Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Huw Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Sydney

Review: An Enemy of the People, Belvoir.

The fitness of Henrik Ibsen’s plays to address the political questions of our modern lives renews itself with each generation. So, Arthur Miller adapted Ibsen’s 1882 play, An Enemy of the People, in 1950, using it as a way to confront the beginnings of McCarthyism and its assaults on writers’ capacities to tell the truth.

And now, at Belvoir in Sydney, we have a new adaptation from Melissa Reeves, transplanted by director, Anne-Louise Sarks, to a small-town in Australia. We are ready to confront, via Ibsen, some of what it means to live in Scott Morrison’s Australia. This is a land where vested interests might prevent our access to the truth, and where nobody’s motives are entirely free from narcissistic self-regard.

An Enemy of the People has a title that uncannily prefigures Donald Trump’s preferred description for mainstream journalists. As one of Ibsen’s plays that is more overtly concerned with public life, it is primed to address some important questions of our time: how possible is it to tell the truth, or even to hear the truth, if nobody is allowed to escape the prison-house of vested interests?

At the centre of the play is the whistle-blower Dr. Brockmann, here played by Kate Mulvany. The doctor discovers that her town’s source of income — the healing waters of a health spa (“wellness centre”) — pose a significant health risk; they have been poisoned by run-off from local industry. At first, local media and small businesses are both on her side, and plan to help rectify the problem.

But, as the politicians get hold of the issue, what seems like a straightforwardly practical and scientific problem becomes clouded by self-interest. The town turns on the doctor that they had previously seen as its champion. In this production, Leon Ford, as the town’s mayor and brother to the good doctor, successfully evinces a perfect mix of parochial narrow-mindedness and mean-spirited disregard for his sister’s campaigning.

At the same time, the doctor’s crusade is harmed by a tendency to enjoy the limelight just a little too much. This is a Dr. Brockmann who, whilst passionate in her commitment to the truth, is blind to the way that her campaigning might ignore the town’s deeper conflicts.

Mulvany captures well a combination of steely resolve and an anguished vulnerability to the harsh treatment that her neighbours dole out. In amongst the damaging fight that ensues, Ibsen shows us that any path to “truth” is unlikely ever to come clearly into view.

An Enemy of the People is something of an outlier in Ibsen’s work in that it focuses more on political associations than it does on personal relationships. The playwright’s interest in the difficulties of truth-telling is, however, something that connects almost all of his work.

He wrote this play in Danish in 1882, in between two of his masterpieces: Ghosts (1881) and The Wild Duck (1884). A contemporary review in The Times of the first English production remarks on how different the play is by way of it being much easier to understand: “the name of Ibsen … has hitherto been associated with work which is full of enigmas and obscurities,” the anonymous reviewer writes, but “here we have a play which everybody can understand.”

Incomprehension was a very common reaction to Ibsen’s plays during his lifetime. What we now take for granted as a staple of drama — a realistic representation of everyday life that hints, in its many silences, at the larger power struggles within which people become trapped – was, for late 19th-century playgoers, difficult to make sense of.

The play Ghosts, for example, had received a particularly hostile reception from some aspects of the press. The story of syphilis that it tells resulted in it being seen, according to one newspaper, as a “mass of vulgarity, egotism, coarseness and absurdity”.

Others saw in Ibsen a truth-teller, somebody who was prepared to try and show life as it is really lived, not caring to insist that audiences adopt particular points of view. A contemporary supporter of Ibsen, Arthur Symons, wrote that, “Nothing shows us better than Ibsen’s social dramas the true meaning of the word realism” and that his work, “is daring to discuss matters over which society draws a veil”.

In Dr. Brockmann, we get an Ibsen-like figure: a misunderstood truth-teller, wondering if it is all still worth it when faced with seemingly impossible opposition. This might be why some of his contemporaries found this play to be a bit more digestible than his others. With his other plays, Ibsen turns inwards, into people’s minds and into their private rooms, as he traces the appalling effects of stifled opportunity. But, with this play, he goes on the attack and looks outward.

In this production, this outward-looking trajectory provides for some fresh and compelling dialogue from Reeves. Her adaptation fizzes with contemporary relevance.

The fourth act is particularly strong. This is a public meeting between the doctor and her opponents. In the original, Ibsen manages this by filling his usually sparsely-populated stage with a huge crowd of people. Contradictory viewpoints fly across the stage. He takes us out of his usual habitat, the middle-class parlour, where he might just show us “life as it is lived” without offering us any explanations.

Instead, we are being addressed directly as if part of the crowd, confronted by the demands of the playwright as much as by the demands of Dr Brockmann.

In the Belvoir production, we are actually made part of the crowd, as Mulvany’s Brockmann draws us into the argument, challenging us on our own complicities, our own refusals really to break through the spin and listen to the “truth”.

An Enemy of the People is being staged at Belvoir until November 4.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross L Jones, Honorary Senior Fellow, Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, University of Melbourne; Associate, Centre for Health Law and Society, La Trobe University, University of Melbourne

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the ABC’s Boyer Lectures. Delivered by Professor John Rasko, the 2018 Life Engineered lectures explore ethical and other issues around gene therapy and related technologies, and their potential to cure disease, prolong life and change the course of human evolution.

The first lecture will be broadcast on RN’s Big Ideas at 8pm tonight. In this article, we explore the history of eugenics and the ethical implications of its resurgence with the evolution of genetic therapy.

News about the potential of genetic engineering to improve our lives is often compromised by problematic stories about its potential for misuse. Should couples be allowed to choose the gender of their offspring? Should the state intervene in the reproductive lives of its citizens?

We can see this most recently in the case of couples travelling to clinics overseas to use IVF to choose the gender of their child – a practice prohibited in Australia. Such case studies represent only the current point in a long history of the debate about “improving” humanity – the science of eugenics.

Some scientists and ethicists believe eugenics is a value-free science that got a bad name due to the practices in Nazi Germany.

Philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu, for instance, has endorsed the “new eugenics”, claiming that in its previous incarnation it was sullied by bad science and state intervention. He has argued we have a moral obligation to overcome some limitations if science permits it, such as ensuring babies aren’t born with certain types of disabilities.

The argument follows that the new science is “good” science and the free market will lead to human improvement, not contravene fundamental rights.

Read more: Toby Young: what is ‘progressive eugenics’ and what does it have to do with meritocracy?

Eugenics not a Nazi creation

Discussing Nazi eugenics, however, misses the point. This is because German eugenicists actually learnt the craft from observing the extensive sterilisation programs in the US in the 1920s and ’30s that stopped tens of thousands of people from reproducing.

Legal oversight failed completely. The sterilisation program that targeted “inferior” Americans was endorsed by the Supreme Court in Buck v Bell in 1927. Carrie Buck was surgically sterilised at the age of 22 using fabricated evidence of her, her mother’s and her seven-month-old daughter’s mental incapacity. The reason given in the leading judgment was that “three generations of imbeciles is enough”.

The Rockefeller Foundation funded the pre-second world war work of Josef Mengele (a doctor who later performed human experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp) on genetics and disease. Along with the Carnegie Foundation and the Harriman family, millions of dollars went into research programs used to justify the sterilisation of people in the US with disabilities.

Leading scientists and eugenics

Not that we can point the finger just at the US. Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton founded the modern eugenics movement in Britain. He set the ball in motion for the Eugenics Society to be born in the early 1900s. It supported policies that reduced the breeding rights of “inferior” members of society – ranging from birth-control clinics in the slums of major cities and severe restrictions on immigration, through to state-imposed sterilisation.

The first Galton Chair of Eugenics at University College London, Karl Pearson, discovered many of the most important principles underlying modern statistics. Central to his development of statistics was his work in establishing methods of measuring biological normality for the purposes of breeding “better” humans.

Many leading biological scientists and Nobel laureates were members of the society – the brightest minds of generations, who were thought leaders of the time. These included Ronald Fisher, the founder of modern evolutionary biology (who argued that the poorer classes are genetically inferior to the middle classes), the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Peter Medawar and IVF pioneer Robert Edwards.

Read more: Boyer Lectures: gene therapy is still in its infancy but the future looks promising

Leading scientists still preached the eugenic message of the biological inequality of humans after 1945, as well as the need to restrict the reproductive rights of such people. For example, in the late 1950s and early 1960s Australia’s own Nobel laureate, virologist McFarlane Burnett, pointed out the danger in letting less intelligent members of society have larger families in an article of the Eugenics Society magazine, the Eugenics Review.

Even more controversially, James Watson, who with Francis Crick and, with a very belated acknowledgement, Rosalind Franklin, discovered the double-helix architecture of the chromosome in 1953, argued recently that blacks are less genetically intelligent than whites, and that women are less able in the sciences.

Read more: Eugenics in Australia: The secret of Melbourne’s elite

But we’re ‘better’ now

Maybe the science is much “better” now, as Savalescu claims – but there have been concerns about that as well.

Perhaps the most important consideration when evaluating the benefits of the new eugenics is the vexed question of what makes a human “better”.

Certainly if we take deafness, there is an important movement of the deaf that sees deafness as a culture, not a disability. Advocates of this view argue that deaf people aren’t lacking in a way that makes them inferior, they are just different and society should accommodate such difference, not “cure” it, in the same way homosexuality has been de-medicalised.

Can this be said of other so-called disabilities? Is having a higher IQ “better”?

The founder of social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, coined the term “survival of the fittest”. Interrogating this statement actually shows its a tautology.

Question: Who survives?

Answer: The fittest

Question: Who are the fittest?

Answer: Those who survive.

A tautology is a meaningless formula for future action as it only describes what has gone on in the past. We know who “survived”, it’s the story written by the “winners”. For Spencer, middle-class white males were the “fittest”. Have we just replaced “fittest” with “best”?

We need to think clearly about the consequences of the new genetic technologies and not blindly embrace them in the name of “betterment” if we don’t scrupulously interrogate why such “improvements” are necessary. This was a problem with most of the definitions of the unfit by eugenicists in the past.

If significant funding is to be allocated to the modern eugenics, policymakers must be involved in finding solutions to these problems, otherwise the “new eugenics” is just the old one in new clothes.

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

This week’s Newspoll, conducted October 11-14 from a sample of 1,707, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Labor (down one), 37% Coalition (up one), 11% Greens (up one) and 6% One Nation (steady).

In contrast to Newspoll, Labor’s lead increased to a 55-45 margin in a Fairfax Ipsos poll, a two-point gain for Labor since four weeks ago. Primary votes were 35% Coalition (up one), 35% Labor (up four), 15% Greens (steady) and 5% One Nation (down two). This poll was taken October 10-13 from a sample of 1,200.

Read more: Coalition trails 47-53% in Newspoll, as Ipsos finds 74% oppose law discriminating against gay students and teachers

When Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull in late August, Labor’s lead blew out to a 56-44 margin in Newspoll, and the Coalition has since clawed back support. However, these two polls indicate the Coalition’s gains have stalled. Analyst Kevin Bonham’s aggregate is at 53.9% two party to Labor by last election preferences, a 0.6% gain for Labor since last week.

As usual, the Greens vote in Ipsos is too high, but Newspoll also indicates that the Greens have gained; this is their highest Newspoll vote since August 2017. The Coalition’s dismissal of the IPCC report is a plausible reason for Green gains.

Respondent allocated preferences in Ipsos were 55-45 to Labor, the same as the previous election preference method. Under Turnbull, respondent preferences skewed to the Coalition, but the two Ipsos polls under Morrison have had identical respondent and previous election results. A stronger flow of Greens and Others to Labor could be compensating for One Nation’s flows to the Coalition.

Read more: Poll wrap: Labor’s lead shrinks in federal Ipsos, but grows in Victorian Galaxy; Trump’s ratings slip

In Newspoll, 45% were satisfied with Morrison (up one), and 38% were dissatisfied (down one), for a net approval of +7. Bill Shorten’s net approval was up six points to -16. Morrison led Shorten by 45-34 as better PM (45-32 three weeks ago).

Morrison’s first three Newspoll net approval ratings have been +2, +5 and +7. Turnbull’s first three Newspoll net approval ratings after deposing Tony Abbott were +18, +25 and +35. While Morrison’s current ratings are much better than Turnbull before he was deposed, they are far worse than Turnbull in his honeymoon period.

Despite the stronger voting intentions for Labor in Ipsos, 50% approved of Morrison (up four) and 33% disapproved (down three), for a net approval of +17, up seven points. Shorten’s net approval dropped four points to -8. Morrison led Shorten by 48-35 as better PM (47-37 four weeks ago).

By a massive 74-21, voters in Ipsos opposed allowing religious schools to discriminate against gay teachers and students. Bonham cautions that, as a live phone pollster, Ipsos is prone to social desirability bias, so the real margin for this question is probably closer.

By 64-29, Ipsos voters were dissatisfied with the Coalition on immigration. 45% thought immigration should be reduced, 23% increased, and 29% thought immigration should remain as is.

By 50-32, voters in Newspoll thought Morrison more capable of handling the economy than Shorten (48-31 to Turnbull in May). Morrison also led on cost-of-living 44-43 (43-41 to Shorten over Turnbull in December 2017) and on delivering tax cuts 45-33 (40-33 to Turnbull in December). The economy and tax cuts tend to favour conservatives.

In February 2016, five months after deposing Abbott, Turnbull led Shorten by 58-22 on the economy and 42-33 on cost-of-living.

All of the polls below were taken before the events of last week.

Essential: 53-47 to Labor

Last week’s Essential poll, conducted October 4-7 from a sample of 1,025, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, unchanged on three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up one), 37% Labor (up one), 10% Greens (down two) and 7% One Nation (up two).

43% approved of Morrison (up six since September) and 28% disapproved (down three), for a net approval of +15. Shorten’s net approval fell four points to -12. Morrison led Shorten by 42-27 as better PM (39-27 in September).

57-62% had at least some trust in ABC and SBS TV and radio news and current affairs. Other news sources had between 35% and 48% trust, with Internet blogs at the bottom with just 17% trust. There was little change in trust since October 2017.

36% thought the government had too much influence over the ABC, 16% too little and 17% about the right amount. By 40-34, voters thought news reporting and comment on the ABC was unbiased, with Labor and Greens voters more likely to say the ABC was unbiased.

By 43-35, voters opposed keeping all asylum seekers on Nauru indefinitely. By 42-37, they opposed closing the detention centres and transferring all remaining asylum seekers to Australia. By a narrow 40-39, voters supported transferring families and children from Nauru to Australia.

Wentworth ReachTEL poll tied 50-50 Liberal vs Labor

The Wentworth byelection will be held on October 20. A ReachTEL poll for the Refugee Council of Australia, conducted in the first week of October from a sample of 870, had the Liberals’ Dave Sharma and Labor’s Tim Murray tied at 50-50, a one-point gain for Murray since a September 27 ReachTEL poll for independent Licia Heath’s campaign.

According to The Poll Bludger, primary votes, including a forced choice question for initially undecided voters, were 39.9% Sharma (down 3.1%), 25.0% Murray (up 4.3%), 17.3% for independent Kerryn Phelps (down 0.6%), 9.1% Greens (up 2.5%) and 3.6% Heath (down 6.4%). It is likely the Heath campaign poll exaggerated her support.

Read more: Poll wrap: Phelps slumps to third in Wentworth; Trump’s ratings up after fight over Kavanaugh

This poll also gave a Sharma vs Phelps two candidate estimate, which had Phelps beating Sharma 53-47. However, on the primary vote figures, it is likely Phelps will be eliminated and her preferences distributed between Sharma and Murray. Phelps’ decision to preference the Liberals ahead of Labor, doing an about-face on her previous position of putting the Liberals last, appears to have damaged her.

Seat polls are unreliable, so the 50-50 Sharma vs Murray estimate could reasonably be out by up to five points in either direction. The respondent preference flows implied by this poll (about two-thirds of all Other preferences to Labor) are more reasonable than in the previous poll (three-quarters of Other preferences to Labor).

It is disappointing there have been no properly conducted polls of Wentworth since early October, and no media-commmissioned polls at all. Bonham has big issues with a Voter Choice poll that has both Phelps and Murray defeating Sharma by about 55-45 after preferences, due to that poll’s opt-in nature and weighting adjustments. A Liberal internal poll reportedly shows Sharma is just behind Phelps, who is likely to finish ahead of Murray.

Victorian ReachTEL: 52-48 to Labor

The Victorian election will be held on November 24. A ReachTEL poll for The Age, conducted October 3 from a sample of 1,240, gave Labor a 52-48 lead, a one-point gain for Labor since July. Primary votes were 39.4% Coalition (down 1.4%), 37.6% Labor (up 0.9%), 10.9% Greens (steady) and 4.0% Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.

One Nation had 3.7% in the July poll, but they will not contest the election. The Shooters have benefited from One Nation’s absence.

Premier Daniel Andrews led Opposition Leader Matthew Guy by a 51.3-48.7 margin as better Premier, a 0.7% gain for Andrews since July. ReachTEL’s forced choice better PM/Premier questions are usually better for opposition leaders than other polls.

In other forced choice questions, Labor led the Coalition by 54.0-46.0 on dealing with Melbourne’s congestion (Coalition ahead by 50.8-49.2 in July). Labor led by 52.9-47.1 on cost-of-living (50.2-49.8 in July). The Coalition led by 53.9-46.1 on law and order (55.8-44.2 in July) and by 50.4-49.6 on managing growing population (51.6-48.4 in July).

Read more: Victorian ReachTEL poll: 51-49 to Labor, and time running out for upper house reform

All these issues surveyed have moved towards Labor since July, with a large movement on Melbourne’s congestion. Issue questions usually move in the same direction as voting intentions.

A Galaxy poll in September for the bus industry gave Labor a 53-47 lead. State political parties tend to do better when the opposite party is in power federally. Labor is clearly ahead now, and is likely to win the Victorian election.

In brief: US midterm elections and far-right likely to win Brazil presidential election

I had an article for The Poll Bludger on the November 6 US midterm elections published Sunday. Since the fight over judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the US Supreme Court, Republicans have gained ground in the Senate, but Democrats have gained in the House. A split decision, where the Democrats win the House, but Republicans keep the Senate, is the most likely outcome.

I also previewed the Brazilian presidential election on my personal website. At the October 7 first round election, the far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, won 46.0% of the vote, while the left-wing Workers’ Party candidate, Fernando Haddad, had 29.3%. Another left-wing candidate won 12.5%, and a centre-right candidate won 4.8%.

As Bolsonaro did not win over 50% in the first round, a runoff will be held on October 28 between Bolsonaro and Haddad. The three runoff polls taken so far give Bolsonaro a seven to fifteen point lead over Haddad. Bolsonaro has made comments sympathetic to the 1964-85 Brazilian military dictatorship.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vikki Schaffer, Program Co-ordinator and Lecturer, Tourism, Leisure and Event Management, University of the Sunshine Coast

As virtual reality technology improves, it creates new opportunities for travellers seeking new experiences. This is the latest instalment of our series exploring how technology is changing tourism.

Tourism is often about seeking deeper emotional and personal connections with the world around us. It’s a quintessential part of the “experience economy”, creating memories that can be recalled, re-lived and re-shared for a lifetime.

But not all travel experiences take place in the real world. With the evolution of virtual reality (VR) technology, tourism is increasingly a mash-up of physical and virtual worlds. VR can even remove the need to travel entirely.

Excessive tourism, or over-tourism, in popular destinations can degrade heritage sites, the quality of life of host communities, and the experience of visitors. Virtual reality not only offers alternative forms of access to threatened locations, it also recreates historical experiences and provides virtual access to remote locations you might not make it to otherwise.

Read more: How Virtual Reality is giving the world’s roller coasters a new twist

Evoking a sense of ‘being there’

Our brains seem to have an inbuilt VR-like mechanism that enables us to live imagined experiences. Much of our waking life is spent thinking about either the past (retrospection) or the future (prospection). This is known as mind wandering.

During these events we’re not paying attention to the current world around us. Instead, we’re recalling memories, or creating and processing imagined futures.

When we’re engaged in mind wandering, our brains process and appraise mental images via the same neural pathways they use to receive stimuli from the real world. So, the imagined past or future can evoke emotions and feelings similar to how we react to everyday life.

Read more: Museums are using virtual reality to preserve the past – before it’s too late

VR can elicit these same feelings. Virtual worlds use sensory stimulation and vivid imagery to generate authentic experiences. Immersion in these environments can lead to a deeper understanding of a place or event than simply reading about it or looking at pictures.

There is evidence virtual reality can create absorption, or a state of attention, leading to a sense of “presence” or “being there”. After a tourism VR experience of the Great Barrier Reef, for example, participants reported experiencing a sense of relaxation, similar to that gained from travel in real life.

What VR tourism looks like

Choosing a destination

Immersive videos of Australian holiday destinations created by Tourism Australia have been viewed more than 10.5 million times over the past two years. Research conducted by Tourism Australia shows that almost 20% of consumers have used VR to choose a holiday destination, while about 25% plan to use VR to choose a future destination. There is evidence VR can sometimes surpass reality, potentially leading the participant to choose an alternate destination.

Sustainability

In March, Thai authorities closed sections of the famous Maya Bay (which featured in Hollywood movie The Beach) because over-tourism threatened coral reefs. VR could offer experiences of locations like this without impacting the natural environment. It could also help support capacity management at “bucket list” destinations, such as Machu Picchu. But if VR is too effective at reducing visitation, alternate forms of income for local people need to be developed to support economic viability.

Historical recreations

In 2018, the Australian War Memorial brought the Battle of Hamel to virtual life using 3D and 360 degree video. Designers of the A$100 million Sir John Monash Centre in Villers-Bretonneux, France used immersive video, interactive touch screens and historical relics to recreate the soldiers’ experience on the Western Front during WWI. Similar work is being completed in regional Australia to recreate life on a US Airbase on “the Brisbane Line” – Australia’s controversial last point of defence in WWII.

Access to remote areas

Wildlife watching can elicit feelings of empathy, surprise, novelty, even fear. It can also generate excitement, stimulation, entertainment and learning. But government regulation, cost, remoteness and seasonality of migratory patterns may limit opportunities for people to encounter some of the awe-inspiring creatures on our planet. Virtual immersion can offer alternatives that support conservation goals and provide transformative visitor experiences.

Read more: Want to be a space tour guide? Apply here… in 2025

Enhancing health and wellbeing

VR tourism could also help to increase health and well-being. Long working hours can lead to anxiety and depression. Research demonstrates immersion in the outdoors encourages relaxation, rejuvenation, expectation, surprise, trust in oneself, and improved self-esteem that can contribute to reduced symptoms. Short breaks using tourism-based VR experiences can mirror these effects and improve health.

New possibilities for VR applications – both practical and pleasurable – are emerging as the technology evolves. And as travellers seek new and novel experiences, combining virtual with real world experiences may become a common feature of tourism in the future.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

When G20 finance ministers met in Bali last week to review economic developments in the lead-up to the annual G20 summit, they could not ignore troubling signs in the global economy driven by concerns about an intensifying US-China trade conflict.

Last week’s slide in equities markets will have served as a warning – if that was needed – of the risks of a trade conflict undermining confidence more generally.

China’s own Shanghai index is down nearly 30% this year. This is partly due to concerns about a trade disruption becoming an all-out trade war.

Read more: The risks of a new Cold War between the US and China are real: here’s why

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde’s call on G20 participants to “de-escalate” trade tensions or risk a further drag on global economic growth might have resonated among her listeners in Bali, but it is not clear calls to reason are getting much traction in Washington these days.

Uncertainties caused by a disrupted trading environment are already having an impact on global growth. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF revised growth down to 3.7% from 3.9% for 2018-19, 0.2 percentage points lower than forecast in April.

The IMF is predicting slower growth for the Australian economy, down from a projected 2.9% this year to 2.8% next year. The May federal budget projected growth of 3% for 2018-19 and the following year.

Adding to trade and other tensions between the US and China are the issues of currency valuations, and a Chinese trade surplus.

In September, China’s trade surplus with the US ballooned to a record U$34.1 billion.

This comes amid persistent US complaints that Beijing has fostered a depreciation of the Yuan by about 10% this year to boost exports, which China denies.

These are perilous times in a global market in which the US appears to have shunned its traditional leadership role in favour of an internally-focused “America First” strategy.

So far, fallout from an increasingly contentious relationship between Washington and Beijing has been contained, but a near collision earlier this month between US and Chinese warships in the South China sea reminds us accidents can happen.

This is the background to a meeting at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires late in November between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. That encounter is assuming greater significance as a list of grievances between the two countries expands.

US Vice President Mike Pence’s speech last week to the conservative Hudson Institute invited this question when he accused of China of “malign” intent towards the US.

Are we seeing the beginning of a new cold war?

The short answer is not necessarily. However, a further deterioration in relations could take on some of the characteristics of a cold war, in which collaboration between Washington and Beijing on issues like North Korea becomes more difficult.

By any standards, Pence’s remarks about China were surprising. He suggested, for example, that Chinese meddling in American internal affairs was more serious than Russia’s interventions in the 2016 president campaign.

He accused Beijing of seeking to harm Republican prospects in mid-term congressional elections and Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. This was a reference to China having taken its campaign against US tariffs to newspaper ads in farm states like Iowa.

Soybean exports to China have been hit hard by retaliatory tariff measures applied by Beijing in response to a first round of tariffs levied by the US.

“China wants a different American president,” Pence said.

This is probably true, but it could also be said that much of the rest of the world – not to mention half of the US population – would like a different American president.

All this unsteadiness – and talk of a “new cold war” – is forcing an extensive debate about how to manage relations with the US and China in a disrupted environment that seems likely to become more, not less, challenging.

Australian academic debate, including contributions from various “think tanks”, has tended to focus on the defence implications of tensions in the South China Sea for Australia’s alliance relationship with the US.

This debate has narrowed the focus of Australia’s concerns to those relating to America’s ability – or willingness – to balance China’s regional assertiveness.

This assertiveness increasingly is finding an expression in China’s activities in the south-west Pacific, where Chinese chequebook – or “debt-trap” – diplomacy is being wielded to build political influence.

Australian policymakers have been slow to respond to China’s push into what has been regarded as Australia’s own sphere of influence.

Read more: Despite strong words, the US has few options left to reverse China’s gains in the South China Sea

Leaving aside narrowly-focused Australian perspectives, it might be useful to get an American view on the overarching challenges facing the US and its allies in their attempts to manage China’s seemingly inexorable rise.

Among American China specialists, few have the academic background and real-time government experience to match that of Jeffrey Bader, who served as President Barack Obama special assistant for national security affairs from 2009-2011.

In a monograph for the Brookings Institution published in September, Bader poses a question that becomes more pertinent in view of Pence’s intervention. He writes:

Ever since President Richard Nixon opened the door to China in 1972, it has been axiomatic that extensive interaction and engagement with Beijing has been in the US national interest.

The decisive question we face today is, should such broad-based interaction be continued in a new era of increasing rivalry, or should it be abandoned or radically altered?

The starkness of choices offered by Bader is striking. These are questions that would not have entered the public discourse as recently as a few months ago.

He cites a host of reasons why America and its allies should be disquieted by developments in China. These include its mercantilist trade policies and its failure to liberalise politically in the three decades since the Tiananmen protests.

However, he concludes the costs of distancing would far outweigh the benefits of engagement to no-one’s advantage, least of all American allies like Japan, India and Australia.

None of these countries, in Bader’s words, would risk economic ties with China nor join in a “perverse struggle to re-erect the ‘bamboo curtain’… We will be on our own”. He concludes:

American should reflect on what a world would be like in which the two largest powers are disengaged then isolated from, and ultimately hostile to each other – for disengagement is almost certain to turn out to be a way station on the road to hostility, he concludes.

Bader has been accused of proffering a “straw man argument’’ on grounds that the administration is feeling its way towards a more robust policy, and not one of disengagement. But his basic point is valid that Trump administration policies represent a departure from the norm.

Read more: Response to rumours of a Chinese military base in Vanuatu speaks volumes about Australian foreign policy

At the conclusion of the IMF/World Bank meetings in Bali, the Christine Lagarde added to her earlier warnings of “choppy” waters in the global economy stemming from trade tensions and further financial tightening. She said:

There are risks out there in the system and we need to be mindful of that…It’s time to buckle up.

That would seem to be an understatement, given the unsteadiness in the US-China relationship and global geopolitical strains more generally.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merlin Crossley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic and Professor of Molecular Biology, UNSW

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the ABC’s Boyer Lectures. Delivered by Professor John Rasko, the 2018 Life Engineered lectures explore ethical and other issues around gene therapy and related technologies, and their potential to cure disease, prolong life and change the course of human evolution.

The first lecture will be broadcast on RN’s Big Ideas at 8pm tonight. In light of this, we’ve asked Merlin Crossley to explain what gene therapy actually is and how we got to where we are with it.

Over the last few centuries, infectious diseases have been understood and tackled, through advances in sanitation, anti-microbial medications and vaccination. One day we may also be able to tackle genetic diseases – lifelong conditions arising from mutations that we inherit from our ancestors or that occur during our development.

We’re over the foothills but we still have mountains to climb in treating genetic diseases.

Step 1 – understanding genetic disease

The key step to tackling infectious diseases was to truly define the nature of the microorganisms that caused them. Similarly, with genetic diseases the first step was to understand and define the nature of a gene.

Scientists, including Watson, Crick and Franklin, determined the structure of DNA in 1953. Gradually it became clear that a gene was a stretch of DNA that encoded a functional product, such as the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin.

Around the same time in 1949, US chemist Linus Pauling demonstrated that the disease sickle cell anaemia was caused by a chemical change in haemoglobin. He called this the first “molecular disease”. With the advent of DNA sequencing in the 1970s, the actual mutation in the globin gene was identified.

Read more: Explainer: one day science may cure sickle cell anaemia

Rapidly after this, the genetic lesions responsible for other inherited diseases – such as haemophilia, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy – were identified. From this moment on, the idea of replacing defective genes or correcting them captured people’s imaginations, and this is the basis of what we now call “gene therapy”.

Step 2 – replacing defective genes

Patients suffering from genetic diseases either have a defective gene or may altogether lack a key gene. In the early stages of gene therapy there was no way of correcting genes, so researchers focused on supplementing the body with a replacement gene.

In the 1980s, recombinant DNA technology (where chosen DNA molecules are transferred between individual organisms) was developed by harnessing the miniature machinery bacteria and viruses use to move DNA around. This allowed researchers to isolate individual human genes and encapsulate them in harmless viruses to deliver them into human cells.

It was possible to get the genes into certain blood cells and other accessible tissues. This process was termed somatic gene therapy (from “soma” meaning, “the body”) and was distinct from germline gene therapy where eggs or sperm, or early embryos, would be modified and whole people and their offspring changed forever.

Human germline gene therapy is widely outlawed and there is no evidence it has ever been seriously attempted.

Read more: Human genome editing report strikes the right balance between risks and benefits

But somatic gene therapy has been attempted and, in some cases, has been successful. Viruses really can be made harmless and filled with human DNA, which they deliver into the patient’s cells.

A handful of people have now been successfully treated in this way for haemoglobin deficiencies, haemophilia, and for immune disorders, such as so-called “bubble boy” disease (where victims are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases).

Step 3 – improving replacement gene therapy

Attempts at these forms of gene replacement therapy began in the 1990s but early results were disappointing. It proved difficult to get the genes into enough human cells, and when the genes did get in they were often turned off after a few weeks.

More worryingly, it was not possible to determine where in the chromosome the replacement gene would land. Often it integrated harmlessly in an unimportant part of the genome, but sometimes it landed near to, and activated, growth control genes called “oncogenes” that drive cellular proliferation and cancer.

Some of the first children treated for “bubble boy” disease developed leukemias. These leukemias were treatable, but the complications, together with immune reactions, such as led to the death of Jesse Gelsinger in an early gene therapy trial in 2000, led to caution.

Over the years, researchers have developed better viruses, systematically improved the gene delivery protocols and found control switches that aren’t turned off by our body’s anti-viral response. In recent gene therapy trials for haemophilia, haemoglobin disorders, and also for specific inherited forms of blindness, many of the patients treated have benefited.

Step 4 – gene correction

The advent of new techniques, most notably CRISPR-mediated gene editing, has led to the idea of correcting a mutant gene rather than adding a replacement. CRISPR is a system that bacteria use to identify and cut invading viral DNA. It has now been used by researchers to direct DNA modification machines to chosen human genes.

We can now develop miniature chemical tools to convert harmful mutations back into normal sequences. News that this technology was being used on human embryos in China created a storm of controversy but so far those experiments have only involved embryos that were known to be non-viable and the research has been purely experimental.

Elsewhere researchers aren’t exploring modifications of whole embryos. Instead the somatic gene therapy approach is being followed, for example, to see if genes can be corrected in a high proportion of blood stem cells and whether these cells can then be transplanted back into the patient to cure their disease.

Step 5 – The future

We will soon see an increasing number of patients helped by both gene replacement therapy and by CRISPR-mediated gene correction. But the work is likely to be focused on a few specific diseases rather than there being a broad advance across all genetic diseases.

The diseases treated first will share some key characteristics: the genetic defects would be well-understood; they must affect a tissue we can get at easily (blood will be easier than brains and bones); the conditions would be serious and have no other effective treatments.

And they must be so costly in terms of human suffering and economic burdens that a complex and expensive treatment such as gene therapy becomes a viable option.

This means common blood and immune disorders are likely to feature in the first generation trials. Cancer is also a genetic disease, but one typically caused by mutations that accumulate in our cells over time rather than by inherited mutations, and somatic gene therapy, in the form of immunotherapy, involving enhancing the capacity of our immune systems to fight cancer may also become common.

A Nobel Prize was just awarded for anti-cancer immunotherapy, and it is likely that the genetic modification of the immune system will increasingly be used to treat cancers.

Read more: How two 1990s discoveries have led to (some) cured cancers, and a Nobel Prize

The age of gene therapy is arriving but it will be gradual, not sudden. But incrementally, more people will benefit from these treatments.

In the long term, as we all become aware of mutations we carry in our own genomes that may affect our offspring, there may be pressure to correct more and more genetic lesions. This will remain too risky and expensive for many years so gene therapy will likely remain a niche and specialist treatment for the foreseeable future.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jayanthi Kumarasiri, Lecturer in Accounting, RMIT University

Four years after it was launched, the federal government’s A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) has still not attracted the participation of many of Australia’s highest-emitting companies.

Our research on corporate managers’ attitudes suggests that the scheme, which remains the Coalition government’s flagship policy to curb Australia’s rising greenhouse emissions, is plagued by significant policy uncertainty, lack of visible commercial imperatives, lack of clear policy guidance, and strict and unrealistic qualifying conditions.

The new federal environment minister Melissa Price last month signalled her desire to continue relying on the ERF – which uses a series of “reverse auctions” to allocate funding to emissions-reduction projects – as the main policy to reach Australia’s 2030 climate targets.

Read more: Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund is almost empty. It shouldn’t be refilled

The government claims a main objective of the ERF is to create an incentive for Australian businesses to adopt smarter practices to reduce their greenhouse emissions. But our surveys of the business community suggest the policy has not achieved this objective.

Our research conducted in 2015 found that big businesses were taking a wait-and-see approach on whether to opt into the scheme. Our latest results suggest this cynicism has become even more entrenched.

During 2018 we interviewed 14 senior executives involved in managing the emissions of large corporations in the materials, industrial, utility and consumer staples industries. Their responses, some of which are quoted anonymously below, reveal the ERF has not been effective in attracting the trust and participation of high-emitting companies:

The ERF process is long-winded, cumbersome […] and it’s just impractical.

The functions of auctions and the secondary market are unclear; industrial methods are difficult to use, which hinders participation.

Many interviewees believe the ERF process is costly, and the scheme does not offer visible commercial incentives for companies to participate:

for the amount of work and the number of audits that are required it’s very expensive and time-consuming to apply.

Some participants also claimed the conditions to qualify for funding are overly strict, unrealistic and complicated:

One of the projects didn’t qualify because we had ordered a part for [that] project at a date prior to registering the project […] This was a project that would have had considerable reductions associated with it.

Some interviewees also suggested the ERF does not focus enough on high-emitting sectors such as electricity generation:

the sector that produces the most emissions and where the technology exists now to get the best reductions is the electricity generation sector. It’s completely exempted from this policy.

Minimal participation

Only four of the nine companies represented in the interviews participated in the ERF, and three of these submitted only one project each. Some companies preferred state-run schemes over the national ERF:

We have purposely avoided the ERF and gone with the New South Wales ESF scheme […] because the ESF scheme has much better rules, it’s much easier to work with.

A minority of our interviewees described the plan to extend the ERF scheme as a waste of taxpayers’ money. But while most remained in favour of the policy, they stressed it needs to be improved – particularly with regard to its “safeguard mechanism” which aims to stop big emitters cancelling out the progress made elsewhere.

[T]he ERF should be funded along with implementing changes to the safeguard mechanism and other policies to make sure it’s more effective in its outcomes.

Almost all the managers highlighted the need for a stable, long-term policy to motivate significant emissions reductions in the corporate sector.

We want some level of policy certainty over a long period of time, so we can make informed and considered investment decisions. It’s the same thing we’ve been asking for for a while.

Read more: Australia’s biggest emitters opt to ‘wait and see’ over Emissions Reduction Fund

Overall, the study suggests carbon emissions regulation in Australia has been politicised and bureaucratised to such an extent there is now a disconnect between regulators and corporations. As a result, ERF funding has been skewed towards the land and agriculture sectors, and high-emitting industries have been distanced from the fund. This is clearly detrimental to emissions reductions as a whole.

Australia’s carbon emissions continue to rise, adding further jeopardy to our already threatened efforts to meet our Paris targets.

Therefore, leaving high-emitting companies to regulate their own carbon emissions may not be a rational decision. Boosting ERF funding may be necessary, but not before a critical review of the policy so as to ensure the highest emitters actually sign up to the scheme.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Herndon, Senior Lecturer – Small Animal Internal Medicine, The University of Queensland

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children of all ages. The Conversation is asking young people to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome: find out how to enter at the bottom.

My question is I am wondering why dogs get ‘snow nose’ in winter, and is it something to do with blood circulation? – Maddy, 11, Melbourne.

That is a very clever answer, Maddy! But the truth is, we don’t know why some dark brown, black or tan dogs’ noses fade during the winter months.

The dark colour in the nose (or any skin on the body) is called melanin. The more melanin you have, the darker your skin. If it happens to collect in patches, we call those freckles.

Melanin protects your skin from ultraviolet light by absorbing radiation. When you spend more time in the sun, the body makes more melanin.

During winter, or if you don’t spend much time in the sun, that pigment fades.

The cells that make that melanin are called melanocytes. If your body doesn’t make melanocytes, or if those melanocytes don’t make any pigment, then you have albinism.

Because these melanocytes are so involved in absorbing radiation from the sun, they are a bit prone to damage. If they get too damaged, they might become cancer.

Read more: Curious Kids: Do cats and dogs lose baby teeth like people do?

Tumours of melanocytes are called melanoma, which is a big problem in Australia and why you must always wear a hat, sunnies and sunblock!

Dog skin is exactly the same and yours and mine. Hair colour and skin colour is the result of how much melanin is in the hair or skin. Most all the different colour variations you see are really just a result of how much melanin is in the skin and hair.

In some dogs (particularly breeds like the husky and some retrievers) their noses will lose some pigment in the winter. Occasionally this is permanent, but usually it fades in winter and gets darker in summer.

It is the melanin coming and going, just like a tan.

We know that’s not the whole story, because it’s not the entire nose that loses pigment, it’s down the middle and along the top. But it’s the best idea we have!

Maybe it also has to do with temperature, and that will be influenced on blood flow, just like you suggested! Your answer might be “right on the nose” after all.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why don’t cats wear shoes?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us on Twitter by tagging @ConversationEDU with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
* Tell us on Facebook

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrienne Stone, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellow, Director, Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies, University of Melbourne

It goes without saying – or at least it ought to – that freedom of speech should be a core value of universities. As a scholar of freedom of speech and a university academic, it has been gratifying to see so many Vice Chancellors (and a former Chief Justice of the High Court) take it so seriously.

This attention to freedom of speech is a response to recent controversies about on campus. Bettina Arndt’s campus tour met with rowdy and obstructive demonstrations. Students have accused each other of bullying and censorship. And last year, La Trobe University academic Roz Ward was briefly suspended for misconduct for her controversial views on Australia’s flag in a Facebook post.

Read more: The great irony in punishing universities for ‘failing’ to uphold freedom of speech

Temperatures are running high enough that universities have occasionally been forced to cancel controversial speakers for fear of the disruption caused by protesters. These controversies are not new. But it’s high time for universities to think very carefully about freedom of speech and they should prevent speakers from speaking in only very rare cases.

The special context of the university

One thing to consider is there is no context in which freedom of speech constitutes an absolute right to say anything at all. All serious thinkers about freedom of speech and all legal systems – even the US, which has the strongest protection of free speech in the world – recognise some limits on freedom of speech. The difficult question is where those limits properly lie.

It’s also important to remember universities have a special responsibility for the attainment of knowledge and for the education of students. These goals require high levels of intellectual freedom, including freedom of speech. Freedom of speech enables researchers and students to discover new things, communicate and test their ideas, and foster and develop critical thinking skills.

But freedom of speech in universities is a means to that end, and not an end in itself.

The four fundamental principles

Because of this responsibility, universities should be guided by four fundamental free speech principles.

1. Unorthodox ideas should be welcomed and offensive ideas must be tolerated

The proper advancement of knowledge and learning requires a high degree of freedom of speech. It’s very important orthodoxies can be challenged and ideas subject to debate and criticism. It’s through freedom of speech, for example, that women and minorities challenged established ideas about their inferiority.

A university community is necessarily one in which people disagree and will often do so in deep and unchangeable ways. Those disagreements mean sometimes public debate on campus will be highly offensive and upsetting. Even so, offensive ideas must be tolerated.

Read more: Who really benefits from freedom of speech?

Our willingness to extend the right to people we disagree with is at the heart of freedom of speech. After all, popular or mainstream ideas generally need no protection. There is no question, for example, that Bettina Arndt should be permitted to speak on university campuses, as should those who oppose her.

2. Protest is crucial to the proper exercise of free speech rights on campus and should be permitted and facilitated

The protection of protest is just as important as protecting the expression of unorthodox and unpopular ideas. Protest – whether by environmentalists or anti-abortion activists – is an important means for the expression of unorthodox and unpopular ideas, as well as for a response to them. We should expect protest to be part of university life and universities should both permit and facilitate them.

Obviously, universities will be in the middle of fierce disputes between opposing elements of the community and working out a balance of interests will be difficult. If there are loud and chaotic protests that require significant security, it will also be expensive.

But it’s not fair to place the cost of security entirely on those provoking the protest (giving protesters an effective heckler’s veto). Nor is it fair to place it on those protesting (given the importance of protest as a mechanism for free speech).

If governments are serious about protecting freedom of speech on campus they should fund universities in a way that makes it possible for them to balance free speech and protest on their campuses. A free speech fund for each university seems like a small price to pay for something so fundamental.

3. The university must protect the pursuit of knowledge

Because universities have a responsibility to promote the attainment of knowledge and education, they also need to protect those activities from people who blatantly disregard evidence, research and scholarly standards of inquiry.

Universities should not be required to give a platform to those who peddle nonsense – especially dangerous nonsense. Universities are quite within their rights to deny anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers, flat earthers and others from the use of their facilities.

The line between the unorthodox and nonsense can, of course, be blurry and universities should be very careful about how they exercise this power. They might choose instead to permit such speakers but to ensure a platform for their critics that’s at least as prominent.

Free speech scholar and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger provided a good example of this kind of action when he permitted the appearance of then President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Columbia’s campus but personally introduced him with a series of sharp challenges. Universities should support freedom of speech, including unpopular ideas, but not without challenging them.

4. The university’s intellectual climate must be inclusive

Universities can’t be sure they have the best researchers and students unless everyone has an equal opportunity to attend and participate in university life. For this reason, universities need to take seriously the concerns of students and staff who are affected by the exercise of the free speech rights of others.

Read more: University changes to academic contracts are threatening freedom of speech

Students who claim controversial ideas threaten their safety have been widely condemned. Hurt feelings themselves provide no good reason to take action against speech or speakers. But these students are often arguing that ideas perpetuated by these speakers are a barrier to their equality and can lead to discrimination or violence.

At least in public forums on campus, a university should very rarely prevent speakers from spreading their message. But students concerned about their equality and safety on campus should not be ignored or ridiculed.

Universities need to engage with their students about their concerns, take steps to protect their physical safety and well-being, and ensure these students can respond on their own behalf. In serious cases, where students are subject to unfair and abusive commentary, the university ought to use its own powers of speech to defend them publicly.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Tietz, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design, UNSW

The constructed world around us provides the stage for our daily life. The term “built environment” is in the past tense, describing a scenario after the fact. What does it actually mean beyond the obvious connotation of buildings and parks?

If we look closely at these two words they tell a hidden story. We have built, which is made, created and manufactured, and environment, which can be either human-made or natural. The term links the made world with our natural world. It describes the world we made so far. But the two are separated.

The interesting thing is that the made world, the one we created, is mentioned first. The setting it creates or into which the buildings are placed comes second. There is a hierarchy here that relegates the environment to second place.

Read more: Sustainable cities? Australia’s building and planning rules stand in the way of getting there

Yet when we pay respect at a formal occasion to the traditional peoples of Australia it is generally referred to as Acknowledgement of Country. Here we acknowledge the environment (country) first and then the custodians of it.

Today we are at pains to integrate environmental concerns into our building efforts. We are discussing how to meet climate targets, reduce heat island effects and limit the impacts of the built environs, which have harmed our planet. The term built environment seem to come from a time when we felt the need to dominate nature; now we are desperately trying to work with it.

Viewed from a different perspective, the built environment is a constructed historical record of how societies developed and applied their technical skills to express the culture of their time. It is all the infrastructure, power grids, water pipelines, dams, refineries, cargo terminals and industrial manufacturing sites that enable our urban existence.

The term also speaks about the expertise of the various trades and the craftsmen involved. But not so much about the professions that negotiate the abstract world of policies, council guidelines, building codes and the laws – not only of physics but also of the legal framework of contracts and workers’ rights. Together it creates visible structures that allow for comfortable living, business activities and transport networks.

Looking beyond buildings

The term built environment in an academic setting describes a suite of disciplines engaged in studying and therefore aiming to improve it. The late architect Col James “made housing a verb”. He did so not only to reflect the human agency involved in the processes but to provide a more equitable and just living environment for people who don’t have the means to get their own architect to design a dream home for a cool US$2 billion.

The built environment looks like the material world conceived by planners, designed by architects and constructed by builders and labourers. Yet, if we look closer, we can see that these structures are only one part of the equation. These build things (buildings) on their own can not simply be populated by people. People would have nothing to do in these buildings were it not be for the fixtures, fittings, furnishings and products within them.

These elements enable and activate these environments and make them usable and productive for their intended purposes. If the products within them fail they can make buildings harmful.

These products are not so much built in the traditional sense, but are mass-produced high-volume items. From window frames to light switches, phones and furniture, these are products conceived, designed and specified by professionals like industrial designers. They form an integral part of the built environment.

Even buildings themselves are not built in the traditional sense anymore, but are more and more the result of complex manufacturing processes. Project managers and builders are orchestrating a vast range of pre-manufactured items, which they assemble skilfully into an environment fit for human use.

If we are at a hospital, train station or playground, these environments are populated with equipment that speaks explicitly to the use of the space. In hospitals we see kidney analysis machines, hospital beds and infusion stands. The station has signage, trains and turnstiles. And at the playground the equipment lets us play and have fun.

Without these things these places wouldn’t be what they are. They could not perform the function that is their reason for being. Therefore it is the things in these environments that give them their meaning and function, because they enable it.

Our environment is and always has been integrated with products that help us with access to the services and infrastructure available at the time.

Take for example the prosaic light switch. It activates the enormous resource-intensive electricity-generating industry, which delivers power over vast distances, from its massive powerplants, through its extensive grid via high-voltage cables, in and out of substations and transformers and finally through to the consumer switchboard into the home of the end user. Who, with an unremarkable flick of a switch, can power up a light, laptop, TV, heater or whatever else.

Without this user interface of the switch – or tap, or stove knob – these entire huge networks are useless. It is the integration of these seemingly insignificant humble “actors” and their affordances that enables entire utility networks to be adjusted and controlled to create an enjoyable and healthy living environment for people.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Lobato, Senior research fellow, RMIT University

Over the last few years we have been studying the catalogues of Netflix and Stan to see how much local screen content each service carries and how this compares to international benchmarks.

Our first report in 2017 found that the Netflix Australia catalogue carried around 2-2.5% local content, much of it licensed from the ABC. Stan’s local content level was slightly higher, at 9.5%.

Our latest report finds that Netflix’s local content level has fallen to 1.6% (82 Australian titles out of 4,959). This is due to Netflix’s overall catalogue growth, rather than any significant decrease in the absolute number of Australian titles available. Stan’s local content level has risen to 11.1% (172 titles out of 1,548).

While these figures may seem alarming, we should remember that, unlike free-to-air TV, subscription video-on-demand services are not regulated for local content. Netflix also plays a big role in promoting Australian content overseas.

Behind the figures

Digital access to local content, particularly on services like Netflix, has become a big issue for policymakers around the world. The European Parliament recently approved a minimum 30% European content quota for video-on-demand services operating in the region.

In Australia, groups such as Screen Producers Australia and APRA AMCOS (a music rights organisation) are calling for new regulation to be introduced here. This could include local production spending requirements for video streaming services, or playlist quotas for music streaming services.

In this context, Netflix’s 1.6% local content ratio might seem alarming, especially when compared to the minimum 55% local content quotas that apply to free-to-air television in prime-time hours. But there’s more to the story. Comparing free-to-air TV and video streaming services is like comparing apples and oranges: one is regulated for local content while the other is not.

Netflix’s local content figures are arguably more in line with other parts of the screen industry. On pay-TV channels, where a local content expenditure requirement rather than an hours quota applies, local content levels are generally lower. At the local cinema box office, Australian films have historically made up around 9% of releases and 4% of takings.

Australia has long been an importer of screen content, and subscription video streaming simply extends that tradition into the digital age.

The changing TV ecology

Another way to approach the problem is to think about such services as part of a wider audiovisual ecology, with some parts regulated for local content and others not. Despite all the hype about the streaming revolution, Netflix and Stan do not simply replace free-to-air TV; they complement and interact with it.

Read more: As local networks retreat, Netflix is filling the gap in teen TV

Our research found, for example, that the ABC remains a very important supplier to both Netflix and Stan. Almost 60% of the licensed local television content on Netflix and 37% of the local television content on Stan was initially commissioned and distributed by the ABC.

The algorithms that determine how content is displayed to viewers on streaming services also complicate things. Users of Stan and Netflix experience the catalogue as a curated, personalised library rather than as a raw list. Hence, the visibility of Australian content in each portal will vary from user to user, depending on viewing history.

The bright side

There is a bright side to this story. Our research also looked at the availability of Australian content in Netflix’s international catalogues. We found, for example, that Netflix’s US catalogue contains more Australian content than the Australian Netflix catalogue does (both in the number of titles and the overall proportion of the library).

What’s more, Netflix markets a number of its Australian co-productions and exclusive acquisitions as Netflix originals in international territories, even though these are not available in the Australian Netflix catalogue (because the local co-production partners and commissioners typically have exclusivity).

So, the low levels of local content in the Australian catalogue must be considered alongside Netflix’s significant capacity to distribute and promote Australian content internationally.

What do the platforms have to say?

We invited both Stan and Netflix to check our figures. Netflix’s global public policy manager, Josh Korn, responded and provided some interesting context.

Emphasising Netflix’s international distribution function, Korn confirmed that Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette – Netflix’s first Australian stand-up original title – had been viewed by Netflix subscribers in over 190 territories. Similarly, he noted that 95% of Netflix viewing hours for the Australian kids show, Mako Mermaids: An H20 Adventure, were from outside Australia, with similar numbers claimed for the dramas Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Glitch.

Netflix also points to the Australian shows in its production pipeline, including Pine Gap, Tidelands, Motown Magic, an untitled Chris Lilley project, and live stand-up comedy performances by Joel Creasey and Nazeem Hussein.

Stan, which was the first streaming video platform to commission local original content, has also recently released a new Romper Stomper reboot and its first feature, The Second, which add to the service’s existing Australian originals (such as No Activity, The Other Guy and Wolf Creek). New drama series Bloom and The Gloaming are in production.

Read more: Romper Stomper reboot is a compelling investigation into Australia’s extremist politics

This is all good news for Australian screen producers, who now have a bigger pool of buyers and new sources of production finance. But adding these new productions to both catalogues is unlikely to significantly increase the overall local content ratio in each service.

We may need to come to terms with the fact that Netflix and Stan cannot do the job of broadcast television when it comes to local content.