Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bekessy, Professor, RMIT University

Some voters heading to the polls this weekend may be casting their ballot with biodiversity in mind, after a major UN report released last week highlighted the global extinction crisis facing more than a million species.

Australia is an extinction hotspot: we are second only to Indonesia when it comes to biodiversity loss and we have had far more mammal species go extinct than any other country over the past 200 years. Conservation spending for threatened species recovery in Australia is woefully inadequate.

Read more: Australia’s major parties’ climate policies side-by-side

However a recent survey commissioned by WWF Australia found 89% of Australians agree we should invest in restoring wildlife habitats and natural places, and 68% of Australians believe a healthy environment and a prosperous economy go hand-in-hand.

So how should you cast your vote if you’re one of the many Australians who care about biodiveristy loss?

We’ve analysed policies, new investments, new initiatives and reforms from the Coalition, the Australian Labor Party, the Greens, One Nation, the United Australia Party, the Animal Justice Party and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.

We took these figures from party websites and policy statements, and where possible contacted party representatives directly to confirm

The Coalition

The Coalition, if returned to government, has proposed a budget of A$1.19 billion over the next four years, which includes A$100 million for new biodiversity programming. Their proposed budget for agriculture includes an additional A$30 million for a pilot biodiversity agricultural stewardship program.

Read more: South Australia’s experience contradicts Coalition emissions scare campaign

Despite highlighting new funding for watershed restoration, the Coalition does not explicitly call for funding directed at the Murray-Darling restoration.

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party has committed to invest $600 million in new environmental programs over the next four years, and will reallocate the $400 million currently committed to the Great Barrier Reef fund to public agencies dedicated to reef protection.

New initiatives include a native species protection fund, a program to restore urban rivers and corridors, doubling the number of Indigenous Rangers, reforming current environmental laws, and funding of a new independent, federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Read more: Fixing the gap between Labor’s greenhouse gas goals and their policies

One Nation

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation advocates a departure from the Paris Agreement, and contends that the Great Barrier Reef will adapt to a warmer climate – pointing instead to Crown-of-Thorns Starfish and Tropical Cyclones as key issues.

Perhaps most significantly for the diverse ecosystems of the Top End, the party advocates constructing dams in monsoonal regions of North Queensland to provide water to farmers in the Murray-Darling region. They also propose to eradicate cane toads. Costings are not provided.

United Australia Party

The United Australia Party has no formal policies regarding biodiversity conservation, but advocates for several economic policies which have likely negative biodiversity implications.

Despite its commitment to meeting the Kyoto Protocol targets via investment in renewable fuels and advocacy for an emissions trading scheme, the party supports continuing exploitation of mineral resources (mining) in Queensland and Western Australia, including supporting the controversial Adani mine and construction of a new Alpha North Coal Mine in the Galilee Basin. No costings for these policies were indicated.

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

The Greens

The Greens have committed to a A$2 billion (per annum) Nature Fund to protect and restore biodiversity across Australia. This plan aims to recover every threatened species through the creation of new havens, invasive species control and fire management.

Their initiates include doubling protected areas, increasing the number of Indigenous Rangers, and incentivising private land conservation. In addition, the Greens have committed to reform our current nature laws.

Animal Justice Party

The Animal Justice Party has many broad policies directly related to biodiversity and wildlife, and are pushing for clean energy infrastructure.

Read more: We must rip up our environmental laws to address the extinction crisis

Policies include land acquisition and habitat restoration and protection, strict penalties for harm to wildlife and an active stance against lethal control on invasive species. They will also encourage wildlife ecotourism, wildlife-sensitive education and investing in technology to reduce wildlife-human conflicts. They specify no costs for any of their policies.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers

The Shooters Fishers and Farmers party promotes sustainable land use for farming and recreation, rather than “locking it away” for conservation. They express support for individual, community, and farm-based conservation programs if they do not impact recreational use.

However, their proposed expansions of recreational use of public conservation land (such as expanding park tracks, private game reserves and fishing) could negatively impact biodiversity. There are no expenditure details specified for these policies.

Investment in biodiversity conservation

The figure below summarises the total budget spend across the four-year electoral cycle proposed by each of the parties.

What about Adani?

As the biodiversity issue that has received the most attention this election campaign, readers may be interested on where the parties stand on the Adani development.

Read more: Interactive: Everything you need to know about Adani – from cost, environmental impact and jobs to its possible future

While the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party have not commented specifically on the issue, the Coalition actively supports the development of the mine, as does One Nation and the United Australia Party (Clive Palmer is keen to open another big mine next to Adani).

Labor has committed to not reviewing the approval, which amounts to tacit support. The Greens and the Animal Justice Party are the only parties actively opposing the mine.

If we want to improve our depressing record of species extinctions in Australia, urgent action is needed. There appear to be substantial differences between initiatives, reforms and investment proposed by all of the parties you could vote for on Saturday.

While the details of initiatives and reforms can be difficult to interpret, international research has shown investment has a direct impact on biodiversity. In other words, the more we spend, the fewer extinctions. On this measure, the Greens are easily in front.

And don’t forget that with preferential voting, you are able to vote for your first preference without wasting your vote.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Thami Croeser and Matt Hardy to this article.

– ref. How should I vote if I care about preventing the extinction of nature? – http://theconversation.com/how-should-i-vote-if-i-care-about-preventing-the-extinction-of-nature-117197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Austin, Professor UNSW Canberra Cyber, UNSW

US President Donald Trump has raised the stakes in his country’s cyberspace confrontation with China and Russia. On May 15 he signed a new executive order that identifies sabotage (not espionage) as the main threat from foreign states, and declared a national emergency.

The executive order includes provisions for the US administration to label foreign countries as adversaries, a move sure to anger the great power competitors.

I’m not surprised at this news – US cybersecurity policy has been building to this point since at least 2015. It’s also clear Australia is firmly committed to the emerging, robust posture of the US to protect national assets from risks of sabotage in cyberspace from countries such as China.

Read more: Australia is vulnerable to a catastrophic cyber attack, but the Coalition has a poor cyber security track record

Concerns about sabotage

Sabotage in this context refers to the fear that in a political crisis or war, an adversary will have its finger on the switch of our critical infrastructure – including the internet and communications capability – and be able to turn it off.

The freshly signed US executive order calls out two threats:

• “risk of sabotage to or subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance” of information and communications technology (ICT) equipment and services in the United States

• “undue risk of catastrophic effects on the security or resiliency of United States critical infrastructure or the digital economy of the United States”.

The reference to the digital economy alludes to the theft of intellectual property.

The order is not out of the blue, having been foreshadowed by strategies and policies previously issued by the White House.

Focus on Russia and China

The executive order places a complete ban on US companies or individuals conducting future business of any kind with foreign ICT corporations from a country the US administration has formally declared to be an adversary.

The order also makes it clear that banned products and services will be any that are “supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries”.

The United States has already been explicit that China and Russia are undertaking cyber activities that threaten US national security (though sabotage has rarely been mentioned). The US position has also been that China and Russia both maintain political influence over corporations headquartered in their countries.

So it seems inevitable that the US will soon declare China and Russia as adversary countries under the terms of the order.

Evolution of policy since Obama

This is not a Trump administration innovation, but rather the natural – some would say slow – evolution of policy under the Obama administration. A national cyberspace emergency was declared in both April 2015 and December 2016.

Trump’s move follows the introduction in 2018 of new policies designed to punish countries undertaking malicious activities in cyber space. These are contained in the Defense Department Cyber Strategy and the National Cyber Strategy issued by the White House.

Just this month, comments from head of US Cyber Command General Nakasone imply America is already launching attacks in cyber space and taking other measures to punish China and Russia for their malicious actions in cyberspace.

The Cyber Deterrence Initiative was announced as part of the National Cyber Strategy of September 2018. It involves coalition-building with like-minded states, a group that is now 27 members strong, and includes the Five Eyes countries like Australia.

Referring to “consequences of […] malicious cyber behavior” and “malign actors”, it’s now clear this initiative set the stage for Trump’s new executive order.

Read more: Explainer: how the Australian intelligence community works

Australia is involved

The actions of our government indicate Australia supports US policies on persistent engagement and cyber deterrence.

In October 2018, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne joined other countries in linking Russia with malicious cyber activity over the previous four years.

In December 2018, Payne and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton joined like-minded countries in attributing a continuing campaign of intellectual property theft in cyberspace to China’s Ministry of State Security.

It is difficult to gauge how far Australia or other allies will go in supporting the US in imposing more severe costs other than simply naming and shaming.

Australia, like the US, has compiled a range of consequences it will consider imposing on foreign countries for cyber attacks. This will mean responses can be much swifter in the future. They will depend on early and close international coordination, and finding the right strategies to pinpoint responsibility.

We can be certain from US policy statements in 2018 that the American list of consequences includes retaliatory cyber attacks for Chinese and Russian incursions, as well as other severe non-cyber penalties. These include trade bans on Chinese firms, and the trade war now being waged with China.

The Australian list is probably somewhat more muted. But just how far this country is prepared to go to punish China is not likely ever to be put on the public record.

Read more: Is Trump’s trade war saving American jobs – or killing them?

No Huawei

Australia’s position on the risk of sabotage was implicit in the statement by the government in August 2018 effectively banning Huawei from 5G. The statement mentions potential impacts on critical infrastructure, including their availability and integrity. It does not refer to espionage as a concern.

Huawei’s recent commitment to enter “no spy” agreements with host countries will not address the sabotage concerns.

According to strategic studies expert Hugh White, the Australian government already sees China in adversarial terms. In a recent debate on Australia’s China policy, he said war with China over Taiwan or the South China Sea is now “the de facto basis of Australian defence policy”, adding:

Australia is building a force whose primary function is to support the United States in a war with China.

While White saw such a war as still a possibility rather than a certainty – and therefore China as only a potential adversary – the Trump administration’s escalation of policies around cyber sabotage threats from China will present new policy challenges for Australia’s next government.

– ref. US ban on Huawei likely following Trump cybersecurity crackdown – and Australia is on board – http://theconversation.com/us-ban-on-huawei-likely-following-trump-cybersecurity-crackdown-and-australia-is-on-board-117250

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerald Burke, Adjunct Professor, Education, Monash University

The Coalition has promised to create 80,000 new apprenticeships in areas of skills shortages if it wins the election. Most skilled trades (such as motor mechanics, panel beaters, carpenters, automotive electricians, plumbers, hairdressers) have recently been in shortage.

The Coalition aims to reduce the shortages through doubling employer incentive payments, making cash payments to apprentices and creating training hubs in regional areas and other areas of need.

Labor said it would pay upfront fees for 100,000 TAFE places. Labor has also said it would provide incentives for employers and apprentices for an additional 150,000 apprentices.

It’s clear trade apprentices and associated skills shortages are a central concern of both parties. But it’s not clear providing incentives is the best way to handle the issue, as history shows government incentives to employers have made little difference to the (mostly male) trade apprenticeship numbers.

Difference between apprentice and trainee

In considering the policies of both parties, it’s important to understand the differences between longer-term trade apprenticeships and shorter-term traineeships.

An apprentice, in the narrow use of the word, is contracted in a trade such as that of an electrician, carpenter, chef or hairdresser. An apprenticeship can take up to four years to complete. Trade apprentices make up a small proportion of the vocational education and training sector – around 14% of all government funded vocational students.

Many of the main trades frequently appear on the skills shortage list. Shortages are seen to inhibit productivity in industries and the broader economy.

Read more: Don’t be too quick to dismiss ‘dying trades’, those skills are still in demand

Traineeships were established in the late 1980s to provide apprentice-type training for young people in non-trade occupations such as sales and clerical, and many of the care occupations including disability and aged care.

The aim was to provide options, particularly for early school leavers, which combine work experience and learning on the job. It was hoped this would enhance early school leavers’ job prospects and add to the stock of skills in the economy.

Traineeships usually take one to two years to complete, much shorter than trade apprenticeships.

History of incentives

From the 1970s, the federal government had been providing financial incentives to employers of trade apprentices. The states also provided assistance. From the mid-1990s the federal government extended incentives to trainees, existing workers and to part-time and older workers.

Together with the introduction of a low training wage for trainees, the incentives led to a rapid expansion in the numbers of trainees in the late 1990s and to new training modes including fully on-the-job training. There was a sharp increase in the number of training organisations as employers were allowed to choose a private or public provider for off-the-job training (often one day a week).

A 1999 review into the system found some firms were using traineeships as a source of wage subsidies and, in many instances, provided little training to the trainees. For some, the skills acquired were not valued by employers over general work experience obtained during the traineeship. And the issue continued into the next decade.

In 2011, an expert panel noted Australia was the only country that paid government incentives, on a large scale, to employers of apprentices and trainees. The panel reported research that showed incentives paid to employers for the shorter traineeships represented a significant part of the wage costs (in some cases about 20%) and contributed to the large increase in trainee numbers.

For the longer, and more costly, training of trade apprentices, government payments to employers represented a much smaller proportion of the wage and training costs. And so, the incentives had only a marginal effect on the numbers of trade apprentices employed.

Read more: There is no apprenticeships ‘crisis’ in Australia

The expert panel suggested the government would be better to confine its payments to programs that added value to the economy, such as those in community services, health and information technology.

The panel also recommended the government not give funds directly as incentives to employers. Instead, both employers and government would pay into an employer contribution scheme. Employers who met benchmarks such as a strong induction process and effective mentoring would have their contribution rebated, either in part or in full.

These recommendations were particularly aimed at the non-completion rates of apprentices – on average less than half complete their apprenticeships with their first employer. The most common reason given is dissatisfaction with the employment experience including difficulties with employers or colleagues.

Drop in trainee numbers

The government at the time didn’t take up the recommendation of an employer contribution scheme. It retained incentives for apprenticeships in trades on the national skills needs list such as construction and telecommunications, and for traineeships in priority occupations in aged care, childcare, disability care and nursing.

It abolished incentives for existing workers in other traineeships. Together with cuts in state subsidies to the providers of off-the-job training in some courses, these changes led to a large fall in traineeship numbers.

For example, by 2018, traineeships in clerical and sales had fallen by more than 70% from 2012. Older and female workers were most affected.

Read more: The vocational education sector needs a plan and action, not more talk

But the numbers of starting apprenticeships in trades in the last ten years in the largest three groups – construction trades, automotive and engineering, and electrotechnology and telecommunications – is virtually unchanged. And a fall in automotive was offset by increases in the others.

These results were largely in keeping with intentions of the expert panel in 2011.

A male dominated industry

Trade apprenticeships are male dominated. In 2018, 65,000 males started trade apprenticeships compared to 9,000 females. And females bore the larger share of the reduction in traineeships since 2012. It seems unlikely many of the women who missed out on traineeships are among the entrants to higher education where women form the majority of undergraduates.

The available research shows electrotechnology and telecommunications trades and construction trades graduates are relatively well paid, while hairdressers are the worst paid.

Trade apprentices are already the best-supported VET students during training. They can access trade support loans of up to $20,000 over four years – with a 20% discount of the debt on completion. Apprentices can receive allowances for living away from home, and the government provides support for adult apprentices as well as rural and regional skills shortage incentives.

Employment of apprentices and their mentoring is assisted by the Australian Apprenticeship Support Network, at an annual cost of nearly A$200 million.

State governments also provide additional support for employers and apprentices. For instance, Queensland has a program including schemes aimed at the unemployed. Western Australia has announced the provision of employer incentives in its 2019 budget. NSW has abolished tuition fees for apprenticeships.

Extra government incentives to improve apprenticeship numbers do not seem to be the most effective, or equitable, policy. The next government must undertake a comprehensive review of incentives and all other forms of apprenticeship assistance.

The review should revisit the advice of the 2011 expert panel and ideally, should be conducted in the context of a review all tertiary funding (similar to what Labor is proposing).

Read more: VET needs support to rebuild its role in getting disadvantaged groups into education and work

– ref. Employer incentives may not be the most cost-effective or fair way of boosting apprenticeship numbers – http://theconversation.com/employer-incentives-may-not-be-the-most-cost-effective-or-fair-way-of-boosting-apprenticeship-numbers-114986

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Laughland-Booy, Research Fellow in Sociology, Australian Catholic University

With the election campaign racing to its conclusion, there’s been a lot of talk about the impact younger voters will have on the result.

Some political leaders might view the potential voting power of young people with disdain. But it might be wise for them to listen more closely to the views of young people about why their trust of politicians is so low, and what needs to be done in order to gain the respect of younger constituents.

Since 2006, we have been conducting longitudinal research with a single-aged cohort of 2,000 young people. When the study commenced, our participants were aged 12-13 years old. They are now in their mid-20s. The information they have given us over the years offers some interesting insights into the attitudes and behaviours of young Australians.

Read more: Trust in politicians and government is at an all-time low. The next government must work to fix that

Why trust is important

Trust in government is critical for the effective operation of a democracy. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, identified trust as “one of the most important foundations upon which the legitimacy and sustainability of political systems are built” (original emphasis).

Our study found that participants’ trust in politicians has dramatically declined. In 2006, 29% of the cohort told us that they trusted politicians, but by 2017, that number dropped to 9%.

With maturity, many young people will develop a healthy degree of scepticism towards those in positions of power. But the instability of federal leadership over the past decade has left many young people disillusioned with politics and disappointed in the conduct of many politicians.

Revolving door of prime ministers is a problem

We conducted in-depth interviews with many of our research participants to understand the stories behind the statistics. The fact that four prime ministers have been deposed by their own party since 2010 has left an indelible mark on how participants view Australian politics.

In 2013, the participants were first-time voters, and we interviewed some about their political views. At that time, Kevin Rudd had just been returned as prime minister, and the Labor government leadership spills of 2010 and 2013 were playing strongly on the minds of our interviewees. They were unhappy with what they saw as being disloyal behaviour demonstrated by the actors involved in these events.

Six years later, our participants are again telling us they are disappointed with leadership change becoming a common feature of Australian politics. They are disheartened that there have been so many prime ministers and, although these young people are interested in many political issues, they are not interested in the levels of party infighting and bickering that have characterised Australian politics over recent years.

Read more: After six years as opposition leader, history beckons Bill Shorten. Will the ‘drover’s dog’ have its day?

Qualities of a good political leader

With the quality of political leadership playing heavily on the minds of our participants, we asked what they want from the next prime minister.

The most common responses were stability and integrity. In terms of stability, they simply do not want to see prime ministers coming and going, as has been the case since 2010. They believe the next governing party must support their leader for the duration of the term that they are in government.

Integrity is also important. They would like the prime minster to act in the interests of all Australians and not just those who voted for them. They believe that a good leader has clearly identifiable values and advances policies that serve the broader public good.

Honesty is also important. They want a prime minister who will do what they say they are going to do. They are also looking for a leader capable of admitting when they are wrong, instead of making excuses and blaming others.

Read more: Against the odds, Scott Morrison wants to be returned as prime minister. But who the bloody hell is he?

Looking after the national interest

Somewhat unexpectedly, a recent poll found that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is Australians’ most trusted politician. Her attributes are seen to include integrity, commitment, and relevance.

Interestingly, when we asked our participants if they could think of an Australian prime minister who had demonstrated any admirable attributes, the most common response was John Howard. This was irrespective of the party the young person supported. Although they might not have agreed with his policies, they appreciated that John Howard represented a level of stability that has not been seen since.

The Howard government’s reforms to national gun laws drew significant praise by our participants, possibly due to recent events in Christchurch. The fact that the Howard government was able to bring about significant reforms to firearms policy was admirable, especially in face of vehement opposition from its own constituency.

This may just be the key for national leaders after the election. While debates about policy are to be expected, young voters are ultimately willing to support leaders who are transparent, honest, and who will advance the national interest rather than the interests of their own faction or party.

– ref. Young Australians don’t trust politicians. Here’s one reason why – http://theconversation.com/young-australians-dont-trust-politicians-heres-one-reason-why-116259

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Feo Snagovsky, PhD Candidate in Political Science, Australian National University

Australia’s major political parties are not popular institutions. Minor parties and independent candidates have been chipping away at their primary vote for decades. While less than 10% of voters cast a ballot for them in the 1950s and 1960s, almost one in four voters turned away from mainstream parties in 2016.

According to the latest Newspoll, it seems unlikely this trend will change at this election. The major parties are understandably rattled and after a group of independents released a coordinated campaign ad last week, some pundits have been quick to portray them as a new “green-left force” determined to bring Labor into power.

So, is this new wave of independents really part of a coordinated and cohesive left-wing conspiracy, akin to a new political party? Probably not.

First off, the claim is at odds with the intention of some of the very same independents to support a Coalition minority government if the election returns a hung parliament.

What’s more, data from smartvote Australia, a voting advice application developed by the Australian National University (ANU), shows most independents actually take policy positions somewhere between Labor and the Liberals. There is also considerable variance in the positions they take.

In contrast to party-centric projects that are based on expert coding, smartvote asks voters and their local candidates to fill out the same 35-question survey. It then matches voters with the local candidates who align the closest with their views (and, if you are curious, you can see how you compare to candidates and parties running in your electorate here).

Smartvote invited all candidates and parties running for parliament in the 2019 election to participate. One week out from the election, it contained information from about 70% of the 50-plus parties that are fielding candidates. In addition, smartvote includes the answers of 40% of all independents running for the election – some of whom are incumbents or have a good chance of winning on May 18.

Read more: How much influence will independents and minor parties have this election? Please explain

Using smartvote, we can take the ideological positions of each candidate and plot them in two-dimensional space. So, what do the data tell us? The figure above shows the ideological positions of 56 independent candidates compared to the positions of the two main parties and the Greens.

Most independents who participated in smartvote find themselves somewhere between Labor and the Liberals (what some of them call the “sensible centre”). And while some are more progressive than Labor on the social dimension, none is to the left of Labor on the economic dimension.

We also analysed the personal statements each independent candidate provided to smartvote to explain why they are running for office. Independent candidates overwhelmingly stressed their ties to their local community, the need to do politics differently, and the importance of climate change.

These statements echo the main arguments they are taking into the 2019 campaign – that political parties have failed Australians. They also echo the arguments in the Independents Day video. For example, Kerryn Phelps (Wentworth) starts by saying she “ran as an independent because [she’s] sick of the two major parties”, while Zali Steggall (Warringah) goes further, claiming “the time for political parties is moving on”.

To find out what else they have in common, we examined another of smartvote’s graphical tools, the “smartspider”. This tool allows voters to compare their positions with candidates and parties on six dimensions. In the animation below, we look at the profiles of eight of the “Independents Day” candidates first and then compare them with the two large parties.

Almost all the independents in our sample have a more environmentally-friendly position than the two major parties – the very message they tried to articulate in their ad. Although this differentiates them the most from the two major parties, they hardly outflank the Greens, who get the highest score on the environment. Most independents also remain far from the Greens’ positions on the economic and social dimensions.

All data are subject to limitations, and this project is no different. Our sample of 56 independent candidates matches the proportion of women in the population of independent candidates (almost one in four). House of Representative candidates are slightly overrepresented, even though this group accounts for two-thirds of all independent candidates standing for parliament. It also includes candidates from all states and territories except the Northern Territory.

Read more: Discontent with Nationals in regional areas could spell trouble for Coalition at federal election

The percentages of candidates from New South Wales and Queensland is very similar to their percentages in the general population. However, candidates from Victoria and South Australia are overrepresented, while Tasmania and the territories are underrepresented.

That said, smartvote is unique in Australia as the only voting advice application to include independents and minor parties.

While independents did not have much success in getting elected to the lower house in 2016, more than a third of Australians voted for minor parties and independents in the Senate.

The result was a record 20 crossbenchers following the last election. With only half the Senate up for election, minor parties and independent candidates will have a harder time at this election.

We do not have to wait long to see whether more independents find themselves sitting in the House after May 18.

– ref. Are independents part of a ‘green-left’ conspiracy? New research finds they are more the ‘sensible centre’ – http://theconversation.com/are-independents-part-of-a-green-left-conspiracy-new-research-finds-they-are-more-the-sensible-centre-117094

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hamilton, Visiting Scholar, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This is the final in a three-part series on the budget tax measures that began with an analysis of the government’s plan to flatten the tax schedule and continued with an analysis of its plan to target tax relief at low and middle earners via an expanded tax offset.

The third leg of the government’s budget (and election) tax package is an expansion of the instant asset write-off which will allow businesses to immediately write off expenses worth up to A$30,000. The key takeaway of this piece is that the plan will likely increase investment, but we ought to think carefully about whether that’s really what we want.

If more investment increases the productive capacity of the economy, then terrific. But if it’s just spending on things businesses don’t really need, then it’s nothing but taxpayer-subsidised waste.

The instant asset write-off was introduced by the Rudd government in its 2010 budget with the stated goal of boosting business investment.

The policy allows businesses to claim capital investments as expenses upfront rather than having to spread these expenses out over the lives of the assets. They get all the tax benefits of investment instantly without having to wait.

Originally, it covered expenses up to A$5,000. In 2015 the Abbott government lifted that to A$20,000 and this year the Morrison government lifted it to A$30,000.

A primer on business taxation

In principle, business taxes are levied on profits – revenues less expenses – and for good reason. By allowing firms to deduct their expenses from their revenues to determine the tax they owe, taxes affect both spending on and returns from investments equally. Indeed, if you could figure out a way to allow businesses to deduct all of their true costs –- in the broadest possible sense –- then taxes wouldn’t affect business decisions at all.

When a business only has variable inputs (such as flour for a bakery), the story is pretty straightforward because expenses are incurred at more or less the same time as the revenues are received. In practice, however, businesses have many so-called fixed inputs (like an oven for a bakery) where an expense is incurred immediately but its benefits are spread out over years.

Read more: It’s the budget cash splash that reaches back in time

If the business borrowed to pay for the asset, then there are in theory two basic ways these kinds of expenses could be recognised at tax time.

The first is if the business is able to claim as annual expenses on its tax return the interest on the loan plus the value of the asset’s lost productive capacity in that year (we call this economic depreciation).

The second is if the business is not able to claim the interest expenses but is instead allowed to claim the entire value of the asset as a single expense in the first year.

These two methods each have pros and cons for the business. The second lets you claim more now, which lowers your tax bill today, but then you lose the ability to claim your interest expenses in future years, which raises your tax bills in the future. In an ideal world, businesses should be indifferent between method one and method two.

The problem with the first method is that it’s impossible for the Tax Office to determine for every single asset held by every single business the true rate of economic depreciation. In practice, it formulates standardised depreciation schedules for different circumstances (for example, straight-line depreciation that allows a fixed portion of the asset to be written off each year). But this is necessarily imperfect, so businesses inevitably will either be under or overcompensated so they’ll either under or over invest.

What the instant asset write-off does is to allow businesses to claim the entire value of the asset as an expense upfront, as with the second method, but it also allows them to continue to claim their interest expenses in future years.

It gives them the upside of both methods and none of the downsides. For an asset with, say, a ten-year lifespan, this over-compensation could represent a significant financial benefit. So in theory it should encourage firms to investment more.

Will the instant asset write-off encourage investment?

Mostly because of limited data availability, we have little Australian evidence of the effect of taxes on businesses. This is a shame, because there’s a long history of policy changes in this area offering ample opportunity for us to assess how well tax policies have worked in practice. This is improving with initiatives like the Tax Office’s ALife database covering personal taxation, but governments of both stripes could do a lot more to support the development of a strong local evidence base to guide tax policy.

Evidence from the US (here, here and here) and the United Kingdom (here), where the business tax systems are somewhat different, suggest these kinds of policies can significantly boost business investment. But it doesn’t tell us much about the quality of the investment. You often see commentators talk about business investment like it’s a commodity – a homogeneous thing, like wheat or water, about which only the quantity matters. The more of it the better, never mind the details.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Businesses face complex choices along countless dimensions. Not all investments are created equal. In the absence of taxes, there are a whole range of investments that businesses would deem unworthy. Replacing your perfectly functional, if a bit tired, delivery van with a brand new one, is an example. Without a tax incentive, you mightn’t do it, but if offered one, you might be nudged into doing it.

Investment would go up. So would Australia’s gross domestic product. Mission accomplished.

Tax policy shouldn’t push or pull, but get out of the way

Not so fast.

Tax policy can absolutely be used to manipulate behaviour.

But in its most basic form, it’s about collecting the money we need to fund schools, hospitals and pensions.

In doing so, tax architects follow their version of the Hippocratic oath: first, do as little harm as possible. We assume that in the absence of tax, people will do what’s best for them. We try to design taxes that will change that as little as possible.

When it comes to businesses, that means we want businesses to innovate, and to invest, as they would have in the absence of tax. That means we want bakers to buy new ovens, but only if they would see it as prudent in a world without taxes.

You hear a lot of politicians (and sadly, some economists) talk about how more investment is necessarily better. But that’s wrong. Investment is only good when it raises the productivity capacity of the economy and in a way that more than pays for itself. Otherwise, it’s not really investment, it’s waste. If you assert that businesses aren’t investing enough as it is, then you’d better be able to explain what you mean, what you think enough is, and how you could possibly know.

If you’ve ever heard a business owner say he or she only bought something because it was a tax write-off, then you know the tax architect has failed.

And that’s really the concern with this policy. It will almost certainly encourage businesses to invest more. Business owners will buy new utes and mixers and fridges and all sorts of things – partly at taxpayers’ expense. But we really have no idea whether these will be good investments or whether tax policy will have induced all these businesses to buy things they probably shouldn’t have.

Read more: The budget’s dirty secret is the hikes in tax rates you’re not meant to know about

The Labor opposition has proposed a significant expansion of the policy. Businesses would be able to claim 20% of most investments worth more than A$20,000 upfront.

It too would overcompensate businesses for the investments they make so, it too should lead to more business investment, but on a grander scale. All of the arguments against the Coalition’s scheme apply to Labor’s scheme, only more so.

What I’d much prefer to see is a focus on business tax reform with the fundamental concept of neutrality built into its core. A business tax policy that neither discouraged nor encouraged business decisions, but just got out of its way.

That would be no write-off.

– ref. Shock. More investment isn’t necessarily better. Those instant asset write-offs are bad tax policy – http://theconversation.com/shock-more-investment-isnt-necessarily-better-those-instant-asset-write-offs-are-bad-tax-policy-116509

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Oldfield, Associate Professor in Architecture, UNSW

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

What’s the tallest skyscraper it’s possible to build? – Sophie, aged 7, Perth.

Great question! The world’s current tallest skyscraper is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s 828 metres tall, which is over two-and-a-half times as tall as any skyscraper in Australia.

However, there is a skyscraper being built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that will be over 1,000 metres tall when it’s finished. This will be the first building to ever rise over a kilometre high. It will also have 167 floors on top of each other!

So, how tall could we build a skyscraper? It would be difficult, but we could probably build a tower over 2,000 metres tall, which would be like ten normal skyscrapers on top of each other!

This is probably not a very good idea though. Building such a mega-tall skyscraper would use a huge amount of concrete and steel. Using lots of these materials when we don’t need to can be bad for the environment. It’s usually much better for the environment if we build smaller skyscrapers, maybe up to 300 metres tall.

In fact, there are lots of challenges when you design and build a mega-tall skyscraper.

Stopping the wind

The biggest difficulty is the wind. It blows on a skyscraper and tries to push it over, so you need to design a structure that keeps the building stable. The wind can also make a tower sway from side to side, so that people at the very top can even feel seasick.

Architects and engineers have lots of technologies to help stop this. Some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world have a giant pendulum at the top, inside the building, called a “tuned mass damper”.

Imagine a ball of steel the size of a house hanging from ropes inside a skyscraper. When the wind blows, the pendulum swings back and forth, absorbing the energy of the wind, to stop the building swaying.

Other buildings have pools of water at the top. When the wind blows it makes the water slosh around. Giant paddles in the pool absorb the water’s movement, which stops the building from swaying.

Another way to stop the wind is to use a clever skyscraper shape. When the wind blows on a skyscraper it creates swirls of air called vortices – like whirlpools in the sky.

If these happen regularly, it can make the building sway back and forth. The Burj Khalifa building in Dubai is thin at the top and wide at the bottom, with giant steps down the side. The steps make the vortices happen at different heights to help stop the building from swaying in the wind.

Getting to the top

Another big challenge is how do you get to the top of a building that is one kilometre tall? Walking up the stairs isn’t an option as there would be more than 3,000 steps!

Taking the lift would be a good idea, but you’d need a very fast lift. Otherwise it would take ages to get up or down the building.

Some of theses lifts can travel at 70km/h, the speed of cars on a highway. At that speed you would go past five floors every second and soon be at the top.

You would also need lots of lifts in a kilometre-high skyscraper. The Jeddah Tower will have 59 of them! They will have super-strong carbon fibre ropes to carry the lift, as normal ropes just aren’t strong enough.

Read more: Curious Kids: is water blue or is it just reflecting off the sky?

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

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

– ref. Curious Kids: what’s the tallest skyscraper it’s possible to build? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-whats-the-tallest-skyscraper-its-possible-to-build-116817

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Young, Professor, University of Melbourne

News Corp must have been startled to find itself becoming one of the major issues in this election campaign. But this is just another sign that, in recent years, the company’s ability to read the public mood has gone wildly off-kilter.

From attacking the decision of the jury in the sexual assault trial of Cardinal George Pell to last week’s Daily Telegraph attack on Bill Shorten using his deceased mother as ammunition, there are mounting signs of panic and folly at one of Australia’s largest media companies.

With the media and political landscape shifting rapidly around the company, there is a feeling akin to the last days of the Roman Empire.

Rupert Murdoch is winding back after six decades building up an Australian, and then global, media empire. The Murdoch family has retreated from buying up assets and instead become a seller, offloading, for instance, 21st Century Fox to Disney last year.

Read more: Mounting evidence the tide is turning on News Corp, and its owner

If the next generation of Murdochs starts looking to sell unprofitable assets, the Australian newspapers have reason to be concerned. Because they are no longer financially valuable to the newly slimmed down company, the Australian papers seem to be trying to prove their worth by being politically useful while they still can.

Since 2013, the News Corp papers have become more politically aggressive, with some adopting the shrill, cartoonish and openly-partisan approach of British “red top” tabloids. During the 2019 election, News Corp journalists – past and present – have spoken out against the company’s determined barracking for the return of the Coalition government.

Academic Denis Muller recently called News Corp a “propaganda operation masquerading as a news service”. Remarkably, this statement neatly encapsulates how News Corp actually began.

Chance meeting on a train?

As I explain in my book Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires, News Corp began its corporate life in 1922 as News Limited. It was a company that was secretly established by a mining company owned by the most powerful industrialists of the day, and it was created for the express purpose of disseminating “propaganda”.

This was not what I expected to find when I began researching its origins.

The story that News Limited/News Corp has long told was that it was founded by James Edward Davidson, a brilliant journalist and former editor of the Melbourne Herald. After Davidson was pushed out of the Herald in 1918 for asserting his editorial independence, he purchased two provincial newspapers – one in Broken Hill (the Barrier Miner) and one in Port Pirie, South Australia (the Recorder).

According to corporate legend, Davidson was travelling on the Melbourne-Adelaide steam train two years later when he sat next to an old friend, a “miner” named Gerald Mussen. On that journey in 1921, Davidson and Mussen hatched a plan for a new afternoon paper, the Adelaide News, to be owned by a company called News Limited. From those humble beginnings grew one of the world’s most important media companies.

But this corporate tale intrigued me immediately. There was something awry about it.

I knew that Australia’s most powerful industrialist at the time, William Lawrence Baillieu, was one of the directors and owners of the Herald, the outlet Davidson had modernised into a powerful force before his untimely exit. Baillieu was also head of a huge industrial complex dubbed “Collins House”, which dominated the mining and manufacturing industry and was involved in many other businesses. It developed some of Australia’s most famous brands, including the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), Consolidated Zinc (now Rio Tinto), Carlton and United Breweries (CUB), Dunlop Rubber, and Dulux.

Collins House’s immense wealth and power originally came out of the mines of Broken Hill. It also formed the Broken Hill Associated Smelters (BHAS) in 1915 and took over the lead smelter at Port Pirie, turning it into the world’s largest lead smelting works.

It seemed beyond coincidence that the two papers Davidson had chosen to buy in 1918-19 just happened to be at the two ends of Collins House’s supply chain – Broken Hill and Port Pirie.

Read more: FactCheck: does Murdoch own 70% of newspapers in Australia?

But I also knew that Mussen, Davidson’s train companion, was no mere miner, as the company story goes. He was Collins House’s industrial consultant. A former journalist, Mussen had become a PR man and fixer, a soother of industrial conflict, who had already worked for Baillieu for more than a decade.

Private letters in the BHAS archive at the University of Melbourne provided the next clues about what – and who – were really behind the founding of News Limited.

A tool for combating union influence

In mid-1918, BHAS executives were increasingly concerned about the union-owned newspaper in Broken Hill, the Barrier Truth. In a letter held in the BHAS archive, the general manager of Collins House’s Broken Hill South mine reported that the Barrier Truth was inciting “class warfare” and industrial unrest. He wanted “some means of keeping it within bounds”.

BHAS’ managing director, Colin Fraser, began searching for a way to combat the union paper with pro-mining company publicity. In late-1918, he wrote to Collins House’s WS Robinson and suggested that BHAS buy the Barrier Truth’s local rival, the Barrier Miner newspaper. But the astute Robinson, a former Age journalist, knew it would be a bad look for a mining company to own a newspaper.

Fraser came up with another idea. His letter explaining this idea to Robinson is missing from the BHAS archive. But Robinson’s reply to Fraser is still there, thankfully, for this letter is significant.

Robinson wrote to Fraser in December 1918:

I am glad to note that you are going to shake the Port Pirie Recorder up. There is great room for propaganda in Broken Hill and Port Pirie … Let us try and educate our men, and the public too.

Nineteen days later, a new company was registered in Melbourne for the purpose of taking over the Recorder. Davidson was the key shareholder. Obviously, he was the means of “shaking up” the Recorder and disseminating “propaganda”.

Davidson purchased not only the Port Pirie Recorder, but the Barrier Miner, too.

Under Davidson, the Barrier Miner became known locally as the “bosses’ paper” for its pro-company line. Only a month after Davidson took it over, Fraser wrote to Robinson in March 1919 and said how pleased he was with it.

Consolidation under Murdoch

Union activists at Broken Hill suspected the Collins House mining companies had funded Davidson’s purchase of the paper, but they could never prove it.

But proof lies in the letters in the BHAS archives, as well as in the original company documents for News Limited (now held in the State Records of South Australia and the Public Record Office Victoria). When Davidson’s first newspaper company was registered, the only other two shareholders were both Collins House accountants. When it was rolled into News Limited, the company’s first shareholder list was a roll call of key Collins House figures.

Tellingly, Davidson was never made the chairman of News Limited’s board and never increased his shares in the company. By 1929, he was being pushed out of it. A chronic alcoholic, he died while on an overseas trip in 1930, just as Baillieu’s other protégé, Keith Murdoch, was proving a deft hand at interstate takeovers of newspapers.

Read more: After Rupert – welcome to the game of thrones at News Corp

After Davidson’s death, News Limited quickly ended up in Murdoch’s hands. He initially oversaw the company for Collins House’s HWT but, in 1949, he convinced HWT executives to let him acquire a stake in it.

Murdoch built up that stake to such an extent that, when he died in 1952, he was able to leave News Limited to his son Rupert, who then used it as a springboard for the creation of his media empire.

Veneer of ‘impartiality’ no longer needed

When it was founded in 1923, News Limited concealed its mining company connections at the same time it promised the public that its news would be “independent” and “impartial”.

Lip service or not, notions of balance and the public interest were important then. This was because News Limited’s founders knew that respect was an important precondition for influence, and that newspapers had to be responsive to the communities they served in order to attract a wide audience and prosper.

News Corp’s recent behaviour suggests it now sees such notions as quaint. ​

– ref. The secret history of News Corp: a media empire built on spreading propaganda – http://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Davy, Research Fellow, Public Service Research Group, UNSW

This week at the aged care royal commission hearings, the CEOs of three aged care providers called for a change in the way residential aged care is funded to improve the quality of care.

This followed a plea from Aged Care Services Australia for the government and opposition to address what it called a “crisis in residential aged care funding”.

But while most residential aged care funding comes from government, residents also have to contribute. So how does this complicated payment system work?

Read more: Nearly 2 out of 3 nursing homes are understaffed. These 10 charts explain why aged care is in crisis

Who is eligible for subsided care?

In July 2014, the government introduced several changes to the residential aged care accommodation and care fees rules. These were part of wider reforms to the aged care system initiated under the Aged Care (Living Longer Living Better) Act 2013.

One of the biggest changes was the introduction of means testing. Many residents of aged care facilities are now expected to pay a portion of their care and accommodation costs themselves, but whether and how much they contribute is determined by an assessment of their personal financial circumstances.

A person who receives a full age pension and has just a small amount saved in a bank account, for example, will likely have their accommodation and care costs fully subsidised by the government – aside from a daily care fee, which is a proportion of the pension.

Someone who receives a higher income and owns significant shares and investments may need to pay some or all of their accommodation and care costs.

Read more: Don’t wait for a crisis – start planning your aged care now

Costs of aged care

There are four main costs associated with residential aged care:

1) Daily care fee

This fee covers living costs such as meals, cleaning, heating and power. All residents of an aged care facility pay this fee, which is fixed at 85% of the age pension.

2) Daily means tested care fee

Some residents also need to pay an additional contribution towards the cost of their care. The Department of Human Services conducts an income and assets assessment to work out whether people need to pay this fee, and if so, how much it is.

3) Accommodation costs

This includes the cost of the room and other physical amenities provided by the aged care facility. Some residents have their accommodation paid for fully or partly by the government, while others need to pay accommodation costs privately.

4) Additional services fees

Some facilities offer extra services such as newspaper delivery, hairdressing and cable TV. Fees for these additional services only apply if the resident agrees to pay them.

Accommodation costs get really complicated

Out of these costs, accommodation costs are often the highest as well as the most confusing.

Those who need to pay all or some of their accommodation costs have a couple of different payment methods to choose from:

Refundable accommodation deposit (RAD) or refundable accommodation contribution (RAC)

RADs and RACs are lump sum payments for a resident’s accommodation. They work like an interest free loan paid to the aged care provider, who is then able to invest this amount, for example in improvements to the facility and services, and earn interest on it.

The lump sum amount is refunded to the resident or their estate if they move or pass away, and is guaranteed by the government even if the provider goes bankrupt.

Daily accommodation payment (DAP) or daily accommodation contribution (DAC)

DAPs and DACs work like a rental payment. Residents pay the aged care provider the daily rate of lost interest on what the lump sum amount would be for their room. The interest rate is set by the government and is currently 5.96%.

You can also pay through any combination of these methods, such as 60% RAD and 40% DAP. For example:

Linda agrees on a RAD price of A$320,000 for her room, and wants to pay this amount in a lump sum. When she leaves the facility, the RAD amount will be refunded to her or her estate.

Gary also chooses aged care accommodation with a RAD price of A$320,000, but he wants to pay the daily amount rather than make the full payment upfront. Gary’s DAP is calculated from the RAD amount for his accommodation, and comes to about A$52 per day.

Maria wants to pay some of her accommodation costs as a lump sum RAD and the rest via a DAP. If her accommodation is also priced at A$320,000 and she pays A$192,000 as a part RAD, her DAP for the remaining amount is about A$21 per day.

Is the accommodation payment system fair?

The answer depends on where you stand on broader issues around fiscal responsibility and intergenerational equity.

Governments have argued the reforms implemented since 2013 are necessary to sustain the aged care system into the future, particularly given a rapidly ageing population and growing budget deficit.

Read more: Would you like to grow old at home? Why we’re struggling to meet demand for subsidised home care

In terms of the payment options themselves, there are some significant advantages to paying an accommodation lump sum if you are in a financial position to do so. It can help preserve your estate and age pension eligibility, as the RAD or RAC amount is refunded and is exempt from the pension income and asset tests.

The DAP and DAC payments are not refundable.

But given that the average value of RADs and RACs held by providers in 2017 was A$283,499, a rental-style payment may be the only option for many people.

There are annual and lifetime caps to the means-tested care fee, but not for accommodation payments, so this daily cost will stack up over time.

Keep in mind, however, that the average length of stay in permanent residential aged care was just under three years in 2017, and many people pass away or leave the facility after a stay of just three, six or 12 months.

Some recent reforms aim to make the system easier to navigate and more transparent, such as the introduction of the My Aged Care gateway and the requirement for aged care providers to make their accommodation pricing public.

But the system is still highly complex, and the onus is on government and care providers to provide accessible information.

A consumer-led system will only work if consumers are informed. This requires investment in education and awareness campaigns to promote greater knowledge of aged care policy, fee structures and options, as well as affordable sources of financial and legal advice.

Read more: Australia’s residential aged care facilities are getting bigger and less home-like

– ref. So you’re thinking of going into a nursing home? Here’s what you’ll have to pay for – http://theconversation.com/so-youre-thinking-of-going-into-a-nursing-home-heres-what-youll-have-to-pay-for-114295

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Hopkin, Acting Editor, FactCheck, The Conversation

The Adani Carmichael coal mine has been an election issue across state and federal politics since 2016.

Despite bipartisan support, it defined the November 2017 Queensland election, has shaped federal by-elections since and prompted protests in almost every Australian state and territory – including a convoy that has made its way up to the neighbouring town of Clermont all the way from Tasmania.

So given it’s gone through several revisions thanks to issues with funding and environmental approvals, what does the proposed mine look like now?

This is a heavily revised version of the graphic originally created for the 2017 Queensland state election.

It will be updated as new information becomes available.

– ref. Interactive: Everything you need to know about Adani – from cost, environmental impact and jobs to its possible future – http://theconversation.com/interactive-everything-you-need-to-know-about-adani-from-cost-environmental-impact-and-jobs-to-its-possible-future-116901

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

The lowest blow of this election campaign may have come from a firm of real estate agents that abused its position of trust to scare renters about Labor’s proposed negative gearing changes.

If you are one of those renters, relax. You have nothing to fear from the changes. You might even benefit from them. The only interests the real estate firm is protecting is its own.

Late last week Raine & Horne principal Graham Cockerill wrote to tenants saying Labor’s changes would be “devastating” and including material from the Real Estate Institue of Australia warning of what might happen if “the planned changes to negative gearing do go ahead”.

“The fall in property prices will decrease the value of 18 million Australian’s retirement nest eggs,” and “rents will rise” the material warns. “Further, government savings will be less than estimated, unemployment will rise and our whole economy will be in jeopardy.”

Other renters have received official looking material apparently sent by the Liberal Party reading “Final Notice: Rent Increase”.

It’s a jumped-up scare campaign. But some renters may give it more credibility than it’s worth because some of it comes from the people who normally notify you when your rent is going up.

Here are some facts.

Labor’s policy will not raise rents.

Real estate agents don’t decide rents, landlords do.

The Labor policy won’t fundamentally change the balance of supply and demand in the rental market.

Yes, if there are fewer cashed-up investors that might mean fewer rental properties. But those properties won’t disappear – home buyers will move in, so there will be fewer renters.

And the policy shouldn’t reduce the supply of new homes, because most investment lending goes to existing rather than new homes. Labor’s policy actually leaves in place the tax breaks for people who invest in new homes.

Some of the renters targeted by Raine & Horne might be saving to buy a home. If you are one of them, here are some more facts.

Labor’s policy will help renters buy houses

You stand to benefit from the Labor policy. If there are fewer taxpayer dollars in the hands of property investors, that will boost your prospects of being able to buy a home yourself.

If there is reduced demand from investors, house prices will fall. The fall will be modest – we at Grattan Institute calculate it will be in the range of 1% to 2%. The Commonwealth and NSW Treasuries estimate similar modest price falls.

So what about the headlines you might have seen about 10% or 20% price falls?

All those estimates were prepared by – or paid for by – the property industry. If you detect a pattern you are right. Well-resourced property groups that stand to lose from capital gains tax and negative gearing changes have been muddying the water for a long time now.

The industry talks its own book

Here are a few facts that real estate agents aren’t rushing to tell you. Negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount work together to create a very generous tax regime for the property industry. Investors write off their losses after interest costs in full against the taxes on their wages. But when they sell, they only pay tax on half their gain. Given strong growth in property prices and low inflation, some wage earners end up paying less tax than if they had not invested at all, despite the profits on the investments.

And like most tax concessions, people with higher incomes benefit the most. That’s why the share of anaesthetists negatively gearing is almost triple that for nurses, and the average tax benefits they receive are around 11 times higher.

The end result is that the government has been subsidising investors to buy their second, third or tenth property while at the same time crying crocodile tears about the fact that lots of young people trying to buy their first home are locked out of the market.

Read more: The Game of Homes: how the vested interests lie about negative gearing

The industry claims of rising unemployment and putting the economy “in jeopardy” show a similar disregard for facts. The Labor policies will collect on average an extra A$3 billion to A$4 billion a year in revenue for the government over the first decade, less than a 1% increase in the total tax take. Much of that money will go back into the economy through reductions in other taxes or increases in spending. Any negative overall effects from the higher levels of tax will be imperceptibly small across a A$1.8 trillion economy.

There is, however, one industry that might go backwards.

Real estate agents take healthy commissions from housing investors. Investors, particularly negatively geared ones, also turn over properties faster than homeowners. So real estate agents benefit when there are more properties in the hands of investors and fewer in the hands of homeowners.

Don’t be scared by the real estate agents’ campaign. Labor’s negative gearing policy won’t raise your rent. And if you’re trying to buy your first home, it just might boost your chances.

Read more: Confirmation from NSW Treasury. Labor’s negative gearing policy would barely move house prices

– ref. Real estate agents targeting tenants is the lowest of the low blows during election 2019 – http://theconversation.com/real-estate-agents-targeting-tenants-is-the-lowest-of-the-low-blows-during-election-2019-117188

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Carney, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Sydney

Campaign promises can seem like so much noise and distraction; this morning’s announcement replaced by another by the afternoon and forgotten before bedtime. But as the “robo-debt” saga showed, such announcements can have devastating consequences if not properly scrutinised, once the election rush has passed.

In December 2015 in the lead up to the mid-2016 election the Coalition announced a “crack-down” on welfare overpayments, to be brought about by matching taxation data with Centrelink records.

In the leadup to the election Scott Morrision, then social security minister, spoke of it as a “more bespoke way of dealing with people’s arrangements”. It would “cut red tape, and ensure that mistakes are minimised”.

It began as a promise

Data matching had long been used, but only to identify possible overpayments. Centrelink staff then verified and properly calculated any such debts, using its powers to compel banks or employers to provide precise fortnightly earnings records if the person hadn’t kept them.

The new scheme “automated” that key stage.

Instead of finding out what a person actually earned each fortnight so their rate of social security could accurately be worked out, it robotically apportioned to each fortnight the annual employment income reported to the tax office. Each fortnight the person receiving benefits was said to have earned form employment one 26th of what they had earned over the year, making it look as if they had been working all year even if they had not.

Debts were asserted and put in the hands of debt collectors unless the person could produce pay-slips or other fortnightly earnings records, often from as far back as 2010. The Centrelink website had only advised people to keep records dating back six months.

Government oversight was weak

The scheme was to begin on July 1, 2016, which as it happens was the day before the election. The election victory was narrow, and for a while uncertain, meaning the bureaucracy was left with more responsibility than usual for making sure it was delivered as promised.

And as events transpired, it proved to be unable to design a scheme that completely met the tests of being lawful (it reversed the onus of proof on the esistance of debts), accurate (the bulk of its assessments were either totally false or grossly inflated ), meeting the integrity standards expected of government (hiding from public scrutiny details about appeals that overturned its decisions), or meeting the pub test of morality.

It frankly beggars belief that standards of government implementation could fall so far and so low.

And Centrelink staff must have known it

It cannot possibly have been unknown within government that it was legally impossible to reverse the onus of proof of establishing a debt. The legislative provision was crystal clear that debts can be raised “if and only if” the law creates it as a debt.

Even the lowest-level employee within Centrelink knew that most people on benefits had several different jobs, of varying durations and hours with erratic and fluctuating earnings and that the law required the person’s rate to be determined every fortnight, not on the basis of some extrapolated “average” over a year.

Hardly anyone could not know that basic maths tells us that an “average” never speaks to its constituent parts unless a person has a single job at an unchanged pay rate.

Read more: What 1,100 Australians told us about the experience of living with debt they can’t repay

And every senior bureaucrat ought to have understood their obligation to behave as a “model litigant”, which includes not continuing to raise debts that regularly overturned as illegal on appeal, and not to “hide” those decisions by never once challenging them by appealing to the next level where decisions would become public, or reportedly seek to “settle” a Federal Court challenge to the process rather than have it come to a public hearing.

All of these things were part and parcel of this botched implementation.

Bull-headedly, government continued with it 18 months after it became clear several things were wrong.

Promises have consequences

The economic cost to citizens of a program which effectively uses the might of the state to frighten them into paying up what the Ombudsman’s report found to mainly be non-existent or highly inflated “debts”, is now estimated as A$3.7 billion over the budget estimates.

The cost to the government’s reputation for integrity is incalculable, because the irony is that automation is the way of the future, and competently designed and implemented it can benefit social security clients and the public.

Elections are a time when not only the promises but also the professionalism and integrity of their implementation are on public display. If you don’t take note, you might end up getting something that looks appealing (such as a “crackdown” on welfare fraud) but ends up targeting you in a way that is illegal or immoral. You might even have voted for it.

– ref. Danger. Election 2016 delivered us Robodebt. Promises can have consequences – http://theconversation.com/danger-election-2016-delivered-us-robodebt-promises-can-have-consequences-117191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin O’Brien, Lecturer in Economics, University of Wollongong

After three years of submissions, hearings and deliberations, Australia’s workplace relations umpire, the Fair Work Commission, decided in 2017 to decrease the penalty rates paid to retail and hospitality workers on the safety-net award for working on Sundays and public holidays.

For years employer groups had argued that high penalty rates (up to double standard pay) were an unaffordable anachronism in the modern economy, and the commission essentially agreed.

In particular, it concluded the evidence was that cutting penalty rates (by between a quarter and a half) would lead to more trading hours and services on offer on Sundays and public holidays, “and an increase in overall hours worked”.

Read more: Labor wants to restore penalty rates within 100 days. But what about the independent umpire?

In other words, reducing penalty rates would create more jobs.

Two years on, with cuts to public holiday penalty rates fully implemented and Sundays partially implemented (being introduced over three to four years) how many extra jobs have been created?

Our research suggests basically none.

What the data tells us

The publicly available data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics doesn’t really help determine the effect of the penalty rate cut. The following graph shows ABS employment date covering the retail and hospitality sectors since 2015.

The key dates are when penalty rate cuts occurred, on July 1, 2017 (full reduction in the public holiday rate and part reduction of the Sunday rate) and July 1, 2018 (further reduction of the Sunday rate).

There is no obvious increase in employment after those two dates, but this doesn’t really tell us the full story. Because the ABS doesn’t collect employment data for Sundays and public holidays specifically. Also the group affected (those on modern award pay and conditions) comprise about a third of employees in these sectors, and they are buried in the stats alongside those on enterprise agreements and individual contracts, whose wages were unaffected by the commission’s decision.

In short, one needs to collect some custom data to do a proper study.

Which is what my colleague Ray Markey at Macquarie University and I did.

In late 2018 we commissioned a survey using a third-party data collection agency. We surveyed more than 1,800 employees and 200 owner-managers in retail and hospitality. We collected data on Sunday, public holiday and weekly employment patterns for modern award employees, as well as those covered by enterprise agreements and individual contracts.

Using a variety of statistical analyses, we were unable to establish any evidence of a relative increase in the prevalence of Sunday, public holiday or weekly employment for modern award employees or employers. Nor could we establish a decrease to the number of hours that owner-managers worked Sunday and public holidays, something else the Fair Work Commission also predicted.

In fact, some of the analysis suggested the Sunday and public holiday employment outcomes were worse for those affected by the penalty cuts compared to those on enterprise agreements and individual contracts.

Flawed evidence

So, why the dud result?

The inescapable conclusion is that the evidence presented to the commission was flawed.

What came from employer groups, trade unions, the Productivity Commission, and expert witnesses (including myself) was indirect and tangential at best, and biased at worst.

No reliable statistical evidence of the effect of penalty rates on employment was presented, either by employers or unions, because no such data had ever been collected.

Of the 151 academic papers the commission referred to in its decision, not one contained sound empirical analysis of the employment impact of penalty rates. It was instead mostly inferred from minimum wage cases.

The evidence in support of penalty rate cuts consisted of employer intentions surveys. One such survey, by an employer group, indicated more than half of its members would employ extra staff if they could cut penalty rates.

Read more: Are Sunday penalty rates a job killer? A real-world experiment refutes employers’ claim

One high-profile professor of economics often consulted by employers calculated that reducing penalty rates by 1% would increase employment by 3%. This relied on sources including an unpublished conference paper from 1971 using Danish consumer data and a US study from 1966.

Ultimately, the Fair Work Commission decision was swayed by the Productivity Commission and blind faith in high-school economics – that if the price of labour goes down, the quantity of labour demanded will go up.

But by how much? Don’t ask the Productivity Commission, which admitted it was “difficult to quantify the precise effect”.

Increased minimum wage

At least two factors may have undone the Fair Work Commission’s prediction.

First, some of the savings employers might have made from the penalty rate cuts were nullified by increases in base minimum wage rates.

For example, a retail worker on the General Retail Modern Awardpaid A$50.55 an hour on a public holiday in 2016-17 would get only A$46.98 in 2017-18. But they would have gained 3.3% minimum wage increase. So a full-time employee would be earning A$793.60 a week compared with A$768.20 the previous year.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has argued it will take time to see a positive employment impact due to the gradual, phased reduction in Sunday rate cuts. However, the public holiday penalty-rate cut was implemented in full in 2017 and there has been no significant change to public holiday employment.

Yet low-wage growth across the economy

Second, despite relatively generous increases in minimum wages, there has been record low income growth across the economy, while costs associated with housing, energy and food have risen at a rapid rate.

The above graph shows the wage price index, which measures the annual percentage growth of wages across the economy (CPI for the labour market).

The retail and hospitality sectors depend upon discretionary household spending. It is likely the expected employment stimulus has been affected by a lack of demand and spending in these sectors. Less spare cash after paying important bills means less spending on extra goodies like restaurant meals, holidays, recreational goods – all the things that retail and hospitality rely on.

It doesn’t matter how much you try and reduce business costs via penalty rate cuts, if people aren’t spending money then employers are not going to put extra people on for Sundays and public holidays.

In fact, decreasing the Sunday and public holiday pay for a decent chunk of the labour force may be adding to this lack of consumer demand and confidence.

– ref. Cutting penalty rates was supposed to create jobs. It hasn’t, and here’s why not – http://theconversation.com/cutting-penalty-rates-was-supposed-to-create-jobs-it-hasnt-and-heres-why-not-117178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alistair Paterson, ARC Future Fellow, University of Western Australia

It is understandable that Captain Cook is a trigger for debates about our national identity and history. However, we often risk being blinded by the legacy of Cook. Around the continent, early encounters with outsiders occurred on other days, and in other years before 1788. Across northern Australia these did not involve Europeans, but rather Southeast Asian trepangers.

The earliest documented European landfall was at Cape Keerweer, Cape York, in 1606 with the landing of the crew of the Dufyken. For coastal Aboriginal communities around Australia each moment of encounter was unique, significant and – in many instances – cataclysmic.

The history of the exploration of Australia’s coast became a media story with Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement that a A$6.7 million replica of Cook’s Endeavour would be built to circumnavigate Australia. Of course, James Cook never circumnavigated Australia. This was done by Abel Tasman in 1642 (albeit at a great distance) and most effectively accomplished in 1803 by Matthew Flinders.

Flinders was accompanied by Boongaree, an Aboriginal man from Port Jackson, now remembered as an iconic Aboriginal go-between for his ability to move between the Indigenous and settler worlds.

Remarkably, Boongaree would circumnavigate Australia a second time in 1817-18, accompanying Phillip Parker King, a consummate explorer. King would captain four expeditions circumnavigating Australia and filled in many details on the map. He and his crew remain unsung heroes of exploration compared to Cook.

During archaeological field recording in the Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga), Western Australia, our team working with Murujuga Land and Sea Unit Rangers encountered an engraved depiction of a single-masted sailing ship. This image is on an elevated rock panel in an extensive Aboriginal engraving (petroglyph) site complex near a rocky water hole at the south-western end of Enderby Island.

We argue in a new paper that this image depicts His Majesty’s Cutter (HMC) Mermaid, the main vessel of the historically significant British Admiralty survey captained by King.

The Mermaid visited the Dampier Archipelago in 1818. It was not the first European vessel to visit – that was William Dampier in the HMS Roebuck in 1699. But King and his crew recorded encounters with Yaburara people. They observed fresh tracks and fires on the outer islands, and described how Yaburara people voyaged between islands on pegged log rafts.

Murujuga is globally renowned as one of the world’s largest rock art estates. Our work has documented the tens of thousands of years of human occupation, the extraordinary production of rock art and the historical presence of American whalers.

The depiction of the boat on Enderby Island overlooks the bay where the Mermaid anchored two centuries ago. When they went ashore the crew observed Aboriginal camps, and the formidable rocky landscape. Boongaree went fishing, while the expedition’s botanical collector Allan Cunningham planted a peach pip near a fig tree. While there, it appears someone scratched the image of the Mermaid.

A scratched technique

There are various surviving documents from the Mermaid expedition, such as log books, day books, journals, watercolours, and coastal views. Interestingly, in their writings, King, midshipman John Septimus Roe and Cunningham all neglect to mention the engravings, and they did not mention making this image of their ship. We are confident the ship was not made by Yaburara people, as the scratched technique used is very different to the surrounding Yaburara engravings.

While our investigation suggests that a metal tool was not used to make the image, the imagery – which demonstrates detailed knowledge of the ship’s rigging and proportions, and the inclusions of water in this “sketch” of the craft, leads us to the conclusion that this ship was sketched on the day that the crew of the Mermaid visited this area.

So, who made the image? We really don’t know (but do have some ideas).

The artist clearly knew the ship in great detail. The similarities to the Mermaid are profound, allowing us to rule out other possible vessels to visit the islands in later years such as two-masted whaling barques and pearling ships.

Both King and Roe made many images in their records of the Mermaid – was this one of theirs? Perhaps another unnamed crew member got involved. Perhaps Boongaree was impressed by the extensive rock art legacy that he encountered. Being from Sydney with a similarly rich rock art heritage – which includes the depiction of post-contact sailing ships – perhaps he depicted what was by then utterly familiar to him – a tiny sailing ship on a voyage across the unknown seas.

Whoever’s hand, if this is the Mermaid, as we argue, this new finding is of nautical and historical significance to Australia and Britain as well as being significant to the Aboriginal people of the west Pilbara.

Significant timing

The timing of King’s visit is significant. He was there for eight days in February and March, a time when monsoonal rainfall rejuvenates the rock pools on the outer islands and when turtles were hatching: a seasonal pulse in Yaburara island life.

During that week the crew of the Mermaid described their contact with family groups that were camped on several of the inner islands, as well as the widespread evidence for outer island use. Their encounters with people included the observations of their unique water craft, camps and a range of subsistence activities. One Yaburara man was kidnapped from his mangrove raft, and taken on board the Mermaid where Boongaree tried to reassure him by removing his own shirt to reveal his body marking and black skin. The visitors offered the Yaburara man glass beads, which he rejected.

King’s voyages of discovery left behind other marks along the West Australian coastline. At Careening Bay in the Kimberley in 1820, King had the name of the Mermaid carved into a boab tree, where it can still be found today. At Shark Bay, King had a post erected with “KING” spelt out in iron nails – today this is in the WA Museum.

Collections from the Archipelago included plants and stone artefacts still held in the British Natural History Museum. King’s daily journal helped him create his official account, published as two volumes in 1826 titled Narrative of a Survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia.

There was no marked national commemoration in 2017 of the 200-year anniversary of the start of King’s voyages. However, as Murujuga’s nomination to the World Heritage Tentative Listing proceeds, this new evidence adds further significance to the Mermaid’s brief encounters with the Yaburara.

It provides new insight to King’s Expedition around this continent’s seascape as well as adding to the deep-time record of Murujuga’s Aboriginal history – and place-making inscribed on this landscape.

– ref. The Murujuga Mermaid: how rock art in WA sheds light on historic encounters of Australian exploration – http://theconversation.com/the-murujuga-mermaid-how-rock-art-in-wa-sheds-light-on-historic-encounters-of-australian-exploration-116815

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

Nationals federal president Larry Anthony has added his weight to a call by the NSW party for supporters to vote below the line” in the Senate, in retaliation against the campaign by maverick Liberal senator Jim Molan to get voters to buck the Coalition’s joint ticket.

Molan, a rightwinger who was relegated to an unwinnable fourth place on the ticket, is canvassing for votes to go to him personally rather than to the ticket.

He has no prospect of being elected but the votes he takes from above the line harm the Natioonals’ chances of getting their candidate Perin Davey elected.

Votes “above the line” are for a party or group; “below the line” is where candidates are listed individually.

A furious NSW Nationals organisation accused Molan’s backers of breaking the Coalition agreement for the joint ticket and asked its party members to tell people to vote below the line to maximise Davey’s prospects.

Davey has third place on the joint ticket, behind the two Liberal candidates, making her chances already very precarious.

Anthony said on Wednesday night: “We had an agreement with the Liberal Party and Perin Davey is a very good candidate. If there is a group of people suggesting a vote below the line then we will reciprocate. It will have an impact [on the Nationals vote] and we’re responding accordingly”.

In an email to party members, the Nationals’ NSW chairman Bede Burke and director Ross Cadell said: “Supporters of Liberal senator Jim Molan have taken it upon themselves to campaign for a ‘below the line’ vote, which in our view, breaks the Coalition Agreement and seriously harms the chances of a Nationals Senator being elected.

“That is why we are asking you to vote below the line on the Senate ballot paper, for The Nationals’ Perin Davey and Sam Farraway”.

Unless Davey is elected there will be no NSW Nationals senator. John “Wacka” Williams, from NSW, is retiring at the election.

“We must continue to have a strong, regional voice in the Senate fighting for our communities,” Burke and Cadell said.

They said they had “no choice” but to follow suit after Molan’s action and “actively encourage everyone to vote below the line” for the Nationals’ candidates. “This is the only way to guarantee our communities have a voice in the Senate,” they said.

“We are not taking this extraordinary step lightly. The Coalition Agreement is something that is fundamental to our ability as Nationals to deliver for our regions.”

Asking people to vote below the line “is not something we want to do”, but the party needed every one its members to do so “and to encourage everyone they know to do the same”.

Molan said he did not want to comment, beyond saying that on Wednesday he had been handing in the seat of Whitlam for the Nationals candidate and would be handing out for Andrew Gee, the Nationals MP in Calare on Thursday.

But the Nationals are concerned about the potential erosion of votes for the Senate ticket in these regional areas.

The Prime Minister’s Office said the issue was a matter for the party headquarters. HQ referred to comments by the deputy leader of the Liberal party Josh Frydenberg – who had dodged the question, telling a news conference “matters for New South Wales are matters for the organisation”.

Labor’s campaign spokesman Jim Chalmers said the NSW fight “is the final proof that the Liberals and Nationals are a dumpster fire of disunity and dysfunction”.

– ref. Angry Nationals play payback in NSW Senate row – http://theconversation.com/angry-nationals-play-payback-in-nsw-senate-row-117208

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Camakaris, Visitor in the School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne

How little things have changed in the last six years. Back in 2013 I wrote an article for The Conversation called “Wanted: political leader with a vision for a sustainable future”.

Like most people, I hoped climate policy would improve, but years of infighting and adversarial politics have resulted in a dearth of climate action, where cooperation might well have yielded positive results.

One solution to this frustrating deadlock is to place the responsibility for climate policy at arm’s length from political actors. We need a Council for the Future, tasked with the long-term thinking that eludes so many of our elected representatives.

Read more: The too hard basket: a short history of Australia’s aborted climate policies

Experience has shown that the Coalition government has difficulty speaking with one voice on leadership and policy, let alone promoting collaboration with the opposition or minor parties. Labor also has had its problems in the past.

We are still waiting for a good leader and indeed a system that is up to the challenge. Climate change is now generally recognised as a serious threat to civilisation, not least because we have had years of worsening climate catastrophes.

Global movements for change, including (but not limited to) School Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion, have also brought climate change to the forefront of our collective consciousness. For this Australian election, climate change is deservedly a major issue.

However, even during this election campaign many politicians have continued to fiddle around the edges, fudge the figures, scaremonger and hedge their bets by appealing to the hip-pocket nerve.

Read more: Australia’s major parties’ climate policies side-by-side

Power may be intoxicating, but we are being sold short when leaders and politicians see retaining their positions as more important than finding a safe and equitable future for the people they represent. Leaders must moderate self-interest, and search for answers, even if subsequent compromise within government might become necessary.

And when we, the voters, mark our ballot papers, the integrity and vision of the candidates and leaders must be foremost in our minds.

It is time to ask ourselves why our democracy is stumbling in the face of such important issues.

Part of the answer lies in the fact that governments are rarely representative since most voters support an ideology that lies in the middle of the political spectrum, and yet in Australia we generally choose between two almost equally popular parties: a conservative coalition, the LNP, which extreme conservatives have dragged to the right, and Labor, which is ostensibly left-wing but not radically so, capturing much of the middle ground. The result in our winner-takes-all system is nasty, adversarial politics and rotating governments.

Long-term, global problems are also problematic because many of us feel conflicted when long-term, rather abstract interests seem incompatible with short-term self-interest. Our ability to think rationally about the future is limited by human nature, as most of our judgments are made instinctively, using a form of cognition that is rapid but emotional and subject to a broad range of biases.

Read more: Don’t trust your Stone Age brain: it’s unsustainable

However, consensus on intractable problems is still possible. It’s time to create a Council for the Future, made up of experts on climate change, sustainability, economics and psychology, together with representatives of the various parties.

Such a council should have responsibility for policy, much as the Reserve Bank determines financial policy, independent of government. Right now is the time for a major party to commit to such a policy, and I believe such a model would win support in the electorate. This body would ensure continuity of policy and set long-term targets, sorely needed by business.

Our incoming government, perhaps with the assistance of such a Council for the Future, could break free from the paralysis that currently besets our democracy.

It could make bold financial commitments to policy that will help keep warming under the Paris guardrail. And, at the same time, it could promote industries in solar energy, wind energy, pumped hydro, electric vehicles, irrigation and farming, together with associated processing industries, thereby also easing unemployment.

Read more: Wanted: political leader with a vision for a sustainable future

It could explore models for rapid transition to renewable energy, using incentives and disincentives to satisfy our desire for fairness. Gradually introducing surcharges that incorporate social and environmental costs would decrease consumption and moderate growth, and are fairer than an across-the-board increase in GST.

Other ways to moderate growth might include reduced working hours as an optional alternative to increased salaries, and reducing the salary “arms race”, particularly in the corporate sector.

Our leaders have a unique responsibility because only governments can implement the major changes we need and also create incentives that encourage citizens to act in humanity’s best interests.

– ref. A ‘Council for the Future’ could break Australia’s climate paralysis – http://theconversation.com/a-council-for-the-future-could-break-australias-climate-paralysis-117185

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Skarbek, CEO at ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University

No matter who wins the upcoming federal election, both the ALP and LNP are committed to remaining in the Paris Climate Agreement.

This means every five years Australia is expected to submit progressively stronger targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and report on progress. And by 2020, Australia is expected to submit a long-term emissions reduction strategy showing how to get to net zero emissions.

Read more: UK becomes first country to declare a ‘climate emergency’

Regardless of what policy mix is chosen to achieve this, the process of hitting the Paris targets is now a permanent feature of economy-wide decision-making, one that will need credible ongoing support from government and businesses. Policy uncertainty, and a lack of national framework, has reduced investment confidence.

The UK has shown how national climate change legislation can guide institutional action, and not only dramatically cut emissions, but also promote economic growth.

Victoria rolled out similar legislation in 2017, one of the first pieces of legislation in the world to be modelled on the Paris Agreement.

But Australia lacks a national version of Victoria’s or UK’s legislation.

We have national targets, but not yet ongoing systems embedded in departments. These systems would include measures to ensure continuous target-setting every five years (as used in other jurisdictions) with guidelines and progress reporting obligations. A lack of national legislation means the community and businesses lack transparency about Australia’s long-term direction, pace and progress.

How national climate change legislation would work

A national Climate Change Act would reduce recognise climate change was not taken into account when many current laws were developed, and reduce policy instability around Australian meeting our Paris obligations by:

• providing a role for governments and courts to flesh out and stabilise the low carbon transition

• guiding an emissions reductions path that looks ten years ahead, across all sectors of the economy, and that can be ratcheted up if policies fail to meet their targets

• ensuring transparent reporting of emissions and progress towards meeting interim Paris Agreement targets

• allocating responsibilities across government for reporting and climate-conscious planning

• signalling to business, communities and government agencies about emerging opportunities in a low carbon economy.

How Victoria did it

In 2017, the Victorian Labor government rolled out state-wide climate legislation, the Victorian Climate Change Act.

This legislation recognises how addressing climate change needs a whole-of-government approach, extending obligations to each state government portfolio.

And it has already catalysed climate change reporting and planning activity across government. An independent committee has been tasked with advising on the first ten years of emissions budgets.

Government departments are preparing adaptation plans for each sector, reviewing operational guidelines and establishing regular reporting of emissions in sectors and their future plans.

Read more: Australia’s major parties’ climate policies side-by-side

The UK’s success story

The UK passed its Climate Change Act in 2008 with a near unanimous vote. It has guided government decisions on national energy and industrial policy ever since.

The Act contains a process for setting economy-wide, multi-year targets, generating a clear, but flexible path towards its long-term objective – an 80% reduction in national greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It’s not explicit about how targets are to be met and successive governments have been free to choose their own mitigation policies.

What has resulted is a clear shift away from the politics of the past where climate change action was traded off against other government goals.

Ever since the Act passed, subsequent UK parliaments have created management and efficiency initiatives, a minimum price on carbon (called carbon price floors), renewable energy targets, competitive reverse auction schemes and capacity markets.

Combined, these policies promote a competitive, sustainable, low carbon energy supply, along with economic growth and increased national energy security.

And the results have been extraordinary: emissions in the UK have fallen dramatically since 2008, with the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions now below 1860s levels.

National transparency would improve the market

With a clear legislative process with interim targets every five years, a Climate Change Act for Australia would provide businesses and the public with a certainty around the pace of climate change action that reaches beyond the political cycles.

Governments would still have the freedom to choose interim targets and how to deliver them, but the legislation would create transparency around our obligations.

It would also ensure that a transition to a low-carbon future does not risk financial stability.

Regulatory bodies, such as the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Bank of England, and the Financial Stability Board, recognise the necessity for climate change legislation to create confidence in markets. They are already applying pressure to local and international financial markets to improve disclosure of climate risk.

Finally, national legislation would ensure the market and the public are kept up-to-date about progress and future pathways, and how they can be involved in the process along the way. This includes investing in Australia’s potential as a new lower-carbon powerhouse.

Read more: Cutting cities’ emissions does have economic benefits – and these ultimately outweigh the costs

Let’s agree what is agreed, and move on

Australian politicians don’t often agree on climate change action, but the major parties do agree on Australia staying in the Paris Agreement.

A national Climate Change Act for Australia would embody this commitment, aligning us with the international process in a policy-flexible framework. Agreement on such an Act would show the Australian public that each party is serious about tackling climate change, providing a stable platform for the next parliament.

– ref. The UK has a national climate change act – why don’t we? – http://theconversation.com/the-uk-has-a-national-climate-change-act-why-dont-we-115230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beryl Exley, Professor, Deputy Head of School, Learning and Teaching, Griffith University

The Coalition says, if re-elected, it will invest A$10.8 million for “a Year 1 voluntary phonics health check for parents and teachers to ensure their children are not falling behind”. The aim of this is to lift Australia’s literacy standards.

But data about Australian children’s literacy rates tells a different story to the one pushed by the Coalition. Before the Coalition’s announcement, a story in The Australian newspaper drew attention to Australia’s performance in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) – which helps inform policymakers where Australian children stand on international benchmarks.

The report shows one in five Australian children fail to reach the proficiency level in reading. But such findings are only part of the story. The (PIRLS) report also found 16% of Australian students reached the advanced benchmark, while 35% performed at the high benchmark and a further 30% reached the intermediate benchmark.

Phonics is already taught to children. What these data highlight is that literacy in Australia is both high quality, but low equity. The government would be better investing its millions in initiatives that support an approach to teaching that targets inequality, as well as supporting students at the intermediate benchmark to develop the skills to rise to the high benchmark.

Read more: Explainer: what is phonics and why is it important?

Phonics, again!

Teaching phonics, in the broad sense, is teaching children the sounds made by individual letters or letter groups (for example, the letter “c” makes a k sound), and teaching children how to blend sounds together to make a word (for example, blending the sounds k, a, t makes CAT).

The proposal for a phonics test has been around for some time. The 2016 federal budget allocated money for Australia to adopt a similar phonics screening check that’s been used in the United Kingdom from 2012. The UK test asks children to read a list of 20 real words (such as baker, thrill and plastic) and 20 nonsense words (such as roopt, jound and scrope) to see if children can match sounds to letters.

The proposal to fund a voluntary online open-access phonics “health check” that can be administered by parents assumes teachers aren’t assessing children’s early reading knowledge and skills. This is wrong. Early years teachers implement a range of ongoing checks, including phonics checks.

They are trained to implement and monitor assessment and use their expert knowledge of each child to make decisions about what they will assess, and when they will do so. Each state and territory already produces a detailed range of early assessment indicators and monitoring maps.

The Coalition’s proposal also assumes a phonics check will add value to early years teachers’ monitoring and assessment. But an independent inquiry into the UK phonics screening check found 94% of participating teachers said that the phonics check did not provide any information on individual children which they did not already know.

Read more: A new phonics test is pointless – we shouldn’t waste precious money buying it from England

Interpreting the data

The literacy benchmarks in the PIRLS report need to be understood in relation to other reported measures. For example, the PIRLS data also include a number of scales about children’s experiences in Australian schools, which are correlated with their literacy benchmark scores .

For instance, students who highly felt they “belonged” at school scored 37% higher than those “with little sense of belonging”. Students who indicated they “very much like reading” also scored significantly higher in reading, on average, than students who said they “somewhat like reading”, who in turn scored higher on average than students who “do not like reading”.

The test also reveals strong correlations between high achieving students and social factors. For instance, students attending more affluent schools scored 61 points higher, on average, than students attending more disadvantaged schools. Of concern, but not a surprising finding, was that students who reported arriving at school hungry every day scored 41 points lower, on average, than students who never arrived at school hungry.

Read more: What happens when kids don’t eat breakfast?

Teaching phonics to teachers

The story in The Australian that drew attention to Australian children’s low rating in PIRLS pointed the blame at early years teachers who apparently were not teaching phonics, and university-based literacy teacher educators who weren’t teaching the teachers to teach phonics.

A re-elected Coalition government has promised to

ensure phonics is included in university teaching courses so that new teachers can teach phonics in their classrooms.

This initiative is already in place. Australian teacher educators must abide by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) Program Standards, which states all literacy teacher educators teaching in accredited initial teacher education programs are required to teach the Australian Curriculum: English.

The Australian Curriculum: English devotes a whole substrand – phonics and word knowledge – to teaching phonics. This substrand includes phonological and phonemic awareness (the ability to identify discrete sounds in spoken language, and to reproduce and manipulate discrete sounds in oral language) and alphabet and phonic knowledge (the relationship between sounds and letters and how letters are combined to make sounds).

Pre-service teachers, then, are required to meet these professional standards. Not teaching pre-service teachers how to teach phonics is not an option.

Politicians would be much wiser to spend their money on policies that allow teachers to teach in ways that nurture children’s sense of belonging in school, and making sure children are not hungry when they are trying to learn.

– ref. The Coalition’s $10 million for Year 1 phonics checks would be wasted money – http://theconversation.com/the-coalitions-10-million-for-year-1-phonics-checks-would-be-wasted-money-116997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Siminski, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Technology Sydney

The Australian federal government plans to spend A$500 billion this year. With 188 federal agencies and departments, it funds everything from preschool to pensions, from the army to the arts.

This is before getting into state/territory and local governments with their own world of policies and programs, such as public transport and local parks.

Looking behind the curtain, it is striking how poorly Australian government programs are evaluated. There is little oversight into whether these programs are successful, waste money, or even do us harm.

Tucked away in a largely overlooked press release may be a solution. In November last year, the shadow assistant treasurer, Andrew Leigh, announced Labor would establish an Evaluator General if they won the upcoming election.

The Evaluator General’s office will oversee high-quality evaluations of government programs in collaboration with other agencies.

As academics with long track records in evaluating government programs, we think this is a small, but good, step towards improving the evaluation culture in government. So long as we get the details right.

Poor evidence, poor performance

Government policy at all levels is poorly evaluated.

Consider education. Federal and state/territory governments’ spending per student increased from A$13,904 in 2008 to A$15,739 in 2016, adjusted for inflation.

Since 2000, though, Australia’s international rankings in reading, mathematics and science have dropped considerably, according to a government review into Australian schools.

The Productivity Commission has identified how the problem of evaluation has contributed to this. Schools collect data about student scores and the like, but this information is not used to evaluate whether programs are working. Because we don’t know what is or isn’t working, we can’t ensure the best programs are rolled out Australia-wide. It puts our kids at a disadvantage on the global stage.

Read more: Three things Australia’s next education minister must prioritise to improve schools

The same is true for other government priorities, including Indigenous policy.

More than a decade ago, federal and state governments committed to “Closing the Gap” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on a host of health, education and employment measures. In 2017 governments spent about A$33.4 billion on Indigenous-specific programs, according to the Productivity Commission. Yet the most recent Closing the Gap report has found little or no progress on a majority of goals, including child mortality, student attendance and life expectancy.

The lack of evidence is almost certainly getting in the way of closing the gap. In 2016, there were 1,082 Indigenous-focused programs from government and non-government agencies, 92% of which had never been evaluated. The few evaluations conducted were not high-quality for the most part.

Read more: How to get a better bang for the taxpayers’ buck in all sectors, not only Indigenous programs

A new hope

An Evaluator General could fix this. With a A$5 million annual budget, the office would work with departments to evaluate the effectiveness of government programs.

The research would be widely available and that, in theory, should empower policy makers to implement evidence-based programs.

The proposed Evaluator General’s office would lie within the Treasury. There is a strong case for greater independence, but pure independence is a myth since government controls the purse strings.

Perhaps the Treasury is the best option at the moment. It is comforting that there is precedence. Chile, for example, has had its evaluation unit firmly in the Ministry of Finance for more than two decades.

All that glitters is not gold

It would be a little ironic if we did not evaluate the Evaluator General. So let’s dig deeper.

Labor says the Evaluator General will use randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate programs. Such trials are generally seen as the gold standard in evaluation. They involve individuals being randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group receives the treatment being trialled. The other group – the control group – does not. We then compare outcomes between the two groups.

Consider a job training program. With a randomised controlled trial, one group of people is randomly assigned training, while another is not. Everything else about the trainees and non-trainees are the same. So we would then compare unemployment rates for the two groups to see if the training worked.

Without question, Australia should invest more in randomised controlled trials to learn about the impact of economic and social policies.

But they are also expensive. Randomised controlled trials usually need new data to be collected, which makes them quite expensive.

The Evaluator Generals $5 million budget will not go far if evaluation is based exclusively on the use randomised controlled trials. There are, however, “second-best” tools the Evaluator General should be able to use.

Natural (quasi) experiments can be powerful in telling us if policies are effective. Natural experiments mimic RCTs, except that assignment to treatment is usually not completely random, and they more readily draw on existing survey and administrative data.

For example, a policy maker may decide on a new training program for young people aged less than 20. Unemployed people aged 19 years and 11 months are essentially the same as those who have just turned 20. So we can compare the outcomes of these two groups to find out the effect of the program. There is no need to design a whole new experiment. This means natural experiments are usually cheaper and quicker to conduct than RCTs.

Our own work with quasi-experimental evaluations of welfare quarantining, military conscription and the legal drinking age shows they can be effective.

The data is on our side

Ultimately, any evaluation relies on data. Garbage data in, garbage results out.

Even with an Evaluator General, we will still be a long way off from having a strong evaluation culture. Too often governments hope, pray, and shoot policy into the wind. Anything besides evaluating.

But Labor’s proposal would be a small step in the right direction. It represents an increased focus on quality evaluation.

Equipped with the right tools, and with help from experts in evaluation, we could increasingly have policy that we know actually works.

– ref. Labor’s idea of an Evaluator General could dramatically cut wasteful spending – http://theconversation.com/labors-idea-of-an-evaluator-general-could-dramatically-cut-wasteful-spending-115840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Chinna, Senior Honorary Research Fellow, University of Western Australia

Review: Water, Black Swan, Perth.

Water, written by Jane Bodie and directed by Emily McLean, was commissioned by Clare Watson, artistic director of Black Swan, as “a family drama for now, that spoke to the moral questions and dilemmas of our time”. Both the playwright and artistic director share an admiration for the plays of Arthur Miller, and Water echoes Miller’s techniques, where family politics and political issues clash in an enclosed space.

It is a production tailor made for a Black Swan audience, dealing with topical issues – principally “illegal” immigration and an environmental crisis – and family dynamics. It is performed naturalistically with a cleverly designed adaptable set.

The play is set in three different narrative contexts: an Australia of the “not too distant future”, the US immigration station on Ellis Island in 1921, and Queensland in 1905.

The first narrative takes place on an island in a river, with its watery surroundings standing for an Australia similarly surrounded by sea. Peter (Igor Sas), a former immigration minister, is seemingly retired but in disgrace – a virtual prisoner on the island.

With his wife Beth (Glenda Linscott), he awaits the arrival of his daughters for his birthday. When they arrive, an “unwanted guest” is introduced by the errant older daughter. A family drama unfolds against the pressing issues of water shortages, the operation of a costly new desalination plant, and the disappearance of native bird life. However, there is little excitement when it finally rains towards the end of this narrative, and these now seemingly superfluous environmental issues are dispensed with in favour of the immigration theme.

Following an interval, the latter two narratives consist of vignettes. The first takes place at the immigration station on Ellis Island in the United States in 1921 where a retired white Australian farming couple (played again by Sas and Linscott), financially ruined by drought, seek to enter the country.

While seeming incongruously placed, this reflects actual events when immigration quotas were imposed, specifically to limit the numbers of Mediterranean immigrants into America.

Read more: When the US locked up white Australian immigrants like Australia does to asylum seekers

The sense of humiliation the couple feel is sensitively performed by Linscott and Sas, and the vignette effectively conveys how it might feel to be on the receiving end of this treatment, usually meted out to people of a different ethnicity.

The second vignette, concerning the doomed friendship between a South Sea Islander labourer and a cane grower’s daughter, takes place on the Queensland cane fields in 1905. It is set against the history of the employment of low-paid Pacific Islander indentured workers. From the 1860s onwards some 60,000 indentured labourers were brought to Australia. As part of an embryonic White Australia Policy, a 1901 Bill sought the expulsion of about 10,000 labourers, with deportations commencing in 1906.

The play is ably directed by Emily McLean. Pace and rhythm are generally spot on and the space is intelligently utilised. Sound and lighting are effectively executed and the set, with its various doors and easily adapted furniture, suits the various times and settings of the three narratives.

The acting is uniformly sound. Linscott shines as Beth, the beleaguered wife of Peter, as she drinks her wine and manically rides the family politics and the arrival of that unwanted guest, played by Richard Maganga. Maganga delivers strong performances here as Yize, the “illegal” refugee, and later as a clerk on Ellis Island and Andrew, the Islander indentured labourer.

Peter and Beth’s daughters are played by Amy Mathews (Gemma) and Emily Rose Brennan (Joey), the latter having brought Yize to the island house. Both perform strongly as the very different sisters and display adept shifts in style in their respective later characters – Mathews as a Nurse at Ellis Island, and Brennan as Josephine, the daughter of Andrew’s employer/owner.

Sas exhibits nuanced performances as Peter, the disgraced former government minister for immigration, and as Robert, the elderly farmer on Ellis Island. Sas gives both characters some dignity, notwithstanding their differing circumstances, and the sometimes-clichéd dialogue in the characterisations of older Australian males.

Water provides the audience with a competently delivered night at the theatre but there are times, especially early on, when it displays some of the same problems periodically present in Miller’s plays, such as occasional banal dialogue exchanges and clumsy exposition. Nonetheless, some lame repetitive jokes early on concerning politically correct language were greeted with appreciative laughter from the audience.

The opening night audience expressed their appreciation with frequent laughter, sometimes rapt attention, and enthusiastic applause at the curtain. Like Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling, produced by Black Swan in 2011, it deals intelligently with some important topical issues – and all of the characters have become sadder and wiser persons by the conclusion.

Water is on at Black Swan State Theatre Company in Perth until May 26.

– ref. In Black Swan’s Water, three vignettes explore the politics of immigration, drought and family dynamics – http://theconversation.com/in-black-swans-water-three-vignettes-explore-the-politics-of-immigration-drought-and-family-dynamics-117003

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carmen Jacques, PhD Candiate, Global Issues Practice Centre, Edith Cowan University

On October 12, 2002, a terrorist detonated a bomb inside Paddy’s Nightclub in Kuta, Bali. Seconds later, as people fled the club, a larger bomb was detonated outside the Sari Club. More than 200 people lost their lives, 88 of them Australian.

On the first anniversary of the Bali bombings, the idea to build a Peace Park on the site of the Sari Club was conceived by survivors, responders and the victims’ families. A few years later, the Bali Peace Park Association (BPPA) was founded in Perth with the aim of creating a permanent memorial at the site. It has maintained strong political support ever since, both at home and in Bali.

Read more: Remembering the Bali bombings ten years on

Despite this, the Sari Club site has remained an empty lot for the past 16 years. Recent negotiations to purchase the land from its owner have broken down, with the owner demanding A$4.9 million for the site itself, plus an additional A$9 million in compensation for predicted future financial losses. The BPPA have agreed to the land price, but are only offering compensation of A$500,000.

The Bali governor, Wayan Koster, cannot force the sale, but has offered the owner another parcel of land about 1.5km away and urged the owner to consider the relationship between Australia and Indonesia as a priority in the negotiations.

But a compromise now appears remote. Last week, the BPPA chairman David Napoli was told by the owners:

Either put in an offer to buy the land or we are closing the site and preparing for heavy equipment to come in.

Why the memorial has been contentious

From 2013-16, I was part of a research team studying how the proposed Bali Peace Park could become a site of collective resistance to terrorism.

During our research, we travelled to Bali and spoke to many community members and political supporters of the memorial, including the then-governor, Made Pastika. The local government has long supported the idea of a memorial at the site, but couldn’t build on the land itself since it is privately owned. Instead, Made Pastika put an embargo on commercial development of the site, while the BPPA negotiated with the owners to purchase the land.

Read more: Why refusing to build memorials for terror attacks is a bold political statement

Unfortunately, this embargo recently lapsed and the owners now want to build a five-story commercial complex at the site.

The Indonesian government did create a monument in between the old Paddy’s and the Sari Club site across the road, and it considers this enough. But the BPPA argues a Peace Park is needed because the design of the monument fails to say anything about the attacks. It only functions to remember the dead, not what actually happened on the day of the attacks, nor how or what we might learn from them. The BPPA wants the park to counter violent extremism by educating visitors about the attacks from a position of non-violence.

In our research, we also found there were significant cultural barriers to a memorial of this sort. Ancestor veneration is done at home in Bali and it is not local custom to otherwise memorialise the dead. The places where people die are “cleansed” by Hindu priests, allowing the spirits to return home. This means the ground is not considered sacred as it no longer contains the dead.

We were also told by one supporter of the park, Nyoman Jarna, that the Balinese prefer to “forget” disaster – they don’t want to be reminded of such tragedy. Bali is a place of happy holidays and its entire economy relies on this.

What memorials should do

In my view, the current monument erected by the government is static – it does not allow for any kind of deeper engagement with visitors. It stands on a small strip of land between the two bomb sites. It is too hot and exposed during the day for people to spend any real time there. At night, it is now closed to the public to prevent possible desecration by drunk tourists.

Anthropologist Katharina Schramm has argued that sites where violent acts have taken place are dynamic spaces that are constantly being reinterpreted through the memories of survivors, responders and other visitors. Reflecting on Ground Zero in New York where the September 11 attacks took place, social psychologist Eric Miller says memorials of this sort must provide future generations with an accurate representation of the devastation that occurred there.

Read more: Reclaiming our home away from home: the Bali bombings

A static monument does not adequately explain what happened. During our research, many of the tourists we spoke with had no idea what had occurred at the site of the current monument in Bali and regularly asked us what it was for.

Memorials that have achieved a deeper engagement – such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York – create a space for reflection and conversations with the dead. They also tell a story about what happened.

In my research, Gill Hicks, a survivor of the 2005 London terror attacks and now a prominent peace activist, told me:

Memorials like the one at Ground Zero should respect the lives lost and focus on ‘whatever happened’, as the victims didn’t deserve to die such a horrific death.

This is what many people in Bali told me is important to them. Maria Katronikas, who lost her bridal party, two sisters and two cousins during her honeymoon said:

I know how happy the girls were when I left them, I know what mood they were in, this is where they took last breath.

And Kevin Paltridge, who lost his son, Corey, told me:

I come here to talk to Corey, sometimes for his birthday, sometimes for mine, sometimes just because I need to have a chat, I just get a couple of beers and one for him and one for me and we talk.

As the fight over the Sari Club site continues in Bali, it’s worth keeping in mind the significance of places of remembrance. The way in which we memorialise the sites of terror attacks is particularly important because, as a society, we have a responsibility to the dead – and the living – to remember what happened.

If the BPPA succeeds in purchasing the land, the next challenge will be to create a peaceful place like this within the chaos of Kuta – a shady space for reflection and peace, which speaks to a future without terrorism.

– ref. The site of the Bali bombings has been a vacant lot for 16 years. It’s time to build a proper memorial – http://theconversation.com/the-site-of-the-bali-bombings-has-been-a-vacant-lot-for-16-years-its-time-to-build-a-proper-memorial-116725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney

Recent protests by animal welfare activists on Australian abattoirs and farms and city streets triggered a backlash from meat-lovers and MPs. The activists were labelled “un-Australian” by the Prime Minister and others, and the protests prompted calls for tougher trespass laws and penalties.

Protests have continued more recently, with a Perth restaurant targeted earlier this month.

But it’s not just activists who are concerned about animals. A recent report commissioned by the federal Department of Agriculture and Water Resources suggests it’s the majority of Australians who care about animal welfare.

Read more: Vets can do more to reduce the suffering of flat-faced dog breeds

The report included a survey of 1,521 people: 95% of respondents viewed farm animal welfare with concern, and 91% want reform to address this.

The report – Australia’s Shifting Mindset on Farm Animal Welfare by consultancy firm Futureye – also says the department “currently has very limited powers over farm animal welfare”, raising the potential for “outrage […] if the community sees the government as not responding to concerns and expectations”.

That could be a problem for whoever wins control of government after the weekend’s federal election.

What’s the concern?

The report did receive some coverage when it was released in March, but this was largely among farming and activist groups. It’s timely to delve deeper into some of the findings.

The survey group was split 50/50 on gender; covered a range of age groups and locations, both city and rural, across Australia; and included meat and non-meat eaters.

Issues such as poor animal welfare in live export – which has received plenty of media coverage – were of highest concern (57% of respondents), followed by concerns over low income for farmers and farm workers (47%).

The report highlights people’s concern over poor animal welfare in abattoirs (42%) and on farms (40%). The lowest concern mentioned was any health implications from eating meat and animal products (21%).

The report also confirms the public’s appreciation that the low price of animal products can constrain a producer’s ability to maintain good animal welfare standards and the government’s ability to enforce them.

Consumers want reform

Most respondents in the survey saw the government as chiefly responsible for ensuring animal welfare standards, and 40% see the need for “significant reform”. They suggested various actions for improvement, such as:

• a minimum standard set by government
• incentivising farmers for good animal welfare
• better education of the public about agricultural practices in terms of awareness-raising
• standardisation of product labels such as free-range.

Focus group discussions revealed many respondents were concerned that the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources has a conflict of interest when both supporting the agricultural industry and promoting good animal welfare standards.

Consumers want greater transparency about animal welfare practices and more consistent information so they can make informed decisions. The report found 42% of respondents said there was too much conflicting information about animal welfare, and 40% wanted more information.

Most respondents assumed products labelled cage-free, free-range and organic reflected better animal welfare standards, but they did not always trust these labels. One of the solutions raised from focus group discussions was a trusted certification and labelling process to help consumers differentiate products.

How animal welfare meets politics

Clearly people are concerned about animal welfare – and the report says concern has been growing over the years, and shows no sign of abating.

It predicts that more exposés, negative media focus on farm animal welfare, and a perceived lack of governmental responsiveness will intensify public outrage and demand for reform.

People want something done about animal welfare, and they’re looking towards government to act. So what can government do?

The report says one of the best indicators to explain the growing concern for farm animal welfare was the public’s views on animal sentience – the capacity to experience suffering and pleasure. Less than 10 per cent of those surveyed believed cattle, sheep, goats and pigs are not sentient.

Animal sentience is recognised in New Zealand’s Animal Welfare Act and also in the draft ACT Animal Welfare Act here in Australia.

Sentience is currently enshrined in European Union law but not into UK law, yet.

In the UK, and in anticipation of Brexit, an animal welfare bill is being considered. If approved, it will increase the maximum sentence for animal cruelty from six months to five years.

What about Australia? We suggest that Australian politicians take note.

The Animal Justice Party is campaigning on animal welfare reform and already holds two seats in the New South Wales upper house and one in the Victorian upper house. It has candidates running for the Senate in the federal election.

What consumers need to know

There is also a clear need to inform consumers on the science of animal welfare. Even the Futureye report warns about “uninformed” people being drawn into any animal welfare debate.

Read more: How fake news gets into our minds, and what you can do to resist it

Now, more than ever, consumers need to understand the basic scientific and ethical frameworks that shape current attitudes to animals and animal welfare.

That way they can then assess whether animals are experiencing good welfare, and the way in which practices, policies, legislation and the views of different stakeholders affect animal welfare.

Such tools would allow us all to evaluate information on animal welfare issues, discover why animal protection has been called the “social justice issue whose time has come”, and empower us to make informed decisions on animal welfare issues.

– ref. Not just activists, 9 out of 10 people are concerned about animal welfare in Australian farming – http://theconversation.com/not-just-activists-9-out-of-10-people-are-concerned-about-animal-welfare-in-australian-farming-117077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong

One of the most significant, and unremarked, features of the 2019 Australian federal election has been the absence of what might be termed a “populist surge”.

In the most recent Newspoll, the United Australia Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation are polling at about 8% of the vote combined. This is tiny in comparison to, for example, Marine le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National in France, which is currently polling at 22% in the lead up to the European Parliament elections.

The current elections in Australia indicate that there is nothing equivalent to the mood that led either to the election of Donald Trump in the United States or the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. There is no firebrand leader galvanising Australians into a populist revolt, and it appears that no lower house electorates will fall to such a figure.

Let’s take a look at why.

Read more: Compare the pair: key policy offerings from Labor and the Coalition in the 2019 federal election

Our electoral system is hard on newcomers

Part of the reason is technical. The Australian electoral system for the House of Representatives, based on single member electorates, makes it very difficult for newcomers to win a seat.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the electorates have being growing in size over the years. Section 24 of the Constitution establishes the so-called nexus, which states that the size of the House of Representatives must be twice the size of the Senate. Despite significant growth in Australia’s population, the number of House of Representative members has remained static. This has resulted in ever larger electorates in terms of the number of voters.

More importantly, over the years, redistribution has increased the geographical size of many rural electorates. This makes it difficult for minor parties or independents to attract support across a large geographical area composed of disparate communities.

Independent candidates tend to have built up a support base in the major provincial city within an electorate. While this might be sufficient for election to a state legislature given the smaller size of state electorates, it makes life very difficult at a federal level.

One example of a serious outside contender is Kevin Mack, the Mayor of Albury. Mack is standing against the current Liberal member, Sussan Ley, in Farrer, where constituents are fired up over lack of access to water under the under the Murray-Darling Basin plan. Farrer covers the territory of the New South Wales state electorate of Murray, which was claimed by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers in the recent state election.

In cases where independents or minor party candidates in the large federal electorates manage to collect enough support to get elected, it’s usually because they come in second, and take advantage of preferences to get them over the line.

Paradoxically, the Australian system of single member electorates combined with preferential voting gives smaller parties and independents considerable influence in terms of preference allocation. But makes it unlikely that they will be elected to parliament.

Read more: Against the odds, Scott Morrison wants to be returned as prime minister. But who the bloody hell is he?

Immigration hasn’t been an election issue

As political newcomers, populists require some issue or image or myth that will capture the imagination and stimulate enough of the emotional side of human nature to lure electors from their traditional political allegiances.

Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics in the UK, argues in his book White Shift that immigration is the issue that’s fuelling much contemporary populism.

Covering a wide range of countries, Kaufmann points to data indicating that it’s neither being “left behind” nor economic matters that are the spark the populist fuse, but culture and the perception that immigration leads to cultural loss.

If that’s the case, it explains a lot about the current election. Immigration has not featured heavily as an issue. Instead, the focus has been on other matters, mainly of an economic nature.

Without immigration as an issue to fire the imagination and stir the emotions, would-be populists have little to inspire support for them. This situation may also be exacerbated by the fact that, unlike Donald Trump, Australia’s two populist leaders, Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer, lack the fire to spark a populist revolt. Enduring Clive Palmer’s seemingly endless advertisements on YouTube is a struggle in itself.

Read more: After six years as opposition leader, history beckons Bill Shorten. Will the ‘drover’s dog’ have its day?

Australian populism is different

Australian populism has been largely confined to rural and regional areas that don’t have much experience of the effects of immigration. If immigration was going to be a major issue in Australia, you would expect it to resonate in outer suburban areas of the large cities.

In the example of Farrer, where the established member is seriously challenged, there is a local issue that has stirred the passions of the people.

This suggests that Australian populism is quite different from populism in other countries. It’s more a form of long-term grumble about the state of the world than a sharp reaction to the threat of cultural loss.

So, populism will have much less impact on the Australian elections than on those of other comparable countries. Pauline and Clive should be asking themselves why their level of support is so low.

– ref. We’re not seeing a ‘populist surge’ in this election. Why not? – http://theconversation.com/were-not-seeing-a-populist-surge-in-this-election-why-not-117011

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Beckett, Postdoctoral Fellow (Human Molecular Nutrition), School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

Food gives us the nutrients we need to survive, and we know a balanced diet contributes to good health.

Beyond this, many people seek out different foods as “medicines”, hoping eating certain things might prevent or treat particular conditions.

It’s true many foods contain “bioactive compounds” – chemicals that act in the body in ways that might promote good health. These are being studied in the prevention of cancer, heart disease and other conditions.

But the idea of food as medicine, although attractive, is easily oversold in the headlines. Stories tend to be based on studies done in the lab, testing concentrated extracts from foods. The effect seen in real people eating the actual food is going to be different to the effects in a petri dish.

Read more: Health check: can eating certain foods make you smarter?

If you do the maths, you’ll find you actually need to eat enormous amounts of particular foods to get an active dose of the desired element. In some cases, this might endanger your health, rather than protecting it.

These four foods (and one drink) show the common healing claims around the foods we eat don’t always stack up.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon, which contains a compound called cinnamaldehyde, is claimed to aid weight loss and regulate appetite.

There is evidence cinnamaldehyde can reduce cholesterol in people with diabetes. But this is based on studies of the chemical in large doses – not eating the spice itself.

These studies give people between 1 and 6 grams of cinnamaldehyde per day. Cinnamon is about 8% cinnamaldehyde by weight – so you’d have to eat at least 13 grams of cinnamon, or about half a supermarket jar, per day. Much more than you’d add to your morning porridge.

Red wine

The headlines on the health benefits of red wine are usually because of a chemical in grape skins called resveratrol. Resveratrol is a polyphenol, a family of chemicals with antioxidant properties.

It’s been claimed resveratrol protects our cells from damage and reduces the risk of a range of conditions such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart disease.

There is some limited evidence that resveratrol has benefits in animal models, although studies done in humans have not shown a similar effect.

It varies by wine, but red wine contains about 3 micrograms (about 3 millionths of a gram) of resveratrol per bottle. The studies that have shown a benefit from resveratrol use at least 0.1 grams per day (that’s 100,000 micrograms).

To get that much resveratrol, you’d have to drink roughly 200 bottles of wine a day. We can probably all agree that’s not very healthy.

Read more: Health check: is moderate drinking good for me?

Blueberries

Blueberries, like red wine, are a source of resveratrol, but at a few micrograms per berry you’d have to eat more than 10,000 berries a day to get the active dose.

Blueberries also contain compounds called anthocyanins, which may improve some markers of heart disease. But to get an active dose there you’re looking at 150-300 blueberries per day. More reasonable, but still quite a lot of fruit – and expensive.

Chocolate

The news that dark chocolate lowers blood pressure is always well-received. Theobromine, a chemical in chocolate has been shown to lower blood pressure in doses of about 1 gram of the active compound, but not at lower doses. Depending on the chocolate, you could be eating 100g of dark chocolate before you reached this dose.

Chocolate is a discretionary food, or “junk food”. The recommended serve for discretionary foods is no more than 600 kilojoules per day, or 25g of chocolate. Eating 100g of chocolate would be equivalent to more than 2,000kJ.

Read more: Treat or treatment? Chocolate is good but cocoa is better for your heart

Excess kilojoule consumption leads to weight gain, and being overweight increases risk of heart disease and stroke. So these risks would likely negate the benefits of eating chocolate to lower your blood pressure.

Turmeric

Turmeric is a favourite. It’s good in curries, and recently we’ve seen hype around the tumeric latte. Stories pop up regularly about its healing power, normally based on curcumin.

Curcumin refers to a group of compounds, called curcuminoids, that might have some health benefits, like reducing inflammation. Inflammation helps us to fight infections and respond to injuries, but too much inflammation is a problem in diseases like arthritis, and might be linked to other conditions like heart disease or stroke.

Human trials on curcumin have been inconclusive, but most use curcumin supplementation in very large doses of 1 to 12 grams per day. Turmeric is about 3% curcumin, so for each gram of tumeric you eat you only get 0.03g of curcumin. This means you’d have to eat more than 30g of tumeric to get the minimum active dose of tumeric.

Importantly, curcumin in turmeric is not very bioavailable. This means we only absorb about 25% of what we eat, so you might actually have to eat well over 100g of turmeric, every day, to get a reasonable dose of curcumin. That’s a lot of curry.

What to eat then?

We all want food to heal us, but focusing on single foods and eating mounds of them is not the answer. Instead, a balanced and diverse diet can provide foods each with a range of different nutrients and bioactive compounds. Don’t get distracted by quick fixes; focus instead on enjoying a variety of foods.

Read more: Science or Snake Oil: can turmeric really shrink tumours, reduce pain and kill bacteria?

– ref. These 5 foods are claimed to improve our health. But the amount we’d need to consume to benefit is… a lot – http://theconversation.com/these-5-foods-are-claimed-to-improve-our-health-but-the-amount-wed-need-to-consume-to-benefit-is-a-lot-116730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Briggs, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

With 12 coal power stations in Australia closed since 2013, a full transition out of coal is coming.

Around the world, governments and stakeholders are considering how to implement a “just transition” from coal to clean energy – a transition that’s fair for local workers and communities in coal regions.

Some coal-producing nations, such as Germany and Spain, are delivering major just transition packages. Other nations are less successfully trying to navigate social conflicts around the transition, such as Poland and South Africa.

But so far in Australia, there is little planning for the transition.

What can Australia learn from other international experiences to plan our own just transition? Through our ongoing research we found four important lessons.

Read more: What would a fair energy transition look like?

Lesson 1: build a social compact

Climate science demands the energy transition be as rapid as possible. But faster transitions threaten the capacity of local labour markets to replace jobs lost in coal.

Unions have begun shifting from defensive support for coal towards a just transition perspective, but this support can unravel once job losses start to hit.

In South Africa, for instance, trade unions helped pioneer a just transition. But they brought legal action to stop renewable energy auctions amid coal closures without adjustment support for workers.

Germany, on the other hand, has managed industrial transitions in the western coal regions since the late 1960s through effective negotiations.

In 2018, Germany’s government-appointed “coal commission” developed a pathway for the full closure and transition of the coal industry by 2038. It involved a process with representatives from unions, industry associations, coal regions, scientists, local communities and environmental NGOs.

A social compact between the key parties is needed to manage the conflicts that can emerge over a transition out of coal.

Just transition commissions have been established in Canada, Scotland – and now South Africa.

So Australia should be considering two things to build a social compact for coal transition:

• a taskforce including all the key stakeholders to negotiate an overarching framework for a transition out of coal

• an on-going process for including stakeholders at national and regional level, because it will be a long-term process requiring negotiated trade-offs.

Lesson 2: plan early for closures

If transition planning is delayed until mass redundancies are on the horizon, labour markets will not cope with the volume of displaced workers.

Planning for closures is starting to emerge at an industry and company-level in some nations (such as Italy, Germany and Australia) – which includes retraining, support for early retirements and the redeployment of workers.

Victoria is a global leader on regional level adjustment. The La Trobe Worker Transfer Scheme is redeploying retrenched Hazelwood power station workers to other sites.

Site remediation is also an important way we can restore the local environment quality and create semi and low-skilled jobs at the most critical time of the transition. Mandatory requirements need to be established for funds allocated to the coal industry.

Read more: Hazelwood’s closure calls for a rethink on Latrobe Valley solutions

Lesson 3: diversify the regional economy

The Institute for Sustainable Futures has modelled the global employment impacts in the energy sector if we meet the Paris Climate Agreement.

The modelling found jobs will grow across almost all occupational categories. There will be big job losses among machine operators and assemblers as coal closures occur, but this group also experiences the strongest job growth within the renewables sector, especially solar.

But market restructuring alone will not deliver a just transition.

In each of the coal regions we examined, there is little prospect for large-scale renewable energy because the best solar and wind resources are located elsewhere.

This means workers will rarely transfer seamlessly to new jobs without having to move away from home. And as many of the new jobs are in the construction phase, ongoing jobs will be replaced by a higher volume of temporary jobs.

Read more: How to fight climate change in agriculture while protecting jobs

Local solar and energy efficiency can be a source of new jobs but ultimately diversifying the regional economy is the solution for creating new jobs beyond coal. Each region has different mixes of sectors and capabilities, so economic diversification strategies need to be tailored.

These are some features of successful plans to diversify regional economies:

• develop links with related industries and establish new industries

• extend the capabilities of existing industries and workers

• fund labour-intensive projects, such as site remediation and plant decommissioning

• target infrastructure upgrades and skill development for coal regions.

Lesson 4: establish funds and authority for a just transition

Specialist funds are being established to oversee, develop and implement coal transition programs. The European Commission’s coal and carbon-intensive regions in transition initiative is investing funds in 13 coal regions.

In Germany, the coal commission has recommended a funding package of €40 billion to support the coal regions, with legislation due May 2019.

The Spanish government has established a €250 million fund, which includes support for workers, economic diversification and environmental restoration.

How is Australia placed?

National climate and energy policy is a fiasco in Australia. The federal government has no energy transition plan and refused to sign a Just Transition declaration at the Poland climate conference in December 2018.

On a positive note, there have been some innovative regional responses. The Victorian Government has established the La Trobe Valley Authority, which is funding economic diversification initiatives.

The ALP will establish a Just Transition Authority if it wins the federal election, which will develop regional transition plans and oversee redundancy schemes. Unions, industry and local communities will have direct input.

Read more: Labor’s policy can smooth the energy transition, but much more will be needed to tackle emissions

But without a coordinated exit schedule like the German coal commission, coal closures will still likely be abrupt, driven by technical breakdowns or renewables growth squeezing out less profitable generators.

The ALP scheme also only covers power generators – not coal mining – which will be more challenging because there are more low-skilled workers (around half are drivers and machine operators).

Social and political support can unravel very quickly once regional communities start to transition. In Queensland, mining unions are opposing any candidates that will not support the Adani mine after their national body led the shift to a just transition policy by the ACTU.

Australia would be wise to invest heavily in just transition planning and investment alongside technology development.

– ref. How to transition from coal: 4 lessons for Australia from around the world – http://theconversation.com/how-to-transition-from-coal-4-lessons-for-australia-from-around-the-world-115558

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Noble, Education Policy Fellow, Victoria University, Mitchell Institute

As voters head to the polls, around one-quarter will decide who to vote for on the day. Analysis shows climate change and the economy are foremost in voters’ minds.

But education remains a key issue, as evidenced by a flurry of education-related announcements in the final stretch of the campaign.

Here’s what you need to know about the major parties’ education commitments, and what the millions and billions here and there really mean.

Read more: How has education policy changed under the Coalition government?

Early childhood education and care

Two years of high-quality, play-based learning at preschool can have a significant impact on children’s development. It can put them close to eight months ahead in literacy by the time they start school. The benefits are greatest for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, which makes preschool a valuable tool for reducing inequality.

Read more: Both major parties are finally talking about the importance of preschool – here’s why it matters

Labor has promised to make childcare free for most low-income households and to provide up to an 85% subsidy for households under $175,000. It has committed to funding an extra year of preschool for three-year-olds. This is evidence-based and builds on commitments by several states to support two years of preschool.

Labor has also pledged to increase wages for some early childhood educators, to be rolled out over a decade, and to reinstate funding for the National Quality Agenda, which lapsed in 2018. This reflects the importance of quality in early childhood services, to improve outcomes for children.

The Coalition is taking a more cautious approach to spending on the early childhood sector. It has pledged funding for four-year-old preschool, but only for another year, and it has not renewed funding for the National Quality Agenda.

The Coalition will likely retain the means-tested subsidy introduced as part of its major childcare reforms in 2018. While these reforms benefited an estimated one million lower-income families, the means test also left around 280,000 families worse off, including families with neither parent in work.

Advocates argue preschool should be seen as an integral component of the education system and a fundamental right for all children, and all parties should take a cross-partisan approach and commit to long-term funding. The major parties are certainly not at that point yet, but there are indications they’re heading in the right direction.

Read more: Labor’s childcare plan: parents, children, and educators stand to benefit, but questions remain

Schools

Given states and territories are largely responsible for schools, federal investment should be targeted where it can make the most difference. Two key areas are needs-based funding, to ensure additional support is available to students who need it the most, and central investment in research and evidence-based practice.

Both major parties have promised a national evidence institute. Labor has allocated funds for it, with the Coalition yet to do so. This initiative reflects the urgent need to ensure evidence helps to shape the education system. The Productivity Commission has recommended such an institute, to connect educators and policymakers with the latest research on teaching and learning.

Read more: Three things Australia’s next education minister must prioritise to improve schools

On funding, the Coalition wants us to judge it on its reforms to the schools funding package, which is now mostly modelled on the needs-based funding approach outlined in the Gonski Review. But funding has still not reached the recommended levels. The Coalition has supported the National School Resourcing Board to review these funding arrangements and develop a fairer model for all schools.

Labor has promised to increase funding for schools. Labor’s offer would bring schools closer to meeting the levels of funding recommended by Gonski.

Funding isn’t a magic bullet, but it plays an important role in improving outcomes for all students..

Read more: What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding

Tertiary education

Vocational Education and Training (VET) has experienced a series of unsuccessful reforms over the past decade. VET plays an important role in the tertiary sector, so it’s good to see both major parties addressing this in their platforms.

The Coalition’s plan comes out of a major recent review of the VET sector and includes more money for apprentices and rural programs; the establishment of a National Skills Commission and a National Careers Institute; and simplifying systems for employers.

Labor has pledged to fund up to 100,000 TAFE places. It has also promised a major inquiry into tertiary education, looking at VET and universities side by side. This could potentially move us towards a fairer system that puts VET and universities on an even footing and better caters to the varied needs of students and employers.

Both Labor and the Coalition have committed to increased support for apprenticeships, through financial incentives for employers.

For universities, Labor says it will bring back demand-driven funding, which existed between 2012 and 2017, where universities are paid for every student studying and there is no limit on the number of students that can be admitted to courses. Evidence suggests this has been effective in boosting studies in areas where there are skills shortages, such as health, and also appears to have improved access to education for disadvantaged groups.

Read more: Labor wants to restore ‘demand driven’ funding to universities: what does this mean?

Due to costs, the Coalition has moved to a funding model based on population and university performance. It has also promised extra support for regional students and universities. This help address the large gaps in university participation between young people from major cities, and rural and regional Australia.

Making an informed choice

When casting our votes, we would do well to look past the dollar signs, and think about how each party is shaping an education system that will deliver quality learning for all Australians, from all kinds of backgrounds, from childhood through to adulthood.

The Coalition has delivered needs-based funding for schools and promises a greater focus on regional and rural students in all sectors. But there are some apparent gaps in early learning and tertiary policy and funding.

Labor has pledged more funding in all sectors. It has made a prominent commitment to early childhood education and care. However, Labor’s policies are expensive and would need to be implemented effectively to make sure they achieve the intended outcomes for students and deliver the financial benefit to the economy in the long-term.

Read more: Compare the pair: key policy offerings from Labor and the Coalition in the 2019 federal election

– ref. Beyond the dollars: what are the major parties really promising on education? – http://theconversation.com/beyond-the-dollars-what-are-the-major-parties-really-promising-on-education-117097

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

No matter who wins Saturday’s federal election, you can expect to see more cranes on the skyline and hi-viz vests on the roadside. Both major parties are promising to spend big on transport infrastructure: A$42 billion for the Coalition and A$49 billion for Labor. However, many of the favoured projects are unlikely to be completed for years or even decades to come.

Read more: We hardly ever trust big transport announcements – here’s how politicians get it right

What’s being promised, and where?

The types of project each party is promising reflect a now-familiar pattern seen in the recent Victorian and New South Wales elections. The Coalition will outspend Labor on roads; Labor will outspend the Coalition on public transport.

There’s also a story in the details of where the parties are promising to spend. In Victoria, where the Coalition suffered heavy losses in last October’s state election, the federal Coalition has been busy “sandbagging” key seats. Until last weekend, the Coalition had been promising much more than Labor.

Announcements on Sunday changed all that. While the Coalition upped its commitment to the East West Link to A$4 billion, this was dwarfed by Labor’s A$10 billion pledge for the Suburban Rail Loop. Victoria now stands as the key battleground for transport promises.

Read more: East-West Link shows miserable failure of planning process

Labor is also writing bigger cheques than the Coalition in Queensland, where it hopes to make big gains.

There’s some agreement on the big stuff

Despite their different ideologies and at-risk electorates, there is still much common ground between the parties. Almost one in three of the projects and funding packages that have attracted promises of at least A$50 million are backed by both the Coalition and Labor. Each party has promised almost A$24 billion for these “bilateral” projects – that’s more than half of the Coalition’s total promised transport infrastructure spending and almost half of Labor’s.

The parties are more likely to agree on big projects than small. Bilateral commitments make up almost half of all promises worth at least A$500 million, but less than a third of those below that threshold. For the very largest projects, the level of agreement is somewhere in between – the Coalition and Labor agree on four of the 11 projects attracting commitments of more than A$1 billion.

But voters are forced to make risky choices, again

With so much cash on the table, will these vast riches be spent on the right things?

More money for roads and public transport probably sounds fine to most Australians, whether they’re navigating potholed rural roads, stuck behind trucks on regional highways, drumming the steering wheel in clogged city streets, or calling in late on delayed suburban trains.

Read more: Congestion-busting infrastructure plays catch-up on long-neglected needs

But are the projects of national significance and therefore worthy of Commonwealth attention? And can they be relied on to return a benefit larger than their cost?

For too many projects, the answers are no and no. Infrastructure Australia (IA) publishes a list of national priorities and evaluates business cases for projects that are “nationally significant or where Commonwealth funding of A$100 million or more is sought”. Most of the commitments above A$100 million in this campaign do not have IA-approved business cases.

Some projects are under evaluation, such as a new bridge in Nowra on the NSW south coast, but the two parties should have waited for IA’s assessment before committing.

Worse still, many promised projects are not even on the national priority list.

For projects attracting commitments of less than A$100 million, most are best left to state governments. The Commonwealth should stick to projects that are important to more than one state or are particularly important to the national economy.

Fixing regional and suburban intersections is important, but it’s hardly of national significance. When federal parties get involved, it starts to smell like pork-barrelling.

Read more: Missing evidence base for big calls on infrastructure costs us all

Some promises are inexcusable

Throwing taxpayer money at boondoggles is poor governance. Far worse is flagrantly ignoring independent advice and burning cash on projects that we know don’t stack up. Before the 2016 federal election, Grattan Institute reported on the outrageous Princes Highway duplication between Winchelsea and Colac in Victoria’s Western District. The Coalition promised this project even though IA determined that it would return only eight cents of value for every dollar spent.

Three years on, lessons still need to be learnt. Labor has committed A$50 million this election to the Maldon-Dombarton rail link in NSW’s Illawarra region. This A$806 million project got the thumbs-down in 2017 from IA, which stated that “the project would not justify its costs and would impose a net cost on the Australian economy”.

In exceptional cases, governments may want to fund projects with costs outweighing benefits on equity grounds, such as to provide a minimum level of service for rural communities. It is hard to make that case for a commercial freight rail link.

Every dud project built cannibalises a worthy one. Our politicians should stop donning hardhats and promising infrastructure before they’ve done their homework.

– ref. Transport promises for election 2019: the good, the bad and the downright ugly – http://theconversation.com/transport-promises-for-election-2019-the-good-the-bad-and-the-downright-ugly-115138

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

Labor is banking on about A$5 billion per year from ending the cash payment of company tax refunds to dividend holders who don’t pay tax.

It’ll exempt charities, non-profits, pensioners and part pensioners and other Australians on government allowances, including future pensioners. Self-managed super funds that had pensioner members at the time Labor announced its policy will also be spared.

So who’s left? Are they battlers on genuinely low incomes (as might be inferred from the low taxable incomes that enable them not to pay tax), or are they a good deal more wealthy?

The Coalition says they are mainly genuine low income earners. According to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg

over 80 per cent of people who are relying on their cash refunds have a taxable income under $37,000

Yet Labor’s Chris Bowen says they are

typically wealthier retirees who aren’t paying income tax – these are people who typically own their own home and also have other tax-free superannuation assets, and don’t pay tax on their superannuation income

There are two main ways in which people receive company tax refunds that are paid in cash rather deducted from their tax bill.

One is through self-managed super funds that don’t pay tax during the retirement phase. Around 55 per cent of excess refunds are paid out in this way according to our modelling.

The other is through payments made directly to Australians who own Australian shares in their own name but pay insufficient tax to make use of credits of company tax paid creasting their dividends. These people are oft

For investors it makes sense to have the investment in the name of the person with the lowest taxable income ensuring that tax paid on investment returns is minimised or, even better, rebated through franking credits.

Retirees can have low taxable incomes even when their actual incomes are high because of decisions to exempt superannuation income from income for tax purposes.

Read more: Words that matter. What’s a franking credit? What’s dividend imputation? And what’s ‘retiree tax’?

Modelling just completed by the Australian National University Centre for Social Research and Methods gets around this by using the household income figures collected by the Bureau of Statistics.

Household income is arguably a better guide to who benefits from shares that are typically held in the name of the lowest taxed member. Household income also includes superannuation income whether it is taxed or not.

Our findings are presented in 2019 dollars and is based on a mature policy in the sense that all behaviour changes have occurred. We do this by aligning our numbers to the Parliamentary Budget Office who attempt to account for behaviour changes such as altered investments. We accept that such changes are subject to considerable uncertainty but expect the distribution of results to be relatively robust regardless.

Across all households, regardless of whether they receive franking credits, the average impact from removing the credits is $489 per year, or about 0.5% of disposable income.

But the impact of Labor’s policy is heavily concentrated in households in the top 10% (decile 10) of household incomes. These households pay additional tax of $2,641 per year (1.1% of their disposable income) averaged across all households in the top decile.

There is virtually no impact on households in the bottom half of the income distribution.

Impact of proposed changes to franking credit policy on annual household disposable income by equivalised income decile, 2019 dollars

The impact is even more skewed when considered by wealth distribution of households.

Labor’s changes would have virtually no impact across the bottom 70% of the wealth distribution. Almost 90% of the total value of all imputation cheques are paid to the top 20% of the wealth distribution.

Around 2.7% are paid to the bottom 50%.

Impact of proposed changes to franking credit policy on annual disposable household income by wealth decile, 2019 dollars

Overall, around 6.5% of households would be negatively impacted (around 600,000 households). The vast majority have high income and high wealth.

For those low income or low wealth households that are affected, the impact tends to be relatively small. As an example, for the least wealthy 10%, the average financial impact is $686 per year. For the most wealthy it is nearly $12,000 per year.

The current arrangements around franking credits and superannuation leads to significant leakage in the tax system. Whether removing excess franking credits is the solution to this problem is debatable, but it remains the case that the majority of franking credit refunds are received by high income and/or high wealth households who ideally would be paying at least some tax on this income.

Reforming such leakage in the tax system provides room for other tax reforms in personal income and company tax that many economists argue offer more promise in providing incentives to work and invest.

– ref. At last, an answer to the $5 billion question: who gets the imputation cheques Labor will take away? – http://theconversation.com/at-last-an-answer-to-the-5-billion-question-who-gets-the-imputation-cheques-labor-will-take-away-117075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, Professor of Economics, School of Economics, Finance and Property, Curtin University

The new First Home Loan Deposit Scheme announced the Coalition, and instantly backed by Labor, is likely to be popular among those on the cusp of buying their first home.

It’ll be open to singles earning up to A$125,000 and couples earning up to A$200,000 who have saved at least 5% of the value of the home. The government-owned National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation will partner with private lenders to put up as much as another 15% of the value of the home to take the deposit to 20%.

However, the scheme is capped at 10,000 home buyers per year, roughly one tenth of the number of Australians who bought first homes in 2018.

It’ll help them – the latest survey shows that more than half of first homebuyers needed financial assistance outside of their own savings to get their deposit. The benefits of home ownership have been widely documented. But will it do enough?

Source of deposits

An often-expressed concern is that such a scheme will bid up house prices. However, it is means-tested, making it much less vunerable to this criticism than the non-means-tested First Home Owners’ Grant.

And is also capped at 10,000 loans per year, giving it little scope to price pressure.

However, it may not be means-tested enough.

Consider the population subgroup that broadly comprises aspiring homebuyers who qualify for the scheme: renters aged 25-34 years who meet the scheme’s income criteria and whose financial wealth is between 5% and 20% of the lowest-priced quarter of houses for sale in the borad area in which they live.

In the most-recent 2015 ABS Survey of Income and Housing there were 127,000 such potential eligible first home buyers, more than 12 times the 10,000 cap.

Read more: That election promise. It will help first home buyers, but they better be cautious

The cap is a practical necessity of course, needed to limit impacts on prices and prevent a cost blowout. But the weakness of the scheme is that the cap will be filled on a “first come, first serve” basis, without distinguishing between those who actually need help and those who are likely to meet the deposit requirement anyway.

The graph shows that some 40% of potential first home buyers have managed to save a deposit amounting to not much more than 5% of the home value. Only 7% have a 20% deposit or something near it.

Potential users of the scheme, by amount of deposit saved

The Coalition (or Labor) could get more bang for its buck within the cap by targeting those in greater need of assistance; for example by prioritising those who cannot access the so-called Bank of Mum and Dad. Not everyone has access to wealthy parents.

The Great Australian Dream of owning a home has been fading fast, and not just for young people. Naturally, the scheme’s details of the scheme require scrutiny. But overall, it provides a welcome acknowledgement (by both major parties) that the affordability crisis facing young people has not waned despite recent house price declines.

Read more: The brutal truth on housing. Someone has to lose in order for first homebuyers to win

The scheme will restore the opportunity – at least to some – to accumulate wealth in property and enjoy the security and other benefits that home ownership brings.

But seriously addressing housing affordability will ultimately require a bigger intervention.

– ref. Small, but well-formed. The new home deposit scheme will help, and it’s unlikely to push up prices – http://theconversation.com/small-but-well-formed-the-new-home-deposit-scheme-will-help-and-its-unlikely-to-push-up-prices-117073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Although record numbers of people are flocking to exhibitions in the major public art galleries, foot traffic into commercial art galleries is dwindling at an alarming rate. Embarrassed gallery directors of well-established and well-known commercial art galleries will quietly confess that frequently they scarcely get more than a dozen visitors a day. Outside the flurry of activity on the day of the opening, very little happens for the duration of the show.

This is not a peculiarity of the Australian art scene, I have heard similar accounts in London, Manhattan and Paris. The art public has largely ceased visiting commercial art galleries as a regular social activity and art collectors are frequently buying over the internet or through art fairs. In fact, many galleries admit that most of their sales occur via their websites, through commissions or at art fairs, with a shrinking proportion from exhibitions or their stockroom by actual walk-in customers.

The commercial art galleries have become an endangered species and their numbers are shrinking before our eyes. Leaving aside China and its urban arts precincts, such as 798 Art Zone in Beijing, again this is a trend that can be noted in much of Europe, America and Australasia.

At the same time, the art market is relatively buoyant, albeit somewhat differently configured from the traditional one. The art auction market in many quarters is thriving and, as persistent rumours have it, not infrequently auction houses leave their role as purely a secondary market and increasingly source work directly from artists’ studios. This seeps into their lavish catalogues.

The other booming part of the art trade is the art fairs. Here I will pause on a case study of the Auckland Art Fair 2019. Started by a charitable trust about a dozen years ago and run as a biennial, in 2016 the fair, with new sponsorship and a new management team of Stephanie Post and Hayley White, was reorientated. As of 2018, it has become an annual art fair with a focus on the Pacific Rim region. It remains the only major art fair in New Zealand.

Situated in The Cloud, a scenic setting on Queens Wharf in central Auckland, this location also limits its size to create an intimate, friendly, human-scale fair, unlike the vast expanses of the Chicago Art Fair or even Sydney Contemporary in the Carriageworks.

The nuts and bolts of the Auckland Art Fair is that galleries from the Pacific Rim region can apply to exhibit and a curatorial committee of four curators, two from public galleries and two from commercial ones, select about 40 galleries for participation. The event, which is held over five days, attracts about 10,000 visitors and generates between $6-7 million in art sales.

The fair costs about $1 million to stage with 90% of this sum raised from sponsorship, ticket sales and gallery fees and the rest a grant from Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development. The public pays an admission fee of between $25-30, depending on when they book.

Art fairs are popular with local governments as they invariably attract people and businesses into the city. In Auckland Art Fair 2019, held in the first week in May, there were 41 galleries participating, almost 30 from various parts of NZ, the rest from Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Shanghai, Jakarta, Rarotonga (Cook Islands) and Santiago.

According to Stephanie Post, a major purpose of the fair is to build a new art audience and, by extension, a new generation of art collectors. The fair is designed to fill the gap between the primary and secondary art markets. For this reason, there is a whole series of “projects” that generally promote new art, frequently by emerging artists, many currently without representation by a commercial art gallery. In 2019 there were ten of these non-commercial projects at the fair.

These projects, for the past three art fairs, have been curated by Francis McWhannell, who now plans to step aside to be replaced by a new set of curatorial eyes. There are also various lectures, talks, panel discussions and related exhibitions. This year, most notably, there is “China Import Direct”, a curated cross-section of digital and video art from across China with some stunning and quite edgy material by Yuan Keru, Wang Newone and Lu Yang, amongst others.

A mixed bag

Predictably, art at the Auckland Art Fair 2019 is a mixed bag, but the stronger works do outnumber those that are best passed over in silence. In terms of sales, within the first couple of hours quite a number of the big-ticket items were sold, such as work by the Australians Patricia Piccinini and Dale Frank.

Looking around this year’s fair, some of the highlights included Seraphine Pick at Michael Lett; Robert Ellis at Bowerbank Ninow; Max Gimblett at Gow Longsford Gallery; Anne Wallace and Juan Davila at Kalli Rolfe; Christine Webster at Trish Clark; Daniel Unverricht and Richard Lewer at Suite, Toss Woollaston at Page Blackie Gallery, Dame Robin White and Gretchen Albrecht at Two Rooms; Robyn Kahukiwa at Warwick Henderson Gallery; Geoff Thornley at Fox Jensen McCrory; Simon Kaan at Sanderson; James Ormsby at Paulnache and Kai Wasikowski at the Michael Bugelli Gallery.

This selective list of names, to which many others can be added, indicates something of the spread and diversity of the artists being presented at the fair – not only in style and medium, but in the whole range of languages of visualisation and conceptualisation. Although there are a few deceased artists included, like Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori and Colin McCahon (neither represented by a particularly strong work), like most art fairs there is a predominance of well-established blue chip artists, a scattering of art market darlings plus a few unexpected newcomers.

A criticism of art fairs is that they are an expensive market place with high overhead costs, which discourage too much experimentation with “untested” emerging artists. Despite the welcome initiatives of the “projects”, Auckland in this respect falls into line with the pattern of most fairs.

The oft-repeated claim that they create a new art audience is also difficult to quantify. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that many who go to fairs may not have ever entered a commercial art gallery before, this does not appear to be followed up by a conversion of this audience into regular gallery goers.

A spectacle

Art fairs and blockbuster exhibitions in public art galleries have become popular people magnet events. They are a form of entertainment that is becoming more of a surrogate for consuming art than some sort of conduit for a return to more traditional patterns of art appreciation and acquisition. They are noisy, crowded and colourful spectacles – more like a party than a quiet arena for the contemplation of art.

Is this such a bad thing? Observing the spectacle in Auckland, I was struck by the youthfulness of the thousands of visitors. For many, it seemed the idea that they could afford to purchase an original artwork came as a revelation. Perhaps this was not a $100,000 painting by a major artist, but something more modest and frequently more to their tastes. Nevertheless, new buyers are being introduced to original art and this in itself has to be a positive development.

Art fairs globally are breeding a cult of dependency with some “commercial” art galleries increasingly divesting themselves of a physical existence and living from fair to fair. For a while, this was a complete no-no and fairs insisted that participant galleries had a bricks-and-mortar existence, but in many instances the borders are fudged and to be a gallery you need only be an established art trading entity.

Art fairs are here to stay; the future of commercial art galleries is far more problematic.

– ref. With commercial galleries an endangered species, are art fairs a necessary evil? – http://theconversation.com/with-commercial-galleries-an-endangered-species-are-art-fairs-a-necessary-evil-116680