Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Montague, Senior Lecturer/Program Director, masters program in human resources management, RMIT University

Over the next decade up to 40% of jobs could be replaced by automation. That’s according to a forecast from the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia.

Risk of job automation by country. In New Zealand, for instance, the median worker has 39% chance of their job being automated. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper No. 202

Other estimates are less dire. A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says only 14% of jobs across its member nations are “highly automatable”, though another 32% are likely to change significantly.

Despite this uncertainty about the exact number of human jobs that will disappear, it is certain the impacts of automation driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are potentially profound.

If the new jobs that emerge as a result are fewer and less rewarding than those lost, we face a period of social dislocation.

Yet there is little evidence of any strategic planning and forward thinking by Australia’s federal and state governments to minimise the potential downside. The recent federal budget, for example, was silent on this issue.

It is analogous to the lack of a strategic plan on climate change.

Read more: Your questions answered on artificial intelligence

Our concern about the policy vacuum is based on an extensive search on government websites, the media and budget speeches, which disturbingly yielded very little.

We think AI should be an election issue, because there is virtually no job that won’t be affected by AI-driven automation. Being ready for this technological and social revolution should be at the heart of any government’s economic and educational reform agenda.

Workers that never rest

The activities at which AI is expected to outperform humans by 2030 include translating languages, writing high-school essays and driving trucks. By mid-century it is expected AI could be capable of writing a bestselling books or performing surgery.

Researchers believe there is a 50% chance AI will outperform humans in all tasks in 45 years and that almost all current human jobs can be automated in 120 years.

Robotic farmhands in agriculture. www.shutterstock.com

The World Economic Forum may argue that AI and automation “is about empowering people, not the rise of the machines” but there are good reasons to think some people will lose out.

Read more: Careful how you treat today’s AI: it might take revenge in the future

Machines have many attractions to employers. They do not need rest, holidays or take sick leave. They will never complain about overtime or join a union.

A report published last month by management consultancy McKinsey Australia suggests, if proactive measures are not taken, the unemployment rate could increase by 2.5 percentage points, based on up to 46% of jobs being automated by 2030.

The industries likely to experience the greatest disruption are retail, administration and government, health and social assistance, construction, manufacturing, and accommodation and food services. Australia Statistics, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), ONED, BLS, Oxford Economics

Inequality will also increase, the report says. To what extent depends on “how much Australia steps up its efforts to retrain and redeploy its surplus service, administrative and manual workers”. Without large-scale retraining, Australia’s Gini coefficient (the standard measure of income inequality) could increase from 0.32 to 0.41.

Questions for policymakers

The stakes are high. Employment is so much more than just an income. A decent job provides purpose and dignity. It enables security, health and well-being. Joblessness hurts the individual, families and the wider community. If fewer people have work, and more people get paid less, the federal government will have to contend with falling income-tax revenue and rising welfare spending.

With intensifying global competition and rapid technological change, all governments need to be strategic. They need long-term policies to help business and workers gain the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to seize the opportunities and mitigate the threats.

Read more: Artificial intelligence can now emulate human behaviors – soon it will be dangerously good

There are three key questions for policy makers:

• To what extent will AI-driven automation increase unemployment and underemployment?

• How can governments and employers take advantage of AI and create the jobs of the future?

• How can government, employers and educators equip employees and graduates with the skills to have jobs alongside robots, instead of competing with them?

The growth in AI and machine learning need not pose a threat to jobs and our standard of living, but without a strategic and shared effort, we will repeat the mistakes of previous technological revolutions, which imposed a terrible price on some in the name of progress.

The authors of this article are working towards a book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Implications for Managers in the Asia Pacific, due to be published in September. It will include chapters from colleagues in Taiwan, China, India, Mauritius, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. For the Australian chapter we need more information from leaders and managers in industry about the impact of AI and the preparation and planning that is, or is not, occurring. We invite you to complete a short survey as part of this study. You can do so confidentially here.

– ref. Artificial intelligence may take your job, so political leaders need to start doing theirs – http://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-may-take-your-job-so-political-leaders-need-to-start-doing-theirs-103764

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tani Khara, PhD student in Sustainability, University of Technology Sydney

Protests from animal-rights activists around the country have drawn a swift national backlash. The Prime Minister has condemned the animal-rights protesters as “shameful”, “un-Australian” and, memorably, “green-collar criminals”.

It’s clear the protesters have touched a nerve, attracting derisive comments from both social media and mainstream outlets. While public inconvenience and disrupting understandably creates annoyance, this does not necessarily explain the strong reaction from Australians.

Read more: Animal rights activists in Melbourne: green-collar criminals or civil ‘disobedients’?

It is worth looking at other factors which may have also prompted negativity towards the protests, and why questions about our meat consumption can feel particularly uncomfortable.

The meat paradox

Its clear from the widespread reaction to abuse in the live export industry that many Australians value animal welfare. Millions of Australian households also include much-loved pets, and less-cruel farm products like free-range eggs are growing in popularity.

At the same time, Australians eat vast amounts of meat. It is also clear that, whatever one’s views towards farming, it is very hard to guarantee the meat on one’s plate was killed in a “humane” manner.

Read more: Three charts on: Australia’s declining taste for beef and growing appetite for chicken

The contradiction between enjoying meat but disliking the harm done to animals to produce it is called the “meat paradox”.

Widespread annoyance at the vegan protests goes beyond the traffic disruption. Ellen Smith/AAP

One way of reducing this dissonance is mentally disengaging from the origins of meat. If animals are not assigned a moral status, then slaughtering them no longer becomes a moral dilemma, and eating meat, therefore, is not morally problematic.

Another way we cope with simultaneously liking (or loving) some animals but eating others is to create categories. That is, cows, sheep and pigs are for eating but dogs, cats and horses are not. In this mental map, farm animals tend to be viewed as commodities rather than individual sentient beings.

We are also far more likely to feel empathy towards species we’re familiar with and can relate to. Pets have an advantage here, as they are often selectively bred for expressive affection towards people.

Read more: Why do vegans have such bad reputations?

Shock gets attention, not action

All of this together means strident campaigning for animal rights can provoke a strong and emotive backlash. Furthermore, it’s not at all certain this headline-grabbing approach improves animal welfare.

Shock tactics can effectively attract attention and (compared to less emotive messages) are more likely to be noticed, but they do not necessarily prompt action.

Although disturbing scenarios of animals undergoing cruelty and confinement might be eye-catching, these, alone, are not effective in changing attitudes or behaviours.

Communicating an achievable, positive alternative is important. David Crosling/AAP

People have a limit to how many issues we can worry about at once and as worry about one risk increases, concerns for the others may lessen. Exposure to messages about animal cruelty can also create feelings of pain and loneliness and may also, paradoxically, result in avoidance to take any further action.

Instead, it is important to create a compelling positive alternative. In this case, this might involve showing farm animals free from any confinement and abuse, thereby communicating a vision to aspire to.

This might explain the success of Animals Australia’s “Make it Possible” campaign which offered its audiences a vision of hope by depicting a farm animal who broke free from the shackles of captivity. Results from this campaign revealed a drop in demand for factory-farmed products and a rise in ethical product purchases.

Read more: Should veganism receive the same legal protection as a religion?

In addition, it is important to make behaviour change easier by making the alternatives more accessible – which, in this instance, may involve giving people information and access to consumption alternatives – as sustainable behaviour change is more likely to occur when it is perceived as relatively easy.

Read more: It’s complicated: Australia’s relationship with eating meat

This might also explain why reducetarianism or flexitarianism – reducing meat rather than cutting it out entirely – appears to be gaining traction. In my as-yet unpublished research on what Australians eat, one person told me:

when the Titanic sank, you don’t say ‘oh I don’t have room for everyone, throw everyone overboard, out of lifeboats!’ You do what you can.

I guess that’s the philosophy of reducetarianism, eating one bit of chicken a month is better than a person who eats it twice a day.

Read more: How restaurants are wooing ‘flexitarians’

Australians can be empathetic towards animals. There’s also a slow – but growing – understanding of how the livestock sector is influencing climate change.

But research shows our immediate needs and demands – to feed our family, to eat familiar food, even getting to work on time – often take precedence over larger and far less visible moral and environmental questions.

Understanding and empathising with the barriers, needs and habits of people who do and don’t eat meat may go some way in bridging the chasm towards a more sustainable future.

– ref. Here’s why well-intentioned vegan protesters are getting it wrong – http://theconversation.com/heres-why-well-intentioned-vegan-protesters-are-getting-it-wrong-115224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture, UNSW

Regulation of the Australian building industry is broken, according to the Shergold-Weir report to the Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF).

[…] we have concluded that [the] nature and extent [of problems] are significant and concerning. The problems have led to diminishing public confidence that the building and construction industry can deliver compliant, safe buildings which will perform to the expected standards over the long term.

You can say that again.

Just one of the issues identified in the report, combustible cladding, could affect over 1,000 buildings across Australia. An unknown proportion of these are tall (four storey and above) residential strata buildings. Fears of rectification costs are starting to have severe impacts on the apartment market.

The cost of replacing combustible panels at the Lacrosse Apartments in Melbourne, which caught fire in 2014, will be at least A$5.7 million, plus A$6 million or so in consequential damages. The total cost of replacing combustible panels across Australia is unknown at this point, but is likely to run to billions of dollars.

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

The Shergold-Weir report identifies a catalogue of other problems, including water leaks, structurally unsound roof construction and poorly constructed fire-resisting elements. Faults appear to be widespread.

A 2012 study by UNSW City Futures surveyed 1,020 strata owners across New South Wales and found 72% of respondents (85% in buildings built since 2000) knew of at least one significant defect in their complex. Fixing these problems will cost billions more.

Regulatory failures are not only “diminishing public confidence”, they have a direct impact on the hip pockets of many Australians who own a residential apartment. In short, building defects resulting from lax regulation are a multi-billion dollar disaster.

How could authorities let this happen?

A web of regulations and standards enacted by governments cover construction in Australia, but this regulation is centred on the National Construction Code (NCC). The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), a body controlled by the Building Ministers’ Forum, manages the NCC. The ABCB board comprises appointed representatives from the Commonwealth plus all the states and territories and a few industry groups.

It is such a complicated system that it is hard to identify any government, organisation or person that is directly responsible for its performance.

Read more: Australia has a new National Construction Code, but it’s still not good enough

The NCC is supposed to create “benefits to society that outweigh costs” but it appears the ABCB may have been more focused on the need to “consider the competitive effects of regulation” and “not be unnecessarily restrictive” (Introduction to NCC Volume 1).

The BMF’s February 8 communique, issued after the fire in the Neo200 building in Melbourne, is straight out of the Yes Minister playbook:

Ministers agreed in principle to a national ban on the unsafe use of combustible ACPs (aluminium composite panels) in new construction, subject to a cost/benefit analysis being undertaken on the proposed ban, including impacts on the supply chain, potential impacts on the building industry, any unintended consequences, and a proposed timeline for implementation. Ministers will further consider this at their next meeting [in May this year].

This suggests the ministers are more concerned about possible impacts on the panel suppliers and the building industry than the consumer. The earliest a ban can take effect is in May. In the meantime, anecdotal evidence suggests buildings are still being clad in combustible ACP.

Thanks to the journalist Michael Bleby, we know governments and the ABCB failed to act in 2010 when presented with evidence that combustible ACP was not only a danger, but was also being widely used on tall residential buildings.

Bleby quoted ABCB general manager Neil Savery as saying neither his organisation, nor any of the states, was aware that builders were using the product incorrectly.

We also know that panel manufacturers, including the Australian supplier of Alucobond, actively lobbied building ministers. At the July 2011 BMF meeting, the ACT representative effectively vetoed an ABCB proposal to issue an advisory note on the use of combustible ACP.

We are entitled to ask why the ABCB and its staff, or the downstream regulators and their staff, did not know about serious fire problems with ACP that the technical press identified as long ago as 2000. The answer will be of particular interest to residents of tall apartment buildings clad in these panels, all of whom are now living with an active threat to their safety.

Read more: Cladding fire risks have been known for years. Lives depend on acting now, with no more delays

Consumers are owed better protection

While both Labor and Coalition governments have worked to improve consumer protection for people buying consumer goods, their record on housing, particularly apartments, is awful. While a consumer can be reasonably sure of getting restitution if they buy a faulty fridge, no such certainty exists if they buy a faulty house or apartment.

At the moment, the NCC does not have any focus on providing protection for buyers of houses or apartments. There are few requirements for the durability of components and astonishingly weak requirements for waterproofing. Under the NCC and its attached Australian Standards, particularly AS 4654.1 and 2-2012, a waterproof membrane could last, in practice, five minutes or 50 years.

Given the magnitude of the economic loss, it would be appropriate for the BMF and ABCB board to publicly admit they have failed. Since their appointments in November 2017 and January 2013 respectively, neither ABCB chair John Fahey nor Savery as general manager has remedied the situation. The Shergold-Weir report has not been implemented and the combustible cladding issues remain unresolved. It would be reasonable for Fahey to step down and for Savery to consider his future.

The next federal government should consider what further action should be taken, particularly in relation to individuals on the BMF and within the ABCB involved in the 2010-2011 decision not to issue the proposed advisory note on the use of ACP. Since the ABCB does not publish minutes and none of its deliberations are in the public domain no one knows what actually happened or who did what.

The new board should consider moving residential apartment buildings (Class 2 buildings in the NCC classification) from Volume 1 of the NCC to Volume 2, which controls detached and semi-detached housing. Volume 2 should then have as its overriding objective the protection of consumers.

The downstream regulators should focus on requiring builders to deliver residential buildings with no serious faults and providing simple mechanisms for redress if they don’t.

Surely this is not too much to ask.

This article has been updated to correct a reference to NCC volumes 1 and 2 – the latter controls detached and semi-detached housing.

– ref. Housing with buyer protection and no serious faults – is that too much to ask of builders and regulators? – http://theconversation.com/housing-with-buyer-protection-and-no-serious-faults-is-that-too-much-to-ask-of-builders-and-regulators-113115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, 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.

What happens when an opposition party wins power? In theory, it adopts a more statesmanlike demeanour. If it doesn’t, it stays perennially narky, unwilling to accept others’ ideas, yet incapable of generating a positive way forward itself.

The alternate aggression and apathy of the Coalition in arts and culture since the 2013 election suggests it never abandoned its oppositional ways. Taking office just after Creative Australia, the national cultural policy Labor released too late to have much practical effect, the way was clear to reclaim the portfolio as one of bipartisan concern.

This had happened under Prime Minister John Howard, who responded to the game-changing influence of Paul Keating’s Creative Nation policy not by rejecting it, but by extruding its ambitions through traditional Menzies values.

Instead, the last six years has seen a combination of ministerial whim and purposeless economising. There has been an absence of strong policy initiatives, neglect of smaller arts organisations, and an undermining of trust in arm’s length agencies, notably the Australia Council for the Arts and the ABC.

ABC staff hold a meeting outside their offices in Sydney in 2018. There has been an undermining of trust in the ABC over the last six years. Joel Carrett/AAP

Read more: Australian governments have a long history of trying to manipulate the ABC – and it’s unlikely to stop now

The first Coalition arts minister, George Brandis, was an artistic conservative with a poor grasp of the sector’s industrial complexities. Mitch Fifield, the current minister, is an economic conservative with little time for its cultural complexities. The emergence of tech giants like Netflix and Amazon has changed the landscape of the arts, introducing a proliferation of new competitors for Australian creators – but the government has failed to keep up with these developments.

There has also been a resurgent populist politics with a nasty, xenophobic edge to it. As a mechanism for social inclusion, arts and culture appear to have passed the Coalition by entirely.

A space where nothing happens

All the government’s major cultural policy events have been regrettable ones: the spat over the 2014 Sydney Biennale, which saw Brandis threaten artists if they didn’t accept corporate sponsorship; the 2015 raid on the Australia Council’s budget to establish an ill-defined National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA); and a Senate Inquiry into the arts cuts with an unprecedented 1,719 submissions.

Then, with the accession of Fifield as minister, the rebranding of the NPEA as the Catalyst Fund, the dissolution of this body too, and the return to the Australia Council of most (but not all) of the money taken from it 18 months previously.

Since 2016 arts and culture has been a space where nothing happens, by design. The low rate of government investment in the sector has continued unabated. In 2011-12, total federal cultural expenditure was A$2.355 billion; in 2012-13 A$2.361 billion; in 2015-16 A$2.29 billion; and in 2016-17 it was A$2.384 billion.

Figures for 2014-15 are hard to find, because in 2014 the Australian Bureau of Statistics canned its Culture, Sport and Recreation accounts in response to funding cuts. The burden of collecting cultural data then fell on the Meeting of Cultural Ministers Statistical Advisory Group – which had its federal administrative support removed in 2012.

Against this, the Coalition can point to recent investment in cultural infrastructure through the Public Service Modernisation Fund, and a A$8.2 million tip-in for collecting institutions. The National Gallery of Australia has received A$63.8 million to ensure, in the words of one arts bureaucrat, “the new Director doesn’t have a leaky roof and can buy the next Blue Poles”. Given the Efficiency Dividends scalped from galleries and museums in the past, however, this counts as little more than one step forward after two steps back.

The 2019 Coalition budget extends the ad hocism, with A$30.9 million for an Australian Music Industry Package, and sprinkled support for select cultural bodies, including the Bundanon Trust, the property Arthur Boyd bequeathed to the nation (that just happens to be in the Liberals’ most marginal NSW seat).

There is no return of money to the Australia Council or the Regional Arts Fund. In the words of Artshub’s Richard Watts the budget “demonstrates the Morrison government’s lack of interest and understanding of the sector”.

Read more: Missing in action: a vision for the arts in the 2019 budget

Most serious of all has been the damage done to the reputation and operation of the Australia Council and the ABC. Intentionally or not, both were harmed under the Coalition. Given their crucial role as protectors of our national culture, the consequences go beyond the immediate storms in which they were embroiled.

Labor’s challenge

The main challenge facing an incoming Labor government is recognised in its pre-election manifesto A Fair Go for Australia: which parts of creative Australia remain applicable and which need upgrading? The arts and culture section juggles two sets of priorities. On the one hand, there is standard blah about “contribut[ing] to innovation and lift[ing] productivity”. On the other, there is new awareness of the urgent need to promote cultural diversity and connection in an age of democracy deficit.

These pronouncements are of the broader kind. Yet there are two specifics Labor might consider. First, ending efficiency dividends for arts and culture, which are not efficient and a dividend only if the public goods so targeted are not impaired.

Second, restoring federal support for the Statistical Advisory Group and the ABS’s Culture, Sport and Recreation accounts. I have been an outspoken critic of the datafication of cultural policy, but fit-for-purpose facts and figures are essential to meaningful evaluation.

Both resources are important for ensuring our next national cultural policy is truly cultural, national and bipartisan.

– ref. Arts and culture under the Coalition: a lurch between aggression and apathy – http://theconversation.com/arts-and-culture-under-the-coalition-a-lurch-between-aggression-and-apathy-114434

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anja Hilkemeijer, Lecturer in Law, University of Tasmania

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.

Religious freedom

Anja Hilkemeijer, Law Lecturer, University of Tasmania; and Amy Maguire, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle Law School

In December 2017, joyous scenes accompanied the long-awaited enactment of marriage equality in Australia. This joy was soon replaced by outrage, however, when the community learned of the extent to which religious schools may legally discriminate against students and staff on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

In response, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced last October that parliament would swiftly act to disallow religious schools to expel students on the basis of their sexuality.

Read more: Talk of same-sex marriage impinging on religious freedom is misconceived: here’s why

However, action on removing the special exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA) for religious schools quickly stalled. Following a number of private members’ bills, a range of amendments and two Senate inquiries, it became clear the Coalition government wanted religious schools to retain some special exemptions.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison wanted a Religious Discrimination Act passed before the general election, but momentum has slowed. Dan Himbrechts/AAP

In a Senate committee report in February, Coalition senators insisted the matter of religious school exemptions from the SDA be referred to the Australian Law Reform Commission.

To date, no referral has been made. And given the few parliament sitting days scheduled before the federal election, it appears this issue will fall to the next parliament to resolve.

The Coalition has also announced a number of initiatives to boost protections of religious freedom following the release of the long-awaited Ruddock Religious Freedom Review in December.

Read more: Why Australia needs a Religious Discrimination Act

Contrary to the panel’s recommendation, Morrison said the government would appoint a religious freedom commissioner to the Australian Human Rights Commission. He also said he wanted to pass a Religious Discrimination Act before the next federal election, but the government has not provided any details on what form such a statute might take.

While the Liberal Party’s election policies have yet to be released, it is safe to assume the Coalition would seek to implement all the proposals announced in response to the Ruddock report if re-elected.

What about Labor?

If Labor wins the May election, it will feel pressure to follow through on removing exemptions for religious schools in the SDA, as it has committed to doing.

Labor has also indicated it supports enacting a federal law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs, but it needs to see the details of such a proposal before committing to it.

Freedom of speech

Katharine Gelber, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, The University of Queensland

Freedom of speech has become a prominent topic in public debate in recent years. One trigger was the 2017 marriage equality survey. During the campaign, the Australian Christian Lobby argued that marriage equality would “take away” people’s right to free speech and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott insisted that a “no” vote was essential, “if you’re worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech”.

A second trigger was the 2017 parliamentary inquiry into freedom of speech, which raised the question of whether the wording of the racial vilification provision in federal law (Section 18C) should be changed, and whether the procedures under which complaints are dealt with by the Australian Human Rights Commission should be altered. Subsequent attempts to change the text of Section 18C were unsuccessful.

Read more: Free speech: would removing Section 18C really give us the right to be bigots?

What has received far less media attention, though, are the multiple ways in which the Coalition has undermined free speech while in government. The Coalition appears to be a friend of free speech only when it suits them.

The list includes extensive laws that restrict free speech far more than is necessary for legitimate national security purposes.

These include counter-terrorism laws prohibiting the unauthorised disclosure of information that does not have a public interest exemption. Another new law ostensibly designed to prevent foreign interference in Australian affairs exposes journalists and charities to risk of prosecution.

In addition, the Coalition included secrecy provisions in the 2015 Border Force Act intended to prevent people who work in offshore detention centres from disclosing information. The legislation was so draconian, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants cancelled a planned visit to Australia in September 2015 on the grounds it would prevent him from doing his work. Eventually, in the face of a High Court challenge in 2017, the government removed the provisions.

What about Labor?

Labor’s position on free speech is less clearly stated. On the one hand, it has a record of support for national security laws that restrict free speech. However, Labor takes a different stance from the Coalition on anti-vilification laws, which it defends as narrow, valid restrictions that prevent racism, bigotry and discrimination.

Perhaps the biggest shift in public discourse around free speech has been the degree to which politicians from One Nation, Katter’s Australian Party and the United Australia Party, as well as some from the Coalition, have been emboldened to promote harmful stereotypes of migrants, asylum seekers, LBGTQI and other marginalised groups.

Indeed, in some quarters, political rhetoric has become so caustic that it has separated informed public debate from evidence and reasoning, and undermined core democratic institutions.

If Labor wins the election, its biggest challenge will be to provide the leadership to shift public discourse away from this and facilitate a political culture that embraces diversity and provides free speech to as many people as possible.

Social security and welfare

Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Social security and welfare remains the largest component of government spending. In the latest budget released by the Coalition government, spending is projected to increase from A$180 billion in 2019-20 to just over A$200 billion in 2022-23. This represents a slight fall, however, from 36.0% of total spending to 35.8%.

Compared to previous budgets, there are no major proposed cutbacks in assistance. The Coalition government has attempted to slash funding for social security and welfare in its past six budgets, with little success.

A campaigner for an anti-poverty group in Adelaide. Tracey Nearmy/AAP

There are some welcome initiatives set out in the budget, including a commitment of A$328 million over four years to the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children, and a commitment of A$527.9 million over five years to establish the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

Read more: Future budgets are going to have to spend more on welfare, which is fine. It’s spending on us

But the budget also extended the government’s Cashless Debit Card trials, which have courted controversy. The Australian Council of Social Service has argued the card curtails people’s freedoms and hasn’t resulted in any positive effects. This followed an Australian National Audit Office report, which concluded that the card had major flaws and it was difficult to see where social harm had been reduced due to a “lack of robustness in data collection.”

The Coalition government has attempted to play up its social security and welfare successes in recent years, pointing to the fact that the proportion of the working-age population receiving income support is at its lowest level since the early 1980s.

But this appears to be the result of fewer people applying for benefits rather than people moving off benefits more rapidly, as has been claimed. It also reflects a somewhat stronger labour market in recent years and changes introduced to the Parenting Payment Single and Disability Support Pension programs under the Rudd/Gillard governments.

What about Labor?

Whoever wins the next election will face pressure to further increase welfare and social security spending as the National Disability Insurance Scheme ramps up and the Aged Care Royal Commission releases its findings. The recent report by the Parliamentary Budget Office projects that real spending on aged care will increase by around A$16 billion over the next decade as a result of Australia’s rapidly ageing population.

Newstart, the main payment for unemployed Australians, is also increasingly being seen as inadequate. It has slipped relative to pensions and wages each year because it is indexed to the slower-growing consumer price index.

Labor has promised that, if elected, it will use a “root and branch review” to look at lifting the rate of the Newstart unemployment benefit. However, it is not just Newstart that is inadequate, but support for single parents and families with children, which has been cut by both major parties over the last 15 years.

– ref. The Coalition’s record on social policy: big on promises, short on follow-through – http://theconversation.com/the-coalitions-record-on-social-policy-big-on-promises-short-on-follow-through-114611

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Thomas, Professor of Media and Communications; Director, Social Change Enabling Capability Platform, RMIT University

The national broadband network (NBN) has been a major issue in federal election campaigns for close to a decade.

And the 2019 version of the NBN bears little resemblance to the futuristic, egalitarian earlier editions.

Despite years of controversy, cost over-runs, and delays, the coalition government says our $50 billion national network is finally nearing completion.

But Labor’s Shadow Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has set out some different priorities should her party achieve government in the coming election. One of these is a “digital inclusion drive”, aimed at improving access to the internet for older Australians and low-income households.

Read more: Three charts on: the NBN and Australia’s digital divide

In addition, Labor is making no immediate commitment to replacing copper connections with fibre.

Instead, if elected, it will fund service and reliability fixes for those on the copper NBN, and impose service guarantees for small businesses and consumers. It will examine what has happened to the economics of the network, looking at its cash flow, pricing, capital structure, and future options for network upgrades.

Labor’s policy will disappoint those hoping for a fast-tracked return to that party’s original (2009) vision of high-speed fibre for (almost) everyone. But its 2019 plan is an important acknowledgement that network infrastructure is only one part of the NBN story.

Affordability and digital inclusion

The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) provides data on the affordability of internet services for Australians since 2014. It shows that recent, modest improvements seen by some households have been matched by declines in affordability for a number of Australia’s more digitally excluded groups.

The results for low-income households, single parents, people outside the labour force, Indigenous Australians, and people with a disability remain poor.

The good news for Australian consumers is that the pricing of mobile services has improved, reflecting competitive pressures and the reduced cost of delivery as a consequence of investment by network owners.

But when we look at fixed broadband services — the kinds of connections used by most households — recent price increases by NBN have led to a decline in the number of low-cost plans on the market. This change post-dates the most recent ADII report (2018), and the effects are beginning to work their way into the market.

Read more: Digital inclusion in Tasmania has improved in line with NBN rollout – will the other states follow?

Communications costs matter

Communications services have a knock-on effect in many other areas of life and work.

Access to high-speed broadband can reduce the costs of using other services considerably. This makes critical activities like banking, seeking government information, looking for work, or studying much easier.

But when we speak of the cost savings linked with online services, we need also to bear in mind the flip-side of those savings: the much higher costs borne by those, often less well-off, citizens who must access services offline.

If an individual on a low income lacks electronic access to banking or government information, the cost of commuting to do these things in person can be prohibitive — and especially so for Australians living in remote or regional areas.

For children at school and adults in education or training, a lack of access to the internet means many will fall behind their peers, as access to educational materials and online content becomes a core part of the modern education experience. This has implications for Australia’s ability to take advantage of the next wave of digital transformation.

Read more: Australia’s digital divide is not going away

Expensive for everyone

The costs of inequitable internet access are directly felt by many families, but the broader costs are borne by society.

And so digital exclusion now has the potential to be a drag on Australia’s economic growth and productive potential for decades to come.

For individuals, conducting activities offline may be time-consuming and expensive. But that’s also true for the government. It’s estimated that even taking half of government services online would save around A$20 billion.

Aside from the costs of lower productivity, economic growth and tax receipts, inequitable access means that the material savings from automated services may never be realised.

Affordable access to broadband also supports the cost effective delivery of core government and other services – such as health – to regional and remote locations.

Although addressing inequitable access will involve costs in the short term, effective policy measures to improve affordability are likely to generate considerable national benefits.

Read more: Infographic: Budget 2019 at a glance

How to improve affordability

At this stage Labor is not saying what it might do to improve internet affordability for low-income households.

The idea of writing down the NBN has been widely discussed. It does, however, have serious implications: it will be very costly to taxpayers.

It will also limit the ability of the NBN to invest in future network upgrades and threaten the economics of uniform national pricing, the NBN’s key promise of equity for regional and remote Australia.

That could mean a return to the pre-NBN communications landscape, with regional and remote Australia relying on increasingly obsolete communications infrastructure while metropolitan Australia moves ahead.

Read more: Shorten uses budget reply speech to reframe the economic debate

A direct increase in cash payments is likely to improve living standards materially for those in poverty, but more money for low income households doesn’t necessarily mean that broadband will be within their reach.

The creation of a concession at a retail level would make the telecommunications companies responsible for selling products at a cheaper rate, which in an era of reduced margins appears unlikely to occur.

Also, a series of retail concessions can lead to consumer confusion, as the scope of each scheme and the discounts on offer vary wildly. We’ve seen these problems in the energy sector.

Another option is to create a wholesale concession, a measure that has been promoted by consumer advocates. This would involve the government paying NBN to put a wholesale product into the market that retailers could purchase and retail to low income households.

A nationally uniform concessional service would allow retailers to compete in offering affordable services to low-income households, boost NBN take-up and consequently its revenue and financial viability.

Read more: Government advertising may be legal, but it’s corrupting our electoral process

Focus on inclusion

While the introduction of a concessional arrangement would involve government picking up a part of the tab for service delivery, it offers sizeable benefits.

By ensuring NBN access for low-income households, the government avoids forgoing a large proportion of the savings that should accrued from the digital transformation of government services (and the benefits to be gained from improving services).

It would also prevent a lower take-up of NBN services and revenues. Without such an arrangement, questions will continue to be raised about the financial viability of NBN, its repayment of outstanding debt to government and whether there needs to be a write-down.

The take up of broadband has historically seen improvements in average household income, productivity, and the creation of new kinds of work and services.

In order to maximise the benefits of the current wave of digital change, we’ll need a broader public debate, that goes beyond the relative merits of fibre and 5G.

Policy will need to address the challenge of affordability, invest in digital literacy, and ensure that all Australians can access the services that they need.

While there are many improvements that can and should be made to our national network infrastructure, a focus on the larger problem of digital inclusion is both welcome, and overdue.

– ref. Labor will prioritise an NBN ‘digital inclusion drive’ – here’s what it should focus on – http://theconversation.com/labor-will-prioritise-an-nbn-digital-inclusion-drive-heres-what-it-should-focus-on-115135

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Harvey, Associate professor in mathematics, UNSW

Multiplication of two numbers is easy, right?

At primary school we learn how to do long multiplication like this:

The long way to multiplication. David Harvey

Methods similar to this go back thousands of years, at least to the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians.

But is this really the best way to multiply two big numbers together?

Read more: Six images reveal how we ‘see’ data and capture invisible science

In long multiplication, we have to multiply every digit of the first number by every digit of the second number. If the two numbers each have N digits, that’s N² (or N x N) multiplications altogether. In the example above, N is 3, and we had to do 3² = 9 multiplications.

Around 1956, the famous Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov conjectured that this is the best possible way to multiply two numbers together.

In other words, no matter how you arrange your calculations, the amount of work you have to do will be proportional to at least N². Twice as many digits means four times as much work.

Kolmogorov felt that if a short cut was possible, surely it would have already been discovered. After all, people have been multiplying numbers for thousands of years.

This is a superb example of the logical fallacy known as “the argument from ignorance”.

A quicker way

Just a few years later, Kolmogorov’s conjecture was shown to be spectacularly wrong.

In 1960, Anatoly Karatsuba, a 23-year-old mathematics student in Russia, discovered a sneaky algebraic trick that reduces the number of multiplications needed.

For example, to multiply four-digit numbers, instead of needing 4² = 16 multiplications, Karatsuba’s method gets away with only nine. When using his method, twice as many digits means only three times as much work.

This stacks up to an impressive advantage as the numbers get bigger. For numbers with a thousand digits, Karatsuba’s method needs about 17 times fewer multiplications than long multiplication.

But why on earth would anyone want to multiply such big numbers together?

In fact, there are a tremendous number of applications. One of the most visible and economically significant is in cryptography.

Big numbers in real life

Every time you engage in encrypted communication on the internet — for example, access your banking website or perform a web search — your device performs a head-spinning number of multiplications, involving numbers with hundreds or even thousands of digits.

Very likely your device uses Karatsuba’s trick for this arithmetic. This is all part of the amazing software ecosystem that keeps our web pages loading as snappily as possible.

For some more esoteric applications, mathematicians have to deal with even larger numbers, with millions, billions or even trillions of digits. For such enormous numbers, even Karatsuba’s algorithm is too slow.

A real breakthrough came in 1971 with the work of the German mathematicians Arnold Schönhage and Volker Strassen. They explained how to use the recently published fast Fourier transform (FFT) to multiply huge numbers efficiently. Their method is routinely used by mathematicians today to handle numbers in the billions of digits.

The FFT is one of the most important algorithms of the 20th century. One application familiar in daily life is digital audio: whenever you listen to MP3s, music streaming services or digital radio, FFTs handle the audio decoding behind the scenes.

An even quicker way?

In their 1971 paper, Schönhage and Strassen also made a striking conjecture. To explain, I’ll have to get a bit technical for a moment.

The first half of their conjecture is that it should be possible to multiply N-digit numbers using a number of basic operations that is proportional to at most N log (N) (that’s N times the natural logarithm of N).

Their own algorithm did not quite reach this target; they were too slow by a factor of log (log N) (the logarithm of the logarithm of N). Nevertheless, their intuition led them to suspect that they were missing something, and that N log (N) should be feasible.

In the decades since 1971, a few researchers have found improvements to Schönhage and Strassen’s algorithm. Notably, an algorithm designed by Martin Fürer in 2007 came agonisingly close to the elusive N log (N).

The second (and much more difficult) part of their conjecture is that N log (N) should be the fundamental speed limit — that no possible multiplication algorithm could do better than this.

Sound familiar?

Have we reached the limit?

A few weeks ago, Joris van der Hoeven and I posted a research paper describing a new multiplication algorithm that finally reaches the N log (N) holy grail, thus settling the “easy” part of the Schönhage–Strassen conjecture.

The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, so some caution is warranted. It is standard practice in mathematics to disseminate research results before they have undergone peer review.

Instead of using one-dimensional FFTs — the staple of all work on this problem since 1971 — our algorithm relies on multidimensional FFTs. These gadgets are nothing new: the widely-used JPEG image format depends on 2-dimensional FFTs, and 3-dimensional FFTs have many applications in physics and engineering.

In our paper, we use FFTs with 1,729 dimensions. This is tricky to visualise, but mathematically no more troublesome than the 2-dimensional case.

Really, really big numbers

The new algorithm is not really practical in its current form, because the proof given in our paper only works for ludicrously large numbers. Even if each digit was written on a hydrogen atom, there would not be nearly enough room available in the observable universe to write them down.

Read more: Why do we need to know about prime numbers with millions of digits?

On the other hand, we are hopeful that with further refinements, the algorithm might become practical for numbers with merely billions or trillions of digits. If so, it may well become an indispensable tool in the computational mathematician’s arsenal.

If the full Schönhage–Strassen conjecture is correct, then from a theoretical point of view, the new algorithm is the end of the road – it is not possible to do any better.

Personally, I would be very surprised if the conjecture turned out to be wrong. But we shouldn’t forget what happened to Kolmogorov. Mathematics can sometimes throw up surprises.

– ref. We’ve found a quicker way to multiply really big numbers – http://theconversation.com/weve-found-a-quicker-way-to-multiply-really-big-numbers-114923

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

The Coalition government’s use of taxpayer money for political advertising – as much as A$136 million since January, according to Labor figures – is far from an aberration in Australia. It is part of a sordid history in which public resources have routinely been abused for electoral advantage.

For example, the Coalition governments of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull spent at least A$84.5 million on four major advertising campaigns to promote their policies and initiatives with voters. The ALP governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard spent A$20 million on advertising to promote the Gonski school funding changes and another A$70 million on a carbon tax campaign. Going further back, the Coalition government under John Howard spent A$100 million on its WorkChoices and GST campaigns.

Read more: The difference between government advertising and political advertising

This is also a history in which hypocrisy is not hard to find.

When in opposition, Rudd condemned partisan government advertising as “a cancer on our democracy”. His government, however, exempted its A$38 million ad campaign on the mining super profits tax from the government guidelines put in place two years earlier.

In 2010, while an opposition MP, Scott Morrison decried such spending as “outrageous”. In 2019, his government may be presiding over the most expensive pre-election government advertising blitz in recent history.

Few restrictions on government advertising

All of this is perfectly legal.

The High Court in Combet v Commonwealth made clear that legislation authorising government spending (appropriation statutes) imposes virtually no legal control over spending for government advertising, because of its broad wording.

In the absence of effective statutory regulations, there are government guidelines that prohibit overtly partisan advertising with government funds, such as “negative” ads and advertising that mentions party slogans and names of political parties, candidates, ministers and parliamentarians.

These guidelines nevertheless provide ample room for promotion of government policies under the guise of information campaigns – what Justice Michael McHugh in Combet described as “feelgood” advertisements. They permit advertising campaigns such as the Coalition government’s “Building a better tax system for hardworking Australians” (which essentially promotes the government’s tax cuts) and “Small business, big future” (which burnishes its “small business” credentials).

The government advertising campaign spruiking its tax reform measures.

Crucially, the guidelines fail to address the proximity of such taxpayer-funded advertising campaigns to federal elections. They fail to recognise what is obvious – the closer we get to the elections, the stronger the governing party’s impulse to seek re-election, the greater the likelihood that “information” campaigns become the vehicle for reinforcing positive images of the incumbent party.

This risk is clearly recognised by the caretaker conventions, which mandate that once the “caretaker” period begins with the dissolution of the House of Representatives:

…campaigns that highlight the role of particular Ministers or address issues that are a matter of contention between the parties are normally discontinued, to avoid the use of Commonwealth resources in a manner to advantage a particular party

The conventions further state:

Agencies should avoid active distribution of material during the caretaker period if it promotes Government policies or emphasises the achievements of the Government or a Minister

The problem with these conventions, however, is that they kick in too late. By the time the House of Representatives is dissolved prior to an election, the major parties’ campaigns have usually been in high gear for months.

Read more: Eight ways to clean up money in Australian politics

A form of institutional corruption

A pseudo-notion of fairness tends to operate in the minds of incumbent political parties when it comes to taxpayer-funded advertising.

When she was prime minister, Gillard defended her use of government advertising by pointing that the Howard government had spent more. And now, the Morrison government has sought to deflect criticisms of its current campaign by drawing attention to ALP’s use of government advertising when it was last in power.

Our children are taught to be better than this – two wrongs do not make a right.

Indeed, government advertising for electioneering is a form of corruption. Corruption can be understood as the use of power for improper gain. It includes individual corruption where the improper gain is personal (for instance, bribery) but also what philosopher, Dennis Thompson, has described as institutional corruption, where the use of power results in a political gain.

Government advertising to reinforce positive impressions of the incumbent party is a form of institutional corruption – it is the use of public funds for the illegitimate purpose of electioneering. Its illegitimacy stems from the fact that it undermines the democratic ideal of fair elections by providing the incumbent party with an undue advantage.

Read more: Election explainer: what are the rules governing political advertising?

It is an instance of what the High Court in McCloy v NSW considered “war-chest” corruption – a form of corruption that arises when “the power of money … pose(s) a threat to the electoral process itself”.

A longer government advertising ban?

I propose a ban on federal government advertising in the period leading up to federal elections.

Such bans are already in place in NSW, which prohibits government advertising during roughly two months before state elections, and the ACT, which bans government advertising 37 days before territory elections. To take into account the longer campaign period at the federal level, a federal ban should operate for at least three months before each federal election.

The absence of fixed terms in the federal parliament is not a barrier to adopting such a ban. With an average of two and a half years between federal elections, a three-month ban of sorts could take effect from two years and three months after the previous election until polling day of the next election.

By dealing with government advertising for electioneering, this ban will improve the integrity of federal elections.

– ref. Government advertising may be legal, but it’s corrupting our electoral process – http://theconversation.com/government-advertising-may-be-legal-but-its-corrupting-our-electoral-process-115061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Vertessy, Enterprise Professor, University of Melbourne

Over the recent summer, three significant fish death events occurred in the lower Darling River near Menindee, New South Wales. Species involved included Murray Cod, Silver Perch, Golden Perch and Bony Herring, with deaths estimated to be in the range of hundreds of thousands to over a million fish. These events were a serious ecological shock to the lower Darling region.

Our report for the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources examines the causes of these events and recommend actions to mitigate the potential for repeat events in the future.

The final report has just been released, summarising what we found and what we recommend.

Causes of the fish deaths

High-flow events in the Darling River in 2012 and 2016 filled the Menindee Lakes and offered opportunities for substantial fish breeding, further aided by the targeted use of environmental water.

The result was very large numbers of fish in the lakes, river channels and weir pools around Menindee. After the lake-filling rains of late 2016, two very dry years ensued, resulting in very low inflows into the Barwon-Darling river.

As the supply of water dried up, the river became a series of disconnected and shrinking pools. As the extremely hot and dry conditions in late 2018 took hold, the large population of fish around Menindee became concentrated within weir pools.

Hot weather, low rainfall and low flows provided ideal conditions for algal blooms and thermal stratification in the weir pools, resulting in very low oxygen concentrations within the bottom waters.

With the large fish population now isolated to the oxygenated surface waters of the pools, all that was needed for the fatal blow was a trigger for the water profile to mix. Such a trigger arrived on three separate occasions, with changes in the weather that brought sudden drops in temperature and increased wind that caused sudden turnover of the low-oxygen bottom waters.

Summary of the multiple causes of the 2018-19 fish death events in the lower Darling river.

With the fish already stressed by high temperatures, they were now unable to gain enough oxygen from the water to breathe, and a very large number of them died. As we write, the situation in the lower Darling remains dire, and there is a risk of further fish deaths if there are no significant inflows to the river.

Fish deaths caused by these sorts of turnover events are not uncommon, but the conditions outlined above made these events unusually dramatic.

So, how did such adverse conditions arise in the lower Darling river and how might we avoid their reoccurrence? We’ve examined four influencing factors: climate, water management, lake operations, and fish mobility.

Key influencing factors

We found that the fish death events in the lower Darling were preceded and affected by exceptional climatic conditions.

Inflows to the water storages in the northern Basin over 2017-18 were the second lowest for any two-year period on record. Most of the Murray-Darling Basin experienced its hottest summer on record, exemplified by the town of Bourke breaking a new heatwave record for NSW, with 21 consecutive days with a maximum temperature above 40℃.

We concluded that climate change amplified these conditions and will likely result in more severe droughts in the future.

Changes in the water access arrangements in the Barwon–Darling River, made just prior to the commencement of the Basin Plan in 2012, exacerbated the effects of the drought. These changes enhanced the ability of irrigators to access water during low flow periods, meaning fewer flow pulses make it down the river to periodically reconnect and replenish isolated waterholes that provide permanent refuge habitats for fish during drought.

We conclude that the Lake Menindee scheme had been operated according to established protocols, and was appropriately conservative given the emerging drought conditions. But low connectivity in the lower Darling resulted in poor water quality and restricted mobility for fish.

Recommended policy and management actions

Given the right mix of policy and management actions, Basin governments can significantly reduce the risks of further fish death events and promote the recovery of affected fish populations.

The Basin Plan is delivering positive environmental outcomes and more benefits will accrue once the plan is fully implemented. But more needs to be done to enhance river connectivity and protect low flows, first flushes and environmental flow releases in the Barwon-Darling river.

Initiatives to improve river conditions will require cooperation between government, traditional owners and local communities. Dean Lewins/AAP

Drought resilience in the lower Darling can be enhanced by reconfiguring the Lake Menindee Water Savings Project, modifying the current Menindee Lakes operating rules and purchasing high security water entitlements from horticultural enterprises in the region.

In Australia, water entitlements are the rights to a share of the available water resource in any season. Irrigators get less (or no) water in dry (or extremely dry) years.

A high-security water entitlement is one with a high chance of receiving the full water allocation. In some systems, although not all, this is expected to happen 95 per cent of the time. And these high-security entitlements are the most valuable and sought after.

Fish mobility can be enhanced by removing barriers to movement and adding fish passageways.

It would be beneficial for environmental water holders to place more of their focus on sustaining fish populations through drought sequences.

The river models that governments use to plan water sharing need to be updated more regularly to accurately represent the state of Basin development, configured to run on a whole-of-basin basis, and improved to more faithfully represent low flow conditions.

There are large gaps in water quality monitoring, metering of water extractions and basic hydro-ecologic knowledge that should be filled.

Risk assessments need to be undertaken to identify likely fish death event hot spots and inform future emergency response plans.

All of these initiatives need to be complemented by more sophisticated and reliable assessments of the impacts of climate change on water security across the Basin.

Governments must accelerate action

Responding to the lower Darling fish deaths in a prompt and substantial manner provides governments an opportunity to redress some of the broader concerns around the management of the Basin.

To do so, Basin governments must increase their political, bureaucratic and budgetary support for high value reforms and programs, particularly in the northern Basin.

All of our recommendations can be implemented within the current macro-settings of the Basin Plan and do not require a revisiting of the challenging socio-political process required to define Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs).

Successful implementation will require a commitment to authentic collaboration between governments, traditional owners, local communities, and sustained input from the science community.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Daren Barma, Director of Barma Water Consulting, to this article.

A version of this article has been published in Pursuit.

– ref. We wrote the report for the minister on fish deaths in the lower Darling – here’s why it could happen again – http://theconversation.com/we-wrote-the-report-for-the-minister-on-fish-deaths-in-the-lower-darling-heres-why-it-could-happen-again-115063

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture, UNSW

Regulation of the Australian building industry is broken, according to the Shergold-Weir report to the Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF).

[…] we have concluded that [the] nature and extent [of problems] are significant and concerning. The problems have led to diminishing public confidence that the building and construction industry can deliver compliant, safe buildings which will perform to the expected standards over the long term.

You can say that again.

Just one of the issues identified in the report, combustible cladding, could affect over 1,000 buildings across Australia. An unknown proportion of these are tall (four storey and above) residential strata buildings. Fears of rectification costs are starting to have severe impacts on the apartment market.

The cost of replacing combustible panels at the Lacrosse Apartments in Melbourne, which caught fire in 2014, will be at least A$5.7 million, plus A$6 million or so in consequential damages. The total cost of replacing combustible panels across Australia is unknown at this point, but is likely to run to billions of dollars.

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

The Shergold-Weir report identifies a catalogue of other problems, including water leaks, structurally unsound roof construction and poorly constructed fire-resisting elements. Faults appear to be widespread.

A 2012 study by UNSW City Futures surveyed 1,020 strata owners across New South Wales and found 72% of respondents (85% in buildings built since 2000) knew of at least one significant defect in their complex. Fixing these problems will cost billions more.

Regulatory failures are not only “diminishing public confidence”, they have a direct impact on the hip pockets of many Australians who own a residential apartment. In short, building defects resulting from lax regulation are a multi-billion dollar disaster.

How could authorities let this happen?

A web of regulations and standards enacted by governments cover construction in Australia, but this regulation is centred on the National Construction Code (NCC). The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), a body controlled by the Building Ministers’ Forum, manages the NCC. The ABCB board comprises appointed representatives from the Commonwealth plus all the states and territories and a few industry groups.

It is such a complicated system that it is hard to identify any government, organisation or person that is directly responsible for its performance.

Read more: Australia has a new National Construction Code, but it’s still not good enough

The NCC is supposed to create “benefits to society that outweigh costs” but it appears the ABCB may have been more focused on the need to “consider the competitive effects of regulation” and “not be unnecessarily restrictive”. (Introduction to the NCC Volume 1; ABCB)

The BMF’s February 8 communique, issued after the fire in the Neo200 building in Melbourne, is straight out of the Yes Minister playbook:

Ministers agreed in principle to a national ban on the unsafe use of combustible ACPs (aluminium composite panels) in new construction, subject to a cost/benefit analysis being undertaken on the proposed ban, including impacts on the supply chain, potential impacts on the building industry, any unintended consequences, and a proposed timeline for implementation. Ministers will further consider this at their next meeting [in May this year].

This suggests the ministers are more concerned about possible impacts on the panel suppliers and the building industry than the consumer. The earliest a ban can take effect is in May. In the meantime, anecdotal evidence suggests buildings are still being clad in combustible ACP.

Thanks to the journalist Michael Bleby, we know governments and the ABCB failed to act in 2010 when presented with evidence that combustible ACP was not only a danger, but was also being widely used on tall residential buildings.

Bleby quoted ABCB general manager Neil Savery as saying neither his organisation, nor any of the states, was aware that builders were using the product incorrectly.

We also know that panel manufacturers, including the Australian supplier of Alucobond, actively lobbied building ministers. At the July 2011 BMF meeting, the ACT representative effectively vetoed an ABCB proposal to issue an advisory note on the use of combustible ACP.

We are entitled to ask why the ABCB and its staff, or the downstream regulators and their staff, did not know about serious fire problems with ACP that the technical press identified as long ago as 2000. The answer will be of particular interest to residents of tall apartment buildings clad in these panels, all of whom are now living with an active threat to their safety.

Read more: Cladding fire risks have been known for years. Lives depend on acting now, with no more delays

Consumers are owed better protection

While both Labor and Coalition governments have worked to improve consumer protection for people buying consumer goods, their record on housing, particularly apartments, is awful. While a consumer can be reasonably sure of getting restitution if they buy a faulty fridge, no such certainty exists if they buy a faulty house or apartment.

At the moment, the NCC does not have any focus on providing protection for buyers of houses or apartments. There are few requirements for the durability of components and astonishingly weak requirements for waterproofing. Under the NCC and its attached Australian Standards, particularly AS 4654.1 and 2-2012, a waterproof membrane could last, in practice, five minutes or 50 years.

Given the magnitude of the economic loss, it would be appropriate for the BMF and ABCB board to publicly admit they have failed. Since their appointments in November 2017 and January 2013 respectively, neither ABCB chair John Fahey nor Savery as general manager has remedied the situation. The Shergold-Weir report has not been implemented and the combustible cladding issues remain unresolved. It would be reasonable for Fahey to step down and for Savery to consider his future.

The next federal government should consider what further action should be taken, particularly in relation to individuals on the BMF and within the ABCB involved in the 2010-2011 decision not to issue the proposed advisory note on the use of ACP. Since the ABCB does not publish minutes and none of its deliberations are in the public domain no one knows what actually happened or who did what.

The new board should consider moving residential apartment buildings (Class 2 buildings in the NCC classification) from Volume 2 of the NCC to Volume 1, which controls detached and semi-detached housing. Volume 1 should then have as its overriding objective the protection of consumers.

The downstream regulators should focus on requiring builders to deliver residential buildings with no serious faults and providing simple mechanisms for redress if they don’t.

Surely this is not too much to ask.

– ref. Housing with no serious faults and buyer protection – is that too much to ask of builders and regulators? – http://theconversation.com/housing-with-no-serious-faults-and-buyer-protection-is-that-too-much-to-ask-of-builders-and-regulators-113115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olivia Murphy, Postdoctoral research fellow in English, University of Sydney

A documentary from the Smithsonian Institute, examining new DNA and physical anthropology evidence, suggests the famous cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski (1745-1779) might have been a woman, or intersex.

Pulaski is a hero of the struggles for Polish and American independence. He is credited with saving George Washington’s life in battle and with establishing the first American cavalry force. According to the documentary, DNA testing has confirmed a female-appearing skeleton is indeed Pulaski’s. This new evidence is the first hint that Pulaski – who seems to have lived as male from childhood – was anything other than a cisgendered man.

We may never know if Pulaski was intersex (that is, his body didn’t fit neatly into either male or female categories) and did not question his gender. Or if he was, in fact, born female but chose to live as a man.

In either case, Pulaski would be the most senior military officer we know of to have female anatomical characteristics before the late 20th century. But he certainly wouldn’t have been the only one on the battlefield.

The history of intersex men and women is one that requires more research. The lives of intersex people have often been made invisible throughout history. I hope that when more evidence comes to light Pulaski can be claimed as an inspirational intersex hero.

We know quite a bit, however, about women dressing as men and joining the military in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were famous women such as the British marine Hannah Snell (c.1723-1792) who, disguising herself as James Gray, signed up to fight in Scotland against the Jacobite invasion of 1745. Snell was later wounded trying to capture a French colony in India.

After revealing her gender, she was granted a pension by the king and made a living performing military exercises on stage. She also briefly kept a pub called “The Female Warrior”.

A portrait of Hannah Snell, circa 1750. Wikimedia Commons

In contrast to Snell’s self-promoting confidence, the Anglo-Irish military physician James Barry (c.1789-1865) kept the secret of his female birth all his life. Dressing as a man, Barry completed medical studies in Edinburgh and went on to have a long and distinguished career. Only after Barry’s death was his sex discovered.

“William Brown” was the name taken by a black woman from Edinburgh who served aboard HMS Queen Charlotte from 1804 until after 1816, through the end of the Napoleonic Wars. She exhibited “all the traits of a British tar (slang for a sailor) and takes her grog with her messmates”, according to a contemporary report.

The discovery of Brown’s sex by her crew doesn’t seem to have interrupted her career: she re-enlisted on the same ship after news broke that she was female.

Then there is the story of Jeanne Baré, who was not a soldier, but became the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe (1766-69). She dressed in men’s clothes to work as an assistant to Philibert Comerçon (she may also have been Commerçon’s mistress), who was the botanist to French admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville.

Portrait of Jeanne Barret (1740-1807) by Cristoforo Dall’Acqua (1734-1787). Wikimedia Commons

Baré was found out when the ships made it to Tahiti. While she had passed as a man with the crew, her disguise didn’t fool the Tahitians, who pointed her out to Bougainville.

Why would women disguise themselves as men and join the army and navy? One major reason was that men were paid far better than women. For a working-class woman, despite the dangers of a military or naval career, the money might have looked too good to pass up.

There were prohibitions against women wearing men’s clothing in the period, but prosecutions were relatively rare. The army and the navy were desperate for recruits and tended not to inquire too closely. As Snell’s career shows, being brazen about one’s cross-dressing adventures might be a ticket to a comfortable life.

Young women might also be inspired by the many popular ballads narrating the military and naval careers of cross-dressing women. One, The Ballad of Jack Monroe, exists in several surviving versions:

She went into the tailor shop
And dressed in men’s array,
And went into a vessel
To convey herself away.

For women as well as men, joining the army or navy might be a rare opportunity to see the world. For an adventurous spirit, living in disguise may have added to the excitement.

But for many of these cross-dressing adventurers, there must have been one further reason: they just felt more comfortable, more like themselves, fighting and living not only alongside men, but as men.

– ref. Adventurous identities: intersex soldiers and cross-dressing women at war – http://theconversation.com/adventurous-identities-intersex-soldiers-and-cross-dressing-women-at-war-115126

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

The fallout from the extraordinary revelations about Peter Dutton’s contacts with Chinese Communist Party-aligned billionaire Huang Xiangmo is a potent brew, its ingredients the issue of foreign interference and the legacy of last year’s leadership challenge.

A tale full of spooky overtones, mates, ironies, and payback.

Monday’s Four Corners-Age-Sydney Morning Herald investigation reported that Dutton, immigration minister at the time, in 2015 approved a private citizenship ceremony for Huang’s family, who were due to travel overseas.

Dutton justifies the special treatment as being in response to a request from then-Labor senator Sam Dastyari.

That would be the same Dastyari who in December in 2017 announced he would resign from the Senate after revelations that he had promoted Chinese interests, including at a notorious news conference where he stood beside Huang.

(Dutton is generous in responding to personal representations – he, it will be remembered, was the minister who provided a quick rescue services for a couple of stranded au pairs.)

Four Corners reported that in 2016 – when Huang was anxious to get his own citizenship – lobbyist Santo Santoro, a former Howard government minister and close to Dutton, arranged a lunch between the businessman and the minister at Master Ken’s (upmarket) restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown.

Dutton denies the lunch was about Huang’s citizenship bid. “He didn’t make representations to me in relation to these matters,” Dutton said on Tuesday, also stressing he’d received no donation (Huang over several years donated, to both sides of politics, between $2 million and $3 million.)

Huang didn’t get his citizenship and last year his permanent residency was cancelled. The officials charged with examining his background and activities judged him unsuitable to be one of us.

The Australian Financial Review reported that, in relation to the cancellation of his residency, ASIO had found he was “amenable to conducting acts of foreign interference”. Cancellation of a permanent resident’s visa is a decision taken by the immigration minister or a senior official within the Home Affairs department, which is responsible for immigration and citizenship matters. By this time, David Coleman had oversight of immigration.

Scott Morrison, desperate to smother what is on most criteria a damaging story coming almost on the eve of the election being called, insists on Tuesday there was nothing to see in Dutton’s conduct.

“I’ve spoken with Peter Dutton about this and there are no issues here that trouble me at all. I mean there’s no suggestion that Peter, in any way, shape or form, has a sought or been provided with any benefit here.

“The individual we’re talking about had his visa cancelled while he was out of the country, by Peter Dutton’s department. So if the object was foreign interference, well, the exact opposite is what has occurred.”

But the issue is not whether Dutton himself got a benefit.

The issues are that Huang’s family received favourable treatment via the minister’s office, and that Huang, in hiring Santoro, “bought” himself valuable access to a minister. That Huang came to grief later is not the point.

“The suggestion that somehow I’ve provided anything to this individual is just a nonsense,” Dutton says. He’d met with him “because he was a significant leader within the Chinese community”.

Duuton underestimates himself. He notes that Huang “was interested obviously in politics and other issues of the day”. Of course he was – and access to a minister over a relaxed and tasty Chinese meal yields information and insights.

Malcolm Turnbull had emerged early on Tuesday declaring Dutton had “a lot to explain” and setting up the challenge for Morrison. “Scott Morrison is the Prime Minister and you can’t wave this off and say it is all part of gossip and the bubble.

“This is the national security of Australia. Remember the furore that arose against Sam Dastyari ?

“All the same issues have arisen again and this has to be addressed at the highest level of security, priority, urgency by the Prime Minister,” Turnbull said.

“The buck stops with him. I know what it is like to be Prime Minister and, ultimately, you are responsible. So Scott Morrison has to deal with this Peter Dutton issue”.

Predictably, Turnbull didn’t influence Morrison but he did ensure a bad day became even worse for the government.

Turnbull is not an objective voice when it comes to Dutton, who instigated the events that ended in the political demise of the former PM.

But Turnbull’s credentials on combatting foreign interference are beyond question. His government introduced the legislation to counter what has become a very serious problem.

On Monday Duncan Lewis, head of ASIO, told a Senate estimates hearing “the threat from foreign interference and foreign espionage in Australia is running at […] an unprecedented level.”

No doubt if he knew then what he learned later, Dutton would not have given Huang the benefits of valuable face time.

But by 2016 politicians, and especially a minister, should have been alert to foreign interference.

In 2015 Lewis briefed the top officials of the main parties about the risks from foreign donations, and reportedly named donors ASIO believed were acting on the Chinese government’s behalf.

Did Dutton make any effort to check Huang out with ASIO before agreeing to lunch?

Most pertinently, the lunch highlights the insidious power of the lobbying industry in today’s Canberra.

Four Corners had Santoro on tape saying (speaking to an unidentified person, not Huang): “One of my best friends is Peter Dutton. He is the most honest politician that I have ever come across, but he tries to be helpful.[…] I can go to somebody in the minister’s office and say ‘can you have a close look at this’”.

According to Four Corners, Santoro charges at least $20,000 for access to Dutton’s office.

Dutton says: “There are lobbyists who are registered on both sides of parliament, people that operate as lobbyists. Their transactions and how they conduct their business is an issue for them”.

Actually, how they conduct themselves and how ministers respond are matters for the democratic system.

That you can write Santoro a cheque and expect to be fast-tracked to the minister’s office (whether that ends in a successful outcome or not) isn’t the way the system should desirably work.

We do have a federal register of lobbyists. But we don’t have enough information about their operations – until they find themselves in the spotlight.

Journalist Primrose Riordan tweeted on Tuesday that Santoro had “just updated his listing on the foreign influence register to include a heap of Chinese companies”.

At the very least, the Dutton affair suggests we need a lot more transparency about what in recent years has become a sunrise industry of politics, and a lucrative occupation for spent politicians.

– ref. View from The Hill: Dutton suffers reflux after tasty Chinese meal – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-dutton-suffers-reflux-after-tasty-chinese-meal-115150

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

Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s memoir of a “monstrous” mother has won the 2019 Stella Prize. The Erratics tells the story of Vicki’s return home to a prairie house in the sparse wintry landscapes of Alberta, Canada, where she grew up. Once there, the narrator faces family relationships that are strained to the point of breaking.

This is Laveau-Harvie’s debut work – making her the second first-time writer to win in the prize’s seven year history. The book’s road to the Stella Prize is an impressive one: first released by a now-defunct independent publisher, it was reissued by a major publishing house, after being longlisted for the Prize.

Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s debut memoir explores family relationships on the edge. Stella Prize

When the book begins, its narrator has been absent from her family for 18 years. Her mother is clearly unwell, and Vicki believes she should be declared legally “incompetent” against her wishes.

Vicki is convinced that her mother is attempting to kill her father, by starving him to death, keeping him on a diet of spinach, bok choy and kale. Her father defers to his wife, often against all reason, and indeed safety.

This book shatters social expectations that a mother is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-caring, by setting them against the bleak reality of what one mother is. It explodes culturally sanctioned ideas about what a mother ought to be, feel and do. It does so with a rare – often dark, and deeply unsettling – honesty.

The writing style is taught, elegant and clinically restrained. The narrator is almost numb.

The judges said:

Set against the bitter cold of a Canadian winter, Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s The Erratics mines the psychological damage wrought on a nuclear family by a monstrous personality. Despite the dark subject matter, this book has a smile at its core, and Laveau-Harvie shows constant wit when depicting some harrowing times.

Read more: Six books that shock, delve deeply and destroy pieties: your guide to the 2019 Stella Prize shortlist

There are many uneasy truths in this book. It’s occasionally difficult to feel empathy for the narrator, with her myriad blind spots, and the way her desires too often lead her to fashion the world according to her own needs – seen in her failure to understand the psychiatrist’s serious hesitation to commit her mother to a locked ward unless she is genuinely a threat to herself or to others. In her too easy belief that her father’s carer is a “gold-digger”. And in the many judgments that are delivered down the telephone line from half a world away, after she returns to Sydney.

“I would very much like to mean ‘we’, my sister and me,” she writes about the question of who will be caring for her aged parents. “But I’m leaving, my sanity always dependent on living somewhere remote […] My sister and her partner will shoulder almost all of what needs doing.”

There is grief, though, when news breaks that her mother’s medical team have decided she requires constant care in a mental health ward. Vicki writes:

I think of everything my mother will never see again, the view over the foothills to the Rockies from the windows of her house, the animals in the duck light, fawns gambolling unsteadily, coyotes pausing to give you the slightest of nods before loping across the lawns […]

And yet, it is difficult reading to the end: grief expressed from faraway Sydney feels disparaging of her caregiving sister’s nervously exhausted relief at, in the narrator’s words, the “wicked witch being dead”.

This is a remarkable book. It is also a deeply uncomfortable one. And that – I suspect – is precisely the point. Where the rest of us would rather deal in easy platitudes, this book is deeply honest.

– ref. Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s remarkable, uncomfortable memoir wins the 2019 Stella Prize – http://theconversation.com/vicki-laveau-harvies-remarkable-uncomfortable-memoir-wins-the-2019-stella-prize-115120

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Professor of Environmental Science, Macquarie University

Current smelting emissions from the Nyrstar smelter in the South Australian city of Port Pirie continue to pose a clear risk of harm to local children, our research has found.

Port Pirie has been a world-leading centre for lead and zinc smelting and processing since 1889, exposing the adjoining community to dangerous lead contamination for more than a century.

Read more: Lead poisoning of Port Pirie children: a long history of looking the other way

A new study led by Macquarie University examined blood lead and emergency department presentation data collected by South Australia Health. It also examined lead in air and sulfur dioxide data collected by the South Australian Environment Protection Authority to quantify health outcomes due to smelter emissions in Port Pirie.

In 2017, almost half of Port Pirie’s children under five years old had unacceptably high blood lead levels. Heightened blood lead levels in children can result in developmental problems and behavioural disorders.

Meanwhile, Port Pirie residents visited emergency departments for respiratory conditions at more than twice the rate of residents elsewhere in South Australia. Children under ten make up 11% of the Port Pirie population, yet they represent 30% of emergency department respiratory cases.

Emergency department presentations for respiratory illness might include asthma, bronchitis, and upper respiratory tract infections.

Based on our results, which are in turn based on government data, we would argue that protection of public health and the environment must be made a higher priority than the present focus on economic opportunities.

Half of children in Port Pirie exceed the maximum acceptable blood lead levels, according to Australian standards. David Mariuz/AAP

Lead in children’s blood

The maximum acceptable blood lead level in Australia is five micrograms per decilitre (µg/dL).

Lead in blood, even at low levels, has a range of adverse health impacts, including reducing IQ, lowering academic achievement, and socio-behavioural problems.

In 2018, the percentage of Port Pirie children under five exceeding the Australian intervention blood level of 5 µg/dL rose to 50.5%, compared with 47.4% in 2017. Mean blood lead concentrations rose in all children to 4.8 µg/dL.

Blood lead levels in children aged two, who are considered the most sensitive indicator of lead exposure trends in the city, rose to an average of 5.8 µg/dL in 2018.

A recent University of Adelaide study looked at children from Port Pirie and the New South Wales town of Broken Hill. It calculated that 13.5 IQ points were lost when a child’s blood lead level increased from 1 to 10 µg/dL.

Therefore, the estimate of loss for Port Pirie children with an average blood lead level is around 6 to 8 IQ points. To put this in perspective, the average IQ is around 100.

Multiple studies of the long-term effects of lead exposure show its adverse effects do not improve with age. In one New Zealand study, children who had high lead exposures reported lower cognitive function and socioeconomic status at age 38 than those who didn’t.

Read more: Pregnant women and parents misled about dangers of living with lead pollution

Monitoring lead levels

Elevated concentrations of air lead results in the deposition of lead-rich dust, which Port Pirie children are seemingly unable to avoid.

The smelter company, Nyrstar, monitors lead levels in the air daily. In 2017, the average lead in air measured across all four of Port Pirie’s EPA monitors was more than double the Australian standard, at 1.13 µg/m³.

In 2018, the smelter only met the Australian standard by closing part of its operations for several weeks.

Our study shows Port Pirie’s lead in air concentrations need to be 80% less than the current Australian standard of 0.5 µg/m³, at no more than 0.11 µg/m³.

Children under five would be better protected at this level, as it would help their blood levels remain below the maximum acceptable Australian blood lead level. However, to protect two-year-old children, lead in air concentrations need to be even lower at 0.082 µg/m³.

Therefore, application of the current Australian lead in air standard of 0.5 µg/m³ at Port Pirie fails to adequately protect children from adverse exposures.

Sulfur dioxide and respiratory health

Sulfur dioxide is a well-known health risk for respiratory diseases. Surprisingly, our study is the first to examine its impact on respiratory health in Port Pirie despite it being a known problem in the city for decades.

Our research found elevated levels of sulfur dioxide in Port Pirie, and increased rates of emergency department respiratory presentations.

Port Pirie residents visited an emergency department with respiratory symptoms at a higher rate than the rest of South Australia, with children being disproportionately affected.

Port Pirie residents rates of Emergency Department presentations for respiratory symptoms are more than double those for the rest of South Australia.

The Australian standard for sulfur dioxide is 0.2 parts per million averaged over one hour. This value has been exceeded 896 times since 2003.

Remarkably, there is currently no legal requirement in Nyrstar’s environmental licence for it to meet a particular air standard for sulfur dioxide in Port Pirie.

Even our national standards may be too generous as the sulfur dioxide levels recommended by the World Health Organisation are even lower than those set by the Australian standards.

As a minimum, to better protect the residents of Port Pirie, the Australian standards for sulfur dioxide must be enforced.

A matter of politics

No other city in Australia experiences air quality like Port Pirie. The city’s population has the worst combined outcomes for sulfur dioxide exposure and blood lead in Australia.

Established public health programs in Port Pirie have aimed to reduce blood lead in Port Pirie’s children. Playgrounds are washed and residents advised to wash their hands, surfaces and food. But previous research has found that playground washing results in only short-lived exposure reduction and effective treatment requires elimination of smelter emissions.

Read more: Toxic chemicals and pollutants affect kids’ brain development

Of the political and government agency decision-makers, we ask: why did you not intervene sooner to prevent vulnerable members of the population from being be exposed to toxic substances that are known to cause serious short- and long-term health problems? Would you be comfortable with bringing up your family in such an environment, where damaging but preventable toxic exposures are inescapable?

We anticipate the outcomes of the approximately A$660 million Nyrstar smelter transformation project with interest.

In a statement to The Conversation, Nyrstar noted it was undergoing the most significant transformation of the Port Pirie smelter in its history, and was committed to reducing emissions as a result:

That is the focus of the company and its entire workforce and Nyrstar has been working closely with the community through the decommissioning process. When complete it will be among the world’s most advanced facilities of its kind; full ramp up and stable low emissions should be achieved by the end of 2019. – Nyrstar

The most recent air quality, particularly sulfur dioxide levels, suggests there have been improvements, but there’s a still a long way to go. Importantly, these improvements do not help those already exposed.

This Nyrstar investment, supported by the SA government, includes a smelter refit with modern, clean technology and is expected to yield measurable benefits in health outcomes.

However, in the refit “transition” period since 2014, lead in air quality has got markedly worse, not better.

– ref. Children continue to be exposed to contaminated air in Port Pirie – http://theconversation.com/children-continue-to-be-exposed-to-contaminated-air-in-port-pirie-113484

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, 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.

The Turnbull/Morrison government has a mixed record, at best, on health.

The 2019 budget cash splash includes more promises on health but these will not come into effect until after the election. So they are just promises, not actions that have changed the health system.

Read more: Budget 2019 boosts aged care and mental health, and modernises Medicare: health experts respond

In 2016-17, the Commonwealth government spent A$74.5 billion on health care, mostly on:

• grants to the states for public hospitals (29% of total spending)
• medical specialists and diagnostic tests (18%)
• general practice (14%)
• the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (14%)
• support for private health insurance (8%).

Here’s the report card on the Coalition’s performance since the 2016 election.

1. Grants to the states for public hospitals

Public hospital funding has been a failure for this government.

The Coalition’s 2013 election promise to keep the Labor policy on hospital funding growth was not repeated at the 2016 election. The Commonwealth now funds only 45% of the costs of growth, not 50% as previously promised.

This funding gap – Labor calls it a cut – left the government exposed during last year’s by-elections to charges that it was short-changing local hospitals.

Read more: Public hospital blame game – here’s how we got into this funding mess

The claim appeared to gain traction with voters, so we should expect to see a re-run of this tactic in this election. This started with Bill Shorten highlighting the issue in his budget reply speech, promising to “put back every single dollar that the Liberals have cut from public schools and public hospitals”.

The Coalition now funds only 45% of hospital funding growth, down from 50%. hxdbzxy/Shutterstock

Despite bribes and threats, the federal government has failed to negotiate hospital funding agreements with Victoria and Queensland, together covering 46% of the population. As a result, those states are at risk of being left in a funding limbo when the current arrangements expire on June 30, 2020.

2. Specialist medical services and diagnostics

A key challenge for policy on specialist medical services is out-of-pocket costs. General practitioner bulk-billing rates are good, but patients are angry about the out-of-pocket costs they face when they go to a specialist.

The government response has been a committee, a report, and a promise of transparency or, more accurately, a promise to encourage voluntary fee transparency.

Read more: We need more than a website to stop Australians paying exorbitant out-of-pocket health costs

Increased transparency is all well and good, but it puts the burden of reducing out-of-pocket costs on consumers, who generally do not have enough information to make informed choices. The complication rates of different specialists, and other measures of quality, are not yet routinely available to patients, or even GPs.

This area should be marked as a policy fail.

Promises about diagnostic testing before the 2016 election were of two kinds: more reviews and more machines that go ping, the latter dropped into marginal electorates as part of the cargo cult which appears endemic during election campaigns.

Left unaddressed is the need to reform the pathology market to recognise that pathology provision (such as blood and tissue tests) is a big business and needs to be treated as such, by procuring via tenders rather than fee-for-service.

Blood testing is big business. Romanets/Shutterstock

The government has also failed to end the over-use of diagnostic tests. This could have been done by reducing payments for tests which have been shown to add little value and encouraging more evidence-based diagnosis. Another fail.

A third key area of specialist provision, mental health, is a mess. Before the 2016 election, the Coalition promised to “strengthen mental health services”.

The latest Panglossian national status report on mental health gives no hint of the underlying problems of poor access, misdirected funding, lack of teamwork, and appalling rates of suicide in Indigenous communities. Yet another fail.

Read more: Why are we losing so many Indigenous children to suicide?

3. General practice and primary care

The much-vaunted Turnbull-era Primary Health Care Homes Trial – once the vanguard of a primary care revolution and core to the government’s policy announcement’s before the 2016 election – has disappeared from the radar.

In its place, announced in this year’s budget, is a new capitation-type payment for general practitioners.

Although the details are still to be fleshed out, this will probably allow general practitioners to introduce remote consultations – such as advice by email for those who want it – and have practice staff reach out to people with chronic illness to track how they are going to reduce future problems.

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

This is a good move, and reflects recommendations from a review of general practice items as part of the broader Medicare Benefits Schedule Review.

Other important recommendations from the general practice review seem to be languishing, and there is no sense that overdue primary care reforms are being tackled in a serious and systematic way.

Overall, however, the government has been moving in the right direction in this area, albeit slowly and with false starts. A solid pass.

4. Pharmaceutical benefits

Before the 2016 election, federal health minister Greg Hunt signed agreements promising to talk to and work with all components of the pharmaceutical supply chain.

This has been a success story. New drugs are now listed in line with recommendations from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, ending the delays and political interference of yesteryear.

Labor has promised to do the same.

Policy pass: drugs are now being listed without delay. iviewfinder/Shutterstock

Pharmaceutical prices have come down, so the prices paid by Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) for drugs are now closer to international best practice. But anti-competitive restrictions on pharmacy location remain, to the benefit of pharmacy owners.

Nevertheless, a strong pass.

5. The private market

The private health market is supposed to be an area of strength for a Coalition government. On April 1 this year, this government introduced changes to private health insurance:

• standardising product definitions
• allowing deductions to encourage young people to take out insurance
• removing many natural therapies (for which there is no evidence that they work) from the subsidised extras packages.

Read more: Premiums up, rebates down, and a new tiered system – what the private health insurance changes mean

These changes are unlikely to have much impact on private health insurance coverage, which has been declining in recent years.

Overall, no harm has been done, but unfortunately most of the fundamental problems of the private markets have not been confronted. Borderline achievement.

6. Everything else

Barely a week goes by when Hunt is not announcing yet another funding initiative. He has two big slush funds from which to dispense goodies: the Medical Research Future Fund and the Community Health and Hospitals Fund.

The criteria for distributing money from these funds is opaque; it is difficult to discern any strategic vision informing the way the largesse is being spread.

Health minister Greg Hunt makes frequent health funding announcements. AAP/Penny Stephens

There was a veritable cornucopia of policies announced before the last election, from glucose monitoring to treatment of rare teen cancers.

All were worthy, and most were designed to placate vocal sectoral interests. Most have been implemented, but few will change the fundamentals of the health system or improve integration of the system’s many disparate elements.

Scattered like programmatic confetti, each of these funding dollops will yield a minor benefit, but together they will lead to more funding silos, less policy integration, and more confusion about the roles of the Commonwealth government and the states.

What’s more, they will give more heart to vested interests, and undermine rational national health policy.

What Labor has promised so far?

Health is an area of comparative advantage for Labor – voters tend to trust Labor more than the Coalition on Medicare.

Not surprisingly, Labor capitalises on that, and opposition leader Bill Shorten made health policy a key element of his budget reply speech.

Last month Labor promised to lift the freeze on Medicare rebates for general practice consultations, a promise matched by the Coalition in the Budget.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten has made Medicare a focus of his pre-election campaigning. Ellen Smith/AAP

Labor has also set out a longer-term vision for reform of the health system, including a proposal for an ongoing “reform commission”.

The centrepiece and most expensive was a massive “cancer plan” commitment to address out-of-pocket costs for people with cancer. This includes expanded Medicare rebates for MRI scans for cancer patients, a new rebate for bulk-billed visits to oncologists, and a guarantee that all new drugs recommended for listing on the PBS will be listed.

Read more: Labor’s cancer package would cut the cost of care, but beware of unintended side effects

– ref. The Coalition’s report card on health includes some passes and quite a few fails – http://theconversation.com/the-coalitions-report-card-on-health-includes-some-passes-and-quite-a-few-fails-113734

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Bond-Smith, Research Fellow, Bankwest-Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University

The federal government has just promised to increase spending on public hospitals from A$21.7 billion in 2018 to A$26.2 billion by 2023. Expect more hospital promises in coming weeks. There is a long history of parties at both state and federal level pledging new hospitals during election campaigns.

Building new hospitals may at first seem sensible, especially as the population grows. But it will not cure the health system’s most pressing ailment. Instead, our research shows it’s more effective to focus health policy on people and prevention.

A problem of demand

It is true that hospitals in Australia aren’t keeping up with demand. Though supply of beds has increased, the population is growing while also ageing. This is increasing demand for all health-care services, including hospital beds.

The following graph shows the change in the number of beds per 1,000 people in all states and territories since 2006. Only in the Australian Capital Territory has the ratio improved.

Available hospital beds per 1000 population, by region, public hospitals (including psychiatric). Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre | AIHA (various years), Australian hospital statistics, Health Services Series; AIHW (various years), hospital resources’ Australian hospital statistics, Health services series.

State and federal governments thus feel a lot of pressure to spend more on hospitals. In 2016-2017 it was $69 billion Australia-wide – $2 billion more than the previous year. The following graph shows expenditure on public hospitals by state over the past two decades.

Public hospital spending in each state since 1996. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, CC BY

Queensland shows the greatest growth over the past two decades. In Western Australia, where we did our research, the proportion of government health budgets spent on public hospitals rose from 26% to 31%.

Preventive measures

We looked at why the hospital care is growing faster than the overall health sector, and what can be done about this.

Our conclusion: there needs to be more focus on the “unsexy” parts of the health-care system that treat people before they get sick enough to need a hospital. Prevention is cheaper and more effective than cure.

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

For example, it is estimated that A$9 million invested in anti-smoking campaigns between 1997 and 2007 saved A$740 million on smoking-related illnesses like lung cancer.

Yet our breakdown of health spending in Western Australia shows just 1.7% is spent on preventive measures – called “public health spending”. Australia-wide the average percentage is even less, according to research from La Trobe University and the Australian Preventative Partnership Centre.

Breakdown of health care spending in WA. Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre | Authors’ calculations from AIHW health expenditure database.

Early medical attention is another way to reduce the need for hospitals. In analysing data from around Western Australia between 2009 and 2016, we generally found that increasing visits to general practitioners reduced the incidence of avoidable deaths (deaths that could have been avoided with better treatment or prevention).

People-centred approach

Limited prevention and early detection comes back to the way we fund health care. Australia’s health system is funded using a “hospital-centred” rather than “people-centred” approach.

This means hospitals are funded by the number of patients cared for and the type of procedures done. Hospital and GPs are funded separately. There is no incentive to cooperate and keep people out of hospitals.

A people-centred approach, on the other hand, would give funds based on patients’ health outcomes, rather than their particular treatments. GPs would be paid to manage patients, with the goal of keeping them out of hospital.

This system would particularly help people living in remote and rural regions, including Indigenous Australians, who are disadvantaged by the relative lack of resources being spent on local and preventive health.

The Canterbury model

The Canterbury region in New Zealand. English Wiki

The best example of such a people-centred system is New Zealand’s Canterbury model – named after the Canterbury region on New Zealand’s South Island (which includes Christchurch).

Instead of separate budgets for GPs and hospitals, Canterbury created a “one system, one budget” approach. This led to new programs that weren’t possible under the old system. An example is Healthpathways, which brought together GPs and specialists to decide on treatement programs for individual patients.

In working to make hospitals the last resort, more time and resources have gone to GPs. There are now more 24-hour clinics, for example, making it easier to get treated by a local doctor when needed.

Read more: Infographic: a snapshot of hospitals in Australia

A study of the Canterbury system showed that between 2007 and 2014 the number of people being hospitalised declined from 6.59 to 5.83 per 1,000. While an 11% decline may not seem huge, it represents a significant financial saving, given the high cost of hospitalisation.

Canterbury shows what can be achieved by rethinking how health care funding works. Australia has the opportunity to reimagine its health care system in a similar way.

New hospitals get a lot of attention. Politicians can point to them as concrete evidence they’re doing something to help. But emphasising hospitals as the most important part of the health system comes at a cost, and will only get more so as the population ages.

It’s time to discuss alternatives. Putting more resources into prevention and people is the right medicine for our future health needs.

– ref. More hospitals will not cure Australia’s ailing health-care system. There’s a more efficient way – http://theconversation.com/more-hospitals-will-not-cure-australias-ailing-health-care-system-theres-a-more-efficient-way-111084

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Laurance, Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook University

For time immemorial, many wildlife species have survived by undertaking heroic long-distance migrations. But many of these great migrations are collapsing right before our eyes.

Perhaps the biggest peril to migrations is so common that we often fail to notice them: fences. Australia has the longest fences on Earth. The 5,600-kilometre “Dingo Fence” separates southeastern Australia from the rest of the country, whereas the “Rabbit-Proof Fence” stretches for almost 3,300 kilometres across Western Australia.

Emus attempting to cross the Rabbit-Proof Fence in Western Australia. Western Australia Department of Agriculture & Food

Both of these enormous fences were intended to repel rabbits and other “vermin” such emus, kangaroos and dingoes that were considered threats to crops or livestock. Built over a century ago, their environmental impacts were poorly understood or disregarded at the time.

Since construction these fences have caused recurring ecosystem catastrophes, such as mass die-offs of emus and other species trying to find food and water in a land notorious for the unpredictability of its rainfall, vegetation growth and fruit production.

Fatal fences

The same thing is happening across much of the planet. While a nemesis for larger wildlife, nobody knows how many fences exist today or where they’re located. A study that mapped all the fences in southern Alberta, Canada, found there were 16 times more fences than paved roads.

Scientists are waking up to the peril of fences, realising that from an environmental perspective they’re grossly understudied — “largely overlooked and essentially invisible,” according to a recent global review.

A zebra noses a fence in Kenya. Duncan Kimuyu

In Africa, home to some of the most spectacular wildlife migrations, scientists found that of 14 large-mammal species known to migrate en masse, five migrations were already extinct. Proliferating fences, along with habitat loss and wildlife poaching, has sent ecosystems such as the Greater Mara in Kenya crashing into ecological turmoil.

And a 2009 audit of Earth’s greatest terrestrial-mammal movements showed that of 24 large species that once migrated in their hundreds to thousands, six migrations have vanished entirely.

Many remaining migrations are mere shards of their former glory. For instance, Indochina once had mass migrations of elephants and other large mammals, big cats, monkeys and birds — often called the “Serengeti of Southeast Asia”.

Elephants and Banteng graze in Kuri Buri National Park in Thailand, vestiges of a once-massive fauna that migrated annually across Indochina. Pattarapong/iStock

The thundering herds of American bison – some numbering up to 4 million animals – which once dominated the plains of North America have all but vanished today.

How to save mass migration

There are two main ways to destroy mass migrations: killing the animals outright by hunting and over-harvesting, or stopping the animals from accessing food or water, typically by fencing them out or clearing and fragmenting their habitat.

As the human footprint rapidly expands, scary things for wildlife are happening all over. Research that one of us (Bill Laurance) led revealed that 33 African “development corridors” would, if completed, exceed 50,000 kilometres in length and crisscross the continent, chopping its ecosystems into scores of smaller pieces.

Cost-benefit assessment for 33 massive ‘development corridors’ that are proposed or under construction in Sub-Saharan Africa. William Laurance

Beyond this, over 2,000 parks and protected areas in Africa would be degraded or cut apart by the massive developments.

Migrations are vulnerable even in the seas. Recent research shows that growing shipping traffic is an increasing danger to migratory great whales, basking sharks, and giant whale-sharks – all highly vulnerable to collisions with fast-moving ships, as well as disruption of their sensitive hearing and vocal communications by shipping noise and sonar, and pollutants from vessels.

But the inspiring news is that, if you remove barriers such as fences, animal migrations can spontaneously resume – like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

A Red-Billed Oxpecker, which feeds on skin parasites of African mammals. Fernando Quevedo de Oliveira/Alamy Stock Photo

In 2004, a fence that had blocked a former zebra migration in Botswana was removed. By 2007 it was one of the longest animal-migration routes in the world.

And a few places on Earth are still free from fencing and fragmentation. The world-famous Seregeti ecosystem of Tanzania is an iconic example. In war-torn South Sudan, a spectacular mass migration of a million antelope — known as white-eared kob — is still intact because there are no fences.

And caribou still migrate in great herds across large expanses of northern Canada and Alaska.

Alarming news for Botswana

Collapsing migrations are a global concern, but right now conservationists are most worried about Botswana.

This mega-diverse nation in southern Africa is considering profoundly changing its wildlife management by expanding fences and cutting off wildlife migrations not considered beneficial to the country’s current priorities.

This would be a shocking decision, because Botswana’s wildlife conservation is almost entirely dependent on its mass migrations.

For wildebeest, zebra, eland, impala, kob, hartebeest, springbok and many other large migrants, isolation is a killer – destroying their capacity to track the shifting patterns of greening vegetation and water availability they need to survive.

And it’s not just grazing and browsing animals that are affected: entire suites of large and small predators, scavengers, commensal and migratory bird species, grazing-adapted plants and other species are integrally tied to these great migrations.

Lions attacking an Angolan Giraffe, one facet of Botswana’s complex migratory ecosystems. Michael Cohen

Botswana is already sliced into 17 giant “islands” by fences, erected in colonial times to protect the livestock of European farmers from foot-and-mouth disease.

But foot-and-mouth disease is far more likely to be spread by cattle, not wildlife. Fence-free strategies for managing disease risk also have have great potential.

And nature tourism in Botswana is a large, vibrant, and growing part of the national economy. Ecotourists will continue to favour the nation so long as it maintains untrammelled areas and spectacular animal migrations.

Botswana is expected to have over 40,000 tourism-related jobs by 2028, showing their key importance to the national economy. Travel & Tourism Economic Impact: Botswana 2018

But you can kiss a lot of those tourism revenues goodbye if Botswana shatters its great migrations – killing off the spectacular living panoramas that are a magnet for the world’s nature lovers.

If we can avoid fencing and bulldozing critical parts of the Earth, we could hugely increase the chances that our most vibrant wildlife and ecosystems have a fighting chance to survive.

– ref. From Australia to Africa, fences are stopping Earth’s great animal migrations – http://theconversation.com/from-australia-to-africa-fences-are-stopping-earths-great-animal-migrations-114586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

Six weeks before an expected May 18 election, this week’s Newspoll, conducted April 4-7 from a sample of 1,800, gave Labor a 52-48 lead. That’s a two-point gain for the Coalition since the last Newspoll, conducted four weeks ago, owing to the NSW election and the budget. This Newspoll has the narrowest Labor lead since Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull.

An Ipsos poll for Nine newspapers, conducted April 3-6 from a sample of 1,200, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since mid-February. While Ipsos was better for Labor, the February Ipsos was the infamous 51-49 after the Medevac bill passed.

Read more: Poll wrap: Labor’s lead narrows to just 51-49 in Ipsos, but is it an outlier?

Primary votes in Newspoll were 38% Coalition (up two), 37% Labor (down two), 9% Greens (steady) and 6% One Nation (down one). In Ipsos, primary votes were 37% Coalition (down one), 34% Labor (up one), 13% Greens (steady) and 5% One Nation (steady). Rounding probably assisted the Coalition on two party in February, and assisted Labor this time. As usual, the Greens vote in Ipsos is too high, and Labor’s too low.

Respondent allocated preferences in Ipsos were also 53-47 to Labor, and there has been no difference between respondent and previous election methods in Ipsos since Morrison replaced Turnbull. Under Turnbull, respondent preferences were usually better for the Coalition.

In Newspoll, 45% were satisfied with Morrison’s performance (up two), and 43% were dissatisfied (down two), for a net approval of +2, Morrison’s best since October. Bill Shorten’s net approval rose one point to -14, his best since January. Morrison led Shorten by 46-35 as better PM (43-36 four weeks ago).

In Ipsos, Morrison’s approval and disapproval were both down a point, to 48% and 39% respectively. Shorten’s net approval fell three points to -15. Morrison led Shorten by 46-35 as better PM (48-38 in February).

There are three questions Newspoll has asked after every budget since 1988: whether the budget was good or bad for the economy, good or bad for you personally, and whether the opposition would have delivered a better budget.

44% thought the budget good for the economy and just 18% bad; the +26 net score is the best for a budget since 2008. 34% thought they would be better off, and 19% worse off; the net +15 score is the best since 2007. In better news for Labor, by 45-37 voters thought Labor would not have delivered a better budget; this -8 score is the third best for Labor under a Coalition government, just one point less than in 2014 and 2018.

Read more: Infographic: Budget 2019 at a glance

In Ipsos, by 41-29 voters thought the budget was fair, the +12 net is the best since 2015. 38% thought they would be better off and 24% worse off, the +14 net is the same as in 2018. By 42-25, voters thought Labor had better policies on climate change than the Coalition.

The 2018 budget was also well received, and the Coalition had its best polling of the current term during the period surrounding that budget. Six of the eight Newspolls conducted from late April 2018 to August gave Labor just a 51-49 lead, before the Coalition crashed to a 56-44 deficit after Turnbull’s ousting.

While last week appealed to the Coalition’s perceived strength on overall economic management, wage growth and climate change, which are perceived as weaknesses for the Coalition, are likely to be important during the election campaign. Attacks on Labor’s economic policies, such as their plan to abolish franking credit cash refunds, give the Coalition its best chance to win.

After revelations that One Nation solicited donations from the US National Rifle Association, some would have expected their vote to crash, but it has held up well.

In economic news, on March 21 the ABS announced that 4,600 jobs were added in February, well down from the over 39,000 added in January. While the unemployment rate decreased 0.1% to 4.9%, this was a result of lower workforce participation.

The Westpac March consumer confidence index, taken in the week the weak GDP report was released, fell 4.8 points from February to 98.8. House prices have continued to fall.

Essential: 52-48 to Labor

This week’s Essential poll, conducted April 4-7 from a sample of 1,069, gave Labor a 52-48 lead, unchanged from last fortnight. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (down one), 35% Labor (down one), 11% Greens (up one) and 5% One Nation (down two). Essential has tended to be worse for Labor than Newspoll since Morrison became PM.

By 51-27, voters approved of the budget; the +24 net is higher than the +16 net in 2018 or +8 net in 2017. Over 75% agreed with the infrastructure spending program and tax rebates for workers earning up to $90,000. By 26-20, voters thought the budget was good for them personally, a reversal from last fortnight’s pre-budget poll, when voters thought the budget would be bad for them personally by 34-19.

The Coalition was trusted over Labor to manage the economy overall by 44-29, but Labor was ahead by 45-31 on managing the economy in the interests of working people.

I wrote on my personal website about last fortnight’s Essential poll that gave Labor a 52-48 lead. Questions about views of world leaders had Theresa May’s ratings tanking since these questions were last asked in July 2018.

In pre-budget polling, a YouGov Galaxy poll for the News Ltd tabloids gave Labor a 53-47 lead. State breakdowns of primary votes suggested that the NSW election defeat had an impact on federal Labor’s NSW vote.

NSW election upper house late counting

With 68% of enrolled voters in the NSW upper house check counted, the Coalition has 7.9 quotas, Labor 6.5, the Greens 2.1, One Nation 1.5, the Shooters 1.1, the Christian Democrats 0.5, the Liberal Democrats 0.5, Keep Sydney Open 0.4 and Animal Justice 0.4.

Out of the 21 seats up for election, eight Coalition, six Labor, two Greens, one One Nation and one Shooter are certain to win. By also using the now complete initial count, analyst Kevin Bonham currently thinks two seats will go to Labor and One Nation, and the final seat is in doubt between the Liberal Democrats, Christian Democrats, Keep Sydney Open and Animal Justice.

Read more: Coalition wins a third term in NSW with few seats changing hands

European leaders’ summit on April 10 to decide on Brexit

On April 12, the UK is currently scheduled to leave the European Union, with or without a deal. With no deal likely by then, an April 10 European leaders’ summit will decide whether to grant the UK a long extension to Brexit.

I wrote about this summit for The Poll Bludger on April 6, and on March 30, I wrote about the 58-vote Commons defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

– ref. Post-budget poll wrap: Coalition gets a bounce in Newspoll, but not in Ipsos or Essential – http://theconversation.com/post-budget-poll-wrap-coalition-gets-a-bounce-in-newspoll-but-not-in-ipsos-or-essential-114010

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Wake, Program Manager, Journalism, RMIT University

Despite some reprieve in the 2019 federal budget, the ABC is still in dire financial straits. More job losses and a reduction in services remain on the agenda.

The Coalition government has provided another three years of tied funding of A$43.7 million specifically for the national broadcaster’s “enhanced news-gathering” program. This program supports local news (particularly regional and outer-suburban news gathering), national reporting teams and state-based digital news.

But this funding doesn’t address the broadcaster’s need for more stability in its operational funding.

In July, the ABC will start to feel the full impact of a three-year, A$83.8 million indexation freeze on its funding, which was contained in the 2018 budget. So devastating is the size of that cut – and the ones prior to that – that ABC managers are almost completely focused on money, undermining their capacity to be strategic about the future.

There is no provision in the 2019 budget to restore the funding lost over the past six years and certainly no boost to cater for the dynamic and changing media environment.

Audiences who value what the ABC does now – and what it needs to be doing to support Australian democracy into the future – should take a closer look at the numbers, the way the money has been allocated and the impact of that.

Read more: ABC inquiry finds board knew of trouble between Milne and Guthrie, but did nothing

Accumulated losses to ABC are staggering

To illustrate the need for more secure operational funding for the ABC, one of the authors of this article, Michael Ward, conducted research on just how much the broadcaster stands to lose in the aggregate over the course of an eight-year period. Ward used a number of public financial sources to build the table below, including ABC portfolio budget statements and ABC answers to Senate Questions on Notice

One of the difficulties in looking at budgets is the way forward estimates work. As the figures in the table show, the past six budgets have included measures to reduce, remove or freeze (indexation) ABC funding, without adding any new funding initiatives.

This has resulted in an accumulated reduction in available funding of A$393 million over a five-year period, starting from May 2014. According to current budget forecasts, this also means the ABC stands to lose A$783 million in funding by 2022, unless steps are taken to remedy the situation.

The Coalition government and others would argue, however, the ABC actually received a reprieve in this year’s budget with committed funding for “enhanced news gathering” because it treats as “new” the renewal of tied fixed-term funding as it expires.

The “enhanced news gathering” and digital delivery funding was first enacted by the former Labor government in 2013. Although “enhanced news gathering” funding has been renewed twice by the Coalition government since then, including in this year’s budget, the amount allocated for the program was slashed in 2016.

So, while it appears that the current budget announcement is good news for the ABC, the reality is, it is simply a continuation of what should be seen as core business.

Read more: ABC budget cuts will hit media innovation

One way governments of all ilks have tried to control the ABC – and to win voters over – is by providing tied funding to specific programs like this. One of the earliest examples of tied funding was a National Interest Initiative by the Howard government in 2001, and later the Rudd government’s Children’s Channel and Drama Funding Initiative of 2009. These were seen as core to the ABC’s work, and were eventually made part of the ABC’s ongoing budget.

The problem, of course, is that voters do not understand the impact of the cessation of limited-term, tied funding programs.

We argue that tied funding is also contrary to the principles of independent public broadcasting because it effectively forces the broadcaster to prioritise its activities and programs at the current government’s whim. It also inhibits longer-term effective financial planning by the ABC.

Tied funding used by all parties

If elected, the ALP has committed to restore the A$83.8 million indexation freeze for the ABC included in last year’s budget. It has also promised an additional A$15 million for specific projects to restore short wave radio to the Northern Territory and add more local and regional content, emergency broadcasting and a news literacy program aimed at combating misinformation campaigns online.

Labor has also pledged “funding stability for the ABC over the next budget cycle”, though this has not come with a guaranteed boost in funding.

These commitments are important, but the freeze is just the tip of a funding iceberg that the ABC has been dealing with for the past six years. The continuation of a tied funding approach doesn’t address the underlying budget problem. More needs to be done.

Read more: Cut here: reshaping the ABC

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia, a group that represents journalism academics in Australia, drew on Ward’s research at the recent Senate hearing into allegations of political interference of the ABC to call for more secure operational funding for the broadcaster.

JERAA argued that the ABC has been cowed by repeated parliamentary inquiries, funding cuts and efficiency reviews. These have had a severe impact on the broadcaster’s ability to perform its important role for the Australian people, which includes production of excellent public affairs reporting, local programming, international news, children’s programming and services on a range of current and emerging platforms.

Tied funding stops the ABC from meeting the core components of its legislated obligations, particularly digital content delivery, where the cost of success – increased take up of services – carries an extra financial burden, unlike analogue broadcasting.

Unless the ABC has ongoing stability of funding and ideally an increase that allows it to keep innovating, it won’t be able to maintain relevance in this fast-moving, globalised media world, nor will it be able to continue as a watchdog on people in power, particularly governments.

– ref. The ABC didn’t receive a reprieve in the budget. It’s still facing staggering cuts – http://theconversation.com/the-abc-didnt-receive-a-reprieve-in-the-budget-its-still-facing-staggering-cuts-114922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kat Bolstad, Senior Lecturer, Auckland University of Technology

Squids and octopuses could be considered the “parrots of the ocean”. Some are smart, and many have complex behaviours. And, of course, they have strange, bird-like beaks.

They are the subject of ancient myths and legends about sea monsters, but they do not live for decades. In fact, their high intelligence and short lifespan represent an unusual paradox.

In our latest research we have discovered several new species that have never been reported from New Zealand waters. Our study almost doubles the known diversity for the Kermadec region, north of New Zealand, which is part of the proposed, but stalled, Kermadec–Rangitāhua ocean sanctuary.

Read more: Why we’re watching the giant Australian cuttlefish

More than we bargained for

Collectively, squids and octopuses are known as cephalopods, because their limbs attach directly to their head (cephalus). Our team studies cephalopods in our part of the world – the waters between Antarctica and the most northern reaches of New Zealand, the Kermadec Islands – as well as further afield.

Our first inkling of an impressive regional diversity came as we began to open boxes of frozen cephalopod samples at the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). These animals had been collected during a deep-sea survey voyage to the Kermadec Islands to better understand the region’s marine biodiversity. Members of the AUT Lab for Cephalopod Ecology and Systematics (ALCES), also known as the “squid lab”, had come to identify and examine them.

As we gently defrosted each specimen, we marvelled at their perfect suckers, iridescent eyes, and shining light organs. We noticed that many species were rare among New Zealand collections. There were some familiar faces, but also some we had only rarely or never encountered before in our local waters. Some were known from neighbouring regions; others, we suspected, might be entirely new to science.

We examined them, photographed each one, took small samples of muscle tissue for DNA analysis, and preserved them for additional work in the future. Then we set about systematically comparing our observations with what had previously been reported in New Zealand waters. And we were in for a surprise.

Doubling known diversity

Among the 150 cephalopod specimens that were collected, we identified 43 species, including 13 species that had not been previously found anywhere in New Zealand waters. Three entire orders – the taxonomic rank above family, which is the level at which, for example, egg-laying mammals split off from all other living mammals – had not been reported from this region: “Bobtail squids” (sepiolids), “comb-fin squids” (genus Chtenopteryx, order Bathyteuthoidea), and myopsid squids (coastal squids with eyes covered by a cornea).

We extracted DNA and obtained sequences for the species that had been seen for the first time in New Zealand waters. This allows us to compare them with individuals from other regions of the world. These included the strange tubercle-covered “glass” (cranchiid) squid Cranchia scabra, and the little “ram’s horn squid” Spirula spirula.

Examples of squid specimens collected recently from the Kermadec Islands Ridge: A) Histioteuthis miranda, B) Heteroteuthis sp. ‘KER’ (likely new to science), C) Chtenopteryx sp. ‘KER1’ (likely new to science), D) Leachia sp. (likely new to science), E) Pyroteuthis serrata, F) Enoploteuthis semilineata. Scale bars: 5mm. Images by Rob Stewart/Keren Spong, CC BY-ND

Five species appear likely new to science, across a number of families with colourful common names such as “strawberry” and “fire” squids (Histioteuthidae and Pyroteuthidae, respectively). These individuals were genetically distinct from all other specimens that had been previously identified and sequenced (by us or others). Their physical appearances will now need to be compared in detail with other similar-looking species in order to fully evaluate their taxonomic status.

In total, 28 of the species we encountered had not previously been reported in the Kermadecs. This brings the total number of species in the region to at least 70. Of these, half are not known to occur elsewhere in New Zealand waters.

Kermadec–Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary

The Kermadec Islands, north-north-east of New Zealand, represent a diverse and nearly pristine environment. The region includes (among other habitats) a chain of seamounts and the second-deepest ocean trench in the world.

Currently, the Kermadec Islands region is on a tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A small proportion of the area is already protected by an existing marine reserve, which extends 12 nautical miles around each of five islands and pinnacles.

This map shows New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in light grey, the existing Kermadec Islands marine reserve in dark grey, and the proposed Kermadec–Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary outlined in black. Heather Braid, Kat Bolstad, CC BY-ND

The proposed Kermadec–Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary would extend the protection to 200 nautical miles and protect 15% of New Zealand’s ocean environment. It would be among the world’s largest marine protected areas.

Read more: More than 1,200 scientists urge rethink on Australia’s marine park plans

We strongly support the establishment of the proposed sanctuary, especially since most of the cephalopod taxa newly reported by this research are deep-sea species whose habitat is not protected by the existing marine reserve.

Although the creation of the sanctuary is supported by most political parties, New Zealand First, which is part of the government coalition, opposes it. So does the fishing industry because fishing would be banned. It is possible that the sanctuary might be created with a lower level of protection than originally proposed (with some fishing still permitted), but the government has reached an impasse.

If the Kermadec–Rangitāhua ocean sanctuary were to be established, it would protect habitats that are used by over half of the known squid and octopus biodiversity in New Zealand waters, including 34 species that have so far only been reported from the Kermadec region.

– ref. Squid team finds high species diversity off Kermadec Islands, part of stalled marine reserve proposal – http://theconversation.com/squid-team-finds-high-species-diversity-off-kermadec-islands-part-of-stalled-marine-reserve-proposal-110893

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