds.
The minister claimed Labor was reconsidering its position “and that they would be open to suggestions about how that bill could be repealed or at the very least wound back”.
But Keneally said he had misrepresented Labor’s position; she stressed it supported the legislation.
It was “up to the government to explain if changes are necessary. I have no information that would suggest changes are necessary,” she said.
“If the government believes that the medevac legislation is no longer necessary to ensure that sick people can get the health care they need then the government needs to explain why to the parliament.
“And if the government wants to improve the medevac legislation to ensure that people can more readily get the health care that they need then the government needs to explain that to the parliament.
“The government has said nothing about either of those two aspects of the legislation”.
Dutton said there were now just over 800 people remaining across Nauru and Manus.
He did not think the United States would take the maximum 1,250 people under the deal between Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama.
So far 531 had gone to the US and there were about 295 in the pipeline who had approvals but hadn’t gone yet. More than 300 had been rejected by the US.
He hoped all offered a place would take it up. About 95 had either withdrawn from consideration or rejected an offer. “If we can get those 95 across the line, we get closer to zero”.
In a controversial decision, Australia accepted under the US deal two Rwandan men accused of involvement in the murder of tourists on a gorilla-watching expedition in Uganda in 1999. The government says the men have been found by Australian security agencies not to pose a threat.
Pressed on whether these two were the only ones coming here to fulfil Australia’s side of the deal, Dutton said: “We don’t have plans to bring any others from America at this stage.”
Dutton, while saying it was a matter for the department, also indicated the security company Paladin was likely to have its contract for services on Manus rolled over, despite an ongoing investigation by the Australian National Audit Office into the Home Affairs department’s management of the procurement process for the earlier A$423 million contracts.
Keneally said the A$423 million contract had been “given out by the government in a closed process – a closed rushed process […] to an organisation that was registered in a beach shack on Kangaroo Island, that had one member barred from entering PNG, had another accused of fraud”.
I joined the Australian Journalists Association (now the MEAA – Media Alliance) in, I think, 1971, when I still lived and worked in Papua New Guinea.
When I formally retired from paid work a few years back, I was given honorary membership but, to bolster the journalism profession and its union, I recently asked to return as a paying member – which was accepted.
Given that I still scribble the PNG Attitude blog, book reviews for The Australian, a column in Noosa Style and other bits and pieces, that seemed appropriate.
It may seem implausible, but freedom of the press is under attack in our country. The actions of federal authorities have been nibbling at that freedom for some time, and most recently the federal police took a large bite at it.
I’m concerned. That’s why I’m sharing this letter:
-Partners-
A GRAVE THREAT TO MEDIA FREEDOM
Dear Llew O’Brien, MP, cc Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese
I support in full the following letter from the MEAA calling upon the Australian Parliament to act to guarantee the freedom of the press in Australia.
Recent events have shown that this implied right of Australians is under threat. Legislative and constitutional changes are required:
The Australian Federal Police raids on the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst and on the offices of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) represent a grave threat to press freedom in Australia.
We welcome the Prime Minister’s stated commitment to freedom of the press and openness to discuss the concerns that have been raised.
A healthy democracy cannot function without its media being free to bring to light uncomfortable truths, to scrutinise the powerful and inform our communities. Investigative journalism cannot survive without the courage of whistleblowers, motivated by concern for their fellow citizens, who seek to bring to light instances of wrongdoing, illegal activities, fraud, corruption and threats to public health and safety.
These are issues of public interest, of the public’s right to know. Whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them are entitled to protection, not prosecution. Truth-telling is being punished.
The raids, a raft of recent national security laws, and the prosecutions of whistleblowers Richard Boyle, David McBride and Witness K all demonstrate the public’s right to know is being harmed. Truth-telling is being punished.
It is also clear from the global response to the recent raids that Australia’s proud reputation around the world as a free and open society is under threat.
We urge Parliament to legislate changes to the law to recognise and enshrine a positive public interest protection for whistleblowers and for journalists. Without these protections Australians will be denied important information it is their right as citizens to have.
We urge you to take prompt action to protect our democracy for all Australians.
Publisher: Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) in association with SciDev.Net and the Pacific Media Centre: Manila and Auckland.
“Disaster reporting, which focuses on deaths and casualties for the benefit of local readers, is understandable. However, the mass media also need to explain in depth the causes of climate change. Contextual climate change reporting can be taught to journalists by journalism schools if they have enough trained faculty and resources. But Asia-Pacific journalism schools are not able to do this, to cite a paper we published in Pacific Journalism Review (2017), which was based on a small survey of 20 schools in the region…. There is a vacuum in formal science and environmental education in the Asia-Pacific region… But for the long-term, there is a need for a wide-scale, systematic upgrading of the science communication/science journalism training programmes in the universities with the help of UN agencies like UNESCO.” – Lead author Professor Crispin C. Maslog
The word uncertainty is used a lot in quantum mechanics. One school of thought is that this means there’s something out there in the world that we are uncertain about. But most physicists believe nature itself is uncertain.
Intrinsic uncertainty was central to the way German physicist Werner Heisenberg, one of the originators of modern quantum mechanics, presented the theory.
He put forward the Uncertainty Principle that showed we can never know all the properties of a particle at the same time.
For example, measuring the particle’s position would allow us to know its position. But this measurement would necessarily disturb its velocity, by an amount inversely proportional to the accuracy of the position measurement.
Was Heisenberg wrong?
Heisenberg used the Uncertainty Principle to explain how measurement would destroy that classic feature of quantum mechanics, the two-slit interference pattern (more on this below).
But back in the 1990s, some eminent quantum physicists claimed to have proved it is possible to determine which of the two slits a particle goes through, without significantly disturbing its velocity.
Does that mean Heisenberg’s explanation must be wrong? In work just published in Science Advances, my experimental colleagues and I have shown that it would be unwise to jump to that conclusion.
We show a velocity disturbance — of the size expected from the Uncertainty Principle — always exists, in a certain sense.
But before getting into the details we need to explain briefly about the two-slit experiment.
The two-slit experiment
In this type of experiment there is a barrier with two holes or slits. We also have a quantum particle with a position uncertainty large enough to cover both slits if it is fired at the barrier.
Since we can’t know which slit the particle goes through, it acts as if it goes through both slits. The signature of this is the so-called “interference pattern”: ripples in the distribution of where the particle is likely to be found at a screen in the far field beyond the slits, meaning a long way (often several metres) past the slits.
Particles going through two slits at once form an interference pattern on a screen in the far field. There are bands (dark) where they are more likely to show up separated by bands (light) where they are less likely to show up.Wikimedia/NekoJaNekoJa/Johannes Kalliauer, CC BY-SA
But what if we put a measuring device near the barrier to find out which slit the particle goes through? Will we still see the interference pattern?
We know the answer is no, and Heisenberg’s explanation was that if the position measurement is accurate enough to tell which slit the particle goes through, it will give a random disturbance to its velocity just large enough to affect where it ends up in the far field, and thus wash out the ripples of interference.
What the eminent quantum physicists realised is that finding out which slit the particle goes through doesn’t require a position measurement as such. Any measurement that gives different results depending on which slit the particle goes through will do.
And they came up with a device whose effect on the particle is not that of a random velocity kick as it goes through. Hence, they argued, it is not Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that explains the loss of interference, but some other mechanism.
As Heisenberg predicted
We don’t have to get into what they claimed was the mechanism for destroying interference, because our experiment has shown there is an effect on the velocity of the particle, of just the size Heisenberg predicted.
We saw what others have missed because this velocity disturbance doesn’t happen as the particle goes through the measurement device. Rather it is delayed until the particle is well past the slits, on the way towards the far field.
How is this possible? Well, because quantum particles are not really just particles. They are also waves.
In fact, the theory behind our experiment was one in which both wave and particle nature are manifest — the wave guides the motion of the particle according to the interpretation introduced by theoretical physicist David Bohm, a generation after Heisenberg.
Let’s experiment
In our latest experiment, scientists in China followed a technique suggested by me in 2007 to reconstruct the hypothesised motion of the quantum particles, from many different possible starting points across both slits, and for both results of the measurement.
They compared the velocities over time when there was no measurement device present to those when there was, and so determined the change in the velocities as a result of the measurement.
The experiment showed that the effect of the measurement on the velocity of the particles continued long after the particles had cleared the measurement device itself, as far as 5 metres away from it.
By that point, in the far field, the cumulative change in velocity was just large enough, on average, to wash out the ripples in the interference pattern.
So, in the end, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle emerges triumphant.
The take-home message? Don’t make far-reaching claims about what principle can or cannot explain a phenomenon until you have considered all theoretical formulations of the principle.
Yes, that’s a bit of an abstract message, but it’s advice that could apply in fields far from physics.
FIRST PERSON:By Katie Todd, of RNZ News, reporting outside the High Court in Christchurch
The latest chapter in the court proceedings of the accused mosque gunman played out in cold, misty weather in Christchurch today.
Reporters and camera crews from around the world lined Lichfield Street from 6.30am, with all eyes and lenses on the High Court, situated on the Justice Precinct’s fourth floor.
Today was the third appearance of Brenton Tarrant, who today pleaded not guilty to all 92 charges against him, including murder, attempted murder and one terrorism charge.
As his 9.15am court appearance approached, so too did a steady trickle of people from the Muslim community – some arriving alone and others in clusters, clasping each other’s hands.
Some bore physical wounds visible in limps and crutches, while others displayed their emotional wounds in shirts printed with the names of their deceased loved ones.
-Partners-
Anneke Smith was at court in Christchurch today and filed this report. Video: RNZ News
Shutters clicked as the gunman’s lawyers, Shane Tait and Jonathan Hudson, dragged suitcases of court documents through entrance A1.
At 9.56am, texts came through that the hearing was over and that he had entered not guilty pleas to all charges.
Frustration and pain Then came expressions of frustration and pain from the Muslim community, some of whom had just seen their first glimpse of the man, albeit via video-link.
Didar Hossain, who lost his uncle in the attacks, concluded today had been a “difficult day”.
“I was totally heartbroken,” he said of hearing the not guilty pleas.
John Setka’s reported comments about Rosie Batty have the potential to seriously damage the Labor Party and unions generally in the public eye.
The Labor Party’s new federal leader, Anthony Albanese, moved quickly to seek Setka’s expulsion from the party following reports of his claim that Batty’s work campaigning against domestic violence had led to a reduction in men’s rights. Albanese had little choice but to act forthrightly, but in doing so he was also careful to emphasise his support for unions more broadly. The shockwaves from the affair have highlighted some divisions in the labour movement and given a political gift to the government.
What Setka actually said is contested. He claims he was recounting general statements from lawyers regarding the shift in balance of family law, and that he was “a huge supporter” of Batty. However, the difference appears to be mainly in nuance.
More significantly, he has also indicated he will plead guilty to charges of harassment of a woman over a carriage service later this month in court.
Setka has form in attracting negative media attention as Victorian state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, Maritime and Energy Union (CFMMEU). He had threatened to expose all Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) inspectors and make their children “ashamed of who their parents are”.
On social media, he posted a picture of his children holding a placard stating “go get fu#ked” in reference to the ABCC. His actions in industrial disputes have contributed significantly to almost A$16 million in fines from the ABCC and the Fair Work Commission for the CFMMEU.
Albanese said Setka “undermines the credibility of the trade union movement through the position he holds and the public views he’s expressed” in relation to Batty.
They also provide ammunition for government efforts to increase union regulation. A number of government members have indicated the time is ripe to reintroduce their Ensuring Integrity Bill to ensure unions and registered organisations are run by “fit and proper” persons and can be degistered or placed under administration for industrial lawlessness.
The ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, rushed home from a meeting of the International Labour Organisation in Geneva to meet with Setka on Thursday. She urged him to resign and consider the harm he was causing the wider union movement. She said she and other union leaders believe his words “are not compatible with our values”.
McManus also reiterated the ACTU’s strong stance against domestic violence, noting that Setka must resign if the allegations of harassment over a carriage service are true:
There is no place for perpetrators of domestic violence in leadership positions in our movement.
However, Setka is refusing to resign, with support from some other union leaders. He claims he has been stitched up by enemies within the union movement. The reported comments were made at a private CFMMEU national executive meeting, which seems to indicate that somebody present informed the media. Others present have supported Setka’s account, notably the president of the maritime division of the union, Christy Cain.
Setka’s removal from his position would not be easily achieved. He retains strong support within the union, especially from the large construction division. If he does plead guilty to the harassment allegations, or is convicted, union rules would allow his removal for bringing the union into disrepute. However, this would likely be a lengthy legal process, with no guarantee of success. The Federal Court has often been reluctant to sanction removal of elected officials.
ACTU disaffiliation of the CFMMEU would probably be counterproductive. Setka is based in the Victorian construction division of the CFMMEU, but affiliation is a matter for the federal office of the union.
Disaffiliation would also affect other divisions and branches that do not necessarily share Setka’s outlook. The CFMMEU is a conglomerate union, with other divisions representing workers in mining, manufacturing, forestry, energy and maritime sectors.
Labor risks being “wedged” on this issue. Government members have suggested the party should sever ties with the CFMMEU, and frequently highlight that the union is the Labor Party’s biggest electoral donor. Bob Hawke is reported to have counselled Bill Shorten, when he was leader, to cut ties with the union.
But apart from the financial issue, a union’s party affiliation is a matter for the state Labor branches. This and the conglomerate nature of the union complicate the issue.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated there are “plenty more where John Setka came from”. In one sense he may be right. The construction sector has many robust characters and practices among both unions and employers, although the ABCC regulator tends to focus on unions.
The situation is reminiscent of Norm Gallagher and the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation (BLF), which was deregistered for industrial lawlessness in 1986, with the support of the Hawke Labor government and the ACTU. Government members have referred to the possibility of deregistration proceedings for the CFMMEU.
However, one important historical lesson is that despite numerous deregistrations of building unions from the 1950s onwards, behaviour in the sector was not greatly affected. It is also now a good deal more complex with the CFMMEU, since deregistration would affect other divisions representing workers outside construction.
The Setka episode has broader cultural dimensions for the union movement. Setka and his supporters represent a declining group of traditional blue-collar macho unionists. But the majority of the union movement is based in the service sector and more feminised.
The biggest unions are those representing nurses, shop assistants and teachers. The ACTU president and secretary are women, and their strongest supporters on this issue to date have been the Australian Service Union and United Voice, both with large female memberships.
The July 5 national Labor executive meeting will decide on Setka’s expulsion. Whatever is decided, the broader political issues will not easily subside.
Sign up to the Beating Around the Bush newsletter here, and suggest a plant we should cover at batb@theconversation.edu.au.
When you are in the northern part of Western Australia, one of nature’s joys is seeing a large boab tree close up, perhaps for the first time.
The boab (Adansonia gregorii) is a native to this part of Australia, but is related to the broader group of species called boababs that live in Madagascar and Africa – but more on that connection later.
Boabs are also called bottle trees, the tree of life, boababs and Australian boababs. Some of the indigenous Australian names include gadawon and larrgadi.
From their iconic swollen trunks, to living up to 2,000 years and the many uses for their “superfood” fruits, here’s what makes boab trees so fascinating.
The Conversation
The ‘upside-down tree’: trunks that save lives and lock up prisoners
While the boab in Australia is not quite as well-documented as the African species, specimens have been recorded at over 1,000 years of age. Some living trees have been estimated to be nearer to 2,000 years old.
And while it’s difficult to age the trees, several specimens of the African species have been dated at 2,000 or more years old.
Australian boabs can grow up to 15 metres tall at maturity and have swollen, attention-grabbing trunks called a caudex, which may be up to five metres in diameter.
The African boab species, A. digitata, can be much taller, at 25 metres high and with a diameter of up to 15 metres.
In such dry continents, the caudex is a life-saver, often containing water, which was tapped by Indigenous folk. It has been estimated that some of these huge old trees can hold more than 100,000 litres of water in their trunks.
In Africa, these massive trunks have been used as shelters, homes, farm sheds and, more recently, even shops and bars.
Sadly in Australia, legend has it the huge trunks were used to make lock-ups for Indigenous people and other prisoners.
The infamous Boab Prison Tree, just south of Derby in Western Australia, was said to have once held Indigenous prisoners.Shutterstock
It’s not just the trunk that can stop you in your tracks. The boab has a unique branching structure, one that looks more like a root system than a canopy.
Some locals in Africa will tell you the tree was dropped from heaven to earth and landed upside down. So the African species of boab is sometimes called the upside-down tree.
Boab fruits are ‘superfoods’ and its shell has many uses
A. gregorii, the Australian boab species, has large, attractive white flowers up to 75 millimetres in length. Its round fruits are edible and sought after by birds, mammals and humans. The fruit gives rise to some of the common names for the tree, such as monkey bread tree and dead rat tree. The latter comes from the appearance of older fruits in the canopy looking a bit like … well, dead rats?
In fact, there’s great interest in fruits from the African species, A. digitata, which are considered a “superfood” because of their high levels of antioxidants, calcium, potassium, magnesium, fibre and vitamin C. It’s assumed many of these traits will be shared by the Australian boab, but there is little research as yet to prove it.
Fruit of the African boab tree fruit are initially covered in velvety fur.Ton Rulkens/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The soft part of the fruit is surrounded by a hard, coconut-like shell that’s initially covered in a velvety fur. The hard shell has been used for cups and bowls, but has also been intricately carved and decorated by Aboriginal artists in Africa and Australia. If the seeds are left inside the fruit as it dries, they can be used for toys like rattles.
On both continents, Aboriginal people have eaten the white powder that surrounds the seeds. The leaves are rich in iron and the pulp from the fruits tastes like cream of tartar.
The Indigenous people of both continents were also well aware of the medicinal uses of the fruits. The bark and leaves of the trees also treat various ailments, but particularly those associated with digestive disorders.
But at present there is very little modern research on the medicinal and dietary aspects of either the baobab or boab.
How the boab tree got to Australia
One of the mysteries surrounding the boab is how it got to Australia – the Australian species has clear affinities with related species in continental Africa and Madagascar.
A baobab tree, Adansonia digitata, in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. Its journey from Africa to Australia remains a mystery.Yoki/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The first is that all of the boababs originate from the super-continent Gondwana – consisting of Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar – before it fragmented almost 80 million years ago. But A. Gregorii and A. digitata are so similar genetically that, given the millions of years that have elapsed, this theory is now in question.
The second theory comes from recent DNA analysis of the species. It suggests they separated more recently, perhaps only 70,000 years ago, which raises the question, were humans involved in their journey? But did they come to Australia from Africa, or from Australia to Africa? The latter is a less likely scenario given the direction of ocean currents.
And the third theory is that fruits arrived on the Australian shore after an epic ocean voyage from Africa.
Boabs are usually found in the remote outback of Australia, but in 2008, a large 750-year-old boab was transported from Warmun in the Kimberley to Perth and transplanted in Kings Park.
Transplanting such a large tree is both daunting and fraught, with a high chance of failure, but the deciduousness and growth habit of the boab gave some cause for optimism about a successful outcome. For the reward of having a large old boab growing in Perth, it would be worth it.
After a period of stress, the tree appears to be coming good, reflecting the toughness of the species.
A large, mature boab is a splendid tree of arid Australia that inspires awe in all who experience them close up. They really are a beauty and a bottler of a tree!
Sign up to the Beating Around the Bush newsletter here, and suggest a plant we should cover at batb@theconversation.edu.au.
When you are in the northern part of Western Australia, one of nature’s joys is seeing a large boab tree close up, perhaps for the first time.
The boab (Adansonia gregorii) is a native to this part of Australia, but is related to the broader group of species called boababs that live in Madagascar and Africa – but more on that connection later.
Boabs are also called bottle trees, the tree of life, boababs and Australian boababs. Some of the indigenous Australian names include gadawon and larrgadi.
From their iconic swollen trunks, to living up to 2,000 years and the many uses for their “superfood” fruits, here’s what makes boab trees so fascinating.
The Conversation
The ‘upside-down tree’: trunks that save lives and lock up prisoners
While the boab in Australia is not quite as well-documented as the African species, specimens have been recorded at over 1,000 years of age. Some living trees have been estimated to be nearer to 2,000 years old.
And while it’s difficult to age the trees, several specimens of the African species have been dated at 2,000 or more years old.
Australian boabs can grow up to 15 metres tall at maturity and have swollen, attention-grabbing trunks called a caudex, which may be up to five metres in diameter.
The African boab species, A. digitata, can be much taller, at 25 metres high and with a diameter of up to 15 metres.
In such dry continents, the caudex is a life-saver, often containing water, which was tapped by Indigenous folk. It has been estimated that some of these huge old trees can hold more than 100,000 litres of water in their trunks.
In Africa, these massive trunks have been used as shelters, homes, farm sheds and, more recently, even shops and bars.
Sadly in Australia, legend has it the huge trunks were used to make lock-ups for Indigenous people and other prisoners.
The infamous Boab Prison Tree, just south of Derby in Western Australia, was said to have once held Indigenous prisoners.Shutterstock
It’s not just the trunk that can stop you in your tracks. The boab has a unique branching structure, one that looks more like a root system than a canopy.
Some locals in Africa will tell you the tree was dropped from heaven to earth and landed upside down. So the African species of boab is sometimes called the upside-down tree.
Boab fruits are ‘superfoods’ and its shell has many uses
A. gregorii, the Australian boab species, has large, attractive white flowers up to 75 millimetres in length. Its round fruits are edible and sought after by birds, mammals and humans. The fruit gives rise to some of the common names for the tree, such as monkey bread tree and dead rat tree. The latter comes from the appearance of older fruits in the canopy looking a bit like … well, dead rats?
In fact, there’s great interest in fruits from the African species, A. digitata, which are considered a “superfood” because of their high levels of antioxidants, calcium, potassium, magnesium, fibre and vitamin C. It’s assumed many of these traits will be shared by the Australian boab, but there is little research as yet to prove it.
Fruit of the African boab tree fruit are initially covered in velvety fur.Ton Rulkens/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The soft part of the fruit is surrounded by a hard, coconut-like shell that’s initially covered in a velvety fur. The hard shell has been used for cups and bowls, but has also been intricately carved and decorated by Aboriginal artists in Africa and Australia. If the seeds are left inside the fruit as it dries, they can be used for toys like rattles.
On both continents, Aboriginal people have eaten the white powder that surrounds the seeds. The leaves are rich in iron and the pulp from the fruits tastes like cream of tartar.
The Indigenous people of both continents were also well aware of the medicinal uses of the fruits. The bark and leaves of the trees also treat various ailments, but particularly those associated with digestive disorders.
But at present there is very little modern research on the medicinal and dietary aspects of either the baobab or boab.
How the boab tree got to Australia
One of the mysteries surrounding the boab is how it got to Australia – the Australian species has clear affinities with related species in continental Africa and Madagascar.
A baobab tree, Adansonia digitata, in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. Its journey from Africa to Australia remains a mystery.Yoki/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The first is that all of the boababs originate from the super-continent Gondwana – consisting of Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar – before it fragmented almost 80 million years ago. But A. Gregorii and A. digitata are so similar genetically that, given the millions of years that have elapsed, this theory is now in question.
The second theory comes from recent DNA analysis of the species. It suggests they separated more recently, perhaps only 70,000 years ago, which raises the question, were humans involved in their journey? But did they come to Australia from Africa, or from Australia to Africa? The latter is a less likely scenario given the direction of ocean currents.
And the third theory is that fruits arrived on the Australian shore after an epic ocean voyage from Africa.
Boabs are usually found in the remote outback of Australia, but in 2008, a large 750-year-old boab was transported from Warmun in the Kimberley to Perth and transplanted in Kings Park.
Transplanting such a large tree is both daunting and fraught, with a high chance of failure, but the deciduousness and growth habit of the boab gave some cause for optimism about a successful outcome. For the reward of having a large old boab growing in Perth, it would be worth it.
After a period of stress, the tree appears to be coming good, reflecting the toughness of the species.
A large, mature boab is a splendid tree of arid Australia that inspires awe in all who experience them close up. They really are a beauty and a bottler of a tree!
An Australian company’s application to mine a fossil-rich site in the south of New Zealand has been met with fierce criticism and a campaign to protect it in perpetuity.
A maar is a small deep volcanic crater lake. Foulden Maar formed 23 million years ago after an explosive eruption . It contains tens of thousands of exquisitely preserved fossils of plants and animals, all of which represent extinct biodiversity.
The fossils are preserved between layers of diatomite, itself the fossilised microscopic remains of siliceous aquatic algae called diatoms. Plaman Resources, a majority Malaysian-owned subsidiary of Australian company Plaman Gobal, has applied to create an open pit mine to extract the diatomite, trademarked as ‘black pearl’, to turn it into pig and poultry feed.
This would be like mining volcanic ash at Pompeii for pig food.
This fossil leaf from Foulden Maar shows damage by insects.Supplied, CC BY-ND
The economic case put forward by Plaman Resources in its application to the Overseas Investment Office has been heavily criticised and described as unjustifiable vandalism. New Zealand and international scientists have challenged the scientific case for ‘black pearl’ as a food additive for stock.
Public and scientific opinion has since changed the Dunedin City Council’s position. At first, the council supported the mine, but it has now promised to protect Foulden Maar for scientific research and educational purposes. The University of Otago has also called for the site’s protection. Both institutions have now formalised their opposition through submissions to the Overseas Investment Office.
Meanwhile, Plaman Resources tried to shore up support by offering monetary inducements to the University of Otago if it dropped its opposition to the mine. The company also proposed a swap between Foulden Maar and the 15-million-year-old Hindon Maar fossil deposits. The latter has no diatomite deposits that are economically viable for Plaman, but for palaeontologists this would be like having to choose between the pyramids of Giza or the Sistine Chapel.
Until recently, Foulden Maar was known mostly to the scientific community, but had no public profile to ensure ongoing access to the site.
The maar crater formed 23 million years ago, filled with a small hydrologically closed lake that gradually filled in and preserved an entire subtropical rainforest ecosystem that once flourished there. It links New Zealand to what was occurring at the time in New Caledonia, Australia, and even South America.
The site is about a kilometre wide and nearly 200 metres deep. It contains fossils of plants and animals that lived in the lake and surrounding rainforest, including the world’s oldest galaxiid fish (whitebait) and scale insects on leaves. Of the tens of thousands of exquisitely preserved fossils, only 30 have been described so far by the international team working at the site.
Research at the northern hemisphere equivalent, the Messel Pit, has been ongoing for over a century and shows no signs of slowing down. There are hundreds of new species yet to be described at Foulden Maar. Each fossil must be painstakingly separated from its diatomite tomb and preserved, a process that can take around a week per fossil. Bringing this lost world to life is incompatible with the Plaman Resources proposal for a 24/7 operation.
A scanning electron microscope image reveals fossil diatoms, present in their billions at Foulden Maar.Supplied, CC BY-ND
Hidden climate record
There is more to Foulden Maar than the fossils. At its deepest point, it preserves a unique climate record covering 120,000 years. It is the only site in the southern hemisphere with a climate record that shows annual resolution of this kind and shows links between the tropics and Antarctica 23 million years ago.
Data from the site are being used in predictive global climate models. There is no way in which the full thickness of the maar lake could be preserved for ongoing climate research if the mining proposal went ahead.
Ideally, Foulden Maar could link in with the Waitaki Whitestone Geopark, which will soon be proposed as New Zealand’s first UNESCO Global Geopark, promoting scientific research and fossil tourism. This proposal, championed by Helen Clark, includes over 40 geological sites, including a goldfield of international scientific importance at Nenthorn, just north of Foulden Maar.
Our fight to protect Foulden Maar will no doubt continue. Plaman Resources has indicated it will appeal any decisions to protect the site. The company has also threatened to mine the section it already owns if it doesn’t get approval to buy a neighbouring farm to make its operation economically viable.
Misconceptions remain, such as Dunedin city councillor Lee Vandervis’s comment that the “climate change record of the time is less significant than the fossils and … people could already research the climate at different periods in time on the internet”. This is like saying we don’t need cows to produce milk as we can buy it from a dairy.
In the best interests of the fossils, the locals and scientific research, Plaman Resources should walk away from this. Mining is littered with bad investments. Write this off as one of those.
Massive public protests taking place in Hong Kong over the past week are aimed at a new extradition law, known as the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, that would see accused criminals extradited to mainland China to face prosecution.
Hongkongers feel the law could be used to legalise the kidnapping of people who express views, and act in ways, that are not popular with the Chinese government. The same law could also be used to extradite tourists and visitors to China who are arrested on suspicion of having committed these crimes.
Protesters want the bill scrapped. For now, debate of the legislation has been postponed.
Organisers say one million people turned out for the protests, while police estimate the number was around 240,000. Either way, it was a significant number of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million population. Commentators on Twitter remarked on how well organised the protesters were.
So, how did they do it?
Protesters across the world are using new technologies to organise. Social media platforms were used to share information about the Hong Kong protests. And messaging apps, such as Telegram and WhatsApp, were essential for coordinating with other protesters.
In choosing a messaging app, organisers are looking to communicate effectively while avoiding surveillance. Telegram, which launched in 2013, has become a more secure competitor to WhatsApp.
There is the “cloud chats” option for group messaging. Telegram also allows for “secret chats” between two people. These chats are stored on the phones rather than in the cloud, and can be set to self-destruct at a time determined by the user.
Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram hasn’t suffered major hacks in the recent past. Earlier this year, WhatsApp was reportedly infected with the Pegasus spyware as part of an attempt to access the messages of a UK-based human rights lawyer who was working on a case for civil rights activists. During the 2014 protests, WhatsApp was also reportedly attacked to spy on Hongkongers.
Telegram is a partially open source platform. Anyone can contribute to strengthening its security by looking for and fixing vulnerabilities, which can help to prevent hacks like those from Pegasus.
Telegram therefore offered Hongkongers a messaging service they could use with a bit more confidence, or so the organisers thought. But the use of spyware isn’t the only method available to those who might want to disrupt the communications of protesters.
The administrator of a 30,000-member Telegram chat group, which was used to organise the protests, was arrested on Tuesday. Ivan Ip, 22, was accused of conspiring to commit a public nuisance. Ip told the New York Times:
I never thought that just speaking on the internet, just sharing information, could be regarded as a speech crime […] I’m scared that they will show up again and arrest me again. This feeling of terror has been planted in my heart.
In a further show of force, Telegram was also targeted in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack during the protests.
DDoS attacks use botnets, which are computers that have been compromised by malicious software and then used to launch cyber attacks in an automated fashion. The owner of the computer may not even know that their property was used as a tool to suppress civil rights activists.
Telegram’s servers were flooded with junk communications at rate of 200-400 gigabits per second, slowing functioning of the service until it was ineffective or unusable.
Based on past trends, this size of an attack is likely to have been carried out by a state actor. Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said source IP addresses indicated the geographic location of the attacks were mainly originating in China.
This disruption appears to have been coordinated to occur at the height of the protests for maximum impact, creating a chilling effect on the ability of protesters to organise and communicate.
The effect of the attack was global, impacting Telegram users in other countries like the United States. This shows how targeted internet censorship techniques in one country could punish citizens of another.
By making Telegram unusable, the cyber attack redirects the communications of organisers onto less secure platforms, where vulnerabilities can be exploited.
Communications on these platforms might be more easily intercepted, and metadata and location information might be available from telecommunications companies and ISPs. This can heighten protesters’ fears of being identified and prosecuted for their political actions.
Protesters during a rally against an extradition bill outside the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on June 12.Vernon Yuen/EPA
The power of governments to attack and disrupt the communications of protesting citizens has a chilling effect on the universal right to march and to protest. Social media hacking tools, which are sold to repressive governments to spy on their own citizens, further erode the right to free speech and to organise political activity.
In this environment, demand for secure social media apps will only increase out of a basic necessity to break free from surveillance, and for protection against authoritative regimes around the world.
A growing number of older Australians don’t own their homes. And whether they are private renters or live in social housing can make a big difference to their risk of loneliness and anxiety.
That’s the key finding of research led by Alan Morris, a professor at the UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance, who interviewed older Australians about how their housing situation may relate to the loneliness they experience.
On today’s episode, Professor Morris shares some of the deeply moving stories he heard.
Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Trust Me, I’m An Expert on Pocket Casts).
You can also hear us on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Trust Me, I’m An Expert.
Massive public protests taking place in Hong Kong over the past week are aimed at a new extradition law, known as the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, that would see accused criminals extradited to mainland China to face prosecution.
Hongkongers feel the law could be used to legalise the kidnapping of people who express views, and act in ways, that are not popular with the Chinese government. The same law could also be used to extradite tourists and visitors to China who are arrested on suspicion of having committed these crimes.
Protesters want the bill scrapped. For now, debate of the legislation has been postponed.
Organisers say one million people turned out for the protests, while police estimate the number was around 240,000. Either way, it was a significant number of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million population. Commentators on Twitter remarked on how well organised the protesters were.
So, how did they do it?
Protesters across the world are using new technologies to organise. Social media platforms were used to share information about the Hong Kong protests. And messaging apps, such as Telegram and WhatsApp, were essential for coordinating with other protesters.
In choosing a messaging app, organisers are looking to communicate effectively while avoiding surveillance. Telegram, which launched in 2013, has become a more secure competitor to WhatsApp.
There is the “cloud chats” option for group messaging. Telegram also allows for “secret chats” between two people. These chats are stored on the phones rather than in the cloud, and can be set to self-destruct at a time determined by the user.
Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram hasn’t suffered major hacks in the recent past. Earlier this year, WhatsApp was reportedly infected with the Pegasus spyware as part of an attempt to access the messages of a UK-based human rights lawyer who was working on a case for civil rights activists. During the 2014 protests, WhatsApp was also reportedly attacked to spy on Hongkongers.
Telegram is a partially open source platform. Anyone can contribute to strengthening its security by looking for and fixing vulnerabilities, which can help to prevent hacks like those from Pegasus.
Telegram therefore offered Hongkongers a messaging service they could use with a bit more confidence, or so the organisers thought. But the use of spyware isn’t the only method available to those who might want to disrupt the communications of protesters.
The administrator of a 30,000-member Telegram chat group, which was used to organise the protests, was arrested on Tuesday. Ivan Ip, 22, was accused of conspiring to commit a public nuisance. Ip told the New York Times:
I never thought that just speaking on the internet, just sharing information, could be regarded as a speech crime […] I’m scared that they will show up again and arrest me again. This feeling of terror has been planted in my heart.
In a further show of force, Telegram was also targeted in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack during the protests.
DDoS attacks use botnets, which are computers that have been compromised by malicious software and then used to launch cyber attacks in an automated fashion. The owner of the computer may not even know that their property was used as a tool to suppress civil rights activists.
Telegram’s servers were flooded with junk communications at rate of 200-400 gigabits per second, slowing functioning of the service until it was ineffective or unusable.
Based on past trends, this size of an attack is likely to have been carried out by a state actor. Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said source IP addresses indicated the geographic location of the attacks were mainly originating in China.
This disruption appears to have been coordinated to occur at the height of the protests for maximum impact, creating a chilling effect on the ability of protesters to organise and communicate.
The effect of the attack was global, impacting Telegram users in other countries like the United States. This shows how targeted internet censorship techniques in one country could punish citizens of another.
By making Telegram unusable, the cyber attack redirects the communications of organisers onto less secure platforms, where vulnerabilities can be exploited.
Communications on these platforms might be more easily intercepted, and metadata and location information might be available from telecommunications companies and ISPs. This can heighten protesters’ fears of being identified and prosecuted for their political actions.
Protesters during a rally against an extradition bill outside the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on June 12.Vernon Yuen/EPA
The power of governments to attack and disrupt the communications of protesting citizens has a chilling effect on the universal right to march and to protest. Social media hacking tools, which are sold to repressive governments to spy on their own citizens, further erode the right to free speech and to organise political activity.
In this environment, demand for secure social media apps will only increase out of a basic necessity to break free from surveillance, and for protection against authoritative regimes around the world.
You’ve probably heard eating too much fatty red meat is bad for your health, while lean meat and chicken are better choices. So, recent headlines claiming white meat is just as bad for your cholesterol levels as red meat might have surprised you.
The study did find lean white meat had the same effect on cholesterol levels as lean red meat. While this might be construed as good news by lovers of red meat, more research on this topic is needed for a clearer picture.
How was this study conducted?
The researchers set out to compare three diets: one where the main dietary source of protein came from eating red meat (beef and pork), another where it came from poultry (chicken and turkey), and a third where it came from plant foods (legumes, nuts, grains and soy products).
They wanted to measure the impact of these diets on specific categories of blood fats, as markers of heart disease risk. They tested blood fat markers including low density lipoprotein cholesterol (or LDL, commonly known as “bad cholesterol”), apolipoprotein B (apoB), and the ratio of total cholesterol to high density lipoprotein cholesterol (or HDL, commonly known as “good cholesterol”).
The researchers also wanted to know whether blood fat levels changed more when the background dietary patterns were high in saturated fat, derived mostly from full-fat dairy products and butter, or when they were low in saturated fat.
To achieve this, 177 adults with blood cholesterol levels in the normal range were randomised to follow either a high-saturated fat diet (14% of total energy intake) or a low-saturated fat diet (7% of total energy intake).
Within these two groups they were further randomly assigned to follow three separate diets for four weeks each: red meat, white meat, and plant protein sources. The main protein sources in the meat groups came from lean cuts of red and white meat. In the plant diet, protein came from legumes, nuts, grains and soy products.
Participants met research staff weekly to collect their food products and received counselling on following their specified diet. Participants were asked to maintain their physical activity level and keep their weight as stable as possible so these factors did not bias the results.
To eliminate any carry-over effects from eating one type of protein to the next, participants were given between two and seven weeks break in between each diet and told to return to their usual eating patterns.
Some participants dropped out along the way, so in the end researchers had results from 113 participants.
Blood concentrations of LDL cholesterol and apoB were lower following the plant protein diet period, compared to both the red and white meat periods. This was independent of whether participants were on a background diet of high- or low-saturated fat.
There was no statistically significant difference in the blood fat levels of those eating red meat compared to those eating white meat.
We’re often told to limit our consumption of red meat.From shutterstock.com
Eating a diet high in saturated fat led to significant increases in blood levels of LDL cholesterol, apoB, and large LDL particles compared with a background diet low in saturated fat.
So, all the dietary protein sources as well as the level of saturated fat intake had significant effects on total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, and apoB levels.
How should we interpret the results?
Although the test diets only lasted four weeks each, this study is important. It’s rare to see intervention studies that directly compare eating different types of meat and sources of protein and the impact on heart-disease risk factors. This is partly due to the challenge and expense of providing the food and getting people to follow specific diets.
Most studies to date have been cohort studies where people are categorised based on what they eat, then followed up for many years to see what happens to their health.
There are a few things to keep in mind with this study. First, the researchers used the leanest cuts of both red and white meats, and removed all visible fat and skin. If participants were eating fatty meat, we may have seen different results.
The significant variation in breaks between different diets (ranging from two to seven weeks) may have also affected the results. Participants with a longer break would have had more time for their blood cholesterol levels to change, compared to those with shorter breaks.
Finally, in reporting their results, it would have been better to include all 177 participants who began the study. People who drop out often have different health characteristics and leaving them out may have biased results.
This short-term study does not provide evidence that choosing lean white meat over red meat is either better or worse for your health.
But the findings are consistent with recommendations from the Heart Foundation to include a variety of plant-based foods in our diets, foods containing healthy types of fat and lower amounts of saturated fat, and in particular, to choose lean red meat and poultry.
Blind peer review
The article presents a fair, balanced and accurate assessment of the study. In this study, they showed lean red meat and lean white meat (with all visible fat and skin removed) had the same effect on blood fat levels.
Importantly, plant protein sources (such as legumes, nuts, grains and soy products) lowered blood fat levels compared to the red and white meats, and this was independent of whether the participants had been placed on a background diet low or high in saturated fats. This study did not look at the impact of a fish-based diet on blood fats. – Evangeline Mantzioris
Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julienne van Loon, Vice Chancellor’s Principal Research Fellow, School of Media & Communication, RMIT University
The omniscient narrator – an all-knowing, third-person voice – is making a return to contemporary fiction. Indigenous Australian author Kim Scott, in choosing this technique for his latest award-winning novel, Taboo, is not alone: we can also find it in recent fiction by Zadie Smith (White Teeth; On Beauty) and Richard Powers (The Overstory).
Readers might be surprised by this trend. Isn’t the penchant to narrate in this way – like a kind of god – long dead? Curiously, the answer is no.
Along with several of his peers, Kim Scott is playing with a mode of omniscience deeply informed by the legacy of postmodernism in literature, a movement characterised by, among other things, a critique of the unreliable narrator. As with all of Kim Scott’s fiction, it matters deeply who it is that is speaking.
Literary scholar Paul Dawson has argued that the reappearance of the omniscient narrator in recent fiction can be read as “a performance of narrative authority”. He suggests one reason omniscience has returned is the anxiety many writers now feel about the role and place of storytelling in contemporary culture, where freely available digital media stories, peppered with fake news, produce and reproduce endlessly. As a result, there is very little about in the way of the consistently reliable narrative authority.
Pan Macmillan
Enter Kim Scott’s omniscient narration in Taboo. Here is a narration that is playfully performative, in part to acknowledge and perhaps counter the many problems with narrative authority in contemporary life, but also to approach a very difficult topic.
This is a novel about a massacre site, and the question of how to adequately acknowledge what such a site means for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in the present.
Questions around power and narration are entirely pertinent in this context. Whose history is this? And who can tell it adequately? Who has the authority? Who, even, has an adequate handle on the story?
The sense of the flesh-and-blood Indigenous Australian author, Kim Scott, is ever present behind the text. Curiously, he even inserts an Afterword, a non-fiction commentary on his intentions with the novel, directly following the final page. It is an exegesis, or explanation, of sorts. But in and through the novel itself, the omniscient voice is not the implied voice of the author. It is something else entirely.
Reviewing Taboo for the Sydney Morning Herald, literary critic Peter Pierce describes the novel as having an “oracular” voice. Pierce may simply mean that the voice of the novel is enigmatic, but Scott’s narration is also oracular in the sense of employing a voice that claims the authority of an oracle – a source of wisdom from some higher, more ancient order of meaning.
Sometimes this makes the book feel like a work of magic realism, where the magical creeps into the real world, as in the opening pages:
We thought to tell a story with such momentum; a truck careering down a hillside, thunder in a rocky riverbed, a skeleton tumbling to the ground. There must be at least one brave and resilient character at its centre (one of us), and the story will speak of magic in an empirical age; of how our dead will return, transformed, to support us again and from within.
Reviewer Jane Gleeson-White has described the voice of the book as belonging to “‘undead’ Noongar ancestors who rise from the riverbed to narrate”. This is functionally correct, but Scott’s text is not a conventional ghost story, nor is the first-person plural, with its sense of a haunting presence, heavily laboured.
Author Kim Scott employs an omniscient voice in his latest novel.Pan Macmillan
For much of the novel, we are focused upon the key protagonist, Tilly, in a way that could easily be mistaken for conventional realism. Except that it isn’t. Scott regularly disrupts that notion through shifts of perspective, a regular pulling back to the bigger picture. Here is one example, where the reader’s “sitting” on Tilly’s shoulder as she looks out the window of her group’s tour bus is interrupted by another viewpoint, one she cannot be simultaneously aware of:
Seen through the insect-smeared windscreen: scarcely undulating, dry and bleached ground; fence lines beside the road and dividing, at wide intervals, a mostly bare landscape. A fence is just the posts holding hands, thought Tilly, and such long arms in between them … “This place, Tilly, where we’re going” Gerry began, but Tilly was not listening and he let the words die. No one took up the conversation.
Taboo’s omniscient narration is gently provocative. It prods us to think about being or existence, for the novel’s unseen collective voice is more-than-human. As an ancestral voice, it is possible to understand our narrator(s) as a life expanded beyond the human form to encompass land, water, fire and curlew. We are encouraged to shift our thinking beyond the human-centric and towards the relation between human and other forms, especially ecological ones.
Consider, for example, this passage from the end of the novel, when an elderly Tilly is pictured at some point in the future, contemplating a pile of tree branches in a forest:
[She] would see not timber limbs but the bones of something new and ancient, something recreated and invigorated, and would think of when she first heard a voice rumbling from a riverbed, and how something reached out to her.
Did Scott just suggest that a riverbed might have a voice? That an energy without form might have reach?
To some extent, the meaning we take from Taboo depends upon how we think about the whole notion of omniscience. In my view, Scott’s choice of narrative technique works to ask of us as humans an increasingly important question: where are our limits? His use of omniscient narration might therefore be understood as a not just a literary choice, but a philosophical and ethical one.
Both the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea governments have signalled changes to make their forestry industries more sustainable.
According to Loop PNG, the Papua New Guinea government will be putting a stop to the issuance of all new logging licences to foreign companies.
Forestry Minister Solan Mirisim who resigned as Defence Minister under the O’Neill led government, said licenses will only be issued to landowning companies.
“The Minister is charged in ensuring that no more new licence is given to foreign companies, all existing players in the country go down to downstream processing by 2020,” he said.
He said that more needs to be done to ensure the forestry industry is sustainable.
-Partners-
“But what we can absolutely do about logging is this: We can replace the tree that we cut. But we are not doing that. You go anywhere in the logging area in PNG, are they doing reforestation? No. But the authority that’s supposed to do this is slack.”
Illegal deforestation Deforestation is rife in Papua New Guinea, with 640,000 hectares of forest felled in the last three years. Much of the logging is illegal, prompting conflict between offending companies and indigenous landowners.
According to The Guardian, millions of tonnes of illegally felled logs are sent to China and PNG is China’s single largest supplier of tropical logs.
Illegal logging activity is often enabled through corruption typical of the previous government under Peter O’Neill.
Prime Minister James Marape has since pledged to stamp out such corruption and work more in the interests of indigenous landowners.
The Solomon Islands government has also discussed changes to the logging industry, with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare looking to halt all round log exports by 2023, reports SIBC news.
Sogavare will encourage a shift from round log exporting to downstream processing with more factories set up to process the timber onshore.
Twenty times the sustainable rate According to environmental news website Mongabay, logging companies are clearing Solomon Islands forests at nearly 20 times the sustainable rate.
While Sogavare’s announcement appears to be a step in the right direction, there are concerns that any changes will be hindered by a majority of pro-logging MPs, many of whom are being paid by foreign logging companies.
“You never forget the flu”. This is the title of the Victorian health department’s current campaign, which highlights people’s recollections of having the flu.
‘The flu knocked me out for weeks’, part of the Victorian health department’s winter flu campaign.Vic Dept Health & Human Services
Phrases include “I’ll never forget the pain of the fever”, “the flu flattened me”, “the flu knocked me out for weeks”.
This gives the impression that when you have the flu, you know you have it. What makes the flu so memorable is the severe symptoms. These include fever, aches and pains, a sore throat, runny nose, cough, and feeling weak and lethargic.
But what causes the flu? And why are the symptoms so severe?
Influenza is caused by a virus, a small microbe that needs to enter our cells to replicate and produce more viruses. The influenza virus infects cells that line our airways and so is easily transmitted via the spread of droplets released when we sneeze or cough.
Coughs, sneezes and the other symptoms we feel after getting the flu, are largely due to our bodies fighting the infection.
When you are infected with the flu virus, your innate immune system kicks in. Special receptors recognise unique parts of the virus, triggering an alarm system to alert our bodies that an infection is under way.
This produces a rapid but non-specific response — inflammation.
Inflammation results from the action of small proteins called cytokines. A primary role of cytokines is to act locally in the lung to help limit the initial infection taking hold.
They can also make their way into the circulation, becoming systemic (widespread in the body) and act as a “call to arms” by alerting the rest of the immune system there is an infection.
Unfortunately, your body’s inflammatory response, while trying to fight your infection, results in the flu symptoms we experience.
Inflammation can trigger increased mucus production. Mucus (or phlegm) is a sticky substance that helps capture virus in the lungs and upper airways. The increased amount of mucus in the airways can trigger coughing and/or sneezing, and can lead to a runny nose. This helps expel the virus from our body before it can infect other airway cells.
Inflammation also results in an increase in body temperature or fever, which creates an inhospitable environment for the flu virus to replicate.
While an increased body temperature helps fight the infection, it also results in you feeling colder than usual. That’s because you feel a greater temperature difference between your body and the outside environment.
This can induce rapid muscle contractions in an effort to heat you up. This is why you can feel like you can’t stop shivering while at the same time burning up.
Finally, some of these inflammatory molecules act directly on infected cells to stop the virus replicating. They can do this by either interfering with the replication process directly, or alternatively, by actually killing the infected cell.
One of these factors is tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha). While its actions limit where the flu virus can replicate, its side effects include fever, loss of appetite and aching joints and muscles.
Calling in the big guns
Inflammation induced by the innate response also helps alert the adaptive immune system that there is an infection.
While innate immunity provides an immediate, albeit non-specific, response to viral infection, it is the adaptive immune response that can efficiently clear the infection.
The adaptive immune system consists of specialised white blood cells called T and B cells that when activated provide a highly specific response to infection.
Your flu symptoms are likely the result of your body fighting off infection with the the tiny flu virus.from www.shutterstock.com
Activation of flu-specific T and B cells in tissues called lymph nodes results in the generation of hundreds of thousands of clones, all specific for the flu virus. These can migrate into the lungs and specifically target the virus and its ability to replicate.
This enormous expansion of T and B cell numbers in response to infection results in swelling of the lymph nodes, which you can feel under your armpits or chin, and which can become sore.
Flu-specific T cells are also a source of the inflammatory molecule TNF-alpha and help fight influenza infection by killing off virus-infected cells. Both actions can contribute to the flu symptoms.
Why can flu become a serious problem?
Our ability to see off a flu infection requires a coordinated response from both our innate and adaptive immune responses.
If our immune system function is diminished for some reason, then it can prolong infection, lead to more extensive damage to the lung and extended symptoms. This can then result in secondary bacterial infections, leading to pneumonia, hospitalisation and eventually death.
Then there are people whose immune system doesn’t work work so efficiently who are particularly susceptible to the flu and its complications. These include:
the very young, whose immune system is still yet to mature
the elderly, whose immune system function wanes with age
people with other conditions where immune function might be compromised, or be taking medication that might suppress the immune system.
Preventing the flu
Washing your hands and covering your mouth when coughing and sneezing are simple things we can all do to reduce the chance of catching the flu in the first place.
And getting the flu vaccine activates your adaptive immune response to induce the sort of immunity efficient at protecting us from infection.
With the flu season well under way, prevention is our best bet that you won’t be saying “Remember the time I got the flu”.
There is now nothing standing between Indian mining giant Adani and the coal buried in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
By approving the Adani’s groundwater management plan on June 13, the Queensland government has given the final green light to the company’s controversial Carmichael coal mine.
This plan outlines Adani’s proposed strategies to protect ecosystems that depend on groundwater, such as the Doongmabulla Springs wetland, which some experts have warned could be destroyed by the project. The plan’s approval at a state level removes the final legislative hurdle standing in the mine’s way.
Didn’t the federal government suffer a legal setback this week relating to the mine? Why is the mine still clear to proceed?
On June 12, in response to a legal challenge by the Australian Conservation Foundation, the federal government conceded in the federal court that it failed to properly consider public submissions in passing judgement on Adani’s North Galilee Water Scheme.
This scheme concerns Adani’s plans for taking water from the Suttor River to the east of the mine, which will be required for mining operations.
The federal government will now need to reappraise this proposal. But the approval to take river water does not impact Adani’s ability to start mine construction.
Has Adani made significant changes to its groundwater plan in light of scientific criticism?
In February 2019, CSIRO and Geoscience Australia advised the Queensland government that they did not consider Adani’s groundwater plan adequate for assessing the risk to local springs. They recommended more research drilling, monitoring and analysis, to better understand the source aquifer for the springs.
On June 7, CSIRO and Geoscience Australia responded to a series of questions from the Queensland government. They effectively reiterated their earlier concerns, including that Adani’s groundwater model is not fit for the purpose of assessing the mine’s likely impacts to the springs.
Among a raft of suggested changes to the groundwater plan, they recommended that Adani make firmer commitments to protecting the springs. However, Adani has not strengthened this part of the plan, and actions required to address impacts to the springs remain vague.
Adani has made some changes to the investigations it is required to complete within one to two years. But there appears to be no new scientific work or findings in the most recent version of the groundwater plan to address scientific uncertainties or flaws in the modelling, as pointed out by CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and others.
Does Adani know where the Doongmabulla Springs water comes from?
No. Adani and the Queensland government seem relatively confident that the source aquifer for the springs is a geological unit called the Clematis Sandstone. But the Queensland government acknowledges that some uncertainty remains. The CSIRO and Geoscience Australia advice makes clear the springs could in fact flow from multiple sources, in agreement with a consortium of other experts. Adani has been asked to determine this during the first two years of the mine’s operation.
So have the scientific concerns been satisfied or not?
The final groundwater plan is based on science that has been shown to be questionable and containing crucial errors and data gaps, as indicated in the CSIRO/Geoscience Australia reviews in both February and June 2019. The plan also fails to consider key scientific issues that we raised in collaboration with colleagues from other universities. The shortcomings in the science raised by a range of scientists from multiple universities and agencies will therefore remain unaddressed until after mining activity begins, risking irreversible harm to the Doongmabulla Springs.
We believe that uncertainties in the future groundwater impacts from the mine are high, but could have been addressed if Adani had acted upon the advice it has repeatedly received over the past six years.
After so many government approvals processes, court rulings, and legal challenges, does Adani truly have permission to start digging now?
Yes. Adani’s excavations will mark the start of a highly uncertain experiment into the effects of mega-scale disturbance to a natural groundwater flow system and the ecosystems that depend on it. Time will tell whether the benefits of the mine warrant the impacts it will cause.
Around one in every 70 Australians are on the autism spectrum. The proportion of children with autism is higher – more than 80% of all Australians on the autism spectrum are aged under 25.
Autism is most prevalent among school-aged children between 5 and 14. Many of these children have social, learning, communication and intellectual difficulties.
The high proportion of children on the autism spectrum presents an obvious challenge to teachers and the learning environment. One way they can respond to it is to examine what we know about how these children understand their world and learn.
How memory works
We use our bank of autobiographical memory to tell us how to behave in any situation.from shutterstock.com
To understand what we suspect, so far, about the way in which some people with autism may see the world, we need to examine how we use our autobiographical episodic memory – the bank of experiences we have stored in memory.
This bank of experiences tells us how to behave in any situation. It tells us what we did in past, matching situations, where and when events happened, how we felt at the time and how we coped. These are the time-and-place images of our life history.
We use this memory bank to interpret new situations. The memories help us decide how to act socially or functionally, to imagine how someone might feel and what to expect in the future. They help us transfer our behaviours to new situations and adjust how we behave and think based on the context.
We seem to do these things implicitly. We don’t need to plan consciously how we will act in most new situations. In other words, we modify or adapt our stored experiences automatically to fit the situation in which we find ourselves at any time.
The stereotypical behaviours of individuals with autism suggest they don’t use their bank of experiences spontaneously and automatically in these ways.
Emerging research supports this possibility. It suggests people on the autism spectrum could be less likely to reflect on specific experiences, infer from them or recognise regularities in them.
This would then lead to difficulty modifying stored experiences to use later to interpret other everyday situations.
People on the autism spectrum, depending on where on the spectrum they are, can have difficulty adapting what they have learnt to changes in context. They may find it harder to predict, anticipate or think flexibly and switch how they will act.
Children on the autism spectrum may find it harder to predict, anticipate or think flexibly and switch how they will act.Photo by Limor Zellermayer on Unsplash
At the same time they may be able to learn and recall facts and relationships that are specific, precise and rigid – such as associations between names, symbols and meanings.
Rigidly stored experiences limit the ability to learn and to deal with dynamic social situations. So, people who store memories in this way may be more likely to overreact emotionally and show attention difficulties.
They might also have difficulty linking their experiential knowledge with language. Everyday living, the classroom and the workplace use language as a major vehicle for learning and interacting.
One way to possibly stimulate episodic memory could be through the use of video-based instruction (VBI). This is where videos are used to demonstrate new knowledge and skills in particular contexts.
One review looked at 36 studies that investigated whether video-based instruction helped children with autism gain social skills. It showed students with autism could more easily learn functional skills and transfer and generalise them.
The videos may help participants recall past similar experiences, say what they did and how they coped, and decide how they would act in unfamiliar situations.
Narrative therapy has also been shown to help people with autism deal with social and emotional issues. This therapy is based on imaginary real-life situations.
The children are taught to actively analyse an everyday episode and to build alternative stories around it, with themselves as a protagonist. They learn to visualise the situation and imagine it changing.
Many students with autism often have difficulty with reading comprehension. Some research shows teaching visualisation strategies to reading underachievers generally enhances reading comprehension.
Visualisation strategies can trigger a child’s imagination.from shutterstock.com
This directly target’s a child’s ability to imagine. While reading a narrative, for example, a child is told to note how particular characters are feeling and predict what they might do next, as well as to imagine how others might be feeling.
Visualising scaffolds someone’s episodic memory to form virtual experiences of the text being read and to infer in a range of ways about it. This could also help students with autism. They are taught explicitly to create mental images of what they read, comprehension strategies and also to self-regulate and summarise.
This type of reading intervention for students with autism has been shown to improve links between the verbal and imagery areas of the brain.
Our knowledge of how individuals with autism spectrum disorder know and learn has increased exponentially over the last two decades. Teachers can use some of this knowledge in the classroom, and governments can use some of the emerging evidence to develop programs to help children with autism learn.
Urban design undoubtedly influences the urban economy. A simple thing like designing an area to make it more walkable can boost local business profits. This can also increase real estate value, create more and better jobs and generate stronger local economies.
Street temperatures also determine their walkability. With climate change bringing longer and more frequent heatwaves, street temperatures will become even higher than at present. This will reduce walkability and, in turn, local business profitability.
New York transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan explains the impact on street and retail activity of the transformation of Times Square.
The following example helps explain why foot traffic benefits local business. In car-based cities, a take-away coffee on the way to work may involve a series of decisions:
driving the car to a certain cafe
finding car parking
leaving and closing the car
joining a queue to buy a coffee
getting back in the car
proceeding on the journey to work.
In contrast, when walking down the street we may not even have considered having a coffee, but we can smell it. So:
we walk into the cafe
join the queue to buy a coffee
carry on walking to work.
The process is shorter, more spontaneous and part of a daily journey. Impulse buys as a result of exposure to stimuli have surprisingly big economic consequences, particularly for the retail industry.
What is microclimate?
Microclimate refers to the atmospheric conditions in an area. These can vary not only from the surrounding region but also within the area itself. Both the natural and built environments influence these differences. A well-known example of such differences is in Sydney’s western suburbs, which are much hotter in summer than the eastern suburbs, which benefit from being close to the sea and cooling breezes.
But can an unpleasant microclimate suppress impulse buys? To a certain extent, yes. The frequency of impulse buys, and ultimately the overall success of most businesses in tropical cities, may be connected to the local microclimate.
For instance, the orientation of streets in relation to sun and breeze exposure can influence the microclimate. This can then determine if people stay and have a second coffee or extra ice cream after lunch, or if they avoid streets because they are too exposed and hot.
Australian cities, however, are too often overzoned and planned in a sprawling pattern. By compromising walkability this represses spontaneous purchases.
CBDs are also too frequently oversized with unshaded wide streets. In hot climates this makes the journey on foot unpleasant and poses health risks to young children, senior citizens and people with health conditions.
Microclimates and the tropics
To date, a growing body of research on this question has focused mainly on capital and metropolitan cities with humid continental climates. The assumption is that those cities are more vulnerable to the effects of higher temperatures. However, looking only at these kinds of cities can lead us to overlook important variations.
Coastal tropical cities can also experience unpleasant microclimates. While the tropics are seen as perfect holiday locations, high summer temperatures can compromise street life.
The qualities and materials of buildings and infrastructure such as roads and footpaths also influence local temperatures. Large areas of hard, heat-absorbing surfaces contribute to the urban heat island effect, which makes urban areas hotter than their surroundings. The effects of this on urban life and economic activities become more critical in hot and humid tropical conditions.
In essence, microclimate affects the use of the footpath. If the microclimate discourages the use of public space, then a great design may not be enough to create the type of environment that attracts street life and generates strong local economic activity.
Shields and Lake Street corner in Cairns: great design, plenty of trees and shade, but little activation.Silvia Tavares
Considering this problem, our ongoing research focuses on tropical cities. We are investigating the relationship between urban microclimate, labour productivity, sales revenue and real estate values.
Is there, for instance, an optimum location for certain types of land use according to their suitability and need to use the footpath? If one side of the street is more exposed to the sun than the other, it may be more suitable for establishments that don’t make active use of the streetscape, such as stores and offices, rather than cafes and restaurants.
Another question is does microclimate affect the productivity of businesses differently across urban and non-urban surroundings?
Part of the solution to rising urban temperatures could focus on street orientation and exposure to breezes. Priority could be given to siting cafes, for instance, in pleasant areas, with tables outside to help activate spaces. Instead of creating zoning that kills flexibility and dynamic spaces, planning guidelines for tropical street life should consider the types of businesses suited to specific street microclimates.
In a warming climate, designing for microclimate is more important than ever before to ensure urban life and economies can prosper.
A somewhat obscure fact about the marching orders for Australia’s Reserve Bank is that, usually, when a government is elected or re-elected or a new governor takes office, the official agreement between the government and the Reserve Bank changes.
There have been seven such agreements so far, each signed by the federal treasurer and bank governor of the time, and each entitled “Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy”.
The first was signed by treasurer Peter Costello and incoming governor Ian Macfarlane in 1996, the second when Costello reappointed Macfarlane in 2003, and the third when Costello appointed Glenn Stevens in 2006.
The fourth was between new treasurer Wayne Swan and Stevens on Labor’s election in 2007, and the fifth between Swan and Stevens on Labor’s reelection in 2010.
The sixth was between incoming treasurer Joe Hockey and Stevens on the Coaition’s election in 2013, and the most recent one between treasurer Scott Morrison and incoming governor Philip Lowe in 2016.
The Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy (the Statement) has recorded the common understanding of the Governor, as Chair of the Reserve Bank Board, and the Government on key aspects of Australia’s monetary and central banking policy framework since 1996.
For nearly a quarter of a century, as the statement goes on to note, there has been a core component of how monetary policy is conducted:
The centrepiece of the Statement is the inflation targeting framework, which has formed the basis of Australia’s monetary policy framework since the early 1990s.
But over the years, there have been tweaks. One was this change between the 2013 and 2016 statements.
Effective management of inflation to provide greater certainty and to guide expectations assists businesses and households in making sound investment decisions…
The change from “low inflation” to “effective management of inflation” sounds subtle, but was no accident. It gave the Reserve Bank extra wiggle room around the inflation target.
And boy, did it come in handy.
The target that’s rarely met
The big question about the agreement is whether the next one (between Frydenberg and Lowe on the Coalition’s reelection) will tweak the target again, change it completely, or do something in between.
Because it presumably can’t remain the same.
One reason to think it will change, perhaps significantly, is the bank’s utter inability to even get particularly close to its target inflation band of 2-3%, let alone to get within tit, “on average, over time” as required by the agreement.
For years now, inflation has mostly been below the band.ABS 6401.0
You might not think this matters too much. But it does.
The inflation target is crucial in setting stable expectations for consumers, businesses and markets.
Don’t just take my word for it.
Here is what the previous Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, said in his last official speech before handing over to Philip Lowe in August 2016:
From 1993 to 2016, a period of 23 years, the average rate of inflation has been 2.5% – as measured by the CPI, and adjusting for the introduction of the goods and services tax in 2000. When we began to articulate the target in the early 1990s and talked about achieving “2–3%, on average, over the cycle”, this is the sort of thing we meant. I recall very well how much scepticism we encountered at the time. But the objective has been delivered.
As I pointed out last month, expectations about price movements depend on Australians believing that the bank will do what it says it will do.
Once people lose faith in the bank’s commitment to or ability to achieve the target, inflation expectations become unmoored. People react to what they think what might happen rather than what they are told will happen. This is what led to Australia’s wage-price spirals in the 1970s and 1980s, and to Japan’s lost decades of deflation.
Three possible outcomes
One possibility is the same statement, word for word. It would be meant to signal that the bank and the government think things are under control.
A second possibility is a tweak that furhter emphasises the “flexible” nature of the target, along the lines Lowe mentioned in his speech at this month’s Reserve Bank board board dinner in Sydney. It would provide more cover for the bank’s inability to hit its target.
A third option would be to add some discussion of the importance of fiscal policy – government spending and tax policy – as a complement to the Reserve Bank’s work on monetary policy. Lowe is keen to mention that he is keen on it, every chance he gets.
But that would put the government under implicit pressure to run budget deficits at times like those we are in rather than surpluses. It’s hard to see the Morrison government signing up for that, given its repeated talk during the election about the importance of being “responsible”.
Or something more
At the more radical end of the spectrum would be a genuinely new framework for monetary policy.
In the United States, which has also missed its inflation target, though by not as much as Australia, there has been much discussion of moving to a “nominal GDP target”. The range mentioned is 5-6% a year.
Advocates of this include former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who outlined his rationale in a Brookings Institution report in mid-2018.
ANU economist and former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin championed the idea along with economists John Quiggin, Danny Price and then Senator Nick Xenophon in the leadup to the 2016 agreement between Morrison and Lowe.
Nominal GDP is gross domestic product before adjustment for prices. In countries subject to big changes in export prices such as Australia, it can provide a better guide to changes in income.
When nominal GDP is strong (as it is when minerals prices are high) consumer spending is likely to be strong – perhaps too strong. When it is weak (as it is when minerals prices collapse) consumer spending is likely to be weak and in need of support.
But don’t get your hopes up
Given the natural caution of the bank and of this government, we should probably expect something at the modest end of the spectrum – even if something like a nominal GDP target would make sense.
Perhaps what’s most important isn’t what the statement says, but that it says something and that the Reserve Bank sticks to it. It will lose an awful lot of credibility if it sticks to nothing.
Let’s face it, Thursday evenings on ABC television are not quite the same any more. The mesmerising, idiosyncratic sketches of Clarke and Dawe are now consigned to Australian television history. Still, Sammy J has taken the spot, and the good news is that the spirit of Clarke lives on. Sammy J’s gormless, football coach character, the strongman at the helm of the “Blue Ties”, delivers the rebukes to our politicians in a register we all recognise. The sketches are clever, dry and whip smart. The coach is comical with his blokey, narcissistic armoury of quips.
Sammy J is versatile too. One night in the guise of an auctioneer for “Sothejays Auction House”, he sold off most of the LNP cabinet – seeing off the pre-election deserters. In another episode, he diligently sold off the ABC, with “Channel 9, Network 10, the IPA, Mark Latham, Newscorp and the Communications Minister” assembled for this “steal, after the 254 million dollar cuts to the formerly publicly owned broadcaster, now broken down, torn apart and ready to be sold off to the highest bidder”.
The satire in those two Sothejays episodes is seamless, as it was in so many of the two-minute gems delivered by Clarke and Dawe. We recognise and admire the comic ingenuity each week because the sketches refer to the events that we’ve all just witnessed in the news. Our despair, rage and incredulity, turns to delight and we can breathe again after the release of laughter at seeing our pollies skewered.
Edna as pioneer
Barry Humphries pioneered topical, referential satirical comedy in Australia in the 1950s. Carol Raye, Max Gillies, John Clarke, The Chaser and others developed it and brought innovation to satire in their characters and programs. The flipside of topical satire and its comic immediacy is that the work dates immediately. The elements – the factual reference points of the satire – become hard to trace over time, particularly for new audiences, and then eventually – sometimes quite quickly – the performer is consigned to history.
But the style and power of the satire, the achievement of the performer and the innovation that the individual brings to their form and the genre, often informs the next generation, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly. In that way the original contribution and its spirit lives on in the traditions that follow, building a distinctive comic culture over time.
In 1955, with the Olympic Games to be staged in Melbourne the following year, the organisers were fixated on the problem of housing the influx of visitors, and the fact that the athletes’ village in Ivanhoe was not yet finished. In a parody of the Australian, and specifically Melbourne tendency to pronounce “average” as “everage”, Barry Humphries called his plain and timid character Mrs Norm Everage or Edna, after the kind lady who had looked after him as a small boy.
In a Christmas revue sketch directed by Ray Lawler, Humphries dressed as Edna Everage offered to open her home in Humouresque Street, Moonee Ponds to a visiting athlete, and asked the most preposterous questions about the visitors. In the stage sketch a government official listed the nationalities of the potential guests and Edna responded with bigoted comments about all of them.
The sketch was called “The Olympic Hostess” and Noel Ferrier played Mr Hopechest, the official interviewing Mrs Everage. In 1955, she was shy in comparison to her later incarnations. She described her bedroom with its newly painted duck-egg blue walls and chenille bedspread.
“But you surely don’t wish to share your bedroom with the athletes?” the official exclaimed. “Oh, goodness, no. Norm isn’t as sporting as all that,” she replied.
Mrs Everage stated that she would prefer to host someone from the Commonwealth, and that she didn’t mind if they were “a little tinted”, “perhaps someone from Ceylon”. She felt sure that meeting an athlete would be good for her son, Kenny, and broaden his horizons.
Barry Humphries as Mrs Norm Everage in her travelling abroad outfit, appearing live on television, 1959.Courtesy of Barry Humphries Collection, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne.
The 21-year-old Humphries borrowed a yellow felt hat belonging to his mother for the sketch, one that Louisa Humphries had intended to wear to the races. Edna wore a twinset underneath a light beige coat, the kind of garment women wore into the city on the tram to cover their bare arms.
The tall, spindly-legged Humphries spoke to the audience in their own vernacular about their own homes. It was an important moment for Australian theatre, but the audience was slightly stunned, and the sketch was regarded as only moderately successful. Barry never imagined that he would perform the character again. Little did he realise that this 1950s “Mrs Average” would take on a life of her own.
On John Laws’ Friday night television variety show, Startime in 1962, Humphries introduced Mrs Everage as a “a very close friend of mine”, and then appeared in a coat and a small hat, extolling the virtues of plastic gladioli, and declaring that it was wonderful to be back in Australia. Humphries himself was back in Australia after a few years in London for his touring stage show, A Nice Night’s Entertainment.
The studio audience for Startime laughed loudly at Mrs Everage. Edna’s commentary on Australian manners would become the centrepiece of an ongoing drama devised by Barry on the subject of Australia over the next 50 years. His anarchic, sometimes cruel comedy still raises eyebrows today and enrages his critics.
He ran into serious trouble in 2003 when Edna insulted Hispanics in the US in a column for Vanity Fair, instructing readers to
Forget Spanish … Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you’re American, try English.
Swamped by complaints the editor attempted to explain the satire, calling Edna “an equal opportunity distributor of insults”.
In the last few years, Humphries and Edna have crossed the line several times. The actor called transgenderism a “fashion” in The Spectator earlier this year, causing offence with comments such as: “How many different kinds of lavatory can you have? And it’s pretty evil when it’s preached to children by crazy teachers.” The Barry Award, named after Humphries, is no more, after some controversy.
Barry Humpries in 2012 visiting Bouquet, a 13-metre towering vase of gladioli created by theatrical designer Brian Thomson on the Arts Centre Melbourne lawn.Julian Smith/AAP
Public taste has changed and that is that. Humphries is primarily of historic interest now. That’s how satire and comedy work. It’s not just the references that date in topical satire. Audiences are powerful, and if they feel insulted they can shut down a comedian.
Clarke and Bazza
John Clarke’s career began in earnest through first hand observations of Barry Humphries on and off the stage. Clarke met Humphries in the early 1970s in London, and it was through this meeting that he began to glimpse a future for himself in comedy.
Clarke was working as a van driver and spending his afternoons and evenings in the pub when his friend, Ginette McDonald, convinced him to audition for the young Australian director Bruce Beresford, who, she’d heard, was making a film in which a lot of young men were required.
Clarke had appeared in revue theatre back at home in New Zealand but was reluctant to attend an audition. But when he read the script for The Adventures of Barry McKenzie he roared with laughter, and was awestruck by the talent of the three men driving the film: Beresford, Humphries and Nick Garland. Garland, a New Zealander, had drawn the cartoons for the Barry McKenzie comic strip, on the which the film was based.
Peter Cook and Barry Humphries in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972).Longford Productions
During the filming, Beresford and Humphries shepherded Clarke along. John spent hours talking to Humphries about what Humphries had read as a young man. The audacity of this gangly, long-haired, young Australian and his vivid humour struck Clarke immediately, and was to have a huge influence on Clarke’s evolution as a performer.
John Clarke as Fred Dagg.Courtesy of John Clarke.
Clarke noticed that Humphries performed for a world audience, and while he parodied the cultural cringe, he and Beresford asserted their equality with everything and anything British at every opportunity. Clarke felt that he could be himself with these men; better still he could be himself in the film, appearing in the pub scenes singing and drinking with Bazza McKenzie.
Being permitted to play himself was the key to Clarke’s performance style and his future as a satirist: not only did it offer him a strangely comforting armour, but it provided the perfect satirical weapon and a mode of directly addressing the audience.
The experience of working with Humphries and Beresford emboldened Clarke in the long run and he returned to New Zealand to start work as a performer. By the end of the year, Clarke had made his first television appearance as Fred Dagg, an endearingly dishevelled sheep farmer who went on to charm audiences in New Zealand and Australia for years to come.
Gillies, Hawkie and the glory days
John Clarke carefully explained to me in several interviews I conducted with him over the years that if he had not experienced that work with Humphries, he would not have created Fred Dagg, or had the confidence to create satirical television. He always took time to observe. When he moved to Australia in 1977 he took things slowly.
He encountered the masterful mimic, Max Gillies, and at Gillies’ invitation contributed to the scripts of The Gillies Report, a hugely popular weekly satirical television sketch show on the ABC that featured Max playing all the politicians of the day, and John as a news reader, amongst other roles. Max’s powers of mimicry and rich, politically potent satirical impersonations seized the imagination of the whole country; the hyper-theatricality of the sketches and rollicking musical production numbers struck a chord with viewers.
Gillies had first created a magnificent version of Bob Hawke when the former ACTU president rose to power, playing the charismatic, savvy, effervescent man of the people with such flair that many mistook him for the Prime Minister. Gillies even appeared as Hawke in Hawke’s presence, addressing the North Melbourne Foootball Club grand-final breakfast in character as the PM. It is unusual for performers to appear in the presence of those they impersonate, and it was the first and only time in Australian history that a Prime Minister has allowed it.
Yet Hawke’s ambivalence was clear to observers and to Gillies that day. Shaking hands with everyone at the high table, Gillies, dressed in his silver suit, large cufflinks and expensive wavy-haired wig, ran the gauntlet of the Club President, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, finally greeting the man himself, Robert James Lee Hawke. The leering Prime Minister grabbed Gillies’s hand so vigorously his wrist throbbed and before he knew it Hawke had pulled him into a tight, face-to-face, with cameras flashing all around them.
Gillies blinked as Hawke suddenly let go of his hand and brought his fist to Max’s nose, punching him in a stinging bop, as he turned to approach the podium to give his performance of the man who had just hit him. It was a playful but not painless pre-emptive “alpha male” warning to the actor. It’s difficult to imagine such a scenario today but who knows, with “ScoMo” and “Albo” at the helm.
Manning Clark cast Humphries among the mythmakers and prophets of Australia as he witnessed the man “enriching the culture which had been dominated by the straiteners”. Peter Conrad described Humphries’ adolescence as a “one-man modern movement”, and the American critic John Lahr admired the art of the clown who takes the public to the “frontiers of the marvellous”.
Anyone who saw Humphries perform his one man shows in the glory days knows that Lahr was right. But that is now history.
continue the Morrison Government’s work to make the internet a safer place for the millions of Australians who use it every day.
Addressing online racism is a vital part of this goal.
And not just because racism online is hurtful and damaging – which it is. This is also important because sometimes online racism spills into the real world with deadly consequences.
An Australian man brought up in the Australian cyber environment is the alleged murderer of 50 Muslims at prayer in Christchurch. Planning and live streaming of the event took place on the internet, and across international boundaries.
We must critically assess how this happened, and be clearheaded and non-ideological about actions to reduce the likelihood of such an event happening again.
There are six steps Australia’s government can take.
1. Reconsider international racism convention
Our government should remove its reservation on Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
In 1966 Australia declined to sign up to Article 4(a) of the ICERD. It was the only country that had signed the ICERD while deciding to file a reservation on Article 4(a). It’s this section that mandates the criminalisation of race hate speech and racist propaganda.
The ICERD entered into Australian law, minus Article 4(a), through the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act (RDA).
Article 4 concerns, such as they were, would enter the law as “unlawful” harassment and intimidation, with no criminal sanctions, twenty years later. This occurred through the 1996 amendments that produced Section 18 of the RDA, with its right for complainants to seek civil solutions through the Human Rights Commission.
With Article 4 ratified, the criminal law could encompass the worst cases of online racism, and the police would have some framework to pursue the worst offenders.
Our government should extend Australia’s participation in the European cybercrime convention by adopting the First Additional Protocol.
In 2001 the Council of Europe opened the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime to signatories, establishing the first international instrument to address crimes committed over the internet. The add-on First Additional Protocol on criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature came into effect in 2002.
Australia’s government – Labor at the time – initially considered including the First Additional Protocol in cyber crime legislation in 2009, and then withdrew it soon after. Without it, our country is limited in the way we collaborate with other country signatories in tracking down cross border cyber racism.
3. Amend the eSafety Act
The Enhancing the Online Safety of Australians Act (until 2017 Enhancing the Online Safety of Children Act) established the eSafety Commissioner’s Office to pursue acts which undercut the safe use of the internet, especially through bullying.
The eSafety Act should be amended by Communications Minister Fletcher to extend the options for those harassed and intimidated, to include provisions similar to those found in NZ legislation. In effect this would mean people harassed online could take action themselves, or require the commissioner to act to protect them.
Such changes should be supported by staff able to speak the languages and operate in the cultural frames of those who are the most vulnerable to online race hate. These include Aboriginal Australians, Muslims, Jews and people of African and Asian descent.
4. Commit to retaining 18C
Section 18C of the RDA, known as the racial vilification provisions, allows individuals offended or intimidated by online race hate to seek redress.
Rather than just leaving this dangling into the future, the government should commit itself to retaining 18C.
Even if this does happen, unless Article 4 of the (ICERD) is ratified as mentioned above, Australia will still have no effective laws that target online race-hate speech by pushing back against perpetrators.
Australia’s government should conduct a public review of best practice worldwide in relation to combating cyber racism. For example, it could plan for an options paper for public discussion by the end of 2020, and legislation where required in 2021.
European countries have now a good sense of how their protocol on cyber racism has worked. In particular, it facilitates inter-country collaboration, and empowers the police to pursue organised race hate speech as a criminal enterprise.
Other countries such as New Zealand and Canada, with whom we often compare ourselves, have moved far beyond the very limited action taken by Australia.
6. Provide funds to stop racism
In conjunction with the states plus industry and civil society organisations, the Australian government should promote and resource “push back” against online racism. This can be addressed by reducing the online space in which racists currently pursue their goals of normalising racism.
Such action characterises many European societies. Another good example is the World Wide Web Foundation (W3F)) in North America, whose #Fortheweb campaign highlights safety issues for web users facing harassment and intimidation through hate speech.
Speaking realistically, the aim through these mechanisms cannot be to “eliminate” racism, which has deep structural roots. Rather, our goal should be to contain racism, push it back into ever smaller pockets, target perpetrators and force publishers to be far more active in limiting their users’ impacts on vulnerable targets.
Without criminal provisions, infractions of civil law are essentially let “through to the keeper”. The main players know this very well.
Our government has a responsibility to ensure publishers and platforms know what the community standards are in Australia. Legislation and regulation should enshrine, promote and communicate these standards – otherwise the vulnerable remain unprotected, and the aggressors continue smirking.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Farquharson, Head, School of Social and Political Sciences and Professor of Sociology, University of Melbourne
The AFL and its clubs have finally issued an apology to two-time Brownlow Medallist Adam Goodes for their handling of the relentless racist booing that marred his last year of football in 2015. This apology is welcome, though certainly overdue.
Despite its failures to adequately address Goodes’ situation at the time – and its subsequent delay in apologising – the AFL has actually been considered a leader in Australian sport for its efforts to stamp out racism among players.
The league enacted racial vilification policies in 1995 in response to incidents of racial vilification during games. Since then, these policies have been very effective in eliminating racial abuse on the field, though they have not had the same impact on taunts from spectators, as Goodes’ experience clearly shows.
The key element that works is that players now receive meaningful penalties for racial abuse: fines, suspensions, and being publicly named as perpetrators. The policy shifts the focus from the player who is the victim of the racism to the player who perpetrates it.
The AFL’s approach to managing racial vilification has been adopted throughout Australian sport, including at the community level.
But it may be surprising to hear that these efforts to tackle racism on the field have been largely ineffective in junior sport. And it is at junior sport level where children learn the norms, values and practices around what is and is not acceptable behaviour.
We recently conducted an in-depth study of how junior sports clubs manage diversity. Our study conducted over 100 interviews and 450 surveys with players, coaches, parents and committee members from nine community sports clubs across five sports in Victoria. One of the types of diversity that we studied was ethnic or cultural diversity.
Our analysis found that racial vilification was a common occurrence among players in junior sports, as well as with spectators. Our interview data indicates that it is occurring across most sports and among both boys and girls, with non-white children being the targets of most abuse.
For example, one club official at a junior football club said to us:
Our Sudanese boys get vilified every second to third week, at least.
Another junior football club told us:
Some of our Muslim kids are regularly vilified but they’ve learned to shrug and move on.
While all the clubs we surveyed had an official process for handling racial abuse – similar to the one developed for players in the AFL – it was almost never utilised.
Instead, clubs preferred to use informal means to address the incidents, such as coaches or managers speaking to their counterparts on the other team during a match, or club presidents doing the same after a match.
Sometimes, children experiencing racial abuse were pulled out of the match for their own protection. The reason the clubs gave us: the children who were vilified were unlikely to receive a positive outcome from making a formal complaint.
This is because complaints never led to consequences for abusers, only for the abused.
Tolerance for racist behaviour in sport
Academic research into denial of racism in Australia has found that many people fear speaking out against racial incidents because they are likely to be punished for doing so.
This was certainly the case for Goodes, whose troubles began when he complained of being racially vilified by a 13-year-old girl during a football match in 2013. and intensified when he focused attention on racism after being named Australian of the Year in 2014.
Not only was Goodes systematically booed the following season for his efforts to speak out against racism, the lack of response from the AFL at the time reinforced the message that such acts are acceptable. There have been no consequences for the fans who vilified Goodes, or for those in the league who tacitly supported the booing by not coming out against it.
Though policies have been enacted by the AFL and other sports leagues to tackle racism on the field, there’s still the broader cultural problem of racial vilification from spectators – and on social media. This culture is maintained through a tolerance for racism that begins in junior sport.
North Melbourne fans booing Adam Goodes during his tumultuous 2015 season.Julian Smith/AAP
What can be done to fix the problem
We would argue that the process for addressing racial vilification in junior sport, as it stands, is ineffective. So how do we fix the problem? Our study identified some actions that could work.
According to our interviews, the most effective way to address racist taunts by players was for their own teammates to call it out. In more extreme cases, some of the teams we surveyed refused to continue the match if a player was being vilified. This had an immediate effect – the racist behaviour stopped and didn’t start again.
It would also be effective for officials to act against perpetrators when they see racial abuse happening, either by ejecting players from the game or spectators from the field. According to our research, this is not a step that officials take now to handle such incidents.
As Goodes’ experience in the AFL illustrates, there needs to be consequences for those who engage in racial abuse in sport, particularly at the junior level where attitudes are learned and ingrained.
As it stands, the only ones negatively impacted by racial abuse in junior sport are the victims. If we want a sporting landscape where all are welcome and enabled to thrive, this is unacceptable.
Team work is common across society. From schools to multinational businesses, people usually collaborate in groups towards a shared goal.
It can work well, but sometimes, it can be a disaster. One team might create a proposal for a new policy because all members manage to agree on details, while another fails because they can’t find common ground.
Why is it that groups can vary so much in their outcomes? We know that some people are better team players than others. In fact, job interviews and personality assessments often include questions about team skills.
But this assumes that only individual personality is relevant, not the interaction between people with various personality characteristics.
Investigating group behaviour
We don’t yet fully understand how different personality types within a group interact and how that affects group outcomes. To address this, we investigated which mixes of personalities create more or less cooperative group working styles.
We wanted to know whether it matters how many group members show personality traits that have been found to be less cooperative. People high on so-called psychopathic personality traits are characterised by goal-oriented, fearless, impulsive, manipulative behaviours, and also by less cooperative behaviours such as refusing to find common ground when interacting with another person.
But does the proportion of individuals high on these traits within a group matter for the overall group behaviour?
We asked participants to decide whether to cooperate with the people sitting next to them in mixed groups, composed of different numbers of participants with high or low scores on a questionnaire for psychopathic personality traits.
Participants who did not know each other were asked if they would like to cooperate with the people next to them, over a series of rounds.Supplied
We found groups that were composed entirely of people with low psychopathic traits and groups with a low proportion (20%) of individuals with high psychopathic traits showed the expected cooperative behaviour. But in groups with a larger proportion (50%) of individuals with high psychopathic traits, the overall rate of cooperative behaviour was significantly lower. We measured this by the number of cooperative decisions participants in a group made.
The overall group behaviour seems to be more than the sum of its parts. Group composition had an effect on cooperation over and above the effect of the individuals’ own level of psychopathic traits. Group members with low levels of psychopathic traits behaved less cooperatively and more “psychopathically” when in groups with more people who had high levels of psychopathic traits.
This suggests that interacting with people with high psychopathic traits increases uncooperative behaviour across all members of a group. The personality characteristics of group members matter for cooperative behaviour, and can change individuals’ behaviour. But the effect is only seen when a substantial proportion of individuals in a group have non-cooperative personality traits.
These findings indicate that group composition matters. Teams working on a collaborative task are more likely to cooperate successfully if most of the group members have more cooperative personality types. But our findings also trigger new questions about what role the type of task plays in collaborations and whether group behaviour stabilises over longer time periods.
In his first days as leader Anthony Albanese has taken two decisive actions to reset Labor’s relationship with the militant Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.
Reshuffling Labor’s frontbench, he removed responsibility for industrial relations from Brendan O’Connor, whose brother Michael is the CFMMEU’s national secretary. This was always a huge conflict of interest, but one that Bill Shorten as opposition leader declined to address.
Then this week Albanese moved to turf out of the ALP the union’s Victorian secretary John Setka, whose behaviour over a long period has been notorious. Albanese had Setka’s party membership suspended, and he flagged he’ll ask for his expulsion at next month’s ALP national executive meeting.
Under Shorten, the CFMMEU had what many regarded as a special position. The union formed part of his base, and protected and helped him when he needed numbers.
Albanese has had no such relationship, and he repeatedly emphasises that he’s come to his position without any deals or obligations.
That has made it all the easier for him to take on Setka, who should have been called out a very long time ago.
The trigger point Albanese used was a report that Setka had denigrated anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, in remarks he made at a meeting of the union executive. Setka was talking about charges he’s facing of using a carriage service to harass a woman – he has already said he’ll enter a guilty plea. He was reported to have told the union meeting that Batty’s work had led to men having fewer rights.
Albanese was well aware the Setka affair was about to become a lot uglier in coming days, and the ALP needed to shake him off.
Setka’s initial fightback took the form of appearing hand-in-hand with his wife at a news conference, in which they said they’d been to hell and back and people should lay off them.
Setka denied he’d denigrated Batty, a denial quickly backed by a couple of officials at the meeting. This potentially complicated the situation for Albanese (who insisted he’d checked out the report) in the event of Setka fighting the expulsion move.
But precisely what he’d said or not said about Batty became fairly irrelevant once ACTU Secretary Sally McManus weighed in, meeting Setka on Thursday to tell him he should quit his union position.
McManus, incidentally, believed Setka’s denial; she too had checked out the report, and was satisfied “he never said anything to denigrate Rosie Batty”. Rather, she argues he should quit as an official because of his behaviour (which she stresses she can’t comment on in detail for legal reasons) and the damage being caused.
For the union movement, the Setka affair goes to the heart of its strong pitch against domestic violence, and its credentials in championing women’s rights. The ACTU currently is led by two women – its president is Michele O’Neil – making it even more imperative to match words with actions.
“There is no place for perpetrators of domestic violence in leadership positions in our movement,” McManus said in her Thursday statement.
“We have already put on record the union movement’s values and our principles regarding family and domestic violence.
“We also believe in equality for women and know that instances of violence against women are not just unacceptable, they stand in the way of achieving equality.”
She told the ABC the Setka issue was “about the broader reputation of the union movement, and I think it means that we are in a position where we can’t continue to advocate in the way we want to on issues while John Setka is the main story”.
McManus, who consulted widely with union leaders in taking her stand, is reflecting the position of a number of important unions, such as the Australian Services Union, which represents those who work in domestic violence services and the SDA (the “Shoppies”), which has many female members.
Unsurprisingly, Setka says he won’t resign, and he has the backing of Victorian branch delegates, making it uncertain how things will play out.
It’s a safe bet the ALP executive will back Albanese’s expulsion move – not to do so would be an inconceivable repudiation of his leadership.
With her authority on the line, McManus’s gamble is that as the story unfolds, Setka will be more isolated and will eventually step down or be forced to do so.
Asked whether the ACTU could disaffiliate the union if it would not get rid of its rogue official, McManus said this wasn’t something that had been thought about. She pointed out it would be a very serious course to take over one official.
But one thing the ACTU has been thinking about is the ammunition Setka is giving the government for its fresh push to bring in tough legislation – the Ensuring Integrity bill – to crack down on unions and officials that break the law.
Among its provisions, the legislation would “allow the Federal Court to prohibit officials from holding office who contravene a range of industrial and other relevant laws, are found in contempt of court, repeatedly fail to stop their organisation from breaking the law or are otherwise not a fit and proper person to hold office in a registered organisation”.
The bill was before the last parliament; it was opposed by Labor, and there wasn’t sufficient crossbench support to pass it.
But now the government is hot to trot. Assuming Labor continues to oppose, the question will be whether the government can get it through a Senate likely in general to be easier for the Coalition than the last one was.
It would come down to the votes of One Nation and Centre Alliance. One Nation would be on board. Centre Alliance would want changes that applied equivalent provisions to misconduct in the corporate sector.
If the union movement can’t deal with its Setka problem, the government’s argument, and its hand, certainly will be strengthened in its battle for the bill.
As one union man put it succinctly, “John Setka has bought the naming rights to the Ensuring Integrity legislation”.
The Solomon Islands Government should exercise caution as it considers whether to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan or switch to China, an academic says.
Last week, amid diplomatic visits from both Australia and New Zealand, the Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele said the government would take its time to make an informed decision.
The director of the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii, Dr Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, said China’s aid focus on large infrastructure projects was appealing to some Solomon Islands MPs.
But leaders need to consider whether the country can manage not only the potential debt that could be incurred but also the intensity of a relationship with China, he said.
“Think about whether or not we are prepared for a relationship that is going to come with intensity both in terms of diplomacy as well as in terms of investment and how we can best benefit from it,” Dr Kabutaulaka said.
-Partners-
“So at the end of the day it is the interest of the Solomon Islands people that is the most important thing.”
Dr Kabutaulaka also said Australia and New Zealand’s actions in the Pacific speak louder than their attempts to play down concerns over the Solomon Islands considering cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of China.
In their official statements during last week’s visits to Solomon Islands, both Australia and New Zealand said they were not putting any pressure on the country either way.
But Dr Kabutaulaka said Australia’s Step Up and New Zealand’s Pacific Reset policies told a different story.
“We cannot get away from the fact that Australia and New Zealand have … have done in recent years attempted to strengthen their influence in the Pacific Islands region vis-a-vis the rising presence or assertive presence of the People’s Republic of China,” Dr Kabutaulaka said.
This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
A recent survey on the world’s plants found a shocking number have gone extinct – 571 since 1750. And this is likely to be a stark underestimate. Not all plants have been discovered, so it’s likely other plants have gone extinct before researchers know they’re at risk, or even know they exist.
In Australia, the situation is just as dire. The Threatened Species Recovery Hub recently conducted two evaluations that aren’t yet published of extinct plants in Australia. They found 38 have been lost over the last 170 years, such as the Daintree River banana (Musa fitzalanii) and the fringed spider-orchid (Caladenia thysanochila).
But uncertainty about the number of plant extinctions, in addition to the 38 confirmed, is an ongoing concern.
Both studies pointed out the actual number of extinctions is likely to be far more than those recognised in formal lists produced by the Commonwealth and state and territory agencies.
For example, there is still a high rate of discovery of new plant species in Australia. More than 1,600 plants were discovered between 2009 and 2015, and an estimated 10% are still yet to be discovered.
The extinction of Australian plants is considered most likely to have occurred in areas where there has been major loss and degradation of native bushland. This includes significant areas in southern Australia that have been cleared for agriculture and intensive urbanisation around major cities.
Many of these extinct plants would have had very restricted geographic ranges. And botanical collections were limited across many parts of Australia before broad scale land clearing and habitat change.
Why extinction goes undocumented
There is already one well recognised Australian plant extinction, a shrub in Phillip Island (Streblorrhiza speciosa), which was never formally recognised on any Australian threatened species list.
Black magic grevillea (Grevilla calliantha) is known from only six populations within a range of 8 square kilometres. In the wild the species is threatened by frequent fire, habitat loss, invasive weeds, herbicide overspray, grazing animals and phytophthora dieback.Dave Coates
Researchers also note there are Australian plants that are not listed as extinct, but have not been collected for 50 years or more.
While undocumented extinction is an increasing concern, the recent re-assessment of current lists of extinct plants has provided a more positive outcome.
The re-assessment found a number of plants previously considered to be extinct are not actually extinct. This includes plants that have been re-discovered since 1980, and where there has been confusion over plant names. Diel’s wattle (Acacia prismifolia), for instance, was recently rediscovered in Western Australia.
A significant challenge for accurately assessing plant extinction relates to the difficulties in surveying and detecting them in the Australian landscapes.
Many have histories associated with fire or some other disturbance. For example, a number of plants spend a significant part of their time as long-lived seeds – sometimes for decades – in the soil with nothing visible above ground, and with plants only appearing for a few years after a fire.
But by far, the greatest reason for the lack of information is the shortage of field surveys of the rare plants, and the availability of botanists and qualified biologists to survey suitable habitat and accurately identify the plants.
Purple-wood wattle (Acacia carneorum) is slow growing and rarely produces viable seed. Threats are not well understood but grazing by livestock and rabbits is likely to impact on the species.Andrew Denham
What we’ve learnt
The continuing decline of Australia’s threatened plants suggests more extinctions are likely. But there have been important achievements and lessons learnt in dealing with the main causes of loss of native vegetation.
Our understanding of plant extinction processes – such as habitat loss, habitat degradation, invasive weeds, urbanisation, disease and climate change – is improving. But there is still a significant way to go.
One challenge in dealing with the causes of Australian plant extinction is how to manage introduced diseases.
Two plant diseases in particular are of major concern: Phytophthora dieback, a soil-borne water mould pathogen, and Myrtle rust, which is spread naturally by wind and water.
Both diseases are increasingly recognised as threats, not only because of the impact they are already having on diverse native plant communities and many rare species, but also because of the difficulties in effective control.
Two Australian rainforest tree species Rhodomyrtus psidioides and Rhodamnia rubescens were recently listed as threatened under the NSW legislation because of myrtle rust.
Native guava (Rhodomyrtus psidioides) A tree species around the margins of rainforest between the NSW and the QLD border. The species is has now been listed as Critically Endangered. Surveys of rainforest areas infected with Myrtle Rust found that 50 to 95% of native guava trees were killed by the disease within a few years.Zaareo/Wikimedia
While extinction associated with disease is often rapid, some individual plants may survive for decades in highly degraded landscapes, such as long-lived woody shrubs and trees. These plants will ultimately go extinct, and this is often difficult to communicate to the public.
While individual species will continue to persist for many years in highly disturbed and fragmented landscapes, there is little or no reproduction. And with their populations restricted to extremely small patches of bush, they’re vulnerable to ongoing degradation.
In many such cases there is an “extinction debt”, where it may take decades for extinction to occur, depending on the longevity of the plants involved.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. A recent study found of the 418 threatened Australian plants showing ongoing decline, 83% were assessed as having medium to high potential for bouncing back.
And with long-term investment and research there are good prospects of saving the majority of these plants.
