New research shows that despite differences in their funding commitments, major political parties in Australia – the Coalition, Labor and the Greens – see science and technology as important aspects of our economy and future prosperity.
But that’s not enough.
It’s also crucial that the Australian public is able to have a say on priorities for scientific research and its applications. The social license of science depends on being able to engage with the public. Without this, scientists and other experts risk losing public trust.
This could have real implications for achieving the public good when it comes to emerging disruptive technologies (like robotics and AI), the environment (including climate change) and more.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently pointed to tensions between government, the public and scientists, saying “we sub-contract too much out to experts already”. So how can we build, and not erode, trust in Australia’s scientists and other experts?
We recently worked with scientists to distil priorities they think should be front and centre in building a trusting relationship between science and the public.
They say that improvements can be made in:
transparency
high ethical standards
two-way dialogue between scientists and the public.
A new charter
The social license for science is not a “set and forget” exercise. As disruptive technologies emerge, scientists need to re-engage the general public to understand changing expectations and views about science.
With election 2019 in mind, late in 2018 the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) called for a new charter to re-set the relationship between science and government, and to identify fresh ways for the general public to be involved in science.
Focusing on key areas highlighted by the AAS, we adapted existing research methods to gather survey responses from 174 respondents across the science and innovation sector, and collated over 700 priority statements.
A group of 18 scientists – both senior and early career researchers across science domains – then gathered in Canberra on April 18 to work through the survey findings, and identify priorities for re-freshing scientists’ social licence. For this workshop exercise, we did a first cut of analysis and grouped the statements for similarity.
The survey data indicate the majority of respondents believe science should be based on transparency, openness, and meaningful dialogue with society. They also believe the ethical pursuit of research and innovation is important. However, the majority feel that current institutional arrangements don’t support these aspirations.
Participants in the workshop offered a set of priorities for action.
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How the science sector can do better
Some of these principles don’t cover new ground – for example, some aspects were already contained in the 2018 release of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. Also many scientists would say that openness, engagement and integrity are already central to their work.
But there is a sense running through this list of priorities that the science sector could collectively be doing better. That perhaps some of the ways scientists engage with the public, open up their work for debate or reflect on ethical implications are limited by old assumptions.
Also, scientists will need a lot more support from science and policy institutions if they want to shake up the old ways of doing things.
We hope these results mark the beginning of a longer conversation – as well as some concrete actions – about what a social licence for science means, and what is needed to meet public obligations in doing good science.
Some of this is already happening internationally, as learned academies combine forces to speak to governments about tackling critical shared challenges posed by environmental change and new technologies. Scientists, they stress, need to prioritise meaningful conversations with citizens and policy-makers should do more to create the infrastructure to make this possible.
In Australia, it’s important the next government meets the challenge of refreshing the social licence between science, government and the many and diverse communities that make up our nation.
The research described in this article was designed and undertaken by a team of researchers from the Australian National University and The University of Queensland and CSIRO. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency or organisation.
Labor launched its arts policy in Melbourne on Saturday. The new policy document is called “Renewing Creative Australia”, paying homage to Labor’s two previous cultural policy documents; “Creative Nation” in 1994 and “Creative Australia” in 2013.
The policy includes a commitment to restore funding taken by the Coalition from the Australia Council, starting with A$37.5 million. There are funding boosts for the ABC and SBS of $40 million and $20 million respectively for production of Australian content, and new funding for contemporary music and interactive game development.
The agenda also includes $8 million for the establishment of a new national Indigenous Theatre Company, as well as a commitment to embedding better arts education across schools. Overall, Labor, in a modest fashion, tries to address some of the major issues affecting the arts in Australia.
However it does not come close to the Canadian Government’s 2016 dramatic scene changer, which pledged an increase of CAD$1.9 billion (approximately $A2 billion) to the cultural sector, including an extra CAD$550 million in for the Canada Council for the Arts and CAD$675 million for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Action on this scale here would be transformative.
A Friends of the ABC rally in Melbourne in 2018. Labor’s new arts policy includes a funding boost to the ABC for Australian content.Penny Stephens/AAP
Meanwhile, the Coalition has barely mentioned the arts during this campaign, nor is there any evidence of an arts policy on the Liberal Party website.
In relation to new programs though, it recommended in the most recent budget a $30.9 million music industry package, for funding of live music and mentoring programs for female and Indigenous musicians.
Nevertheless, the funding of arts and culture in this country reflects a political climate that does not take culture, or the arts practices it spawns, seriously. While a 2017 survey reinforced that 98% of the community engage with the arts, there is little acknowledgement or respect paid to artists and cultural producers at the political level.
In its 2018 budget the federal government predicted an overall expenditure of $488.58 billion. Within this total, $1.3 billion – a little more than a quarter of 1% – was allocated to arts and cultural heritage.
Many nations spend a great deal more as a percentage of their budget, including nations far poorer or smaller in population than ours.
While there are caveats in doing direct comparisons, Australia spent around $95 per capita federally including recurrent expenditure (but not including local and state contributions) on arts and cultural heritage in 2016-17. In 2015 Sweden’s public cultural expenditure was $439 per capita and Estonia spent around $337 per capita.
The Australia Council had $189.3 million in 2017-2018 to spend on the funding of arts activities. Around 59% of this total (or $111 million) went to support 28 major performing arts organisations, all included in the Major Performing Arts Framework.
Over the past year the Australia Council has been reviewing this framework and consulting with the broader arts sector in relation to its review. In a summary of the second phase of consultation published last month the council noted there was “little diversity” among this group of major performing arts organisations with only one Indigenous company (Bangarra Dance Theatre) included.
The Bangarra Dance Theatre Company is the only Indigenous company included in the Australia Council’s Major Performing Arts Framework.Jess Bialek/Mollison Communications/AAP
Over 600 other arts organisations and individuals received the rest of the federal arts funding. They have strict limitations imposed on them in terms of accountability, performance, output and the amount of funding they can receive. These conditions are designed to ensure they do what they say they will – but they also limit what they might be capable of doing.
In contrast, organisations that come under the Major Performing Arts Framework are primarily subject to financial criteria. Even when they do not conform to the expected financial conditions (as recorded in the National Opera Review in 2016, they can continue to be funded.
The Labor Party says it expects the additional funds for the Australia Council “will help restore the balance for areas that have been underfunded in recent years, including, literature, visual art and the small, medium and independent sectors.” It wants to see the Major Performing Arts Framework deliver a clear purpose and fairer funding arrangements and reflect the broader community’s diversity.
There is an intention flagged here that Labor will review the current arrangements to make them more accountable and reflective of diversity. The challenge though is always equating size with quality. Academic researchers Ben Eltham and Deb Verhoeven have demonstrated that most artistic innovation occurs in arts activities outside of the major funded organisations.
Cultural rights
Inequities exist in the arts because of class, education, gender, race and ethnicity. Nevertheless, only relatively recently has there been recognition that citizens should have “cultural” as much as political or social rights, with the passing of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression in 2005.
While Australia has been party to the Convention since 2009, actual policies to ensure our compliance are limited. For example, Australia does not have a Bill of Rights ensuring freedom of expression or cultural rights.
The idea of cultural rights includes the notion that all citizens should have access to and be able to participate in various forms of artistic and cultural practice. If Australia had constitutional recognition of cultural rights, would there then be an imperative to fund the arts appropriately to reflect the cultures and population distributions that exist?
Australia is home to the oldest living continuing culture on this earth – a unique privilege for us all. Recognition, respect and valuing of culture and the arts are part of the remit of a sophisticated and caring nation. It is time that our political masters demonstrated that they understand that arts and culture matter to everyone.
New Caledonia’s anti-independence parties have retained their slim majority in the 54-member Congress made up of members from the French Pacific territory’s three provincial assemblies.
After Sunday’s provincial elections the anti-independence parties have 28 Congress seats, reflecting their continued dominance in the more populous Southern province.
However, the other two provinces, Kanak-governed North and the Loyalty Islands, saw a clean sweep by the pro-independence camp, cementing the sharp political divisions within New Caledonia.
The final lineup in the New Caledonian Territorial Congress in Noumea. Image: PMC screenshot
Transcript The two big winners emerging from the provincial elections are two newcomers, the Future in Confidence coalition and the Pacific Awakening Party.
The Future in Confidence coalition was formed out of three rival anti-independence parties after last November’s independence referendum.
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Pacific Awakening, emanating from the anti-independence Wallisian and Futunian community, won three seats to give the pro-French camp 28 seats versus the 26 secured by the pro-independence parties in the Congress.
Sonia Backes, who leads the anti-independence coalition, was on television commenting on the election outcome:
“The Caledonians have suffered a lot in the last few years. They are expecting from us confidence at an economic level and in terms of security which we have to act on.”
Social policy The Pacific Awakening party, which was formed just two months ago, is led by Milakulo Tukumuli who on election night restated his goals.
“I think, as I have said during my programme, it’s mainly about social policy, for New Caledonians the gap between the richest and poorest needs to be closed; that’s a priority.”
In the Loyalty Islands province, all 14 seats went to pro-independence parties.
The result in the 22-seat Northern province Assembly. Image: PMC screenshot
In the 22-seat Northern province Assembly, the pro-independence Uni/Palika list of the incumbent president Paul Neaoutyine came first, narrowly ahead of the pro-independence UC-FLNKS list led by Daniel Goa.
The big loser is the anti-independence Caledonia Together Party, which was the biggest party in both the southern province and the Congress.
Its representation in Congress was more than halved.
The president of the Southern province, Philippe Michel, conceded that there has been a realignment after the November referendum.
‘Historic crisis’ “There has for one been an historic crisis in the nickel sector which had not been seen any time before during the Noumea Accord. It had affected the economy and caused difficulties in the country.”
For the Future in Confidence, remaining French has been a key campaign platform election, which resonated with voters in the Southern province.
The balance between pro and anti-independence parties is largely unchanged yet the split into these two camps is further entrenched.
It is a given that the next referendum on independence from France will be called by the new Congress which will sit for the first time next week.
Congress is also due to elect an 11-member collegial government for a five-year term.
Under the collegial system enshrined in the Noumea Accord, the government seats will be shared among the parties in proportion to their strength in Congress.
Among the elected provincial councillors in the Northern province was a former journalist and Radio Djiido news editor, Magalie Tingal Lémé.
This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
Last week the US state of Georgia passed abortion laws that wind back some of the hard-fought reproductive rights won through America’s landmark abortion case Roe v Wade.
The new legislation restricts abortion once “cardiac activity” can be detected. Since this usually occurs at around six weeks of pregnancy – at which point many are unaware they are pregnant – the legislation effectively outlaws abortion.
The introduction of these laws, and similar legislation across Republican-held states, has been met with fierce criticism from feminists, reproductive choice activists and medical professionals alike.
In a move reminiscent of her role in the #MeToo movement, Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter encouraging women to go on a “sex strike” in protest.
While the call to arms over reproductive rights is laudable, Milano’s approach is a deeply problematic one.
Milano’s response illustrates some of the worst tendencies of “white feminism”, with a focus on individual choice and failure to take an intersectional perspective.
The idea that women should deny men sexual “choices” frames the issue of reproductive rights in an individualised way. In this case, the “solution” to repressive legislation is individual women denying men (who may or may not be anti-abortion) partnered sexual activity.
Of course, individual action is both a necessary and powerful component of generating broader political change. But it’s largely unclear, in this case, how the proposed individual action translates into the collective mobilisation required to challenge political and legal institutions.
Access to abortion is a complex social, structural and institutional problem. Limited reproductive choice is rooted in legislation, other regulation, and access to affordable health care. Likewise, access to abortion – and women’s experiences of accessing it – are shaped by a multitude of factors: race and socialclass. These underlying causes are unlikely to be shifted through a “sex strike”.
2. It frames sex in heteronormative ways
By suggesting that women avoid sex because they cannot risk pregnancy, Milano frames “sex” in limited and heteronormative ways.
“Sex” is constructed as involving penis-in-vagina penetration, reproducing the idea that only heterosexual, penetrative sex is “real” sex. This leaves little space for other forms of sexual expression – particularly those that are unlikely to result in pregnancy (such as oral sex or masturbation).
While clearly relevant to the issue of abortion, linking sex to a need to avoid pregnancy also implies that all women are in heterosexual partnerships with cisgender men, that all women are able to fall pregnant, and that only women can become pregnant, excluding trans and non-binary people.
Given the diverse repertoire of sexual acts available to us, it’s not clear why women (and others) should have to forgo ethical, pleasurable and wanted encounters. While the sex strike aims to regain bodily autonomy, this method of protest in fact further limits it, simultaneously perpetuating the “sex-negative” ideology that often underpins the logic of anti-abortion proponents.
Suggesting that women shouldn’t have sex until their sexual autonomy is regained reproduces the trope that women use sex as a bargaining chip, or tool to manipulate men. This reduces a complex structural and political issue to a tiresome “battle of the sexes”.
Women are stereotyped as the “gatekeepers” of sexual activity, who either say “yes” or “no” to men’s sexual advances, but never actively desire sex or initiate it themselves. Sex is positioned as something that women do to please men, rather than something they (gasp!) actively enjoy or find pleasurable.
This is concerning given that these stereotypes can be used to excuse sexual violence, or to place blame on victim-survivors. For example, survivors are often blamed for sexual violence because they have not fulfilled their role as sexual gatekeeper – that is, they didn’t say “no” clearly enough. At the same time, reports of sexual violence are often dismissed as accusations from a woman scorned. In other words, the sex strike reproduces many of the stereotypes that enable and excuse sexual violence, running the risk of further compromising bodily autonomy.
There is also an assumption that women are able to freely negotiate or refuse sex without consequence. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Most obviously, this occurs in cases of sexual violence through the use of force or coercion, or where submitting to a perpetrator may be the safest option in the moment. It assumes that women are situated in a world where the utterance of a “no” is heard in a meaningful way – and that saying “no” is safe in the first place.
Research also suggests that women can face enormous social and cultural pressure to comply with a partner’s sexual advances, meaning that refusing sex is not always straightforward.
Ultimately, Milano’s approach offers women a reductive level of “control”: sex or no sex. Encouraging women to forego sex in the face of restrictive abortion laws does little to transform how we approach sex and reproductive rights at the social, structural and institutional level.
Milano has defended her sex strike on the basis that it has generated widespread public debate about the issue.
At best, this “debate” distracts from the collective political action and structural change needed to truly challenge threats to our reproductive autonomy. At worst, it actively reproduces some of the conditions it seeks to disrupt, with the potential to exacerbate harms to already vulnerable and marginalised groups along the way.
Some Australian students are reportedly shunning Year 12 exams in favour of more favourable, and less stressful, pathways to finishing school. These reports come amid warnings of rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people, with psychologists calling for better mental health support services in schools. Experts say exam stress could be making depression and anxiety worse for vulnerable young people.
Websites set up to support youth mental health use words such as “survive” when it comes to Year 12. Others refer to exam time = stress time.
Exams are certainly challenging. But our rhetoric may be having an impact on the way young people perceive exams. In our efforts to support young people, we may be teaching them to be afraid rather than encouraging them to see exams as a positive challenge.
Anxiety in adolescence
Researchers have for decades considered adolescence to be a stressful time, but it appears the mental health of young Australians has worsened in recent years. Just over 40% of Australian youth indicated mental health was their greatest issue in the 2018 youth survey conducted by Mission Australia. One in four had a probable serious mental-health issue.
Mission Australia’s survey relies on self-reports of young people aged 15-19. The 2018 survey also showed young people’s main concerns were coping with stress (43%) and school (34%). In another survey conducted by mental-health organisation ReachOut, 65.1% of youth reported worrying levels of exam stress in 2018, compared to 51.2% in 2017.
Despite these troubling reports, an analysis of several studies on the prevalence of anxiety actually suggests there has been no such increase. The authors note:
The perceived ‘epidemic’ of common mental disorders is most likely explained by the increasing numbers of affected patients driven by increasing population sizes. Additional factors that may explain this perception include […] greater public awareness, and the use of terms such as anxiety and depression in a context where they do not represent clinical disorders.
This means while some young people have serious anxiety issues, others may be perceiving normal levels of stress as anxiety. And this may have some significance side effects.
In psychology, appraisal theory posits that our emotional response to an event is determined by our evaluation, or appraisal, of it. Knowing what our appraisal is of a situation helps us determine if it is a threat, if we have sufficient resources to deal with it and, ultimately, if something harmful or bad will happen to us.
In a 2016 US study of appraisals, students in one group were told emotional arousal before an exam was normal and would better help them face a challenge. Another group, the control group, wasn’t provided with any strategies.
Our appraisal of a situation in many ways determines how we will feel in that situation.from shutterstock.com
Despite all students sitting the exam, researchers found the first group experienced less anxiety and performed better than the second group. They argued the reduced stress was due to the first group appraising their elevated heart rates and other anxiety signs as functional, rather than threatening. So this showed it was the appraisal of students’ feelings that determined how stressed they actually were rather than the event itself.
Appraisals are influenced by the things we value and what we believe to be at stake. Exams might be appraised as “stressful” because youth perceive them as a threat to their future, such as their ability to get a job.
In some cases, exams can be a threat to students’ self-worth. Self-worth is the belief our life has value and is a strong predictor of well-being. If self-worth is tied to academic success it is at risk, as academic success becomes critical for the young person – almost a matter of life or death. This increases their perception of exams and academic measures as threatening.
Challenges are an essential and normal part of our development. Drawing a parallel with immunity, resistance to infections doesn’t come from avoiding all contact with germs. On the contrary, avoidance is likely to increase vulnerability rather than promote resilience.
While we should protect young people from high risk situations, such as abuse and trauma, low-level manageable challenges, such as exams, are known as “steeling events” – they help develop young people mentally and emotionally. Allowing students to avoid exams so they avoid stress might be robbing children of the opportunity to deal with the emotions evoked by the challenge. It also teaches them we don’t think they are capable of meeting the challenge.
Young people need to understand study is something they do, not who they are, or they will be vulnerable in this area.
Young people with a diagnosis of anxiety need clinical support to help them succeed through exam periods. But young people experiencing “normal” exam stress should be provided with strategies to help manage stress. These include self-soothing (such as breathing and listening to music) and acknowledging that negative feelings are a normal response to challenges.
Life can stressful, but it is how we see this stress that creates anxiety. Adults could do well helping your people believe they are not passive recipients of stress, but can decide how they view challenges. They also need to help young people believe they have inner resources to manage stressful situations, and that they are worth something, whatever number they get in exams.
On housing, the contrast between the two major parties on housing couldn’t be clearer.
The Coalition is still pretending that you can help first homebuyers without hurting anyone. Labor isn’t.
This matters, because Australian governments have been pretending for decades that there are easy and costless ways to make housing more affordable. And over that time the problems have become worse.
The Coalition’s First Home Loan Deposit Scheme is the latest plan that is supposed to arrest the decline in home ownership among younger Australians.
The Coalition’s First Home Deposit Scheme
Housing costs are a big problem for young people. Home ownership is falling fast in Australia, especially among the young and poor. Fewer than half of 25-34 year olds own their home today. Home ownership among the poorest 20% of that age group has fallen from 63% in 1981 to 23% today. At this rate almost half of retirees will be renters in 40 years time.
Saving a deposit is the biggest hurdle. In the early 1990s it took six years to save a 20% deposit on the average home. Today it takes 10 years. That’s bad news for younger Australians without access to the “Bank of Mum and Dad”.
The Coalition’s new plan seeks to arrest the decline by lending prospective buyers up to 15% of the purchase price, provided they’ve saved at least 5% for themselves.
It would also mean that single first home buyers on less than $125,000 a year, or couples earning less than $200,000, could save $10,000 or more by not having to pay the lenders mortgage insurance which is normally required when a purchaser has a deposit of less than 20%. There would be a cap on the value of homes purchased through the scheme, still unannounced, which would vary by region.
The Coalition is budgeting just $500 million for the guarantees. Labor was quick to match the scheme, partly because it doesn’t cost very much (unless there are unexpected losses).
Most likely, the scheme won’t have much impact.
It would increase home ownership, but only a little. It might also push up prices – but by even less. Some people saving for their first home might buy earlier. Others just priced out of the market at the moment could afford to pay a little more for a house given that they would not have to pay lenders mortgage insurance.
Most of those taking up the scheme would probably have bought anyway. Those with access to the Bank of Mum and Dad already could use the scheme instead. And the income thresholds are set too high, cutting off just the top 10-15% of income earners. The New Zealand scheme, upon which the Coalition’s plan is based, cuts out at incomes of just $85,000 for singles or $130,000 for couples.
Instead the biggest barrier for many first home owners is not the deposit. Their issue is qualifying for a mortgage when banks must assess their ability to repay the loan assuming an interest rate of 7%, much higher than the typical 4% that most home buyers are paying.
And the Coalition has capped uptake at 10,000 loans every year, or about one in every ten loans (based on loans last year to first homebuyers). Even if not one of those 10,000 beneficiaries would have bought without the scheme (most unlikely), home ownership would be only 1% higher in a decade’s time.
But an even larger scheme might well be worse. If it “succeeded” in rapidly expanding demand from first home buyers, it would push up prices for everyone, not least all the other first home buyers trying to get into the market. Instead of being ineffective, it’d become counterproductive.
And the larger the scheme, the greater the risks of dodgy lending, which could leave the government on the hook if buyers’ default.
The underlying problem with the Coalition’s latest plan – like the First Home Super Saver Scheme it introduced in 2017, or the Howard and Rudd Government’s first homeowners grants – is that it tries to fix the housing affordability problem by adding to demand for housing.
Because it costs the budget less, the new scheme is less bad than its predecessors. But it shares their critical flaw: it pretends we can make housing more affordable without hurting anyone.
Its political virtue is that it seems to send a signal to first home buyers that government is on their side.
Yet the Coalition won’t pursue the one thing happen that would help home buyers the most: letting housing prices fall.
Labor’s negative gearing plan
In contrast, Labor’s plan to abolish negative gearing on existing homes and halve the capital gains tax discount creates losers.
Labor would prevent new investors in existing homes from writing off the losses from their property investments against the tax they pay on their wages. And investors would pay tax on 75% of their gains, up from 50% now.
Labor’s plan takes away tax breaks worth $1 billion to $2 billion a year in the short term, and more in the long term.
Existing homeowners would lose a little: The Grattan Institute estimates that house prices would be 1% to 2% lower under the Labor plan. The Commonwealth treasury and NSW treasury have reached similar conclusions.
Prospective investors who had planned to buy and negatively gear an existing house would miss out on a lot. Some might buy anyway, others wouldn’t. Despite the noise, the bulk of those affected would be among the top 10% of income earners.
By reducing investor demand for existing houses, Labor’s policy could provide a bigger boost to “genuine” home ownership, by owner occupiers. Fewer investors would mean more first home buyers winning at auctions.
Recent Australian Prudential Regulation Authority imposed restrictions on lending to investors have already resulted in an increase in the share of lending to first homebuyers. Labor’s policies would accelerate that process.
The bottom line on housing? Changing rules on negative gearing and capital gains tax is more likely to increase home ownership than guaranteeing part of the deposit.
But no policy proposed in this Commonwealth election affects the really big lever for home ownership: increasing housing supply.
If we can avoid a recession for another two years, then on July 1, 2021 Australia will have recorded a record 30 years of economic expansion. We will be entering our fourth decade recession-free.
That’s the expectation embedded in the Reserve Bank’s latest set of forecasts in its Quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy. But it will be a challenge.
A major downturn in housing markets, historically low interest rates and an international economy more complex and troublesome than we have seen for decades mean the new government will need to take bold and creative decisions in order for us to achieve this truly remarkable milestone.
The bank has painted a benign picture of the global economic outlook for the next few years after recent data have allayed concerns about a US recession.
The Chinese authorities appear to have stabilised growth in the worlds second largest economy after fears of a steeper decline in activity emerged late last year. Although the Chinese economy faces many challenges, there doesn’t appear to be any signs of an imminent problem.
That should leave economic growth in Australia’s major trading partners at a respectable rate of 3.75% over the next few years, not different to the global economy. While not exactly a boom, growth it should be enough to support the Australian economy through to 2021.
This is reflected in the bank’s expectations for the key sectors linking Australia to the world economy. Resources exports are expected to experience strong growth, as are education exports and tourism.
The bank is even expecting manufacturing exports to grow, due to healthy global growth and a low Australian dollar. The same can’t be said for rural exports, with drought conditions expected to hurt our international sales for some time.
…were it not for the threat of a trade war
This otherwise upbeat assessment of global economic prospects could come to naught if the renewed trade dispute between the US and China intensifies. This is recognised a major risk to the Australian economic outlook.
Even though Australia could benefit from Chinese domestic economic stimulus in response to difficult export markets, a continuation of rising protectionist measures would impact Australia directly and indirectly as global growth slows.
Managing the China relationship in the midst of Trump’s trade war will be critical for the incoming government. A misstep could see China use non-tariff measures to slow Australia’s exports.
That would also make life difficult for Australian companies attempting to capitalise on the opportunities that China’s emerging middle class offers.
In Australia, households are battening down
The bank is expects employment to continue to grow by enough to keep the unemployment rate stable. However, there appears to be little prospect that a rapid pick up in either wages or inflation will make much of a dent in Australian household’s real debt burdens.
The bank has made it clear that the very low inflation environment will be with us for several years to come. The inflation pulse of the economy, which appears to have slipped to around 1.5% in the past six months, will only slowly pick up towards 2% by 2020 and might climb just above 2% (and back into the Reserve Bank’s target zone) in 2021.
That gradual increase is unlikely to be meaningfully outstripped by wages growth, implying either a very small lift in living standards or no increase. It will result in very low consumption growth.
The bank is forecasting historically weak consumption growth of about 2.5% for the next few years. It will put the high-employing retail sector under pressure for quite some time.
The only good news for households (those with debt at least) is that there is some interest rate relief in prospect. The bank uses market pricing for the interest rate assumptions in the forecasts. Markets are pricing a 1% cash rate over the year ahead, down from the present record-low 1.5%, which the bank explicitly identifies as as two cuts of 25 points.
Even with 50 points of cuts factored in, the bank believes it will only just meet its targets of falling unemployment and 2% inflation. It is possible it will have to cut further.
But the effectiveness of interest rate cuts as a short term stimulus tool is in serious question.
The costs of sustained easy monetary policy are rising.
Not only is wealth inequality a potential problem, but as interest rates get lower the banks might find it hard to pass cuts on.
…but they mightn’t be enough
A major issue for the new government will be to recognise the new-found importance of fiscal policy (spending and tax policy) to support economic growth. It will need to be done in an even handed way, without a hint of pork barrelling. Otherwise it will be wasted money.
While lower interest rates will good news for the large proportion of Australians that have mortgages, they will not be great for savers. Whether it is someone saving for a home deposit or people living off retirement savings, these super low levels of interest rates will not make life any easier.
This challenging environment for Australian households will have implications beyond just the economy’s performance, making for tricky political waters. Populist political propositions will have much more resonance in difficult times, particularly in regional and rural areas with high retiree populations and the exposure to drought.
The next Australian government should not be complacent on this front.
An explicit strategy needs to be enacted to deal with the economic and political fallout from the ongoing adjustments within Australia’s household sector. Falling wealth and low real income growth will need to be addressed through serious structural reforms aimed at driving up productivity and real wages.
In the short term the government is going to need to be ready to deploy its substantial resources to support households should conditions deteriorate. The low and middle income tax offset ss a good starting point.
Business is in good shape so far…
Although business confidence has dropped over the past nine months, the bank expects businesses to continue to invest and hire new staff. It expects non-mining business investment to expand at a healthy rate. But this can’t be taken for granted given the precarious nature of consumer demand.
The next government will have to be acutely sensitive to the risk of undermine business confidence. A hiring strike by business would be a dangerous proposition with an economy tiptoeing along a knife edge.
We might be surprised by good news. In other advanced economies in recent years an unexpected bonus has been generate strong employment growth despite economic and political uncertainty and modest economic growth.
This international experience shouldn’t give us confidence that stronger employment growth translate into stronger wage growth, but it might at least help maintain consumer spending in the face of lower house prices.
…except for construction
The Reserve Bank is explicit in its expectation that housing construction will turn down over the next two years. The drop off in activity could be large and have a major negative impact on employment. Although there is currently a high level of activity in commercial construction, particularly infrastructure-related activity, it is unlikely one will offset the other.
Governments across Australia have an opportunity at nation building. Funding costs are low, government finances are strong and the shrinking construction sector will free up labour and other resources.
Which means its time for nation building
This term of government will see very little economic momentum originating from consumers. They are in balance sheet repair mode. That makes it the perfect time for the governments to lead the way and drive private sector economic activity through a whole range of long-term investments in Australia’s future.
Coordinating this with the states and identifying the right projects will be the most important challenge for the new government.
Investigative journalism, intervention by the midwives’ professional association, Māori health advocates and the child’s iwi (tribe), Ngāti Kahungunu, brought this representative story to light.
The baby boy was, on the strength of limited evidence, a “high risk” child. His parents were allegedly afflicted by domestic violence, poor parenting skills and transient housing arrangements. These allegations had not been heard by a court, and it appears his wider family and midwives had already arranged supported accommodation for him and his mother. Plans seemed to be in place to mitigate whatever risks he may have faced.
The police, hospital staff and Ngāti Kahungunu negotiated for the family’s own arrangements to prevail, at least until a substantive court hearing. The important moral and political principle is that the family, except when it is demonstrably and irreparably dysfunctional, is prior to the state.
Māori experience is not unique
Children in state care do not routinely fare better than others. As chief district court judge Jan-Marie Doogue commented in 2018, placing children in care signficantly increases their risk of a life of crime.
The well-being of vulnerable Māori children does then depend on the willingness and capacity of iwi like Ngāti Kahungunu to fulfil its promise to “intervene [against the state] at all costs”. The capacity to intervene with stable, sustainable and effective care arrangements is a matter of both child safety and cultural integrity.
The Māori experience is not unique. Indigenous children in Australia and Canada were routinely removed from their families under policies of genocidal intent until the mid-20th century. New Zealand pursued policies with more subtle assimilationist objectives. However, all three countries retain policies and practices that make it difficult for Indigenous people, iwi or first nations to intervene in support of families in difficulty.
As the New Zealand Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft notes:
The argument put to an Australian House of Representatives select committee by the Indigenous Australian lobby group Grandmothers Against Removals is representative. The group says that:
States have a responsibility to actively undo the harm they have perpetrated and continue to perpetrate.
With reference to the 2008 parliamentary apology to Australia’s Stolen Generations, Grandmothers Against Removals note that “sorry means you don’t do it again”.
State care needs reform internationally
In Australia, there is compelling evidence that the “care system is producing criminals”. Indeed, half the people in youth detention centres in Victoria have come from the child protection system.
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission made recommendations to mitigate the risks of state care for Indigenous children. But for the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada child welfare remains “an agent of colonialism”. Outcomes for Indigenous children are rarely positive. In a jurisdiction where Indigenous children comprise 7.7% of children under 4, but represent 50% of those in state care, there is an urgent imperative for the state to support First Nations’ families and institutions to do the job of caring for children more effectively and respectfully than the state can.
Such is the depth of Indigenous concern internationally that the 1993 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contained protections against “the removal of indigenous children from their families and communities under any pretext”.
States were opposed to the strength of this provision. The final declaration, which New Zealand, Australia and Canada voted against when it was adopted in 2007 but have since accepted as “aspirational”, made the less blunt but nevertheless clear statement (in article 7, section 2) that:
Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.
Indigenous rights and child welfare
The declaration thus provides an international moral authority to Indigenous arguments against legislation, such as in New South Wales, to accelerate the adoption of children in state care.
In 1997, the inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families recommended adoption as a last resort. The New South Wales legislation sets aside that principle and from widespread Indigenous perspectives establishes “a dangerous path to risking lives and tearing families apart”.
In 2019, the New Zealand government announced it was developing a declaration plan to help address “indigenous rights and interests”. The minister for Māori development, Nanaia Mahuta, has promoted this initiative at the United Nations.
New Zealand has a well-developed understanding of what is needed to address Māori rights and interests in child welfare, but, as the present case shows, the nation lacks the political will and institutional capacity to follow the values set out by Oranga Tamariki itself.
We respect the mana [status, power] of people. We listen, we don’t assume, and we create solutions with others.
We value whakapapa [ancestry and family relationships] – tamariki [children] are part of a whānau [family] and a community.
Child protection is complex. But there is widespread doubt that under its current leadership and legislative arrangements, Oranga Tamariki has the capacity to develop professional practices grounded in its own values.
Legislation to take effect on July 1 is intended to strengthen the obligation on Oranga Tamariki to develop relationships that involve iwi and other Māori organisations in decision-making and to recognise more respectfully, and according to established Māori values and practices, a child’s wider family, not just the parents, in care arrangements.
Developing a respectful organisational capacity, in the context of broader rights to culture and self-determination, is a pressing moral issue.
As Australia’s aged care royal commission hears testimony about the treatment of people with dementia in residential aged care, the use of restraints is front and centre.
Restraints are sometimes used in an attempt to prevent harm – for example, to prevent falls or to stop wandering. In some cases, they’re also used to manage “difficult” behaviour.
Dementia is a degenerative brain disease which affects not just memory but also mood and behaviour. As neural pathways are lost, the person may be less able to interpret the world and communicate clearly. This can result in agitated and confused behavioural symptoms.
Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia can be challenging for aged care staff to manage. But restraints should only be used for short periods of time to protect residents or staff, and only after all alternatives have been exhausted.
What is physical restraint in aged care?
Physical restraint is anything that restricts body movement. This includes:
belts and vests attached to a bed, chair or wheelchair
chairs or wheelchairs with locked tables
bed rails
door alarms.
There is no reliable data on how often residents are physically restrained, but data from the 1990s and 2000s suggest between 12% and 49% have been restrained at some stage.
Physical restraints have historically been used because they were thought to keep residents safe from injuries, such as falling out of bed or off chairs. But research from the 1990s found that restraints actually increased the risk of injury.
Take the use of bed rails, for instance. When a resident attempts to get out of bed after bed rails have been installed, they are more likely to become entangled or fall. Alternative strategies might include lowering the bed and placing soft fall materials on the floor.
Bed rails constitute one form of physical restraint that might be used to manage patients with dementia.From shutterstock.com
The use of physical restraint also increases the residents’ isolation from their peers and staff. As a result, residents are more likely to experience anxiety, depressive symptoms, and some form of cognitive decline.
Positive social relationships protect against cognitive decline. So it’s important for aged care residents to stay socially connected to their peers.
Chemical restraint is the use of sedative, antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, collectively known as psychotropics, which affect residents’ emotional and physical behaviour.
Some estimates suggest almost one in two residents may be inappropriately prescribed these medications.
Psychotropic medications are prescribed for people with chronic depression or paralysing anxiety, but should be used in conjunction with psychotherapies. For those with more serious mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, they can be a necessity for stability.
However, these medications should not be used for people who are wandering, restless, or for being just uncooperative.
Informed consent should be obtained from the patient and/or their family before before psychotropic medications are administered, or in emergency situations, immediately after the fact.
It’s difficult to adjust to aged care
Older people are often resistant to entering aged care. The royal commission recently heard testimony that people would “rather die than go into aged care”. So it’s not surprising that adjustment and behavioural issues may arise.
Entering an aged care facility can be a very difficult process. It means adjusting to new people, routines, or recovering from a serious health condition. Many people living in aged care report multiple losses: of control, independence, identity, meaning, and trust.
Added to this, most people entering aged care know this is where they are likely to die. The average stay in aged care is 2.8 years and very few residents return home.
Many aged care residents have difficulty adjusting to the lack of control they now have over their life.Photographee.eu/Shutterstock
Residents’ psychological and social needs aren’t being met
Aged care guidelines state that when considering the use of restraint, the aim should be to maintain the person’s previous level of independence. The choice of an intervention must promote the highest level of functioning, particularly independent mobility and eating.
But while educational programs have been shown to reduce the use of restraints in some situations, they’re not enough to solve the problem. This requires systemic changes to aged care culture and models of care.
Almost two in three aged care facilities are understaffed. Aged care staff are busy providing clinical care, delivering medications, and supporting activities of daily living such as bathing and dressing. This leaves little time or training to account for the social and psychological needs of residents.
Staff have expressed these concerns for decades, with little or no change. Staff have sometimes justified the use of restraint as a means of managing the overall workload and maintaining resident safety.
While it’s important to increase the numbers of nurses and carers, it’s also important to address the underlining factors that lead to the use of restraint. Residents require emotional, social and psychological support to ease their adjustment into aged care, and address their social isolation and loss of independence.
One way to increase this support is to develop evidence-based programs that mobilise people in the community to develop relationships with aged care residents, whether that’s by reading to them, talking to them, or even – as we’ve seen in the Netherlands – living alongside them.
We can also very easily see the short-term economic benefits in our cities. These benefits can be factored in to our calculations by carefully enabling the new economy to emerge as old power stations, buildings, transport infrastructure and vehicles are replaced.
The big change involves deciding no more coal, gas or oil-based systems will be built as replacements for ageing infrastructure systems in our cities. We can do this now that new energy systems are emerging as cost-competitive.
Economic growth is decoupling from fossil fuels
We can see the data supporting this by examining the macro-economic perspective of the emerging economy. The global emergence of the non-fossil-fuel economy can be traced by looking at how economic growth – measured as gross domestic production (GDP) or gross national income (GNI) – is decoupling from fossil-based emissions of greenhouse gases. This century global GNI has grown 60%. Fossil-based emissions have grown just 27% and have declined in the past few years.
Driving these changes in fossil fuel use has been the astonishing growth worldwide in solar, wind, batteries and now electric vehicles (cars and trains). All of these developments are contributing to economic growth, mainly in our cities. Each is still increasing its rate of growth and every nation and city will compete economically on how best to make these changes.
We can already see benefits locally
On a local level in our cities it is possible to see how this transition should not be feared but embraced. In Perth, Western Australia, 30% of households now have rooftop solar panels. The total output is equivalent to 1000MW, roughly the same as the biggest power station in WA.
Research for the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Low Carbon Living on the Josh’s House project in suburban Perth, involving two 10-star NatHERS-rated homes, shows the investment in solar and batteries was completely paid off in nine years. It’s producing more renewable energy than the householders consume.
When the same kind of changes were built into project homes across Australia with passive solar design, PV systems on roofs and community-scale batteries, it took just six years to pay off. Residents then had basically free power from the sun.
Such projects demonstrated how 10 million tonnes (10MT) of greenhouse gas can be removed over the six years that the CRC in Low Carbon Living funded many of these demonstrations, without damaging the economy and indeed creating many benefits.
The project has been successfully scaled up to a suburb in the White Gum Valley housing project in Fremantle, Western Australia. Residents use peer-to-peer trading to share, as needed, the electricity generated and stored on site. The project provides a low-cost demonstration of how we can rebuild our cities while creating more economic benefits than costs.
The White Gum Valley housing project is an innovative sustainable development in the suburbs.
The housing development sold much faster than the market modellers expected. A newly announced development close to Fremantle city centre, East Village at Knutsford, goes even further. It will have not just 100% renewable energy but each house will have an electric vehicle charger and share the battery system, water recycling and waste minimisation.
Australia can choose to do nothing or very little about greenhouse gas emissions, as those who say Australia produces only a small fraction of the world’s emissions might suggest. But if we don’t act we will quietly miss the opportunities being created for the future. The new economy is emerging and we should show leadership and not fear these changes.
Just two elections ago Tony Abbott was headed for the prime ministership. Now he’s desperately trying to survive in his own seat.
A leader deposed by his party, turned on by Liberal voters in his own heartland, bruised and battle-scarred, Abbott is in one of the most vitriolic contests of this campaign.
His main opponent, former winter Olympian Zali Steggall, is among several high-profile independents challenging in Coalition seats.
Warringah takes in areas of Sydney’s north shore and northern beaches. Abbott, its occupant since 1994, has a margin of 11.1%. He’s been under pressure in a couple of previous elections but is now being pursued by posses of angry locals, some upset over his views on same-sex marriage and his “spoiler” role within the Liberal party, and highly-organised external activists, notably GetUp, mobilising particularly around climate change.
He’s been frenetically working the electorate for months in a massive fight-back, locally focused (think a tunnel and toilets), and supporters are trooping into the seat for these last days.
On Monday John Howard (who in 2007 lost his own seat and the election) was lending a hand. Warringah voters were “not the big end of town,” the former prime minister said. “Warringah is full people who’ve worked hard, they’ve done a bit better, they’ve accumulated a bit and they don’t want it taken away through higher tax by Mr Shorten.”
The Liberals, attempting to leap the barrier of anti-Abbott feeling, have been hammering the point that a vote for Steggall would be a vote for a Shorten government.
The University of Canberra’s Democracy 2025 project commissioned two rounds of focus groups in Warringah, done by Landscape Research. The first was in February. The second round, on Wednesday and Thursday last week, included four groups totalling 34 “soft” voters (people who had not decided definitely who they’d vote for). Half had participated in the February round.
It is important to stress focus group research is not predictive – rather it taps into attitudes.
Both the older and younger voters believe Abbott will win, even if they aren’t leaning towards voting for him. As a young first-time voter put it: “It’s the demographics of the area”. A middle-aged self-employed woman from Allambie Heights said: “People want certainty and security. They say they want change but they’re resistant”.
In the research’s February round, many participants hadn’t even heard of Steggall. By last week – unsurprisingly given the rash of publicity – everybody had, although some knew little detail about her.
“While many are open to the idea of voting for a strong independent, and see her as a welcome choice standing against Tony Abbott, she does not appear to have done enough to persuade them fully over to her side, yet,” the moderator’s report says.
“There is no doubt she is a serious challenger, and they like having a serious contest to ‘shake things up a bit’, but soft voters acknowledge that Tony Abbott has stepped up to the challenge.
“For many his longevity as a tireless worker for the community – for example, volunteer firefighting, lifesaving – is a strong counter in electoral currency to his reputation for outmoded views on homosexuals and climate change”.
For some of these soft voters, the unknowns about Steggall are seeing them shift to Abbott. A 23-year-old female student teacher from Frenchs Forest was “unsure about Zali”. A female disability contract worker in her 30s from Brookvale thought it better to “keep with what you know.”
Steggall’s elite sporting background is seen as holding her in good stead, shown in her “determination and drive”. She’s viewed as “learning quickly”, although some campaign stumbles have also been noted.
A 59-year-old man from North Balgowlah observed Steggall had done an “astute swivel”, with “the statement that she’d provide ‘confidence’ to the Coalition [if there was a minority government]. It’s providing confidence so that, as a Liberal person, you can get rid of Tony Abbott but still support the Coalition”.
But Steggall’s pushing of climate change as her primary policy, with the apparent lack of a fully fleshed-out platform, concerns some soft voters, including those open to voting for an independent.
“The only thing I’ve heard from her campaign is the environment – other than that, nothing,” said a civil engineer in his 30s from Queenscliff; a Cromer Heights middle-aged woman at home questioned why Steggall was running now. “If she’s such a local, and so for our electorate, where has she been all this time?”.
Some have also found her wanting even on her central issue. A 33-year-old business development manager from Manly said he “liked her at first” but then thought she was hypocritical when she was “jumping on the electric vehicle bandwagon” while driving a “massive SUV”, which she said she needed to ferry her children.
“The challenge for Steggall at this point in the campaign is that those who have not already decided definitely to vote for her are wavering, and they are not hearing anything more than an ‘I’m not Abbott, I support climate change action’ message,” the research report says.
“While the prospect of a centrist independent candidate was initially appealing, after more consideration over the past few months, some soft voters who were leaning towards voting for Steggall have changed their mind.”
“I was voting more for an independent whereas now I think I need to put down either a Labor or a Liberal candidate because they will have more sway in actually saying something for our electorate,” said the Allambie Heights woman.
Abbott is seen as experienced, a known quantity, widely recognised for his community service, even if people don’t agree with him on some key issues.
He is also regarded by some of these voters to have made positive moves to recognise the electorate’s views on same-sex marriage and climate change. “I think he’s trying to represent everyone a bit more”, the business development manager said. “I think it shows growth for him.”
But others still see climate as Abbott’s Achilles heel. “He continues to struggle to explain his position on climate change. He has an instinct that he doesn’t quite believe it. But he can’t explain what he’s done in the past or what he would do. […] By flip-flopping about, it is very un-Tony Abbott, a weakness,” said the North Balgowlah man.
Being seen in the media as fighting for his survival is regarded as helpful for Abbott. “That generates talk around his supporters and helps him get re-elected,” said a 41-year-old firefighter from Dee Why.
In February, many of the soft voters were more exercised by Abbott’s defying the electorate on same-sex marriage than they were about his climate change position. Now, there is greater attention by some on his climate views. “Some people don’t like Tony because of that,” said a retired Australia Post manager from Manly Vale.
“While believing it important, these Warringah voters also see the climate change discussions as somewhat more of a political debate than about practical environmental action,” the research report says.
“As well, they feel bombarded with the issue to the point of drowning out everything else of importance to them, and they feel like they can’t express their views.
“Yes, climate change is important, but why is it just hammered into us non-stop?” said a Dee Why woman who works part time in hospitality.
A challenge for Steggall is that her opposition to Labor policies on franking credits and negative gearing that are unpopular with soft voters here hasn’t cut through. The former Australia Post manager, a self-funded retiree who’d been a lifelong Labor voter, said: “I am leaning towards Tony Abbott because I am against the franking credit [changes]”.
As well as the environment (as distinct from “climate change”), local issues for these voters include the northern beaches tunnel (which Abbott has talked about constantly), traffic congestion generally, and housing affordability.
Predictably, given the nature of this electorate, Scott Morrison has an edge over Bill Shorten as more trusted to lead the country, mainly because of the Liberals’ perceived better economic credentials and a sense of personal strength they don’t see in Shorten.
Older voters mention his “track record” in immigration and his personal character. “I feel he’ll manage the budget better” (retired policeman from North Curl Curl). “[I trust his] moral values and he’s not in it for his own ego” (retired female public servant from Manly). A 74-year-old woman from Forestville said: “One of his policies is to slow down immigration and I also believe in that”.
Younger voters agree Morrison’s economic credentials are stronger and some are prepared to put aside their personal desire for a more compassionate PM for the sake of the country’s economic interests. “Personally, I’d pick Bill Shorten, but for the nation I’d pick Scott Morrison, mainly for the economy”, said the first-time voter, an 18-year-old school leaver from Manly who’s working as a labourer during a gap year.
But mostly in making their election decisions, these voters’ eyes are on the candidates in their own backyard.
“There is no doubt that having an accomplished independent challenging a 25-year incumbent has given the electorate something to think about. But questions remain for soft voters around Steggall,” the research report concludes.
“They are looking for more than they perceive she is offering (a positive stance on climate change and that she is not Tony Abbott).
“They also perceive that there could a potential backlash against the bitterness and vitriol of the anti-Abbott movement (even if not her doing) which may work against her.
“Warringah soft voters are quietly determined they will make up their own minds, in their own time, and not be bullied into voting a certain way, by either the Abbott or Steggall camps, or anyone else.”
Older generations are failing to address climate change and they need the world’s youth to lead the way, says United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
Speaking at Auckland University of Technology’s southern campus in Manukau today as part of a two-day tour of New Zealand and the Pacific, Guterres said governments have not been showing the political will to address climate change.
He described this as the defining issue of our time – “It is the biggest threat to our lives and the life of the planet and we are not winning the battle.”
He added: “Things will start to change very quickly.
“It is absolutely crucial to have the leadership of the youth.”
-Partners-
The youth were well represented at the talk, with groups from three local high schools and many AUT students in attendance.
Introduced by the university’s Office for Pacific Advancement (OPA) strategic director Veronica Ng Lam, who welcomed him to South Auckland – “the centre of the universe”, Guterres also said fossil fuels were being subsidised by governments and that needed to stop.
António Gutteres … “I’m not waiting for you to be in power, I’m waiting you to be as noisy as possible now.” Image: Michael Andrew/PMC
Direct subsidies “The IMF has calculated 7.2 trillion dollars spent in direct subsidies to fossil fuels or indirect negative consequences of those subsidies,” he said.
“It is totally unacceptable that taxpayer’s money is used to spread drought, to spread heat waves, to bleach corals and to make glaciers recede.
“Taxpayer’s money must be spent in what is good for humankind, not in what is threatening humankind.”
He also spoke about the role of the internet and its capacity to both help and harm society.
“It is essential to make sure that we transform the internet into an instrument for good and not an instrument to subvert the wellbeing of society.”
Common responsibility He said there was a common responsibility, especially of wealthy countries to reverse the destructive trends and that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 was top priority.
Students were then invited to come forward and ask questions.
A student from Papatoetoe High School cited a recent IPCC climate report, which found that millions of species could be facing extinction as a result of climate change.
The student said that it might be too late to simply wait for the younger generations to come into power in order address climate change and save threatened species.
Guterres replied: “I’m not waiting for you to be in power, I’m waiting you to be as noisy as possible now. To mobilise your societies, your parents, your families, your friends and to put governments under pressure.”
AUT business student and Oceania Leadership Network member Christopher Tenisio then asked how the UN would deal with countries that were not fulfilling their commitment to the 2016 Paris Climate Change Accord.
“Name and shame. We don’t have instruments to punish, so name and shame.”
‘Rehearsed’ answers After the session, Tenisio told Asia Pacific Report he was impressed with what the Secretary-General had said, but felt that the answers seemed rehearsed.
“It’s like he already knew the questions, like he’d practised the answers.”
Executive director of OPA and pro-vice chancellor of AUT South Walter Fraser said the Secretary-General had naturally come prepared with refined responses.
“He is a career politician after all. Just about every question was deflected back to the audience.”
However, he said it was a positive experience for the students to see how the United Nations operates.
“It’s good in a sense that they get to see how the system works.”
António Guterres meeting audience members at the AUT South campus today. Image: Michael Andrew/PMC
Set in a rambling and ageing house haunted by a colonial past, Cloudstreet is a theatrical adaption of Tim Winton’s 1991 novel of the same title.
Written by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo – and first performed in 1998, now directed by Matthew Lutton – the play is a faithful rendering of Winton’s modern literary epic. It follows the lives of two working-class families, the Lambs and the Pickles, as they attempt to eke out a living in the wake of the depression, while contending with a series of personal tragedies and triumphs.
The play roughly covers the period between the late 1940s to the 1960s, as the Pickles and Lamb children move into adulthood. Themes of death and rebirth abound. The house on Cloudstreet is restless – it heaves, sighs, and curses while Perth’s Swan River whispers the story of a submerged past.
Cloudstreet begins with a narrator figure (played by Noongar actor Ian Michael) who tells the house’s backstory. As in the novel, number one Cloudstreet was once a mission for young Indigenous girls, who were used as indentured servants by a land-owning woman and self-proclaimed paragon of Christian virtue.
Guy Simon and Ian Michael in Cloudstreet.Pia Johnson
The young Indigenous captives perished in the house along with its cruel mistress. One of the mission’s girls returns as an embodied presence on the stage, at times interrupting the dramatic time of the play to offer its main characters pieces of wisdom or provide exposition on plot.
The house and its surrounds are haunted by the past: the walls and foundation are soaked with the traumatised presences of its previous occupants. The outline of two figures whom we assume are the souls of the departed are literally etched in black charcoal onto the back wall.
Cheery nostalgia
Yet the play is unapologetically nostalgic and tips its hat to vaudeville, with larger than life delivery of dialogue, course humour, and a strong embrace of working-class Australian vernacular. Overtones of cheery nostalgia intersect with moments of magical-horror or surrealism – these arrive in the form of theatre’s equivalent to the horror genre’s jump scare.
Matthew Lutton’s directorial hand is palpable, delivering haunting atmospherics sustained and supported by a rich, often unsettling soundscape (J. David Franzke). The set-design (Zoë Atkinson), is reminiscent of a modernist style, with the set doubling as both the outdoors and the inside of the house. The walls of the house are not static – they grind as they protrude and retract, giving the impression the audience is moving in and out of a secret crypt.
The house on Cloudstreet is haunted by its past.Pia Johnson
Dramatic action unfolds over four acts, with the first depicting the near drowning of Fish Lamb (Benjamin Oakes), who is left permanently altered. Oakes inhabits the character of Fish Lamb with aplomb, drawing out the role’s subtleties and enthusiasm.
We also see the fraught relationship between teenager Rose Pickles (Brenna Harding) and her glamourous, listless and alcoholic mother Dolly (Natasha Herbert). Sam Pickles (Bert LaBonté), a kind but errant gambler, loses his livelihood after a trawling accident claims his hand.
In the second and third act, the Lambs and Pickles converge at the house on Cloudstreet, an eyesore bequeathed to Sam Pickles by a publican relative. They are polar opposites: Oriel Lamb’s (Alison Whyte) industriousness sees the Lambs opening up shop on their side of the house, a hive of entrepreneurial activity, while Dolly Pickles drinks, smokes and languishes on the other side.
Bert LaBonté as Sam Pickles and Natasha Herbert as Dolly Pickles in Cloudstreet. The Pickles and the Lambs are polar opposites.Pia Johnson
The actors deliver nuanced performances despite the demands placed upon vocal style and delivery when playing to the Merlyn Theatre’s large auditorium. Their performances are energetic, with members of the ensemble cast shifting convincingly across multiple small roles for the duration of the play.
In the third and fourth act, a serial killer stalks the town and its unwitting inhabitants, leaving a swathe of dead in his wake. The terror of the unknown gunman merges with the supernatural horror embedded in the history-soaked mortar of the house; while the perilous water of the Swan River beckons Fish Lamb to return to it.
Fish’s near drowning left him open to fits of revelry and panic; he hears the calls of the dead from Cloudstreet’s walls; and longs to return to his watery grave in which a subterranean landscape of sky and stars unfold.
Benjamin Oakes, Guy Simon and Ian Michael in Cloudstreet. The Swan River plays a key role in the story.Pia Johnson
The play’s stunning final image is elemental and cathartic, promising to wash away the colonial hauntings of the past, which leaves us to contemplate our own position in an Australian landscape beset by a continuing history of settler colonial violence.
However, relegating Indigenous presence to the margins of plot or to the ghostly realm is a major sticking point in Cloudstreet and has been critiqued before. This narrative device is advanced in both the novel and its theatrical adaptation. The Indigenous characters in the play remain spectral and/or peripheral – artificially grafted to the lives of the Lambs and Pickles as counterpoint.
While diverse casting in the new production attempts to mitigate this literary settler trope, it would require a deeper intervention in the writing itself to fully succeed. Pathos blends with humour to produce a visually arresting production, by turns raucous and tragic, but its nostalgia dovetails all too easily with a redemptive vision of Australia’s past.
Cloudstreet is on at the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne until June 16.
The Great Australian Bight is home to a unique array of marine life. More than 85% of species in this remote stretch of rocky coastline are not found anywhere else in the world. It’s also potentially one of “Australia’s largest untapped oil reserves”, according to Norwegian energy company Equinor.
Equinor has proposed to drill a deepwater oil well 370km offshore to a depth of more than two kilometres in search of oil.
But a recent poll showed seven out of ten South Australian voters are against drilling in the Bight. And hundreds of people recently gathered on an Adelaide beach in protest.
Stop Shopping Gospel Choir from New York are seen at the Rundle Mall in Adelaide, protesting against Equinor’s plans to drill in the Great Australian Bight.AAP Image/David Mariuz
Their main concerns include the lack of economic benefits for local communities, more fossil fuel investment, weak regulation and the potential for an oil spill, devastating our “Great Southern Reef”.
Drilling in the Great Australian Bight has occurred since the 1960s, but never as deep as what Equinor has proposed.
The Coalition government argues the project will improve energy security and bring money and jobs to the region. Labor announced recently that, if elected, it would commission a study on the consequences of a spill in the region.
So what’s the worst that could happen?
A spill could leak between 4.3 million barrels and 7.9 million barrels – the largest oil spill in history, according to estimates from the 2016 Worst Credible Discharge report, authored by Equinor and its former joint-venture partner, BP.
The Bight is a wild place, with violent storms and strong winds and waves. The geography is remote, unmonitored, largely unpopulated and lacks physical infrastructure to respond effectively to an oil spill.
In such an event, Equinor has said it would take 17 days to respond in a best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is 39 days, and the goal scenario is 26 days.
In modelling for the worst-case scenario, the company predicts the oil from a spill could even reach from Albany in Western Australia to Port Macquarie in New South Wales.
How likely is an oil spill?
Reports from Norwegian regulators, compiled by Greenpeace, reveal Equinor had more than 50 safety and control breaches, including ten oil leaks, in the last three-and-a-half years. Each incident occurred in regulatory environments with stricter conditions than in Australia.
Our independent regulator, NOPSEMA, does not require inspections of wells during construction to ensure they meet safety standards.
This can be disastrous. For instance, the failure to properly construct the Montara Well in the North West Shelf caused the worst oil spill in Australian history.
NOPSEMA does not have a set standard for well control. This is a risky proposition because in recent years three of the four major international oil spills from well blowouts occurred in exploration wells, the kind planned for the Bight.
And Greenpeace has questioned the independence of NOPSEMA after it was revealed the regulator will speak at an event promoting oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight.
Equinor’s proposed project risks local fishing and tourism industries that rely on a pristine natural environment and contribute $10 billion a year to our economy, twice as much as the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Australian Bight is home to at least 14 schools of bottlenose dolphins.Shutterstock
A 2018 ACIL Allen report on the economic impact of drilling in the Great Australian Bight suggested Australia’s GDP could gain A$5.9 billion a year if the region turns out to be a major oil field.
But the catch is that this would require 101 oil wells to be successfully drilled, and many of the expected benefits wouldn’t be realised until between 2040 and 2060. What’s more, this windfall wouldn’t reach the pockets of locals, but would largely land in federal government coffers via the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.
These predictions are based on optimistic estimates of oil prices, and the report assumes our oil demand will remain on an upwards trajectory, which would mean we breach the Paris targets by a significant margin.
Worryingly, Equinor’s former partner in this venture, energy giant BP, even tried to claim an oil spill would benefit the local economy, and said:
In most instances, the increased activity associated with cleanup operations will be a welcome boost to local economies.
There is little evidence to support the argument that this drilling will lead to better energy security.
Given Australia doesn’t have the capacity to refine oil domestically, it’s likely most, if not all, of the oil extracted would be processed overseas.
From a security point of view, far more impact would come from reducing our reliance on oil through better vehicle emission standards and promoting a system-wide shift to electric vehicles.
No real benefit to the community
The Great Australian Bight is home to Australia’s most productive fishery, which directly employs 3,900 locals. An oil spill would threaten 9,000 jobs in South Australia alone.
By comparison, Equinor claim that the construction phase of the project would create 1,361 jobs, most of which require experience that would not be found in local communities. For instance, fly-in fly-out workers from Adelaide would take ongoing jobs on the rigs.
Equinor has had more than 50 safety and control breaches in the last three-and-a-half years, occurring in stricter regulatory environments than in Australia.Shutterstock
Equinor has already completed seismic testing, which involves firing soundwaves into the ocean floor to detect the presence of oil and gas. The testing alone has pushed schools of tuna further out to sea, increasing costs and risks for local fisherman.
You decide, is it worth it?
Decisions over resource projects with significant environmental impacts need to be based on a thorough cost-benefit analysis and include the precautionary principle.
The economic advantage to either local communities or the Australian public from this proposal is in doubt. And Australians are entitled to ask their politicians why so little is demanded of these organisations.
In the lead-up to a critical federal election, we are left to ask why our political leaders are doubling down on a fossil fuel bet with no clear advantages and a significant downside risk.
Amnesty International Indonesia is calling for justice and truth from the government over the Trisakti student shooting tragedy through legal channels.
This was revealed by AI executive director Usman Hamid in response to the 21st anniversary yesterday of the Trisakti student shootings on May 12, 1998.
On that day, four students were killed when the military fired on a demonstration opposing former President Suharto at the Trisakti University campus in Grogol, West Jakarta.
The four students were Elang Mulia Lesmana, Hafidin Royan, Heri Hartanto, and Hendriawan Sie.
“First, Amnesty is again calling for the state to take responsibility for resolving the tragic student shootings at the universities of Trisakti, Atma Jaya, and at other campuses in Indonesia which took place during the early days of reformasi,” said Hamid.
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Hamid said the victims and their families had the right to receive legal justice. This could be achieved by bringing the perpetrators to trial.
In addition to this, the victims also had the right to receive an explanation about the affair and other rights, Hamid said.
Right to justice, truth “The victims have the right to obtain restoration, as far as is possible, of their lives which were destroyed, through a policy of repression by the state. The right to legal justice, truth and rehabilitation are the most important rights which the state is obliged to fulfill,” he said.
Amnesty is also calling for a resolution of the Trisakti tragedy to be included in the government’s agenda and by incoming members of the next House of Representatives following last month’s general election.
The tragedy reflects the limits on academic freedom and opinion in socio-political terms. Because of this, it is important to remember the tragedy so that the same thing does not happen again.
“The Trisakti tragedy is a tragedy of curbing academic freedom, including independent thinking on campus as well as independence to express views in socio-political life. Commemorating this tragedy is extremely important so that the state and the government do not do this again,” said Hamid.
Meanwhile according to documentation by the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), about 681 other people were injured across various tertiary education institutions in Indonesia.
The Trisakti tragedy became a symbol and a trigger for student resistance against Suharto’s New Order regime.
Following the tragedy, student protests demanding reformasi (political reform) grew significantly and in the end forced Suharto to resign on May 21, 1998.
Background On May 12, 1998, security forces fired into a crowd of student protesters from the Trisakti University near their campus in West Jakarta, killing four students and injuring several others.
This proved to be the spark which set-off three days of mass demonstrations and rioting in Jakarta which eventually lead to the overthrow of former president Suharto.
The then armed forces chief and Defence Minister General Wiranto, who is now the Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs, has been accused of having command responsibility for the Trisakti and other student shootings in 1998 but has never been investigated over the case.
A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has attracted widespread media attention after it found chemicals contained in sunscreen could get into people’s bloodstreams:
A variety of different chemicals in sunscreen are used to absorb or scatter UV light – both long wavelength (UVA) and short wavelength (UVB) – to protect us from the harmful effects of the Sun.
But while small amounts of these chemicals may enter the bloodsteam, there is no evidence they are harmful. Ultimately, using sunscreen reduces your risk of skin cancer, and this study gives us no reason to stop using it.
Why was the study done?
The US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) recently updated its guidelines on sunscreen safety. The guidelines indicate that if long-term users were likely to have a plasma concentration of greater than 0.5 nanograms per millilitre of blood, further safety studies would need to be undertaken.
This level is just a trigger for investigation; it does not indicate whether the chemical has any actual toxic effect.
The JAMA study was done to determine whether commonly used sunscreen compounds exceeded these limits, which would indicate that further safety studies were required under the new guidelines.
So what did the study do?
The study looked at the absorption of some common organic sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, and ecamsule), in 24 healthy participants after they applied four commercially available sunscreen formulations.
Each formulation contained three of the four organic sunscreen ingredients listed above. The concentrations of each individual compound were typical of commercial sunscreens and well within the permitted levels. For example, they all contained 3% avobenzone, and the maximum permitted concentration is 5%.
The researchers split the participants into four groups: two groups used a spray, one used cream, and the other used a lotion. The participants applied their assigned product to 75% of their body four times a day, for four days.
The researchers then examined the absorption of these compounds by measuring participants’ blood over seven days using highly sensitive tests.
What did they find?
In all subjects, the blood levels of the sunscreen chemicals rapidly rose above the FDA guidance levels regardless of the sunscreen formulation (spray, lotion or cream).
The levels remained above the FDA guidance levels for at least two days.
But the conditions of the test were extreme. Some 75% of body surface was covered, and the sunscreen was reapplied every two hours and under conditions where the compounds were unlikely to be broken down or removed (for example by swimming or sweating).
This was deliberately a test of a worst-case scenario, as mandated by FDA guidelines to determine whether safety testing was needed.
Of course, going above the FDA guidance levels does not indicate there is a risk; only that evaluation is required.
What about in Australia?
Australia’s FDA-equivalent body uses the European Union’s “non-clinical” guidelines to evaluate sunscreens and ensure they are safe to use.
The EU guidelines are based on several studies which show the components of sunscreens are not poisonous or harmful to human health.
Looking specifically at the chemical avobenzone, the safety studies show no toxic effect or potential harm to human health, aside from a small risk of skin sensitivity.
The level of avobenzone reported in the blood after regularly applying sunscreen, (around 4 nanograms per millilitre) is around 1,000 times lower than the threshold levels for harm to skin cells. And the safety studies report no increased risk for cancer.
European researchers have also investigated whether the chemicals in sunscreens can mimic the effects of the female sex hormone estrogen. They found the levels would have to be 100 times higher than are absorbed during normal sunscreen use to have any effect.
The bottom line
This study found that under a worst case scenario, blood levels of organic sunscreen chemicals exceeded the FDA guidance threshold. Under more realistic use the levels will be even lower.
But even under this worst case scenario, the levels are at least 100 times below the European Union’s safety threshold.
The research check is a fair and reasonable summary and interpretation of the JAMA paper on the absorption of active sunscreen ingredients.
It is worth noting that the reference to “extreme” conditions in which the research was conducted is correct, however, in terms of dose, it does align with the recommended level of use of sunscreen. That is, reapply every two hours and use 2mg per 1cm₂. A single “dose” is recommended at 5ml for each arm, leg, front torso, back and head and face, or 7 x 5 = 35ml.
Four such doses suggest each subject would have applied 140ml of sunscreen each day; more than a full 110ml tube, which is a common package size for sunscreen in Australia. This is extremely unlikely to occur. Most people use half or less of the recommended dose per application, and few reapply. Even fewer do so four times in a day. – Terry Slevin
Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.
We don’t often think of microscopic organisms such as fungi as being particularly athletic. Certainly not Olympic champions.
But understanding more about fungi – which includes moulds and yeasts – could lead to new ways to prevent the devastating diseases they can cause. That’s why we’re competing in this year’s Fungus Olympics.
It’s an international competition in which teams had to find ways to encourage certain fungi to navigate a microscopic obstacle course. There will be a winner, but everyone benefits from the knowledge gained in the tournament.
The good and the bad in fungi
Fungal yeasts and moulds are highly perceptive of surfaces they colonise, and can navigate according to a basic sense of “touch” and chemical sensing.
This sensing ability makes fungi devastating to the plants we grow for food. For example, fungi that cause rust diseases in cereal crops perceive ridges on plant leaves and can grow to invade pores in the leaf surface.
But not all fungi are bad. Some beneficial mycorrhizal fungi colonise plant roots and help plants grow by providing nutrients.
In human health, fungi also have benefits and harms.
The antibacterial compounds extracted from the mould Penicillium notatum heralded the antibiotic age with unprecedented improvements in human health in the 20th century.
But the global impact of human fungal diseases is a neglected issue. It’s estimated that fungi kill more people per year than tuberculosis and malaria combined.
With their invasive filaments, known as hyphae, some fungi are adapted to locate and penetrate susceptible tissues to spread life-threatening infections.
Invasive hyphae penetrate human tissues and spread fungal disease.Dr David Ellis, University of Adelaide
The thought of sneaky hyphal filaments infiltrating human tissues and searching for ways to spread infection is the stuff of nightmares.
When fungicides no longer work
Controlling harmful fungal plant and human disease will become more difficult in the future.
It is also becoming harder and more expensive to develop new antifungal compounds that can kill fungal cells while remaining non-toxic to host cells.
A new idea is to find alternatives to killing fungal cells, such as ways to take out their sensing abilities to stop them from recognising a plant or animal hosts.
This is why understanding how fungi sense and respond to surfaces is an important area of research.
An unconventional Olympics
In 2018 I learned about the inaugural Fungus Olympics where fungi are the competitors and the events are held in microscopic mazes.
This year, at least 29 teams are involved, including us. All we needed was a memorable team name.
But in this Olympiad, competitors didn’t go to the Olympics; the Olympics came to us.
The events consisted of fabricated microscopic channels moulded in soft polymers in small petri dishes, and sent to us by mail. The competitors are different fungal organisms, selected by each team.
Live cell imaging microscope and microfluidic device.Bryan Coad, Author provided
To observe the microscopic events the organisers couriered small digital microscopes to capture live-cell images as fungal hyphae (filaments) raced around and through the maze device.
At the “ready” stage of the race, fungal cells were injected into the maze and on “go”, images of the fungus were captured in time-lapse video and uploaded to cloud storage.
Our lab’s 4th competitor quickly outgrew this small event.
In the interest of fairness, only the organisers could access the runs of all the competitors, meaning that each team was blind to the fungal species and the specific conditions used by other teams.
This is highly secretive business because in the Fungus Olympics, the use of performance enhancing substances is actually encouraged. Each team is free to choose whatever growth medium and supplements are needed for optimal performance.
With fungi, adjusting the temperature by a few degrees here or there, or giving them a bit of extra glucose, can turn a lacklustre competitor into an Olympic champ.
Different events presented unique challenges for the fungi to overcome. There was the:
“100 metre dash” and “hurdles” designed to test speed and agility
“weightlifting” to judge their ability to force their way through a tight space
“intelligence” and “thoroughness” events to judge how fast they can navigate through a maze, and explore different paths.
Microfluidic device and microscope image of the different events. 1.‘100 metre’ dash, 2. ‘hurdles’, 3. ‘weightlifting/squeeze’, 4. ‘intelligence/navigation’, 5. ‘thoroughness/exploration’Bryan Coad, Author provided
The last competitors completed their runs at the end of April, and it’s now up to the judges to select the winners based on the performance of the fungi.
While fun events such as the Fungus Olympics show fungi can navigate obstacles and overcome barriers, there are valuable lessons to be learnt about the relationships between fungi and the properties of materials.
My lab is using these ideas to design new materials that mimic the chemical and physical properties of plant and animal host tissues. The goal is to better understand how fungi use surface sensing to plan their attack.
If we can identify any inhibitors of fungal sensing to confuse them and prevent host recognition, then essentially we can disarm them and thus prevent them from causing any damage.
This is a promising new strategy for stopping harmful plant and human diseases that does not rely on the use of toxic drugs to which fungi can develop resistance.
This is why understanding more about how fungi sense makes sense in outsmarting these cunning pathogens.
So fingers crossed for a medal for our contribution to the Fungus Olympics.
The Fugus Olympics was conceived by Daniel Irimia and Michelle Momany, organised by Alex Hopke and Felix Ellett designed the events.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Associate Professor at La Trobe University. Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University
As we enter the final straight of the Australian election campaign, we ask you: how much of your information about the issues and the candidates comes from social media?
Today’s Media Files podcast examines the role of social media in election campaigns, including the spread of “fake news” and foreign political interference.
Joining us is Facebook’s policy director Mia Garlick to help us understand the scale of traffic on social media.
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Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Media Files on Pocket Casts).
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James Shaw rates his Zero Carbon Bill as seven or eight out of ten. And former Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman – now with Greenpeace – rates it zero out of ten. Either way, it’s clear that the new legislation isn’t really the crucial planet-saving bill that many were hoping for. And it certainly doesn’t seem to match up to Jacinda Ardern’s claim that her government regards the climate change crisis as her generation’s nuclear-free moment.
The press release from Greenpeace really was quite stunning in its scathing critique of the Government – see: Toothless Zero Carbon Bill has bark but no bite. To quote Norman: “What we’ve got here is a reasonably ambitious piece of legislation that’s then had the teeth ripped out of it. There’s bark, but there’s no bite.” And ultimately, the bill “is watered-down medicine that lacks the potency to cure the actual ailment we have”.
Norman went on to criticise more about the bill, on various broadcasters, even saying that it amounted to “virtue signalling” as it would do nothing to fight climate change, only make the Government look like they were taking action.
One of Norman’s main criticisms is that the bill establishes targets for emission reductions that are “unenforceable”. He told TVNZ’s Breakfast: “They’ve made it very clear – it’s like saying the speed limit is 50km/h, then the next line says that no one is allowed to enforce the speed limit. The next part is you can go get a declaration, it’s called, but a declaration has no weight – you can’t force the Government to do anything” – see: Climate change amendment bill ‘unenforceable, problematic’ – says Greenpeace New Zealand leader.
In this interview, Norman also calls on the public to pressure the Government to do more: “That people power element is essential and people shouldn’t think that somehow, this, the Government now has this under control… They’ve been calling it climate action – it’s not. Action will only happen now if people really mobilise and put pressure on politicians.”
Norman also says: “The Bill sends some good signals, until you get to the section at the end that negates everything else you’ve just read. This section states there is no remedy or relief for failure to meet the 2050 target, meaning there’s no legal compulsion for anyone to take any notice.” See also: Greenpeace Executive Director rates Zero Carbon Bill 0 of 10.
Others have also criticised the new legislation for setting up a Climate Commission that recommends necessary actions, but has no power.
According to Gordon Campbell the bill has “been reduced to a shadow of what the Greens originally envisaged”, and the lack of independence for the Commission is big problem: “Crucially, these are to be aspirational targets and recommendations only. The Commission lacks the policies to help achieve them, the powers to enforce them, the penalties to punish non-compliance, and the independence to over-ride the opposition from competing interests. Instead of reporting to Parliament, the Commission will report to the government of the day, who will be free to spin or muzzle its findings as it sees fit” – see: Token moves on climate change.
Blogger No Right Turn is also critical of the bill, and not only for the problem with the enforceability of the targets, but because setting the carbon neutral goal for 2050 is too unambitious in light of the crisis we are in: “2050 looked great as a target year a decade ago, but it may now be too late. I suspect that we’re going to have to increase our ambition and bring forward the target year for net-zero in the medium term” – see: Climate Change: The Zero Carbon Bill.
Other climate commentators have criticised the lack of ambition in the targets and processes involved. For example, Bronwyn Hayward, who was New Zealand’s lead author on last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, is reported as approving of the overall framework of the bill, but being unhappy about the new Commission reporting to the Government of the day rather than Parliament as a whole: “We all know that when you’re reporting to a government of the day your report can be, the text can be massaged, the release can be delayed which all gets in the way of what we actually need which is a fearless commission” – see Kate Gudsell’sClimate change plan: ‘Setting the bar so low’.
As to why the Government “had to set the bar so low”, Hayward suggests it was “in order to get everybody on board”. This has been a common theme in the commentary about the new bill. For example, although Gordon Campbell points the finger at New Zealand First for watering down the bill, he thinks that it’s a result of the consensus political process and “the path of moderation has ended up pleasing virtually no-one”.
Clearly, the Government and the Greens have put a high priority on “consensus” in drawing up the Zero Carbon Bill. James Shaw, in particular, wanted to put together a law that had as much buy-in as possible from political parties and relevant organisations.
For one of the best discussions of this prioritisation of consensus, see Toby Manhire’s interview with the Climate Change Minister, in which Shaw explains that he went to great lengths to consult and find consensus, saying “I’ve bent over backwards, and some people argue forwards too, to get them on board” – see: James Shaw and the zero hour.
This might have led to what Shaw acknowledges are “imperfections” in the legislation, but he justifies the approach like this: “It’s important because it reduces the chances that a future government will come in and biff it out. I mean, they could. But generally what happens is if a party votes for legislation when they’re in opposition they will uphold it when they’re in government.”
Furthermore, Shaw says that environmental groups backed this approach: “I’ve said to them: tell me what is more important. Do you want this thing to last for 30 years or do you want it to be perfect? And what they’ve said is that they need it to last for 30 years, because there’s no point in having a perfect piece of legislation that get thrown out three or six or nine years down the track. If you think about that 30-year target, it’s got to survive three or four governments in that time.”
In this interview, Shaw has high praise for the National Party for how they engaged in the process: “Look, they’ve operated in a way that has been unusually nonpartisan. They really have. We’ve been talking to them for just under a year. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to give us a good kicking, to really blow it up politically, or make hay out of it. They’ve chosen not to do so. So they have engaged in really good faith. There are certainly elements of the bill that are directly due to things they’ve proposed to us.”
And in terms of the controversial new target whereby methane gases will need to be reduced by ten per cent by 2030, Shaw suggests that this could still be moderated over the next few months if it helps get the National Party onboard. But there would inevitably be a trade-off: “you could have a lower methane target, but that means you’d have to have a steeper long-lived gases target – get to net zero in, say, 2040 or 2030”.
For another very good discussion of both the Greens’ attempt to find consensus, and also the possibility of bringing National into the multi-party consensus on the legislation, see Thomas Coughlan’s Zero Carbon Bill lives or dies on politics. According to Coughlan, the success or otherwise of this bill will be very telling for the New Zealand political system: “If the bill succeeds, it will vindicate the ability of our complicated, imperfect democracy to solve the great problems of our age… If it fails, it will prove the opposite: that our democracy isn’t up to handling the great problems of our age.”
The problem is, “When your starting point is bringing in as many cooks as possible, you’ll inevitably spoil the broth. The Government’s next big problem also has a British precedent [of Brexit], and that is the danger that in trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one”.
Now the pressure will be on National to support the bill. They want the Government to drop the detailed methane targets and instead leave the target-setting to the new Climate Commission. Commenting on this, political journalist Richard Harman says: “whether the Government would be prepared to accommodate that now would seem highly unlikely. And that could be a deal breaker” – see: Why is James Shaw apologising to Todd Muller over climate change?.
It therefore seems unlikely that a cross-party consensus will eventuate. But, in reality the Government appeared to give up on that some weeks ago, with Shaw apparently having to pull out of continued talks with National’s climate spokesperson, Todd Muller – which Shaw publicly apologised for last week. It seems that New Zealand First has played a significant role in recent changes to the process and substance of the bill. Although Harman reports that New Zealand First contacts “have been briefing journalists warning that they would have to agree to stricter methane targets than they would like because of the big win they had over capital gains tax”.
Given that consensus hasn’t worked out, and given that the Greens didn’t get what they wanted from the bill, Simon Wilson ponders who was to blame in his column, High stakes and the Greens’ game (paywalled). Wilson seems to think that it was Labour rather than New Zealand First who have stymied the bill being more progressive.
Wilson almost rules out New Zealand First and National as being responsible for ruining the consensus: “So why did that consensus fail? Blame the usual suspects, NZ First? Their rhetoric is all about their being the farmers’ friend, which makes them unlikely promoters of a methane target higher than farmers wanted. Was it National, slyly deciding to stay out of the deal, whatever it proposed? That also seems unlikely: Shaw and National’s climate change spokesperson Todd Muller have forged a close working relationship they both say is based on trust.”
Instead, it seems that Labour might be responsible: “So was it NZ First after all, playing dark and dirty with a Greens initiative because that’s what they always do? Or did Labour shaft the consensus? There’s a logic to that. Labour always needs issues that define it as being different from National, and consensus doesn’t matter if your opponents are going to accept your reforms later anyway.”
Finally, according to economist Rod Oram, this bill was always destined to be a problem because all political parties are hostage to conservative forces who don’t want to see real action on climate change. He says that the Zero Carbon Bill “is by far the most important Act our Parliament will ever pass” but that it isn’t the best legislation that could have been produced. Therefore, “time is very short to get a very direct message to all parties: a significant number of voters want a far more effective Climate Act than this Bill offers. If that means taking to the streets, let’s do it” – see: Time to shout for a better climate law.
The Coalition has put forward a scheme to help first home buyers get into homes, under which the government will underwrite a loan of 15% of the value of the home, to be treated as part of their deposit, taking a deposit of 5% up to 20%. Labor adopted it within hours of the announcement on Sunday, meaning that in one form or another it seems likely to become part of housing policy.
Home ownership benefits from significant tax advantages, which are at their strongest when owners have built up their equity. Partly for that reason, it has always been a major pillar of savings for Australians. But the benefits tend to be priced into the cost of housing, which helps explain why it is so expensive. Yes, it is not only those pesky investors.
Home prices are high because of tax breaks…
Blaming investors for this situation can be politically acceptable, but blaming homeowners more broadly or even hinting that tax advantages are to blame is political poison.
Blaming an insufficient supply of new houses is also unacceptable as it can be portrayed as a cop out, even though it is probably the biggest factor explaining the high cost of housing in Australian cities and cities in other countries and states such as Canada and California. In any event it is seen as a “states issue”.
This means the first point to make is that efforts to assist first home buyers are second-best options. Given that we are not tackling the problems we’ve got, whatever things we do do won’t be prefect.
…and an insufficient supply of homes
The latest proposal isn’t the first or only measure directed at first home buyers. The first home buyers grant introduced in 2000 as part of the goods and services tax package was similar but, at A$7000, on a smaller scale. State government concessions on conveyancing tax have also helped.
These measures have been criticised as simply putting upward pressure on prices, and as a result not benefitting first home buyers. This criticism is not correct. They benefit first home buyers by much more than they push up prices. They would only harm first home buyers if all buyers got the concession and it didn’t result in extra houses being built.
Neither is the case.
It is possible to help first home buyers…
In recent years we have seen a substantial supply response which should have put to rest notions that the market does not respond to shifts in demand. And first homes don’t make up that much of the market; less than 20% of buyers overall, although more in some sectors.
Measures to help first home buyers do have an upward impact on prices, but nothing like to the extent that they help first home buyers.
They hurt people swapping homes. They have to pay marginally more, as do investors, meaning renters have to pay more.
The major concern with the proposal is the risk that buyers might enter the market and then get into trouble.
…but they’ll need to be careful
One of the big problems in the US in the lead-up to the global financial crisis (GFC) were policies designed to get low-income households into the market.
When the GFC hit, they were the biggest losers. So policymakers will need to be very wary in designing the policy.
First home buyers will win, but they will need to be cautious.
Housing is not risk free. House prices can fall as well as rise, as recent history has confirmed only too well.
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.
Can snails fart? Thank you. – Avalon, age 9, Scotts Head, NSW.
Lots of animals fart because of what they eat, but it was not easy for me to find a clear answer on whether snails really do. More research is needed to know exactly how the digestive system of a snail really works.
You might have heard about methane. It is a gas found in a lot of animal farts. I did find one study that said that scientists kept some snails in a glass container for one day and one night and checked if they would produce methane. And the snails did not.
(For the adults in the audience, the paper noted that, “In this aspect, the structure of the microbiota and in consequence the functioning of the digestive microbial ecosystem of the snails differs markedly from those of vertebrates, especially herbivores.”)
You may have seen reports that scientists built a database showing which animals do and don’t fart. Not every animal in the world is on there, but it does say that mussels and clams (which, like snails, are part of a group of animals called molluscs) do not fart. Moon snails, which live in the sea, were also listed as a no.
One thing I can tell you is that a snail’s bottom is right over its head. This is because snails are very different from other molluscs (which includes things like octopus and squid as well). Because they are squashed into a protective shell, their body is twisted round to fit in. As a result, their bottom is just above and to the side of where their head comes out.
Gassy molluscs
Water snails, mussels and other molluscs do produce a gas called nitrous oxide if they live in polluted water.
You might have heard of nitrous oxide. It’s also called “laughing gas”. But this can be a problem, as nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas and lots of it will add to climate change.
These mussels, when they are not producing laughing gas, produce something called “pseudo-faeces” which literally means “false poo”. Because the food they eat (little plants and animals floating in the water which they suck in) can contain a lot of sand, they sometimes have to squirt it all out. This doesn’t come out of their bottom, but out of something called a siphon, through which they suck their food.
Preliminary results from New Caledonia’s provincial elections show that the anti-independence parties will retain their slim majority in the 54-member Congress.
Local television projections show that the new anti-independence majority will get 28 seats, including three of a new party, Pacific Awakening, which emanates from the Wallisian community.
This is two more than the 26 seats of the pro-independence bloc of five parties.
Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes front page today. Image: PMC screenshot
In the new Congress, which will be made up of members of the three provincial assemblies, the Future with Confidence coalition led by Sonia Backes will be the biggest party with a projected 18 seats.
Caledonia Together, which used to be the biggest party, is set to slump from 15 seats to seven.
According to unofficial results in the southern province, Backes’ coalition, which was formed for this election, won an absolute majority in the provincial assembly.
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In the Loyalty Islands province, all seats went to pro-independence parties.
In the northern province, the pro-independence Uni/Palika list of the incumbent president Paul Neaoutyine came first, narrowly ahead of another pro-independence list.
Turnout was about 66 percent.
The new Congress will elect an 11-member collegial government for a five-year term.
Under the collegial system enshrined in the Noumea Accord, the government seats will be shared among the parties in proportion to their strength in Congress.
Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper, described the result as “The great upheaval” in its front page report, describing the massive southern provincial reshuffle while the north and the Loyalty islands provinces had little change.
This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
Hienghéne Sport won their maiden OFC Champions League football title after a sensational 60 metre strike by substitute Amy Antoine Roine earned a 1-0 victory over AS Magenta in an all New Caledonian final in Noumea.
With the match still scoreless approaching the halfway point of the second half at Stade Numa Daly, Roine won the ball from a clearance and took two touches to bring the ball under control before spotting the Magenta goalkeeper off his line.
Just six minutes after being sent onto the pitch by head coach Felix Tagawa, Roine let fly with an audacious long-range lob from inside his own half which sailed over Steeve Ioxee’s head and into the goal, in what proved to be the decisive moment of the match.
“Any player, whether on the field or not, is important and we were clear that they couldn’t just be spectators. He showed that he listened, he scored a great goal and we had an impressive goalkeeper too. It was a great final.” said Tagawa.
A stunned Magenta went in search of the equaliser and it should have come in the 71st minute, but Hienghéne keeper Rocky Nyiekene saved Wilsen Poameno’s effort from point-blank range as the New Caledonia domestic champions held on to clinch their first regional title.
“It’s a huge moment for the club, and for the country too. I hope that it will continue, we know we’ve won, what we’ve done in winning this match,” said Felix Tagawa. “It’s been a long journey, today we were patient, we know how to bounce back.”
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Rocky Nyiekene capped off a standout performance by winning the OFC Champions League Golden Glove award.
“Of course I’m really touched to be elected the best goalkeeper. You have to be prepared for matches like this and I was. For now, no, I don’t think it’s sunk in that we’ve qualified for the Club World Cup. Maybe later, but right now, no,” reflected Nyiekene.
Hienghéne captain Bertrand Kai was awarded the Golden Ball for best overall player while Team Wellington striker Ross Allen collected the Golden Boot after finding the net 11 times during the season, while Auckland City received the Fair Play Award.
This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
Hienghéne Sport celebrate their maiden OFC Champions League title. Image: RNZ/Phototek
Today we run two longer reads on the men who are vying to become prime minister at the 2019 federal election. In this essay, Associate Professor Paul Strangio examines Labor leader Bill Shorten – where he’s come from and, if he wins, what kind of a prime minister he might be. You can read Michelle Grattan’s essay on Scott Morrison here.
“I believe a drover’s dog could lead the Labor Party to victory the way the country is and the way the opinion polls are.”
Uttered by Labor’s Bill Hayden on the day the 1983 election was called, as he dramatically announced his resignation as opposition leader to make way for the irresistible force of Bob Hawke, these words are part of Australian political folklore.
Hayden had every right to feel bitter, as his last-minute supplanting by Hawke robbed him of the opportunity to become prime minister. He had inherited Labor’s leadership more than five years before, when it was reeling from crushing defeat. He had worked conscientiously to restore the party’s shattered stocks by building around him a united and talented front bench, and had overseen a major renovation of the party’s policy program.
Hayden had also made sizeable ground in his first election campaign as leader, winning more than a dozen seats to bring Labor within striking distance of government. Yet his lack of public appeal fuelled nagging questions about him diminishing Labor’s chances of claiming office. He was a stolid media performer, with his speaking style and dress sense the butt of criticism.
Sound familiar?
Of course, we should not overstate the historical analogy; the Australia of the early 1980s and its political circumstances are far removed from the present, and Hayden and Bill Shorten are dissimilar in many ways. Still, an intriguing thing about the 2019 election is that we will discover whether a “drover’s dog” can actually win.
There is no Hawke-like messiah waiting in the wings for Labor and, even if there was an obvious charismatic alternative, the party’s new rules for the selection and deselection of leaders would have impeded any five-minutes-to-midnight change. For Labor, it is the leadership ugly duckling Shorten, or bust.
For Labor, it is the ‘leadership ugly duckling’ Shorten, or bust.AAP/Lukas Coch
At this stage, the auguries remain promising for Shorten. Despite narrowing through the campaign, the opinion polls have monotonously pointed to a Labor victory. The arithmetic of the electoral pendulum is also strongly on his side.
If Shorten becomes prime minister on Saturday, he will create his own piece of political history. The two-election recovery strategy has mostly been a comforting myth for Australia’s major parties and leaders when regrouping from major defeat.
Since the second world war, several opposition leaders — all Labor — have had consecutive shots at delivering electoral redemption and failed: Bert Evatt, Arthur Calwell, and Kim Beazley. Hayden, as noted, was agonisingly denied a second run.
This leaves only Robert Menzies and Gough Whitlam who have steered their parties back into office after being opposition leader through the preceding two terms: during 1943-49 and 1967-72, respectively. And neither of these giants of Australian politics was crowned opposition leader immediately upon their party’s previous loss of government.
How will Shorten have done it? The longer one pores over the annals of political leadership, the more evident it becomes that good timing and luck are fundamental to success. The political gods have smiled generously on Shorten. While the public’s image of him is still tainted by his factional power plays during the civil war between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, the legacy of that internecine fighting has buttressed his leadership. A traumatised Labor Party has taken refuge in unity and stability since that time, while the leadership selection rules imposed by Rudd during his prime-ministerial second coming have safeguarded Shorten from the risk of precipitous challenge.
His Coalition adversaries have also consistently blessed Shorten. He was gifted early political traction and the mantra for his leadership project (fairness versus inequality) by the Abbott government’s first budget of May 2014, with its litany of broken promises and punitive measures.
Tony Abbott kept giving. Indeed, with so much emphasis on Shorten’s stubbornly poor leadership ratings in the opinion polls, it is easy to forget he enjoyed patches when he led Abbott as preferred prime minister, the most sustained spell coming in the wake of the latter’s Australia Day 2015 knighting of Prince Philip.
Malcolm Turnbull was never less popular than Shorten in the polls, yet he too did the opposition leader his share of favours. Turnbull’s pusillanimity towards his conservative Coalition colleagues, and failure to capitalise on the electorate’s bountiful goodwill towards him in late 2015, saved Shorten from drowning at a point when his prospects seemed most hopeless.
Malcolm Turnbull (right), like Tony Abbott before him, did Shorten several unwitting political favours.AAP/Mick Tsikas
Turnbull followed with a lacklustre 2016 election campaign that aided Shorten, who won enough seats to fortify his leadership against the aspiring Anthony Albanese. And when there were reports of Albanese circling Shorten in the winter of 2018, Turnbull badly misfired by framing the so-called “Super Saturday” by-elections as a test of leadership, only for the Coalition to suffer a serious setback in the Queensland seat of Longman.
Once again, Shorten was thrown a lifeline. Finally, he has richly profited from the Coalition’s destructive divisions and paralysis over climate policy as public anxiety over the issue has escalated.
In that timeless manual of political leadership, The Prince, Machiavelli observed that “fortuna” is not alone sufficient for a leader to prosper; they must adapt to and take advantage of the prevailing circumstances. In Shorten’s case, this attribute has been evident in at least two ways. The first is that he has practised a leadership style perfectly attuned to binding the wounds of Labor’s Rudd-Gillard era. His leadership has centred around the team rather than the individual, prioritising consultation and collegiality.
That leadership style has been the product of necessity and instinct. With the polls relentlessly telegraphing this message, Shorten is surely aware that he possesses neither the easy appeal nor magnetism to play leadership diva. He can only dream of enjoying the pop star popularity of his hero, Bob Hawke.
But where Shorten is confident he matches Hawke – and here their shared background as trade union bosses is significant – is in a capacity for orchestrating groups. Like Hawke, Shorten can talk out differences and coax agreement, giving others a sense of agency and ownership of consensually achieved decisions.
Shorten with his hero, Bob Hawke, in 2016.AAP/Joel Carrett
Interviewed by journalist Laura Tingle for a recent profile in The Monthly, Shorten said of his leadership of the Labor Party:
I don’t have to win every argument. My colleagues are capable and smart. I’m part of a much bigger movement. I’ve learnt that to lead you’ve got to be willing to listen, you’ve got to be willing to give some ground.
That team projection was obvious at Labor’s official campaign launch. Shorten insists he will bring the same approach to the prime ministership. He has regularly employed the term “coach” to describe how he will perform the role.
Appearing on the ABC’s Q&A, he declared
I’m not going to be a messiah. I don’t believe in the … authoritarian strongman.
Speaking to The Australian’s Troy Bramston, Shorten expanded on his leadership method:
I always try to find, in any negotiation, the creation of mutual value. I will always try to understand your interests as well as mine, and then I look to where we can work together to create additional value.
An illustration of this shared, enabling model of leadership was Labor’s reproductive health strategy announced earlier this year. Following the plan’s announcement, which among other things is designed to improve women’s access to abortion services in public hospitals, it was revealed that the policy was the result of two years of extensive consultations within Labor’s ranks and with health experts and women’s groups. Its development had been stewarded by the head of the party’s federal caucus committee on women, shadow health minister Catherine King, and Shorten’s deputy, Tanya Plibersek. The policy had risked unsettling the party’s conservative elements and Shorten was inconspicuous in its announcement, but he had clearly empowered it under his watch.
Another example of how Shorten has capitalised on circumstances is in reading the mood of an era in which the market liberalisation paradigm that dominated policy-making for a quarter of a century from the early 1980s has run out of puff. Under his leadership, Labor has resuscitated the idea of an activist government, promising expanded investment in services and strategic interventions in the marketplace (for example, in wage setting).
Labor has boldly committed to wealth redistribution and ameliorating inequalities that are economic and generation-based. There were portents of this direction early in Shorten’s leadership — his 2014 budget reply speech established themes of countering inequality and injustice that he has built on in the five years since.
As in the 2016 election campaign, News Corp commentators have been incandescent at Shorten’s market apostasies. Yet their doyen, Paul Kelly, grudgingly acknowledged earlier this year:
Shorten’s skill has been conspicuous. Acting with audacity, he has picked much of the spirit of the times.
Shorten’s leadership has not been without weaknesses. There is the persistent shadow of his inability to win personal favour with the electorate. A trawl through past Newspolls confirms that his ratings have been chronically poor. Apart from a brief honeymoon in the months following his election as opposition leader in October 2013, approval of his performance has only outstripped disapproval on a handful of occasions, and then only barely.
He has mostly trailed badly on the question of preferred prime minister. His defenders protest that opinion polls are seldom kind to opposition leaders, and history shows that lagging as preferred prime minister is not a serious obstacle to winning office. These are valid points. Leadership ratings do not strongly correlate with election results. Nevertheless, Shorten’s popularity deficit has been more pronounced than any of the past three opposition leaders during their countdown to becoming prime minister: John Howard in 1996, certainly Kevin Rudd in 2007, and even the unloved Abbott in 2013.
The 2016 Australian Election Study provides insight into the nature of Shorten’s image problem in the electorate. Although scoring creditably on the qualities of “intelligent” and “knowledgeable” (albeit not as highly as Turnbull), survey respondents marked him low on the qualities of “honest”, “trustworthy” and “inspiring”.
Images have a habit of becoming baked in. The perception of Shorten as shifty, which originated during the Rudd-Gillard era, is an abiding problem for him. The author George Megalogenis has identified the opposition leader’s prosaic rhetorical skills as typical of the “apparatchik age” politician. But Shorten has peculiar difficulty in projecting authenticity down the barrel of the television camera or generating a positive emotional reaction among voters from afar. His on-screen ungainliness contrasts with his reputation as a deft worker of small rooms.
Maybe Shorten’s emotionally charged rebuttal of the News Corp tabloids’ snide disputing of his mother’s life story will thaw the electorate’s view of him. More likely, it will take the prime minister’s mantle to significantly reset attitudes towards him and even then, the respect he receives is likely to be stinting in this reflexively sceptical age.
Perhaps, though, there has been a silver lining to voters’ coolness towards Shorten. As already noted, it has reinforced his natural inclination to be a team player. Moreover, his batting on despite the public withholding approval suggests someone with the internal resilience and self-belief required of a head of government to weather the maelstroms that inevitably come their way.
If Shorten becomes prime minister, how will he fare? There are grounds for optimism. As Peter van Onselen observed in The Australian earlier this year, there is something analogous between the situation of Shorten and his team and the incoming Hawke Labor ministry of 1983.
Just as the excesses of the Whitlam experiment were imprinted in the minds of the latter, so too a Shorten government would surely be at pains to avoid a repeat of the follies of the Rudd-Gillard years. Equally, Shorten places great stock on his learning from nearly six years as opposition leader. He told journalist Troy Bramston that:
…the best training ground to become prime minister of Australia is to be leader of the opposition.
Indeed, Shorten’s extended period as opposition leader separates him from most of the recent prime-ministerial incumbents, who served in the former role only briefly (Rudd and Turnbull) or not at all (Gillard and Morrison).
History corroborates Shorten’s belief that enduring the slings and arrows of opposition is a firm foundation for government. It is an opportunity to test and refine leadership practice, and it steels temperament.
And it is a steady temperament — the pioneering social scientist Max Weber wrote about “the firm taming of the soul” — that is arguably the quintessence of successful leadership. That kind of self-mastery is intimately connected with self-knowledge, something for which Howard was renowned. Shorten claims his time in opposition has been a voyage of self-discovery: “I’ve learnt a lot about myself.”
Shorten kisses his wife Chloe at Labor’s campaign launch. He says that nearly six years as opposition leader has taught him a lot about himself.AAP/Darren England
Another positive is that, if elected, Prime Minister Shorten will be armed with a more comprehensive program for government than have any of his predecessors for decades. This has been a considered strategy — again informed by the mistakes of recent governments, and perhaps most notably by the predicament of the Coalition after it gained office in 2013 on the back of an Abbott-led crusade that accentuated the negative and was threadbare in terms of constructive policies.
Shorten noted to Tingle that “one of the big problems” for incoming governments and prime ministers over recent years is that “they are like the proverbial dog that caught the truck. What do we do now?”
On the other hand, there are real questions about how Shorten will manage the larger forces that have conspired against the post-Howard set of prime ministers – for instance, a balkanised electorate riven by jarring interests and identities.
If Labor does form government, it looks like doing so with a primary vote of less than 40% — this would be the lowest starting core support base for any federal government since the settlement of Australia’s party system more than a century ago. It will narrow the foundation of Shorten’s prime ministership and leave him with less secure political capital to push through an agenda. It will render his government more vulnerable and potentially prone to skittishness.
In addition, Shorten will have to contend with the anarchic and fragmented contemporary media environment that, as each recent prime minister has discovered, greatly complicates the task of constructing and sustaining a unifying narrative and dissipates their powers of persuasion.
In the end, of course, we cannot forecast with confidence Shorten’s prime-ministerial destiny should he emerge victorious on Saturday. But, if defeated, we can be sure of the fate of his leadership: it will be an unceremonious end of the line. Shorten will join the likes of Evatt, Calwell, Hayden and Beazley who, for all their other notable achievements in public life, will be forever remembered as also-rans in the competition for the most glittering prize in Australian politics.
And we will belatedly learn that the drover’s dog could not win after all.
Today we run two longer reads on the men who are vying to become prime minister at the 2019 federal election. In this piece, Michelle Grattan examines Scott Morrison’s political history and his prime ministership. You can read Professor Paul Strangio’s essay on Bill Shorten here.
Jim Molan, the former major-general who was the co-author with Scott Morrison of the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders, remembers vividly Morrison’s mood immediately after the 2013 victory.
The election was on September 7, but the new government wasn’t sworn in until September 18. “He was frustrated because he was so ready to start his job, but he couldn’t start it on Day One,” Molan says.
So it was predictable that when Morrison seized the leadership after the fall of Malcolm Turnbull last August, he was on the road almost immediately, visiting drought-stricken Queensland. And it was unsurprising that Morrison soon started to come through the Labor research as a PM “getting on with the job”.
Colleagues and commentators looking at Morrison default to “action” and “ambition”. For some, those descriptions are positives; for others, negatives.
It’s possible to over-think Morrison. Long time political associate and friend David Gazard is probably right when he says “what you see is what you get”.
As he fights against the odds in this election, we see in Morrison a leader who’s tough, pragmatic, indefatigable. He’s simultaneously authentic (more people can relate to him than could to Malcolm Turnbull) and a chameleon (it’s hard to know what the beliefs are that they’re relating to, because he adapts to the circumstances he finds himself in).
Gazard attests to Morrison’s prodigious capacity for work. When Gazard was chief-of-staff to NSW opposition leader John Brogden, he would call Morrison, who was Liberal state director, at the end of the day for his help with speeches.
He’d show up at 7.30 pm for a couple of hours. If you went to the bathroom and came back, he’d be sitting in your chair, writing.
If you had to describe Morrison in a single word, perhaps you’d call him a “journeyman” of politics, in the dictionary definition a player who’s “reliable but not outstanding”. He’s not cerebral but he’s clever and cunning; he’s competent, but not charismatic nor inspiring.
His combative style was evident during the second debate when he advanced on Bill Shorten, who quipped he was a “space invader”. But comparisons with Mark Latham’s notorious handshake with John Howard late in the 2004 campaign were false.
Morrison had long been steadily climbing towards the leadership, though it seemed more likely this would come after a government defeat. There is debate about whether or to what degree he intrigued in the August 2018 coup against Malcolm Turnbull. But his capacity to don a mask was evident on Wednesday August 22, two days before Turnbull’s fall when, asked at a news conference to rule out having any leadership ambitions, he put a comradely arm around Turnbull’s shoulder and said “Me, this is my leader and I’m ambitious for him!”
Morrison with Turnbull in August 2018: ‘This is my leader and I’m ambitious for him!’AAP/Lukas Coch
One Liberal observer declares: “I’m very sure he was very much aware of what was going on – others on his behalf were active”. Pamela Williams, writing in The Monthly, reported that, by the Wednesday, Morrison was simultaneously standing by Turnbull and giving “the green light for his own tight group to start counting numbers”, so he could move in the event of Turnbull’s collapse.
Whatever the ins and outs, Morrison obtained the prime ministership in circumstances in which he was likely soon to lose it.
Initially, the opinion polls plunged, and he was dogged by the question “why isn’t Malcolm Turnbull prime minister?”. It’s a question that never entirely disappeared. But Morrison’s performance was better than many expected and the polls narrowed back to where Turnbull had them.
His opponents are wrong in trying to dismiss him as simply the one-time advertising man turned political showman, but certainly Morrison (who as a kid did some acting and appeared in a few TV advertisements) knows the value of creating a “set”, whether visual or atmospheric, and galvanising attention.
After becoming leader, he took his road show to Albury, scene of one of the Liberal party’s founding conferences in 1944, and invoked the spirit of Robert Menzies. The backdrop appealed to the loyalists. “I like rituals,” he told his audience.
His standout example of conjuring up a “moment” was the Great Strawberry Crisis. Needles had been put into some strawberries; from the start, it was believed the culprit was a disgruntled employee, which turned out to be the case, but there was concern about “copycat” activity. All a problem, of course, though hardly needing federal parliament to leap into action.
Morrison announced legislation with draconian penalties – despite the strong existing regime and the fact this was mainly a state matter. Parliament rushed the bill through.
Morrison had elevated a limited issue requiring only the enforcement of the existing law into a mega story. Politically, the importance of the incident was it showed the new PM acting decisively.
Another, more dramatic example of Morrison’s use of “framing” was his taking the media to Christmas Island to mark the detention centre’s re-opening, after the passage of the medevac legislation to facilitate medical transfers. In the event, the wave of transfers the government had warned of didn’t materialise.
In the wake of the medevac bill passing, Morrison took the media on an expensive trip to Christmas Island.AAP/Lukas Coch
As a former party official, Morrison is steeped in the dark arts of the political tactician as well as, from his advertising days, the techniques of marketing. He’s master of the sharp slogan, the quick denial (never mind whether accurate or not), the abrupt walk off when a news conference threatens to become awkward. He has the knack of smothering a line of questioning.
If someone asked the “real Scott Morrison to please stand up”, two men might rise to their feet. The uncompromising, don’t-give-an-inch Scott, and a more conciliatory, flexible character.
As immigration minister cracking down on the borders, he closed off information, selectively leaked stories that were later discredited, seemed untroubled by human rights issues. He had taken a different line in opposition when it had suited him, for example expressing concern about the welfare of people who might be dispatched under Labor’s proposed “Malaysia solution”.
When he moved to social services, he emerged as a negotiator, with the welfare lobby and the Senate. Cassandra Goldie, CEO of Australian Council of Social Service, recalls Morrison from that time as “adaptable, pragmatic and able to spot a political opportunity. He showed he was capable of changing direction to build support.” Another source puts it more harshly: “He’s a shape-shifter. He pivots for the opportunity, and his gospel is the gospel of politics”.
His period as treasurer – a post to which Turnbull appointed him after Tony Abbott was deposed – revealed much about him as an operator.
His part in that coup had been typical Morrison. He’d voted for Abbott but some of his small group of followers had (it was presumed with his support) put their backing behind Turnbull. Abbott was incandescent. Shock-jock Ray Hadley excoriated Morrison in an excruciating interview in which he demanded Morrison swear his innocence on a bible.
Morrison was determined to make his mark in Treasury. Turnbull and Morrison considered an ambitious reform of the GST, with the aim of enabling big income tax cuts. Morrison ran the issue hard in the media. Turnbull became alarmed he was getting too far out in front. Treasury work showed the plan (in any politically acceptable form) didn’t stack up and, to Morrison’s embarrassment, he was reined by his boss.
One source – a critic of Morrison – who observed the internal debate says he “didn’t seem to care” about the Treasury work. “For him, [GST reform] was a political flag. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more purely political operator.”
Morrison had “a propensity to grab a stick and then run off with it”, according to a bureaucrat. His more cautious ministerial partner, Mathias Cormann in finance, “talked him off the ledge” on various occasions.
A Liberal backbencher recalls Morrison, in those days, using his authority to lean on people.
When he runs out of intellectual runway, he’ll just say, I’m asking for your support on this one and I think I deserve it.
Gazard, an admirer, says Morrison “comes to a view by consulting a whole range of people”. But “when he comes to a view he can be hard to move – he won’t give up on that conviction easily”. Morrison paints this as a virtue, saying at his campaign launch, “When I get determined, I get very determined”.
In the election campaign, Morrison hasn’t been sharing the limelight with his team, in contrast to Shorten, who has sought to neutralise his unpopularity by surrounding himself with strong colleagues.
At his campaign launch, Shorten had his bevy of frontbenchers on stage and three former PMs in the audience. The “team” was a theme.
Morrison said repeatedly ahead of his formal launch on Sunday that it would be “different”.
It’s not about the Liberal Party and it’s not about the National Party.[…] I just want to have a conversation with people on Sunday directly about the choice.
Given the thinness of his ranks, with multiple high profile Coalition figures leaving at the election, it would have been hard for Morrison to accentuate the team. And the coups meant the past two PMs couldn’t or wouldn’t be there – and that made it impossible to have party icon John Howard.
So the event, coinciding by chance or design with Mother’s Day, was a plain, homespun affair, with all the Morrison family who could be mustered, a video of Scott and Jen talking about each other, and (appropriately) a promise to help aspiring young homeowners to bridge the deposit gap – that got blown away within a couple of hours by Labor matching it.
As one Liberal remarked of the launch: “It was the best we could do in the circumstances.”
Despite the obvious drawbacks, shouldering all the weight of the campaign, being ultra “presidential” (even if that term seems ridiculously overblown for him) suits Morrison’s temperament. He’s a natural one-man-band, filling the stage, pounding at the drums.
The bones of the Morrison story are well known. He was brought up in a middle-class home in the Sydney suburb of Bronte, son of a senior policeman who was community-minded and active in local government (as an independent), including becoming mayor of Waverley). Morrison as PM understands the importance of the “local” in politics.
The most notable parts of his pre-parliamentary career were his stints in tourism, in New Zealand and Australia, both of which ended badly, and, in between, his time as a Liberal official.
He was in the NSW Liberal post when Malcolm Turnbull ousted sitting member Peter King in the 2004 bitter Wentworth preselection, which involved a great deal of branch-stacking. Some sources will tell you Morrison favoured Turnbull, while others think he wanted King to hang on.
One view is that, as state director, Morrison practised “pan-factionalism” in the deeply-riven NSW party.
Liberals used to joke about Morrison’s penchant for walking both sides of the street after he attended the private gatherings of both right and left factions at a Liberal function.
Morrison entered parliament for the seat of Cook in the Sutherland Shire in 2007, after a highly controversial pre-selection. Although he’d come from another part of Sydney, he has adopted “The Shire” and everything about it, especially the Sharks rugby league team, as though his family were original settlers.
His prime ministerial persona plays up the footy-loving, suburban, family-oriented, curry-cooking dad. It works with some voters but others are cynical.
Focus group research in Wentworth last week, done for The Conversation, highlighted the conflicting views about Morrison. Some saw him as “basically decent”, “genuine”, “well-meaning”, “approachable”, a “family man”, someone who could “relate to an ordinary guy in the street”.
But on the negative side, older voters viewed him as a “Sharks-supporting salesman”, “a typical bogan”, “a typical politician”, a “bully”, while younger voters described him as “the local butcher, not the PM”, “a privileged white guy”, “insipid, religious, racist”, “sly”, an “arrogant hypocrite”.
Morrison allowed the media into an Easter service at his Horizon church.AAP/Mick Tsikas
Perhaps the one thing that’s not “mainstream” about Morrison is his deep Pentecostal religious commitment. On all the evidence, he is very literalist in his religious convictions. Politically, it might have seemed a gamble to let the media into an Easter service of his Horizon church, but Morrison chose to be expansive about his faith. It was certainly an arresting sight to see the PM standing, arm raised, in full voice, praising the Lord.
Writing about Morrison’s Pentecostalism, James Boyce says his “idea of what it means to be PM is influenced by his experience of what it means to be a pastor – his constant positivity, enthusiastic hand gestures, fondness for a parliamentary clap and cheer, and wealth-enhancing ethics come straight from Horizon Church”.
Morrison says his religion is quite separate from his politics. He told parliament in his maiden speech:
My personal faith in Jesus Christ is not a political agenda.
But it influences his views, for example his opposition to same-sex marriage, and last year he told Sky he had concerns about the “trajectory” in relation to freedom of speech and religious freedom. The latter remains unfinished business for the Coalition.
Politically, Morrison’s strength is in the economic sphere. He’s been hardly tested on foreign affairs, although he did the “summit season” soon after becoming leader last year. His big foray, in a pitch for the Wentworth byelection, was to consider moving Australia’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; after much reaction, including from Indonesia, the government announced a compromise position.
Like Turnbull before him, Morrison launched his election campaign from the platform of a budget. Turnbull promised company tax cuts, only some of which he could eventually deliver. Morrison is running on income tax cuts, with a lot of the program way into the future.
Economic management is historically the Coalition’s strong campaigning ground, and economic credibility is a strength for Morrison in focus groups. But, weighed down by the government’s record of division, with minimal pledges for the future beyond the tax cuts, infrastructure and being a safe pair of hands, Morrison has little beyond his own energy and a scare campaign against Labor to carry through until polling day.
Morrison embraces his family at the Liberal Party campaign launch.AAP/David Crosling
And what then? If Morrison loses but respectably, it’s most likely he’d be opposition leader. Peter Dutton has indicated he would not challenge him for the job (anyway, it is an open question whether Dutton will be returned).
In what on the polls is the more unlikely event of a Coalition win, there aren’t many pointers to how a Morrison government would handle the next term.
Morrison would have immense authority, having done the apparently impossible. On the other hand, a re-elected Coalition would likely have a very small majority or be in minority government, which would impose constraints and probably see the Liberal party, beyond the initial elation of survival, as fractured as before.
Morrison says he would lead “from the middle”. Asked on the ABC who’d have the upper hand in driving Liberal party policy if he were re-elected, the right of the party or its mainstream, Morrison said, quickly and firmly, “I will”.
That fits with his personality, but leaves a heap of questions.
There is mounting evidence that Australia is sick of Rupert Murdoch and the political propaganda machine he runs in the guise of a news organisation.
In January, Bill Shorten rebuffed an open-ended offer to meet Murdoch whenever the opposition leader was in the United States. According to the ABC’s 7.30 political editor, Laura Tingle, Shorten replied that any dealings he had with News Corp would be conducted with the company’s representatives in Australia.
This was a bold break with tradition. For decades, Labor leaders have paid court to Murdoch. During the prime ministership of Bob Hawke, there was memorable footage of a cortege of ministerial cars driving in procession through the gates of Murdoch’s farm outside Canberra.
It was Paul Keating who changed the media ownership rules in 1987 so that Murdoch was able to buy the Herald and Weekly Times, giving him what has turned into a newspaper monopoly in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart, as well as ownership of the Herald Sun in Melbourne.
Shorten’s two predecessors, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, both met Murdoch in New York in an attempt to obtain his blessing.
Much good it did any of them. Rudd has bitterly repented, saying last August that Murdoch was “the greatest cancer on Australian democracy” and calling for a royal commission into News Corp.
More dramatic, however, has been the fallout from last week’s attack by the Daily Telegraph on Shorten over the life story of his deceased mother.
Not only did the media as a whole stand back at a news conference and allow Shorten to let rip for ten minutes at this “gotcha shit”, but two high-profile journalists with News Corp credentials have spoken out against the organisation’s culture.
The courage this took should not be underestimated. They must know the relentless personal vilification that befalls anyone who ends up on the News Corp hate list.
One of them, Rick Morton, is on the staff of The Australian, where he is social affairs editor.
He told a seminar at the University of Technology Sydney on May 9 that in recent months, “the craziness has been dialled up” at the newspaper.
He said openly what other insiders have been saying for years: that senior writers know what the editorial line is and write stories to fit. “It’s not always a Murdoch line; it’s just that Murdoch hires editors who are very much like him.”
Asked whether the paper’s journalists were uncomfortable with The Australian’s barracking for the Coalition in the election, Morton said they were “more uncomfortable certainly now than at any time I’ve been there in the past seven years”.
“There is a real mood that something has gone wrong.”
A second attack came from Tony Koch. He worked for News Corp for 30 years and is a very distinguished journalist: winner of five Walkley Awards, recipient of the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year Award and – ironically – of the Sir Keith Murdoch News Limited Award.
He did not mince words:
No editor I worked for would have put up with the biased anti-Labor rubbish that, shamefully, the papers now produce on a daily basis.
Gone is the requirement for balance. One has only to look at the story selection and headlines on the front pages of the papers each day to see that an anti-Labor angle has been taken, however contorted had been the literary gymnastics required to finally arrive at that particular bit of stupidity.
It was notable that both went well beyond the specific case of the Telegraph, assailing the performance of the group’s flagship, The Australian, and the craven nature of the organisation’s editorial leadership.
As if to confirm the bias they spoke of, the lead headline on page 12 of The Weekend Australian on May 11-12 contained this magnificent Freudian slip: “Hypocritical” ALP must back our tax package. Our tax package? The story was about Scott Morrison claiming a mandate for the Coalition’s $158 billion tax package.
In the current issue of The Monthly, the magazine’s US correspondent Richard Cooke has weighed in with a substantial essay arguing that News Corp represents a grave threat to democracy.
Cooke has just published a book based on his observations of life in the United States during and after the election of Donald Trump. He writes of News Corp in Australia:
… [I]t isn’t a normal news organisation any longer. At News Corp – in an inversion of journalism’s ideal– the old-fashioned, straight-down-the-line reporting is expendable and surplus to requirements. It is the unhinged propaganda outfit that is central to the identity of the company. It is the core that is lunatic, not the fringe.
In the US and UK, where Murdoch is a big player, some rival media organisations have confronted him. The most recent instance was a three-part series in April by The New York Times called How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World.
Now the uprising has spread to Australia, driven by politicians and journalists, people with skin in the game.
Why?
No doubt the decline in readership of the News Corp newspapers is a factor. Roy Morgan newspaper readership data for the year ended March 2019 show year-on-year declines for The Australian, the Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Herald Sun. The Adelaide Advertiser and Hobart Mercury were up Monday to Friday but down at weekends.
This is part of the overall decline in newspaper readership that also afflicts The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review.
But this decline has been a trend for several years, so it cannot fully explain the recent rebellion.
Shorten’s refusal to meet Murdoch, the searing attacks by him and other politicians on the Daily Telegraph, the criticism from News Corp-related journalists and the attacks by rival publishers suggest something is happening in the political zeitgeist, and not just in Australia: that at some level, democratic societies have had enough of Murdoch and his propaganda operation masquerading as a news service.
If trust in our politicians is at an all time low, maybe it’s time to reconsider how we elect them in the first place.
Can artificial intelligence (AI) help with our voting decisions?
Music and video streaming services already suggest songs, movies or TV shows that we will probably enjoy. Online shopping sites helpfully suggest other products we might like to buy. All this is based on what we’ve already watched, listened to or bought.
So why not have a similar system to suggest whom we should vote for?
With preferential voting, political parties and candidates already issue how-to-vote cards. But what if an AI service could create a personalised how-to-vote card for each and every one of us?
How do we decide?
Some of us are “rusted on” voters who back the same party, come what may, while others are “swinging voters” who compare options before making a choice.
Politicians tend to focus on the latter during election campaigns, as they know these voters may well decide their fate.
Politicians may have different beliefs, values and policy proposals. But if we analyse their persuasion techniques, there are striking similarities in the way in which politicians try to persuade us to vote for them.
They talk of “objective evidence” and warn voters about the “real cost” of their opponent’s policies.
When it comes to debating politics, we may try to find a rational or logical argument based on expertise to silence our opponent.
Or we may resort to the argument that our opponent will be the one who ends up having to pay for their misguided beliefs.
But it’s these kinds of arguments (about money or logic) that prove remarkably ineffective. What is more likely to win over swinging voters are appeals that arouse emotion (particularly fear) and tribal sentiments (“us-them thinking”).
So is there a better way for us voters to determine whom we should be voting for? Is there a way to take values, emotions and tribalism out of the equation? That’s where AI comes in.
To solve this problem of selling, business has turned to AI.
When booking accommodation on a hotel website, you may find yourself in a conversation with an AI chatbot. Based on the information you provide, the chatbot may suggest activities or persuade you to upgrade your room, book a hire car, or even get a massage.
Call your bank, telco or other service provider and you most likely interact with an AI voice assistant: “In a few words, please tell us the reason for your call.”
Retailers are capturing and analysing your purchase data to develop personalised offers, and using AI to influence and predict what you are about to buy next.
Supermarkets such as the UK-based Tesco, US giant Walmart, and even Woolworths in Australia are investing heavily in this area.
Given voters are more likely to respond positively to a political message if it resonates with them, political parties try to target voters with relevant messages. To do that, they too employ AI.
In the same way businesses use retargeting strategies to persuade us to buy or act, politicians now do the same.
Retargeting is the activity of tracking a person’s online activity. It includes what they comment on, what sites they visit, the products they research, and what articles they “like”.
Using this information, a politician can then send a customised message.
AI for the people
If politicians are using AI to try to persuade us how to vote, why not flip this around and give us the AI tools needed to help us decide how to vote?
Some media companies already have online questionnaires – such as the ABC’s Vote Compass and News Corp’s How should I vote? – that try to predict your political leaning.
While this may be a useful tool for some, you still need to follow political news and current affairs to make sense of many of the questions. So tools like these appear targeted at the already politically engaged.
What if there was a tool that did not ask you anything but instead you gave it access to your digital footprint. This could be your browsing history, your shopping habits, your location data, and even your social media activity. In fact, anything that showed how you lived, but on your terms.
Unfortunately, no such tool exists yet, as far as we are aware.
But why should the politicians have the AI and not you, the voter? Surely it’s only a matter of time before such a tool is available to us.
Who knows what it might say about you? It might even change the mind of a “rusted on” voter. Now that would be something new for political parties to consider.
Almost one quarter of the Australian population speaks a language other than English at home. But health services in Australia are largely delivered in English only.
We know Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are less likely to access health services, which leads to poorer health outcomes. One major reason for this is the language barrier between health-care providers and consumers.
Access to interpreters in health care should be seen as a basic human right.
Interpreters benefit both patients and practitioners
Interpreters are a vital bridge between health services and consumers. Interpreters enable consumers to be fully informed about their health condition and options for treatment.
They also give consumers a voice to express themselves freely in their dominant language. This means people can share exactly what they need to say to health-care professionals and can ask the questions they want answered.
Research has found the use of professional interpreters improves the experience of medical care for patients with limited English proficiency.
The use of professional interpreters significantly reduces the risk of communication errors that can lead to negative clinical consequences. Errors could include gaps in information about patient allergies, and instructions around the use of prescription medicines being misconstrued.
Particularly in an emergency, if a patient and their loved ones are unable to communicate details about the patient’s medical situation to the treating doctors, this may impact whether the patient receives appropriate and timely treatment.
In one case in the United States, a hospital acted on advice provided by a Spanish-speaking family with limited English proficiency when admitting their son. A court found language confusion contributed to delayed diagnosis of a brain haemmorhage, which resulted in the patient becoming a paraplegic.
But not everyone is given access to an interpreter
Despite the benefits of using an interpreter, a recent study in a Sydney hospital found although interpreters were required in 15.7% of admissions, just 3.7% of patients were actually provided with an interpreter.
A person who needs an interpreter may not get one because they’re deemed not to require the service, because an interpreter can’t be sourced within the required timeframe (for example, in emergency situations), or because there’s no interpreter available in the language or dialect required by the patient.
Patients who need interpreters aren’t always able to access them.From shutterstock.com
When health professionals and consumers don’t speak the same language, delivering health services without an interpreter raises a number of ethical issues.
For example, if a person is unable to understand what is being said to them by a health-care practitioner, they can’t give their informed consent. Proceeding with any treatment without informed consent is in breach of the code of conduct of all health professions in Australia.
The Australian government funds the provision of professional interpreters in health-care settings free of charge. But professional interpreters are not always on hand when they are needed. This often results in the use of family members as interpreters.
This practice is fraught with issues and in some instances this can do more harm than good for both the interpreter and the patient.
Relatives don’t have formal training as interpreters and may not be familiar with the medical terminology being used or how to translate it.
Family members may add their own interpretation or opinion in the delivery of the message, thereby not delivering the message intended by the health-care practitioner or the patient.
Children and teenagers often act as translators for their older relatives.From shutterstock.com
In many migrant families, children or young adults have the best knowledge of English in the family and so are often called upon to be the interpreter. The use of underage interpreters raises further ethical issues as they are tasked with interpreting sensitive health information about a loved one.
So caution is needed when using family members as interpreters.
Third, health services need to collect accurate information to determine whether an interpreter is needed. A person may present with functional English but still require an interpreter for ease of communication given the complex terminology and the seriousness of medical conversations.
And finally, professionally trained interpreters must be available in the languages and dialects required. There are more than 300 languages spoken in Australia and many have multiple dialects.
Investment in interpreting services is essential to ensure the provision of equitable, high quality health care to all Australians. In a country where interpreters may improve care for one quarter of the population, we can’t afford not to.
Research from the University of Melbourne found if all countries’ climate action was as inadequate as Australia’s, the world would be on track for 4°C warming.
With an election on Saturday, lets dig into the major parties’ climate policies, and see how they track against Australia’s Paris commitments.
Kids are taking to the streets to call for stronger action on climate change. Brisbane, March 16, 2019.AAP
Liberal
The Liberal Party introduced the Climate Solutions Package in February 2019. The package includes a range of measures, but most notably a continuation of the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), which remains the coalition’s key climate policy.
The Climate Solutions Fund includes another $2 billion to be used for ERF auctions until 2030. The package does not include any plan to increase renewables beyond the current 23.5% 2020 target.
The package also retains Australia’s current emissions reduction target of 26%-28% below 2005 levels by 2030. This target falls far short of what is required to meet the Paris climate agreement goals.
Labor
Labor has released a Climate Change Action Plan that leads with a renewable energy target of 50% electricity generation by 2030, household rebates for solar batteries, and investment in energy efficiency.
Labor will extend the existing “safeguard mechanism” to function as a pollution cap for industry, while the agriculture sector will participate in a revived Carbon Farming Initiative.
Labor’s climate target will commit Australia to emission reductions of 45% on 2005 levels by 2030, and to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Labor’s policy document states this target is informed by advice from the independent Climate Change Authority (CCA), yet the CCA’s 2015 targets review concluded Australia’s fair share of a global target for 2°C was an emissions reduction of between 40-60% below 2000 levels by 2030.
The CCA review pre-dated the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, which raised global ambition to keep warming “well below 2°C” and ideally below 1.5°C. The CCA 2015 targets review can therefore be considered out of date, so Australia’s fair contribution to the Paris climate agreement would have to sit at the upper end of (if not above) the 40-60% range.
Labor’s target is still inadequate from a global perspective and would not put Australia on track to meet its Paris commitments. But it is a big step forward from our current targets, and would at least bring Australia in line with the inadequate action pledged by the rest of the world – current global pledges put the world on track for 3°C warming.
Greens
The Greens are the only political party in Australia with climate policies that put forward targets that would enable us to meet our international obligations according to the science.
The Liberals claim their climate policies meet our climate commitments “without wrecking the economy” and have released economic modelling suggesting Labor’s 45% target will cost the economy billions.
Labor in its manifesto emphasises the “devastating costs” climate change will have for the Australian economy over the long term, and points out that the cost of not acting on climate change must also be factored in. Research in 2018 estimated the global cost of 4℃ warming would eventually reach US$23 trillion per year, costing Australia A$159 billion every year.
Far greater ambition is required from all nations, including Australia, for the world to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The UN has invited Paris Agreement signatories to submit revised national targets in 2020.
Nearer to home, on Wednesday the New Zealand prime minister introduced the Zero Carbon Bill, which calls for net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050, and creates a legal obligation to plan for supporting New Zealand towns and cities, business and farmers to adapt to increasingly severe storms, floods, fires and droughts caused by climate change.
While all of these actions are far more ambitious than Australia’s targets, the IPCC found net-zero emissions will need to be reached earlier than 2050 for a chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C without overshoot (overshoot risks potentially irreversible ecosystem loss).
So far no developed nation is taking seriously the equity considerations of the Paris Agreement, which require financial and technology support to help developing countries both reduce emissions and adapt to the already severe consequences of climate change.
Limiting warming to well below 2°C and aiming for 1.5°C as required by the Paris Agreement will indeed require that fossil fuel use declines to zero over the next few decades. This is a trajectory that governments around the world – the UK, the EU, NZ and others – are beginning to acknowledge.
If Australia sees more of the same in terms of climate policy we will inevitably continue our dismal track record of inaction – with devastating consequences.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Webster, Departmental Lecturer in Law and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
As part of its election campaign the Centre Alliance party (formerly the Nick Xenophon Team) has proposed a referendum give the Commonwealth power to regulate the waters of the Murray-Darling Basin.
The proposal would amend the constitution to give the Commonwealth legislative power over:
the use and management of water resources that extend beyond the limits of a State.
The proposal is intended to give the Commonwealth “clear authority” to regulate water resources that cross state borders, such as the Murray-Darling Basin and the Great Artesian Basin.
But it’s not clear a referendum would solve any of the problems currently facing the Basin. The Commonwealth already has plenty of power: it’s cooperation and environmental consciousness we lack.
Who controls the Murray-Darling Basin?
At a Basin-wide level, the distribution of water within the Murray-Darling Basin is presently governed by the Water Act 2007. The Act requires the creation of a Basin Plan, which provides a framework for water management across the Basin. The current Plan came into force in 2012.
The power to implement parts of the Water Act is supported by a referral of power from the states. That is, the states have passed their legislative power to the Commonwealth.
It is legally uncertain as to the extent this referral of power is necessary, and what would happen if a state withdrew its referral. The High Court has not had to consider these difficult constitutional questions.
Is a referendum necessary?
Before resorting to a referendum, it’s worth considering the extent of the Commonwealth’s existing power to regulate the Murray-Darling Basin. Although the Water Act is supported partly by a referral of power from the states, the Commonwealth has considerable legislative power it can deploy to regulate the Basin.
The constitution gives the Commonwealth power to make laws with respect to external affairs, corporations, and trade and commerce.
In particular, the “external affairs” power – which gives the Commonwealth legislative power to meet international obligations – is relied upon considerably to support the Commonwealth enacting the Water Act.
While the Commonwealth probably has greater power to regulate interstate rivers than it currently exercises, it has not sought to flex its muscle and test the limits of these powers.
Mass fish deaths in the Darling river earlier this year have raised serious concerns about the future of the Basin.AAP Image/Dean Lewins
What is the problem with the current Water Act and Basin Plan?
The South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission examined the constitutional basis for the Water Act as well as other legal issues surrounding the operation of the Act and implementation of the Basin Plan.
This commission found the fundamental issue with the Basin Plan is it did not prioritise environmental sustainability highly enough, as the Water Act requires.
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) uses a “triple bottom line” – taking into account environmental, economic and social factors – when deciding how much water to take out of the rivers.
While this approach is supported by legal advice from the Australian government solicitor, the commissioner said relying on that advice was an error.
The Water Act requires the Plan include a:
maximum long-term annual average quantities of water than can be taken, on a sustainable basis, from the Basin water resources as a whole.
The commissioner concluded that this means the MDBA should put environmental priorities above social and economic considerations. This would mean more water returned to the environment.
Crucially, the commissioner did not take issue with the constitutional basis of the Water Act. The problem is one of priorities and interpretation of the Water Act, not the scope of the Commonwealth’s power.
Does a referendum solve the current problems?
Even if the proposed referendum went ahead, it would be unlikely to resolve interstate disputes concerning the distribution of water.
The constitutional amendment proposed by Centre Alliance would also place a limit on Commonwealth legislative power by prohibiting any federal law from having:
an effect on water resources that would have an overall detrimental effect on the environment.
This amendment raises as many questions as it seeks to resolve. What would constitute an “overall detrimental effect” on the environment? As a question of constitutional interpretation, it would be for the High Court to determine the meaning of these words. Any ambiguity surrounding the meaning of this provision is only likely to shift the battle over the Murray-Darling Basin to the courtroom.
The solution does not lie in constitutional amendment or a courtroom battle. Instead, as the Royal Commissioner noted, the solution lies in “co-operative federalism”. The states and the Commonwealth must put “short-sighted, vested self-interests” to one side and work together in a manner that ensures the long-term viability of the Basin.
Wondering why you can’t get a seat on the train? Perhaps it’s because we don’t actually know how many extra people will use public transport when new building developments are planned. As a result, you’re probably in for a bit of a crush.
A traffic impact assessment is usually required when planning a major building development in Australia. This is supposed to assess the impacts of the development on the movement of people and goods. But, in practice, these assessments mainly focus on the movement of cars.
However, car trips are often in the minority when developments have good access to walking, cycling and public transport networks. Trip generation surveys at apartment buildings in inner Melbourne show cars account for only 30-40% of all trips.
Despite this shift away from cars, current planning guidelines in Australia fall short when it comes to planning for other modes of transport associated with new development. Little or no quantitative assessment of trips by walking, cycling and public transport is required.
Planning focus is still on cars
Planning for new development in Australia does very little to adequately support public transport, walking and cycling. Investment is geared towards roads at the expense of more sustainable forms of transport.
There is a lack of data on walking, cycling and public transport trips generated by land use developments. Unfortunately, greater resources are required to collect this data as we need to ask people about their travel, rather than simply count cars.
A review of more than 150 trip generation studies conducted worldwide since 1982 found nearly all of these counted car trips from land use developments. Much fewer measured public transport, walking or bicycle trips. Fortunately, though, this situation has been changing over the last 10 years.
Measurement of travel by transport mode at building developments.De Gruyter (2019)
So why is so much focus on the car in traffic impact assessments for such developments? Good practice has long recognised the importance of considering all forms of transport.
Good practice shifts the emphasis from assessing traffic impacts to assessing transport impacts. It recognises that most land use developments generate demand for all forms of transport.
When new apartments go up, planning assessments should consider how many public transport, walking, cycling and vehicle trips these developments generate.James Ross/AAP
In the UK, recommended practice is to quantify the number of trips a proposed development is expected to generate for each transport mode, not just the car. These numbers can then be compared against the actual capacity of public transport, walking, cycling and road networks. A comprehensive database, with trip data from more than 2,000 developments, supports this process.
Once we know how many public transport, walking, cycling and vehicle trips a development is likely to generate, we can then actively plan for these modes of travel.
For example, will the public transport network have enough capacity to cope with the extra demand? Will new services be required? Will footpaths need to be upgraded? What infrastructure is available for cycling and is this sufficient? Will the extra demand for car trips need to be managed?
Without quantifying the expected number of trips by each transport mode, it’s not possible to answer such questions. We can’t properly manage what we can’t measure.
Practice in Australian traffic impact assessments needs to shift towards a multimodal transport focus. Being able to quantify the expected number of trips from a development, by each transport mode, will go a long way to giving more sustainable forms of transport the attention they need.
Sure, collecting data on walking, cycling and public transport trips is more resource-intensive and costs more. But without this data the long-term cost to society is greater.
Australian state and national guidelines on traffic impact assessments also need to change. This will far better support practitioners in assessing the real transport impacts of proposed building developments.
Above all, we need to picture what type of future we want for our cities. Do we want a future dominated by the car? Or do we want to prioritise liveability in cities where walking, cycling and public transport are real options?
Once built, developments typically remain in place for a very long time. It’s therefore important that traffic impact assessments can influence the development of our transport systems in the right manner.
Properly considering all modes of transport will allow us to plan more effectively for walking, cycling and public transport. This will help to reduce our reliance on the car and enhance the liveability of our cities.
We found very little difference in the economic performance of the two sides of politics, once proper controls had been put in place for the state of the world economy and other things that affect Australia.
Despite the Liberals making much of their economic credentials, I don’t think we’ll see any difference in economic outcomes such as the unemployment rate, GDP growth, or inflation under a Labor or a Liberal government, and in other writings in this outlet Anne Garnett and I have argued that government spending and government debt and deficit are typically little different under either side of politics.
Little difference then, little difference since
The table below shows some data relevant to questions about economic outcomes under different governments since the Hawke government won the federal election in March 1983.
It shows clearly a drop in the rate of growth of Australia’s gross domestic product since the Howard government left office, but there’s little difference between the rates under Rudd/Gillard (RG) and Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison (ATM).
Economists would explain the drop in the rate of growth since Howard more by pointing to the the global financial crisis and the end of the mining boom than by weaker economic management by either side.
Note: The columns show averages of growth in real GDP, CPI inflation, the RBA target cash rate, the unemployment rate, tax receipts and government spending as a share of GDP over each term in office. (Only the first PM is listed, though they should not be given sole credit/responsibility for the outcomes!)Sources: RBA Bulletin Database, ABS, and MYEFO
The rest of the table provide little evidence of better macroeconomic management by one political party or the other.
Inflation and the Reserve Bank’s cash rate were higher under Hawke/Keating (HK), but that was a time of globally high inflation and interest rates. The “recession we had to have” in the early 1990s brought the inflation rate down, and also explains the high unemployment rate average under HK.
As far as unemployment goes, it is the state of the world economy that would explain most of the differences between the governments in the table.
On spending and tax, the Howard government benefited greatly from the mining boom and were able to keep spending below tax revenue on average. Since then the ATM Liberals have had no more success than the RG Labor government in keeping spending below tax.
Success has many fathers
Hawke and Keating have recently been claiming responsibility for Australia’s recent strong economic performance on the grounds that they initiated many of the reforms that have put Australia in good stead since the last recession in the 1990s.
I think they are overstating their case a little. Earlier reforms such as the Whitlam tariff cut in the 1970s and later reforms such as Howard government’s labour market changes and the introduction of the goods and services were also important.
Australia has been fortunate to have had a well managed economy over much of the past 40 years and prime ministers and treasurers on both sides of politics who have been equally up to the job and responsible for our relatively good outcomes.
Labor (and Liberals) can manage money
Currently I would be equally comfortable with the ability of the incumbent (Josh Frydenberg) and his shadow (Chris Bowen) to deliver solid economic outcomes as treasurer over the next three years. I would be much more comfortable if either of them showed a stronger commitment to further economic reform.
Of course we will see different decisions under a Labor or a Liberal government leading to different economic outcomes. Labor’s proposed tax and other reforms will benefit some and hurt others, but the point here is the differnce in their overall impact on the macroeconomy is likely be minimal.
Things are much more interesting when it comes to their effects on income inequality. But even on that front it isn’t clear to me which party’s policies will deliver better outcomes.
So who should you vote for on Saturday? I’ll leave that to you, but don’t make your decision on the basis that it will make any difference to the state of the economy.
Why do we tell stories, and how are they crafted? In a new series, we unpick the work of the writer on both page and screen.
Former Fairfax journalist and lawyer Cynthia Banham voices the silenced pain of generations in A Certain Light, her evocative, hybrid work of docu-memoir.
In an effort to process the trauma she experienced while on assignment more than ten years ago – a plane crash over Indonesia claimed both her legs and left 60% of her body covered in full thickness burns – Banham locates her own experience within her wider family’s narrative.
Banham’s memoir was released in 2018. Her story was once again in the news earlier this year, when Eddie McGuire mocked her pre-match coin toss at an AFL game (McGuire later apologised and said his comments were not about Banham).
In the book, Banham confronts the impact of the accident on her identity, and the ways in which her own resilience can be traced backwards through her heritage. She writes of her family: “We were shaped by each other’s trauma, just like we were shaped by each other’s love.”
Her voice shifts between the investigative (she incorporates historiography, images, documents, footnotes and parentheses) and the insightful and emotional first person. Yet her journalistic attention to detail is constant. Woven together, these voices comprise her fragmentary memoir, an arduous journey into the past and ultimately, resolution.
Allen & Unwin
Banham says A Certain Light is written for her young son, so he will one day know about his family’s history. The book begins with an epistolary prologue that speaks directly to him, predominantly through first person but sometimes in second.
We are invited by Banham into the intensely personal space of the text. She reveals to us her maternal indecision – the desire for her son to know, yet be shielded from, her trauma’s painful excesses.
Banham writes: “Will you, my son, grow up with memories of your mother’s suffering, feeling that you are somehow my compensation?” The first of many rhetorical questions throughout the text reminds us of her vulnerability, and the fraught task of communicating trauma through generations.
Connected narratives
Banham’s painful telling of her rehabilitation after the crash is threaded through other, broader stories of the past, an act of deflection perhaps signifying the difficulty endured in writing about the crash itself.
She retraces the trauma narratives of her grandfather, Alfredo; Alfredo’s sister, Amelia; and Banham’s mother, Loredana. She collects memories from family members across Europe, and artefacts and documents she has chosen to incorporate into the text, reflective of her own pieced-together family narrative.
The images are haunting at times and lend an immense gravity to Banham’s storytelling. Connecting stories of suffering to a face or a real artefact allows the reader to explore her own empathic ties with the story.
Banham finds a connection between the experiences of these relatives and her own. While her grandfather’s plight as an Italian prisoner of war in Nazi Germany is of course different to her own experience, Banham draws effective comparisons.
For example, she likens her thirst immediately after the plane crash as she waited, unable to move, in a foreign hospital hallway, to the excruciating thirst felt by victims of war.
In her research she encounters an image of German soldiers who had lost their legs. “War wounds”, she writes, “how did I end up with war wounds?” These comparisons show a lingering resonance of war in her mind, of the shared, transcendental suffering that connects generations.
Through her mother’s story as an Italian immigrant to Australia during the 1950s, Banham connects to a deep feeling of shame – the shame of difference, of abnormality. Shame was so innate that her mother was reluctant to let the surgeons amputate Banham’s legs in life-saving surgery, for fear of what her daughter’s life might be like without a “normal” body.
Banham leans painfully into her trauma in the final chapter of the book, titled Crashing. She revisits the site of the plane crash, and the days immediately before and after – the most distressing moments.
Cynthia Banham is evacuated from Sardjito hospital, in Yogyakarta, Wednesday, 07 March 2007.Weda/EPA
Tension builds as she recalls a handful of details: the description of her hotel room; the clothes she chose to wear that morning (might her life be different now if she had worn pants instead of a skirt?); the trivial pre-flight conversation she had with fellow journalists about Indonesia’s air crash record.
The actual recount of the crash is surreal. Banham writes: “Shit, I was thinking. Is this really happening? Then: Oh God.” On the next page: “Shit, actually, this could be it, this could be the end, maybe this is how I am going to die.”
The terror Banham experienced in those moments is beyond comprehension, and yet the incredibly human, common thoughts of panic incite an immense sense of empathy in the reader. It reminds us this could happen to anyone.
A Certain Light reconciles the woman she was before the plane crash with the woman who writes this text. Banham explores the fragility of memory and the shared longing to know the stories of family members who can no longer speak, or perhaps do not want to.
“Memory is fluid, malleable, untrustworthy”, Banham writes, yet ultimately it’s memory that has created her narrative, her identity reclaimed from trauma. A Certain Light is a reminder that despite even the greatest tragedy, time moves on and there is light in the darkness – if we choose to see it.
A New Plymouth Boys’ High School student has won a national race relations competition with a speech citing examples of past and present New Zealand leaders who have helped forge unity in Aotearoa.
The year 11 student, Robbie White, used the metaphor of a tui building a nest to explain how to unify people of different backgrounds.
“What is a tui? A leader, a march, a call, a movement, a word, an action, a stand, a physical structure, an event, the voice of unity, bringing people together with common purpose, understanding and connection,” he asked during his speech in the Race Unity Speech Awards at Auckland’s Te Mahurehure Marae last night.
“…I think of Te Whiti O Rongomai and Dame Whina Cooper.”
White also recognised former New Plymouth mayor Andrew Judd as a leader who has built racial unity.
-Partners-
“On my doorstep, in my forest, Andrew Judd is also a tui. Once a self-proclaimed racist himself, …his ‘peace march’ stamped a monumental mark on race unity in the Taranaki region,” White said.
The student wove te reo Māori strongly into his speech.
At the prizegiving last night, chief judge Wallace Haumaha, Deputy Commissioner of Police, joked that Robbie White was from the Taranaki iwi Te Āti Awa because of his excellent use of te reo Māori.
The 22 students who competed in the final round of the NZ Race Unity Speech Awards at St Columba Centre, Ponsonby, on Friday night before the finals last night. Image: David Robie/PMC
Struggle over hair Zimbabwean New Zealander Takunda Muzondiwa of Mt Albert Grammar School talked about internalised racism and her struggle to accept her natural hair due to society’s narrow concept of beauty.
Muzondiwa recited a poem she wrote about a recent incident where a man had touched her hair on a train in Auckland without asking.
“But luckily my hair, my hair speaks volumes. Tangled and twisted there are stories in these in curls. Stories of a mother, father stamped with a number marked as objects sold for property,” she said.
“Stories of my ancestors shackled in cages displayed in zoos the same way you stroke me like an exhibit in a petting zoo.
“It’s twisted and tangled there are stories in these curls. A beautiful possession of my history’s oppression.”
The national final of the Race Unity Speech Awards at Te Mahurehure Marae featured the top six speakers from 180 students who had entered this year’s awards.
The speech awards provide a national platform for senior high school students to express their ideas on how New Zealanders can improve race relations.
Increasing diversity Organisers said participants this year again reflected New Zealand’s increasing diversity of more than 200 ethnicities and 100 plus languages.
Speech finalists represented immigrant communities from Egypt, Philippines, Russia and Samoa who now call Aotearoa home.
In a letter, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern acknowledged the students who participated in the speech awards.
“Following the tragic events in Christchurch, this year’s Race Unity Speech Awards and hui hold even greater significance,” she said in the message.
“We need to think deeply and carefully about our country’s rich and precious diversity, and what we need to do to remain an inclusive, multicultural country.”
Many of the speeches touched on New Zealanders’ response to the terrorist attack on two Christchurch mosques that killed 50 people with another dying later.
Runner-up Nina Gelashvili of Kuranui College in Wairarapa said: “It shouldn’t take 50 lives for us to finally realise that racism still lives in New Zealand and it shouldn’t take 50 lives for us to come together as one.”
‘Oneness of humanity’ The Race Unity Speech Awards are organised by the New Zealand Baha’i Community, a religious community concerned with promoting the oneness of humanity at the local, national and international levels.
The awards are also sponsored by NZ Police, the Human Rights Commission and the Hedi Moani Charitable Trust, and supported by Multicultural NZ, the Office of Ethnic Communities and Speech NZ.
Scott Morrison has made a late bid for the support of younger voters with a promise that a re-elected Coalition government would provide a guarantee to help them bridge the deposit gap for their first home.
But as the campaign enters its desperate last days, Labor immediately declared that it would match the government’s initiative.
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said in a statement: “After six years of failure, and six days before an election, the Liberals are desperately trying to tell young Australians they understand their struggles to buy their first home.
“We back genuine support for first home buyers – that’s why we are also reforming negative gearing for future purchases, so young Australians don’t have to keeping losing out to wealthy property speculators.”
Under the Morrison scheme, those who saved at least a 5% deposit would be able to take advantage of the guarantee.
Deposits of 20% are often required to buy a house.
The plan, which would start on January 1, would be directed to first home buyers earning up to A$125,000 a year, or $200,000 for couples. The value of homes eligible under the scheme would be determined on a regional basis, given the different property markets.
Although the pitch is primarily directed to younger people trying to get into the housing market, the political thinking behind it also takes into account the fact that many parents are concerned about the difficulty their children have in getting together enough finance for a house, unless they can call on their families for assistance.
The timing of the promise appears to be designed to make an impact, without leaving much time for examination of the detail. But with Labor promising to match it the political effect of this initiative will presumably be lost.
Mostly the government has relied in this campaign on its economic record and an attack on Labor for proposing tax increases. Apart from the budget tax plan, much of which would not be delivered for years and infrastructure commitments, it has not made many headline promises.
The housing pledge came in Morrison’s low key launch in Melbourne. Victoria has been a weak state for the Liberals, who are pulling out all stops to minimise their losses in the state. Sarah Henderson – who holds the ultra-marginal seat of Corangamite, which is now notionally Labor, was the first speaker.
In contrast to the razzmatazz of Bill Shorten’s launch last weekend in Brisbane, Morrison’s was an exercise in minimalism.
It very much concentrated on Morrison and his family – he was introduced by his mother Marion, his wife Jenny and his two daughters, Abbey and Lily. A video featured he and Jenny talking about their courtship and their struggle to have children. There was a heavy emphasis on Mother’s Day.
Attack ads on Labor were prominent in the other video material shown at the launch.
While Morrison’s team was not featured in the prominent way that Shorten highlighted his last week, the prime minister did go out of his way to mention particular ministers in his speech.
Deputy Liberal leader and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg got a rousing response when he addressed his hometown audience. The Nationals leader and deputy prime minister Michael McCormack also spoke.
Announcing the housing plan Morrison told the launch: “I want more Australians to be able to realise the dream of owning their own home.” He said there were 112,000 new first home owners last year, a nine year high.
But “it’s hard to save for a deposit, especially with the banks pulling back and larger deposits of 20% now being standard. It’s not getting easier.
“We want to help make the dreams of first home buyers a reality.”
He said the scheme was similar to one that had been running in New Zealand. It would cut the time to save for a deposit by at least half or more. The plan would give preference to working with smaller banks and non-bank lenders to boost competition.
The lenders would do the normal checks to make sure the borrowers could meet their repayments, Morrison said, stressing that “this isn’t free money”. He said the support would remain in place for the life of the loan – when people refinanced after their equity increased the guarantee would cease.
While the plan is a guarantee scheme it would be underpinned by $500 million in government money. The government says the scheme will also save people about $10,000 by not having to pay lenders mortgage insurance.
The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation would partner with private lenders to deliver the scheme, with the government investing $25 million in the corporation to establish the plan.
Morrison also announced $53 million to tackle perinatal depression, declaring this was a cause close to his own family. “Too many parents have suffered in silence,” he said.
In a bid to put a floor under votes in Melbourne’s east, the government is promising $4 billion for the East-West link project, which has previously been blocked by the state government. This is $1 billion more than the federal Coalition originally promised. The remaining money would come from the private sector. The project would require no state government money but it would require state approval.
Morrison cast next Saturday’s election as a series of choices.
“The choice of who you can trust to keep the promise of Australia, to all Australians as Prime Minister. Myself or Bill Shorten.
“The choice between a government that knows how to manage money, has returned the budget to surplus and will now pay down debt. Or Bill Shorten and Labor, whose reckless spending and higher taxes will put all of that risk, at the worst possible time. “There are storm clouds and tensions ahead. The choice between a government that will ensure you keep more of what you earn, or Bill Shorten and Labor that will hit you and weaken our economy, which impacts all 25 million Australians with $387 billion in new and higher taxes. “The choice between a stronger economy under my government, that can guarantee funding, real funding, for hospitals, schools and roads, and Labor who always runs out of money and always comes after yours. “It’s the choice between a prime minister in myself who just wants to back, acknowledge and cheer on the decent and simple and honest aspirations of Australians – and Bill Shorten, who just wants to tax all of those aspirations more.” So far about 2.2 million people have cast their votes at pre-polling.
Is there a “big black hole” in Labor’s election costings? It’s unlikely.
The final campaign before the arrival of the Parliamentary Budget Office in 2012, the 2010 Gillard versus Abbott contest, was full them.
Abbott was in opposition, Joe Hockey was his treasury spokesman. A treasury analysis of the costings document he produced, delivered to the newly-elected independent members of parliament to help them decide who would form government found errors including double counting, purporting to spend money from funds that sweren’t there, using the wrong time period to calculate savings, and booking debt interest saved from a privatisation without booking the dividends that would be lost.
All up, the mistakes were said to amount to A$11 billion.
Opposition costings used to be awful
In order to give his calculations a veneer of respectability Hockey engaged two accountants from the Perth office of a firm then known as WHK Horwath and wrongly said they had audited them.
“If the fifth-biggest accounting firm in Australia signs off on our numbers it is a brave person to start saying there are accounting tricks,” he told the ABC. “I tell you it is audited. This is an audited statement.”
It wasn’t. The letter of engagement later seen by Fairfax Media explicitly said the work was “not of an audit nature”. Its purpose was to “review the arithmetic accuracy” of Hockey’s work.
Three years on, with the Parliamentary Budget Office in place, Hockey’s costings were comparatively controversy-free, as were Chris Bowen’s when Labor was in opposition in 2016.
Now, they’re fairly controversy-free
Costings have become straightforward. The Parliamentary Budget Office prepares the best possible estimate of the cost of each policy, then a panel of eminent Australians goes over its calculations and adds the costs together.
Labor’s panel this time was the same as its panel last time: Professor Bob Officer, who chaired the commissions of audit for the Howard and Kennett Coalition governments, Dr Michael Keating, who used to head the department of prime minister and cabinet and finance under the Hawke and Keating governments, and company director James MacKenzie.
They provided “a reasonable basis for assessing the net financial impact on the Commonwealth budget”.
Labor’s costings are propped up by savings
That impact was a return to “strong surplus” of $22 billion under Labor in 2022-23, four years ahead of the Coalition, in a year which the Coalition is forecasting a surplus of less than half the size – $9.2 billion.
Labor is able to do it because it will raise (or avoid spending) more than the Coalition. Over ten years it will save
$58 billion by winding back payouts of dividend imputation cheques to people who don’t pay tax
$32.5 billion by winding back negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions
$29.8 billion by reducing superannuation tax concessions
$26.9 billion by more fully taxing trusts
$6.9 billion by cracking down on multinational tax avoidance and the use of high fees for tax advice as tax deductions, and
$6.3 billion from reintroducing for four years the Coalition’s temporary budget repair levy of 2% on the part of high earners’ income that exceed $180,000
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg attacked the costing saying Labor had confirmed “$387 billion in higher taxes; higher taxes on retirees, higher taxes on superannuants, higher taxes on family businesses, on homeowners and renters and low-income earners,” which it had, although it had hardly been a secret.
The tax measures are how Labor builds its bigger surpluses.
The best an opposition can produce
Frydenberg said Labor had failed explain the “economic impact these higher taxes will have across the economy”, a charge Labor had responded to earlier by saying that wasn’t a service the Parliamentary Budget Office provided.
It was work the treasury was able to do, but the resources of the treasury weren’t available to the opposition.
Besides which, a fair chunk of those savings would be spent, on programs such as Labor’s Medicare cancer plan, its pensioner dental plan, extra hospital funding and greater childcare subsidies. They would boost the economy.
Unlike the Coalition, Labor isn’t locking in tax changes years out into the future (although its costings set aside $200 billion for extra tax cuts at some point over the next ten years); it is giving itself flexibility in order to manage the economy as needed when the time came.
Frydenberg identified as the “big black hole in Labor’s costings”, what he said was its “failure to account for the increase in spending that they have promised with changes to Newstart, to aid, to research and development”.
Four years out is conventional
It wasn’t much of black hole. Labor has not promised changes to the Newstart unemployment benefit – it has instead promised to review it. Without the result of the review or without an indication of how much Newstart might be lifted or when it would be lifted, it’d be a hard thing to cost.
Frydenberg’s other beef was with programs Labor’s document costed in detail for four years but not in detail for ten. But that is how his own budget presented its figures. It’s how every previous budget has presented its costings.
Since the late 1980s it’s been the convention to cost programs in detail only four years ahead. Before that, the budget convention was to cost programs in detail only one year ahead.
It is possible that Labor’s costings document is less than perfect. It is possible that the three eminent Australians who lent their names to it have been hoodwinked. But the contours of the document are clear. Labor will tax more and spend more than the Coalition, and deliver bigger surpluses.
But it only plans to tax more up to a certain point: 24.3% of gross domestic product, which was the tax take in the final year of the Howard government. The Coalition’s limit is 23.9% of GDP, which will mean it finds it harder than Labor to build up a big surplus quickly.
The days of black holes are behind us, thankfully.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW
Tony Costa’s portrait of fellow artist Lindy Lee has won the 2019 Archibald Prize. His subject, Lindy Lee is both one of Australia’s most distinguished artists and a former trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Costa has painted her wearing a traditional robe, in meditation, a reminder of both her Chinese heritage and her Zen Buddhist faith.
The annual announcement of the Archibald Prize is one of Sydney’s great spectacles. There is the crowd of journalists, photographers, television crew, some of the artists, their dealers, friends and many of the subjects.
Those of us who have been here before try to read the runes in the positioning of the podium from where the announcement is made.
This year it is directly in front of David Griggs’ large portrait of Alexie Glass-Kantor. That means this was not in the final group of works to be considered, as cameras require an uncluttered view of the winner the instant it is announced. No furniture can get in the way.
The Chairman of Trustees, David Gonski, is one of the most experienced of showmen, and knows how to string out an announcement. He starts with the lesser prizes. First, the Sulman, judged this year by Fiona Lowry, awarded to McLean Edwards for The first girl that knocked on his door, an almost plaintive expression of emotional vulnerability.
Then he slowly moves onto the Wynne, teasing the waiting journalists with the two lesser prizes – the Trustees’ Watercolour Prize goes to Robyn Sweaney for her country cottage, Perfect Uncertainty. This is followed by the awarding of the Roberts Family Prize to Noŋgirrŋa Marawili for Pink Lightning, a luminous account of the lightning snake that spits fire into the sky in her Baraltja country.
The Wynne Prize goes to Sylvia Ken who, with her sisters, was awarded the same prize in 2016. Her subject, Seven Sisters, is one of the great songlines of Aboriginal Australia.
And now, for the big one, the room goes silent. Gonski thanks all 919 people who entered the prize. It’s a reminder of the achievement of the 51 who have been selected to hang. He points out how arduous the process of judging has been and highly commends Jude Rae’s portrait of Sarah Peirse as Miss Docker in Patrick White’s A cheery soul. Rae’s portrait captures the actor in character, isolated on the stage. Not getting the prize, but being signalled out for praise, is a good omen for future years.
But as Gonski says, there is only one winner. This is the fourth time Costa has been an Archibald finalist, so he fits the criteria of recent winners.
There is a tranquility to this painting, echoing the meditative quality of Lee’s own work. Costa has painted a portrait that is both a reflection of his subject’s culture, faith, and approach to making art.
The strong lines that define the shapes within the painting almost appear to quote archaic prints. It’s a similar approach to that taken by Costa in previous portraits, notably last year’s portrait of Claudia Chan Shaw and Simon Chan in 2017.
As Archibald Winner, Tony Costa is in for a dizzying time of feasting and fun, but that will fade with the next news cycle. The real impact of the prize will last a lifetime.
The 1985 winner, Guy Warren, was able to buy a studio in Leichhardt with his winnings. Sadly, even with the decline of Sydney real estate, the prize money (now $100,000) won’t go so far these days. But there will most likely be future portrait commissions, successful exhibitions, and a slightly less precarious life for the artist.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eileen Webb, Professor, School of Law, The University of South Australia; Adjunct Professor, Curtin Law School, University of South Australia
New laws in Western Australia will make it easier for people escaping family violence to “break” their leases.
The laws are “unashamedly victim-focused” – the latest development in a legal shift across Australia that seeks to alleviate the legal and financial barriers to leaving an abusive household. The WA legislation draws heavily on Canadian and US models to make the process of leaving timely and more efficient.
Under traditional laws, joint tenants are equally liable for lease expenses. If a lease is terminated early, the tenants remain responsible for expenses – including rent. Failure to comply has serious consequences, including the loss of a security deposit (often essential to find new accommodation) and “black-listing” on a tenancy database.
This places a person experiencing family violence in a vulnerable position if they need to leave. To stay is unsafe, but a victim may be unable to find a new, affordable home without being burdened by expenses arising from the previous lease.
Here’s what the new laws mean for people experiencing family violence in Western Australia.
Reduced notice period
Under the legislation, tenants can end a tenancy directly with the landlord or agent with seven days’ notice. They need to provide a termination notice, along with evidence that the circumstances involve family violence.
This development is significant because, unlike in most other states and territories, a person experiencing family violence won’t necessarily have to navigate law enforcement or the court system before they can leave.
Evidence might take the form of a court order, but it could also be a declaration signed by a medical professional or other independent third party to confirm that the lease is being terminated because of family violence. A broad range of people can make the declaration, including police, psychologists, social workers or people in charge of refuges. This means the evidence can be obtained in a timely and uncomplicated way.
The tenant may leave immediately for safety, although is responsible for the rent until the end of the seven-day notice period. This means the lease can be terminated quickly and cleanly with less financial burden than there would be in the case of the usual notice period.
Fast dispute resolution
The legislation also provides an efficient system to address disputes about unpaid rent, property damage and the disbursement of the security bond. The aim of the provisions is to allow for financial issues to be resolved quickly and ease the victim’s pathway out of the lease. For example, a victim will not be responsible to pay for any damage caused by the perpetrator.
Should the tenant choose to do so, the legislation allows a tenant to stay in the rented premises, but remove the perpetrator from the lease by application to the Magistrates Court.
If children are in school in the local area, for example, it’s best for a tenant to be able to remain in the rented premises. The court may make an order terminating the perpetrator’s interest in the lease after considering matters such as the best interests of any child living on the premises, or the effect the order might have on any pets kept on the premises.
Permission to install extra security
A tenant can change or add locks and security devices without the landlord’s permission if the tenant believes, on reasonable grounds, that an act of violence is likely to be committed against them or any of their dependants.
This is an important development because, although some jurisdictions permit this in an emergency, generally residential tenancy laws require that a tenant must obtain the permission of the landlord prior to making any alteration. That included for locks, alarms and security screens. In some cases, there is an unacceptable, and dangerous delay in obtaining consent and enhancing security.
Legislation can be beneficial to landlords too
The new laws draw heavily on models from the US and, in particular Canada. Indeed, the WA provisions are modelled on those operating in Alberta and, although controversial to some, do not go as far as those in some jurisdictions. In Ontario, for example, a lease can be terminated through the use of an online form and a tenant’s statement about sexual or domestic violence.
Obviously, these amendments have concerned landlord and real estate representatives because of the potential to “use” the new laws as an excuse to break leases and disadvantage landlords. But evidence suggests that this type of legislation can actually be beneficial to landlords.
In Canadian provinces such as Alberta, where similar legislation has been operating for several years, there has been little to no evidence of the provisions being misused. And, in comparison to the expense of having to go through a court or tribunal process to terminate the lease in the usual way, the new process is more efficient and cost effective for the landlord.
The landlord has the certainty of knowing that the lease will be terminated in seven days, there is less risk of damage to the premises, and the property can be advertised promptly (rather than wait for court or abandonment processes). Of course, in a slow rental market there may be a delay in finding a new tenant, but, on balance, the process is likely to be beneficial to both the tenant and the landlord.
The scourge of family violence touches many. Although all Australian states and territories have introduced some measures to alleviate the difficulties faced by a person wanting to end a lease because of family violence, the Western Australian provisions provide an example of best practice in balancing safety, efficiency and the interests of both tenant and landlord.
Sunny interludes punctuate showers of rain, hail and sleet as furious winds sweep clouds across the sky. It’s a typical summer day on Macquarie Island, a sliver of ocean floor that rose more than 2.5 km from the depths of the Southern Ocean, halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica, around 12 million years ago.
On this February day in 2013, my colleague Jennie Whinam and I are visiting monitoring sites for the critically endangered Macquarie Island cushion plant, Azorella macquariensis, which has been suffering extensive dieback.
It is a short walk from our cosy field hut to Skua Lake on the opposite side of the island – a mere four kilometres of steep off-track walking, head-first into the icy wind.
We make a small detour to the shoreline of Skua Lake, the only known location for perhaps the rarest plant on the island, the subantarctic bedstraw (Galium antarcticum). This small herb had not been seen since it was first recorded on Macquarie Island in the early 1980s, despite several searches in the subsequent 30 years.
The Conversation
It seemed likely the humble bedstraw was extinct on Macquarie Island, and we weren’t confident we’d see one that day. It is a small herb, growing to a few centimetres in size, with reddish leaves clustered on sprawling stems and tiny inconspicuous white flowers. Not the easiest plant to spot amongst the lush growth of a subantarctic meadow.
But within five minutes of arriving at the shoreline of Skua Lake, we spotted a reddish-coloured herb unlike any other plant there, partly hidden among dense mosses and grasses.
Excitedly, we set about searching for others, finding hundreds of the tiny plants!
But our celebratory feeling was soon blown away by a flurry of horizontal snow carried across the lake. Skua Lake is perched on the top of an escarpment 130 metres above the ocean with no shelter from the winds that travel unimpeded around the globe at these latitudes.
We were so cold we had to start moving again. And turning our backs to the wind, we marched across grassy hills dusted with fresh snow.
Subantarctic bedstraw (Galium antarcticum)Author provided (No reuse)
Hidden for three decades
Our rediscovery of this critically endangered species raised a couple of questions. Where had it been hiding for 30 years? And, given the abundance of apparently suitable habitat on the island, why was it restricted to one location?
These questions remain unanswered. But four years later, in 2017, botanists Cath Dickson and Alex Fergus stumbled upon a second population of subantarctic bedstraw on the opposite side of Skua Lake, comprising an estimated 1,000 plants. But why it is not even more widespread remains a mystery.
Galium is a large and widespread genus of herbs (commonly called bedstraw) in the Rubiaceae family, with several native and introduced species in Australia including the familiar garden weed cleavers or sticky weed. Many species have distinctive bristly hairs, whereas G. antarcticum is hairless.
With a total known population of 1,500 plants confined to a few square metres of windswept tundra, Galium antarcticum remains critically endangered in Australia.
The Skua Lake habitat for subantarctic bedstraw.Author provided (No reuse)
Travelled across vast seas
Macquarie Island is a young and very remote landmass with an unusual cold maritime climate. Its flora was born from long-distance dispersal and largely composed of subantarctic specialists.
Subantarctic bedstraw is one such specialist, and is also found in Patagonia, South Georgia, the Falklands, Crozet and Kerguelen islands. This wide distribution throughout most of the Subantarctic, including islands separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean, suggests this species has been dispersed by seabirds.
The future prospects for the species on Macquarie Island are uncertain. It may benefit from the recent eradication of rabbits, expanding its range, or it may struggle to compete with taller growing plants as the short grassland transitions to a more closed vegetation community in the absence of grazing pressure. Or it may continue to be a mystery.
