Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ushi Ghoorah, Associate lecturer, Western Sydney University

The case of Eman Sharobeem, the NSW Australian of the Year finalist who stole almost $800,000 from charitable organisations she ran, highlights major problems with transparency throughout the nonprofit sector.

Sharobeem managed two organisations that received funds to help immigrant women. She stole the money over more than 10 years, using it to buy items such as jewellery and a Mercedes.

That she was got away with it for so long is indicative of the nonprofit sector’s general lack of accountability. The overwhelming majority of organisations make no public financial disclosures. Generally the only ones that do are those required to by law.

Only nonprofit groups registered as charities have to lodge information with the sector’s regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission (ACNC). The degree of information depends on their annual revenue. Only charities earning more than A$1 million a year must submit audited financial statements.

The commission is now considering increasing this threshold to A$5 million.

My research suggests this will make publicly available financial disclosures extremely rare. This means donors, volunteers, employees and taxpayers will have even less assurance that charity dollars are being spent efficiently on their intended cause.

Read more: Australian charities are well regulated, but changes are needed to cut red tape

The Australian nonprofit sector

Australia’s nonprofit sector numbers about 600,000 organisations. Despite the sector’s scale and social importance, we don’t know much about it. Most information is limited to the 56,000 registered charities that have to submit a basic Annual Information Statement to the charities regulator to be tax-deductible.

Read more: Celebrity charities just compete with all other charities – so why start one?

These charities receive more than A$140 billion in annual revenue as well as 328 million unpaid hours from almost 3 million volunteers.

Voluntary disclosure is rare

My research on financial disclosures looked at 342 nonprofit organisations. They covered four areas: social services, culture and recreation, education and research, and environment.

Just 55 (16%) made their annual reports and financial statements public. Of those, 52 had annual revenues of at least $A1 million. Just three charities earning less than A$1 million made their financial statements voluntarily public.

This suggests most nonprofit organisations are unlikely to make financial disclosures if not required to do so.

Differences between sub-sectors

Among those making financial disclosures, there is no consistency in approach taken. This was particularly glaring among social services organisations, which made up 34 of the 52 organisations in my study earning more than A$1 million a year.

This graph shows the best and and worst disclosure scores within the four sub-sectors.

The score indicates the extent of voluntary financial disclosures above and beyond what is required by law. These include the amount of grants received, total donation revenue, program expenses, administration expenses, management expenses and the value of volunteer contributions.

Each organisation received a score of one for each voluntary disclosure within its published financial statement.

The lack of consistency illustrates the failure of the charity regulator’s reporting requirements to create a level playing field. For example, religious charities of any size do not have to answer financial questions or submit financial reports.

Elaborate narratives, limited financial disclosures

Most crucially, there is no obligation under the existing reporting standard for any organisation to specifically disclose what it spends on its core social mission.

So while most of the 52 organisations provided elaborate narratives about their social mission, few disclosed the actual amount of money spent on their mission.

As a result, it’s hard for donors to assess how many cents in the dollar go to the cause they want to support.

Public’s right to greater transparency

These limited, inconsistent and vague disclosures are an impediment to the nonprofit sector. It is difficult to assess if an organisation is deploying its resources consistent with its mission.

Charitable nonprofit organisations are eligible for many tax benefits and government subsidies. These benefits should oblige them to put their financial records in the public domain.

Read more: Charity regulators should not assume that donors always know best

What needs to be done

Rather than making financial disclosure even rarer, the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission should make three key regulatory changes.

First, there needs to be a reporting system where all nonprofit organisations have to make minimal financial disclosures of funds received and spent. This should be irrespective of their size or status.

Second, there needs to be a standardised approach to disclosures, so anyone can know what an organisation spends, and how much goes to its core social mission rather than other costs such as fundraising. This would enable the performance of organisations with similar missions to be compared.

Third, the nonprofit regulator needs to create a platform to make all financial disclosures easily accessible to the public.

These reforms are crucial for people to have confidence in the nonprofit sector and the organisations to which they donate.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc Freestone, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

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

Leek orchids don’t have many friends. Maybe it’s because they lack the drop-dead gorgeous looks of many of their fellow family members. Or perhaps it’s because they’re always the first to leave the party: as soon as sheep or weeds encroach on their territory, they’re out of there. Whatever the reason, you don’t see leek orchids around very often.

Read more: Secrets of the orchid mantis revealed – it doesn’t mimic an orchid after all

Leek orchids are small, ground-dwelling native Australian orchids, so called for their single spring-onion-like leaf, which shoots up from an underground tuber each autumn. In the spring, if there’s been enough rain, they produce a spike of small brown, green or white flowers.

Like many native orchids, they are battling extinction. My research involves trying to find the secret to propagating them – something we still don’t fully understand.

Extinction

Australia is quite rich in orchids with more than 1,300 native species (by contrast, there are only about 200 species in all of North America). About 140 of these are leek orchids, and most live in bushland remnants across the south of Australia.

With a preference for fertile soils and relatively high rainfall, these little plants suffered severely during the period of agricultural expansion in the southeast of the country during the first half of last century. Rabbits, weeds, inappropriate fire regimes, and declining rainfall patterns continue to plague those that survive, which often hang on in narrow roadsides, beside rail lines or in rural cemeteries – tiny pockets of land that were never ploughed.

Read more: Bunya pines are ancient, delicious and possibly deadly

Almost one-third of all leek orchid species are at risk of extinction. Some are already extinct, such as the Lilac Leek-orchid (Prasophyllum colemaniae). It once grew in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs, but disappeared when an upgrade of a rail line in the 1970s destroyed the last population. Standing half a metre tall, with fragrant purple-white flowers, it was said to be the most beautiful of all leek orchids.

Native orchids are rebounding – but not leek orchids

Fast forward to 2018 and things have changed. The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria now hosts the largest orchid conservation program in the world. Dozens of critically endangered native orchids from the southeast mainland are being brought back from the brink of extinction through propagation and reintroduction programs.

But not leek orchids.

That’s because we still don’t know how to grow leek orchids successfully. In fact, growing any type of orchid is hard work. For a start, orchid seed is microscopic. It is so small it doesn’t contain any food for the germinating orchid seedling.

Instead, all orchids rely on symbiotic fungi that live in their roots and the surrounding soil and are required to inoculate the orchid seed – the fungus literally pumps food into the seeds to get them to germinate. We have no idea why these fungi do this, but we can replicate this scenario in the lab by carefully extracting fungi from the roots of a wild orchid plant, growing the fungi in a petri dish, and sprinkling in the orchid seed. But for some reason, leek orchid seed rarely germinates, and if it does, the young seedlings usually brown off and die.

How to grow leek orchids is the subject of my PhD project with the Australian National University, based at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. We have many theories about what might be going on and we’re looking at seed viability, growing conditions, and the relationship between leek orchids and their symbiotic fungi.

It’s a race against time to work out how to grow them before more species – like the Shelford Leek-orchid (Prasophyllum fosteri) from western Victoria, which is now down to only a handful of wild plants – go extinct.

Why should we care?

At first glance, leek orchids do not appear to be particularly useful for anything. They can’t cure cancer or be traded for Bitcoin. So who cares if they go extinct?

Well, the first point is we don’t know enough about leek orchids to be able to conclude that they are indeed completely useless to the human race. Second, leek orchids probably used to play an important ecosystem role in the lowland grasslands of southeastern Australia.

Up in the Australian Alps there are several species of leek orchid that are still very common, their flowers providing an important food source for insects. Seeing the massed flowering of the Alpine Leek-orchid (Prasophyllum tadgellianum) in summer really gives you a feel for what the lowland grasslands would have been like once upon a time, when species like the Gaping Leek-orchid (Prasophyllum correctum) would have numbered in the millions. Now there are perhaps 10 plants left.

If it goes extinct, Australia will have lost part of what makes it unique. A small part, perhaps, but when added to all the other threatened species in this country, a significant part.

Read more: ‘The worst kind of pain you can imagine’ – what it’s like to be stung by a stinging tree

Personally, I find leek orchids delicate and utterly defenceless against humans, who have engulfed their world. Ironically, some species are now totally dependent on us for their survival. I feel a great sense of responsibility to help them.

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

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

Michelle Grattan speaks to Director of the University’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis Mark Evans about the week in Australian politics. They discuss the Wentworth byelection campaign, the leaks from the Ruddock inquiry into religious freedom, and Scott Morrison’s announcement that the government will fast-track the company tax cuts for small and medium businesses.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sheree Gregory, Lecturer, Western Sydney University

Women in Australia’s screen industry are finding it difficult to juggle their working lives with their caring roles, according to our study released today.

In our online survey of 600 people working in the industry about the impacts of parenting and caring responsibilities on their paid working lives, we found that 74% of carers felt their caring responsibilities had a negative impact on their career. Of these, 86% were women.

One parent responded:

I have been careful to not mention my child [at work]; pretending not to have a child.

This sums up what many workers conveyed to us about the current work-care dynamics in the industry and the lengths women go to in order to hide their status as parents. It says something of the disapproval that parents and carers feel – both sharply and painfully.

While in the 21st century women are reminded to “lean in” and celebrate their choices, the reality is that many women in the screen industry are managing and navigating their working realities by “leaning out”. They work as though they don’t have children, and parent as though they don’t have a job.

The report also reveals that 73% of respondents find it difficult to impossible to vary their work hours or access the amount of payment needed for caring support. Given 60% of carers are freelance or self-employed, it’s not surprising that long hours, financial uncertainty and unpredictable paid work commitments are major concerns.

Read more: Women aren’t the problem in the film industry, men are

Parents and carers in the Australian screen industry are acutely aware that the current work culture is unfriendly towards caring.

One respondent said they “have been overlooked for a role where it was expected that I couldn’t do the hours” (rather than anyone asking me before offering it to someone else).

Another commented: “Returning to work after time off for babies is slow. Even though I can work full-time, employers are reticent to offer me full-time roles because I have small children.”

There has been a swift response. The South Australian Film Corporation today announced new measures to address the impact of caring on film workers.

These include:

• a requirement that major projects hire at least one crew member who is returning to work after a caring role
• incentives for films that use different methods of production, such as more flexible shooting schedules that allow people to work and care
• a program that keeps employees skilled while they are away from work to care for others.

These responses are all in line with our report recommendations.

‘Fatherhood bonus’

Compared to the invisibility of mothers behind the screen, one man experienced the opposite. Paradoxically, his caring status helped his career:

I swear I get some gigs with repeat clients just so they can hear about or catch up with my son. He is a pretty awesome kid. Has also made many appearances on sets and gets taken seriously as being helpful and intelligent from a pretty young age.

His experience is supported by other findings from the survey. Approximate pre-tax earnings from the screen industry for the last financial year show that men who are carers earned substantially more than women who are carers, and receive a substantial income boost – the “fatherhood bonus” – compared to men without children.

Read more: Three ways Screen Australia can actually improve diversity in the industry

Doing better

Working parents and carers taking the survey identified long and inflexible hours, typical of the screen industry, as their key challenge. This confirms findings from previous reports, including a UK survey that this Australian study was adapted from. This UK report yielded similar responses, with 79% of carers saying they fared badly compared to non-carers.

We suggest a number of policy recommendations to help address the unwritten rules that hide parenting and caring in the screen industry. These include:

• measures for supporting carers to return to work such as funding incentives, subsidies for childcare, flexible work arrangements, and more predictable working hours
• industry incentives that reward inclusive production structures and processes
• recognition of carers as productive industry members
• actions to redress the negative impact of attitudes to carers in the workplace
• the introduction of care-sensitivity in funding agency processes.

Households wrestle with the challenge of balancing work and care, often by crafting their own private solutions. Our survey and report recognises this is a problem that is best solved by employers and industry decision-makers who are in a position to make change happen at the broadest level. Households and workers know this and are calling out for support from policymakers.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria

For the second time this year, the five brightest planets can be seen at the same time. You can catch them by looking towards the western sky after sunset. The planets will form a line rising up from the horizon.

Mercury and Venus are low to the west, with bright Jupiter shining just above. Higher up in the northwestern sky is Saturn, and completing the set of five is the red planet Mars, high overhead.

On Friday October 12 a beautiful crescent Moon sits just to the right of Jupiter. Keep watching the planets night after night and you can track the progression of the Moon.

Read more: More ‘bright’ fast radio bursts revealed, but where do they all come from?

As the Moon zips around Earth each month, its apparent motion in the sky is much faster than the more leisurely motion of the planets in their orbits around the Sun.

By Monday October 15, the Moon will have moved higher in the sky to sit near Saturn, and a few days later, on October 18, the Moon will partner with Mars.

That will also be a perfect evening to see the planets, as Venus and Mercury will be sitting side by side. Of all the five planets, Mercury is the faintest and therefore hardest to see, so having bright Venus as a signpost to Mercury is always an advantage.

In about a week’s time, Venus, which has been the bright evening star for most of this year, will move into the glare of the Sun and out of the night sky.

Five planets, two groups

The planets have been doing a merry dance in the night sky over the past few months.

Back in July, they also came together in the evening sky, but on that occasion they were stretched right across the sky. Mercury and Venus could be found in the west, while Jupiter, Saturn and Mars were rising in the east.

As Mercury and Venus are the inner planets, orbiting closer to the Sun than Earth does, we only ever see these two low to the west after sunset, or low to the east before sunrise. They are the planets either following or leading the Sun.

In contrast, the outer planets of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can drift right across the sky, which is exactly what they have been doing since July. The trio has moved from east to west, and now they join Mercury and Venus to put on the five-planet show.

There’s more in store

It may seem like a common occurrence, since the five planets have come together again in the space of just a few months. But it’s only possible because Jupiter and Saturn are currently on the same side of the Sun and therefore near each other, relatively speaking.

The five planets have come together twice this year and twice in 2016, but before that there was a decade when it just wasn’t possible. The two gas giants were too far apart.

As Jupiter and Saturn pair up in the sky, it’s only a matter of time before the other planets fall into the right configuration to bring them all together.

The next time this occurs will be in July 2020, but it will be harder to see compared to this week. The planets will be stretched across the sky rather than all clustered together in the west as they are right now.

So it’s still special to spot the five planets coming together. There’s great satisfaction in being able to tick off all five planets in a single viewing.

Up for a challenge?

Not only are the five easy-to-see planets visible in the evening sky, but they are joined by Uranus and Neptune to complete the planetary set.

These two ice giants that orbit beyond Saturn are modern-day planets. They were not known in ancient times because their discovery needed the aid of a telescope and an understanding of gravity to know how the Solar System works.

But while they may not be seen with the naked eye, Uranus is low in the east at sunset and Neptune is higher up, about midway to Mars.

Practised observers, viewing the sky from a dark country site, have been able to see Uranus with the naked eye by knowing exactly where to look. Through binoculars, Uranus appears like a faint star but a good telescope will show its slightly bluish disc.

Read more: Aboriginal traditions describe the complex motions of planets, the ‘wandering stars’ of the sky

It is best to wait until later in the evening, when Uranus has risen higher, to try to observe it. But now is an ideal time, as the planet is approaching opposition on October 24, when it will be at its best.

Neptune is about the same size as Uranus but much further away, making it harder to see. Even with a modest telescope it appears as a bluish star, while the right observing conditions and a high-quality telescope are needed to reveal Neptune’s disc.

Lastly, and not to be left out, even the dwarf planet Pluto joins the crowd. It’s much too small and distant to be seen but currently sits about midway between Saturn and Mars.

Even with a high-quality telescope Pluto only ever appears as a faint star-like object, and it will be a challenge for most (myself included) to find it in its current position among all the stars near the bright Milky Way.

If you are up for the challenge, a free astronomy program such as Stellarium is ideal to help locate the planets. But it’s just as rewarding to enjoy the five bright planets, observed since ancient times, briefly coming together in the western sky.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Edele, Hansen Chair in History, University of Melbourne

This article is part of our series of explainers on key moments in the past 100 years of world political history. In it, our authors examine how and why an event unfolded, its impact at the time, and its relevance to politics today.

For most people, the term “Russian Revolution” conjures up a popular set of images: demonstrations in Petrograd’s cold February of 1917, greatcoated men in the Petrograd Soviet, Vladimir Lenin addressing the crowds in front of the Finland station, demonstrators dispersed during the July days and the storming of the Winter Palace in October.

What happened?

These were all important events that forced the Tsar to abdicate, brought the Bolsheviks to power, took Russia out of the first world war, prompted British, American, and Japanese interventions, and careened the Romanov empire towards years of bloody civil war.

Among revolutionary socialists, they still inspire daydreams of future revolutions. Historians on the political right, by contrast, promote them as warnings of what happens if you try to change the world. In Russia, meanwhile, they pose complex challenges for constructing a past that can inspire the present.

The standard story summarised by these pictures goes something like this:

The Russian empire, already under severe political and social strain in 1914, broke apart under the pressures of modern warfare. In 1916, a massive uprising against conscription to work shook central Asia.

In 1917, it was the turn of the Russian heartland. Industrial strikes, protests over food shortages, and women’s demonstrations combined to create a revolutionary crisis in Petrograd, the capital of the empire.

Eventually, this crisis convinced both the political and the military elites to pressure the Tsar to abdicate. These events are known as the February revolution.

They turned out to be only the first step. Throughout 1917, the revolution radicalised until in October, the most radical wing of the Russian Social Democrats – Lenin’s Bolsheviks – took power in the name of the revolutionary working class. The October revolution, in turn, triggered the Russian Civil War which was eventually won by the Bolsheviks.

But this focus on events in Petrograd in 1917 is misleading. If we want to understand the significance of the Russian revolution for today’s world, we need to understand both its position in a wider historical process and its very complexity.

Read more: Friday essay: Putin, memory wars and the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution

The larger context

What happened in 1917 was not just a beginning. It was also a moment in the larger trajectory of the Romanov empire (the pre-Soviet Russian Empire) embroiled in a world war it was poorly prepared to fight.

1917 is part of the story of how an empire, built between the 15th and the 18th century on the basis of peasants tied to the land of their master (serfdom) and the indisputable power of the Tsar (autocracy) tried to come to grips with a changing world in the 19th and early 20th centuries filled with overseas empires, industrialisation, and the emerging mass society.

It is but a snapshot in the history of imperialism, economic and social change, and decolonisation. These are all ongoing processes that still trouble the region today.

This sequence of events began with the lost Crimean War of 1853-56, which triggered the Great Reforms of the 1860s and 1870s.

Together with a determined push in the 1890s to industrialise the country, these reforms brought a new, more modern, more urban, and more educated society into being.

This more complex society then faced its first test in 1904-05. A disastrous war against Japan destabilised the empire enough to trigger a first revolution in 1905. It forced the Tsar to make concessions towards modern politics through the creation of a pseudo-parliament, legal parties, and decreased control of the media.

Then came the first world war. The military campaign went poorly, disgruntling the elites with an obviously incompetent regime, dislocating populations on a massive scale, intensifying national feelings in this multi-ethic empire, triggering an economic crisis of immense proportions, and further polarising social divisions between the haves and have-nots.

The result was a cluster of wars, revolutions, and civil wars that dragged on to the early 1920s. The Union of Soviet Socialist republics that emerged from this catastrophe united most of the lands the Romanovs had ruled. Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland went their own way, meanwhile, at least until the second world war.

Contemporary relevance

The “Russian revolution”, then, was not just Russian and not just a revolution. It was also a moment when modern nations were born.

Notwithstanding earlier histories, today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia began their lives in the crucible of war and revolution. Independent Finland and Poland, too, saw the light of day in 1917.

As one historian has pointed out in a compressed overview over events in Ukraine, “the Ukrainian revolution is not the Russian revolution.” Neither were the more democratic revolutions in Omsk, Samara, and Ufa, the same as the Bolshevik revolution in Petrograd, to say nothing of those beyond the peaks of the Caucasus, or the grassroots rural revolutions all over the empire. These other revolutions, often forgotten but as much part of the process as the iconic events in Petrograd, amounted to the catastrophic breakdown of the empire in 1918.

But the revolutionary period saw more than just the replacement of one empire by another. It also changed matters decisively. For one, the Soviet empire was not capitalist, notwithstanding the limited market mechanisms allowed under the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1921 to deal with the catastrophic economic crisis engendered by war, revolution, and civil war.

The new empire was also much more national in form than its Romanov predecessor had been. The aspirations of the non-Russian peoples had to be accommodated in some way and hence a pseudo-federal state was erected, where “Union republics” (such as Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia) were joined together in a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR). In 1991, it would break apart along the borders of these Union republics, lines drawn, by and large, as a result of the reconquest of the Romanov lands by the revolutionary Red Army.

These lines became more significant over time, because of a second far reaching aspect of the national transformation of the multi-ethnic Romanov empire in the crucible of the “Russian” revolution. In order to deal with the threat of nationalism, the Soviet Union became an “affirmative action empire”, which gave non-Russian minorities space and resources to develop their languages and cultures. This affirmation of the national principle was meant to disarm nationalism and help the development of socialism. Instead, it inadvertently “promoted ethnic particularism”.

As a result, many of the nationalisms we encounter in the region today are to a considerable degree a result of this paradoxical Soviet nation making.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fincina Hopgood, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of New England

In recent years, Australia’s public broadcasters have been willing to program innovative, thought-provoking content to coincide with Mental Health Week. This year is no exception, with SBS taking a gamble on a new format in a two-part series How ‘Mad’ Are You?, which began last night.

The series is produced by Blackfella Films, which also made the factual series First Contact and Filthy, Rich and Homeless. Much like these shows, How ‘Mad’ Are You? adapts the reality TV format of “the social experiment” to examine a complex social issue.

Read more: Go back to where you came from: Reality TV encounters the refugee crisis

This format – in which a group of strangers is placed in shared living arrangements and assigned tasks by the producers to create unscripted drama – was pioneered by Big Brother and has become a familiar trope of reality TV, most commonly associated with the melodrama of The Bachelor or Survivor franchises.

How ‘Mad’ Are You? shows the compassion and support of a diverse group of people who have willingly participated in this social experiment to combat the stigma of complex mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, clinical depression and bipolar disorder.

Perhaps most importantly, the series offers a platform for five people with a lived experience of these conditions to tell their stories.

Who is ‘mad’ anyway?

Using this reality TV format to explore mental illness – specifically its diagnosis and the social stigma that accompanies it – was bound to be provocative, as some early comments on social media indicate.

The series’ title alone is a provocation, but it also offers an invitation (How ‘Mad’ Are You?) to place ourselves in the shoes of the participants.

By using quote marks, the title actively questions the term “mad” and invites us to consider its shifting definition in different contexts. This also alerts us to the show’s intention, as declared by SBS, to “challenge assumptions about what it means to have a mental illness.”

Read more: Go back to where you came from: Reality TV encounters the refugee crisis

How ‘Mad’ Are You? highlights the importance of collaboration between the screen industry and the mental health sector. As part of the show’s mission to challenge the social stigma of mental illness, Blackfella Films consulted with SANE Australia for expert advice to ensure the series would be responsible, not exploitative, in its handling of this sensitive issue and the participants.

In keeping with the Mindframe guidelines for media portrayals of mental illness, the show’s broadcast on SBS will provide viewers with contact information for mental health support services.

Questioning the diagnosis

How ‘Mad’ Are You? is based on a two-part 2008 BBC Horizon/Discovery Channel Co-Production of the same title (minus the quotation marks).

The BBC program was inspired by the 1972 Rosenhan Experiment in which the American psychologist David Rosenhan and colleagues faked symptoms of mental illness to see if they would be admitted to psychiatric hospitals.

Read more: Hoax highlights the pitfalls and perils of open access publishing

The experiment raised questions about the validity of psychiatric diagnosis, and was part of a broader social movement in the 1970s that highlighted the social construction of mental illness.

The Australian production follows the BBC format closely: ten volunteers, five of whom have a history of a mental illness diagnosis, complete a series of tests and challenges, such as performing stand-up comedy or solving a complex puzzle.

Their performance is observed by a panel of three mental health experts. After each test, the experts have to decide which of the five has a history of a mental illness diagnosis and what that diagnosis might be.

In the British version, the three experts included a psychiatrist, a professor of clinical psychology, and a psychiatric nurse: for the Australian version, the experts are Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, director of Australia’s largest psychiatry research centre; senior psychiatric nurse Jan Macintire; and clinical psychologist Professor Tim Carey.

The proverbial thin line between mental well-being and ill-health is visualised in How ‘Mad’ Are You? when the experts are asked to place photos of the participants on either side of a dividing line between mental health and illness.

This is a crude device, but it serves as the catalyst for reflective conversation between the experts, who become increasingly exasperated with the demands of the task and the scanty evidence on which they have to base their conclusions. “This is not what we normally do!” protests Professor Kulkarni.

Read more: Mental illness on screen – a new world of hopes and aspirations

The task of diagnosing an individual’s mental health solely on the basis of their performance in a series of tests, with both participants and experts being filmed by a camera crew, is unquestionably an artificial abstraction of mental health practice.

But what this experiment reveals is how stereotyping and snap judgements based on appearance and other social cues influence our wider perceptions of mental ill-health. The three experts navigate this minefield with tact and critical self-awareness.

The series provides insight into the complex decision-making underpinning diagnosis and it is refreshing to see mental health experts willing to admit their uncertainty about the conclusions they are reaching.

Their empathy and compassion for the people they have been asked to scrutinise is palpable.

Under the guise of “entertainment” through the reality TV format, How ‘Mad’ Are You? will certainly start conversations about the role of diagnosis in the lived experience of mental ill-health.

While some viewers may object to the show’s central concept, How ‘Mad’ Are You? offers a new way of telling stories about mental health on screen and brings all of us into the conversation.

How ‘Mad’ Are You? is available on SBS On Demand. Part two airs next Thursday October 18 at 8.30pm.

For help or information call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit beyondblue.org.au.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Prendergast, Lecturer in Physical Geography, University of Melbourne

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.

Watching the weather for today and tomorrow is relatively easy with apps and news programs – but knowing what the climate was like in the past is a little more difficult.

Archaeological evidence can show us how humans coped with long-gone seasonal and environmental changes. For me, it’s fascinating because it reveals what life was like back then. But it’s useful beyond that too. This body of data helps us understand and build resilience to climate change in the modern world.

Archaeological data is now of a standard where it can map past climate variability, offer context for human-induced climate change, and even improve future climate predictions.

Read more: Friday essay: how archaeology helped save the Franklin River

Surviving all the seasons

As Earth takes its annual trip around the Sun, temperature, daylight hours and water availability vary through the seasons. These dictate natural cycles of animal breeding and migration, and plant fruiting and flowering. Such cycles control the availability of food, shelter, and raw material resources.

People living in cities might notice the changing seasons: autumn leaves turn a golden hue, and in summer fresh berries fill the supermarket shelves.

However, modern technology and global trade networks lessen the impact of the seasons on our daily lives. We can buy strawberries at any time of year (if we pay a premium). We can escape summer heatwaves by turning on air conditioners.

In most parts of Australia, our lives no longer depend on tracking the changes in plants and animals throughout the year. But in the past, if you weren’t in tune with seasonal patterns, you wouldn’t survive.

In my work I study how past people interacted with seasonal changes, using evidence from archaeological sites around the world.

Past and present seasonal patterns have changed due to climate change, causing cooler winters, warmer summers, or altered rainfall. Different seasons may occur earlier or later, last longer or be more extreme.

These changes have flow-on effects that can be detected in the archaeological record.

Read more: Sustainable shopping: want to eat healthy? Try an eco-friendly diet

Life in ancient Libya

One archaeological site where seasonal changes have been well studied is the Haua Fteah cave in the Gebel Akhdar region of Libya.

The Haua Fteah covers the transitions from prehistoric hunter-gatherers (beginning around 150,000 years ago), and prehistoric farmers (beginning around 7,500 years ago), right the way through to more recent times.

We found the Haua Fteah experienced the most arid and highly seasonal conditions just after the last global ice age. This changed the plant and animal resources available in the local landscape over 17,000 to 15,000 years ago.

However, despite the climate and resource instability, human activity was the most intense during this period.

To investigate this, we compared climate records from the Gebel Akhdar and adjacent regions of North Africa.

It turns out that even though the Gebel Akhdar had an arid and highly seasonal climate, it was not as arid as surrounding regions at this time. Scientists believe that increasingly dry conditions elsewhere led to population increases at the Haua Fteah – people were simply seeking a less hostile place to live.

Additionally, use of shellfish as a food source changed from a predominantly winter-focused activity to a year-round activity during this period.

Year-round shellfish reliance was probably an adaptation to supplement the diet when other resources were less available. A mixture of climate and population pressures likely drove the restriction of resources and reliance on shellfish.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do crab and prawn shells go red after they have been cooked?

But beyond just knowing what people ate, and when, hiding in such shells (and other items) are clues about regional differences in seasonality.

Here’s how it works.

The remains of ancient meals

Archaeologists are essentially trash sifters. We use clues preserved in artefacts, plant and animal remains that people threw away or left behind to reconstruct the past.

Hard animal parts, including mollusc shells, teeth, fish ear bones (otoliths) and antlers, are routinely preserved in archaeological sites. These items accumulate from hunting, fishing, farming, and foraging activities.

The growth of these animal parts over time forms periodic growth rings, or increments. Much like tree rings in dendrochronology, the structure and chemical composition of these increments is influenced by the environment. By analysing these increments, we can understand what the environmental conditions during the animal’s life may have been like.

Read more: How ‘bling’ makes us human

Seasonal variations in climate parameters such as temperature, rainfall, and humidity can be reconstructed by analysing the chemical composition of these growth increments using the presence of stable isotopes and trace elements.

Analyses of the annual — and in some cases, fortnightly, daily and even tidal — increments allow us to reconstruct a detailed timeline of environmental change. This field of study is known as sclerochronology and it has expanded exponentially in the past couple of decades.

The shells, teeth and animal bones that we analyse are the remains of food collected and consumed by people. Therefore climate reconstructions from them can be directly linked to human activity.

We can establish the animal’s season of death and season of exploitation by humans by examining the growth pattern or chemistry of the most recent growth increment. For example, we can use oxygen isotopes to reconstruct the sea surface temperature when the animal died. A very cool temperature tells us that the animal was collected by humans during the winter.

My colleagues and I recently wrote a review article and edited a journal special issue highlighting some of the latest research using these methods. The studies – which included evidence from prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the Mediterranean to historic Inuit sites in Canada – show how people dealt with seasonal variability in the past.

Learning from the past

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues in today’s world.

However, our understanding of how human-induced climate change fits into natural climate variability (pre-industrial) is limited by the instrumental record, which rarely extends beyond a century or so.

Proxy records of past climate variability — such as increments from animal teeth or mollusc shells — extend our understanding of long-term climate variability.

Such abundant archaeological evidence can fill in the gaps from climate records about seasonal and sub-seasonal variation.

Read more: Rising seas will displace millions of people – and Australia must be ready

We need the robust, quantitative, detailed data we are now getting from archaeological sites around the globe. It helps to contextualise current and future climate change, and to form baselines for environmental monitoring.

Additionally, these climate records are useful for testing and refining global and regional climate models. More accurate climate models give us a better understanding of the overall climate system, and an enhanced ability to predict future climate change.

Such data may help us build resilience to climate change in our modern world.

So next time you tuck into your shellfish dinner, or juicy steak, take a moment to reflect on all of the useful information preserved in the intricate hard parts these creatures leave behind.

Will archaeologists of the future study your discarded shells and bones?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Senior Lecturer in New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity

Why is our prime minister so poor on matters of gender and sexuality? Why won’t he clearly state that no institution in Australia, including schools, should be able to discriminate against children on the basis of their sexuality? Why won’t he condemn gay conversion therapy, despite widespread agreement within the medical community that it has no therapeutic value and is likely to harm?

This week, Morrison has hidden behind the phrase “it’s existing law” to defend religious schools’ right to discriminate against LGBT+ students.

He has previously stated that he is open to “preventative legislation” to protect religious freedoms and has talked about sending his daughters to an independent Christian school because he doesn’t want the values of the Safe Schools program imposed on them.

Some colleagues even claim Morrison has a “blind spot” when it comes to debate about religious freedom.

As a Pentecostal Christian, Morrison’s faith has already received much commentary. Yet, Pentecostalism alone does not explain Morrison’s views on gender and sexuality.

Read more: Explainer: what is Pentecostalism, and how might it influence Scott Morrison’s politics?

The Pentecostal movement was once at the vanguard of Christianity for its inclusion of women (and black) preachers, precisely because of its belief that the Holy Spirit endows gifts on whomever she chooses, not on the basis of gender, race, education, or any other criteria. Hence, it is not unusual to see a woman preaching in a Pentecostal church.

The key issue, as always, is how the Pentecostal church understands and interprets the Bible (hermeneutics). On this matter, the Pentecostal church sits within a wider strand of Christianity that reads the Bible in a “plain sense” or rather literalistic way. That is, it doesn’t have a robust scholarly tradition when it comes to the interpretation of this complex, ancient text, which can lead to pretty simplistic interpretation and a misunderstanding about the nature of biblical knowledge and truth.

Take, for example, the very first chapter of the Bible, which is often a basis for Christian conceptions of gender. Genesis 1 famously describes six “days” of creation and one day of divine rest.

Scholars agree that it is a form of Hebrew poetry that ultimately makes Sabbath/Shabbat the pinnacle of creation. The days are not literal 24 hour periods, but rather reflect the weekly pattern to life that undergirds Jewish life and laws about Shabbat. It was never intended to be a description of the science nor mechanics of creation. Instead, Genesis 1 offers a deep theological statement about the goodness of creation and God’s gift to that creation in mandating and blessing rest (for humans, animals, and land).

Yet, many Christians have and do interpret Genesis 1 in a more literalistic way: as actual action over six days that decrees the way God intended things to be or, worse still, as a scientific description of creation. So when they read “so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” they interpret it to mean God intended only two genders. It seems pretty straightforward, right?

Well, no. Genesis 1 is full of poetic binaries: light and dark, day and night, land and sea, male and female. Just because we have light and dark does not mean we don’t have dusk and dawn. Just because we have land and sea does not mean we do not have beaches and tidal plains. These are not absolute categories, but rather a shorthand for the breadth of creation.

By extension, then, just because humans are created male and female, does not mean we don’t have diverse gender expressions that lie somewhere in between, nor that these diversities are not also part of the creation God declared to be good.

The Horizon church that Scott Morrison attends has no statement about gender or sexuality on its website. It is affiliated with the Australian Christian Churches, which also does not have an explicit statement on gender or sexuality. But it does say this about the Bible:

We believe that the Bible is God’s Word. It is accurate, authoritative and applicable to our every day lives.

Another statement claims the Bible is “infallible”. Words such as “accurate” and “infallible” commonly denote a worldview that considers the Bible to be the supreme authority on all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, putting it in fundamental conflict with science. It is a misunderstanding of what the Bible claims to be and the complex diversity of perspectives and genres therein.

The problem is, the Bible is neither accurate nor infallible on several measures. It is inconsistent, repeatedly historically inaccurate, and a text that reflects the cultural assumptions of its time (slavery is assumed, for example).

If you were to keep reading Genesis, you’d discover that Genesis 2 also describes creation, but this time it occurs in the opposite order (a human first) out of a dry dusty place (not watery chaos). Which is true? It can’t be both if “accuracy” means something measured in literal, factual, or scientific terms.

Read more: Ruddock report constrains, not expands, federal religious exemptions

Herein lies the problem. Beliefs about biblical “accuracy” are faith claims and are best framed in terms of theological truths about God. Taken in this light, biblical stories about gender and sexuality are not scientific evidence that sets Christianity against current medical and scientific knowledge, but rather ways that ancient believers expressed their understanding of God, life, and one another.

Morrison’s conservatism about gender and sexuality implies a worldview shaped by a conservative approach to the Bible where “biblical truth” is viewed as at odds with medical and scientific knowledge.

The dichotomy does not need to be there. One can hold belief in biblical authority and give credence to scientific knowledge on matters of gender, sexuality, or even climate change if one understands what the Bible does and does not claim to do. It is simply a matter of better interpretation.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Stallman, Hospital Research Foundation Fellow, University of South Australia

Many current suicide prevention interventions focus on raising awareness of suicide or on preventing it only at the point just prior to it occurring. But despite decades of government investment in suicide awareness programs, the rate of deaths by suicide in Australia is the second highest it’s been in ten years.

Clearly, we must expand our efforts.

Suicide occurs when a person can’t identify any other effective strategy to reduce their distress. It comes at a point when a person has reached the end of their tether. Australia’s National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan 2017–2022 largely focuses on this kind of endpoint when people are about to die or have died of suicide. The focus is also on people with serious psychiatric illnesses or those considered at “high risk” of suicide.

To bring down Australia’s suicide rate, Australia must stop focusing on the suicide itself and put more effort into helping people find ways to cope. It should invest on helping people reduce their emotional reactivity, rather than waiting to intervene until the last minute before someone dies.

Read more: Three charts on: why rates of mental illness aren’t going down despite higher spending

Getting there earlier

There is often discussion about which age groups (adolescents, older adults or middle-aged adults), life circumstances (homelessness, domestic violence, workplaces, childhood abuse), or professions (doctors, lawyers, veterans, FIFO workers) have highest rates of deaths by suicide. This can distract from the underlying biological, psychological and social factors that contribute to suicide.

The factors contributing to distress and emotional reactivity are well-established. They are unhealthy environments (physical, social, cultural and economic), inadequate parenting, social isolation and unhealthy behaviours (sleep, nutrition and exercise), healthy coping, lack of resilience and lack of access to physical and psychological treatments.

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

Most of these factors don’t feature in Australia’s National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan 2017–2022. Where the plan does address psychological and social issues, it does so in relation to people who already have a serious psychiatric illness or those considered “at high-risk” of suicide.

In our overburdened health systems, often only those determined to be at “high risk” get access to immediate services. Despite assessing risk for suicide being the prevailing model, more than 50 years of data has shown this approach is ineffective at the individual level – as everyone is different and the issue is complex.

If a person is deemed to be at risk, health professionals in Australia and internationally generally make decisions as to what shall be done to the person and what services they can receive. Such practices often end up detaining, monitoring and reducing access to possible methods of suicide.

While such strategies can help prevent someone from dying by suicide in any given moment, failure to address overwhelming stressors and improve everyday coping strategies leave a person vulnerable in the future. These practices can also make patients feel traumatised and unsupported.

Address the complex factors

There are three areas that need attention if we truly want to help people reaching the end point: prevention, evaluation and support.

Nationally, we have high rates of those factors associated with emotional instability: inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, and inadequate exercise. These are some obvious population targets to improve mental health in all Australians and prevent long-term risk of suicide. Meeting people’s basic needs for housing, parenting, and belonging are also important.

Health practitioners need to be skilled at identifying the primary drivers of distress and mental illness, and providing treatments. They must have links for patients to access community resources (such as financial aid, domestic violence support, housing, sleep, nutrition and physical activity interventions) where necessary to support their health and well-being and reduce distress.

Read more: Five lifestyle changes to enhance your mood and mental health

People who are distressed need to be supported to cope and access the right intensity of support when they ask for help. Too many people who ask for help are assessed as “not at high risk” and later die by suicide. Others are discharged from inpatient services without adequate support and later die. We must invest in supporting all Australians to cope, rather than waiting until the moment before we think they may die from suicide.

Focusing on suicide as a suicide prevention strategy has not been effective in reducing the prevalence of suicide. While we continue to fund band-aid solutions, rather than addressing the complex factors that contribute to emotional problems and overwhelming distress, it is unlikely rates of death by suicide in Australia will decline.

There is talk of setting targets for suicide prevention, which is also a very low measure of success. Similar to observing and monitoring vital signs of inpatients with suicidal thoughts to ensure they are alive, it ignores the mental life and quality of life of those who are alive.

Our long-term mental health strategy needs to focus on preventing distress through improved health and well-being, improved coping, and providing timely and adequate access to evidence-based treatments for all those who ask for help.

Anyone seeking support and information about suicide can contact Lifeline on 131 114 or beyondblue 1300 22 46 36.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Ann Wheeler, Professor in Water Economics, University of Adelaide

Australia has been described as the “front line of the battle for climate change adaptation”, and our farmers are the ones who have to lead the charge. Farmers will have to cope, among other pressures, with longer droughts, more erratic rainfall, higher temperatures, and changes to the timing of seasons.

Yet, puzzlingly enough to many commentators, climate denial has been widespread among farmers and in the ranks of the National Party, which purports to represent their interests.

Read more: The Nationals have changed their leader but kept the same climate story

Back in 2008, only one-third of farmers accepted the science of climate change. Our 2010-11 survey of 946 irrigators in the southern Murray-Darling Basin (published in 2013) found similar results: 32% accepted that climate change posed a risk to their region; half disagreed; and 18% did not know.

These numbers have consistently trailed behind the wider public, a clear majority of whom have consistently accepted the science. More Australians in 2018 accepted the reality of climate change than at almost any time, with 76% accepting climate change is occurring, 11% not believing in it and 13% being unsure.

Yet there are signs we may be on the brink of a wholesale shift in farmers’ attitudes towards climate change. For example, we have seen the creation of Young Carbon Farmers, Farmers for Climate Action, the first ever rally on climate change by farmers in Canberra, and national adverts by farmers on the need for climate action. Since 2016 the National Farmers Federation has strengthened its calls for action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Our latest preliminary research results have also revealed evidence of this change. We surveyed 1,000 irrigators in 2015-16 in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, and found attitudes have shifted significantly since the 2010 survey.

Now, 43% of farmers accept climate change poses a risk to their region, compared with just 32% five years earlier. Those not accepting correspondingly fell to 36%, while the percentage who did not know slightly increased to 21%.

Why would farmers deny the science?

There are many factors that influence a person’s denial of climate change, with gender, race, education and age all playing a part. While this partly explains the attitudes that persist among farmers (who tend to be predominantly male, older, Caucasian, and have less formal education), it is not the full story.

The very fact that farmers are on the front line of climate change also drives their climate change denial. For a farmer, accepting the science means facing up to the prospect of a harsher, more uncertain future.

Yet as these changes move from future prospect to current reality, they can also have a galvanising effect. Our survey results suggest farmers who have seen their farm’s productivity decrease over time are more likely to accept the science of climate change.

Many farmers who have turned to regenerative, organic or biodynamic agriculture talk about the change of mindset they went through as they realised they could no longer manage a drying landscape without major changes to their farming practices.

Read more: Farmers experiencing drought-related stress need targeted support

In addition, we have found another characteristic that is associated with climate change denial is whether farmers have identified a successor for their farm. Many farmers desire to turn their farm over to the next generation, hopefully in a better state than how they received the farm. This is where the psychological aspect of increased future uncertainty plays an important role – farmers don’t want to believe their children will face a worse future on the farm.

We all want our children to have better lives than our own, and for farmers in particular, accepting climate change makes that very challenging. But it can also prompt stronger advocacy for doing something about it before it’s too late.

What can we do?

Whether farmers do or do not accept climate change, they all have to deal with the uncertainty of weather – and indeed they have been doing so for a very long time. The question is, can we help them to do it better? Given the term “climate change” can be polarising, explicit climate information campaigns will not necessarily deliver the desired results.

Read more: To help drought-affected farmers, we need to support them in good times as well as bad

What farmers need are policies to help them manage risk and improve their decision-making. This can be done by focusing on how adaptation to weather variability can increase profitability and strengthen the farm’s long-term viability.

Farming policy should be more strategic and forward-thinking; subsidies should be removed for unsustainable practices; and farmers should be rewarded for good land management – both before and during droughts. The quest remains to minimise the pain suffered by all in times of drought.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Finkel, Australia’s Chief Scientist, Office of the Chief Scientist

This week’s release of the special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has put scientific evidence on the front page of the world’s newspapers.

As Australia’s Chief Scientist, I hope it will be recognised as a tremendous validation of the work that scientists do.

The people of the world, speaking through their governments, requested this report to quantify the impacts of warming by 1.5℃ and what steps might be taken to limit it. They asked for the clearest possible picture of the consequences and feasible solutions.

Read more: The UN’s 1.5°C special climate report at a glance

It is not my intention in this article to offer a detailed commentary on the IPCC’s findings. I commend the many scientists with expertise in climate systems who have helped Australians to understand the messages of this report.

My purpose is to urge all decision-makers – in government, industry and the community – to listen to the science.

Focus on the goal

It would be possible for the public to take from this week’s headlines an overwhelming sense of despair.

The message I take is that we do not have time for fatalism.

We have to look squarely at the goal of a zero-emissions planet, then work out how to get there while maximising our economic growth. It requires an orderly transition, and that transition will have to be managed over several decades.

That is why my review of the National Electricity Market called for a whole-of-economy emissions reduction strategy for 2050, to be in place by the end of 2020.

Read more: The Finkel Review at a glance

We have to be upfront with the community about the magnitude of the task. In a word, it is huge.

Many of the technologies in the IPCC’s most optimistic scenarios are at an early stage, or conceptual. Two that stand out in that category are:

• carbon dioxide removal (CDR): large-scale technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

• carbon capture and sequestration (CCS): technology to capture and store carbon dioxide from electricity generation.

It will take a decade or more for these technologies to be developed to the point at which they have proven impact, then more decades to be widely deployed.

The IPCC’s pathways for rapid emissions reduction also include a substantial role for behavioural change. Behavioural change is with us always, but it is incremental.

Driving change of this magnitude, across all societies, in fundamental matters like the homes we build and the foods we eat, will only succeed if we give it time – and avoid the inevitable backlash from pushing too fast.

The IPCC has made it clear that the level of emissions reduction we can achieve in the next decade will be crucial. So we cannot afford to wait.

Many options

No option should be ruled off the table without rigorous consideration.

In that context, the Finkel Review pointed to a crucial role for natural gas, particularly in the next vital decade, as we scale up renewable energy.

The IPCC has made the same point, not just for Australia but for the world.

The question should not be “renewables or coal”. The focus should be on atmospheric greenhouse emissions. This is the outcome that matters.

Denying ourselves options makes it harder, not easier, to get to the goal.

There also has to be serious consideration of other options modelled by the IPCC, including biofuels, catchment hydroelectricity, and nuclear power.

My own focus in recent months has been on the potential for clean hydrogen, the newest entrant to the world’s energy markets.

Read more: How hydrogen power can help us cut emissions, boost exports, and even drive further between refills

In future, I expect hydrogen to be used as an alternative to fossil fuels to power long-distance travel for cars, trucks, trains and ships; for heating buildings; for electricity storage; and, in some countries, for electricity generation.

We have in Australia the abundant resources required to produce clean hydrogen for the global market at a competitive price, on either of the two viable pathways: splitting water using solar and wind electricity, or deriving hydrogen from natural gas and coal in combination with carbon capture and sequestration.

Building an export hydrogen industry will be a major undertaking. But it will also bring jobs and infrastructure development, largely in regional communities, for decades.

So the scale of the task is all the more reason to press on today – at the same time as we press on with mining lithium for batteries, clearing the path for electric vehicles, planning more carbon-efficient cities, and so much more.

There are no easy answers. I hope, through this and other reports, there are newly determined people ready to contribute to the global good.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Phillips, Associate Professor, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Director, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Research School of Economics, Australian National University

Electricity prices have doubled in the past ten years, climbing 117%, which is 76% more than inflation. Gas prices climbed 89%, 53% more than inflation.

In a report to be released on Friday by the Australian Council of Social Service and the Brotherhood of St Laurence, we examine what these climbing prices have actually cost different types of households, after taking full account of energy use and government concessions and rebates, including solar energy rebates.

Our modelling is based on the Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey. We use the changes between the 2003-04, 2009-10 and 2015-16 surveys to develop estimates for the changes between 2008 and 2018.

For most, it’s as affordable as it was ten years ago

A perhaps surprising finding is that, despite those strong price rises, there has been relatively little change in the amount households spend on gas and electricity as a proportion of their incomes.

The average proportion of household income spent on electricity and gas has climbed just 0.1% over the decade, from 2.3% to 2.4%.

Read more: Capping electricity prices: a quick fix with hidden risks

Prices have climbed more sharply than spending, but some households have responded to higher prices by using less energy in order to keep costs in check. This has been achieved partly by taking advantage of improvements in the efficiency of devices such as air conditioners, and also by being more frugal.

But not for renters, or the unemployed

Low-income households, in particular households whose main source of income is a government payment such as Newstart, are spending much more of their (already small) budgets on energy.

In 2008 energy costs took up 5.9% of low-income households’ disposable income. By 2018 they took up 6.4%.

In contrast, the highest-earning households spend just 1.5% of their income on energy, up from 1.4%.

One in four low-income households spend at least 9% or more of their income on energy.

Renters pay a higher proportion of their income than home owners, and have also suffered much bigger increases in costs, perhaps because they have less scope to make the sorts of changes to their homes needed to get costs down.

By region, costs are the highest in Adelaide (on average about 3.4% of disposable income) and the lowest in Sydney and Brisbane (about 2%).

If you’re wealthy, you can go solar

Another perhaps surprising finding is that the take-up of solar panels is fairly evenly distributed across the income spectrum. Among the bottom four in ten households the take-up is 15%. Among the top four in ten, it is 17%.

Read more: Are solar panels a middle-class purchase? This survey says yes

But high wealth households are far more likely than low wealth households to take up solar. For the most wealthy the take-up is 23.5%, for the least wealthy it is 4%.

Typical savings are about A$500 a year. High wealth households saved much more than low wealth households.

It’s the high payers that are paying more

For most, energy remains as affordable as it was ten years ago. That’s because, for most, incomes have been climbing – although not to the same extent as energy prices. Even pensioners received quite big increases in 2009.

Read more: Higher energy prices are here to stay – here’s what we can do about it

It’s also because many households have been able to cut back their use of externally supplied energy, especially high wealth households that can afford solar panels, and those who own the home they live and have the right to modify it.

For others, especially households who rent, and those headed by people on non-pension benefits, energy costs are climbing sharply. Already paying much more of their income than others, they’re trapped into spending even more.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW

Amazon has just voluntarily raised its employees’ minimum wage to US$15 an hour. Retail giant Costco has moved to US$14. This might not sound like a lot – and it is sure not a lot to live on – but with the US federal minimum wage at US$7.25 it is a big shift.

Why are they paying more?

The cheap answer is that Amazon in particular has buckled to external pressure.

Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren, a possible 2020 presidential contender, has suggested regulating it and other technology companies with a version of the depression-era laws used to curb the power of banks.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna have already introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act. Also known as the Stop BEZOS Act. Oh, the subtlety. But Amazon founder Jeff Bezos didn’t get to be the world’s richest man by pre-emptively giving into these kind of folks.

A more interesting answer is this. The US labour market is incredibly tight right now. Unemployment is running at 3.7%. Standard economic theory says that as unemployment goes down employers have to pay more to attract workers. So wages go up. People like me normally draw a nice, smooth curve in economics 101 to represent that relationship.

Trouble with the curve

But maybe the curve isn’t smooth. It could be that, especially in large companies such as Amazon, wage rises come in jumps, not smooth increments.

Imagine yourself Bezos for a day and consider what happens if you raise wages a modest amount for all your nearly 550,000 employees. That costs a ton. You could raise wages more frequently but by just a few cents an hour, which would of course cost less.

Yet we know from behavioural economics people tend to think of small raises as zero. So it costs you something but your workers don’t care. That’s a bad trade.

Read more: Is faster profit growth essential for a pick-up in wages growth?

How does this shake out? Well, it takes getting unemployment down a lot before you are willing to raise wages; and when you move, it will be a big enough move to be appreciated.

Now this is just a theory. But perhaps the explanation that sluggish wage growth can be blamed on the excessive power of big employers is incomplete.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that power manifests itself in slow wages growth only for moderate movements in unemployment. With really big changes – like the huge decline in unemployment seen in the US – things are different.

Only big steps count

If this is right then one unmistakable implication is that Australia also needs a big step down in unemployment to get past its sluggish wage growth. For the past five years or so wages growth has barely kept up with inflation.

Perhaps we need to get unemployment down from its current level of 5.6% to something more like 4.5% before employers will offer significant wage rises.

Read more: This is what policymakers can and can’t do about low wage growth

For the Reserve Bank of Australia, stimulating the economy to reduce the jobless rate would mean cutting, not raising, the cash rate from 1.5% now to perhaps 1% or so. With less fear about property bubbles thanks to tighter lending standards – and less fear still if Labor is elected and cuts back negative gearing perks – there is more room to cut.

I have just laid out a kind of “what if” theory. Economists test such theories with data – in this case identifying the causal effect of unemployment changes on wage bargaining outcomes – and by using some natural experiment (like an unexpected war) or clever empirical strategy (think Steve Levitt and Mark Duggan’s statistical evidence for cheating in Sumo Wrestling).

Economics research like this typically takes a couple of years. But the RBA has to set interest rates every month based on its best guess of the answer. It can’t just wait two years for the research to come in.

This is the kind of time pressure economic policy makers have had to deal with over the past decade. The world is different than it was. The old economic models of unemployment and the macroeconomy don’t work very well. Intuitions need to be rethought and instincts rewired.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom van Laer, Reader (Associate Professor) of Marketing, City, University of London

The 2016 science-fiction drama Arrival, starring Amy Adams as linguistics professor Dr Louise Banks, was a ceiling-shattering moment for female academics. The film, directed by Denis Villeneuve, presented Adams’ character in a race against time to avert a war by finding a way to communicate with extraterrestrial visitors.

Banks’s character was groundbreaking because for decades, men have been portrayed as brilliant, heroic academics in American and British films. Movies such as A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Good Will Hunting and Wonder Boys are not only all set at a university or in research institutes – and mostly excellent works of art – but are also all dramas of academic masculinity.

In these movies, women are extras who exist only to offer comfort, help, love, lust and support to the great man until they are assaulted, dumped or divorced.

Women make up 49.3% of academia in America, 45.7% in Britain and 45.6% in Australia. Yet female academics have barely appeared as rounded characters in movies.

I still remember my joy and shock at watching Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, five years ago, in which Sandra Bullock plays Dr Ryan Stone, a medical engineer who is stranded in space after the mid-orbit destruction of her space shuttle. Here was a blockbuster movie starring a complex, female academic character. Yet Gravity was not the breakthrough for which I had hoped. A single momentous work cannot, by itself, change things.

The absence of these characters in mainstream film matters, because most women in academia must still fight to tell their own stories and fight against the stories that distort or erase them. And on the rare occasions when women have appeared as academics in Hollywood films, their depictions have often been awful.

The most notorious examples are characters such as the naive palaeontologist Dr Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, or worse, the talented PhD student Hannah Green (Katie Holmes) in Wonder Boys, who lusts after her male supervisor.

While Dr Harding is ostensibly an intelligent academic, in The Lost World she more accurately serves as a damsel-in-distress. Ironically, it is Dr Harding’s supposed intelligence that puts her in distress in the first place. (Bring the baby Tyrannosaurus rex aboard the mobile home? Sure mommy, the nine-ton predator will never smell a baby or hear its cries in there!) When Dr Harding’s scientific shortsightedness leads to trouble, she proves she can wail on par with any princess in jeopardy.

The Wonder Boys’ Hannah Green is the ideal student for hyper-masculine academics. She is beautiful, brilliant, and innocent. She lives for her studies. And she has a crush on her male professor. Moon-eyed, she gushes:

I was thinking it’s like all your sentences seem as if they’ve always existed, waiting around up there, in Style Heaven, or wherever, for you to fetch them down.

In short, she is the perfect muse.

Women wince at these unrealistic portrayals. They hurt because many viewers will take these stereotyped depictions and transfer them to any female academic they later encounter.

The brilliant women who deserve movies

One solution to all this is to change how and what stories are told. So here are my picks of women with brilliant minds who deserve movies of their own.

• Hypatia, the Egyptian astronomer who built an astrolabe, the first instrument for calculating the position of the sun, moon, and stars at any given time. She taught astronomy and philosophy in ancient Alexandria and her classes where always popular. Students and other scholars would crowd in to hear her explain that you must reserve your right to think – for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

• Maria Reiche, the 20th century German archaeologist who found that hundreds of mysterious lines etched into the dry Peruvian desert, called Nazca Lines, actually correspond to the constellations in the night sky. She flew helicopters and planes to map the lines and used so many brooms to clean them that some people thought she was a witch.

• Ada Lovelace, the British mathematician who in 1843 wrote the first computer program in history, way before modern computers were invented!

• Grace Hopper, the American computer scientist. Thanks to the programs she wrote for the first computer, called Mark I, and its successors, US forces were able to decode secret messages their enemies sent during the second world war.

• Marie Curie, the scientist who found out that some minerals are radioactive, give off powerful rays and glow in the dark. Born in Poland in 1867, she moved to France to study. She discovered two new radioactive elements – polonium and radium – and won two Nobel prizes for her work. She died in France in 1934 due to exposure to radiation.

• Jane Goodall, the British primatologist who has discovered that chimpanzees have rituals and use tools, that their language comprises at least 20 different sounds, and that they are omnivores.

• Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator who lived from 1870 to 1952. Instead of applying old teaching methods, she watched children to see how they learnt. Her innovative teaching method is applied in thousands of schools and it helps children all over the world grow independent and self-sufficient.

• Mae C. Jemison, the first African-American woman in space. She graduated in African-American studies, chemical engineering, and medicine and learnt to speak Japanese, Russian, and Swahili. After becoming a doctor and volunteering in Cambodia and Sierra Leone, she then applied to NASA to become an astronaut. Dr Jemison was selected and sent into space on board the space shuttle. She carried out tests on other members of the crew. Since she was not only an astronaut but also a doctor, her mission was to conduct experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness. When Dr Jemison came back to Earth, she realised that her true passion was improving health in Africa. So, she quit NASA and now runs a company that uses satellites to do just that.

Signs of progress

Filmmakers continue to produce movies with male actors (The Martian), with academic characters played by male actors (Doctor Strange) and with research institutes led by men (Interstellar).

Nevertheless, the developments since Arrival are encouraging. 2017 saw Hidden Figures, the movie about the three brilliant African-American women at NASA – Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) – who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell) into orbit. It was a stunning achievement that restored the US’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanised the world.

And this year, Annihilation was launched. Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy, the movie stars Natalie Portman (as a cellular biologist), Jennifer Jason Leigh (as a psychologist), Tuva Novotny (as an anthropologist), Tessa Thompson (as a physicist), and Gina Rodriguez (as a paramedic). If Gravity chipped the ceiling for female academics; Arrival appears to have finally smashed it.

If Arrival does succeed in transforming how filmmakers perceive and represent women and female academics, it is due not only to this one movie being good and profitable, but also to the long, slow work by female and male actors, agents, directors, producers, researchers, writers and others that has gone before it. For decades, people have been researching gender representation in media and advocating for equal representation of women.

Still, Arrival should really have been just a science-fiction drama about a linguistics professor, who happens to be female, leading an elite team of investigators. Yet, with so few movies about female professors, or female humanities scholars, or female lead investigators, or female academics in general, it became highly symbolic.

The real test of how far things have progressed will be when a female academic has the luxury of being the star of a bad movie. That is one measure of equality — the right to be bad and not suffer for it, rather than the demand, placed on female academics and actresses, to be exceptional just to be seen.