Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trisia Farrelly, Senior Lecturer, Massey University

A powerful marriage between the fossil fuel and plastic industries threatens to exacerbate the global plastic pollution crisis. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) estimates the next five years will see a 33-36% surge in global plastics production.

This will undermine all current efforts to manage plastic waste. It is time to stop trying (and failing) to bail out the bathtub. Instead, we need to turn off the tap.

Read more: The major source of ocean plastic pollution you’ve probably never heard of

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) has recognised plastic pollution as a “rapidly increasing serious issue of global concern that needs an urgent global response”. An expert group formed last year proposed an international treaty on plastic pollution as the most effective response.

Together with Giulia Carlini, at CIEL, I was part of a 30-strong group of non-governmental organisations within this expert group attending the UNEA summit this week to discuss how we can start making plastic pollution history.

Unfortunately, despite strong statements from developing countries, including the Pacific Island states, a small group of countries stalled negotiations. This effectively turns back the clock on ambitious global action, and leaves us more desperate than ever for a real solution to our plastic problem.

Why we need a treaty

The first step is to reject the many false solutions that pop up in our news feeds.

Recycling is one of those false solutions. The scale of plastic production is too big for recycling alone. Of all the plastics produced between 1950 and 2015, only 9% have been recycled. This figure is set to plummet as China and a growing number of developing countries are rejecting plastic waste from Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world.

China had been a major destination for Australia and New Zealand’s recyclable waste. China’s shutdown meant Australia lost the market for a third of its plastic waste. It also left New Zealand with 400 tonnes of stockpiled plastic waste last year.

With limited domestic recycling facilities, Australia and New Zealand are seeking new markets. Last year, New Zealand sent about 250,000 tonnes of plastic to landfill, and a further 6,300 tonnes to Malaysia for recycling. But now Malaysia is also rejecting other countries’ hazardous plastic waste.

Sending our platic to Asia is not a solution. EPA/Diego Azubel, CC BY-SA

Even if we manage to find new plastic recycling markets, there is another problem. Recycling is not as safe as you might think. Flame retardants and other toxins are added to many plastics, and these compounds find a second life when plastics are recycled into new products, including children’s toys.

Plastic-to-energy is a false solution

What about burning plastic waste to generate energy? Think again. Incineration is expensive, can take decades for investors to break even. It is the opposite of a “zero waste” approach and locks countries into a perpetual cycle of producing and importing waste to “feed the beast”. And incineration leaves a legacy of contaminated air, soil, and water.

Producing lower-grade materials from plastic waste (such as roads, fenceposts and park benches) is not the solution either. No matter where we put it, plastic doesn’t go away. It just breaks into ever smaller pieces with a greater potential for harm in air, water, soil and marine and freshwater ecosystems.

This is why researchers are paying more attention to the less visible hazards posed when micro (less than 5mm long) and nano (less than 100 nanometres long) sized plastics carry pathogens, invasive species and persistent organic pollutants. They have found that plastics can emit methane contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

Tyres wear down into microplastics which find their way into the ocean. When plastics break down to nanoparticles, they are small enough to pass through cell walls. Our clothes release plastic microfibres into water from washing machines.

Plastic is truly global

Plastic pollution moves readily around the globe. It travels through trade, on winds, river and tidal flows, and in the guts of migrating birds and mammals. We don’t always know which toxic chemicals are in them, nor their recycled content. Plastic pollution can end up thousands of kilometres from the source.

This makes plastic pollution a matter of international concern. It cannot be solved solely within national borders or regions. A global, legally binding treaty with clear targets and standards is the real game-changer we urgently need.

The NGO component of UNEA’s expert group recognised an international treaty as the most effective response. The proposed treaty has the potential to capture the full life cycle of plastics by focusing on prevention, right at the top of the waste hierarchy.

The Zero Waste hierarchy. Zero Waste Europe

These solutions could include restricting the volume of new or “virgin” plastics in products, banning avoidable plastics (such as single-use plastic bags and straws), and curbing the use of toxic additives.

Read more: We can’t recycle our way to ‘zero waste’

More than 90 civil society organisations around the world and a growing number of countries have indicated early support for a treaty. Australia and New Zealand have not.

– ref. We need a legally binding treaty to make plastic pollution history – http://theconversation.com/we-need-a-legally-binding-treaty-to-make-plastic-pollution-history-113351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher: Technology and Learning, Western Sydney University

It’s a parent’s responsibility to protect their children from harm, no matter where that threat of harm comes from. But what if the threat is a hoax?

We’ve seen recently a rollercoaster of panic from parents trying to protect their kids from a supposed online threat known as the Momo challenge, that has for months been debunked as a hoax.

Yet the panic from parents continued, as did reports in the media and even warnings from celebrites – all of which could have been avoided if parents had done a few simple checks before raising the alarm.

So how can you as a parent protect your children (and yourself) from falling for these hoaxes if you don’t even know whether something is not a genuine threat in the first place?

Before I give some help and advice on that, let’s look at this latest hoax: the Momo challenge.

The Momo challenge

Momo is a ghoulish character who is said to use social media and other online tools to encourage youngsters to complete dangerous tasks involving self-harm.

But the whole Momo challenge is a manufactured myth.

The creepy image was copied from a sculpture by Japanese special-effects company Link Factory. Its use in the hoax was condemned by its original artist several months ago.

Even this revelation did not stop the spread – of both the hoax and the warnings about it – continuing for several months afterwards.

The Momo challenge is just the latest in a series of manufactured online hoaxes designed to generate paranoia among adults.

Other online hoaxes

We’ve had the “blue whale challenge”, allegedly linked to numerous teen deaths around the world. The trend later turned out to be a fake.

We were told the deadly TidePod challenge was encouraging kids to be filmed while eating poisonous laundry detergent pods (they weren’t).

There was also a challenge that linked kids choking to death to snorting condoms for more YouTube likes (no deaths have been reported).

These hoaxes are carefully designed to grab your attention and incite shock and panic, so you share the information with everyone you know. The designers of the hoax callously tap directly into parents’ Achilles heel: their fears regarding their children’s safety.

Posting the hoax online fits the designer’s aim perfectly because it can travel far and wide online very quickly. This is of course a win from the perpetrators’ perspective, whose very aim is to go viral! The more attention they get, the more profit or fame.

What parents should do to help protect your kids from such hoaxes

Hoaxes that threaten your kids one day, and turn out to be fake the next, are mentally and emotionally exhausting for kids and adults. Parents can feel an increasing lack of control.

But this doesn’t need to be the case. There are tools and tricks you can apply to help you spot a hoax.

1. Investigate: see if it’s real

Information about any so-called challenge is often shared on social media, where fake news and misleading information is rife.

If you are concerned about a hoax it’s important to investigate, by using a reputable news website or a reliable fact-checking site such as Snopes or FullFact.

Both are good fact-checking resources that gives readers evidence-based analysis (Snopes and FullFact have both published content on Momo).

Even a simple web search of the name of any supposed threat can help you. Add the words “hoax” or “scam” to your search queries and you will very quickly see if there is any real evidence to support the claims of harm you may be hearing about.

2. Help your child investigate authenticity

Use the opportunity to educate your child about these online challenges. When you hear about one, go online with your child and investigate.

This is the perfect opening to help your child understand fake content online. Explain why someone would want to start a hoax to scare people (for example, to achieve fame).

3. Explore alternatives for viewing

You may be concerned about your child using online video streaming services such as YouTube or Facebook, where they could be exposed to any hoax video.

As an alternative, look for other ways for your children to view their favoured content.

Many of the popular shows that kids watch online also have their own apps with pre-screened videos: for example PBS kids videos and Disney Channel app.

4. Avoid causing unnecessary alarm

It’s important to be careful about sharing news articles that perpetuate a hoax or myth with other adults.

Before sharing potentially wrong information, do some internet research of your own to check out the accuracy of any threat.

5. Be a critical, alert consumer

We live our lives on the internet, and there is a mass of misleading online information designed to manipulate our thinking.

It’s important to read and stay up to date about how the online world operates, and to be critical of what you view and read online.

Ask yourself some basic questions such as:

• who is going to benefit from this online post/article?

• what is the underlying purpose of it?

• is the author/creator trying to sway my thinking, and why?

6. What if you think a threat is genuine?

Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms have options to report anything you think may be a serious threat. If you’re still worried, call your local police.

The online space is always changing. Keeping you and your kids safe online involves being aware of emerging and new safety issues, and committing to a bit of research before you panic.

– ref. Don’t fall for it: a parent’s guide to protecting your kids from online hoaxes – http://theconversation.com/dont-fall-for-it-a-parents-guide-to-protecting-your-kids-from-online-hoaxes-113179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona McGaughey, Lecturer, Law School, University of Western Australia

On International Women’s Day this year, Australia hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Not only did we fail to support a United Nations (UN) motion that called for greater accountability for human rights violations against women and girls, but comments made by our prime minister provoked international outrage.

The UN resolution proposed “policies and legislation that respect women and girls’ right to bodily autonomy”. Perhaps Australia refused to support this motion because some of its domestic laws effectively maintain sex discrimination against women.

Abortion is still restricted and even criminalised in some circumstances, in some Australian states, which impinges on women’s capacity to access safe reproductive healthcare.

Read more: Crowd-mapping gender equality – a powerful tool for shaping a better city launches in Melbourne

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, at an International Women’s Day event, generated controversy by saying:

We’re not about setting Australians against each other, trying to push some down and lift others up. We want to see women rise but we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.

In contrast, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, a “proud feminist” stated:

When we exclude women, everyone pays the price. When we include women, the whole world wins.

Following international media coverage, Morrison sought to clarify his earlier remarks:

What I was saying yesterday is I don’t want to see this agenda pursued by setting women against men. No. Australian against Australian. No. I want to bring all Australians together to focus on this. That’s what I’m fair dinkum about.

How Australia measures up

Fair dinkum though, these developments are disappointing. Australia was one of 47 states elected to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) for a 2018-2020 term. It currently has real potential to contribute to global progress on women’s rights.

Indeed, one of the five “pillars” of Australia’s bid for a HRC seat was gender equality. Foreign Minister Marise Payne recently reiterated Australia’s commitment to these pillars in her speech to the HRC.

We can measure whether Australia has demonstrated its commitment to its voluntary pledges as a member of the HRC in a number of ways. We can assess whether Australia’s public statements at the council address its objectives.

In 2018, gender equality was the most consistent theme of Australia’s statements before the council. Australia promoted gender equality through statements on violence against women, female genital mutilation, discrimination against women and women’s rights.

On this measure, then, Australia performed well.

Read more: Backlash and gender fatigue. Why progress on gender equality has slowed

In recent years, Australia has at times reacted with hostility to constructive critique from the UN human rights bodies.

But in June 2018, in response to a report from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop struck a more diplomatic tone. Bishop thanked the special rapporteur for her report and commented:

Independent scrutiny, transparency and accountability are critical to upholding the human rights of all people and Australia welcomes such scrutiny. Australia is carefully considering the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations and appreciates the opportunity to make a preliminary response today.

In this area, then, Australia also appears to be doing better.

A poor record in Indigenous communities

But in the same statement, Australia acknowledged the following:

The Special Rapporteur noted particular concerns regarding the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. We acknowledge and regret that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience violence at higher levels than non-Indigenous Australian women. We must do better.

Indeed, the special rapporteur called on the Australian government to make policy in this area with – rather than for – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. She noted that current policy settings are insufficient to address the “institutional, systemic, multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination” experienced by Indigenous women and girls.

On top of that, Australia is falling down on its commitments in terms of how it responds to the human rights performance of other countries. The Universal Periodic Review process, administered by the HRC, scrutinises each UN state’s behaviour on cycles of four and a half years. According to a public database of recommendations, only 4% of Australia’s recommendations to other states related to gender equality.

Far fewer of Australia’s recommendations – 0.6% – related to its commitment “pillar” of Indigenous rights.

Read more: Parents can promote gender equality and help prevent violence against women. Here’s how

Plenty of room for improvement

Gender equality is one of many areas in which Australia’s public discourse is poorly served by a lack of comprehensive human rights protection in our domestic law.

From the prime minister’s public comments to Australia’s diplomatic behaviour, there is considerable room for improvement if we are to be “fair dinkum” about gender equality.

Having secured a place on the HRC as a defender of gender equality, Australia ought to be beyond immature statements that depict women’s equality as necessarily diminishing men’s capacity or rights in society.

– ref. Australia’s performance on gender equality – are we fair dinkum? – http://theconversation.com/australias-performance-on-gender-equality-are-we-fair-dinkum-113657

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Ciarrochi, Professor of Psychology, Australian Catholic University

Simply being nice wins more friends in high school than being a rebel, our study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology has found.

We looked at what sorts of social strategies help teens win close friends of the same and opposite sex. We asked whether aggressiveness and breaking rules – what we will call being a rebel – sometimes make teens well liked by their peers.

We found that empathetic children who also show some rebellious and antisocial behaviours have more opposite-sex friends in the early years of high school than those who were merely empathetic and followed the rules. But in the latter years empathetic children who keep to the rules beat their more aggressive peers and had more opposite-sex friends.

Past research shows being empathetic helps young people communicate, resolve conflict and engage in social behaviours, all of which helps build close friendships. Others have argued being a giver rather than a taker helps a person succeed socially.

But we wanted to find out why some people who display antisocial behaviour are socially successful. We also wanted to know if this behaviour was equally effective in opposite and same-sex relationships. Perhaps aggression and rule-breaking is attractive to the opposite sex but repellent to the same sex?

Measuring empathy and aggression

We addressed this question in a large, longitudinal study of friendship development in high school. The study assessed 2,803 students in 16 different schools across two different Australian states and five different time points between Years 8 and 12. We used both self-reports and peer-rated measures.

We measured empathy and antisocial behaviour (aggression and rule breaking) using self-reports. Empathy is the capacity to understand others’ emotions. Students were asked to rate statements such as: “When someone is feeling down I can usually understand how they feel,” and “I can often understand how people are feeling even before they tell me.”

Read more: Understanding others’ feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?

Aggression and rule breaking also involved scoring statements of students engaging in arguing, fighting with other children, destroying things and bullying others. The scales in our study have been widely used and validated in former research.

We measured friendships using peer nominations of who youth felt where their close friends.

Our research identified four types of young people:

• nice youth (around 36% of all participants, with 70% being female and 30% male) – these young people are high in empathy and avoid hurting others
• rebels (around 11% of participants, 31% female and 69% male) – these young people hurt others, break the rules and have little empathy
• nice rebels (around 18% of participants, 67% female and 33% male) – they have the ability to be both empathetic and hurt others
• nonplayers (around 36% participants, with 28% being female and 72% male) – they use neither empathy nor aggressive strategies.

The nice rebels were the most interesting group. Theory suggests people who exhibit these qualities have an advantage over others because they can use empathy to build social alliances and aggression to become dominant in those alliances.

Being a bully will lose you friends. from shutterstock.com

Nice people win

In Years 8-10 (around 13-15 years old) the nice rebels had more opposite-sex friends than the nice youth. The plain rebels tended to attract fewer opposite-sex friends than both the nice youth and the nice rebels, but these rebels still did better than the nonplayers, who were relatively invisible to the opposite sex.

However, the nonplayers did about as well as both types of rebels in same-sex relationships.

But in Years 11-12 (around 16-17 years old), the nice rebels lost opposite-sex friends and became less popular with the opposite sex than nice youth. The plain rebels also lost friends and became similar to the nonplayers in opposite-sex friendships.

Read more: Nice guys finish first: empathetic boys attract more close female friends

The story gets even better (if you like nice youth). Throughout all of high school, the nice youth had more same-sex friendships than all other groups and higher well-being than both the nice rebels and the rebels.

At first, young people might have seen the nice rebels as charming, fun and powerful. However, over time, they experienced the rebel acting aggressively and, eventually, this disrupted the friendship.

What about mental health?

We also used self-reports to assess children’s well-being. We found the nice rebels and rebels consistently reported lower levels of self-esteem and worse mental health then the nice youth and nonplayers.

We also found important differences between males and females. Females paid a higher price for being in one of the rebellious groups, experiencing worse mental health and self-esteem than their male counterparts. We speculate society may be more rejecting of rebellious females who are aggressive and break the rules.

The study had its limitations. Research is needed to determine what motivates young people to rebel. We also need to better understand why rebels experience lower self-esteem and worse mental health than the nice youth and nonplayers.

But what our research does show is that being nice is not only the ethically right strategy, it is also the most effective. Nice strategies such as taking perspective and giving can help young people build strong social alliances.

– ref. Rebel teens can quickly make friends, but in the end, it’s the nice ones who have the most – http://theconversation.com/rebel-teens-can-quickly-make-friends-but-in-the-end-its-the-nice-ones-who-have-the-most-113550

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Sigler, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, The University of Queensland

Now in its sixth season, the Nine Network’s wildly successful Married At First Sight chronicles the adventures of 12 couples as they navigate the highs and lows of married life. The premise of the show is relatively simple: each contestant (MAFS reportedly received 10,000 applications) is evaluated by “relationship experts” and matched with a partner. Each pair ties the knot without ever having met and – poof! — they’re married at first sight!

The show shoehorns a lifetime of matrimonial issues into a few dozen episodes. Over the course of the season, viewers witness the daily ups-and-downs of marriage and cohabitation, and ultimately we learn the difficulty of matchmaking. MAFS’s couples fight, they cheat and – spoiler alert – most separate (divorce?) within a matter of weeks.

Read more: Married at first sight: latest reality TV show poses as ‘social experiment’

But if MAFS is merely reality TV, then why is it so popular? Could we be addicted to gratuitous programming? In part yes — reality TV has ruled the roost since 2001, when Big Brother arrived on our shores and averaged 1.4 million viewers each night. But could it also be that MAFS is reality? In a world of Tinder dates and lunchtime botox, maybe MAFS is more of a reality check than a social experiment.

Five demographic realities

Below are five reasons that Married at First Sight reflects the demographic realities of modern Australia.

1) Australians increasingly cohabit prior to marriage. One of MAFS’s more earnest attributes is the awkwardness of sharing a bed with someone you barely know. Research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that 81% of Australians co-habit prior to marriage, up from 16% in 1975. The proportion aged 15 years and over living in de facto relationships has doubled in the past 20 years, from 5% in 1996 to 10% in 2016.

Read more: Explainer: what legal benefits do married couples have that de facto couples do not?

The Australian Study of Sex and Relationships found that Australian men and women reported having had an average of 18 and 8 sexual partners, respectively. From the first episode of MAFS onward, contestant Matthew Bennett is teased by his male co-stars about his lack of (any) sexual experience, suggesting this is far from the norm among the cohort.

2) Marriage has been delayed. A common refrain uttered by MAFS contestants is that they have sacrificed love for a career. For Cameron, that was professional cricket; for Jules, that was running a successful hair and beauty business.

The contestants range from 25 (Susie) to 43 (Mike), averaging 29.5 for the show’s females and 32.5 for its males. This reflects national averages for marriages of 30.1 for females and 32.0 for males. In 1997 these numbers were 27.5 for females and 29.7 for males respectively.

3) Despite this, marriage remains a strong institution. The 1911 Australian Census revealed that 46.0% of the population aged 15 and over was married. Divorce was virtually non-existent and was made more difficult by archaic laws. The proportions increased steadily until the marriage boom of the mid-20th century.

Today’s figure of 48.1% is remarkably close to what it was a century ago, but down from 53.2% at the 1996 census. The 2017 referendum on same-sex marriage demonstrates that a majority of Australians (61.6%) now support a broad and inclusive definition of marriage.

Notwithstanding, the national marriage rate is declining — from 9.3 marriages per 1,000 Australian residents in 1970 to 4.6 marriages per 1,000 in 2017. So is the divorce rate, though. It has fallen from a peak of 4.6 per 1,000 in 1976 (tied to the introduction of no-fault divorce) to 2.0 per 1,000 in 2017, with a median length of marriage to separation of 8.2 years, and to divorce of 12.

4) Modern Australia is urban. Despite the “Outback” image presented to the rest of world, Australia is approximately 90% urbanised (depending on how we define a “city”). Consistent with national figures, the MAFS crew are overwhelmingly urban.

Eight contestants (33%) live in Sydney and eight more in Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth. Regional contestants from Gympie, Newcastle and Townsville are almost perfectly aligned with national data showing that Australia’s urban populations are divided between major cities (72%) and “inner regional” (18%) parts of the country.

5) Modern Australians are multicultural. In addition to their geographic distribution, MAFS contestants have a range of ethnic and national backgrounds. Of this season’s contestants, nine (38%) self-report a discernible non-Australian identity (either them or their parents).

This reflects the waves of migrants that have rendered Australian cities some of the most ethnically diverse on Earth. Ines fled civil war in Bosnia, while Filipino, Greek, Italian, Thai and other national identities are proudly represented by respective contestants.

Thus, in contrast to many of the previous reality shows depicting the Ocker Australian (e.g. Farmer Wants a Wife), the diversity of MAFS is significantly more true to life. According to the most recent census data, 49% of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent that was.

So, as we have shown, reality TV may not be too far from reality after all – at least in terms of demography.

Read more: Census 2016 puts on display the increasing diversity in Australians’ relationships

– ref. Married at First Sight’s closer to reality than you’d think, demographically speaking at least – http://theconversation.com/married-at-first-sights-closer-to-reality-than-youd-think-demographically-speaking-at-least-112226

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosalind Dixon, Professor of Law, UNSW

This is the second in a three-part mini-symposium on Wages, Unemployment and Underemployment presented by The Conversation and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Read the other pieces in the series here.

For the past half-decade Australian wages have barely moved after adjusting for inflation.

In the United States the picture is far bleaker — the real wages of average workers have changed little in 40 years.

Not so for US chief executives.

In 1965 the heads of America’s 350 biggest companies earned 20 times what the average worker did. By 2017 they earned 312 times as much.

As is often the case, things aren’t quite as extreme in Australia, but the pattern is similar. In 2017 the heads of the 100 biggest ASX-listed companies earned an average of A$4.75 million – roughly 78 times as much as the average worker.

They get the bulk of their income not from their salaries, but from stock options or payments tied to the share price of the companies they run.

It at least raises the possibility than one way to get pay to rise for average workers is to structure their pay a little more like that of chief executives.

There are upsides to paying workers in shares…

Paying workers in the stock of the company would not affect the day-to-day profitability of the company. It would just mean the shareholders owned a bit less of the company.

That might not sound like an important distinction, but the everyday costs —- of which wages and salaries can be a big part -— help determine how competitive a firm is compared to its rivals. Paying workers in stock could give firms a strategic advantage.

It could also better align their interests with those of senior management and shareholders. It could reduce intra-firm conflict about wages, benefits and employment terms.

One manifestation occurs when executives receive large payouts from stock options while “ordinary workers” are facing redundancies or pay cuts.

Giving workers a slice of the same type —- if not the same level -— of compensation could help reduce this conflict.

…and downsides

If the idea was perfect, we would go to the extreme and pay workers exclusively in stock.

We wouldn’t, in part because equity-based compensation imposes risk on workers, as workers employed by firms whose share price is falling know well.

A basic principle of contract theory – the field that gave rise to the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for its creators Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom – is that if a compensation contract imposes more risk on an employee than wages, it’ll need to be larger than wages on average to make up for the additional risk. It would cost the firm more.

And it would encourage workers to put most of their investment eggs in one basket (the same basket that employs them), which is always a bad idea.

Despite appearances, for many or even most, it woudln’t link their efforts to their compensation. Stock price movements often have little to do with the efforts of paper-shufflers or cleaners. Another key principle of contract theory is that it is suboptimal to reward workers for luck.

Shadow equity might be better

New developments in blockchain technology offer a way to link the efforts of employees to an equity-like security —- or what one might call “shadow equity”.

Initial Coin Offerings are used in the US as an alternative to venture capital. They involve creating a digital currency that is linked to performance but not to share price.

They can be used to invest in or bet on specific components of a company. Take the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. It has a whole portfolio of drugs. Buying stock in Pfizer is a bet on its entire portfolio. But suppose Pfizer issues, say, 1 million Xtandi tokens to help it develop the colon cancer drug Xtandi. Suppose it also agrees that all future purchases of Xtandi will have to be done with those tokens. That would link the aggregate value of those tokens to the value of revenue from the drug.

An investor who bought those tokens would be betting on a specific part of Pfizer’s portfolio.

The idea could be extended to traded securities tied to a granular level of performance within an organisation. It wouldn’t mean it was possible to have securities in the impact of single worker (expect perhaps for superstars such as actors or recording artists) – but it would be conceivable to have such securities for divisions of companies, or even teams within divisions.

How could it work?

It will take time for these technological developments to play out, but there are steps we could take to hasten it. One would be increased tax deductibility for equity-based compensation.

We are not suggesting workers’ pay be cut to allow equity-based compensation, or that it not rise to keep up with the cost of living. But as extra pay rises happen from time to time, they could be offered in the form of shadow equity.

It would mean workers would be paid, at least in part the same way as executives. And it might start to reverse the trend of rising executive to worker pay ratios.

The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia is one of Australia’s four learned academies. The ASSA coordinates the promotion of research, teaching and advice in the social sciences, promotes scholarly cooperation across disciplines, comments on national needs and priorities in the social sciences, and provides advice to government on issues of national importance.

– ref. Introducing shadow equity: a fresh idea to escape the low wage trap – http://theconversation.com/introducing-shadow-equity-a-fresh-idea-to-escape-the-low-wage-trap-113362

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Professor of History, University of Western Australia

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

In an archive in regional France, the story of a Canadian First Nations woman emerges from an old manuscript written by nuns documenting the history of their convent.

Antoinette de Saint-Étienne was of the Mi’kmaw people, whose land spanned northeastern areas of what is now Canada and the US. In the early 17th century, the fates of this First Nations woman and the nuns in a provincial French convent became unexpectedly intertwined.

Antoinette was born in Acadia, a fledgling French settlement in Canada, but she would one day sing for a queen in Paris and become a source of pride for the nuns of the Benedictine Abbey of Beaumont-lès-Tours, as an unusual convert to the Catholic faith.

An ‘exotic child’

Mi’kmaw petroglyph [n.d.; after 1500] In situ: Kejimkujik National Park, Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, P179/ 59.60.2/ N-19,345. Nova Scotia Museum – not for commercial use

Antoinette was born in the 1620s, a time when the French sought to explore the rich resources of fur in the region and Christianise the local people.

Her parents were a Mi’kmaw woman, who is not named in the nuns’ chronicle, and a French Protestant man, Charles de Saint-Étienne de la Tour. He had arrived in Acadia as an adolescent and quickly learned to live among the local people. In 1631, he was appointed governor.

The Mi’kmaw traditionally moved seasonally across their lands, their lifestyle strongly oriented around the maritime coasts. Their territories were among the first with which Europeans made contact in the region. Although Antoinette had been baptised by Capuchin missionaries in Acadia, the nuns’ chronicle referred to the young girl as a “little savage”.

By 1632, it seems Antoinette’s mother had died, for Saint-Étienne travelled to France with two of their three daughters. The girls were left in the care of nobleman Charles de Razilly, whose brother Saint-Étienne knew from Acadia.

Antoinette, then about five or six, was initially given to a Protestant woman named Madame de Saint-Hilaire, but Razilly had written about his young charges to his sister Louise, a nun at Beaumont. The nuns noted that Antoinette’s carer was “very zealous about her religion”.

This mattered. Protestants and Catholics were no longer at war by the 17th century, but the spiritual affiliation of children had become a new battleground between Christian denominations. The nuns wanted this exotic child to be raised a Catholic.

Portrait of Marie de l’Incarnation, attributed to Hugues Pommier, 1672. Archives of the Ursulines of Quebec. Wikimedia Commons

Louise de Razilly’s campaign to have the child moved to the convent’s care succeeded. In 1636, Antoinette was placed at Beaumont, “to render her capable of religious life, if it were possible”.

Having Antoinette at Beaumont was a double victory for the nuns. Her sister had been taken into the Ursulines convent in Tours, a relatively new order established in 1622.

At about the same time, so too was a novice who is best known today as Saint Marie de l’Incarnation, who went on to lead other Ursuline sisters to teach among the Indigenous people of Quebec. The Ursulines looked like the dynamic face of a Catholic Church in renewal, attracting novices from many sectors of society.

By contrast, the long-established Benedictine Abbey of Beaumont had been taking in women from the region’s most elite families since the 11th century. Having Antoinette gave traditional Beaumont a claim to the remarkable.

Antoinette’s voice

At the age of about 16, Antoinette asked to be formally admitted to Beaumont as a novice. The community voted its approval, and from this point on, she was no longer referred to as a “savage”. Instead, Antoinette became the “Canadian novice”.

Some years later, a passing father of the Cordeliers order attended a service at Beaumont and heard Antoinette sing. As the chronicle tells it, he found this girl’s voice “flawlessly good”, returning several more times to confirm his discovery. Upon his return to Paris, he went to inform the French queen and regent, Anne of Austria.

The queen announced that she wished to hear the voice for herself, and Antoinette was duly brought up to Paris. There, she was installed in the Benedictine Royal Abbey of Val-de-Grâce, then being built by the queen. In June 1644, Anne attended a service in order to hear Antoinette sing.

The queen declared that Antoinette’s voice was indeed beautiful “but without training” and arranged for a tutor. Antoinette was expected to remain in Val-de-Grâce and take vows as a professed nun there.

Former abbey of Val-de-Grâce, Paris, France: view on the cloister and its French formal garden. Myrabella/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

However, after eight months, she requested a transfer. According to the chronicle, she found the austerity of Val-de-Grâce too much to bear and received the queen’s consent to return to the more moderate regime of Beaumont in February 1645.

This represents one of few moments of autonomy for Antoinette in the chronicle’s account — one that reflected well on the abbey. The severity of Val-de-Grâce’s lifestyle was renowned and attracted many women. Here, though, Beaumont’s adoption of a less extreme path attracted Antoinette back to them, and in 1646, she took her vows there.

The journey of a First Nations woman

Antoinette de Saint-Étienne went on a number of journeys in her lifetime – geographical and spiritual as well as textual.

She featured in the chronicle’s narrative because it was a story of triumph for the community. In their eyes, they had saved her from a life of savagery, from Protestantism, and from the fashionable but excessive religious regime at Val-de-Grâce.

Antoinette only appears in one other place in the chronicle, in a list of nuns participating in a procession. But this makes sense from the community’s perspective. As she became a fully professed member of the community, Antoinette slips away from view.

She had become one of them, and as such, was no longer a point of exception to be documented in the chronicle. Alongside her enclosed sisters, the Mi’kmaw woman with the remarkable voice faded into the silences of history.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Antoinette de Saint-Étienne, the First Nations nun who sang for a queen – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-antoinette-de-saint-etienne-the-first-nations-nun-who-sang-for-a-queen-110183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders University

Review: Grand Finale, Adelaide Festival March 15

When we take our seats in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre the air is already thick with haze. Its density suggests something ominous, a kind of collapse. A single, melancholic musical line pierces through the darkness as a body in motion comes into focus.

Soon the stage is filled with the full company of ten dancers, casually attired in khaki and beige, none standing out from the crowd. We see bodies in constant motion, like cells dividing and reconfiguring endlessly when looked at through a microscope.

Grand Finale employs the movement vocabulary that audiences have come to associate with Israeli-born, London-based contemporary dance choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Dancers swirl, whirl, jump in place and move like human percussion machines across all dance styles. When the dancers are in motion, all is fluid and there is no rest. Everything and anything could happen. Nothing can be predicted.

While the work’s title might suggest something rousing and operatic with a clear narrative and heroic resolution, this is anything but that. It’s as if we’re witnessing something big, but don’t know what. We are silent spectators to something terrible unfolding, a global catastrophe, possibly a literal “grand finale” for the species.

Grand Finale draws upon movements typical of Hofesh Shechter’s works. Rahi Rezvani

Dancers respond to forces that seem to register on their bodies but are unseen to us. They move alone and in groups, countering those provocations with different tactical moves.

Bodies become objects, human sacks of flesh that are dragged and pulled around the stage, arranged and posed, held, cradled, then reconfigured. We feel the weight of these human bodies that have been drained of life. It is poignant, difficult, even painful.

At other times dancers are pulled from heaps of bodies and become human wreckage, mute, mouths agape, unable to speak, as if they have been atomised, burned alive in an atomic blast.

Designer Tom Scutt’s enormous but remarkably mobile panels, which can look like giant concrete walls, are manipulated by dancers from behind, creating the spaces that shape and contain movement. They are co-actors in the unfolding drama, back drops, places of refuge and of no escape, prehistoric monoliths used for unknown rituals, even monstrous, menacing grave markers.

Mobile panels designed by Tom Scutt play an essential role in the unfolding drama. Rahi Rezvani

Like other works by Shechter, notably Political Mother and In Your Rooms, Grand Finale is highly percussive, with beats activating human movement, which at times becomes frantic, even painfully frenetic. In this work he adds an onstage string quartet with two cellos, a violin, and an acoustic guitar. The musicians seem to disappear and reappear in different areas of the stage, thanks to Tom Visser’s magical lighting.

The sometimes mellifluous, often melancholic musical line is contrasted with a soundscape of industrial noise: the sounds of static, metal scraping, crashes and booms, buildings falling down or a ship – the Titanic perhaps – hitting an iceberg.

These two sonic worlds constantly compete, with one dominating the other but never for long, as the other line is eventually born from the sonic chaos. The dancers similarly emerge from and move through a world that is unstable, chaotic, ever-changing.

Because of the way sound, light, movement, and percussion come together, Shechter’s choreography can be almost trance-inducing in its intensity and relentlessness. It can seem to invoke the ecstatic, as if dancers were seeking to connect with some higher power, springing up and down, arms splayed out, their hands reaching for something beyond the reach of mere mortals.

When the dancers advance downstage toward us, executing martial arts moves that sometimes resemble a Māori haka, freezing to briefly hold stances of power and strength, they can almost make our hair stand on end.

In the second half of Grand Finale, the dancers seem to inhabit a new world order. Rahi Rezvani

When they reappear from the darkness in the second half of the work, they seem to inhabit not a world falling apart, but instead a brutal, new world order. The giant mobile panels now increasingly resemble the walls that cut through Jerusalem, angry, impossible to scale, closing in on the dancers and separating them from one another.

The dancers break apart, lonely and isolated, and the walls scatter. A feeling of urban warfare prevails, with rapid tempo shifts forcing the dancers together and driving them apart.

It’s as if they’re dancing in and around a ruined world. Suddenly all stop to stare at a couple kissing against a slice of the wall, an unexpected and unprecedented act of intimacy.

As the work draws to a crescendo, with their backs to us the dancers fall into a line running upstage, swaying out of sync with one another, delicate, broken, but still moving. Suddenly they stop, and find themselves enclosed in a sarcophagus-like structure. It opens and the dancers move into the breach, into the light, and fade from view.

This is a Grand Finale for which there is no known ending, only the certainty that those who survive will step into different world than the one they left behind.

– ref. With Grand Finale, audiences bear witness to a world on the edge – http://theconversation.com/with-grand-finale-audiences-bear-witness-to-a-world-on-the-edge-113730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jillian Ryan, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, CSIRO

Wang Wang and Funi came to Australia from China a decade ago. Their relationship is best described as complicated. Despite considerable medical assistance, they have never managed to produce offspring. It has put a big question mark over whether they will be permitted to remain in Australia.

The fate of the two giant pandas may now depend on the outcome of the federal election. Keeping the couple at Adelaide Zoo includes paying about A$1 million a year to the Chinese government. The federal Labor Party has promised it will pay that bill for another five years. The Coalition’s position remains unclear.

It’s just another chapter in the story of an iconic species where politics, economics and international diplomacy often eclipse conservation considerations.

Captive breeding program

China currently has pandas on loan (or hire) to 26 zoos in 18 countries. The most recent zoo to join the select list was Ähtäri, Finland, which welcomed two pandas on a 15-year loan in 2018. Denmark’s Copenhagen Zoo is eagerly awaiting two pandas due to arrive in April.

Officially it’s all part of a captive breeding program to help save the species from extinction. Though their conservation status is no longer “endangered” (improving to “vulnerable” in 2016), there are still just 500 to 1,000 adult pandas left in the wild, in six isolated mountain ranges in south-central China.

The overseas placements augment China’s own 67 reserves dedicated to panda conservation. Any cubs born overseas are the property of China and typically return to China to continue the captive breeding program.

But the number of zoo births has been quite low. As the Smithsonian Institution’s “panda guy” Bill McShea has pointed out, pandas in the wild have fewer problems mating or breeding: “In the wild, aggregations of male pandas form along ridge tops in the spring, and a stream of visiting females in heat keeps the mating activity intense.”

Zoos can’t mimic these conditions. Since giant pandas are solitary animals, they are housed separately except for the few days of the year when the female is ready to mate. Because there is no mate choice in captivity, natural mating is rare. Most captive births are the result of IVF treatments.

In 2015 panda fans got to watch Mei Xiang at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo give birth via panda cam. Mei Xiang was aged 17 years at the time. She had been artificially inseminated with sperm from two male pandas, and gave birth to two cubs.

Trade considerations

This is not to say overseas zoo placements have no conservation value. But other strategic aims, such as improving China’s public image and consolidating trade relationships, loom large.

For example, the new panda enclosure at Berlin’s Tierpark zoo was opened just ahead of the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. The opening was attended by German chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese president Xi Jingping. The event was intrepreted as a signal of China’s endorsement of Germany as a competitor to the United States for leadership of the western world.

German chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese president Xi Jinping at the opening of the new panda bear enclosure at Berlin’s Tierpark zoo in July 2017. Axel Schmidt/Reuters/DPA

China’s 2012 announcement that it would send four pandas to Canada’s Toronto and Calgary zoos was linked to successful trade talks, particularly over a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement after almost 20 years of negotiation.

Edinburgh Zoo’s receipt of two pandas in 2011 was linked to trade deals worth billions of dollars.

As for the panda loan to Adelaide Zoo, it was announced by Chinese president Hu Jintao at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney in 2007. On the same day Australian prime minister John Howard and President Hu also announced plans for a yearly “security dialogue”.

Panda diplomacy

Panda diplomacy is believed to date back to the 7th century, when the Empress Wu Zeitan sent a pair as a gift to Japan. In the 20th century Mao Zedong embraced the strategy, gifting pandas to fellow-travelling communist nations. When Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, Deng Xiaoping presented him with two pandas.

Cub Xiang Xiang and mother Shin Shin eat bamboo at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo in November 2018. Xiang Xiang was born in June 2017. Jiji Press/EPA

Since then the recipients have been well and truly weighted towards wealthy capitalist nations. There are two reasons for this.

First, China uses the pandas to improve its image and deepen relationships with nations able to supply it with valuable resources and technology. This has been aptly described as an exercise in “soft cuddly power”.

Second, since the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, China has used panda loans to pay for local conservation efforts, mend damaged panda conservation facilities and conduct giant panda research.

Financial strings attached

For recipient zoos keeping pandas is an expensive business.

Consider Adelaide Zoo’s costs even with the federal government covering the pandas’ A$1 million annual rental fee. From the outset, the zoo went heavily into debt to build a specialist panda enclosure (at a cost of about A$8 million).

Wang Wang in his enclosure at Adelaide Zoo in 2009. He and companion Funi have largely lived separate lives over the past decade. Bryan Charlton/Zoos South Australia

Looking after each panda also costs many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Pandas are the most expensive animal to keep in a zoo, costing about five times as much as an elephant.

Food alone is a logistical headache. Giant pandas are not biologically herbivores but for some reason they developed a taste for bamboo about 6,000 years ago and stopped eating a varied diet, including meat. Bamboo, however, is low in nutrients and difficult to digest, which means pandas have to eat a lot and then rest. Each day an adult panda can munch through about 12 kilograms of fresh bamboo – and because they’re fussy eaters, they need to be given more than double that amount.

All of this means a panda must be treated like a business proposition. Will there be a return on investment? Will their cost be justified by the extra visitors they draw to the zoo?

Adelaide Zoo had high expectations that were quickly dashed. Like other zoos, there was a large initial spike in zoo visits, but by 2010 visitor numbers had returned to pre-panda levels. It was clear Funi and Wang Wang would not add A$600 million to the South Australian economy over a decade as predicted. In their honeymoon year, research suggests, they brought in just A$28 million. Adding a baby panda would improve their attraction value considerably.

Four-month-old baby panda Yuan Meng, born in France’s ZooParc de Beauval in August 2017. Thibault Camus/EPA

Beyond financial value

It’s therefore easy to see why some some call pandas white elephants.

But let’s not overlook the important contribution the panda diaspora has made to pandas moving off the “endangered” list. Part of this is due to the loan fees paid to China. The money has funded panda conservation research and projects at Bifengxia and Wolong, in China’s Sichuan province.

There is also value in Australian zoo keepers, veterinarians and scientists being part of a global knowledge network.

We still know so little about panda behaviour and the environmental effects that endanger them. We have made a small contribution with our own research into strategies to reduce stress in captive giant pandas. If Funi and Wang Wang remain in Adelaide, the zoo has the potential to provide for further valuable insights.

As scientists who care about animals and animal welfare, we believe it is important to also remember Funi and Wang Wang have helped connect hundreds of thousands of children and adults alike to nature.

These two giant pandas have their own personalities and close bonds with people who care for them everyday. Nature is not just an economic commodity but vital for our survival. If you have not yet visited Funi and Wang Wang, take the opportunity while you can.

– ref. Pandanomics is a grey area, but to us the value of giant pandas is black and white – http://theconversation.com/pandanomics-is-a-grey-area-but-to-us-the-value-of-giant-pandas-is-black-and-white-112956

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart M Bender, Early Career Research Fellow (Digital aesthetics of violence), Curtin University

The shocking mass-shooting in Christchurch on Friday is notable for using livestreaming video technology to broadcast horrific first-person footage of the shooting on social media.

In the highly disturbing video, the gunman drives to the Masjid Al Noor mosque, walks inside and shoots multiple people before leaving the scene in his car.

The use of social media technology and livestreaming marks the attack as different from many other terrorist incidents. It is a form of violent “performance crime”. That is, the video streaming is a central component of the violence itself, it’s not somehow incidental to the crime, or a disgusting trophy for the perpetrator to re-watch later.

In the past, terrorism functioned according to what has been called the “theatre of terror”, which required the media to report on the spectacle of violence created by the group. Nowadays, it’s much easier for someone to both create the spectacle of horrific violence and distribute it widely by themselves.

In an era of social media, which is driven in large part by spectacle, we all have a role to play in ensuring that terrorists aren’t rewarded for their crimes with our clicks.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

Performance crime is about notoriety

There is a tragic and recent history of performance crime videos that use livestreaming and social media video services as part of their tactics.

In 2017, for example, the sickening murder video of an elderly man in Ohio was uploaded to Facebook, and the torture of a man with disabilities in Chicago was livestreamed. In 2015, the murder of two journalists was simultaneously broadcast on-air, and livestreamed.

American journalist Gideon Lichfield wrote of the 2015 incident, that the killer:

didn’t just want to commit murder – he wanted the reward of attention, for having done it.

Performance crimes can be distinguished from the way traditional terror attacks and propaganda work, such as the hyper-violent videos spread by ISIS in 2014.

Typical propaganda media that features violence uses a dramatic spectacle to raise attention and communicate the group’s message. But the perpetrators of performance crimes often don’t have a clear ideological message to convey.

Steve Stephens, for example, linked his murder of a random elderly victim to retribution for his own failed relationship. He shot the stranger point-blank on video. Vester Flanagan’s appalling murder of two journalists seems to have been motivated by his anger at being fired from the same network.

The Christchurch attack was a brutal, planned mass murder of Muslims in New Zealand, but we don’t yet know whether it was about communicating the ideology of a specific group.

Even though it’s easy to identify explicit references to white supremacist ideas, the document is also strewn with confusing and inexplicable internet meme references and red herrings. These could be regarded as trolling attempts to bait the public into interrogating his claims, and magnifying the attention paid to the perpetrator and his gruesome killings.

Read more: Christchurch attacks are a stark warning of toxic political environment that allows hate to flourish

How we should respond

While many questions remain about the attack itself, we need to consider how best to respond to performance crime videos. Since 2012, many academics and journalists have argued that media coverage of mass violence should be limited to prevent the reward of attention from potentially driving further attacks.

That debate has continued following the tragic events in New Zealand. Journalism lecturer Glynn Greensmith argued that our responsibility may well be to limit the distribution of the Christchurch shooting video and manifesto as much as possible.

It seems that, in this case, social media and news platforms have been more mindful about removing the footage, and refusing to rebroadcast it. The video was taken down within 20 minutes by Facebook, which said that in the first 24 hours it removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally.

Telecommunication service Vodafone moved quickly to block New Zealand users from access to sites that would be likely to distribute the video.

The video is likely to be declared objectionable material, according to New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs, which means it is illegal to possess. Many are calling on the public not to share it online.

Simply watching the video can cause trauma

Yet the video still exists, dispersed throughout the internet. It may be removed from official sites, but its online presence is maintained via re-uploads and file-sharing sites. Screenshots of the videos, which frequently appear in news reports, also inherit symbolic and traumatic significance when they serve as visual reminders of the distressing event.

Watching images like these has the potential to provoke vicarious trauma in viewers. Studies since the September 11 attacks suggest that “distant trauma” can be linked to multiple viewings of distressing media images.

While the savage violence of the event is distressing in its own right, this additional potential to traumatise people who simply watch the video is something that also plays into the aims of those committing performance crimes in the name of terror.

Rewarding the spectacle

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are powered by a framework that encourages, rewards and creates performance. People who post cat videos cater to this appetite for entertainment, but so do criminals.

According to British criminologist Majid Yar, the new media environment has created different genres of performance crime. The performances have increased in intensity, and criminality – from so-called “happy slapping” videos circulated among adolescents, to violent sexual assault videos. The recent attack is a terrifying continuation of this trend, which is predicated on a kind of exhibitionism and desire to be identified as the performer of the violence.

Researcher Jane O’Dea, who has studied the role played by the media environment in school shootings, claims that we exist in:

a society of the spectacle that regularly transforms ordinary people into “stars” of reality television or of websites like Facebook or YouTube.

Perpetrators of performance crime are inspired by the attention that will inevitably result from the online archive they create leading up to, and during, the event.

Read more: View from The Hill: A truly inclusive society requires political restraint

We all have a role to play

I have previously argued that this media environment seems to produce violent acts that otherwise may not have occurred. Of course, I don’t mean that the perpetrators are not responsible or accountable for their actions. Rather, performance crime represents a different type of activity specific to the technology and social phenomenon of social media – the accidental dark side of livestreaming services.

Would the alleged perpetrator of this terrorist act in Christchurch still have committed it without the capacity to livestream? We don’t know.

But as Majid Yar suggests, rather than concerning ourselves with old arguments about whether media violence can cause criminal behaviour, we should focus on how the techniques and reward systems we use to represent ourselves to online audiences are in fact a central component of these attacks.

We may hope that social media companies will get better at filtering out violent content, but until they do we should reflect on our own behaviour online. As we like and share content of all kinds on social platforms, let’s consider how our activities could contribute to an overall spectacle society that inspires future perpetrator-produced videos of performance crime – and act accordingly.

– ref. Social media creates a spectacle society that makes it easier for terrorists to achieve notoriety – http://theconversation.com/social-media-creates-a-spectacle-society-that-makes-it-easier-for-terrorists-to-achieve-notoriety-113715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Allavena, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland

Companion animals are part of our families, but inevitably the time comes for us to say goodbye to them due to old age or disease.

Many pet lovers opt to bury their pets in the backyard. However, there are some hidden risks to this, and there are other options that will help other pets, and even the owners who love them.

Donating their body to science, for research and veterinary training, can potentially help hundreds of pets.

Read more: Raw meat pet food may not be good for your dog, or your own health

Why the backyard isn’t best

Backyard burial may seem like the easiest way to respectfully take care of your pet’s remains. Unfortunately, it can be dangerous for other pets and wildlife. Most pets are put to sleep with an extremely concentrated anaesthetic agent, which results in a very peaceful death (hence the term euthanasia, which means “good death”). However this drug, pentobarbital, persists in the buried body of the pet for up to a year. Any animal scavenging on the remains will be poisoned by the euthanasia solution.

I have seen two cases in my career where this has happened, with serious consequences. In one case a family had their pet mouse put down and buried it in the backyard. The family’s terrier dug up and ate the mouse, and was comatose in intensive care for nearly a week. In another case, two farm dogs scavenged some bones from a cow which had been euthanased on a farm months before. One dog died and the other was seriously ill for several days.

If your pet dies of a disease which could be spread to other animals or even people, their body might also pose a risk. While vaccination has reduced the amount of dangerous pet diseases in the community, some diseases like parvovirus still occur in outbreaks and are very hardy and spread readily between dogs.

Read more: Vaccinate your puppies – a new strain of parvo has been found in Australia

This virus causes severe and sometimes fatal gastrointestinal disease in puppies and young dogs. Thankfully there are not many diseases we can catch from our pets, but some – such as salmonellosis and toxoplasmosis – can make sensitive people very ill.

What do to instead

One option is pet crematoriums and cemeteries, which are are available in most large cities and regional centres in Australia. The services are very professional and cover a variety of options and price ranges that suit most pet owners. Costs may vary with the size of the pet.

Professional burial or cremation avoids the risks of environmental contamination or disease that might occur with backyard burial. For my own pets which have passed away, I chose cremation which typically costs A$200-300, and then buried their ashes under a memorial tree in my garden.

If you do chose backyard burial, make sure you enclose your pet’s body first. Shutterstock

However, there is another path. As a veterinary pathologist, my job is to conduct autopsies on animals to determine their cause of death. We also use the knowledge and samples we get from the autopsies to conduct research to improve our understanding of diseases and treatments in both animals and people.

Our pets make excellent “models” of diseases in both pets and people, allowing scientists to study the development and progression of a disease and develop new treatments.

Read more: Australians love their pets, so why don’t more public places welcome them?

Cancer is the most common cause of death for pet dogs. Many popular breeds get the same cancer at high rates, providing ample valuable research material. These dog cancers are similar in appearance, behaviour, treatments and genetic causes to many human cancers.

What’s more, because dogs share our home environments, but age faster and show more rapid cancer progression than humans, studying dogs provides faster research results. In the United States, dog cancer trials are already informing trials on new human treatments.

Another area where dogs valuable scientific allies is in the study of rare genetic and developmental diseases in children. As we have bred dogs for specific appearances, from squishy-faced French bulldogs to lanky greyhounds, we have unwittingly created genetic abnormalities. Some of these are close counterparts of rare genetic disorders in children. Thus, dogs can be used to help identify the genetic mutations behind the disease, and how the faulty gene affects human children.

Universities have rigorous ethical reviews for this type of research. However, it is vital that we have the opportunity to take samples of both common and rare pet diseases to form tissue banks. Most of this sampling happens during an autopsy after the pet has died or been put to sleep. These tissue samples are used to research better treatments.

How to donate

If you are interested in donating your pet’s body, your veterinarian can direct you to potential local options. In most large cities this will be the veterinary school at the local university. Alternatively, you can contact the veterinary science school directly through their website or general enquiries telephone number.

Most schools are interested in all species for teaching. My institution takes everything from mice to horses, and exotic pets like snakes and lizards. All these species provide opportunities to learn about their anatomy and diseases.

Beyond helping us research human diseases, veterinary schools need pet body donors to help teach anatomy, surgery and pathology. At its most ethical this training is done on the bodies of animals that have died from natural causes.

Donated pets provide my students with a valuable understanding of how disease affects the body. Further, we report the autopsy findings back to the pet’s veterinarian. This information is crucial to vets who want to confirm diagnoses, and for giving grieving owners some closure.

If you do opt to bury your euthanased pet, please consider enclosing their remains in a container that would prevent other animals accessing the body. Many local councils also have restrictions on pet burial, and it is worth looking at your local area’s guidelines.

Read more: When pets are family, the benefits extend into society

Ultimately though, I would urge you to donate your pet’s body to science. The loss of a pet can be heartbreaking, but there are many ways to create a meaningful legacy from that loss which helps both pets and people.

– ref. Why you shouldn’t bury your pet in the backyard – http://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-bury-your-pet-in-the-backyard-113375

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

The New South Wales election will be held on March 23. Last week, a Newspoll had a 50-50 tie, while a ReachTEL poll gave Labor a 51-49 lead. At the 2015 election, the Coalition won 54 of the 93 seats, Labor 34, the Greens three and independents two. The Coalition won the two party vote by a 54.3-45.7 margin.

Read more: Poll wrap: Labor gains in Newspoll after weak economic report; Labor barely ahead in NSW

Since the 2015 election, the Coalition has lost Orange, to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, and Wagga Wagga, to an independent at byelections. The Coalition enters this election with 52 seats, and would need to lose six seats to lose its majority. Labor needs to gain 13 seats for an outright majority. If Labor gains ten seats and the Greens hold their three seats, a Labor/Greens government could be formed.

On the pendulum, the Coalition holds six seats by 3.2% or less. The current poll swing is about 4.8% to Labor, so Labor would be expected to win these six seats, depriving the Coalition of a majority unless they gain a seat held by a crossbencher.

Labor’s difficulty is that the Coalition has no seats held between a 3.2% and a 6.2% margin. On the pendulum, Labor would need a 6.7% swing to gain the ten seats needed for a Labor/Greens majority. This suggests Labor needs to win the two party vote by a 52.4-47.6 margin.

The pendulum is a useful tool, but swings are never completely uniform. Owing to random variation in the size of swings, analyst Kevin Bonham expects a seat outcome of about 44 Coalition, 41 Labor, three Greens and five Others on the current polls. One side or the other could get lucky and win more seats than expected.

The last NSW statewide polls are a week old now. A key question is whether the final two weeks make a difference. The unpopularity of the federal government could assist state Labor.

The Poll Bludger has details of Daily Telegraph YouGov Galaxy seat polls of Goulbourn and Penrith, presumably conducted last week from samples of 530-550. In Goulbourn, there was a 50-50 tie (56.6-43.4 to Liberal in 2015). Primary votes were 38% Liberal, 37% Labor, 8% Shooters, 6% One Nation and 4% Greens. Gladys Berejiklian led Michael Daley as better Premier by 43-30.

In Penrith, the Liberals led by 51-49 (56.2-43.8 to Liberal in 2015). Primary votes were 42% Liberal, 38% Labor, 9% One Nation and 6% Greens. Berejiklian led Daley by 51-30 as better Premier. Seat polls have been very unreliable at past elections.

One Nation’s Mark Latham will win an upper house seat

The NSW upper house has 42 members, with half up for election every four years. The 21 members are elected using statewide proportional representation. The quota for election is low: just 1/22 of the vote, or 4.55%.

NSW uses optional preferential voting for its upper house. A single “1” above the line will only apply to that party’s candidates. Voters may put “2”, “3”, etc above the line for preferences to other parties after their most preferred party is eliminated. To vote below the line, voters must number at least 15 boxes for a formal vote. There is no group ticket voting in NSW.

In the current upper house, the Coalition holds 20 of 42 seats, Labor 12, the Greens four, the Shooters and Christian Democrats two each, Animal Justice one and former Green Jeremy Buckingham has the last seat.

The seats to be elected in 2019 were last up at the massive Coalition landslide of 2011. Eleven Coalition, five Labor, two Greens and one each for the Christian Democrats, Shooters and Buckingham are up for re-election. As the Coalition will not do as well as in 2011, they are certain to lose seats, and Labor is certain to gain.

According to the ABC’s Antony Green, 83% of ballot papers in 2015 were single “1” votes above the line. Owing to the high rate of exhausted preferences, parties with primary votes about 2% win seats. In the four elections since the current system was introduced in 2003, the lowest primary vote to win was Animal Justice in 2015 with just 1.8%, and the highest primary vote to lose was Pauline Hanson in 2011 with 2.4%.

As a result of the low quota for election, One Nation’s lead candidate, former federal Labor leader Mark Lathem, is certain of election. The Shooters are also certain to win at least one seat; they are assisted by drawing the left-most column on the ballot paper. Various left and right-wing micro parties could be fighting it out for the last seats.

SA Galaxy: 52-48 to state Liberals

A year after the March 2018 South Australian election, we have our first SA state poll. In this YouGov Galaxy poll for The Sunday Mail, conducted March 12-14 from a sample of 844, the Liberals led by 52-48 (51.9-48.1 at the election).

On primary votes, both major parties are up at the expense of SA Best. Primary votes were 42% Liberals (38.0% at the election), 37% Labor (32.8%), 7% SA Best (14.1%) and 7% Greens (6.7%). Incumbent Steven Marshall had a 46-26 lead over Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas as better Premier.

Additional national Essential questions

The full report from last week’s national Essential poll is now available. 51% (down two since December and down five since October) thought Australia is not doing enough to address climate change), 27% (up three and up four) thought we are doing enough and 11% (up two and up four) thought we are doing too much. The biggest decline in not doing enough since October was with Coalition voters (down 11 to 34%).

In a question on trust in institutions, there were 5-7 point improvements since September in trust in state parliament, federal parliament, trade unions and political parties. There were 3-4 point declines in trust in federal police, the High Court and the ABC. Police were on top with 66% trust, with the ABC trusted by 51%. Despite a seven-point improvement, political parties are still last on 22%.

Electoral system not at fault for Fraser Anning

In the wake of the far-right terrorist atrocity in Christchurch, there has been much condemnation of independent senator Fraser Anning’s anti-Muslim comments. Anning won just 19 personal votes below the line, so how was he fairly elected?

The whole One Nation ticket had over 250,000 votes or 1.19 quotas in Queensland at the 2016 federal election. Pauline Hanson was immediately elected, and her surplus was passed on to One Nation’s second candidate, Malcolm Roberts, who had just 77 below the line votes. Roberts was then elected on strong preference flows from other populist right parties. When Roberts was disqualified by the High Court in October 2017 over Section 44 issues, his seat went to Anning, One Nation’s third candidate.

Read more: Final Senate results: 30 Coalition, 26 Labor, 9 Greens, 4 One Nation, 3 NXT, 4 Others

Last week’s Brexit votes

From March 12-14, there were several key Brexit votes in the UK House of Commons. I reviewed these votes for The Poll Bludger. PM Theresa May is threatening hard Leavers with a long Brexit delay if they don’t vote for her deal.

The last paragraph of the linked article about polling is out of date. A Survation poll for The Daily Mail taken March 15 – after the Commons votes – gave Labour a 39-35 lead over the Conservatives. This poll is currently out of alignment with other polls.

– ref. NSW election likely to be close, and Mark Latham will win an upper house seat – http://theconversation.com/nsw-election-likely-to-be-close-and-mark-latham-will-win-an-upper-house-seat-113549

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joe Burton, Senior Lecturer, New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science, University of Waikato

In the aftermath of the tragic loss of life in Christchurch on Friday, the focus needs to be on supporting those who have lost their loved ones and on fostering a sense of national unity in the face of an heinous act of terrorism.

At this early stage we know the perpetrator of the most devastating terrorist attack in New Zealand’s history was a white supremacist. We know he accessed and stockpiled firearms over a long period of time, and that his racist beliefs motivated his actions.

But there are other lessons and important points to make about the attack. These should shape the longer-term response by the New Zealand government.

Read more: Christchurch attacks are a stark warning of toxic political environment that allows hate to flourish

Muslims biggest victims of terror across the globe

The first is a more sustained governmental and societal focus on right-wing extremism. It may turn out that the extremist who committed this attack acted alone, but the ideology that motivated him has spread around the globe and is infecting our politics and discourse.

We know right-wing radicals have committed atrocities before. The most notable perhaps was an extremist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. But this is part of a long history of extremist violence on the right.

According to research by the Anti-Defamation League, over the last decade, 73.3% of all extremist-related fatalities in the US could be linked to domestic right-wing extremists, while 23.4% were attributable to Islamist extremists. We should pay attention to these statistics in New Zealand. The fear that jihadist terrorism will occur sometime in New Zealand is real, but we haven’t adequately recognised the threat from neofascist ideology.

It is a tragic footnote to this story that globally Muslims have been by far the most victimised group by terrorism in the post-9/11 era. In a 2011 report, the US government’s National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), said:

In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82% and 97% of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years.

Clearly, we need to do more to protect Muslim communities from acts of violence and to focus more tightly on the ideology of fascism, which underpins both right-wing groups and those who commit violence in the name of Islam.

In cities across New Zealand and the world, people have gathered at prayer services and vigils to honour victims of the Christchurch mosque terror attack. (AAP/Jono Searle, CC BY-SA

Extremists share a lot in common

A second lesson relates to the process of radicalisation. We need to better understand why people who commit mass murder fall into a set of hateful beliefs. This is clearly a serious social problem caused by many variables, including demographic change, inequality, poverty and lack of education.

The latest research on radicalisation suggests many of those responsible for “lone wolf” acts are socially illiterate and have fallen out of the mainstream of society. They often indicate these beliefs via social media, suggesting we could do more to report these viewpoints to authorities.

Radicals also tend to share a set of psychological or cognitive traits that underpin their actions. According to recent reports by the European Institute for Peace these include grievances that are galvanised by a unifying ideology, a process of cognitive “de-pluralisation”, in which they tend to focus on a very limited set of ideas to interpret the world, and confirmation bias, where events are re-packaged into existing beliefs and assumptions.

Other research shows radicals climb a “staircase” to violent acts involving a series of incremental steps over a period of years. This suggests earlier intervention will be the key to having people back away from violence.

The social and cognitive alienation of young people in contemporary society is a growing problem. Radicalisation expert Scott Atran says:

Violent extremism represents not the resurgence of traditional cultures, but their collapse, as young people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity that gives personal significance and glory. This is the dark side of globalisation.

The dark web is a breeding ground for hatred

A third lesson is that global communications technology is providing a breeding ground for extremism and hatred. In this sense “lone wolves” aren’t acting alone. They are connected to a structured and well-financed global neo-Nazi ideology that uses the internet to propagate its beliefs.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

According to a recent report by the Data & Society Research Institute, far-right actors are regularly spreading white supremacist thought, Islamophobia and misogyny on the internet through sites such as 4chan and 8chan.

Right-wing groups have regularly circulated propaganda within social media channels and have sown racial and ethnically charged divisions within society through memes and disinformation. This was a tactic of the far right in the US elections in 2016, and has been used regularly since, including in the Brexit debates.

These websites aren’t easy to take down. As recent efforts by Google show, neo-Nazi sites that are blocked or banned “go dark” behind encrypted platforms that are out of reach of tech companies and security services.

Timothy Snyder, a renowned holocaust historian, notes this form of “mass manipulation” is based on appealing to emotions rather than reason. The spread of fake news and propaganda on the internet creates a perfect platform to increase fear, anger and anxiety. These are the psychological conditions from which acts of violence are committed.

New Zealand does have a right-wing problem

The final lesson is a wider, political one for New Zealand. There has undoubtedly been a tendency in some quarters of New Zealand politics to assume we are living in a largely benign international environment. This is part of a troubling isolationist tendency in New Zealand politics that contributes to us not taking security seriously and investing in it accordingly. The Christchurch attacks have shattered these illusions.

The right-wing problem in New Zealand has historical roots. White pride marches have taken place in Christchurch on numerous occasions. A far-right candidate who was convicted of firebombing a marae (Māori meeting place) stood for mayor three times in recent years, most recently in 2013 when he received a small but significant number of votes.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

On the international stage we need to stand up against the beliefs that underpin right-wing extremism. Jacinda Ardern’s call to Donald Trump to be compassionate to Muslims was a good start and reminds us racism at the top of society can create a permissive environment for extremism.

We also need to reorient our foreign and security policy towards de-radicalisation processes both domestically and internationally. The UK’s Prevent programme, which has seen a big increase in efforts to prevent right-wing extremism, may be a good model to follow.

New Zealanders now know the fear and chaos that follows terrorism. But the goal of terrorism is to use that fear to undermine our democracy and way of life. So we need to channel our response in a way that protects our values.

We must be aware of the perils of over-reacting, but nevertheless need to redouble our efforts to create multi-level, evidence-led strategies to target radicalism, recognising global and local drivers of extremism.

– ref. Four lessons we must take away from the Christchurch terror attack – http://theconversation.com/four-lessons-we-must-take-away-from-the-christchurch-terror-attack-113716

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Cohen, Clinical Psychologist and PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney

Social media use is often described as being problematic for mental health and body image. But is all social media use bad?

Our new research shows that viewing body positive Instagram content may actually improve women’s body image, at least in the short term.

Read more: The ideal female body type is getting even harder to attain

With more awareness, social media users might be able to curate a social media environment that promotes positive body image by unfollowing or blocking idealised accounts, and following more body positive accounts – possibly including more Celeste Barbour – on Instagram.

Celeste Barbour runs an account on Instagram where she parodies the images celebrities post on their own social media. Celeste Barbour (screen shot taken March 13 2019)

Chasing ‘the ideal’

Body image concerns are common among young women and can have serious negative consequences. Most young women use social media daily, and research suggests that viewing idealised appearance-focused content is associated with poorer body image.

That is, following accounts like the Kardashians/Jenners, fitspiration, or influencers and friends posting glamorous bikini shots, is associated with women being more preoccupied with their appearance and less satisfied with their own bodies. As a result, women may engage in unhealthy dieting or exercise strategies to try and achieve “the ideal” they see in their social media feeds.

Read more: How did the Kardashian Jenner family become so successful? A psychologist explains

The rise of BoPo

Recently, a new trend has emerged on social media called “body positivity” (or “BoPo”).

Body positivity aims to challenge narrow beauty ideals and encourage acceptance and appreciation of bodies of all shapes, sizes, and appearances. BoPo accounts such as @bodyposipanda (with over 1 million followers), have become particularly popular on Instagram.

A search for the hashtag #bodypositive returns almost 9 million posts, and #effyourbeautystandards (popularised by body positive activist Tess Holiday) generates almost 4 million posts.

A recent content analysis of body positive content on Instagram shows that these posts do indeed depict a broad range of body sizes and appearances. Content includes:

• selfies of women proudly displaying their belly rolls and cellulite

• before and after photos of “real” vs “edited” bodies, encouraging awareness of the common use of Photoshop on Instagram

• self-compassion quotes

• images focusing on body functionality (what the body can do rather than what it looks like).

Bodyposipanda is a BoPo Instagram account with over one million followers. Megan Jayne Crabb on Instagram

But do women feel better?

Although body positive content is intended to make women feel better about their appearance, there had been no research confirming whether this was actually the case.

In our new study, 195 young women (18-30 years old) viewed either body positive content, idealised content with thin women, or appearance-neutral content taken from Instagram.

Before and after viewing this content we asked women to rate their mood, body satisfaction, and the extent to which they focused on their appearance (known as self-objectification).

We found that brief exposure to body positive Instagram posts resulted in improved body image and mood in young women, compared to idealised and appearance-neutral posts.

Not many of us will ever look like this in a bikini. G A B R I E L L E on Instagram

Women who viewed body positive posts felt more satisfied with their bodies, were more appreciative of the unique functions and health of their bodies, and had more positive mood. In contrast, those who viewed idealised Instagram posts had poorer body image and mood.

Although this study found positive results for body image, it also showed that body positive content can make women more focused on their physical appearance over other aspects of themselves.

This has been a criticism of body positive accounts in the past, with some suggesting that it may be better to focus on aspects of the self that are unrelated to physical appearance in order to improve well-being.

We need more research to determine the effects of body positive content over time and to explore what types of posts are more helpful than others.

Curate your own environment

Given the popularity of social media among young women, we need to understand the type of use that may be helpful or harmful for body image. Unlike traditional media formats (like magazines and televison), social media users are active content creators and have agency in what they post and view.

Read more: How body ideals shape the health of gay men

Interestingly, another recent study found that showing women humorous, parody Instagram content (@celestebarber) resulted in improved body image and positive mood, compared to viewing traditional thin celebrity posts.

So, maybe social media is not necessarily all bad? Rather, we need to be more mindful of the content we are consuming. Considered choices about who we follow, and the messages they promote, might actually help us feel better.

– ref. Women can build positive body image by controlling what they view on social media – http://theconversation.com/women-can-build-positive-body-image-by-controlling-what-they-view-on-social-media-113041

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

Dental care in Australia is a policy anomaly; for some reason, the mouth is treated very differently to other parts of the body. About 58% of dental costs are met directly from patients’ pockets, compared to 11% for medical primary care, and 12% for prescriptions.

As a result of these large out-of-pocket costs, two million Australians each year defer visits to a dentist or miss out on dental care. Poorer people are more likely to miss out.

Source: ABS Patient Experiences in Australia 2016-17

Every few years the Commonwealth government introduces a new dental scheme to fill the dental gap in our health system, and then a few years later the scheme is abolished with a change of government.

This start-stop nature of dental policy has to change. What’s required is a long-term vision to reunite the mouth with the rest of the body.

Read more: Child tooth decay is on the rise, but few are brushing their teeth enough or seeing the dentist

The architecture of a universal scheme

Medicare is widely embraced as the central pillar of Australia’s health system. There is no logical reason why this coverage should not be extended to oral health.

But we should learn from the Medicare experience. The expansion of dental access should be based on a new, better model. Here’s how this can be done.

1. Like Medicare, a universal dental scheme should be based on a mix of public and private services.

State public dental services are struggling valiantly to meet demand, with waiting times of more than a year in most states.

Investing money into these schemes – as the Commonwealth has done for the past few years – has made almost no dent in the waiting lists. And the risk remains that extra investment will be discontinued with changes of government, as has happened in the past.

Even if Commonwealth funding increased to adequate levels, it’s unlikely the state schemes could be expanded sufficiently to provide the amount of care needed.

Nor would a monolithic public-only scheme, with no choice of provider, be consistent with the way the rest of health care is provided.

A mixed public-private scheme could harness the existing investments by private dental practices, as has been done in the existing Commonwealth Child Dental Benefits Scheme.

Over time, a universal dental scheme would encourage all Australians to prevent dental problems and seek treatment early. Daniel Frank

2. A universal scheme should be ‘opt-in’: it should be based on dental practices agreeing to be part of the scheme.

Practices would be allowed to participate only if they agreed to certain conditions, most notably that they will bulk-bill all patients – thereby removing the financial barriers to dental care.

Participating practices would also be required to provide information on the results of their care, and to participate in approved programs to improve the quality of their care.

3. Quality care should be rewarded.

Although the universal scheme would initially make fee-for-service payments to participating practices, in a similar way to Medicare paying GP clinics when you visit a doctor, the payment system should become more sophisticated over time.

This could include rewarding dentists and practices that get the best results for their patients, by supplementing fee-for-service payments with performance-related payments based on following evidence-based practice and achieving better dental outcomes.

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

4. Not all aspects of oral health care should be covered under the universal scheme.

The priority should be to ensure the scheme funds primary dental care and treatments that are aimed at preventing problems and disease from developing. This includes check ups, treatment for tooth decay – which now may not involve drilling – and dentures.

5. The funding arrangements for the universal scheme should be designed to encourage reform and expansion of the dental workforce.

A universal dental scheme will require a bigger dental workforce. All oral health professionals should be encouraged to work to the top of their expertise and qualifications.

Under the new scheme, for example, oral health therapists would be able to perform many of the services now performed by dentists.

How much will it cost?

A universal dental scheme would cost about an extra A$5.6 billion a year. That sort of money could not be found overnight. Nor could the number of professionals required to staff such a scheme.

Instead, the federal government should announce that Australia will move to a universal dental scheme over the next decade – and it should produce a roadmap to get there.

Read more: Waiting for better care: why Australia’s hospitals and health care are failing

The first step should be for the Commonwealth government to assume funding responsibility for oral health care for pensioners and health care card-holders – the group covered by existing state public dental schemes.

The Commonwealth funding should be on the basis of the mixed public-private model described above.

This initiative would cost an extra A$1 billion a year. That is a more affordable price tag – and sufficient dental professionals are already available to meet the anticipated extra demand.

Waiting times for state dental services are often a year or longer. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

Offsets against this extra funding could come from savings elsewhere in the health system. Previous Grattan Institute reports have identified opportunities in both hospitals and pharmaceuticals, or from the introduction of a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, as recommended in another Grattan report.

An A$1 billion a year investment in expanding access to dental care for pensioners and health care card-holders would eliminate the waiting lists for existing public dental services, address a key inequity in health care, and set the stage for the big reform: a universal dental scheme for Australia.

– ref. Two million Aussies delay or don’t go to the dentist – here’s how we can fix that – http://theconversation.com/two-million-aussies-delay-or-dont-go-to-the-dentist-heres-how-we-can-fix-that-113376

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Edwards, Post Doctoral Researcher, La Trobe University

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

Why do bats sleep upside down? – Questions from Year 5 at Brandon Park Primary School, Victoria. The class has been studying animal adaptation.

Evolution allows animals to adapt to their environments by favouring those who have an advantage that helps them survive. If they survive long enough to have babies they pass that advantage onto their children through their genes. That process is what we call adaptation.

Animals have adapted to live in different environments and eat different foods, so they don’t have to compete with each other.

Around 530 million years ago, all animals lived in the ocean. They were rapidly evolving and adapting to live in different places to minimise competition.

Some animals have evolved to live at great depths, like the anglerfish. It has a bioluminescent light it uses to attract prey in the dark water. Other sea creatures evolved amazing camouflage skills, which helps them stay safe from predators.

Eventually, sea animals developed adaptations that allowed them to live on land. More adaptations occurred over millions of years, leading to the amazing and complex range of animals we have today.

Sometimes, two different animals will evolve to have a similar adaptation, even when they are not closely related. Flight is an excellent example.

Here’s a video where two researchers explain some of the key differences between bird flight and bat flight.

Read more: Curious Kids: Do sharks sneeze?

The four flights

Flight has evolved four times: in insects, bats, birds and pterosaurs (the flying creatures from the time of dinosaurs).

These four groups don’t have a common ancestor who could fly. In fact, they all evolved to fly from ancestors who could not. This is what we call “convergent evolution”.

However, birds and bats have some major differences. Bats still have the five digits, or fingers, that their mammalian ancestors had (mammalian means they are mammals, which are animals who have a mammary gland, that produces milk to feed their babies; they also typically have hair or fur).

Birds, however, have lost the digits that their ancestors had. The bones in a bird wing have fused.

Bats still have the five digits, or fingers, that their mammalian ancestors had. Birds, however, have lost the digits that their ancestors possessed. The bones in a bird wing have fused. Shutterstock

Hunt, but don’t be hunted

The bat ancestor (or pre-bat) lived in trees, hunting small insects as they moved along the bark. Since it’s much harder to run up a tree chasing an insect, the pre-bat would wait, facing downwards for prey to come up the tree trunk. That way they could easily run downwards if they saw something tasty.

They used their hands and mouth to grab the prey and hung from their back legs. This led to an adaptation in their claws which allowed their tendons to lock into place when they hang. That’s why bats can hang upside down without using muscles, and barely any energy. Gravity does all of the work for them.

Since it uses the least amount of energy, it’s the best way for a bat to sleep. But on the trunk of a tree, they are visible to predators who hunt during the day while bats are sleeping. Some bats moved to sleep under the horizontal branches, which provided protection.

As with all evolution, the adaptations that help a species to survive is the one that will persist. Most bats now sleep in protected areas and only a few species still sleep on tree trunks.

Make light work

To save energy while flying, you want to make yourself as light as possible. Birds have hollow processes in their bones but bats do not. One way in which bats evolved to save weight was to make their back leg bones shorter and thinner.

However, this means that the bats can no longer stand on their back legs. The pressure is too much for the small bones. As a result, they have lost the ability to run on their back legs as well.

The drop and fly theory

When you watch a bird take off from the ground, you will notice they need a run-up. In order to get off the ground, flying animals needs to achieve what scientists call “lift” to overcome gravity. Many big birds, and bats, do not have strong enough wing muscles to generate the lift required to take off from a standing position (like a helicopter can).

Bats cannot run so it would be almost impossible for them to take off from the ground. A major advantage to hanging upside down is that bats do not need to generate lift to begin flight. They just drop out of their bed, open their wings and off they go.

A BBC Earth Unplugged video explaining why bats like to hang out upside down.

Did you know there are seven species of bats that do not sleep upside down? They sleep in curled-up leaves! Six of these species live in Central and South America, while the other one lives only in Madagascar.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do humans not have fur like chimpanzees and gorillas?

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

– ref. Curious Kids: why bats sleep upside down, and other stories of animal adaptation – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-bats-sleep-upside-down-and-other-stories-of-animal-adaptation-112518

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marissa Parrott, Reproductive Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science, Zoos Victoria, and Honorary Research Associate, BioSciences, University of Melbourne

Smell is a vital part of sexual attraction for all kinds of animals (including humans). We may be able to use smell to improve breeding programs by giving the female animal a sample sniff of potential mates and letting her choose the best one before introducing them.

Our new research found female marsupials paired with the male of their choice in captive breeding programs had a higher chance of becoming pregnant, a shorter time to pregnancy and may produce healthier young.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do we smell?

Ladies’ choice

Zoos and breeding institutions traditionally pair animals based on their relatedness and pedigree so they can manage the overall genetic health of the population. It’s expensive and often not possible to transport multiple males just to give a female some options – but if she refuses her solitary suitor when he arrives, it can cause major problems.

Our research shows that presenting the female with a range of scent samples and letting her pick her favourite dramatically increased compatibility.

This simple 10-minute test more than doubled the number of pregnancies and shortened the time to becoming pregnant in a small carnivorous marsupial, the stripe-faced dunnart.

Marissa Parrott with a captive-bred mountain pygmy-possum released to the wild. Author provided

Using the same technique in the critically endangered mountain pygmy-possum at Healesville Sanctuary, we showed that females had significantly higher breeding success with males they liked during their choice tests. We have shown a similar effect of increasing breeding success and shortening the time to pregnancy in the endangered eastern barred bandicoot at Zoos Victoria through scent and interactions.

How are female marsupials choosing mates?

Put simply, they are following their noses. We gave females a choice of male smell and allowed her to sniff out the best mate.

In the first published study of marsupial mate choice, we found female agile antechinus chose the most genetically suitable male based on his smell. Females preferred males that were genetically dissimilar to themselves (avoiding in-breeding), but not too dissimilar (avoiding genetic out-breeding).

There is a sweet spot to female choice. If you can provide a female with a suite of males, they can choose their most compatible suitor, which in turn is likely to produce the healthiest and fittest young.

Better yet, females are choosing males compared with their own genes, so each female may like a different male, which is good for managing the overall population. However, care must be taken with sisters, as they are likely to have the same choices.

Read more: Swingers’ hookup program can find the right match for endangered species

This information is particularly helpful for global programs that have endangered species spread across different institutions and zoos, such as tree kangaroos.

In the dunnarts, we found that freezing and storing the scents of males for up to 40 days did not affect a female’s choice or interest in a scent. Thus, if you have a female tree kangaroo at Melbourne Zoo and are uncertain which male should be sent from overseas, you could freeze scents from eligible bachelors and send them to her in advance for her approval. This could reduce the stress, time and cost associated with sending males between zoos, especially if the male you sent ended up being the wrong choice!

A stripe-faced dunnart in the captive breeding colony at the University of Melbourne. M Parrott, Author provided

But why focus on females?

In marsupials, females provide the majority of the care of the young. In the extreme case of the antechinus, all males die after mating, leaving the females with all the work raising the offspring. Thus, females are generally the choosier sex, ensuring they get the maximum benefit from appropriate mate choice.

In other species, such as the critically endangered plains wanderer whose females lay eggs and leave them with stay-at-home fathers, you may expect the male bird’s choice to be more important. He is providing the care to the growing chicks and thus will want to maximise their success through choosing the best mate.

Can people learn from the marsupial approach?

Female mate choice is a perennial issue for many humans. A study that supplied 49 women with T-shirts worn by different men found the women could sniff out the men in their genetic “sweet spot” – not too similar or dissimilar – and found those scents most attractive.

We are not so different to the endangered marsupials we are working to recover. Perhaps in the future, instead of swiping right on an image, we can be sent a palette of smells to choose a potential suitor. Instead of speed dating, could we use smell dating?

Read more: Tasmanian devils reared in captivity show they can thrive in the wild

Certainly, when used in conservation breeding programs, allowing a female to choose her own mate can help find the best pairings, reduce the time to produce young and hopefully help produce the healthiest offspring to fight extinction for their species.

– ref. ‘Give us a sniff, love’: giving marsupials scents from suitors helps breeding programs – http://theconversation.com/give-us-a-sniff-love-giving-marsupials-scents-from-suitors-helps-breeding-programs-113641

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Gwynne, Associate Professor and Research Director, Poche Centre for Indigenous Health Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney

A customised scholarship program developed for Aboriginal TAFE students has led to a 96% completion rate – more than 60% above the average completion rate for Aboriginal TAFE students in New South Wales.

Our research, published today in the Australian Health Review, shows how a seven-step approach – which includes supporting students by picking them up from the airport and ensuring Aboriginal staff are involved in each step – can dramatically improve vocational-education outcomes for Aboriginal students.

The completion rate for vocational education students across all cultures, locations and programs of study in NSW was 37.3% in 2013. For Aboriginal students, who make up 6.6% of all TAFE students, the completion rate was 29.6%.

What the program looks like

Previous research has shown a model made of five components (respect, communication, safety and quality, reflection and advocacy) could improve the completion rates of Aboriginal nursing students.

We adapted this model for vocational education and enrolled 31 students in the first cohort. One group studied Certificate III or IV in Dental Assisting. A second group studied Certificate IV in Allied Health Assisting.

Of our cohort who followed the five steps, 96% of students completed their course. But interviews with the first cohort of students and their teaching and support staff revealed an opportunity to add two more steps. And so, the seven step approach was born.

The seven step model has been implemented under the leadership of Bundjalung Elder and Poche Director, Boe Rambaldini. Aboriginal support staff were involved in all aspects of the program, and all staff engaged in ongoing cultural competence awareness and skill development.

The vocational training and scholarships were designed and scheduled to take account of students’ family responsibilities, financial circumstances and academic support needs in the following ways:

• the course was run in mixed-mode with intensive face-to-face blocks of 3-5 days, supplemented by work experience close to home and some assignments at home (to minimise time away from family and employment)

• students received a computer as part of the scholarship as well as pre-paid internet access to download course materials, undertake research online and connect with students and staff

• students were contacted regularly to check on their progress and provide advice/assistance where needed.

By the end of last year, 380 qualifications had been awarded to Aboriginal students. Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, CC BY

By the end of last year, 380 qualifications had been awarded to Aboriginal students and the completion rate of 96% had been maintained.

One of the first graduates of the seven-step approach, Rachel Williams, has gone on to complete a Bachelor of Oral Health. She is now the registered oral health therapist at her local Aboriginal Health Service, Armajun, where she started as a trainee.

Rachel is just one of many Poche scholars (as they have become known) who have gone on to build a career in rural health. Author provided., Author provided

Rachel is just one of many Poche scholars (as they have become known) who have gone on to build a career in rural health. The program, funded by the NSW Ministry of Health, is now in its fifth year and has helped us meet a commitment to employ at least 50% Aboriginal staff in rural and remote health clinics associated with the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health.

Programs like this are important both because TAFE can be a pathway for Aboriginal people to secure local skilled work or study at university, and because they can help improve the cultural competence of health-care services.

Why the steps matter

Our program encourages scholars to make a strong commitment to completion, which builds a strong cohort. As one student told us:

Whenever I’ve fallen behind […] I’ve emailed or messaged them (other students) and we’ve helped each other in that way. We’ve been each other’s support system.

We also wanted to ensure the program could be continuously adapted and improved as needed.

And importantly, applicants did not require prior academic success. The critical factor was the motivation of the scholar and support from family, financial, administrative, cultural, employer and personal support. All qualifications are awarded through the usual TAFE process, and TAFE has adapted their approach for the Poche scholars.

The program costs more to deliver than a standard TAFE place, to cover higher staff to student ratios, laptops and prepaid data, travel and accommodation to attend intensive study blocks, uniforms, cultural and social support staff and customisation of some of the study materials. As one student told us:

I wouldn’t be able to do it if they didn’t pay for the travel. I wouldn’t be able to do it if they didn’t pay for the accommodation. I would find it hard if they didn’t pay for the food, so all of that is amazing and I’m very thankful for all of that.

The latter is particularly important. The curriculum is made relevant to the students by using, for example, case studies that reflect the students’ culture and context.

Getting qualified is not enough

It is not enough, however, to get qualified. Aboriginal people in rural and remote communities must also have real opportunities for secure employment. Economic analysis by the Australian Social Investment Trust has been adapted for this program. It suggests a greater than A$27,000 return on investment for every person who secures a job. This is largely made up of reduced welfare payments and increased tax.

More work needs to be done, of course. If we are to close the gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal people, we need to develop and staff culturally competent health-care services. Building a skilled, qualified, local Aboriginal health workforce is a critical step to achieving this.

Read more: Closing the gap on Indigenous education must start with commitment and respect

– ref. New TAFE program for Aboriginal health-care students sees a near perfect completion rate – http://theconversation.com/new-tafe-program-for-aboriginal-health-care-students-sees-a-near-perfect-completion-rate-113270

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David MacKenzie, Associate Professor, Department of Social Science, Swinburne University of Technology

A National Report Card on Youth Homelessness in Australia says government action over the past decade would earn no more than two stars under its four-star rating system. There has been under-investment in most areas. Promises made have been only partially delivered.

The report identifies the lack of a coordinated national strategy as an obstacle to achieving goals that were set a decade ago. The report card will be presented at the National Youth Homelessness Conference being held in Melbourne today and tomorrow.

It’s the first national conference focused solely on homeless youth in Australia in 20 years. It will consider four proposed strategic reforms:

1. early intervention
2. rapid rehousing
3. engagement in education, training and/or employment
4. extending state care to the age of 21.

Read more: Homelessness: Australia’s shameful story of policy complacency and failure continues

Losing our way even with a roadmap

The report card assesses progress since the 2008 report of the National Youth Commission (NYC) into youth homelessness, the second of two landmark inquiries.

Following the rigorous procedures of the 1989 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Inquiry into Youth Homelessness headed by Brian Burdekin, the NYC’s independent community inquiry held hearings all over Australia. There were 21 public hearings, 319 people gave evidence, and 92 written submissions were received.

In 2008, Kevin Rudd announced a plan to halve homelessness by 2020. Dean Lewins/AAP

The inquiry’s 400-page report, Australia’s Homeless Youth, made 80 recommendations and included a widely publicised ten-point Roadmap for Youth Homelessness. The NYC argued that implementing this roadmap could transform the face of youth homelessness in Australia.

In December 2008, following this report, the federal government released a white paper, The Road Home: A National Approach to Reducing Homelessness. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a bold public commitment to halve homelessness by 2020. This involved three key policy strategies:

• “turning off the tap” – early intervention
• “improving and expanding services”
• “breaking the cycle”.

Read more: New homelessness report shows the cost of waiting for early intervention

How was the report card compiled?

The report card references the ten points of the NYC roadmap. It is a review of responses to youth homelessness over the past decade from a national perspective, and of what still needs to be done.

The 2008 white paper and all subsequent state and territory plans and strategy documents were systematically reviewed against information about what has been done for young people.

Progress under each point was rated using a four-star assessment. Experts and experienced leaders in the various areas then reviewed the preliminary assessments to finalise the ratings.

The National Report Card on Youth Homelessness ratings. Author provided

So what happened to the roadmap?

After the white paper, work began on a national strategy to tackle homelessness, but that project was shelved. The states and territories have issued their own plans and strategies, which are, despite some common features, somewhat divergent. The overall national response to homelessness would be hugely strengthened by working to an agreed national strategy like in other high-priority social policy areas.

The roadmap highlighted affordable housing for young people as a priority. This need has hardly been addressed. Young people make up a significant proportion of the homeless population, but they are only 2.9% of tenants in social housing.

Read more: Homeless numbers will keep rising until governments change course on housing

Domestic and family violence is a known cause of homelessness. Only in recent years has there been a significant effort to make this a high social policy priority. A recent increase in funding for a range of services and initiatives is promising but overdue.

The white paper proposed “turning off the tap”, or early intervention, but little has been accomplished. More Australians seek help from homelessness services now than in 2008. This is arguably the single biggest policy failure. An early proposal to expand Reconnect, the early intervention program that has existed since 1997, came to nothing.

Some effort has been made to reform state care and protection, especially the inadequate support for young people leaving care at 18. They are particularly vulnerable to homelessness. The idea of extending state care to at least 21 years of age is not new, nevertheless it is still not well resourced nor securely established nationally.

Read more: Why children in institutional care may be worse off now than they were in the 19th century

Some repair and expansion of the crisis system of homelessness services has been achieved. However, many communities complain they do not have even basic crisis capacity.

The roadmap called for improvement of specialist services for homeless youth such as mental health, drug and alcohol services, and employment services. Little progress has been made on drug and alcohol and employment services. Youth-specific mental health services is one area that has had significant development.

The roadmap also called for a new form of housing that linked supported accommodation with education, training and support into employment. These were foyers and foyer-like facilities modelled largely on the UK foyers. Over a decade, some 15 foyers have been developed in Australia. This can be acknowledged as an achievement.

Lastly, the roadmap argued that support after homelessness (“post-vention”) is important for young people. The passage to independence should not simply be expected, but rather they need extended support (the kind of support most families provide their children) to “break the cycle” of homelessness. In policy terms, Australia has come late to this understanding and little has been achieved on this issue in the past decade.

In making an overall assessment of progress since the NYC roadmap, the report card acknowledges some positive initiatives and progress but also neglect and underachievement. The existing crisis-focused service systems are not reducing youth homelessness; proven early intervention approaches remain critically underfunded and underdeveloped. What has been done, or rather not done, over the past decade continues to fail young people who are at risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness.

Overall, the report card gives a two-star rating – “developing – some progress under way” – to efforts to reduce youth homelessness over the past decade. As a nation, we cannot be satisfied with a below-average response to youth homelessness. The next decade needs to be a very different story.

– ref. Youth homelessness efforts get a lowly 2 stars from national report card – http://theconversation.com/youth-homelessness-efforts-get-a-lowly-2-stars-from-national-report-card-113118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

This is the first in a three-part mini-symposium on Wages, Unemployment and Underemployment presented by The Conversation and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

The long debate over the causes of wage stagnation took an unexpected turn last week, when Finance Minister Matthias Cormann described (downward) flexibility in the rate of wage growth as “a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture”.

It was a position that was endorsed in a flurry of confusion 16 seconds after it had been rejected by Defence Industry Minister Linda Reynolds.

Cormann had said policies aimed at pushing wages up could cause “massive spikes in unemployment”.

The ease with which Reynolds was trapped into at first rejecting and then accepting what her ministerial colleague had said flowed from the fact that Cormann had broken one of the standing conventions of politics in Australia, and for that matter, the English-speaking world.

For more than forty years, both the architecture of labour market regulation and the discretionary choices of governments have been designed with the precise objective of holding wages down.

These policies have been quite successful, as can be seen from the graph.

However, at least until recently, there has been bipartisan agreement on at least one aspect of them – that no one should mention their role in holding back wages.

ABS Australian Accounts, seasonally adjusted

Instead, the decline in the wage share of national income has been variously blamed on

• technology

• immigration

• imports from China and, more recently,

• the end of the mining boom.

None of these explanations stand up to scrutiny.

The idea that technology is driving the wage share down is perhaps the most popular.

But technological change has been continuous, if uneven, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Most of the time, workers have shared in the resulting productivity gains.

There have however, been a number of exceptional periods in which workers have been harmed.

They have been times when the balance of power had favoured employers. At those unusual times, any kind of disruption, whether caused by new technology or not, has had the potential to enable employers to break working conditions and cut wages.

Right now, for example, there is no necessary reason for the ability to do business over the Internet to harm workers. In many ways it empowers workers by reducing the information advantages of big employers.

But in an environment where unions are weak and working conditions are vulnerable to erosion, the outcome is firms like Airtasker, where workers bid against each other to perform outsourced tasks, often for less than the minimum wage.

There is nothing new about this kind of working arrangement.

It could be seen outside the wharves on Sydney’s “Hungry Mile” in the 1930s, where workers went from wharf to wharf each day hoping for work, or today on street corners in the United States, where (often undocumented) construction workers gather in the mornings hoping to be picked for work.

But if technology isn’t to blame, what is?

The overlong shadow of the overhang

The real story begins in the early 1970s, when there was an upsurge in inflation associated with the breakdown of the post-war Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates , and soaring prices in commodity markets including that for oil. The result was a “wage-price spiral” as both wages and prices rose at unexpected annual rates of more than 10%.

In a nation with a history of strong trade unions, decades of full employment, and the boundless faith in the future forged by the 1960s, wages grew faster than prices as both spiralled upwards.

By the time rising unemployment began to bite, and inflation slowed down, the wage share of national income had risen to an unprecedented 62%.

Reining in this “real wage overhang” became the central preoccupation of macroeconomic policy throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

This made sense at the time. But, as in other fields, ideas formed in the 1970s and 1980s continued to dominate the thinking of policymakers long after they had either been proven to be failures or rendered obsolete by changing circumstances, as was the case with policies designed to hold back wages.

The policies had several elements. There were a series of changes in industrial relations law, most of which have attacked unions and weakened the bargaining power of labour.

The Fraser government introduced Sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act banning secondary boycotts, that is, action in solidarity with other workers. Fraser also created the Industrial Relations Bureau, the first of a series of industrial “police forces”.

On its election in 1996, the Howard government introduced the Workplace Relations Act 1996 which extended scope for non-union agreements. After winning a Senate majority in 2004, Howard introduced WorkChoices which limited the scope of collective bargaining, and wound back protections against dismissal.

Read more: Explainer: what are the ABCC and Registered Organisations bills?

The Industrial Relations Bureau maintained at least a pretence of impartiality. By contrast, the organisations created by the Abbott and Turnbull governments (the Registered Organisations Commission and Australian Building and Construction Commission) have been so nakedly anti-union that they have repeatedly broken the law they are supposed to uphold.

Labor governments have wound back some of the most extreme measures, but have not changed the general direction of policy.

Even measures that appeared superficially favourable to workers turned out differently. For example, in 1993 the Keating government introduced the concept of “protected industrial action”.

It was some time before it became apparent that the result was to abolish any general right to strike, something that exists in almost every other democratic government.

As Minister for Workplace Relations, Bill Shorten introduced measures that were pitched as protecting penalty rates through a review process undertaken by the Fair Work Commission. A few years later, in a highly politicised process, the Commission used the process to cut penalty rates.

Coalition governments have also used the power of the state directly against unions. Notable examples include the string of royal commissions created by the Abbott government and the use, in 1998, of ex-military strikebreakers to break the Maritime Union of Australia. Their training and deployment was facilitated by a government consultant who worked with the major waterfront employer, Patricks.

orchestrating the offshore training of the replacement workforce through the actions of consultant Stephen Webster and other shadowy ex-military figures.

Finally, macroeconomic management has operated on the basis that any increase in wages is a danger signal requiring a tightening of fiscal and monetary policy. A notable example, was the warning by then Employment Minister Eric Abetz in January 2014 months after taking office that Australia faced a “wages explosion”.

ABS Wage Price Index

Far from “exploding”, wage growth slid and hasn’t recovered.

More striking than his failed prediction, was Abetz’ assumption, taken for granted in policy debate, that any substantial increase in wages would be disastrous.

It is only in the last few years that this assumption, inherited from last century, have been challenged.

The Reserve Bank in particular has become an advocate for higher wage growth.

Yet as Cormann’s incautious outbreak of truthtelling has shown, the view has yet to percolate through to Australia’s elites.

The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia is one of Australia’s four learned academies. The ASSA coordinates the promotion of research, teaching and advice in the social sciences, promotes scholarly cooperation across disciplines, comments on national needs and priorities in the social sciences, and provides advice to government on issues of national importance.

– ref. Ultra low wage growth isn’t accidental. It is the intended outcome of government policies – http://theconversation.com/ultra-low-wage-growth-isnt-accidental-it-is-the-intended-outcome-of-government-policies-113357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Ashton, PhD Candidate, Monash University

We all think we know what pornography is, whether we oppose it, use it, or tolerate it. But are we all conjuring up the same images?

The term has been used to describe, for example: a music video clip of a naked Miley Cyrus straddling a wrecking ball; Bill Henson’s photographs of naked children, hung in art galleries; and forceful sex scenes in Game of Thrones.

Our Google search using the term “porn” yielded 3 billion results with every sexual act imaginable (and plenty we could never imagine).

Before we began our research on the meaning of pornography in young women’s lives, we wanted to define it. Our review of the literature found no consistently used definition.

Many social science researchers did not define pornography. From those who did, we drew out several key components: the content and its delivery (for example, whether it was “sexual in nature”), the intention of the producer (whether it was “intended to arouse the viewer”), and the perception of the consumer (whether it was “deemed sexual”).

Sometimes researchers referred to what the general public might think (most people would think it is pornography, “given the context”).

It was notable that there was no mention of consent in any of the definitions we reviewed. Where do we place sexual material that is produced and distributed without consent from the people involved?

We are convinced that we cannot understand pornography without considering consent, and that pornography must be differentiated from sexual abuse. We therefore propose a new definition of pornography:

Material deemed sexual, given the context, that has the primary intention of sexually arousing the consumer and is produced and distributed with the consent of all persons involved.

From sexting to ‘revenge porn’

In 2019, the question “What is pornography?” doesn’t have an easy answer. The advent of smart phones has revolutionised the production and distribution of sexualised videos and images.

When someone uses their phone to send another person an image of their own naked body or body part, this consensual sharing of sexual images is called “sexting”. Smartphone users can also choose to film sexual activities and share the images on websites for others to view.

Virtual reality technology, high-speed video chat streaming, and online gaming are also used to distribute sexual content. If the people involved have the capacity to freely consent (there are many factors that contribute to this, including being over 18) to the production and distribution of images, films, or digital content, and they want this content to be consumed for sexual arousal – we would refer to this as pornography.

Read more: Virtual child pornography could both help and hinder law enforcement

Unlike sexting, “revenge porn” is the distribution or publication on a website of sexual material without the consent of the person depicted. This usually follows the ending of an intimate relationship. The vengeful person publicises the images that were assumed by the subject or sender to be confidential.

Revenge porn websites encourage users to submit nude and sexual photographs of their ex-partners explicitly for revenge and to include the victim’s contact details and links to their social media accounts.

When an adult produces or distributes a sexual image of a child, it’s usually called “child porn” and is a criminal offence because (among other reasons) children cannot legally give consent. Once images have been shared, they have a perpetual life on the net, maintaining the victim’s experience of abuse. As with revenge porn, there is potential for endless damage to the victim.

It is perplexing, therefore, that the terms “revenge porn” and “child porn” tend to be used without differentiating these inherently violent acts from consensual pornography. To describe them this way normalises sexual violence occurring in the digital realm.

Words matter. Disregarding consent by describing acts of non-consensual violence as “pornography” has the effect of minimising the significance of consent.

Read more: AI can now create fake porn, making revenge porn even more complicated

There is, of course, violent sexual material that is produced and distributed with consent from those involved. The violent acts seen in what is known as Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism (BDSM) material are preceded by the actor’s recorded consent.

One can also find online, however, a plethora of violent sexual material with no evidence of consent. It is theoretically possible to discover whether consent was obtained for production and distribution. But we can claim with confidence that so-called “revenge porn” and “child porn” are incidents of non-consensual sexual abuse.

Content that is produced and distributed without consent should be referred to as sexual abuse material, not as pornography. Our opinion is consistent with that of the Australian Government’s Children’s eSafety Commissioner, who has recommended that non-consensual material be referred to using terms such as “online sexual abuse”.

A definition can be a powerful instigator of social change. Considering consent and taking account of this definition amounts to a personal contribution to the prevention of sexual violence. We can do it today.

– ref. We need a new definition of pornography – with consent at the centre – http://theconversation.com/we-need-a-new-definition-of-pornography-with-consent-at-the-centre-111994

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

Terrible tragedies test leaders to the full. Anyone watching from afar must be impressed with the way in which Jacinda Ardern has dealt with the aftermath of the Christchurch horror.

Ardern has kept her shocked population regularly updated, walked the talk in her embrace of the country’s Muslim community, flagged policy changes in relation New Zealand’s gun laws. She’s radiated deep compassion while publicly holding her emotions under control.

Friday’s atrocity would inevitably hit Australians hard, given the two countries’ “family” relationship. But we’ve been dragged much closerto it because the white supremacist perpetrator is an Australian.

On top of that, a federal politician has made appalling and shameful comments.

Senator Fraser Anning, ex-One Nation, who became notorious for using the words “final solution” when urging a popular vote on immigration, in his Friday statement declared Islam “the religious equivalent of fascism”, and said that “just because the followers of this savage belief were not the killers in this instance, does not make them blameless”.

A day later, when he was he was “egged” by a 17-year-old while appearing in Melbourne, Anning knocked the youth to the ground.

Unsurprisingly, some would have liked to see Anning expelled from the Senate for his comments.

The Senate doesn’t have the power to throw him out, but it would be a bad course anyway, setting an unfortunate precedent as well as making him a martyr in the eyes of the extreme right.

The voters will dispatch him soon. Before that, the Senate will denounce him, with government and opposition releasing a bipartisan motion on Sunday for when parliament resumes on April 2 for its final week. The motion censures Anning “for his inflammatory and divisive comments seeking to attribute blame to victims of a horrific crime and to vilify people on the basis of religion”.

It also “calls on all Australians to stand against hate and to publicly, and always, condemn actions and comments designed to incite fear and distrust”.

“Standing against hate” requires robust leadership from the politicians.

Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten have done what they should, and what you’d expect, in the immediate wake of the NZ attack.

Morrison’s language was direct and accurate, describing the assailant as “an extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist”.

The Prime Minister and Opposition leader, and other leading politicians attended gatherings of the Muslim community.

Morrison signalled that the big internet companies need to act, after the gunman’s live streaming took time to be removed.

But is this enough? The NZ attack has opened debate about extremism and what is likely to give or deny it succour in this country.

The countering of extremism of all sorts demands action on many fronts. One of them goes to political culture – that politicians should eschew the low road that self-interest too often leads them to take. The same, incidentally, should go for those in the media.

We must put in a reality check here: history tells us it is impossible to guard absolutely against attacks from fanatics of whatever variety.

And we have to recognise also that in this battle the internet, for all its virtues, is a formidable enemy. It fertilises the spread of extremist ideologies of all brands. It both enables and encourages unbridled outpourings of hate.

Those with extreme views and seeking attention have a communication road and reach inconceivable when there was little more than the mainstream media, with its filters.

The internet is the convenient medium but it’s today’s political climate that is providing the environment for intolerant views to be given wider expression and greater legitimacy.

The culture wars and identity politics, favoured by right and left respectively, have sliced and diced the community, fracturing it rather than uniting it.

They rewrite the past, define the present, and poison the future.

The resulting conflicts and divisions are frequently marked by a degree of intensity and absolutism that carries risks for the public good.

In recent years politicians and commentators on the right have become preoccupied with what they see as restrictions on free speech.

But the commitment to “free speech”, admirable in itself, becomes dangerous when it morphs into a cover for hate speech or the targeting of minorities.

The Coalition government has itself been torn on the issue, as shown by its internal tensions over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Now we have its chopping and changing on an entry visa for provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos for a speaking tour.

Despite the Home Affairs department telling Yiannopoulos he might not pass the character test, Immigration Minister David Coleman, granted him the visa.

But following Yiannopoulos posting an offensive comment about the NZ attack, Coleman announced at the weekend he would not be allowed to come.

An increasingly polarised media has seen the right wing commentariat become more strident and minor political players from the far right gain inflated platforms.

Immigration has always been a sensitive issue and successive waves of migrants have had their adjustment challenges. But immigration has become infused with ideology, and often a lightning rod for cultural complaint and bigotry, open or thinly disguised.

Discussion of immigration these days focuses minimally on its nation-building side, and frequently homes in on Muslims, stoking fears both of and in that community.

Among the mainstream right of politics, fuelling them-versus-us sentiments has been widely used as a political tactic.

This has been seen in the government’s blatant exaggeration of the consequences that could flow from the legislation passed by parliament to facilitate medical transfers from Manus and Nauru, and in its targeting of Labor’s plans to boost the refugee intake.

Earlier there was Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s extraordinary claim that Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence”.

The political bile flows more freely when shock jocks get together with their political favourites, a regular feature of the airways today.

Australia has always had a particularly robust brand of adversarial politics but it has reached the stage where it is in desperate need of some tempering and self-discipline from politicians.

The desirable immigration level, the appropriate size of the refugee intake, and the like are legitimate matters for vigorous debate. But politicians (and media) should conduct those debates much more responsibly than at present if they are serious about “standing against hate”.

A multicultural society will always require careful curation. It needs constant vigilance, general restraint and the avoidance of inflammatory language and claims for short-term political gain.

It’s no good being inclusive one day and shrill and politically expedient on another.

– ref. View from The Hill: A truly inclusive society requires political restraint – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-a-truly-inclusive-society-requires-political-restraint-113719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Clune, Honorary Associate, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

On Saturday, March 23, the people of New South Wales will head to the ballot boxes for a state election. It is looking increasingly close, with polls showing government and opposition neck and neck on about 50% of the two-party preferred vote. This is a decline in the Coalition vote of 4% compared to the 2015 election.

The current campaign is reminiscent of a 1950s “I’ll see you and raise you” one. Government and opposition are engaged in an auction to outbid each other in the amounts committed to schools, hospitals, transport and other basic services. The campaign is one of the quietest in a long time, with little excitement about the respective leaders and no major clash of visions for the future.

Read more: Mark Latham in the upper house? A Coalition minority government? The NSW election is nearly upon us and it’s going to be a wild ride

Mike Baird’s victory in 2015 laid the foundation for this. The then Coalition leader won a mandate to privatise the state’s electricity network, although sacrificing seats his successor would be glad to have in reserve. The mountains of money produced by this and other privatisations have allowed Premier Gladys Berejiklian to go to the election with a massive war chest.

In addition, the NSW economy is in good shape, performing well compared to most other states. The budget is in surplus and predicted to remain there. Net debt is negative. Unemployment is at a record low.

The Coalition government has a large array of infrastructure projects in progress, including the Westconnex and Northconnex motorways, Sydney Metro – the largest public transport project in Australia – and the CBD and South East light rail. The amount committed for infrastructure over the next four years is just under A$90 billion.

Berejiklian’s pitch is: don’t jeopardise all this by electing Labor. She is keen to remind the electorate of the factional bloodletting, policy paralysis and corruption that marked the final years of the last ALP government in NSW. The release during the campaign of Ian Macdonald, another ex-ALP minister, after his conviction was quashed, assisted the government by putting their misdeeds back on the front pages.

The Coalition also has some significant problems. Overdevelopment is devastating many Sydney suburbs. Residents angry at the disruption to their lives are likely to turn against the Liberals. The premier will not be presiding at many opening ceremonies for infrastructure projects before the election. More apparent are cost over-runs, delays and short-term inconvenience.

The general unpopularity of the federal Coalition government is a handicap for its NSW counterpart. In rural NSW, a belief that the Nationals have neglected voters’ interests could cost the government seats.

Read more: Low-key NSW election likely to reveal a city-country divide

Opposition Leader Michael Daley struggled at first to gain momentum and attention. His campaign ignited three weeks out from polling day when he took on influential radio commentator Alan Jones over the Sydney stadiums issue. This has been a festering sore for the government since November 2017, when Berejiklian announced that both Allianz Stadium at Moore Park and ANZ Stadium at Homebush would be simultaneously demolished and rebuilt at an estimated cost of A$2.5 billion.

The public outcry at what was seen as wasteful expense was so great that she quickly backed off. The rebuilding of Allianz would proceed, but ANZ would now be renovated, saving A$1 billion.

Labor quickly seized on the issue, opposing the demolition of Allianz and coining the effective slogan of “schools and hospitals before Sydney stadiums”.

Jones is a member of the prestigious Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, which controls Allianz and has lobbied strongly for its rebuilding. Daley attacked Jones and promised to sack him and most members of the trust.

Daley instantly became the people’s politician, unafraid to stand up to a powerful broadcaster and an elite board. He put the stadium issue back at the centre of the campaign. It crystallised the perception that the government is more concerned about developers and big business than the community.

But does Daley have anything more positive to offer? There is some policy differentiation.

Labor has promised there will be no more privatisations and will re-regulate the electricity industry. Labor also has stronger policies on the environment and climate change than the Coalition. It will be more generous to the public sector. But the main thrust of Daley’s campaign is: we will give you more of the same but do it better.

The government has 52 of the 93 seats in the Legislative Assembly. The opposition holds 34. A uniform swing of nearly 9%, just under what it achieved at the last election, would be needed for Labor to gain a majority in its own right.

A feature of this poll is the difference between Sydney and the bush. In 2015, Labor picked up most of the low-hanging fruit in Sydney and only a handful of seats are in play this time. In rural and regional NSW, the Nationals face a strong challenge from independents and minor parties.

If the government loses six seats, it will be in a minority. After appointing a speaker, its numbers would drop to 45. The crossbench would be in a crucial position.

Currently, there are seven crossbench MPs in the lower house: three Greens, a Shooter and three independents (Alex Greenwich, Joe McGirr and Greg Piper). The Greens have already indicated they would support the Coalition. Greenwich is on the left and has close links with his predecessor, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. The other three are more conservatively inclined. The election of additional crossbenchers would add to the unpredictability.

Daley is hoping the electorate has forgotten about Obeid and that accumulated dissatisfaction with the government will translate into a victory for him. The result hinges on whether voters have lost faith in the Coalition to the extent that they are prepared to trust Labor again.

– ref. NSW election neck and neck as voters face a 1950s-style ‘I’ll see you and raise you’ campaign – http://theconversation.com/nsw-election-neck-and-neck-as-voters-face-a-1950s-style-ill-see-you-and-raise-you-campaign-113472

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

When lives are tragically cut short, it is generally easier to explain the “how” than the “why”. This dark reality is all the more felt when tragedy comes at the hands of murderous intent. Explaining how 49 people came to be killed, and almost as many badly injured, in Christchurch’s double massacre of Muslims at prayer is heartbreaking but relatively straightforward.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

As with so many mass murders in recent years, the use of an assault rifle, the ubiquitous AR15, oxymoronically referred to as “the civilian M-16”, explains how one cowardly killer could be so lethal.

It was much the same in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando three years ago, when one gunman shot dead 49 people in a crowded space and, though the motive appears very different, the same sort of military instrument of death lies behind the 58 deaths in Las Vegas a year later. An AR15 was used to shoot dead 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue last October and a similar weapon was used to kill six people in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.

It is a credit to the peaceful nature of New Zealand society that, despite the open availability of weapons like the AR15, the last time there was a mass shooting was in 1997. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern rightly identified reform of gun laws as one of the immediate outcomes required in response to this tragedy.

But lax gun laws are arguably the only area in which blame can be laid in New Zealand. Ardern, together with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was also right to refer to this barbaric act of cold-blooded murder of people in prayer as right wing extremist terrorism driven by Islamophobic hatred.

State and federal police in Australia have long warned that, next to the immediate threat posed by Salafi jihadi terrorism, they are most concerned about the steady rise of right-wing extremism. There has been some comfort in the recognition that the most active right wing extremist groups, and there are many, are disorganised, poorly led, and attract but small crowds.

On the face of it, then, right wing extremism in Australia is nowhere near as serious as the neo-Nazi movements of Europe or the various permutations of white supremacy and toxic nationalism that bedevil American politics. In America, it is conservatively estimated that there were 50 deaths due to terrorist attacks in 2018, almost all linked to right-wing extremism.

In 2017, it is calculated that there were 950 attacks on Muslims and mosques in Germany alone. Many of last year’s attacks in America involved a common right wing extremist hatred of Islam, and a targeting of Muslims, joining a long-standing enmity towards Jews.

Almost all recent terrorist attacks have been lone-actor attacks. They are notoriously difficult to predict. Whether inspired by Salafi jihadi Islamist extremism or right wing extremism, lone-actor attacks commonly feature individuals fixated on the deluded dream of going from “zero to hero”.

Read more: Comic explainer: what is lone-actor terrorism?

One of the main reasons authorities struggle with identifying right wing extremist “nobodies” who post online, before they turn to violence, is that it’s difficult to pick up a clear signal in the noise of a national discourse increasingly dominated by exactly the same narrative elements of mistrust, anxiety, and a blaming of the other.

In Australia, as in Europe and America, mainstream politicians and mainstream media commentators have increasingly toyed with extremist ideas in the pursuit of popularity. Many have openly brandished outrageous ideas that in previous years would have been unsayable in mainstream political discourse or commentary.

Donald Trump can be deservedly singled out for making the unspeakable the new normal in mainstream right wing politics, but he is hardly alone in this. And sadly, for all of the relative civility and stability of Australian politics, we too have now come to normalise the toxic politics of fear.

No-one put it better than The Project host Waleed Aly in saying that Friday’s terrorist attacks, although profoundly disturbing, did not come as a shocking surprise. Anyone who has been paying attention and who really cares about the well-being and security of Australian society has observed the steady growth of right wing extremist and right supremacist ideas in general, and Islamophobia particular.

They have seen the numerous attacks on Muslims and Jews at prayer and worried about the day when the murderous violence that has plagued the northern hemisphere will visit the southern hemisphere. But more than that, they have worried about the singling-out of migrants, and in particular asylum seekers, African youth and Muslims as pawns to be played with in the cynical politics of fear.

Scott Morrison is right to say these problems have been with us for many years. But he would do better to point out that our downward trajectory sharply accelerated after John Howard’s “dark victory” of 2001. The unwinnable election was won on the back of the arrival of asylum seekers on the MV Tampa in August followed by the September 11 attacks, and at the price of John Howard and the Liberal party embracing the white supremacist extremist politics of Pauline Hanson.

Both major parties, it must be said, succumbed to the lure of giving focus groups and pollsters the tough language and inhumane policies the public appeared to demand and reward. We are now beginning to see the true price that we have paid with the demonising of those arriving by boat seeking asylum, or looking too dark-skinned, or appearing too religious.

The result has been such a cacophony of hateful rhetoric that it has been hard for those tasked with spotting the emergence of violent extremism to separate it from all the background noise of extremism.

There are, of course lessons to be learned. Authorities need to do better. We can begin with a national database of hate crimes, with standard definitions and robust data collection. Clearly, we need to pay attention to hateful extremism if we are to prevent violent extremism.

But ultimately, we need to address the permissive political environment that allows such hateful extremism to be promulgated so openly. The onus is on commentators and political leaders alike. They cannot change the past, but they will determine the future.

– ref. Christchurch attacks are a stark warning of toxic political environment that allows hate to flourish – http://theconversation.com/christchurch-attacks-are-a-stark-warning-of-toxic-political-environment-that-allows-hate-to-flourish-113662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

In the wake of comments about the Christchurch massacre, members of the public have raised the question of whether a senator can be expelled from the Senate for making offensive statements.

It is now well known that members of parliament can have their seat vacated in the parliament due to their disqualification under section 44 of the Constitution for reasons including dual citizenship, bankruptcy, holding certain government offices or being convicted of offences punishable by imprisonment for one year or longer.

But there is no ground of disqualification for behaviour that brings a House of Parliament into disrepute. This was something left to the house to deal with by way of expulsion.

Read more: Dual citizenship debacle claims five more MPs – and sounds a stern warning for future parliamentarians

What powers do the houses have to expel?

Section 49 of the Commonwealth Constitution provides that until the Commonwealth parliament declares the powers, privileges and immunities of its houses, they shall be those the British House of Commons had at the time of federation (1901).

The House of Commons then had, and continues to have, the power to expel its members. The power was rarely exercised, but was most commonly used when a member was found to have committed a criminal offence or contempt of parliament. Because of the application of section 49 of the Constitution, such a power was also initially conferred upon both houses of the Australian parliament.

The House of Representatives exercised that power in 1920 when it expelled a member of the Labor opposition, Hugh Mahon. He had given a speech at a public meeting that criticised the actions of the British in Ireland and expressed support for an Australian republic.

Prime Minister Billy Hughes (whom Mahon had previously voted to expel from the Labor Party over conscription in 1916), moved to expel Mahon from the House of Representatives on November 11 – a dangerous date for dismissals. He accused Mahon of having made “seditious and disloyal utterances” that were “inconsistent with his oath of allegiance”. The opposition objected, arguing that no action should be taken unless Mahon was tried and convicted by the courts. Mahon was expelled by a vote taken on party lines.

In 2016, a private member’s motion was moved to recognise that his expulsion was unjust and a misuse of the power then invested in the house.

The power of the houses to expel members, as granted by section 49, was subject to the Commonwealth parliament declaring what the powers, privileges and immunities of the houses shall be. This occurred with the enactment of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987.

It was enacted as a result of an inquiry by a parliamentary committee, which pointed out the potential for this power to be abused and that as a matter of democratic principle, it was up to voters to decide the composition of the parliament. This is reinforced by sections seven and 24 of the Constitution, which say that the houses of parliament are to be “directly chosen by the people”.

As a consequence, the power to expel was removed from the houses. Section 8 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 says:

A House does not have power to expel a member from membership of a House.

This means that currently neither house of the Commonwealth parliament has the power to expel one of its members.

Could the position be changed?

Just as the parliament had the legislative power to limit the powers and privileges of its houses, it could legislate to amend or repeal section eight so that a house could, in future, expel one of its members, either on any ground or for limited reasons.

Whether or not this is wise remains doubtful. The reasons given by the parliamentary committee for the removal of this power remain strong. The power to expel is vulnerable to misuse when one political party holds a majority in the house. Equally, there is a good democratic argument that such matters should be left to the voters at election time.

However, expulsion is still an option in other Australian parliaments, such as the NSW parliament. It’s used in circumstances where the member is judged guilty of conduct unworthy of a member of parliament and where the continuing service of the member is likely to bring the house into disrepute.

Read more: Why a government would be mad to advise the refusal of royal assent to a bill passed against its will

It is commonly the case, though, that a finding of illegality, dishonesty or corruption is first made by a court, a royal commission or the Independent Commission Against Corruption before action to expel is taken. The prospect of expulsion is almost always enough to cause the member to resign without expulsion formally occurring. So, actual cases of expulsion remain extremely rare.

Are there any other remedies to deal with objectionable behaviour?

The houses retain powers to suspend members for offences against the house, such as disorderly conduct. But it is doubtful that a house retains powers of suspension in relation to conduct that does not amount to a breach of standing orders or an “offence against the house”. Suspension may therefore not be available in relation to statements made outside the house that do not affect its proceedings.

Instead, the house may choose to censure such comments by way of a formal motion. Such motions are more commonly moved against ministers in relation to government failings. A censure motion is regarded as a serious form of rebuke, but it does not give rise to any further kind of punishment such as a fine or suspension.

The primary remedy for dealing with unacceptable behaviour remains at the ballot box. This is a pertinent reminder to all voters of the importance of being vigilant in the casting of their vote to ensure the people they elect to high office are worthy of fulfilling it.

– ref. Can a senator be expelled from the federal parliament for offensive statements? – http://theconversation.com/can-a-senator-be-expelled-from-the-federal-parliament-for-offensive-statements-113711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Croucher, Professor and Head of School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey University

As an immigrant to New Zealand, I am saddened and outraged by the events in Christchurch. The apparent innocence of New Zealand has been stripped away by acts of cowardice and evil.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

Police remain on high alert and authorities are still responding to events following the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch that took the lives of 49 people and seriously injured many more. Three people have been arrested, and one, an Australian living in New Zealand sporadically, has appeared in court today on murder charges.

My research focuses on how members of a majority perceive a growing immigrant population, and what we can all do to keep fear and hatred in check.

Migrants target of hate

The alleged gunman (whom the Conversation has chose not to name) is a self-identified white supremacist. Before the attacks he posted an 87-page manifesto online. In his manifesto and social media accounts, he refers to the rise of Islam, and to towns and cities being shamed and ruined by migrants.

He posts photos of ammunition, retweets alt-right references and praises other white supremacists. The manifesto includes references to “white genocide,” which is likely a reference to a conspiracy theory embraced by the alt-right and white supremacists that “non-white” migration dilutes white nations.

The gunman’s motivations seem to echo those of other white supremacists who have committed similar atrocities: the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, the Charlottesville attacker, the Charleston church shooter, and attackers in Sweden, Quebec and Norway.

In each of these cases, the attackers voiced hatred toward minorities or immigrants and expressed a belief that their way of life, the “white” way, was being destroyed by these groups who were infiltrating their societies.

Over the past decade, my team has conducted research in India, France, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, analysing how members of the dominant group perceive minorities and immigrant groups. The research has shown that many dominant group members, often white Christians in the countries studied, express fear of immigrants in their nations. In particular, respondents have voiced fear of immigrants changing their cultural, political, and economic way of life.

Read more: Hearing hate speech primes your brain for hateful actions

Combating fears to reduce hate

Normally such fears are benign and lead only to misunderstanding or lack of interaction. But as we have seen too often, they can lead to prejudice, hatred and much worse.

Recently, such fears have become more visceral with the proliferation of social media platforms. With the use of social media, individuals can easily find others who share their feelings, and therefore not feel alone. The ability to find a community that shares one’s feelings provides a sense of security and validates ones fears and feelings of hate.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

In our increasingly connected world, it’s essential we take steps to combat these fears to reduce the chances of such atrocities happening in the future. First, how families talk about minorities and immigrants is critical. In work that we conducted in Finland, we found prejudicial opinions of Finns toward Russian immigrants are largely shaped during adolescence. It’s incumbent upon parents to be role models for their children and adolescents and to promote tolerance and mutual respect early.

Second, in an increasingly computer-mediated world, it is our shared responsibility to challenge racist and hateful cyber messages. If you see a YouTube clip that you deem abusive or offensive, report it.

Third, the more contact we have with each other and learn about one another, the less likely we are to fear one another. This may sound trite, but the more we know about other groups, the more likely we are to pass that information onto one another and improve overall social cohesion. In turn, we are better able to identify and challenge those bent on dividing society. It is our collective responsibility as diverse societies to recognise our diversity and to face the psychology of hate that would attack our home and us.

– ref. The psychology of fear and hate, and what each of us can do to stop it – http://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-fear-and-hate-and-what-each-of-us-can-do-to-stop-it-113710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Battersby, Police Teaching Fellow, Massey University

My research focuses on terrorism in or affecting New Zealand. Until yesterday, my phone didn’t ring that often because few were interested in anything I had to say. Since yesterday, it has not stopped.

There is no understating the horrific nature of the Christchurch tragedy. Forty nine people have been killed, and more than 40 are being treated for injuries at Christchurch hospital.

Three people have been arrested in relation to the mosque shootings. One Australian citizen has appeared in court today charged with murder.

New Zealanders will need to come to terms with this tragedy, vent emotions and frustrations, and they will want to know why this could not be stopped. These are valid questions.

New Zealand is a small country, geographically distant from the rest of the world. It has been happy in the assumption that the violent extremism that has showed itself on multiple occasions on five continents over the last 20 years had never happened here. Many New Zealanders believed that because it hadn’t, it couldn’t.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

Geographic isolation no protection

There was a definite realisation by those in the security sector that this assumption was not safe. The spread of extremism through social media simply obliterates geographical distance and there is really nothing to prevent overseas events being replicated here.

The emphasis was on monitoring and detecting extremism – in whatever form it took. The few arrests for possession and distribution of ISIS related propaganda exhibit that fact. It was not confined – as some commentators have suggested – to just those engaging with violent jihadism.

Another key problem is hindsight. Now that the culmination of a sequence of activities has become so painfully clear, it will be inevitable that several points will be picked out that security sector operators perhaps did see, or could have seen. A retrospective case will be made that therefore they should have seen this coming.

But any sign there was, would have occurred in the context of the day before yesterday. Trying to convince the average New Zealander that anything like this could ever happen here would have been no easy endeavour.

Review of gun and terrorism laws

There will be questions over the resourcing and powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and rightfully so. But we must be mature and evidence-based in the conclusions we take from all this.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced a review of gun laws. New Zealand doesn’t have a gun register, but there are an estimated 1.3 million legally owned firearms, with illegal firearms a significant problem.

It is not just the law that needs a review. Gun control, monitoring and enforcement will need to be tightened, but changes need to be considered calmly and focus on the individuals that are not likely to abide by any new law. The vast majority of licensed gun owners are not a problem, but they will need to accept that military-style automatic weapons will likely be banned and a national register will become a reality.

New Zealand’s Terrorism Suppression Act was found wanting in 2007, following the “Urewera raids”. Police relied on the act to spy on and arrest activists who allegedly trained to use semi-automatic weapons in military-style camps in the Urewera forest. Then Solicitor-General David Collins QC described the act as “incoherent and unworkable”. Nothing meaningful has been done with it since.

Social media to blame

New Zealand is a democratic country in which freedom of expression, conscience, religious freedom and free speech are valued. Any legislative change will need to impinge on these as little as possible, but people need to be safe here.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

Regardless of how big and well-resourced security agencies are, overseas experience has shown that individual actors, or small tightly integrated groups can slip through any security filter. It is simply impossible to monitor people’s thoughts, intentions, sayings and social media accounts so closely that every signal that someone might be planning to carry out an attack is seen.

Australian media suggestions of an “intelligence failure” are useful to a point. But the fact that at least one of the Christchurch offenders left Australia a short time ago and was not on any watch-list of concern in Australia, where police and intelligence powers are much more comprehensive, demonstrates this is a very difficult failure to guard against.

This attack was enabled by, and certainly comprised a strong element of, social media. Social media has been wilfully and readily adopted across modern societies. This has happened without much thought being given to its usefulness to organised criminals or extremists to spread their toxic views, or its ready use as a means of sourcing an audience for terror attacks.

As a society perhaps we should take pause to consider the broader implications before rushing to adopt every new piece of communications technology. It’s all very well to ask the security sector what could they have done to stop this attack, when we could ask ourselves the same – what could we have done?

– ref. Why overhauling NZ’s gun and terrorism laws alone can’t stop terrorist attacks – http://theconversation.com/why-overhauling-nzs-gun-and-terrorism-laws-alone-cant-stop-terrorist-attacks-113706

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Spoonley, Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University

Tonight, New Zealand police continue to respond to events following shootings at two mosques in central Christchurch. The national security threat level has been lifted to high. Mosques across New Zealand have been closed and police are asking people to refrain from visiting.

So far, 49 people have been killed. According to media reports, 41 people were fatally shot at the Masjid Al Noor mosque on Deans Avenue; others died at a second mosque nearby.

Four people, three men and a woman, have been taken into custody in connection with the shootings. One man in his late 20s has been charged with murder.

In the hours after the attacks, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern made it clear this was a terrorist attack of “extraordinary and unprecedented violence” that had no place in New Zealand.

She said extremist views were not welcome and contrary to New Zealand values, and did not reflect New Zealand as a nation.

It is one of New Zealand’s darkest days. Many of the people affected by this act of extreme violence will be from our refugee and migrant communities. New Zealand is their home. They are us.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

She is right. Public opinion surveys such as the Asia New Zealand Foundation annual surveys of attitudes tend to show that a majority of New Zealanders are in favour of diversity and see immigration, in this case from Asia, as providing various benefits for the country.

But extremist politics, including the extreme nationalist and white supremacist politics that appear to be at the core of this attack on Muslims, have been part of our community for a long time.

The scene of the mass shooting, Masjid Al Noor mosque on Deans Avenue, in Christchurch. AAP/Martin Hunter, CC BY-SA

History of white supremacy

I completed research in the UK on the National Front and British National Party in the late 1970s. When I returned to New Zealand, I was told explicitly, including by authorities that were charged with monitoring extremism, that we did not have similar groups here. But it did not take me long to discover quite the opposite.

Through the 1980s, I looked at more than 70 local groups that met the definition of being extreme right wing. The city that hosted many of these groups was Christchurch.

They were a mixture of skinhead, neo-nazi and extreme nationalist groups. Some were traditional in their ideology, with a strong underpinning of anti-Semitism and a belief in the supremacy of the “British race”. Others inverted the arguments of Māori nationalism to argue for separatism to keep the “white race pure”.

And yes, there was violence. The 1989 shooting of an innocent bystander, Wayne Motz, in Christchurch by a skinhead who then walked to a local police kiosk and shot himself. The pictures of the internment showed his friends giving nazi salutes. In a separate incident, a Korean backpacker and a gay man were killed for ideological reasons.

Things have changed. The 1990s provided the internet and then social media. And events such as the September 11 terror attacks shifted the focus – anti-Semitism was now supplemented by Islamaphobia.

Hate speeech online

The earthquakes and subsequent rebuild have significantly transformed the ethnic demography of Christchurch and made it much more multicultural – and more positive about that diversity. It is ironic that the this terrorism should take place in this city, despite its history of earlier far right extremism.

We tend not to think too much about the presence of racist and white supremacist groups, until there is some public incident like the desecration of Jewish graves or a march of black-shirted men (they are mostly men) asserting their “right to be white”. Perhaps, we are comfortable in thinking, as the prime minister has said, they are not part of our nation.

Last year, as part of a project to look at hate speech, I looked at what some New Zealanders were saying online. It did not take long to discover the presence of hateful and anti-Muslim comments. It would be wrong to characterise these views and comments as widespread, but New Zealand was certainly not exempt from Islamaphobia.

Every so often, it surfaced, such as in the attack on a Muslim woman in a Huntly carpark.

Families outside following a shooting at mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. AAP/Martin Hunter, CC BY-SA

An end to collective innocence

It became even more obvious during 2018. The Canadian YouTuber, Stefan Molyneux, sparked a public debate (along with Lauren Southern) about his right to free speech. Much of the public comment seemed to either overlook or condone his extreme views on what he regards as the threat posed by Islam.

And then there was the public protest in favour of free speech that occurred at the same time, and the signs warning us about the arrival of Sharia law or “Free Tommy” signs. The latter refers to Tommy Robinson, a long-time activist (cf English Defence League leader) who was sentenced to prison – and then released on appeal – for contempt of court, essentially by targeting Muslims before the courts.

There is plenty of evidence of local Islamophobic views, especially online. There are, and have been for a long time, individuals and groups who hold white supremacist and views. They tend to threaten violence; seldom have they acted on those views. There is also a naivety amongst New Zealanders, including the media, about the need to be tolerant towards the intolerant.

There is not necessarily a direct causation between the presence of Islamophobia and what has happened in Christchurch. But this attack must end our collective innocence.

No matter the size of these extremist communities, they always represent a threat to our collective well-being. Social cohesion and mutual respect need to be asserted and continually worked on.

– ref. Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism – http://theconversation.com/christchurch-mosque-shootings-must-end-new-zealands-innocence-about-right-wing-terrorism-113655

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colleen Murrell, Associate Professor, Journalism, Swinburne University of Technology

Like so many times before with acts of mass violence in different parts of the world, news of shootings at two Christchurch mosques on Friday instantly ricocheted around the world via social media.

When these incidents occur, online activity follows a predictable pattern as journalists and others try to learn the name of the perpetrator and any reason behind the killings.

This time they did not have to wait long. In an appalling example of the latest technology, the gunman reportedly livestreamed his killings on Facebook. According to reports, the footage apparently showed a man moving through the interior of a mosque and shooting at his victims indiscriminately.

Amplifying the spread of this kind of material can be harmful.

Read more: Since Boston bombing, terrorists are using new social media to inspire potential attackers

Mainstream media outlets posted raw footage from gunman

The video was later taken down but not before many had called out the social media company. The ABC’s online technology reporter, Ariel Bogle, blamed the platforms for allowing the video to be shared.

ABC investigative reporter Sophie McNeil asked people on Twitter not to share the video, since the perpetrator clearly wanted it to be widely disseminated. New Zealand police similarly urged people not to share the link and said they were working to have the footage removed.

Following a spate of killings in France in 2016, French mainstream media proprietors decided to adopt a policy of not recycling pictures of atrocities.

The editor of Le Monde, Jérôme Fenoglio, said:

Following the attack in Nice, we will no longer publish photographs of the perpetrators of killings, to avoid possible effects of posthumous glorification.

Today, information about the name of the Christchurch gunman, his photograph and his Twitter account, were easy to find. Later, it was possible to see that his Twitter account had been suspended. On Facebook, it was easy to source pictures, and even a selfie, that the alleged perpetrator had shared on social media before entering the mosque.

But it was not just social media that shared the pictures. Six minutes of raw video was posted by news.com.au, which, after a warning at the front of the clip, showed video from the gunman’s helmet camera as he drove through the streets on his way to the mosque.

Read more: Mainstream media outlets are dropping the ball with terrorism coverage

The risks of sharing information about terrorism

Sharing this material can be highly problematic. In some past incidences of terrorism and hate crime, pictures of the wrong people have been published around the world on social and in mainstream media.

After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the wrong man was fingered as a culprit by a crowd-sourced detective hunt on various social media sites.

There is also the real fear that publishing such material could lead to copycat crimes. Along with the photographs and 17 minutes of film, the alleged perpetrator has penned a 73-page manifesto, in which he describes himself as “just a regular white man”.

Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 69 people on the island of Utøya in 2011, took a similar approach to justifying his acts. Before his killing spree, Breivik wrote a 1,518 page manifesto called “2083: A European Declaration of Independence”.

Read more: Four ways social media companies and security agencies can tackle terrorism

The public’s right to know

Those who believe in media freedom and the public’s right to know are likely to complain if information and pictures are not available in full view on the internet. Conspiracies fester when people believe they are not being told the truth.

Instant global access to news can also pose problems to subsequent trials of perpetrators, as was shown in the recent case involving Cardinal George Pell.

While some large media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, are under increasing pressure to clean up their acts in terms of publishing hate crime material, it is nigh on impossible to stop the material popping up in multiple places elsewhere.

Members of the public, and some media organisations, will not stop speculating, playing detective or “rubber necking” at horror, despite what well-meaning social media citizens may desire. For the media, it’s all about clicks, and unfortunately horror drives clicks.

– ref. Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream – http://theconversation.com/why-news-outlets-should-think-twice-about-republishing-the-new-zealand-mosque-shooters-livestream-113651