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

This is the first in a two-part series on heaven and hell by Bible scholar Robyn Whitaker. You can read her piece on heaven here.

“This is hell” we might proclaim, midway through a boot camp session or a punishing work deadline. We don’t, of course, mean we are literally in a place of eternal torment nor standing in a lake of fire.

Hell continues to be invoked in all sorts of ways, by Christians and non-believers alike, with Dante and Hieronymus Bosch, among others, fanning the flames of our collective imagination.

Considered by some as a swear word, hell can be used to threaten eternal damnation or, more colloquially, to add colour to an exclamation. But do we even know what we mean by the term? And where does this so-called Christian idea even come from?

The Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) uses the word Sheol to describe the realm of the dead. Sometimes described as a pit and imagined to be a literal place under the earth, Sheol is where the dead – all of them, good and bad – go when they die. At times, Sheol is used poetically to relay the sense of tragedy associated with death. Sheol was not, however, associated with firey torment, nor is it a place of punishment. That idea comes later.

In the New Testament, “hell” is referred to by various terms: Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus, or the Abyss. Gehenna was a valley in or near Jerusalem. One popular theory is that it was the site of a perpetually burning rubbish dump (fire being the ultimate decontaminate in antiquity) and thus served as a metaphor for a site of purification. But there is little historical evidence for this theory.

Read more: Jesus wasn’t white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here’s why that matters

The more likely reason for Gehenna’s association with “hell” lies in the memory, preserved in the Hebrew Bible, that this was where people burned their children as human sacrifices to the gods. Hence, Gehenna became synonymous with wickedness, fire, and death.

The term Hades comes from Greek culture. Initially used as a name for the god who had dominion over the realm of the dead and then later for the place itself, it was a place where all dead people resided. Homer’s Odyssey famously describes Hades as a place across a river at the end of the world, requiring a guide and long journey for the restless soul. In the Iliad, it is a murky, damp place. In Greek poetry, Tartarus is simply another name for Hades.

The writers of the New Testament, influenced by both Greek and Jewish cultures, incorporated Hades, Gehenna, Sheol, ideas of the Abyss, and other traditions into their conceptions of the realm of the dead. They write in a time when literary tours of hell and stories about the fate of lives after death were common. Most English Bibles translate Hades, Gehenna, and Sheol with the generic term “hell”, leaving readers unaware of the nuances and distinct terms in use.

The innovation of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity was belief in a resurrection and with it the idea that after death some go to a place of reward and rest, while others are assigned a place of punishment for their bad deeds.

The religious text 1 Enoch 22 describes a Hades-like, watery place where the dead rest until they can be evaluated and judged. Similar images emerge in Christianity. The book of Revelation depicts a scene of final judgement where all the dead are raised to give an account of their actions, with some sentenced to a second death along with all evil (such as Satan) and others to eternal life.

It should be noted that these are poetic and highly symbolic apocalyptic texts whose purpose is primarily to persuade people to stay faithful to their God, not to set out a precise agenda for the afterlife.

The afterlife, in all its forms, is rarely related to correct belief but is rather about one’s actions and behaviour. Hence, vivid descriptions of “hell” emerge within the pages of the Bible and in early Christianity as a means of moral formation designed, as Meghan Henning has argued, to persuade people to act ethically.

For example, Luke’s gospel tells the story of a very wealthy man who lived lavishly and ignored a poor man, Lazarus, who begged outside his gate. In Jesus’ parable, both men die but their situations are shockingly reversed in the afterlife. The poor man finally has enough to eat and his bodily sores are healed up, whereas the rich man now suffers, crying out for a drink of water and begging for mercy.

Read more: Why the Christian idea of hell no longer persuades people to care for the poor

Similarly, some Christians invoke hell to persuade individuals to repent of their sins. Such rhetoric is from a different time and place, when scaring people into faith seemed like a good idea. Likewise, many ancient Greek texts also depict tours of hell intended to confront readers with ethical questions and educate them about morality. TV shows like The Good Place continue to toy with this anxiety: that one earns a place in either heaven or hell based on one’s ethical deeds in life.

One challenge to the idea of hell as a literal place comes from the Bible itself. Parts of the New Testament record that when Jesus died on the cross he descended into the realm of the dead.

These fleeting references were preserved in ancient Christian creeds. Medieval Christians called Jesus’ descent to the dead the “harrowing of hell”. The theology behind it is that even the realm of the dead (hell) and death itself have been transformed by God.

It begs the question – does hell continue to exist? Many Christians today would say no. Others claim an ongoing belief in a literal place of eternal punishment, which raises a different theological question: what kind of God do you believe in to think God consigns people to eternal torment?

Hell is complicated precisely because it is a term used to denote a cluster of diverse ideas in the biblical tradition. Notions of a fiery place of torment, however, are more influenced by later medieval art, literature and Hollywood movies than they are by the biblical tradition or Christian theology.

– ref. What is hell, exactly? We might joke it’s other people, but the Bible has a more complicated answer – http://theconversation.com/what-is-hell-exactly-we-might-joke-its-other-people-but-the-bible-has-a-more-complicated-answer-113732

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynda Crowley-Cyr, Associae Professsor of Law, University of Southern Queensland

The Easter long weekend marks the last opportunity this year for many Australians to go to the beach as the weather cools down. And for some, particularly in Queensland, it means dodging bluebottle tentacles on the sand.

In just over a month this summer, bluebottles stung more than 22,000 people across Queensland, largely at beaches in the southeast. At least eight of these stings required hospitalisation.

To make matters worse, there were more than twice the number of Irukandji jellyfish stings in Queensland than is typically reported for this time of the season. Irukandjis – relatives of the lethal box jellyfish – cause “Irukandji syndrome”, a life-threatening illness.

Read more: There are many ways to treat jellyfish stings – peeing on them isn’t one

Venomous jellyfish can lurk beneath Australia’s picturesque beaches, including in the Whitsundays. Better public awareness is vital. alexmgn/Shutterstock

There have also been widespread reports that Irukandjis have been migrating southwards. Many reports have assumed there is a southward migration linked to climate change. But Australia’s jellyfish problem is far more complex. Despite the media hype, there exists no evidence that any tropical Irukandji species has migrated, or is migrating, south.

In addition, many people find it surprising to learn there are Irukandji species native to southern waters. Many cases of Irukandji syndrome have been recorded in Moreton Bay (since 1893), New South Wales (since 1905), and even as far south as Queenscliff, near Geelong (in 1998).

So amid the misinformation, pain and misery, why is this jellyfish problem not more effectively managed?

Read more: Jellyfish have superpowers – and other reasons they don’t deserve their bad reputation

What is being done to manage jellyfish risks?

In North Queensland, coastal councils have grappled with jellyfish risk for decades.

At popular beaches in the Cairns, Townsville, and Whitsunday regions, visitors are offered protection in the form of lifeguard patrols and stinger nets. Beaches are also peppered with marine stinger warning signs.

But these strategies are not as effective as intended. Stinger nets, for instance, protect people against the larger, deadlier box jellyfish, but not against the tiny Irukandji.

Stinger nets are less likely to protect beach-goers from tiny Irukandji jellyfish. WA Department of Parks and Wildlife/AAP

There’s a lack of public awareness about many aspects of stinger safety. For example, that Irukandji can enter the nets; that Irukandji may be encountered on the reefs and islands as well as in many types of weather conditions; and that both Irukandjis and box jellies are typically very difficult to spot in the water.

To make matters worse, visitors, especially international tourists, are completely unaware of these types of hazards at all. This was confirmed in a recently published study that found marine stinger warning signs are not effectively communicating the true risk.

These signs comply with the requirements established by Standards Australia, but do not fully meet research-based design guidelines for effective warning signage.

The high number of stings that continue to occur at patrolled beaches highlights the need for a redesign.

Read more: The blue bottles are coming, but what exactly are these creatures?

Reef operators share a similar problem.

Workplace Health and Safety legislation requires businesses for recreational water activities to do all they reasonably can to protect their staff and customers from health and safety risks.

Jellyfish risk management is only mentioned in the Code of Practice applying to diving and snorkelling businesses. But jellyfish stings continue to be widely reported, raising questions about the effectiveness of this law and its applicability to businesses for other water activities like jet skiing, kayaking, and resort watersports.

Can jellyfish risk management improve?

Absolutely! But only with more data and communication about the risks of jellyfish.

A newly established independent Marine Stinger Authority, based in Cairns, will be well positioned to provide all coastal councils, government and tourism organisations, and the wider public with updated research, information and consultation on jellyfish risks in Australia.

Read more: Why your tourist brain may try to drown you

A warning sign at a Queensland beach. Shutterstock

It’s a good start, and all current strategies provide a level of protection, but there is room for improvement. We have identified the following points as the highest priority:

1. a national reporting system

A national reporting system to capture real-time data about stings. This would inform coastal councils, tourism operators and other stakeholders so they can better protect the public and meet their duty of care.

Such a system has been partially developed by CSIRO, but this has ceased. We are seeking funding to resume development and implementation of this critical public safety tool.

2. improved warning signage

Modification of jellyfish warning signs should be consistent with research-based design guidelines.

Effective signs should, among other things: be noticeable and include a signal-word panel with “WARNING” in appropriate size and coulours to alert of the hazard; be easy to read, including by international visitors; include a well-designed pictogram indicating scale of hazardous jellyfish; and include hazard information, its consequences and how to avoid it.

Any modifications would also need to be monitored to ensure the signs are properly understood where deployed.

3. an updated Code of Practice

The Work Health and Safety Code of Practice should be amended to include all businesses for recreational water activities and make jellyfish risk management mandatory.

4. safety messaging research

More research is needed to better understand the effectiveness of jellyfish management strategies, taking into account the diverse cultural expectations and languages of visitors at different destinations.

For this Easter break, here a few safety tips for beachgoers:

• plan ahead and be aware of local conditions

• don’t touch bluebottles or other jellyfish (they can still sting out of the water)

• wear stinger protective clothing like a full body lycra suit (a “rashy”) or neoprene wet suit (especially in tropical areas)

• pack a bottle of vinegar in your beach bag, boat or boot of the car

• get local advice on recent stings (from lifeguards or tour operators).

– ref. Going to the beach this Easter? Here are four ways we’re not being properly protected from jellyfish – http://theconversation.com/going-to-the-beach-this-easter-here-are-four-ways-were-not-being-properly-protected-from-jellyfish-112955

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Professor, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia

In our Here’s looking at series, experts explain prominent works of art.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s fever of stingrays glide menacingly beneath a crystal sea. The installation Pretty Beach is instantly engaging; the seductive quality of the craftsmanship drawing you in close enough to hear the story the artist wants to tell. It is a story about growing up as a Muslim in Australia, being seen as different and coming to terms with fear and pain. It documents the changing patterns of his life.

His slippery, grey, swarming stingrays – currently displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, as part of the major exhibition The National – are a meditation on the suicide of his grandfather, who died ten years ago. He lived in a rambling home on the idyllic waterfront of Pretty Beach, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

As the artist explains:

I remember standing out on the jetty as a kid watching groups of stingrays glide beneath me, tracing arcs through the shallow water. The rain drifted in like a soft curtain drawing across the bay, obliterating the rays from view as the surface of the water crumpled above them. I ran inside.

That memory is ensnared with brilliant effect in this work to capture the fear and anguish he felt on his grandfather’s death.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Pretty Beach, 2019, installation view, The National 2019: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, painted wood, silver plate ball chain, crystals, audio, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. © the artist, photograph: Jacquie Manning.

The installation is centred around 11 swarming Estuary Stingrays, which glide beneath a sea of sparkling crystals, suspended on 1800 strands of ball chain. These strands mimic that cloud burst of rain activating the ocean’s surface with a flickering light.

The number 11 is significant in Sufi Muslim thinking because it represents the idea of meeting your creator, thus echoing the artist’s fear as a young boy. Acknowledging that fear of death, our movement through and around the installation triggers the shimmering of his crystal sea, placing us both actually and imaginatively within that space of revelation, terror and insight.

The installation creates a mystical environment of rain, sea and menacing depths. Surrounding walls are etched with a delicate drawing of shadows cast by the ball chain that creates a slowly pulsating shroud. Gallery lights ignite individual crystals as you move around the circular sea, first a white glow, then yellow, green and red. This luminous field holds your attention, while the stingrays congregate beneath in an elegant arabesque.

Read more: The National is a time capsule of new Australian art in uncertain times

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Pretty Beach, 2019, installation view, The National 2019: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, painted wood, silver plate ball chain, crystals, audio, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. © the artist, photograph: Jacquie Manning

Abdullah is one of three brothers, who all drew and made visual responses to their world from an early age, adapting and appropriating from aspects of their Asian and Western heritage. Their Muslim faith has been influential in shaping their practice, and each has framed that experience within their work.

For Abdullah:

being a Muslim will always be a core aspect of my identity, it’s inescapable, and I’m very comfortable with that. Since 9/11 Islam was in the public realm, and we were the bad guys […] For me this polarisation of Muslim identity directly informs my practice, it’s really important for me to explore my own experience as an artefact of social change.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, ‘I’ve Been Assured That You’re Going to Heaven My Friend’, resin, satin. 750mm x 380mm x 1800mm (2013). Image courtesy and © the artist

Embedded in family life and memories and intertwined with narratives from the Quran, his works induce a dreamlike musing on the power of objects and animals to evoke meaning.

His 2013 image of a lamb trussed for ritual slaughter by his father, a vivid memory from his childhood, is given the reassuring title I’ve Been Assured That You’re Going To Heaven My Friend, its execution undertaken with an air of sanctity that is seamlessly blended with blood, shit and meat.

Ritual and religion are entwined, the sacrificial lamb standing for all those innocents who make the ultimate sacrifice for others, willingly or not.

Prior to becoming an artist, Abdullah spent some years designing and building animal enclosures and sculptures at Perth Zoo. Animals have come to form an integral part of his practice – he is interested in the ideas about identity that animals allow him to explore.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Pretty Beach, 2019, installation view, The National 2019: New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, painted wood, silver plate ball chain, crystals, audio, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. © the artist, photograph: Jacquie Manning

Delving deep into his memories of childhood, Abdullah creates experiences that involve the viewer physically, moving in and around objects in a particular space to heighten the alternative sense of reality he generates through his skillful re-interpretation of his animal subjects.

The artist’s grandfather took his life in 2009, after years of suffering. Pretty Beach provokes us all to confront our sense of mortality – and to ponder how that knowledge might shape our lives.

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s Pretty Beach is on at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia until June 23.

– ref. In Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s Pretty Beach, a fever of stingrays becomes a meditation on suffering – http://theconversation.com/in-abdul-rahman-abdullahs-pretty-beach-a-fever-of-stingrays-becomes-a-meditation-on-suffering-114427

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Mortimer, Associate Professor in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Queensland University of Technology

There are some anecdotes just so good that almost every story about a particular economic principle begins the same. So too this article begins with cake mix.

In the 1950, the story goes, US food company General Mills wanted ideas on how to sell more of its Betty Crocker brand of instant cake mixes. It put psychologist Ernest Dichter – the “father of motivational research” – on the case.

Dichter ran focus groups. Change the recipe, he then advised the company. Replace powdered eggs in the cake mix with the requirement to add fresh eggs. All-instant cake mix makes baking too easy. It undervalues the labour and skill of the cake maker. Give the baker more ownership in the final result.

And the rest is history.

Add eggs! Betty Crocker cake mix advertisement.

It’s likely this story is extremely overegged. Inconvenient facts include another company, Duncan Hines having a cake mix recipe using fresh eggs (developed by food chemist Arlee Andre) as early as 1951. And in 1935, the company P. Duff and Sons was granted a patent for a cake mix using fresh eggs.

The P. Duff and Sons in 1935 patent. US Patent and Trademark Office

“The housewife and the purchasing public in general seem to prefer fresh eggs,” the patent reads, “and hence the use of dried or powdered eggs is somewhat of a handicap from a psychological standpoint.”

Even the book sometimes credited as the source of the Dichter anecdote, Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, by Laura Shapiro, says that “if adding eggs persuaded some women to overcome their aversion to cake mixes, it was at least partly because fresh eggs made for better cakes”.

Nonetheless it is the story of Dichter making a profound psychological insight into consumer behaviour that has passed into legend.

Almost seven decades later, the idea of making things more laborious to get consumers to value them more is an established marketing tactic.

We now know it as the “IKEA effect”.

Testing the IKEA effect

The IKEA effect – “that labour alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one’s labour” – was named in a 2011 paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely. They chose the name because products from the Swedish manufacturer typically require some assembly.

Read more: The Ikea effect: how Ingvar Kamprad’s company changed the way we shop

Their paper also begins with the cake-mix story. It concedes there might have been other reasons General Mills increased its sales – an alternate view is that the icing on the cake was, in fact, the icing on the cake – but the authors were still enthused by the idea that “infusing the task with labour” was a crucial ingredient.

To empirically confirm this phenomenon, and its limits, they conducted experiments that involved assembling IKEA boxes, folding origami and building with Lego. The results showed participants valued items they assembled themselves more than items assembled by someone else.

The following graph shows the results from one of the experiments, in which participants were asked asked to fold origami cranes or frogs and then bid to buy the creations. The bidding phase also included origami made by expert folders. They tended to see their own creations as much more valuable than those made by other participants, and almost equal in value to the expert origami.

Results show participants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for origami frogs and cranes made by themselves or others. Participants saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts’ creations, Harvard Business School, CC BY

The experiments also showed the effect had limits.

When participants spent too much time building or deconstructing their creations, or failed to complete the task, their willingness to pay for the item declined.

The following graph shows the results of the experiment in which some participants built an IKEA box, while others were allowed to complete only half the steps required to build the box.

Results shows participants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for assembled IKEA boxes. Those who built their boxes bid more for their creations than did incomplete builders. Harvard Business School, CC BY

Those who got to complete their box valued it much more, shown by their willingness to pay to keep it. “Most importantly,” the paper notes, “this increase in valuation was not limited to only participants who considered themselves DIYers.”

Related, but different, concepts

The IKEA effect is connected to, but not quite the same as, a number of other important economic behaviours.

First, there is the endowment effect, in which simply owning a product increases its perceived value. Though this effect has long been recognised, it was formally named by economist Richard Thaler in a 1980 paper. Since then many studies have demonstrated that individuals usually want more money to give up something they own than they are willing to pay to acquire a similar item from someone else.

Second is the psychological idea of effort justification. This goes back to studies in the 1950s. The idea is that an individual who makes a sacrifice to achieve a goal rationalises the effort by attributing greater value to the achievement. In one celebrated study, for example, women made to undergo an embarrassing initiative to join a social group subsequently rated membership of that group higher than those who did not.

Third is personal preference, which is expressed in consumers being attached to particular brands. Being involved in the creative process might be regarded as an extension of this attachment to individual tastes, something companies seek to leverage through customisation options.

Read more: The paradox of choice. Why made-to-order might not solve the fashion industry’s problems

In their experiments Norton, Mochon and Ariely were very careful to control for these effects. For example, none of the items they had participants assemble entailed customisation.

Their findings have been supported by subsequent studies that disentangle ownership and personal preference from valuing the fruits of one’s labour.

Having customers do most of the work, feel great about it, and at the same time perceive they have attained “greater value for money’” is the Holy Grail for marketers.

Even if the Dichter cake-mix story is more legend than history, food and grocery brands are using the IKEA effect to attract new “value-seeking” customers.

Consider the “ready-to-create” meal kit – prepackaged raw ingredients you prepare and cook yourself. These meals seek to balance the desire for convenience with concerns about about healthy eating and the pleasure of cooking.

A typical meal kit. Blue Apron

Brands getting in on the action include YouFoodz (known for its convenient “ready-made” meals) launching “ready-to-create” options, and Pataks (known for its “pre-made” curries in a jar) offering “curry kits”.

Market research company Nielsen estimates more than one million Australian households will buy meal kits by the end of 2019.

While many retailers focus their efforts on speedy deliveries and ready-made, convenient solutions, the IKEA effect suggests the secret to success may be to make things a little more challenging.

– ref. The IKEA effect: how we value the fruits of our labour over instant gratification – http://theconversation.com/the-ikea-effect-how-we-value-the-fruits-of-our-labour-over-instant-gratification-113647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

The major focus on climate change in Environment Aotearoa 2019, a stocktake on New Zealand’s environment released today, is a welcome change.

The report describes an environment that faces serious pressures, including species at risk of extinction, polluted rivers and streams, the loss of productive land as cities expand, and climate change.

On climate change, the report is more detailed and hard-hitting than past reports have been.

Read more: New Zealand’s urban freshwater is improving, but a major report reveals huge gaps in our knowledge

New Zealand’s global share of emissions

New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are high internationally. In 2015, New Zealanders produced 17.5 tonnes of greenhouse gases (measured as carbon dioxide equivalent) per person, 33% higher than the average of 13.2 tonnes from industrialised countries.

In the latest figures from 2017, gross emissions rose 2.2% from 2016 and remain 23% above 1990 levels. The immediate causes are clearly stated: high emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture and sharply rising emissions of carbon dioxide from transport.

The report is silent on the root causes of rising emissions, including ineffective government action and community attitudes that rank climate change as a relatively low priority. Instead it states:

Our high per-person emissions are reversible if we adopt policies, technologies, or other means that reduce our production of greenhouse gases.

But this obscures the story of 30 years of policy work on climate change and 11 years trying to make New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme work.

Read more: Why NZ’s emissions trading scheme should have an auction reserve price

An earlier report on climate change did not foresee the flood of vehicles entering the country. This has now given New Zealand the highest rate of vehicle ownership in the OECD. New Zealand has 4.36 million vehicles, up half a million since 2015, but lacks the regulations found in many other countries, such as CO₂-linked registration fees and fuel efficiency standards. With a flood of cheap, high-emission used imports, it is no surprise that New Zealand’s transport emissions continue to rise.

Known unknowns

A key function of this latest report is to identify knowledge gaps. An important one for New Zealand is the relative strengths of different carbon sources and sinks, for example by different types of vegetation, soils and agricultural practices.

As emphasised recently by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, New Zealand is still focusing too much on plantation forestry as a short-term fix for our emissions problem. It is a risk because it creates a carbon liability for the future, as well as exposure to diseases and fires. Its true environmental impact is not well understood.

Read more: The scandal of calling plantations ‘forest restoration’ is putting climate targets at risk

The section on current climate impacts could not be more clear.

Climate change is already affecting Aotearoa New Zealand. Changes include alteration to temperature, precipitation patterns, sea-level rise, ocean acidity, wind, and sunshine.

New Zealand’s temperature has increased by 1ºC since 1909. While this is close to the global average, it is less than the global land average which has increased by 1.4ºC. New Zealand is protected to some degree by the Southern Ocean.

Warm days have increased and frosts decreased. Soils have dried, glaciers have melted, sea levels have been rising, the oceans have warmed and acidified, and sunshine hours have increased. No surprises so far. Climate science predicts an increase in extreme rainfall events, but this has not yet been detected statistically. At one-third of the measured sites, extreme wind has decreased, whereas an overall increase in wind is expected.

New Zealand not immune to climate change

If anything, the section on current impacts is too conservative. The data stops in 2016 before the epic years of 2017 and 2018, which saw many extreme weather events of all types. These were linked in part to El Niño, which raises global temperatures, and in part to an extreme Southern Annular Mode, an indicator whose strengthening is itself linked to climate change.

Read more: Farmed fish dying, grape harvest weeks early – just some of the effects of last summer’s heatwave in NZ

Few New Zealanders will forget the sequence of ex-tropical cyclones, 1-in-100-year floods, the sight of the Southern Alps without snow or the Port Hills on fire.

The report’s final section covers future impacts in the most forceful official statement seen yet. It lays out a blizzard of impacts in all areas of the environment, country, economy and infrastructure, including coastal flooding, erosion, tsunami risk, liquefaction risk and saltwater intrusion.

All aspects of life in New Zealand will be impacted.

The way forward

The uncertainties are clear. We don’t have a clear idea of the rate of future emissions, or the impacts under different emission scenarios. Some of the most important impacts, such as sea-level rise, are also the most uncertain. The report notes that information on cumulative and cascading impacts is limited. Climate change has the capacity to undermine environmental efforts elsewhere.

Polls show a rising awareness of climate change and a hunger for stronger action. The Zero Carbon bill is expected to go to select committee before June, but even when passed, emissions will not start falling until the mid-2020s, with the heavy lifting left to the 2040s and future emission reductions technologies.

A recent report on New Zealand’s transition to a low-emission economy outlines many more immediate actions. Let’s hope that this report, along with the public pressure from the School Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion movements, give the government the courage to act decisively.

– ref. Climate change is hitting hard across New Zealand, official report finds – http://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-hitting-hard-across-new-zealand-official-report-finds-115661

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, University of Melbourne

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (known as “Jokowi”) looks poised to win another five years in office by a convincing margin.

Official results from Wednesday’s election won’t be released by Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPU) until 22 May, but the usually reliable “quick count” results produced by six private polling groups suggest Jokowi may have won by as much as 10% of the vote (54% to 45%). This is hardly a surprise, as polling in the months leading up the vote never had his lead lower than double digits.

This is the second election defeat for former general Prabowo Subianto, who also ran against Jokowi in the last presidential race in 2014. It is also likely the end of Prabowo’s aspirations to follow his former father-in-law, Soeharto, the authoritarian ruler of Indonesia for three decades, to the Presidential Palace. But that doesn’t mean Prabowo will go quietly.

Read more: Indonesia’s presidential election: Is Jokowi ‘religious enough’ for conservative voters?

For weeks, he has claimed the elections were rigged, alleging widespread fraud. He has called on his supporters to take action if he loses, saying they should be prepared to “come out onto the streets” for a month if necessary.

It is certainly true that there have been problems with this election, but that was always going to be the case.

When the Constitutional Court ruled that Indonesia’s presidential election had to be held simultaneously with local, provincial and national legislative elections this year, it imposed a huge burden on the hardworking KPU. On Wednesday, 193 million eligible voters were asked to choose from over 300,000 candidates from 16 parties for 20,528 seats across 34 provinces and more than 17,000 islands.

Under these circumstances, it would have been surprising if there were no irregularities. Among the allegations being levied by Prabowo’s campaign have been manipulation of the electoral rolls, millions of “ghost voters”, ballot box stuffing and widespread attempts to buy votes with cash and gift handouts.

As in previous elections, many of these allegations will end up in the Constitutional Court. This is where Prabowo is expected to file a challenge to reverse the result of the presidential ballot, just as he did, without success, in 2014. The nine judges on the court will probably be overwhelmed by hundreds of cases, and the chief justice has warned they will not be decided until early August at best, with legislative disputes given priority over the presidential ballot.

But it is unlikely the court will end up sending Prabowo to the palace. The margin of victory looks too big to be overcome by challenging voting irregularities.

So why bother sending his supporters into the streets? The answer probably has lot to do with the real struggle for power that begins today.

As with past elections, this year’s vote was plagued by allegations of irregularities. Dedi Sinuhaji/EPA

Jockeying for positions in the new administration

Indonesia has a political system that loosely resembles America’s, in that the president appoints his cabinet from outside the legislature. But in Indonesia, the ministries have traditionally been treated as cash cows to be milked.

Jokowi, who has proved utterly pragmatic as a politician, will have no choice but to spend the next few months negotiating the allocation of ministries with the powerful oligarchs who wield great power and influence in Indonesia’s corrupt political system. These include hugely wealthy businessmen, some of whom “own” their own political parties, or control major media groups – or both. They will want to recoup their investments in the election campaigning, plus profits.

These negotiations will be complicated by the fact that, once again, no party looks likely to win an outright majority in the legislature. A governing coalition will somehow have to be pieced together, with political threats neutralised by offers of positions of power in the legislature or administration. A lot of minor parties have failed to meet the new higher threshold for seats in the legislature, so how all this will play out is unpredictable.

Read more: Facing bumps, but on the right track: Indonesia’s democratic progress

But Jokowi will likely end up brokering a broad legislative alliance. Just as in his last administration, and former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration before that, the Cabinet will probably be largely filled by proxies of oligarchs and powerful politicians. There will likely only be a few lonely technocrats to bear the burden of policy making.

Prabowo and his party, Gerindra, know the haggling has already begun, but they are in a difficult position. According to the “quick count” results, Prabowo looks certain to lose again, and although Gerindra is poised to come in second in the national legislature, it scored just under 13%, well behind Jokowi’s party, the PDI-P, with 20%.

Prabowo Subianto, the son-in-law of a former dictator, ran a nationalist campaign backed by Islamist groups. Bagus Indahono

Prabowo and Gerindra’s campaigns have also drained vast sums from the personal fortunes of Prabowo’s family and his vice-presidential candidate, Sandiaga Uno. Gerindra’s second place finish in the legislature is about the only political capital Prabowo has left – unless, of course, his die-hard supporters are marching in the streets protesting Jokowi’s victory.

This will be easy for Prabowo to arrange among his core supporters of conservative Islamists. The Islamists have strongly backed him largely because he is the only alternative to Jokowi, whom they despise as a major obstacle to their aspirations to push Indonesia in a more conservative Islamic direction. They will be all too eager to protest, giving Prabowo the leverage he wants to try to win places in the new administration for his party, inner circle and proxies.

Whether Prabowo succeeds in winning concessions from Jokowi will be another question, of course. If he does, he will eventually distance himself from the street protesters.

Australia’s limited clout in Indonesia

What does all this mean for Australia-Indonesia relations? In the final analysis, not much.

Jokowi is an inward-looking politician with limited interest in international relations. He has made it clear that it doesn’t see the relationship with Australia as “special” in the way Yudhoyono did; that is not likely to change now.

And Australia has limited clout in Indonesia. Despite our proximity, we have slashed our aid to Indonesia, are a low-ranked trading partner, and invest more in New Zealand, Luxembourg and smaller Southeast Asian nations than we do in Indonesia. We are not an important player in Indonesia’s political and economic decision-making.

Of course, the recently signed Indonesia-Australia free-trade agreement (IA-CEPA) is intended to change that by giving both countries greater access to each other’s markets. But don’t hold your breath. The agreement has yet to be ratified, and for all its rhetoric of deregulation, Indonesia remains heavily protectionist.

Read more: It’s more than a free trade agreement. But what exactly have Australia and Indonesia signed?

Despite the fact that neither came close to winning a majority in the legislative elections, Jokowi and Prabowo’s parties will be important powers in the new legislature, and both are nationalist and often suspicious of foreign influence. It is by no means certain the free-trade agreement will be quickly ratified. It may well face major amendments or simply be put on hold, like a number of other international agreements inked by past administrations that still await ratification.

Like much else in Indonesia today, the outcome depends heavily on the intra-elite back-room horse-trading and deal-making that will be happening quietly behind closed doors for weeks to come, while court challenges and noisy protesters in the streets get all the attention.

– ref. Joko Widodo looks set to win the Indonesia election. Now, the real power struggle begins – http://theconversation.com/joko-widodo-looks-set-to-win-the-indonesia-election-now-the-real-power-struggle-begins-115626

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Bateman, Associate professor, Curtin University

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

I would like to know how long garden snails would live if they were not eaten by birds (or other predators)? – Alice, age 6, Canberra.

That’s a really good question! There have been reports of at least one snail living as many as 14 years in captivity. His name was George and he lived in Hawaii, in the United States.

Very few people have ever had the patience to study how long garden snails live in the wild. However, it might be longer than we might at first think – studies showed that snails in gardens in California needed to be between two and four years old before they were old enough to have babies. Many of these Californian garden snails, which were studied for almost five years, were therefore over six years old at least – older than you, Alice! It seems that rats and small mammals were the main predators of these snails.

I wonder how old this little guy is? Flickr/TJ Gehling, CC BY

Read more: Curious Kids: why do we have fingernails and toenails?

Counting snail shell rings

There is a snail very like the garden snail that is called the Roman or Apple snail – it is the one that some people like to eat.

A study of a population of these snails in England was able to work out how old these snails are. That’s because, as they get older, you can count growth rings at the edge of their shell.

Some of the snails were at least six years old and probably more like eight or nine. The older snails had very thick shells and were often out and about. The scientists thought this might be because as the snails got older and bigger, fewer birds and other predators could crack their thick shells, and so they felt safe enough not hide away all the time.

So, it seems that if you are a snail that can survive long enough to get big then you might stand a good chance of getting even older – maybe 15 years old. It depends on what type of snail you are.

Can you count the growth rings on this snail’s shell? Flickr/Björn S…, CC BY

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

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

– ref. Curious Kids: How long would garden snails live if they were not eaten by another animal? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-long-would-garden-snails-live-if-they-were-not-eaten-by-another-animal-114746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling

Today we’re bringing you a special discussion about the federal election that took place at the launch of a book of Conversation essays, Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country.

Recorded at Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane on April 17, the discussion featured Indigenous academic lawyer Eddie Synot from Griffith University and Griffith’s Dean of Engagement, Professor Anne Tiernan.

Eddie Synot is currently completing his PhD, taking a hard look at the liberal rights discourse of Indigenous recognition, and has also taught Indigenous Studies.

And political scientist Anne Tiernan has worked in and advised Australian governments at all levels, so she knows politics from the inside out.

Together with Liz Minchin, the Executive Editor of The Conversation Australia & New Zealand, the panel covered topics including the Queensland seats to watch on election night, how to give Indigenous Australians a true voice in politics, and how to improve trust in the political system.

Today’s episode was recorded by Michael Adams from Griffith University.

Read more: Our Advancing Australia series is about starting a conversation about what really matters

New to podcasts?

Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Trust Me, I’m An Expert on Pocket Casts).

You can also hear us on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Trust Me, I’m An Expert.

Additional audio

Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks

Recording and editing by Michael Adams from Griffith University

Additional reading

Buy Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country

Griffith University’s special election coverage, including interactive maps of Queensland’s 30 federal electorates

The Uluru statement showed how to give First Nations people a real voice – now it’s time for action by Griffith University’s Eddie Synot

The 14 Indigenous words for money on our new 50 cent coin by the University of Queensland’s Felicity Meakins

Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi by the University of Waikato’s Sandra Morrison and Ingrid L M Huygens

The end of uncertainty? How the 2019 federal election might bring stability at last to Australian politics by University of Canberra’s Michelle Grattan

Image

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– ref. The myth of ‘the Queensland voter’, Australia’s trust deficit, and the path to Indigenous recognition – http://theconversation.com/the-myth-of-the-queensland-voter-australias-trust-deficit-and-the-path-to-indigenous-recognition-115569

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Troy Baisden, Professor and Chair in Lake and Freshwater Sciences, University of Waikato

Environment Aotearoa 2019, a major report released today, provides the first snapshot since 2015 of New Zealand’s environment across five “domains” – air, climate, freshwater, land and ocean.

This is the first synthesis report produced under environmental reporting legislation that came into effect in 2016. Here, I’ll focus on freshwater and how this report updates an earlier assessment of freshwater quality in 2017.

Sadly, the standout message is the scale and importance of the gaps in the data on environmental change. Trends in a range of water quality attributes have been re-assessed, but the causes remain poorly understood. This is mostly because of a lack of a “national-scale database or map of farm management practices”.

Gaps in understanding

The gap widens when assessing impacts of changing water quality on “things we value”, including te ao Māori (Māori world), ecological health and human health. Despite having over 500 sites evaluated for contamination trends, only 41 sites have data for a cultural health index assessing Māori interactions with water.

This is concerning because the dual goals for this synthesis report were to assess pressures on the environment as well as the resulting impacts.

In many cases, the data can’t help us detect recent change. Data and maps for land cover and erosion date to 2012. In other cases, the data presented is very coarse, but tells a compelling story that pollution has been significant.

When compared to native land cover, agriculture yields 2.2 to 9.7 times higher concentrations of contaminants. Urban areas have concentrations 3.3 to 30 times higher.

Compared to native land cover, agriculture contributes 2.2 to 9.7 times higher concentrations of contaminants. Troy Baisden, CC BY-ND

What’s changing

Changes for animal numbers (separated into dairy cattle, beef cattle, and sheep) show meaningful trends that differ on the North and South islands. Modelled estimates show that the dairy sector contributed 39% of nitrate leaching in 1990, which increased to 65% in 2017.

But water quality data is presented in a format where the main story is nearly equal numbers of increasing and declining trends in water quality. The use of modelled water quality data obscures useful detail. The report’s model results suggest streams and rivers don’t presently exceed toxic nitrate concentrations. But the dataset unpinning the analysis has sites that clearly exceed this limit.

CC BY-ND

For instance, consider Boundary Drain at Trigpole Rd, a small 15km long catchment crossing State Highway 1 on the Canterbury Plains midway between Ashburton and Geraldine. This catchment has a five-year median well above a threshold of 6.9 g/m³ and has had no results in the last two years of data (2016-17) under the 10 g/m³ commonly used worldwide as a drinking water toxicity threshold. Making a chart from the data for this site presents quite a different view from the general story in Environment Aotearoa 2019.

Only by looking at sites that exceed limits, or will do so soon, can we better understand how to use environmental reporting to help us live sustainably. This will be even more important as we apply more stringent limits for cultural and ecological health across multiple contaminants, as well as dealing with further pressures from expanded irrigation and climate change.

Read more: Six ways to improve water quality in New Zealand’s lakes and rivers

Old news and suprises

One danger of repeating rather than updating information in environmental reports is that it reinforces excuses for not taking action. The report correctly points out that slow passage of contaminants through groundwater can delay the impacts of land use by years or decades. It quotes average lags calculated for water entering Lake Rotorua of 50 years or more. These estimates make recovery seem impossible, but recent updates suggest otherwise by using models that more accurately represent how water moves. This shows improvements in nitrate concentration trends in streams with very old water and suggests that restoration work has halted algal blooms in the lake.

Overall, the report gives a sense that change has occurred over decades, and faster change is possible only if we can overcome knowledge gaps to sharpen our focus. Along these lines, the report provides a surprise with a strong indication of improvements in urban freshwater trends from 2008 to 2017, with 75% of sites showing better measures for clarity and nutrient loads. Many voices in the farming sector have pointed at the poor state of urban water quality as a reason for inaction on rural streams and rivers. Urban water remains polluted, compared to native land cover, but there are now indications improvements are possible.

The report could do more to clarify how gaps can be filled, particularly at the interfaces between domains such as how the land influences freshwater. It is silent on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recent report on a farm nutrient monitoring system called Overseer, and future needs for quantifying land-to-water transfers, including improved statistical methods to track how contaminants move through the environment. Such work can also clarify transfers between other domains, including how nutrient and contaminant loads move via surface and groundwater to estuaries, coasts and harbours.

The report is honest about the challenge these gaps pose. But the ministries responsible for producing this report use data funded and created by other agencies, such as regional council monitoring. Clearer messages from the Ministry for the Environment can help coordinate these agencies to provide a clearer picture in three years’ time, when the next synthesis report is due.

– ref. New Zealand’s urban freshwater is improving, but a major report reveals huge gaps in our knowledge – http://theconversation.com/new-zealands-urban-freshwater-is-improving-but-a-major-report-reveals-huge-gaps-in-our-knowledge-115695

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Majdi Faleh, Teaching Assistant, University of Melbourne

The public housing estates built in cities around the world since the first public housing was built in the 19th-century London have long been home to the very vulnerable, including refugees and immigrants. At the level of their lived experience – home and neighbourhood – the architectural and spatial qualities of public spaces and housing affect refugees’ and migrants’ ability to integrate into their new home. We can see this in the public housing estates of two cities on opposite sides of the world, Paris and London.

In their new communities, refugees are also trying to adapt to new cultural norms, language, access to employment and education and even to stigma and blame for their need of public housing.

Read more: Class divide defies social mixing and keeps public housing stigma alive

Refugees are among those hardest hit by social and economic challenges that are being deepened by structural economic changes. This includes the challenge of finding affordable housing. By 2025 an estimated one-third of the world’s city dwellers will struggle to secure decent, affordable housing.

The HLM of Paris

Public housing apartment blocks, or rent-controlled housing (HLM), in Paris. sylv1rob1/Shutterstock

The French government has been discussing issues related to public housing or habitation à loyer modéré (or HLM, which means “rent-controlled housing”). In 2018, the government and its Ministry of Territorial Cohesion suggested a plan to generate funds to build and renovate this housing.

An HLM tower block in Saint-Denis. WorldPictures/Shutterstock

Over 20% of immigrants live in the HLM of Paris and the Seine Saint-Denis department. Arab and Sub-Saharan African immigrants experience high levels of ethnic segregation, reaching 30% by the late 1990s. African immigrants and refugees tend to live in clusters in segregated and more disadvantaged neighbourhoods away from the city.

The public still has a negative view of the public housing estates, located in many banlieues, as declining and segregated “immigrant-dominated slums”.

Saint-Denis is a working-class neighbourhood in the northern suburbs of Paris. Despite the positive impact of its shops, bazaars, diverse communities and residents’ recent initiatives to boost tourism, it is still struggling with social inequality as one of the most impoverished areas in Paris.

Violence and drug trafficking are two key issues that impact people and their HLM housing. In 2016, an increase in violent crime led the HLM Office, which manages 18,000 social housing estates in Seine-Saint-Denis, to hold the government responsible due to a sharp increase in insecurity.

Public housing in Melbourne

A street view of public housing in Carlton, Victoria. Majdi Faleh, Author provided

Many similar issues, and some different ones, affect public housing provision and tenancy in Melbourne. It’s where many refugee arrivals are first housed in Australia. As in Paris, Melbourne’s public housing is associated (fairly or unfairly) with crime, social isolation and urban blight.

A more pressing problem in Melbourne, however, is the gap between housing supply and demand. Public housing stock across Australia is declining and ageing while waiting lists grow.

The list is growing by 500 people a month in Victoria. In this state alone, nearly 25,000 children are waiting for social housing.

Read more: Governments have no excuse for keeping public in the dark on public housing deals

Amid increasing concerns about the affordability and availability of public housing, the sociology, design/architecture and aesthetics of existing estates become even more vital in terms of their effects on social cohesion and well-being. These impacts are critical for those whose first home in Melbourne is a public housing estate.

The disrepair and poor quality of buildings and grounds of many of Melbourne’s older, inner-city estates are obvious. Building materials (like concrete) are degraded. The design of common areas, like foyers and hallways, does not promote social interaction.

The grounds also fall short of what’s needed, despite the opportunities they offer for varied outdoor activity and social encounters. Public housing estates are often gated, either physically or psychologically, from the surrounding community. This results in enclaves of social disadvantage, often within otherwise wealthy suburbs.

Many have questioned whether public housing renewal is improving these conditions. The public-private mix in some new estates has resulted in gated gardens being provided for the exclusive use of the private residents of apartment buildings and not the public tenants.

Read more: Social mix in housing? One size doesn’t fit all, as new projects show

A public housing estate in North Richmond, Melbourne.

The monumental scale of Melbourne’s largest estates is intimidating for visitors. Finding one’s way to a particular address can be challenging. All buildings take the same form and, lacking individual identity, are recognisable by numbers only.

The scale of the buildings and the dull colours and textures of their facades coupled with the repetitive, gridded network of windows are reminiscent of a Soviet era that never existed in Melbourne. One can see similar layouts, colours and materials on the facades of the HLM of Saint Denis. This speaks to the ubiquity of public housing design.

The intimidating scale and uniformity of public housing can be a problem in Melbourne – this estate is in Carlton – or Paris. Sandra Carrasco, Author provided

How can public housing be made better?

Public housing estates often have a pronounced cultural and social mix, with first-generation migrants and refugees from across the globe living as neighbours. This can have benefits including cultural exchange and mutual understanding but can also trigger social withdrawal and isolation. The risks are particularly high for people from new cultural groups arriving in neighbourhoods with settled (and culturally different) populations.

Cultural differences certainly affect relationships between individuals, but also apply to the ways people use the private and public spaces of their new homes. What an Australian-born, wealthy white person would expect and need of “open space” is potentially quite different to what a black, Sudanese-born survivor of conflict might expect or need.

Inside a Carlton public housing estate. Majdi Faleh, Author provided

Arguably, what is being offered as places for people to connect with their new community in and around public housing meets few people’s needs or expectations. The interior spaces, such as long interior corridors with blank walls, do not provide for comfort, communication and interaction between tenants. The exterior spaces delineate rather than join up the communities of public and private housing.

These dimensions of Melbourne’s public housing may set up a spatial tension that mirrors the occupants’ lives. Yet they could also offer an opportunity to be a canvas for a new interpretation of architecture and urban development, as German sociologist Martina Low notes in her book, The Sociology of Space: Materiality, Social Structures, and Action.

Low’s principle focuses on the emergence of space as a result of interplay between social structure, the material world of objects and bodies, and the symbolism of the social world. This new interpretation needs to reflect the lives and experiences of refugee migrants making a new home as well as more established members of the community.

– ref. Paris? Melbourne? Public housing doesn’t just look the same, it’s part of the challenges refugees face – http://theconversation.com/paris-melbourne-public-housing-doesnt-just-look-the-same-its-part-of-the-challenges-refugees-face-110284

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University

It is telling that the greatest early modern philosophical defender of tolerance was a refugee.

Pierre Bayle, a Protestant, fled his native France in 1681. He would lose several family members in the persecution of the Huguenots after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Largely forgotten, Bayle’s writings were among the most widely read of the 18th century.

In the wake of the tragic attack in Christchurch, and the wider rise of anti-liberal forces globally, we face urgent questions surrounding the reasons for and limits of tolerance.

Read more: Where to start reading philosophy?

Bayle’s writings defending this value are newly timely today.

What did Bayle say about tolerance?

Bayle’s first statement on tolerance, his 1682 Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, is arguably his most radical.

Bayle claimed a society would need to protect religious beliefs if those beliefs decisively shaped and improved people’s conduct.

But history shows this is not the case.

People of all orthodoxies and faiths don’t behave as their faith would dictate, and exhibit the same human traits:

ambition, avarice, envy, the desire to avenge oneself, shamelessness, and all the crimes that can satisfy our passions are seen everywhere.

Bayle would point to crusaders, such as those presently being heroised by many on the far and alt-right. He believed them to be evidence, of how even Christianity, a religion of divine love, has been invoked to sanctify “the most frightful disorders ever heard of”.

Bayle concludes all people should be tolerated based on what they do, not what they say. This means even a society of atheists, with good laws, could be as virtuous as a society of religious believers.

Why were his ideas controversial?

Pierre Bayle by Louis Ferdinand Elle. wikimedia

Bayle’s Various Thoughts caused predictable outrage. For this extraordinary text contains the first distinctly secular justification of multicultural tolerance.

It does so by critically distinguishing the basic dignity of a person and their religious, cultural identity. He says all peoples’ beliefs and rituals should be tolerated, out of respect for their fundamental humanity.

This distinction, which we often take for granted today, was far from universally accepted.

And in the current political climate, it can seem we are increasingly accepting the idea that different groups can only ever criticise their opponents, never their own side.

By contrast, Bayle, a Christian, draws on specifically Christian arguments for toleration, at the same time as he criticises the actions and beliefs of other Christians.

Read more: After Charlottesville, how we define tolerance becomes a key question

As a Protestant, for instance, Bayle claims that is as deeply wrong as it will be ultimately fruitless to try to force people to renounce their freely-formed beliefs, even if they are heretical. This would mean compelling them to go against their God-given consciences, a sin against both God and man.

The limits of tolerance

Yet Bayle grasps the limits of justifying tolerance for different faiths by recourse to specifically Christian, Protestant claims. By appealing to the inviolability of people’s consciences, he brooks a graver problem.

This problem has been recently, horrifically exemplified by the tragic events in Christchurch.

Fanatics like the alleged Christchurch terrorist (whom The Conversation has chosen not to name) are honestly convinced of the righteousness of their actions, even when these actions involve indiscriminate slaughter of anyone belonging to another group.

The argument respecting freedom of conscience by itself suggests we should tolerate such “conscientious persecutors”. An argument that was intended to protect the vulnerable in this way ends by condoning the most odious extremists.

To combat this outcome, and underscore the limits of tolerance, Bayle finally introduces a further argument which would, via Voltaire, become central to the enlightenment period.

Read more: Tolerance is more than putting up with things – it’s a moral virtue

Bayle’s argument both starts from and sanctifies a liberal, almost “postmodern” acceptance of irreconcilable cultural differences between groups.

The sheer diversity of religious creeds in the world suggests no one group can know the deepest truths about the human condition with enough certainty to license suppressing, exiling or killing others who do not share their customs and opinions. So Bayle writes:

difference in Opinions seems to be Man’s inseparable Infelicity, as long as his Understanding is so limited, and his Heart so disordered; we should try to reduce this Evil within the narrowest limits: and certainly the way to do this is by mutually tolerating each other.

A difficult strength, not a weakness

From Bayle forwards, tolerance was never a weak “anything goes” affair.

Those who believe they are entitled to be violently intolerant, however deeply convinced they are of their zealotry, should not be tolerated.

Read more: Indulge me this: how not to read Daniel Dennett’s comments on philosophy and self-indulgence

For Bayle, such people claim their creed is the only absolute truth, despite the limitations of human understanding and the many different creeds in the world. They believe they hold a moral superiority which is only warranted by egoism and force.

Despite its myriad critics, tolerance demands a difficult strength.

If Bayle is right, respect for difference above all rests upon recognising our own limitations; limitations we share as finite human beings with others whom it is always simpler to dismiss, exoticise, or demonise as wholly alien.

This is neither flattering, nor easy.

– ref. How old ideas about tolerance can help us live more peacefully today – http://theconversation.com/how-old-ideas-about-tolerance-can-help-us-live-more-peacefully-today-114082

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugo Dutel, Research associate, University of Bristol

There’s a lot that’s fascinating about the coelacanth Latimeria. Now under threat, this deep-sea fish is closely related to humans and other back-boned, land dwelling animals (tetrapods).

The coelacanth Latimeria is a relatively large fish (reaching about 2 metres long) but has a very tiny brain lying within a hinged braincase – a very primitive feature found in many fossil fishes.

How the coelacanth skull grows and why the brain remains so small has puzzled scientists for years. Our new study published today in Nature illuminates for the first time the development of the brain and skull of this curious animal.

It’s another piece of evidence that might help us see where humans once came from.

Read more: It’s less than 2cm long, but this 400 million year old fossil fish changes our view of vertebrate evolution

Discovery of a living coelacanth

The discovery of a living Latimeria coelacanth rocked the world in 1939, as scientists thought they had died out with the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.

The first Latimeria ever found was accidentally caught in a trawl off the South African coast. Amazingly, its overall body shape was strikingly similar to some of its fossilised relatives that had been known by palaeontologists since the 19th century.

The fossil coelacanth Trachymetopon from the Jurassic of Germany. This specimen is housed in the collections of the Museum der Universität Tübingen. Hugo Dutel (no commercial use)

The scientific frenzy around Latimeria was really sparked by what the animal could reveal about the origin of humans and other four-limbed animals.

At the time of its discovery, Latimeria held a pivotal position in the family tree of vertebrates (animals with backbones). It was considered the direct descendant of lobe-finned fishes, the group of fish from which tetrapods evolved.

So the discovery of a living Latimeria coelacanth was expected to shed light into the biology of our very early ancestors.

Read more: Ancient fish evolved in shallow seas – the very places humans threaten today

Our fishy family tree

Nowadays, expectations have been tempered. The development of new methods for reconstructing the evolution of organisms, the discovery of new fossils, and, more recently, information extracted from DNA and other molecules have slightly changed this picture.

Among living vertebrates, coelacanths are no longer regarded as the closest relatives to tetrapods – they have been replaced by another old group of fishes, the lungfishes.

Simplified phylogeny of the bony fishes (osteichthyans). Coelacanths and lungfishes are the only living lobe-finned fishes and are closely related to tetrapods, the land-dwelling vertebrates. The intracranial joint is a primitive feature of sarcopterygians, the group that includes lobe-finned fishes and tetrapods. It is found in many fossil lobe-finned fishes from the Devonian, but has been independently lost in tetrapods and living lungfishes. The coelacanth is the only living vertebrate which possesses an intracranial joint. Hugo Dutel (no commercial reuse)

Yet, the Latimeria coelacanth possesses some unusual features that are still of interest for understanding the evolution of our fossil relatives.

The skull of Latimeria is completely split in half by a joint called the “intracranial joint”. This joint is a very primitive feature that is otherwise found only in many extinct lobe-finned fishes.

In contrast with other vertebrates, the brain of Latimeria is ridiculously small compared with the cavity that houses it (1% of the entire braincase volume).

The rear of the skull of Latimeria and extinct lobe-finned fishes also straddles a surprisingly huge structure called the notochord.

3D virtual reconstruction of the coelacanth skull in right lateral view. Left: Overall view of the skull. Right: the braincase isolated and virtually cut open along the midline to show the brain (yellow) and the notochord (green). The brain represents about 1% of the volume of the cavity which houses it. Hugo Dutel

The question of how this skull and brain develops, and what it means to vertebrate evolution, triggered our work published today.

Read more: What evolution and motorcycles have in common: let’s take a ride across Australia

Finding unborn Coelacanths

Latimeria is ovoviviparous, meaning that eggs develop in the female abdomen, and then she gives birth to live young.

But studying the development of this fish is not an easy thing. Latimeria cannot be bred in an aquarium, so embryos and fetuses cannot be easily obtained. Moreover, we cannot capture any coelacanths in the wild as they are protected.

Many adult coelacanths are held in natural history collections. However, earlier life stages are extremely scarce as they came from the rare captures of pregnant females. For a long time, scientists thus could not dissect these precious specimens to study their anatomy.

The growth series of Latimeria collected for our study. Hugo Dutel

So we used state-of-the-art X-ray scanning facilities at the European synchrotron and powerful MRI to visualise the internal anatomy of these precious museum specimens.

Thanks to these data, we generated digital 3D models of the skull at each stage of its growth. The detailed 3D models allowed us to describe how the form of the skull, the brain and the notochord changes from a very early fetus to an adult.

How the brain grows but stays tiny

We found that the relative size of the brain dramatically decreases during development. The brain grows, but not as much as the surrounding structures in the head.

This is is very unusual, and not seen in other vertebrates (and especially us primates, in which the brain expands dramatically during growth).

On the other hand, the notochord expands considerably to become much bigger than the brain in the adult. This is very unique, as the notochord usually degenerates in the early development of most vertebrates.

The brain (yellow) within the braincase (blue) at different developmental stages of Latimeria. Hugo Dutel

Why is the brain of Latimeria so small?

As is often the case, there is probably not a single explanation. It might be due to the way the notochord develops, and the position and function of the intracranial joint (which is probably plays a role in biting). It is also possible that the energy needed by a huge electrosensory organ in Latimeria‘s snout, the rostral organ, may come at the expense of having a bigger brain.

Together with a recent study on its lung (which has bony plates on it), these findings represent the best of our knowledge on the development of Latimeria. It remains one of our most mysterious cousins, as many aspects of its biology and ecology remain unknown.

For sure, Latimeria still holds many promising clues for our understanding of vertebrate evolution and our distant origins.

But this only survivor of a 400 million year old group and its marine ecosystem are in jeopardy and need to be protected more than ever.

– ref. We scanned one of our closest cousins, the coelacanth, to learn how its brain grows – http://theconversation.com/we-scanned-one-of-our-closest-cousins-the-coelacanth-to-learn-how-its-brain-grows-115147

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreea S. Calude, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Waikato

Ask the average Kiwi on the street about Māori words in New Zealand English, and most will tell you that more and more are being used in everyday language.

This increase in borrowing goes against observations in other language examples. Typically, most borrowing tends to happen from the dominant language to the minority or indigenous language. However, it is quite astounding to find a situation where the words of an endangered language (Māori) are productively adopted by a linguistic giant (English), and perhaps equally surprising to find the trend remains positively increasing more than two centuries after initial contact.

But here is the rub: while we dip into Māori vocabulary to bring new words into English as well as using existing words more frequently, this trend is not homogenous across speakers (and writers), nor across topics.

Read more: Kia ora: how Māori borrowings shape New Zealand English

Making loanwords stick

On the one hand, we have loanword innovators who borrow words more than others. Our research shows that Māori women in particular are contributing to this language innovation. But we also have topics that seem to be loanword attractors – usually topics related to Māori people or culture, such as Matariki (the star cluster Pleiades, whose appearance in the morning sky is celebrated as Māori new year), Māori Language Week, or kapa haka performances.

Read more: Matariki: reintroducing the tradition of Māori New Year celebrations

Teasing these parameters apart from the overall frequency of use was a crucial part of our work to test the validity of the hypothesised increase in loanwords. We focused on data that hold the topic constant, so we could see whether an increase could still be gleaned over time.

We combed through newspaper articles related to Māori Language Week over a period of 10 years and found the loanwords used are indeed more frequent today than they have been in the past.

But will these Māori words stick? Linguists who study lexical change have noted that in certain languages, it is possible to measure the degree to which an incoming foreign word settles into its new linguistic home. This is called integration or entrenchment. The idea is that the stronger the entrenchment of a loanword, the less likely it is for speakers of that language to be aware of the origin of the word.

Integration manifests itself in various linguistic ways, for example, by taking on grammatical or morphological clothing from the new language. An English word referring to an entity or object (a noun) may acquire a certain gender if it is entering French, because all French words have assigned genders (weekend became masculine that way; le weekend). A Māori noun may take a plural -s suffix because that is what English nouns do (book-books, pen-pens).

How to spot entrenched loanwords

When we checked our data for morphological integration of this type we found that only a handful of Māori loans take the plural suffix (Māori-Māoris, kiwi-kiwis, hui-huis). But this does not necessarily mean that other Māori words are not entrenched.

Previous work by linguists Carolyn Davies and Margaret Maclagan explains that the practice of using -s for pluralisation on Māori words was at some point deemed disrespectful to the Māori language (because it does not use English pluralisation) and therefore stopped.

Two other parameters can forecast entrenchment: ‘listedness’ of the loanwords in the minds of speakers (this is notoriously difficult to ascertain, but typically considers whether a loanword appears in a dictionary) and flagging (providing explanations or translations of the loanword).

Listedness is linked to entrenchment because it formally signals the status of a given word as belonging to the language in question. Flagging is similarly a predictor of entrenchment because a loanword that needs explaining or translating is deemed to be unfamiliar to speakers of the language. Thus, a loanword that is flagged is expected to be less well entrenched than one which is not.

Flagging, entrenchment, and perception

Our data showed some interesting results in relation to both of these parameters. On the one hand, we had plenty of listed words in the New Zealand English Dictionary being flagged in newspaper articles, including kai (food), iwi (tribe), kawa (customs), mahi (work), puku (belly), taonga (treasure). On the other hand, we had a number of words which were not listed in the dictionary that were not flagged: tikanga Māori (Māori custom), waka ama (outrigger canoe), wānanga (learning institution).

Some of the authors of the articles themselves wrote quite explicitly of Māori words which they deemed everyone in New Zealand would know, yet these very words would later turn up flagged elsewhere.

So what is going on here? It is our view that increased Māori word use does not necessarily reflect increased entrenchment levels, but rather that they are still functioning as a tool of marking identity. Because Māori words themselves are being used to signal cultural, social and political identities in a deliberate manner, linguistic markers of entrenchment are not relevant predictors here.

The words are not so much used for their contribution to meaning but more for their social connotations.

– ref. Māori loanwords in NZ English are less about meaning, more about identity – http://theconversation.com/maori-loanwords-in-nz-english-are-less-about-meaning-more-about-identity-111260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandy Truong, Research Fellow, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University

We learned this month that Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pledged A$10 million in the federal budget for couples counselling and mediation for families impacted by domestic violence.

But the proposed policy runs counter to expert advice and evidence, which indicates that encouraging women to stay in relationships with an abuser exposes them to higher risk of harm. The announcement was swiftly condemned by family and domestic violence (FDV) advocates.

Commentators have noted that an emphasis on mediation and the maintenance of relationships, even if they are abusive, is common within many religious and faith communities. Faith and religion are well recognised as having a powerful influence on attitudes, beliefs and social norms related to FDV, but empirical academic research on the subject remains scarce.

We recently conducted a study with leaders and community members from various faiths to better understand the capacity of faith communities to address and prevent FDV. Our initial findings indicate that while FDV is a common problem in faith communities, it remains poorly understood.

Women experiencing FDV can face barriers to seeking appropriate help. This is often due to attitudes and practices that deny or minimise experiences of FDV, and encourage women to stay in relationships with their abusers.

Read more: Domestic violence and Australian churches: why the current data have limitations

Family and domestic violence is a taboo topic

We conducted interviews and focus groups with Anglican, Evangelical and Christian (including Catholic), Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Jewish leaders and community members. We also spoke with key people who had experience working in FDV with faith leaders and faith communities.

In our interviews, participants often described FDV as being a taboo topic. It was also considered a private, family issue – we found it was rarely spoken about openly in faith and religious communities. Participants thought this contributed to a generally low awareness of FDV, and led to a limited understanding of the issue.

According to participants, faith communities’ understanding of FDV was generally limited to acts of physical violence. However, FDV can include other forms of abuse, such as emotional, social, financial and spiritual. Participants also said that conversations about FDV are sometimes met with denial and defensiveness among faith communities. This was true across different faiths.

Many participants emphasised that faith and religion does not condone violence. They suggested FDV resulted from a misinterpretation of religious beliefs, or was related to cultural norms. The idea that some religious beliefs and practices can promote victim-blaming attitudes and overemphasise forgiveness, acceptance and endurance was a dominant theme.

In particular, religious beliefs about hierarchical gender roles and male authority that consider men and women to be “equal but different” were seen by some participants as a strong influence on attitudes to FDV within faith communities.

Religious teachings about gender roles, where wives are expected to submit to their husbands, were also seen as contributing to denial and minimisation of FDV. These teachings also contributed to victim-blaming attitudes and failure to believe women disclosing FDV experiences.

Participants across many faiths saw a focus on keeping couples and marriages together as being of primary importance in their communities. But there was an awareness that this often prevented those experiencing FDV from seeking help due to the strong stigma and shame of divorce and relationship separation.

Read more: How domestic violence affects women’s mental health

How faith leaders respond to the problem

Participants thought the capacity of faith leaders’ and faith communities’ to address and prevent FDV was limited and highly variable. Some communities said their leaders were helpful, while others failed to act.

Some participants did report feeling that progress was being made – albeit slowly – as leaders and communities became increasingly aware of FDV. There are grassroots groups and informal leaders across faith communities doing important work in this area. Some community members expressed that their faith gave them support in difficult times – including when experiencing FDV.

Several faith leaders observed that some other leaders didn’t share the same level of skills, awareness and responsibility in responding to FDV. For example, some leaders failed to respond to FDV disclosures appropriately, such as with a referral to specialist services.

One leader suggested that others not only failed to access expert support, but used religious texts in ways that further perpetrated trauma and harm. Some faith leaders were viewed as falsely confident and lacking insight into their own limitations – a problem perpetuated by their positions of power within their community.

Read more: After a deadly month for domestic violence, the message doesn’t appear to be getting through

What can be done?

Participants in our study provided a number of recommendations for effectively reducing FDV. These include:

• more information about what constitutes FDV and the harm FDV can have on individuals and their families to increase awareness and understanding of the issue

• more resources to support and train faith leaders, community leaders, and grassroots faith groups in FDV work

• more evidence of the prevalence of FDV in faith communities should be gathered to motivate and engage those that deny or minimise the existence of FDV in their community

• marriage preparation, and counselling and religious sermons should include information about respectful and healthy relationships and FDV

• organisations in the FDV sector need to work together in partnership with faith leaders and communities to achieve change in FDV work. This involves collaborating in a respectful way using approaches that suit each distinct community.

Further investment in FDV is welcome, but it needs to be directed towards evidence-based best practice, and guided by experts on the ground who work directly with those experiencing FDV.

More broadly, to prevent and stop FDV and the harm it causes, we need greater reflection on the attitudes and beliefs that drive FDV across all sections of the community, including within faith communities.

– ref. New study finds family violence is often poorly understood in faith communities – http://theconversation.com/new-study-finds-family-violence-is-often-poorly-understood-in-faith-communities-115562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sheena G. Sullivan, Epidemiologist, WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza

Influenza illness – or the flu – is a caused by the influenza virus. It often comes on rapidly, with a high fever, chills, muscle aches, tiredness and a dry cough. These symptoms get worse over the first few days.

Most people will get better without medical care, but some people are at higher risk of dangerous complications. This includes pregnant women, children, those aged over 65, people with chronic diseases and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples.

News reports have claimed Australia is on track for a particularly bad flu season. But it’s too early to tell if that’s the case – and it’s impossible to predict. Here’s what we know so far.

Read more: When’s the best time to get your flu shot?

What was last year’s flu season like?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) classifies the severity of flu seasons based on how quickly the circulating viruses spread, the seriousness of the disease – which can be measured by the number of hospitalisations or deaths – and the impact of the illness, such as the strain on hospitals.

Based on these metrics, the 2018 influenza season was pretty mild. The season started late, comparatively few cases were seen in GP clinics and hospitals, it had a low impact on workplaces and hospitals, and it caused a moderate level of illness.

This contrasts with 2017, which saw an early start to the season, high activity in the eastern states, a great impact on GPs and hospitals, high levels of absenteeism, and at least 1,255 deaths.

The 2017 flu season was particularly bad. VILevi/Shutterstock

It’s too early to assess the 2019 season – this is usually done after the flu season ends. But GPs are seeing more flu-like illness for this time of year than in previous ones.

Hospital surveillance doesn’t usually start until the end of April, so it’s difficult to assess activity and severity in hospitals, but emergency department presentations in both the Northern Territory and New South Wales have been high.

Why is it so hard to predict?

Part of the problem with predicting the influenza season is that we talk about one season, but four distinct influenza viruses cause clinically important illness in humans.

These viruses are categorised into two influenza types: A and B. Influenza type A is further subdivided into two subtypes: H1N1pdm09 and H3N2. Influenza type B is further subdivided into two lineages: B/Victoria and B/Yamagata.

All four of these viruses are covered by the four-strain influenza vaccine that is provided to Australians aged under 65 years.

For adults aged 65 years and older, an enhanced vaccine is available which contains the two influenza A subtypes and one influenza B. This year the B strain is a B/Yamagata lineage virus because in 2018, we saw many more B/Yamagata than B/Victoria viruses.

Read more: High-dose, immune-boosting or four-strain? A guide to flu vaccines for over-65s

Flu viruses are continually mutating in nature, and so any immunity acquired from a previous infection or vaccine may provide little protection against the viruses that will circulate in the next season.

There is also little cross-immunity. Infection with A(H1N1)pdm09, for example, won’t necessarily protect you against A(H3N2). It’s even possible, though unlikely, to be infected with two viruses at the same time or in close succession.

All four of these influenza viruses rarely circulate with equal frequency during the winter months. Typically, one of the influenza A viruses will dominate.

In Australia, it’s rare for influenza B to dominate. It’s even rarer for both lineages to circulate at the same time, but it happened in 2015.

The burden of each of these viruses also varies. Children may be more susceptible to influenza B infections than adults, while the elderly are relatively less susceptible to infection with A(H1N1)pdm09 but are more vulnerable to A(H3N2) infections.

Children are more susceptible to influenza B infections. Aslysun/Shutterstock

Although deaths have been associated with all four viruses, A(H3N2) generally causes more deaths than the others, particularly among the elderly.

Unfortunately, our disease surveillance systems rarely collect information on the specific influenza viruses that patients present with in GP clinics and hospitals. That’s because influenza testing can be expensive, and knowing the strain – or if it is indeed influenza – wouldn’t necessarily alter the course of treatment.

Instead, we learn which virus dominated and its likely impact. While this is useful for monitoring overall trends, it isn’t sufficient to study specific virus circulation patterns that might enable us to predict the seasons better.

What’s happening elsewhere in the world?

Influenza viruses mutate quite rapidly and circulate the globe quite efficiently thanks, especially, to air travel.

That said, circulation of influenza viruses in Europe does not necessarily help us predict which viruses will circulate in Australia as there is no consistent pattern of one hemisphere leading the other in terms of virus circulation.

Even within hemispheres, variation occurs. During the 2017-18 winter, influenza B viruses dominated in Europe, while A(H3N2) viruses dominated in North America.

Read more: When the numbers aren’t enough: how different data work together in research

In tropical and sub-tropical regions, where there is no “winter”, there may be more than one flu season per year, or a year-round season with low rates of one virus, usually influenza B.

The reasons why influenza viruses circulate at different times are unclear. They may be related to climatic factors, such as temperature and humidity and, in some locales, may be driven by tourism. But we don’t really understand the causal relationships between these factors.

The good news is that with increased computing power, greater availability of high-quality surveillance, more years of data and a greater understanding of influenza virology and immunology, our ability to forecast the season is improving.

– ref. We can’t predict how bad this year’s flu season will be but here’s what we know so far – http://theconversation.com/we-cant-predict-how-bad-this-years-flu-season-will-be-but-heres-what-we-know-so-far-115303

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenni Downes, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

It has been two years since China banned Australia’s recycling imports and, according to the waste industry, we haven’t seen much progress.

Holiday celebrations like Easter can exacerbate this messy situation.

Large spikes in overall waste production, considerable amounts of food, unusual packaging and products enter our homes, leaving us with overflowing bins, less time to worry about recycling and what happens to it when it disappears on bin night.

Read more: The ‘recycling crisis’ may be here to stay

Although the jewel-coloured foil and plastic wrappers on Easter eggs may look pretty, their impact on the environment when they ends up in landfill, or when they contaminate our recycling, is not. Nor is the amount of energy and resources required to produce it all in the first place.

Just like at Christmas, many Australians are literally buying into the pressure to go “all out” at Easter. It’s creating a culture of excess and over-indulgence in our bid to celebrate with our families and create happy memories for our kids.

The star is, of course, chocolate. Consumption over the Easter weekend historically accounts for almost 4% of the nation’s total annual consumption, with A$210 million spent on chocolate last Easter.

What’s more, supermarket aisles overflow with disposable baskets, small plastic eggs, fluffy chicks and bunnies, and toys meant to break after one use. You can start to see how the waste will add up over the long weekend.

Read more: Easter eggs: hunting for a solution to excessive packaging

If this waste ends up in the wrong bin, our recycling crisis will be exacerbated this Easter.

More festivity, less environmental footprint

So what can you do to reduce your footprint this Easter without reducing the fun and festivity?

The first thing is to consider the “waste hierarchy” and do what you can to avoid waste from occurring in the first place.

Waste hierarchy. UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, provided by author

Refuse

As much as you can, refuse to buy into the commercialised paraphernalia, and reuse, repurpose or make your own decorations, Easter baskets and even chocolate eggs and hot cross buns.

Reduce

When buying festive food, try to reduce the amount of packaging. You’re paying a premium for fancier packaging, and don’t be too egg-sessive!

It’s also important to plan ahead to reduce unnecessary food waste. Planning meals in advance, getting portion sizes right and making use of the leftovers can all reduce waste – and save you money

Make memories, not waste this Easter. Shutterstock

Reuse

Look for products and packaging made from recycled material, and buy decorations second-hand from charity op shops. Opting for reusable alternatives over disposable single-use products can greatly reduce your waste footprint.

Repurpose

Be creative with unwanted packaging: repurpose leftover boxes, containers or fruit punnets to package eggs or gifts, and moulded plastic packaging to make your own chocolate gifts.

And, if you’re embellishing real egg shells (with natural dyes of course!), make sure the egg goes into an omelette or frittata, not down the drain.

Onyalife, a website specialising in reusable products, says the “magic” of Easter is creating beautiful lasting memories with your family and friends. And this could include starting your own new zero waste traditions where you spend time, not money.

What could be more magical than baking hot cross buns together, or piping molten chocolate into an egg-shaped mould?

Recycle (as a last resort)

Despite our best efforts, most of us will still end up with some waste.

Holidays may be a great time to sit back and unwind, but recycling rules don’t change over a long weekend.

Read more: Five golden rules to help solve your recycling dilemmas

It might be worth looking at your council’s website or Planet Ark’s RecyclingNearYou to brush up on all the details.

In the meantime, this infographic can help as a quick guide.

Which recycling Australia, Author provided (No reuse)

Australians have a recycling problem

Household rubbish is only a small piece of Australia’s overall waste pie, but what we put in our kerbside bins aggravates the current headache.

A big part of the problem is that Australia’s waste continues to grow by 6% over the decade from 2006/7 to 2016/17. This is, in part, due to our belief in the efficacy of recycling.

But what we think of “recycling” is actually simply collecting and sorting, ready for someone to use the recyclable material to make something new.

And Australia’s use of recycled material is particularly lacking.

This is partly because the quality of recycled material coming out of our sorting facilities isn’t that great, and also because there has traditionally been low demand for products made from recycled material.

So what’s causing the poor quality of our kerbside recycling?

Since recycling was introduced into Australia in the late 1970s and early 80s much has changed, including: how things are packaged, what is and isn’t acceptable, how we put out our recycling and what happens to it after collection.

Read more: Recycling can be confusing, but it’s getting simpler

This has caused a great deal of confusion, with almost half of Aussies struggling to figure out what can and can’t be recycled, resulting in high levels of “contamination” (rubbish in our recycling bins).

Look for the new Australasian Recycling Label on the back of some packaging telling you what you can and can’t recycle, through your kerbside bin or elsewhere.

Woolworth’s hot cross buns, for instance, has a label telling you to collect the plastic bag along with other soft plastics and return them to your supermarket REDcycle bin.

Hot cross buns. Planet Ark and RecycleRightSA

If you’re still not sure, the golden rule is, “if in doubt, leave it out!”

– ref. Tips to reduce your waste this Easter (but don’t worry, you can still eat chocolate) – http://theconversation.com/tips-to-reduce-your-waste-this-easter-but-dont-worry-you-can-still-eat-chocolate-113916

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Trentholm, Lecturer in Mathematics Education, University of South Australia

This article is part of our series on homeschooling in Australia. The series answers common questions including why homeschooling is on the rise and whether homeschooled children have enough opportunities for socialisation.

Homeschooling is on the increase globally. The BBC recently reported that the number of homeschooled students in the United Kingdom increased by 40% from 2014 to 2017 – from around 34,000 to 48,000 students respectively. In the United States, the number of homeschooled children almost doubled, from 850,000 in 1999 to around 1,690,000 in 2016.

Australia has mirrored these trends. Registered homeschooled student numbers nearly doubled from around 10,000 students in 2011 to nearly 20,000 in 2018.

People thinking about homeschooling, or already doing it, may wonder if their child will miss out on the quality of education provided by trained teachers at school. But the available research shows outcomes of homeschooled students are either the same, or better, than those of their traditionally educated peers.

Read more: Homeschooling is on the rise in Australia. Who is doing it and why?

International research

Australian state and territory education departments require parents or guardians to register to homeschool their children. But some people don’t do this, which is one of several known challenges to conducting research on the homeschooled population. This issue alone makes it virtually impossible to obtain random samples.

There are other issues too, such as the different types of homeschooling approaches used (such as structured or unstructured schooling). Despite this, some robust research on outcomes has been conducted.

International research suggests homeschooled students’ achievements are as good, if not better, than those of their schooled peers, particularly for structured approaches. A 2013 review of several US studies showed none had “reported higher standardised test scores for traditional education samples over homeschooled samples”.

The review also found the majority (78%) of higher education admission officers “expect homeschool graduates to perform, overall, as well or better in their first year of college than traditional high school graduates”.

Such findings are echoed in The Wiley Handbook of Home Education, published in 2017. It says, in spite of all methodological issues, that

what is known is that homeschooled students who go on to college and adulthood do quite well.

Research in Australia

What little research has been done in Australia mirrors international findings. Academic outcomes of homeschooled children are equal to, or better than, those of traditionally schooled students. A 2014 study conducted in NSW examined available evidence on the academic outcomes of children who had been homeschooled in the state.

Homeschooled children have time to explore their own interests – which may be why they have good outcomes. from shutterstock.com

This evidence included a literature review of previous studies and analysis of results in statewide assessments such as the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests, School Certificate and Higher School Certificate.

The study acknowledged shortcomings in the research, such as that the only achievement data available for homeschooled students was from those who had voluntarily taken the NAPLAN tests. Only around 10% of homeschooled students choose to take NAPLAN.

Within these data, the results indicated the homeschooled group scored significantly above the overall NSW average in nearly every test. The differences were largest in reading, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy, where home schooled students’ average scores were typically about 70 marks (or about one standard deviation) higher than the NSW average. The differences were smaller in spelling (about 40 marks) and writing (about 20 marks).

The study also reported on a much larger and involuntary sample of school students who had previously been homeschooled. These results also reflected well on homeschooling.

The study found in HSC 2 unit English (advanced and standard), there was no statistically significant differences between those who had previously been homeschooled and the state’s average results.

Despite such findings, the NSW report ignored potential benefits of homeschooling. It instead said there was

no strong evidence to indicate that home schooling is associated with substantially different academic outcomes.

Homeschooling research can be political, however. Academics writing in The Conversation after the NSW report was published accused the NSW government of purposefully omitting any evidence which suggests “school failure and home education success”.

Read more: Evidence of home schooling success erased from inquiry report

A study conducted in Victoria in 2016 found homeschooled students scored higher in all NAPLAN areas than their traditionally schooled peers.

What about higher education?

The Home Education Network (HEN) – a homeschooling support group in Victoria – conducted what is considered the largest study of homeschooled alumni in Australia. The survey ran from December 2016 to March 2017 and included more than 500 former students – from two 15-year-olds starting apprenticeships to a 52-year-old associate professor. The average participant had received nine years of homeschooling.

One finding was that homeschooled students earned consistently more degrees (bachelors and above) than the general population.

There are several explanations for why homeschooled students do well.

Homeschooled children have the ability to learn in real-life contexts, which could be one reason for their advantageous outcomes. Another is one-on-one mentoring and tutoring opportunities and regular interactions with more informed peers such as older siblings.

Student initiative and agency to pursue interests, freedom for reflective time and imagination, and learning within in warm personal relationships are also recognised benefits to homeschooling.

No doubt more research is needed. But if early indications suggest, home education works well. It should be recognised, foregrounded and celebrated as a valid and valued alternative form of education.

Read more: Homeschooled children are far more socially engaged than you might think

This article was written with the assistance of:

• Susan Wight, who was the coordinator of the Home Education Network (a non-profit support group for home educators) from 2010-17.
• Dr Glenda Jackson, director of the Australian Home Education Advisory Service. She has previously been paid to help homeschooling families write education plans for government registration. She is also a member of the Home Education Network and Home Education Australia, both not-for-profit groups.

– ref. Homeschooled students often get better test results and have more degrees than their peers – http://theconversation.com/homeschooled-students-often-get-better-test-results-and-have-more-degrees-than-their-peers-111986

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Richards, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia

Creating something original – let alone poignant – within the genre of romantic comedy is no easy feat. But with Top End Wedding, Wayne Blair (The Sapphires) has managed to achieve a unique Australian story with a genuine, emotional payoff for its audience.

Directed by Blair (The Sapphires) and co-written by Joshua Tyler (writer and star of Plonk) and Miranda Tapsell (Love Child, The Sapphires), the film had its Australian premiere at the recent Adelaide Film Festival with much fanfare.

Top End Wedding has all the hallmarks of an accessible romantic comedy. Soon-to-be-married couple Lauren (Tapsell) and Ned (Gwilym Lee) arrive in Darwin for the wedding only to discover that Lauren’s mother, Daffy (Ursula Yovich) has disappeared in the remote far north of Australia.

Lauren must save her parents’ marriage before she can begin her own. Can Lauren and Ned find Daffy and have their dream wedding? Catch is – there is always a catch in the romantic comedy – she only has ten days leave from her highly successful legal job, giving her limited time to find her mother and get married.

Official trailer for Top End Wedding.

Crossover appeal

Top End Wedding follows in the footsteps of Blair’s 2012 film The Sapphires by telling an Indigenous Australian story that has international crossover potential.

Australian screen studies scholar Therese Davis argues that The Sapphires – based on the true story of an Indigenous Australian singing group who performed for troops in Vietnam – incorporates an international perspective by drawing upon soul music and American politics, while engaging with specifically Australian content at the same. The film is speaking simultaneously to local and global audiences.

No moment in The Sapphires better demonstrates this than the titular group’s performance of their song Ngarra Burra Ferra, with the lyrics playing over Martin Luther King Jr’s historic speech in the background.

Top End Wedding similarly draws on internationally recognisable conventions of popular genres, by adhering to many of the narrative and visual patterns of the romantic comedy and the road movie.

Many of the film’s plot developments will be familiar to romantic comedy fans: Lauren receives assistance from her domineering boss Hampton (Kerry Fox) who develops into a sympathetic character; Ned quits his job and is too afraid to tell Lauren; both have quirky supporting family and friends that provide comic relief and emotional support. There is even a bit of slapstick wrestling at the airport.

When the central couple begin their search, the staples of the road movie come into play: clues are discovered, they run into car trouble, tensions arise and they run into more oddball characters, including a fake, French helicopter pilot.

Top End Wedding draws upon conventions of romantic comedies and the road movie. Courtesy of Universal Pictures

The poignant final act of the film, however, rises above genre conventions, with shining performances by Tapsell and Yovich in particular.

In an Adelaide Q&A, screenwriter Joshua Tyler spoke of the profound impact that consultation with Indigenous elders had on the script writing process. The representation of the Tiwi Islands in the final act demonstrates the importance of genuine consultation and engagement with community groups.

In particular, I was delighted to see the representation of Sistagirls and other queer Aboriginal Australians in the community.

The representation of Indigenous languages and the images of the land throughout the film provide it with a sincere sense of place. Travelling shots across the country are represented through an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander map of Indigenous Australia. We see gorgeous shots of the Australian landscape, including the Tiwi Islands and Katherine Gorge.

It’s no surprise that the film has received support from Tourism NT. This localisation is also heard through the brilliant soundtrack, including tracks from Indigenous artists like Electric Fields and Naberlek (whose cover of Land Down Under features).

Some viewers might find earlier parts of the Top End Wedding derivative (a charge that could easily be made against other iconic Australian films such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). But this, I feel, is entirely the point: familiar tropes from popular genres have been used to reveal a romantic side of Australia that some may have never seen.

Top End Wedding is released in cinemas on May 2.

– ref. Top End Wedding: a new Australian romantic comedy with a sincere sense of place – http://theconversation.com/top-end-wedding-a-new-australian-romantic-comedy-with-a-sincere-sense-of-place-114914

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Schmulow, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Wollongong

Among the many recommendations of the banking Royal Commission was a Board of Oversight for the two regulators in charge of financial institutions; the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority: ASIC and APRA.

Since then APRA’s own internal review conducted by deputy chairman John Lonsdale and NSW Supreme Court Judge Robert Austin, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission commissioner Sarah Court and UNSW professor Dimity Kingsford-Smith has found APRA to be soft on enforcement and timid by comparison to its international peers.

Nonetheless, and to demonstrate that APRA still doesn’t get what it doesn’t get, its chairman used Tuesday’s release of the review to announce a new mantra. From now on, APRA is to be: “constructively tough”.

‘Constructively tough’?

It sounds like “tough but flexible”, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. Despite its Royal Commission hammering, APRA still seems not to have internalised the message: fraud and theft are not up for negotiated settlement.

This is why a board of oversight is so necessary.

I have frequently argued in favour of such a reform: a regulator to regulate the regulators. Along with colleagues Karen Fairweather and John Tarrant, I was invited to make a submission to the Royal Commission detailing egregious examples of regulator inefficacy, and capture by, and subornation to, the industries they are meant to regulate. Included was a body of theoretical and empirical international scholarship suggesting that financial sector regulators are more susceptible to capture than regulators of other industries.

We argued that the gravity of the potential harm from crises, superimposed with the frailties – both observable and theoretical – of regulators, required enhanced safety in the form of an overseer to police the corporate police.

So it was encouraging to see our submission reflected in the commission’s recommendation for a board of oversight:

Final Report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, February 2019

Of concern, however, is that the commissioner elected to leave the details of how the board would work to parliament. It is here that the process faces its greatest risk: the risk of clumsy albeit well-intentioned implementation, all the way to purposefully bad implementation, fully intended to undermine the fundamental goals of the whole endeavour, and facilitated by equally captured and suborned politicians.

Politicians have a history of backing down

It has happened before. The 1991 report of the The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration entitled “Pocket Full of Change” recommended a banking code of practice, which was ditched at the last minute to be replaced by a different code written by the Australian Bankers’ Association. The result was a code that protected banks against their customers, while allowing them to virtue signal.

So far Treasurer Frydenberg has refused to commit to one of the single most necessary powers that such a board can possess: the power of public opprobrium. As far back as the late 1860s Charles Francis Adams Jr wrote of the need to subject captured and corrupted railroad commissions to the disinfecting power of sunlight; what Thomas McCraw, writing in the mid-1980s referred to as a Sunshine Commission.

Read more: Defence mechanisms. Why NAB chairman Ken Henry lost his job

The anti-viral power of public exposure has been amply demonstrated by the banking royal commission already. Heads have rolled: the chair, chief executive and group counsel at AMP. The chair and chief executive of the National Australian Bank (albeit after significant procrastination). Some entities have self-selected out of their business model. Others have self-selected out of the market entirely. Retail Super funds have haemorrhaged well in excess of one million members, and over $11 billion in funds.

But none of this fallout, none of it, is due to post-royal commission enforcement measures. It is all thanks to public opprobrium: sunshine.

Few things are as powerful as the power to shame

So it is of concern that the treasurer hasn’t yet made an unequivocal commitment to make public the board of oversight’s reports into the performance of our regulators, performance which to date has been weak enough, feckless enough, and incompetent enough to more than justify the royal commission.

Speaking to the ABC on February 4 in what might be some sort of Orwellian newspeak, Frydenberg would only say:

this new oversight board will be reporting to government and governments don’t operate in secret.

Sometimes they do, and especially when dealing with banks. APRA reports are routinely withheld form the public, making use of the secrecy provisions of the Banking Act.

Frydenberg should instead be mindful of the extensive protection his government has provided to the banking and retail super industry over the past five years, shielding them from the threat of inquiry by a royal commission up until the point when it was impossible to resist. It will serve no purpose to replace one protection racket with another. And that applies to both banks and super, something Labor’s Chris Bowen should keep in mind should he become treasurer.

Put simply, as we emerge from this dark, decade-long night of the most appalling dishonesty and wickedness in our financial sector, more than anything else, now we must ensure the sun shines.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

– ref. Constructively tough? Neither side has committed to fully adopting perhaps the most important recommendation of the banking royal commission – http://theconversation.com/constructively-tough-neither-side-has-committed-to-fully-adopting-perhaps-the-most-important-recommendation-of-the-banking-royal-commission-111428

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

Once again, the public servants are trying to force the politicians to do things by the book. But the government would prefer to cut the inconvenient corner.

The heads of the Treasury and Finance departments on Wednesday warned the government that the first round of its tax cuts – due to be paid within weeks of the election – must be legislated before they can go out.

The edict is in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO), the official update prepared in the first stage of the election campaign.

PEFO is presented by Treasury secretary Phil Gaetjens and Finance secretary Rosemary Huxtable and doesn’t have any political input. It’s a rare dose of spin-less numbers in the campaign.

Morrison argues the Australian Taxation Office can act before the tax legislation passes. He said on Wednesday that “what happens traditionally with the Tax Office, is where there is a bipartisan commitment to matters, they can often go ahead and administer the tax arrangements on that basis”.

But in PEFO the officials said that while many of the budget’s tax measures can be legislated later without affecting the estimates, “the immediate relief […] requires the relevant legislation to be passed before the increase to the low and middle income tax offset (LMITO) can be provided for the 2018-19 financial year.

“If not legislated prior to 1 July 2019 the revenue cost of this measure would need to be reassessed,” PEFO says.

Officials have been clear about how they see things since immediately after the budget, when the Australian Taxation Office told The New Daily: “The ATO requires law in order to deliver the measure as announced, and, as such, it cannot be delivered administratively”.

It isn’t the first time this issue over the timing of implementing tax cuts has arisen. Morrison would remember that well – he was treasurer when it happened in 2016.

That year saw a prolonged face-off between the Turnbull government and the ATO, as the government pressed for income tax cuts to be delivered ahead of parliament passing them.

It was the same story. The measure (for those earning $80,000 to $87,000) was in the May budget, to come in July 1. There was no time to legislate before the July 2 election.

Turnbull said the tax cuts would be delivered “administratively”. But the PEFO of that year said “the [Taxation] Commissioner has indicated that the […] targeted personal income tax relief measure requires the relevant legislation to be passed before the change will be incorporated into the income tax withholding schedules”.

In the end, delivery was delayed, but it came before the legislation’s passage, when the Tax Office was (sort of) persuaded the cuts had bipartisan support.

The first round of the 2019 tax relief does have bipartisan support in the broad, but there are a couple of twists. Labor proposes more relief for low income earners, and the government’s tax plan is a long term package, with Labor rejecting the later stages.

It is more likely than not the 2019 tax cuts will end up delivered on time. “It’s certainly our intention to legislate them,” Morrison said. Whichever side wins, parliament is expected to sit at the end of June to deal with them. The PEFO stand is just making sure of that.

Unsurprisingly, the PEFO validated the numbers in the budget brought down early this month, including the forecast $7.1 billion surplus next financial year.

A minor adjustment was made in this year’s forecast deficit, from $4.2 billion to $4.3 billion, because of the extension immediately after the budget of the energy payment to those on Newstart and a number of other payments.

In what was in general a groundhog day in the campaign, Bill Shorten on Wednesday said he had used the wrong words when on Tuesday he claimed Labor would not increase tax on superannuation – overlooking the $34 billion of proposed changes the opposition has announced.

His gaffe, leapt on by the government, received wide coverage, marring his first week in the campaign.

“I thought I was being asked, have we got any unannounced changes to superannuation,” Shorten said.

“But obviously we have changes which we outlined three years ago, and of course I should have picked the words better, no question. We have no proposals other than what we’ve already announced previously.”

He also argued that ALP policies closing down concessions and loopholes in superannuation “is not some massive increase in taxation”.

Meanwhile the treasurers of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory have written to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg asking him “to confirm that there will be no further funding cuts to hospitals, schools, infrastructure and other essential services.”

This follows analysis undertaken by the Grattan Institute arguing the government’s budget projections would need a cut to spending of about $40 billion a year by 2029-30.

“As we are in the process of finalising our respective budgets, it is imperative that you are transparent about any planned cuts in payments to states and territories,” the Treasurers say.

“States and territories should not be forced to fill funding gaps created by cuts by the Commonwealth Government across our respective hospitals, schools and transport networks.”

– ref. View from The Hill: Those tax cuts should follow proper process, officials tell government – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-those-tax-cuts-should-follow-proper-process-officials-tell-government-115665

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Slavin, Head, Department Infectious Diseases, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

We’ve recently heard a lot about Candida auris, a deadly, antibiotic-resistant fungus emerging around the world. This pathogen has been labelled the new “fungal superbug” and poses a significant threat to public health.

C. auris tends to infect people with weakened or compromised immune systems. It thrives on the skin where it persists for long periods.

It also sheds into the patient’s environment – commonly a hospital or aged care home – and sticks to and survive on surfaces very well.

In hospitals, invasive fungal infections, particularly candidiasis caused by C. auris, can jeopardise patient safety and worsen outcomes after cancer treatment or surgery.

But it’s tricky to diagnose, and, importantly, C. auris has a resistance profile that can make it very difficult to treat.

Many people who get sick with an infection caused by C. auris won’t survive.

Read more: A frenemy fungus provides clues about a new deadly one

How common is this deadly fungus?

C. auris was first identified in 2009 in Japan.

Infections have since been reported in a range of countries, but the prevalence of C. auris has likely been underestimated in most places. This is because it’s hard to identify, and surveillance programs, where they exist, may not capture all cases.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States report that 617 cases of C. auris have been detected in the US.

Countries from which Candida auris cases have been reported as of February 2019. CDC

Australia has had very few cases, and the cases we have seen have mainly been acquired overseas.

The Victorian health department notes hospital stays in a number of affected areas such as the UK, India, Pakistan, China, South Africa and parts of the US may pose a risk.

How does it manifest and how is it diagnosed?

C. auris seems to most commonly colonise and infect people who are already sick or have compromised immune systems, such as cancer or transplant patients, or hospitalised patients who are very young or very old.

Risk factors include suppression of the immune system (such as via medication after organ transplants to prevent organ rejection), recent surgery, diabetes, and the presence of an in-dwelling medical device such as a catheter.

Read more: Deadly frog fungus has wiped out 90 species and threatens hundreds more

The presence of the fungus on the body, called colonisation, doesn’t necessarily cause illness.

But invasive candidiasis (that is, invasive infection with Candida species) can infect the bloodstream (candidemia), central nervous system and internal organs.

When the infection spreads to the bloodstream, it can cause a sepsis-like condition with symptoms including fever, rapid breathing, muscle pain, and confusion.

Just like serious bacterial infections, C. auris may form abscesses in different parts of the body and may require surgery.

C. auris spreads in hospitals and other health-care settings. From shutterstock.com

It can be difficult to diagnose fungal infections and accurately identify the species that has caused the infection. C. auris is very similar to other common fungi of the Candida genus and can be misidentified.

In most Australian hospitals, we use a blood culture diagnostic test. This is time-consuming and relies on specialists to accurately identify the pathogen.

Alternatives such as molecular diagnostic tests are not routinely used in many hospitals due to their cost, and, even when they are, they may not be able to accurately identify the type of fungus that has caused the infection.

However, these tests are improving and will become more widely available soon.

Outcomes for people who contract C. auris

Patients with weakened immune systems who have candidemia or invasive candidiasis have a 30-60% chance of dying after becoming infected.

But it can be very difficult to tell if these patients die from their infection, or die with their infection, given infection typically occurs when a person is already very sick.

Read more: Explainer: why do we get fungal nail infections and how can we treat them?

Another problem is treatment with antifungal drugs is routinely delayed. The time between taking a blood sample and receiving a test result often extends beyond 48 hours, which can lead to delayed or inappropriate treatment (because the cause of infection is still unknown).

Delaying antifungal therapy is associated with an increased risk of death.

For these reasons, we need better tests to diagnose fungal infections.

Why resistance has developed

C. auris has developed resistance to several different antifungal drugs.

While its resistance profile varies geographically, C. auris is almost universally resistant to fluconazole, a dependable drug in the azole class of antifungal drugs – one of the four main classes of existing antifungal drugs.

We need to learn more about this, but it’s been suggested the prevalence of antifungal use in the environment contributes to the acceleration of resistance.

For example, in the presence of azole-based pesticides, we’ve seen the emergence of azole-resistant Aspergillus, another genus of fungi. Resistant strains then reproduce in the soil, and infections may be contracted from spores in the air that are inhaled.

Similar processes may also have led to the emergence of resistant C. auris, but we don’t know this for sure.

Read more: Five of the scariest antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the past five years

How can we control it?

C. auris is notoriously hard to clear. It poses enormous challenges for hospital cleaning and infection control.

In addition to disinfectants with antifungal activity, hydrogen peroxide vapour or UV light are now also used, when feasible, to clean contaminated environments.

Australia is on high alert, and hospitals screen patients who may have been exposed.

But we need continued vigilance, co-ordinated efforts to stop its spread in hospitals, and to diagnose it early. We also need to use antifungal agents wisely in human health and the environment.

– ref. Explainer: what is Candida Auris and who is at risk? – http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-candida-auris-and-who-is-at-risk-115293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zareh Ghazarian, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Monash University

The political engagement of young Australians has attracted significant interest in recent weeks.

Thousands marched across the country to express concern about climate change, while the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations has just presented his findings to the nation. Issues concerning young voters, such as housing affordability, have also dominated the election campaign.

With opinion polls showing a tighter gap between the parties, young Australians, especially those who will be voting for the first time, will play a critical role in deciding who wins the federal election.

Read more: No matter who wins the election, many Australians think real leadership will be lacking

Indeed, the number of young voters grew following the campaign to enrol young people during the same-sex marriage postal vote in 2017. This cohort will now be voting at their first federal election.

Young and first-time voters are often treated as a homogeneous group assumed to be supportive of left-leaning parties such as the Australian Greens.

However, to better understand the more nuanced decision-making of young people who are old enough to vote, we interviewed first-time voters about their interest in politics and the voting strategies they might use to make a choice at their first Australian federal election.

The findings were drawn from a longitudinal study of more than 2000 young people from Queensland, which is following a single-aged cohort of young Australians as they progress from adolescence into adulthood.

Our research found that first-time voters in Australia tend to adopt five broad strategies. These strategies are based on the levels of interest, knowledge and cognitive effort that young voters apply when deciding how to vote.

The impulsive voter

The impulsive voter type is the most disconnected. Young people who were identified in this category made it clear that they wanted little to do with the electoral process, and said they would probably make an arbitrary selection on the ballot paper.

Such a strategy is often characteristic of those who are ill-informed about or uninterested in politics yet are compelled to vote.

The collective voter

These voters feel they do not know enough about the electoral system and the political debate in order to cast an informed vote. As a result, first-time voters in this group tend to seek the guidance of their parents, who they believe are more knowledgeable about the political system. Typically, these first-time voters mimic the party loyalty and voting patterns of their parents.

The instinctive voter

The central characteristic of the instinctive first-time voter is that they draw on some political knowledge to reach a voting decision. But they make the final decision based on a gut feeling or other general beliefs about the parties and candidates. Sometimes, these beliefs came from emotion-based appraisals of the party leader’s character or physical appearance.

The principled voter

These first-time voters possess more information about policies and candidates and are confident in their knowledge of the Australian electoral system.

Among our interviewees, principled voters intended to use their vote to support candidates who advanced policies of most concern to them. These first-time voters also undertook research and used a variety of sources to help them make a final choice about whom to support.

The pragmatic voter

The pragmatic voter weighs up multiple factors and engages in critical reasoning before committing to supporting one candidate over another. In our study, this process included assessing the party leadership, the position of parties across different policies, and whether one issue was more salient than another.

Pragmatic voters engage with a wide range of resources and actively undertake research to evaluate campaign promises. Often, they decide whom to vote for based on prioritising policies and assessing whether one party is better suited to addressing their concerns over another.

What does all of this mean for the 2019 election?

As in the adult voting population, political interest and knowledge among young voters can vary substantially. Some of the young voters in our study were uninterested and hesitant participants in the voting process; others made significant efforts to form strong and well-reasoned views about the choices before them.

These findings highlight the ways in which policy promises and track records can sway many young people to form views about whom they will support at an election.

Read more: And now for a newsflash: politicians actually do keep their promises

Importantly, the voting behaviours and processes that young voters demonstrate indicate a significant need and opportunity to prepare young Australians, especially those approaching voting age, to be confident participants in the democratic process.

Equipping young people with political knowledge through programs such as civics and citizenship education at school will be critical in fostering the knowledge and skills they need to support candidates who best advance their interests.

– ref. New research reveals how young Australians will decide who gets their vote – http://theconversation.com/new-research-reveals-how-young-australians-will-decide-who-gets-their-vote-114599

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristen Lyons, Professor Environment and Development Sociology, The University of Queensland

Last week, federal environment minister Melissa Price approved Adani’s groundwater management plan for its proposed Carmichael mine.

However, Adani’s proposed mine remains highly contested and uncertain. A number of environmental plans are still waiting state approval, and the Queensland government will not extinguish native title over land Adani needs while outstanding Traditional Owners’ court action is unresolved.

Members of the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council (W&J Council) are contesting the validity of Adani’s Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA). The case is due to be heard by the full bench of the Federal Court in May.

Read more: Morrison government approves next step towards Adani coal mine

What was approved last week?

Price’s approval decision last week refers to Adani’s plan to manage the impacts on ecosystems drawing on groundwater for the Carmichael mine.

The announcement follows apparent threats from Price’s Queensland colleagues as pressure mounts to secure votes before the federal election. Queensland’s environment minister Leanne Enoch says the approval “reeks of political interference” and has called into question the integrity of Price’s decision; federal Labor is building a case to review the decision.

Wangan and Jagalingo cultural leader Adrian Burragubba is challenging the proposed mine. Darren England/AAP

Serious concerns have been raised by CSIRO and Geoscience Australia in a joint report. They warn that the modelling used by Adani underestimates the effect of the project on local bore water, and there’s real risk to the aquifer that feeds the environmentally significant and sacred site, the Doongmabulla Springs.

Read more: Why are we still pursuing the Adani Carmichael mine?

The Doongmabulla Springs

The Doongmabulla Springs are a nationally significant artesian spring complex of four square kilometres, located in close proximity to the proposed Carmichael mine, and part of a nationally threatened ecological community. This unique unspoiled arid oasis – fed by fresh groundwater – is under threat from the proposed Carmichael mine.

For W&J people, the Doongmabulla Springs are their most sacred site, from which the Rainbow Serpent, or Mundunjudra, travelled to shape the land. W&J Council cultural leaderAdrian Burragubba has said:

The water is our life. It is our dreaming and our sovereignty. We cannot give that away. With this decision, the Commonwealth continues to violate our common law rights to our culture. Water is central to our laws, our religion and our identity. It is the Mundunjudra, the water spirit, the rainbow serpent.

Minister Price’s approval – silencing scientific uncertainty of ground water impacts – affronts the W&J cultural custodians’ responsibilities as water protectors.

State approval remains

Minister Price’s support removes the last remaining federal hurdle to Adani’s mine, but there are still nine environmental issues waiting state approval. Among those is the Black-Throated Finch Management Plan, which prior assessment has determined as inadequate to protect the endangered Black Throated Finch population.

Adani must also obtain state approval for its Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management Plan. Enoch, as state environment minister, has called out uncertainties in the science related to each of these plans. She has also stressed that these decisions will not be rushed.

Nor has Adani submitted its revised railway plans for assessment, or finalised royalty arrangements. Adani asserts these arrangements need not be concluded before “breaking ground” in central Queensland. This is a risky proposition, given that outstanding approvals could delay or substantially compromise the mine.

Contested agreement with traditional owners

Last year the Federal Court upheld the registration of the Adani ILUA, which allows the Queensland government to extinguish W&J peoples native title to give Adani freehold title to 2,750 hectares of land required for “critical infrastructure” for its mine operations.

But the W&J Council has appealed that decision, alleging Adani manipulated the native title process, including by stacking and controlling a meeting to achieve an agreement in the face of numerous prior rejections of their land deal. They say the deal should never have been certified.

The appeal will be heard by the full bench of the Federal Court in May. The Queensland government has indicated it will not exercise its ability to extinguish native title rights while the matter is outstanding. Nor are they obliged to, even if the registration is upheld. But if the W&J leaders are successful in their appeal, Adani will suffer a major blow, with compulsory native title extinguishment being the only option open to the Queensland government to support the mine.

Traditional owners allege that Adani manipulated the native title process. Darren England/AAP

W&J Council’s resistance is particularly remarkable given the extent to which political and legal institutions and processes are stacked against them. They highlight the limits of the ILUA authorisation process, and the failure of the native title system for their people.

The native title regime denies Indigenous peoples’ right to veto proposed development on their lands, facilitates mining and other forms of development, and is backed up by the threat of compulsory state acquisition. We have previously argued the federal government has a long history of prioritising mining development over Indigenous rights through native title.

These dynamics have been described by United Nations Monitoring Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination as racially discriminatory. Australia’s first Indigenous senior counsel, and Wangan and Jagalingou traditional owner Tony McAvoy, has similarly called the system out for “embedding racism”.

Read more: How will Indigenous people be compensated for lost native title rights? The High Court will soon decide

Affirming Aboriginal authority

By challenging dominant Australian political institutions and foregrounding their commitment to protecting ancestral homelands, W&J Council highlight that settler state authority is not the only form of law operating on the Australian continent. The W&J Council continues to assert its members’ right to oppose mining on their homelands as part of their defence of country and culture.

While their efforts are under-reported, as mainstream media focuses on outstanding state-based approvals for the Adani mine, their campaign represents a resurgence of Aboriginal rights in the face of settler state institutions.

Regardless of the outcome of the pending Federal Court appeal, the W&J Council is affirming Aboriginal authority and unsettling the settler state and its service to the mining industries.

– ref. Traditional owners still stand in Adani’s way – http://theconversation.com/traditional-owners-still-stand-in-adanis-way-115454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kit Wise, Professor of Fine Art and Dean, RMIT School of Art, RMIT University

“This is no ordinary painting – it is a living picture that moves!” So says one of the “For kids” labels in the National Gallery of Victoria’s impressive exhibition, Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor.

The exhibition is an elegant testimony to the living, breathing work of art, charting Calder’s atypical path into the modernist canon. It is also great fun, curated with care and a sense of play by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the NGV.

Alexander Calder, American 1898–1976, Belt buckle about 1935, brass wire, 21.9 × 10.6 × 4.1 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of Mrs. Marcel Duchamp in memory of the artist. Accession number: 77.21a-b. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Copyright Agency, Australia

Calder (1898-1976) was born into an American family of established artists. Both his parents received formal art training and practised: Calder’s mother Nanette set up an easel in the corner of the living room, while his father Alexander operated a professional sculpture studio.

Calder’s career bridged both domestic and the professional, as the NGV galleries compellingly narrate, moving from intimate, domestic objects (including spoons, jewellery and, significantly, toys) to scale models for the monumental works that occupy urban spaces across the world.

Alexander Calder, American 1898–1976, Hair comb c. 1940, gilded brass, 28.9 x 17.8 x 3.9 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Calder, Accession number: 1968.7.4. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Copyright Agency, Australia

The exhibition starts with a self-portrait in his “workshop” and two gifts to his parents from the eight year old Calder: a rocking duck and a dog. Both are tenderly made from single sheets of brass, fitting in the palm of the hand.

Witty, efficient, emotive and in motion, they signpost the concerns underpinning a career that generated 22,000 works over six decades, received over 250 commissions, and exhibited on five continents.

Despite an early affinity with the art world, Calder chose to study science and graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1919. After trying various jobs, he joined the famous Art Students League in New York in 1923 where he studied until 1925, by which time he was working as a freelance illustrator.

Alexander Calder, 1898–1976, Molluscs 1955, oil on canvas. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / SODRAC, Montréal. Photo: Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York

He developed a portable “drawing table”, which allowed him to capture fast moving scenes through fluid drawings in ink and pencil, including animals at the New York Zoo and what was to become a key motif, the circus. Invention, speed and sinuous line became the vocabulary for his emerging artistic identity.

George Hoyningen-Huene / Condé Nast via Getty Images, Calder with Cirque Calder (1926–31), Paris 1930, black and white photograph. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Copyright Agency, Australia

The obvious joy Calder took in his practice overflows in the Cirque Calder works. Using found objects, scraps and discarded materials, this ongoing project presented a miniature circus for family and friends, growing to over 300 items, including 69 miniature figures and animals.

This work is presented as still objects in the exhibitions as well as in footage of Calder himself bringing the circus to life, recorded by Hans Curlis (1929), Herbert Matter (1950) and Jean Painleve (1955).

During Calder’s years in Paris in the late 1920s, guests at these performances included some of the most famous names in European modernism, such as Jean-Paul Sartre (who wrote a 1946 catalogue essay for Calder), Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. These artists fostered Calder’s work, recognising the irreverent, radical ideas that he brought to art making at the time.

The now commonly used term “mobile” (meaning both moving object and motive in French) was first invented by Duchamp during a studio visit in 1931 to describe Calder’s balanced, agile forms; while Jean Arp coincided the term “stabile” to differentiate Calder’s static forms.

Alexander Calder, American 1898–1976, Gamma 1947, painted sheet metal and steel wire. 147.3 x 213.3 x 91.4 cm. Collection of Jon Shirley. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Copyright Agency, Australia

This exhibition originated at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, but the NGV makes masterful use of its gallery spaces in this iteration. We move from intimate spaces where shelves and alcoves display the delicate early toys and domestic works at eye height, to transition spaces with stacked asymmetric plinths and double-height galleries in the penultimate space, in which major suspended mobiles hover above the viewer’s body.

Alexander Calder, American 1898–1976, Triple Gong 1951, Painted steel, painted wire, and brass, 78.7 x 172.7 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Gift of Mr. And Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, Accession number: 1996.120.27. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Copyright Agency, Australia

Looking up at the dramatic white, red and black forms gliding overhead, we seem to be suspended ourselves, somehow floating as if underwater. At its best, Calder’s work disrupts our usual perception of gravity, somehow inverting floor and ceiling as the baseline for orientation.

One disappointment is that the work does not culminate with the full-scale public commissions; in Montreal these would have been a given. Arguably Calder’s most famous commission was for Expo 67, held in Montreal, where his Trois Disques (1967) formed the centrepiece then, and is again the focal point of a current urban redesign.

Australia is home to Calder’s major work Crossed Blades (1967), commissioned by Harry Seidler for Sydney’s Australia Square, referenced through a maquette in the exhibition. The final room resonates with this absence, presenting studies for a number of late, large scale commissions that can only point towards the culmination of his vision.

Alexander Calder, American 1898–1976, Fish 1944, metal, paint, wire, plastic, wood, glass, and ceramic, 41.3 x 122.2 x 11.4 cm, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972 Accession number: 66.785. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / SODRAC, Montréal

Any sense of lack is quickly displaced by the delight of the NGV Kids Room. Returning to the deep sense of play running throughout the exhibition, we design and make our own animals from sheet material; or create a public sculpture out of found objects through touch-screen bricolage. There is, of course, a selfie-site, and a beanbag corner where parents can retreat, listening to the music of the Paris Jazz Age.

The exhibition finishes with the same values with which it began. As Georges Mounin suggests in the handsome catalogue accompanying the exhibition: “[Calder] gets us to look at his ‘mobiles’ with the same sense of silent wonder, the same rapt attention, the same outwardly invisible joy that we experience as children”.

Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor is on at the National Gallery of Victoria until August 4.

– ref. Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor is a tribute to living, breathing works of art – http://theconversation.com/alexander-calder-radical-inventor-is-a-tribute-to-living-breathing-works-of-art-115446

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexei Trundle, PhD Candidate, Australian-German Climate & Energy College, University of Melbourne

The impacts of climate change are already being felt across the Pacific, considered to be one of the world’s most-at-risk regions. Small island developing states are mandated extra support under the Paris Agreement. Many are classified as least developed countries, allowing them special access to development funding and loans.

Analysis of climate change adaptation projects in the Pacific shows most focus on rural areas, heavy infrastructure and policy development. Climate change planning for the cities and towns has been limited, despite their rapid growth.

Read more: For Pacific Island nations, rising sea levels are a bigger security concern than rising Chinese influence

Port Vila, for example, has far outgrown the municipal boundary set out when Vanuatu became independent in 1980. Migration to the urban fringe has resulted in the wider metropolitan area accounting for 26.8% of Vanuatu’s population. These areas are growing at an average rate of 6.6% a year.

The capital of Solomon Islands, Honiara, is experiencing similarly rapid growth. More than a third of its residents live in informal settlements on the city fringes, without legal tenure.

There are few rural economic opportunities and climate change is threatening outer island subsistence crops and fisheries. This means Pacific cities are likely to keep growing for many years to come.

Koa Hill informal settlement in central Honiara is prone to landslips and flash flooding. Alexei Trundle (2017)

Read more: Sea-level rise has claimed five whole islands in the Pacific: first scientific evidence

‘Not drowning, fighting’

Despite being exposed to extreme weather and rising seas, many inhabitants of Small Island Developing States resist being framed as “climate vulnerable”.

High exposure to extreme weather and little responsibility for the emissions that are making such events worse mean these states often regard characterisations of fragility and weakness as counterproductive. Pacific leaders regularly avoid describing their citizens as vulnerable to climate change, even during international negotiations.

Read more: Pacific islands are not passive victims of climate change, but will need help

As president of the 23rd UN Climate Conference, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama emphasised that Pacific vulnerability was recognised “not to present our people as victims but to emphasise that their interests are your interests”.

Kiribati’s former president, Anote Tong, recently in Australia advocating for stronger climate action, similarly insists that I-Kiribati “must not relocate as climate refugees but as people who would migrate with dignity”.

Graffiti on the fence of a damaged house in Blacksands, Port Vila, two years after Tropical Cyclone Pam. Alexei Trundle (2017)

Communities also focus on their strengths in the face of natural disasters. In March 2015 Tropical Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu. In the capital, Port Vila, it destroyed 30% of dwellings. The losses were equivalent to 64.1% of national GDP.

Read more: Cyclone Pam shows why more people means more havoc

In the aftermath local musician Bobby Shing released a single titled “Resilience”. The song relates the roles of culture, religion and “standing strong”.

“Resilience” echoed a national mood to rebuild and move forward. It also acknowledged the wealth of traditional knowledge for dealing with natural hazards in the world’s most disaster-prone country.

Artists Tujah (Bobby Shing), KC and ALA of Port Vila express their views on resilience following Tropical Cyclone Pam.

Rethinking climate resilience

Climate change adaptation in Pacific island cities is challenging for a number of reasons.

The United Nations Human Settlements Program, UN-Habitat, focuses specifically on adapting developing cities to climate change. As the UN’s peak body for cities it is responsible for implementing the New Urban Agenda. It is also spearheading Sustainable Development Goal 11, the “urban” SDG.

Working with Australian academics, local government and civil society, UN-Habitat is developing urban resilience and climate adaptation plans in Honiara and Port Vila.

UN-Habitat adaptation planning workshops in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Alexei Trundle (2016)

Recently published research reflecting on these two projects sheds light on the ways that “climate-resilient development” in Pacific cities needs to be done differently.

1) Target those who need help most

Informal settlements are the most vulnerable parts of Pacific cities. These vulnerability hotspots often occupy hazardous land such as floodplains where formal development is prohibited. They usually lack basic services such as piped water and electricity. When disaster strikes, the impacts are worst for these communities.

A lack of formal recognition can also stand in the way of disaster relief, voting rights and access to facilities such as health clinics. This further reduces the capacity of these communities to recover from disaster.

A spatial assessment of Honiara’s climate vulnerability shows the overlap between ‘hotspots’ and informal settlements. Honiara Urban Resilience & Climate Action Plan (UN-Habitat 2016)

Climate change planning should therefore prioritise the most vulnerable settlements at a sub-city scale. Initial efforts to understand the most vulnerable can then provide a baseline for wider city planning. This can ensure scarce adaptation resources are distributed more equitably.

2) Take land tenure into account

“Informal” encompasses many different ways of urban living beyond the renter/owner norms of developed nations.

Some households informally subdivide their land for extended family members. Other communities hold collective leasehold. Some have arrangements with traditional owners, renting through cash or customary payments.

Each type of informality modifies which climate adaptation options are feasible. For instance, communities might share sanitation facilities or water sources, making communal infrastructure preferable. Customary owners might restrict the “permanence” of structures built in an area.

Informal settlement areas in Blacksands, a large peri-urban community on customary land in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Alexei Trundle (2017)

3) Allow for ‘bottom-up’ resilience

Formal and informal communities in the Pacific often rely heavily on their own networks and capabilities when hit by a natural disaster. Without understanding these systems, international development efforts can undermine “bottom-up” resilience.

Participatory approaches ensure communities can determine their own adaptation needs. This also prevents outside actors from imposing their own assumptions and worldviews about how Pacific cities work.

An informal water supply in Koa Hill, Honiara. Church-based community structures manage the pipes that distribute drinking water to subgroups of households. Alexei Trundle (2017)

Sovereignty, agency and aid

Much has been made of Australia’s Pacific “step up”, with a bipartisan commitment to supporting the region’s adaptation efforts. Nonetheless climate change remains a major point of tension between Pacific island states and the region’s largest fossil fuel exporter.

Read more: Pacific pariah: how Australia’s love of coal has left it out in the diplomatic cold

A starting point for development partners like Australia should be recognising the importance of sovereignty and identity to Pacific Islanders. Calls for “constitutional condominiums” with low-lying countries serve only as reminders of Australia’s 20th-century colonial past.

Helping communities with engineering, geographic information systems (GIS) and climate analysis can enable them to make their own informed adaptation decisions.

Support to train construction specialists, urban planners and climate scientists will provide a platform for resilience building.

The cities of the Pacific are sometimes referred to as hybrid spaces. They blur traditional culture and customs with the global opportunities that lie beyond the “Sea of Islands”.

As Pacific Islanders urbanise, so too should adaptation efforts and finance. But, first, climate resilience must be understood as the most vulnerable understand it.

Leveraging endogenous climate resilience: urban adaptation in Pacific Small Island Developing States was published as part of a Special IPCC Cities Edition of Environment and Urbanization, which will be Open Access from the 15th of April – 15th May 2019

– ref. Pacific island cities call for a rethink of climate resilience for the most vulnerable – http://theconversation.com/pacific-island-cities-call-for-a-rethink-of-climate-resilience-for-the-most-vulnerable-113473

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Matthews, Research Officer – Cognitive Neurology Lab, Monash University

Although the term itself is not new, fake news presents a growing threat for societies across the world.

Only a small amount of fake news is needed to disrupt a conversation, and at extremes it can have an impact on democratic processes, including elections.

Read more: We made deceptive robots to see why fake news spreads, and found a weakness

But what can we do to avoid fake news, at a time when we could be waiting a while for mainstream media and social networks to step up and address the problem?

From a psychology perspective, an important step in tackling fake news is to understand why it gets into our mind. We can do this by examining how memory works and how memories become distorted.

Using this viewpoint generates some tips you can use to work out whether you’re reading or sharing fake news – which might be handy in the coming election period.

How memory gets distorted at the source

Fake news often relies on misattribution – instances in which we can retrieve things from memory but can’t remember their source.

Misattribution is one of the reasons advertising is so effective. We see a product and feel a pleasant sense of familiarity because we’ve encountered it before, but fail to remember that the source of the memory was an ad.

One study examined headlines from fake news published during the 2016 US Presidential Election.

The researchers found even one presentation of a headline (such as “Donald Trump Sent His Own Plane to Transport 200 Stranded Marines”, based on claims shown to be false) was enough to increase belief in its content. This effect persisted for at least a week, was still found when headlines were accompanied by a factcheck warning, and even when participants suspected it might be false.

Repeated exposure can increase the sense that misinformation is true. Repetition creates the perception of group consensus that can result in collective misremembering, a phenomenon called the Mandela Effect.

It might be harmless when people collectively misremember something fun, such as a childhood cartoon (did the Queen in Disney’s Snow White really NOT say “Mirror, mirror…”?). But it has serious consequences when a false sense of group consensus contributes to rising outbreaks of measles.

Scientists have investigated whether targeted misinformation can promote healthy behaviour. Dubbed false-memory diets, it is said that false memories of food experiences can encourage people to avoid fatty foods, alcohol and even convince them to love asparagus.

Creative people that have a strong ability to associate different words are especially susceptible to false memories. Some people might be more vulnerable than others to believe fake news, but everyone is at risk.

How bias can reinforce fake news

Bias is how our feelings and worldview affect the encoding and retrieval of memory. We might like to think of our memory as an archivist that carefully preserves events, but sometimes it’s more like a storyteller. Memories are shaped by our beliefs and can function to maintain a consistent narrative rather than an accurate record.

An example of this is selective exposure, our tendency to seek information that reinforces our pre-existing beliefs and to avoid information that brings those beliefs into question. This effect is supported by evidence that television news audiences are overwhelmingly partisan and exist in their own echo chambers.

It was thought that online communities exhibit the same behaviour, contributing to the spread of fake news, but this appears to be a myth. Political news sites are often populated by people with diverse ideological backgrounds and echo chambers are more likely to exist in real life than online.

Our brains are wired to assume things we believe originated from a credible source. But are we more inclined to remember information that reinforces our beliefs? This is probably not the case.

People who hold strong beliefs remember things that are relevant to their beliefs but they remember opposing information too. This happens because people are motivated to defend their beliefs against opposing views.

Belief echoes are a related phenomenon that highlight the difficulty of correcting misinformation. Fake news is often designed to be attention-grabbing.

It can continue to shape people’s attitudes after it has been discredited because it produces a vivid emotional reaction and builds on our existing narratives.

Corrections have a much smaller emotional impact, especially if they require policy details, so should be designed to satisfy a similar narrative urge to be effective.

Tips for resisting fake news

The way our memory works means it might be impossible to resist fake news completely.

Read more: How to help kids navigate fake news and misinformation online

But one approach is to start thinking like a scientist. This involves adopting a questioning attitude that is motivated by curiosity, and being aware of personal bias.

For fake news, this might involve asking ourselves the following questions:

• What type of content is this? Many people rely on social media and aggregators as their main source of news. By reflecting on whether information is news, opinion or even humour, this can help consolidate information more completely into memory.

• Where is it published? Paying attention to where information is published is crucial for encoding the source of information into memory. If something is a big deal, a wide variety of sources will discuss it, so attending to this detail is important.

• Who benefits? Reflecting on who benefits from you believing the content helps consolidate the source of that information into memory. It can also help us reflect on our own interests and whether our personal biases are at play.

Some people tend to be more susceptible to fake news because they are more accepting of weak claims.

But we can strive to be more reflective in our open-mindedness by paying attention to the source of information, and questioning our own knowledge if and when we are unable to remember the context of our memories.

– ref. How fake news gets into our minds, and what you can do to resist it – http://theconversation.com/how-fake-news-gets-into-our-minds-and-what-you-can-do-to-resist-it-114921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Management, Swinburne University of Technology

With the federal election a little over a month away, it appears many Australians have little faith the winners will be able to provide the type of leadership that can change the country in a meaningful way.

According to our recent research, nearly a third (29.8%) of respondents believe that the Coalition shows no “leadership for the public good”, compared to just 5% who believe the Coalition shows such leadership to an extremely large extent.

Labor fared only slightly better – 24.9% of respondents believe it shows no “leadership for the public good”, compared to 7.3% who said it shows it to an extremely large extent.

Our findings revealed that minor parties, the Greens and One Nation, didn’t inspire confidence, either. About a third (32.9%) of respondents believe the Greens show no “leadership for the public good”, while just over half (50.3%) believe the same of One Nation.

Equally concerning is the collapse of Australians’ trust and confidence in their democratic institutions of government.

Just over a quarter (26.3%) of respondents believe that the federal government, as an institution, shows no “leadership for the public good”. This score is somewhat worse than perceptions of state governments (24.6%) and significantly worse than perceptions of local governments (16.2%).

Read more: What can governments and leaders do when trust evaporates?

The findings come from the initial results of the Australian Leadership Index, a new quarterly survey from the Swinburne Business School that measures and tracks community perceptions and expectations of leadership across 12 institutions in the government, public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

These results were drawn from two nationally representative surveys of 1,000 Australians we conducted in March.

Taken together, the results provide more bad news for the Coalition in the lead-up to the federal election on May 18.

Accountability and ethics are key

We hasten to add that the disillusionment with the federal government does not extend to voters’ perceptions of the public sector. On balance, voters think the public health and education sectors show leadership for the public good.

This indicates that public disillusionment lies squarely with the people who make the policy, rather than those who implement it.

Consistent with other studies, our findings confirm the importance of transparency, accountability and ethics to perceptions of trust and confidence in leadership.

Read more: Reforming our political system is not a quick fix. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to do it

From a community perspective, political leadership for the public good occurs when leaders demonstrate high ethical standards, prioritise transparency and accountability even when it could have a negative impact on their administrations, and are alive and responsive to the needs of the people they serve.

In other words, leadership for the greater good is reflected in what value leaders create, how they create this value, and for whom they create it.

Political leaders in Australia are currently lacking on all counts.

For whom is value created?

Our survey results shed light on where the public thinks the federal government is failing to create value and what the community expects of political leaders to serve the greater good.

Notably, creating economic value has no bearing on perceptions of politicians’ leadership for the public good. As former Liberal Party leader John Hewson recently observed, voters now take effective economic management for granted from governments.

The same could be said for the creation of social value through, for example, the provision of social services and the enactment of policies that enable people to flourish.

From the public’s perspective, the creation of social and economic value is essentially “core business” for the federal government.

In order to be seen as showing leadership for the public good, the federal government needs to go beyond business as usual.

What looms largest in the public mind when thinking about leadership for the greater good is how political leaders create value and for whom they create value.

Specifically, politicians need to behave ethically and demonstrate accountability for their actions. Australians have had enough of the opportunistic, short-term game of point-scoring and blame-shifting.

Read more: Australians’ trust in politicians and democracy hits an all-time low: new research

Moreover, political leaders need to be seen as responsive to the people they serve, in addition to balancing the needs of different groups of stakeholders. Concern about the use of donations to gain access to, and exert influence over, politicians looms large in the public mind.

In the lead-up to the federal election, and in the wake of recent Royal Commissions into banking and religious institutions, it’s the ideal time for Australians to consider the kind of leadership we need for the Australia we want.

– ref. No matter who wins the election, many Australians think real leadership will be lacking – http://theconversation.com/no-matter-who-wins-the-election-many-australians-think-real-leadership-will-be-lacking-115449

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sean Phelan, Associate Profesor of Communication, Massey University

Two months before New Zealand’s 2017 elections, which eventually installed the Ardern coalition government, then Green party co-leader Metiria Turei gave a speech on welfare reform.

Many political commentators had predicted an easy victory for the ruling National party, but this was turned on its head by a chain of events that saw Turei resign as Green party co-leader – and effectively from parliament – less than four weeks later. In the middle of it all, Jacinda Ardern was appointed as Labour party leader, partly in response to polls suggesting Labour was losing support to the Greens.

In our research we examined the role of journalism in animating the Turei controversy and the different perceptions of professional journalists and online commentators sympathetic to Turei’s left politics.

Read more: How ‘new power’ is driving journalism in the digital age

The political context

Turei’s speech outlined a policy that challenged the neoliberal consensus of the past 30 years by pledging to increase welfare payments for “every single beneficiary by 20% and remove disciplinary penalties for welfare beneficiaries”.

But the part that attracted most media interest was Turei’s personal story about her experiences of the New Zealand welfare system as a single parent, Māori woman and law student in the 1990s. Most significantly, she revealed “the lie I had to tell to keep my financial life under control” by not informing the welfare authorities about the flatmates she had when receiving rent support payments.

The initial reaction in journalistic opinion pieces and commentary was predictably mixed and divisive. Some journalists condemned Turei for welfare “fraud”, while others communicated their support. The case mobilised Turei’s supporters on social media, where they used the Twitter hashtag #IamMetiria to share their own punitive experiences of the country’s welfare system.

The response of the two main political parties, Labour and National, was relatively subdued. Then opposition Labour leader Andrew Little commended Turei’s speech, while National government ministers merely expressed their “disappointment”.

Media politics

The focus on journalism’s role in the controversy intensified after the publication of an opinion piece by Patrick Gower, who was then political editor of Newshub. Gower accused Turei of manipulating “the media and the public” by trying to exploit her personal story for political gain.

In a drip-feed fashion, different details emerged that intensified media scrutiny of Turei, including a Newshub story that revealed she had registered at an electoral address that wasn’t her home in 1993. The political stakes rose even higher when two of Turei’s parliamentary colleagues resigned in protest at her initial refusal to step down as co-leader.

Our analysis highlighted a marked division in the responses of professional journalists and online commentators. Journalists insisted they were simply “doing their job” by interrogating Turei’s story. Online critics accused journalists of hounding Turei, and attributed significant responsibility to media for her political demise.

For example, in this column, Rachel Stewart mocked the claims of Turei’s online supporters that journalism was somehow to blame for her political fate:

Blaming the media – or anyone – for a political misfire of the Greens’ own making, is about as pointless as expecting sharks to stop liking blood. Not going to happen.

Conversely, writer and blogger Giovanni Tiso interrogated journalistic discourses that obscured the role played by media in Turei’s “political assassination”. In pointed contrast to Stewart’s shark metaphor, he suggested:

…there is in fact nothing natural, inevitable or necessary about a narrow understanding of journalism which has no regard for social value.

Antagonistic disputes

Our study highlighted how evaluation of journalism is increasingly the subject of antagonistic disputes between journalists and non-journalists, operating in different regions of what the political communication scholar Andrew Chadwick calls today’s “hybrid media system”. We showed how journalists negotiate these antagonisms partly through a self-serving depiction of online publics as inherently irrational.

Journalists’ defensiveness to ubiquitous online critique is in one sense understandable. The complex entity we call “the media” can be made to sound like an undifferentiated blob. But journalistic dismissals of “social media” can be similarly reductive. In the Turei case, these obscured the capacity of online commentators to produce perceptive critiques of journalism.

Our study illuminated what can and cannot be said about journalism in the middle of a high-stakes political drama. On the eve of Turei’s resignation, the Green’s other co-leader, James Shaw (now a government minister), gave a media interview in which he said:

…people should just calm down … and realise the media have just been doing their job.

Shaw’s comments were – not surprisingly – lauded by many journalists and, read literally, affirmed the dominant journalistic interpretation of the controversy.

But a month later, Shaw offered a more convincing diagnosis of the case. He noted how parts of the media “really went beyond reasonable bounds” in their coverage of Turei.

Journalism, social media and democracy

How journalists do their job is the product of a constellation of economic, political, social, cultural and historical forces. Much like Turei’s attempt to bring attention to punitive aspects of the country’s welfare system, these cannot be understood independently of the neoliberal imperatives that have dominated New Zealand politics since the 1980s.

But the fact it is still difficult to make these arguments when talking about journalism in mainstream media says something about the nature of journalism’s representational power and its vulnerability to forms of online critique that ultimately democratise public conversations about journalism practice.

Affirming the democratic capacity of online publics should not be construed as denying some of the profound limitations of today’s digital culture and its obscene business models. These have become very visible to all of us in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

Read more: Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media

Rather, it is to suggest that the thing we call “social media” should not be reduced to a one-dimensional pejorative category. For all its faults, online culture has given greater public visibility to legitimate critiques of journalism that are still less likely to be talked about – and heard – in traditional news media.

– ref. Were journalists ‘just doing their job’ in the political resignation of Metiria Turei? – http://theconversation.com/were-journalists-just-doing-their-job-in-the-political-resignation-of-metiria-turei-115040

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Gillespie, Deputy Director, Menzies Centre for Health Policy & Associate Professor in Health Policy, University of Sydney

Labor’s 2016 “Mediscare” has entered political memory as a campaign tactic that almost changed the game in that election. Using robocalls and text messages purporting to come from Medicare, government proposals to outsource management of back-office business became inflated into an all-out “privatisation” of Medicare.

The hyperbole cut through because of a long history of Coalition hostility to Medicare as a universal health scheme. The then Turnbull government didn’t lose the election, but it became accepted wisdom that the Mediscare campaign contributed to the loss of some seats.

Health has taken centre stage once again this election, with both sides trying to use “Mediscare” tactics to drive fear about cuts or shortfalls in the health system.

Read more: As Mediscare 2.0 takes centre stage, here’s what you need to know about hospital ‘cuts’ and cancer funding

Coalition hostility

Both the Whitlam government’s Medibank and Hawke’s Medicare faced withering hostility from Australian conservatives.

Australia became one of the only nations to introduce universal health coverage in 1975. This aimed to ensure all Australians had access to a wide range of health services at little or no cost, no matter where you lived or how much money you earned.

But the Fraser Coalition government abolished the system in 1981.

Howard changed his tune on Medicare. Shaney Balcombe/AAP

After three years of debate about the role of private health insurance, and indivuals’ responsibility to pay for their own health care, universal health care was re-established in 1984 by the Hawke Labor government, under the new name: Medicare.

In 1987, then opposition leader John Howard promised to return to a user-pays system based on private health insurance. He wanted to “take a scalpel, without punning too much, to Medicare”.

But rather than backing Howard’s plan, voters delivered a string of Coalition electoral losses. In 1990, the Liberal shadow minister for health confessed to the press, just before resigning:

I want to say with all the frankness I can muster, the Liberal and National Parties do not have a particularly good track record in health, and you don’t need me to remind you of our last period in government.

Read more: Labor’s ‘Mediscare’ campaign capitalised on Coalition history of hostility towards Medicare

Howard’s 1996 electoral success relied on defusing the Medicare issue. He assured voters that “Medicare will remain totally in place under a Coalition government”.

However, he retained some of his ambivalence. Howard supported Medicare’s role as a “safety net” to support people with few financial resources. But the Coalition believed those who could afford it should pay their own way, through private health insurance.

The Abbott government’s 2014 Commission of Audit report restated this call for a two-tier health system:

Higher-income earners should be required to insure for basic health services in place of Medicare.

The incoming Turnbull government rejected this advice. But the debate reinforced an image of a reluctant and half-hearted convert.

When the Coalition extended the Medicare benefit freeze, which was originally introduced by Gillard’s Labor government, the extension hurt the Coalition far more than it had Labor.

Read more: What is the Medicare rebate freeze and what does it mean for you?

Embracing Medicare or avoiding a Mediscare?

The Coalition has been determined to avoid this trap again. The Turnbull and Morrison governments have underlined support for Medicare. The 2019-20 Budget documents are punctuated with statements about “guaranteeing” and “strengthening” Medicare. It also declares: “The government’s commitment to Medicare is rock solid.”

The Medicare Guarantee Fund was established in 2017 to emphasise this commitment. Tax dollars generated by the Medicare levy (minus the portion set aside for the National Disability Insurance Scheme), go into the fund. These are topped up with enough personal income tax receipts to meet the combined cost of the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

The 2016 Mediscare campaign caused more than a headache for the Coalition. Dan Peled/AAP

But the fund has been criticised as mere rebadging and an “accounting trick”. It offered no new funding or new policies; it simply changed the name of existing policies, and extended the definition of “Medicare” from payments of medical benefits to include pharmaceuticals.

But the “Medicare guarantee” wasn’t extended to guarantee adequate federal funding for public hospitals, which remains a problem.

Read more: Don’t be fooled, the Medicare Guarantee Fund provides no real guarantee

When it comes to embracing Medicare and health funding, Labor has been called out for some of its own lapses.

In 2011 the Gillard government, during its struggles for control of spending, delayed implementation of some expensive pharmaceuticals, causing outrage among health provider and patient groups.

Labor has had to add its own guarantee this election campaign that all PBS drugs approved by the nation’s expert advisory panel will be approved immediately.

Mediscare 2.0

Labor’s new attempt at scare tactics over Medicare uses well established themes. It will test how far the Coalition has been able to inoculate itself.

The attack has again focused on the out-of-pocket costs from declining bulk-billing levels, especially in cancer treatment.

Despite the Gillard government’s Medicare rebate freeze, Labor has held the high ground in this cost debate. Its cancer package focuses on extending bulk billing to minimise out-of-pocket payments.

Labor has focused on spruiking its cancer package. Ellen Smith/AAP

In the field of hospital funding, Labor’s “Mediscare 2.0” focuses on a A$2.8 billion “cut” in funding to the states to pay for public hospitals.

In 2011, the Rudd/Gillard government pledged to share the cost of public hospital funding growth with the states with a 50-50 split to end the “blame game”. The Abbott government abandoned this policy in the 2014 budget.

Read more: Budget takes hospital funding arrangement back to the future

The Coalition, under Turnbull, offered to return to funding 45% of the cost of public hospitals. The Labor-held states rejected this, and Shorten has now promised to restore this to 50%. Labor has made traction with these attacks, though much of the detail has been lost or confused in media soundbites.

Election campaigning in health has forced the Coalition to accept how much Australians value Medicare and the principle of universal health coverage. As the common ground between Labor and the Coalition expands, we may be able to have a more rational debate over Medicare’s virtues and deficiencies. But not in the partisan heat of an election.

– ref. Election campaign lesson #1: don’t mess with Medicare – http://theconversation.com/election-campaign-lesson-1-dont-mess-with-medicare-114292

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elsa Dominish, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Growing demand for electric vehicles is important to help cut transport emissions, but it will also lead to new mining. Without a careful approach, we could create new environmental damage while trying to solve an environmental problem.

Like solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage technologies, electric vehicles require a complex mix of metals, many of which have only been previously mined in small amounts.

These include cobalt, nickel and lithium for batteries used for electric vehicles and storage; rare earth metals for permanent magnets in electric vehicles and some wind turbines; and silver for solar panels.

Read more: Time for a global agreement on minerals to fuel the clean energy transition

Our new research at the Institute of Sustainable Futures found that under a 100% renewable energy scenario, demand for metals for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies could exceed reserves for cobalt, lithium and nickel.

To ensure the transition to renewables does not increase the already significant environmental and human impacts of mining, greater rates of recycling and responsible sourcing are essential.

Greater uptake of electric vehicles will translate to more mining of metals such as cobalt. Shutterstock

Recycling can offset demand for new mining

Electric vehicles are only a very small share of the global vehicle market, but their uptake is expected to accelerate rapidly as costs reduce. This global shift is the main driver of demand for lithium, cobalt and rare earths, which all have a big effect on the environment.

Read more: Politically charged: do you know where your batteries come from?

Although electric vehicles clearly help us by reducing transport emissions, the electric vehicle and battery industries face the urgent challenge of improving the environmental effects of their supply chains.

Our research shows recycling metals can significantly reduce primary demand for electric vehicle batteries. If 90% of cobalt from electric vehicle and energy storage batteries was recycled, for instance, the cumulative demand for cobalt would reduce by half by 2050.

So what happens to the supply when recycling can’t fully meet the demand? New mining is inevitable, particularly in the short term.

In fact, we are already seeing new mines linked to the increasing demand for renewable technologies.

Clean energy is not so clean

Without responsible management, greater clean energy uptake has the potential to create new environmental and social problems. Heavy metals, for instance, could contaminate water and agricultural soils, leading to health issues for surrounding communities and workers.

Read more: Dirty deeds: how to stop Australian miners abroad being linked to death and destruction

Most of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and around 20% of this is from artisanal and small-scale miners who work in dangerous conditions in hand-dug mines.

This includes an estimated 40,000 children under 15.

Rare earths processing requires large amounts of harmful chemicals and produces large volumes of solid waste, gas and wastewater, which have contaminated villages in China.

Copper mining has led to pollution of large areas through tailings dam failures, including in the US and Canada. A tailings dam is typically an earth-filled embankment dam used to store mining byproducts.

A tailings dam. Edvision/Shutterstock

When supply cannot be met by recycling, we argue companies should responsibly source these metals through verified certification schemes, such as the IRMA Standard for Responsible Mining.

What would a sustainable electric vehicle system look like?

A sustainable renewable energy and transport system would focus on improving practices for recycling and responsible sourcing.

Many electric vehicle and battery manufacturers have been proactively establishing recycling initiatives and investigating new options, such as reusing electric vehicle batteries as energy storage once they are no longer efficient enough for vehicles.

Read more: Treasure from trash: how mining waste can be mined a second time

But there is still potential to improve recycling rates. Not all types of metals are currently being recovered in the recycling process. For example, often only higher value cobalt and nickel are recovered, whereas lithium and manganese are not.

And while electric vehicle manufacturers are beginning to engage in responsible sourcing, many are concerned about the ability to secure enough supply from responsibly sourced mines.

If the auto industry makes public commitments to responsible sourcing, it will have a flow-on effect. More mines would be encouraged to engage with responsible practices and certification schemes.

These responsible sourcing practices need to ensure they do not lead to unintended negative consequences, such as increasing poverty, by avoiding sourcing from countries with poorer governance.

Focusing on supporting responsible operations in these countries will have a better long-term impact than avoiding those nations altogether.

What does this mean for Australia?

The Australian government has committed to supporting industry in better managing batteries and solar panels at the end of their life.

But stronger policies will be needed to ensure reuse and recycling if the industry does not establish effective schemes on their own, and quickly.

Australia is already the largest supplier of lithium, but most of this is exported unprocessed to China. However, this may change as the battery industry expands.

Read more: Charging ahead: how Australia is innovating in battery technology

For example, lithium processing facilities are under development in Western Australia. Mining company Lithium Australia already own a battery component manufacturer in Australia, and recently announced they acquired significant shares in battery recycling company Envirostream.

This could help to close the loop on battery materials and create more employment within the sector.

Human rights must not be sidelined

The renewable energy transition will only be sustainable if human rights are made a top priority in the communities where mining takes place and along the supply chain.

The makers of electric cars have the opportunity to lead these industries, driving change up the supply chain, and influence their suppliers to adopt responsible practices.

Governments and industry must also urgently invest in recycling and reuse schemes to ensure the valuable metals used in these technologies are recovered, so only what is necessary is mined.

– ref. Electric cars can clean up the mining industry – here’s how – http://theconversation.com/electric-cars-can-clean-up-the-mining-industry-heres-how-115369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Goss, School Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

State governments may run schools, but federal decisions still make a big difference to the education of Australian children. Whoever the federal education minister after the May 18 election, he or she needs to put these three things first:

• fixing school funding
• establishing a national evidence institute to find out what works best in the classroom, and
• reinforcing the government’s commitment to reform of initial teacher education.

1. Get school funding right, then move on

School funding debates in Australia are complex and messy, but there is hope. Both Labor and the Coalition are committed to needs-based funding, and there were real steps forward in 2017 with the passage of Gonski 2.0. Among many improvements, this committed to increasing Commonwealth funding to government schools from an average of 17% of their needs in 2017, to 20% by 2023.

Read more: The passage of Gonski 2.0 is a victory for children over politics

Each school’s needs-based funding target is calculated through something called the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS). Under the SRS, every student receives a base amount of funding. When parents choose a non-government school, base funding is reduced according to parents’ capacity to contribute. Students with higher needs attract extra funding, regardless of how well-off their parents are.

The structure of the SRS formula is sound: schools get more money if their students need it, and most families can afford a non-government school if they so choose.

So far, so good. But there is a big gap between funding theory and practice. The Grattan Institute’s Commonwealth Orange Book 2019 compared Australia’s performance across a range of policy areas against nine similar countries: Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

We found disadvantaged schools in Australia had worse access to educational staff and materials than any comparison country. And Australia’s state schools, which educate the bulk of the most disadvantaged students, get less funding than governments themselves say the schools need.

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

This funding gap isn’t going away. Under current Coalition policy, the effective funding for each state school will plateau well below 100% of SRS, while non-government schools get full whack.

Labor’s promised additional A$14 billion for government schools closes about half the remaining gap. But government schools would still be funded less (compared to SRS) than non-government schools.

The SRS formula is sound but needs a refresh. JESHOOTS.COM/Unsplash

The next federal education minister should work with the states to close this gap, moving all sectors to a consistent level of funding against the SRS on a consistent time-frame – ideally after reviewing the SRS formula to increase confidence in the underlying target.

How much money each school gets is important. How they spend that money can have an even bigger impact, especially when it is based on rigorous evidence.

2. Create a national evidence institute

Education researchers have spent decades building the evidence around the most effective – and cost-effective – ways to teach.

Yet there are still major evidence gaps around the impact of policies, programs and education practices in Australian schools and early childhood education and care services; and the most effective ways to turn best practice into common practice.

A 2016 Productivity Commission report highlighted the need for a new national evidence institute, to complement the work already being done at a state level. Both the Coalition and Labor have promised to establish such a body. The task of the next federal education minister will be to get the institute’s governance and scope right.

The institute should be genuinely independent of government, both to gain the trust of the education sector and to avoid changes driven by the political tides.

And its scope must be sufficiently broad. Lists of the most effective educational interventions are valuable, but don’t automatically change teaching practice.

Instead, evidence must be ready for use by the teaching workforce, and the teaching workforce must be ready to use the evidence. The institute should research what works best, understand the current state of practice and identify the most effective ways to help teachers implement evidence-informed practices.

Read more: Don’t be fooled, billions for schools in budget 2019 aren’t new. And what happened to the national evidence institute?

3. Deliver the ongoing reforms into initial teacher education

In the short- to medium-term, the key to better student outcomes is to help the existing teacher workforce adapt their practices to do more of what works best and to stop practices that don’t.

In the long-term, a key consideration is who comes into the teaching profession and how well they are trained. As of today, too many students are unprepared for the classroom even once they have completed their initial teacher education.

This issue is not new, and it is being addressed. Since the 2014 Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) review, the Commonwealth has tightened the accreditation requirements for initial teacher education courses, and made a number of other sensible changes such as ensuring all would-be teachers have strong literacy and numeracy skills.

The next federal education minister should announce a major review of these reforms. It should assess the effectiveness of the changes that have been made to date and explore whether additional sanctions are needed for universities that are failing to deliver quality improvements.

Read more: Viewpoints: should universities raise the ATAR required for entrance into teaching degrees?

Potential additional consequences could include greater transparency on student pass rates, restricting student places or performance-based funding.

Given the TEMAG reforms are still being implemented, we suggest the review should not happen until 2021. This would give time for the current changes to be implemented and tested.

It would also make it harder for universities to make excuses if they are still admitting too many students with poor academic records or if their students are still unready to teach when they get to the end of their degrees.

It’s a lot to ask a Commonwealth education minister to get school funding right, strengthen the evidence base, and ensure initial teacher education is delivering the goods. They certainly can’t do it all on their own. But what the minister chooses to prioritise will affect the life outcomes of Australia’s schoolchildren, and the future economic prospects for the whole nation.

– ref. Three things Australia’s next education minister must prioritise to improve schools – http://theconversation.com/three-things-australias-next-education-minister-must-prioritise-to-improve-schools-115223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Daley, Chief Executive Officer, Grattan Institute

A federal election is an opportunity to take stock of how we are doing, where we are going, and what governments can do about it.

Grattan Institute’s latest report, Commonwealth Orange Book 2019, released today, is designed to help the next government set priorities for reform.

The problems aren’t hard to find. Our living standards have stagnated, mirroring trends across much of the developed world. Although we avoided the global malaise in the wake of the global financial crisis, other countries – most notably the United Kingdom and the United States – are starting to grow faster than us. Anxiety about our economic prospects is rising.

Australian incomes have flatlined in recent years

Gross national income per capita, purchasing power parity adjusted

Grattan Institute Commonwealth Orange Book 2019 Figure 2.1

The federal budget might be returning to surplus, but after a decade of deficits, Australia no longer enjoys the big financial buffers that gave the government the firepower to protect our economy through the global financial crisis. And the projected future surpluses assume spending restraint not achieved in 50 years.

Internationally, we’re slipping

On many social issues, Australia is not doing especially well when compared to its peers, as our International Scorecard shows.

Australia’s school results are behind. Home ownership has been sliding and housing costs and homelessness are relatively high. Australia’s electricity supply is more polluting, less reliable and more expensive than in comparable countries, and we are not on track to fulfil our promises to reduce greenhouse emissions. Trust in government is falling, and more people think the government is corrupt and policy making is being conducted behind closed doors.

There are bright spots. Our health system is delivering longer lives. Retirement incomes are generally sufficient, except for the increasing number of renters. Government is delivering results on health, education and retirement at relatively low cost.

Policy-wise, we’re drifting

But Australians pay more out of their own pockets for health and education than in most other countries. And Australians are paying much more to have their savings managed than in other countries.

The overall pattern is that Australia is beginning to pay for well over a decade of policy drift and flip-flops. Governments of all political stripes have been less willing to put forward bold reforms in the public interest, and less able to make them stick.

Australia has made fewer tough economic choices this past decade, and reversed many

Grattan Institute Commonwealth Orange Book 2019 Figure 2.4

The next Commonwealth Government needs to choose to do less, but deliver more.

Recent Australian governments of all sides of politics have tried to fix too much at once, and have tended to achieve small things but mishandle big things. It takes time to design and implement important policies. Even for governments, resources are scarce and political capital is finite.

We should do less, and do it better

Some of the key policy reforms are primarily problems for state governments, such as planning reforms to permit more housing development, transport infrastructure project selection, electricity network costs, public hospital costs, and school teaching. In these areas, Commonwealth intervention gains headlines, but rarely achieves much.

Instead, the Commonwealth needs to focus where it has direct responsibility.

One such area is a clear, credible policy to tackle climate change that will win public support. Failure on this task destroyed the prime ministerships of Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull. The next government should implement the emissions and reliability obligations of the National Energy Guarantee for electricity, in cooperation with the states.

To support economic growth, the next Commonwealth government should put major tax reform back on the table. Australia needs to reform the combination of personal income tax, means-testing of welfare benefits, and childcare costs and subsidies, which discourage many second-income earners with children, primarily women, from working more.

Accelerated depreciation or investment allowances for large companies could attract more investment to Australia (and these are better reforms than simply cutting the company tax rate, which gives away tax revenue on investments already made).

These changes should be funded (and other tax increases avoided) by reducing the capital gains tax discount, winding back negative gearing, limiting superannuation tax concessions (particularly tax-free earnings in retirement), and broadening or increasing the rate of the goods and services tax.

Read more: Stranger than fiction. Who Labor’s capital gains tax changes will really hurt

In health, the Commonwealth needs to respond to the rapidly increasing pressures on private health insurance and out-of-pocket costs. It should start down the path of universal dental care.

The Commonwealth should finish the job on school funding and move on. It should reintroduce the demand-driven higher education system, while controlling costs by increasing the repayment requirements for Higher Education Loan Program debt.

On retirement incomes, the Commonwealth should abandon the planned increase in the Superannuation Guarantee from 9.5% to 12%, and instead drive down costs by adopting the Productivity Commission’s recommendations for “best-in-show” default superannuation funds.

Find things out…

In a range of other policy areas we know there are problems, but we don’t know the solutions.

The Commonwealth should commission work to determine how to deliver more integrated primary health care, improve the quality of initial teacher education, manage the balance between university and vocational education, ensure that natural gas producers pay a reasonable rate of royalty tax, and increase the age of access to the age pension and superannuation given rising life expectancy.

The politics of reform is never easy. Special interest groups, emboldened by success, are increasingly vocal in protecting their interests. The public interest has few friends.

…and protect the public interest

The next Commonwealth government should improve checks and balances on the influence of special interests by making political donations and lobbying more visible, in real time, and should ensure there are real penalties for people who do not comply. Election advertising expenditure should be capped to slow the “arms race” between the major parties for more campaign funds. And whoever wins the next federal election should establish a strong integrity commission.

Australia has a proud history of implementing substantial reform, which requires assembling the evidence, using it to defend the public interest, and staring down interest groups.

Recent reforms to school funding and the partial rollback of superannuation tax concessions show what is possible.

Many countries would be delighted to swap our problems for theirs. But we can do even better. And we must make our own luck.

– ref. Grattan Orange Book. What the election should be about: priorities for the next government – http://theconversation.com/grattan-orange-book-what-the-election-should-be-about-priorities-for-the-next-government-115563

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

Almost a week into this campaign, many people would be finding their heads hurting. Others would be staying tuned out for a while yet, put off by the cacophony of conflicting claims.

Voters have been bombarded by numbers. Numbers asserted, numbers contested, numbers denied. Numbers in tens, indeed hundreds, of billions. Millions have mostly become the five cent coins of election dialogue (unless they are a subset of the billions).

And the numbers stretch into what, in political terms, might as well be infinity. Plans are for the next decade. Never mind that elections come every three years.

Many of these numbers mean little in themselves. Let’s not say they’re made up. They do, however, have a good deal of confection to them.

The way the carefully-controlled campaign operations work, many of the numbers are dropped out, by government and opposition, embargoed for publication around midnight. The aim is to land them “raw” into the morning news cycle, not masticated by reaction.

The think tanks are enthusiastically in the numbers game. The Grattan Institute this week said the government would need to cut $40 billion over a decade to meet its tax and surplus promises.

“Absolute complete rubbish,” Scott Morrison harrumphed.

Please, can someone remember to check in 10 years?

There is much to be said for sticking to the four-year timeframe of the budget’s forward estimates (and remember, at budget time the experts often question the assumptions even over that period).

No ordinary people with a life can or will follow all these figures. Anyway, why would any rational voter believe claims involving mega multiple billions and 10-year spans? Peter Costello has drawn attention to the absurdity of promises into the never never.

The government and opposition have been framing their stories, and they think a long “plan” sounds better than a shorter one. And, in trying to discredit the offerings of their opponents, they believe size matters.

The most fanciful example of the latter was the government this week claiming part of Labor’s cancer policy would cost some exorbitant extra amount on the basis of grossly inaccurate assumptions.

But one cohort of voters usually thought to be taking more than average notice of specific numbers is retirees. Moreover, for those nearing retirement, or worried about it, even long term numbers have more than usual meaning.

The government is banking heavily on these people reacting badly to Labor’s plan to cancel cash refunds for franking credits (worth A$57 billion over a decade) and to various proposed changes to superannuation Labor has foreshadowed.

Both sides have different perceptions about what the government characterises as a “retirement tax” – the refunds crackdown – will play out politically.

The government has produced a table showing the number of individuals (of all ages) in various seats adversely affected (with data based on 2016-17 tax statistics) and the average dollar impact.

For instance, in the Victorian marginal seat of Chisholm, which the government is fighting to hold, more than 10,400 people would be affected, with an average impact of about $2200. In the NSW ALP seat of Richmond those affected would number nearly 8200, with an average impact of more than $1900.

Overall, these figures show 910,000 people affected, with the average impact $2285.

The government would argue those who’d be hit are widely scattered and extend beyond wealthy people who have arranged their financial affairs to minimise their taxable income. So it sees the issue as politically potent.

But Labor says most of those who’d be caught are the better off – and likely Coalition supporters. Pensioners would be exempt.

Notably, some Labor sources say the “retirement tax” is not coming through its research as a big issue, especially once the discussion drills down into the detail of, and rationale behind, the policy. It is a matter of explaining it.

Bill Shorten was blunt in defending the proposed change at his Sunday rally, also translating it into the sort of tangible benefits the savings could buy.

“If you are getting a tax credit when you haven’t paid any income tax, this is a gift,” he told the rally. “It is a gift lifted from the taxes paid by working class and middle class people in Australia today.

“It is a gift that is eating our budget. It’s now costing our nation over $6 billion this year, and pretty soon will cost $8 billion.

“And if all of this talk of billions is too much, perhaps think of it in the following way. Two minutes’ worth of the gift, the money that flows out of this one loophole, two minutes out of 365 days, could pay for someone’s knee replacement surgery. Ten minutes worth of the gift is enough to employ a nurse, full-time, for a year.”

Scott Morrison on Tuesday had his eye firmly on the retiree vote, when he appeared at a forum in the Victorian seat of Corangamite (where Sky reported that many in the audience were Liberal party members who’d been invited to attend.)

Morrison gave an assurance of no further imposts on superannuation – a painful issue for the government at the last election. “No new taxes, no higher taxes on superannuation under my Government. Never ever,” he later reiterated at a news conference.

When Bill Shorten was pressed for a commitment on super, he began by saying Labor had “no plans to increase taxes on superannuation” but was then pushed into an unqualified promise.

This overlooked various planned changes to superannuation Labor announced some time ago. Amounting to $34 billion. Over a decade.

– ref. View from The Hill: Why would rational voters believe talk of hundreds of billions and 10-year timeframes? – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-why-would-rational-voters-believe-talk-of-hundreds-of-billions-and-10-year-timeframes-115578