Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Douglas, Professor, Flinders University

A little over a year ago, former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith made a tearful confession and apology to the public, having been banned from cricket for 12 months for ball tampering. Smith’s confession was expected. As Australian captain, he would take responsibility for the indiscretions of the whole team.

Smith’s televised confession and apology, and a later Vodafone advertisement referencing it that leans into a redemption narrative, have paved the way for his atonement and successful return to cricket. Smith recently played for the Australia XI in a game against New Zealand; he and Warner will likely play in the first Ashes in August.

We might interpret these confessions cynically, as a public relations exercise. But it is also clear that, in performing these acts, Smith is following particular, expected cultural templates for confession and apology.

Though confession has its origins within Judeo-Christian faiths, it has evolved to become one of Western society’s most familiar rituals. We see confessions every day: in literature, on television, and now online. Some are more convincing than others.

While confessions on reality TV programs, on certain current affairs shows, and from YouTubers who thrive on controversy are now quite formulaic, new spaces are constantly opening up for confessional narratives. Anonymous social media spaces such as “Reddit” have shown that there is something potentially liberating about sending an anonymous (or semi-anonymous) confession out into the world. While these do have the potential to cause harm, they show just how strong the confessional impulse can be.

The word confession originates from Latin Middle English via Old French Latin (confession, confiture – meaning “acknowledge”). In the act of confession, people disclose their sins (by speaking to a priest) or as part of the sacrament of reconciliation. But whatever the context for the confession, the listener is essential; only they have the power to judge and absolve.

Secular contexts

Though influenced by its religious origins, confession has become meaningful in secular contexts. It is central to legal discourse. The admission of a crime within a court of law is the first step towards penance and possibly absolution.

Read more: Friday essay: how do you measure remorse?

The tradition of literary confession is thought to have begun with Saint Augustine’s Confessions, written between AD397-400. Augustine writes about the sins of his youth and his eventual conversion to Christianity. Along with Jean-Jacques Rosseau’s 1782 autobiography Confessions, Augustine has provided a model for writing the confessional that has endured over time: deep, intimate introspection as the first-person author or speaker admits to having committed sins that they wish to atone for.

“Confessional” is now used to describe any autobiography or memoir that is particularly intimate in its revelations. Authors such as Lena Dunham, Lindy West, and Amy Schumer have mined the deeply personal subjects of their lives for their memoirs.

In Australia, comedians like Judith Lucy use confession, usually in the form of embarrassing personal disclosure, as the foundation for their stand-up. More recently, Hannah Gadsby, in Nanette, explored the problems that come with confessing for laughs. Gadsby persuasively argued that comedians (particularly those from minority groups) should not use self-deprecating humour to put themselves down. Personal stories should instead be positioned as a powerful means of connecting humanity through mutual understanding. Now, Gadsby continues to tell personal stories, but on her own terms – to share and explore her politics on issues such as gender, sexuality, and power.

In these contexts, where humour, confession, and trauma intersect, the listener is positioned to respond with empathy and without judgement. Such self-disclosures establish a sense of intimacy between performer and audience; this might forge connections in an often individualistic, impersonal world.

Read more: Friday essay: garish feminism and the new poetic confessionalism

Schadenfreude and current affairs TV

Confessions are also a staple of televised entertainment, encouraging a very different listener/spectator dynamic. Contemporary television confessions are usually about an indiscretion and the need to expunge guilt – for personal reasons or because society requires it (like Steve Smith). Or, the confessor might benefit in some way from the confession (for instance, fame, infamy or monetary reward).

Witness the rise of minor celebrities from reality TV shows like Married at First Sight. At the program’s “commitment ceremonies”, those who offered the most salacious disclosures have become the most in/famous participants. Viewers witnessed the indiscretions on previous episodes. And because they know how these programs work, they are aware that the confessions are coming, and will become an integral part of the show’s narrative arc.

Confessional narratives are sometimes positioned as therapeutic for the confessor, but the viewer is invited to engage in schadenfreude – the joy of witnessing someone else’s misfortune. Reality TV confessions are edited and structured for their sensational value, rather than complexity or nuance. The confession exists in a formulaic mode; the genre is rarely transgressed.

On a Sunday evening you will typically witness confessions on 60 Minutes or Sunday Night. The latter recently ran a story titled “Sex, Guys and Videos” in which so-called “football groupies” (women who date famous AFL or NRL players) disclosed their experiences with the sport’s cultures of toxic masculinity (in particular, sex scandals). Such confessions are constructed as cautionary tales for the viewer: “don’t fall into the traps that I have”. The women discussed their hurt and embarrassment. But these confessions also function as a celebrity exposé and a strong social commentary around power, sexual consent and sexist cultures that seek to silence and degrade women. Confession commonly implicates others.

Confessing online

Not surprisingly, there are myriad outlets for confession online, whether public, semi-public, or anonymous; indeed, the internet has been described as a “global confessing machine”.

There are possibly millions of portals online catering to different genres of confession. On the news, rating and discussion site and app, Reddit, there are various discussion pages or “subreddits” devoted to anonymous confession. One called “Admit your wrongdoings”, has over a million subscribers.

The “rules” of this subreddit state that all submissions must be a confession, ie a statement that “presumes that you are providing information that you believe other people in your life are not aware of, and is frequently associated with an admission of a moral or legal wrong”. Common confessions here include cheating on partners, failing college, and financial failures.

Perhaps the most infamous spaces for online confessions in recent years are anonymous social networking apps such as “Whisper”, and “Confide”. Designed for mobile use, they allow users (most likely young people) to publicly share secrets and confessions, usually through uploading a symbolic image and one-line caption. Confessional subjects include the breakdown of friendships, unrequited love, and family secrets.

Other apps such as “Wut”, “Rumr” and “Sarahah” are described as “semi-anonymous” because users exist in a known network (for instance, a school or work network), but messages are anonymous.

These anonymous messages are not first-person confessions, but confessions directed towards another. They usually take the form of “feedback” to another user (“I said I liked your formal dress, but really I hate it”). This, unsurprisingly, has resulted in instances of bullying and the potential for defamation.

The likely appeal of these anonymous apps is that they offer an antidote to the more public and performative spaces of Facebook and Instagram, enabling young people to engage anonymously outside of their usual social networks.

As my colleagues and I have found, personal disclosure can be positive and empowering for young people. Online self-representations and self-disclosures can encourage teenagers to take control of their public self-image and how and where it is shared.

There are lots of moral panics about teens over-sharing online, or having stories and images shared without consent. But it is possible that the more experience young people have using different apps and sites, the more skilled, knowledgeable, and comfortable they will be using them to their own benefit.

Social media self-representations can be a site for creativity, showcasing photography, clothing ensembles, hair and make-up, making memes and so on. Private, online confessional spaces can offer supportive networks for exploring thoughts and ideas than require a more intimate public and a place for positive exploration of identities with like-minded peers.

The use of anonymous apps suggests that there is something emancipatory about being invisible amidst so much pressure to be active and visible in their everyday public storying to larger networks on Snapchat and Instagram. There’s potentially something thrilling in the risk of being recognised, or of recognising someone else when engaged in online confession. There’s also the promise of social contact, of connection, attention and validation.

But these apps also have the potential to prey on young people’s sense of alienation or loneliness – when confessions are elicited by platforms designed for profit, who holds the power?

Such concerns – about the potential manipulation of young media consumers – are not new; they simply shift according to new media trends. As I found in my research, young people’s engagements with sites such as these anonymous ones are much more complex than we currently know, and are shifting at a pace faster than we can track.

Engagements with social media can be time-consuming, dull, and harmful. They can also be empowering, creative, and community-forming. And they might be everything in between.

Either/or debates are not useful here: we need to develop much more nuanced discussions on this fast-shifting cultural terrain. And these discussions are best driven by young cultural consumers and producers.

YouTube apologies

Another genre of confession that has become very visible online is apologies from “YouTubers”. The usual sequence of events is this: the YouTuber says something inappropriate or offensive in a video on their channel. They receive backlash from the media or from followers. As in the case of Steve Smith, they must conform to established scripts for confession and apology or else risk being “cancelled” by their fans.

As writer Morgan Sung has noted, because their YouTube content is most often autobiographical, covering intimate subjects and perspectives, apologies are expected as an extension of this constructed intimacy between YouTuber and viewer.

For instance, one of the most well-known YouTubers, Shane Dawson, has found himself in an apologetic loop as he tries to evade his own digital footprint. The now 30-year-old Dawson has confessed to, and apologised for, things he said online during his younger days, most notably for offensive jokes he made during his late-teens “shock” phase. He was heavily criticised for his racially offensive humour, inappropriate sexual jokes, and the attention he paid to conspiracy theories.

Just last week we witnessed the rapid fall of YouTube beauty blogger and make up artist James Charles. Charles’s public feud with fellow YouTuber and former mentor Tati Westbrook resulted in him losing over 2.5 million subscribers. Charles’s numerous confessions via apology videos did not initially help his case. However, after a week of excessive social media banter and accusation (and a 40-minute video from Charles titled No More Lies), the feud seems to have settled a little.

Apology videos have become so common they are now often the subject of parody for being insincere or exaggerated. These videos have a formulaic structure; they most often function as image repair – to ensure the YouTuber does not lose their followers. Like the reality television confessions, these apology videos follow expected templates.

The confession compulsion

Though confession has evolved considerably since the times of Augustine and Rosseau, we can see familiar patterns in contemporary practices: we are guided by the moral conventions of our time to perform confession and contrition when required, or else suffer the consequences. Confession, whether anonymous or public, has long been positioned as a means for redemption, connection, or simply, a way of feeling better.

Whether or not confession is therapeutic is still up for debate, and no doubt its potential is time and culture-specific.

But if the stakes are high enough; if confession and apology are required for the maintenance of economic livelihood, or fame, these acts, whether believable, will at least be predictable.

– ref. Friday essay: YouTube apologies and reality TV revelations – the rise of the public confession – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-youtube-apologies-and-reality-tv-revelations-the-rise-of-the-public-confession-114970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, PhD candidate in Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Some of the world’s most popular video games track your activity as you play – but they’re not just gathering data for business or marketing purposes.

They’re accumulating information about the way you and others play the game, the patterns or habits that lead to success or failure.

The aim is to create systems that can learn about the game, and then coach you to become a more competent player (or at least feel like one).

Read more: We made a moving tectonic map of the Game of Thrones landscape

It’s another way game developers can make money from gamers (via paid subscriptions). But it’s also seen as a way to keep you playing for longer, and attract new players to complex games that otherwise offer little help or instruction on how to play.

Machine learning to play

These coaching tools use machine learning. This is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) in computing systems that, through the capture and analysis of large amounts of information, can improve performance at a particular task over time.

Machine-learning based assistant tools are particularly noticeable around competitive, multiplayer videogames. These games often require significant effort on your behalf to develop even a modicum of skill.

A good example is DotaPlus for Valve’s popular multiplayer videogame Dota 2 – a competitive five-versus-five player contest that draws from elements of strategy and role-playing games. (This is a proprietary tool but third-party options are available.)

Launched in March 2018, DotaPlus provides you with basic functions, such as statistics about your gameplay, and the gameplay activity of others (such as broader play-style trends, and the ability to view other players’ gameplay performance in detail during matches).

Better than hints

The PlusAssistant feature gives you prompts on how you should play the game, based on Valve’s accumulation of match data from all players.

This kind of personalised data-driven help is different from more standard hints you often get when playing a game.

To give some examples, as soon as you enter into a game of Dota 2, you face the often daunting task of selecting the most strategically appropriate character (or hero) to play as.

But, as a DotaPlus user, the PlusAssistant will make suggestions about what is most appropriate for you to play. Is your chosen character likely to perform well against characters of your opponents? Does it synergise with characters of your teammates?

As you progress further in the game, DotaPlus provides suggestions about which of the game’s many “items” (which give your character particular skills or bonuses) are most beneficial to you.

Certain items in Dota 2 are better against certain enemies, support stronger playing as a certain character, and add advantage at particular points of the game.

For example, when I play the Bristleback hero – one that uses many abilities or “spells” – the game recommends I buy the “Octarine Core” item, which allows me to cast spells more frequently.

DotaPlus also suggests how you should use your character’s abilities or skills (all of which have unique effects and uses).

For example, the game might tell me that one ability is what 80% of players picked at level 1. This is the interface nudging me towards a choice that will likely yield the most positive outcome.

Once again, the predictive capabilities of DotaPlus de-emphasise the need for you as a player to deliberate on what to do in the game. They minimise the need for you to have a large amount of accumulated knowledge of how to play.

Without this feature, games such as Dota 2 offer you very little help on how to play. As a more simple and cheaper option, many players learn by watching videos produced by members of the game’s community.

Valve’s move with launching DotaPlus (which costs from A$5.60 a month) is likely, at least in part, a response to this – providing a more user-friendly experience for newer players.

It’s also likely a move to better monetise the game (previously reliant on microtransactions and other monetisation features).

But DotaPlus is also likely a hook to keep Dota players playing (and consuming) within Valve’s digital distribution platform.

What’s different about these kinds of tools?

The use of data to gain an advantage isn’t new in and of itself.

The practice, known as “theorycraft”, has been a part of gaming communities for some time. It’s essentially a high-level, specialist kind of number-crunching to help players adapt their style for even the slightest competitive advantage.

This was particularly prevalent in Blizzard’s once hugely popular World of Warcraft. Players used a program called SimulationCraft to quantify and rank things like items or in-game actions in terms of their performance according to certain in-game metrics (such as how much damage one’s character deals per second).

Analytics tools can be provided by the game’s developer – as is the case with Battlefield’s BattleLog, an application for tracking users’ gameplay activity in the game.

Read more: It’s designers who can make gaming more accessible for people living with disabilities

But they can also be provided by third-party developers. DotaBuff in Dota 2, or Warcraft Logs in World of Warcraft are good examples. As described above, these allow users to retrieve detailed statistical information about their own and others’ performance at these games.

The difference with DotaPlus and other such tools is that players negotiate the gameplay itself through a real-time gaze of data, derived from the surveillance tracking of your own and others’ activity – a more sensuous way of experiencing the game through data.

These subscription-based services are a popular and highly effective way to monetise games. Perhaps Valve’s move, in creating pay-for-use data analytics (as opposed to other more conventional subscriptions) will inspire similar developments.

– ref. Gamers use machine learning to navigate complex video games – but it’s not free – http://theconversation.com/gamers-use-machine-learning-to-navigate-complex-video-games-but-its-not-free-114906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joannah Luetjens, PhD Candidate, Utrecht University

In the lead up to the recent federal election, there was plenty of negative rhetoric about current policy settings. Piecing together the various messages, it seems we have entered an armageddon of poor fiscal management, intolerable social inequality, and environmental degradation. If we took the rhetoric seriously, who in their right minds would want to take charge of the mess that is government?

These assessments are symptomatic of a longstanding, worldwide tendency of politicians, commentators, and citizens to fixate on the limitations of government. We know the lexicon. Terms such as “blunder”, “blowout”, “crisis”, “failure”, “fiasco”, “incompetence”, “red tape” and “scandal” are well-used in public and academic discourse about government, politics and public policy. But this kind of rhetoric risks creating self-fulfilling prophecies in the way we look at, talk about, think of, evaluate, and emotionally relate to public institutions.

By contrast, successful policy accomplishments are seldom deemed newsworthy. Neither are the thousands of everyday forms of effective public value created by and through governments.

Read more: Australia has been silent on Indigenous suicide for too long, and it must change

To help turn the tide, we recently commissioned 20 up close and in depth case study accounts about the genesis and evolution of standout public policy accomplishments in Australia and New Zealand, across a range of sectors and challenges.

To identify the cases, we convened a panel of experts consisting of prominent public policy scholars and senior practitioners in Australia and New Zealand. We then invited expert scholars in the relevant fields to produce the case studies.

World-leading response to HIV/AIDS

Consider Australia’s response to HIV/AIDS. It emerged in the early 1980s as an unidentifiable, infectious and lethal disease affecting some of the most stigmatised communities.

What followed was ground-breaking policy embedded in three key principles: partnership, community engagement and bipartisan support.

The first Australian National HIV/AIDS Strategy, in 1989, contained three policy goals:

• restrict the spread of HIV/AIDS transmission
• care for those infected
• educate and support healthcare professionals.

Subsequent national strategies have maintained this strong values base. This framework has ensured Australia’s national policy response to HIV/AIDS has been lauded as one of the best in the world.

Read more: 2040: hope and action in the climate crisis

A swift change to gun control policy

Australia’s gun laws offer another case of successful policy.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Australia suffered 14 mass shootings. These culminated on April 28, 1996 in the Port Arthur Massacre, when a single gunman killed 35 people and seriously injured 18 with military-style semiautomatic rifles.

Tasmania was one of the few places in the western world where an unlicensed individual could obtain such a weapon. Policy change was swift. Adopted in a crisis, the new policy was nonetheless the result of years of policy development. The government of the day united different parties and stakeholders to present a broad coalition in favour of the new laws.

With those laws in place, the risk of an Australian dying by gunshot fell by more than half. Australia’s rate of gun homicide remains 25 times lower than that of the United States.

Six ingredients of successful public policy

These two cases, along with the others in our study, have led us to note six recurrent patterns that seem to promote successful policy outcomes:

1. they tend to address a problem that has been well defined and broadly acknowledged at the outset of the policy development process

2. they tend to rest on conceptually coherent, evidence-informed advice that has paid attention to the realities of implementation

3. champions and stewards are key, not just during the design and decision making phase, but equally critically during the implementation phase

4. astute policy advocates carefully build their cases for policy change, readying themselves to fit their workable solutions to the crisis of the hour

5. virtually all the policies we studied had sufficiently broad appeal that they survived changes of government from the party that gave them initial support

6. implementation challenges dog any major policy initiative – but when policymakers persevere, learn from experience, and adjust their approaches accordingly, they can help policies become major successes in the longer term.

Read more: Where to now for unions and ‘change the rules’?

Governments can and do improve lives

Without doubt, the current times present major challenges for all governments. And new challenges will surely arise in the years ahead. The negative lexicon has its place in political life. But governments can and do generate much that is good, and that serves our collective interests well.

Looking ahead, we encourage more people to reflect on cases of successful public policy. We especially hope that politicians of every ideological persuasion, and those who advise them, will heed the lessons of the past that reveal what it takes to produce strongly positive outcomes that improve the lives of generations of citizens.

– ref. From gun control to HIV: six ingredients of successful public policy – http://theconversation.com/from-gun-control-to-hiv-six-ingredients-of-successful-public-policy-117600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago

In February, a terrorist attack by Jaysh e-Mohammad (JeM) killed more than 40 Indian military personnel in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It triggered the worst escalation of India–Pakistan tensions for nearly two decades.

The flare-up was a stark reminder that the Kashmir conflict appears to be intractable, with especially dangerous consequences for the weaker party, Pakistan.

At great economic cost, Pakistan has constructed a nuclear-armed national security state over many decades to counter the Indian “threat”. This somewhat ossified approach has done little to improve security in South Asia.

It is also generating dangerous new threats to stability inside the country.

Read more: Nuclear war between India and Pakistan? An expert assesses the risk

The militarisation of Pakistan during the Cold War

Kashmir has been in a geopolitical limbo, with a disputed border, ever since partition in 1947. The conflicting Indian and Pakistani claims to sovereignty over Kashmir have helped generate the emergence of a Pakistani national security state in which the military became a dominant political actor.

The Pakistan military has received the lion’s share of national resources and began acquiring nuclear weapons during the 1970s. But it has also played a key role in framing Islamabad’s national security policy.

Because Pakistan was struggling to compete with India, which is much larger in terms of territory, population, economy and military power, it needed external support. The Cold War provided an opportunity for Pakistan to make an alliance with the US, which was looking to contain the Soviet Union in South Asia. In February 1954, the Eisenhower administration announced it was providing military assistance to Pakistan.

American assistance significantly strengthened the role of the military and enabled it to become the key actor in Pakistan’s foreign and security policy. The civilian bureaucracy cooperated with the Pakistani military in a pragmatic fashion to help it exercise political control during the Cold War.

The Pakistani judiciary provided legal justifications for military rule when required. Consequently, the Pakistani military ruled the country directly for 24 years from 1947 to 1988. During this period the parliamentary system was undermined and a “controlled democracy” became the norm.

Read more: India, Pakistan and the changing rules of engagement: here’s what you need to know

Growing post-Cold War threats

The Pakistani military also used its political and administrative autonomy to establish its own commercial ventures. This included road building, real estate, cement factories and private banks. By establishing its own version of a military industrial complex, the Pakistani military assumed a dominant position in the country’s national security policies.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) emerged during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s as a second key player. Civilian political parties or leaders in Pakistan were effectively constrained in national security decision-making by a military-led coalition that encompassed intelligence agencies, the civil bureaucracy and the judiciary.

The end of the Cold War did little to diminish Pakistan’s fixation with the Kashmir conflict. Its intense rivalry with India continued in South Asia, including in war-torn Afghanistan. But the post-Cold War era changed the strategic equation.

First, India embarked on a successful process of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. This significantly widened the wealth gap between a rising India and a desperately poor Pakistan.

Second, the US no longer needed Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in the late 1980s and drastically reduced its military support for Islamabad.

But the Pakistani national security state showed little willingness to adapt to the realities of a transformed strategic environment. Islamabad persisted with its involvement in proxy wars in Kashmir. It supported militant Islamist forces opposing the Indian presence and, in Afghanistan, it supported Taliban militants in a bid to counter Indian influence in that country.

In the post-Cold War context, Pakistan’s stance on national security has largely failed to balance India’s preponderance and generated significant new internal security threats from factions of Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) and other militant groups.

Read more: How to end Afghanistan war as longest conflict moves towards fragile peace

The war on terror and Pakistan’s dangerous double game

The 9/11 attacks helped restore Pakistan’s position as a key strategic partner of America in Washington’s war on terror. But the country’s national security state continued to pursue its anti-Indian agenda in Kashmir and Afghanistan, while ostensibly cooperating with US administrations in hunting down al-Qaeda terrorists in South Asia.

Osama bin Laden was eventually killed at a hideout inside Pakistan in May 2011, not far from a major Pakistani army base. This double game not only frustrated Washington, it also led to dangerous blowback at home.

Since the US-led war on terror, Pakistan’s internal security has been increasingly threatened by the activities of Taliban militants and the influx of al-Qaeda operatives into the country from neighbouring Afghanistan.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has experienced a gradual shift to more democratic processes. Nevertheless, the military has continued to play a dominant role in the making of foreign and security policy.

Today, Pakistan is a country in desperate need of peace and stability. But unless Pakistan’s national security state is reformed and brought under full civilian control, it is difficult to see how the country can reverse an ominous pattern of domestic instability and economic decline.

– ref. How the dangerous evolution of Pakistan’s national security state threatens domestic stability – http://theconversation.com/how-the-dangerous-evolution-of-pakistans-national-security-state-threatens-domestic-stability-116886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Moore, PhD Candidate, Melbourne School of Design, Monash University

Private enterprise has shaped the skylines of Australia’s cities, and the names of their highest towers reflect this. The towers of Sydney shout finance: Deutsche Bank, MLC, Ernst & Young, ANZ, Suncorp. The tall buildings of Perth read like a mining index: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside. In Melbourne, residential skyscrapers for investors make up the mass of new development, with names like Aurora, Verve, Empire and Vision – names that are timeless (and placeless).

The recent transformation of Australian city centres makes them appear unruly and wild, with their gilded towers, curtain walls compiled from a cladding company catalogue, and hybrid building types. Two-storey Victorian-era fronts abutt six-storey apartment buildings, or are completely engulfed by towers. This bricolage, paired with aspirational branding, creates the impression that property developers and financiers are the main drivers and shapers of this “anything goes” approach to urban development.

This is partly true. Market-driven development has always played a leading role in the urban settlement of Australia. But markets operate within a framework of rules that mitigate the negatives of urban development for the public good.

Governments have a key role in setting policies, rules and regulations that steer those driving urban development through the morass of planning policies, design guidelines and codes for buildings. Within these planning mechanisms, government actions should reflect the standards and expectations of the communities they represent.

So why is there such a gulf between what the centres of Australian cities look like, including their public spaces, and community expectations? Part of the problem is the lack of guidance about quality design during the planning and design phase and the consistent decision-making necessary to achieve it.

Take Melbourne, for example

Nowhere is this more obvious than some of Melbourne’s recently built tall towers.

Over the two decades up to 2015 there was a lack of strong regulation of planning schemes around taller buildings. In 1999 – when the economy was sluggish – the state government removed density controls from the city centre to allow maximum flexibility in property development.

These controls had established a maximum floor area ratio (FAR) of 12:1. This means that if a site has an area of 1,000 square metres, the construction of 12,000 square metres of floor space is allowed. It might be a building built across the whole site to 12 storeys, or a building on half the site to 24 storeys.

It is only by chance that Melbourne’s height limit was set between 265 metres and 315 metres, so that buildings did not intrude into aircraft flight paths.

The soaring heights of Melbourne’s buildings are not necessarily a major problem. The new residential towers take their share of the 100,000-plus new residents who move to Greater Melbourne each year, and these people are more likely to walk than drive. And restricting building heights does not necessarily lead to better buildings and neighbourhoods.

However, setting height limits through density controls – regulating floor areas, and apartments, in a building, block or precinct – is an important lever for achieving better design. It’s a form of regulatory “bargaining power”, permitting a few extra floors in return for better public amenity. Without it, there can be many bad outcomes, particularly at street level, as is obvious in some recently built towers.

The City of Melbourne’s 2018 report, Promoting High Quality Urban Design Outcomes in the Central City and Southbank, notes a “lack of design investment in the lower 20 metres of building facades and in particular in shopfront design” in the past. The problems include allowing parking above ground in podiums, tinted glass that renders active uses (such as common areas or commercial tenancies) invisible, and poor materials and architectural details that undermine the quality of the streetscape. This can contribute to poor visual connections between building occupiers and pedestrians, which reduces surveillance from above that would help make streets safer.

Some developments just look incredibly cheap and bland. There are flat finishes and facades, tinted glass, floor-to-ceiling glazing with repetitious frames and mullions, building services taking up much of the street frontage – despite the luxury apartment taglines used to market these towers.

Tighter controls for better design

Planning controls in the central city and Southbank area of Melbourne have become tighter since interim controls were put in place in 2015. These became permanent in 2016. Most of the podium and infill towers recently springing up in Melbourne received planning permission before then.

The new controls stipulate stronger requirements for minimum street setbacks, overshadowing, wind effects, FAR limits and tower separation. New height limits are based on density controls. However, high-rise apartment towers are still permitted to produce densities higher than those found in areas of Tokyo or Hong Kong.

These new planning controls have already led to a reduction in above-ground car park podiums, as developers aim to increase their yield in the face of restrictions on floor area ratios.

Despite these new planning provisions promoting quality design, there is still ambiguity around what good design means for Melbourne’s taller building proposals. This becomes an issue when tall buildings are subject to discretionary height limits.

The report Measurable Criteria to Assess Development Applications Exceeding Preferred Heights: Analysis and Recommendations by MGS Architects observed through several case studies across Melbourne – including in South Yarra and Collingwood – that extra height can be negotiated for projects that demonstrate a “high standard of architectural design”. But good design here may not relate to setbacks, overshadowing, provision of public space, or quality architectural details. It could be because a building is marketed as a “landmark”, “gateway” or “icon”.

But does a building’s height make it a landmark? If so, how high should it be? And should poor public amenity (such as generating traffic or overshadowing) be traded away because a building is “slender” and “sculptural”?

In the case of projects that went to the planning tribunal VCAT, the City of Melbourne report observed:

Where the tribunal was required to make a decision between an acceptable urban design outcome or project viability (such as the ability to achieve a viable tower envelope), viability and consolidation objectives prevailed on balance.

What more needs to be done?

Certainty and consistency are lacking. MGS Architects writes that this “undermines the public perception of a fair and orderly process for development approvals”.

All property developers, architects and planners desire consistency and clarity in urban planning, design and policy in order to deliver their projects – as do local communities. And despite moves in the right direction in Melbourne, there still is room to improve regulation. This includes introducing clearer density controls in relation to quality architectural design, a design review process in which designers lead decision-making and design-led envelope controls (where quantitative rules about where development is permitted are matched by qualitative rules that focus on how the building interfaces with the public realm).

However, to encourage innovation the regulations should still allow for flexibility.

The growth in Melbourne’s residential towers reinforces to the inhabitants of Australian cities the need to regulate for quality design outcomes. It acts as a warning for strategic town centres in Melbourne, and across Australia, that lack adequate quality control of their taller buildings.

Height restrictions were eased in part of Adelaide’s city centre this decade with the Capital City Development Plan Amendment. This led to a slew of new commercial, residential and hotel buildings over 100 metres proposed or under construction. Let’s hope that, with strong design guidelines, Adelaide avoids the mistakes of some of Melbourne’s recent additions.

The Conversation is co-publishing articles with Future West (Australian Urbanism), produced by the University of Western Australia’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts. These biannual collections of articles look towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. The latest series looks at the notion that urbanism is shaped by design enterprise. You can read other articles here.

– ref. Taming wild cities: the tall buildings of Australia show why we need strong design guidelines – http://theconversation.com/taming-wild-cities-the-tall-buildings-of-australia-show-why-we-need-strong-design-guidelines-116735

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Allen, Researcher, UNSW

Are we letting too many or too few migrants into Australia?

For 2019-20 the Australian government has cut the annual net migrant intake from 190,000 to 160,000. It’s a political decision, balancing the concerns of those who want much lower or higher immigration levels for a mix of social, environmental and economic reasons.

It’s an unsatisfactory and ad-hoc balancing act. Could there be more “science” in these decisions?

We’ve sought to come up with an evidence-based method to gauge the effects of migration. To do so we’ve used the internationally accepted framework for development planning, the Sustainable Development Goals. The goals cover major aspects of economic, social and environmental well-being, from decent jobs and quality education to good health and clean water.

We investigated three population scenarios: one similar to Australia’s recent annual level of net migration (about 200,000 a year); one much lower (about 70,000 a year); and one much higher (about 300,000 a year).

What our results show, perhaps surprisingly, and more by luck than design, is that recent levels of immigration seem to be in a “goldilocks zone” that balances economic, social and environmental objectives.

Our results also suggest migration is neither the problem nor solution in many areas where Australia is off-track, from government debt to environmental action.

Balancing competing agendas

Immigration policy is Australia’s de facto population policy. With the birthrate just keeping up with deaths, it’s migration that drives population growth. It’s why in 2018 the population passed 25 million, years earlier than previously predicted.

Annual migration intake is set as part of the the annual budget cycle. The government treats it primarily as a short-term economic issue. But population growth has long-term impacts on many sectors, from health and education to infrastructure and housing. Population growth, particularly through urban expansion, increases pressures on the natural environment.

Ideally, therefore, decisions about migration numbers and population growth should synch with long-term planning at the state and local levels to avoid service shortages, urban sprawl, vehicle congestion and infrastructure shortfalls.

Read more: Solving the ‘population problem’ through policy

The question remains about how to make evidence-based policy that balances deeply divided views. Some strongly support high net migration due to the important role population growth plays in managing an ageing population. Others argue equally forcefully for reducing migration because it places a burden on infrastructure, services and the environment.

Using the sustainable development goals

To negotiate these differences, we chose the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The goals cover long-term targets in 17 major areas of economic prosperity, social justice and environmental sustainability. All member states of the UN, including Australia, have agreed to them as a shared blueprint to achieve by 2030.

Each goal area includes multiple specific targets – 169 in all. For example, Goal 11 (“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”) includes the targets of adequate, safe and affordable housing and affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems.

Countries are not required to adopt all targets, but focus on those appropriate. We chose 52 targets relevant to Australia, covering all 17 goals and ensuring a reasonable balance of economic, social and environmental priorities.

Read more: Explainer: the world’s new sustainable development goals

Using advanced modelling capabilities, we tested how achieving the targets by 2030 might be affected by different population sizes.

Overall, not a huge difference

The following chart shows our results in a single graphic. For our low-migration scenario, Australia’s population in 2030 is 27.3 million; for the moderate, 28.9 million; and for the high, 30.6 million.

Only in two goal areas – education, clean water and sanitation – do our results show Australia doing better than 85% achievement by 2030 under all three scenarios. Only in another three – health, gender equality and energy – do we do better than 50%.  

All scenarios had equal effect on eliminating poverty (Goal 1). However, the low-migration scenario did better for achieving food security and improving nutrition (Goal 2).

Perhaps surprisingly, for decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), the middle scenario scored the best.

In the centre of the chart are the overall scores of each scenario.

The high-migration scenario (39.4% progress towards all targets) is the lowest , but not by much. There is almost no difference between maintaining recent migration levels (40.5%) and significanly slashing the migration intake (40.6%).

This suggests that, on an equal balance across a broad set of competing objectives, recent historic levels may be about right.

However, these results brush over the range of trade-offs between different targets – some of which may be considered more important than others.

Compared against the low scenario, for example, the high scenario results in an estimated 1.7 million extra vehicles on the roads, increased water consumption (~600 million m3), greater urban sprawl (~60,000 ha), and higher greenhouse gas emissions (~15 million tons CO2-equivalent).

Poor performance in many areas

What is perhaps most striking is that, regardless of the population scenario, Australia isn’t tracking well on most measures of sustainable development. Other studies have concluded the same.

As already noted, Australia is doing well on health, education and water quality. But it’s performing poorly on climate action (Goal 13) and responsible consumption (Goal 12), to name just two.

Read more: Australia falls further in rankings on progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals

Broadly accepted frameworks to measure progress and weigh policy decisions in contested areas is something we lack across the policy board.

Finding new drivers of economic growth and job creation, addressing infrastructure needs, and tackling climate change are just some of the complex challenges Australia faces.

Ad-hoc, short-term approaches to addressing them are unlikely to often deliver optimal outcomes. Combining clear targets, a long-term perspective and advances in modelling might help.

– ref. If you think less immigration will solve Australia’s problems, you’re wrong; but neither will more – http://theconversation.com/if-you-think-less-immigration-will-solve-australias-problems-youre-wrong-but-neither-will-more-115136

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

Bill Shorten has said he likes doing the family shopping, nevertheless Tuesday’s front page picture in The Australian did capture the savagery of changing political fortunes. There was Shorten, clutching a packet of Rice Bubbles, going through his gate.

While he was coping with a massive let down, a shell-shocked Labor party was moving with lightning speed to its post-Shorten era.

Not wanting Anthony Albanese, who had stalked him, as his successor, Shorten encouraged Tanya Plibersek, then Chris Bowen, to stand for leader. Plibersek quickly found she lacked the numbers and pulled back; Bowen on Tuesday declared he’d run but by Wednesday had decided that would be futile.

Colleagues of Shorten, who would have been crowding close to him if the result had been different, now resented any whiff of interference – a resentment no doubt intensified by the fact Shorten hadn’t just been defeated but had lost in face of an overwhelming expectation of victory.

Jim Chalmers held out until Thursday, wondering if the call of “generational change” could get the numbers. He concluded it couldn’t.

So finally Albanese, so long the bridesmaid, will get the prize. If you can call leader of the opposition, after a rout, a prize.

But maybe you can. After all, many thought Scott Morrison inherited a poisoned chalice last August.

Read more: Why the 2019 election was more like 2004 than 1993 – and Labor has some reason to hope

The Morrison government’s majority will be small – the next election remains quite winnable for Labor. The outcome in 2022 will be determined by the comparative performances of Morrison and Albanese, and their teams.

We can expect (on the balance of probabilities) that these two will survive to that election. Rule changes in both parties bring more stability to the leadership (although there’s never absolute certainty – before “Super Saturday” there was speculation that if things went badly Albanese was ready to make a challenge).

In style, there are similarities between Morrison and Albanese – perhaps summed up in their enthusiastic self-identification with their respective nicknames, “ScoMo” and “Albo”. They’re both knockabout, at ease mixing with people, fanatical about rugby league. When Albanese did the background briefings for the media after caucus meetings, more often than not these sessions started with a reference to the Rabbitohs’ latest good or bad news.

Albanese comes to the leadership with the advantage of having positioned himself somewhat to the side during the Shorten years. So he is not associated with the crafting of controversial election policies, such as the franking credits crackdown, although of course he campaigned for them.

He made his independence felt in small as well as bigger ways – his press releases, for example, never went through the centralised channel of the leader’s office, as did those of other shadow ministers. Albanese also has other advantages – not least that he doesn’t have Shorten’s closeness to the militant CFMMEU.

There is one contrast between Morrison and Albanese that’s potentially important. During his whole political career Morrison has been the ultimate pragmatist, indeed a chameleon. Albanese, from Labor’s left, in the past was quite militantly ideological, although the experience of government and later saw him shift to a more centrist, flexible position. Last year, in a major speech, he stressed the need for Labor to have a good relationship with business.

Read more: Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation

However close the electoral margin and whatever his personal strengths, preparing Labor for its next run at government won’t be easy.

Current policies will have to be overhauled and in some cases discarded, unlike after the 2016 election when basically they were added to.

Labor needs to better tune into middle suburbia, which proved less committed on issues such as climate change and more worried about economic management than the opposition had expected. Yet it can’t afford to turn its back on the issues that concern its more progressive supporters. It will be a tricky balancing act.

If he’s wise, Albanese will resist media demands that the ALP has a policy on everything instantly. It can afford to glide for a while, listening, thinking, weighing options. We all praised Shorten for Labor’s long game approach, but Morrison showed how the sprint can work. Albanese needs something in between.

Meanwhile Albanese is signalling that Labor may put up a fight on the government’s tax cuts legislation, which will be the first item when the new parliament meets.

There’s agreement over the immediate cuts but the Coalition wants those scheduled for years on to be passed at the same time. If the Senate refuses, the government will need to give way – politically, it can’t afford to do anything else. It has already had to concede it won’t meet its promised timetable for delivering this relief from July 1, because parliament is not able to meet before then.

Read more: After Clive Palmer’s $60 million campaign, limits on political advertising are more important than ever

Among the many challenges confronting Albanese will be where he takes Labor policy on climate change, with the debate already starting with comments from environment spokesman Tony Burke.

For some, the election was to be much about climate – at least as much, perhaps, as the 2007 election was. In fact, in terms of results, on that issue it’s been more of a setback than a positive.

The climate debate may have helped Zali Steggall dislodge Tony Abbott in Warringah, but arguably Abbott’s own behaviour – his defiance of the electorate on same-sex marriage, his destructive role in the Liberal party – was what really killed him.

Activists threw everything at the climate issue, but much of the effort turned out counter-productive.

Labor, trying to walk both sides of the street on Adani and internally divided over that controversial project, lost votes in the Queensland mining areas. The anti-Adani convoy, led by Bob Brown from the south to the north of the country, backfired in Queensland.

To cap things off, after Saturday’s result Queensland Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who faces an election next year, immediately demanded the Adani approval process be put on skates.

Adani is likely, it seems, to get an early go-ahead, which will deeply disappoint many activists. But for the new Labor leader, that could be a relief, taking an awkward issue off the federal Labor agenda.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Shocked Labor moves on – but to what policy destination? – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-shocked-labor-moves-on-but-to-what-policy-destination-117698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amitabh Mattoo, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of Melbourne

The resounding victory of the Bharitya Janata Party (BJP) coalition in India’s federal election represents a key marker in the modern history of India. It was the most extensive and probably most expensive election campaign in the country’s history, with 900 million voters casting their votes in one million polling stations over 38 days. Some 83 million Indians were first-time voters, with 15 million of them aged 18 and 19.

The great Indian festival of democracy – as the elections are often called – is seen as the most challenging exercise in making all Indians feel they have a say in the running of the government.

And the return of Narendra Modi as prime minister is both an opportunity and challenge for the country.

Read more: India election 2019: millions of Indian youth are underemployed and going to the polls

The 2019 parliamentary elections were the most “presidential” since the era of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi four decades ago, with a focus more on the personality of one leader (and his track record) than the candidates standing for office and their respective parties.

I travelled across India to the hustings in as many as 50 parliamentary constituencies and witnessed firsthand the “Modi phenomenon.” In constituency after constituency, BJP candidates evoked Modi’s name and displayed his image every opportunity they could.

Modi’s larger-than-life presence

Modi was projected as the only leader who would revive the great Indian civilization and save the country from the powerful elites and corrupt politicians who made up what the BJP deemed the “anti-national” opposition.

At times in the campaign, his personality assumed almost mythological proportions. The defining image was of the Indian leader shedding his regal robes and retreating to a bare cave in the Himalayas, close to one of the important centres of Hindu pilgrimage, where he meditated in a monastic saffron shawl. This reinforced his popular image as a puritanical and incorruptible leader whose first choice in life was to be a monk.

In contrast to this imagery, the opposition parties ran lazy, tired campaigns that failed to have much impact.

The Congress Party, the country’s once-dominant political party, did not improve much on its devastating results from the 2014 election. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the sister of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, tried hard to mobilise voters with rousing speeches and campaign events, but these were just brief moments in the longest campaign in Indian electoral history.

The Congress Party’s traditional hubris showed little signs of abating as it abandoned any chance of building potentially winning coalitions that could have countered the Modi juggernaut.

The only real resistance to the BJP-led coalition came from India’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh, where two strong regional parties suspended their traditional rivalry to establish an alliance.

Read more: Modi’s polarising populism makes a fiction of a secular, democratic India

The Modi campaign succeeded not just in appealing to nostalgia for India’s greatness or in the ultra-nationalism that peaked after airstrikes against what India viewed as terrorist camps in Pakistan in February. It was actual delivery on the ground.

The social welfare schemes built around providing lavatories, cooking gas and direct cash transfers to India’s poorest have had tremendous impact across the country. Surprisingly, even the more woolly-headed schemes of the Modi government, such as his chaotic demonetisation decision in 2016 and a poorly implemented introduction of GST, were perceived by many voters as policies that were well-intentioned, but badly executed by the toxic bureaucracy seeking to undermine Modi.

In part due to these social welfare schemes, the BJP expanded its presence in states where it has traditionally had little previous success, including Bengal, Odisha and many parts of southern India.

What Modi’s win means for India

So, what can Indians expect from a BJP-led government for the next five years? Based on what we have seen since 2014, the government will be centralised and driven primarily from Modi’s office. Fortunately, the messiness of Indian democracy and the strengths of the constitution will prevent the country from leaning towards authoritarianism, so that should not be a concern.

The previous Modi government has shown it was possible to take a pragmatic approach to social and economic policies.

There are many key challenges that will require a fine balancing act. These include a further liberalising of the economy, with the structural changes needed to make it easier to do business in India and attract more foreign investment. Creating jobs and skills training for the vast numbers of young Indians remains a formidable challenge, as does India’s struggling agrarian sector, which has reached a crisis point.

Read more: Narendra Modi’s performance on the Indian economy – five key policies assessed

It remains to be seen if the activism of the BJP’s rank-and-file members, as well as the party’s supporters in the Hindu nationalist movement, can be managed without compromising on key policies that India needs for social cohesion and to continue growing the economy. It will also fall to Modi to reassure ethnic and religious minorities – many of whom have fallen victim to Hindu mob attacks – that they are part of an inclusive vision for the country.

In terms of foreign policy, Modi has demonstrated deftness in New Delhi’s relations with powers like China and the US, as well as other countries in the region. There are sure to be new challenges with Pakistan, in particular, as well as an increasingly belligerent China, but Modi has already shown he has a unique ability to build a personal rapport with other leaders.

– ref. Narendra Modi has won the largest election in the world. What will this mean for India? – http://theconversation.com/narendra-modi-has-won-the-largest-election-in-the-world-what-will-this-mean-for-india-116598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Burne, Lecturer, BFA Screenwriting, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne

Why do we tell stories, and how are they crafted? In this series, we unpick the work of the writer on both page and screen.

The rule of three is a commonly held one for writers. It’s used for comedy (two relatively normal things are often followed by a third twist or stereotype), for rhythm, and it’s widely accepted that people remember things more clearly when listed in threes. Think of The Three Little Pigs, The Three Musketeers or Slip Slop Slap.

This rule of threes is also embedded deeply within television screenwriting. Writing episodic TV, scriptwriters traditionally work from a principle of having three stories woven together through an episode. These are known as the A story, the B story and the C story.

Newly launched in 2019, and already well received, the ABC’s half-hour series, The Heights, uses this threefold technique skilfully to establish characters and story world. By breaking down the pilot episode we can see how the three stories run through it.

Read more: The Heights – at last, a credible Australian working-class soap

A, B and C stories

The A story in TV drives the action, prompting the viewer to ask “What’s going to happen?” or “Who did it?”. The B storyline is typically more character-driven, or emotion-driven. The C story could be lighter, perhaps comedic, depending on the show.

The A story is the main thread of the episode, and will generally have the most plot points (or beats or scenes). The B story has fewer story beats per episode; the C story fewer still.

Plotting an episode involves working out the beats for each storyline, then weaving them together for satisfying narrative build, scene design and character development.

Wherever storylines cross over, or dramatically contrast or impact on one another, this will be carefully identified and structured to give the audience the strongest possible dramatic or comic experience.

In The Heights, The A story is that of an abandoned baby. The B story follows who will inherit the local pub. The C story explores a teenage boy’s choice about which parent to live with.

Other characters’ stories are also seeded in to be developed in later episodes – Claudia and Sabine’s arrival in town, Pav’s obtaining pain relief through marijuana, and Sully and Ash’s relationship – but these only have a single beat (within one scene).

Let’s take a look at the pilot episode, scene by scene, to uncover more about this ABC structure.

Breaking down the ABC structure

The opening sequence sets up the world, and many of the characters, utilising soccer, a barbecue, and the fire alarm. The fire alarm pays off a couple of scenes later as having been
a deliberate part of a plan to abandon the baby. (A story).

Hazel is set up as hoping to inherit the pub from her father, Bill, who has just died. It is her “lottery ticket”. (B story).

At the end of this sequence, Pav finds an abandoned baby in the garden. Pav rushes the baby to the hospital. Police search for clues as to the baby’s identity. (A story).

This scene also reveals that Pav is a retired, injured cop. He has to climb the stairs and .has leg pain, so he self-medicates with marijuana. His kids and ex-wife are established for the audience. Mich, his son, wants to stay with Pav rather than Leona, his mother. (C story).

This scene also cleverly keeps the A-story alive by featuring a news report of the abandoned baby – this technique is used across many scenes of the episode. So, it’s not necessarily new information for the A-story – though it might be – but is functioning to tie the characters and community together for the audience, and also give the characters information.

Claudia and Anna meet while nursing the abandoned baby. This scene also functions to further develop the world and interlink the characters through a common workplace. (A story). Claudia is home to her unpacked boxes and her daughter, Sabine, who is starting at the local high school the next day.

Hazel is opening the pub and a mystery man watches her. He is revealed to be her estranged son, Ryan, and the tension between them is established due to Ryan having stolen money from the pub and been gone 12 years. (B story). Also, his sister Shannon is established as having been gone for some weeks. Shannon will be revealed to be important to the A-story.

The grocery store is established, with its proprietor, Iris, her son Sully and his friend, Ash. Pav and Leona meet there and talk in the street about their kids. (C story).

At the river, Ryan and Anna meet up. A possible rekindled romance is seeded, and the pub inheritance discussed. (B story). Shannon’s absence is mentioned.

At the beach, Pav hangs out with his kids. They discuss trying to find the mother of the baby, and also Mich’s living arrangements. (A,C stories).

Hazel plans to sell the pub and retire, and Ryan pays back the money. (B, A stories).

Clues to the baby’s mother are discussed by Pav and Max. A girl is watching Claudia nurse the baby. Claudia gives chase. (A story).

Bill’s wake is being held, and Hazel and Ryan begin to reconcile, before a lawyer arrives and tells Hazel that Bill left the pub in equal shares to Hazel, Ryan and Shannon. Hazel is furious. Then Shannon arrives and collapses. There is a big reveal – Shannon is the baby’s mother. (B,A stories).

Establishing themes

As this breakdown shows, the greatest number of story beats revolve around the episode’s A story: the abandoned baby. The mystery is solved by the end, the story having served its dramatic function in driving it while simultaneously connecting the characters and establishing the show’s world and recurring themes, namely parenting and family.

The B story has the next highest number of story beats. It has left major characters – Hazel and Ryan – with a dramatic legacy to be played out in future episodes (owning and running the pub). These estranged family members are now tied together in day-to-day responsibility.

The C story has the fewest number of beats, and begins another ongoing story about family and responsibility. It is less dramatic and immediate than the A and B stories, but has plenty of potential for emotional, long-term narrative – and future drama.

– ref. Inside the story: the ABC of screenwriting as demonstrated by ABC’s The Heights – http://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-the-abc-of-screenwriting-as-demonstrated-by-abcs-the-heights-115854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Wiseman, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne

It was framed as “the climate election”, but last week Australia returned a government with climate policies that make the task of building a zero-emissions, safe climate Australia even harder.

This result comes at a time when international studies are raising the real and imminent spectre of a mass extinction crisis and many communities are already struggling with the consequences of the climate emergency now unfolding around us.

Amid the growing strength of movements like Extinction Rebellion and climate activist Greta Thunberg’s advice to “act as you would in a crisis”, Australian film-maker Damon Gameau’s new climate change solutions film 2040 focuses on highlighting the huge range of climate action opportunities being explored and accelerated, not just in Australia but around the world.

Read more: Why art has a part to play in tackling climate change

Structured as a visual letter to Gameau’s four-year-old daughter, 2040 takes us on an engaging, upbeat journey, introducing us to a wide array of climate and energy solutions already underway. The film then fast-forwards 20 years to help us imagine how a zero-emissions world might unfold.

The film and accompanying book showcase a rich tapestry of climate action stories from around the world, from renewable energy microgrids in Bangladesh, to autonomous electric vehicles in Singapore and regenerative agriculture in Shepparton, Victoria.

Economist Kate Raworth speaks eloquently about the urgent need for a new “doughnut economics” approach, which grows jobs and health and well-being rather than consumerism, pollution and inequality.

Paul Hawken, founder of the Drawdown project reminds us we already have the tools required to build a just and resilient zero-carbon economy. Our key task now is to mobilise the resources and harness the creativity required to bring this work to scale at emergency speed.

Importantly, the 2040 project also includes the Whats Your 2040 website, where audiences can explore their own personal climate action plans.

I have had the privilege to contribute ideas and advice to the 2040 film project, drawing on research I’ve undertaken over the last ten years on strategies for accelerating the creation of post-carbon economies. Its also been exciting to see such enthusiasm and determination from audiences watching 2040, particularly among students and young people.

From fear to hope and action

While 2040 doesn’t avoid hard truths about the rapidly escalating risks and dangers of the climate emergency, Gameau has made a clear choice to focus his narrative of “fact based dreaming” on stories of hope and action rather than just chaos and catastrophe.

The goal is to offer viewers a refreshing and energising change from yet more images of burning forests and melting glaciers.

Of course, some will also bear in mind the cautionary warning of Greta Thunberg:

I don’t want you to be hopeful…I want you to feel the fear I feel every day…I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire. Because it is.

US author Rebecca Solnit provides another valuable perspective. “Hope”, she argues “is not about what we expect. It’s an embrace of the essential unknowability of the world. Hope is not a door but a sense that there might be a door.”

In my work with climate scientists, activists and policy makers over the last ten years I’ve had many challenging conversations about finding the right balance between fear and hope; threat and opportunity; naive optimism and paralysing despair.

Emergency response

One useful source of wisdom in navigating this tension is research on effective and timely responses to more immediate natural disasters, like fast-moving storms, floods and fires.

Successfully dealing with an emergency requires recognising that decisive action is urgently necessary, possible in the time available, and desirable. Broken down, this means understanding:

1. the emergency is real and heading our way, but
2. there is a clear course of action that will significantly reduce the danger, and
3. the benefits of decisive collective action clearly outweigh the costs and risks of inaction.

There is certainly no shortage of scientific and experiential evidence about the scale and speed of the climate emergency which has now arrived at our door. But the case for radical hope, defiant courage and decisive collective action also continues to strengthen.

We can see this in the remarkable rise and global impact of the School Climate Strike, Green New Deal, Extinction Rebellion, and fossil fuel divestment initiatives like Market Forces.

This challenge is also being taken up by some sections of the business world. (See, for example, Ross Garnaut’s recent lecture series outlining Australia’s great potential as a renewable energy superpower.)

Ideas like this are particularly important in developing a convincing and compelling narrative about a future post-fossil fuel economy that creates high-quality secure jobs and leaves no Australian worker or community behind.

Read more: The poster is political: how artists are challenging climate change

The election outcome is clearly a significant setback for those who had hoped that there might now be clearer air for a more mature conversation in Australia about the necessity, urgency and desirability of accelerating the transition to a just and resilient zero-carbon economy.

None of us know exactly how our journey into a harsh climate future will evolve. We can however be sure that the journey will be far tougher if we close our eyes and fail to act with honesty and imagination; wisdom and courage. 2040 makes an important contribution to this urgent and essential work.

2040 was released in Australia on May 22.

– ref. 2040: hope and action in the climate crisis – http://theconversation.com/2040-hope-and-action-in-the-climate-crisis-117422

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

Since Scott Morrison became PM in August 2018, Newspoll has usually been the best pollster for Labor. This was particularly so in late 2018, but these strong polls for Labor should now be questioned. In November 2018, Labor had two 52-48 lead results from Essential and Ipsos, but two Newspoll results the week before and the week after those polls gave Labor a 55-45 lead.

Read more: Poll wrap: Labor’s worst polls since Turnbull; chaos likely in Victorian upper house

In late 2018, Essential usually gave Labor a lower two party vote than Newspoll, even though Essential’s preferencing method was better for Labor than Newspoll. Essential used last-election preferences, while Newspoll adjusted One Nation’s preferences to 60-40 to the Coalition – from the results, this adjustment was justified.

At the time, poll analysts assumed that Newspoll, not Essential, was correct, but the election results suggest Essential was more accurate in consistently having Labor’s primary vote lower than Newspoll had it.

Analyst Kevin Bonham said there is no evidence of a late swing; pre-poll booths had a greater swing to the Coalition than Election Day booths (2% vs 0.8%). That suggests that the polling has been wrong for a long time, and that Newspoll was flawed. During the campaign, other pollsters herded their results towards where Newspoll had it, but this was wrong.

The four active pollsters at this election were YouGov Galaxy, which conducts Newspoll, Ipsos, Essential and Morgan. Galaxy uses online methods and robopolling, Essential uses online methods, Ipsos uses live phone polling and Morgan uses face-to-face interviews. No pollster does only landline polling – Ipsos calls mobiles.

Australian pollsters have inadequate documentation of their methods. For example, we do not know what portion of Galaxy’s surveys are robocalls, and what portion use online methods. This lack of documentation should change after this poll failure.

Read more: Coalition wins election but Abbott loses Warringah, plus how the polls got it so wrong

Polls have not been accurate in recent state elections

Labor led in the final federal election polls by about 51.5-48.5, but lost the election by about the same margin. We won’t know final figures for at least a few weeks, but this miss was about three points. At recent elections, polls have not been accurate, also missing badly at the November 2018 Victorian election. Polls appear to have have become less accurate since the 2016 federal election.

This is the table of polls vs the election outcome for the July 2016 federal election. As with the 2019 election, polls appeared to “herd” too close together, but in 2016 they herded to the correct result. Bold numbers for poll estimates in the tables below denote cases where the poll was within 1% of the actual result.

At the March 2017 WA election, polls were too high on One Nation’s vote, caused by One Nation not contesting all WA seats. The Greens and Labor did a bit better than expected.

At the November 2017 Queensland election, polls were good – unlike Queensland state breakdowns or polls at the federal election, which suggested 51-49 to the LNP or a 50-50 tie. The LNP currently leads in Queensland by 57.5-42.5.

At the March 2018 Tasmanian election, two polls, taken about a week before the election, understated the Liberal vote. But Tasmania has a bandwagon effect where people opt for the major party that can govern without needing the Greens.

At the March 2018 SA election, both major parties, particularly the Liberals, had a greater primary vote than the polls estimated, and SA-Best did worse. SA-Best support had been falling.

At the November 2018 Victorian election, Labor led in the final polls by about 53.5-46.5, and won by 57.6-42.4. Few people care when the party expected to win wins by a bigger than expected margin, so polls are not criticised for these mistakes as much as they should be. When the expected winner loses, polls are heavily criticised.

Only one poll at the March 2019 NSW election could be thought of as a final poll, with Newspoll at 51-49 to the Coalition (actual result 52.0-48.0). Movement to the Coalition was explained by the revelation of a video of Labor leader Michael Daley that could be construed as anti-Asian.

Late counting updates

Much counting of Liberal-friendly postal votes in Chisholm has confirmed it will be retained by the Liberals. That gives the Coalition an overall majority with 76 of the 151 seats. The Coalition is also likely to gain Bass, while Macquarie is still uncertain, but with the Liberals currently ahead.

The Coalition has improved its position in the Victorian and Queensland Senate races. With 58% counted in Victoria, the Coalition has 2.47 quotas, Labor 2.24 and the Greens 0.72. With 60% counted in Queensland, the LNP has 2.70 quotas, Labor 1.62, the Greens 0.72 and One Nation 0.70.

If these results hold up, the Coalition is well-placed to win the final Victorian Senate seat. In Queensland, whoever is last after preferences from LNP, Labor, Greens and One Nation misses out, and that looks likely to be Labor. That would mean Queensland would split 4-2 to the right in the Senate.

If current counting in Victoria and Queensland holds, there will be 38 right-wing senators out of 76 (35 Coalition, two One Nation and Cory Bernardi), 35 left-wing senators (26 Labor and nine Greens), two Centre Alliance and Jacqui Lambie. The Coalition’s easiest path to passing legislation opposed by the left would be with other right-wing senators, plus either Lambie or Centre Alliance.

AEC’s two party count does not yet include all electorates

The Electoral Commission has a two party preferred count on the home page of its results, currently showing the Coalition ahead by 51.3-48.7. However, this two party count only includes seats where the Coalition and Labor are expected to be the final two candidates. There are currently 15 seats out of 151 with “non-classic” contests, where the final two candidates were not from the Coalition and Labor.

These non-classic contests are added to the two party count via a special count between the Coalition and Labor candidates, but this will not happen until the seat count has been nearly finalised. Ten of these seats are very likely to favour the Coalition when added to the count, and only five will favour Labor. That means the current two party count is biased to Labor.

In addition, there are three seats – Calare, Grey and Barker – where the Electoral Commission thought Labor would not make the final two. Labor made the final two in those seats, so they are slowly being recounted between the Coalition and Labor. These conservative seats still have plenty of votes that haven’t been added to the two party count.

With these distortions factored in, the two party count is probably close to 52-48 to the Coalition, though Labor should improve as absent votes, which favour Labor, have yet to be included.

UK’s European Union elections are today

I wrote for The Poll Bludger about the UK’s European Union elections, which will be held today. No results will be released until all EU countries finish voting early on May 27 Australian Eastern Standard Time. Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is expected to win the UK’s EU elections, with the Conservatives crashing to their lowest ever national vote share. There has been much recent speculation that Theresa May will resign soon, so Boris Johnson could be the next PM.

– ref. Newspoll probably wrong since Morrison became PM; polling has been less accurate at recent elections – http://theconversation.com/newspoll-probably-wrong-since-morrison-became-pm-polling-has-been-less-accurate-at-recent-elections-117400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niraj Lal, Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, Australian National University

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

How was the Earth made? – Audrey, age 5.

More than 4,500,000,000 years ago – before even the dinosaurs existed, before even the Earth existed – there was space.

And in one part of space, there was a huge collection of stars mixed in with massive clouds of gas and dust, that today we call the Milky Way galaxy.

Read more: Curious Kids: The Milky Way is huge. But just how huge?

In a small corner of that huge galaxy, in an area that would later become our solar system, there was a big cloud of gas that had been swirling around since the Big Bang. There were also some dusty remains of an old star that had exploded long ago.

The gas and dust were floating, swirling and spinning past each other – but they were all quite far apart. But then… a nearby star exploded, in what we call a supernova.

This supernova sent a shockwave of light and energy rippling across space, pushing some of the gas and dust towards each other. This gas and dust soon became a ball, which started to get bigger and bigger because of gravity.

Gravity makes everything in the universe move towards everything else – and when things get really big (like, planet-size big), they start to pull all nearby things towards it.

As the ball of gas and dust got bigger, the gas and dust started to crush in on itself until something called a “nuclear reaction” happened right in the middle of the ball. A nuclear reaction is super powerful, and this particular one turned our Sun into a brilliantly shining star, throwing light across the rest of the gas and dust that was still spinning around it.

Read more: Curious Kids: why has nobody found any life outside of Earth?

Gas and dust started clumping together to form planets

Some of those other swirling, twirling chunks of gas and dust (that hadn’t been sucked into the Sun) were bumping and clumping into each other. Soon, those clumps got big enough that gravity started pulling in all the other gas and dust around it, all while still going round and round the giant shining Sun.

Some of these twirling bits clumped together to make our Earth. Others clumped together to make Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – and all of their moons too.

All these baby planets swirled and spun, and pulled in all the nearby matter. They squished together to become super-tight big giant hot balls of spinning stuff.

Our own Earth was getting hit by rocks that were falling towards it. It kept getting bigger and hotter until it was a giant ball of melted rock.

Then, a really huge rock smashed into Earth and made it even bigger. And a little bit of that rock flew off and floated into space to make the Moon.

Read more: Curious Kids: Is there anything hotter than the Sun?

So the Earth was just out there floating in space, near the Sun. But it looked totally different to the Earth we live on today. There were volcanoes all over the place, with hot lava and gas everywhere.

Cooling down

But slowly over many years, Earth started to cool down. Some rocks full of ice and gas hit it and melted to make the sea.

This is continuing today – every year more than three tonnes of space rocks hit the Earth.

But slowly, over many years, the top layer of the Earth was cool enough to harden. This is the ground we walk on today. We call it the Earth’s crust, like a crust of bread. Deep down underground, the Earth is still full of melted hot rock.

And gradually, over a long time, plants started to grow, bugs started to live and life on Earth began to form (which is a whole story on its own).

Earth is really ancient, and humans have only been around for a tiny part of that. All the buildings and the cars and the restaurants, and the phones and even everything that’s inside of you… it all started with an exploding star, billions of years ago.

Read more: Curious Kids: What existed before the Big Bang? Did something have to be there to go boom?

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

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

– ref. Curious Kids: how was the Earth made? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-was-the-earth-made-112067

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron J. Cavosie, Senior research fellow, Curtin University

In the remote desert of western Egypt, near the Libyan border, lie clues to an ancient cosmic cataclysm.

Libyan desert glass is the name given to fragments of canary-yellow glass found scattered over hundreds of kilometres, between giant shifting sand dunes.

Interest in Libyan desert glass goes back more than 3,000 years. Among items recovered from King Tut’s burial chamber is a gold and jewel-encrusted breastplate. In the centre sits a beautiful scarab beetle, carved from Libyan desert glass.

Libyan desert glass – raw and carved – is easily available today, but how the glass formed has long puzzled scientists.

Our research has found the answer.

The heat is on

Studies show the Libyan desert glass formed about 29 million years ago. The glass is nearly pure silica, which requires temperatures above 1,600℃ to form, and that is hotter than any igneous rock on Earth.

But few mineral relics survived from whatever caused the melting. Within the glass are rare occurrences of high-temperature minerals, including a form of quartz called cristobalite.

There are also grains of the mineral zircon, although most have reacted to form a higher-temperature mineral called zirconia.

Ideas about how the glass formed include melting during meteorite impact, or melting caused by an airburst from an asteroid or other object burning up high in Earth’s atmosphere.

Despite many studies, definitive proof about which origin is correct has been elusive, until now.

One problem is that no impact crater from any object hitting the ground in the area has been identified as the source of the glass. Another was the lack of evidence of damage from high-pressure shock waves caused by any impact.

Evidence of impact

Our research, published in the journal Geology, reports the first evidence of high-pressure damage, showing the glass formed during a meteorite impact.

Meteorite impacts and airbursts are both catastrophic events. Large meteorite impacts, such as the one that killed the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago, are rare.

But airbursts occur more frequently. An airburst over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 caused extensive property damage and injured people.

The Chelyabinsk airburst deposited 0.5 megatons of energy into the sky. Despite the damage, that event did not cause melting or shock damage.

In contrast, Libyan desert glass is thought by some to have been caused by a 100-megaton airburst, an event 200 times larger than the Russian airburst.

The airburst idea arose from modelling atmospheric nuclear explosions. Like a nuclear bomb, a large airburst deposits energy into the atmosphere that can melt surface materials. And an airburst does not leave a crater.

Read more: Target Earth: how asteroids made an impact on Australia

The ‘smoking gun’

The new “smoking gun” for understanding the origin of the Libyan desert glass is evidence of an unusual mineral called reidite. Reidite only forms during a meteorite impact, when atoms in the mineral zircon are forced into a tighter arrangement.

Such high-pressure minerals are a hallmark of a meteorite impact, and do not form during airbursts.

Zircon is a common mineral in granite, sandstone and other rock types. It is known from Earth, the Moon, Mars, and various meteorites. It is widely used for dating when rocks formed.

Zircon is also useful when searching for evidence of shock deformation caused by a meteorite impact. At low shock intensity, zircon deforms by bending of the crystal. It is like bending a plastic spoon to the point where it deforms but does not break.

As the shock intensity increases, zircon further responds in several unique ways and at extreme pressures, reidite forms.

If the rocks then get hot, zircon will recrystallise. This results in the formation of a network of new, tiny interlocking grains. Above 1,700℃ zircon ultimately breaks down to zirconia.

Libyan desert glass contains many zircon grains, all smaller than the width of a human hair. While most reacted to zirconia due to the heat, about 10% preserve evidence of former reidite. But the thing is, reidite is no longer present.

Reidite is not stable when hot, and reverts back to zircon above 1,200℃. It only gets preserved if shocked rocks do not melt. So it takes a specialised technique called electron backscatter diffraction to nut out whether reidite once existed in shocked zircons that got hot.

The key to finding evidence of former reidite lies in analysing the crystal orientations of the tiny interlocking grains in reverted zircon.

Similar to turning a Rubik’s cube, the initial transformation to reidite occurs along specific directions in a zircon crystal. When reidite changes back to zircon, it leaves a fingerprint of its existence that can be detected through orientation analysis.

And we found the reidite fingerprint in samples of the Libyan desert glass. We examined zircon grains from seven samples and the critical crystal orientation evidence of former reidite was present in each sample.

A meteor impact

Reidite is rare and only reported from meteorite impact sites. It is found in material ejected from craters and in shocked rocks at craters.

Read more: A disappointing earring, and the world’s hottest rock: zirconia

Prior studies have found evidence of former reidite within zircon from impact melt, similar to how it was identified in Libyan desert glass.

A 100 megaton airburst should occur every 10,000 years. If this size event is supposed to have caused Libyan desert glass to form, the geological record does not support the idea. The reidite fingerprint points to a meteor impact as the only option.

Outstanding mysteries about Libyan desert glass still remain, such as the location of the source crater, its size, and determining if it has eroded away.

– ref. How we solved the mystery of Libyan desert glass – http://theconversation.com/how-we-solved-the-mystery-of-libyan-desert-glass-117253

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

I recently had cause to look at a large file of material I collected about Mark Latham during 2004. It is full of many of the same columnists who have just campaigned successfully for the return of the Morrison government. They were buzzing with excitement and hubris. News Corps’s Miranda Devine saw an omen in the news that arrived from Paris as the polls opened in Australia:

Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstructionism, died in Paris of pancreatic cancer, bringing to a symbolic end a destructive era of postmodern truth-twisting.

While no one else seemed to draw a bow quite so long, almost everyone could agree that John Howard’s victory was “historic” and that Labor was in “crisis”.

Read more: View from The Hill: Should Labor jump to new generation leader – and Morrison steal some Shorten policies?

But The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen’s response to that election brings us closest to the present. Howard’s very lack of a grand vision was precisely what had attracted voters to him, she claimed:

While the Left aches for a top-down vision imposed from above by some Whitlamite, Keatingesque leader, the rest of us prefer the bottom-up Howard version where we get to choose our own vision.

With Scott Morrison, we also have little choice but to choose our own vision if we want one. But Howard, it turned out, had plans if not a vision. He would use the Senate majority voters had sent his way to deal with Australia’s unions once and for all, through WorkChoices. At the 2007 election, Howard lost government as well as his own seat.

Labor supporters despairing of the result of Saturday’s election would do well to recall 2004. It is, to my mind, the closest parallel with what we have just seen. Labor took bold policies to the voters in 2004 and 2019. A Coalition leader managed to persuade enough voters that Labor couldn’t be trusted in economic matters.

Resources industries mattered for both elections, Tasmanian forests in 2004, and Queensland coal in 2019. Labor fumbled each, just as housing – interest rates in 2004, and property values and rents in 2019 – caused Labor grief on each occasion.

Shorten is no Latham, but there were question marks hanging over both leaders that told against their party. Shorten made his mistakes but ran a solid campaign in 2019, gradually hitting his stride.

Latham was no slouch in 2004, either; there has been a conflation of his behaviour after the campaign with that during its course. Writing straight after the election in The Australian, Paul Kelly had many criticisms of both Labor and Latham. But he also thought Latham had campaigned “very well” personally.

The more common comparison of 2019 has been with 1993, John Hewson’s “unlosable election”. There is, of course, something in that and, again, some hope for Labor.

There were reasons to imagine after the 1993 election that Labor was in for the long haul – that it would be the modern equivalent of the post-war Coalition with its 23-year run. The Liberals continued with a broken Hewson, had a brief and disastrous experiment with Alexander Downer, and then settled on a failed leader from the previous decade, Howard.

Few saw the Coalition’s future as bright after Keating’s win. But Labor fumbled its post-1993 election budget and, for all of Keating’s bravado in the house and all of his “big picture” hobnobbing with world leaders such as Clinton and Suharto outside it, the foundations of Labor rule were crumbling.

Is Labor’s “crisis”, if it is a crisis, worse than that faced by the Coalition in 1993 and Labor in 2004? If the ultimate test is electoral success, only the next election will allow us to answer that question.

But there are some alarming indicators. Labor seems to have lost votes to the far right in Queensland and preferences then flowed helpfully to the Coalition. Morrison was able to have his cake – getting the Liberals to put One Nation last south of the Tweed – while eating it north of the Tweed, where he had no sway over LNP preferencing and the Coalition reaped the rewards.

There is an emerging narrative that Adani mattered in key Queensland seats, not so much in its own right but for its wider symbolic significance for the future of coal mining in Queensland and Labor’s commitment to traditional blue-collar jobs.

If so, Labor has a lot of work to do to clarify its policy and messaging, in a state where coal has formed one of the foundations of the economy since the 1960s.

And it needs to do so without damaging its prospects elsewhere by equivocating on commitments to renewable energy and vigorous action on climate change. The old calculation that alienated Greens votes will come back to Labor might still be largely correct, but Labor has never won from opposition when the electorate votes for it only grudgingly.

Read more: Labor’s election defeat reveals its continued inability to convince people it can make their lives better

It was ironic, in view of Labor’s problems in some regions and outer suburbs, that the two front-runners who initially emerged as Labor leadership contenders were members of the Left faction representing neighbouring seats in oh-so-hip inner Sydney. With Tanya Plibersek withdrawing – and another Sydneysider, Chris Bowen, also bowing out – the leadership is now likely to fall to the Left’s Anthony Albanese. Queenslander Jim Chalmers, from the Right, is considering whether to run.

The terms in which the post-election debate about Labor’s future has been carried on could have occurred after any election defeat in the last 50 years. But the foundational issue for Labor is not where it places itself on the political spectrum, or even whether it can win back voters in the regions, but whether it has any capacity to grapple with the inequalities and frailties that lax, opportunistic and unsustainable policy – much of it dating back to the Howard era – has embedded.

At the 2019 election, Labor proposed chasing revenue by winding back tax concessions to some categories of shareholder, property investor and superannuant. This approach was rejected at the polls. But economic growth and productivity seem unlikely to provide an alternative pathway for a future Labor government, unless there is a miraculous turn-around in the global economy.

No prospective Labor leader should be taken seriously unless he – and it seems it will indeed be a “he” – is at least able to articulate this dilemma.

– ref. Why the 2019 election was more like 2004 than 1993 – and Labor has some reason to hope – http://theconversation.com/why-the-2019-election-was-more-like-2004-than-1993-and-labor-has-some-reason-to-hope-117394

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beth Armstrong, Foundation Chair in Speech Pathology, Edith Cowan University

This article is the fourth part in a series, Where culture meets health.

Aboriginal Australians continue to face serious health challenges. Life expectancy is about 10.7 years less for Indigenous Australians than non-Indigenous Australians.

Brain injury occurs up to three times more often in Aboriginal Australians than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. It also commonly occurs at a younger age, and is more likely among Aboriginal people living in rural and remote areas.

Despite their greater need, Aboriginal people access rehabilitation services at a lower rate than the general population.

Barriers to accessing health services can be related to communication breakdowns, distance from facilities, and previous negative experiences with services.

Aboriginal people who have suffered brain injury are even more vulnerable to these barriers.

Read more: Explainer: what is traumatic brain injury?

Our research tells us the absence of Aboriginal people in rehabilitation services has often led largely non-Aboriginal practitioners to assume they don’t want therapy.

But based on our interviews with Aboriginal brain injury survivors in Western Australia, we’ve found they want more information and education about brain injury, and more practical support along their rehabilitation journey.

Culturally secure health care

The effects of colonisation, social exclusion, poverty and racism continue to impact many of our First Nations peoples today.

This is compounded by health services that may not have the tools to consistently recognise and respond to the cultural needs of Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal understandings of health and wellness, and how these understandings differ from Western biomedical models, need to be better reflected in practice.

The Aboriginal construct of health is a holistic model that perceives physical, psychological, spiritual, cultural, social, environmental and economic factors as affecting a person’s functioning.

Cultural security directly links understandings and actions. So providing culturally secure health care means all these factors are taken into account. Importantly, patients can practise their cultural norms and their care will not be compromised as a result.

For example, under certain circumstances, interactions may only be considered culturally secure when conducted between people of the same gender, language group, or when aligned with kinship rules. Hospital limitations on the number of family members visiting at one time may lead to feelings of exclusion and infringement on family rights.

Read more: Indigenous health programs require more than just good ideas

Our research

We spoke to Aboriginal people who had experienced brain injury as a result of a stroke, or a traumatic injury such as a car accident, assault, or fall.

Our participants spoke frequently about poor communication with non-Aboriginal hospital staff. Many felt staff did not understand or empathise with their situation and the centrality of family and culture in their lives. Some expressed feeling vulnerable, alone and diminished in the hospital environment.

Several people reported being unable to understand technical explanations they were given regarding stroke, its treatment and recovery. Many Aboriginal stroke patients and families felt they received very little practical information about services available to them once they left hospital.

Read more: Words from Arnhem land: Aboriginal health messages need to be made with us rather than for us

We also interviewed non-Aboriginal health service providers. They reported not feeling confident working with Aboriginal patients and families.

Reasons for this included a lack of skills in positively engaging and communicating with Aboriginal people, a fear of offending, and recognition that their largely Western knowledge base may not be appropriate when delivering medical care to Aboriginal patients.

We need Aboriginal service providers on the ground

The first point of contact after a brain injury is critical in determining the person’s ongoing rehabilitation journey. If information and support are made accessible from the outset, and cultural security guaranteed, follow-up and two-way engagement will be more likely.

In our studies, patients often talked about feeling more comfortable with another Aboriginal person. Someone who understands their personal context including family, culture and community is uniquely placed to assist with the person’s journey to recovery.

As a result of our findings, the National Health and Medical Research Council funded Healing Right Way, a project across Western Australia to improve the journey after brain injury for Aboriginal people and their families.

Healing Right Way will employ eight Aboriginal Brain Injury Coordinators to support Aboriginal people for the first six months following their injury. These are the first such positions in Australia.

Typically nurses, the coordinators meet the patient and their family in hospital immediately after injury. They provide education around brain injury and subsequent rehabilitation and recovery, as well as psychological support.

They also liaise with other services and care providers such as GPs, specialists, and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services.

Read more: Indigenous health leaders helped give us a plan to close the gap, and we must back it

Meanwhile, the project is providing training for hospital staff to enhance their skills and knowledge in delivering culturally secure care for Aboriginal people with brain injury.

There are success stories

Our research has revealed stories of “successfully” living with brain injury.

One man who suffered a severe stroke looked to family and community groups to support his recovery. He resumed painting, travelling, and socialising over time, despite being partially paralysed and having virtually no speech. This was enabled by a strong will and help from his sister who organised taxi vouchers, train trips and other supports.

These stories provide a rich basis from which to explore alternative possibilities in the rehabilitation process. Learning from Aboriginal brain injury survivors about how to re-engage with community and return to regular activities offers insights that can be shared with brain injury survivors in the future, and, importantly, with rehabilitation service providers.

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

The issues raised for Aboriginal people with brain injury are mirrored in First Nations people with a range of other conditions.

While examples of individual clinicians attempting to provide culturally secure services were evident in our research, system-wide practices doing the same were rare.

To build a more culturally secure approach for Aboriginal patients recovering from brain injury, there needs to be acknowledgement of patient experiences alongside a system willing to implement change.

The involvement and leadership of Aboriginal researchers, health professionals and consumers is essential.

– ref. Aboriginal Australians want care after brain injury. But it must consider their cultural needs – http://theconversation.com/aboriginal-australians-want-care-after-brain-injury-but-it-must-consider-their-cultural-needs-115128

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Krummel, Research Group Leader, CSIRO

A mysterious rebound in the emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals – despite a global ban stretching back almost a decade – has been traced to eastern China.

Research published by an international team today in Nature used a global network of monitoring stations to pinpoint the source of the rogue emissions. According to these data, 40-60% of the increase in emissions seen since 2013 is due to possibly illegal industrial activity in the Chinese provinces of Shandong and Hebei.

Read more: After 30 years of the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is gradually healing

Chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11) is a powerful ozone-depleting chemical that plays a major role in the appearance, each spring, of the ozone “hole” over Antarctica.

In the past, CFC-11 had been used primarily as a propellant in aerosol products and as a foam plastic blowing agent. The production and consumption (use) of CFC-11 are controlled by the global Montreal Protocol. CFC-11 consumption has been banned in developed countries since 1996, and worldwide since 2010.

This has resulted in a significant decline of CFC-11 in the atmosphere. Long-term CFC-11 measurements at Cape Grim, Tasmania, show the amount in the atmosphere peaked in 1994, and fell 14% by 2018.

However, this decline has not been as rapid as expected under the global zero production and consumption mandated by the Montreal Protocol since 2010.

A 2014 study was the first to deduce that global emissions of CFC-11 stopped declining in 2002. In 2015, CSIRO scientists advised the Australian government, based on measurements compiled by the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which includes those from Cape Grim, that emissions had risen significantly since 2011. The cause of this rebound in CFC-11 emissions was a mystery.

An initial explanation came in 2018, when researchers led by Stephen Montzka of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analysed the CFC-11 data collected weekly at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. They deduced that the increased emissions originated largely from East Asia – likely as a result of new, illegal production.

Montzka’s team concluded that if these increased CFC-11 emissions continued, the closure of the Antarctic ozone hole could be delayed, possibly for decades. This was a remarkable piece of detective work, considering that Mauna Loa is more than 8,000km from East Asia.

Suspicions confirmed

A still more detailed explanation is published today in the journal Nature by an international research team led by Matt Rigby of the University of Bristol, UK, and Sunyoung Park of Kyungpook National University, South Korea, together with colleagues from Japan, the United States, Australia and Switzerland. The new study uses data collected every two hours by the AGAGE global monitoring network, including data from Gosan, South Korea, and from an AGAGE-affiliated station at Hateruma, Japan. Crucially, Gosan and Hateruma are just 1,000km and 2,000km, respectively, from the suspected epicentre of CFC-11 emissions in East Asia.

The Korean and Japanese data show that these new emissions of CFC-11 do indeed come from eastern China – in particular the provinces of Shandong and Hebei – and that they have increased by around 7,000 tonnes per year since 2013.

Meanwhile, the rest of the AGAGE network has detected no evidence of increasing CFC-11 emissions elsewhere around the world, including in North America, Europe, Japan, Korea or Australia.

Yet while this new study has accounted for roughly half of the recent global emissions rise, it is possible that smaller increases have also taken place in other countries, or even in other parts of China, not covered by the AGAGE network. There are large swathes of the globe for which we have very little detailed information on CFC emissions.

Nevertheless, this study represents an important milestone in atmospheric scientists’ ability to tell which regions are emitting ozone-depleting substances and in what quantities. It is now vital we find out which industries are responsible for these new emissions.

If the emissions are due to the manufacture and use of products such as foams, it is possible that, so far, we have seen in the atmosphere only a fraction of the total amount of CFC-11 that was produced illegally. The remainder could be locked up in buildings and chillers, and will ultimately be released to the atmosphere over the coming decades.

Read more: Explainer: what is the Antarctic ozone hole and how is it made?

While our new study cannot determine which industry or industries are responsible, it does provide strong evidence that substantial new emissions of CFC-11 have occurred from China. Chinese authorities have identified, and closed down, some illegal production facilities over the past several years.

This study highlights the importance of undertaking long-term measurements of trace gases like CFC-11 to verify that international treaties and protocols are working. It also identifies shortcomings in the global networks for detecting regional emissions of ozone depleting substances. This should encourage expansion of these vital measurement networks which would lead to a capability of more rapid identification of future emission transgressions.

– ref. Eastern China pinpointed as source of rogue ozone-depleting emissions – http://theconversation.com/eastern-china-pinpointed-as-source-of-rogue-ozone-depleting-emissions-117505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, University of South Australia

Tourism today has a problem and needs an entire rethink. Pundits are debating overtourism, peak tourism and tourismphobia. Cities such as Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik are witnessing a backlash against imposed forms of tourism.

In response, new tactics have been tried, ranging from tourist “police” and tourist taxes to entry fees and crowd control. Cities are having to rethink their engagement with tourism if they want to keep the locals from rioting.

Read more: Tourists behaving badly are a threat to global tourism, and the industry is partly to blame

Fundamental concerns are being raised. If tourism is to have a sustainable future, we need to reorient our focus and put the well-being and interests of local residents at the forefront.

Understanding tourism

Tourism is typically understood from two angles. On the one hand, the focus is on the tourists and the nature of their motivations and demand, in the hope of enticing more. On the other is the business side, focused on developing products and services to provide to tourists.

The industry seeks to grow tourism for profits. Governments support the industry for the jobs and revenues it provides. The result has been a relentless growth in tourism in forms that locals have often not appreciated.

Developments like Airbnb are placing tourists in the heart of local neighbourhoods, disrupting the rhythms of daily life. Events are imposed on communities, driving out locals or blighting their quality of life. A case in point is the Newcastle 500 Supercars event, which some locals claim has harmed local businesses and disrupted residents’ lives.

Public assets like the Adelaide Parklands and Australian national parks and World Heritage areas are being commercialised and privatised for tourism developments.

Read more: From Kangaroo Island to the Great Barrier Reef, the paradox that is luxury ecotourism

Shifting the focus to the local community

We could create a different future for tourism if it was reoriented to be centred on the local community. Our recently published research paper redefined tourism as:

The process of local communities inviting, receiving and hosting visitors in their local community, for a limited time duration, with the intention of receiving benefits from such actions.

Such forms of tourism may be offered by commercial businesses or made possible by non-profit organisations. But in this restructure of tourism, tourism operators would be allowed access to the local community’s assets only under their authorisation and stewardship.

The seeds of such a transition to more sustainable forms of tourism are already growing.

Respect and fairness go a long way

Venice provides a good example. In 2017, the authorities launched a #EnjoyRespectVenezia campaign to overcome problems of poor tourist behaviour.

In 2019, Venetian authorities have gone even further by introducing an entry fee this year and, later, a booking system. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said:

We intend to guarantee a better liveability for citizens and, above all, for the residents.

Read more: Cruise lines promise big payouts, but the tourist money stays at sea

But local communities and organisations are not waiting for authorities to act. Community activists are organising to take control of tourism for themselves.

A grassroots initiative from Amsterdam and Venice has resulted in Fairbnb. It’s a social cooperative designed to challenge the damaging and disruptive model of Airbnb. The new platform “provides a community-centred alternative to current vacation rental platforms that prioritises people over profit and offers the potential for authentic, sustainable and intimate travel experiences”.

Like Airbnb, Fairbnb offers a platform to book vacation rentals. The difference is that 50% of revenues will be directed to local community projects. It also has a “one host, one home” policy – only one property on the market for each host – to limit negative impacts on local residential housing markets.

Meanwhile in Australia …

Australia does not have the same level of overtourism that places in Europe are suffering. But pressures are building right around the country from Byron Bay and the Great Ocean Road to our bigger cities like Sydney and Melbourne. Locals are complaining about housing affordability, congested roads and badly behaved tourists.

Read more: Why Australia might be at risk of ‘overtourism’

Australia would benefit from strategies to reorient tourism to local well-being and control. Some promising examples already exist.

Lirrwi Tourism in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, stands out. The Yolngu Aboriginal operators have embraced tourism access but only under a visionary set of guiding principles. These declare “Yolngu have a responsibility to care for country” and “Tourism should never control what happens on country”. It’s an example of tourism on the local community’s terms.

Melbourne’s laneways strategy has demonstrated one way CBD revitalisation, resident well-being and visitor experiences can be brought together for great outcomes.

Tourists can play their part by meeting local communities halfway. In a resource-constrained world the pleasures of tourism must be balanced with some basic responsibilities.

Tourists must gain some basic understanding of local living conditions and shape their travel plans accordingly. The focus must be to give locals the maximum benefits from the visit with the minimum negative impacts. The recent campaign “Helpful or harmful: what sort of traveller are you?” provides a place to start.

The long-term sustainability of tourism depends on ensuring visitors do not wear out their welcome. Reorienting tourism to enhance local well-being is the way forward.

– ref. Rethinking tourism so the locals actually benefit from hosting visitors – http://theconversation.com/rethinking-tourism-so-the-locals-actually-benefit-from-hosting-visitors-116066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Forsyth, Professor of Workplace Law, RMIT University

Very few people saw the Coalition’s win coming. If it was, as opposition leader Bill Shorten contended, “a referendum on wages” then it follows that Australians were content with sluggish wage growth and didn’t want a more substantial pay rise.

But that would be a great oversimplification. Labor had a more ambitious program of workplace reform, part of a much wider agenda for economic change and wealth redistribution, that it simply couldn’t sell to the electorate.

Where does this leave the industrial wing of the labour movement, which pushed the Labor Party to adopt sweeping re-regulation of the labour market?

For two years through its “change the rules” campaign the Australian Council of Trade Unions has had remarkable success in entrenching in public consciousness the twin themes of wage theft and insecure work.

Being ‘broken’ was a broken record

It seemed to have a deliberate strategy of repeating its talking points and examples to reinforce the view that something is “broken” and needs to change.

But it provided very little detail about the type of change it wanted.

Whether it should have provided more or less detail is now very much up for debate as it and the Labor Party try to work out what went wrong on Saturday.

Rather than getting what they wanted, they are both on the defensive. Already business groups are weighing in, urging the Morrison government to “simplify” the industrial relations system and prevent casual workers from “double-dipping” – obtaining both a casual loading and leave entitlements.

Harvey Norman executive chairman Gerry Harvey put it this way on Monday, perhaps revealing something about how he sees his workforce: “The economy works best when all the little ants out there are left to get on and do great things.”

Now it’s up to the Coalition

The Coalition did not advocate workplace law changes in the election campaign. It gained a mandate to do no more than implement the recommendations of the Migrant Workers Taskforce which it accepted back in March. As it happens, they are mostly worker-friendly measures directed at systemic underpayment and other forms of exploitation.

However, given the pressure that is already coming from the business community, don’t be too surprised if the Government dusts off some of the recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s 2015 inquiry into workplace relations.

These include “enterprise contracts” that allow businesses to vary award terms, and a relaxation of the “better off overall test” for enterprise agreements.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission and Registered Organisations Commission will remain in place as “cops on the beat” to combat union power, probably with increased resources.

Unions have a choice of strategies

So what room is there for unions in the new environment? In my view, plenty. The deep problems that “change the rules” and Labor’s policies sought to address haven’t gone away.

We still have a culture of wage theft in many sectors of the economy. We still have a proliferation of dodgy labour hire contractors. We still have misuse of the labour hire business model at companies like Amazon, with many workers trapped in long-term casual engagement. We still have widespread use of rolling fixed-term contracts.

We still have the collapse of effective collective bargaining in much of the private sector, and employer ‘work-arounds’ to avoid negotiating an enterprise agreement or get out of an existing one. We still don’t have the basis for a proper living wage.

Read more: How the major parties stack up on industrial relations policy

As the results unfolded ACTU secretary Sally McManus has made it clear that the union movement would “never give up, never stop fighting for fairness for working people”. That said, it will doubtless revisit the change the rules campaign and its accompanying communications and electoral strategies.

Rather than shrinking back to a “small target”, as Labor is now contemplating in some policy areas, I think the ACTU should consider remaining bold in its vision for workplace reform.

It could prepare a clearly articulated case for “changing the rules” using detailed research that precisely measures the extent of problems employers like to downplay such as insecure work and wage theft.

And it should outline precisely how it wants the rules changed and what those changes would do to working lives.

Read more: Why are unions so unhappy? An economic explanation of the Change the Rules campaign

Of course, campaigning for legal changes can only be one part of the unions’ playbook.

Organising and connecting with workers on the ground in new and innovative ways is also essential, as shown by the United Voice’s new digital union [Hospo Voice] which campaigns against wage theft and sexual harassment in the hospitality industry and the Young Workers Centre and Migrant Workers Centre which are one-stop shops run by the Victorian Trades Hall Council.

As the National Union of Workers and United Voice put it in the context of their current amalgamation proposal: “we need to change the rules, but we also need to change the game”.

Anthony Forsyth blogs on workplace issues at: labourlawdownunder.com.au

– ref. Where to now for unions and ‘change the rules’? – http://theconversation.com/where-to-now-for-unions-and-change-the-rules-117583

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland

Prime Minister Scott Morrison began his victory speech on Saturday with the words, “I have always believed in miracles”. This was no mere hyperbole. Morrison appeared to be declaring his belief that God had actively intervened in the political process to bring about his re-election.

Morrison’s Pentecostal Christian faith is at the centre of his understanding of political life. He invited cameras to film him while worshipping at his church, Horizon, in southern Sydney. And in his maiden speech to Parliament in 2008, he described Pentecostal Hillsong Church leader Brian Houston as his “mentor” and himself as standing for “the immutable truths and principles of the Christian faith”.

In Morrison, the marketing man joins the evangelical preacher. When he tells his listeners, “I will burn for you”, this references the Biblical text, “Never let the fire in your heart go out,” (Romans 12.11). And, if he stays true to his church’s Pentecostal doctrine, he presumably believes in a personal Devil “who, by his influence, brought about the downfall of man”.

What then, are the key aspects of Pentecostal belief that will likely shape Morrison’s actions as a re-elected Prime Minister commanding huge authority in his party?

Miracles

Morrison’s Horizon Church is part of the broader Pentecostal movement that emerged in the United States in the early 20th century. That miracles happen is a central tenet of Pentecostalism. As a religion, it sees itself as re-creating the gifts of the Spirit experienced by the earliest Christian worshippers. Along with the working of miracles, these included speaking in tongues and healings. They remain central features of Pentecostal belief and worship today.

Divine providence

Morrison’s mention of an election miracle coheres with the Pentecostal belief in the divine providence. Put simply, this is the belief that, in spite of the apparent chaos in the world, as the old song puts it, “He’s got the whole world in his hands”.

According to Pentecostal theology, all of history – and the future – is in the control of God; from creation, to the Fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, to the redemption of all in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In turn, this will lead to the second coming of Christ, the end of the world and the final judgement.

This is why further action on reducing carbon emissions to counter the environmental damage wrought by climate change may have little intellectual purchase with the PM. If the end of the world through climate change is part of God’s providential plan, there is precious little that we need to or can do about it.

Prosperity theology

In keeping with his theology, Morrison appears to see himself as chosen by God to lead us all towards his understanding of the promised land, which as we know means, “If you have a go, you get a go”.

This “have a go” philosophy sits squarely within Pentecostal prosperity theology. This is the view that belief in God leads to material wealth. Salvation too has a connection to material wealth – “Jesus saves those who save”. So the godly become wealthy and the wealthy are godly. And, unfortunately, the ungodly become poor and the poor are ungodly.

This theology aligns perfectly with the neo-liberal economic views espoused by Morrison. The consequence is that it becomes a God-given task to liberate people from reliance on the welfare state.

So there is no sense in Pentecostal economics of a Jesus Christ who was on the side of the poor and the oppressed. Nor is there one of rich men finding it easier to pass through the eyes of needles than to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. On the contrary, God helps those who are able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Exclusivism

That said, in some ways, Pentecostalism is pretty light on beliefs. Rather, it stresses an immediate personal connection with God that is the exclusive property of those who are saved. This leads to a fairly binary view of the world. There are the saved and the damned, the righteous and the wicked, the godly and the satanic.

In this Pentecostalist exclusivist view, Jesus is the only way to salvation. Only those who have been saved by Jesus (generally those who have had a personal experience of being “born again” which often happens in church spontaneously during worship) have any hope of attaining eternal life in heaven. At its best, it generates a modesty and humility; at its worst a smugness and arrogance.

So only born-again Christians will gain salvation. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and non-born-again Christians are doomed to spend an eternity in the torments of hell.

Thus, as the website of the Christian group to which Scott Morrison’s Horizon church belongs puts it, “We believe in the everlasting punishment of the wicked (in the sense of eternal torment) who wilfully reject and despise the love of God manifested in the great sacrifice of his only Son on the cross for their salvation”.

Pietism

In principle, the PM’s faith is “pietistic”. It is about the individual’s personal relationship with God. So faith is focused “upwards” on God in the here and now – and the hereafter. The result is that Pentecostalism is weak on the social implications of its beliefs. Social equity and social justice are very much on the back burner.

So you would not expect from a Pentecostalist like Morrison any progressive views on abortion, womens’ rights, LGBTI issues, immigration, the environment, same sex marriage, and so on.

Pentecostalists are not fundamentalists. Unlike them, they are especially concerned with the direct experience of the Holy Spirit as the key to salvation. But like fundamentalists, they believe in the Bible as the inerrant word of God in matters of ethics, science and history.

Thus, they hold to a social conservatism reinforced by an uncritical approach to the Bible, which reveals everything necessary for salvation. It would be difficult, for example, for a Pentecostalist to reject the Biblical teaching that homosexuals were bound for hell. The Prime Minister recently did so. But only after first evading the question and then through very gritted teeth.

– ref. Five aspects of Pentecostalism that shed light on Scott Morrison’s politics – http://theconversation.com/five-aspects-of-pentecostalism-that-shed-light-on-scott-morrisons-politics-117511

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

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen has pulled out of Labor’s leadership race, increasing the pressure for an uncontested run for Anthony Albanese, which would prevent an extended limbo period for the party.

But finance spokesman Jim Chalmers, Albanese’s only potential challenger, was still considering his position overnight. He will announce on Thursday morning whether he will run.

Bowen said he had decided to withdraw because, while he believed he would have a narrow majority in the caucus ballot, Albanese would beat him in the rank-and-file vote by a good margin.

“Hence I have reached the view that it would be unlikely for me to win the [overall] ballot.” The party and caucus ballots have equal weighting.

Chalmers immediately tweeted:

I feel for Chris & I know it would’ve been hard for him to pull out. I’m being encouraged to nominate for leader & I’ll now consider my options overnight. @AustralianLabor needs to rebuild, refresh & renew & I want to play a prominent role in that. What role is to be determined.

Chalmers, from the right, has been receiving support from those who believe the party needs generational change. Also, he is from Queensland, where Labor will have a big challenge in seeking to improve its support.

If he decides not to stand, he would be a strong contender for deputy.

Read more: With the LNP returned to power, is there anything left in Adani’s way?

Labor’s national executive met on Wednesday evening to tick off on dates if there is a contest. Nominations open Thursday and close Monday. If there is more than one candidate, a postal ballot would be held between May 31 and June 27, followed by a caucus ballot on July 1.

Joel Fitzgibbon, who earlier this week threatened to run for leader, threw his support behind Albanese, saying he’d had a long discussion with him “about my demands that the party strengthens its focus on regional Australia”.

“I am satisfied that a Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese will provide that focus and he’ll listen closely to the needs and aspirations of our country people.”

There has been a pile-on of public support from senior Labor figures for Albanese. Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong described him as “the outstanding parliamentarian of our generation”.

“Anthony Albanese knows who he is and he knows what he stands for. He’s a man of authenticity and integrity. He’s got a capacity to speak to people across this great country, to speak to people in the regions and in the outer suburbs as well as in our cities,” she said.

Speaking before Bowen’s withdrawal, Wong was asked about reports Bill Shorten was lobbying on Bowen’s behalf.

She said she would be surprised if that were happening – “it would undermine the unity that Bill has been such an important part in rebuilding”.

Shorten sources said reports of the outgoing leader’s activity (he encouraged Tanya Plibersek and then Bowen to stand) had been “overblown” – these had been the people he’d worked closely with.

Read more: Queensland to all those #Quexiteers: don’t judge, try to understand us

Kristina Keneally, strongly backing Albanese, said Labor “had our backsides handed to us on a platter” on Saturday. Keneally may get the post of deputy Labor leader in the Senate.

Albanese said he believed he had majority support in caucus if there was a contest, and recalled his win in the rank-and-file ballot after the 2013 election.

“So I am confident but not complacent about being able to succeed if another candidate comes forward.”

If he became leader he would bring a different style to the position, he said.

“One of the things I won’t do is walk along to press conferences and make policy announcements without consultation, on the run.

“I won’t be obsessed by the 24-hour media cycle. We will have considered responses. We’ll have respect for caucus processes.”

He said that under his leadership Bowen would have “a critical role”.

In his news conference Bowen, who holds a seat in western Sydney, an area which has a big ethnic vote, made a strong call for the Labor party to give more attention to its attitude to “people of faith”.

He said it needed urgently to deal with “the matter of people of faith in our community not feeling that the Labor Party talks to them”.

He had noticed during the election campaign and afterwards “how often it has been raised with me that people of faith no longer feel that progressive politics cares about them.

“These are people with a social conscience, who want to be included in the progressive movement. We need to tackle this urgently. I think this is an issue from the federal election that we haven’t yet focused on”.

The Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce said that “Albanese would be an incredibly formidable leader of the opposition”, making the next election “vastly more difficult for the Coalition than the one we’ve just had”.

Read more: 3 lessons from behavioural economics Bill Shorten’s Labor Party forgot about

Barnaby Joyce doesn’t expect frontbench spot

The Nationals meet in Canberra on Thursday, with their female representation tripled, from two to six, but the party’s cabinet numbers cut.

The Nationals held all their seats but one – Steve Martin, who joined the Nationals after replacing Jacqui Lambie in the last term, lost his Tasmanian Senate spot. The party room now numbers 21.

The good result has cemented the leadership of Michael McCormack, who had earlier been stalked by former leader Barnaby Joyce.

Joyce told The Conversation on Wednesday that he would like a position on the frontbench but “I don’t expect to get one”.

He said he would not be at the meeting. His partner Vikki Campion is expecting their second child soon.

McCormack chooses the Nationals frontbenchers who go into the Coalition ministry, with the number determined under a formula according to the proportion of seats won by the Liberals and Nationals.

The Nationals had five in the cabinet but are set now to have four under the formula.

What portfolios are allocated to the Nationals is a matter of negotiation between the prime minister and the deputy prime minister.

The new women are Perin Davey (Senate, NSW), Sam McMahon (Senate, NT), Susan McDonald (Senate, Queensland), and Anne Webster (Mallee, Victoria). They join deputy leader Bridget McKenzie and Michelle Landry from Queensland.

Nationals senators have to choose a new Senate leader to replace Nigel Scullion, who retired at the election. But that vote would be delayed – the new Senate does not come in until July 1. The obvious choice would be Matt Canavan, given the other Nationals senators, apart from McKenzie, will all be new.

Thursday’s meeting will discuss the party’s priorities and canvass the Coalition agreement.

– ref. Wind in Albanese’s sails as Chalmers weighs options – http://theconversation.com/wind-in-albaneses-sails-as-chalmers-weighs-options-117621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

After months of “start” and “stop” Adani campaigning, the coalmine is poised to go ahead following the surprise success of the Coalition government at the federal election.

So is anything still stopping the coalmine from being built?

Australia has a federal system of government, but states own coal. This means the Queensland Labor government is responsible for issuing the Adani mining licence.

And there are suggestions pressure is mounting in the state Labor party for the final approvals to be passed.

Strategists have argued the state government must approve the Adani mine if they are to be re-elected next year. One of the reasons Labor lost votes in Queensland may have been because of perceived delays in the approval process by the Queensland Department of Environment and Science.

Read more: View from The Hill: It’s the internal agitators who are bugging Scott Morrison on Adani

Now, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has appointed her coordinator-general to oversee the remaining approvals. In a press conference, she said:

I think that the community is fed up with the processes, I know I’m fed up with the processes, I know my local members are fed up with the processes … We need some certainty and we need some timeframes — enough is enough.

But what has “delayed” the state government so far is its legal duty to make sure the coalmine has an effective plan to manage matters of environmental significance.

Before the election, the federal government already approved two controversial environmental plans – the groundwater management plan and the finch management plan. The only thing left now is for the Queensland Labor government to give its nod of approval.

Not ‘delay tactics’, but a legal duty

The federal government does not have jurisdiction over state resources unless the project impacts matters of national environmental significance.

And the Adani mine is one such project. The mine would remove the habitat of an endangered species and significantly impact vital underground water resources.

This means the project needed to be referred to the federal government.

The aim of this referral was to make sure the environmental assessment process would sufficiently prevent or reduce irreparable damage to the environment.

Read more: Traditional owners still stand in Adani’s way

Generally, in a bilateral arrangement, the federal government authorises the state to conduct an environmental assessment. And this is the framework that has informed the Adani project from the outset.

This is our rule of law, and one that’s in the public interest.

So any suggestion the Queensland government engaged in “delay tactics” when they were carrying out these critical legal responsibilities is inaccurate and misconceives the fundamental legal responsibilities that underlie this process.

There are two more approvals left

There are two outstanding approvals required for the environmental conditions to be satisfied: the black-throated finch environmental management plan and the groundwater environmental management plan.

Black-throated finch

The Queensland government rejected the black-throated finch management plan submitted by Adani last month. This was because the plan did not constitute a management plan at all.

If the finch’s habitat is destroyed by the coalmine, then it’s necessary to outline how this endangered species will be relocated, and how this relocation will be managed.

But the Adani management plan does not do this. Rather than setting up a conservation area for the finch, the Adani plan proposed establishing a cow paddock, which would destroy the grass seeds vital for the survival of the finch.

Clearly this plan does not comply with the environmental condition attached to its licence.

Read more: Why Adani’s finch plan was rejected, and what comes next

Groundwater management

The Queensland Department of Environment and Science is currently reviewing the groundwater management plan and have sought further advice from Geoscience Australia and CSIRO.

Adani must address how the mine will impact the threatened Doongmabulla Springs in the Great Artesian Basin. This involves creating a groundwater model capable of estimating how much groundwater levels will decrease when water is used to extract the coal.

Read more: Unpacking the flaws in Adani’s water management plan

This is important because the basin is a water supply for cattle stations, irrigation, livestock and domestic usage. It also provides vital water supplies to around 200 towns, which are entitled to draw between 100 and 500 million litres of water each year.

Any impact on the underground aquifers that feed into the Great Artesian Basin would not only be devastating for the environment, but also for all the communities that rely on its water resources.

The original groundwater model submitted by Adani was not “suitable to ensure the outcomes sought by the EPBC Act conditions are met”.

It’s unclear whether Adani’s resubmitted groundwater model still under-predicted the impact because the further submissions made by Adani have not been subjected to extensive review at the federal level.

Great care needs to be taken to ensure the expert advice from CSIRO and Geoscience is properly heeded.

The Adani mine is an outlier in the global coal community

The approval of the Adani coalmine comes at a time when the global community is rapidly moving away from coal.

Germany, a pioneer of the mass deployment of wind and solar power generation, announced the phaseout of its 84 coalfired plants.

Britain has just had its first week without coal-fired electricity, and this new energy mix has rapidly become the “new normal”.

Read more: How to transition from coal: 4 lessons for Australia from around the world

But the international coal market is variable. India’s consumption is expected to rise by the end of 2023, but their aim is to reduce coal imports. And China’s coal consumption is projected to fall almost 3%, largely due to the country’s ambitious clean energy plans. What’s more, coal is in decline in the United States and across Europe generally.

The global economy is de-carbonising. As global warming accelerates and cleaner energy options gain more traction, coal will inevitably decline even further.

A hasty post-election approval of the outstanding environmental plans for Adani coalmine would not only conflict with our domestic legal framework, but also the broader imperatives of the international community.

– ref. With the LNP returned to power, is there anything left in Adani’s way? – http://theconversation.com/with-the-lnp-returned-to-power-is-there-anything-left-in-adanis-way-117506

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGorrery, PhD Candidate in Criminal Law, Deakin University

Sentences for most sex offences are getting harsher in Victoria, according to new data released on Wednesday by the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council.

The data are for all cases sentenced in the County Court for certain sex offences over the five-year period from 2013-14 to 2017-18.

Are Victorian courts too lenient?

There is a common perception in Victoria that courts are too lenient on offenders – a perception the courts are well aware of. But demands for harsher sentences are often based on sensational and selective reporting of a small number of cases.

Anyone who watched Peter Kidd, the chief judge of the County Court of Victoria, sentence Cardinal George Pell in March will have noticed he spent over an hour explaining his decision. This is actually a typical duration for a sentencing hearing and demonstrates not just the complexity of the sentencing task in general, but also the care that judges take in explaining the sentence to victims, offenders and the general community.

Read more: Is Victoria’s sentencing regime really more lenient?

Indeed, contrary to the popular belief that courts are too lenient, research with Tasmanian and Victorian juries over the last decade has repeatedly found that when members of the public are given all the information about a case – not just a dramatic snippet – most people would actually impose a lesser sentence than what the judge imposed.

In addition, when jurors were asked if the sentence the judge imposed in their cases was appropriate, nine out of ten said it was.

But there are some exceptions.

When jurors in sex offence trials were asked what sentence they would have imposed – without knowing what sentence the judge had given – half of them said a jail term longer than the judge’s, particularly for offences involving children.

What’s more, when the jurors from those trials were told what sentence the judge had imposed, 83% thought it was too lenient.

Sentences for sex offences getting harsher

The image below shows the median prison sentence and longest prison sentence imposed over the last five years for six specific sex offences. For example, the median prison sentence for a single charge of rape was five years, while the longest prison sentence was 12 years.

The most interesting feature of the latest data released by the Sentencing Advisory Council is that the average sentence imposed for almost all of those offences increased significantly in 2017-18 compared to the average for the four previous years. In particular:

Prison sentences for sexual penetration of a child under 12, however, decreased by 2% (to four years). This is particularly concerning given that the council has previously found that sentences for this offence “re-enforce past norms” and do not reflect community expectations.

The council’s data reveal general trends, but these do not tell the whole story. It doesn’t reveal the many competing factors that judges must balance as part of the sentencing process for every case, such as the impact on the victim, whether the offender pleaded guilty, or whether the offender had mental health or substance abuse issues.

Before these statistics are used to level criticism at the courts, it is important to understand that there are complex stories behind the numbers.

Read more: Sex abuse victims deserve better than media-driven policy

Will sentences keep getting tougher?

Despite these longer average sentences for most sexual offences, many Victorians will likely still view them as not tough enough.

However, this upward trend in sentences is likely to be sustained in the coming years, due to several factors.

First, in late 2017, the High Court held that Victorian courts had been giving too much weight to past sentencing practices and that consistency should be just one of the many factors taken into account in sentencing. It should not be given primacy above other sentencing factors, such as the harm done to victims.

As a result of that High Court decision, Victorian courts have effectively been unshackled from the “gravitational pull” of past sentencing practices, especially in the context of sex offences, and can start imposing harsher sentences when appropriate.

Read more: Mandatory sentencing leads to unjust, unfair outcomes – it doesn’t make us safe

Another factor is the government’s introduction of new standard sentencing laws for offences committed after February 1 2018. These laws require courts to consider imposing longer sentences than those currently being handed out for certain offences, especially sexual offences.

Indeed, the then attorney-general, Martin Pakula, said these laws were expressly intended to “increase sentences”.

We are yet to see the full effect of both of these changes on sentences in the state, but jail terms for sex offences are likely to only continue to increase, becoming more closely aligned with community expectations.

The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

– ref. New data shows sex offenders in Victoria are going to prison for longer – http://theconversation.com/new-data-shows-sex-offenders-in-victoria-are-going-to-prison-for-longer-116957

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Tiernan, Professor of Politics. Dean (Engagement) Griffith Business School, Griffith University

“What the hell is wrong with Queensland?”

Such comments are at the polite end of social media responses from progressive voters in other parts of Australia who were disappointed by the Coalition’s “miracle” win on Saturday.

Putting to one side the fact that the swings against Labor were not much bigger in Queensland than some other parts of the country, and that it had the most marginal seats in the election, the instinct to blame and deride Queensland highlights exactly what went wrong for the ALP.

Contrary to the claims of #Quexiteers, Queenslanders are not all deeply conservative, rusted-on LNP voters, even in central and northern regions. If they were, they wouldn’t have elected Labor governments for 25 of the past 30 years.

Anna Bligh was the first woman in Australia to be elected premier and Annastacia Palaszczuk was the first woman to be elected premier from opposition. Her ministry was the first in Australia to have a female majority. Voters who elected LNP members in Leichhardt, Herbert, Dawson and Capricornia on Saturday voted in ALP members in the 2017 state election in seats like Cook, Cairns, Gladstone, Mackay and Keppel.

The problem for Labor, then, isn’t that Queenslanders don’t like voting Labor. Instead, the federal Labor Party, like the many pundits who predicted an ALP win, seem to have underestimated or misunderstood the variances and nuances of the Queensland electorate.

As the only state where a majority of the population lives outside the capital city, regionalism matters in Queensland in a way it does not elsewhere.

Why Queensland is different

Settlement patterns in Queensland did not mirror other states. Regional towns and cities developed as service centres and ports for the hinterland industries, among them beef, gold, sugar, coal and gas. The first railways in the 1860s ran from the ports in coastal towns to these inland production centres, creating an interdependence not replicated in other parts of the country.

Queensland’s regions, therefore, developed as separate economic entities, with limited connection to the rest of Queensland (including the capital Brisbane), or indeed Australia.

This geography also informs the way people have historically voted. Any threat to the economic viability of hinterland industries had a spillover effect on the regional towns that serviced them.

As regions reliant on export industries, they have been highly susceptible to cycles of boom and bust. Many are still suffering high unemployment and depressed housing prices following a slowdown in mining and the end of the LNG construction boom in and around Gladstone. Frequent natural disasters have compounded their difficulties.

Read more: The myth of ‘the Queensland voter’, Australia’s trust deficit, and the path to Indigenous recognition

As a result, Queensland governments have had to be highly responsive to the interests and fears of diverse communities.

The national focus of federal politics, however, is less conducive to understanding the differences between, say, Cairns and Clermont, Caboolture and Charleville. This hurt both Labor and the Coalition in the recent federal election, as evidenced by the rise in first preferences to minor parties like One Nation and the United Australia Party.

Labor suffered more, though, due to its policy-rich campaign platform focused mainly on metropolitan, first-time home buyers and environmentalists. This did not signal to regional Australians, particularly those in Queensland, that their concerns had been heard.

Who is representing the workers?

Queensland has a proud place in Labor history. The Labor movement was born under the Tree of Knowledge in Barcaldine in 1891. The state also elected the world’s first Labor government in 1899. To characterise Queensland as regressive and redneck is to deny its historic and contemporary relationship with the Labor Party and workers.

It may be that working Queenslanders no longer see their lives or aspirations reflected in the federal Labor Party and its leadership. The pathway that Andrew Fisher and Ben Chifley took, for example, from engine driver to prime minister has gone the way of the poisoned Tree of Knowledge. Labor is now dominated by professional political operatives drawn from the knowledge and professional classes – the group Bill Shorten personified.

Read more: State of the states: Queensland and Tasmania win it for the Coalition

When workers couldn’t see their concerns and fears reflected in Labor policies, they parked their vote with the permanent voices of disaffection – Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer. And in the federal election those parties’ preferences flowed strongly to the LNP.

In the marginal seats of Flynn, Capricornia, Dawson, Forde and Petrie, the LNP’s primary vote scarcely moved. After preferences, however, swings to the LNP ranged from 5.7% in Flynn to 11.1% in Capricornia and 11.4% in Dawson, with votes still to be counted as of Wednesday.

Concerns of the ‘neglected classes’

Labor paid the electoral price for misjudging Queensland, but it was far from alone in doing so. Analysts and commentators, predominantly those south of the Tweed, indulged in the smug chauvinism of tired stereotypes. Social media lit up, exposing the cultural and political divide between urban, regional and rural Australia that journalist Gabrielle Chan documented in her recent book, Rusted Off: Why Country Australia is Fed Up.

Chan describes the “neglected classes” – Australians locked out of opportunity by economic and social shifts, as well as a lack of technology, in the nation’s left-behind places. An index of prosperity and distress in Australian localities developed by the Centre of Full Employment and Equity identifies the seats of Hinkler, Wide Bay, Kennedy, Maranoa, Flynn and Capricornia in Queensland among the most economically distressed in the nation. Dawson, Blair, Longman, Herbert and Rankin are classified as “high risk”.

Read more: Adani aside, North Queensland voters care about crime and cost of living

Another index developed by Griffith University researchers identifies Gladstone, Logan (encompassing the marginal seat of Forde retained by the LNP) and Far North Queensland as “hotspots” of energy poverty, meaning they lack access to affordable energy services.

The prevailing discourse in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne that this was the “climate change” election obscured the role that economic insecurity and disadvantage might have played in shifting votes to One Nation and United Australia, which flowed as preferences to the Coalition.

Lessons for the future

What, then, can we learn from the 2019 federal election? For one, we need a better way of understanding the needs and interests of all Australians in election campaigns and developing a nuanced sense of local contexts and concerns.

Griffith University’s data dashboard and our coverage of Queensland seats sought to ensure more informed reporting of the campaign than we have come to expect from the national media and commentators, whose lack of knowledge of different parts of Queensland seldom tempers their opinions.

Another important take-home is that federalism matters – perhaps more than ever. Australia’s federal framework was premised on the principle of subsidiarity – that decision-making should be devolved to the most local level possible.

National governments, by their nature, are homogenising. Political elites often strive to force states and regions to conform to a one-size-fits-all national policy approach, usually driven from the top down.

Labor’s experience in Queensland, however, suggests that local governments are better placed to accommodate regional differences and try to balance competing influences and perspectives.

Federalism was not mentioned once in the 2019 federal election campaign, but the result in Queensland suggests the need to rethink and reconceptualise the role the national government plays in a contemporary federation. This could help foster a political culture that is more responsive to, and respectful of, all parts of Australia – including and perhaps especially Queensland.

– ref. Queensland to all those #Quexiteers: don’t judge, try to understand us – http://theconversation.com/queensland-to-all-those-quexiteers-dont-judge-try-to-understand-us-117502

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Cummings, Lecturer in Singing, University of Wollongong

Classical music has traditionally not been a welcoming environment for women composers. Opera Australia’s 2019 season, for instance, features just one work by a female composer, Elena Kats-Chernin.

At a recent New Opera Workshop, held in Brisbane in April, numerous prominent composers and artists (both female and male) put forward a united call for action from the opera sector. “We want to decolonise the distribution of power so that the stories … of women and all people with diverse voices resonate equally with that of men”, they said in part.

Despite the exclusion of their creative work from mainstream opera companies, Australian women are creating spaces for themselves: writing music that tackles issues such as colonisation and misogyny and breathing new life into vocal styles.

Andrée Greenwell is an Australian composer exploring the expressive possibilities of voice to tell female centred stories. In her most recent work, Listen to Me, created for radio and podcast, women speak about gendered violence.

In this collection of songs, words and music, words take precedence, without sacrificing the aching beauty of the richly melodic writing. The recording and mixing of Listen To Me gives the clarity and feeling of intimate speech – in contrast to traditional classical singing, which prioritises beauty of tone over intelligibility of the word.

Among the words featured are those of Clementine Ford and Candy Royalle, two public figures who have stood up for women and been subject to sustained sexist abuse as a result. Candy Royalle writes about struggling to be heard in the media space: “We wrap our tongues around our ancestors stories which intermingle with our own new lives and cannot be silenced, no matter how hard, how sustained the attack on our voices.”

Another, Australian poet and cultural commentator Alison Croggon has powerfully described the under-representation of female voices in the performing arts in general. It means, she says, that “the same stories, the same viewpoints, the same assumptions, the same tropes, continue to dominate our representations of humanity, sexuality, relationships and power. And these representations reinforce the behaviours that in turn force women out of these industries. It’s the definition of a vicious circle”.

Greenwell’s vocal writing is also exploring new territory, with a contemporary classical style that is influenced by renaissance and folk song. It has something in common with minimalist composers like David Lang and American composers and singers Caroline Shaw of Roomful of Teeth and Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond.

Indigenous stories

For Indigenous Australians, classical music has never been an arena to tell their own stories. However, Yorta Yorta composer and soprano Deborah Cheetham is committed to using classical forms such as opera, oratorio and song as vehicles for Indigenous stories and performers.

Pecan Summer, an opera based on the story of the 1939 Cummeragunga Mission walk off, was written by Cheetham. After auditioning Indigenous opera singers across Australia for two years, she has established a training and support program for them.

Cheetham uses centuries old European classical music forms to tell Indigenous stories that are thousands of years old. She is writing works in the world’s oldest living languages and giving voice to stories that have been suppressed or little known.

She is also writing in a form that have been notorious for excluding and suppressing the work of women composers – depicting female characters as mad, dangerous, cunning, virtuous, stupid and rarely the authors of their own destiny. As Susan McClary has written: “Operas … offer up the female as spectacle … while guaranteeing she doesn’t step out of line.”

Cheetham has followed Pecan Summer with a Requiem inspired by one of the most brutal resistance wars fought in Australia, The Eumeralla Wars between European squatters and Gunditjmara people in south west Victoria. Eumeralla, A War Requiem for Peace is sung entirely in the language of the Gunditjmara. It will have its Melbourne Premiere next month with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Cheetham says of this requiem for her people:

Unlike other theatres of war, such as ANZAC Cove and the Somme, where peace was declared and relationships restored with the Turkish and the Germans, no such peace was declared in the resistance wars: no such restoration.

Cheetham is adapting traditional musical forms such as opera, oratorio and art song, while placing women at the centre of the stories. She is reinventing old musical forms with rich, soaring melodies that touch the heart and inhabit the body.

Other women

There are many other women reshaping classical music. Sound artist Jo Truman, a composer/performer who is one of Australia’s leading experimental artists working and composing for voice says: “I felt empowered and embodied by singing … I wasn’t singing songs; my body was a physical score and I could draw feelings and landscape out of it.”

Musician, pianist, educator, conductor and composer Sally Whitwell has won two ARIA awards for her recordings of Philip Glass and Michael Nyman while challenging distinctions between high and low art, serious and light music.

While Greenwell and Cheetham explore the power of words and narrative, in her work Speechless, composer Cat Hope uses the visceral quality of sound and wordless voice to explore the lack of action on the 2014 Australian Human rights Commission report “The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention”.

John Potter, an early music and contemporary music specialist and member of the Hilliard Ensemble among others, has argued that classical singing has become standardised and moribund. Its future, he argues, lies in finding room for a wider range of voices, and of vocal styles.

These Australian women composers are doing just that – and asking urgent questions about our nation in the process.

Eumeralla, a War Requiem for Peace will be performed on Saturday June 15 2019 at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall.

– ref. In a notoriously sexist art form, Australian women composers are making their voices heard – http://theconversation.com/in-a-notoriously-sexist-art-form-australian-women-composers-are-making-their-voices-heard-108991

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Baxter, Researcher/PhD Candidate, criminology and human trafficking, Flinders University

Born in rural Thailand, Watcharaporn Nantahkhum gave birth to her first child at the age of 17. Her father killed himself when she was young, to absolve the family of debt. Her mother later ran into debt, and arrangements were made for her to travel to Australia, to earn money to support her family. She knew she would be working in the sex industry, however, at 37 years of age, she had been sold.

Details of the conditions she put up with in a Sydney brothel were later revealed in a Canberra court. They were severe. She was a virtual prisoner, not allowed to leave unsupervised. Being older than the other sex workers, she could not refuse clients, nor insist they use a condom.

We know her story, however, not because she was a victim of human trafficking. In 2012 she became the first person in the Australian Capital Territory to be convicted of possessing a slave.

Read more: Fact check: How many people are enslaved in the world today?

By 2007, just three years after being trafficked, she herself became a trafficker. Ultimately charged with six offences relating to two victims, she was sentenced to eight years, 10 months in prison (reduced on appeal to six years, 10 months).

Her trajectory is far from unique. Since 2004, 20 people have been convicted of human trafficking-related crimes in Australia. Of those, nine have been women, with six of them having a history of some form of sexual victimisation.

Does such a history aggravate or mitigate involvement in human trafficking? My research indicates some judges in Australia appear to take the former view – that someone who knows what it’s like to be exploited has no excuse to exploit others.

But I suggest that their history of victimisation is important. Because they were once themselves exploited as the trafficked victim, their offending behaviour needs to be understood within the context of their victimisation.

Victims turned victimisers

We tend to think human trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation is perpetrated by men against women and girls. But the high proportion of women among those convicted of trafficking in Australia echoes an international trend. The United Nations notes women comprise a large share of convicted offenders compared with most other crimes.

In three of the Australian cases, the offenders (all from Thailand) came into the country in remarkably similar ways to their victims. They were were lured with promises of making large amounts of money. They incurred a debt for the trafficking arrangements, and were effectively held captive.

After they paid their debt, they stayed and continued to work in the sex industry. Then they made the transition from victim to offender, by profiting from other women being trafficked and prostituted.

The judges who sentenced these three women drew attention to what the offenders experienced as victims of sex trafficking and then helped perpetrate on others.

As Justice Richard Refshauge said in sentencing Nantahkhum: “This has both positive and negative elements to it as far as sentencing is concerned. She knew what it was like to be constrained in this way […] She should have known that this was not the way to conduct such a business.”

A question of free choice

The issue of victims who become victimisers is a complex one. Certainly many victims do not become offenders, but research points to earlier experiences of victimisation being strongly associated with later offending. This victim-offender overlap has been recognised in other areas, for example, intimate partner violence.

To what extent we judge and punish someone for their offences depends on the degree to which society believes it necessary to serve justice, signal abhorrence of certain behaviour and judges the offender responsible for their own actions.

In the three cases of trafficked women turning traffickers that I looked closely at, the sentencing judgements assume a choice freely exercised. All three had, after all, been released from their previous situations of exploitation. They were free to begin a life, away from away from the exploitation other people. Why didn’t they, apart from sheer greed?

But how free were these women really?

They had limited education – particularly in English, limited opportunities and limited experience – except of course, of sex work and the trafficking business.

Read more: What it’s like to live and work illegally in Australia

Appearing to defend the offender is contentious. I do not suggest these women should be released of all culpability of their crimes. But these women were not always offenders. It’s possible, had they not been trafficked, they would not have become traffickers. Their victimisation does not excuse their offending, but nor does their offending erase that victimisation.

The structure of our criminal courts is not designed to grapple with a person being both a victim and an offender, or both innocent and guilty. Their function can thus obscure or overlook complexities, and contribute to a wider system failure.

We need to understand the events that led these women to exploit others to help break the cycle of exploitation.

– ref. Sex trafficking’s tragic paradox: when victims become perpetrators – http://theconversation.com/sex-traffickings-tragic-paradox-when-victims-become-perpetrators-115706

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keiran Hardy, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University

On Tuesday, the gunman in the Christchurch mosque shootings was charged with committing a terrorist act. The new charge came more than two months after the massacre.

The gunman, who the author and The Conversation have chosen not to name, had already faced 50 charges of murder and 40 charges of attempted murder stemming from the attacks. An additional murder charge was also brought on Tuesday, bringing the total to 51.

So, why was the terrorism charge added at this later stage? And why is it significant?

Difficulties using the terrorism law

The terrorism charge is unprecedented because the offence of committing a terrorist act has never been prosecuted successfully in New Zealand. The offence is found in Section 6A of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 (NZ), which was enacted by the New Zealand parliament in response to the 9/11 terror attacks in the US.

The offence relies on a statutory definition of terrorism, which is found in Section 5. To constitute a terrorist act, the conduct must include the following:

• be carried out for the purpose of advancing an ideological, political, or religious cause
• be intended to induce terror in a civilian population, or to unduly compel or force a government or international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act
• cause one in a list of specified harms, including death, serious bodily injury, a serious risk to health or safety, serious property damage, or serious interference with an infrastructure facility.

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

On face value, it is clear the shootings at the two mosques in March, which left 51 people dead, amounted to terrorism.

The delay in bringing the terrorism charge was likely due to the fact New Zealand police and prosecutors needed sufficient time to ensure they could prepare a successful case. The definition of terrorism creates additional hurdles compared to a murder charge, and New Zealand authorities have faced difficulties using the Terrorism Suppression Act in the past.

In 2007, for instance, New Zealand police arrested a group of environmental activists running military-style training camps in the Urewera forest on the eastern side of the North Island. The raids were known as “Operation Eight.”

No terrorism charges were brought in that case, even though there was evidence that some members of the group intended to harm innocent people. The possibility of a terrorism charge was explored, but New Zealand’s solicitor-general concluded that the law was “unnecessarily complex, incoherent, and … almost impossible to apply.” Four of the 17 activists were eventually convicted of firearms offences.

More recently, two other recent cases – one involving letters laced with poison and another involving the publication of jihadist material – also could have been plausibly prosecuted as terrorism. However, likely due to the solicitor-general’s previous advice, the offenders were charged instead with criminal blackmail and disseminating objectionable material (a charge commonly used for child pornography).

Read more: Explainer: trial of alleged perpetrator of Christchurch mosque shootings

It is not clear why the solicitor-general considered the terrorism law so difficult to apply after Operation Eight, as most of the evidence is not publicly available. The definition of terrorism is very similar to that found in Australia, as both laws are based on UK legislation. However, there is a greater focus in the New Zealand law on international terrorism conventions, which may make it harder to apply to domestic acts of terrorism.

More likely, it may have been difficult in that case to fit environmental activism within the definition of a political, religious or ideological motive because there is a presumption against legitimate protest falling within the law. In addition, there were significant concerns around police use of force and racial motives against the mostly Maori offenders.

Prosecutors will not likely face the same difficulties in applying the terrorism laws to the Christchurch massacre, where the intention to cause harm and the attacker’s motivations (as outlined in his manifesto) are obvious.

However, the prosecution may still be risky if it gives the gunman a platform to espouse his extremist views. He would still be able to do this while facing a murder charge alone, but a terrorism trial will carry added weight and the prosecutors will need to admit evidence about his ideological motives.

Why is a terrorism charge important?

There is no added practical benefit to charging the gunman with terrorism in addition to murder. A maximum penalty of life imprisonment was already possible with the murder charges.

However, the choice to bring a terrorism charge is not simply a practical one. The criminal law is said to have two purposes: a practical one (to put dangerous people in prison) and a moral one (to denounce conduct that is morally unacceptable).

Adding this charge signals to the wider community that the massacre was an act terrorism and will be punished as such. This may give victims, too, some degree of closure, if the offender is sent to prison for committing a terrorist act.

Read more: The ‘Christchurch Call’ is just a start. Now we need to push for systemic change

Labels are also particularly important in this case given that it was an act of terrorism by a white supremacist against Muslim worshippers. Had prosecutors only pursued the murder charges, they may have been criticised for a double standard. Acts of violence by Islamist extremists are commonly treated as terrorism, even if they result in far fewer fatalities.

In other words, bringing a terrorism charge is a trade-off: there’s a risk of giving the gunman a platform, but also a need to denounce the massacre for what it was – an act of terrorism.

This charge sends a clear signal that political or religious violence against innocent people is abhorrent and will be punished as terrorism, no matter its colour or ideology.

– ref. Charging the Christchurch mosque attacker with terrorism could be risky – but it’s important – http://theconversation.com/charging-the-christchurch-mosque-attacker-with-terrorism-could-be-risky-but-its-important-117513

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology Sydney

Australia’s lowest ever Reserve Bank cash rate – 1.5% – is about to be consigned to history.

On Tuesday Governor Philip Lowe made it clear that he plans to cut it in two weeks time. The money market cash rate (from which all other rates derive) will then fall to 1.25%.

After that, if betting in the market is right he will cut the cash rate to just 1% by Christmas.

Speaking in Brisbane Dr Lowe said the Reserve Bank board was of the view that:

inflation was likely to remain low relative to the target, and that a decrease in the cash rate would likely be appropriate.

A lower cash rate would support employment growth and bring forward the time when inflation is consistent with the target. Given this assessment, at our meeting in two weeks’ time, we will consider the case for lower interest rates.

The bank is forecasting a tick up in economic growth from the present 2.3% to 2.75% by the end of the year and a fairly steady unemployment rate.

But here’s the thing. He was keen to emphasise that those forecasts only applied if he cut rates twice this year – that’s twice, before the end of the year.

Reserve Bank cash rate since 1990

He is planning to do it because the economy is weak, much weaker than his political masters suggested during the election campaign. Consumer spending is “unusually soft”.

Over the past three years, household disposable income has increased at an average rate of just 2¾ per cent. This compares with an average of 6 per cent over the preceding decade.

As this period of weak income growth has persisted, it has become harder for households to dismiss it as just a temporary development – as something that will pass quickly. The lower rate of income growth has also made it harder for households to pay down debt. The end result has been that many people have decided to adjust their spending plans.

The cuts are just the start

It isn’t much good cutting interest rates if mortgage rates don’t follow. That will be up to the banks. But until this week, even if they had passed it on, there would have been so many would-be borrowers it wouldn’t have helped.

That’s because, whatever the interest rate, and lately new mortgages have been going for 4.5% or lower, and whatever a would-be borrower’s ability to make payments, banks have generally refused to lend to anyone who couldn’t cope with a rate of 7.25%.

It’s been the doing of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority – one of the Reserve Bank’s sister organisations. It regulates banks and super funds and other institutions in order to keep the financial system stable.

In December 2014 it directed the institutions it supervises to impose serviceability assessments that incorporated a buffer of at least two percentage points above the loan product rate they were offering and a minimum floor rate of at least 7%.

That meant that if new mortgage rates were 5%, as they were at the time, the lenders had to satisfy themselves that the borrower could cope with 7%. As new mortgage rates fell to 4.5% they still had to satisfy themselves that the borrower could cope with 7%.

Banks have needed unreasonably high buffers

APRA’s directive stated that “prudent practice would be to maintain a buffer and floor rate comfortably above these levels”, meaning that in practice most lenders wouldn’t lend to anyone who wasn’t able to cope with the mortgage rate climbing to 7.25%, no matter how unlikely that was becoming.

On Tuesday this week, a few hours before Governor Lowe delivered his speech, it wrote to the institutions again, telling them that

the low interest rate environment is now expected to persist for longer than originally envisaged. This may mean that the gap between actual rates paid and the floor rate may become unnecessarily wide.

It was proposing to remove “reference to a specific 7% floor”.

The required serviceability buffer would climb from 2% to 2.5%, and it would no longer expect lenders to use a rate “comfortably above” that buffer.

Soon, they’ll be able to lend more…

While strictly speaking the letter notified lenders of a one month consultation period, what it really did was notify them that the changes were about to be implemented.

In recent months most new mortgage rates have been below 4.5%, with some high quality borrowers able to get rates as low as 3.6%.

The new arrangements will allow banks to assess them on their ability to make payments on a 6% to 7% loan instead of a 7.25% loan.

Should the next two cash rate cuts be passed on, it would allow them to assess lenders on their ability to repay a 5.5% to 6.5% loan.

It would represent a substantial easing of credit standards for new borrowers.

..up to 10% more

My calculations suggest it would increase the borrowing capacity of home buyers by as much as 10%, enough to have a material positive impact on the housing market.

APRA’s move (almost certainly taken in consultation with the Reserve Bank) both makes a cut in the Reserve Banks’s cash rate less imperative and more potent.

As interest rates get lower, further cuts seem to have been losing their ability to get people and businesses spending and borrowing, something the Governor would have been thinking of when he referred in his speech to the “limitations” of relying on just one instrument to boost the economy.

Read more: Their biggest challenge? Avoiding a recession

It would also be up to the government to provide “additional fiscal support” (which means extra spending or tax cuts” including through spending on infrastructure and “policies that support firms expanding, investing and employing people”.

The first of his rate cuts, due in a fortnight, will have more impact than it would have had APRA not acted.

Or perhaps not as much as he would have hoped if the banks, carrying big costs as a result of the misdeeds uncovered in the royal commission, don’t pass it all on.

– ref. Cutting interest rates is just the start. It’s about to become much, much easier to borrow – http://theconversation.com/cutting-interest-rates-is-just-the-start-its-about-to-become-much-much-easier-to-borrow-117500

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Carey, Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences, University of Tasmania

Predicting when a volcano will next blow is tricky business, but lessons we learned from one of Hawaii’s recent eruptions may help.

Kīlauea, on the Big Island of Hawai’i, is probably the best understood volcano on Earth. That’s thanks to monitoring and gathered information that extends back to the formation of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in 1912.

The volcano is also subject to the world’s most technologically advanced geophysical monitoring network.

Read more: From Kilauea to Fuego: three things you should know about volcano risk

From the skies, satellites collect data that show the changing topography of the volcano as magma moves throughout the internal magma plumbing system. Satellites also look at the composition of volcanic gases.

From the ground, volcanologists use a number of highly sensitive chemical and physical tools to further understand the structure of that magma plumbing system. This helps to study the movement of magma within the volcano.

Earthquakes and vibrations

A lynch pin of volcano monitoring is seismicity – how often, where and when earthquakes occur. Magma movement within the volcano triggers earthquakes, and putting together the data on their location (a technique known as triangulation) tracks the path of magma underground.

A newer technique, seismic interferometry, uses vibrations of energy from ocean waves hitting the distant shorelines that then travel through the volcano.

Changes in the speed of these vibrations help us map the 3D footprint of the volcano’s magma plumbing system. We can then detect when, and in some cases how, the magma plumbing system is changing.

This monitoring provides the “pulse” of the volcano during times of inactivity – a baseline from which to detect change during volcanic unrest. This proved invaluable for early warning, and the prediction of where and when, of the eruption of Kīlauea on May 3, 2018.

The “pulse” of Kīlauea includes cycles of volcano inflation (bulging) and deflation (contraction) as magma moves into and out of the storage region at the summit of the volcano.

The speeds of vibrations travelling through the volcano are predictable during observations of inflation/deflation cycles. When the volcano bulges, the vibrations travel faster through the volcano as rock and magma is compressed. When the volcano contracts these speeds decrease.

We describe this relationship between the two sets of data – the bulging/contraction and the faster/slower speed of vibrations – as coupled.

Something changed

Compared to our baseline, we saw the coupled data shift 10 days before the Kīlauea eruption on May 3. That told scientists the magma plumbing system had changed in a significant way.

The volcano was bulging due to the buildup of pressure inside the magma chamber, but the seismic waves were slowing down quite dramatically, instead of speeding up.

Our interpretation of this data was that the summit magma chamber was not able to sustain the pressure from an increasing magma supply – the bulge was too big. Rock material started to break around the summit magma chamber.

Breakage of the rocks perhaps then led to changes of the summit magmatic system so that more magma could more easily arrive at the eruption site about 40km away.

As well as Kīlauea, such coupled data sets are regularly collected, investigated and interpreted in terms of magma transport at other volcanoes globally. Sites include Piton de la Fournaise on Reunion Island, and Etna volcano, Italy.

But our modelling was the first to demonstrate these changes in the coupled data relationship could occur due to weakening of the material inside the volcano before an eruption.

The damage model that we applied can now be used for other volcanoes in a state of unrest. This adds to the toolbox volcanologists need to predict the when and where of an impending eruption.

So much data, we need help

When volcanoes are in a heightened state of unrest, the volume of information available from digital data and ground observations is extreme. Scientists tend to rely on observational monitoring first, and other data when time and extra people are available.

But the total amount of incoming data (such as from satellites) is overwhelming, and scientists simply can’t keep up. Machine learning might be able to help us here.

Artificial intelligence is the new kid on the block for eruption prediction. Neural networks and other algorithms can use high volumes of complex data and “learn” to distinguish between different signals.

Read more: How the dinosaurs went extinct: asteroid collision triggered potentially deadly volcanic eruptions

Automated early alert systems of an impending eruption using sensor arrays exist for some volcanoes today, for example at Etna volcano, Italy. It’s likely that artificial intelligence will make these systems more sophisticated in the future.

Early detection sounds wonderful for authorities charged with public safety, but many volcanologists are wary.

If they lead to multiple false alarms then that could slash trust in scientists for both managers of volcanic crises and the public alike.

– ref. The ‘pulse’ of a volcano can be used to help predict its next eruption – http://theconversation.com/the-pulse-of-a-volcano-can-be-used-to-help-predict-its-next-eruption-117005

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Two big media-related issues have emerged from the federal election: how opinion polls are reported and the polarisation of the main newspaper groups.

Opinion polls have been part of Australia’s political landscape for 90 years, and for most of that time they have been reliable barometers of public opinion.

As a result, they have acquired considerable credibility. Malcolm Turnbull weaponised this for political purposes when he justified his challenge to Tony Abbott’s prime ministership in 2015 on the basis that Abbott had lost 30 consecutive Newspolls.

It was a gross lapse of judgment.

Not only did it set up Turnbull to be judged by the same criterion – as duly happened last year when he lost his 31st Newspoll – but he chose precisely the wrong time to elevate public opinion polls to the status of prime ministerial kingmaker.

Read more: Coalition wins election but Abbott loses Warringah, plus how the polls got it so wrong

Public opinion polls have been living on borrowed time since mobile phones began to displace household fixed-line phones, a gradual but inexorable process over a couple of decades.

Without digressing too far into the complexities of sampling, it is now difficult, time-consuming and expensive to generate a genuinely random sample of voters.

Telephone polling, introduced in the 1980s, originally drew its samples from the Telstra list of fixed-line numbers – in other words, from the White Pages. There is no equivalent available list of mobile phones so, for practical purposes, drawing a genuine random sample has become impossible.

To cope with these realities, polling organisations have adopted somewhat makeshift sampling and interviewing procedures, drawing on various combinations of fixed-line phones, mobile phones, large panels of available respondents, and robo-polling.

This in turn raises questions about the validity of statements about sampling error, something the election results brought home with a thump.

Yet the media have carried on reporting the polls as if nothing has changed.

Poll results still make banner headlines. Stories are still written on the basis that the data are as good as they have always been.

The public, accustomed to the longstanding reliability of Australian polls, do not know and are not told that this is nonsense.

Polls are useful and interesting stories, but the reporting of them needs to change.

There needs to be greater transparency about how a poll’s sampling and interviewing are done. The way a poll is done – whether it is a human being or a machine asking the questions, for instance – is significant.

The public is also entitled to know that today’s polls have limitations that polls of the past did not have. They are more indicative and less precise, so statements about sampling error need to be qualified accordingly.

And as the main newspapers have become more partisan, so the reporting of polls has shifted from straightforward accounts of the data to stories dominated by analysis, comment or wishful thinking on the part of the writer or the editor.

Partisanship in the media, especially the newspapers, has always been with us, but analyses by Media Watch and The New Daily show it reached extreme levels in this election.

Read more: Mounting evidence the tide is turning on News Corp, and its owner

An audit of metropolitan newspaper front pages by Media Watch showed a heavy anti-Labor bias by News Corp papers, and a roughly equivalent – but less strident – pro-Labor bias by the old Fairfax (now Nine) newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

The New Daily analysed three nights of Sky News coverage – April 30, May 1 and 2 – and found gross anti-Labor bias:

News Corp’s unconstrained anti-Labor bias cannot account entirely for Labor’s disastrous showing, but common sense says it accounts for some.

For example, the company has a daily newspaper monopoly in Brisbane through The Courier-Mail. It was virulently anti-Labor and Labor did astonishingly badly in Queensland. Coincidence? Possibly, but unlikely.

If Australia had a half-decent system of media accountability, there would be a public inquiry into the increasing polarisation of Australian newspapers and into the conduct of Sky at night.

However, the newspaper industry’s self-regulator, the Australian Press Council, relies on the two big newspaper organisations for nearly all its funding, so the chances of having such an inquiry approach zero.

And the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Media and Communications Authority, has never shown the slightest interest in reviewing the way commercial television and radio cover elections.

So in an age where polarisation is undermining democracies around the world, Australia is stuck with an increasingly polarised media, a highly concentrated media ownership landscape and no apparent way to do anything about it.

– ref. Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation – http://theconversation.com/outrage-polls-and-bias-2019-federal-election-showed-australian-media-need-better-regulation-117401

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sacha Kendall, Post-doctoral research fellow in public health, University of Technology Sydney

Aboriginal women are the fastest growing prison population in Australia. They comprise around one-third of female prisoners in New South Wales, despite making up just 3% of the population. The majority of Aboriginal women in prison (more than 80%) are mothers.

Our research team interviewed 43 Aboriginal mothers in six prisons across NSW about their physical and mental health and well-being. We found they were overwhelmingly unable to access culturally appropriate treatments for their mental health, well-being and substance use issues.

These circumstances compounded the poor health and well-being of Aboriginal mothers, and in some instances triggered or exacerbated mental health problems.

Read more: Three charts on: Australia’s booming prison population

A cycle of trauma and incarceration

The mothers we interviewed said intergenerational trauma and the forced removal of their children by government services were the most significant factors affecting their health and well-being.

Mothers recounted their own and their relatives’ experiences of being removed from their families as children, as part of the Stolen Generations, painting a picture of longstanding and ongoing intergenerational trauma.

In prison, many of the Aboriginal mothers experienced significant distress due to the trauma of separation from children combined with the stress of the prison environment. Trauma is associated with high rates of co-occurring mental health disorders.

Many mothers had children in the care of family members, but the long distances between the prison and the family’s home made regular contact extremely difficult.

Phone contact in prison was also difficult if the mothers did not have the money to use the prison phones.

Mothers whose children had been taken by government services were reliant on government caseworkers to facilitate their children’s visits. Many mothers reported that these visits were rare, even though they had been ordered by the court. Mothers worried that their children would not be returned to them.

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

Some Aboriginal women use substances to cope with past trauma. But this is seen as a law and order issue rather than a health problem or coping method of last resort because they haven’t been able to access services to address intergenerational trauma.

This further increases risk of contact with the criminal justice system and leads to deterioration of mental health and well-being. But no action is taken to address these underlying causes of discrimination and incarceration.

As a result, more than 80% of Aboriginal mothers in prison in NSW report their offences are drug-related. Aboriginal women are more likely to be charged and imprisoned for minor offences than non-Aboriginal women. Consequently, Aboriginal women often cycle through the prison system on shorter sentences or remand (unsentenced) and experience multiple incarcerations.

This compounds intergenerational trauma and cycles of incarceration. It creates another generation of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their mothers as well as separating Aboriginal mothers from their families and communities.

Poor physical and mental health

The mothers in our study reported having multiple physical health problems too.

Some had sustained injuries caused by family violence. Head injuries produced ongoing symptoms such as head pain, blurred vision, and memory loss, which made it more difficult to access treatment.

The mothers reported a high occurrence of reproductive health problems including endometriosis, ovarian cysts, precancerous changes of the cervix, and cervical cancer. The mothers highlighted the links between reproductive health problems and trauma, injury, and poor social and emotional well-being.

Many of the women reported extensive waiting times to access treatment and support, which exacerbated these problems.

Read more: Acknowledge the brutal history of Indigenous health care – for healing

Many women who had been taking medication that had been effective for a mental health problem in the community, for example prescription medication for anxiety, were not able to continue on that medication on admission to prison.

They were forced to withdraw from it and wait, sometimes weeks, to see a prison psychiatrist, presenting a serious and imminent risk to their stability, health and well-being.

What can be done?

The incarceration of Aboriginal mothers is a serious public health issue. The gross over-representation of Aboriginal women in prison reflects the inequity and discrimination they face, and the failure of multiple systems to address their needs and divert them from prison.

We urgently need culturally informed approaches to address the health and well-being of Aboriginal mothers in prison and after release to stop ongoing cycles of incarceration and child removal.

The mothers in our study highlighted the need for culturally appropriate services in the community that promote healing for intergenerational trauma. This includes an Aboriginal women’s healing and drug and alcohol service, long-term housing, trauma-informed counselling, and facilities specifically to support Aboriginal women in regaining access to their children.

Aboriginal mothers know what it means to be healthy and stay healthy, but too often do not have access to culturally safe services to support them in their mothering, to realise their health goals, and to remain out of prison and in the community.

Read more: Babies and toddlers are living with their mums in prison. We need to look after them better

– ref. Aboriginal mothers are incarcerated at alarming rates – and their mental and physical health suffers – http://theconversation.com/aboriginal-mothers-are-incarcerated-at-alarming-rates-and-their-mental-and-physical-health-suffers-116827