Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgia Ward-Fear, Post doctoral fellow and Conservation Ecologist , University of Sydney

It’s a common refrain – western ecologists should work closely with indigenous peoples, who have a unique knowledge of the ecosystems in their traditional lands.

But the rhetoric is strong on passion and weak on evidence.

Now, a project in the remote Kimberley area of northwestern Australia provides hard evidence that collaborating with indigenous rangers can change the outcome of science from failure to success.

Read more: We’ve cracked the cane toad genome, and that could help put the brakes on its invasion

Fighting a toxic invader

This research had a simple but ambitious aim: to develop new ways to save at-risk predators such as lizards and quolls from the devastating impacts of invasive cane toads.

Cane toads are invasive and highly toxic to Australia’s apex predators. David Nelson

All across tropical Australia, the arrival of these gigantic alien toads has caused massive die-offs among meat-eating animals such as yellow-spotted monitors (large lizards in the varanid group) and quolls (meat-eating marsupials). Mistaking the new arrivals for edible frogs, animals that try to eat them are fatally poisoned by the toad’s powerful toxins.

Steep population declines in these predators ripple out through entire ecosystems.

But we can change that outcome. We expose predators to a small cane toad, big enough to make them ill but not to kill them. The predators learn fast, and ignore the larger (deadly) toads that arrive in their habitats a few weeks or months later. As a result, our trained predators survive, whereas their untrained siblings die.

Read more: What is a waterless barrier and how could it slow cane toads?

Conservation ‘on Country’

But it’s not easy science. The site is remote and the climate is harsh.

We and our collaborators, the Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, decided at the outset that we needed to work closely with the Indigenous Traditional Owners of the east Kimberley – the Balanggarra people.

So as we cruised across the floodplain on quad bikes looking for goannas, each team consisted of a scientist (university-educated, and experienced in wildlife research) and a Balanggarra Indigenous ranger.

Although our study species is huge – a male yellow-spotted monitor can grow to more than 1.7 metres in length and weigh more than 6kg – the animals are well-camouflaged and difficult to find.

Over an 18-month study, we caught and radio-tracked more than 80 monitors, taught some of them not to eat toads, and then watched with trepidation as the cane toad invasion arrived.

Read more: Yes, you heard right: more cane toads really can help us fight cane toads

Excitingly, the training worked. Half of our trained lizards were still alive by the end of the study, whereas all of the untrained lizards died soon after toads arrived.

That positive result has encouraged a consortium of scientists, government authorities, conservation groups, landowners and local businesses to implement aversion training on a massive scale (see www.canetoadcoalition.com), with support from the Australian Research Council.

A yellow-spotted monitor fitted with a radio transmitter in our study. This medium-sized male became CTA-trained and lived for the entirety of the study in high densities of cane toads. Georgia Ward-Fear, University of Sydney

Read more: Teaching reptiles to avoid cane toads earns top honour in PM’s science prizes

Cross-cultural collaboration key to success

But there’s a twist to the tale, a vindication of our decision to make the project truly collaborative.

When we looked in detail at our data, we realised that the monitor lizards found by Indigenous rangers were different to those found by western scientists. The rangers found shyer lizards, often further away from us when sighted, motionless, and in heavy cover where they were very difficult to see.

Gregory Johnson, Balanggarra Elder and Ranger. Georgia Ward-Fear

We don’t know how much the extraordinary ability of the rangers to spot those well-concealed lizards was due to genetics or experience – but there’s no doubt they were superb at finding lizards that the scientists simply didn’t notice.

And reflecting the distinctive “personalities” of those ranger-located lizards, they were the ones that benefited the most from aversion training. Taking a cautious approach to life, a nasty illness after eating a small toad was enough to make them swear off toads thereafter.

In contrast, most of the lizards found by scientists were bold creatures. They learned quickly, but when a potential meal hopped across the floodplain a few months later, the goanna seized it before recalling its previous experience. And even holding a toad briefly in the mouth can be fatal.

Comparisons of conditions under which lizards were initially sighted in the field by scientists and Indigenous rangers (a) proximity to lizards in metres (b) density of ground-cover vegetation (>30cm high) surrounding the lizard (c) intensity of light directly on lizard (light or shade) (d) whether the lizard was stationary or moving (i.e. walking or running). Sighting was considered more difficult if lizards were further away, in more dense vegetation, in shade, and stationary. Georgia Ward-Fear, University of Sydney

As a result of the intersection between indigenous abilities and lizard personalities, the overall success of our project increased as a result of our multicultural team.

If we had just used the conventional model – university researchers doing all of the work, indigenous people asked for permission but playing only a minor role – our project could have failed, and the major conservation initiative currently underway may have died an early death.

So our study, now published in Conservation Letters, provides an unusual insight – backed up by evidence.

Moving beyond lip service, and genuinely involving indigenous Traditional Owners in conservation research, can make all the difference in the world.

Georgia Ward-Fear (holding a yellow-spotted monitor) with Balanggarra Rangers Herbert and Wesley Alberts. David Pearson, WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions

This research was published in collaboration with James ‘Birdy’ Birch and his team of Balanggarra rangers in the eastern Kimberley.

– ref. How indigenous expertise improves science: the curious case of shy lizards and deadly cane toads – http://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-expertise-improves-science-the-curious-case-of-shy-lizards-and-deadly-cane-toads-113997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marion Terrill, Transport and Cities Program Director, Grattan Institute

This article is part of a series examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.

Election season means transport season: just as the recent New South Wales and Victorian elections gave us massive new transport promises, so too is the federal government relying on the enduring popularity of new roads and rail. But look beyond the rhetoric and the past three years have been largely business as usual. That leaves plenty of room for the next government, of whatever colour, to take a fresh look at how transport promises are made – and plenty of room to improve.

Last week’s federal budget committed to transport expenditure of A$7.4 billion in 2019-20, and A$33 billion over the four-year forward estimates period.

Read more: Budget transport spending is about par for the course, but the pattern is unusual

The government claims it’s spending a record A$100 billion over a decade. Yet the opposition claims: “Across the four years of this budget, Commonwealth investment in infrastructure actually falls, from A$8 billion to A$4.5 billion.” And Infrastructure Partnerships Australia says recent budgets are down on the long-term average by about A$11 billion over the forward estimates.

How much is the government actually spending?

With such polarised views, who are we to believe?

In reality, the expenditure for 2019-20 is absolutely normal. At 0.37% of GDP, it’s close to the midpoint of spending on transport under treasurers Scott Morrison, Joe Hockey and Wayne Swan. In each of the past ten budgets, annual transport spending in the year following the budget has been 0.26-0.53% of GDP.

What is different is the extent of promises that lie beyond the forward estimates period. The move to a ten-year pipeline of promises might be fine in theory, but an interested elector can rely only on what’s in the budget papers. And from that they would conclude there’s nothing unusual to see here.

Read more: $500m for station car parks? Other transport solutions could do much more for the money

A new enthusiasm for equity investments

All these figures concern grants to state governments, which are responsible for transport networks. But, in addition to these grants, the federal government has developed an enthusiasm for funding projects “off-budget”. In the past two years, the Commonwealth made equity investments of A$9.3 billion in Inland Rail and A$5.3 billion in Western Sydney Airport.

The Charter of Budget Honesty states that an investment can be treated as an off-budget equity injection only if the government has a “reasonable expectation” of recovering the investment. In other words, the entity must be expected to make a positive return over time.

But this gives governments a lot of latitude. A positive rate of return is not the same as a commercial one. And there seems little likelihood of commercial returns in either case.

For Inland Rail, it’s no secret that the Australian Rail Track Corporation will never be asked to repay the A$9.3 billion, even when project revenues start to flow in 2025. Let’s hope the finance minister is right to insist there’s no prospect the project will need even more taxpayer support, despite the risks identified in the budget papers themselves and by the Commonwealth Auditor-General. With no expectation of repayment, there is no practical difference between this “equity investment” and a grant.

The Morrison government has invested A$5.3 billion in Western Sydney Airport while ensuring any write-down will never show up in the budget bottom line. Mick Tsikas/AAP

For Western Sydney Airport, the government decided to build the airport itself after Sydney Airport Corporation declined its right to build it. The airport operator said the offer as it stood was “deeply uneconomic”. It cited operational, traffic, financial and political risks.

So it’s hard to share the confidence of the then treasurer (and now prime minister), Scott Morrison, when he said the new airport will “generate an income stream that’s going to pay for itself”.

In both cases, if a future government ends up writing down the fair value of these assets, this will appear on the balance sheet as a change to “other economic flows”. It won’t be separately identified. Nor will the write-down show up in the underlying cash balance figure that the media spotlight highlights on budget night.

The unavoidable conclusion is that pushing transport spending off-budget seriously diminishes not only the discipline that comes from competing for funds through the budget process, but also transparency in how public money is being spent.

Read more: A closer look at business cases raises questions about ‘priority’ national infrastructure projects

A foray into road pricing is stillborn

In November 2016 the government took an unusually bold step: it committed to holding an inquiry into road-user charging. The then minister for urban infrastructure, Paul Fletcher, was in good company. His commitment to commission a review led by an eminent Australian was in response to a 2016 recommendation from Infrastructure Australia, which invoked a similar recommendation in the 2015 Harper Review of competition policy, which in turn referred to a 2014 Productivity Commission recommendation. And the backdrop to all these reports was a recommendation of the 2010 Henry Tax Review.

But time passed and no eminent person was appointed. More time passed, ministers moved portfolio, and no eminent person was appointed. Finally, in October 2018, current minister Michael McCormack declined to commit to the inquiry.

An inquiry is no more than an inquiry, but a non-inquiry is a commitment to the status quo. Roads funding and roads investment are serious topics, and many commentators have argued that they are the laggards of regulatory reform.

A change to how road use is funded could significantly alter which roads are funded, what maintenance is done, and how networks are managed. It appears to have been all too much for this government. This task awaits a future government.

Read more: Delay in changing direction on how we tax drivers will cost us all

Labor’s promises on proper assessment of projects and business cases before investment decisions are made are welcome. Lukas Coch/AAP

The alternative government’s most important promises aren’t the sexy ones about electric vehicles. They are Labor’s promises that Infrastructure Australia should assess projects before the decision to invest, and to release assessed business cases. These promises may sound worthy and a little dull, but in reality they are big and welcome commitments.

Less obvious is how to square them with federal Labor’s promise to advance high-speed rail, or the promise to work with the Victorian premier “to deliver the visionary Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop”. Both of these are massively expensive projects with nothing approaching an assessed and publicly available business case.

It would be a significant improvement if whichever party wins government next month were to commit to, and follow through on, careful assessment of transport gaps and problems, consideration of the various feasible solutions, and rigorous evaluation of the preferred approach. And it’s not enough just to do this; it should be done in public.

Let’s hope.

Read more: Missing evidence base for big calls on infrastructure costs us all

– ref. Business-as-usual record on transport leaves next government plenty of room to improve – http://theconversation.com/business-as-usual-record-on-transport-leaves-next-government-plenty-of-room-to-improve-113571

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Meakins, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, The University of Queensland

When you rifle around in your purse for some change soon, you might be lucky enough to pull out a new 50 cent coin, launched today by the Royal Australian Mint to celebrate the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

The coin, developed in consultation with Indigenous language custodian groups and designed by the Mint’s Aleksandra Stokic, features 14 different words for “money” from Australian Indigenous languages. But where do these words come from?

Read more: The state of Australia’s Indigenous languages – and how we can help people speak them more often

Old words for new things

Money, or an object which abstractly represented the value of goods and services, did not exist in Australia before European colonisation. Trade occurred, but it was between items deemed to be of similar worth, for example, pearl shell, quartz, food or songs. With the entry of money into the Indigenous economy, new words were needed to refer to coins and later, notes.

Most Indigenous words for money come from words for “stone”, “rock” or “pebble”, no doubt in reference to the size and shape of coins. On the new 50 cent coin, you’ll find words for “stone” from across Australia:

Kaytetye, spoken in Central Australia, and Kaurna, the language of Adelaide, go against the trend by extending the words ngkweltye and pirrki (which both mean “piece”), to also mean “money”.

Gathang, from the Central New South Wales coast, uses dhinggarr “grey”, perhaps due to the colour of most coins, and walang “head”, presumably in reference to the monarch’s head on the coin. Wiradjuri, from the same area, also uses walang, but in this case it means “stone”.

Origin of the Indigenous words for ‘money’ on the new 50 cent coin. Felicity Meakins and Brenda Thornley

Other words for ‘money’ from Indigenous languages

The diversity of Indigenous words for money on the new coin is an attempt to reflect the linguistic tapestry of Australia, a nation of over 300 languages and many more dialects. However, the words on the coin are just a small sample of Indigenous terms for money.

Some languages differentiate between coins and paper money. Murrinh-patha, spoken in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory, uses palyirr “stone” for coins and we “paperbark” to mean notes.

Other languages have words that vary by denomination. Alyawarr, spoken just north of Alice Springs, uses aherr-angketyarr “lots of kangaroos” to refer to the A$1 coin, and rnter-rnter “red” in reference to $20 notes.

Alyawarr people also say kwert-apeny “like smoke” for $100 notes. This is perhaps confusing at first, until you recall the original light blue and grey $100 note (1984-1996) depicting Sir Douglas Mawson.

Read more: Some Australian Indigenous languages you should know

Borrowed words for money

In some cases, terms for money have been borrowed from other languages. The English word “money” has been given a local flavour by different languages, for example: mani/moni (Kriol) and maniyi or tala (Warlpiri).

Another borrowing comes from Australia’s close neighbours. The legacy of 18th century Macassan traders from present-day Indonesia remains in words for “money” originally derived from rupiah (Indonesia’s word for currency). These include rrupiya (Mawng, Burarra, Djinang) and wurrupiya (Tiwi). (And note that Tiwi also uses wurrukwati “mussel shell” for “money”).

Probably the most innovative borrowing for money, still used throughout south-western Queensland, is banggu. The word derives from bank and –gu, the latter being used to express ownership. So banggu literally means “of the bank”, and perhaps emerged during the period in Queensland history when the state government was withholding wages from Indigenous people. These stolen wages are now thought to be worth as much as A$500 million in banggu.

Indigenous representation on Australian currency

Indigenous Australians have not always been well represented on Australian currency. Take the bark painting by David Malangi on the back of the old $1 note released in 1966, which was used without consent or acknowledgement, or the first polymer $10 note, released in 1988, which featured an anonymous Indigenous man painted up for ceremony.

Contrast this to 1995, when the Indigenous man on the $50 note was named as the first published Indigenous author, Ngarrindjeri writer David Unaipon, or 2017 when a commemorative 50 cent coin was designed by Boneta-Marie Mabo and released for National Reconciliation Week.

The use of multiple words for money on the new coin challenges the myth of a single Australian language. It also represents a shift to naming and individuation: from depicting Australian Indigenous people and their languages as a single group, to recognising the diversity of these groups and their languages.

– ref. The 14 Indigenous words for money on our new 50 cent coin – http://theconversation.com/the-14-indigenous-words-for-money-on-our-new-50-cent-coin-113110

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Letheren, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

We have access to plenty of technology that can serve us by automating more of our daily lives, doing everything from adjusting the temperature of our homes to (eventually) putting groceries in our fridges.

But do we want these advancements? And – importantly – do we trust them?

Our research, published earlier this year in the European Journal of Marketing, looked at the roles technology plays in Australian homes. We found three main ways people assign control to, and trust in, their technology.

Read more: One reason people install smart home tech is to show off to their friends

Most people still want some level of control. That’s an important message to developers if they want to keep increasing the uptake of smart home technology, yet to reach 25% penetration in Australia.

How smart do we want a home?

Smart homes are modern homes that have appliances or electronic devices that can be controlled remotely by the owner. Examples include lights controlled via apps, smart locks and security systems, and even smart coffee machines that remember your brew of choice and waking time.

But we still don’t understand consumer interactions with these technologies, and to speed up their adoption we need to know they type of value they can offer.

We conducted a set of studies in conjunction with CitySmart and a group of distributors, and we asked people about their smart technology preferences in the context of electricity management (managing appliances and utility plans).

We conducted 45 household interviews involving 116 people across Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, and Tasmania. Then we surveyed 1,345 Australian households. The interviews uncovered and explored the social roles assigned to technologies, while the survey allowed us to collect additional information and find out how the broader Australian population felt about these technology types.

We found households attribute social roles and rules to smart home technologies. This makes sense: the study of anthropomorphism tells us we tend to humanise things we want to understand. We humanise in order to trust (remember Clippy, the Microsoft paperclip with whom we all had a love-hate relationship?).

These social roles and rules determine whether (or how) households will adopt the technologies.

Tech plays three roles

Most people want technology to serve them (95.6% of interviewees, about 19 out of 20). Those who didn’t want any technology were classified as “resisters” and made up less than 5% of the respondents.

We found the role that technology can play in households tended to fall into one of three categories, the intern, the assistant and the manager:

• the intern (passive technology)
  Technology exists to bring me information, but shouldn’t be making any decisions on its own. Real-life example: Switch your Thinking provides an SMS-based tip service. This mode of use was preferred in 22-35% of households.

• the assistant (interactive technology)
  Technology should not only bring me information, but add value by helping me make decisions or interact. Real-life example: Homesmart from Ergon provides useful data to support consumers in their decisions; including remotely controlling appliances or monitoring electricity budget. This mode of use was preferred in 41-51% of households.

• the manager (proactive technology)
  Technology should analyse information and make decisions itself, in order to make my life more efficient. Real-life example: Tibber, which learns your home’s electricity-usage pattern and helps you make adjustments. This mode of use was preferred in 22-24% of households.

Who’s the boss?

According to our study, while smart technology roles can change, the customer always remains the CEO. As CEO, they determine whether full control is retained or delegated to the technology.

For example, while two consumers might install a set of smart lights, one may engage by directly controlling lights via the app, while the other delegates this to the app – allowing it to choose based on sunset times when lights should be on.

Roles for consumer and smart technology – the consumer always remains the CEO, but technology can be viewed as an intern, assistant, or manager. Natalie Sketcher, Visual Designer

Notably, time pressure was evident as justification for each of the three options. Passive technology saved time by not wasting it on fiddling with smart tech. Interactive technology gave information and controlled interactions for busy families. Proactive technology relieved overwhelmed households from managing their own electricity.

All households had clear motivation for their choices.

Households that chose passive technology were motivated by simplicity, cost-effectiveness and privacy concerns. One study participant in this group said:

Less hassle. Don’t like tech controlling my life.

Households prioritising interactive technology were looking for a balance of convenience and control, technology that provides:

A good support but allows me to maintain overall control and decision-making.

Households keen on proactive technology wanted set and forget abilities to allow the household to focus on the more important things in life. They sought:

Having the process looked after and managed for us as we don’t have the time to do it ourselves.

This raises the question: why did we see such differences in household preference?

Trust in tech

According to our research, this comes down to the relationship between trust, risk, and the need for control. It’s just that these motivations that are expressed differently in different households.

While one household sees delegating their choices as a safe bet (that is, trusting the technology to save them from the risk of electricity over-spend), another would see retaining all choices as the true expression of being in control (that is, believing humans should be trusted with decisions, with technology providing input only when asked).

Read more: Smart speakers are everywhere — and they’re listening to more than you think

This is not unusual, nor is this the first study to find the importance of our sense of trust and risk in making technology decisions.

It’s not that consumers don’t want advancements to serve them – they do – but this working relationship requires clear roles and ground rules. Only then can there be trust.

For smart home technology developers, the message is clear: households will continue to expect control and customisation features so that the technology serves them – either as an intern, an assistant, or a manager – while they remain the CEO.

–

If you’re interested to discover your working relationship with technology, complete this three-question online quiz.

– ref. Control, cost and convenience determine how Australians use the technology in their homes – http://theconversation.com/control-cost-and-convenience-determine-how-australians-use-the-technology-in-their-homes-114510

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Macnamara, Professor of Public Communication, University of Technology Sydney

Over the past month, Australians and many people around the world have been listening – really listening – to politicians, for a change. Some politicians, that is. Jacinda Ardern, for one.

People everywhere have been moved by her comments, often to tears. She has been lauded for her demonstration of empathy and understanding of complex, emotionally charged issues that some others reduce to glib slogans.

How is it that the New Zealand prime minister is such a good speaker?

It’s because she is a good listener. Understanding and empathy, so lacking in much political discussion and debate, don’t come from being a good talker. They come from active, empathetic, inclusive listening.

Read more: Finding dignity and grace in the aftermath of the Christchurch attack

Empathy is essential to leadership

I don’t wish to sound like yet another member of a movement to canonise Jacinda Ardern, but she stands as a good example of what people want from politicians. Policy, yes. Leadership, yes. But not a blustering, boasting, blowhard style of leadership focused on self-aggrandisement and berating and beating the opposition – a style of political discourse to which we are all too accustomed.

Leadership studies emphasise empathy. Princess Diana had it. Nelson Mandela had it. That did not make them weak. To the contrary, it made them strong and able to effect change.

Nelson Mandela served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. DEBBIE YAZBEK/NELSON MANDELA FOUNDATION

Knowledge is important to produce informed policy. But understanding of people is also vital in a democracy. Understanding their affective (emotional) as well cognitive responses and their deepest concerns, fears and hopes requires listening. And listening to all sectors of society, not only elites and lobbyists.

Not listening is what led to Brexit

A research project I have led over the past four years inside a variety of political, government, corporate and non-government organisations has found 80% to 95% of communication resources are devoted to disseminating messages. That is, speaking, mostly about themselves. As little as 5% of the large investment by organisations in communication is devoted to listening.

Calling the referendum that resulted in Brexit was the result of not listening. The former Conservative government in the UK led by David Cameron did not understand the views and concerns of British people. How could that be when they spent money on research and a bevy of political advisers?

Research indicates three main reasons.

1. Many politicians and political parties rely heavily on polls with “tick a box” questions, and often small unrepresentative samples to measure support. But, as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump showed, polls often do not reflect the concerns or mood of a majority of citizens.

2. Politicians continue to play to traditional media, believing that media reflects public opinion, and that making headlines in newspapers or being on TV is a primary influence on people’s behaviour.

3. They rely on their political parties, not only for organisation, but as their “electorate” and “voice of the people”.

Read more: The road to Brexit: how did the UK end up here?

Political participation has changed

The problem for Australian politicians facing a federal election in May is that audience and influence of traditional media in Australia, and many Western countries, have been in severe decline for some time.

Journalism remains important – perhaps more important than ever. But many people, particularly young people and some major ethnic communities, get their information, news and advice from social media, peers and other sources.

The major political parties in Australia reportedly had 100,000 to 200,000 members in the 1950s, but that number had shrunk to less than 50,000 by 2013. In the UK, political party registration data reveal that the total membership of the three largest political parties amounts to just 1.6% of eligible voters.

In short, the goal posts and the sites of democratic participation have moved over the past decade or so – from major political parties and traditional mass media to social media, social movements, activist groups, special interest groups and small minority parties.

Read more: Chinese social media platform WeChat could be a key battleground in the federal election

Australian politicians should listen first

Studies of election campaigns show that politicians use social media primarily for posting slogans and political messages, rather than listening.

While some sites are “echo chambers” frequented by bots and fake accounts, there is also a large body of authentic public opinion voiced every day online – voices crying out to be listened to. There are also new types of community and environmental organisations that fall under the radar of mainstream politics.

It’s time for politicians to #listenfirst, learn and lead.

– ref. Politicians need to listen up before they speak up – and listen in the right places – http://theconversation.com/politicians-need-to-listen-up-before-they-speak-up-and-listen-in-the-right-places-114821

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Moynihan, Assistant Professor, Bond University

Did you know the definition of high blood pressure (hypertension) in the United States was recently greatly expanded? Overnight, tens of millions of people were reclassified, leaving one in every two adults with a diagnosis of hypertension.

The move has been welcomed by some but also widely criticised, amid concerns the expanded definition may bring more harm than good to many people, from unnecessary illness labels and unneeded drugs.

Read more: New blood pressure guidelines may make millions anxious that they’re at risk of heart disease

What about the condition called “chronic kidney disease” (CKD), diagnosed by measuring blood levels to estimate kidney function? Because it does not account for normal ageing, the current definition labels up to one in two older people as having “CKD”.

But many of those labelled will never have any kidney symptoms, chronic or otherwise, and there’s been repeated criticism within the medical literature. That broad new “disease” was created at a conference sponsored by a major drug company.

Then there are the recent changes to the definition of gestational diabetes which mean up to one in five pregnant women may now be diagnosed. But it’s unclear whether many among the newly diagnosed mothers or their babies might benefit from this expansion.

Read more: Are you at risk of being diagnosed with gestational diabetes? It depends on where you live

It’s time for a major change in how disease definitions and diagnostic thresholds are set. We outline a proposal for how this might happen today in the the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The growing problem of overdiagnosis

In all these examples, the danger is that more and more people may be overdiagnosed. Overdiagnosis means receiving a diagnosis that isn’t likely to benefit you.

Supporters of expanded definitions often have the best of intentions, motivated to diagnose ever milder problems and treat them early.

But early detection can be a double-edged sword. For some people you prevent serious illness, for others you overdiagnose and overtreat things that would never progress and never cause any harm.

Panels of experts determining where to set the threshold for the diagnosis of disease often have financial ties to drug companies. Africa Studio/Shutterstock

One common example is prostate cancer. Researchers recently estimated that more than 40% of all the prostate cancer now detected via testing healthy men in Australia may be overdiagnosed. In other words, those cancers would not have caused symptoms or problems during a man’s lifetime, yet they are now being detected and treated with surgery or radiotherapy, often with major complications.

Read more: Most people want to know risk of overdiagnosis, but aren’t told

Our research a few years ago studied the panels of experts who actually change the definitions of common conditions, such as high blood pressure or depression.

We found three things. When they made changes, panels tended to expand definitions and label more previously healthy people as ill.

Second, they did not appear to rigorously investigate the downsides of that expansion.

And third, these panels tended to be dominated by doctors with multiple financial ties to drug companies with interests in expanding markets.

A proposal to reform how diseases are defined

Today, an international group of influential researchers and family doctors launch a proposal to address this problem of expanding disease definitions. Published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, our proposal is for new processes and new people.

The new processes include rigorously examining evidence for benefits and potential harms, before reclassifying millions of healthy people as diseased. This was proposed in a world-first checklist for groups seeking to change definitions, developed by the Guidelines International Network.

Read more: Five commonly over-diagnosed conditions and what we can do about them

As for new people, today’s article suggests new multidisciplinary panels led by generalists, rather than specialists. It calls for strong representation from consumer or citizen groups, and all members being free of financial ties to drug and other interested companies.

Overdiagnosis can lead to the overtreatment of things that would never progress and never cause any harm. Ronald Rampsch/Shutterstock

Where to from here?

Responding to overdiagnosis remains a complex and uncertain challenge, both for individuals, and those who run health systems.

But it’s clearly being taken more and more seriously. The World Health Organisation is co-sponsor of the Preventing Overdiagnosis conference in Sydney this year, where the science of the problem and solutions will be debated.

And just last week, leadership of the Nordic Federation of General Practitioners endorsed this proposal to reform the way diseases are defined. It’s likely others will follow suit, against strong resistance from vested interests.

But as we conclude in today’s BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine article, the time for change is now. We shouldn’t treat people as an ever-expanding marketplace for diseases, for the benefit of professional and commercial interests. We can no longer ignore the great harm to those unnecessarily diagnosed.

Read more: Influential doctors aren’t disclosing their drug company ties

– ref. We need new rules for defining who is sick. Step 1: remove vested interests – http://theconversation.com/we-need-new-rules-for-defining-who-is-sick-step-1-remove-vested-interests-114621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Thornhill, Research botanist, James Cook University

Eucalypts dominate Australia’s landscape like no other plant group in the world.

Europe’s pine forests consist of many different types of trees. North America’s forests change over the width of the continent, from redwood, to pine and oak, to deserts and grassland. Africa is a mixture of savannah, rainforest and desert. South America has rainforests that contain the most diversity of trees in one place. Antarctica has tree fossils.

But in Australia we have the eucalypts, an informal name for three plant genera: Angophora, Corymbia and Eucalyptus. They are the dominant tree in great diversity just about everywhere, except for a small region of mulga, rainforest and some deserts.

My research, published today, has sequenced the DNA of more than 700 eucalypt species to map how they came to dominate the continent. We found eucalypts have been in Australia for at least 60 million years, but a comparatively recent explosion in diversity 2 million years ago is the secret to their spread across southern Australia.

Hundreds of species

The oldest known Eucalyptus macrofossil, from Patagonia in South America, is 52 million years old. The fossil pollen record also provides evidence of eucalypts in Australia for 45 million years, with the oldest specimen coming from Bass Strait.

Despite the antiquity of the eucalypts, researchers assumed they did not begin to spread around Australia until the continent began drying up around 20 million years ago, when Australia was covered in rainforests. But once drier environmental conditions kicked in, the eucalypts seized their chance and took over, especially in southeastern Australia.

Eucalypts are classified by their various characteristics, including the number of buds. Mary and Andrew/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

There are over 800 described species of eucalypts. Most of them are native only to Australia, although some have managed to naturally escape further north to New Guinea, Timor and Indonesia. Many eucalypts have been introduced to other parts of the world, including California, where Aussie eucalypts make cameos in Hollywood movies.

Eucalypts can grow as tall trees, as various multi-trunk or single-trunk trees, or in rare cases as shrubs. The combination of main characteristics – such as leaf shape, fruit shape, bud number and bark type – provided botanists with enough evidence to describe 800 species and estimate how they were all related to each other, a field of science known as “taxonomy”.

Since the 1990s and early 2000s, taxonomy has been slightly superseded by a new field called “phylogenetics”. This is the study of how organisms are related to each other using DNA, which produces something akin to a family tree.

Phylogenetics still relies on the species to be named though, so there is something to sample. New scientific fields rely on the old. There have been a number of eucalypt phylogenetic studies over the years, but none have ever sampled all of the eucalypt species in one phylogeny.

Read more: Stringybark is tough as boots (and gave us the word ‘Eucalyptus’)

Our new paper in Australian Systematic Botany aimed to change that. We attempted to genetically sample every described eucalypt species and place them in one phylogeny to determine how they are related to each other. We sampled 711 species (86% of all eucalypts) as well as rainforest species considered most closely related to the eucalypts.

We also dated the phylogeny by time-stamping certain parts using the ages of the fossils mentioned above. This allowed us to estimate how old eucalypt groups are and when they separated from each other in the past.

Not so ancient

We found that the eucalypts are an old group that date back at least 60 million years. This aligns with previous studies and the fossil record. However, a lot of the diversification in the Eucalyptus genus has happened only in the last 2 million years.

Gum trees are iconic Australian eucalypts. Shutterstock

Hundreds of species have appeared very recently in evolutionary history. Studies on other organisms have shown rapid diversification, but none of them compare to the eucalypts. Many species of the eucalypt forests of southeastern Australia are new in evolutionary terms (10 million years or less).

This includes many of the tall eucalypts that grow in the wet forests of southern Australia. They are not, as was previously assumed, ancient remnants from Gondwana, a supercontinent that gradually broke up between 180 million and 45 million years ago and resulted in the continents of Australia, Africa, South America and Antarctica, as well as India, New Zealand, New Guinea and New Caledonia.

The eucalypts that grow natively overseas have only made it out from Australia in the last 2 million years or less. Other groups in the eucalypts such as Angophora and Corymbia didn’t exhibit the same rapid diversification as the Eucalyptus species.

Read more: Renewable jet fuel could be growing on Australia’s iconic gum trees

What we confirmed with the fossil record using our phylogeny is that until very recently, and I mean in terms of the Earth being 4 billion years old, the vegetation of southeastern Australia was vastly different.

At some point in the last 2-10 million years the Eucalyptus arrived in new environmental conditions. They thrived, they most likely helped spread fire to wipe out their competition, and they then rapidly changed their physical form to give us the many species that we see today.

Very few other groups in the world have made this amount of change so quickly, and arguably dramatically. The east coast of Australia would look very different if it wasn’t dominated by gum trees.

The next time you’re in a eucalypt forest, take a look around and notice all of the different types of bark and gumnuts and leaves on the trees, and know that all of that diversity has happened quite recently, but with a deep and long link to trees that once grew in Gondwana.

They have been highly advantageous, highly adaptable and, with the exception of a small number of species, are uniquely Australian. They are, as the press would put it, “a great Australian success story”.

– ref. A detailed eucalypt family tree helps us see how they came to dominate Australia – http://theconversation.com/a-detailed-eucalypt-family-tree-helps-us-see-how-they-came-to-dominate-australia-113371

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester

This article is part of a series examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.

It might feel like the past decade of climate policy wars has led us into uncharted political waters. But the truth is, we’ve been sailing around in circles for much longer than that.

The situation in the late 1990s bore an uncanny resemblance to today: a Liberal-led government; a prime minister who clearly favours economic imperatives over environmental ones; emerging internal splits between hardline Liberal MPs and those keen to see stronger climate action; and a Labor party trying to figure out how ambitious it can be without being labelled as loony tree-huggers.

The striking parallels between now and two decades ago tell us something about what to expect in the months ahead.

Read more: Ten years of backflips over emissions trading leave climate policy in the lurch

After a brief flirtation with progressive climate policy in the 1990 federal election, the Liberals had, by the final years of the 20th century, become adamant opponents of climate action.

In March 1996, John Howard had come to power just as international climate negotiations were heating up. In his opinion, even signing the United Nations climate convention in Rio in 1992 had been a mistake. He expended considerable effort trying to secure a favourable deal for Australia at the crunch Kyoto negotiations in 1997.

Australia got a very generous deal indeed (and is still talking about banking the credit to count towards its Paris target), and Howard was able to keep a lid on climate concerns until 2006. But it was too little, too late, and in 2007 his party began a six-year exile from government as Rudd, then Gillard, then Rudd took the climate policy helm, with acrimonious results.

When Tony Abbott swept to power in 2013, his first act was to abolish the Labor-appointed Climate Commission, which resurrected itself as the independent Climate Council. Next, he delivered his signature election campaign promise: to axe the hated carbon tax (despite his chief of staff Peta Credlin’s later admission that the tax wasn’t, of course, actually a tax).

Read more: Obituary: Australia’s carbon price

Abbott also reduced the renewable energy target, and sought (unsuccessfully) to keep climate change off the agenda at the 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane.

Abbott and his environment minister Greg Hunt did preside over some policy offerings – most notably the Direct Action platform, with the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund at its heart, dishing out public money for carbon-reduction projects. The pair also announced an emissions reduction target of 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030, which Australia took as its formal pledge to the crucial 2015 Paris climate talks.

But by the time nations convened in Paris, Malcolm Turnbull was in the hot seat, having toppled Abbott a few months earlier. Many observers hoped he would take strong action on climate; in 2010 he had enthused about the prospect of Australia going carbon-neutral. But the hoped-for successor to the carbon price never materialised, as Turnbull came under sustained attack from detractors within both his own party and the Nationals.

Then, in September 2016, a thunderbolt (or rather, a fateful thunderstorm). South Australia’s entire electricity grid was knocked out by freak weather, plunging the state into blackout, and the state government into a vicious tussle with Canberra. The dispute, embodied by SA Premier Jay Weatherill’s infamous altercation with the federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg, spilled over into a wider ideological conflict about renewable energy.

Read more: A year since the SA blackout, who’s winning the high-wattage power play?

With tempers fraying on all sides, and still no economy-wide emissions policy in place, business began to agitate for increasingly elusive investment certainty (although they had played dead or applauded when Gillard’s carbon price was under attack).

In an era of policy on the run, things accelerated to a sprinter’s pace. Frydenberg suggested an emissions intensity scheme might be looked at. Forty-eight hours later it was dead and buried.

Turnbull commissioned Chief Scientist Alan Finkel to produce a report, which included the recommendation for a Clean Energy Target, prompting it to be vetoed in short order by the government’s backbench.

Within three months Frydenberg hurriedly put together the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which focused on both reliability and emissions reduction in the electricity sector. The policy gained support from exhausted business and NGOs, but not from the Monash Forum of Tony Abbott and cohorts, who preferred the sound of state-funded coal instead. And then, in August 2018, the NEG was torpedoed, along with Turnbull’s premiership.

The next man to move into the Lodge, Scott Morrison, was previously best known in climate circles for waving a lump of coal (kindly provided, with lacquer to prevent smudging, by the Minerals Council of Australia) in parliament.

Scott Morrison’s new-found enthusiasm for Snowy 2.0 stands in contrast to his earlier excitement about coal. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Read more: The pro-coal ‘Monash Forum’ may do little but blacken the name of a revered Australian

Morrison’s problems haven’t eased. His energy minister Angus Taylor and environment minister Melissa Price have each come under attack for their apparent lack of climate policy ambition, and Barnaby Joyce and a select few fellow Nationals recently endangered the fragile truce over not mentioning the coal.

Meanwhile, Labor, with one eye on the Green vote and another on Liberal voters appalled by the lack of action on climate change, are trying to slip between Scylla and Charybdis.

Shorten’s offering

While Labor has decided not to make use of a Kyoto-era loophole (taking credit for reduced land-clearing), its newly released climate policy platform makes no mention of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, dodges the thorny issue of the Adani coalmine, and has almost nothing to say on how to pay the now-inevitable costs of climate adaptation.

What will the minor parties say? Labor’s policy is nowhere near enough to placate the Greens’ leadership, but then the goal for Labor is of course to peel away the Greens support – or at least reduce the haemorrhaging, while perhaps picking up the votes of disillusioned Liberals.

Overall, as Nicky Ison has already pointed out on The Conversation, Labor has missed an “opportunity to put Australians’ health and well-being at the centre of the climate crisis and redress historical injustices by actively supporting Aboriginal and other vulnerable communities like Borroloola to benefit from climate action”.

Read more: Labor’s climate policy: a decent menu, but missing the main course

And so the prevailing political winds have blown us more or less back to where we were in 1997: the Liberals fighting among themselves, business despairing, and Labor being cautious.

But in another sense, of course, our situation is far worse. Not only has a culture war broken out, but the four hottest years in the world have happened in the past five, the Great Barrier Reef is suffering, and the Bureau of Meteorology’s purple will be getting more of a workout.

We’ve spent two decades digging a deeper hole for ourselves. It’s still not clear when or how we can climb out.

– ref. In Australia, climate policy battles are endlessly reheated – http://theconversation.com/in-australia-climate-policy-battles-are-endlessly-reheated-114971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Hanly, Research Fellow, UNSW

Boys, younger children and children from relatively advantaged families and neighbourhoods – particularly in Sydney – are more likely to delay starting school. These are some of the findings of our study on who chooses to delay sending their children to school and how a child’s age when they start school is related to their “school readiness”.

Every year, thousands of Australian families with four-year-old children face a difficult decision: to enrol their child in school or delay for another year. Delayed entry typically incurs a cost, such as childcare fees or lost wages. For this reason, not all families may be in the same position to make the decision to delay, even if they wanted to.

Research shows New South Wales tops the charts when it comes to delaying school entry. Our paper, published today in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, found one-quarter of children in NSW delayed school entry in 2009 and 2012, with geographic and social variation in the tendency to delay.

We also confirmed what many parents and teachers believe: older children are more likely to have the developmental skills in place to hit the ground running in the first year of school.

Measuring development

Rules about when children can start school vary internationally and across Australia. In NSW, the enrolment cut-off is July 31 and children must start school before they turn six.

This means parents of children born January to July must decide whether to send their child to school at the age of between four-and-a-half and five, or wait 12 months until they are five-and-a-half to six years old. Children with August-to-December birthdays have no choice about when to start school, except in special circumstances.

Read more: Why are more parents choosing to delay when their child starts school?

Our study used data on more than 100,000 NSW public school children in their first year of school. The data sets were collected as part of the Australian Early Development Census in 2009 and 2012. The census takes place every three years and is based on teachers’ knowledge and observations of the children in their class.

Teachers fill out a questionnaire for each child. It asks more than 100 questions covering five key domains of development: physical, social, emotional, language and cognitive, and communication.

Children’s development is scored between 0 and 10 on each domain. Children with scores in the bottom 25% are considered developmentally vulnerable or at risk. In this study, we considered children with scores above 25% in all five domains to be developing as expected.

We combined the developmental data with information from other routinely collected population data sets, such as birth registrations, midwives and hospital data, to better understand children’s health and family circumstances.

Who delays school entry?

Besides finding boys and children from more advantaged neighbourhoods are more likely to delay starting school, we also found children with higher developmental needs – such as hearing and communication impairments, and children who were born preterm – were among those more likely to delay school entry.

Family background played a role. Children born to mothers from Australia or northern Europe were more likely to delay. Children born to mothers from Asia, North Africa or the Middle East were less likely to delay. This may reflect a range of cultural, social and economic circumstances, as well as attitudes and beliefs. However, we did not have information about why families made their choices in this study.

Delayed school entry varied depending on where children lived, ranging from 8% to 54% of children in an area. In general, it was more common for children in regional areas to delay, compared with children from cities.

There was substantial variation within Sydney. Delayed school entry was least common among children living in the southwestern suburbs, which have great cultural diversity and more low-income households, compared with other areas in Sydney.

We found children were more likely to be ready for school with each additional month of age at the start of the school year. The differences in children’s development were quite small month to month – there wasn’t a big gap between August-born and September-born children, for example.

But the differences did add up: there was a substantial development gap between the youngest and oldest children in the first year of school. For example, around 60% of children who started school aged five-and-a-half to six years old had scores above the 25% cut-off point in all five development domains. Only 36% of those who started aged four-and-a-half met this threshold.

What does this mean for families and policymakers?

Every parent knows their child best. Families should consider the available evidence together with their own personal circumstances, advice from their local school or preschool, and any other factors that are important to their family when making the decision about when to send the child to school.

Read more: When to send a child to school causes anxiety and confusion for parents

Our findings are also relevant to the ongoing debate about school enrolment policies in Australia and the potential impact of these on the make-up of classrooms and children’s school readiness.

One option for policymakers is to change the school enrolment cut-off date. For example, raising the minimum school starting age would remove the youngest group of children from the classroom, who are less likely to have the developmental skills to thrive in school. This would narrow the age range and development gap between the youngest and oldest kids in the classroom.

However, raising the school starting age might place pressure on families to provide preschool care, or restrict workforce participation for parents. A later start to school might also mean children enter the workforce a year later, potentially impacting total lifetime earnings.

A key question for future research is whether these initial age-related development gaps remain over time. The available evidence from other countries is mixed. Some studies have found younger children quickly catch up with older classmates. Other research shows older children have an advantage over their younger peers throughout childhood in multiple areas, including sports, mental health and test results.

– ref. Which families delay sending their child to school, and why? We crunched the numbers – http://theconversation.com/which-families-delay-sending-their-child-to-school-and-why-we-crunched-the-numbers-111826

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Timothy O’Leary, Lecturer in Construction and Property, University of Melbourne

After a three-year cycle of industry comment, review and revision, May 1 marks the adoption of a new National Construction Code (NCC). Overseen by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), the code is the nation’s defining operational document of building regulatory provisions, standards and performance levels. Its mission statement is to provide the minimum necessary requirements for safety and health, amenity, accessibility and sustainability in the design, construction, performance and liveability of new buildings.

Some say the building industry is in deep crisis and broken, that even our entire building regulatory system is not fit for purpose. Consider what has happened, particularly in residential construction. We have had buildings burning, cracking, windows exploding, rooms with intolerable heat stress, rendered unfit for occupation without costly remedial action, class actions against developers, and multi-million-dollar court judgments against consultants and builders.

Read more: Beyond Opal: a 10-point plan to fix the residential building industry

What have reforms to the old Building Code of Australia (BCA), now the NCC, delivered? Is the new code good enough?

Well, how do you measure performance? We should think in terms of lives saved, heat stroke minimised, costly remedial works avoided, less sleep deprivation and climate-induced respiratory issues, disability access, less bill shock for the vulnerable, and housing that is built to allow ageing in place.

Safety and amenity

Widespread use of non-compliant building materials, and specifically combustible cladding, has been foremost in the minds of regulators. Three years ago, after the Lacrosse fire in Melbourne Docklands, the ABCB amended the existing code. This crucial revision has been carried forward into the new code.

Individually, states have acted on the findings of a Senate inquiry into this area. Last October, for example, Queensland enacted the Building and other Legislation (Cladding) Amendment Regulation 2018.

Investigations into the highly publicised, structurally unsound Opal tower in Sydney found the design – namely the connections between the beams and the columns on level 10 and level 4, the two floors with significant damage — indicated “factors of safety lower than required by standards”.

Opal Tower report finds “construction issues”.

Just two months ago when the new code was released in preview form, we learnt that a significant number of approved CodeMarks used to certify compliance for a range of building materials are under recall. The Australian Institute of Building Surveyors posted urgent advice: “We are in the process of making enquiries with the ABCB and Building Ministers to find out when they were made aware that these certificates were withdrawn and what the implications for members will be […] and owners of properties that have been constructed using these products.”

Fire safety concerns are driving changes in the code. The new NCC has extended the provision of fire sprinklers to lower-rise residential buildings, generally 4-8 storeys. However, non-sprinkler protection is still permitted where other fire safety measures meet the deemed minimum acceptable standard.

Read more: Lacrosse fire ruling sends shudders through building industry consultants and governments

Comfort and health

The code includes new heating and cooling load limits. However, requirements for overall residential energy efficiency have not been increased. The 6-star minimum introduced in the 2010 NCC remains.

The code has just begun to respond to the problem of dwellings that are being constructed to comply but which perform very poorly in the peaks of summer and winter and against international minimum standards. The change in the code deals with only the very worst houses – no more than 5% of designs with the highest heating loads and 5% with the highest cooling loads.

It’s a concern that the climate files used to assess housing thermal performance use 40-year-old BOM data. Off the back of record hot and dry summers, readers in such places as Adelaide and Perth might be surprised to learn the ABCB designates their climate as “the mildest region”.

For well over a decade my colleagues and I have researched thermal performance, comfort and health and improvements by regulation. Our recent paper, based on a small sample of South Australian houses built between 2013 and 2016, demonstrated what has been discussed anecdotally in hushed voices across the industry, that a building can fail minimum standards using one particular compliance option yet pass as compliant using a different pathway.

A building that is not six stars can be built under the new code. In fact, it may have no stars!

Read more: Construction industry loophole leaves home buyers facing higher energy bills

Lamentably, there has been no national evidenced-based evaluation (let alone international comparison) of the measured effectiveness of the 6-star standard. CSIRO did carry out a limited evaluation of the older 5-star standard (dating back to 2005). An evaluation for commercial buildings is available from the ABCB website.

Accessibility and liveability

Volume 2 of the NCC covers housing and here it is business as usual, although the ABCB has released an options paper on proposals that might be part of future codes. Accessible housing is treated as a discrete project. Advocates for code changes in this area, such as the Australian Network for Universal Housing Design (ANUHD), have written to the ABCB expressing disappointment.

A Regulation Impact Assessment on the costs and benefits of applying a minimum accessibility standard to all new housing has yet to see the light of day.

These proposals or “options” talk of silver and gold levels of design (there is no third-prize bronze option for liveable housing). Codes of good practice in accessible design have for decades recommended such measures.

Read more: Australia’s housing standards are failing its ageing population

It’s all about performance

Some argue that deep-seated problems have developed from a code that favours innovation and cost reduction over consumer protection. There is a cloud over the industry and over some provisions – or should we say safeguards and compliance?

Safety should not be a matter of good luck or depend on an accidental selection of a particular building material or system. New buildings born of this new code are hardly likely to differ measurably from their troublesome older siblings. The anxiety for insurers, regulators and building owners continues.

Read more: Cladding fires expose gaps in building material safety checks. Here’s a solution

The National Construction Code adopts a performance-based approach to building regulation, but don’t expect the sales consultant to know the U-value of the windows, whether the doors are hung to allow for disabled access, or if the cleat on your tie beam is to Australian standards.

Anyone can propose changes to the NCC. The form is on the website. Consultants will be hired to model costs and benefits.

Regulatory reforms introduced through the ABCB over the past 20 years have produced an estimated annual national economic benefit of A$1.1 billion. That’s a lot of money! The owners of failing residential buildings could do with some of that cash to cover losses and legal fees.

– ref. Australia has a new National Construction Code, but it’s still not good enough – http://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-new-national-construction-code-but-its-still-not-good-enough-113729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is part of a series examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.

Politicians often invoke the word “reform” to convey the significance, or gravitas, of a particular policy change they are proposing.

However, the tax policies implemented over the six years of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government should be more aptly described as: no reform, lots of tinkering, two blunders and some lost opportunities.

To be fair to the leaders of the Coalition, both Abbott and Turnbull began their prime ministerships professing a large appetite for tax reform.

In opposition Abbott and his treasury spokesman Joe Hockey had promised a major inquiry. Hockey said it would pick up where Labor’s Henry Tax Review left off:

We thought the Henry Tax Review was going to be a proper process. Now, that has obviously been an abject failure. We’ve said – Tony Abbott announced in Budget and reply speech – we will have a proper process for proper tax reform, and whatever comes out of that process, which will be a white paper, we will take to a subsequent election, seeking the mandate of the Australian people – their approval.

Treasury’s Re:think tax discussion paper, which is as far as the tax white paper process got. Source: Commonwealth Treasury

It got as far as a discussion paper, seeking submissions.

When Turnbull assumed the leadership, the draft white paper, which would have followed the discussion paper, was scuttled, and the process ended.

Tinkering…

Instead what resulted were marginal changes to personal income tax. One of the brackets was expanded and a new low and middle income tax offset was added.

Marginal changes to superannuation tax further added to the complexity of the tax system as a whole. The current superannuation system disproportionately rewards higher income earners because most contributions are taxed at the same low rate (15%) regardless of the taxpayers’ income tax rate.

The Coalition’s response was to apply a 30% tax on contributions for those earning $250,000 or more (down from the previous threshold of $300,000) and to cut the cap on concessional contributions from $30,000 ($35,000 for those aged 49 and over) to $25,000. And it capped at $1.6 million the amount that could be transferred into the “retirement phase” where fund earnings in retirement were exempt from tax.

It made the system much more complex, and it could have been done more simply, perhaps by reimposing tax on super earnings in retirement (at a low rate) or by taxing by contributions at a standard discount to taxpayers at a marginal rate, as recommended by the 2009 Henry Tax Review.

Alongside these marginal changes, there was also a failed attempt to cut the company tax rate (only the tax rates for small companies were cut) and a muddled discussion about the progressivity of the income tax system.

All in all, many a tinker, but no reform.

Blunders…

Human-induced climate change is compromising the sustainability of our planet. The only way to solve it is by changing incentives using the economic toolkit at our disposal. The Carbon Tax was a good tax. It shifted the costs of pollution onto those who created it, instead of subsidising processes that damaged the environment.

No solution to climate change is possible without corrective taxes.

At some point we’ll have to climb that mountain again, assuming the mountain is not underwater before politicians come to their senses.

The repeal of the Minerals Resource Rent Tax was also a step backwards. By taxing rents (excess profits) instead of profits, it avoided the disincentives created by traditional company taxes. And, it was a good example of the kind of taxes that could eventually replace or supplement company tax.

…and lost opportunities

Changing the GST could have ensured at least one significant contribution to overall tax reform. At 10%, the rate is relatively low by international standards and applies to a shrinking share of spending, as more and more of our money is spent in places or on goods that aren’t taxed.

Value-added (GST) tax rates in OECD and selected Asian countries. Re:think, Treasury tax discussion paper, March 2015

These factors, combined with the fact that GST is difficult to evade and less costly to administer, suggest that broadening the base is low hanging fruit on the tax reform tree, ripe for picking.

Instead, it may as well be forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. We’ve gone in the wrong direction by adding even more exemptions and cutting short talk of increasing the rate.

The failed debate on company tax cuts was another missed opportunity.

What remains is a system that applies different rates to different company sizes, one of few remaining dividend imputation systems in the world, and no discussion about the sustainability of corporate income tax revenue in the future.

All up, the government’s approach over the past six years has largely been piecemeal. It also managed to dismantle two of the most significant tax reforms that could have contributed to a more sustainable tax base in the long run.

Would Labor be better?

It remains to be seen whether a Labor government will be able to achieve more. Some of the party’s proposed changes, such as the treatment of capital gains, head in the right direction, but what it is offering falls short of comprehensive reform.

At the same time, many of its proposed changes will add additional complexity, fail to account for interactions within the entire tax system and use tax exemptions to reach goals that could be better achieved with payments.

Many an international tax reform was engendered by crisis, so there’s hope, of a sort. The opportunity still remains to get in early before weaknesses inherent in the current system become grossly apparent.

What we’ve got is unfair and its complexity rewards those with the resources to pay to understand and exploit it. It is overly reliant on income and company tax in place of indirect taxes, like consumption tax, and it tries to achieve too many disparate objectives, without consideration for the workings of the family and social security payments system.

There is much scope to improve things. What we need most are fearless leaders, from all sides of the political spectrum, who treat comprehensive tax reform as important and can work together to achieve it.

Read more: What will the Turnbull-Morrison government be remembered for?

– ref. What will the Coalition be remembered for on tax? Tinkering, blunders and lost opportunities – http://theconversation.com/what-will-the-coalition-be-remembered-for-on-tax-tinkering-blunders-and-lost-opportunities-114632

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

The big surprise in last week’s budget was the size of new income tax cuts – A$158 billion over a decade, in addition to the A$144 billion already promised in last year’s budget.

A lot of the plan doesn’t take effect until 2024-25, so it’s easy to dismiss as tax cuts on the never-never. But given it’s a central plank of the government’s campaign for re-election, it deserves closer scrutiny.

Grattan Institute

The plan comes in three stages.

The major part of stage 1 is the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset – giving everyone earning less than $126,000 a cheque in the mail come July and then for the following three years. Stage 2 (2022-23) would lift the top threshold of the 19% and the 32.5% brackets. The biggest cuts would come in stage 3 (2024-25) when the government removed the 37% bracket and cut the 32.5% rate to 30%.

Everyone earning between $45,000 and $200,000 would face the same 30% marginal tax rate.

2019 Budget infographic

Unsurprisingly, in absolute terms the biggest beneficiaries would be high-income earners. More than half the benefit would go to the top 20% of earners, those with taxable income over $87,500 a year.

But to better understand what the plan would do to the progressivity of the system, we need to consider what would happen to rates without the plan.

Without change, the average tax rate would increase across the income distribution, as wage growth pushed people into higher tax brackets.

The plan would prevent some of that bracket creep by lowering future tax rates.

Most taxpayers would be better-off than without a change – but high-income earners would benefit the most.

Read more: NATSEM: federal budget will widen gap between rich and poor

It goes part-way to addressing bracket creep for low and middle income earners. Someone in the middle of the income distribution would pay 3.6% more tax in 2029-30 than today, instead of 6.1% more without the plan.

But Australia’s highest earners – the top 15% of taxpayers – would escape bracket creep entirely, paying the same average tax rate or less in 2029-30 than today.

Grattan Institute

This result would be a shift in the proportion of tax paid at different points in the income distribution.

Middle earners, those earning between the third to top and the third to bottom ten percents of the income distribution, would pay a larger share of tax in 2029-30 than they do today: 23% compared to 20%.

But high-income earners, those in the top fifth of the income distribution, would pay a smaller share of tax: 65% in 2029-30 compared to 68% today.

It’s more a tax cut than tax reform

The government has been keen to sell the tax package as a “huge reform” because it removes an entire tax bracket.

It says flattening the tax scale would create a greater incentive for higher-income earners to work. But unlike earlier tax reform packages, there has been little in the way of clear articulation or modelling to demonstrate that this would be the case. And there are reasons to doubt that it would be the case.

Read more: Mothers have little to show for extra days of work under new tax changes

The people who would benefit most from the tax reform would be in the top 6% of the income distribution in 2024-25. Barring major changes to gender work patterns in the next five years, they would be disproportionately men, working full time. But as the Henry Tax Review pointed out, the people who are the most responsive to changes in effective tax rates are second-earners (mainly women) working part-time.

Proper reform of the income tax system would lower the economic barriers to second-earners working more: the increase in tax, the cuts in family and childcare benefits and higher childcare costs that accompany working more.

And it might not be affordable

The budget numbers point to a decade of surpluses, exceeding 1% of GDP by 2026-27, even with the tax cuts. But the surpluses rely on payments as a share of gross domestic product falling steadily over the decade, from 24.9% of GDP today to 23.6% by 2029-30.

Achieving such a reduction would require significant cuts in spending growth across almost every major spending area, during a period when we know that an ageing population will increase spending pressures, particularly on health and welfare. The Parliamentary Budget Office says ageing will add 0.3% of GDP a year to spending by 2028-29.

The approach marks a change since the 2016-17 budget, when the government forecast that payments would grow as a share of GDP over the decade because of the ageing population. There have not been enough significant savings measures in the past three budgets to explain the turnaround. It appears to be more driven by assumption than by reality.

Read more: Expect a budget that breaks the intergenerational bargain, like the one before it, and before that

If we were to make the still-conservative assumption that spending remained merely constant as a share of GDP at 24.9%, the third stage of the tax cuts would push the budget back into deficit in 2024-25.

The bottom line

The pre-election tax package finally does something about bracket creep – but solves it only for the highest of earners.

It passes up the opportunity for more comprehensive reform. And most disconcertingly, it punches a sizeable hole in government revenue just at the time an ageing population will start to demand that more money be spent.

Read more: What will the Coalition be remembered for on tax? Tinkering, blunders and lost opportunities

– ref. Potentially unaffordable, and it still won’t fix bracket creep. The Coalition’s $300 billion tax plan assessed – http://theconversation.com/potentially-unaffordable-and-it-still-wont-fix-bracket-creep-the-coalitions-300-billion-tax-plan-assessed-115057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Meakins, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, The University of Queensland

When you rifle around in your purse for some change, you might be lucky enough to pull out a new 50 cent coin, launched today by the Royal Australian Mint to celebrate the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

The coin, developed in consultation with Indigenous language custodian groups and designed by the Mint’s Aleksandra Stokic, features 14 different words for “money” from Australian Indigenous languages. But where do these words come from?

Read more: The state of Australia’s Indigenous languages – and how we can help people speak them more often

Old words for new things

Money, or an object which abstractly represented the value of goods and services, did not exist in Australia before European colonisation. Trade was practised, but it was between items deemed to be of similar worth, for example pearl shell, quartz, food or songs. With the entry of money into the Indigenous economy, new words were needed to refer to coins and later paper money.

Most Indigenous words for money come from words for “stone”, “rock” or “pebble”, no doubt in reference to the size and shape of coins. On the new 50 cent coin, you’ll find words for “stone” from across Australia:

Kaytetye, spoken in Central Australia, and Kaurna, the language of Adelaide, go against the trend by extending the words ngkweltye and pirrki, which both mean “piece”, to also mean “money”.

Gathang, from the Central New South Wales coast area, uses dhinggarr “grey”, perhaps due to the colour of most coins, and walang “head”, presumably in reference to the monarch’s head on the coin. Wiradjuri from Central New South Wales also uses walang, but in this case it means “stone”.

Origin of the Indigenous words for ‘money’ on the new 50 cent coin. Felicity Meakins and Brenda Thornley

Other words for ‘money’ from Indigenous languages

The diversity of Indigenous words for money on the new 50 cent coin is an attempt to reflect the linguistic tapestry of Australia, a nation of over 300 languages and many more dialects. However, the words featured on the coin are just a small sample of Indigenous words for money.

Some languages differentiate between coins and paper money. Murrinh-patha, spoken in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory, uses palyirr “stone” for coins and we “paperbark” to mean notes.

Other languages have words that vary by denomination. Alyawarr, spoken just north of Alice Springs, uses aherr-angketyarr “lots of kangaroos” to refer to the A$1 coin, and rnter-rnter “red” in reference to $20 notes. Alyawarr people also say kwert-apeny “like smoke” for $100 notes – perhaps confusing at first, until you recall the original light blue and grey $100 note (1984-1996) depicting Sir Douglas Mawson.

Read more: Some Australian Indigenous languages you should know

Borrowed words for money

In some cases, terms for money have been borrowed from other languages. The English word “money” has been given a local flavour by different languages, for example: mani/moni (Kriol) and maniyi or tala (Warlpiri).

Another borrowing comes from Australia’s close neighbours. The legacy of 18th century Macassan traders from present-day Indonesia remains in words for “money” originally derived from rupiah (Indonesia’s word for currency). These include rrupiya (Mawng, Burarra, Djinang) and wurrupiya (Tiwi). (And note that Tiwi also uses wurrukwati “mussel shell” for “money”).

Probably the most innovative borrowing for money, still used throughout south-western Queensland, is banggu. The word derives from bank and –gu, the latter being used to express ownership. So banggu literally means “of the bank”, and perhaps emerged during the period in Queensland history when the state government was withholding wages from Indigenous people. These stolen wages are now thought to be worth as much as A$500 million in banggu.

Indigenous representation on Australian currency

Indigenous Australians have not always been well represented on Australian currency. Take, for example, the use of a bark painting by David Malangi on the back of the old $1 note released in 1966, used without consent or acknowledgement, or the first polymer $10 note, released in 1988, which featured an anonymous Indigenous man painted up for ceremony.

Contrast this to 1995, where the Indigenous man on the $50 note is named as the first published Indigenous author, Ngarrindjeri writer David Unaipon, and 2017 where a commemorative 50 cent coin was designed by Boneta-Marie Mabo and released for National Reconciliation Week.

The use of multiple words for money on the new coin challenges the myth of a single Australian language. It also represents a shift in Indigenous representation to naming and individuation: from depicting Australian Indigenous people and their languages as a single group, to recognising the diversity of these groups and their languages.

– ref. The 14 Indigenous words for money on the new 50 cent coin – http://theconversation.com/the-14-indigenous-words-for-money-on-the-new-50-cent-coin-113110

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Pask, Professor, University of Melbourne

Female enjoyment of sex is typically associated with the human species.

But actually all female mammals have a clitoris, the highly sensitive organ that is linked with pleasure and orgasm in women.

And research is now starting to slowly unpack how the clitoris might be involved in sexual encounters in mammals. For example, a research paper presented at a biology conference this week showed that the clitoris in dolphins is very large, and more complex than we previously thought.

Let’s take a look at the biology and evolution of the clitoris – for science.

It starts in the uterus

All babies, regardless of whether they are destined to become a boy or a girl, begin development in the womb with a small bulge called a genital tubercle.

Read more: What makes you a man or a woman? Geneticist Jenny Graves explains

If the developing fetus is destined to become male, the fetal testes will produce the male hormone testosterone and the genital tubercle will develop into a penis. If, on the other hand, the fetus is destined to become a female, the fetal ovary will not produce any hormones and instead the genital tubercle will develop into the clitoris.

Both structures look very similar in the early days of pregnancy.

Human genitals photographed at 11 weeks gestation. strictly_nub_theory on Instagram (screen shot April 8 2019)

Since the penis and the clitoris both develop from the same structure, they share many similarities.

The clitoris has a hood in humans: this is the same as the foreskin in males. The clitoris has a glans, which is the same structure as the head of the penis in men. Both the penis and clitoris become engorged with blood when stimulated. And both structures are full of nerves which, at least in humans, provide a pleasurable sensation when stimulated.

A very recent science

But compared to the penis, the clitoris is not well studied even in humans.

Read more: You need more than just testes to make a penis

Amazingly, it was not until the late 1990s that the complete anatomy of the human clitoris was accurately described by Australia’s first female urologist, Helen O’Connell. Her work to understand the detailed form and function of the clitoris provides answers to some basic biological questions about sex.

Such research also has implications in pelvic area surgery, where doctors can use this knowledge to avoid any loss of sexual function.

The external aspect of the human clitoris is just a very small portion of its entire structure. In this image, the dark pink and white structures are internal. from www.shutterstock.com

Read more: ‘Is it normal for girls to masturbate?’

Female hyenas are special

Because the penis and clitoris develop from the same tissue in the fetus, anything that affects the hormone balance in the embryo can impact its development. A great example of this is seen in the female spotted hyena.

In this mammal, the female rules the pack. She is larger and more muscular than the males because she is exposed to high levels of male hormones during embryonic development.

Just grin and bear it, or is this enjoyable? from www.shutterstock.com

But this more muscled physique comes at a cost. The male hormones also affect the clitoris, turning it into a structure that looks like the male penis.

Unfortunately for the female hyena this 20cm clitoris contains the birth canal. So, the female needs to both mate and give birth through her clitoris, which often splits in the process, causing a high death rate in first time mothers.

There are other known differences in clitoris anatomy across species too.

The urethra is the tube through which urine passes to the outside of the body. Many animals have the urethra running through the clitoris (as it does in the penis) while in humans, the urethra opens at the base of the clitoris.

The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Most mammals also have a small bone in the clitoris to help it become rigid during intercourse. This is known as the os clitoris and again shares a counterpart in the penis, the os penis. Os clitoris and os penis bones are present in most mammals, and humans are unusual in not having one in either organ.

Read more: Lascivious virgins and lustful itches: women’s masturbation in early England

Getting lost in the moment

The jury is still out on whether all mammals experience orgasm.

Non-human primates almost certainly do, but it is difficult to measure pleasure in animals.

What is certain is that females who stick around for longer during the act of mating are much more likely to become pregnant and produce more offspring. So if a clitoris does enhance enjoyment, then it would be strongly selected for in nature through increasing the females chance of having offspring.

Although the clitoris is not well studied, there is evidence of larger clitorides – yes, this is the plural of clitoris – in animals in which sex plays an important part in relationship building. Examples include the matriarchal hyena, bonobo chimps, humans and most recently in the dolphin.

Lots of surprises

A paper released this week reveals that female bottlenose dolphins have clitorides similar to humans, and that female dolphins may experience sexual pleasure.

Researchers used a combination of dissections and 3D scans to explore the female genitalia of dolphins in detail.

The shape and structure of the dolphin clitoris is very similar to that of the human. Both animals have extensive areas of erectile tissue that are larger than the clitoral hood. The skin under the clitoral hood also contains bundles of nerves that may increase sensitivity, raising the possibility that sexual experiences can be pleasurable for female dolphins.

Computer reconstruction of the clitoris of the bottlenose dolphin, which researchers say is remarkably similar to the human clitoris in its structure and shape. Dara Orbach, Mount Holyoke College

However, there are also some differences in the location of the clitoris with respect to the vaginal opening and how it would be stimulated during copulation.

These comparative studies help us learn about the function of genitalia, and the evolution of sexual bonding across species.

Science has revealed a bizarre array of penis shapes found in mammals, from a four-headed penis in the echidna to two-headed penises in many marsupials.

It remains to be seen what surprises the clitoris has in store for us.

– ref. All female mammals have a clitoris – we’re starting to work out what that means for their sex lives – http://theconversation.com/all-female-mammals-have-a-clitoris-were-starting-to-work-out-what-that-means-for-their-sex-lives-114916

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kees Van Gool, Health economist, University of Technology Sydney

Labor’s big-ticket election promise is a A$2.3 billion package to provide free medical scans and specialist consultations for cancer patients, plus automatic listing of new cancer therapies on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) once they’re recommended by the nation’s expert advisory panel.

One in two Australians will be diagnosed with cancer by the age of 85, and around 145,000 new diagnoses are made each year. So most of us have a close relative or friend who will be affected by the policy.

But there are some important policy considerations a Shorten government would need to plan for to ensure the package provides optimal care, improves patient outcomes, and does actually reduce out-of-pocket costs.

Read more: Shorten promises $2.3 billion package to relieve costs for cancer patients

What’s the problem with cancer care?

New therapies for cancer are rapidly evolving, and are often extremely expensive. Seeking treatment involves navigating a complex array of public and private providers across multiple health care sectors, often leaving patients with high out-of-pocket costs.

These costs are highly dependent on which providers the patients choose (and the fees they charge), the level of private insurance cover, and the volume of services used.

A recent Queensland study found the median out-of-pocket expenses for a breast cancer patient, for example, was A$4,192.

It’s possible but very time-consuming for patients to “shop around” to reduce costs. But this is an unreasonable burden to place on patients.

The Labor proposal provides an opportunity to develop a comprehensive cancer control program that encompasses prevention, early diagnosis, treatment and follow-up – at a reasonable cost.

Read more: Cutting cancer costs is a worthy policy, but we need to try to prevent it too

Better care for cancer patients

Cancer treatment is well researched; there are clear evidence-based guidelines that establish clinical pathways for the best treatment.

Nevertheless, there is substantial variation in treatments given to cancer patients. This difference cannot always be explained by their clinical conditions, and sometimes the care is not evidence-based.

It’s important that the proposed reforms do not just fund more care, but support more of the best care.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten announced the A$2.3 billion cancer package in last week’s budget reply. Dan Peled/AAP

The approach that has shown promise in other countries is known as “bundled payments”.

Under bundled payments, a series of health care services – that can span over time and across multiple health care sectors and providers – are bundled together for funding purposes. This gives providers or institutions greater flexibility in how they spend money delivering care to the patient.

There is a danger that bundling can provide incentives to skimp on care, because the provider receives the same amount of funding no matter how much care is provided. But this can be addressed by monitoring the quality of care and the patients’ outcomes.

Ensuring the financial benefits flow to patients

Australian governments have made several attempts to provide better safety nets that cushion patients from extra charges.

Study after study shows that, in these circumstances, providers are likely to raise their fees. So while patients get some financial benefit, the doctors benefit also.

Under current Medicare rules, the Australian government does not and cannot determine doctors’ fees. It can only determine the amount of the Medicare benefit.

In general practice, most consultations are bulk-billed implying that the fee the doctor charges is equivalent to the Medicare benefit.

Only 31% of specialist consultations are bulk-billed, leaving more patients with an out-of-pocket payment.

Read more: Specialists are free to set their fees, but there are ways to ensure patients don’t get ripped off

What can government do to encourage cancer care providers to bulk-bill?

Labor has announced they will add a bulk-billing incentive payment, as occurs in primary care. Specialists will receive an additional payment if they bulk-bill a cancer-related service.

This will not guarantee that every patient will not incur any out-of-pocket costs – although it should increase the likelihood that they will. Indeed, the Labor target is that 80% of patients will be bulk-billed.

However, previous research has shown that while the GP bulk-billing incentive led to a reduction in costs for those eligible (concession card holders), it also increased costs for those not eligible.

Careful monitoring is required to ensure the volume of services – and their fees for non-cancer patients – do not go up.

Not all cancer care is based on the best available evidence. Napocska/Shutterstock

A further unprecedented complication is that for some services, it will be necessary to differentiate Medicare payments on the basis of the patient’s cancer status.

To guarantee patients face no out-of-pocket costs would require more radical reform. Again, the bundled payment system could be a vehicle for such reforms whereby payments are conditional on all the patient’s service providers agreeing to deliver care with no additional fee to the patient.

Depending on whether a patient is privately insured, the bundled payment could be financed by private health funds and Medicare.

Of course, it’s not yet clear that bundled payment schemes can be directly applied to the Australian setting.

The Labor cancer package requires careful and rigorous research effort to inform and guide the policy development.

A new vision for Medicare

Medicare is now 35 years old. It was built on fee-for-service payment, and focused on short, acute episodes of illness.

Now it’s time to move to new funding mechanisms that provide better care for complex, ongoing conditions, at a cost patients and the country can be sure represent efficient use of resources.

Read more: More visits to the doctor doesn’t mean better care – it’s time for a Medicare shake-up

Cancer is a good place to start and it could indeed be the most significant reform of Medicare so far.

Imagine a health system where every Australian was assured of optimal care, no matter what their illness or economic circumstances. That is a health system worth paying taxes for.

– ref. Labor’s cancer package would cut the cost of care, but beware of unintended side effects – http://theconversation.com/labors-cancer-package-would-cut-the-cost-of-care-but-beware-of-unintended-side-effects-114979

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glenn C. Savage, Senior Lecturer in Education Policy and Sociology of Education, University of Western Australia

This article is part of a series examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.

School’s policy and funding

Glenn C. Savage, Senior Lecturer in Education Policy and Sociology of Education, University of Western Australia

The Coalition’s approach to schooling policy since the 2016 election has primarily focused on its Quality Schools agenda. This centres on increased funding (A$307.7 billion in total school recurrent funding from 2018 to 2029). It also attempts to steer national reform in areas such as teaching, curriculum, assessment and the use of evidence.

The Coalition wants to steer reform in teaching, curriculum, assessment and the use of evidence. from shutterstock.com

The government’s policies are strongly informed by the 2018 Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools (aka Gonski 2.0) which examined how record levels of federal funding could be better tied to evidence-based practices.

The review’s recommendations are central to the National School Reform Agreement. This ties federal funding from 2019-2023 to a number of new national reform initiatives, which include:

• changes to the Australian Curriculum through the development of “learning progressions”. These describe the common development pathway along which students typically progress in their learning, regardless of age or year level
• developing an online assessment tool to help teachers monitor student progress
• reforms to improve the consistency and sharing of data
• a review of senior secondary pathways to work, further education and training
• establishing a national evidence institute to undertake research on “what works” to improve schooling outcomes
• developing a national strategy to support teacher workforce planning.

While the Coalition sees the agreement as heralding a positive new reform era, deals done with states to get it over the line are far from ideal, especially in the fraught area of school funding.

Labor and the Coalition aren’t all that different when it comes to schools policy. Ellen Smith/AAP

The agreement ensures that by 2023, private schools will receive 100% of the recommended amount under the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) funding model, whereas most government schools will be stuck at 95%.

The states share a great deal of the blame. But it’s not a good look for a federal government promoting a commitment to needs-based funding.

What about Labor?

A Labor government would change some elements of the national reform conversation. But the extent to which it would radically shift the current trajectory is debatable.

Labor has promised further school funding increases and flagged other reforms such as universal access to early childhood education for three and four year olds, tougher requirements for entry into teaching degrees, and the creation of a National Principals’ Academy to provide leadership training.

But Labor also shares a great deal in common with the Coalition.

Both preference a strong federal role in schooling. Both support (at least in theory) the principles of the SRS, and there is significant alignment between parties when it comes to reforms in the National School Reform Agreement.

Labor has also been promoting the idea of a national evidence institute for some time and many reforms in the school reform agreement build directly on those established by Labor as part of its “education revolution” agenda from 2007-2013.

While the parties will draw dividing lines to make a choice between them look stark, they have more in common than they would like to admit.

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

Higher education

Tim Pitman, Senior Research Fellow, Curtin University

Since the last federal election, the Coalition has been mostly dealing with the fallout from their ambitious policy agenda conceived under Tony Abbott, as laid out in the 2014 Higher Education Reform Bill. The chief aims of this policy were to:

• cut higher education funding by 20%
• increase subsidies to private providers
• deregulate tuition fees.

The Coalition started their new government with no clear pathway to enact their vision for higher education. from shutterstock.com

The reforms were voted down by the Senate in late 2014 and again in early 2015. This meant the government had no clear pathway to enact their vision for higher education and fewer options for reducing higher education expenditure. One way to do the latter would be to increase the maximum student fee payable.

Another option would be to freeze increases to the amount the Commonwealth subsidised the universities to teach students, so in future years it would spend less, in real terms, on higher education. The government took this option in 2017, saving an estimated A$2.2 billion. Research funding also took a hit.

The government further announced it would introduce performance-based higher education funding, though it is still not clear how, exactly, performance will be defined.

Labor says if it is elected, it will end the freeze on increases to the Commonwealth student subsidies. Labor will also conduct an inquiry into post-secondary education, with one aim being to repriotise the importance of vocational education, so it sits alongside, not beneath, higher education.

Labor heads are also promising a A$300 million University Future Fund to fast-track funding for high priority research and teaching projects.

For both the Coalition and Labor, regional Australia is shaping up as a key battleground and this is already being reflected in higher education policy. In February 2018, the Coalition announced it was funding 22 regional study hubs across regional Australia to provide

study spaces, video conferencing, computing facilities and internet access, as well as academic support for students studying via distance at partner universities.

In November 2018, it followed with a further A$135 million in additional support for regional universities affected by their freeze on funding.

In response, Labor has upped the ante on the regional hubs, saying it will not only maintain support for the study hubs but will fund mentoring and pathways programs in the communities that have the hubs. It will also commit an additional A$174 million for equity and pathways funding to support students from areas with low graduation rates, many of which are in regional Australia.

Read more: Australia should start planning for universal tertiary education

Early childhood

Susan Irvine, Associate Professor, School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology

There are some recurring and predictable storylines in early childhood education election policies in Australia. At the last election, the Coalition’s main storyline was affordability.

Its central platform was the Jobs for Families Package – a controversial bill that promised a simplified and more generous fee subsidy to help parents cover the rising cost of education and care.

The Coalition introduced a subsidy for early childhood education, but the means test has some vulnerable children missing out. from shutterstock.com

It was controversial because it tied children’s access to early education with their parents’ participation in the paid workforce. To get the subsidy, families had to meet a new work activity test. Children whose families did not meet this test had their hours of early education cut in half.

A drawn-out battle in the Senate saw the bill eventually pass with some hard-fought amendments to support more equitable access for children and families experiencing disadvantage.

On the whole, the childcare subsidy has been a positive change for most Australian families. However, there is evidence that the continuing focus on parent work participation means some of our children in low-income families – who research shows will benefit the most from access to high quality early education – are missing out.

The Coalition’s other 2016 election commitment was funding for universal preschool education, focusing on four year olds in the year prior to school. However, this has been doled out on an annual basis. The result being no security for children, families and service providers.

In the 2019 budget, the government committed funding for universal preschool for all Australian children only until the end of 2020.

Read more: Don’t be fooled, billions for schools in budget 2019 aren’t new. And what happened to the national evidence institute?

This is one of two key differences between the Coalition and Labor’s early childhood policies. Labor has committed to secure and sustainable funding for universal preschool. It has also committed to expanding access to three year olds, providing two years of early education prior to school entry.

The other key difference relates to broader investment in the early years workforce. The single most important factor influencing quality and children’s outcomes are the teachers and educators working with children. Australia urgently needs a new Early Years Workforce Strategy. The Coalition allowed the previous strategy to lapse and has remained silent on matters relating to pay and conditions.

Labor has announced a commitment to investment in the workforce, including funding to train more educators and teachers, and, has previously pledged support for professional wages for professional work.

– ref. How has education policy changed under the Coalition government? – http://theconversation.com/how-has-education-policy-changed-under-the-coalition-government-113921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, University of South Australia

Japan’s Nanzoin Temple is famous for its huge statue of a reclining Buddha. Its custodians are less laidback about the hordes of tourists the temple attracts. Signs in 12 languages now warn foreign visitors they may not enter in large groups.

It’s part of anti-tourist sentiment, driven by “the bad manners and abhorrent actions” of some visitors from abroad, reportedly growing all over Japan – and elsewhere in the world.

Nanzoin Temple. www.shutterstock.com

In Amsterdam, for example, city authorities have put a halt on new hotels and souvenir shops, and are cracking down on private rental platforms.

Tourism brings many benefits to communities around the world. But tourism hotspots are feeling the strain as tourist numbers increase. Locals resent being crowded out of restaurants and parks. They resent paying inflated prices. Most of all they resent tourists behaving badly.

The increasing prevalance of the badly behaved tourist, either in reality or simply as cultural meme, presents a serious issue for the tourism industry. In cities at tourism’s bleeding edge, such as Venice, resentment has boiled over into anti-tourism protests. In Barcelona the cause against foreign visitors has been embraced by left-wing nationalist activists. Their view is expressed in graffiti around Barcelona: “Refugees welcome; tourists go home.”

Tourists go home. Refugees welcome. Dunk/flickr, CC BY-SA

Unless the tourism industry does something to address underlying aggravations, such sentiments are likely to spread. There’s a danger tourism, instead of building bridges for cross-cultural understanding and friendship, will add to the stereotypical walls that separate people.

When in Rome…

Sometimes bad behaviour is a matter of perception, and comes down to cultural differences. There are places in China, for example, where it’s perfectly acceptable to leave your restaurant table, and the floor around it, an absolute mess. Two Chinese women visiting Japan, however, became the focus of international criticism due to a video that appeared to show them being asked to leave an Osaka restaurant because of their “disgusting eating habits”.

‘Please just go’

The question arises as to why tourists don’t make more effort to understand and follow local customs.

Then there’s the question of why tourists behave in ways they wouldn’t dream of at home. Maybe it’s wearing a lime-green mankini while wandering through Krakow. Or nothing at all at Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s most holy shrine.

Read more: Tourists behaving badly: how culture shapes conduct when we’re on holiday

The evidence suggests there’s something about being on holiday that simply seems to lower people’s inhibitions.

Otherwise ordinary people commit stupid acts like attempting to steal a propaganda poster in the world’s most totalitarian state. Or spray-painting grafitti on a wall of a site where millions were murdered. Or brawling for a prime selfie spot at Rome’s Trevi Fountain.

Rome’s famed Trevi Fountain. Giuseppe Lami/EPA

Sustainable tourism rests on a number of pillars. One of those is the need for the tourist to respect local people, cultures and environments.

The problem now, as other tourism scholars have pointed out, is that tourism is promoted as an activity of pure hedonism. Rather than being encouraged to see themselves as global citizens with both rights and responsibilities, tourists are sold an illusion of unlimited indulgence. They are positioned as consumers, with special privileges.

Is it any wonder that encourages indulgent behaviour and an attitude of entitlement?

The Tiaki promise

We know about some of the incidents mentioned because the perpetrators themselves recorded their crimes for posterity. On other occasion an offended local has done the filming.

Such is the case of the “pig” British tourists who created a media storm on their holiday to New Zealand in January. A video showing the rubbish they left behind at a beachside park turned them into a media sensation. More than 10,000 people signed a petition for them to be deported.

It’s a classic case study in how a local event can now so easily become a national or international incident.

But I believe New Zealand also provides a case study in how the global tourism industry can deal with antitourist sentiment by encouraging tourists to show greater respect.

To deal with multiple problems associated with tourists – including bad driving, damaging camping practices and to ignorance of safety in the outdoors, New Zealand’s tourism authority and operators are promoting “The Tiaki Promise”.

The Tiaki Promise.

Tiaki is a Maori word meaning to guard, preserve, protect or shelter. An associated principle is Kaitiakitanga, an ethic of guardianship based on traditional Maori understandings of kinship between humans and the natural world.

Read more: A green and happy holiday? You can have it all

The Tiaki campaign thus asks tourists to look after New Zealand, “to act as a guardian, protecting and preserving our home”. In exchange it promises a warm welcome to those who care to care.

Such a principle of reciprocity is an inviting code for responsible tourism. The tourism industry’s challenge is to develop effective strategies to bring tourists and locals into better alignment.

The key is in communicating the priceless experiences that emerge from being with the locals rather than imposing on them.

– ref. Tourists behaving badly are a threat to global tourism, and the industry is partly to blame – http://theconversation.com/tourists-behaving-badly-are-a-threat-to-global-tourism-and-the-industry-is-partly-to-blame-112398

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Matthew, Lecturer in Ancient History, Australian Catholic University

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.

How did the months get their names? – Sylvie, age 8, Brisbane.

The names of the months are very old and they come from ancient Rome. Rome is the capital of Italy and several thousand years ago it was the heart of a very powerful empire (which is like a kingdom, only bigger).

In the very beginning of the Roman calendar (more than 2000 years ago), there were only 10 months in the year. The Romans based this version on the ancient Greek calendar. Later, however, the Romans added in two more. The names of some of the months also changed a few times.

Here’s how the early version would have looked.

This fancy fellow is Mars, the Roman god of war. March is named after him. Shutterstock

In the early days

MARCH: Happy New Year! March was the start of the year for the Romans. The beginning of spring was the time when everyone could go out and start fighting each other, so the month was named after Mars – the Roman god of war.

APRIL: The name for this month may come from a Roman word for “second” – aprilis – as it was the second month of the Roman year.

MAY: Spring is in full bloom for the Romans in May, and this month is named after Maia – a goddess of growing plants.

JUNE: This month is named after Juno, the queen of the Roman gods.

Here’s a statue of Juno, the Roman queen of the gods. June is named after her. Shutterstock

JULY: This month used to be called Quintilis – the Roman word for “fifth” as it was the fifth month of the Roman year. It was later changed to July by Emperor Julius Caesar after his family name (Julius). An emperor is like a king, only more powerful.

Here’s the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, who decided to name a month after his family name (Julius). He called it July. Shutterstock

AUGUST: This month was first called Sextillia – the Roman word for “sixth”, as it was the sixth month of the Roman year. It was later changed to August by the Emperor Augustus, and he named it after himself.

SEPTEMBER: The name for this month comes from the Roman word for “seventh” – septimus – as it was the seventh month of the Roman year.

OCTOBER: The name for this month comes from the Roman word for “eighth” – octavus – as it was the eighth month of the Roman year.

NOVEMBER: The name for this month comes from the Roman word for “ninth” – nonus – as it was the ninth month of the Roman year.

DECEMBER: The name for this month comes from the Roman word for “tenth” – decimus – as it was the tenth month of the Roman year.

Then a few extra months were added…

JANUARY: This was one of the extra months that the Romans added to the year. This month was named after Janus – the god of beginnings and endings. He is often depicted as having two faces.

Janus, the god of beginning and endings, is often shown as having two faces. By Loudon dodd – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, CC BY

FEBRUARY: This is another extra month that the Romans added to the calendar. They put it right after January. Its name comes from a festival that was held at this time called Februa. The festival aimed to cleanse the city of evil spirits and welcome health and fertility.

Because the Romans put two new months into the year, the names of the months do not make sense anymore. If our year started in March as it did for the Romans, December would still be the tenth month.

But 450 years ago, people who used this calendar started thinking that January was the first month of the year. So now December in the twelfth month for the Western calendar.

Read more: Curious Kids: why are there different seasons at specific times of the year?

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

– ref. Curious Kids: how did the months get their names? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-did-the-months-get-their-names-113558

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roderick John Fensham, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland

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

Swamp foxtail (Cenchrus purpurascens) is a delightful grass that forms a neat tussock up to a metre tall with a distinctive fluffy spikelet that resembles a fox’s tail.

Foxtails are widely used in horticulture. The purple forms are particularly popular in ornamental gardens and some have even become invasive weeds.

The foxtail grasses are more commonly seen in these cultivated settings, which has led to much confusion about swamp foxtails’ origins in Australia. The species is simultaneously an exotic weed from Asia, the dominant grass in an endangered Australian ecosystem and a rare native species in isolated desert springs.

The Conversation

Is it native?

It was uncertain for a while whether swamp foxtail is actually native to Australia. Although Europeans collected it near Sydney, it was possible the seeds had come with livestock on the early ships.

The plant’s fluffy spikelets resemble a fox tail. Shutterstock

This theory was put to rest by genetic studies that found small populations have existed in inland Queensland for hundreds of thousands of years.

The species spread southward and was first recorded in Victoria in the 1970s.

European records

Robert Brown, the botanist who accompanied Matthew Flinders as he circumnavigated the continent, made the the earliest European collections of the swamp foxtail near Sydney in 1802.

Despite the early date of the collections, it is feasible that the swamp foxtail was brought to Sydney within 14 years of settlement as a byproduct among grain or hay. However, while the species occurs naturally in Asia, the Javanese ports were not on the typical travelling route from Europe.

Read more: Spinifex grass would like us to stop putting out bushfires, please

The intrepid adventurer Ludwig Leichardt later collected this species near the Gwydir River region. This collection provides more convincing evidence the swamp foxtail is native to Australia. It seems unlikely that, in the early years of colonisation, the swamp foxtail had been transported overland with the squatters who were spreading out from their successful properties in the Hunter Valley.

The spread southward

The history of herbarium records, from collections in the late 1800s and early 1900s, suggests swamp foxtail might have been native to Queensland and New South Wales.

Collections south of these locations happened after 1940. The species was not recorded in Victoria until the 1970s. It seems almost certain the swamp foxtail spread southward during the 20th century, in some places as an undesirable weed.

Unusual and isolated habitats

Aboriginal fire management possibly maintained natural grassy openings among the northern NSW rainforests. The curious “grasses”, as they were named, are well documented on early survey plans of the Big Scrub country. Many a place name, Howards Grass Road and Lagoon Grass Road among them, bear testament to their existence.

The surveyors provided detailed recordings of the dominant grass on the valley floors: the “foxtail”. The swamp foxtail is now rather rare on the valley floors of the Richmond and the Tweed River valleys, replaced by crops on prime agricultural land. It managed to survive in a few locations west of Murwillumbah and on springs, but large expanses of the foxtail grasslands have succumbed to the plough.

An extremely isolated population of the swamp foxtail at Elizabeth Springs in western Queensland. Author provided

A particularly unusual habitat for the swamp foxtail is the artesian springs that feed permanent wetlands in the semi-deserts of inland Queensland. The swamp foxtail occurs there in very local populations separated by hundreds of kilometres.

This raises the question: is the swamp foxtail a recent arrival on these tiny, strange and isolated ecosystems, or are these ancient populations?

Genetic studies have provided conclusive evidence of an ancient origin. The oldest lineage is the population at Elizabeth Springs to the south of Boulia. Its molecular signature suggests this population has been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years.

Where swamp foxtail does occur at springs, it is always accompanied by rare species that are seen only in those unusual wetlands.

Read more: Grass trees aren’t a grass (and they’re not trees)

Crossing continents and climates

Swamp foxtail demonstrates the complexity of defining a species’ origin. This species probably evolved in Asia, because this is where most of its relatives are found. It found its way to Australia, possibly through a migratory bird that dropped a seed in a desert spring.

It then had a second migration, either from the springs or from a repeat dispersal from Asia, and found a niche in the valley floors of subtropical landscapes. It was abundant in these moist and fertile habitats when Europeans colonised the continent in 1788.

Since then, the swamp foxtail has spread to temperate climates where it has become invasive and, in some situations, a minor pest. Quite a journey.

– ref. The swamp foxtail’s origin is hidden in its DNA – http://theconversation.com/the-swamp-foxtails-origin-is-hidden-in-its-dna-114731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aurelien Forget, Lecturer in Macromolecular Chemistry, Freiburg University

When we have small wounds on our skin or muscles they can usually heal by themselves.

But in deeper wounds – such as those in diabetic patients or in muscle tissue after a heart attack – repair is more difficult. These sorts of issues often require more serious treatments, and may eventually need amputation or a transplant if healing is not complete.

While organ transplants save lives, we fall short in available organs for this procedure, and alternative methods are needed.

Technology such as bioprinting has been proposed to build fully functional organs outside the body. But what if we could boost our own regenerative capabilities? Would it be possible to create the organs inside the body?

Read more: The next pharmaceutical revolution could be 3D bioprinted

In a recent publication we demonstrate that by a simple injection of a gel extracted from edible seaweeds, we can direct the body to create stable blood vessels in a muscle. These vessels are the key in helping tissue to live.

These results are an important step toward regenerative therapies based solely on biomaterials.

What are regenerative therapies?

Regenerative therapy (also called regenerative medicine) is an area of research that combines medicine, molecular biology, and biotechnology. It aims to engineer tissues or organs and restore normal function.

As an example, 3D bioprinting has had some success, such as the creation of implantable corneas for the eye.

But this approach requires specialised manufacturing facilities. The cells must be isolated, grown in a bioreactor – a special vessel providing the right environment for tissue growth – and used to create artificial organs under controlled and sterile conditions.

Process of biofabrication of patient specific organs. Steffen Harr

A new approach emerged a couple of years ago. This uses the body to produce a particular type of tissue or cells, and is called the in vivo (in the body) bioreactor. This was initially developed to make bones.

To create tissue in the human body, we need to trigger and exploit our own regenerative capabilities. Unfortunately we are not as good as salamanders: we can’t regrow a new limb.

But with some help, we could regenerate individual tissues. To achieve this, the help can come in the form of materials that:

• reproduce the tissue properties needed, such as the stiffness of the tissues, and

• carry chemical and biological signals that can direct the tissue growth.

A tissue is defined as a group of cells working together for a specific function. As an example, muscle tissues are made of cells organised into fibres, forming the so-called muscle fibres.

Materials that can talk with cells

Our body’s tissues are made up of many different cell types, and also materials that exist outside the cells. These materials are known as the extracellular matrix (ECM).

The ECM is made up of several different elements. It holds water, and also stores vital information to help cells move, grow and organise into functional tissues.

We don’t need to go into the details of what the ECM is made of here. But what we can say is that scientists can copy many of its functions using a gel-like material called hydrogel. This can be modified to pass specific biological information to cells.

Edible seaweed to create blood vessels

We have been developing a new class of injectable hydrogel.

The material making the hydrogel is called agarose, which is also used to make jelly cakes in the kitchen, and in biology laboratories to separate DNA.

Agarose is a polysaccharide – a long chain of sugar – that is extracted from red seaweed found in many oceans around the world.

Agarose powder used in the laboratory for the separation of DNA and agar used to make jelly cakes. Aurelien Forget

In our lab, we can modify agarose by attaching a small molecule (a peptide) that will talk to the cells. Using this approach, we have created a unique formulation of the hydrogel that provides the ideal environment for certain cells to organise into blood vessels.

Now in our latest work with collaborators at the University Hospital of Basel, we show that this same hydrogel injected into muscle can “talk” to the body and initiate the formation of new blood vessels.

Previously, only cartilage or bone could be regenerated within the body.

Formation of new blood vessels induced by an injectable therapeutic material. Steffen Harr

Future therapies

This approach paves the way for the creation of a new class of therapies in which injectable materials could become as useful as pharmaceutical drugs.

We envision that in certain cases a patient with a defect organ might one day be able to get an injection of a material that will carry with it information to talk to cells and direct their organisation into new functional tissues.

Read more: The ‘painless woman’ helps us see how anxiety and fear fit in the big picture of pain

This approach would let our body do most of the complicated tasks, in contrast to cell therapies or bioprinting of organs outside the body – where cells must be harvested, grown and re-implanted. Materials therapies would be highly valuable for patients in remote location where complex infrastructures are not available.

More speculatively, organ bioprinting is considered as one of the critical technologies for the expansion of the humans to other planets.

By using regeneration-triggering materials to overcome injuries or disease we could leave the critical repair task for our body. Perhaps one day a person living in space would be able to inject themselves with one of these materials.

– ref. Edible seaweed can be used to grow blood vessels in the body – http://theconversation.com/edible-seaweed-can-be-used-to-grow-blood-vessels-in-the-body-112618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Chapple, Director, Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

Following the Christchurch mosque shootings, there has been considerable discussion of intolerance and experiences of discrimination in New Zealand.

For example, Anjum Rahman, a spokesperson for the Islamic Women’s Council, has expressed concerns about rising levels of discrimination against the Muslim community.

This discussion has been driven by specific examples of discrimination or intolerance. Such anecdotes clearly prove wrong the idea that New Zealand is free of discrimination or intolerance, but they provide no evidence of societal prevalence of such experiences and attitudes.

My aim here is to consider data on the occurrence of discrimination and the extent of tolerance across New Zealand society, in aggregate and by different groups. This allows some generalisable conclusions about what we do and don’t know.

Experiences of discrimination

Stats NZ’s most recent General Social Survey (collected between April 2016 and April 2017) allows a consideration of local discrimination and tolerance. It uses an officially collected and statistically representative population sample. It also enables an analysis by subgroups defined by migrant status, main ethnic category and region.

Aggregating across all experiences of discrimination (e.g. by ethnicity, age, gender, dress, language, religion, sexual orientation etc), and hence maximising reported discrimination, most New Zealanders (83.1%) report no discrimination in the previous year. There is little difference in reported discrimination between New Zealand-born people (83.5% report no discrimination) and long-term migrants (83.7%). However, while a large majority of recent migrants (74.3%) report no discrimination, the figure was smaller.

Across all major ethnic categories, the large majority report no discrimination. Of New Zealand Europeans, 85.4% report no discrimination. Rates for Pacific (80.1%), Māori (74.4%) and Asian New Zealanders (73.4%) are lower, but still high.

In terms of regional differences, 83.1% of Cantabrians (where Christchurch is) report no discrimination, identical to New Zealand-wide rates. On this evidence, Canterbury is not a local hotbed of discrimination.

How big are the observed difference in discrimination between groups reported above? The standard social science approach divides population differences into “small”, “medium” and “large”. On the basis of this division, the most elevated experiences of discrimination experienced by ethnic minorities and recent migrants are closest to small in size.

Read more: Can religious vilification laws protect religious freedoms?

Tolerance of ethnic and religious diversity

In terms of tolerance, the large majority of New Zealanders are comfortable or very comfortable with a neighbour with a different religion (87.4%). They feel the same comfort regarding a neighbour from a different ethnic group (88.7%).

The one case where only a small majority express comfort involves a neighbour with a mental illness. Only 53.2% of people are very comfortable or comfortable here.

There are no notable differences in tolerance by migrant status, ethnic category or region. Hence, with the exception of the mentally ill, all groups share a majority value of out-group tolerance, and harbour a similar small share of the intolerant.

There is no official data on discrimination experienced by Muslim New Zealanders compared to other groups. Equally, there is no official data on Muslim tolerance of other ethnic and religious groups as neighbours.

However, there is information from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study on negative attitudes, in the form of reported anger. People report on a 1 to 7 scale, where 1 is “No anger”, 4 is “Neutral”, and 7 is “Anger”. People report on anger towards several main ethnic categories, as well as Muslims, a religious group. In terms of the sampling approach, these data are less well suited for answering population questions than the official Statistics New Zealand data.

Bearing this caveat in mind, the survey shows a broad lack of out-group negativity. Most societal responses fall between “No anger” and “Neutral”. For example, 91.3% of non-Pacific people report “No anger” to “Neutral” attitudes towards Pacific people. Comparable out-group figures for Asians are 90.3%, for New Zealand Europeans 87.3% and for Māori 86.0%.

All these figures are basically identical. For Muslims the number is slightly lower at 81.9%. But in all cases the share of society in the “No anger” to “Neutral” zone is a large majority. Equally, differences between Muslims and ethnic groups are small.

Unfortunately there are no other religious groups where the anger question is asked. This means there is no benchmark to compare out-group anger towards Muslims. Data on anger towards Evangelical Christians, Hindus or Jews are not collected.

Read more: After Charlottesville, how we define tolerance becomes a key question

While discrimination experienced by minority groups, defined by migrant status and ethnic category, clearly exists, it is not the experience of a large majority of New Zealanders from any of these groups. Furthermore, group differences are small.

The large majority of New Zealanders also seem to be tolerant, including of different ethnic groups and religions, and are not angry, as far as one can tell, towards Muslims.

There appears to be, however, a small elevation in anger towards Muslims compared to ethnic groups. But whether anger is greater towards Muslims compared with other religious minorities remains unclear from the available evidence. It is worth observing that all religious groups, Muslim or otherwise, are minorities in New Zealand.

Many thanks to Chris Sibley, at the University of Auckland, for making the data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study available. Errors and opinions are mine alone.

– ref. What the data say about discrimination and tolerance in New Zealand – http://theconversation.com/what-the-data-say-about-discrimination-and-tolerance-in-new-zealand-114369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Manwaring, Senior Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University

This article is part of a series examining the Coalition government’s record on key issues while in power and what Labor is promising if it wins the 2019 federal election.

When the “mighty Roman” Gough Whitlam died, Indigenous leader Noel Pearson delivered a memorable eulogy. Channelling Monty Python, Pearson asked what had Whitlam ever done for Australia? Pearson then reeled off a long list of achievements, including Medibank, no-fault divorce, needs-based schools funding, the Racial Discrimination Act and many more. This was a blistering set of reforms by a truly radical and activist government.

After close to four years of the Turnbull and Morrison Coalition government, we might well ask: “What has the Coalition done for us?”

It is hard to think of a single notable achievement for which the government will be credited or remembered. If we take another government as ideologically driven as Whitlam’s – albeit from a different vantage point – in this case John Howard’s, we can still recall a significant range of policies and changes. Chief among these was gun control.

In contrast, we are hardly likely to remember the Turnbull-Morrison governments.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison struggles to straddle the south-north divide

In 2016, if we vaguely recall, there was a double-dissolution election – but could many voters even remember why? Ah, the trigger was the ill-fated Australian Building and Construction Commission, which did not even feature during the election campaign.

Since then, what have been the major policy achievements?

The National Energy Guarantee? If the government is likely to be remembered at all, it will be for the deep-seated divisions that meant Malcolm Turnbull was entirely unable to deliver a clear and coherent energy and climate policy. This was, after all, a government that chose to ignore Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s call for a Clean Energy Target.

Tony Abbott’s reversal on withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement (under Turnbull), but then arguing Australia should stay in (especially with Angus Taylor’s masterful handling of the data on emissions) reflected a policy agenda dogged by internal divisions and incoherence.

Scott Morrison’s major contribution to the debate was to bring a piece of coal into the parliament.

Read more: What kind of prime minister will Scott Morrison be?

Perhaps immigration? Turnbull was forced to rescue a deal initially brokered with the Obama administration, after new President Donald Trump mocked the deal as “stupid”. With the government wedded to a “tough” border policy, including re-opening the detention facility on Christmas Island, it even lost the vote on “medevac” legislation to ensure medical treatment for suffering refugees.

Any lasting achievements that seem to have happened were only because the government was either forced to, or reluctantly accepted it needed to, make changes. On the banking royal commission, Morrison – a political leader resolutely wedded to remain on the wrong side of history – had initially described it as a “populist whinge”. Any systemic changes to the banking sector will emerge, in spite of, rather than because of the government’s actions.

Turnbull will point to legislating for same-sex marriage as one of his government’s signature policy achievements, following the plebiscite. Yet Morrison will hardly be trumpeting this achievement, given that he voted against it.

Yes, same-sex marriage should be a lasting and welcome change, but again, the Coalition did much to resist it.

In stark contrast, German Chancellor Angela Merkel enabled a parliamentary vote but then voted against it – a more principled position than the unnecessary plebiscite. This was a government that consistently showed it was behind public opinion on a range of issues.

There is a case that underneath the general political and policy mess of the Turnbull-Morrison era, the government notched up some quiet achievements. These include a free-trade deal with Indonesia, entering the fourth phase of the bipartisan national plan to reduce family violence, and trying to embed the Gonski 2.0 schools funding.

Many public servants across a range of portfolios were busily, professionally carrying out a range of important policies and programs out of the media glare. This reflects a long-standing view of government as policy incrementalism – carrying out the everyday, important, but unglamorous work of running the country.

Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of the Turnbull-Morrison era has been a consistent failure to adequately represent the concerns and issues of the centre-right of Australian politics. Neither Turnbull or Morrison understood the promise of Burkean conservatism or even John Stuart Mill’s liberalism.

Worse still, in the case of the Nationals, there was an almost wilful inability to offer a coherent and reasoned case on behalf of regional Australia. As Coalition MPs scratch their heads and wonder where it all went so horribly wrong, they might well look at South Australia and now New South Wales to remind themselves what a “liberal” government looks like.

Indeed, if we needed a lasting image of the Nationals’ mishandling of the water portfolio, then the dead fish of the Menindee will suffice.

As Scott Morrison most likely exits the prime ministership, a different kind of Roman to Whitlam, his only comfort might be that he is not Theresa May.

– ref. What will the Turnbull-Morrison government be remembered for? – http://theconversation.com/what-will-the-turnbull-morrison-government-be-remembered-for-114618

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

Often during the day I feel the need to have a bit of a lie-down. Whether it’s been a busy day, I didn’t sleep well the night before, or for no particular reason I know of. But some will warn that you’ll be ruined for sleep that night if you nap during the day.

We asked five experts if we should nap during the day.

Four out of five experts said yes

Here are their detailed responses:

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

None of the authors have any interests or affiliations to declare.

– ref. We asked five experts: should we nap during the day? – http://theconversation.com/we-asked-five-experts-should-we-nap-during-the-day-112523

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa Schneider, DECRA fellow, Australian National University

Tasmania’s bushfires may have resulted in the release of significant amounts of mercury from burnt trees into the atmosphere. Our research shows that industrial mercury pollution from decades past has been locked up in west Tasmanian trees.

Mercury occurs naturally in Earth’s crust. Over the past 200 years, industrial activities have mobilised mercury from the crust and released it into the atmosphere. As a consequence, atmospheric mercury concentrations are now three to four times higher than in the pre-industrialisation era.

Mining is the largest source of the global atmospheric mercury, accounting for 37% of mercury emissions. When Europeans first arrived in Australia, there was, of course, no Environmental Protection Act in place to limit emissions from industrial activities. In western Tasmania, where mining has occurred for more than a century, this meant mercury was being released without control into the local atmosphere until changes in technology, market conditions, and later, regulation, conspired to reduce emissions.

Read more: Australia emits mercury at double the global average

Because mercury is also very persistent in the environment, past mining activity has generated a reservoir of mercury that could be released to the atmosphere under certain conditions. This is a concern because even small amounts of mercury may be toxic and may cause serious health problems. In particular, mercury can threaten the normal development of a child in utero and early in its life.

Tree rings can reveal past mercury contamination

How much mercury has been released into the Australian environment and when has remained largely unknown. However, in a new study we show how mercury levels in Tasmania have dramatically changed over the past 150 years due to mining practices. Long-lived Huon pine, endemic to western Tasmania, is one of the most efficient bioaccumulators of mercury in the world. This makes it a good proxy for tracking mercury emissions in western Tasmania. If concentrations of mercury in the atmosphere are high in a given year, this can be detected in the annual ring of Huon pine for that year.

Mercury pollution from past mining practices in western Tasmania has left a lasting environmental legacy. The sampled trees contained a significant reservoir of mercury that was taken up during the peak mining period in Queenstown. Changes in mercury concentrations in the annual rings of Huon pine are closely aligned with changes in mining practices in the region.

Increased concentrations coincide with the commencement of pyritic copper smelting in Queenstown in 1896. They peak between 1910 and 1920 when smelting was at its height. In 1922, concentrations begin to decline in parallel with the introduction of a new method to separate and concentrate ores. This method required only one small furnace instead of 11 large ones. In 1934, a new dust-collection apparatus was installed in the smelter’s chimney, coinciding with the further decrease in mercury concentrations in nearby Huon pine.

Temporal tree rings of Huon pine, revealing historical mercury pollution. Author provided

Toxic elements or compounds taken up by vegetation can also be released back into the local environment. Bushfires that burn trees that have accumulated mercury may release this mercury as vapour, dust or fine ash, potentially exposing people and wildlife to the adverse effects of mercury. It is estimated that bushfires release 210,000kg of mercury into the global atmosphere each year. As these fires become more frequent and ferocious in Australia, mercury concentrations in the atmosphere are likely to increase. Mercury released by bushfires can persist in the atmosphere for a year, allowing for long-distance transportation depending on wind strength and direction. This means that mining activity from over a century ago may have regional implications in the near future. The Tasmanian fires in December-February burned almost 200,000 hectares, including areas around Queenstown.

It is not currently possible to know how much mercury has been released by these recent fires. Our results simply highlight the potential risk and the need to better understand the amount of mercury taken up by vegetation that may one day be released back to the atmosphere via bushfires.

Re-release of historical mercury emissions by bushfires. Author provided

Read more: Dry lightning has set Tasmania ablaze, and climate change makes it more likely to happen again

Although there is no simple way to remove bio-accumulated mercury from trees, the history of mercury contamination recorded in tree rings provides important lessons. Decreased uptake of mercury after upgrades to the Queenstown copper smelter operations demonstrates the positive impact that good management decisions can have on the amount of mercury released into the environment.

To control mercury emissions globally, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has developed the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Its primary goal is to protect human health and the environment from the negative effects of mercury. Australia has signed the convention and but has yet to ratify it. Once ratified, Australia would be required to record sources of mercury and quantify emissions, including those from bushfires.

But to do this, the government must first be able to identify environmental reservoirs of mercury. Our study, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, shows that the long-lived Huon pine can be used to for this purpose. Further work to determine what other tree species record atmospheric emissions of mercury and other toxic elements in other regions of Australia is required.

– ref. Mercury pollution from decades past may have been re-released by Tasmania’s bushfires – http://theconversation.com/mercury-pollution-from-decades-past-may-have-been-re-released-by-tasmanias-bushfires-114603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dorothy Wardale, MBA, Deputy Director, Curtin University

More Australian universities are relying on casual academics to teach their students. It’s difficult to estimate the exact proportion of academic staff on casual contracts, but reports suggest up to 80% of undergraduate courses in some Australian universities have been taught by a casual academic. By mid-2018, an estimated 94,500 people were employed at Australian universities on a casual basis, primarily in teaching-only roles.

Research suggests the higher education sector is the third largest employer of casual staff globally, just behind health- and social-care and retail.

Although casual academics are on temporary contracts, some have been working for universities longer than their colleagues on continuing contracts. This trend is not unique to Australia. There are concerns the number of casual academics working in higher education is growing worldwide. Current research suggests several explanations.

First, the casualisation of academic labour mirrors the growing number of part-time and temporary contracts in other employment sectors.

Second, casual academic contracts provide workforce flexibility at a time when student enrolments are fluctuating and budgets are limited. This means universities can service their teaching needs on a just-in-time basis.

Third, because casual academic contracts have none of the benefits of continuing contracts, they allow employers to reduce overall labour costs .

Using casual academics brings benefits and challenges. But casualised labour won’t be done away with any time soon. We suggest universities manage their casualised staff more effectively and equitably – and bring their employment conditions as close to those of permanent staff as possible.

Read more: Self-employment and casual work aren’t increasing but so many jobs are insecure – what’s going on?

Concerns about casual academics

There are growing concerns about the impact of casual academics on the quality of teaching. Australia’s higher education regulator, for example, states that an “unusually high reliance on casual staff poses risks for the quality of the students experience″.

Our unpublished research suggests casual academics are often recruited on an ad hoc basis, which is unlike the highly regulated recruitment processes for continuing staff. This means more reliance on personal connections, short notice and limited market searches.

Continuing staff are usually required to complete some form of professional development to keep up-to-date with teaching and research innovations. However, professional development for casual academics is often limited, with little oversight from the employer. In some instances it has to be in their own time and at their own expense.

Short lead-in times to a casual contract also leave casual academics with little time to prepare course materials. Nor do they allow enough time to understand institutional cultures and policy requirements. Institutions with high numbers of casual staff may also find it difficult to ensure continuity of course offerings which can impact on student learning.

Read more: How does being second-last in the OECD for public funding affect our unis?

Benefits of casual academics

Despite these concerns, casual academics also bring important benefits to higher education. Many are industry professionals with a deep understanding of the real world practices they are teaching. They can also connect students and other university staff to their industry networks. This can create opportunities for industry research projects and student internships.

Research also shows that many casual academics have high levels of commitment to their students. They regularly go beyond their contractual obligations by writing job references, providing career advice and making connections for future employment.

From the perspective of the individual casual academic, casual academic work is something of a double-edged sword. Some enjoy the flexibility of not having to fulfil service requirements such as attending meetings and annual performance reviews. Yet they also miss out on the benefits of being part of an academic community. This includes restricted opportunities for conference travel, professional development and promotion.

Many casual academics enjoy the flexibility of working across different institutions. Yet they must also contend with less job security. There is no guarantee of work from one semester to the next, which creates a lack of financial security and benefits. For younger cohorts, this is especially problematic for mortgage applications and other loans.

Read more: The costs of a casual job are now outweighing any pay benefits

How to make it better

There is an urgent need for a more effective and equitable approach to managing casual academics. Providing more permanent contracts may be one solution, budgets permitting, but there are other options. Besides, some casual academics prefer to retain the flexibility of casual work.

Recruitment and selection of casual academics needs to be more rigorous. Clear job specifications are essential, with systematic interviewing and transparent decision making for all appointments.

There also needs to be enough lead-in time to ensure adequate preparation before the start of a course. Effective induction to institutional learning and teaching policies is also required – especially for new appointees.

Professional development opportunities need to be embedded into work contracts with time paid for by the employer. More attention also needs to be paid to support financial security, including a review of financial institutions’ loan policies.

Increased competition and budget cutbacks in the global higher education sector mean the use of casual academic labour will increase even further. Institutional policy makers must work effectively with these important partners in the education of the future labour force.

– ref. Casual academics aren’t going anywhere, so what can universities do to ensure learning isn’t affected? – http://theconversation.com/casual-academics-arent-going-anywhere-so-what-can-universities-do-to-ensure-learning-isnt-affected-113567

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Pittman, PhD Candidate in Transportation Planning, University of Melbourne

Half a billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but that really depends on what you’re spending it on. In Tuesday’s federal budget, the Coalition government announced its Commuter Car Park Fund, a A$500 million package intended to make it easier for people in the suburbs and regions to drive to their local railway station.

While this is a drop in the ocean compared with the wider transport infrastructure budget, we’re going to use it here as a starting point to run some thought experiments to see if this is the best way to spend our taxes to help people get around.

Read more: Congestion-busting infrastructure plays catch-up on long-neglected needs

How much car parking could we buy for $500 million?

The construction cost for a single parking spot can range from A$10,000 for a surface car park to A$68,000 per space in multi-level structures. So, if all the money is spent on surface car parks, the new fund could build 50,000 spaces at railway stations around Australia.

Of course, not all of these spots are going to be in surface parking lots – some will need to be in multi-level parking garages. So, if we built one multi-level space for every five at ground level, the A$500 million earmarked in the budget would buy us 30,000 parking spaces.

Read more: Budget transport spending is about par for the course, but the pattern is unusual

Does increased parking increase transit usage?

If these 30,000 park-and-ride spaces at train stations are built, this is unlikely to lead to an increase in transit patronage. It could even run counter to providing good public transport.

On the day of the 2016 Census, 1,225,668 people used public transport to get to work. Generously assuming that a single car has an average of 1.5 passengers, the Commuter Car Park Fund might enable only 45,000 extra people to access the public transport network. That’s a tiny 4% of the current number of people who travel to work by public transport.

But studies show that only a small proportion of park-and-riders had previously commuted by car all the way to their destination. Many are existing passengers who used to walk, cycle, bus or drive to a different station but are now opting to drive to the station with new parking places. Non-commuters working or shopping in nearby activity centres also often use park-and-ride spaces.

There are at least 705 train stations in metropolitan Australia, and it is not clear from the budget papers where these extra parking spaces are going to be placed. Sydney has 176 train stations, Melbourne has 218, Southeast Queensland has 152, Adelaide has 89, and Perth has 70. Even assuming only 300 stations will need extra parking, that provides an average of only 100 new spaces per station.

Read more: This is how regional rail can help ease our big cities’ commuter crush

More bang for your buck

There are cheaper ways to move an extra 45,000 people a day to and from railway stations and around our cities.

Linking a major university campus with a Skytrain station, Vancouver’s 99 B-Line bus service moves 56,000 passengers a day at a cost of less than C$14 million ($A14.7 million) a year.

Similarly, in Toronto, the Finch West bus service carries 44,000 passengers a day to and from the subway. The Toronto urban transit network moves more than a million people a day with an annual operating subsidy of C$713 million.

Passengers transferring from the Metro to a feeder bus in suburban Montreal. Iain Lawrie/University of Melbourne, Author provided

Each of these cities has comparable urban landscapes to suburban Australia, but is able to offer buses to nearby stations every five minutes.

We understand that these costs are not necessarily directly comparable. We provide them though as a point to think about, and so you might begin to ask how our cities could be better configured.

Read more: Don’t forget buses: six rules for improving city bus services

Better land use around train stations?

Alternatives like direct and frequent buses could liberate space around our suburban train stations. Around the world, stations are community hubs, and even simple stations can be wonderful, vibrant places for people. The best ones are a pleasure to move through and spend time in, unencumbered by the conflict and noise of space dominated by car traffic.

Building car parks wastes that place potential. Instead, it bakes in the mobility habits and planning prejudices that condemn our public places to being grey deserts, difficult to move through, and keeping out parks, shops, gardens, street life, walkability and human interaction.

Unsealed car parking at Tarneit station in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Paul Fleckney/University of Melbourne, Author provided

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

Underpinning the futility of the Commuter Car Park Fund is the fact that “demand” for free parking is fundamentally insatiable. Just like urban road space, building more of the wrong infrastructure simply induces more use and perpetuates congestion.

Parking policy scholars and practitioners have known for decades now that parking demand can be successfully managed, including via pricing existing parking supply and improving transport alternatives. Pricing and related policies serve as an effective disincentive to people who don’t need to be driving (and parking), freeing up road space for those who do.

Urban congestion is a problem of the quality and connectivity of our public transport network, not just a parking and road space issue. We have long known the policies and mechanisms to shift higher proportions of people to alternatives (and improve conditions for those who need to drive). We still need the funding and the planning capacity to achieve it.

Australia deserves better transport policy and a clearer, better-informed discussion about how its transport funds are being spent.

Read more: The elephant in the planning scheme: how cities still work around the dominance of parking space

– ref. $500m for station car parks? Other transport solutions could do much more for the money – http://theconversation.com/500m-for-station-car-parks-other-transport-solutions-could-do-much-more-for-the-money-114908

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hans Hendrischke, Professor of Chinese Business and Management, University of Sydney

Chinese investment in Australia fell 36% in 2018, to A$8.2 billion (US$6.2 billion) from A$13 billion (US$10 billion) in 2017, according to research by KPMG and the University of Sydney Business School.

This is despite Chinese investors still generally regarding Australia as safer and more attractive than most other countries. So 2018 need not be a turning point. But it is cause for reflection.

Chinese direct investment to Australia by value 2007–2018 (US$ million). KPMG/Sydney University database, Author provided (No reuse)

Discussion about Chinese investment in recent years has been dominated by political and security concerns. These concerns need to be balanced by the national interest in economic prosperity. Chinese investment creates jobs, increases export opportunities and deepens relations with our most significant trade partner.

Arguably the pendulum has to swing back to thinking about the economic benefits. We need a more balanced national conversation.

Many losers, one winner

Our data covers direct investments through mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and new projects. We do not include portfolio investments, such as buying stocks and bonds, which do not result in foreign management, ownership or legal control. Nor do we include residential property sales.

In the mining, agribusiness and services sectors investment fell by more than 90%. In renewable energy it fell by 48%, and in commercial real estate by 31%.

The only sector where investment did not fall was health care, where investment more than doubled to A$3.4 billion. This made health care the biggest investment sector, attracting 41.7% of all Chinese money, relegating commercial real estate (36.7%) to second place.

Chinese direct investment in Australia by Industry in 2018 (percentage of total). The KPMG/Sydney University database, Author provided (No reuse)

The declines were driven by state-owned enterprises pulling back on foreign investment. In 2018 13% of Chinese money came from state-owned enterprises, with 87% from private companies.

This reflects the Chinese government’s greater control of capital outflows and pressure to reduce debt levels, as well as the Australian government’s security concerns about Chinese influence.

It also reflects global dynamics. Chinese investment in Australia is no longer isolated from scrutiny of Chinese investment in North America and Europe. Excluding Chinese technology from telecommunications infrastructure is a notable example.

Read more: Huawei exposes critical weaknesses. We need the infrastructure to engage with China

In the United States, Chinese investment fell 83% to US$4.8 billion from US$29 billion in 2017. In Canada, it fell 47% to US$3.4 billion from US$6.2 billion in 2017.

Accumulated Chinese investment in Australia, US and EU from 2014 to 2018 (US$ billion). KPMG & University of Sydney, Author provided (No reuse)

Balancing competing concerns

Australian governments, corporations and professional advisers need to consider what types of Chinese investments and investors are desired and actively welcome in Australia.

Our report points to areas where Chinese investment is in Australia’s national interest and benefits the global integration and competitiveness of Australian industries.

Health care is a key example.

Chinese investment in Australian health care sector (A$ million). The KPMG/Sydney University database, Author provided (No reuse)

Chinese investment in health care companies has both provided capital for innovation and facilitated entry into the Chinese market.

Take the Chinese private equity firm CDH buying Sirtex Medical Ltd for A$1.9 billion. Sirtex is an Australian medical device company with a treatment for liver cancer. Its acquisition enables expansion into China, which accounts for more half of the global incidence of liver cancer.

In mining, lithium provides an example of Chinese investment adding value. Tianqi Lithium has invested A$700 million in a processing plant in Perth. The plant will provide about 200 jobs and produce 48,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide for export.

Even in food and agriculture, which has generated much controversy over land acquisitions, we see room for advantageous investment processing and value-adding facilities, such as regional abattoirs.

Signalling Australia’s economic interests in Chinese and foreign investment is crucial to Australia’s prosperity.

Read more: Chinese-Australia relations may not be ‘toxic’, but they do need to keep warming up

At a time of global uncertainty, Australian politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders, educational organisations and others must work quietly and respectfully with their Chinese counterparts to allay community concerns and consolidate Australia’s reputation as a welcoming and proactive partner.

The authors contributed to the Demystifying Chinese Investment in Australia Report.

– ref. Chinese investment in Australia is down 36%. It’s time for a more balanced debate about the national interest – http://theconversation.com/chinese-investment-in-australia-is-down-36-its-time-for-a-more-balanced-debate-about-the-national-interest-114984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Young people – how they think and feel, how institutions (families, schools, clinics, courts) fail them – are a recurring theme in the books shortlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize.

These six surprising books – four novels, a memoir and a collection of essays – cover subject matter as diverse as grief, loss, history, childhood, and Indigenous resistance. They make risky aesthetic choices. Some feature dazzling experiments with language, structure and form. Despite, or, more likely, because of this, they also have a tight grip on reality.

They are searing and often searching; intent on excavating the “present’s beating heart”. They share an attitude that is daring, sometimes darkly funny, always serious and thoroughly unsentimental. These books are difficult to sum up or pin down. Here is our critical guide to them.

Little Gods, Jenny Ackland

Olive May Lovelock is blessed with the sunny kind of optimism that is typical of an Australian childhood, set against the broad flats of the Mallee. She saves a joey, and tames a raven named Grace. She checks the warm wombs of roadkill for babies. Olive wears an old pair of binoculars around her neck to “see things better”, but life proves deceptive.

There are secrets here. A mother who rarely hugs or pays attention to her daughter, an unmarried sister whose baby is taken away at birth, an uncle who loses his pregnant wife in a car accident.

When Olive finds out she had a baby sister who died – a secret that “everyone knows”, as the local school bully tells her, but nobody is allowed to tell – she is determined to find out what happened. Olive pieces together the answers out of fragments of her own memory, and those of the children around her. But memories are deceptive, “[they] get you where they want you, not the other way around”. The answers prove dark in a way that is breathless, soul-crushing and peculiarly Australian.

The Bridge, Enza Gandolfo

In October 1970, Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge – a “nation building project” that ought to have been a symbol of the brave, bold modern city – collapsed in Australia’s worst industrial accident, leaving 35 workers dead.

The opening pages of Gandolfo’s book conjure the physical terror of that moment, “[…] the men were falling, falling off, falling through the air”, she writes, “bashed by the flying debris; their arms reached for the sides of the girder, for something, but there was nothing”.

In Gandolfo’s imagining, the Westgate Bridge becomes the site of another horror 40 years later. Jo and her best friend, Ashleigh, a granddaughter of one of the Westgate survivors, are on the verge of finishing high school, flush with the future, when their lives are shattered by a car crash – senseless, alcohol-fuelled.

This novel, set among migrant communities in Yarraville in Melbourne’s west, explores how accidents of this magnitude not only waste the lives of those who die, but continue to haunt the living, who must struggle for a lifetime with the weight of trauma. This is a book about guilt, ambiguity and moral culpability. It searches amid half-made lives, misguided dreams and murky realities, asking stern questions about responsibility and remorse.

Pink Mountain on Locus Island, Jamie Marina Lau

Lau’s debut novel is a head trip of a book, filled with the shards of broken sentences. Written in short chapters, it embraces a contemporary reality that veers wildly between boredom and violence, mediated through retro technologies, including grainy VHS videos, and YouTube tutorials. It is sometimes hard to tell what is real and what is believable – whether there is, as Lau writes, any difference between “a false-alarm scream and a death-scream”.

But the book is always emotionally true to the chaotic inner life of its young protagonist, 15-year old Monk, whose world hovers between childhood and adulthood, English and Cantonese, familial neglect and a desperate desire to be noticed.

At one stage, Monk’s father asks, “Would you look away if somebody was forcing you to look at their emotions?” Lau doesn’t give us the chance. She makes sure we look, straight-on.

Monk’s mother is absent in Shanghai, her artist father is addicted to Xanax and alcohol, and she is infatuated with a “messiah” figure named Santa Coy, who ignites all their lives – pulling Monk into a dangerous world of drugs, pushers and parties. Lau’s book captures the voice of its teenage protagonist and a new kind of transcultural millennial life in the digital age.

The Erratics, Vicki Laveau-Harvie

Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s memoir tells the story of an estranged daughter’s journey home, when she is summoned to care for a mother with a fractured hip. Vicki’s mother suffers from some kind of undiagnosed mental illness, which has caused her to isolate herself and her husband from the world on their rural property, set in an eerie landscape in a remote region of Alberta, Canada. Vicki’s father suffers from dementia, and Vicki and her sister are convinced their mother has been slowly starving him to death.

Vicki’s mother is clearly unwell, and probably has been for their entire lives. She also possesses extraordinary powers of persuasion, convincing doctors, nurses and, at times, her own ailing husband that she has no daughters, or only one daughter who is dead, or only two daughters who have both disappeared.

Says Vicki: “I have a vision of my mother’s influence making its way through my father’s mind, filling the tiny spaces left by the rounded contours of his brain, solidifying around the synapses until not even his thoughts are his own.”

There are hints here of childhood trauma – reasons for leaving, reasons for not caring, or even trying to care. Vicki’s sister has long ago changed her name because “hearing her childhood name cast her back into the black chasms of before”.

The prose style is numb, clinically distant. It is sometimes difficult to empathise with the detached narrator and the care she cannot – or will not – show. But this is a startling memoir of family damage. We can only guess, “where there is nothing, there must have been pain”.

Too Much Lip, Melissa Lucashenko

Kerry Salter enters the pages of Too Much Lip on a stolen Harley Davidson Softail, “a dozen blue eyeballs popping fair outta their moogle heads at the sight of her”, with Kerry – “blackfella du jour” – barely resisting the “urge to elevate both middle fingers as she rode past”.

She has come to say goodbye to her grandfather, Pop Owen, and to say hello to a mother who spends way too much time “on the turps”. This is a book about colonial violence, contemporary state-sponsored violence, diffuse racism, and their relationship to domestic violence, searing child abuse, family dysfunction and intergenerational trauma.

Kerry and her siblings cope in different ways, mostly thorough crime, alcohol and “too much lip”. But when the local mayor, a shady real estate agent whose grandfather terrorised Indigenous people, wants to build a prison on land that has spiritual, cultural and personal significance to Kerry’s family, they pull together and fight to save their river. Resistance for the Salters is less about the Native Title Act, and more about missing sister Donna’s commercial know-how.

Lucashenko’s book is shot through with defiance and anger; present day thefts are offset by the memory of historical ones. Hers is a darkly funny, searingly violent world, in which there are no easy fixes – only hard, complicated truths.

Axiomatic, Maria Tumarkin

To say that Maria Tumarkin’s essay collection scrutinises our ideas about “History” and the past is inadequate. This book rips into our pieties, interrogates our easy platitudes, and forces us to see the world – words, things, people, feelings – in new ways. History is exactly the right subject for Tumarkin, because there is no easy forgetting in the world she describes, just as there is seemingly no limit to “how much sorrow and pain about the world a person can carry inside”.

Each essay in the collection takes an axiom about history and tests it against our gritty present day realities. In “History Repeats Itself”, Vanya, a community lawyer, helps young people on a collision course with the criminal justice system “who live their lives on a highway where they are repeatedly hit by passing trucks”. In “Those Who Forget the Past Are Condemned to Re – ”, a child flees a stepfather’s violence only to be returned to a house of blood and broken teeth.

Her essay “Time Heals All Wounds” is a harrowing examination of teenage suicide. One boy writes in a suicide note: “Please do not assume you know why. Even I’m not completely sure.”

Facing all this would not be possible without Tumarkin’s sonorous wisdom; her capacity to turn things, words, people, sentences over on the page to see what they’re made of. Lucid and grave; this book is a revelation.

The winner of the 2019 Stella prize will be announced in Melbourne on April 9.

– ref. Six books that shock, delve deeply and destroy pieties: your guide to the 2019 Stella Prize shortlist – http://theconversation.com/six-books-that-shock-delve-deeply-and-destroy-pieties-your-guide-to-the-2019-stella-prize-shortlist-114829