Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laichang Zhang, Professor Mechanical Engineering, Edith Cowan University

To mark the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements we’re taking a look at how researchers study some of the elements in their work.

Today’s it’s titanium, a metal known for its strength and lightness so it’s ideal for making replacement hips, knees and other parts of our bodies, but it’s also used in other industries.

Titanium gets its name from the Titans of ancient Greek mythology but this thoroughly modern material is well suited to a huge range of high-tech applications.

With the chemical symbol Ti and an atomic number of 22, titanium is a silver-coloured metal valued for its low density, high strength, and resistance to corrosion.

I first studied titanium via a Master’s degree at the Institute of Metal Research in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999. One of my projects was to investigate the formation of titanium alloys for their high-strength characteristics.

Read more: From the bronze age to food cans, here’s how tin changed humanity

Since then, the applications for this metal have grown exponentially, from its use (as titanium dioxide) in paints, paper, toothpaste, sunscreen and cosmetics, through to its use as an alloy in biomedical implants and aerospace innovations.

Particularly exciting is the perfect marriage between titanium and 3D printing.

Custom design from 3D printing

Titanium materials are expensive and can be problematic when it comes to traditional processing technologies. For example, its high melting point (1,670℃, much higher than steel alloys) is a challenge.

The relatively low-cost precision of 3D printing is therefore a game-changer for titanium. 3D printing is where an object is built layer by layer and designers can create amazing shapes.

This allows the production of complex shapes such as replacement parts of a jaw bone, heel, hip, dental implants, or cranioplasty plates in surgery. It can also be used to make golf clubs and aircraft components.

The CSIRO is working with industry to develop new technologies in 3D printing using titanium. (It even made a dragon out of titanium.)

Advances in 3D printing are opening up new avenues to further improve the function of customised bodypart implants made of titanium.

Such implants can be designed to be porous, making them lighter but allowing blood, nutrients and nerves to pass through and can even promote bone in-growth.

Safe in the body

Titanium is considered the most biocompatible metal – not harmful or toxic to living tissue – due to its resistance to corrosion from bodily fluids. This ability to withstand the harsh bodily environment is a result of the protective oxide film that forms naturally in the presence of oxygen.

Read more: Hydrogen fuels rockets, but what about power for daily life? We’re getting closer

Its ability to physically bond with bone also gives titanium an advantage over other materials that require the use of an adhesive to remain attached. Titanium implants last longer, and much larger forces are required to break the bonds that join them to the body compared with their alternatives.

Titanium alloys commonly used in load-bearing implants are significantly less stiff – and closer in performance to human bone – than stainless steel or cobalt-based alloys.

Aerospace applications

Titanium weighs about half as much as steel but is 30% stronger, which makes it ideally suited to the aerospace industry where every gram matters.

In the late 1940s the US government helped to get production of titanium going as it could see its potential for “aircraft, missiles, spacecraft, and other military purposes”.

Titanium has increasingly become the buy-to-fly material for aircraft designers striving to develop faster, lighter and more efficient aircraft.

About 39% of the US Air Force’s F22 Raptor, one of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world, is made of titanium.

Civil aviation moved in the same direction with Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner made of 15% titanium, significantly more than previous models.

Two key areas where titanium is used in airliners is in their landing gear and jet engines. Landing gear needs to withstand the massive amounts of force exerted on it every time a plane hits a runway.

Titanium’s toughness means it can absorb the huge amounts of energy expelled when a plane lands without ever weakening.

Titanium’s heat resistance means it can be used inside modern jet engines, where temperatures can reach 800℃. Steel begins to soften at around 400℃ but titanium can withstand the intense heat of a jet engine without losing its strength.

Where to find titanium

In its natural state, titanium is always found bonded with other elements, usually within igneous rocks and sediments derived from them.

The most commonly mined materials containing titanium are ilmenite (an iron-titanium oxide, FeTiO₃) and rutile (a titanium oxide, TiO₂).

Ilmenite is most abundant in China, whereas Australia has the highest global proportion of rutile, about 40% according to Geoscience Australia. It’s found mostly on the east, west and southern coastlines of Australia.

Both materials are generally extracted from sands, after which the titanium is separated from the other minerals.

Read more: Where did you grow up? How strontium in your teeth can help answer that question

Australia is one of the world’s leading producers of titanium, producing more than 1.5 million tonnes in 2014. South Africa and China are the two next leading producers of titanium, producing 1.16 and 1 million tonnes, respectively.

Being among the top ten most abundant elements in Earth’s crust, titanium resources aren’t currently under threat – good news for the many scientists and innovators constantly looking for new ways to improve life with titanium.

If you’re an academic researcher working with a particular element from the periodic table and have an interesting story to tell then why not get in touch.

– ref. Titanium is the perfect metal to make replacement human body parts – http://theconversation.com/titanium-is-the-perfect-metal-to-make-replacement-human-body-parts-115361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, ARC DECRA Fellow, Australian National University

The high tide of analysis concerning the Australian Labor Party’s shock 2019 federal election loss has been reached. It looks like so much flotsam and jetsam with the odd big log – leadership popularity, Queensland – prominent among the debris. Sorting through it, making sense of it, and weighting the factors driving the result really matters. It matters because decisions influencing the outcome of the next federal election will flow from it.

The learner’s error is to grasp onto a couple of factors without considering the full suite, weighting them and seeing the connections between them. What does the full suite look like?

1. Leadership popularity

Labor’s Bill Shorten was an unpopular leader, neither liked nor trusted by voters. The shift from Shorten in private to Shorten in leadership mode in the media was comparable to the shift in Julia Gillard when she moved from the deputy prime ministership to prime minister: the charm and wit went missing, replaced by woodenness and lack of relatability.

Shorten accepted advice to appear “leader-like”, creating a barrier Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who sought to directly connect with voters, was not hampered by. “It is often said of democratic politics,” historian David Runciman has said, “that the question voters ask of any leader is: ‘Do I like this person?’ But it seems more likely that the question at the back of their minds is: ‘Would this person like me?’” Morrison passed and Shorten flunked that test.

Read more: Why the 2019 election was more like 2004 than 1993 – and Labor has some reason to hope

Shorten generally failed the “theatre of politics”. His suits often looked too big, making him look small. Television footage of him jogging in oversized athletic clothes during the campaign made him look small. Poor production of Shorten in these ways diminished perceptions of him as an alternative prime minister – a professionalism fail that could have easily been fixed but was not.

Lesson: Leadership unpopularity costs votes. Successful “theatre of politics” matters.

2. Supporting players’ unpopularity

Shorten was weighed down by frontbenchers in the key economic and environment portfolios who fell well short in the performativity stakes too. The camera is not kind to shadow treasurer Chris Bowen. While he developed serious policy chops, partly through sustained study of Paul Keating’s history as a reforming treasurer of historic stature, he also picked up Keating’s hauteur, but without actually being Keating and able to pull it off.

The arrogance of Bowen’s franking credits policy comment that “if people very strongly feel that they don’t want this to happen they are perfectly entitled to vote against us” was a defining misstep of the Shorten opposition. It made the leader’s job that much harder.

Shadow environment minister Mark Butler is another to whom the camera is unkind. He embodied the soft, urban environmentalist persona that is poison in those parts of Australia where Labor needed to pick up seats. An equally knowledgeable but more knockabout environment spokesperson – Tony Burke, for example – would have been the cannier choice in a “climate election” where regional voters had to be persuaded to Labor’s greener policy agenda.

Lesson: Appoint frontbenchers capable of winning public support in their portfolios.

3. Misleading polls The maths wasn’t wrong but the models on which the two-party-preferred vote is calculated have been blown up by this election, an event foreshadowed by recent polling miscalls in Britain.

Long-time conservative political consultant Lynton Crosby’s presence in the Coalition campaign has been invisible except for the tiny but crucial, and completely overlooked, detail that the Liberals’ polling “was conducted by Michael Brooks, a London-based pollster with Crosby Textor who was brought out from the United Kingdom for the campaign”.

The Coalition had better polling. Labor and everyone else were relying on faulty polling that misallocated preferences and uniformly predicted a Labor win – false comfort to Labor, which stayed a flawed course instead of making necessary changes to avoid defeat.

Lesson: Focus on the primary vote, the polling figure least vulnerable to modelling assumptions.

4. Media hostile to Labor

The Murdoch media have created an atmospheric so pervasively hostile to Labor that it has become normalised. It contributed significantly to Shorten’s unpopularity and Labor’s loss. Its impact is only going to get worse with Australia’s nakedly partisan Fox News-equivalent, “Sky After Dark”, extending from pay-TV to free-to-air channels in regional areas.

Read more: Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation

Lesson: Labor has to be so much better than the Coalition to win in this dire and deteriorating media environment. It needs a concrete plan to match and/or neutralise the Murdoch media’s influence.

5. Regional variations

Labor failed to win support in resource-rich states where it needed to pick up seats to win, and suffered a big fall in its primary vote in Queensland.

There is a danger of this being overplayed as a factor since, in fact, not much really changed at this election: the Coalition has two more seats and Labor two less seats than in the last parliament. Further, there are nuances to be engaged with even in hard-core resource areas. More Queenslanders, for example, are employed in the services sector in industries like tourism than are employed in the coal sector; and Labor has a strong tradition in Queensland and is capable of renewal.

The concerns of both sides need to be woven into a plausible policy path forward, with opportunities for different, deeply-held views to be heard and acknowledged as part of the process.

Lesson: Develop “ground up” rather than “top down” policies that integrate diverse concerns without overreacting to what was actually a modest change in electoral fortunes.

6. Weak advertising strategy

Labor’s advertising campaign was complacent, unfocused and completely failed to exploit the leadership chaos and chronic division in the Coalition parties for the previous six years. Why? Labor’s decision not to run potent negative ads on coalition chaos in parallel with its positive advertising campaign is the biggest mystery of the 2019 election – naive in the extreme. It left Labor defenceless in the face of a relentlessly negative, untruthful campaign from the other side.

Lesson: Have brilliant ads in a sharply focused campaign that doesn’t fail to hit your opponents’ weaknesses.

7. Massive advertising spending gap

Along with the hostile media environment created by the Murdoch press, the unprecedented spending gap between the Labor and anti-Labor sides of politics and its role in the Coalition win has passed largely unremarked.

The previous election was bought by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with a $1.7 million personal donation that boosted Coalition election advertising in the campaign’s crucial last fortnight. That now looks like small beer next to the 2019 election’s anti-Labor advertising spending (approximately $80 million when one adds the Coalition’s $20 million spend to the Clive Palmer-United Australia Party spend of $60 million-plus). This is four times the size of Labor’s $20 million ad budget – a huge disparity.

Palmer’s gambit, which creates a friendly environment for him to gain regulatory approval for a Queensland coal mine vastly bigger than Adani’s during this term of parliament, takes Australia into banana republic territory in terms of money politics.

Lesson: Australia already needed campaign finance laws to stop the purchasing of elections. It needs them even more urgently now.

8. Large policy target

Misleading polling showing it was persistently ahead gave Labor false comfort pursuing a “big” policy agenda – that is, making policy offerings normally done from government rather than opposition. If everything else goes right in an election, and with a popular leader and effective key supporting frontbenchers, this may be possible. That was not the case in the 2019 election.

Lesson: When in opposition, don’t go to an election promising tax changes that make some people worse off. Save it for government.

9. Green cannibalisation of the Labor vote

The primary vote of the Labor Party (33.5%) and the Greens (9.9%) adds up to 43.4% – a long way off the 50%-plus required to beat the conservatives. For a climate-action-oriented government to be elected in Australia, Labor and the Greens are going to have to find a better modus vivendi.

They don’t have to like each other; after all, the mutual hatred of the Liberals and Nationals within the Coalition is long-standing and well-known. But like the Liberals and Nationals, though without a formal agreement, Labor and the Greens are going to have to craft a way forward that forestalls indulgent bus tours by Green icons through Queensland coal seats and stops prioritising cannibalisation of the Labor vote over beating conservatives.

Lesson: For climate policy to change in Australia, Labor and the Greens need to strategise constructively, if informally, to get Labor elected to office.

10. Every election is winnable

Paul Keating won an “unwinnable” election in 1993 and pundits spoke of the Keating decade ahead. John Howard beat Keating in a landslide three years later, despite being the third Coalition leader in a single tumultuous parliamentary term.

Morrison won the 2019 election despite internal Coalition leadership turmoil, political scandals and a revolt of the party’s women MPs against the Liberals’ bullying internal culture.

Lesson: Every election is there to be won or lost. Take note of Lessons 1 to 9 to do so.

– ref. How might Labor win in 2022? The answers can all be found in the lessons of 2019 – http://theconversation.com/how-might-labor-win-in-2022-the-answers-can-all-be-found-in-the-lessons-of-2019-117742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Gilroy, ARC Research Fellow in Indigenous Health, Disability and Community Development, University of Sydney

We welcome the recently announced Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

At the same time, the enquiry must consider certain issues in its approach to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities.

Experiences of cultural discrimination are amplified for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities. They desperately need support that recognises and responds to their cultural needs.

The Commission also must note Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities are contending with abuse in their families and communities at higher levels than in non-Indigenous communities, and are often living in poverty.

Read more: Understanding the NDIS: the scheme does not yet address all the needs of Indigenous people with disabilities

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disability rights movement has gained significant momentum over recent years. This has included participation in the planning and development of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Now we must ensure the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices is heard in this Royal Commission.

Higher rates of disability, but lower rates of accessing supports

In the latest Census for Disability, Ageing, and Carers, nearly 25% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in households reported experiencing disability. This doesn’t include people with disabilities living in out-of-home care, so the prevalence is likely much higher.

In the same survey, 17.5% of the non-Indigenous population reported experiencing disability.

While we have no direct data which explains this higher prevalence, it’s likely disability is more common among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people due to higher rates of chronic health conditions, disease, poverty, and lack of accessible services in remote regions.

Read more: Here’s how we can stop putting Aboriginal people with disabilities in prison

Globally, experiences of disability among Indigenous populations have been linked to colonial imperialism, racism, and dispossession from traditional lands and food sources, and social alienation.

Around 5% of NDIS participants are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage. This figure doesn’t reflect the rates of disability in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, meaning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities are not well-engaged with the NDIS.

Experiences of discrimination

The Commission must acknowledge that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a disability, their experience is entwined with both disablism – discriminatory behaviour arising from the belief that people with a disability are inferior to others – and cultural discrimination. We call this “racial-ableism”, as separating the two is impossible.

Experiences of racial-ableism influence how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities engage with the disability service system. Day-to-day experiences of discrimination include non-Indigenous people accusing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a disability and/or challenges related to motor coordination of being intoxicated when they are not.

It’s imperative these stories are part of the Commission, as their telling can help build a narrative to prevent abuse towards people with disability.

Read more: Indigenous people with disability have a double disadvantage and the NDIS can’t handle that

We need a culturally responsive system

Establishing disability support systems on a Western model that doesn’t consider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ cultural needs can be seen as a form of abuse.

My (Gilroy’s) research has shown the history of the institutionalisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability spans more than one century. This includes many examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being forced to live in large residential centres, excluded from towns, or wrongly incarcerated.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities may live in disability institutions that meet their support needs, but don’t meet their cultural and social needs, such as connecting to community and Country.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities in remote and very remote regions have to move off their traditional lands away from family and live in regional or metropolitan centres due to limited disability services in their communities.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, these are forms of cultural abuse. A culturally responsive system is one that meets cultural and social needs and connects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to their traditional lands, while at the same time accommodating their disability needs.

Read more: Why Aboriginal people with disabilities crowd Australia’s prisons

There are challenges in the communities, too

Simply focusing on disability institutions would be turning a blind eye to the chronic abuse of vulnerable people living among their families and communities, including people with a disability, children, and the elderly.

Our research has shown family violence has contributed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with a disability being placed in out-of-home care arrangements.

The Commission needs to acknowledge abuse of people with a disability can occur in the family and community.

Read more: Aboriginal Australians want care after brain injury. But it must consider their cultural needs

Meanwhile, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a disability experience higher rates of poverty, poorer rates of education attainment, and higher rates of homelessness than non-Indigenous people with a disability. In remote regions where services are scarce, poverty can mean people with disabilities go without food or even shelter.

Our governments must urgently act to address this crisis.

A strengths-based approach

A deficit model focuses solely on the challenges and negative experiences associated with disability, such as “suffering” and “impoverishment”. The Commission should instead be premised on a strengths-based framework.

This gives people the opportunity to express both negative and positive experiences about living as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person with disability.

A strengths-based approach draws attention to what people with disability can achieve, like enrolling in a qualification, securing employment, or winning a martial arts competition – despite the barriers they face.

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

The Commission desperately needs to be attuned to the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability, their carers and peak agencies by including them as key parts of the Commission.

The appointment of an Indigenous Commissioner, in Andrea Mason, is an important start.

– ref. Why Aboriginal voices need to be front and centre in the disability Royal Commission – http://theconversation.com/why-aboriginal-voices-need-to-be-front-and-centre-in-the-disability-royal-commission-115056

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristen Lyons, Professor Environment and Development Sociology, The University of Queensland

Climate change threatens Australia in many different ways, and can devastate rural and urban communities alike. For Torres Strait Islanders, it’s a crisis that’s washing away their homes, infrastructure and even cemeteries.

The failure to take action on this crisis has led a group of Torres Strait Islanders to lodge a climate change case with the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the Australian federal government.

It’s the first time the Australian government has been taken to the UN for their failure to take action on climate change. And its the first time people living on a low lying island have taken action against any government.

This case – and other parallel cases – demonstrate that climate change is “fundamentally a human rights issue”, with First Nations most vulnerable to the brunt of a changing climate.

The group of Torres Strait Islanders lodging this appeal argue that the Australian government has failed to take adequate action on climate change. They allege that the re-elected Coalition government has not only steered Australia off track in meeting globally agreed emissions reductions, but has set us on course for climate catastrophe.

In doing so, Torres Strait Islanders argue that the government has failed to uphold human rights obligations and violated their rights to culture, family and life.

This case is a show of defiance in the face of Australia’s years of political inertia and turmoil over climate change.

It is the first time people living on a low-lying island – acutely vulnerable in the face of rising sea levels – have brought action against a government. But it may also be a sign of things to come, as more small island nations face impending climate change threats.

Breaching multiple human rights obligations

Driving this case is an alliance of eight Torres Strait Islanders, represented by the Torres Strait land and sea council, Gur A Baradharaw Kod, along with a legal team from ClientEarth and 350.org. They argue that their way of life has come under immediate and irreversible threat.

On this basis, they accuse the Australian government of breaching multiple articles of the UN Human Rights Declaration, including the right to culture, the right to be free from arbitrary interference with privacy, family and home, and the right to life.

In the early 1990s, the Torres Strait Islands were at the centre of struggles to secure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights in Australia.

Securing these rights were made possible through the historic Mabo Decision, and these rights remain central to land and human rights debates today as Torres Strait Islanders’ land and seas are threatened by climate change.

Torres Straight Islanders are on the frontlines

Some Torres Strait Islands are less than one metre above sea level and are already affected by climate change.

Rising tides have delivered devastating effects for local communities, including flooding homes, land and cultural sites, with dire flooding in 2018 breaking a sea wall built to protect local communities.

Increasing sea temperatures have also affected marine environments, driving coral bleaching and ocean acidification, and disrupting habitat for dugong, salt water crocodiles, and multiple species of turtle.

In the same way settler colonial violence dispossessed First Nations people from their ancestral homelands, climate change presents a real threat of further forced removal of people from their land and seas, alongside destruction of places where deep cultural and spiritual meaning is derived.

Parallel threats across the Pacific

While the Torres Strait appeal to the UN is groundbreaking, the challenges facing Torres Strait Islanders are not unique.

Delegates at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji last week described climate change as the “single greatest threat” to the region, with sea level rise occurring up to four times the global average in some countries in the Pacific.

Climate change is already causing migration across parts of the Pacific, including relocation of families from the Carteret Islands to Bougainville with support from local grassroots organisation Tulele Peisa.

The Alliance of Small Island States, an intergovernmental organisation, has demanded that signatories to the Paris Agreement, including through the Green Climate Fund, recognise fundamental loss and damages communities are facing, and compensate those affected.

The growing wave of climate litigation

Across the Torres Strait, the Pacific, and other regions on the frontline of climate change, there are a diversity of responses in defence of land and seas. These are often grounded in local and Indigenous knowledge.

They show the resolve of First Nations and local communities, as captured in a message from the Pacific Climate Warriors:

We are not drowning. We are fighting.

There are parallel appeals to the Torres Strait Islanders’ case. Around the world, First Nations people are calling on the UN to hold national governments to account on human rights obligations, including in the context of mining and other developments that drive greenhouse gas emissions.

In Australia, Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners have submitted multiple appeals, including last year alleging government violations of six international human rights obligations in their effort to advance Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine.

There is an array of other climate litigation underway. This includes citizens suing their governments for failing to take action on climate, such as in the Netherlands, where a judge ordered the government to take hefty action to reduce national emissions.

Similarly, a group of 21 children in the United States are pursuing a lawsuit to demand the right to a safe climate.

Given the parlous state of climate politics in Australia, further litigation can be expected. The significance of the current appeal by a group of Torres Strait Islanders lies in its potential to lay bare the adequacy or otherwise of Australia’s response to climate change as a human rights issue.

First Nations people already have a moral authority in defending their human rights in the era of climate change. Over time, they and others, including children, will also test the grounds on which they might have the legal authority to do so.

– ref. Torres Strait Islanders ask UN to hold Australia to account on climate ‘human rights abuses’ – http://theconversation.com/torres-strait-islanders-ask-un-to-hold-australia-to-account-on-climate-human-rights-abuses-117262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jutta Beher, Spatial analyst in conservation and ecology, University of Melbourne

From climate change to armed conflict, our world is struggling with urgent global issues. But disagreements about how to solve them can spiral out of control.

The only way to resolve intractable conflicts is to overcome desire to talk to allies more often than opponents. Here, a social psychologist, two ecologists and a cartoonist explain the toolbox of communication we need to resolve difficult issues.

– ref. Comic: how to have better arguments about the environment (or anything else) – http://theconversation.com/comic-how-to-have-better-arguments-about-the-environment-or-anything-else-98554

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Rowe, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin University

More advantaged public secondary schools across Australia generate nearly six times the amount of funding contributions from parents than less advantaged schools receive.

Our study, published in The Australian Educational Researcher journal, examined private levels of funding in public secondary schools.

We found annual parent contributions per school were on average A$352,956 in schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Schools serving the most advantaged students generated an average A$1,584,974 from parents per year.

Parent contributions in our study included funding for charges such as essential learning items, excursions and specialist programs. They did not include fundraising.

Read more: What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding

Do parent contributions match status?

This is the first comprehensive study that has examined inequalities in school funding as exclusively generated by parents in public secondary schools.

We examined parent monetary contributions for 150 public secondary schools in Melbourne and Geelong. We wanted to know whether parent contributions were related to school socioeconomic status.

We used the parent fees, charges and contributions reported on the MySchool website from 2013-2016. MySchool defines “fees, charges and parent contributions” as “income received from parents for the delivery of education services to students”.

The types of voluntary financial contributions parents can make to public schools differ across states. Victorian legislation mandates the “standard curriculum program” must be provided free of charge.

But parents are required to pay for what the school categorises as “essential student learning items” and there is little oversight in how schools determine what fits this category.

So it varies widely. It could be textbooks, uniforms, stationery or mandatory excursions. It can encompass any additional materials the school considers “essential” for a learning task.

Read more: Public schools actually outperform private schools, and with less money

Schools can also request parent payments for “optional items” offered in addition to the standard curriculum. These include extracurricular programs, music tuition, excursions and camps, as well as “voluntary financial contributions”, which are typically delegated for a special initiative such as a building fund.

We compared the parent contributions to the School Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) – a measure that allows a comparison of the levels of educational advantage or disadvantage students bring to their academic studies.

Our study used ICSEA as a proxy for school socioeconomic status. The ICSEA includes parent occupation and parent education, school remoteness and the percentage of Indigenous student enrolment.

Majorly unequal

We calculated the per student amount averaged over four years for each school, the per school amount averaged over four years, and the total amount per school, summed over four years.

We then compared this to student enrolment in each school. This enabled us to comprehensively examine the reported differences and gaps, and how these correlate with school advantage or disadvantage across different metrics.

Public schools that serve more advantaged student cohorts generated, on average, 5.8 times greater levels of income, in comparison to schools that serve disadvantaged student cohorts.

The difference was greater when comparing per school parent contributions, in comparison to per student. This is because schools that serve more advantaged student cohorts tend to be larger.

The median per student parent contribution in the most advantaged schools is more than four times greater (A$1,399) than for the most disadvantaged schools (A$335).

Annual funding per school, when averaged over the four years, was A$352,956 for schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Schools serving the most advantaged students generated an average A$1,584,974.

The majority of schools we examined were not socially integrated, meaning they enrolled mostly students from advantaged or disadvantaged backgrounds, but not both. Only one-quarter of schools enrolled students from both advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds.

Why this matters

Parent-generated funding disparities between advantaged and disadvantaged schools are a form of educational inequality associated with socially segregated schooling.

It’s relatively unsurprising schools with more advantaged students report higher annual contributions from parents. But it’s concerning these amounts differ so substantially between advantaged and disadvantaged schools.

These disparities can further fuel school segregation which is already higher in Australia than in most other countries in the OECD.

The OECD argues reducing school segregation is one of the best ways to reduce achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students, and improve educational effectiveness more generally.

Previous research has linked school segregation with other inequalities. For instance, schools that mainly serve disadvantaged students can struggle to attract and retain experienced teachers.

Read more: To reduce inequality in Australian schools, make them less socially segregated

Policymakers should consider measures to reduce disparities between schools as part of a larger effort to improve educational equity and effectiveness.

Governments could create additional funding schemes for disadvantaged schools to support special initiatives and programs that in other schools would typically be subsidised by parent contributions.

Alternatively, governments could limit the amount of money schools can ask or expect parents to pay. Or they could pool all parent-generated income that is then equitably divided among schools, as is done in Canada.

Whatever the approach, parent contributions need to be monitored.

– ref. Some public schools get nearly 6 times as much funding, thanks to parents – http://theconversation.com/some-public-schools-get-nearly-6-times-as-much-funding-thanks-to-parents-117268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Makiko Nishitani, Lecturer, La Trobe University

Established migrant communities in regional and rural areas are often ignored in favour of policies focused on attracting new intakes of skilled migrants. A striking example is the substantial population of Pacific Islanders in horticultural areas in Australia.

They are largely unacknowledged or even invisible to policymakers in Canberra. Their working-age children now struggle to move beyond the seasonal, precarious horticultural work their parents do. Appropriate supports could help them increase their skills and make a valuable contribution to the rural economy.

Since the mid-1990s, the Australian government has tried to tackle problems on two fronts – congestion in urban areas, and population decline and associated labour shortages in rural areas – through diverse migration schemes.

In March this year the Morrison government launched a plan for Australia’s future population. It emphasised skilled migration as a means of “ensuring regional communities are given a much-needed boost”. The plan includes new regional visas for skilled workers and scholarships for domestic and international students to study in regional tertiary institutions.

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

A neglected community

The rhetoric around settling people in regional areas tends to neglect the untapped potential of migrant populations that already live there. Our research in the Sunraysia region shows Pacific people have been largely trapped in seasonal farm work since they began moving there in the 1980s.

The government’s lack of acknowledgement of these established communities was evident in its planning and introduction of the Seasonal Worker Program. Their potential to provide pastoral care for temporary workers from the Pacific islands was neglected. In both the 2011 final evaluation of the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme and the 2016 report of the parliamentary inquiry into the Seasonal Worker Program this is seen as the responsibility of approved employers.

However, such “official” pastoral care is insufficient. We have found settled communities are supporting workers in getting health care and often provide them with food and other supplies.

But the government has seen the settlers in negative terms, as potentially encouraging Pacific people employed through the Seasonal Worker Program to overstay their visas. This claim was made, for instance, in a 2016 call for expressions of interest in research for the Labour Mobility Assistance Program.

Rather than relying only on bringing in new waves of skilled migrants, most of whom stay for the required period then move to the cities, why not focus on resolving structural problems and increasing the skills of those who already live there? This would mean tackling the barriers the local Pacific populations face, including their relative invisibility in regional communities.

Read more: Forcing immigrants to work in regional areas will not boost regional economies in the long run

In regional Australia, social services are directed mainly to new migrant and refugee arrivals, as well as Indigenous Australians. Some of our Pacific research participants said their communities’ needs remain largely unmet. A Tongan community leader we interviewed in Mildura raised two questions that prevent Pacific people from accessing support in Sunraysia: “Are you a refugee? Are you an Indigenous [person]?”

A high school principal echoed this point. She knew who to contact when she needed support for Koorie students or students from a “Muslim background”, but eligibility criteria often excluded Pacific youth from these services.

Many Pacific young people in Sunraysia express a strong desire to remain in their home towns, yet feel they face significant barriers to entering the workforce.

Their teachers confirm that Pacific youth are less likely to be considered for apprenticeships. They need targeted programs to ensure they get skills training that will broaden their employment opportunities.

Yet their rates of participation in TAFE and university are low. This is partly due to their lack of knowledge about their options.

In a workshop with teachers they also told us some Pacific students come to high school with insufficient literacy and numeracy skills. Early support could have overcome this problem.

The problems are structural

Much of the debate about employment relies on the idea of individual empowerment, which assumes academic achievement leads to skilled work. However, David Farrugia argues that youth unemployment rates will not decline without overcoming structural problems in regional Australia.

Read more: Youth unemployment: local communities essential for helping young people find work

An example of these problems in Sunraysia is that some local industries that give workers stable hourly rates prefer to employ working holidaymakers or backpackers. This leads migrants and second-generation youth to work in more precarious piece-rate farm jobs. The local advocacy body for employing settled workers told us the preference for working holidaymakers is linked to their connections with other industries such as accommodation providers that benefit from this transient population.

Despite being born and raised locally, and in many cases being Australian citizens, Pacific youth experience significant discrimination and marginalisation. Like their parents’ generation they are stigmatised as “fruit pickers”.

Many of them come to see farm work as the only option if they stay in the area. And even that is becoming increasingly precarious because they have to compete with temporary workers, such as those in the Seasonal Worker Program, working holidaymakers and irregular migrants.

Enabling the full participation of Pacific youth in more stable and skilled employment would contribute to the regional economy and improve social cohesion. But the policy focus is still on how to bring in new migrants. Population planning needs to have a long-term perspective and for regional areas a focus on the needs of the well-established migrant populations is crucial.

Dean Wickham, executive officer of Sunraysia Mallee Ethnic Communities Council, contributed to our research project and writing this article.

– ref. The forgotten people in Australia’s regional settlement policy are Pacific Islander residents – http://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-people-in-australias-regional-settlement-policy-are-pacific-islander-residents-116277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan Lyons, Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University

Last month, audiences got their first glimpse of the trailer for the upcoming film, Joker, which explores the origins of its iconic title character, last seen in the Batman franchise. The trailer came just weeks after Captain Marvel was released to cinemas, detailing the back story of Carol Danvers, a superhero who suffers from amnesia and struggles to find out about her past.

Joker is not the only prequel in the works. DC entertainment (also behind Joker) will follow up with The Batman, a 2021 film set to focus on a younger Bruce Wayne. The sixth instalment of Die Hard, titled McClane, will also be an origin story focusing on John McClane in his 20s.

And after the critically acclaimed Better Call Saul – a prequel to Breaking Bad – it was recently announced that classic TV show The Sopranos would be followed up with a prequel movie. Even Game of Thrones will be filming a prequel series.

Prequels and origin texts focus on the back story of our favourite characters. Traditionally much rarer than sequels, they are fast becoming a popular mode of storytelling, alongside the recent boom of 90s remakes. Prequels allow filmmakers to stay in familiar territory while also developing new storylines for old (and even dead) characters.

While prequels present a unique opportunity for storytelling, they are often poorly received, from Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, to Exorcist: The Beginning. On the list of film prequels on Wikipedia, 36 were direct-to-video. Prequels like Godfather Part II and Better Call Saul appear to be the exceptions to the rule.

Read more: It’s happening again … our love affair with TV reboots

Why the appeal?

Society loves origins. Much like our obsession with the lives of celebrities “before they were famous”, we’re naturally curious about the past of characters. The great attraction of the prequel and origin story is that we get to take a look into a character’s elusive past.

Film scholar Darren Mooney argues origin stories offer what the late Stan Lee called the “illusion of change”, so that our understanding of the character can evolve, even when the character themselves remains more or less the same.

Prequels rely on this process of change, and if we can watch this unfold, it can make certain enigmatic characters more relatable – from the Joker to Tony Soprano. This might explain the popularity of prequels in the horror genre, where we see the early years of killers from Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter.

Just like sequels, the prequel format is a particularly lucrative business model; Captain Marvel has grossed more than US$1 billion worldwide, continuing Marvel’s blockbuster run. By taking advantage of the prequel angle, production companies can capitalise on their films without needing to be particularly original. This means the big film franchises will likely continue their cinematic reign under the guise of “novel” storytelling techniques.

As film studies scholar Andrew Scahill puts it:

the prequel offers the pleasure of familiar characters and settings while further exploring the narrative world of the existing text and possibly deepening the audience’s connection with central characters.

Yet he also acknowledges that “as an industrial mode, the prequel provides the financial safety of a tested storyline with a built-in audience”. This means popular culture, once a thriving field of experimental storytelling, risks becoming ever more derivative as it heads into the next decade.

When prequels go wrong

Prequels are more difficult to pull off than a sequel, because we already know how the story ends. As AMC President Sarah Barnett said of Better Call Saul: “We know clearly the end was already written before the beginning began.” Filmmakers must also contend with the natural process of time, since actors inevitably age. The task is to make the back story both engaging and authentic to the original narrative.

The Star Wars prequels illustrate how easy it is to do a bad job. The first two films in particular were poorly received and accused of bad writing, equally terrible acting, and falling well short of the original trilogy in regards to storytelling. When prequels are weak, it often seems as though they are simply there to make money for production companies.

While sequels and reboots defined the 2010s in popular culture, prequels are set to define the 2020s, which is not necessarily good news. Ironically, there is no longer anything particularly original about origin stories, as the format has already started to exhaust itself.

– ref. A long time ago… why prequels are taking us back to the future in popular film – http://theconversation.com/a-long-time-ago-why-prequels-are-taking-us-back-to-the-future-in-popular-film-115132

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

Scott Morrison’s new ministry mixes stability with dashes of innovation, box ticking, and the rewarding of friends.

The Prime Minister has maintained his record number of women (seven) in cabinet, and created a new entry to the history books by appointing the first indigenous cabinet minister, Ken Wyatt, who will become minister for indigenous Australians.

Let’s hope this is not a poisoned chalice for Wyatt, who previously held aged care and indigenous health in the outer ministry. It is one of the hardest jobs and the expectations and pressures on him from indigenous people will be enormous.

Morrison has highlighted the priority he wants to give to improving program implementation, including and especially the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Rewards for friends

Stuart Robert, one of the Morrison friends and supporters promoted in the reshuffle, becomes minister for government services and minister for the NDIS, and is elevated to cabinet.

Robert will oversee a new Services Australia agency to “drive greater efficiencies and integration” of service delivery.

Addressing senior public servants the other day, Morrison lectured them on the need for “congestion busting” in the bureaucracy. The NDIS has had serious teething problems. Time will show whether Robert, who moves from assistant treasurer, can deliver on improving delivery. He personally has been the centre of political controversies and last year had to pay back about $38,000 for excessive internet use at home.

Read more: Scott Morrison hails ‘miracle’ as Coalition snatches unexpected victory

Ben Morton, a Morrison confidant who travelled with him in the campaign, becomes assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, one of those nice “in close” positions that are all about relationships.

Greg Hunt, much praised by Morrison during the election, adds to his health job the position of minister assisting the prime minister for the public service and cabinet, which gives him extra access to the PM’s ear.

Energy and emissions together

In a major move, Morrison has brought together energy and emissions reduction under Angus Taylor. This means Taylor, whose performance as energy minister has been underwhelming, has responsibility for the climate change area as well as continuing to try to achieve lower power prices.

The government skated through the election with climate change not having as much electoral bite as expected and high energy prices failing to extract the political toll they might have. But this is going to be a hard policy area in the coming term, as industry will be looking for more investment certainty, and consumers will want better results on prices. Taylor will need to lift his game.

As expected and despite Morrison’s commitment during the campaign, Melissa Price is out of environment and out of the cabinet. She’s now in the outer ministry, in defence industry, where she can continue to be neither seen nor heard. As Morrison put it with delicate understatement: “Melissa and I discussed her role and she asked to be given a new challenge and I was happy to give her one”.

Senators to New York, Washington

Two top level diplomatic jobs make space for appointments to the Senate. Mitch Fifield, who held communications, is off to be United Nations ambassador in New York, and Arthur Sinodinos, who seemed a monty for a cabinet post after his return from sick leave, will replace Joe Hockey in Washington. Morrison said Fifield’s exit was by choice – that he could have stayed in his portfolio.

Jim Molan, who unsuccessfully attempted to survive as a senator by appealing for people to vote for him “below the line”, will hope to get the NSW Senate spot; Sarah Henderson, who lost Corangamite, will seek preselection for the Victorian vacancy.

Paul Fletcher, with a background in Optus, takes over Fifield’s communications portfolio.

A minister for housing

The core economic team of Josh Frydenberg in treasury and Mathias Cormann in finance remains, with Michael Sukkar, from the hard right in Victoria, becoming assistant treasurer and housing minister. He will be in charge of implementing the Coalition’s election promise for a deposit guarantee for first home buyers.

Alan Tudge keeps population, cities and urban infrastructure while being promoted to cabinet.

Notably, responsibility for industrial relations (previously with the now-departed Kelly O’Dwyer), has been handed to Christian Porter, who stays attorney-general and becomes leader of the House. Porter immediately signalled his law-and-order priority in industrial relations: “my initial focus will be on the law enforcement aspects of the portfolio, ensuring adherence with Australia’s industrial relations laws, particularly on building sites across Australia”.

Promotions for women

Of the females in cabinet Marise Payne, who retains foreign affairs, is the new minister for women, while Michaelia Cash, who was in a heap of trouble last term, has employment, skills, small and family business, gaining employment.

As he promised, Morrison has elevated Linda Reynolds, whom he appointed to cabinet in March, to defence, formerly held by Christopher Pyne, who left parliament at the election. This is a huge job for Reynolds, regardless of her background in the military. Alex Hawke, who is close to Morrison, becomes assistant defence minister, and minister for international development and the Pacific.

Sussan Ley is back in cabinet after a break, taking the downsized environment portfolio. Anne Ruston is promoted to cabinet, as minister for families and social services. Karen Andrews remains in industry and in cabinet.

Victorian senator Jane Hume, with a background in the superannuation industry, becomes an assistant minister in that area; former whip Nola Marino also becomes an assistant minister.

Fewer Nationals

The Nationals have lost a cabinet position, going from five to four – this results automatically from the change in their ratio within the Coalition – despite the fact they did well at the election.

Morrison confirmed that McCormack chose who went into the portfolios the Nationals have. Nationals sources say McCormack pressed for a better deal on portfolios, Liberal sources deny this.

Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie has got agriculture (first women in that job), which means David Littleproud, who previously held agriculture and water resources, ends up with water resources, drought and other bits and pieces.

Read more: VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Morrison’s ‘miracle’ election win – and Labor’s leadership search

Among those not moving, Peter Dutton stays in home affairs, Dan Tehan in education and Simon Birmingham in trade.

Morrison has put his stamp on his team without being radical. Notably, no one was dumped to the backbench.

And the chance of an early return for parliament

Meanwhile Morrison also hinted he was hoping that, despite the current advice, there was a chance parliament could be brought back before July 1 to pass the tax cuts so the first tranche could be delivered from then.

He told his news conference:

We are awaiting advice from the [Australian Electoral Commission] as to when the return of writs will be provided.

At present they’re saying that’s June 28 and there’s a possibility of that occurring earlier. That presents different opportunities for when might be able to recall parliament.

Delivering those tax cuts right on time is something Morrison would really like to do. It’s a fair bet the AEC is being urged strongly to “deliver” those writs early, if it’s humanely possible.

Meanwhile on the Labor side, Richard Marles is now assured of becoming deputy leader to Anthony Albanese, after Clare O’Neil – who like Marles is from the Victorian right – said on Sunday she would not contest the deputy leadership.

For the fridge door:

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison rewards friends, avoids making enemies and announces new ambassadors – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-rewards-friends-avoids-making-enemies-and-announces-new-ambassadors-117806

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Cullen, Adjunct professor, University of Western Australia

Australians woke to the news on Friday that the United States had unveiled new charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange.

The indictment, issued by the US Department of Justice, includes 17 charges of espionage:

• one count of conspiracy to receive national defense information
• seven counts of obtaining national defense information
• nine counts of disclosing national defense information.

These charges are in addition to the charge of conspiracy to commit computer misuse contained in the initial US request for extradition in April.

Here’s what the new charges mean for Assange, how he could fight them, and what’s likely to happen next.

Read more: Julian Assange on Google, surveillance and predatory capitalism

What factors will affect whether the UK approves extradition to the US?

Extradition includes a mixture of judicial and political processes. Assange could plead a number of legal objections to his extradition, including human rights concerns. This could see the case go through all levels of the English court system, as happened in 2011-12. The charges could also be challenged in the European Court of Human Rights.

Assange’s main legal objection to extradition is likely to be that the offences charged are political offences, and therefore not extraditable offences under the treaty.

In addition to the American extradition request, the Swedish prosecutor has announced she is reopening the investigation of a rape accusation against Assange. She has applied to the Swedish courts for a detention order, which is the first step towards the issuing of a European Arrest Warrant (EAW).

Both the EU’s Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant and the US-UK extradition treaty allow the UK to decide which of the two competing extradition requests to prioritise. There’s a good chance that the UK would decide to prioritise the Swedish request because the rape prosecution must be brought by August 2020, at the latest. It’s likely that the English courts would expedite any legal challenges to prevent time running out.

If the UK decides to prioritise the American request, it would effectively prevent the Swedish prosecution being brought in time.

Read more: Chelsea Manning and the rise of ‘big data’ whistleblowing in the digital age

If he goes to Sweden first to face the rape charges, would Sweden be more or less favourable on the US indictment?

The US-Swedish extradition treaty appears to be stricter than the US-UK treaty. It only allows extradition for listed offences, and espionage is not listed.

Given that the treaty was adopted in 1961, computer crimes are not listed, although they might be understood to be included in one of the forms of fraud listed in the treaty.

The US-Swedish treaty also prohibits extradition for political offences or when the death penalty is imposed.

The Swedish government declares that it will not extradite:

if there is reason to fear that the person whose extradition is requested runs a risk – on account of his or her ethnic origins, membership of a particular social group or religious or political beliefs – of being subjected to persecution threatening his or her life or freedom, or is serious in some other respect.

Do these charges attract the death penalty?

These offences could lead to a long prison sentence, but do not attract the death penalty.

Like the US-Swedish treaty, the US-UK extradition treaty also allows the UK to refuse extradition if the accused is likely to face the death penalty, unless the US gives assurances that the death penalty will not be imposed.

Could Assange be protected under the US constitution?

Civil liberties groups and journalists in the United States argue that the charges in the new indictment are unconstitutional. The First Amendment of the American Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and American courts have historically provided strong protection for journalism.

Many argue that what Assange and Wikileaks did in obtaining information from Chelsea Manning about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and rules of engagement in Iraq, and disseminating it, is not meaningfully different from what news outlets do on a regular basis. American officials who worked for the Obama administration say their decision not to pursue Assange was based on concerns that such a prosecution would be contrary to the First Amendment.

Assange’s legal team are likely to argue that extradition to the US would constitute a violation of Assange’s right to freedom of expression under international law. If the extradition occurs, it’s likely they would seek to have the charges thrown out by American courts as unconstitutional.

Read more: Is part of Chelsea Manning’s legacy increased surveillance?

Will these new charges change the way the Australian government treats the case?

The new charges are much more serious than the computer misuse charge in the initial extradition request. The total sentence could be up to 175 years in jail – effectively a “whole of life” sentence, which some human rights advocates consider to be a form of cruel and inhumane treatment.

Australian government support for its nationals caught up in criminal proceedings overseas is largely negotiated out of the public eye. Nonetheless, there have been cases, such as the recent campaign to bring Hakeem al-Araibi back to Australia from Thailand, where the government was a public advocate.

Assange’s Australian legal adviser Greg Barns has called on Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Prime Minister Scott Morrison to raise his case personally with the US and UK governments.

Assange’s case is certainly exceptional, and the human rights concerns over US extradition could justify exceptional intervention.

– ref. New indictments set up a confrontation between the US and Julian Assange – http://theconversation.com/new-indictments-set-up-a-confrontation-between-the-us-and-julian-assange-117741

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

The government’s tax relief package is shaping up as the first test of incoming opposition leader Anthony Albanese, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg declaring on Friday it must be supported “in its entirety” when put to the new parliament.

But Albanese has only guaranteed support for the first tranche. As for the later cuts for higher income earners, “we will consider that,” he said on Friday.

But let me tell you, it is a triumph of hope over experience and reality that the government knows […] what the economic circumstances are in 2025 or 2023, in the middle of the next decade.

Appearing with Albanese on the Nine Network, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said:

Albo, it would be remarkable if your first act as leader of the opposition was […] to oppose a long term package of tax relief – that would show a real tin ear for the Australian people”.

In an interview with The Conversation, Frydenberg refused to be drawn on what the government would do if unable to get the whole bill through.

It would, however, be hard for it to avoid splitting the bill – to hold out would deny the immediate relief pledged in the April budget.

All or nothing

Nor could Frydenberg say when parliament will meet to consider the legislation, although the government has effectively conceded it will not be in time for the promised July 1 start of the additional tax offset promised in the budget. (A smaller offset from last year’s budget will be paid from then.)

But Albanese said the tax cuts could be passed in time for July 1, because it would only need a couple of hours of sitting. “We’ll do a deal. I can do that. One speaker a side, and Bob’s your uncle.”

Frydenberg said Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe had highlighted the positive impact the tax cuts would have on household incomes.

“Let’s too not forget that $7.5 billion will flow to households in the coming financial year, as a result of these tax cuts,” Frydenberg said.

Tax cuts as good as rate cuts

“This benefit to households and the economy is equivalent to two 25 basis point interest rate cuts and is one reason why growth and household consumption is projected to pick up,” he said.

“The tax reforms we are putting to parliament are not just providing immediate relief, but leading to long term structural change. This will tackle bracket creep and reward aspiration.

“Earning more is nothing to be ashamed of and should be encouraged not punished. Rewarding aspiration is in the Coalition’s DNA and will be a fundamental driver of our policies in government.”

In his assessment of the economic outlook, Frydenberg had two messages.

He said in his discussions with some of Australia’s biggest employers, “I’ve been buoyed by their confidence and their desire to work with the government, to support continued economic growth and job creation”.

Headwinds worsening

But the economy “faces significant headwinds. Trade tensions between the United States and China have increased, with the potential to negatively impact global growth.

“Were there to be another round of US tariff increases, the potential for which has been flagged publicly, the proportion of global trade covered by recent trade actions would double from 2% to 4%.”

Also, flood, drought and fires had taken a toll and the housing market slowdown was hitting dwelling investment and having an impact on consumption.

The challenges made the government’s agenda for growth, including tax relief, so important and time critical.

Asked whether the “headwinds” faced by the Australian economy were stronger than at budget time, when he also spoke of headwinds, Frydenberg said: “I think the tensions between China and the US have increased”.

Read more: Their biggest challenge? Avoiding a recession

Frydenberg spoke with the US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin this week and the two will meet in Japan at the G20 finance ministers meeting in a few weeks. Frydenberg stressed in the conversation the importance of free trade to Australia and its wish to see disputes resolved as amicably as possible.

Asked whether, if the economy deteriorated further, the government would be willing to live with a smaller surplus next financial year than the $7.1 billion projected in the budget, Frydenberg said, “that’s the amount that we’re committed to”.

He would not be drawn on the signal this week from Lowe that an interest rate cut was coming.

The Treasurer said the current unemployment rate of 5.2% reflected “strong labour market performance”.

While there are no plans for an overhaul of federal-state relations by the re-elected government, Frydenberg said he would work closely with the states on infrastructure and managing population.

Read more: Cutting interest rates is just the start. It’s about to become much, much easier to borrow

He said he would respond fully to the Productivity Commission report on superannuation, although he had not set a date for this.

“The issues that were raised through the Productivity Commission report which we need to have a good look at are about the unintended multiple accounts and the under-performing funds,” he said.

“The royal commission [on banking] recommended having a single default [account], which we accepted and Labor accepted, so we’ll go ahead and do that”.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Shocked Labor moves on – but to what policy destination?

– ref. Frydenberg declares tax package must be passed ‘in its entirety’ – http://theconversation.com/frydenberg-declares-tax-package-must-be-passed-in-its-entirety-117768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter "PJ" Holtum, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Queensland

Being an Uber driver doesn’t seem like a great job. Conditions aren’t great and the rate of pay, already typically less than the minimum wage, is declining.

So why do Uber drivers keep driving?

Read more: Uber drivers strike: Organizing labour in the gig economy

When we asked them, they told us the job was better than any others they had.

That’s something that should concern us all.

Across the world the proportion of people in “insecure” jobs is creeping upwards. Less than half of all Australian workers now have permanent full-time jobs.

As the “gig-economy” grows, casuals and contractors without protections such as paid leave and job security may become the new normal. So too may be the experiences of those who end up driving for Uber.

The best of a bad situation

Our team interviewed 24 Uber drivers in Brisbane. Most had worked in hospitality or service sectors. These drivers were earning A$10 to A$17.50 an hour. Almost all reported some form of economic insecurity working for Uber.

Yet most said they were satisfied working as a “driver-partner” because their other options were awful. Many turned to Uber because of chronic underemployment, with their current job not giving them enough hours.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 8.1% of Australian workers are underemployed, up from 2.5% in the 1970s. The graph below shows Australians want more work but aren’t finding it.

Surprisingly this was an experience related to us by drivers who had been working in areas such as advertising, business management and finance. They told us about “commission only” jobs, and having to “win” projects from potential employers, which meant they always felt insecure and didn’t have reliable income.

Uber was essential to them in making up the difference. In fact, for many Uber became their primary income.

Others told us about even worse working conditions at their old jobs. Former hospitality workers struggled with too few hours, unpaid work outside of shifts and terrible managers.

While they earned less per hour driving than working at a restaurant, they were free to work as long as they wanted. That flexibility meant they could do things such as pick up their children from school without having to take time off.

So in many ways Uber has been a step up for these workers.

Driving into uncertainty

While Uber drivers have greater flexibility and earn extra income, should workers have to choose between bad and worse?

This points to a bigger problem than just ride-sourcing: precarious, insecure and non-standard work with uncertain job length, few benefits and unpredictable pay is becoming an issue for more and more Australians.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions regards Australia as a “global pacesetter in creating precarious jobs”. It says about 4 million people now work on short-term contracts, for labour hire companies and as so-called independent contractors, as is the case with Uber drivers.

The proportion of Australian workers in some type of non-standard employment is the third-highest in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (behind the Netherlands and Switzerland), according to a 2015 report.

Non-standard work includes any job that is not full-time and permanent. It is less likely to have the same rights and entitlements, such as sick leave and paid holidays.

This type of employment was historically common in industries such as hospitality and retail. But our interviews with skilled workers turning to Uber presents evidence that non-standard work is spreading to other industries.

Read more: Sugar daddy capitalism: even the world’s oldest profession is being uberised

Closing legal loopholes

Businesses such as Uber use legal loopholes to avoid responsibilities as employers. As more companies try to “uberise” their workforce, the future of work becomes more precarious.

Worker organisations are important for protecting individual workers. But federal and state governments must do more to close the legal loopholes and protect all workers.

Read more: People power is finally making the gig economy fairer

The most important change is ensuring workplace laws cover non-standard workers. The law should ensure contractors such as Uber drivers are protected from unfair dismissal, minimum wage violations and safety violations.

Non-standard forms of employment can be useful for entrepreneurs, primary carers and students. But without basic guarantees of income and regular work, contractors are at the mercy of whoever pays their bill.

If almost half of Australians are precariously employed, we need a change.

– ref. Uber drivers’ experience highlights the dead-end job prospects facing more Australian workers – http://theconversation.com/uber-drivers-experience-highlights-the-dead-end-job-prospects-facing-more-australian-workers-116973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

Over the past few days a pair of spectacular fireballs have graced Australia’s skies.

The first, in the early hours of Monday, May 20, flashed across the Northern Territory, and was seen from both Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, more than 500km apart.

The second came two days later, streaking over South Australia and Victoria.

Such fireballs are not rare events, and serve as yet another reminder that Earth sits in a celestial shooting gallery. In addition to their spectacle, they hold the key to understanding the Solar system’s formation and history.

Crash, bang, boom!

On any clear night, if you gaze skyward long enough, you will see meteors. These flashes of light are the result of objects impacting on our planet’s atmosphere.

Read more: Look up! Your guide to some of the best meteor showers for 2019

Specks of debris vaporise harmlessly in the atmosphere, 80-100km above our heads, all the time – about 100 tons of the stuff per day.

The larger the object, the more spectacular the flash. Where your typical meteor is caused by an object the size of a grain of dust (or, for a particularly bright one, a grain of rice), fireballs like those seen this week are caused by much larger bodies – the size of a grapefruit, a melon or even a car.

Such impacts are rarer than their tiny siblings because there are many more small objects in the Solar system than larger bodies.

Moving to still larger objects, you get truly spectacular but rare events like the incredible Chelyabinsk fireball in February 2013.

That was probably the largest impact on Earth for 100 years, and caused plenty of damage and injuries. It was the result of the explosion of an object 10,000 tonnes in mass, around 20 metres in diameter.

On longer timescales, the largest impacts are truly enormous. Some 66 million years ago, a comet or asteroid around 10km in diameter ploughed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The result? A crater some 200km across, and a mass extinction that included the dinosaurs.

Even that is not the largest impact Earth has experienced. Back in our planet’s youth, it was victim to a truly cataclysmic event, when it collided with an object the size of Mars.

When the dust and debris cleared, our once solitary planet was accompanied by the Moon.

Impacts that could threaten life on Earth are, thankfully, very rare. While scientists are actively searching to make sure no extinction-level impacts are coming in the near future, it really isn’t something we should lose too much sleep about.

Smaller impacts, like those seen earlier this week, come far more frequently – indeed, footage of another fireball was reported earlier this month over Illinois in the United States.

In other words, it is not that unusual to have two bright fireballs in the space of a couple of days over a country as vast as Australia.

Pristine relics of planet formation

These bright fireballs can be an incredible boon to our understanding of the formation and evolution of the Solar system. When an object is large enough, it is possible for fragments (or the whole thing) to penetrate the atmosphere intact, delivering a new meteorite to our planet’s surface.

Meteorites are incredibly valuable to scientists. They are celestial time capsules – relatively pristine fragments of asteroids and comets that formed when the Solar system was young.

Most meteorites we find have lain on Earth for long periods of time before their discovery. These are termed “finds” and while still valuable, are often degraded and weathered, chemically altered by our planet’s wet, warm environment.

By contrast, “falls” (meteorites whose fall has been observed and that are recovered within hours or days of the event) are far more precious. When we study their composition, we can be confident we are studying something ancient and pristine, rather than worrying that we’re seeing the effect of Earth’s influence.

Tracking the fireballs

For this reason, the Australian Desert Fireball Network has set up an enormous network of cameras across our vast continent. These cameras are designed to scour the skies, all night, every night, watching for fireballs like those seen earlier this week.

If we can observe such a fireball from multiple directions, we can triangulate its path, calculate its motion through the atmosphere, and work out whether it is likely to have dropped a meteorite. Using that data, we can even work out where to look.

In addition to these cameras, the project can make use of any data provided by people who saw the event. For that reason, the Fireballs team developed a free app, Fireballs in the Sky.

Read more: How we solved the mystery of Libyan desert glass

It contains great information about fireballs and meteor showers, and has links to experiments tied into the national curriculum. More importantly, it also allows its users to submit their own fireball reports.

As for this week’s fireball over southern Australia, NASA says it was probably caused by an object the size of a small car. As for finding any remains, they are now likely lost in the waters of the Great Australian Bight.

– ref. What caused the fireballs that lit up the sky over Australia? – http://theconversation.com/what-caused-the-fireballs-that-lit-up-the-sky-over-australia-117672

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

University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Geoff Crisp speaks with Michelle Grattan about the week in politics. They discuss the Coalition’s shock victory and the contradicting polls and predictions; Bill Shorten standing down as leader of the Labor party and his likely successor Anthony Albanese; and Scott Morrison’s trouble over delivering his policy of immediate tax cuts.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Morrison’s miracle election win – and Labor’s leadership search – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-morrisons-miracle-election-win-and-labors-leadership-search-117746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Collins, PhD candidate , University of New England

In 2002, I went on a bushwalk with plant taxonomist David Albrecht, and had a big surprise. He pointed to a plant I thought I knew, and said: “that’s probably a new species.”

A new species? How could it be that this plant had not already been scientifically described and named?

I was in for another surprise when I learnt there are estimated to be thousands of undescribed plant species in Australia. But just because one botanist says a plant is a new species, it doesn’t mean that everyone else automatically agrees.

As a researcher, I had the opportunity to study one of Australia’s most iconic plant groups – the eucalypts.

Herbarium records of an endagered eucalyptus species, the Northern Blue Box (Eucalyptus magnificata), showed populations from the Northern Tablelands in New South Wales scattered up to the Granite Belt in southern Queensland.

But on closer inspection, I discovered there were different ecosystems between populations. E. magnificata, for instance, is found on rims of gorges in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, whereas E. baueriana is typically found on riverbanks and flood plains.

The question I wanted answered was: are all these populations really E. magnificata or have some been misidentified and represent other common species? Or, alternatively, are they new, undescribed rarer species?

So when my supervisors, Professor Jeremy Bruhl and Dr Rose Andrew, and I visited the mystery trees near Dalveen in southern Queensland, we knew immediately they were something exciting. They just looked different to everything else we’d seen.

Eucalyptus that smells sweet and fruity

To find out, I’d been sampling eucalyptus (collecting, pressing and drying specimens) and had spent the past two days with my supervisors. With our heads craned back, we stared through binoculars to search the tree canopy at dozens of sites on the Northern Tablelands looking for the buds and fruits that enable eucalypt identification.

Not only did these trees at Dalveen look unlike anything else we’d seen on the trip, they also had a different smell. When we crushed a leaf, the aroma was sweet, mild and fruity, quite unlike the familiar eucalyptus oil.

Back at the university, I could compare the different collections. I examined and recorded differences in the size and shapes of the leaves, buds and fruits. I grew seedlings of my field collections and saw that seedling leaves were also consistently different.

And I extracted the mixture of aromatic chemicals in the leaf oils collected during fieldwork. Then, I used a chemistry laboratory technique, called Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry, to compare their concentrations with closely related species, such as E. baueriana and E. polyanthemos.

The results clearly explained why the leaves had a unique scent. That sweet and fruity aroma was due to larger molecules, called sesquiterpenes, which dominated the leaf-oil. There were only traces of the familiar-smelling cineole molecule common to most eucalypts.

A new species, or just an uninhibited sex romp?

Sequencing the DNA of the tree added another piece to the puzzle.

We had collected samples from all of the closely related common species. We had strong evidence from the shape of the leaves, fruits and flower buds suggesting the Dalveen trees were different. But the possibility remained that they were just hybrids.

Eucalyptus trees can be wickedly promiscuous and hybrid trees with similar characteristics are common. In some parts of eastern Australia, for instance, eucalypts naturally form hybrid swarms, the botanical equivalent of a wildly uninhibited sex romp!

But the DNA told us the trees from Dalveen were genetically distinct, and with no suggestion of shared ancestry.

Now, with three very different data sets all supporting the same conclusion, it became imperative we publish our findings and describe the new species, which we named Eucalyptus dalveenica, or the Dalveen Blue Box.

New species have to be named using a universal and internationally accepted naming system. Names and descriptions must be published, and a pressed and dried specimen must be nominated to be the representative that other collections can be compared to.

Most importantly, convincing evidence must be presented that persuades the botanical community the newly named species should be accepted.

But naming a new species is only the first step in knowing what it is. Importantly, naming tells us what it isn’t. The trees at Dalveen are not Eucalyptus magnificata, nor do they belong to another more common species, E. baueriana or E. conica.

Eucalyptus dalveenica is a rare and endangered part of Australia’s natural heritage. Taxonomic description of new species (classifying, describing and naming) provides the framework for ongoing accurate identification, species conservation and further study.

We are fortunate to live in a beautiful part of the world, with diverse and unique wildlife. Describing biodiversity and communicating new discoveries develops connections between people and their local environment, leading to a broader understanding of our home.

– ref. How I discovered the Dalveen Blue Box, a rare eucalypt species with a sweet, fruity smell – http://theconversation.com/how-i-discovered-the-dalveen-blue-box-a-rare-eucalypt-species-with-a-sweet-fruity-smell-115561

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Morgain, Knowledge Broker, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

The environment was a key concern in the recent federal election. It was also a polarising one, with concerns raised about regional industries and livelihoods. But jobs and environment need not be locked in battle: there are pathways that secure a better future for both our environment and future generations.

It’s just over two weeks since the global announcement that extinction looms for about a million species. The warning may have been partially lost in the noise of Australia’s election campaign, but it should resonate long after the political dust settles. This scale of loss will have catastrophic consequences not only for nature, but for us too.

Read more: ‘Revolutionary change’ needed to stop unprecedented global extinction crisis

The good news is many of the key steps to addressing Australia’s ecological challenges are also wins for jobs, industry and social well-being. Others involve more difficult choices, but could be helped with careful strategic planning and the active involvement of all those with a stake. All require factoring in costs and benefits not only to our generation, but also to generations of the future.

Here are seven suggestions to get us started.

1. Support wildlife-friendly agriculture

More than 60% of Australia is managed for agricultural production. Agriculture is a major driver of species loss both at home and abroad. Yet we know it is possible to manage our agricultural landscapes for wildlife and productivity. Actions like restoring native vegetation, establishing shelterbelts, and creating wildlife-friendly farm dams can help maintain or even boost farms’ productivity and resilience, including in times of drought.

Many farmers are already doing this but their efforts are undermined by policy instability. Political leadership and incentives such as stewardship payments and direct carbon investments are needed to support farmers as they increasingly support the nature from which we all benefit.

2. Nature-based solutions for our cities

About 90% of Australians live in cities, and the rapid expansion of our urban areas brings serious livability challenges. Urban nature can be a key part of the solution, providing a remarkable range of health and well-being benefits.

Urban greenery keeps cities cooler, improves air quality, and even boosts economic prosperity.

Cities can be hotspots for threatened species, and are justifiable locations for investing in nature for its own sake. There is substantial opportunity to create policy and regulation that can allow investment and innovation in nature-based solutions in cities.

3. Help Indigenous Australians care for natural heritage

Indigenous people prospered for millennia in Australia by forging deep connections with land, water and sky. But these connections are ever harder to maintain in the face of two centuries of colonialism and disruption to traditional lore and custom.

Traditional ownership is now recognised for nearly half of Australia’s protected area estate. Increasing investment in Indigenous ranger programs from the current 6% of the conservation estate budget and incorporating traditional knowledge could deliver many social, environmental and economic benefits.

Long-term stability with these programs provides for healthy communities, maintains connection to country, and delivers enormous environmental benefits.

4. Invest in species recovery

Many valiant efforts to help threatened species are undertaken by dedicated groups with often limited resources. They have shown that success is possible. But to prevent extinctions we need much greater investment in strategic and committed management of species, and of pervasive threats like changed fire regimes and changed water flows. Australia’s investment in biodiversity conservation is low compared with other countries, particularly in light of our high rates of species loss.

Investing in threatened species and conservation works. Involving the community in recovery actions can also create employment, skills and many other benefits, especially to rural and Indigenous communities.

5. Build strategically important safe havens and strengthen biosecurity

Much of Australia’s wildlife is threatened by introduced species – predators, herbivores, weeds and disease. Chytrid fungus, introduced through the pet trade, has devastated frog populations. New pathogens like myrtle rust, which affects many Australian plants, look set to repeat this scale of loss. Invasive predators such as cats and foxes are the single biggest threat to most of Australia’s threatened mammals, some of which survive only on islands and inside fenced areas.

Strong biosecurity, of the kind that has long helped Australian agriculture, is vital to prevent introductions of new invasive species. New havens are needed in strategic locations, underpinned by national coordination and partnerships, to help protect species like the central rock rat that are still not safe from predators.

6. Support integrated environmental assessments

Regional development, mining and urban expansion are part of our economy. They can also harm species and ecosystems.

Improving resourcing for decisions about environmental approvals can ensure they are underpinned by sound science. Independent oversight and review could help ensure environmental approvals are credible, transparent, and consistent with Australia’s conservation commitments. Strengthening and expanding protections for critical habitat could ensure our most vulnerable wildlife is protected.

Development can be designed to avoid wholesale devastation or “death by 1,000 cuts”. But ensuring that crucial species habitats are protected will require careful planning based on strong environmental and social science. Applying existing provisions for integrated environmental assessments, fully resourcing these processes, and ensuring all affected people – including local and Indigenous communities – are involved from the start, can help plan a future that works for industries, communities and natural and cultural heritage.

7. Minimise and adapt to climate change, including by investing in biodiversity

Climate change threatens our communities, economy, health, and wildlife – it is changing our country as we know it. It has already contributed to the extinction of species such as the Bramble Cay Melomys. Impacts will certainly worsen, but by how much depends on whether we take strong action.

Many communities, businesses and governments are aiming to tackle climate change. Strategies such as greening cities to reduce heat islands can help native species too. Investing in biodiversity-rich carbon storage (such as old growth forests) can boost regional economies. Options include restoring native ecosystems, boosting soil carbon, managing fire, and transitioning native forests from timber harvesting to being managed for carbon, while sourcing wood products from plantations.

Read more: Government needs to front up billions, not millions, to save Australia’s threatened species

Our economy, communities, cultures, health and livelihoods depend on environmental infrastructure – clean water, clean air, good soils, native vegetation and animals. As with Indigenous sense of place and identities they are entangled with the creatures that share our unique and diverse continent. We steal from future generations every time a species is lost.

For our sake and that of our descendants, we cannot afford to disregard this essential connection. Investing in natural infrastructure, just as we invest in our built infrastructure, is the sort of transformational change needed to ensure our communities and economy continue to flourish.

– ref. As the dust of the election settles, Australia’s wildlife still needs a pathway for recovery – http://theconversation.com/as-the-dust-of-the-election-settles-australias-wildlife-still-needs-a-pathway-for-recovery-117406

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roy Hay, Honorary Fellow, Deakin University

Over the next two weekends, the Australian Football League celebrates the contribution of Indigenous peoples to the history of the game.

At the same time, a new documentary will show how one of the modern Indigenous superstars of the sport, Adam Goodes, was driven from it by prejudice and repeated denigration.

Clearly, Indigenous players have made huge inroads in professional Australian football leagues. In fact, to mark this year’s Indigenous round, the AFL Players Association recently updated its map celebrating the 84 male Indigenous players and 13 female players in the league and showing where they come from.

But in order to understand how we got to this point, it’s important to know the full history of Indigenous involvement in the sport, including the discrimination faced by players like Goodes, and all those who came before him.

The early days on missions and stations

In my latest book, [Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century,](https://www.cambridgescholars.com/aboriginal-people-and-australian-football-in-the-nineteenth-century](https://www.cambridgescholars.com/aboriginal-people-and-australian-football-in-the-nineteenth-century) I examine the long history of Aboriginal involvement in Australian football since the game was codified in the middle of the 19th century. It’s a story of resilience in the face of sometimes overwhelming obstacles to their participation.

By the 1860s, the Indigenous population of Victoria had been drastically reduced to just a few thousand people, due largely to massacres, disease, and the other impacts of European settlement. Most of these people were confined to missions or stations in remote parts of the colony under the control of “protectors.”

Read more: The Aboriginal football ethic: where the rules get flexible

In the second half of the century, the Indigenous inhabitants of these institutions saw the white settlers playing football and sought to take part. They brought skills developed in hunting and their own games like marngrook and joined the white players in football games, first as individuals and then by forming their own teams.

Eventually, the Indigenous teams started taking part in and then winning local leagues. It was a triumph of the human spirit in the face of appalling adversity.

This story can only be told because the deeds of these early generations of Indigenous players were reported in the sports pages of newspapers digitised by the National Library of Australia. Indigenous deeds on the field were being recounted positively, a contrast to the typical media reports of the day focused on “outrages” committed by – or less often, against – our original inhabitants.

Dominating and winning league titles

The numbers of Indigenous players remained small throughout the 19th century and getting leave to compete from the missions and stations was often difficult or inconsistent. Indigenous Australians may have found it slightly easier to break into individual sports like pedestrianism or boxing than team games like cricket and football at the time.

But many Indigenous teams found success. At Coranderrk in the Upper Yarra Valley near Melbourne, Indigenous people from the station began playing regularly in the 1890s, forming a team to compete in local competitions involving three non-Aboriginal teams, Healesville, Lilydale and Yarra Glen.

Read more: What if Indigenous Australians didn’t play footy?

Dick Rowan was invited to play with the South Melbourne club in 1892, but when he sought permission to play again the following season, he was refused by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines of Victoria. Their reason: if he was allowed to play, others would wish to follow. The board wanted to keep Indigenous people on the periphery.

In 1911, the Coranderrk team won the local league against white teams for the first time, but could not field a team the following year after several of their players were recruited by other clubs.

Other dominant Indigenous teams of the era included Framlingham, Lake Condah, Lake Tyers and above all Cummeragunja. Cummeragunja had suffered heavy defeats in the late 1880s, but the team eventually became so strong that it won the Western and Moira League five out of six years, and was promptly handicapped. (They were not allowed to field players over the age of 25.) In 1900, they ran rings around a strong Bendigo team and gave a Ballarat team a close game, as well.

Lake Tyers in Gippsland followed a similar pattern. After the first world war, the team became the receptacle for Indigenous players moved from other stations and missions around the state and was extremely successful, winning the East Gippsland League in 1934, 1938 and 1939.

Critics will point out that this was only “bush football”, but that was all that was on offer to Indigenous teams. They could not get regular matches against professional Melbourne teams, and Indigenous players were denied opportunities to play in senior leagues owing to racial bias.

There were a few exceptions, including Doug Nicholls from Cummeragunja, who was later knighted and became governor of South Australia. He rhapsodised about playing the game:

Once on the football field, I forget everything else. I’m playing football. I never take my eyes off that ball. My aim is not only to beat my opponent, but also to serve my side. I realise that in football as in other things, it’s team-work that tells.

Read more: Indigenous players didn’t invent Australian rules but did make it their own

My aim in writing this book was to show how the history of the game could be rewritten to better reflect Indigenous contributions and experiences by using newspapers and other materials of the day as a basis, even the much maligned “colonial record”. This may assist Indigenous peoples to tell the story from their perspective about what happened to their ancestors and their more recent history.

As the Wiradjuri historian Lawrence Bamblett argues, this could have a positive impact on the sport and help counter the racism and discrimination that Indigenous peoples still face both on and off the field.

…broadening the discourse will bring representations of Aborigines in the writing about sport more closely into line with the richer lived experiences of individuals, and this in itself combats racism.

My hope is that some young Indigenous people with an interest in football will take up this story and tell it from their unique perspective.

– ref. The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football – http://theconversation.com/the-long-and-complicated-history-of-aboriginal-involvement-in-football-117669

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Hemer, Senior Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO

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

Why are there waves? – Evie, age 5.

Thanks for a great question, Evie.

When you look at the waves breaking at the beach, those waves might be at the end of a long journey. The waves might have been created thousands of kilometres away, or they could have been created near you.

There are lots of types of waves in the ocean, but the waves you usually see at a beach are created by the wind. When the wind blows over a smooth ocean, it creates little waves or ripples on the surface. If the wind continues to blow, the waves grow bigger.

Read more: Curious Kids: How does the Moon, being so far away, affect the tides on Earth?

Faster, bigger, longer

The faster the wind blows (like in a strong storm out at sea), the bigger the waves will grow.

The further the wind blows (or the bigger the area of the storm), the bigger the waves will grow.

And the longer the wind blows (like in a storm that lasts a long time), the bigger the waves will grow.

If the wind stops, or changes direction, the waves will stop growing, but they won’t stop travelling.

They will keep travelling away from where they were created in a straight line, sometimes for days, until they run into something like a beach where they are stopped because they break. That’s why there are still waves at the beach, even when it is not windy.

Waves trip over themselves

Imagine you were running really quickly. But then suddenly, you ran into thick gloopy mud. Your feet would slow down, but the top half of your body would still be going fast. You’d trip over.

Waves do the same thing and that is when they break.

As waves approach the shore, the water is shallower, and the bottom of the wave starts to feel the sand and rocks and seaweed. The bottom of the wave slows down, and soon, the top of the wave is going faster than the bottom part of the wave, so the top spills forward and topples over in a big splash.

Waves can travel a long way

Scientists who study the ocean (called oceanographers) have measured waves created in the Southern Ocean, and seen them travel all the way across the Pacific Ocean and break on the beaches of North America more than a week later.

Try counting the seconds between waves breaking on the beach. If the time between waves is 10 seconds or more, the waves have come from a long way away. If the waves were created nearby, the time between waves will be short, perhaps five seconds or fewer.

Sometimes when we look at the sea we might see different waves (some big, some small) all happening at the same time. These waves were created at different places, perhaps by different storms, but ended up in the same spot at the same time.

Freak waves

During big storms, waves can get very big. If big waves from two different storms meet together, that can create enormous waves that we call “freak waves”. The largest waves measured are around 25 metres high (that’s five giraffes standing on top of each other!) and they can tip over ships.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do plastic bags harm our environment and sea life?

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

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

– ref. Curious Kids: why are there waves? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-are-there-waves-112015

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Lacaze, Head, Public Health Genomics Program, Monash University

DNA testing to predict disease risk has the potential to prevent disease and save lives. Yet few Australians can currently access predictive DNA testing via the health-care system.

That may soon change.

As technology improves, the cost of DNA testing declines, and the Australian government invests in genomics, universal DNA screening is becoming feasible.

DNA screening would involve large numbers of otherwise healthy people having DNA testing, by providing a simple blood or saliva sample, to identify risk of certain conditions. This includes types of cancer or heart disease that run in families – and can be prevented.

Being identified at increased risk doesn’t mean you’ll get the disease. But identifying risk early and before symptoms appear provides the opportunity for prevention. Prevention can be achieved through regular check ups, medications or even risk-reducing surgeries.

The new opportunities for prevention genomics offers could transform public health.

Read more: Why we should test everyone’s genes to predict disease

But a number of challenges exist. How would we provide DNA testing to millions of people and deliver the required health services to all those at high risk?

What about genetic discrimination? Could testing cause more harm than good, and lead to over-diagnosis? How would the health-care system fund this level of testing, and would it be cost-effective? Do people even want testing?

The concept of population DNA screening is daunting. But the benefits could be huge.

Australia has the chance to do it properly. Here are five things to know.

1. DNA screening is not a crystal ball, but it identifies risk

DNA testing can’t tell us everything. It estimates risk well for certain types of diseases, mostly those caused by single gene changes. These are distinct from other common diseases where genetic risk accumulates from hundreds of genes and is harder to predict.

Potential candidates for screening include cancers such as breast and ovarian cancer caused by the BRCA genes, colorectal and other cancers caused by Lynch syndrome, inherited high cholesterol and other types of genetic heart disease.

Although each of these conditions alone are relatively rare, together they put an estimated one in 38 adults at high risk.

Read more: Should doctors share gene tests after a death in the family?

Genetic risk for these conditions is often identified too late, after cancer is diagnosed or someone dies from a cardiac arrest. Limited health budgets mean testing is usually offered only to people diagnosed with genetic diseases and their families, not healthy people.

This means thousands of Australians are missing out on DNA testing that could be life-saving, and don’t know they’re at risk of a condition they might be able to prevent.

2. DNA screening could prevent different types of genetic conditions

There are measures people can take to reduce the risk for many genetic conditions. Once risk is identified through testing, people can enter risk surveillance programs, which are highly effective, especially for some types of cancer and high cholesterol. These can detect symptoms at an early (and more treatable) stage.

Some preventive medications can also reduce risk of breast cancer (tamoxifen), bowel cancer (aspirin), high cholesterol (statins) and genetic heart disease (beta blockers).

In some cases, preventive surgeries are available, such as mastectomy to significantly reduce breast cancer risk.

Read more: Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy, so what is BRCA1?

3. DNA screening would be cost-effective

We modelled the health and economic benefits of offering population DNA screening in Australia, focusing on young adults aged 18-25 years (about 2.6 million Australians).

Young adults are most likely to benefit from screening, being old enough to provide informed consent, but below the average age of onset for preventable adult genetic conditions, and below the average age of having their first child.

We modelled screening for four well-understood cancer genes. We calculated screening for these genes alone would prevent 2,411 cancers and save 1,270 lives in Australia over the populaiton’s lifespan, compared with current rates of DNA testing.

At an estimated A$400 per test, this would cost the Australian government around A$600 million (four to five times more than current expenditure on genetic testing for these conditions).

But we estimated screening would save around A$300 million in prevented cancer treatment costs, making DNA screening highly cost-effective in this population.

At A$200 per test (which could be realistic in the near future), savings in treatment costs could outweigh screening costs, saving the health-care system money and saving lives.

Read more: Explainer: what is pre-pregnancy carrier screening and should potential parents consider it?

We also modelled the impact of providing screening results for family planning. This would identify “carrier” parents for rare genetic diseases that occur when children inherit two defective copies, one from each unaffected parent (such as cystic fibrosis).

Options like prenatal testing to identify affected pregnancies, or using IVF to ensure only unaffected embryos are implanted, are available to high-risk couples. Adding reproductive information to the model further improved the cost-effectiveness.

4. DNA screening raises ethical and regulatory concerns

Despite its potential to save lives and money, DNA screening raises ethical questions. Some people may not want testing due to concerns including DNA privacy, insurance discrimination or the “right not to know”. The shared nature of DNA also means testing implicates family members, and issues such as non-paternity may arise.

Those identified as high-risk by DNA screening may be stigmatised. Genetic discrimination already occurs in Australian life insurance, and evidence shows many people at high risk of certain conditions refuse testing for this reason.

Reproductive screening also introduces difficult decisions related to using IVF and termination of pregnancy. Ethical positions vary across religious and cultural groups, and must be respected.

Read more: Sharing isn’t always caring: genetic privacy must come first

Making screening routine may also risk pressuring some people towards irreversible medical interventions, such as surgery or termination of pregnancy.

As a society, we must carefully consider these ethical issues. A recently-launched nationwide study will offer reproductive carrier-screening to 10,000 Australian couples to see if they are carriers of inheritable conditions. This will be crucial for building public awareness and examining these ethical concerns.

5. DNA screening will be feasible in the near future

As the cost of DNA testing falls, publicly-funded population DNA screening is becoming realistic. Genetic testing for risk of breast and ovarian cancer is already reimbursed on the Medicare Benefits Schedule in Australia for individuals at high risk, and more tests will likley be added in coming years.

If widespread testing is not provided by the health-care system, consumers will likely turn to cheap internet-based alternatives, which don’t necessarily follow Australian standards for scientific validity or quality.

Read more: Five things to consider before ordering an online DNA test

Population DNA testing through the health-care system would ensure higher standards of quality control. It would also facilitate equity-of-access to testing that is required to maximise population health benefits.

The federal government has already published guidance on population screening. But before Australia can launch a universal DNA screening program, we need more public education, regulatory protection, and increased funding to expand genetic health services.

– ref. Population DNA testing for disease risk is coming. Here are five things to know – http://theconversation.com/population-dna-testing-for-disease-risk-is-coming-here-are-five-things-to-know-112522

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

This week Melbourne’s water storage dropped below 50%, a sign of the prolonged and deepening drought gripping eastern Australia. Sydney is only marginally better off, at 53.8% of full storage.

Along with many regional towns across southeastern Australia, the two largest capital city water supplies are steadily shrinking.

But while Melbourne’s water levels are lower, if we look at the last 12 months we see another story: Sydney has plummeted from 72.3% to 53.8%, while Melbourne has only dropped from 58.9%.

Melbourne’s average residential water consumption is 161 litres per person per day. In Sydney, for 2018, it was 210 litres per person. That is nearly 50 litres more per person – a difference of about 30%!

So why do Sydney residents use so much more water than people in Melbourne?

Sydney is thirsty

Sydney is using far more water than experts predicted. In March 2017, Sydney released a Metropolitan Water Plan. Among the glossy pictures is a graph that indicates how thirsty Sydney is.

It predicted that by 2018, Sydney would be using around 550 gigalitres (GL) a year. But Sydney’s actual 2018 consumption was 600GL, far higher than the “high use” estimate.

In fact, back in 2017 experts thought Sydney would only need 600GL for normal use in 2040, when the population would be far higher.

Sydney’s actual water use is shown below. Crucially, the 2016 mark – where water use begins a sharp increase – is the same time water prices in Sydney fell by 13.5% (more on this in a moment).

It must be remembered that Sydney and Melbourne residents both consume less water than before the millennium drought. Sydney guzzled more than 600GL a year for seven of the years between 1991 and 2003.

Due to the influence of water restriction and the millennium drought, consumption fell to about 480GL. In Melbourne stores also fell steeply, even more sharply than in Sydney, from 500GL in 2000 to a low of 343GL in 2010.

Desalination

Both Sydney and Melbourne have large and expensive desalination plants, which supplement their water supplies.

Sydney Water will begin preliminary planning to double the size of its desalination plant when water stores fall to 50%. Based on recent months, this is likely to be reached in the next two months or so.

Sydney’s desalination plant is relatively small, as it currently is capable of supplying 15% of the daily water demand. In comparison, Perth’s two desalination plants can produce about 50% of its water demand.

Is water too cheap?

The lower water use per resident of Melbourne is a major element in the city’s lower water thirst. If you live in Sydney and use the average amount of water a day (210 litres per person per day) that will cost you just 48 cents per day. The price is A$2.28 per thousand litres.

Water is far more expensive in Melbourne, which has variable pricing for residential water. The more water you use, the higher the progressive cost per litre.

Each of Melbourne’s three water retailers charge more money for low and high water usage. For example, Yarra Valley Water charges A$2.64 (per 1,000 litres) for water use less than 440 litres a day. For more than 881 litres a day it charges A$4.62, which is 75% higher than the lowest water use charge. For intermediate amounts the charge is A$3.11. This sends an important price signal to residents – it pays to conserve water. In comparison, Sydney charges a flat rate for each litre of water, with no penalty for higher water users.

Sydney is not alone in charging a flat price for residential water use. So do Darwin and Hobart. Canberra has the highest charge for higher water users (A$4.88 per 1,000 litres).

Was dropping Sydney’s water prices in 2016 a mistake?

It is not a simple thing to change water prices in Sydney – the prices Sydney Water charges its customers are set by an independent pricing regulator (IPART).

Based on advice from Sydney Water, IPART dropped the price of residential water in 2016 by 13.5%. This was broadly welcomed as a reduction in the cost of living in Australia’s most expensive city.

This coincides with a sharp rise in the total consumption of water in Sydney in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

As drought continues to bite in southeastern Australia the water authorities have a number of plans to save water, especially water lost from leaking infrastructure.

Currently about 7.5% of Sydney’s water (129.5 megalitres per day) is lost from leakage from its 22,000km of pipes. Sydney Water has explained that hotter weather in 2018 made clay soils expand and crack underground water pipes, exacerbating this problem.

Prepare for water restrictions

Compulsory water restrictions are planned to begin in Sydney as soon as the available storage drops below 50%.

This follows major success in millennium drought, when Sydney had water restriction from 2003 to 2009.

The Victorian government has laws in place to impose fines and even jail for offenders that breach water restrictions during the most severe drought conditions.

With no end to the drought it sight, it may be time for Sydney to learn from Melbourne. Sydney could easily put a higher price on water, with higher users eventually paying more per litre.

– ref. Why Sydney residents use 30% more water per day than Melburnians – http://theconversation.com/why-sydney-residents-use-30-more-water-per-day-than-melburnians-117656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Senior Lecturer and Course Director (Postgraduate Education courses), Charles Sturt University

You may have heard of play. It’s that thing children do – the diverse range of unstructured, spontaneous activities and behaviours.

Children play in many ways, including by exploring movements, constructing with equipment, creating games, using imagination and chasing others around a playground.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises play as every child’s basic right. But play is becoming extinct. Global studies, across generations, have confirmed outdoor children’s play has been declining, across all age groups, for decades.

Unstructured play improves learning and social and physical development. Providing a variety of play options, improved play access and fewer restrictions can encourage children to engage in physical activity with peers in line with their imaginations.

Read more: Why suburban parks offer an antidote to helicopter parenting

Play is becoming extinct

Australian children’s active or independent travel has been declining over the past two decades, consistent with other countries.

There are many reasons researchers are describing child’s play as “endangered” and “extinct”. These include more use of electronic devices and parents wanting to protect children from strangers, traffic, pollution and bullying.

Research also points to a low awareness of the importance of play, more pressure on children to do well in class and more restrictions on play. Hectic schedules, such as parents’ jobs and children’s extra-curricular activities, may also contribute.

Parents have reported their children are playing outdoors far less than they used to when they, themselves, were children. Parents are noticing fewer children walking and cycling to school or actively playing after school.

Modern parents are more likely to accompany children, by driving them to school, attending their excursions, supervising them on school grounds, or keeping them indoors altogether.

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. Urban environments are prone to decreasing play opportunities with less open, natural spaces for outdoor play.

Why this matters

Children have fewer opportunities to engage with nature. Providing more contact with nature can enhance children’s creativity, boost their mood, lower stress, improve well-being, promote physical activity and improve attention spans.

Nature play is also becoming more important as a counterbalance to children’s technological saturation. It is important for children to connect with nature early, as they are then likely to learn to appreciate nature into adulthood.

Read more: Children are our future, and the planet’s. Here’s how you can teach them to take care of it

In primary school, children spend around 30 hours per week at the school and have more than 4,000 recess periods. If play opportunities are becoming limited around the home and community, schools are the best place for children to meet their play requirements.

How schools can help

Research shows introducing simple objects from around the home (such as milk crates, pipes and wooden planks) into school playgrounds may influence children to work cooperatively. They discover new ideas and solve problems by constructing, observing, designing and learning from each other.

Read more: Children need to play outdoors, but we’re not letting them

Providing more options for children to play outdoors ensures they are intellectually challenged and engaged to find new ways to use such spaces for discovery. If loose play equipment, such as balls, bats and blocks, isn’t available children can still use what nature provides, such as twigs, leaves, rocks, feathers, petals, mud and sand.

The diversity of outdoor objects and features offers children a variety of shapes, sizes and locations they can use to discover, explore and invent games or designs. It’s better for play objects not to be fixed as this helps with exploration, discovery and creativity.

Many Australian school playgrounds are fixed in the same spot. But new and replenishing play opportunities are important for children. For schools and parents to maximise children’s play, play environments should include:

• spaces for thinking, so school children can make discoveries, learn and be intellectually engaged
• spaces for doing, so school children can take moderate risks, undertake play challenges and extend themselves physically
• spaces for being, so school children can be themselves away from the confines of classroom walls or overly restrictive rules, regulations and routines
• spaces for feeling, so school children can explore and independently embrace their senses and play decisions with a diversity of colours and features.

The Australian Curriculum recognises the importance of play and outdoor learning. Ensuring children can access quality outdoor play can help align with national curriculum objectives.

– ref. Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop – http://theconversation.com/let-them-play-kids-need-freedom-from-play-restrictions-to-develop-117586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Douglas, Professor, Flinders University

A little over a year ago, former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith made a tearful confession and apology to the public, having been banned from cricket for 12 months for ball tampering. Smith’s confession was expected. As Australian captain, he would take responsibility for the indiscretions of the whole team.

Smith’s televised confession and apology, and a later Vodafone advertisement referencing it that leans into a redemption narrative, have paved the way for his atonement and successful return to cricket. Smith recently played for the Australia XI in a game against New Zealand; he and Warner will likely play in the first Ashes in August.

We might interpret these confessions cynically, as a public relations exercise. But it is also clear that, in performing these acts, Smith is following particular, expected cultural templates for confession and apology.

Though confession has its origins within Judeo-Christian faiths, it has evolved to become one of Western society’s most familiar rituals. We see confessions every day: in literature, on television, and now online. Some are more convincing than others.

While confessions on reality TV programs, on certain current affairs shows, and from YouTubers who thrive on controversy are now quite formulaic, new spaces are constantly opening up for confessional narratives. Anonymous social media spaces such as “Reddit” have shown that there is something potentially liberating about sending an anonymous (or semi-anonymous) confession out into the world. While these do have the potential to cause harm, they show just how strong the confessional impulse can be.

The word confession originates from Latin Middle English via Old French Latin (confession, confiture – meaning “acknowledge”). In the act of confession, people disclose their sins (by speaking to a priest) or as part of the sacrament of reconciliation. But whatever the context for the confession, the listener is essential; only they have the power to judge and absolve.

Secular contexts

Though influenced by its religious origins, confession has become meaningful in secular contexts. It is central to legal discourse. The admission of a crime within a court of law is the first step towards penance and possibly absolution.

Read more: Friday essay: how do you measure remorse?

The tradition of literary confession is thought to have begun with Saint Augustine’s Confessions, written between AD397-400. Augustine writes about the sins of his youth and his eventual conversion to Christianity. Along with Jean-Jacques Rosseau’s 1782 autobiography Confessions, Augustine has provided a model for writing the confessional that has endured over time: deep, intimate introspection as the first-person author or speaker admits to having committed sins that they wish to atone for.

“Confessional” is now used to describe any autobiography or memoir that is particularly intimate in its revelations. Authors such as Lena Dunham, Lindy West, and Amy Schumer have mined the deeply personal subjects of their lives for their memoirs.

In Australia, comedians like Judith Lucy use confession, usually in the form of embarrassing personal disclosure, as the foundation for their stand-up. More recently, Hannah Gadsby, in Nanette, explored the problems that come with confessing for laughs. Gadsby persuasively argued that comedians (particularly those from minority groups) should not use self-deprecating humour to put themselves down. Personal stories should instead be positioned as a powerful means of connecting humanity through mutual understanding. Now, Gadsby continues to tell personal stories, but on her own terms – to share and explore her politics on issues such as gender, sexuality, and power.

In these contexts, where humour, confession, and trauma intersect, the listener is positioned to respond with empathy and without judgement. Such self-disclosures establish a sense of intimacy between performer and audience; this might forge connections in an often individualistic, impersonal world.

Read more: Friday essay: garish feminism and the new poetic confessionalism

Schadenfreude and current affairs TV

Confessions are also a staple of televised entertainment, encouraging a very different listener/spectator dynamic. Contemporary television confessions are usually about an indiscretion and the need to expunge guilt – for personal reasons or because society requires it (like Steve Smith). Or, the confessor might benefit in some way from the confession (for instance, fame, infamy or monetary reward).

Witness the rise of minor celebrities from reality TV shows like Married at First Sight. At the program’s “commitment ceremonies”, those who offered the most salacious disclosures have become the most in/famous participants. Viewers witnessed the indiscretions on previous episodes. And because they know how these programs work, they are aware that the confessions are coming, and will become an integral part of the show’s narrative arc.

Confessional narratives are sometimes positioned as therapeutic for the confessor, but the viewer is invited to engage in schadenfreude – the joy of witnessing someone else’s misfortune. Reality TV confessions are edited and structured for their sensational value, rather than complexity or nuance. The confession exists in a formulaic mode; the genre is rarely transgressed.

On a Sunday evening you will typically witness confessions on 60 Minutes or Sunday Night. The latter recently ran a story titled “Sex, Guys and Videos” in which so-called “football groupies” (women who date famous AFL or NRL players) disclosed their experiences with the sport’s cultures of toxic masculinity (in particular, sex scandals). Such confessions are constructed as cautionary tales for the viewer: “don’t fall into the traps that I have”. The women discussed their hurt and embarrassment. But these confessions also function as a celebrity exposé and a strong social commentary around power, sexual consent and sexist cultures that seek to silence and degrade women. Confession commonly implicates others.

Confessing online

Not surprisingly, there are myriad outlets for confession online, whether public, semi-public, or anonymous; indeed, the internet has been described as a “global confessing machine”.

There are possibly millions of portals online catering to different genres of confession. On the news, rating and discussion site and app, Reddit, there are various discussion pages or “subreddits” devoted to anonymous confession. One called “Admit your wrongdoings”, has over a million subscribers.

The “rules” of this subreddit state that all submissions must be a confession, ie a statement that “presumes that you are providing information that you believe other people in your life are not aware of, and is frequently associated with an admission of a moral or legal wrong”. Common confessions here include cheating on partners, failing college, and financial failures.

Perhaps the most infamous spaces for online confessions in recent years are anonymous social networking apps such as “Whisper”, and “Confide”. Designed for mobile use, they allow users (most likely young people) to publicly share secrets and confessions, usually through uploading a symbolic image and one-line caption. Confessional subjects include the breakdown of friendships, unrequited love, and family secrets.

Other apps such as “Wut”, “Rumr” and “Sarahah” are described as “semi-anonymous” because users exist in a known network (for instance, a school or work network), but messages are anonymous.

These anonymous messages are not first-person confessions, but confessions directed towards another. They usually take the form of “feedback” to another user (“I said I liked your formal dress, but really I hate it”). This, unsurprisingly, has resulted in instances of bullying and the potential for defamation.

The likely appeal of these anonymous apps is that they offer an antidote to the more public and performative spaces of Facebook and Instagram, enabling young people to engage anonymously outside of their usual social networks.

As my colleagues and I have found, personal disclosure can be positive and empowering for young people. Online self-representations and self-disclosures can encourage teenagers to take control of their public self-image and how and where it is shared.

There are lots of moral panics about teens over-sharing online, or having stories and images shared without consent. But it is possible that the more experience young people have using different apps and sites, the more skilled, knowledgeable, and comfortable they will be using them to their own benefit.

Social media self-representations can be a site for creativity, showcasing photography, clothing ensembles, hair and make-up, making memes and so on. Private, online confessional spaces can offer supportive networks for exploring thoughts and ideas than require a more intimate public and a place for positive exploration of identities with like-minded peers.

The use of anonymous apps suggests that there is something emancipatory about being invisible amidst so much pressure to be active and visible in their everyday public storying to larger networks on Snapchat and Instagram. There’s potentially something thrilling in the risk of being recognised, or of recognising someone else when engaged in online confession. There’s also the promise of social contact, of connection, attention and validation.

But these apps also have the potential to prey on young people’s sense of alienation or loneliness – when confessions are elicited by platforms designed for profit, who holds the power?

Such concerns – about the potential manipulation of young media consumers – are not new; they simply shift according to new media trends. As I found in my research, young people’s engagements with sites such as these anonymous ones are much more complex than we currently know, and are shifting at a pace faster than we can track.

Engagements with social media can be time-consuming, dull, and harmful. They can also be empowering, creative, and community-forming. And they might be everything in between.

Either/or debates are not useful here: we need to develop much more nuanced discussions on this fast-shifting cultural terrain. And these discussions are best driven by young cultural consumers and producers.

YouTube apologies

Another genre of confession that has become very visible online is apologies from “YouTubers”. The usual sequence of events is this: the YouTuber says something inappropriate or offensive in a video on their channel. They receive backlash from the media or from followers. As in the case of Steve Smith, they must conform to established scripts for confession and apology or else risk being “cancelled” by their fans.

As writer Morgan Sung has noted, because their YouTube content is most often autobiographical, covering intimate subjects and perspectives, apologies are expected as an extension of this constructed intimacy between YouTuber and viewer.

For instance, one of the most well-known YouTubers, Shane Dawson, has found himself in an apologetic loop as he tries to evade his own digital footprint. The now 30-year-old Dawson has confessed to, and apologised for, things he said online during his younger days, most notably for offensive jokes he made during his late-teens “shock” phase. He was heavily criticised for his racially offensive humour, inappropriate sexual jokes, and the attention he paid to conspiracy theories.

Just last week we witnessed the rapid fall of YouTube beauty blogger and make up artist James Charles. Charles’s public feud with fellow YouTuber and former mentor Tati Westbrook resulted in him losing over 2.5 million subscribers. Charles’s numerous confessions via apology videos did not initially help his case. However, after a week of excessive social media banter and accusation (and a 40-minute video from Charles titled No More Lies), the feud seems to have settled a little.

Apology videos have become so common they are now often the subject of parody for being insincere or exaggerated. These videos have a formulaic structure; they most often function as image repair – to ensure the YouTuber does not lose their followers. Like the reality television confessions, these apology videos follow expected templates.

The confession compulsion

Though confession has evolved considerably since the times of Augustine and Rosseau, we can see familiar patterns in contemporary practices: we are guided by the moral conventions of our time to perform confession and contrition when required, or else suffer the consequences. Confession, whether anonymous or public, has long been positioned as a means for redemption, connection, or simply, a way of feeling better.

Whether or not confession is therapeutic is still up for debate, and no doubt its potential is time and culture-specific.

But if the stakes are high enough; if confession and apology are required for the maintenance of economic livelihood, or fame, these acts, whether believable, will at least be predictable.

– ref. Friday essay: YouTube apologies and reality TV revelations – the rise of the public confession – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-youtube-apologies-and-reality-tv-revelations-the-rise-of-the-public-confession-114970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, PhD candidate in Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Some of the world’s most popular video games track your activity as you play – but they’re not just gathering data for business or marketing purposes.

They’re accumulating information about the way you and others play the game, the patterns or habits that lead to success or failure.

The aim is to create systems that can learn about the game, and then coach you to become a more competent player (or at least feel like one).

Read more: We made a moving tectonic map of the Game of Thrones landscape

It’s another way game developers can make money from gamers (via paid subscriptions). But it’s also seen as a way to keep you playing for longer, and attract new players to complex games that otherwise offer little help or instruction on how to play.

Machine learning to play

These coaching tools use machine learning. This is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) in computing systems that, through the capture and analysis of large amounts of information, can improve performance at a particular task over time.

Machine-learning based assistant tools are particularly noticeable around competitive, multiplayer videogames. These games often require significant effort on your behalf to develop even a modicum of skill.

A good example is DotaPlus for Valve’s popular multiplayer videogame Dota 2 – a competitive five-versus-five player contest that draws from elements of strategy and role-playing games. (This is a proprietary tool but third-party options are available.)

Launched in March 2018, DotaPlus provides you with basic functions, such as statistics about your gameplay, and the gameplay activity of others (such as broader play-style trends, and the ability to view other players’ gameplay performance in detail during matches).

Better than hints

The PlusAssistant feature gives you prompts on how you should play the game, based on Valve’s accumulation of match data from all players.

This kind of personalised data-driven help is different from more standard hints you often get when playing a game.

To give some examples, as soon as you enter into a game of Dota 2, you face the often daunting task of selecting the most strategically appropriate character (or hero) to play as.

But, as a DotaPlus user, the PlusAssistant will make suggestions about what is most appropriate for you to play. Is your chosen character likely to perform well against characters of your opponents? Does it synergise with characters of your teammates?

As you progress further in the game, DotaPlus provides suggestions about which of the game’s many “items” (which give your character particular skills or bonuses) are most beneficial to you.

Certain items in Dota 2 are better against certain enemies, support stronger playing as a certain character, and add advantage at particular points of the game.

For example, when I play the Bristleback hero – one that uses many abilities or “spells” – the game recommends I buy the “Octarine Core” item, which allows me to cast spells more frequently.

DotaPlus also suggests how you should use your character’s abilities or skills (all of which have unique effects and uses).

For example, the game might tell me that one ability is what 80% of players picked at level 1. This is the interface nudging me towards a choice that will likely yield the most positive outcome.

Once again, the predictive capabilities of DotaPlus de-emphasise the need for you as a player to deliberate on what to do in the game. They minimise the need for you to have a large amount of accumulated knowledge of how to play.

Without this feature, games such as Dota 2 offer you very little help on how to play. As a more simple and cheaper option, many players learn by watching videos produced by members of the game’s community.

Valve’s move with launching DotaPlus (which costs from A$5.60 a month) is likely, at least in part, a response to this – providing a more user-friendly experience for newer players.

It’s also likely a move to better monetise the game (previously reliant on microtransactions and other monetisation features).

But DotaPlus is also likely a hook to keep Dota players playing (and consuming) within Valve’s digital distribution platform.

What’s different about these kinds of tools?

The use of data to gain an advantage isn’t new in and of itself.

The practice, known as “theorycraft”, has been a part of gaming communities for some time. It’s essentially a high-level, specialist kind of number-crunching to help players adapt their style for even the slightest competitive advantage.

This was particularly prevalent in Blizzard’s once hugely popular World of Warcraft. Players used a program called SimulationCraft to quantify and rank things like items or in-game actions in terms of their performance according to certain in-game metrics (such as how much damage one’s character deals per second).

Analytics tools can be provided by the game’s developer – as is the case with Battlefield’s BattleLog, an application for tracking users’ gameplay activity in the game.

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

But they can also be provided by third-party developers. DotaBuff in Dota 2, or Warcraft Logs in World of Warcraft are good examples. As described above, these allow users to retrieve detailed statistical information about their own and others’ performance at these games.

The difference with DotaPlus and other such tools is that players negotiate the gameplay itself through a real-time gaze of data, derived from the surveillance tracking of your own and others’ activity – a more sensuous way of experiencing the game through data.

These subscription-based services are a popular and highly effective way to monetise games. Perhaps Valve’s move, in creating pay-for-use data analytics (as opposed to other more conventional subscriptions) will inspire similar developments.

– ref. Gamers use machine learning to navigate complex video games – but it’s not free – http://theconversation.com/gamers-use-machine-learning-to-navigate-complex-video-games-but-its-not-free-114906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joannah Luetjens, PhD Candidate, Utrecht University

In the lead up to the recent federal election, there was plenty of negative rhetoric about current policy settings. Piecing together the various messages, it seems we have entered an armageddon of poor fiscal management, intolerable social inequality, and environmental degradation. If we took the rhetoric seriously, who in their right minds would want to take charge of the mess that is government?

These assessments are symptomatic of a longstanding, worldwide tendency of politicians, commentators, and citizens to fixate on the limitations of government. We know the lexicon. Terms such as “blunder”, “blowout”, “crisis”, “failure”, “fiasco”, “incompetence”, “red tape” and “scandal” are well-used in public and academic discourse about government, politics and public policy. But this kind of rhetoric risks creating self-fulfilling prophecies in the way we look at, talk about, think of, evaluate, and emotionally relate to public institutions.

By contrast, successful policy accomplishments are seldom deemed newsworthy. Neither are the thousands of everyday forms of effective public value created by and through governments.

Read more: Australia has been silent on Indigenous suicide for too long, and it must change

To help turn the tide, we recently commissioned 20 up close and in depth case study accounts about the genesis and evolution of standout public policy accomplishments in Australia and New Zealand, across a range of sectors and challenges.

To identify the cases, we convened a panel of experts consisting of prominent public policy scholars and senior practitioners in Australia and New Zealand. We then invited expert scholars in the relevant fields to produce the case studies.

World-leading response to HIV/AIDS

Consider Australia’s response to HIV/AIDS. It emerged in the early 1980s as an unidentifiable, infectious and lethal disease affecting some of the most stigmatised communities.

What followed was ground-breaking policy embedded in three key principles: partnership, community engagement and bipartisan support.

The first Australian National HIV/AIDS Strategy, in 1989, contained three policy goals:

• restrict the spread of HIV/AIDS transmission
• care for those infected
• educate and support healthcare professionals.

Subsequent national strategies have maintained this strong values base. This framework has ensured Australia’s national policy response to HIV/AIDS has been lauded as one of the best in the world.

Read more: 2040: hope and action in the climate crisis

A swift change to gun control policy

Australia’s gun laws offer another case of successful policy.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Australia suffered 14 mass shootings. These culminated on April 28, 1996 in the Port Arthur Massacre, when a single gunman killed 35 people and seriously injured 18 with military-style semiautomatic rifles.

Tasmania was one of the few places in the western world where an unlicensed individual could obtain such a weapon. Policy change was swift. Adopted in a crisis, the new policy was nonetheless the result of years of policy development. The government of the day united different parties and stakeholders to present a broad coalition in favour of the new laws.

With those laws in place, the risk of an Australian dying by gunshot fell by more than half. Australia’s rate of gun homicide remains 25 times lower than that of the United States.

Six ingredients of successful public policy

These two cases, along with the others in our study, have led us to note six recurrent patterns that seem to promote successful policy outcomes:

1. they tend to address a problem that has been well defined and broadly acknowledged at the outset of the policy development process

2. they tend to rest on conceptually coherent, evidence-informed advice that has paid attention to the realities of implementation

3. champions and stewards are key, not just during the design and decision making phase, but equally critically during the implementation phase

4. astute policy advocates carefully build their cases for policy change, readying themselves to fit their workable solutions to the crisis of the hour

5. virtually all the policies we studied had sufficiently broad appeal that they survived changes of government from the party that gave them initial support

6. implementation challenges dog any major policy initiative – but when policymakers persevere, learn from experience, and adjust their approaches accordingly, they can help policies become major successes in the longer term.

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

Governments can and do improve lives

Without doubt, the current times present major challenges for all governments. And new challenges will surely arise in the years ahead. The negative lexicon has its place in political life. But governments can and do generate much that is good, and that serves our collective interests well.

Looking ahead, we encourage more people to reflect on cases of successful public policy. We especially hope that politicians of every ideological persuasion, and those who advise them, will heed the lessons of the past that reveal what it takes to produce strongly positive outcomes that improve the lives of generations of citizens.

– ref. From gun control to HIV: six ingredients of successful public policy – http://theconversation.com/from-gun-control-to-hiv-six-ingredients-of-successful-public-policy-117600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago

In February, a terrorist attack by Jaysh e-Mohammad (JeM) killed more than 40 Indian military personnel in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It triggered the worst escalation of India–Pakistan tensions for nearly two decades.

The flare-up was a stark reminder that the Kashmir conflict appears to be intractable, with especially dangerous consequences for the weaker party, Pakistan.

At great economic cost, Pakistan has constructed a nuclear-armed national security state over many decades to counter the Indian “threat”. This somewhat ossified approach has done little to improve security in South Asia.

It is also generating dangerous new threats to stability inside the country.

Read more: Nuclear war between India and Pakistan? An expert assesses the risk

The militarisation of Pakistan during the Cold War

Kashmir has been in a geopolitical limbo, with a disputed border, ever since partition in 1947. The conflicting Indian and Pakistani claims to sovereignty over Kashmir have helped generate the emergence of a Pakistani national security state in which the military became a dominant political actor.

The Pakistan military has received the lion’s share of national resources and began acquiring nuclear weapons during the 1970s. But it has also played a key role in framing Islamabad’s national security policy.

Because Pakistan was struggling to compete with India, which is much larger in terms of territory, population, economy and military power, it needed external support. The Cold War provided an opportunity for Pakistan to make an alliance with the US, which was looking to contain the Soviet Union in South Asia. In February 1954, the Eisenhower administration announced it was providing military assistance to Pakistan.

American assistance significantly strengthened the role of the military and enabled it to become the key actor in Pakistan’s foreign and security policy. The civilian bureaucracy cooperated with the Pakistani military in a pragmatic fashion to help it exercise political control during the Cold War.

The Pakistani judiciary provided legal justifications for military rule when required. Consequently, the Pakistani military ruled the country directly for 24 years from 1947 to 1988. During this period the parliamentary system was undermined and a “controlled democracy” became the norm.

Read more: India, Pakistan and the changing rules of engagement: here’s what you need to know

Growing post-Cold War threats

The Pakistani military also used its political and administrative autonomy to establish its own commercial ventures. This included road building, real estate, cement factories and private banks. By establishing its own version of a military industrial complex, the Pakistani military assumed a dominant position in the country’s national security policies.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) emerged during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s as a second key player. Civilian political parties or leaders in Pakistan were effectively constrained in national security decision-making by a military-led coalition that encompassed intelligence agencies, the civil bureaucracy and the judiciary.

The end of the Cold War did little to diminish Pakistan’s fixation with the Kashmir conflict. Its intense rivalry with India continued in South Asia, including in war-torn Afghanistan. But the post-Cold War era changed the strategic equation.

First, India embarked on a successful process of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. This significantly widened the wealth gap between a rising India and a desperately poor Pakistan.

Second, the US no longer needed Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in the late 1980s and drastically reduced its military support for Islamabad.

But the Pakistani national security state showed little willingness to adapt to the realities of a transformed strategic environment. Islamabad persisted with its involvement in proxy wars in Kashmir. It supported militant Islamist forces opposing the Indian presence and, in Afghanistan, it supported Taliban militants in a bid to counter Indian influence in that country.

In the post-Cold War context, Pakistan’s stance on national security has largely failed to balance India’s preponderance and generated significant new internal security threats from factions of Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) and other militant groups.

Read more: How to end Afghanistan war as longest conflict moves towards fragile peace

The war on terror and Pakistan’s dangerous double game

The 9/11 attacks helped restore Pakistan’s position as a key strategic partner of America in Washington’s war on terror. But the country’s national security state continued to pursue its anti-Indian agenda in Kashmir and Afghanistan, while ostensibly cooperating with US administrations in hunting down al-Qaeda terrorists in South Asia.

Osama bin Laden was eventually killed at a hideout inside Pakistan in May 2011, not far from a major Pakistani army base. This double game not only frustrated Washington, it also led to dangerous blowback at home.

Since the US-led war on terror, Pakistan’s internal security has been increasingly threatened by the activities of Taliban militants and the influx of al-Qaeda operatives into the country from neighbouring Afghanistan.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has experienced a gradual shift to more democratic processes. Nevertheless, the military has continued to play a dominant role in the making of foreign and security policy.

Today, Pakistan is a country in desperate need of peace and stability. But unless Pakistan’s national security state is reformed and brought under full civilian control, it is difficult to see how the country can reverse an ominous pattern of domestic instability and economic decline.

– ref. How the dangerous evolution of Pakistan’s national security state threatens domestic stability – http://theconversation.com/how-the-dangerous-evolution-of-pakistans-national-security-state-threatens-domestic-stability-116886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Moore, PhD Candidate, Melbourne School of Design, Monash University

Private enterprise has shaped the skylines of Australia’s cities, and the names of their highest towers reflect this. The towers of Sydney shout finance: Deutsche Bank, MLC, Ernst & Young, ANZ, Suncorp. The tall buildings of Perth read like a mining index: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside. In Melbourne, residential skyscrapers for investors make up the mass of new development, with names like Aurora, Verve, Empire and Vision – names that are timeless (and placeless).

The recent transformation of Australian city centres makes them appear unruly and wild, with their gilded towers, curtain walls compiled from a cladding company catalogue, and hybrid building types. Two-storey Victorian-era fronts abutt six-storey apartment buildings, or are completely engulfed by towers. This bricolage, paired with aspirational branding, creates the impression that property developers and financiers are the main drivers and shapers of this “anything goes” approach to urban development.

This is partly true. Market-driven development has always played a leading role in the urban settlement of Australia. But markets operate within a framework of rules that mitigate the negatives of urban development for the public good.

Governments have a key role in setting policies, rules and regulations that steer those driving urban development through the morass of planning policies, design guidelines and codes for buildings. Within these planning mechanisms, government actions should reflect the standards and expectations of the communities they represent.

So why is there such a gulf between what the centres of Australian cities look like, including their public spaces, and community expectations? Part of the problem is the lack of guidance about quality design during the planning and design phase and the consistent decision-making necessary to achieve it.

Take Melbourne, for example

Nowhere is this more obvious than some of Melbourne’s recently built tall towers.

Over the two decades up to 2015 there was a lack of strong regulation of planning schemes around taller buildings. In 1999 – when the economy was sluggish – the state government removed density controls from the city centre to allow maximum flexibility in property development.

These controls had established a maximum floor area ratio (FAR) of 12:1. This means that if a site has an area of 1,000 square metres, the construction of 12,000 square metres of floor space is allowed. It might be a building built across the whole site to 12 storeys, or a building on half the site to 24 storeys.

It is only by chance that Melbourne’s height limit was set between 265 metres and 315 metres, so that buildings did not intrude into aircraft flight paths.

The soaring heights of Melbourne’s buildings are not necessarily a major problem. The new residential towers take their share of the 100,000-plus new residents who move to Greater Melbourne each year, and these people are more likely to walk than drive. And restricting building heights does not necessarily lead to better buildings and neighbourhoods.

However, setting height limits through density controls – regulating floor areas, and apartments, in a building, block or precinct – is an important lever for achieving better design. It’s a form of regulatory “bargaining power”, permitting a few extra floors in return for better public amenity. Without it, there can be many bad outcomes, particularly at street level, as is obvious in some recently built towers.

The City of Melbourne’s 2018 report, Promoting High Quality Urban Design Outcomes in the Central City and Southbank, notes a “lack of design investment in the lower 20 metres of building facades and in particular in shopfront design” in the past. The problems include allowing parking above ground in podiums, tinted glass that renders active uses (such as common areas or commercial tenancies) invisible, and poor materials and architectural details that undermine the quality of the streetscape. This can contribute to poor visual connections between building occupiers and pedestrians, which reduces surveillance from above that would help make streets safer.

Some developments just look incredibly cheap and bland. There are flat finishes and facades, tinted glass, floor-to-ceiling glazing with repetitious frames and mullions, building services taking up much of the street frontage – despite the luxury apartment taglines used to market these towers.

Tighter controls for better design

Planning controls in the central city and Southbank area of Melbourne have become tighter since interim controls were put in place in 2015. These became permanent in 2016. Most of the podium and infill towers recently springing up in Melbourne received planning permission before then.

The new controls stipulate stronger requirements for minimum street setbacks, overshadowing, wind effects, FAR limits and tower separation. New height limits are based on density controls. However, high-rise apartment towers are still permitted to produce densities higher than those found in areas of Tokyo or Hong Kong.

These new planning controls have already led to a reduction in above-ground car park podiums, as developers aim to increase their yield in the face of restrictions on floor area ratios.

Despite these new planning provisions promoting quality design, there is still ambiguity around what good design means for Melbourne’s taller building proposals. This becomes an issue when tall buildings are subject to discretionary height limits.

The report Measurable Criteria to Assess Development Applications Exceeding Preferred Heights: Analysis and Recommendations by MGS Architects observed through several case studies across Melbourne – including in South Yarra and Collingwood – that extra height can be negotiated for projects that demonstrate a “high standard of architectural design”. But good design here may not relate to setbacks, overshadowing, provision of public space, or quality architectural details. It could be because a building is marketed as a “landmark”, “gateway” or “icon”.

But does a building’s height make it a landmark? If so, how high should it be? And should poor public amenity (such as generating traffic or overshadowing) be traded away because a building is “slender” and “sculptural”?

In the case of projects that went to the planning tribunal VCAT, the City of Melbourne report observed:

Where the tribunal was required to make a decision between an acceptable urban design outcome or project viability (such as the ability to achieve a viable tower envelope), viability and consolidation objectives prevailed on balance.

What more needs to be done?

Certainty and consistency are lacking. MGS Architects writes that this “undermines the public perception of a fair and orderly process for development approvals”.

All property developers, architects and planners desire consistency and clarity in urban planning, design and policy in order to deliver their projects – as do local communities. And despite moves in the right direction in Melbourne, there still is room to improve regulation. This includes introducing clearer density controls in relation to quality architectural design, a design review process in which designers lead decision-making and design-led envelope controls (where quantitative rules about where development is permitted are matched by qualitative rules that focus on how the building interfaces with the public realm).

However, to encourage innovation the regulations should still allow for flexibility.

The growth in Melbourne’s residential towers reinforces to the inhabitants of Australian cities the need to regulate for quality design outcomes. It acts as a warning for strategic town centres in Melbourne, and across Australia, that lack adequate quality control of their taller buildings.

Height restrictions were eased in part of Adelaide’s city centre this decade with the Capital City Development Plan Amendment. This led to a slew of new commercial, residential and hotel buildings over 100 metres proposed or under construction. Let’s hope that, with strong design guidelines, Adelaide avoids the mistakes of some of Melbourne’s recent additions.

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.

– ref. Taming wild cities: the tall buildings of Australia show why we need strong design guidelines – http://theconversation.com/taming-wild-cities-the-tall-buildings-of-australia-show-why-we-need-strong-design-guidelines-116735

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Allen, Researcher, UNSW

Are we letting too many or too few migrants into Australia?

For 2019-20 the Australian government has cut the annual net migrant intake from 190,000 to 160,000. It’s a political decision, balancing the concerns of those who want much lower or higher immigration levels for a mix of social, environmental and economic reasons.

It’s an unsatisfactory and ad-hoc balancing act. Could there be more “science” in these decisions?

We’ve sought to come up with an evidence-based method to gauge the effects of migration. To do so we’ve used the internationally accepted framework for development planning, the Sustainable Development Goals. The goals cover major aspects of economic, social and environmental well-being, from decent jobs and quality education to good health and clean water.

We investigated three population scenarios: one similar to Australia’s recent annual level of net migration (about 200,000 a year); one much lower (about 70,000 a year); and one much higher (about 300,000 a year).

What our results show, perhaps surprisingly, and more by luck than design, is that recent levels of immigration seem to be in a “goldilocks zone” that balances economic, social and environmental objectives.

Our results also suggest migration is neither the problem nor solution in many areas where Australia is off-track, from government debt to environmental action.

Balancing competing agendas

Immigration policy is Australia’s de facto population policy. With the birthrate just keeping up with deaths, it’s migration that drives population growth. It’s why in 2018 the population passed 25 million, years earlier than previously predicted.

Annual migration intake is set as part of the the annual budget cycle. The government treats it primarily as a short-term economic issue. But population growth has long-term impacts on many sectors, from health and education to infrastructure and housing. Population growth, particularly through urban expansion, increases pressures on the natural environment.

Ideally, therefore, decisions about migration numbers and population growth should synch with long-term planning at the state and local levels to avoid service shortages, urban sprawl, vehicle congestion and infrastructure shortfalls.

Read more: Solving the ‘population problem’ through policy

The question remains about how to make evidence-based policy that balances deeply divided views. Some strongly support high net migration due to the important role population growth plays in managing an ageing population. Others argue equally forcefully for reducing migration because it places a burden on infrastructure, services and the environment.

Using the sustainable development goals

To negotiate these differences, we chose the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The goals cover long-term targets in 17 major areas of economic prosperity, social justice and environmental sustainability. All member states of the UN, including Australia, have agreed to them as a shared blueprint to achieve by 2030.

Each goal area includes multiple specific targets – 169 in all. For example, Goal 11 (“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”) includes the targets of adequate, safe and affordable housing and affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems.

Countries are not required to adopt all targets, but focus on those appropriate. We chose 52 targets relevant to Australia, covering all 17 goals and ensuring a reasonable balance of economic, social and environmental priorities.

Read more: Explainer: the world’s new sustainable development goals

Using advanced modelling capabilities, we tested how achieving the targets by 2030 might be affected by different population sizes.

Overall, not a huge difference

The following chart shows our results in a single graphic. For our low-migration scenario, Australia’s population in 2030 is 27.3 million; for the moderate, 28.9 million; and for the high, 30.6 million.

Only in two goal areas – education, clean water and sanitation – do our results show Australia doing better than 85% achievement by 2030 under all three scenarios. Only in another three – health, gender equality and energy – do we do better than 50%.  

All scenarios had equal effect on eliminating poverty (Goal 1). However, the low-migration scenario did better for achieving food security and improving nutrition (Goal 2).

Perhaps surprisingly, for decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), the middle scenario scored the best.

In the centre of the chart are the overall scores of each scenario.

The high-migration scenario (39.4% progress towards all targets) is the lowest , but not by much. There is almost no difference between maintaining recent migration levels (40.5%) and significanly slashing the migration intake (40.6%).

This suggests that, on an equal balance across a broad set of competing objectives, recent historic levels may be about right.

However, these results brush over the range of trade-offs between different targets – some of which may be considered more important than others.

Compared against the low scenario, for example, the high scenario results in an estimated 1.7 million extra vehicles on the roads, increased water consumption (~600 million m3), greater urban sprawl (~60,000 ha), and higher greenhouse gas emissions (~15 million tons CO2-equivalent).

Poor performance in many areas

What is perhaps most striking is that, regardless of the population scenario, Australia isn’t tracking well on most measures of sustainable development. Other studies have concluded the same.

As already noted, Australia is doing well on health, education and water quality. But it’s performing poorly on climate action (Goal 13) and responsible consumption (Goal 12), to name just two.

Read more: Australia falls further in rankings on progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals

Broadly accepted frameworks to measure progress and weigh policy decisions in contested areas is something we lack across the policy board.

Finding new drivers of economic growth and job creation, addressing infrastructure needs, and tackling climate change are just some of the complex challenges Australia faces.

Ad-hoc, short-term approaches to addressing them are unlikely to often deliver optimal outcomes. Combining clear targets, a long-term perspective and advances in modelling might help.

– ref. If you think less immigration will solve Australia’s problems, you’re wrong; but neither will more – http://theconversation.com/if-you-think-less-immigration-will-solve-australias-problems-youre-wrong-but-neither-will-more-115136

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

Bill Shorten has said he likes doing the family shopping, nevertheless Tuesday’s front page picture in The Australian did capture the savagery of changing political fortunes. There was Shorten, clutching a packet of Rice Bubbles, going through his gate.

While he was coping with a massive let down, a shell-shocked Labor party was moving with lightning speed to its post-Shorten era.

Not wanting Anthony Albanese, who had stalked him, as his successor, Shorten encouraged Tanya Plibersek, then Chris Bowen, to stand for leader. Plibersek quickly found she lacked the numbers and pulled back; Bowen on Tuesday declared he’d run but by Wednesday had decided that would be futile.

Colleagues of Shorten, who would have been crowding close to him if the result had been different, now resented any whiff of interference – a resentment no doubt intensified by the fact Shorten hadn’t just been defeated but had lost in face of an overwhelming expectation of victory.

Jim Chalmers held out until Thursday, wondering if the call of “generational change” could get the numbers. He concluded it couldn’t.

So finally Albanese, so long the bridesmaid, will get the prize. If you can call leader of the opposition, after a rout, a prize.

But maybe you can. After all, many thought Scott Morrison inherited a poisoned chalice last August.

Read more: Why the 2019 election was more like 2004 than 1993 – and Labor has some reason to hope

The Morrison government’s majority will be small – the next election remains quite winnable for Labor. The outcome in 2022 will be determined by the comparative performances of Morrison and Albanese, and their teams.

We can expect (on the balance of probabilities) that these two will survive to that election. Rule changes in both parties bring more stability to the leadership (although there’s never absolute certainty – before “Super Saturday” there was speculation that if things went badly Albanese was ready to make a challenge).

In style, there are similarities between Morrison and Albanese – perhaps summed up in their enthusiastic self-identification with their respective nicknames, “ScoMo” and “Albo”. They’re both knockabout, at ease mixing with people, fanatical about rugby league. When Albanese did the background briefings for the media after caucus meetings, more often than not these sessions started with a reference to the Rabbitohs’ latest good or bad news.

Albanese comes to the leadership with the advantage of having positioned himself somewhat to the side during the Shorten years. So he is not associated with the crafting of controversial election policies, such as the franking credits crackdown, although of course he campaigned for them.

He made his independence felt in small as well as bigger ways – his press releases, for example, never went through the centralised channel of the leader’s office, as did those of other shadow ministers. Albanese also has other advantages – not least that he doesn’t have Shorten’s closeness to the militant CFMMEU.

There is one contrast between Morrison and Albanese that’s potentially important. During his whole political career Morrison has been the ultimate pragmatist, indeed a chameleon. Albanese, from Labor’s left, in the past was quite militantly ideological, although the experience of government and later saw him shift to a more centrist, flexible position. Last year, in a major speech, he stressed the need for Labor to have a good relationship with business.

Read more: Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation

However close the electoral margin and whatever his personal strengths, preparing Labor for its next run at government won’t be easy.

Current policies will have to be overhauled and in some cases discarded, unlike after the 2016 election when basically they were added to.

Labor needs to better tune into middle suburbia, which proved less committed on issues such as climate change and more worried about economic management than the opposition had expected. Yet it can’t afford to turn its back on the issues that concern its more progressive supporters. It will be a tricky balancing act.

If he’s wise, Albanese will resist media demands that the ALP has a policy on everything instantly. It can afford to glide for a while, listening, thinking, weighing options. We all praised Shorten for Labor’s long game approach, but Morrison showed how the sprint can work. Albanese needs something in between.

Meanwhile Albanese is signalling that Labor may put up a fight on the government’s tax cuts legislation, which will be the first item when the new parliament meets.

There’s agreement over the immediate cuts but the Coalition wants those scheduled for years on to be passed at the same time. If the Senate refuses, the government will need to give way – politically, it can’t afford to do anything else. It has already had to concede it won’t meet its promised timetable for delivering this relief from July 1, because parliament is not able to meet before then.

Read more: After Clive Palmer’s $60 million campaign, limits on political advertising are more important than ever

Among the many challenges confronting Albanese will be where he takes Labor policy on climate change, with the debate already starting with comments from environment spokesman Tony Burke.

For some, the election was to be much about climate – at least as much, perhaps, as the 2007 election was. In fact, in terms of results, on that issue it’s been more of a setback than a positive.

The climate debate may have helped Zali Steggall dislodge Tony Abbott in Warringah, but arguably Abbott’s own behaviour – his defiance of the electorate on same-sex marriage, his destructive role in the Liberal party – was what really killed him.

Activists threw everything at the climate issue, but much of the effort turned out counter-productive.

Labor, trying to walk both sides of the street on Adani and internally divided over that controversial project, lost votes in the Queensland mining areas. The anti-Adani convoy, led by Bob Brown from the south to the north of the country, backfired in Queensland.

To cap things off, after Saturday’s result Queensland Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who faces an election next year, immediately demanded the Adani approval process be put on skates.

Adani is likely, it seems, to get an early go-ahead, which will deeply disappoint many activists. But for the new Labor leader, that could be a relief, taking an awkward issue off the federal Labor agenda.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Shocked Labor moves on – but to what policy destination? – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-shocked-labor-moves-on-but-to-what-policy-destination-117698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amitabh Mattoo, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of Melbourne

The resounding victory of the Bharitya Janata Party (BJP) coalition in India’s federal election represents a key marker in the modern history of India. It was the most extensive and probably most expensive election campaign in the country’s history, with 900 million voters casting their votes in one million polling stations over 38 days. Some 83 million Indians were first-time voters, with 15 million of them aged 18 and 19.

The great Indian festival of democracy – as the elections are often called – is seen as the most challenging exercise in making all Indians feel they have a say in the running of the government.

And the return of Narendra Modi as prime minister is both an opportunity and challenge for the country.

Read more: India election 2019: millions of Indian youth are underemployed and going to the polls

The 2019 parliamentary elections were the most “presidential” since the era of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi four decades ago, with a focus more on the personality of one leader (and his track record) than the candidates standing for office and their respective parties.

I travelled across India to the hustings in as many as 50 parliamentary constituencies and witnessed firsthand the “Modi phenomenon.” In constituency after constituency, BJP candidates evoked Modi’s name and displayed his image every opportunity they could.

Modi’s larger-than-life presence

Modi was projected as the only leader who would revive the great Indian civilization and save the country from the powerful elites and corrupt politicians who made up what the BJP deemed the “anti-national” opposition.

At times in the campaign, his personality assumed almost mythological proportions. The defining image was of the Indian leader shedding his regal robes and retreating to a bare cave in the Himalayas, close to one of the important centres of Hindu pilgrimage, where he meditated in a monastic saffron shawl. This reinforced his popular image as a puritanical and incorruptible leader whose first choice in life was to be a monk.

In contrast to this imagery, the opposition parties ran lazy, tired campaigns that failed to have much impact.

The Congress Party, the country’s once-dominant political party, did not improve much on its devastating results from the 2014 election. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the sister of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, tried hard to mobilise voters with rousing speeches and campaign events, but these were just brief moments in the longest campaign in Indian electoral history.

The Congress Party’s traditional hubris showed little signs of abating as it abandoned any chance of building potentially winning coalitions that could have countered the Modi juggernaut.

The only real resistance to the BJP-led coalition came from India’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh, where two strong regional parties suspended their traditional rivalry to establish an alliance.

Read more: Modi’s polarising populism makes a fiction of a secular, democratic India

The Modi campaign succeeded not just in appealing to nostalgia for India’s greatness or in the ultra-nationalism that peaked after airstrikes against what India viewed as terrorist camps in Pakistan in February. It was actual delivery on the ground.

The social welfare schemes built around providing lavatories, cooking gas and direct cash transfers to India’s poorest have had tremendous impact across the country. Surprisingly, even the more woolly-headed schemes of the Modi government, such as his chaotic demonetisation decision in 2016 and a poorly implemented introduction of GST, were perceived by many voters as policies that were well-intentioned, but badly executed by the toxic bureaucracy seeking to undermine Modi.

In part due to these social welfare schemes, the BJP expanded its presence in states where it has traditionally had little previous success, including Bengal, Odisha and many parts of southern India.

What Modi’s win means for India

So, what can Indians expect from a BJP-led government for the next five years? Based on what we have seen since 2014, the government will be centralised and driven primarily from Modi’s office. Fortunately, the messiness of Indian democracy and the strengths of the constitution will prevent the country from leaning towards authoritarianism, so that should not be a concern.

The previous Modi government has shown it was possible to take a pragmatic approach to social and economic policies.

There are many key challenges that will require a fine balancing act. These include a further liberalising of the economy, with the structural changes needed to make it easier to do business in India and attract more foreign investment. Creating jobs and skills training for the vast numbers of young Indians remains a formidable challenge, as does India’s struggling agrarian sector, which has reached a crisis point.

Read more: Narendra Modi’s performance on the Indian economy – five key policies assessed

It remains to be seen if the activism of the BJP’s rank-and-file members, as well as the party’s supporters in the Hindu nationalist movement, can be managed without compromising on key policies that India needs for social cohesion and to continue growing the economy. It will also fall to Modi to reassure ethnic and religious minorities – many of whom have fallen victim to Hindu mob attacks – that they are part of an inclusive vision for the country.

In terms of foreign policy, Modi has demonstrated deftness in New Delhi’s relations with powers like China and the US, as well as other countries in the region. There are sure to be new challenges with Pakistan, in particular, as well as an increasingly belligerent China, but Modi has already shown he has a unique ability to build a personal rapport with other leaders.

– ref. Narendra Modi has won the largest election in the world. What will this mean for India? – http://theconversation.com/narendra-modi-has-won-the-largest-election-in-the-world-what-will-this-mean-for-india-116598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Burne, Lecturer, BFA Screenwriting, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne

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

The rule of three is a commonly held one for writers. It’s used for comedy (two relatively normal things are often followed by a third twist or stereotype), for rhythm, and it’s widely accepted that people remember things more clearly when listed in threes. Think of The Three Little Pigs, The Three Musketeers or Slip Slop Slap.

This rule of threes is also embedded deeply within television screenwriting. Writing episodic TV, scriptwriters traditionally work from a principle of having three stories woven together through an episode. These are known as the A story, the B story and the C story.

Newly launched in 2019, and already well received, the ABC’s half-hour series, The Heights, uses this threefold technique skilfully to establish characters and story world. By breaking down the pilot episode we can see how the three stories run through it.

Read more: The Heights – at last, a credible Australian working-class soap

A, B and C stories

The A story in TV drives the action, prompting the viewer to ask “What’s going to happen?” or “Who did it?”. The B storyline is typically more character-driven, or emotion-driven. The C story could be lighter, perhaps comedic, depending on the show.

The A story is the main thread of the episode, and will generally have the most plot points (or beats or scenes). The B story has fewer story beats per episode; the C story fewer still.

Plotting an episode involves working out the beats for each storyline, then weaving them together for satisfying narrative build, scene design and character development.

Wherever storylines cross over, or dramatically contrast or impact on one another, this will be carefully identified and structured to give the audience the strongest possible dramatic or comic experience.

In The Heights, The A story is that of an abandoned baby. The B story follows who will inherit the local pub. The C story explores a teenage boy’s choice about which parent to live with.

Other characters’ stories are also seeded in to be developed in later episodes – Claudia and Sabine’s arrival in town, Pav’s obtaining pain relief through marijuana, and Sully and Ash’s relationship – but these only have a single beat (within one scene).

Let’s take a look at the pilot episode, scene by scene, to uncover more about this ABC structure.

Breaking down the ABC structure

The opening sequence sets up the world, and many of the characters, utilising soccer, a barbecue, and the fire alarm. The fire alarm pays off a couple of scenes later as having been
a deliberate part of a plan to abandon the baby. (A story).

Hazel is set up as hoping to inherit the pub from her father, Bill, who has just died. It is her “lottery ticket”. (B story).

At the end of this sequence, Pav finds an abandoned baby in the garden. Pav rushes the baby to the hospital. Police search for clues as to the baby’s identity. (A story).

This scene also reveals that Pav is a retired, injured cop. He has to climb the stairs and .has leg pain, so he self-medicates with marijuana. His kids and ex-wife are established for the audience. Mich, his son, wants to stay with Pav rather than Leona, his mother. (C story).

This scene also cleverly keeps the A-story alive by featuring a news report of the abandoned baby – this technique is used across many scenes of the episode. So, it’s not necessarily new information for the A-story – though it might be – but is functioning to tie the characters and community together for the audience, and also give the characters information.

Claudia and Anna meet while nursing the abandoned baby. This scene also functions to further develop the world and interlink the characters through a common workplace. (A story). Claudia is home to her unpacked boxes and her daughter, Sabine, who is starting at the local high school the next day.

Hazel is opening the pub and a mystery man watches her. He is revealed to be her estranged son, Ryan, and the tension between them is established due to Ryan having stolen money from the pub and been gone 12 years. (B story). Also, his sister Shannon is established as having been gone for some weeks. Shannon will be revealed to be important to the A-story.

The grocery store is established, with its proprietor, Iris, her son Sully and his friend, Ash. Pav and Leona meet there and talk in the street about their kids. (C story).

At the river, Ryan and Anna meet up. A possible rekindled romance is seeded, and the pub inheritance discussed. (B story). Shannon’s absence is mentioned.

At the beach, Pav hangs out with his kids. They discuss trying to find the mother of the baby, and also Mich’s living arrangements. (A,C stories).

Hazel plans to sell the pub and retire, and Ryan pays back the money. (B, A stories).

Clues to the baby’s mother are discussed by Pav and Max. A girl is watching Claudia nurse the baby. Claudia gives chase. (A story).

Bill’s wake is being held, and Hazel and Ryan begin to reconcile, before a lawyer arrives and tells Hazel that Bill left the pub in equal shares to Hazel, Ryan and Shannon. Hazel is furious. Then Shannon arrives and collapses. There is a big reveal – Shannon is the baby’s mother. (B,A stories).

Establishing themes

As this breakdown shows, the greatest number of story beats revolve around the episode’s A story: the abandoned baby. The mystery is solved by the end, the story having served its dramatic function in driving it while simultaneously connecting the characters and establishing the show’s world and recurring themes, namely parenting and family.

The B story has the next highest number of story beats. It has left major characters – Hazel and Ryan – with a dramatic legacy to be played out in future episodes (owning and running the pub). These estranged family members are now tied together in day-to-day responsibility.

The C story has the fewest number of beats, and begins another ongoing story about family and responsibility. It is less dramatic and immediate than the A and B stories, but has plenty of potential for emotional, long-term narrative – and future drama.

– ref. Inside the story: the ABC of screenwriting as demonstrated by ABC’s The Heights – http://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-the-abc-of-screenwriting-as-demonstrated-by-abcs-the-heights-115854