Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Fellow, Bond University

In September, the New York Times revealed that one of the world’s top cancer specialists had quietly received millions of dollars from drug and other companies. And what’s more, he’d failed to disclose the payments in many of his high-profile medical journal articles.

A few months before that, a study found that many experts who write medical textbooks received company payments, but again, their readers didn’t know about it.

Today our Australian study of the doctors who write influential clinical guidelines has uncovered a similar problem. At least one in five of them have had a financial relationship with a drug company that was not disclosed in the guidelines.

This is a huge concern because guidelines can have big impacts on the sort of care you receive from a doctor, and on which drugs they prescribe. And receiving benefits like free lunches or consulting fees from companies may cause bias.

Only last month a massive research investigation in the United States found a link between marketing payments to doctors, and local deaths from opioids.

Read more: Drug companies are buying doctors – for as little as a $16 meal

Narrowing the search

Our research team from Bond and Sydney universities also included officials from the National Health and Medical Research Council, which is currently trying to improve the quality of Australian guidelines for doctors.

The team identified a random sample of guidelines, drawn from a comprehensive set, which covered ten major disease areas, including heart disease and mental health.

We then looked at what was disclosed in each guideline about any relationships between guideline authors and drug companies. If an author did not have any information, we searched through all the articles that author had published in the scientific literature in the previous five years.

We were specifically looking to see if a guideline author had any links with a drug company which sold products in the disease area that the author’s guideline covered.

What we found

The study, published today in BMJ Open, found at least one in five of all guideline writers had a potentially relevant tie to a drug company, which was not disclosed in the guideline. And two-thirds of all the guidelines had at least one author with a tie that wasn’t disclosed.

We also found this lack of transparency may be worse in certain disease areas, including diabetes and heart disease.

This raises very serious questions about hidden bias and the trustworthiness of these guidelines – which have such an impact on how our doctors make decisions.

Clinical guidelines can have big impacts on the sort of care you receive from a doctor, and on which drugs they prescribe. New_World/Shutterstock

As part of the analysis we compared guidelines which had been funded and developed by governments, as opposed to say specialist groups or medical foundations.

We found guidelines funded and developed by state, federal or territory governments had much lower rates of authors not disclosing their drug company links.

Other similar studies have looked at guidelines like this, but to our knowledge today’s is the biggest and broadest, and the first ever in Australia.

More transparency and greater independence

Despite what you might hear, drug company wining and dining of doctors and other health professionals like pharmacists and nurses, is not a thing a past. There are perhaps 25,000 events or more every year in Australia where drug companies provide free hospitality.

At the same time many senior specialists, like the ones who write guidelines, continue to receive all manner of company benefits as consultants, speakers or sponsored researchers.

Read more: Who’s paying for lunch? Here’s exactly how drug companies wine and dine our doctors

But there is widespread concern about these links, and a growing push for much greater transparency in medicine. The United States has the Sunshine Act, which forces disclosure of all company payments to all doctors.

Australia’s rules have changed since the time our study covers, and some payments to individual doctors are now routinely disclosed. But our rules have huge loopholes and are much weaker than the Sunshine Act, a reform that is well overdue in Australia.

While disclosure and transparency are needed, they don’t solve the problem of bias that flows from close financial relationships between doctors and drug companies.

For such influential things as guidelines – which can impact the care of millions of people – it may be best to have writers totally free of ties to industry. And this is exactly what a new policy from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council is recommending.

The new policy, launched just a few months ago, is very clear in its preference:

It is strongly encouraged that your guideline development group will be composed of members with no financial or other links to relevant industry groups.

Let’s wait and see who is listening.

– ref. Influential doctors aren’t disclosing their drug company ties – http://theconversation.com/influential-doctors-arent-disclosing-their-drug-company-ties-110888

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

The failure of the Opal Tower building in Sydney has highlighted the poor quality of speculatively built multi-unit housing in Australia. The tower’s 392 apartments were evacuated on Christmas Eve when residents heard loud cracks and defects were found. So far, the only reaction from government has been a knee-jerk promise to crack down on shonky building certifiers (that’s you Matt Kean, minister for innovation and better regulation in New South Wales). Unfortunately, there is no evidence this will make any difference.

Read more: There are lessons to be drawn from the cracks that appeared in Sydney’s Opal Tower, but they extend beyond building certification

An Opal Tower apartment with ceiling and flooring removed and propping equipment installed. AAP/Supplied

Planning policies embraced by the NSW and Victorian governments mean a greater percentage of new housing is being constructed in tall multi-unit developments than ever before, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.

Between 50% and 80% of multi-unit buildings have defects serious enough to be the subject of strata committee involvement. Possibly close to 100% have significant defects at completion. Most of the problems are waterproofing issues (which may not be evident for years), malfunctioning services or a lack of proper compliance with fire codes and standards.

We can only fix this problem by changing the culture of the residential building industry.

Read more: The big lesson from Opal Tower is that badly built apartments aren’t only an issue for residents

Ten steps governments can take

We don’t need another royal commission. Governments could implement all of the suggestions below using their existing powers.

1) Increase density by permitting more subdivisions on existing housing blocks rather than building tall buildings.

Two Torrens title townhouses can be built on a normal single-house quarter-acre block. Low-scale buildings will still suffer from defects, but are less problematic to build, inspect and repair than tall buildings and use simpler technology.

2) In the short term, provide occupation certificates to new residential buildings taller than three storeys only if they comply with an enhanced protocol of regulations and oversight.

State government would implement this, with a focus on waterproofing and fire performance.

A suitable code, standards and protocols could be developed in a few weeks. The necessary people to provide independent oversight could be drawn from qualified architects, builders and engineers who are able to pass a probing exam. They would be independent of the design and construction team. The government would fix their fees.

3) Develop a program to enhance the standards for residential building standards in the National Construction Code (NCC).

The current NCC codes for Class 2 buildings (home units) favour innovation and cost reduction over consumer protection. This is the wrong way around for housing. Section F, which covers health and amenity (including waterproofing), is weak and must be strengthened.

4) A voluntary quality scheme to star-rate all apartments, similar to ANCAP (Australasia New Car Assessment Program), might work with industry support.

The minimum standard permissible would comply with the enhanced standards. The NSW Building and Construction Council promoted a scheme in the 1990s but failed due to lack of government support. It was a good idea then, and it is still a good idea now.

5) If the industry won’t support a voluntary scheme, government should introduce a coercive qualified practitioner (QP) scheme.

This would be a permanent version of the short-term scheme. If a building goes bad, the QP could lose the right to practise as a QP as well as being liable to the owners.

6) Revitalise trade training and certification to ensure all trade workers are properly trained and certified.

Many trades on building sites have no training and are not licensed. The requirement to read directions and document work against procedures means everyone on site must be functionally literate. The goal should be to have 30% of people working on site at Certificate 4 level by 2025. 100% of building workers should be literate by 2025. This should be a national requirement, checked by inspectors.

7) All leading hands for any trade should be educated up to Certificate 4 level.

This should be independently verified to cut out shonky training providers. Leading hands in all trades should be licensed and responsible for the work they do.

8) Enhance licensing of builders and subcontractors to ensure people in charge on site are educated beyond Certificate 4.

All people occupying construction roles with management responsibility should have valid qualifications in architecture, structural engineering or building.

9) Consider additional laws on contract provisions to reduce the economic power disparity between developers, head contractors and subcontractors.

Unfair commercial pressures are at the heart of much bad building. We should do more to cushion the smaller players from the larger ones.

10) And, while we are at it, we should ensure a value-capture process accompanies the development of tall residential buildings so the cost of upgrading social infrastructure is recovered.

High-density, high-rise buildings massively increase loads on socially owned infrastructure, such as schools, libraries, hospitals, parks and sporting facilities. The developers of tall buildings should be made to contribute adequately to the economic cost of enhancing these provisions, which can involve solutions that are unusually expensive, such as high-rise schools.

Read more: Explainer: what is ‘value capture’ and what does it mean for cities?

– ref. Beyond Opal: a 10-point plan to fix the residential building industry – http://theconversation.com/beyond-opal-a-10-point-plan-to-fix-the-residential-building-industry-110975

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Linden, Sessional Lecturer, PhD (Management) Candidate, School of Management, RMIT University

Every 10 to 15 years it’s the same.

Ever since financial deregulation in the 1980s we’ve had a finance industry scandal followed by an inquiry, a quick fix, and a declaration that it shouldn’t happen again.

In the early 1990s there were royal commissions into the A$1.7 billion Tri-continental/ State Bank Victoria collapse, the A$3.1 billion State Bank of South Australia collapse and the WA Inc collapse which explored the interrelated activities at Rothwells bank, the A$1.8 billion collapse of Bond Corporation and the A$1.2 billion siphoned from Bell Resources.

A decade later in 2003 Justice Owen reported on the A$5.3 billion collapse of Australia’s largest insurer HIH.

And now, bang on schedule, we have Kenneth Hayne delivering the final report of a royal commission into systemic misconduct in banking, superannuation and financial services industry to a government that voted 26 times against holding it.

There are two particularly striking things about the 10-15 year cycle.

One is the rhythm of public inquiries followed by reports, then (sometimes) trials, then books, then almost everyone forgetting (except for those personally scarred) only for problems to resurface later.

The other is that the times between have been punctuated by government-commissioned banking and financial system reviews: the 1991 Campbell Inauiry, the 1996 Wallis Inquiry, the 2010 Cooper superannuation review and the 2012 Murray Review . Each either missed or downplayed the links between poor governance, industry structure, systemic misconduct and prudential risk.

Has Kenneth got the frequency right this time?

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s 1000-page final report hasn’t gone far enough to end this cycle.

While his referral of 24 misdeeds for possible criminal and civil prosecution will help in righting past wrongs and perhaps focus the minds of directors and executives, the impact will be generational rather than permanent.

Read more: Compensation scheme to follow Hayne’s indictment of financial sector

The flurry of prosecutions and actions will again reveal problems with the law – gaps in coverage, inadequate penalties and cases the law won’t allow to stand up.

Taken together the recommendations are a patchwork of measures that if implemented will over time be eaten away – and at some point will be dismantled – because the rationale for their adoption will be forgotten.

Even before they are implemented they will have to run the gauntlet of a massive subterranean lobbying effort from industry to water them down, something Hayne indicated he expected.

The deepest flaw lies unaddressed…

Even though Hayne emphasises the link between systemic misconduct, governance, structure and prudential (system-wide) risk, something that Treasury, the RBA and Australia’s three business regulator amigos, APRA, ASIC and the ACCC, have long rejected, he makes no concrete suggestions to tackle it.

As we have written previously, research tells us big systemically important shareholder-focused universal for-profit banks that cross-sell products are more profitable than smaller banks in the good times but are more prone to misconduct and to failure in the worse times.

Australia’s big four fit the bill – they’re big, they have been vertically integrated one-stop shops, they are very, very profitable and they are very focused on shareholder returns.

While the banks, apart from Westpac, have divested themselves of wealth management and insurance arms for now there is nothing stopping them reacquiring them in the future.

This means we are once again 10 or 15 years away from systemic misconduct resurfacing as big banks seek to become more profitable.

…and putting the onus on directors won’t much help

While heads might roll in yet another round of internal investigations to fix bank culture, it is wise to remember that as Adele Ferguson observed ANZ’s internal investigation of the Opes Prime collapse left the bigger governance lessons “unlearned”.

Directors and senior executives of failed companies continue to live charmed lives.

The directors of Babcock and Brown were cheered as they left the building, while friends and family of the disgraced One.Tel director Jodee Rich have resurfaced at Hayne and other public inquiries.

Some of the One.Tel directors have had long corporate careers. The former chair at of the collapsed Allco Finance Group Bob Mansfield went on to review the ABC.

As Adam Schwab bluntly put it, “corporate Australia is nothing if not forgiving”.

It’ll chase horses rather than close doors

Hayne is persisting with a chasing bolting horses approach to misconduct that relies on detection and enforcement.

We have argued this approach is just not as a effective as other alternatives such as two-tier boards and employee directors which have a better track record of keeping stable doors closed and horses tethered.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

Without them we could very easily have another crisis and another royal commission in 15 to 15 years time.

Ireland has taken a been prepared to change corporate structures. After the meltdown of its financial system triggered by the end of a “classic vanilla property boom” its parliament legislated to appoint public interest directors to the boards of its failed banks.

These changes were designed to ensure banks directors put the public interest first, ahead of shareholders interests and even customers interests.

It’s beyond time we did it here.

Hayne’s main recommendations:

• Mortgage brokers required to act in the best interests of the borrower
• Mortgage brokers to charge borrowers rather than lenders
• Insurance providers required to “take reasonable care”
• Funeral insurance to be subject to financial service laws
• Cap on insurance sales commissions for car dealers
• Reduced cap on life insurance commissions
• Cold call selling of financial products banned
• Ongoing fee arrangements to be reapproved annually
• “Grandfathering” of fee arrangements to stop
• Banks to no longer charge dishonour fees on basic accounts
• Banks to no longer provide overdrafts on basic accounts without consent
• National scheme for mediation of farm debt
• Industry-funded compensation scheme of last resort
• Super fund trustees not to be employees of super fund owner
• Australians to be defaulted into only one super fund, once
• ASIC to use court action as the “starting point” for considering how to take action
• External body to oversee APRA and ASIC

– ref. Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission – http://theconversation.com/haynes-failure-to-tackle-bank-structure-means-that-in-a-decade-or-so-another-treasurer-will-have-to-call-another-royal-commission-110437

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kym Sheehan, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney

Justice Hayne says in almost every case of appalling misconduct examined by his commission, what happened was “driven not only by the relevant entity’s pursuit of profit, but also by individuals’ pursuit of gain”.

He is fingering greed: personal greed.

One of his suggested solutions is to change corporate culture, something one bank board chairman said in evidence would take 10 years.

Banning some, but not all, sales commissions will help.

But a big failing in the report is its inability to come to grips with the importance of setting remuneration targets and measuring performance.

Put simply, rating performance is a big part of the problem. And we have to rate performance.

We reward the end rather than the means

The way performance is rated and rewarded communicates clearly what the institution wants, but does not necessarily set any limits on how it is achieved.

Being recognised for customer service hasn’t been a big part of those wants. They have usually been usually more directly connected with profit.

For chief executives and their direct reports, that’s underlying group profit, which removes one-off items such as expenses to upgrade computers or pay redundancies or pay regulator fines. Some executives can earn more than 200% of their fixed pay as an extra short term incentive.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

If an executive earned fixed pay of A$2 million per year, the opportunity to earn an extra $4 million as a bonus provides a strong incentive to “perform”. Performance will also seep into decisions about the rate of base pay for next year.

This group profit growth target is then divided up between business divisions or units and sub targets identified. This process continues right down to frontline staff, who might get only 5-10% of their base salary as a bonus.

A particular definition of group profit

At this level the employment terms might explicitly link next year’s base salary with this year’s performance rating. Getting a good rating not only determines this year’s bonus, but also next year’s rate of pay.

Commissioner Hayne recommends changes to how the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority supervises remuneration practices and extend the existing Bank Accountability Regime (BEAR) to other institutions such as insurers and superannuation funds.

He stops short of recommending new laws prescribing how financial institutions reward their staff, seeing that as a matter of culture and something where “no one size fits all”.

If we must reward profit, we could do it differently

But if financial institutions don’t expressly consider how good (profit) performance is achieved – whether it is by treating customers poorly, being less than frank with the regulator, cutting corners to achieve sales – nothing much will change and customers will continue to feel bitter and hurt, and the community will remain distrustful.

The sad truth is that left to their own devices, our financial institutions are likely to continue to set targets that value financial results over the right results for customers.

Read more: Confiscate their super. If it works for sports stars, it could work for bankers

Acting in the customers’ interests needn’t be at the expense of profit, but it might well be at the expense of as much profit.

A better approach might be to ask financial institutions to take into account the one-off costs of fixing up the messes identified by the royal commission when measuring profit. And then to look beyond profit while also considering all customer outcomes, not merely net promoter scores of sentiment.

Hayne’s main recommendations:

• Mortgage brokers required to act in the best interests of the borrower
• Mortgage brokers to charge borrowers rather than lenders
• Insurance providers required to “take reasonable care”
• Funeral insurance to be subject to financial service laws
• Cap on insurance sales commissions for car dealers
• Reduced cap on life insurance commissions
• Cold call selling of financial products banned
• Ongoing fee arrangements to be reapproved annually
• “Grandfathering” of fee arrangements to stop
• Banks to no longer charge dishonour fees on basic accounts
• Banks to no longer provide overdrafts on basic accounts without consent
• National scheme for mediation of farm debt
• Industry-funded compensation scheme of last resort
• Super fund trustees not to be employees of super fund owner
• Australians to be defaulted into only one super fund, once
• ASIC to use court action as the “starting point” for considering how to take action
• External body to oversee APRA and ASIC

– ref. Banking Royal Commission: the real problem is how we value executives and workers – http://theconversation.com/banking-royal-commission-the-real-problem-is-how-we-value-executives-and-workers-111094

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Associate Dean (Global Engagement) and Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University

From a great distance, our Milky Way would look like a thin disc of stars that rotates once every few hundred million years around its central region. Hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational glue to hold it all together.

But the pull of gravity is much weaker in the galaxy’s far outer disc. Out there, the hydrogen clouds that make up most of the Milky Way’s gas disc are no longer confined to a thin plane. Instead, they give the disc an S-like, warped appearance.

Although the Milky Way’s warped hydrogen gas layer had been known for decades, in research published today in Nature Astronomy, we discovered that a disc of young, massive stars there is warped too, and in a progressively twisted spiral pattern.

Read more: From pancakes to soccer balls, new study shows how galaxies change shape as they age

We were able to determine this twisted appearance after having developed the first accurate three-dimensional picture of the Milky Way’s stellar disc out to its far outer regions.

Mapping the Milky Way

Trying to determine the real shape of our galaxy is like standing in a Sydney garden and attempting to determine the shape of Australia. The Milky Way is all around us, so to determine its shape, we would need to map the distributions of stars in all directions.

While that is not particularly difficult in directions above and below the stellar disc plane, it becomes much harder along the Milky Way’s plane.

Other than stars and hydrogen gas clouds in the Milky Way’s plane, our view is obscured by huge quantities of dust. The material astronomers call dust is made up of carbon particles. It is not too different from the soot that builds up in your home if, for example, you have an open fire.

Large quantities of dust obscure our view of what lies beyond, but dust also makes light look redder. This is because the size of those carbon particles is close to the wavelength of blue light. Therefore, blue light can be absorbed quite easily by the dust while red light passes through without too much trouble.

But it’s not just the presence of dust that makes mapping our Milky Way galaxy troublesome. It is notoriously difficult to determine distances from the Sun to parts of the Milky Way’s outer disc without having a clear idea of what that disc actually looks like.

Pulsating stars

One of the researchers in my international team – Xiaodian Chen of the National Astronomical Observatories (Chinese Academy of Sciences) in Beijing – compiled a new catalogue of well-behaved variable stars known as classical Cepheids. These stars vary in brightness over a period of time.

These stars are among the best mileposts in astronomy: they can be used to determine very accurate distances with uncertainties of only 3-5%. This is pretty much as good as it gets in astronomy, allowing us to obtain the most accurate map of the outer Milky Way available to date.

Our new catalogue was based on observations made with NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope fitted with long-wavelength (infrared) glasses, ideal to look through any dust in the Milky Way’s disc.

The Cepheids mapped range from the Milky Way’s centre to its outer regions with most on the near side of the centre of our galaxy because of observational limitations.

Classical Cepheids are young stars that are some 4 to 20 times as massive as our Sun, and up to 100,000 times as bright. Such high stellar masses imply that these stars live fast and die young, burning through the hydrogen fuel in their stellar interiors very quickly, sometimes in only a few million years.

Cepheids show day- to month-long pulsations, which can be observed quite easily as changes in their brightness. Combined with a Cepheid’s observed average brightness, the period of its pulsation cycle can be used to obtain an accurate distance.

We all warp together

Somewhat to our surprise, we found that our collection of 1,339 Cepheid stars and the Milky Way’s gas disc follow each other closely. Until our recent study, it had not been possible to tie the distribution of young stars in the Milky Way’s outer disc so well to the flaring and warped disc made up of hydrogen gas clouds.

3D distribution of the classical Cepheid variable stars in the Milky Way’s warped disc (red and blue points) centred on the location of the Sun (shown as a large orange symbol). The units kpc are kiloparsecs (1 kpc = about 3,262 light years) along the image’s three axes are used by astronomers to indicate distances on galaxy-wide scales. Richard de Grijs (Macquarie University), Author provided

But perhaps more importantly, we discovered that the stellar disc is warped in a progressively twisted spiral pattern.

Many spiral galaxies are warped to varying extents, such as the galaxy ESO 510-G13 (pictured top) in the southern constellation Hydra, roughly 150 million light-years from Earth. However, only a dozen other galaxies were known to also show similarly twisted patterns in their outer discs.

Read more: Curious Kids: Where are all the other galaxies hidden?

Combining our results with these earlier observations, we concluded that the Milky Way’s warped and twisted spiral pattern is likely caused by forced torques from the galaxy’s massive inner disc. The rotating inner disc is, in essence, dragging the outer disc along, but since the outer disc’s rotation is lagging the resulting structure is a spiral pattern.

This new map provides a crucial update for studies of our galaxy’s stellar motions and the origins of the Milky Way’s disc. This is particularly interesting given the wealth of information we anticipate to receive from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite mission.

Gaia aims to eventually map our Milky Way in unprecedented detail, based on the most accurate distance determinations to the galaxy’s brightest stars ever obtained.

– ref. We discovered a warped and twisted disc of young, massive stars at the edge of our Milky Way – http://theconversation.com/we-discovered-a-warped-and-twisted-disc-of-young-massive-stars-at-the-edge-of-our-milky-way-110985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Hughes, Distinguished Professor, James Cook University

In the face of persistent heatwaves, Australians are reaching for the sunscreen. But you might have heard some mixed messages about its harm to the environment – specifically to coral reefs.

In July 2018, Hawaii passed a law to prohibit the future sale of sunscreens containing benzophene-3 and octinoxate, claiming these two chemicals increase coral bleaching, and have significant harmful impacts on Hawaii’s marine environment.

Read more: Marine heatwaves are getting hotter, lasting longer and doing more damage

In October 2018, the Republic of Palau followed suit, and banned “reef-toxic” sunscreens. Like most reefs throughout the tropics and subtropics, coral reefs in Hawaii and Palau have already severely bleached multiple times during recent, unusually hot summers, causing extensive loss of corals.

Key West, in Florida, may be the latest area to follow this trend, with a proposed ban to be voted on in early February.

However, medical and skin cancer specialists have warned of the public health risks of a ban on widely used sunscreens, describing the prohibition as risky and unjustified, in part because the few studies that have addressed the environmental impacts of sunscreens experimentally “are not representative of real world conditions”.

For example, the way in which coral tissues were exposed to sunscreen in experiments does not mimic the dispersal and dilution of pollutants from a tourist’s skin (and other sources) into reef waters and onto corals growing in the wild.

Experiments that expose corals to sunscreen chemicals typically use far higher concentrations than have ever been measured on an actual reef. A recent review of the amount of benzophne-3 in reef waters found that, typically, concentrations are barely detectable – usually, a few parts per trillion. One much higher report of 1.4 parts per million, in the US Virgin Islands, is based on a single water sample.

The environmental concerns over sunscreens on coral reefs are centred overwhelmingly on just two studies. The first, published in 2008, noted that there was no previous scientific evidence for an impact of sunscreens on coral reefs.

This study exposed small fragments of corals (branch tips) to high levels of benzophenone-3 and other chemicals by incubating them for a few days inside plastic bags. The fragments in the bags quickly became diseased with viruses and bleached. The authors concluded “up to 10% of the world reefs are potentially threatened by sunscreen-induced coral bleaching”.

Bleaching is a stress response by corals, where they turn pale due to a decline in the symbiotic micro-algae that lives inside their tissues. You can make a coral bleach experimentally by torturing it in any number of ways. However, coral bleaching at a global and regional scale is caused by anthropogenic heating, not sunscreen. We know the footprint of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017 is closely matched to where the water was hottest for longest in each event.

Even the most remote reefs are vulnerable to heat stress. The physiological mechanisms and timescale of thermal bleaching due to global heating is very different from the rapid responses of corals to experimental exposure to high concentrations of sunscreen chemicals.

The second and most-widely cited study of sunscreen toxicity on corals is also laboratory-based. Published in 2016, it focused mainly on the responses of the day-old larvae of one coral species, as well as isolated coral cells. This study did not examine intact coral colonies.

The larvae were placed in 2-3 centilitres of artificial seawater containing a range of concentrations of sunscreen chemicals and a solvent to disperse them. After a few hours, the coral larvae became increasingly pale (bleached) with higher concentrations of oxybenzone.

Read more: Why there’s still hope for our endangered coral reefs

This study also measured the concentration of benzophenone in sea water at six locations in Hawaii. These samples were unreplicated (one per location), and all of them had unmeasureable amounts of sunscreen chemicals. In the US Virgin Islands, the authors found higher concentrations of benzophenone at four out of ten locations, although they did not report results for any blank samples (to control for contamination). The study concluded that oxybenzone threatens the resilience of coral reefs to climate change.

In conclusion, there is actually no direct evidence to demonstrate that bleaching due to global heating is exacerbated by sunscreen pollutants. Similarly, there is no evidence that recovery from thermal bleaching is impaired by sunscreens, or that sunscreens cause coral bleaching in the wild.

– ref. There’s insufficient evidence your sunscreen harms coral reefs – http://theconversation.com/theres-insufficient-evidence-your-sunscreen-harms-coral-reefs-109567

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

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

In April 1941, just a few short years after Superman came swooping out of the Manhattan skies, Miss Fury – originally known as Black Fury – became the first major female superhero to go to print. She beat Charles Moulton Marsden’s Wonder Woman to the page by more than six months. More significantly, Miss Fury was the first female superhero to be written and drawn by a woman, Tarpé Mills.

Miss Fury’s creator – whose real name was June – shared much of the gritty ingenuity of her superheroine. Like other female artists of the Golden Age, Mills was obliged to make her name in comics by disguising her gender. As she later told the New York Post, “It would have been a major let-down to the kids if they found out that the author of such virile and awesome characters was a gal.”

Yet, this trailblazing illustrator, squeezed out of the comic world amid a post-WW2 backlash against unconventional images of femininity and a 1950s climate of heightened censorship, has been largely excluded from the pantheon of comic greats – until now.

Comics then and now tend to feature weak-kneed female characters who seem to exist for the sole purpose of being saved by a male hero – or, worse still, are “fridged”, a contemporary comic book colloquialism that refers to the gruesome slaying of an undeveloped female character to deepen the hero’s motivation and propel him on his journey.

But Mills believed there was room in comics for a different kind of female character, one who was able, level-headed and capable, mingling tough-minded complexity with Mills’ own taste for risqué behaviour and haute couture gowns.

Miss Fury toting a gun. Author provided

Where Wonder Woman’s powers are “marvellous” – that is, not real or attainable – Miss Fury and her alter ego Marla Drake use their collective brains, resourcefulness and the odd stiletto heel in the face to bring the villains to justice.

A WW2 plane featuring an image of Miss Fury. http://www.tarpemills.com

And for a time they were wildly successful.

Miss Fury ran a full decade from April 1941 to December 1951, was syndicated in 100 different newspapers at the height of her wartime fame, and sold a million copies an issue in reprints released by Timely (now Marvel) comics.

Fighter pilots painted Miss Fury on the fuselage of bomber planes. Young girls played with paper doll cut outs featuring her extensive high fashion wardrobe.

An anarchic, ‘gender flipped’ universe

Miss Fury’s “origin story” offers its own coolly ironic commentary on the masculine conventions of the comic genre.

One night a girl called Marla Drake finds out that her friend Carol is wearing an identical gown to a masquerade party. So, at the behest of her maid Francine, she dons a skin tight black cat suit that – in an imperial twist, typical of the period – was once worn as a ceremonial robe by a witch doctor in Africa.

On the way to the ball, Marla takes on a gun-toting killer, using her cat claws, stiletto heels, and – hilariously – a puff of powder blown from her makeup compact to disarm the villain. She leaves him trussed up with a hapless and unconscious police detective by the side of the road.

Tarpe Mills with her beloved Persian cat. Author provided

Miss Fury could fly a fighter plane when she had to, jumping out in a parachute dressed in a red satin ball gown and matching shoes. She was also a crack shot.

This was an anarchic, gender flipped, comic book universe in which the protagonist and principle antagonists were women, and in which the supposed tools of patriarchy – high heels, makeup and mermaid bottom ball gowns – were turned against the system. Arch nemesis Erica Von Kampf – a sultry vamp who hides a swastika-branded forehead behind a v-shaped blond fringe – also displayed amazing enterprise in her criminal antics.

Author provided

Invariably the male characters required saving from the crime gangs, the Nazis or merely from themselves. Among the most ingenious panels in the strip were the ones devoted to hapless lovelorn men, endowed with the kind of “thought bubbles” commonly found hovering above the heads of angsty heroines in romance comics.

By contrast, the female characters possessed a gritty ingenuity inspired by Noir as much as by the changed reality of women’s wartime lives. Half way through the series, Marla got a job, and – astonishingly, for a Sunday comic supplement – became a single mother, adopting the son of her arch nemesis, wrestling with snarling dogs and chains to save the toddler from a deadly experiment.

Mills claims to have modelled Miss Fury on herself. She even named Marla’s cat Peri-Purr after her own beloved Persian pet. Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Mills grew up in a house headed by a single widowed mother, who supported the family by working in a beauty parlour. Mills worked her way through New York’s Pratt Institute by working as a model and fashion illustrator.

Censorship

In the end, ironically, it was Miss Fury’s high fashion wardrobe that became a major source of controversy.

In 1947, no less than 37 newspapers declined to run a panel that featured one of Mills’ tough-minded heroines, Era – a South American Nazi-Fighter who became a post-war nightclub entertainer – dressed as Eve, replete with snake and apple, in a spangled, two-piece costume.

This was not the only time the comic strip was censored. Earlier in the decade, Timely comics had refused to run a picture of the villainess Erica resplendent in her bath – surrounded by pink flamingo wallpaper.

Erica in the bath, surrounded by pink flamingo wallpaper. Author provided.

But so many frilly negligées, cat fights, and shower scenes had escaped the censor’s eye. It’s not a leap to speculate that behind the ban lay the post-war backlash against powerful and unconventional women.

In wartime, nations had relied on women to fill the production jobs that men had left behind. Just as “Rosie the Riveter” encouraged women to get to work with the slogan “We Can Do It!”, so too the comparative absence of men opened up room for less conventional images of women in the comics.

A Miss Fury paper doll cut out. Author provided

Once the war was over, women lost their jobs to returning servicemen. Comic creators were no longer encouraged to show women as independent or decisive. Politicians and psychologists attributed juvenile delinquency to the rise of unconventional comic book heroines and by 1954 the Comics Code Authority was policing the representation of women in comics, in line with increasingly conservative ideologies. In the 1950s, female action comics gave way to romance ones, featuring heroines who once again placed men at the centre of their existence.

Miss Fury was dropped from circulation in December 1951, and despite a handful of attempted comebacks, Mills and her anarchic creation slipped from public view.

Mills continued to work as a commercial illustrator on the fringes of a booming advertising industry. In 1971, she turned a hand to romance comics, penning a seven-page story that was published by Marvel, but it wasn’t her forte. In 1979, she began work on a graphic novel Albino Jo, which remains unfinished.

Despite her chronic asthma, Mills – like the reckless Noir heroine she so resembled – chain-smoked to the bitter end. She died of emphysema on December 12, 1988, and is buried in New Jersey under the simple inscription, “Creator of Miss Fury”.

This year Mills’ work will be belatedly recognised. As a recipient of the 2019 Eisner Award, she will finally take her place in the Comics Hall of Fame, alongside the male creators of the Golden Age who have too long dominated the history of the genre. Hopefully this will bring her comic creation the kind of notoriety, readership and big screen adventures she thoroughly deserves.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arjuna Dibley, Graduate Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University

The tragic recent events on the Darling River, and the political and policy furore around them, have again highlighted the severe financial and environmental consequences of mismanaging climate risks. The Murray-Darling Royal Commission demonstrates how closely boards of public sector corporate bodies can be scrutinised for their management of these risks.

Public authorities must follow private companies and factor climate risk into their board decision-making. Royal Commissioner Brett Walker has delivered a damning indictment of the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s management of climate-related risks. His report argues that the authority’s senior management and board were “negligent” and fell short of acting with “reasonable care, skill and diligence”. For its part, the authority “rejects the assertion” that it “acted improperly or unlawfully in any way”.

The Royal Commission has also drawn attention to the potentially significant legal and reputational consequences for directors and organisations whose climate risk management is deemed to have fallen short of a rising bar.

Read more: Damning royal commission report leaves no doubt that we all lose if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails

It’s the public sector’s turn

Until recently, scrutiny of how effectively large and influential organisations are responding to climate risks has focused mostly on the private sector.

In Australia it is widely acknowledged among legal experts that private company directors’ duty of “due care and diligence” requires them to consider foreseeable climate risks that intersect with the interests of the company. Indeed, Australia’s companies regulator, ASIC, has called for directors to take a “probative and proactive” approach to these risks.

The recent focus on management of the Murray-Darling Basin again highlights the crucial role public sector corporations (or “public authorities” as we call them) also play in our overall responses to climate change – and the consequences when things go wrong.

Australia’s economy, once dominated by publicly owned enterprises, was reshaped by waves of privatisations in the late 20th century. However, hundreds of public authorities continue to play an important role in our economy. They build and maintain infrastructure, generate energy, oversee superannuation portfolios, provide insurance and manage water resources, among many other activities.

This means that, like their counterparts in the private sector, many face risks associated with climate change. Take Melbourne Water, for instance, a statutory water corporation established to manage the city’s water supply. It will have to contend with increasingly hot summers and reduced rainfall (a physical risk), and also with the risk that government policy in the future might impose stricter conditions on how water is used (a transition risk).

What duties do public authorities owe?

Our new research from the Centre for Policy Development, shows that, at the Commonwealth and Victorian level (and likely in other Australian jurisdictions), the main laws governing officials in public authorities are likely to create similar obligations to those imposed on private company directors.

For instance, a 2013 federal act requires public authority board members to carry out their duties with the degree of “due care and diligence” that a reasonable person would exercise if they were a Commonwealth official in that board position.

The concept of a “reasonable person” is crucial. There is ever-increasing certainty about the human contribution to climate change. New tools and models have been created to measure the impact of climate change on the economy. Climate risks are therefore reasonably foreseeable if you are acting carefully and diligently, and thus public authority directors should consider these risks.

The obligations of public authority directors may, in some cases, go beyond what is required of private company directors. The same act mentioned above requires Commonwealth officials to promote best practice in the way they carry out their duties. While there is still wide divergence in how private companies manage climate change, best practice in leading corporations is moving towards more systematic analysis and disclosure of these risks. Accordingly, a “best practice” obligation places an even higher onus on public sector directors to manage climate risk.

The specific legislation that governs certain public authorities may introduce different and more onerous requirements. For instance, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s governing legislation, the Water Act 2007, imposes a number of additional conditions on the authority. This includes the extent to which the minister can influence board decision-making.

Nonetheless, our laws set out a widely applicable standard for public authority directors.

Approaches to better manage public authority climate risks

While some public authorities are already carefully considering how physical and transition climate risks affect their work, our research suggests that standards vary widely.

As with the private sector, a combination of clear expectations for better climate risk management, greater scrutiny and more investment in climate-related capabilities and risk-management frameworks can all play a role in raising the bar. Our research highlights four steps that governments should consider:

• creating a whole-of-government toolkit and implementation strategy for training and supporting directors to account for climate-risk in decision-making

• using existing public authority accountability mechanisms – such as the public sector commissioner or auditor general’s office – to more closely scrutinise the management of climate-related financial risks

• issuing formal ministerial statements of expectations to clarify how public authorities and their directors should manage climate-related risks and policy priorities

• making legislative or regulatory changes to ensure consistent consideration, management and disclosure of climate risk by public sector decision-makers.

Read more: Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change

Measures such as these would set clear expectations for more consistent, sophisticated responses to climate risks by public authorities. However, even without any changes, it should be clear that public authority directors have legal duties to consider climate risks – and that these duties must be taken seriously even when doing so is complicated, controversial or politically sensitive.

– ref. Murray-Darling report shows public authorities must take climate change risk seriously – http://theconversation.com/murray-darling-report-shows-public-authorities-must-take-climate-change-risk-seriously-110990

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

The Morrison government has promised to establish a compensation scheme of last resort – paid for by the financial services industry – as it seeks to avoid the outcome of the banking royal commission becoming a damaging election issue for it.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, releasing Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s three-volume report which excoriates the financial sector, said the government would be “tacking action” on all 76 recommendations.

The commissioner has made 24 referrals to the regulatory authorities over entities’ conduct in specific instances. All the major banks have been referred except Westpac. AMP, Suncorp, Allianz and Youi are among entities that have been referred.

Commisioner Hayne has made no criminal conduct referrals – he was dealing with entities rather than individuals. But this does not preclude criminal prosecutions as a result of the investigations.

In an indictment of years of bad behaviour which has left many customers devastated, Hayne says “there can be no doubt that the primary responsibility for misconduct in the financial services industry lies with the entities concerned and those who managed and controlled those entities”.

“Rewarding misconduct is wrong. Yet incentive, bonus and commission schemes throughout the financial services industry have measured sales and profit, but not compliance with the law and proper standards,” the commissioner says.

“Entities and individuals acted in the ways they did because they could.

“Entities set the terms on which they would deal, consumers often had little detailed knowledge or understanding of the transaction and consumers had next to no power to negotiate the terms.”

Hayne says that “too often, financial services entities that broke the law werenot properly held to account.

“The Australian community expects, and is entitled to expect, that if an entity breaks the law and causes damage to customers, it will compensate those affected customers. But the community also expects that financial services entities that break the law will be held to account.”

The commissioner stresses that “where possible, conflicts of interest and conflicts between duty and interest should be removed” in financial services.

Hayne says that because it was the financial entities, their boards and senior executives, who bore primary responsibility for what had happened, attention must be given to their culture, governance and renumeration practices.

Changes to the law were “necessary protections for consumers against misconduct, to provide adequate redress and to redress asymmetries of power and information between entities and consumers”.

The commission’s multiple recommendations propose:

…simplifying the law so that its intent is met;

…removing where possible conflicts of interest;

…improving the effectiveness of the regulators, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC);

…driving cultural change in institutions and increasing their accountability;

…increasing protection for consumers from “misconduct or conduct that falls below community standards and expectations”, and providing for remediation.

The government has provided point-by-point responses to the recommendations.

The commission had seven rounds of public hearings with about 130 witnesses, and reviewed more than 10,000 public submissions. It dealt with banking, financial advice, superannuation and insurance.

While there have been claims that the fallout from the commission could risk a further tightening of credit for small business in particular, Hayne has been careful in his report to minimise that danger.

But he makes it clear that there should be no excuse for avoiding needed action. “Some entities used the undoubted need for care in recommending change as a basis for saying that there should be no change. The ‘Caution’ sign was read as if it said ‘Do Not Enter’.”

The commissioner has some sharp words for the NAB in his report, saying that “having heard from both the CEO Mr Thorburn, and the Chair, Dr Henry, I am not as confident as I would wish to be that the lessons of the past have been learned.

“More particularly, I was not persuaded that NAB is willing to accept the necessary responsibility for deciding, for itself, what is the right thing to do, and then having its staff act accordingly. I thought it telling that Dr Henry seemed unwilling to accept any criticism of how the board had dealt with some issues.

“I thought it telling that Mr Thorburn treated all issues of fees for no service as nothing more than carelessness combined with system deficiencies … Overall, my fear – that there may be a wide gap between the public face NAB seeks to show and what it does in practice – remains.”

Among his specific recommendations Hayne says that grandfathering provisions for conflicted remuneration “should be repealed as soon as is reasonably practicable”. The government has said it will do this from January 2021.

Hayne proposes a new oversight authority that would monitor APRA and ASIC.

He lashes ASIC for not cracking down on fees for no service.

“Until this commission was established, ASIC and the relevant entities approached the fees for no service conduct as if it called, at most, for the entity to repay what it had taken, together with some compensation for the client not having had the use of the money.

“That is, the conduct was treated as if it was no more than a series of inadvertent slips brought about by some want of care in record keeping.”

In relation to the sale of products the commission recommends the removal of the exclusion of funeral expenses policies from the definition of “financial product”. It should be put “beyond doubt that the consumer protection provisions of the ASIC act apply to funeral expenses policies.”

On superannuation the commission says that “hawking” of superannuation products should be prohibited, and that a person should have only one default account.

In a statement Scott Morrison and Frydenberg said that in outlining its response to the commission “the government’s principal focus is on restoring trust in our financial system and delivering better consumer outcomes, while maintaining the flow of credit and continuing to promote competition.”

They said the government would expand the remit of Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) so it could award compensation for successful claims going back a decade.

– ref. Compensation scheme to follow Hayne’s indictment of financial sector – http://theconversation.com/compensation-scheme-to-follow-haynes-indictment-of-financial-sector-110981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isobel Ronai, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Sydney

In our fast-paced modern world there is an expectation that scientific breakthroughs occur quickly and efficiently.

We are bombarded with headlines hyping new findings: Scientists “find cure for cancer which will be available within A YEAR”.

Many scientists know how unrealistic such claims are.

My new study provides data confirming that ground-breaking research takes time, and that the basic research underpinning it is typically overlooked or under-valued.

Read more: Funding basic research plays the long game for future payoffs

During my undergraduate degree I was fascinated to learn that cutting-edge molecular biology techniques – those used for manipulating proteins, DNA and other molecules – come from nature. In this paper I analysed the development of eight important molecular techniques, and showed they all were developed from basic biological research.

My case studies include the relatively new molecular technology known as CRISPR-Cas (now known as a precise DNA cutting tool, but which comes from biologists discovering how bacteria build immunity to viruses), and older technologies like DNA sequencing (developed thanks to biologists discovering how DNA copies itself).

Scientific breakthroughs do not happen overnight

I identified that the major breakthroughs in molecular technology take on average a quarter of a century from basic biological research to the practical payoff. This time frame is a lot longer than any election cycle or the funding period for a research project.

The long lead time before the payoff means it is difficult to calculate the exact benefit of funding basic biological research. But basic research has a major impact.

Read more: Funding basic research plays the long game for future payoffs

A loose estimate suggests that the return on investment of funding basic research is between 20-60% per year! In Australia, every $1 invested into our National Health and Medical Research Council returns $3.20 in health and economic benefits.

Scientific glory is not bestowed upon basic research

I found the basic research that led to the development of new and important molecular technologies is not well recognised by the scientific community.

Basic research findings are not favoured by the science publication model. When you compare scientific articles describing basic research to applied research, the former is less likely to be published in high-profile journals or to be highly cited.

This is an important point, because scientific articles are key to career progression in science. Scientists who dedicate their careers to basic research make vital contributions to science but find it harder to obtain funding and have fewer career advancement opportunities.

Read more: Predicting who will publish or perish as career academics

Molecular technologies transform the world, and that is why the eight case studies have all eventually been linked with the awarding of Nobel Prizes (or are expected to be, in the case of CRISPR-Cas).

However, I found that the researchers who conduct basic research are less likely to be awarded the Nobel Prize or the relevant patents for the development of these molecular biology techniques.

We need to ensure the contributions of basic research scientists are recognised.

Read more: Science can be beautiful, but please don’t call it basic

Basic research made the modern world feasible

If basic biological research had never been pursued by scientists, then today’s world would be a very different and scarier place.

For instance, most of our current advances in human health would never have occurred. Consider the following examples:

• detection of pathogens causing infectious diseases (eg Zika virus) using PCR (a technique that copies DNA)
• medical therapies using RNA interference (a technique that lowers accumulation of damaging proteins in a nerve disorder)
• identification of genetic diseases (eg cystic fibrosis) using DNA sequencing
• editing the genome (including cancer therapies) using CRISPR-Cas.

Molecular technologies arising from basic biological research play a critical role in diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

These molecular technologies are also powerful research tools that are critical for the progress of further biomedical research, such as modelling complex human diseases and understanding the effect of diabetes on blood vessels.

Further, these molecular technologies have enabled many other aspects of our modern world: they are crucial for agriculture, have led to entirely new industries and also created numerous jobs.

Basic research has major impacts on society, is worthy of investment, but is chronically underfunded.

Funders need to be like angel investors

It’s important that funding bodies have a realistic understanding of the time frame for basic research. Some appear to be investing in research only when it has a good prospect of being useful – in the sense that it will provide quick returns.

Scientists are also increasingly pressured to obtain funding from non-government sources such as industry.

Read more: With federal funding for science on the decline, what’s the role of a profit motive in research?

We need a new investment approach from government funding agencies. The best strategy for high-risk ventures, such as basic research, is to provide stable funding to a wide variety of projects to diversify the risk. If we cast a wider net, we ensure we will always catch one of these “big fish”.

Funders can think of themselves as angel investors who are investing in a portfolio of start-up businesses (another type of venture that is high risk but also high reward).

The expectation of government funding agencies needs to be that most investments in basic research will not provide a return on investment. Data suggests that for start-up businesses, the failure rate is as high as 60%.

A few projects will return what was invested into them. But some research projects will be priceless scientific breakthroughs – these are known to occur with some regularity. Our modern world is built upon them.

If funding agencies are not consistently funding today’s basic research projects, then the revolutionary technologies of tomorrow will never be developed.

– ref. New study confirms what scientists already know: basic research is under-valued – http://theconversation.com/new-study-confirms-what-scientists-already-know-basic-research-is-under-valued-110778

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Becher, Associate Professor of Business Law, Victoria University of Wellington

Most of us will have entered into consumer contracts with large companies and ticked a box to confirm we understand the terms and conditions – without bothering to read the fine print.

We accept standard form contracts when using social media, booking flights, opening a bank account, subscribing to a gym or renting a car. In all these cases, companies offer pre-drafted standardised agreements that are not negotiable.

At the same time, consumers are legally assumed to read the terms and conditions of their contracts. Because of this “duty to read”, consumers are held responsible for the written terms of their agreements, regardless of whether they read them or not.

While consumers have the legal burden to read their contracts, companies do not have a general duty to offer readable ones. As our research shows, most of them are incomprehensible.

Read more: If small print ‘terms and conditions’ require a PhD to read, should they be legally binding?

Checking readability

We have studied popular online consumer contracts and examined the readability of the 500 most popular sign-in-wrap contracts in the United States.

These contracts, now used routinely by popular companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb, assume that the user agrees to the website’s terms and conditions by signing up. During the sign-up process, the website provides a hyperlink to its terms and conditions. But the consumer is not required to actually access the terms.

Many scholars argue that consumers do not read their contracts. Nonetheless, courts enforce these contracts based on the assumption that consumers had an opportunity to read them. In other words, according to this reasoning, consumers freely choose to ignore these contracts.

To examine this legal argument, we applied two well-established linguistic tools to check if consumers can actually read sign-in-wrap contracts. We used the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid tests. Both tests are based on two factors: the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per word.

Consumer contracts as dense as academic papers

We found that according to these criteria, the contracts examined in our sample are very hard to read. In fact, they are written at the same level as academic articles. Reading these agreements requires, on average, more than 14 years of education. This result is troubling, given the recommended reading level for consumer materials is eighth grade.

Our study shows consumers cannot be expected to read their contracts. A contract is based on mutual assent, but consumers cannot truly assent to something they cannot read.

Read more: Comic contracts and other ways to make the law understandable

We hope such findings will encourage policymakers to revisit their approach to consumer contracts. For starters, legislatures should require companies to better communicate their terms. Beyond that, we should also detail systematic and objective criteria as to what is readable.

At the same time, courts should not assume consumers can read their contracts. Judges should hence be more willing to excuse consumers from unreadable agreements.

Where to from here

Linguistic tests may serve as a good starting point. But such tools should be used only as a perquisite legal standard for examining readability. Companies might deliberately generate good readability scores but that does not necessarily mean the text is actually easy to understand.

The purpose of plain language requirements is not to increase readability per se. Rather, it is to improve the chances that users will be able to understand these agreements, shop among them, and make informed decisions.

Making contracts readable does not rest other concerns, such as the incorporation of unfair terms. Policymakers need to take further steps to level the consumer-business playing field. Currently, the law neglects to impose on companies a clear and operational duty to draft readable contracts. Without a clear incentive, companies will continue to use unreadable texts as their contracts.

This research is a joint project, co-authored with Dr Uri Benoliel at the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, Israel.

– ref. Research shows most online consumer contracts are incomprehensible, but still legally binding – http://theconversation.com/research-shows-most-online-consumer-contracts-are-incomprehensible-but-still-legally-binding-110793

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

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 we need soap? – Claire, age 4.

Thank you, Claire, for your question.

Soap is fun; it feels nice and slippery, you can blow bubbles with it and it often smells lovely. But it also keeps you healthy because it makes it easy for us to remove germs.

Germs are very very small, so small they are invisible to our eyes. We have many germs on our hands all the time. They like to live in the invisible layer of oil on our hands, and they particularly like to hide in skin creases and under your nails. There are many thousands and thousands of germs on your hands right now.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do spiders have hairy legs?

There are good and bad germs. Good germs live on your skin to keep it healthy. Bad germs – what scientists call “pathogens” – can make us sick.

We don’t know if bad germs are on our hands because you can’t see them. The best and easiest way to remove bad germs is washing them away with soap.

It’s a good idea to wash your hands after you go to the toilet, after you blow your nose, before you help prepare food and before you eat. Otherwise, when you touch your mouth, nose or eyes you might accidentally get a bad germ from your hands into your body – where it can make you very sick.

If you’re not a nurse or a doctor you don’t need to “kill” all the germs on your hands. You just need to wash the germs away. Soap is amazingly good at doing this.

Make sure you wash every nook and cranny of your hands. Flickr/World Bank, CC BY

Read more: Curious Kids: how do tongues taste food?

Soap gets foamy when we rub it with water between our hands. Foam makes it easy to move soap all around your hands and fingers. While we move soap around, it lifts up invisible oil that holds germs onto your hand. Under the running water we can easily wash off the soap, and all the invisible oil and germs along with it.

If you just use water without soap, the germs will stay on your hands. That’s because water alone can’t lift off the invisible oil where the germs are hiding, often tucked away in tiny creases in the skin on your hands.

We need to rub our hands together with soap and water long enough for the soap to do its job. We need to allow enough time for the soap to make foam, lift the oil holding onto the germs, and rinse them all away.

How long is long enough? Try singing the Happy Birthday song as you rub the soap and water between your hands. Flickr/Lucille Pine, CC BY

How long is long enough? Try singing the Happy Birthday song as you rub the soap and water between your hands, especially rubbing the soap and water over your fingers and fingernails where germs love to live. If you get through the whole song, you are giving the soap long enough to do its important job.

Don’t forget to rub your hands on a clean towel to remove any bad germs that could have been left on your hands.

When we wash our hands with soap and water, the soap lifts up both the bad and good germs and the water washes them away.

But don’t worry – all the good germs that keep your skin healthy will grow back very fast.

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: why do we need soap? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-need-soap-109083

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Smithies, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

If you are observant enough in the Australian bush, you may be able to spot the spade flower, a member of the violet family. Spade flowers grow under the semi-shade of open eucalypt forest, among other little green herbaceous plants.

This often-overlooked member of Australian flora hides some interesting secrets, including a rare chemical that may hold the key to turning regular plants into medicinal cures.

Read more: The art of healing: five medicinal plants used by Aboriginal Australians

The common name spade flower refers to the flower’s shape, which is dominated by the spade-shaped labellum. Its botanical name, Hybanthus enneaspermus, is equally descriptive. The generic name Hybanthus means “humpbacked flower”, referring to the posture of the flowers. Meanwhile, the specific name enneaspermus means “nine-seeded”, because upon maturity each tiny 5mm fruit splits into three sections bearing three seeds each.

The Conversation

A hidden talent

Violets are familiar objects, from the showy native Viola banksii or the scent of European sweet violets. What is not common knowledge is that members of the Violaceae family produce some very curious molecules called peptides.

People – and many other organisms – use peptides as signals that enable communication between cells and tissues. An example of a peptide messenger from humans with an important function is oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone”. Oxytocin regulates social bonding and other key aspects of our biology and sociality. In contrast, plants sometimes use peptides for a different purpose, as toxins to protect themselves from insects and other pests.

But unlike most peptides, those produced by Violaceae are circular instead of linear. Because of this circular shape, they are highly stable in conditions that would degrade other peptides. This special class of peptides are called “cyclotides” and are only found in relatively few plant species. This is why we have been searching all across northern Australia, from the Kimberley region in Western Australia to the Queensland coast, for samples of native Australian Violaceae.

The first cyclotide to grab the attention of scientists comes from an African plant called kalata-kalata, traditionally used in teas to hasten childbirth. In 2013, it was shown that a specific cyclotide from kalata-kalata acts on smooth muscle to cause contraction of muscle tissue.

Kalata-kalata, or Oldenlandia affinis, is used in a traditional medicinal tea. It’s efficacy comes from the cyclotides it produces. KalataB1/Wikipedia

But easing childbirth might not be the only effect cyclotides have. Initial experiments with spade flower extracts demonstrate a significant effect on the mating behaviour of rats. Rats treated with peptide-laden extracts from spade flower exhibit, uh, increased copulation frequency.

In us humans, the receptors that detect peptides control libido, sleep, and other aspects of our biology. These observations leave spade flower cyclotides as prime suspects underpinning this amorous bioactivity, and could be the basis for coining yet another name for this plant: the “love shrub”.

Despite this intriguing effect, until further scientific investigation validates these initial aphrodisiac findings and their basis, it is probably wise to steer clear of ingesting these plants.

Spade flower is indigenous to Australia, but the native range extends through southern Asia, India, and into Africa. Despite the wide range of the species, the plant is usually distributed in a here-and-there fashion. In our experience this sparse distribution has meant finding no sign of them along the roughly 600km Gibb River Road at the end of the wet season, and just a single observation from a roadside south of Gladstone. This scarcity tests the resolve of many skillful plant spotters, ourselves included.

Spade flower buds are delicate and graceful. Author provided

You’re most likely to find spade flowers in semi-shaded environments north of the Queensland-New South Wales border, along the east coast, and across the Top End. It grows along roadsides or near waterways, but it is difficult to spot because its narrow leaves tend to blend into the mix of herbs growing alongside it.

Look for the lilac spade-shaped flowers among the understory herbs during the warmer and wetter months, but do this before midday when the flowers wilt away from view.

There are other Hybanthus species in Australia, however the genus appears to be polyphyletic (meaning they are grouped together but don’t share a single common ancestor) so the genus is not truly representative of a single taxonomic group per se. Other Hybanthus species look similar to spade flower, namely H. monopetalus, which grows multiple purple-blue flowers on a single stem instead of single lilac-coloured flowers.

In habitats between Brisbane and Sydney spade flower is scarce, however a similar and arguably showier species called H. stellarioides occurs. H. stellarioides is somewhat more delicate, but what really sets it apart are the bright royal orange flowers it produces in summer and autumn.

Spade flowers next to their flashier orange cousin, H. stellarioides. Author provided

In many other aspects these two species look so similar that for some time H. stellarioides was considered a subspecies of the spade flower, however it is now clear they are genetically distinct.

As part of Professor David Craik’s research group at The University of Queensland, we have sequenced the expressed genes of spade flower shoots and roots to uncover how these clever plants make cyclotides. These data helped explain spade flower’s cyclotide amino acid sequences.

Armed with this information, the scientific community can now make stable designer peptides as potential pharmaceuticals. The Craik group is working on making modified cyclotides that can treat cancer and other diseases, and then reintroducing those genes into edible plants – turning a regular tomato plant into a medicinal plant for example. Learning how the spade flower makes cyclotides has already helped us to make some new cyclotides in other plant seeds.

Read more: The mysterious Pilostyles is a plant within a plant

Finally, this work facilitates the isolation of individual “love shrub” cyclotides to test their effects. Watch this space and the herbs underfoot. The humble and shy spade flower may have more surprises yet!

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. The humble spade flower moonlights as the ‘love shrub’ – http://theconversation.com/the-humble-spade-flower-moonlights-as-the-love-shrub-110973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evita March, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Federation University Australia

It seems like internet trolling happens everywhere online these days – and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

This week, the British press and Kensington Palace officials have called for an end to the merciless online trolling of Duchesses Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, which reportedly includes racist and sexist content, and even threats.

But what exactly is internet trolling? How do trolls “behave”? Do they intend to harm, or amuse?

To find out how people define trolling, we conducted a survey with 379 participants. The results suggest there is a difference in the way the media, the research community and the general public understand trolling.

If we want to reduce abusive online behaviour, let’s start by getting the definition right.

Read more: How empathy can make or break a troll

Which of these cases is trolling?

Consider the comments that appear in the image below:

Screenshot

Without providing any definitions, we asked if this was an example of internet trolling. Of participants, 44% said yes, 41% said no and 15% were unsure.

Now consider this next image:

Screenshot

Of participants, 69% said this was an example of internet trolling, 16% said no, and 15% were unsure).

These two images depict very different online behaviour. The first image depicts mischievous and comical behaviour, where the author perhaps intended to amuse the audience. The second image depicts malicious and antisocial behaviour, where the author may have intended to cause harm.

There was more consensus among participants that the second image depicted trolling. That aligns with a more common definition of internet trolling as destructive and disruptive online behaviour that causes harm to others.

But this definition has only really evolved in more recent years. Previously, internet trolling was defined very differently.

Read more: We researched Russian trolls and figured out exactly how they neutralise certain news

A shifting definition

In 2002, one of the earliest definitions of internet “trolling” described the behaviour as:

luring others online (commonly on discussion forums) into pointless and time-consuming activities.

Trolling often started with a message that was intentionally incorrect, but not overly controversial. By contrast, internet “flaming” described online behaviour with hostile intentions, characterised by profanity, obscenity, and insults that inflict harm to a person or an organisation.

So, modern day definitions of internet trolling seem more consistent with the definition of flaming, rather than the initial definition of trolling.

To highlight this intention to amuse compared to the intention to harm, communication researcher Jonathan Bishop suggested we differentiate between “kudos trolling” to describe trolling for mutual enjoyment and entertainment, and “flame trolling” to describe trolling that is abusive and not intended to be humorous.

How people in our study defined trolling

In our study, which has been accepted to be published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, we recruited 379 participants (60% women) to answer an online, anonymous questionnaire where they provided short answer responses to the following questions:

• how do you define internet trolling?

• what kind of behaviours constitute internet trolling?

Here are some examples of how participants responded:

Where an individual online verbally attacks another individual with intention of offending the other (female, 27)

People saying intentionally provocative things on social media with the intent of attacking / causing discomfort or offence (female, 26)

Teasing, bullying, joking or making fun of something, someone or a group (male, 29)

Deliberately commenting on a post to elicit a desired response, or to purely gratify oneself by emotionally manipulating another (male, 35)

Based on participant responses, we suggest that internet trolling is now more commonly seen as an intentional, malicious online behaviour, rather than a harmless activity for mutual enjoyment.

A word cloud representing how survey participants described trolling behaviours.

Researchers use ‘trolling’ as a catch-all

Clearly there are discrepancies in the definition of internet trolling, and this is a problem.

Research does not differentiate between kudos trolling and flame trolling. Some members of the public might still view trolling as a kudos behaviour. For example, one participant in our study said:

Depends which definition you mean. The common definition now, especially as used by the media and within academia, is essentially just a synonym to “asshole”. The better, and classic, definition is someone who speaks from outside the shared paradigm of a community in order to disrupt presuppositions and try to trigger critical thought and awareness (male, 41)

Not only does the definition of trolling differ from researcher to researcher, but there can also be discrepancy between the researcher and the public.

As a term, internet trolling has significantly deviated from its early, 2002 definition and become a catch-all for all antisocial online behaviours. The lack of a uniform definition of internet trolling leaves all research on trolling open to validity concerns, which could leave the behaviour remaining largely unchecked.

Read more: Our experiments taught us why people troll

We need to agree on the terminology

We propose replacing the catch-all term of trolling with “cyberabuse”.

Cyberbullying, cyberhate and cyberaggression are all different online behaviours with different definitions, but they are often referred to uniformly as “trolling”.

It is time to move away from the term trolling to describe these serious instances of cyberabuse. While it may have been empowering for the public to picture these internet “trolls” as ugly creatures living under the bridge, this imagery may have begun to downplay the seriousness of their online behaviour.

Continuing to use the term trolling, a term that initially described a behaviour that was not intended to harm, could have serious consequences for managing and preventing the behaviour.

– ref. Online trolling used to be funny, but now the term refers to something far more sinister – http://theconversation.com/online-trolling-used-to-be-funny-but-now-the-term-refers-to-something-far-more-sinister-110272

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

A federal integrity commission is an idea whose time has finally come. The Coalition announced its proposal for a Commonwealth Integrity Commission in mid-December, joining the Greens, Labor and independents led by Cathy McGowan in recognising the need for a body to investigate corruption by politicians and public servants.

But not all integrity commissions are equal. Unfortunately, the government’s initial proposal is light on both powers and resources and is unlikely to weed out corruption and serious misconduct.

Read more: The proposed National Integrity Commission is a watered-down version of a federal ICAC

There are big gaps in its proposed powers

At a minimum, the new commission should be able to investigate and resolve claims of corruption in the public sector. Yet the government’s proposal limits its scope and powers in three critical ways.

1. It limits who can report corruption

The government proposes the commission only investigate corruption in the public sector if the federal police or agency heads refer it. The proposal explicitly excludes investigation of public complaints. It also appears to exclude investigation of tips and information from lower-level public officials, journalists and whistleblowers.

Closing off the best source of information about corruption — those that have witnessed it directly or heard about it — would severely limit the commission’s effectiveness. Indeed, instead of ignoring public tips, the commission should be a gateway for them.

2. It limits investigations to criminal offences

The proposed commission will only investigate conduct likely to be a criminal offence. While criminal conduct should be the priority, the commission should also be able to investigate other forms of serious misconduct. For example, links between financial contributions and political favours should be explored even if an improper motive – required to meet the criminal threshold – isn’t likely to be established.

3. Findings may remain secret

The proposed commission “will not be able to make findings of corruption, criminal conduct or misconduct at large”. Only the courts can make findings of criminal conduct. But the commission needs to be able to report to the public on the outcomes of its investigations. The government’s proposal makes no mention of the commission having any public presence.

The commission won’t allay public concern if it operates purely behind closed doors. It should be empowered to publish findings of fact in relation to its investigations and refer suspected criminal conduct to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, or serious misconduct to the relevant agency.

Public findings from the commission are important to reassure the public that corruption and serious misconduct are being investigated. It also creates accountability for the agencies ultimately tasked with pursuing the conduct. It is equally important the commission makes public statements when it does not find facts to support an allegation, so that public officials don’t live under a cloud of suspicion.

Funding too tight

The government proposes a commission operating budget of about A$30 million a year. This is supposed to fund the new public sector integrity division as well as a division to investigate corruption in law enforcement agencies – a task currently undertaken by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI), with a budget of about $12 million a year.

Assuming the law enforcement division requires only the existing ACLEI budget – optimistic given the raft of new agencies the government is asking it to cover – this would leave the public sector division with a budget of $18 million.

Read more: Parties, money and their masters: who do office holders serve?

That’s far smaller than the annual budgets of the larger states’ integrity agencies: NSW $24 million, Western Australia $30 million, Victoria $40 million and Queensland $57 million.

A recent review estimated the cost of a well-functioning commonwealth integrity agency at $47 million a year (including a law enforcement division).

Broader integrity reforms are also needed

An integrity commission, even a powerful and properly resourced one, is not enough on its own to ensure well-resourced and well-connected groups don’t have too much sway over public policy.

Grattan Institute’s 2018 report Who’s in the room? Access and influence in Australian politics covered the vulnerabilities of Australian governments to this type of undue influence.

Read more: Influence in Australian politics needs an urgent overhaul – here’s how to do it

A number of simple changes could reduce these risks, including capping political advertising expenditure during election campaigns, strengthening the disclosure regime for political donations and making lobbying more transparent by publishing ministerial diaries.

Read more: Time for the federal government to catch up on political donations reform

Setting much clearer standards for politicians on potential conflicts of interest – particularly relating to corporate hospitality, gifts and secondary employment – would also be a useful complement to the integrity commission’s activities.

Back to the drawing board

The government should go back to the drawing board. A weak and poorly resourced integrity commission is only marginally better than no integrity commission. Fortunately, there is time for the government to fix the model before the proposal is put to parliament. And if the government is serious about lifting the standards in public office, it should reform political donations and lobbying rules at the same time.

– ref. Why the federal government’s new integrity commission isn’t up to the job – http://theconversation.com/why-the-federal-governments-new-integrity-commission-isnt-up-to-the-job-110441

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Lee, Academic Tutor and Lecturer, Southern Cross University

Worldwide, more than 300 million people live with depression. Without effective treatment, the condition can make it difficult to work and maintain relationships with family and friends.

Depression can cause sleep problems, difficulty concentrating, and a lack of interest in activities that are usually pleasurable. At its most extreme, it can lead to suicide.

Read more: What causes depression? What we know, don’t know and suspect

Depression has long been treated with medication and talking therapies – and they’re not going anywhere just yet. But we’re beginning to understand that increasing how much exercise we get and switching to a healthy diet can also play an important role in treating – and even preventing – depression.

So what should you eat more of, and avoid, for the sake of your mood?

Ditch junk food

Research suggests that while healthy diets can reduce the risk or severity of depression, unhealthy diets may increase the risk.

Of course, we all all indulge from time to time but unhealthy diets are those that contain lots of foods that are high in energy (kilojoules) and low on nutrition. This means too much of the foods we should limit:

• processed and takeaway foods
• processed meats
• fried food
• butter
• salt
• potatoes
• refined grains, such as those in white bread, pasta, cakes and pastries
• sugary drinks and snacks.

The average Australian consumes 19 serves of junk food a week, and far fewer serves of fibre-rich fresh food and wholegrains than recommended. This leave us overfed, undernourished and mentally worse off.

Here’s what to eat instead

Mix it up. Anna Pelzer

Having a healthy diet means consuming a wide variety of nutritious foods every day, including:

• fruit (two serves per day)
• vegetables (five serves)
• wholegrains
• nuts
• legumes
• oily fish
• dairy products
• small quantities of meat
• small quantities of olive oil
• water.

Read more: Back to work? Take lunch from home to save time and money – and boost your mood

This way of eating is common in Mediterranean countries, where people have been identified as having lower rates of cognitive decline, depression and dementia.

In Japan, a diet low in processed foods and high in fresh fruit, vegetables, green tea and soy products is recognised for its protective role in mental health.

How does healthy food help?

A healthy diet is naturally high in five food types that boost our mental health in different ways:

Complex carbohydrates found in fruits, vegetables and wholegrains help fuel our brain cells. Complex carbohydrates release glucose slowly into our system, unlike simple carbohydrates (found in sugary snacks and drinks), which create energy highs and lows throughout the day. These peaks and troughs decrease feelings of happiness and negatively affect our psychological well-being.

Antioxidants in brightly coloured fruit and vegetables scavenge free radicals, eliminate oxidative stress and decrease inflammation in the brain. This in turn increases the feelgood chemicals in the brain that elevate our mood.

Read more: Five types of food to increase your psychological well-being

Omega 3 found in oily fish and B vitamins found in some vegetables increase the production of the brain’s happiness chemicals and have been known to protect against both dementia and depression.

Salmon is an excellent source of omega 3. Caroline Attwood

Pro and prebiotics found in yoghurt, cheese and fermented products boost the millions of bacteria living in our gut. These bacteria produce chemical messengers from the gut to the brain that influence our emotions and reactions to stressful situations.

Research suggests pro- and prebiotics could work on the same neurological pathways that antidepressants do, thereby decreasing depressed and anxious states and elevating happy emotions.

What happens when you switch to a healthy diet?

An Australian research team recently undertook the first randomised control trial studying 56 individuals with depression.

Over a 12-week period, 31 participants were given nutritional consulting sessions and asked to change from their unhealthy diets to a healthy diet. The other 25 attended social support sessions and continued their usual eating patterns.

The participants continued their existing antidepressant and talking therapies during the trial.

At the end of the trial, the depressive symptoms of the group that maintained a healthier diet significantly improved. Some 32% of participants had scores so low they no longer met the criteria for depression, compared with 8% of the control group.

Read more: You’ve been diagnosed with depression, now what?

The trial was replicated by another research team, which found similar results, and supported by a recent review of all studies on dietary patterns and depression. The review found that across 41 studies, people who stuck to a healthy diet had a 24-35% lower risk of depressive symptoms than those who ate more unhealthy foods.

These findings suggest improving your diet could be a cost-effective complementary treatment for depression and could reduce your risk of developing a mental illness.

– ref. Want to improve your mood? It’s time to ditch the junk food – http://theconversation.com/want-to-improve-your-mood-its-time-to-ditch-the-junk-food-107358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Kent, Research Fellow, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Sydney

I live where I want to live and I work where the work is. I don’t understand people that go “this is where I’ll work [and] this is where I’ll buy a house” because it might not be the area they want to live in. – Larry

Sydney’s most recent metropolitan strategy, The Greater Sydney Plan, has the 30-minute city as its key aspiration. The plan recommends that the majority of dwellings be located within a 30-minute public transport trip of a strategic centre or cluster. This is proposed as a solution to the problems with transport, infrastructure and housing affordability that are dominating the headlines and lives of Sydneysiders.

Often the 30-minute city ideal is applied to the journey to work. It’s implied that half-an-hour there and back is around the commute time that is acceptable to most people in most circumstances. A recent survey of residents’ reasons for settling in a new outer suburb of Sydney challenges this assumption. It found other factors were more important than commuting time in deciding where to live.

Read more: ‘The 30-minute city’: how do we put the political rhetoric into practice?

Proponents of the 30-minute city generally rely, either explicitly or implicitly, on a concept known as the Marchetti Constant. This constant promotes a universal travel time budget of around 60 minutes on average per person per day. The assumption is that although city structure, transport systems and technologies might change, people gradually adjust their lives to their conditions such that the average time they spend travelling stays roughly constant at one hour a day.

In 2014, influential Australian transport planners Peter Newman and John Kenworthy used 2004 data to apply the Marchetti Constant to transport practices in 41 cities around the world. Using average mode travel speeds, the analysis showed mean and median travel times per day were 66 and 65 minutes respectively. Sydney is included in this list.

It is from this kind of analysis that the 30-minute city ideal is born. However, the applicability of Newman and Kenworthy’s analysis to life in Australian cities in 2019 is questionable.

For a start, the analysis is difficult to replicate. It relies on multiple assumptions and masks variability and nuance in its use of averages.

More importantly, elements of life and employment in cities have changed since the Marchetti finding (1980) and Newman and Kenworthy’s most recent data collection (in 2004).

So what has changed?

First, global labour markets have become more flexible. The workforce in 2004 was less dominated by fixed-term contracts and casual positions. The gig economy, based on short-term contract work, freelancing and self-employment, was relatively nascent.

These changes to ways of working mean people can no longer expect their place of employment to remain stable over time. It therefore doesn’t make sense to base decisions on where to live on proximity to the place where we work. Factors such as lifestyle take precedence over minimising travel time when considering where to live.

Second, back in 2004 the housing market was more accessible. More suburbs had median house prices that were affordable for more people. Again, this made the idea of households following employment possible. People not only had the inclination but also the financial ability to live close to where they worked and minimise travel time.

Third, the way we use time while commuting has changed. Technology has started to free time spent travelling from complete redundancy. In 2019 we can legally drive a car while participating in teleconferences, listening to audiobooks and podcasts and/or chatting to family and friends online.

These three basic shifts – working conditions, housing affordability and the freeing up of commute time – highlight that it’s time to question the idea of a universal travel time budget of 60 minutes per day. While the 30-minute city may be desirable to most, our willingness to travel, the need to travel and the way we experience travel are being recast.

Read more: A 20-minute city sounds good, but becoming one is a huge challenge

What matters to suburban residents?

Some of these factors were confirmed by a recent survey of 300 people who had recently relocated to the greenfield suburb of Oran Park. The survey asked the newly settled residents why they chose Oran Park, which is about 60 kilometres southwest of the Sydney CBD. It was not surprising they didn’t choose to live in Oran Park to minimise the time they spent travelling.

They were more motivated by the affordability of a new house in a family-friendly and attractive urban neighbourhood. Being close to employment and public transport access were less important. Residents’ treatment of these elements of access as less significant was balanced by most respondents ranking the ability to drive everywhere as an appealing feature of Oran Park.

Why Oran Park? The developers know residents buy into the lifestyle of a detached family home with paths for walking, schools for learning and parks for playing. www.oranparktown.com.au

Read more: ‘Children belong in the suburbs’: with more families in apartments, such attitudes are changing

This confirms existing research suggesting location relative to employment is not a particularly strong influence on housing choice. It also confirms research demonstrating how attachments to private car use are alive and well in subsets of Australian culture.

Proponents of jobs-housing balance within a city’s sub-regions, including those who dream of a 30-minute city, rarely consider these factors.

Where does this leave those seeking to plan for the growth of a city such as Sydney? This study suggests a population so desperate to buy into the lifestyle of a detached family home with paths for walking, schools for learning and parks for playing that they will wear an increased commute time.

This willingness – a cultural inclination to sacrifice for home ownership – is lived out in both greenfield estates and infill developments across Australia’s rapidly growing cities. Decreasing housing affordability and increased uncertainty in employment – including where that employment will be located – reinforce this. This is a mix with unanticipated potential to derail the 30-minute city ideal.

– ref. Three changes in how we live could derail the dream of the 30-minute city – http://theconversation.com/three-changes-in-how-we-live-could-derail-the-dream-of-the-30-minute-city-110287

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Gillespie, Professor of Management; KPMG Chair in Organizational Trust, The University of Queensland

After today’s Banking Royal Commission’s final report it may seem as if it is impossible for banks to regain trust.

But it is possible, as I know from working with prominent British and European banks after the global financial crisis, taking part in policy meetings at the UK parliament about how to restore trust, and researching cases of trust repair.

Here are the six most important questions our banks will need to answer for their stakeholders to regain trust:

1. What went wrong and why?

When a major breach of trust occurs, it is often unclear what caused it and who is responsible. It is essential to get a shared understanding of what happened.

This can be arrived at through inquiries and investigations which are most effective when timely, comprehensive, and independently conducted.

The royal commission is itself such an inquiry and will help, as did the Parliamentary Commission into Banking Standards in the UK.

But banks also need to conduct their own investigations and explain what happened to their customers and shareholders.

The paradox is that such a “warts and all” investigation is likely to lower trust in the short term as the true extent and scale of the misconduct is revealed.

But without it, it is hard to “draw a line in the sand” and move on.

2. Have the banks learned their lesson and made amends?

Social rituals and symbolic acts – such as apologies, fines, punishments and compensation – play an important role in repairing trust.

They signal that the organisation understands its conduct was wrong and has “paid a price”. They can help resolve negative emotions and restore a sense of equity and justice in the relationship between the organisation and its stakeholders.

Apologies are usually more effective when combined with substantive actions – such as offering compensation – to avoid appearing as “cheap talk”. They are also more effective when offered voluntarily. Unfortunately, Australia’s banks have often been reactive, issuing public apologies only after damning evidence has emerged, and being slow to offer compensation.

3. Can future violations be prevented?

Given what’s been revealed at the royal commission, stakeholders want to see evidence that the banks have “got their house in order” and won’t let it happen again. This will require comprehensive reforms to their strategies, cultures, incentive schemes, and formal control mechanisms (such as revised accountability and governance structures, procedures, rules, policies, and codes of conduct).

4. Is trustworthiness embedded in their DNA?

Banks are typically good at formal controls. The more difficult task is bringing about cultural change. Yet it is absolutely necessary, because cultural values and norms powerfully influence behaviour.

Ensuring that trust-inducing values and decision making are role modelled and embodied by leaders and managers and embedded in everyday routines will require the banks to challenge firmly held beliefs and assumptions that lead them to prioritise short-term profits and returns to shareholders over a more balanced multi-stakeholder perspective grounded in a broader purpose and responsibility to society.

5. Do others believe the banks are trustworthy?

Transparently sharing information about their conduct over time (through for example corporate reporting and monitoring) and having it verified by credible independent third parties (such as auditors) can help restore and maintain trust. It signals the bank has “nothing to hide”.

In the UK, the Banking Standards Board was established to monitor and report on bank conduct and culture.

Its latest report found slow progress had been made on fixing the UK’s poor banking culture five years on from the UK’s equivalent of our royal commission. That is testament to how hard it is to achieve real cultural change.

6. Is the external governance now effective?

Stakeholders need to know that reforms to the governance and regulation of the industry will reward trustworthy conduct, identify and punish misconduct, and root out systematic problems.

This is important for upholding minimal standards of conduct over time.

Read more: Restructuring alone won’t clean up the banks’ act

The banks will have to convincingly answer each of these questions in order to regain trust. Leaving any one of them unaddressed means it might not happen.

The banks will find the task neither quick nor easy.

It will require time, money, effort, political will, coordination amongst a range of actors and skilled change management, among other things.

Given banks are an essential pillar of a well-functioning society, it is important that they rise to the challenge.

Today’s report will provide an opportunity.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

– ref. Six questions our banks need to answer to regain trust – http://theconversation.com/six-questions-our-banks-need-to-answer-to-regain-trust-110715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pat McConnell, Visiting Fellow, Macquarie University Applied Finance Centre, Macquarie University

If ever you find a job is too big for you, you probably get a friend or an expert to help.

In business, if a department of, say, ten people is not keeping up with its work commitments and making more and more mistakes, a good manager will add three or four extra staff, probably skilled, to improve performance.

Balancing workload with resources is Management 101.

As will be shown in today’s report of the Financial Services Royal Commission, the boards of the major banks, especially Commonwealth Bank, appear to have been overwhelmed with scandals.

They weren’t keeping up with their workload and were making repeated very costly mistakes.

Might it be that the directors of the big four banks have been overloaded and unable to do the job they were being asked to do, which was to govern their institutions?

Overloaded, unable to cope

The scathing Australian Prudential Regulation Authority report into the Commonwealth Bank reads as if the bank’s directors were unable to cope with the constant round of scandals, and frequently dropped the ball as a result.

It concluded diplomatically that the bank’s governance practices were “below mature practice”.

In other words, the directors need to lift their game – a lot.

If they wanted to lift it to “mature practice” where would they look?

My submission to the commission looks at how the leading banks in Canada are well governed, managing not to get themselves into the sort of mess that Australia’s leading banks have done, yet remain just as profitable and strong.

Canadians do it better

Australia and Canada have almost identical political and economic systems. They are two of the largest countries in the world by area, but sparsely populated, with 24 million people in Australia and 36 million in Canada. Both are blessed with abundant natural resources whose exports dominate their economies. Both have similar Westminster-style governments with a two-house federal parliament, plus state and provincial governments. Both legal systems derive from those of the United Kingdom.

Their banking systems are also similar, with the “four pillars” dominating in Australia (and New Zealand) and the “big five” dominating in Canada, in each case controlling more than 75% of the nation’s banking assets.

Many of the financial metrics of the two sets of banks are also comparable, including average net income, return on equity, total assets, and tier 1 capital.

Their bank boards are different

But to date the biggest Canadian banks, while not angels, have largely avoided the scandals that have plagued the biggest Australian banks for a decade.

I reckon the differences in corporate governance have a lot to do with it.

My research comparing the latest (2017) annual reports from the nine banks finds:

• The boards of the largest Canadian banks are 60% larger than their Australian counterparts (an average of 14.4 directors, compared with 9)

• Directors in Canadian banks have been in their roles on average 55% longer (average tenure is 7 years, compared with 4.5)

• The boards in the largest Canadian banks therefore have an average of 100 years of experience of directorships in their banks, whereas Australian banks have only 40 years – a 250% advantage

• Canadian bank boards are more diverse not only as regards female participation (37% vs 31%), but have broader experience in industry, many having been chief executives. Australian banks are top-heavy with ex-consultants with mainly legal and accounting experience

• While total remuneration is higher for Canadian boards (because there are more directors), Australian directors are on average paid some 40% more.

In short, the boards of Australia’s biggest banks are smaller, less experienced, and have less diverse experience than the boards of Canada’s biggest banks.

This would suggest that there is a “governance deficit” in Australia’s bank boards.

Ours could be 50% bigger

Their directors do not have the time, bandwidth or experience to take on the demanding roles of properly governing huge institutions that are vital to the Australian economy. To be comparable with Canadian banks, Australian bank boards should be at least 50% bigger.

Of course, it would be difficult to conclude firmly that board size and composition are the only (or even the main) reasons why Australian banks have been so much more prone to misconduct than Canadian banks.

It might also be the regulatory regime.

In Australia there are “twin peaks”: the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. In Canada there is only one: the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

Read more: CBA’s board needs to take ultimate responsibility for the bank’s failings

It would be unfair to conclude that our twin peaks system has failed. The execution has been woeful, as the Royal Commission has discovered. If implemented properly, twin peaks might well be the best model for dealing with the misconduct in the four pillars.

The question needs research, funded and conducted objectively rather than by the banks or regulators.

The case for beefing up our bank boards to the kind of size needed to do the kind of job they have, seems overwhelming.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission’s damning report: ‘Things are so bad that new laws might not help’

– ref. Pro tip for Australia’s banks: imagine you are in Canada – http://theconversation.com/pro-tip-for-australias-banks-imagine-you-are-in-canada-107795

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney

What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance. (Warning: this scene contains violence and may be upsetting for some viewers.)

Rome, Open City (1945)

In what way does a film reflect the politics of the time and place in which it was made? We started answering this question in the episode on Back to the Future (1985). Today, we explore this question further with Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta), directed by Roberto Rossellini and released to Italian audiences in 1945.

Rossellini made the film just after the German withdrawal, a couple of years after Mussolini’s death and the end of Fascism in Italy. The historical context is important because it provides an insight into what Rossellini was trying to achieve. If you are an Italian filmmaker, committed to the art form, but also to the country and its history, how do you respond to this turbulent moment in history? Rossellini used the medium of cinema to not only reconstruct Italy’s recent past under Fascism, but also its potential future.

See also:

Vertigo
The Passenger
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Jaws
Psycho
The Godfather
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
Marie Antoinette
Requiem for a Dream
The Matrix and bullet-time
Back to the Future

– ref. The great movie scenes: Rome, Open City – fascism, tragedy and the birth of Italian neo-realism – http://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-rome-open-city-fascism-tragedy-and-the-birth-of-italian-neo-realism-110771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keyvan Allahyari, PhD candidate in English, University of Melbourne

When the author Richard Flanagan described Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker currently held on Manus Island, as “a great Australian writer”, he turned tired cliché into a pointed question: what makes an “Australian” writer?

No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani. Pan Macmillan

Flanagan was writing in the foreword to Boochani’s startling book No Friend But the Mountains (Picador), which last night won the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature, the richest of its kind in Australia. Boochani also claimed the award for non-fiction, worth another $25,000.

This triumph cements Boochani’s status as an Australian writer.

Boochani was arguably the most important literary phenomenon in Australian literature in 2018. In part, this is because of the distinctive qualities of No Friend But the Mountains, an epic work that moves between verse and prose, reportage and fantasy, the mundane and the historical. The fact that Boochani’s political memoir of what he calls Manus Prison was ever published in book form defies the odds.

A journalist and experimental documentary maker, Boochani wrote the book as text messages on his mobile phone, sending them, sometimes through several intermediaries, to the academic Omid Tofighian for translation into English.

Read more: Truth to power: my time translating Behrouz Boochani’s masterpiece

Indeed, beyond the recognition of Boochani’s book as a singular achievement in its own right, its success this week highlights recent intersections of human rights activism and the vocal political position-taking of the Australian literary community.

The publication of No Friend But the Mountains was accompanied by numerous public events, such as one at the Greek Centre in Melbourne in October 2018, where the conditions detailed in the book were discussed and protested, and Boochani participated via Skype. The same month, A “National Day of Action” organised by Academics for Refugees featured public “read-ins” of the book on university campuses nationwide.

Other Australian authors have also used their voices to bring attention to the plight of asylum seekers. During her acceptance speech for her second Miles Franklin Award in August 2018, Michelle de Kretser chastised politicians for their treatment of refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. To illustrate her point, she read a list of names of asylum seekers who have died there in the past five years.

It is tempting to dismiss such actions as gesture politics by an urban elite. But each individual action has served to raise awareness of the Australian government’s policy of “offshore processing” for asylum seekers, and to fuse artistic expression with political activism in a particularly forceful manner.

At the same time, and perhaps uniquely in the history of Australian literature, No Friend has seen the translation of human rights awards into convertible cultural capital in the literary field. The author has been awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award, the Amnesty International Award and Liberty Victoria’s Empty Chair Award. These humanitarian awards have confirmed Boochani’s rapidly acquired high profile in the literary field.

Last night’s news topped all of that to make Boochani the first “non-Australian” author to win the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The Victorian government established these awards in 1985 to honour Australian writing. The specific challenge this poses to the definition of “Australian writing” can be seen as an intervention by the literary community into the field of politics. If a non-citizen who has never set foot on mainland Australia can win, who counts as an Australian author?

Read more: Book Review: Behrouz Boochani’s unsparing look at the brutality of Manus Island

Ironically, perhaps, Boochani’s success simply mirrors some of the prevailing trends in Australian authorship in an age of global literary circulation, which allow writers to transcend national borders. An example of this phenomenon is Nam Le who rose to fame with the publication of his very successful The Boat. This collection of short stories, informed by the author’s diasporic identity and upbringing in Australia, soon earned him over a dozen major literary awards in Australia, the United States and Europe.

Conversely, Boochani’s status on Manus Island has been defined by deterrence, indefinite detention and the spectre of refoulement. The narrative of this experience is one that he seeks to address directly to the Australian people from beyond Australia’s borders.

With no clear solution to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru in sight, the paradox of Boochani’s award success can only contribute further to public debate over the tangled logic of indefinite detention. It shows how cultural practices and political activism can be reconfigured to correspond with the newly created literary currency associated with refugee writing. For now, at least, Boochani is an “Australian writer” because Australia is morally implicated in what he wrote and how he wrote it.

– ref. Behrouz Boochani’s literary prize cements his status as an Australian writer – http://theconversation.com/behrouz-boochanis-literary-prize-cements-his-status-as-an-australian-writer-110986

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

Today’s Commonwealth donations data release is a stark reminder of the deep flaws in our political donations system.

Contributions to political parties are revealed up to 19 months after the event, and sometimes not at all.

With most states now operating far more transparent regimes, the only conceivable explanation for the current Commonwealth system is that our political leaders don’t want us to see where the money is coming from.

And the information contained in today’s data dump gives clues as to why that might be.

Read more: Australia trails way behind other nations in regulating political donations

Tasmanian election: where the money came from

The most concerning revelation in today’s release is the extent of political donations from gambling businesses in the lead-up to the March 2018 Tasmanian election. Tasmania relies on Commonwealth rules and processes to make donations public.

The future of poker machines in pubs and clubs was a key election issue: Tasmanian Labor proposed to get rid of the machines by 2023, whereas the Liberals wanted them to stay for at least 25 years.

The hotels lobby ran an intensive advertising campaign during the election. Many commentators suspected pro-gambling lobby groups were also using political donations to support their cause. But it’s taken until today to reveal their donations.

The Tasmanian Liberal Party (who won the election) declared more than A$400,000 from pro-gambling groups in the lead-up to the state election – equal to nearly 90% of the party’s declared donations, and a ten-fold increase on the amount gambling groups gave in the previous election.

Some A$50,000 came from the well-known Federal Group, a family business that runs casinos and gaming assets across the state. Pro-gambling donors gave nothing to Labor, and Labor’s Tasmanian branch received a total of only A$160,000 in donations for the year.

Heavy reliance on a single donor industry creates the risk of undue influence over policy. Tasmanians would be right to question the effect on this inflow of funds from the gambling lobby on their democracy.

Read more: A full ban on political donations would level the playing field – but is it the best approach?

A lot of money remains hidden

The Tasmanian example also neatly highlights the lack of transparency in the Commonwealth regime. Tasmanian voters have waited 11 months to see where the money came from.

In the age of the internet and instant communications, there’s no good reason for this: donations are revealed in close to “real time” in several Australian states.

Tasmanian donations also reveal problems with the disclosure threshold. Parties have to declare donations of A$13,800 or more. But they’re not required to release the details of donations under the threshold – even if a donor makes a series of smaller donations that together exceed the threshold.

The Tasmanian Hotels’ Association declaration reveals that, just two days before the election, they gave A$57,000 to the Liberal Party in seven separate donations.

Because each donation was under the threshold, these donations are not identified in the Liberal Party declaration. The only way for the public to find out about these funds is to guess who might have donated and go hunting in the donor records.

The national returns for the parties shows how significant this issue is. Around half of the Coalition’s funding and a third of the ALP’s funding we know nothing about. A lot of this is likely to be donations below the disclosure threshold. Some of this will doubtless be from “mum and dad” donors who like to give small amounts to their preferred party.

But a lot is probably “donation splitting” from groups adopting a similar approach to the Tasmanian Hotels’ Association.

Read more: FactCheck Q&A: Is Australia one of the few countries worldwide to accept foreign political donations?

What the data does tell us

Despite its deficiencies, the data does reveal some interesting things about how our political parties are funded. Parties received A$154 million in political donations, public funding and other income in 2017-18, down 25% from 2016-17. It’s normal for funding to drop outside of election years, but the parties will be keenly seeking to boost their coffers in the lead-up to this year’s federal election. Unfortunately voters won’t be told anything about that money until 2020.

The data reaffirms the importance of union money to the ALP, and of hotels and mining money to the Coalition. The ALP’s biggest donors and contributors include the shop assistants’ union (A$1.4 million), the Electrical Trade Union (A$940,000) and the CFMEU (A$530,000).

The Coalition’s biggest contributors include the Waratah Group (A$175,000) and the Australian Mining Group (A$170,000). Hotels associations from around the country were also major contributors, giving a combined total of more than A$600,000 to the Coalition.

Both major parties received A$250,000 in donations from ANZ, interesting given the Royal Commission but consistent with the bank’s recent practice of making significant donations to both sides.

Reform the donations regime, for the sake of our democracy

Today’s donations data release will only fuel people’s cynicism about the role of money in politics. If political parties want to start to rebuild the public’s trust, making donations releases more timely and transparent would be a good place to start.

– ref. Tasmania’s gambling election shows Australia needs tougher rules on money in politics – http://theconversation.com/tasmanias-gambling-election-shows-australia-needs-tougher-rules-on-money-in-politics-110977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Vredenburg, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Auckland University of Technology

First it was burning running shoes, and now it’s boycotting razors. This is how some customers are responding to recent brand activism initiatives.

Read more: Razor burned: Why Gillette’s campaign against toxic masculinity missed the mark

Brand activism is becoming increasingly prevalent as brands try to stand out in a cluttered and fragmented marketplace, driven in part by heightened consumer expectations of a brand’s power and duty to do good. In this emerging space, brands have a choice when and how they decide to take a stand, what causes they choose to engage with, and what sort of message they send about this support.

Procter & Gamble razor brand Gillette’s viral campaign against toxic masculinity is an interesting case study.

The campaign

Gillette’s campaign “The Best Men Can Be” plays on their slogan “The Best a Man Can Get”. It is backed by $3 million in charitable donations over three years to causes such as the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

Gillette’s financial support remains ambiguous beyond the initial donations. Our current research indicates that backing up a brand activism marketing message with authentic practice makes it appear less like “woke washing”. When combined with positive and visible socio-political practices, a brand’s message can increase perceptions of authenticity.

In the case of Gillette, criticism has centred around the seemingly insignificant amount to be donated, compared with the heft of Gillette’s annual profits. Others have criticised Gillette’s “pink tax” gender-based price discrimination and have called out the brand for seemingly appropriating the #MeToo cause while charging more for women’s products.

Despite making a visible effort to match messaging with practice through donations, the leveraging of a gender-driven “pink tax” demonstrates inconsistency with actual corporate practice.

Read more: Gillette’s corporate calculation shows just how far the #metoo movement has come

Actions over words

Another campaign released around the same time received less publicity. In response to the recent US government shutdown, Kraft sought to make a meaningful difference. The Kraft campaign, “Kraft Now, Pay Later” provided food for federal government workers and doubled down on this message by asking consumers to donate to a charity of their choice, instead of paying the company.

This ad was not accompanied by a high-budget advertisement or celebrity endorser such as Nike’s campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. For the most part, it forwent the marketing messaging aspect entirely, focusing instead on authentic practice. It is high on action, and therefore authenticity of practice, and low on marketing as a brand activism initiative.

According to our research, Kraft could have benefited from publicising their actions through brand activism marketing, creating positive brand sentiment and loyalty. From a marketing perspective, Kraft may have left some money on the table with their approach but scored authenticity points for not appearing to appropriate a cause. But authenticity may not be enough to catch consumer attention.

Intentionally provocative

If a brand’s goal is to insert itself in a topical conversation, garnering media attention and engaging in a provocative way can have its merits. While this is a risky tactic, the brand’s gamble is wagered on the potential to find intensely positive resonance with a subset of consumers rather than mildly favourable reactions from the masses.

The message framing of the Gillette ad serves as a good example of this phenomenon. Historically, positive appeals have been more successful than negative appeals. Think of the empowering Dove “Real Beauty”campaigns or the stirring “Thank you Mom” advertisements aired in conjunction with the Olympic Games. Both garnered favourable reactions from the general public.

However, in a marketplace increasingly flooded with companies’ good intentions, acting in a way that is unexpected, surprising or even shocking has become necessary to gain attention (and go viral). Links to causes or a socially conscious image that previously provided clear brand differentiation have increasingly become points-of-parity, common across many brands, thus diluting the impact.

Surprising or incongruous advertisements elicit deeper levels of consumer processing because of the unanticipated nature of the message. The more a consumer is prompted to think about an ad, the more likely that consumer is to engage with the brand.

Incongruence can be demonstrated through unexpected alignment between brand and cause. While this can be a successful strategy if properly executed, Pepsi’s unsuccessful attempt to engage in the anti-police brutality conversation using supermodel Kendall Jenner clearly backfired.

Gillette instead used the strategy of negatively framed messaging, leading with examples of “toxic masculinity” such as bullying and sexual harassment. Although they went on to show more desirable examples of positive masculinity, for many, the negative frame was inflammatory enough to spark outrage and anger at the brand. But it has started a conversation about toxic masculinity. Had Gillette focused on the positive and employed a motivational style of ad, general sentiment towards the brand may have been more positive — but it likely wouldn’t have had the same impact.

– ref. Post Gillette: other brands are better at matching practice with talk, but don’t get the publicity – http://theconversation.com/post-gillette-other-brands-are-better-at-matching-practice-with-talk-but-dont-get-the-publicity-110595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mustapha Bangura, Part-time lecturer and PhD Candidate in Property Economics, Western Sydney University

Housing affordability changes over the years for home owners, but this has been largely ignored. The focus has mostly been on entry-level affordability for home buyers. But how does affordability change over the years after people have bought their home? Our newly published research in Australian Geographer has found owners who entered the housing market 10-15 years ago are less likely to be in housing stress compared with renters or prospective home buyers.

Housing becomes unaffordable when households, especially lower-income households, spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Thus the threshold for affordability on our housing affordability index is 30 points. The index shows continuous improvement in ongoing housing affordability for owners over time.

In particular, those who entered the market 10-15 years ago are more likely to find their housing is affordable. Housing stress is not very relevant to them. This is a key benefit of ongoing home ownership.

Read more: Housing affordability stress affects one in nine households, but which ones are really struggling?

Our study focused on Greater Sydney, where we found entry-level housing remains unaffordable in all regions, but the level of unaffordability varies across regions. Specifically, the deterioration in housing affordability is more obvious in lower-income regions such as Western Sydney.

Ongoing housing affordability for those who have entered the market improves considerably within five to ten years. However, there are again significant differences between regions. Residents in lower-income regions such as Western Sydney take longer to improve their ongoing affordability than residents in high-income regions, such as eastern Sydney.

Read more: Mission nearly impossible: the City of Sydney’s efforts to increase the affordable housing supply

Benefits of home ownership are clear

Ongoing housing affordability examines how affordability evolves from the year after entry into the housing market for each cohort of entrants. This is a superior housing affordability measure for most households, particularly current home owners. Importantly, it also demonstrates the benefits and importance of home ownership.

Our ongoing housing affordability indices suggest households in Greater Sydney may experience some level of housing stress in the first five years after buying a house. But this improves from the tenth year after entering and continuously staying in the market.

Figure 1. Ongoing housing affordability index for Greater Sydney showing changes by year of market entry. Bangura & Lee, Australian Geographer (2019), Author provided

For instance, ongoing housing affordability for the cohorts who entered the market in Greater Sydney in 1992 improved significantly from an index value of 38.3 points (a lower index value represents higher housing affordability) in 1992 to around 19 points in 2002. It improved by another 9.5 points by 2016. This reflects a continuous improvement in housing affordability for ongoing owners.

This improvement is explained by a combination of two factors. First, owner incomes typically rose in the years after they first bought a house. Second, those who got in early also avoided the house price inflation of recent times. This means those who entered the market 20 years ago probably do not find their housing is severely unaffordable.

A comparison between the cohort who entered the market in 1992 and the cohort who entered the market in 2015 shows clear differences. The 1992 cohort has a lower housing affordability index value of 9.5 points (meaning more affordable) in 2016 compared to 60.3 points for the 2015 cohort. Housing is clearly much less affordable for new entrants or home owners than for those who entered markets 23 years earlier.

Renters or prospective home buyers are also more likely in housing stress compared with current homeowners, particularly those who entered the market 10-15 years ago. Entering the housing market earlier made a big difference for housing stress. Thus, the long-term benefits of home ownership should be promoted to prospective house buyers.

Affordability gains vary across regions

Ongoing housing affordability for home owners improves considerably within five to ten years of entering the market. However, the ongoing affordability indices show the rate of this improvement varies across different regions of Sydney.

Figure 2. Ongoing housing affordability indices for Greater Sydney regions. Bangura & Lee, Australian Geographer (2019), Adapted from the differential geography of housing affordability in Sydney: a disaggregated approach, Australian Geographer, Author provided

Figure 2 shows that residents in lower-income regions (such as Western Sydney) take longer to reach the affordability threshold of 30 points than residents in higher-income regions (Eastern Sydney). This is likely to affect the consumption and welfare of households, particularly those from lower-income regions.

What next?

The research findings point to two key take-outs:

1. Long-term owners’ head start makes a big difference for housing stress. Policymakers should promote home ownership as a means to reduce housing stress among prospective home buyers as housing affordability improves over time for home owners.

2. Governments should redesign existing housing policies to enhance affordability for all households, but particularly entry-level housing for low-income households.

Read more: Six lessons on how to make affordable housing funding work across Australia

– ref. Head start for home owners makes a big difference for housing stress – http://theconversation.com/head-start-for-home-owners-makes-a-big-difference-for-housing-stress-109007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

In the wake of revelations of water theft, fish kills, and towns running out of water, the South Australian Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin has reported that the Basin Plan must be strengthened if there is to be any hope of saving the river system, and the communities along it, from a bleak future.

Evidence uncovered by the Royal Commission showed systemic failures in the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The damning report must trigger action by all governments and bodies involved in managing the basin.

The Basin Plan was adopted in 2012 to address overallocation of water to irrigated farming at the expense of the environment, river towns, Traditional Owners, and the pastoral and tourism industries.

The Commission has made 111 findings and 44 recommendations that accuse federal agencies of maladministration, and challenge key policies that were pursued in implementing the plan.

Read more: Aboriginal voices are missing from the Murray-Darling Basin crisis

What did the report find?

The commission found that the Basin Plan breached federal water laws by applying a “triple bottom line” trade-off of environmental and socioeconomic values, rather than prioritising environmental sustainability and then optimising socio-economic outcomes.

I and my colleagues in the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists provided evidence to the commission from our independent assessment of the Basin Plan in 2017, which the commission’s findings reflect.

Contrary to current government practices, the Commission recommendations include:

• prioritising environmental sustainability
• basing the plan on transparent science
• acquiring more water for the environment through direct purchase from farmers
• meeting the water needs of the Basin’s 40 Indigenous nations
• ensuring that state governments produce competent subsidiary plans and comply with agreements to remove constraints to inundating floodplain wetlands
• addressing the impacts of climate change
• improving monitoring and compliance of Basin Plan implementation.

Resilience in decline

The Murray-Darling Basin is not just a food bowl. It is a living ecosystem that depends on interconnected natural resources. It also underpins the livelihoods of 2.6 million people and agricultural production worth more than A$24 billion.

The continued health of the basin and its economy depends on a healthy river – which in turns means healthy water flows. Like much of Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin is subject to periods of “droughts and flooding rains”. But over the past century the extraction of water, especially for irrigation, has reduced river flows to a point at which the natural system can no longer recover from these extremes.

That lack of resilience is evidenced by the current Darling River fish kills. More broadly, overextraction risks the health of the entire basin, and its capacity to sustain productive regional economies for future generations.

From the perspective of the Wentworth Group, we support the commission’s main recommendations, including increasing pressure on recalcitrant state governments to responsibly deliver their elements of the plan, and to refocus on the health of the river.

We particularly support recommendations related to the use of the best available science in decision-making, including for managing declining water availability under a changing climate.

We welcome the recommendation to reassess the sustainable levels of water extraction so as to comply with the Commonwealth Water Act. These must be constructed with a primary focus on the environment.

In line with this, the 70 billion litre reduction in environmental water from the northern basin adopted by parliament in 2018 should be immediately repealed. So should the ban on direct buyback of water from farmers for the environment.

We also recognise that the Basin Plan’s water recovery target is insufficient to restore health to the environment and prevent further damage, and would welcome an increase in the target above 3,200 billion litres.

Read more: A good plan to help Darling River fish recover exists, so let’s get on with it

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has taken a welcome first step in calling for a Council of Australian Governments meeting to discuss the commission’s findings. Our governments need to avoid the temptation to legislate away the politically inconvenient failings exposed by the commission, and instead act constructively and implement its recommendations.

This is not only a challenge for the current conservative federal government. The Labor side of politics needs to address its legacy in establishing the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Basin Plan, as well as the Victorian government’s role in frustrating the plan’s implementation by failing to remove constraints to environmental water flows.

Now, more than ever, we need strong leadership. If the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails, we all lose.

– ref. Damning royal commission report leaves no doubt that we all lose if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails – http://theconversation.com/damning-royal-commission-report-leaves-no-doubt-that-we-all-lose-if-the-murray-darling-basin-plan-fails-110908

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

University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini speaks with Michelle Grattan about the week in Australian politics. They discuss the week in politics including; independents Zali Steggall of Warringah; Oliver Yates in Kooyong and Julia Banks in Flinders, ministers Michael Keenan and Nigel Scullion, announcement they would be resigning at the next election, and the Coalition’s election campaigns.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the march of the independents – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-march-of-the-independents-110983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hunter, Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Flinders University

This article is part of our occasional long read series Zoom Out, where authors explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.

Scientists have many tools at their disposal to study, manipulate and copy genes.

Now it appears researchers at the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, China, have combined techniques to produce a world first: gene edited, cloned macaque monkeys (Macaca fascicularis).

Qiang Sun, a senior researcher in the project and Director of ION’s Nonhuman Primate Research Facility explains:

We believe that this approach of cloning gene-edited monkeys could be used to generate a variety of monkey models for gene-based diseases, including many brain diseases, as well as immune and metabolic disorders and cancer.

It sounds like a good idea at face value – curing human disease is something most of us consider a priority. But there are some complex ethical issues at play here.

First, there’s the ongoing question of how we should decide which animals should be used for research.

Second, cloning itself introduces some unique problems around commodification of research animals.

Read more: Fresh urgency in mapping out ethics of brain organoid research

Taking genetics out of the equation

The science in these two reported studies involved cutting out a gene involved in regulating the sleep/wake cycle. Then, an edited embryo was cloned (copied) to produce five live-born monkeys. The five monkeys are essentially genetically identical, and all missing that one gene.

The gene removal created multiple effects in edited monkeys, such as reduced sleep time, increased movement during the night, changed blood hormone levels, increased anxiety and depression, and some schizophrenia-like behaviours.

A statement from the Institute of Neuroscience says this research is an important first step towards the production of “customised gene-edited macaque monkeys with uniform genetic background” for biomedical research.

The underlying motivation of this sort of approach is that the more genetically identical research subjects are, the better any science conducted using them as subjects can be. When comparing two possible outcomes of an experiment – comparing the effect of a new drug versus a non-active placebo for treating anxiety, for example – it allows researchers to remove the complicating effects of natural gene variation from the study outcomes.

Not humans

Animal testing and research involves people doing things to animals that we would not permit them to do to human subjects.

The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki indicates that in human subject research, the interests of the research subject should be considered paramount. No amount of possible societal benefit should trump the consideration we give for the consent and welfare of human subjects.

This obviously prevents all sorts of research from taking place – because even though results may be beneficial to humanity overall, some experiments would be harmful to the research subject.

The solution to this problem has been to shift this research to animals – given that many believe that animals have a lower moral standing than humans.

Human proxies

So animals are used as a proxy to try to assess what would happen to a human subject exposed to the same environment or condition.

Ideally the animal needs to be close to humans in the relevant health aspects that are being tested. Otherwise the results are likely to not tell us anything useful from the human perspective.

However, the closer to humans the subject is in a biological sense, the more likely the animal to also have a high moral status – perhaps even the same moral status as humans do.

This is because moral status is typically thought to be based on the capabilities something has, rather than its genetics. A number of different characteristics have been suggested as the root of moral status, such as sentience, consciousness, personhood, rationality and higher order reasoning. The closer an animal is to us, the more likely it also shares these traits with us.

So the better a model of human biology an animal is, the more controversial and ethically problematic it will be to use them in research, especially research that is harmful or destructive in nature.

Read more: When does a foetus have moral status?

High moral status

Primates are closer to us than other species in terms of their capacities. Even if we don’t hold that all primates hold the same moral status as humans, it seems clear that if any animal does have moral status, primates would be highly placed on the list. Legislation and practices around research have grown to reflect this.

Some countries – such as the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Austria – have legislation that recognises high moral status animals (great apes such as orangutans and chimpanzees, for example) from being used as research subjects. This has occurred because of work by organisations like the Great Ape Project and the Nonhuman Rights Project.

Despite this many non-human primates are still used in research, around 75,000 in the US in 2017 for example – most of whom are bred in captivity for this purpose.

The macaques edited and cloned in these new papers are an example of a primate that is still used a research model to explore human health.

Macaques have many characteristics in common with humans.

Cloning is different from breeding

Cloning introduces additional ethical issues for non-human primate research.

There are two ways that cloning is different than captive breeding in terms of ethics.

First, the process of cloning itself introduces harms. For each live birth there are often several unsuccessful attempts to create, implant and bring to term a clone.

A report suggests that to create the five cloned macaques in this world-first case, the team started with 325 cloned gene-edited embryos, which they implanted into 65 surrogate monkeys, a process that cost about US$500,000. I suspect these costs will be reduced as the technique used is refined.

The second issue has to do with commodification, the practice of taking something and making it “property”.

A ‘thing’ rather than a being

Commodification is important psychologically because it helps with the othering that allows us to abuse and misuse. If something is an object rather than a subject, a “thing” rather than a “being”, it becomes easier to discount its welfare.

Commodities have no standing of their own; they are things we use and discard at will.

Of course research animals are already property. The vast majority are captive bred, and many of those animals are commercially created for use in research.

Cloning for research purposes might nonetheless increase the commodification of these animals by commercialising their production even further. When techniques are used to create animals with specific harmful characteristics to improve their usefulness as test subjects, this inherently increases the view of these animals as merely disposable objects.

Given that we recognise primates often have a high moral standing, it is likely that commodification will lead to the inappropriate treatment of these creatures.

Controversial cases – such as this relatively recent piece of research testing the effects of diesel fume exposure on monkeys and humans – provide a troubling window into what can occur when creatures are treated merely as a means to a scientific end rather than as beings in their own right.

Read more: Is it time for Australia to be more open about research involving animals?

On a slippery slope

Commodifying creatures that are close to us in moral standing may well itself lead to a slippery slope. A word commonly used regarding commodification in the human context is “dehumanising”.

Once we are used to treating those creatures as a commodity, something merely to be used, destroyed and discarded if needed for scientific quality, it may be easier to treat fellow humans in that way too.

– ref. Cloning monkeys for research puts humans on a slippery ethical slope – http://theconversation.com/cloning-monkeys-for-research-puts-humans-on-a-slippery-ethical-slope-90936

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Medhavi Gupta, PhD Candidate, George Institute for Global Health

You’d be hard pressed to have missed the news that there’s been a big spike in the number of drowning deaths this summer – up about 50% since last year. The media’s been full of stories of migrants and tourists losing their lives on our beaches.

But our unpublished analysis of the coverage of drowning deaths this summer reveals many news outlets don’t present the true picture of what’s happening in our waterways. And that’s putting people most at risk of drowning in even greater danger.

Read more: Monday’s medical myth: wait 30 minutes after eating before you swim

What the media is not quite getting right

Are foreigners and migrants more at risk than Australian-born swimmers?

We found that almost half of all stories reported on drownings of migrants and people from overseas. For example, the deaths of three migrants at Moonee Beach in NSW was the most covered incident across stories analysed. Many of these articles suggested solutions such as ensuring tourists are informed of water risks and providing new migrants swimming classes.

Again, these suggestions are useful, but the idea that more drowning victims are foreign-born is misleading. Only two articles we read pointed out the truth – that only a third of deaths this summer involved people born overseas. This is about the same proportion of the Australian population born overseas at 28.2%. Although overseas tourists are more at risk of drowning, migrants are not.

All swimmers need to be made aware they are at risk, foreign-born or not. In fact, Australians raised on home soil may actually be overconfident of their water safety knowledge and swimming ability, and the media needs to be more explicit about this.

Australian and foreign-born swimmers are both at risk of drowning. Photo by zayzayem on Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Are beaches really more dangerous than rivers?

Our analysis showed a clear preference for reporting beach-related drowning deaths over deaths occurring inland, such as in rivers and lakes. This bias perpetuates the idea that beaches are more risky than inland water.

However, this summer, almost as many deaths occurred in inland waterways than beaches (43% v 47% at the time this was written), and in 2017/18 more drowning deaths occurred in natural inland waterways.

So most stories emphasise providing beach-related safety tips, emphasising the importance of visiting patrolled beaches and learning how to spot rips. Although this is important advice, it doesn’t apply to inland bodies of water. Where advice is provided, there are statements such as “respect the river”, which provides little practical guidance.

By focusing on beaches, the media may also be missing an opportunity to warn Australians of the dangers of rivers and lakes, which are being greatly underestimated.

Rivers may seem safe, but deep water and fast flowing currents can be dangerous. Mr.TinDC on Foter.com / CC BY-ND

Vague advice

In many stories, safety spokespeople talk about the “think and plan” approach to water safety. This guidance encourages swimmers to choose swimming areas that suit their abilities, assess the risks and consider possible rescue methods. However, little guidance is given on how to assess environments for dangers. And few Australians know what to do when someone is drowning.

How can we reduce drownings?

What should governments do?

Governments need to provide education that reflects real risks. This includes identifying dangerous river and lake conditions, and learning what to do if you get stuck in a current. Communication around water safety after storms and heavy rains can also help, such as during news weather reports.

Although many water bodies have safety warning signs, there is limited evidence they work to prevent unsafe behaviours.

What is well documented is that people follow what other people are doing, especially when they are young, so may ignore signs if others are acting dangerously. As well as signs, more strict enforcement at particularly dangerous spots may be needed, such as random patrolling of rangers and building fences.

A last important action is providing rescue equipment at beaches and popular inland swimming spots, including emergency phones, floatation devices and rope.

What should I do?

Check out these tips on how to stay safe around rivers. Tips include checking the depth of the water before swimming, something many Australians don’t do.

You can do this by looking for reeds breaking the surface or using a stick. You can also test current speed by throwing a leaf in the water and seeing how fast it flows. If you get stuck in a current, lie on your back, feet forward, until you reach a shallower area.

It’s also important to be aware of when you need to wear life jackets. Most Australians would be aware that we should wear them on smaller motor boats, but what if you are rock fishing? Or being towed in a tube? Different states have slightly different guidelines.

Don’t swim if you’ve been drinking. Even a small amount of alcohol can impair your ability to swim and respond to hazards.

Use a floating object to rescue. christophercjensen on Foter.com / CC BY-ND

If someone is drowning, the safest way to save them is to throw a floating object, such as a life ring or life jacket, or the end of a rope or stick. If the person is too far or you have nothing available, don’t try to saving the victim if you have not received proper training or you are not a confident swimmer. Call emergency services and ask others for help.

Lastly, look out for friends and children. Active supervision isn’t about sitting nearby on your phone – it can take as little as 20 seconds for a child to go under. Signs of a person drowning include their head tilted back and mouth at water level, hair over the forehead or eyes, their body in a vertical position, and gasping.

Actively supervise children at all times. dickdotcom on Foter.com / CC BY-SA

With the right action from governments and individuals, we can save tens of lives from drowning in our waterways. This action can’t just wait until next summer – staying safe is an all-year round endeavour. So, campaign for better safety measures at your local waterways, get yourself educated and trained, and help make sure that Australia’s favourite summer pastime only leaves happy memories.

– ref. Australia’s spike in summer drownings: what the media misses – http://theconversation.com/australias-spike-in-summer-drownings-what-the-media-misses-109948

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Douglas, Professor of Law, The University of Queensland

Migrant women with temporary visa status are particularly vulnerable when it comes to domestic and family violence. That vulnerability is intensified when you add technology to the mix.

Technology-facilitated abuse has been recognised as a new breed of domestic violence. Technology-facilitated abuse refers to controlling, monitoring and harassing behaviours using tools such as mobile phones, SMS, email, tracking apps and social media.

In our recent study, we analysed interviews with migrant women who had experienced domestic abuse about their experiences with technology-facilitated abuse. We found while technology can help women to reduce their isolation in a new country, a partner’s control of technology may increase isolation for migrant women, which can heighten the risk of abuse.

Read more: Technology-facilitated abuse: the new breed of domestic violence

Why migrant women are particularly vulnerable

A number of temporary visas – including partner and prospective marriage visas – require sponsorship by partners with Australian citizenship.

Women who come to Australia on these visas are often separated from family and friends, have limited access to money, and hold fears of deportation and losing custody of their children.

They are often also ineligible to access key resources, such as Centrelink and long term housing, that could help them leave violent relationships.

Technology can make a difference, but without independent income, securing a personal mobile or internet connection is challenging.

The control of devices and digital media by abusers restricts women’s opportunities to connect with support networks, to identify their situation as abusive and to seek help.

These factors contribute to and compound entrapment in abusive relationships.

Listening to migrant womens’ experiences

We reported on women’s experiences of these harms in our study. Analysis of interviews one of us (Heather Douglas) conducted with 65 women who had experienced domestic and family violence showed that most had experienced technology-facilitated abuse as part of their partner’s coercive and controlling behaviour.

Here’s what some of the women on temporary visas told us.

Radha’s story

Radha came to Australia after her marriage to an Australian citizen was arranged. She used Skype to maintain contact with parents, siblings, and friends overseas, but her partner intermittently disabled Skype as “a tactic to pressurise” her.

He would grant access to the internet when she ceded to his demands, such as when she agreed to make him breakfast. He restricted her access to the internet as a way to control her. She said:

it was just to make me […] do something […] Like, if I don’t listen to him he would just switch off the internet.

Read more: The smart home could worsen domestic abuse. But the same technology may also make us safer

Celina’s story

Celina met her partner online, and arrived in Australia to live with him on a partner visa. She was given only enough money to catch public transport. He used a mobile phone to monitor her throughout the day. She said:

I was still new to this country and I didn’t have anything. I was using his personal mobile […] He was carrying the office mobile with him all the time […] he could call me and tell me OK you do this and that during the day […] Every day after work he came home, he took the personal mobile that was with me and went to the toilet and browsed the history and everything.

Dara’s story

Dara described how her abuser severed her connections to resources and her social circle, which were facilitated by technology. She said:

He totally destroyed […] my laptop. My email accounts, password, he changed, that’s why I can’t access my bank. I can’t see my bank account, anything, he changed everything […] He steal my mobile […] It’s my life this is just […] my contact point.

Angelina’s story

Angelina highlights how her abuser monitored her use of technology. She said:

[he] checks [the] phone but I never hide nothing. I had a password on his computer, like guest. He always can go and check history on internet.

A key area for development

As these women’s experiences show, lack of access to technology and a partner’s control of devices can heighten geographic and social isolation.

This causes particular problems for migrant women who rely on technology to maintain supportive connections with family and friends in their home country.

While programs have been developed to assist domestic violence survivors to safely use technology, there are no programs targeting migrant women who are new arrivals.

Specialised services for migrant women are limited, and rely on a small number of staff to serve large geographic areas.

Read more: Technology is both a weapon and a shield for those experiencing domestic violence

So, what can be done?

WESNET’s Safe Connections program works with Telstra to provide smartphones with pre-paid credit to survivors of domestic and family violence, but this program relies on women seeking help.

Given barriers facing those on temporary visas, it would be helpful if their sponsors were required to provide a smartphone, with credit, as part of their sponsorship. Sponsors of prospective marriage visas are currently required to provide an Australian and foreign police check.

It’s important, too, that technology-facilitated abuse is highlighted in programs targeting new arrivals. Women on temporary visas are often required to attend English language courses – information about technology-facilitated abuse should also be offered in this context.

Survivors could also be better protected and empowered by amendments to the Migration Regulations to expand eligibility provisions for permanent residency and to expand eligibility for government support to those on temporary visas. More specialised support services are also needed for survivors on temporary visas.

– ref. Migrant women are particularly vulnerable to technology-facilitated domestic abuse – http://theconversation.com/migrant-women-are-particularly-vulnerable-to-technology-facilitated-domestic-abuse-110270

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Fisher, Assistant Professor in Journalism, University of Canberra

It’s election season again and behind the scenes, the political “spin doctors” are working around the clock.

They are the campaign advisers, social media strategists, press secretaries and others who craft political messages to help “sell” their candidate. The term “spin” is contested, of course, and like the phrase “fake news” has become an easy retort for people who reject any version of events that does not reflect their own.

But the fact is any good spin doctor employs a range of overt and covert tactics to get their message across, and I’ve listed some below.

This list is drawn from a range of academic and other sources, and my own personal experience as a “spin doctor”. (I was once a media adviser to Labor’s Anna Bligh, a former Queensland premier. I am also married to one.) It is by no means exhaustive, but it provides an overview of some of the traditional tactics employed by political media advisers and politicians.

Read more: It’s reputation that matters when spin doctors go back to the newsroom

Overt and covert spin tactics

British researcher Ivor Gaber talked about “overt” and “covert” tactics used by press secretaries in the Blair government in the UK.

Overt refers to standard or benign public relations tactics, such as writing press releases, staging events, giving speeches and appearing in the media.

Covert, on the other hand, refers to a range of cynical techniques to manage information – these are the more malign tactics most people associate with “spin”.

The list below contains a wide range of “covert” tactics drawn from a range of research and personal experience. Each of these tactics is employed in a bid to exert control over the way the news media report the message:

• the leak: these are strategic leaks offered by politicians or their staff to journalists, in exchange for no scrutiny. In other words, you only get the leak if you promise not to seek comment from the opposing side, or other critics. This is increasing and is a real problem

• the freeze: punishing journalists for negative reporting

• the spray: a form of bullying and intimidation, this is another way of punishing journalists for negative coverage. Many political reporters who file an unfavourable story can expect to “cop a spray” over the phone after it’s published

• the drip: the act of keeping favoured reporters on a drip of exclusive information

• staying on message: the goal of every public appearance or interview by a politician. In itself, it’s not a malign tactic, but the constant repetition of the same messages without answering questions can be a form of obfuscation

• pivoting: this refers to politicians shifting away from a difficult question or issue to the one he or she wants to talk about

• the vomit principle: this rule of thumb is widely referred to in political offices. The idea is that if you repeat something so often you feel like vomiting, only then is it likely to be cutting through with the public

• playing a dead bat: this refers to not responding to a media inquiry or giving a minimal response in an effort to kill the story

• the truth, but not the whole truth: this refers to being selective with what one reveals, sharing only the most beneficial or least damaging information

• throwing out the bodies/taking out the garbage: these tactics are used to disclose damaging information under the cover of a major distraction. The classic example often used is that of Jo Moore, a media adviser in the Blair government in the UK. On the day of the 9/11 attacks she sent out an email saying: “It is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors expenses?” Other common days to bury bad news are Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, grand final day, Melbourne Cup day, or a distraction like a royal visit

• get rid of it now: the aim of this tactic is to release all of the damaging information on an issue at one time, so the negative story can be dealt with quickly rather than allowing it to bleed on for weeks in the media. One media adviser I interviewed explained it like this: “It’s a truism in politics – If you’ve got to eat a shit sandwich you’ve got to eat it straight away… The advice was always, ‘Get rid of it now. Go and deal with it now’.”

• fire-breaking: setting up or staging a diversion to distract attention away from another issue. In the film Wag the Dog, the US president fabricates a war in Albania to distract from a sex scandal. Less extreme examples would be launching a new policy to distract from a negative issue in an attempt to shift the media’s attention

• kite-flying: this means testing or floating an idea before making a commitment to announce it

• feeding or starving a story: feeding a story means keeping it alive by commenting on it in the media. Starving a story means starving it of oxygen by not commenting on it. The theory being that after a while the media will get bored and move on

• keeping out of the media/being a small target: this is a useful tactic if the politician is unpopular and affects the polls, has a controversial portfolio or is an accident-prone poor performer

• flying under the radar: this refers to just quietly getting on with things without publicising it

• dishing dirt: this is where old claims suddenly emerge publicly before or during an election in an effort to smear someone’s reputation. The “dirt” can come from outside or inside a party. It’s a tactic used to try to destroy someone’s career

• dog-whistling: using specific subtle language and messages to target a particular section of the audience

• wedging: this tactic involves raising an issue that is popular in the electorate and sensitive to the party you are opposing to “wedge” them in to a difficult position and sow division in the party.

To hear Caroline Fisher in conversation with Michelle Grattan in a special election spin-themed episode of our podcast Trust Me, I’m An Expert, click here or search for it in your podcast app.

New to podcasts?

Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Trust Me, I’m An Expert on Pocket Casts).

You can also hear us on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Trust Me, I’m An Expert.

– ref. The vomit principle, the dead bat, the freeze: how political spin doctors’ tactics aim to shape the news – http://theconversation.com/the-vomit-principle-the-dead-bat-the-freeze-how-political-spin-doctors-tactics-aim-to-shape-the-news-106453

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling

It’s February, the holidays seem like a distant memory and here we are barrelling toward a federal election, which the government has indicated will be in May.

Remember in the olden days – as in, a few elections ago – we used to have a fairly set election campaign period of usually about six weeks? Now, of course, politicians seem to always be in campaign mode.

They’re not doing that all by themselves, of course. There’s a small army of spin doctors, social media strategists, political campaign advisers and press secretaries behind the scenes, finessing every utterance so it fits with the overall campaign strategy. And that’s what we are talking about on the podcast today – the art of political spin.

Read more: It’s reputation that matters when spin doctors go back to the newsroom

We’ll hear from Caroline Fisher, political communication and journalism researcher from the University of Canberra. She began her career as a journalist with the ABC, but went on to work as a media adviser for Labor’s Anna Bligh, a former Queensland premier.

Today, she’s talking to Michelle Grattan, political journalist and Professorial Fellow at the University of Canberra about the tips and tricks spin doctors use to shape the political messages you’re hearing every day. And you can read Caroline Fisher’s article on the spin tactics over here.

Read more: The vomit principle, the dead bat, the freeze: how political spin doctors’ tactics aim to shape the news

All year round and especially during election season, you’re going to hear a lot of competing claims about the state of the economy. Has school funding been cut or is it at a record high? Do tax cuts make the economy better or worse? Why are the government and the opposition saying seemingly contradictory things about debt and deficits?

To find out, Lucinda Beaman – who was our FactCheck editor but has just moved to the ABC – spoke to Fabrizio Carmignagni, a professor of economics at the Griffith Business School, Griffith University.

He’s authored many FactCheck articles for The Conversation, where he tests statements by key public figures against the evidence and his special super power is pulling back the curtain to reveal why certain claims you hear about the economy don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Today, Professor Carmignani reveals why you should be suspicious when you hear a politician claim their government has created jobs, how to spot a bit of causation vs correlation spin doctoring, and other political porkies that make economists’ skin crawl.

Read more: FactCheck: have the Trump tax cuts led to lower unemployment and higher wages?

Trust Me, I’m An Expert is a podcast where we ask academics to surprise, delight and inform us with their research. You can download previous episodes here. And please, do check out other podcasts from The Conversation – you can find them all over here.

The segments in today’s podcast were recorded and edited by Sunanda Creagh, with additional recording and editing by Dilpreet Kaur and Eliza Berlage.

Read more: Pencils ready: it’s time for Politics 2019 Bingo!

New to podcasts?

Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Trust Me, I’m An Expert on Pocket Casts).

You can also hear us on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Trust Me, I’m An Expert.

Additional audio

Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks

Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann, RN Breakfast

Channel 9 news report.

Bill Shorten’s 2018 Budget reply speech.

Sky News report.

Today Show segment.

ABC news report.

Labor Facebook video.

Nick Xenophon SA Best ad.

The Greens ad.

Podington Bear, Pshaw, from Free Music Archive.

Bloomberg news report.

– ref. Trust Me, I’m An Expert: how to spot the work of a political spin doctor this election season – http://theconversation.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-how-to-spot-the-work-of-a-political-spin-doctor-this-election-season-106338