Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Will the Government fix spying in the public service?

January 17, 2019

Political Roundup: Will the Government fix spying in the public service?

by Dr Bryce Edwards

The week before Christmas was dominated by what may actually have been the most important political issue of the year in New Zealand – revelations that government agencies have spied on New Zealanders through the use of private investigators. The matter ended up being somewhat buried in the end-of-year chaos, and perhaps conveniently forgotten about by politicians with an interest in the issue remaining unresolved.

Yet the story isn’t going away. Today, the Herald published revelations about how the private investigations firm Thompson & Clark was previously employed by government-owned Southern Response insurance to review Official Information Act answers about the use of the private investigations firm itself – see Lucy Bennett’s Megan Woods seeks answers on Southern Response’s use of private investigators.

Here’s the key part of the story: “In January 2017, when Woods was the opposition spokeswoman on the Christchurch quake recovery, Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd (TCIL) invoiced Southern Response $2070 for reviewing a response to an Official Information Act request from the Labour Party research unit on its use of TCIL.”

The article reports on how “TCIL also appears to advise Southern Response on how to circumvent public scrutiny.” For example, Thompson & Clark gave the following advice to Southern Response’s chief executive: “to get around disclosure, privacy and OIA issues, we normally set up a discreet email address for you – in Gmail or similar … do you want us to set up a discreet email account for you – or do you want to?”

The original “explosive” SSC report

Despite the State Services Commission report being released during the busy period just prior to Christmas – leading to what some see as a lack of media coverage and scrutiny of the issues – there have been some excellent articles and columns published about it.

Andrea Vance produced some of the best coverage of the report and the aftermath. Her first report, Security firm spied on politicians, activists and earthquake victims, detailed the full extent of what had been uncovered by the report into government agencies using private investigators. Overall, she said that the “explosive report details a slew of damning revelations”.

Vance followed this up with an in-depth article, Public service bosses ignored warnings about Thompson & Clark for years, which revealed that “for a decade public service bosses ignored the warnings about Thompson & Clark. Their tentacles were everywhere. Dozens of ministries and agencies used their services – and yet no-one in the upper echelons of the public service questioned their reach or influence.”

According to Vance, “officials became drunk on the power of the information offered up by security firms like Thompson & Clark. It allowed them to keep tabs on their critics and stave off any reputational damage.” She also argues that “A cavalier attitude to personal and sensitive information, and a troubling disregard for the democratic right to protest, was allowed to flourish within the public service over 15 years and successive governments.”

Hamish Rutherford produced some excellent analysis, explaining: “In an age where the use of contractors is already under scrutiny, a string of government agencies have effectively outsourced snooping, in some cases for highly questionable reasons. In some cases this was done with a lack of clear contracts, creating a fertile atmosphere for mission creep” – see: Use of private investigators exposes carelessness about role of the government.

Rutherford writes about how remarkable it is that public servants weren’t aware (according to the report) that what was going on was unacceptable. He therefore concludes: “we are reading about public servants who appeared to be seduced by private investigators, who decided to make their job easier without considering the implications for democratic rights, or the need to remain neutral. Weeding out improper behaviour may take work, but it seems the report exposes examples where public servants need to be told what their job involves, which would be a far more fundamental problem.”

RNZ’s Tim Watkin also has some strong analysis of what occurred, saying that the report on the state snooping “is a bit of a page-turner and a terrifying read for anyone who cares about the integrity of the public sector” – see: Heart of Darkness in the public sector.

According to Watkin, the situation is perplexing, given the risk-averse nature of the public service: “My concern is what this says about the culture at the heart of our public service. How did leaders who are by the very definition of their roles meant to be servants of the public decide that this level of covert surveillance was a good idea? Government agencies are typically so risk averse these days that they have multiple managers signing off press statements and an inability to make a decision on which pencils or toilet paper to buy without first clearing it with the minister’s office. Yet they are willing to subject those ‘ordinary New Zealanders” to secret surveillance.”

Possibly, Watkin says it’s the very risk-averse nature of the current public service that has caused them to be more open to snooping on citizens: “there seems to be a deep-seated sense of butt-covering and paranoia”. This is the very point made by Gordon Campbell in his blogpost, On why Thompson + Clark are just the tip of the iceberg.

In recent years, according to Campbell, the public service has become politicised, meaning that public servants have become more sensitive to the political needs of their ministers rather than the public good. This means that snooping on citizens and protestors starts becoming sensible, and to dissent against breaches of ethics in the public service has become much more dangerous for your career.

Not surprisingly, some of the strongest condemnation of state snooping on citizens has come from those organisations known to be affected – especially environmental groups. Former Green co-leader, and now Greenpeace head, Russel Norman emphasises the anti-democratic nature of what has been going on: “The chilling effect of being under constant and intrusive surveillance for simply campaigning on important social issues, fundamentally corrodes what it means to live in a free and democratic society. We’ve learnt that under the previous government, no-one was safe from being spied on if they disagreed with government policy” – see: Rotten to the core: The chilling truth revealed by the SSC report.

Norman concludes: “The State Services Commission (SSC) investigation may well be one of the most important examinations into the inner workings of the state that we’ve seen in New Zealand. I’d go as far as to call it our Watergate moment.”

If that sounds like the expected complaints of an activist, then it’s also worth reading what former United Future leader Peter Dunne had to say in his column, Only a first step in the data battle.

Dunne explains what has occurred as being “a gross breach of that implicit covenant between the Government and its citizens”, and he raises serious questions about how much more privacy is being curtailed by government agencies. In particular: “Was any information provided, formally or informally, to the intelligence services by Thompson and Clark, and was any information gathered at the behest of the intelligence services?”

Newspaper editorials have also condemned what has been uncovered in the public service. The Otago Daily Times has a strongly-worded editorial about the dangers to democracy uncovered in the report: “It blasts a warning about the insidious nature of state power and the need for vigilance and protection. Those who would disregard civil liberties for what they might think is the greater good should think again. Big brother and big sister are an ever-present threat. This is even more so in the electronic age. It was first thought the internet might lead to more freedom and more opportunity for dissent. But the massive losses of privacy, the ease with which data is collected and modern data analysis all hand more potential power and surveillance ability to big business and big government” – see: An ‘affront to democracy’.

In Christchurch, The Press has been asking important questions about what the report has revealed – see the editorial: More questions about spies and the public service. Here are the concluding questions: “The public needs to know more about this scandal that is so contrary to the way we expect our public servants to behave on our behalf. The public wants to know who approved of this surveillance, why it was considered necessary in a democracy and, perhaps most important of all, how much was really known about it by the ministers in charge.”

Will anything actually be done about the spying scandal?

The biggest risk to arise out of the controversial investigation into government agencies’ misuse of spying on citizens is that nothing further will now occur. So despite new stories being published about the state surveillance, there’s a danger that we are coming towards the end of the scandal, with no significant reform being offered to correct the problems.

Although the Thompson & Clark firm has been discredited by the scandal, many are arguing that they are not actually the real problem. For example, Andrea Vance says: “although they took advantage, Thompson & Clark aren’t responsible for public service culture and the undermining of democratic rights. That lies with Peter Hughes. For public confidence to be fully restored, the public service must demonstrate accountability and accept culpability, starting from the top down.”

Perhaps it’s time for a proper official and independent commission of inquiry into the spying problems in the public service. Security analyst Paul Buchanan has been arguing for this. And Gordon Campbell agrees: “given that the Thompson+ Clark problem is a by-product of the politicisation of the public service, security analyst Paul Buchanan is dead right in calling for a public inquiry. Only a wide-ranging investigation can address the attitudinal issues and power relationships between ministerial staff and public servants, of which Thompson + Clark are merely one of the end results.”

Tim Watkin has also argued that more needs to happen: “The proper response to this report is not a few hours of tut-tuting, the Prime Minister expressing formulaic concern that the spying was “disturbing” and the symbolic resignation of a single chair. No, the proper response is a change to the public sector culture. So who will lead that?”

Long-time political activist Murray Horton also proposes an inquiry – see: Thompson & Clark just tip of spyberg. Let’s have an inquiry into whole covert world of state spying. Horton explains the significance of the latest changes in state surveillance of citizens, saying that there’s been two major changes: contracting the spying out (perhaps deliberately in order to escape rules), and expanding the targets beyond just activists.

Other activists – especially those affected by the state spying – put forward proposals for reform in Jessie Chiang’s article, Environmental groups call for change after security firm revelations. For example, Russel Norman calls for prosecutions of those involved, and for the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment to be broken up. And Kevin Hague from Forest and Bird says: “I’m encouraging state services to go back to [learning] how to operate as a state service… and your obligations to the public and not just to the government of the day”.

For more thorough reform suggestions, also see blogger No Right Turn’s A private Stasi. He says “Businesses like Thompson and Clark, whose service is explicitly anti-democratic, need to be made illegal and put out of business.”

Finally, there’s the issue of the breaches of rules by Crown Law when working for the Ministry of Social Development – which Andrea Vance has described as “one of the most shocking findings”. The chief executive of MSD at the time was Peter Hughes, who of course is now chief executive of the State Services Commission, and therefore in charge of the whole of the public service. There will therefore be suspicions of conflicts of interest in terms of resolving that issue, and Hughes has handed the ongoing task to his own deputy at the SSC. For the best discussion of all this, see Aaron Smale’s Hypocrisy at the highest levels.

Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Should rodeos be banned in New Zealand?

By Bryce Edwards -

January 17, 2019

Political Roundup: Should rodeos be banned in New Zealand?

by Dr Bryce Edwards

The Summer rodeo season is in full swing. And so protesters are, once again, drawing attention to what they regard as the cruel and archaic nature of this “entertainment sport”. This is leading to clashes between rodeo supporters and protesters.

Rodeo, steer wrestling. Image sourced from Wikimedia.org.

A few days ago, the group Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE) revealed that two animals had recently died at a rodeo in Gisborne. Rodeo organisers had already acknowledged that a bull had been killed, but a whistle-blower alerted the animal rights group to the fact that a horse had also been killed at the event – see Karoline Tuckey’s Second animal death at Gisborne rodeo ‘freakish’.

SAFE accused the rodeo of a cover-up over the death and claimed that, in general, it “highlighted a lack of transparency” in rodeos. But the president of the New Zealand Rodeo and Cowboys’ Association (NZRCA), Lyal Cocks, explained the silence over the death, saying that his organisation “has understandably become cautious [about] speaking out in an environment of extreme negativity towards rodeos, which appears to be promoted by most media organisations.”

Cocks also explained the horse’s death at the rodeo: “After it competed it went out into the yards out the back, and for some inexplicable reason it went into a post and died, it was instantaneous – it was very strange, freakish.” Similarly, when another bull died at a Martinborough rodeo last year, after breaking its leg, at the time Cocks described this as “freak accident”.

Latest rodeo protests

Tensions are rising between supporters and protesters of rodeos, with an altercation taking place a few days ago at a Whangarei event – see Esther Taunton’s Protesters ‘assaulted like the animals’ at rodeo, animal rights group says. Some of this tension revolves around animal welfare activists attending rodeos and filming events, with organisers trying to ban the use of cameras.

One of the organisers of the Northland rodeo, Dianna Bradshaw, explained: “The camera ban was due to the possibility of footage being used out of context”. She added: “These people have an agenda, they’re not coming to these events with an open mind.”

According to one of the activists, Josh Howell, “There was particular emphasis on not being able to film the roping event – the calf roping event – because they acknowledge that it’s particularly controversial… They said we don’t want you filming at all even on your phones the calf-roping because one image can be taken out of context” – see RNZ’s Rodeo protesters consider police action after supporters confront them at event.

A number of other rodeos and protests have occurred in recent weeks. For example, about 24 people from the Queenstown Animal Activist group picketed outside a Wanaka event at the start of the month, calling for an end to “legalised animal abuse” – see Michael Hayward’s About 5000 attend Wanaka Rodeo despite protests.

Call for a rodeo ban

Animal rights activists are demanding that rodeos be outlawed in New Zealand. However, this demand has already been considered by the current Government and rejected. Until she was sacked for alleged mistreatment of staff, Meka Whaitiri was the minister responsible for animal welfare (as the associate Minister of Agriculture), and she made a decision not to introduce a ban on rodeos.

The decision was announced in March of last year, with Tess Nichol reporting that “Whaitiri didn’t believe rodeos were harmful enough to justify a ban” – see: Government won’t ban rodeo, animal welfare Minister says. According to this report: “She acknowledged public concern, but said rodeos were popular in many communities. The Ikaroa-Rāwhiti Māori electorate MP grew up on the East Coast of the North Island and said rodeos were common there – she had attended several herself.”

In lieu of a ban, the minister announced that she would work to strengthen regulations, and said she had asked the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee “to fast track further advice on rodeos this year”. It’s unclear, however, if this came to anything, and after Whaitiri was dismissed as a minister the Prime Minister decided to leave the ministerial portfolio of animal welfare unfilled.

Animal welfare organisations have been unimpressed with the Government’s lack of action on rodeos. The SPCA has responded by saying that “more needs to be done” and reiterated its support for a rodeo ban. The SPCA has also reminded the Government that it promised to do more: “They need to take this very seriously and uphold their election promise, which was to ban the use of animals under 12 months, flank straps, rope burning and the use of electronic prods” – see Newshub’s Govt won’t ban rodeos but will look into improving animal welfare.

The Government and then-minister, Whaitiri, were also criticised for allowing rodeo organisers to attend a hui that was supposedly “described as solely for animal advocates” to discuss how to improve animal welfare – see Nicole Lawton’s Animal welfare meeting ends in walkout after rodeo boss attends.

This article also draws attention to corporate sponsors pulling out of involvement with rodeos: “Foodstuffs, LJ Hooker New Zealand, Saddlery Warehouse, Stuff, Meridian Energy, House of Travel, Bayleys, and Harcourts, all withdrew sponsorship in relation to the animal cruelty claims made by advocacy groups.”

There has, however, been some reform of the rules and regulations governing how rodeos treat animals. According to Michael Hayward, reporting in September, “The New Zealand Rodeo Cowboys Association announced four key changes to improve animal safety, which were confirmed at their recent AGM”, and he details these – see: New rodeo animal welfare rules ‘crisis management’, critics say.

Rodeo debate heating up this summer

This week Green Party MP Gareth Hughes has written an opinion piece making the moral arguments against rodeos: “Do this to a companion animal like a cat and a dog and you would be jailed. Do this on a farm and you could be investigated and prosecuted. Do it in front of a crowd at a rodeo and it is called entertainment. This summer in New Zealand, animals are being terrified, hurt and killed for fun” – see: Rodeo is animal cruelty dressed up as entertainment.

There is a growing sense of inevitability in much of the debate about rodeos being eventually consigned to history. Much of this escalation of concern started towards the end of last summer, with plenty of articles and opinion pieces forecasting a rodeo-free future. For example, the Hawkes Bay Today newspaper ran an article last February reporting on the growing activism following on from animal deaths at rodeos – see: Rodeo in the spotlight: Could Hawke’s Bay incidents be the beginning of the end?

In this, SAFE campaigns manager Marianne Macdonald is quoted saying “Year by year more and more people are speaking out strongly against rodeo. It’s really not something that New Zealand, in 2018, wants. It’s something that really needs to be consigned to the history books.” She adds: “Rodeos are banned in the UK, the Netherlands and parts of Australia, the United States and Canada. It’s time for New Zealand to make a change.”

In contrast, however, the Rodeo Association’s Lyal Cocks points out: “Judging by the increased crowd sizes this season… there are many more people who would like to see rodeo continue as a sport in NZ than those who would like it banned.”

In fact, the Rodeo Association estimates that about 100,000 people attended events last summer. And the sport has been fighting back against bad publicity, even employing former MP Michael Laws as a spokesperson, and getting Government MPs and ministers along to events – last February New Zealand First MPs Ron Mark and Mark Patterson were special guests at rodeo events.

This escalating ideological battle was well covered last year by Philip Matthews in his feature article, Cowboys and injuries: The end of rodeo? In this, he points to changing societal attitudes to the use of animals in sport, and cites survey evidence: “a Horizon Research survey commissioned by Safe and the SPCA found that 59 per cent of people wanted an end to animals in rodeo, 63 per cent wanted calf roping banned and 66 per cent wanted an end to use of flank straps, which cause animals to buck.”

Last year, newspaper editorials also weighed in on the issue – with the Dominion Post asking “Is this really how we want to have fun in a supposedly civilised country in the 21st century?” – see: Rodeos pitting humans against animals belong in the past. In contrast, the Otago Daily Times sat on the fence on the issue, pointing out the right to protest and right to participate in rodeos, and emphasising that both sides need to acknowledge the rights and concerns of the others – see: The rights of rodeos and animals.

For an indication of the turning tide on rodeos, it’s well worth reading Rachel Stewart’s mea culpa on the sport, in which she declares that “As a kid, I rode steers at my rural district sport’s day” but “we all know in our hearts that rodeo is wrong” – see: Rodeo doomed to bite the dust.

Stewart concludes: “Rodeo is on the way out. It’s on the wrong side of history, and the likes of Michael Laws won’t save it. In fact, unwittingly, he’s likely the best thing to happen to the anti-rodeo movement. Because “the truth of the matter is” that rodeo is toast. Yee-ha!”

Similarly, another columnist from the provinces, Tom O’Connor, says “In my brash youth I rode bulls at various rodeos around the country” but “I have come to question the attitude of my youth” – see: All the fun of the rodeo not worth any animal’s pain. He concludes “Like bull fighting, rodeos belong to history, as enjoyable as they might have been.”

For a counter to all this, writing a year ago, Michael Laws argued that concerns about rodeo animals are misplaced: “The science suggests animals suffer no long-term harm. And rodeo injury rates for participating animals are less than for many other animal events. Therefore, NZ Rodeo believes that animal activists are fundamentally misinformed and misguided” – see: Rodeo’s critics ignore findings that it’s not cruel.

Finally, for those wanting to enjoy the rodeo, or to protest its existence, the Rodeo and Cowboys’ Association has listed its upcoming events here: 2018/2019 Rodeo Dates.

Penalties for animal cruelty double in SA, but is this enough to stop animal abuse?

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare and Law, University of Adelaide

Australia is a nation of animal lovers, so when animal abuse is reported in the media, the public are understandably horrified. And they are enraged when the punishment for the offence is seen to be inadequate.

In 2016, a Tasmanian man was sentenced to 49 hours of community service and ordered to pay court costs of A$82.15 for beating six penguins to death with sticks. This caused a public outcry and led to more 50,000 people signing a petition calling for a review into the sentence.

Community outrage across Australia over the decade has led to a number of state and territory governments changing their animal welfare laws to increase the maximum penalties for offences. Queensland amended its maximum penalty for cruelty from two to three years in 2016. South Australia amended the Animal Welfare Act 1985 in 2008.

The maximum time for imprisonment in SA jumped from one to two years, and the maximum fine increased from A$10,0000 to A$20,000.

The SA amendments also introduced a new aggravated offence for particularly horrific crimes against animals, which were deliberate or reckless. Those found guilty of this offence can receive a four-year prison sentence or a A$50,000 fine.

An increase in the maximum penalty for an offence in legislation doesn’t necessarily mean penalties increase in practice. Maximum penalties are put in place as a guide for the courts to benchmark the seriousness of a particular offence.

Judges have a degree of discretion, are guided by previous decisions and have to consider some basic sentencing principles in determining sentence.

Our research – undertaken in collaboration with the SA RSPCA, and published in the journal Animals – shows that penalties have in fact doubled in SA since the change in law. We also looked at the nature of offences in the state and the demographics of offenders.

Who is in charge of prosecution for animal cruelty?

While the police have powers to prosecute animal cruelty cases, the bulk of animal law enforcement in South Australia is done by the RSPCA. The state government has given the RSPCA (SA) powers to enforce animal welfare laws.

Most reported offences were against pets, and a minority included livestock. Drimtry Ulitin/Unsplash

Eight animal welfare inspectors respond to cruelty complaints made by the public through the RSPCA’s cruelty hotline. The inspectors communicate with in-house lawyers to determine whether they will take the case to court. RSPCA inspectors have comparable powers to the police when it comes to investigation and enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act – but they have limited manpower and funds.

Average penalty has increased

Until now the average penalty courts give for animal cruelty offences has remained unknown. We analysed 314 closed case files dated between 2006-2008 and 2016-2018 to compare the penalties given before and after the legal change.

We found the average fine increased from A$700 to A$1,535 over the 12 year period, from before to after the law change with the average prison sentences doubling from 37 to 77 days. But, the maximum prison sentence ever handed down for animal cruelty in SA is still only seven months; 41 months shy of the maximum available.

Is this poor use of statutory maximums unique to animal law? Well, probably not; this is a common feature of the criminal law in relation to so-called summary or minor offences. These can be heard by a single magistrate and include road traffic crimes and minor assaults.

Who are the main offenders?

We also investigated the types of offences committed against animals, and the demographics of offenders.

The majority of offences in our study involved companion animals, or pets, (75%) with the remainder involving livestock.

Thankfully, the percentage of serious, aggravated offences (at least those detected), is low – at 5% of the total. To be classified as a serious offence, the offender’s action must cause serious harm or death to the animal, which was deliberate.

The remaining were the lesser offences, often involving a failure of care, such as poor feeding, or failing to get veterinary treatment when needed.

Males were three times more likely to commit (or at least be charged) with an aggravated offence than females. There was no difference in the proportion of males and females committing the lesser offence.

The average age of offenders across all offences was late 30s to early 40s, with the aggravated offence tending to be perpetrated by slightly younger males.

Previous research suggests males rely on aggression more than females, and females tend to have more empathy for animals.

We found that a higher percentage of animal offences were recorded in Adelaide’s northern suburbs (31%). The north-western suburbs had the second highest rates (9%), closely followed by the southern suburbs (8%).

Adelaide’s northern suburbs were ranked as the most disadvantaged area in SA in the 2016 Australian Census. Since many cruelty cases result from a failure to provide basic care to animals, this is likely a contributing factor to these statistics.

Penalties aren’t enough

While the increase in average penalties is a good sign, it’s likely not enough to decrease animal abuse. The maximum penalty is more of a symbolic gesture to “get tough” rather than a practical figure.

There hasn’t been much research into whether increasing penalties for animal cruelty does reduce the abuse. South Australia hasn’t seen a decrease in offences reported by the RSPCA in their annual statistics, since the change.

Given socioeconomic factors appear to play a part in abuse, education programs in animal care and responsible pet ownership could be more beneficial. As could penalties that better fit the crime, or those that focus on rehabilitation (such as counselling and anger management) to tackle the root of the issue.

Acts of animal cruelty can be reported to your state or territory RSPCA, either by phone or email.

ACT: 0407 078 221
NSW: 1300 CRUELTY (1300 278 358)
NT: 1300 720 386
Qld: 1300 ANIMAL (1300 264 625)
SA: 1300 4 RSPCA (1300 477 722)
Tas: 1300 139 947
Vic: 03 9224 2222
WA: 1300 CRUELTY (1300 278 3589)

– ref. Penalties for animal cruelty double in SA, but is this enough to stop animal abuse? – http://theconversation.com/penalties-for-animal-cruelty-double-in-sa-but-is-this-enough-to-stop-animal-abuse-108021

Viewpoints: should teaching students who fail a literacy and numeracy test be barred from teaching?

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynn Sheridan, Senior Academic Professional Studies, University of Wollongong

Starting this month, teaching students who fail or haven’t yet taken the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) will not be able to teach in Victorian schools. Previously, around one in 20 teachers who had failed the test or hadn’t taken it yet received provisional registration. Prospective students who took the test late in 2018 received their results on January 11.

Victoria is the first state to implement these new standards. The test is a federal initiative. By 2020, all states and territories will be required to ensure all new teachers pass the test before registration.

The test is meant to ensure all new teachers can read, write and perform simple maths equations. In this Viewpoints, Lynn Sheridan argues this test can’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, while Nan Bahr argues we should prevent teaching students who haven’t yet passed, or who fail the test, from registering.

Lynn Sheridan: The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) is limited in assessing the future quality of teachers. This test only assesses the students’ baseline literacy and numeracy skills for teaching in the classroom. It is modelled on year nine NAPLAN tests, complex to administer and expensive for students to access.

This means students who don’t have the means to pay the A$185 fee (up to three times) will be barred from registration, regardless of their efficacy as a teacher. It also doesn’t test for a range of personal attributes essential to good teaching, including interpersonal and communication skills, resilience and passion for teaching. And it measures their test-taking ability, not their ability to teach that knowledge in practice.

Increased attention on how we select teachers for initial teacher education programs and employment is needed. Research shows we need to pay attention to both academic and non-academic capabilities to recruit the most appropriate teachers.

Ensuring initial teacher education programs are effective and high quality are now national education priorities. But there has been little systematic focus on how we make decisions about choosing teachers for the classroom, or students for initial teacher education programs.

Teacher effectiveness can only be measured by how they support their students’ achievement. A new teacher needs job opportunities and colleagues who support their teaching. Research shows practise is far more important than natural talent.

It takes time, practice and support for a new teacher to fully understand the demands of the profession and become an effective teacher. The personal attributes of the person selected, their development and commitment to improvement, teaching opportunities and guidance are crucial to good teaching.

Testing prospective teachers for literacy and numeracy alone is not enough. from www.shutterstock.com

Nan Bahr: The vital life skills of literacy and numeracy are learned and honed at school and they must be taught and demonstrated by every teacher. Send away applicants for teacher registration who can’t meet the mark. Link them up with support programs for literacy and numeracy, and only provide provisional registration when they have met the standard. We know parents expect it.

If we want our children to be fully literate, and numerate, they need to be taught by people who have a high level of personal skill. The literature, social media and intuition tell us how important it is for teachers to have strong personal literacy and numeracy capabilities. They’ll struggle to employ the required skills for instant feedback in spotting basic errors and appropriately correcting them: fundamental for enhancing learning. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to unpick complex texts, problems, and ideas with their students.

As teachers, they need a deep understanding of what it means to be literate and how they can lead learners to their own functional and critical literacy. Without this, our children will not be enabled to be effective communicators of their ideas or self-reliant as functional adults.

These capabilities are important life skills. Without numeracy and critical literacy skills, a person will struggle. A calculator won’t help without a conceptual understanding of what needs to be calculated and why. A spell check won’t help comprehension of the messaging in written communication. A grammar check won’t help anyone be a powerful writer capable of advocating for themselves or their families.

If we want these capabilities for our children, teachers must have them. Some might say to leave it as a requirement only for the English and maths teachers, but functional and critical literacy and numeracy are a feature of every discipline area.

The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education regularly identifies pre-service teachers who struggle. There is an opportunity to re-sit the tests multiple times. But if a pre-service teacher can’t pass, they’re clearly not ready to oversee student literacy and numeracy development.

If a student teacher can’t pass the test, they’re clearly not ready to oversee student literacy and numeracy development. from www.shutterstock.com

Lynn Sheridan: The literacy and numeracy test (LANTITE) is a useful indicator of a graduate teacher’s ability to pass a year nine NAPLAN style test. It’s only a very simplistic “first pass” instrument to determine suitability of students for the teaching profession.

The LANTITE test does not determine a teacher’s level of personal skills, intuition or life skills. It simply tests baseline literacy and numeracy skills at a year nine level only.

Current research suggests it would be better to assess a graduate teacher’s suitability for teaching based on their teaching performance and teaching degree results.

Much more is required to develop quality graduate teachers. Firstly, they should be selected on both academic and non-academic attributes, then supported in their education and into the teaching profession. Through this coordinated, long-term approach, student teachers can develop as effective teachers.

Nan Bahr: There is definitely more to teaching than functional personal literacy and numeracy. I also agree tests are inexact measures for understanding the deep and nuanced dimensions of critical literacy and numeracy. But we shouldn’t forgive people who have not yet demonstrated functional literacy and numeracy and allow them to be registered teachers anyway.

A teacher’s perceived professionalism is undermined if their written communication is poor, or if they can’t do simple calculations. Even apart from the classroom context, a teacher’s letter to parents peppered with spelling errors, or assessments with miscalculated grades undermine the professional perceptions of the capabilities of teachers to teach complex ideas.

The profession’s reputation and status can’t withstand such a body blow. We should fully support the requirement for teachers to demonstrate basic literacy and numeracy skills prior to professional registration.

– ref. Viewpoints: should teaching students who fail a literacy and numeracy test be barred from teaching? – http://theconversation.com/viewpoints-should-teaching-students-who-fail-a-literacy-and-numeracy-test-be-barred-from-teaching-109882

Why Antarctica’s sea ice cover is so low (and no, it’s not just about climate change)

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Arblaster, Associate Professor, Monash University

Sea ice cover in Antarctica shrank rapidly to a record low in late 2016 and has remained well below average. But what’s behind this dramatic melting and low ice cover since?

Our two articles published earlier this month suggest that a combination of natural variability in the atmosphere and ocean were to blame, though human-induced climate change may also play a role.

What happened to Antarctic sea ice in 2016?

Antarctic sea ice is frozen seawater, usually less than a few metres thick. It differs from ice shelves, which are formed by glaciers, float in the sea, and are up to a kilometre thick.

Sea ice cover in Antarctica is crucial to the global climate and marine ecosystems and satellites have been monitoring it since the late 1970s. In contrast to the Arctic, sea ice around Antarctica had been slowly expanding (see figure below).

However, in late 2016 Antarctic sea ice dramatically and rapidly melted reaching a record low. This piqued the interest of climate scientists because such large, unexpected and rapid changes are rare. Sea ice coverage is still well below average now.

We wanted to know what caused this unprecedented decline of Antarctic sea ice and what changes in the system have sustained those declines. We also wanted to know if this was a temporary shift or the beginning of a longer-term decline, as predicted by climate models. Finally, we wanted to know whether human-induced climate change contributed to these record lows.

Hunting for clues

Sea ice cover around Antarctica varies a lot from one year or decade to the next. In fact, Antarctic sea ice cover had reached a record high as recently as 2014.

Antarctic and Arctic sea ice cover (shown as the net anomaly from the 1981–2010 average) for January 1979 to May 2018. Thin lines are monthly averages and indicate the variability at shorter time-scales. Thick lines are 11-month running averages. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

That provided a clue. As year-to-year and decade-to-decade sea ice cover varies so much, this can mask longer-term melting of sea ice due to anthropogenic warming.

The next clue was in records broken far away from Antarctica. In the spring of 2016 sea surface temperatures and rainfall in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean were at record highs. This was in association with a strongly negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event, which brought warmer waters to the northwest of Australia.

While IOD events influence rainfall in south-eastern Australia, we found (using both statistical analysis and climate model experiments) that it promoted a pattern in the winds over the Southern Ocean that was particularly conducive to decreasing sea ice.

These surface winds blowing from the north not only pushed the sea ice back towards the Antarctic continent, they were also warmer, helping to melt the sea ice.

These northerly winds almost perfectly matched the main regions where sea ice declined.

Atmospheric circulation and sea ice concentration during September to October 2016. The top figure shows the Sep–Oct wind anomaly (vectors, scale in upper right, m/s) in the lower part of the atmosphere; red shading shows warmer, northerly airflow, and blue shading represents southerly flow. The bottom figure shows sea ice extent: green represents more sea ice than average, and purple shows regions of a reduction in sea ice (Figure 2a of Wang, et al 2019. Author provided

Though previous studies had linked this wind pattern to the sea ice decline, our studies are the first to argue for the dominant role of the tropical eastern Indian Ocean in driving it.

But this wasn’t the only factor.

Later in 2016 the typical westerly winds that surround Antarctica weakened to record lows. This caused the ocean surface to warm up, promoting less sea ice cover.

The weaker winds started at the top of the atmosphere over Antarctica, in the region known as the stratospheric polar vortex. We think this sequential occurrence of tropical and then stratospheric influences contributed to the record declines in 2016.

Taken together, the evidence we present supports the idea that the rapid Antarctic sea ice decline in late 2016 was largely due to natural climate variability.

The current state of Antarctic sea ice

Since then, sea ice has remained mostly well below average in association with warmer upper ocean temperatures around Antarctica.

We argue these are the product of stronger than normal westerly winds in the previous 15 or so years around Antarctica, driven again from the tropics. These stronger westerlies induced a response in the ocean, with warmer subsurface water moving towards the surface over time.

The combination of record tropical sea surface temperatures and weakened westerly winds in 2016 warmed the entire upper 600m of water in most regions of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. These warmer ocean temperatures have maintained the reduced extent of sea ice.

Antarctic sea ice extent is seeing a record low start to the New Year. It suggests the initial rapid decline seen in late 2016 was not an isolated event and, when combined with the decadal-timescale warming of the upper Southern Ocean, could mean reduced sea ice extent for some time.

We argue what we are seeing so far can be understood in terms of natural variability superimposed on a long-term human-induced warming signal.

This is because the rainfall and ocean temperature records seen in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean that led to the initial sea ice decline in 2016 likely have some climate change contribution.

This warming and the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole may also impact the surface wind patterns over coming decades.

Such changes could be driving climate change effects that are starting to emerge in the Antarctic region. However the limited data record and large variability indicate it’s still too early to tell.

We would like to acknowledge the role of our co-authors S Abhik, Cecilia M Bitz, Christine TY Chung, Alice DuVivier, Harry H Hendon, Marika M Holland, Eun-Pa Lim, LuAnne Thompson, Peter van Rensch and Dongxia Yang in contributing to the research discussed in this article.

– ref. Why Antarctica’s sea ice cover is so low (and no, it’s not just about climate change) – http://theconversation.com/why-antarcticas-sea-ice-cover-is-so-low-and-no-its-not-just-about-climate-change-109572

How to feed a growing population healthy food without ruining the planet

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alessandro R Demaio, Australian Medical Doctor; Fellow in Global Health & NCDs, University of Copenhagen

If we’re serious about feeding the world’s growing population healthy food, and not ruining the planet, we need to get used to a new style of eating. This includes cutting our Western meat and sugar intakes by around 50%, and doubling the amount of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes we consume.

These are the findings our the EAT-Lancet Commission, released today. The Commission brought together 37 leading experts in nutrition, agriculture, ecology, political sciences and environmental sustainability, from 16 countries.

Over two years, we mapped the links between food, health and the environment and formulated global targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production. This includes five specific strategies to achieve them through global cooperation.

Right now, we produce, ship, eat and waste food in a way that is a lose-lose for both people and planet – but we can flip this trend.

What’s going wrong with our food supply?

Almost one billion people lack sufficient food, yet more than two billion suffer from obesity and food-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

The foods causing these health epidemics – combined with the way we produce our food – are pushing our planet to the brink.

One-third of the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change come from food production. Our global food system leads to extensive deforestation and species extinction, while depleting our oceans, and fresh water resources.

To make matters worse, we lose or throw away around one-third of all food produced. That’s enough to feed the world’s hungry four times over, every year.

At the same time, our food systems are at risk due to environmental degradation and climate change. These food systems are essential to providing the diverse, high-quality foods we all consume every day.

A radical new approach

To improve the health of people and the planet, we’ve developed a “planetary health diet” which is globally applicable – irrespective of your geographic, economic or cultural background – and locally adaptable.

The diet is a “flexitarian” approach to eating. It’s largely composed of vegetables and fruits, wholegrains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils. It includes high-quality meat, dairy and sugar, but in quantities far lower than are consumed in many wealthier societies.

Many of us need to eat more veggies and less red meat. Joshua Resnick/Shutterstock

The planetary health diet consists of:

vegetables and fruit (550g per day per day)
wholegrains (230 grams per day)
dairy products such as milk and cheese (250g per day)
protein sourced from plants, such as lentils, peas, nuts and soy foods (100 grams per day)
small quantities of fish (28 grams per day), chicken (25 grams per day) and red meat (14 grams per day)
eggs (1.5 per week)
small quantities of fats (50g per day) and sugar (30g per day).

Of course, some populations don’t get nearly enough animal-source foods necessary for growth, cognitive development and optimal nutrition. Food systems in these regions need to improve access to healthy, high-quality diets for all.

The shift is radical but achievable – and is possible without any expansion in land use for agriculture. Such a shift will also see us reduce the amount of water used during production, while reducing nitrogen and phosphorous usage and runoff. This is critical to safeguarding land and ocean resources.

By 2040, our food systems should begin soaking up greenhouse emissions – rather than being a net emitter. Carbon dioxide emissions must be down to zero, while methane and nitrous oxide emissions be kept in close check.

How to get there

The commission outlines five implementable strategies for a food transformation:

1. Make healthy diets the new normal – leaving no-one behind

Shift the world to healthy, tasty and sustainable diets by investing in better public health information and implementing supportive policies. Start with kids – much can happen by changing school meals to form healthy and sustainable habits, early on.

Unhealthy food outlets and their marketing must be restricted. Informal markets and street vendors should also be encouraged to sell healthier and more sustainable food.

2. Grow what’s best for both people and planet

Realign food system priorities for people and planet so agriculture becomes a leading contributor to sustainable development rather than the largest driver of environmental change. Examples include:

incorporating organic farm waste into soils
drastically reducing tillage where soil is turned and churned to prepare for growing crops
investing more in agroforestry, where trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland to increase biodiversity and reduce erosion
producing a more diverse range of foods in circular farming systems that protect and enhance biodiversity, rather than farming single crops or livestock.

The measure of success in this area is that agriculture one day becomes a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Technology can help us make better use of our farmlands. Shutterstock

3. Produce more of the right food, from less

Move away from producing “more” food towards producing “better food”.

This means using sustainable “agroecological” practices and emerging technologies, such as applying micro doses of fertiliser via GPS-guided tractors, or improving drip irrigation and using drought-resistant food sources to get more “crop per drop” of water.

In animal production, reformulating feed to make it more nutritious would allow us to reduce the amount of grain and therefore land needed for food. Feed additives such as algae are also being developed. Tests show these can reduce methane emissions by up to 30%.

We also need to redirect subsidies and other incentives to currently under-produced crops that underpin healthy diets – notably, fruits, vegetables and nuts – rather than crops whose overconsumption drives poor health.

4. Safeguard our land and oceans

There is essentially no additional land to spare for further agricultural expansion. Degraded land must be restored or reforested. Specific strategies for curbing biodiversity loss include keeping half of the current global land area for nature, while sharing space on cultivated lands.

The same applies for our oceans. We need to protect the marine ecosystems fisheries depend on. Fish stocks must be kept at sustainable levels, while aquaculture – which currently provides more than 40% of all fish consumed – must incorporate “circular production”. This includes strategies such as sourcing protein-rich feeds from insects grown on food waste.

5. Radically reduce food losses and waste

We need to more than halve our food losses and waste.

Poor harvest scheduling, careless handling of produce and inadequate cooling and storage are some of the reasons why food is lost. Similarly, consumers must start throwing less food away. This means being more conscious about portions, better consumer understanding of “best before” and “use by” labels, and embracing the opportunities that lie in leftovers.

Circular food systems that innovate new ways to reduce or eliminate waste through reuse will also play a significant role and will additionally open new business opportunities.

For significant transformation to happen, all levels of society must be engaged, from individual consumers to policymakers and everybody along the food supply chain. These changes will not happen overnight, and they are not the responsibility of a handful of stakeholders. When it comes to food and sustainability, we are all at the decision dining table.

The EAT-Lancet Commission’s Australian launch is in Melbourne on February 1. Limited free tickets are available.

– ref. How to feed a growing population healthy food without ruining the planet – http://theconversation.com/how-to-feed-a-growing-population-healthy-food-without-ruining-the-planet-108994

In the land of Storm Boy, the cultural heritage of the Coorong is under threat

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly D. Wiltshire, PhD Candidate, Flinders University

When I go to see the new film Storm Boy, which opens in cinemas nationally today, my mind will turn to the landscape that forms the film’s backdrop. This is the Kurangk (Coorong), land of the Ngarrindjeri Nation. The Nation’s cultural heritage, testifying to the Ngarrindjeri’s enduring connection to the region, is being destroyed by off-road vehicles.

The film, starring Geoffrey Rush, Jai Courtney, David Gulpilil, and Finn Little, is a new adaptation of Colin Thiele’s 1964 novel, first made into film in 1976. The story, about a young boy who adopts a clever, orphaned pelican, is widely loved among Australians.

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The Kurangk is found in south eastern South Australia and covers an area of 50,000 hectares. Its main feature is a long, brackish to very salty estuary that stretches 130 km in a south-east direction from the Murray Mouth, where Australia’s iconic Murray River meets the sea.

The southern Kurangk is an important breeding ground for Noris (pelicans), with the broader landscape supporting over 200 species of birds. As a result of these unique qualities and others the Kurangk has been recognised under the Ramsar Convention as a Wetland of International Importance since 1985.

The region is an important cultural landscape that has sustained the Ngarrindjeri Nation culturally and economically since Creation. Middens comprising of discarded cockle shells, which can be found on the sand dunes of the Younghusband Peninsula that separate the Kurangk’s estuary from the Southern Ocean, are testament to this ongoing connection.

In the early 1980s, archaeologist Roger Luebbers documented the location, size and content of various middens in the Kurangk, demonstrating that these middens form the largest, most extensive evidence of Aboriginal occupation in the region. At the time Luebbers also worked with members of the Ngarrindjeri Nation, recording oral accounts to get a sense of people’s continued connection to the Kurangk since colonisation.

His work demonstrated an uninterpreted and continuing connection of the Ngarrindjeri Nation into historic times, which continues today through the ongoing management, use and enjoyment of this landscape.

Noris (pelicans) on the Kurangk at dawn. Photo: Amy Della-Sale/Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority Inc.

Disappearing under the wheel

Luebbers considered the cultural heritage of the Kurangk unparalleled in temperate Australia and argued for its long-term protection. But despite the high quality and comprehensiveness of these archaeological investigations, little has been done to ensure the long-term protection of this heritage.

Archaeologist Roger Luebbers examining middens on the Kurangk. Photo: Rhys Jones, AIATSIS, JONES.R05_CS-000141919

Studies have shown that sand dunes, where middens lie, are vulnerable to visitors to the Kurangk, especially off-road vehicles such as quad bikes and four-wheel drives. Since the 1980s these have become much more common. As a result, the number of visitors to remote, dune areas of the Kurangk has steadily increased over the intervening decades, coinciding with increased impacts to Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage, which are physically disturbed by the tyres of the vehicles.

While there are signs in the Kurangk directing people to stay within fenced access tracks and designated camping areas, numerous visitors ignore or even vandalise these so they can access dune areas where the vast middens are located.

Given the large area the Kurangk occupies, illegal vehicle use can go undetected despite National Parks rangers regularly monitoring visitor use. Ngarrindjeri elders I have worked with over the years have described burial grounds within the Coorong turned to dust as a result of illegal vehicles.

Encroaching seas

Climate change is also having a dramatic impact on the landscape of the Kurangk. Vehicle tracks along the ocean have become reduced thanks to erosion linked to sea level rise. Tragically, some visitors have lost their lives trying to negotiate this thin strip of coastline.

Vehicle track along the ocean in the southern Kurangk. Author provided

As access to these parts of the Kurangk becomes more restricted, more people are encroaching illegally on the dunes where Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage lies. Stopping vehicle access to areas where people have historically had access is difficult. The South Australian government must also balance this with its obligation to allow continued public access due the Kurangk’s National Park status.

The impact of visitors on Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage within the Kurangk is an ongoing issue, forming a range of broader concerns the Ngarrindjeri Nation wants to address with their long-term vision for country.

To protect this amazing heritage and the landscape where it resides, we’ll need to address visitor behaviour, improve infrastructure, and address the effects of climate change. Otherwise an irreplaceable record of the Ngarrindjeri Nations’ long-term and continued connection to this incredible cultural landscape will be destroyed forever.

The author would like to thank the ongoing support of Ngarrindjeri elders and colleagues, Grant Rigney, Amy Della-Sale and Roger Luebbers.

– ref. In the land of Storm Boy, the cultural heritage of the Coorong is under threat – http://theconversation.com/in-the-land-of-storm-boy-the-cultural-heritage-of-the-coorong-is-under-threat-109944

How realistic are China’s plans to build a research station on the Moon?

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Chou, Senior lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

The world is still celebrating the historic landing of China’s Chang’e-4 on the dark side of the moon on January 3. This week, China announced its plans to follow up with three more lunar missions, laying the groundwork for a lunar base.

Colonising the Moon, and beyond, has always being a human aspiration. Technological advancements, and the discovery of a considerable source of water close to the lunar poles, has made this idea even more appealing.

But how close is China to actually achieving this goal?

If we focus on the technology currently available, China could start building a base on the Moon today.

The first lunar base

The first lunar base would likely be an unmanned facility run by automated robotics – similar to Amazon warehouses – to ensure that the necessary infrastructures and support systems are fully operational before people arrive.

The lunar environment is susceptible to deep vacuum conditions, strong temperature fluctuations and solar radiation, among other conditions hostile to humans. More importantly, we have yet to fully understand the long term impact on the human body of being in space, and on the Moon.

Seeds taken to the Moon by the Chang’e-4 mission have now reportedly sprouted. This is the first time plants have been grown on the Moon, paving the way for a future food farm on the lunar base.

Building a lunar base is no different than building the first oil rig out in the ocean. The logistics of moving construction parts must be considered, feasibility studies must be conducted and, in this case, soil samples must be tested.

China has taken the first step by examining the soil of the lunar surface. This is necessary for building an underground habitat and supporting infrastructure that will shield the base from the harsh surface conditions.

3D printed everything

Of all the possible technologies for building a lunar base, 3D printing offers the most effective strategy. 3D printing on Earth has revolutionised manufacturing productivity and efficiency, reducing both waste and cost.

China’s vision is to develop the capability to 3D print both inside and outside of the lunar base. 3D printers have the potential to make everything from daily items, like drinking cups, to repair parts for the base.

But 3D printing in space is a real challenge. It will require new technologies that can operate in the micro gravity environment of the Moon. 3D printing machines that are able to shape parts in the vacuum of space must be developed.

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New materials are required

We know that Earth materials, such as fibre optics, change properties once they are in space. So materials that are effective on Earth, might not be effective on the Moon.

Whatever the intended use of the 3D printed component, it will have to be resistant to the conditions of lunar environment. So the development of printing material is crucial. Step-by-step, researchers are finding and developing new materials and technologies to address this challenge.

For example, researchers in Germany expect to have the first “ready to use” stainless steel tools to be 3D printed under microgravity in the near future. NASA also demonstrated 3D printing technology in zero gravity showing it is feasible to 3D print in space.

On a larger scale we have seen houses being 3D printed on Earth. In a similar way, the lunar base will likely be built using prefabricated parts in combination with large-scale 3D printing.

Examples of what this might look like can be seen to entries in the 3D printed habitat challenge, which was started by NASA in 2005. The competition seeks to advance 3D printing construction technology needed to create sustainable housing solutions for Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond.

NASA’s Habitat Challenge: Team Gamma showing their habitat design. NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge

Living on the Moon

So far, we’ve focused on the technological feasibility of building a lunar base, but we also need to consider the long term effect of lunar living on humans. To date, limited studies have been conducted to examine the the biological impact on human physiology at the cellular level.

We know that the human organs, tissues and cells are highly responsive to gravity, but an understanding of how human cells function and regenerate is currently lacking.

What happens if the astronauts get sick? Will medicine from Earth still work? If astronauts are to live on the Moon, these fundamental questions need to be answered.

In the long term, 3D bioprinting of human organs and tissues will play a crucial role in sustaining lunar missions by allowing for robotic surgeries. Russia recently demonstrated the first 3D bioprinter to function under microgravity.

To infinity and beyond

Can China build a lunar base? Absolutely. Can human beings survive on the Moon and other planets for the long term? The answer to that is less clear.

What is certain is that China will use the next 10 to 15 years to develop the requisite technical capabilities for conducting manned lunar missions and set the stage for space exploration.

– ref. How realistic are China’s plans to build a research station on the Moon? – http://theconversation.com/how-realistic-are-chinas-plans-to-build-a-research-station-on-the-moon-109942

Recycling is not enough. Zero-packaging stores show we can kick our plastic addiction

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sabrina Chakori, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Wrapped, sealed, boxed, cling-filmed and vacuum packed. We have become used to consumables being packaged in every way imaginable.

The history of “packaging” goes back to the first human settlements. First leaves, gourds and animals skins were used. Then ceramics, glass and tin. Then paper and cardboard. But with the invention of plastic and the celebration of “throwaway living” since the 1950s, the environmental costs of an overpackaged world have become manifest.

Plastic now litters the planet, contaminating ecosystems and posing a significant threat to wildlife and human health. Food and beverage packaging accounts for almost two-thirds of total packaging waste. Recycling, though important, has proven an incapable primary strategy to cope with the scale of plastic rubbish. In Australia, for example, just 11.8% of the 3.5 million tonnes of plastics consumed in 2016-2017 were recycled.

Bananas wrapped in single-use plastic packaging. Sabrina Chakori

Initiatives to cut down on waste can initially be strongly resisted by consumers used to the convenience, as shown by the reaction to Australia’s two major supermarket chains phasing out free single-use plastic shopping bags. But after just three months, shoppers have adapted, and an estimated 1.5 billion bags have been prevented from entering the environment.

Can we dispose with our disposable mentality further, by doing something to cut down on all the packaging of our food and beverages?

Yes we can.

The emergence of zero-packaging food stores is challenging the idea that individually packaged items are a necessary feature of the modern food industry. These new businesses demonstrate how products can be offered without packaging. In doing so they provide both environmental and economic benefits.

The zero-packaging alternative

Zero-packaging shops, sometimes known as zero-waste grocery stores, allow customers to bring and refill their own containers. They offer food products (cereals, pasta, oils) and even household products (soap, dishwashing powder). You simply bring your own jars and containers and buy as little or as much as you need.

Negozio Leggero is a zero-packaging chain with stores in Italy, France and Switzerland. Negozio Leggero

These stores can already be found in many countries across the world. They are more than just individual trading businesses making a small difference.

They are part of an important and growing trend promoting an environmentally sustainable “reuse” mentality. Their way of doing business shows we can change the current ‘linear’ economic system in which we continuously take, make, use and throw away materials.

Rethinking the system

Food packaging is part and parcel of a globalised food market. The greater the distance that food travels, the more packaging is needed.

Zero-packaging stores encourage sourcing locally. They can therefore play an important role in enhancing local economy and supporting local producers. They can help break globalised agribusiness monopolies, regenerating the diversity of rural enterprises and communities. The book Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market illustrates the benefits of reclaiming back the food industry.

Packaging also contributes to another problem with the current industrialised food system. It doubles as an advertising tool, using all the psychological tricks that marketers have to persuade us to buy a brand. These strategies appeal to desire, encouraging people to buy more than what they really need. This has arguably exacerbated problems such as obesity and food waste. It has given multinational conglomerates with large marketing budgets an advantage over small and local producers.

Next steps

Not all of packaging is wasteful. It can stop food spoiling, for example, and enables us to enjoy foods not locally produced. But what is driving the growth of the global food packaging market – expected to be worth US$411.3 billion by 2025 – is rising demand for single-serve and portable food packs due to “lifestyle changes”. Most of us recognise these are not lifestyle changes for the better; they are the result of us spending more time working or commuting, and eating more processed and unhealthier food.

Zero-packaging stores show, in their own small way, a viable and healthier alternative to the current system. Both for ourselves, local economies and the planet.

While these shops are still niche, governments interested in human and environmental health can help them grow. Bans on plastic bags point to what is possible.

How easily we have adapted to no longer having those bags to carry food a few metres to the car and then to the kitchen show that we, as consumers, can change our behaviour. We can choose, when possible, unpacked products. There is, of course, a small sacrifice in the form of convenience, but we just might find that we benefit more, both personally and for a greater environmental, economic and social good.

– ref. Recycling is not enough. Zero-packaging stores show we can kick our plastic addiction – http://theconversation.com/recycling-is-not-enough-zero-packaging-stores-show-we-can-kick-our-plastic-addiction-106357

How Darling Harbour was botched (and could be reborn)

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Roggema, Professor Spatial Transformation, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen

This is a long read. Enjoy!

More towers at Sydney’s Darling Harbour are among redevelopment plans for the inner city waterfront precinct and this has prompted recent debate.

Plans open for public commentary include proposals for new tall buildings at Cockle Bay and at the Harbourside Shopping Centre.

Critics include Russell Hand and Christopher Ashworth, senior planners at the City of Sydney, who have lodged formal objections.

Alex Greenwich, independent MP for Sydney, describes the Cockle Bay proposal as “very poor planning”. In the same article, Graham Quint of the National Trust says Darling Harbour would be “degraded” by overdevelopment.

Celebrated architect Philip Cox fears the area has “gone backwards” as it does not really create a unique urban space, nor does it contribute much to the city.

Plans for ever larger buildings, bringing in more people and attracting more tourists may mark a point of no return for the precinct. It would place increased pressure on the available space, which already houses a town full of people.

More development of the type proposed also leaves little space to regenerate the city, to create places where nature and open space can help to deal with floods or heat, let alone create a valuable ecological landscape.

To see where development of Darling Harbour went wrong and what we could do better, we need to consider the area as a whole. That’s Darling Harbour itself, Cockle Bay, the Darling Harbour Corridor, Barangaroo, Darling Park and Tumbalong Park.

Three examples highlight how development of the Darling Harbour area over the past 30 years has been botched.

1. Darling Harbour as a noisy neighbour

Walk down Darling Harbour towards Barangaroo on a random night and this is what you’ll face.

Noisy bars and restaurants along Cockle Bay are full; quieter places inside are, even for Sydney’s standards, expensive; bright lights compare with the neon of Shanghai’s Nanjing Road; and there is activity everywhere, even on the water where party boats disturb not only human but also animal life.

I am not against a lively precinct. But Darling Harbour is currently operating like your noisy neighbour — a nice guy but with too many bad habits. He eats too much, burps whenever it is convenient, grows fat and watches the same programs every day.

There it is, consuming tourists (4.6 million in the year ending March 2018), growing bigger buildings all around, producing noises no-one wants to hear, and looking like a huge TV screen flickering flashy lights into the night.

Barangaroo is the next stage of “badnertainment”, adding more expensive drinking and eating venues, increasing traffic congestion, and continuing the gambling boulevard all the way through to Headland Park. Compared to the former port facilities that stood there, at least people can enter this space up to the water’s edge.

But Barangaroo remains a private collection of colossal buildings, impenetrable if you don’t belong to the corporate world.

2. Tumbalong Park, hidden behind a highway

Tumbalong Park is hidden behind a highway, so far back no one can see the water. Though there are paths, plants and a stage, the overkill of lights and noise is not what you’d expect from a park.

Anyone who wants to spend time there on a hot day will experience the “heat island effect”. Here, heat is amplified compared with the surrounding area as the grass is surrounded by large chunks of concrete and glass. That, combined with a feeling of being observed from all sides, might explain why you hardly find people sitting on the grass.

3. Highway cuts up public space

Where do people plan a highway through a public space? In Sydney, this is quite normal. The Western Distributor splits the City from Circular Quay and Darling Harbour. A spaghetti of ramps, concrete traffic lanes and multilayered traffic disconnects surrounding areas including Ultimo and Haymarket from the real beauty: the water and water’s edge of Cockle Bay. What could be a coherent urban precinct is cut in half and displaces the urban front from the water’s edge.

Let’s transform this ‘blinging, boring barrier’

These three failings form an urban sink hole for Sydney’s residents — a gap in which tourists are trapped and the corporates show off. Through traffic and congestion dominate the area.

Darling Harbour is full of bling, the park is boring, and the highway is a barrier. Sydney created a blinging, boring barrier.

Why can’t Darling Harbour and Cockle Bay be a sensitive space, where you can experience relative darkness and silence when eating and drinking, and you can enjoy the tranquility of dark water so close to the city centre?

Wouldn’t it be sensational if you could whisper a secret message to your darling instead of shouting how his or her working day was? Wouldn’t it be great if you could sit on the edge of the harbour, dangling your tired feet in the water? How great could it be if the space was green with trees, bush, ecofriendly river edges, where kids could explore water and nature?

Tranquility, darkness and human scale are the ingredients for an environment that can be completely green and still urban. Higher densities are possible as long as these are sustainable, we use environmental-friendly materials and are placed in a larger green and ecological zone fronting the water. This then creates the space for people to enjoy the environment and relax.

Climate change makes this urgent

This is urgent. Climate change will cause and enforce changes to city centres, especially when they’re fronting water edges, like Darling Harbour.

Rising sea levels (up to 2m by the end of the century), and more flash flooding as a result of more intense rain are expected.

So green buffer zones on either side of the water’s edge are required to deal with rising water levels and more intense rain events.

Environments must be flexible, adaptive and resilient to survive. The types of activities currently in the Darling Harbour area are mono-functional, inflexible and vulnerable to climate impacts.

Here’s what we can learn from other cities

Toronto

Toronto’s city centre has a series of greening projects along its waterfront. These include nature reserves, a bicycle path, sandy beach-like areas and zones in which urban water is purified at the same time made available for the public to use in playgrounds.

Toronto’s water purification site is also an urban playground. Author provided

New York

Another good example is in New York, where Manhattan is transforming its Hudson River edges with parks and green areas. There is open-air office space such as the Hudson Yards, and continuous parks along the river, such as the Riverpark Boulevard.

These continuous parks can not only protect the city from flooding but also suit the daily needs of the jogging, cycling or wandering New Yorker.

New York’s Riverpark Boulevard has been designed to protect the city from flooding, as well as providing people place to walk, jog or wander. Author provided

Shanghai

In Shanghai there’s a large program to green the river edge. Over 100,000 trees are being planted along the Huangpu River. This program is meant to clean the air, mitigate the urban heat island effect and offer space to occasional floods. But it also functions as an enormous park, with a continuous cycle-path and the option to run the marathon (once up and down).

Shanghai is transforming its riverside with more than 100,000 trees and parklands long enough to run a marathon. Author provided

Amsterdam

Finally, Amsterdam is redeveloping the northern shore of the IJ river. Here, new green spaces, water purification and ecological reserves are realised in the midst of a high-density mixed-use urban environment. One of the eye-catchers is EYE, the national movie theatre.

Amsterdam is transforming the IJ north shore. Author provided

Sydney, it’s up to you

These examples show that large, western cities are successfully implementing sustainable ecological developments along their waterfronts.

These are not realised because of some high-level green ambition, but out of pure necessity. People ask for cleaner environments so they can enjoy, exercise and play with their kids in a healthy and safe place.

In Darling Harbour, we’re faced with short-term economic benefits, with a focus on tourists, and a vulnerable waterline. Is this the long-term future for Sydneysiders?

Or could the waterfront become the lovely place for humans and nature, which also protects Sydneysiders living immediately behind the waterfront?

– ref. How Darling Harbour was botched (and could be reborn) – http://theconversation.com/how-darling-harbour-was-botched-and-could-be-reborn-109869

Consider youself one of us

By Barbara Sumner -

January 17, 2019

Column: Barbara Sumner –

As a child, my family saw the musical Oliver. For days after, my adopting mother hummed and sang the theme tune:

Consider yourself one of us
Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself one of the family ….etc etc

The song is a bit of an earworm. I’d forgotten it and the memory until recently when I heard it on the radio.

If you’ve seen the film (or read Dickens), you’ll know that being ‘one of us in Oliver was conditional on acting the part. You had to abide by their code of thievery and obey Fagin, the orphan master.

It makes sense. Like Fagin’s gang, we humans are tribal.

We gather with those who share our values. We’re always on the lookout for casual signifiers of belonging.

When we have kids, family and friends scan the scrunched face of your newborn for resemblance. His father’s nose, her mother’s eyes. When we pull out baby photos of close family and compare them, we recognise the child as one of us.

But does it work the other way?

For a pre-verbal baby, it’s all about smell and sounds. Studies reveal that the basis of bonding is the mothers scent..

Familiar odours wired into a babies brain affect nerve pathways and brain development. One researcher found that in the first few hours after birth, a baby identifies her mother by her smell.

In another study, day-old babies recognised their mother’s voice. They connected pacifiers to tape recorders. One sucking pattern turned on their mother’s voice, while another activated a strangers voice. Guess which sucking pattern the babies used?

So how does this all work for a person removed from their mother for adoption?

In The Primal Wound, Nancy Verrier says there’s an assumption a baby knows nothing. Any deprivation can be overcome by the adoptive parents. But for the infant, absence of her mother is the same as death. She goes through a withdrawal process as her most basic need for connection goes unmet. The loss of the original mother becomes imprinted in the child’s psyche and cells.

Growing up adopted in a stranger family I’ve experienced first hand how deep that loss and grief runs. How everything from smell to sport was wrong. And how the things we ignored, such as lack of family resemblance were the unspoken arrows of daily life.

It’s not easy for the adopting mother either. They also are grieving the child they could not have. They lack hormone bonding. They miss out on that recognition and satisfaction a new mother feels, despite the trials and exhaustion of birth? No one comments on how her baby looks like her. No one expects her child to be like her in any natural way. Instead, she must work extra hard to imprint her culture on the little stranger. While convincing herself that her experience is no different than for a biological mother.

This is the dirty secret of stranger adoption. Adoption is rarely a first choice. It’s not the same as biological parenting. No matter your parenting skills or commitment, this is not the child you would have had if you could have your own.

You won’t read that in pro-adoption literature. You cannot expect the adopted person to become the child you could not have.

I believe it does something to the adopting mother, creating an atmosphere of rote caring. The mother working hard to be seen to love the child she has no connection to.

In “Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are,” Robert Plomin, concludes that babies are not balls of clay. Plomin is a behavioural geneticist. He says babies are not shaped by their parents after birth. You arrive with imprinted traits from your biological parents.

His research proves that nurturing has little effect on the person you become. Children take after their first parents, not their adoptive parents. From cognitive skills and interests to personality traits. They even resemble their first parents in non-genetic traits. Television watching for instance and likelihood of getting divorced. “This comes as no surprise to first parents who meet their lost offspring. But it’s heartening and reassuring to have our impressions supported by scientific research.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nature-not-nurture-after-all-genetics-robert-plomin-polygenic-testing

So how does an adopted person cope with this? They fake it.

The fantasy of the happy adoptee is ingrained in our society. It becomes the job of the adopted person to prove this story true. To salve the wounds of the adopting parent’s infertility. To act as if they are the missing child, to bend and fold and adjust themselves to fit into the adoptor’s family. As if they have no other mother. As if they are indeed one of them.

Of course, someone will jump up and say “I had good adoption. That was not my experience.’

I’m happy they got lucky. But that’s the point. They were fortunate not to experience abuse in addition to what every adoptee already endures.

Because adoption itself is inherently abusive. To say I had a good adoption is like saying I had a good car accident or a good mugging. Of course, some are worse than others. But they’re all bad things. Every adopted person has experienced separation trauma and had their rights violated. Even if they are not ready to acknowledge it. Adoption itself is the trauma.”

I’d describe stranger adoption as a state of suspended animation. You learn early that your inner need for authenticity will never be met. So you split that part of yourself of. And go through the motions. In adoption circles, this is the ‘good adoptee syndrome’. Your real self packed down tight while you smile and wave at the world.

The idea of being a stranger within your family is not limited to children and parents. In my experience, the wider family feels it too. You are a cuckoo in their extended family nest, treated with suspicion, your provenance a mystery.

Throughout history, humans have distrusted outsiders. We’ve always had city walls and borders and the need to identify ourselves. We’ve always had this innate sense of the good us versus the untrustworthy them. Just as Charles Dickens characters understood.

In the absence of blood ties, the only signifier of being one of us is your behaviour. So be a good adoptee, play your part and all will be well with the world.

– ref. Consider youself one of us – https://www.barbarasumner.nz/blog/2019/1/15/consider-youself-one-of-us

Australians lost more than $10 million to scammers last year. Follow these easy tips to avoid being conned.

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damien Manuel, Director, Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University

Many of us start a typical day by checking our phones to read emails, social media posts and the weather. Our phones are trusted devices we use constantly throughout the day to communicate. But the trust we place in our phones, and the way we interact with the world, also makes it easy for scammers to target us.

Our evolutionary past also makes us susceptible to scams. Humans are curious social animals, which means we are more trusting than we should be. That’s especially the case when we’re dealing with people over the phone, email or via SMS, where we don’t have the normal body language cues we would subconsciously process when making decisions.

We are also susceptible to fear and other psychological tools scammers use to create a sense of urgency that tricks us into making irrational decisions and taking action. Simply being aware that scams are out there is not enough to protect us from them. We also need to change our behaviour.

Scam using branding and authority to make you click to see the confidential information. Damien Manuel

Who are these scammers and what do they want?

Scammers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are individuals, others are gangs. The more sophisticated scammers are criminal syndicates and foreign governments looking for a way to subvert international sanctions and obtain money through cyber crime.

The motivations of scammers ranges greatly, but can include:

stealing intellectual property
tricking you to install malicious software (to steal your data or hold you to ransom)
stealing your identity so they can pretend to be you and conduct fraud
tricking you to part with your hard earned cash
gaining control of your device to steal information at a later date or using your device to attack other people you know.

What techniques are they using?

Scammers are experts at social engineering and use a number of tricks to build rapport, credibility and trust with their targets.

Modifying the caller ID is a simple way to build credibility by making a call or SMS appear to come from an authority like the Australian Tax Office. The rise of cheap Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and other online tools has made it even easier for anyone to exploit the phone systems and “spoof” other numbers.

An SMS scam that uses urgency and fear of fines to get people to click a link. Damien Manuel

In the VoIP phone system, the person initiating the call defines the caller ID seen by the receiver. This is the same for traditional phone systems, however the lower price of VoIP and ease at which the caller ID can be modified without any technical knowledge (via a simple web page) makes it faster and cheaper for scammers to cycle through a number of fake caller IDs in a single day. It also allows them to move to a new source number or VoIP provider very quickly, making it harder for telcos in Australia to block.

There are legitimate business reasons for allowing the caller ID to be modified, such as when companies operating call centres want all outbound phone calls from their staff to appear to originate from a single “help desk” phone number.

Email spoofing is also common and easy to do. This is where an attacker forges the email header, making the email look like it originated from a friend, authority or service provider, such as a bank. A key way to identify a spoofed email is to check the email address itself (the reply field) rather than just relying on the display name in the “from” field.

Most email clients (such as Gmail or Outlook) on desktops or laptops are capable of displaying email headers. Unfortunately email clients on most smartphones and tablets make it difficult to see the real source and often only show the forged “display name” information.

Phone and email are the two main scam delivery methods. Losses from attempts to gain your personal information rose by more than 61% between 2017 and 2018. This trend shows no sign of slowing down. Last year, Australians lost more than $10 million to scammers.

An example of a scam email. Damien Manuel

Signs of a scam

Ten common warning signs you are dealing with a scammer include the following:

being asked for password, PINs or other sensitive information
being told you are owed a refund
being told you have unpaid bills, unpaid fines from the police or a government department
being notified there is a problem with your email or bank account
being asked for urgent help
being congratulated on winning a competition (you didn’t enter)
being asked you to click on a link or open a document
being sent you an unexpected invoice to open
receiving a critical alert message with a link to click
receiving a tracking number and link for a delivery (you didn’t order).

A scam telling you your mail box full is designed to make you click on a link. Damien Manuel

Simple tips to avoid being conned

Firstly, don’t click on any links, don’t respond to offers to opt-out or unsubscribe, don’t call return calls from numbers you don’t recognise and, most importantly, don’t give out personal information – even if you think it isn’t important.

Remember, some scams are multi-step scams. The best thing you can do is to report the scam and tell your friends and family to be aware of the scam so they can modify their behaviours.

Scams can be reported to various government agencies, such as Scam Watch, the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) and, in some cases, the service provider – for example, the ATO, Telstra, AusPost and the banks.

An example of a multi-step scam that validates your email is real and then harvests the credentials you enter. Damien Manuel

– ref. Australians lost more than $10 million to scammers last year. Follow these easy tips to avoid being conned. – http://theconversation.com/australians-lost-more-than-10-million-to-scammers-last-year-follow-these-easy-tips-to-avoid-being-conned-109728

Morrison’s Vanuatu trip shows the government’s continued focus on militarising the Pacific

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael O’Keefe, Head of Department, Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University

The foreign policy community met with relief the announcement Morrison’s first overseas trip for 2019 would be to Vanuatu and Fiji. The trip is a long overdue symbol of a priority outlined in the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: “stepping up our engagement in the Pacific”.

There had been much criticism of the PM’s failure to attend last year’s Pacific Islands Forum given the white paper’s stated aims to

engage with the Pacific with greater intensity and ambition, deliver more integrated and innovative policy and make further, substantial long-term investments in the region’s development.

Although Vanuatu’s prime minister, Charlot Salwai, visited Australia last year, Morrison’s trip to Port Vila on Wednesday is the first by an Australian PM since Bob Hawke in 1990.

The trip had a strong defence focus, with Morrison saying Australia’s contribution to Vanuatu’s police and security will ensure “the stability of our region”. He is also reportedly negotiating a bilateral security agreement. This represents a deeper militarisation of Australia’s Pacific foreign policy.

Morrison’s aims to formalise security relations are an attempt to gain influence in the face of China’s rising competition. Australia’s undiplomatic and somewhat hysterical response to rumours of a Chinese military base being built in Vanuatu in 2018 highlights Canberra’s sensitivity to “foreign” intervention in the South Pacific.

Although Vanuatu was quick to deny the rumours, debate in Australia raged over the geopolitical implications, with some commentators saying a strike could be launched from the base to Australia.

The government’s recent pattern of providing support for PNG’s Manus Island naval base, Fiji’s Black Rock Base, or new Patrol Boats to 12 Pacific Island nations, is part of a tectonic shift that has occurred in foreign policy toward the Pacific.

Australia’s focus is security, concentrating on external threats and the possibility of internal instability. The Pacific’s concern, however, is sustainable development and climate change, which Australia seems to ignore.

The question is whether Canberra will simply continue framing the Pacific through the lens of Australian policy priorities or focus on what the Pacific wants.

Australia’s relationship with Vanuatu

Australia already has significant defence relations with the other Pacific Island military nations – PNG and Fiji. Canberra has a longstanding defence cooperation relationship with PNG and this trip will likely lead to greater defence cooperation with Fiji – especially as Australia beat China in the bid to build the Black Rock Base.

And in 2017, under then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, Australia negotiated a bilateral security treaty with the Solomon Islands security cooperation agreement. This agreement allows Australian police personnel to deploy rapidly to Solomon Islands (with the consent of both countries) if there is a threat, which includes natural disasters.

With regards to Vanuatu, Australia is already its main development assistance partner. And Australia’s trading and investment relationship with Vanuatu is as significant as is possible with a small island nation of 285,000 people. And out of the Pacific nations and Timor Leste, Vanuatu has the larger number of workers in Australia and New Zealand as part of the Seasonal Worker Program.

In the 1980s Australia gave Vanuatu a patrol boat to police its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and will give a modern advanced vessel as part of the Pacific Maritime Security Program. This program, detailed in the 2016 Defence White Paper, is a A$2 billion commitment to the region over 30 years, and seeks to support regional countries in defending their maritime boundaries from transnational crime and illegal fishing.

While the Pacific is focused on development, Australia’s priority is security. DAN HIMBRECHTS

The Australian Federal Police also has a longstanding training relationship with the Vanuatu Police through DFAT’s Policing and Justice Support Program. In 2018 it was announced that Australia would train 300 new recruits.

Despite all of this, the Morrison Government is reportedly placing increased security cooperation with Vanuatu high on the agenda. So, why now? Perhaps because Canberra’s Pacific “step up” has not all been plain sailing and relations with Vanuatu have been strained recently.

Australia at odds with the Pacific

In the past, Australia’s relations with the Pacific had been characterised by aid and development rather than security. Canberra remains the region’s number one aid donor. However, under successive Liberal governments, the aid budget has declined.

This has continued under the Morrison government and there is concern militarisation will draw funds away from development projects that more closely meet the interests of Pacific Island nations.

The other key plank in the government’s Pacific “step up” was the announcement of a infrastructure development bank. This multi-billion dollar initiative is short on detail but plans to provide loans for “high priority” infrastructure projects including telecommunications, energy, transport and water.

The loans will be provided at concessional rates and the bank is aimed at countering Chinese influence. Australia has criticised China’s debt book diplomacy, so increasing the debt pool of Pacific countries seems at odds with these concerns.

Morrison’s Pacific pivot is in full swing. So far, the Infrastructure Bank raises more questions than it answers. The security focus of Morrison’s trip is likely to lead to more speculation about what Australia wants to give. If we want to build sustainable relationships, we should be listening closely to what Vanuatu wants to get from any security agreement.

– ref. Morrison’s Vanuatu trip shows the government’s continued focus on militarising the Pacific – http://theconversation.com/morrisons-vanuatu-trip-shows-the-governments-continued-focus-on-militarising-the-pacific-109883

Cotton and rice have an important place in the Murray Darling Basin

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

The widespread deaths of fish in the Darling River – with more predicted to come – has raised serious questions about the allocation of water between agriculture and the environment. Water-hungry crops like cotton and rice are also raising eyebrows: are they worth growing in the Murray Darling Basin?

The situation is a little more complicated than it may appear. Cotton and rice need plenty of water, but they might actually be some of the best crops to help cope with a rapidly changing climate.

Flexible crops are vital

It’s true cotton and rice are both “thirsty” crops. Cotton requires about 7.8 million litres per hectare to grow, while rice needs roughly 12.6 million litres per hectare.

More importantly however, they are both annual crops. Farmers plant, grow and harvest in the same 12 month period. This means they can look to the year ahead and decide how much to plant given water availability and seasonal rainfall predictions.

Along the Murray and Darling rivers, which are some of the most variable in the world, the flexibility to plant more or less in a given year is very valuable. In a drought year with limited water like this one, a rice or cotton farmer may even chose to plant nothing and simply sell their remaining water allocation to another farmer.

During a flood year they can move into full production and grow bumper crops. For an annual crop like this, farmers may only three good years out of five to have a viable business.

In contrast, perennial crops like orchards or vineyards need a very secure water supply, every year without fail. The trees and vines take years to mature, so a bad drought can be devastating: if they die, a farm could be set back a decade waiting for them to regrow.

The Murray Darling Basin is an epicentre for the impact of climate change, in terms of water availability. It’s vital we have crops like rice and cotton that can produce in a good year. Then, with relatively minor consequences, not produce in a dry year when it would be better to have the remaining water going to the environment and higher value agricultural crops like citrus, stone fruit and grapes. Our rural communities need to produce a diverse range of agricultural commodities and industries to be more resilient and thrive.

Do we have the balance right?

While I think we need the cotton and rice industries, this doesn’t mean that we’re distributing water well. The disastrous algal blooms choking the Darling River show clearly taking too much water out of the Murray Darling Basin severely damages freshwater ecosystems during droughts.

The sort of tragedy we’re seeing on the Darling River is because too little water has been allocated to the environment.

We need to reallocate water from irrigated agriculture to improve the health of the environment, support people living along the rivers, and other rural industries that depend on healthy rivers, like grazing, recreational fishing and tourism.

This is, I believe, in large part a value judgement. If we, as a society, are going to take water from the rivers, we have to decide how much of the environment to allow to die off in that process. This is how we support irrigated agriculture and associated communities. The fish deaths on the Darling River are a clear sign we have not got that balance right.

The ‘water stock market’ generally works

The trade in water allocations – between, for example, rice and cotton growers to a perennial crop producer – is a key drought adaptation measure in the Murray Darling Basin. It will only become more important with climate change, which is predicted to make droughts more frequent and intense.

In a drought year, we need a grape grower who’s short of water to be able to quickly buy extra water from a farmer who might produce a lower-value crop. This keeps the vineyard alive, able to keep employing the people picking the grapes, and keeping their wine production facility going.

This is critical for rural communities in drought for maintaining employment and small businesses who supply services from nearby towns. Therefore, we need a modest share of annual crop growers like rice and cotton growers in the system to keep our broader communities healthy.

While some irrigators appear to have broken the rules and taken water they were not entitled to, this is also a crisis of management. Our state governments, in particular, have failed to adequately fulfil their duties to the environment and the Australian public as stewards of our rivers.

– ref. Cotton and rice have an important place in the Murray Darling Basin – http://theconversation.com/cotton-and-rice-have-an-important-place-in-the-murray-darling-basin-109953

Gillette’s corporate calculation shows just how far the #metoo movement has come

By The Conversation -

January 17, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney

For decades Gillette has been selling razors using the slogan “the best a man can get”. This week the Procter & Gamble-owned brand has adopted “the best a man can be” as part of a marketing campaign meant to challenge toxic masculinity.

Explicitly aligning itself with the #metoo movement, the message is that men have to change if we want to end sexual harassment, bullying and domestic violence.

The campaign’s centrepiece, a 108-second “short film”, has divided opinion. Among those to declare their contempt for Gillette’s “virtue signalling” is the British television presenter Piers Morgan, who has labelled the advert “man-hating” and part of a “war on masculinity”.

On the other side, those lauding Gillette include Glamour magazine contributor Helen Wilson-Beevers, who has praised the the video as a “self-assured piece of advertising that Gillette should be proud of”.

The new corporate political activism

Gillette’s campaign exemplifies of a new type of corporate political activism where corporations and their chief executives publicly back progressive social and political causes.

A textbook example is Nike’s advertisements featuring American football player Colin Kaepernick, who began the practice of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African Americans.

A Nike billboard featuring Colin Kaepernick near Union Square in San Francisco. D. Ross Cameron/EPA

Whereas in the past corporations could be expected to be the targets of political activists – on such issues climate change, worker exploitation and animal cruelty – today many corporations see advantage in becoming the activists.

Nike is the classic case study. In 1997 the company was being dragged over the public coals for the use of child labour in the factories it contracted to made its shoes in countries like Indonesia. By 2017 it some considered it a leader in corporate social activism.

This can be very good for business. Corporate activism is a marketing strategy geared at the management of corporate values and identity, as well as reputation building. It has been explicitly identified has having the twin objectives: to influence public opinion but also to improve consumer attitudes about the company.

Nike exemplifies this as well. While some saw the Kaepernick ad as a calculated market risk, it paid off. By the end of 2018 Nikes sales far exceeded expectations, and its share price continued to rise.

This is not to say that nobody at Nike or Gillette genuinely believes in the causes the organisations have chosen to support. But that support would still have depended on the cause passing the “business case” test – with any social benefits seen as being matched to self-interested commercial benefits.

After all, we don’t see many corporations campaigning to eliminate aggressive corporate tax avoidance, even though that is the leading way they contribute to society.

Praise to #metoo

This tells us something about the causes that corporate activists put their money behind. Put simply, when a corporation backs a progressive social movement it is because the company is reasonably confident that its cause has mainstream support.

Gillette’s embrace of #metoo themes is thus a corporate endorsement of how mainstream the that movement has become. In barely a year it has grown into a global social phenomena bringing women’s experience of workplace sexual harassment and exploitation out of the shadows. In the words of the #metoo founder Tarana Burke, the goal is to build “a world free of sexual violence”.

That Gillette has aligned itself with the #metoo movement is not something for the brand to be congratulated on. It is #metoo that deserves the praise.

– ref. Gillette’s corporate calculation shows just how far the #metoo movement has come – http://theconversation.com/gillettes-corporate-calculation-shows-just-how-far-the-metoo-movement-has-come-109936

From robo calls to spam texts: annoying campaign tricks that are legal

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Orr, Professor of Law, The University of Queensland

“Make Australia Great.” So began several million text messages, sent last week from Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. Palmer’s bumptious campaign techniques actually predated those of Donald Trump.

But now he is aping Trump’s slogans and nationalism, if with a less reactionary, more third-way ethos. The chances of Palmer rising again, like the proverbial political soufflé, are remote. But what of his campaign methods?

Mass texting (I’ll dub it “mexting”) is nothing new in electoral politics. Fifteen years ago it proved controversial, during a local election on the Gold Coast. Late night texts were sent to target young voters while they were out on the town.

The message – which came from nightclubs, urging voters to keeping licensed venues open all hours – was lost in a backlash. In those days people paid not just per text they sent, but often to receive them as well.

Mobiles have since become more ubiquitous, intimate fixtures, and we no longer pay to receive messages, nor do many of us pay for individual texts.

Palmer’s party admits to receiving more than 3,000 complaints (which he claims were robo-calls by trade unions), and he says there’s more to come. But why risk alienating the very people you are reaching out to? And how, if at all, does the law regulate such in-your-face campaign techniques?

The law on ‘mexting’?

For once, the legal how is easier than the political why. The national Spam Act of 2003 regulates unsolicited electronic messages via telephone and email. But only commercial messages, about goods and services or investments, are prohibited.

Social and political advocacy is not treated as suspect. On the contrary, it is encouraged. The Privacy Act, in particular, lets MPs and parties collect data on citizens’ views, to better personalise their messages.

Exempting politicians from privacy laws is based on the philosophy that freedom of political communication is vital to Australia’s democratic process.

Even when government agencies, charities or political parties offer services or solicit donations or membership, they are given a free hand. All they have to do is include a link about who authorised the message.

Palmer parroting Trump. Darren England/AAP

The licence to advocate, provided it is not done anonymously, is an old one under electoral law in English-speaking democracies. The obligation to “tag” messages enables the speaker to be traced and helps us discount the source of political opinions.

That is merely a rule about form, not manner or content. When it comes to manner, there are laws against offensive messages via mass media – whether broadcast or sent by post. (Good luck enforcing that rule in the back passages of the internet.)

There are also, famously, rules against discriminatory “hate” speech.

When it comes to content, you need to avoid defaming people. But there is no general requirement of truth, in the media or in politics, outside rules against misleading parliament, and a limited offence of materially false, paid, election-time ads in South Australia.

At the 2016 general election, the Labor Party dismayed the government and many observers, by mexting as part of its so-called “Mediscare” campaign. The texts looked like they came from Medicare itself. The trick led to a tightening of rules and a new offence of “impersonating” a Commonwealth body.

Other in-your-face campaign methods

Mexting sits in a long line of in-your-face campaign methods. The century old tradition of handing out flyers lives on, as letterboxes in marginal electorates will surely testify later this year.

Another was the “soap box” speech, trundled around shopping precincts via a loudspeaker on the back of a ute. In the middle of last century it was so typical that, as a young candidate, Gough Whitlam is said to have campaigned this way via a boat, to reach outlying suburbs not well serviced by roads.

Sound trucks show the ‘soap box’ method of campaigning is still used in Japan. Wikimedia Commons

It is all but dead today in Australia, but lives on in the “sound trucks” of Japan.

More recent innovations are the ubiquitous “direct-mail” – a personalised if expensive variant of letterbox stuffing. Plus the “robo-call”, where a pre-recorded message is automatically dialled to thousands of telephones. I well recall picking up my landline, over dinner in 2007, to hear John Howard greet me. He happily ploughed on despite my unflattering response.

As for how, practically, a campaign assembles thousands of valid mobile numbers… well, Palmer’s party says it has no list. It may have obtained it from a marketing firm. Commercial entities, notoriously, collect and trade files of phone numbers, postal and email addresses, and more.

Still, why? A cynic might say that for Palmer, any notoriety is good notoriety. His gambit has people talking about him again. Minor parties expect to alienate people: their goal is to attract a few percent of the vote.

Why major parties employ such tactics is another matter. They have to build broader coalitions of voters. But there is a cost-benefit analysis at work. Electronic messaging can reach swathes of people more cheaply than broadcast advertising, which in any event lacks the reach it once had. And negative advertising, like Mediscare, tends to work.

As it is, modern parties lack mass memberships and cannot rely primarily on organic influence or door-knocking by activists.

So while spamming, in text or audio, seems perverse – and is unlikely to be as effective as targeted or viral messaging on social media, or community-based campaigning – it won’t disappear.

For my part, I won’t grumble about a text from Mr Palmer popping up in my pocket. It beats his huge yellow billboards in terms of a blight on our public spaces.

– ref. From robo calls to spam texts: annoying campaign tricks that are legal – http://theconversation.com/from-robo-calls-to-spam-texts-annoying-campaign-tricks-that-are-legal-109943

The big lesson from Opal Tower is that badly built apartments aren’t only an issue for residents

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Crommelin, Research Lecturer, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW

The saga of Opal Tower, the 36-storey Sydney apartment building evacuated on Christmas Eve after frightening cracking, has helped to expose the deep cracks in Australia’s approach to building apartments.

An interim engineering assessment released yesterday indicates concrete panels cracked due to their manufacture and assembly deviating from the original design. Though the building is structurally sound and in no danger of collapse, repairing the faults will be costly, slow and disruptive to residents.

The tower’s size, age (it is less than six months old) and the timing of its cracks might have made it particularly newsworthy, but badly built apartment blocks are far from unusual. Right now across Australia’s cities many buildings have significant leaks, cracks and fire safety failings.

So we can’t just address faults in individual developments. We need to identify the systemic flaws in how “compact city” policies have been planned and implemented.

Cracks in the compact city

The consequences of these flaws increasingly affect us all.

As the population of Australia’s capital cities grows, more of us are living in apartments. Governments have been promoting greater housing density as an alternative to sprawl for decades. But they haven’t always ensured this density has been done well, including in terms of building quality.

Gutted: these photos show inside an affected Opal Tower apartment. Furniture, floorings and the ceiling have been removed, and propping equipment installed. Residents have complained about no notification such work would occur. Image supplied/AAP

In the aftermath of the Opal Tower saga, experts have pointed to many reasons why building defects can occur.

These include the fact that developers owe buyers few legal obligations once the apartments are sold, which limits their risk if they get things wrong. There are also significant market pressures, particularly in boom times, to build quickly and cheaply. And there are gaps in how the construction process is overseen, meaning errors go unnoticed.

These are not new observations, but getting regulations in place to address them has proven challenging. A case in point is NSW’s new defects bond, requiring developers to put aside 2% of the building value to fix defects down the track. The bond’s introduction was delayed for years, and it will be a few more years yet before we know if it works.

Scoping the problem

So just how severe is the situation? Right now, we don’t know for sure.

In 2012 a City Futures Research Centre project surveyed apartment owners in NSW. Out of more than 1,000 respondents, 72% knew of defects in their strata-title complex. Among those whose apartments had been built since 2000, the percentage was 85%.

That project only looked at building defects as one of a number of issues facing apartment owners, however, so it didn’t document the issue in detail.

Our new research project will examine just how prevalent building defects are, the reasons they occur, and how strata-titled housing can be improved.

While the research will focus on Sydney, we hope it is a step towards changing planning and development policies to ensure better quality apartment buildings nation-wide.

Increasing inequality

A system allowing defective apartment buildings not only creates huge financial and emotional stress for residents but much wider economic and social risks.

Poor building practices undermine confidence in the multibillion-dollar construction industry, the strata management industry and in the planning system.

They also contribute to inequality. This is because apartment residents are more likely to be younger, renting, on lower incomes, and from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Amid growing concerns about the widening gap between housing “haves” and “have nots”, there is renewed political interest in housing policy. Certainly this is a crucial issue for governments to tackle, but it goes beyond a focus on housing supply and prices. Addressing quality must also be a priority.

At the same time, we also need to step back and reconsider how we do compact-city planning more broadly – including the roles governments and the private market play. With two-thirds of us now calling our biggest cities home, we need to have a serious public conversation about what we want our cities to be and how we can best achieve those goals.

We can’t afford to ignore the growing evidence that our cities are cracking under the strain. Because like the Opal Tower owners, we’re all going to bear the cost when things go wrong, and we’ll all have to live amid the wreckage.

– ref. The big lesson from Opal Tower is that badly built apartments aren’t only an issue for residents – http://theconversation.com/the-big-lesson-from-opal-tower-is-that-badly-built-apartments-arent-only-an-issue-for-residents-109722

We’re in the era of overtourism but there is a more sustainable way forward

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Regina Scheyvens, Professor of Development Studies, Massey University

If you live in a tourist destination, you might dread the holiday invasion. Likewise, disgruntled tourists complain about crowded and polluted beaches, national parks or attractions.

Graffiti in Oviedo, northern Spain, following a spate of attacks on tourism facilities in Barcelona. EPA/ALBERTO MORANTE, CC BY-ND

Overtourism is now a serious issue in many parts of the world. A good visitor experience may not be a finite resource in the same way as oil, but many popular destinations in Europe are reaching what could be termed “peak tourism”.

Concerns have been raised from Amsterdam to Dubrovnik about noise pollution, crowded parks, pressure on public facilities and rising rents. And in what is depicted as a “global battle” between travellers and locals, anti-tourism street marches have occurred in Barcelona and Venice.

Unsustainable tourism growth

Tucked away in a seemingly idyllic spot in the South Pacific, New Zealand is not immune to such concerns, which is why Massey University is hosting the world’s first research conference on tourism and the sustainable development goals this month.

Between 2013 and 2018, international tourist arrivals in New Zealand grew by 1.2 million to a total of 3.8 million. During the 12 months to March last year, tourists spent almost $40 billion, and the industry now provides one in every 12 jobs.

Economists see this growth as very positive for the country’s development, but many New Zealanders are ambivalent: 39% have expressed concern over the negative impacts of the growth in international visitors. The pressure on some destinations is particularly intense. For example, the 20,000 permanent residents of the summer and winter playground of Queenstown play host to around three million visitors a year.

Tourists digging holes in the vulcanic sand of a hot water beach in New Zealand. from www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND

Meanwhile local government bodies lament the pressure on public infrastructure and demands for waste disposal from freedom campers. Contractors at four Central Otago freedom camping sites have struggled to clear 16 tonnes of rubbish accumulated over the last two months.

A test case for concerns about the promise versus the pitfalls of tourism is the case of cruise tourism in Akaroa Harbour. The battle line lies between some business owners whose livelihoods depend on cruise tourists and local residents who feel their beautiful harbour and quaint town are marred by air and noise pollution and congestion associated with hundreds of tourists dropping in on their town with each cruise.

In Australia, the Guinness World Record-certified whitest sand beach in the world – Hyams Beach – has turned away thousands of potential visitors during the Christmas and New Year period. There are only 110 permanent residents and 400 parking spaces, but up to 5000 tourists wanting to visit the beach each day during summer.

These experiences reflect the pressures and tensions tourism brings to many parts of the world, and the need for better ways of regulating tourist activity and capturing the gains from tourism.

A more sustainable way forward

It is clear that most people do not wish to see an end to tourism. But they do want the industry to be far more sustainable. While the term “sustainable tourism” has long been criticised for its lack of clout – and the way it can be seen as merely “sustaining tourism”, there is a way forward. We can look to the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), ratified in 2015 by 193 countries and set to guide global development through to 2030.

The SDGs require governments, civil society and business interests to play their parts in creating a more sustainable world. Furthermore, they are multi-faceted, considering social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability.

The SDGs can help to guide the tourism industry to make more sustainable choices. For example, a strategy by hotels, cruise ships and restaurants to buy as much fresh produce from local farmers as possible would shorten the supply chain and save food miles (thus contributing to SDG 13 on combating climate change). It would also enhance local development (SDG 1 on eliminating poverty).

Tourist resorts in the Pacific could tackle the sexual harrassment from guests that many resort employees experience to show they care about SDG 8 on “decent work for all” and SDG 5 on “empowering all women and girls”.

Tourism trades in luxury products and indulgent experiences, and as such it places a heavy burden on the natural environment and results in waste management issues. SDG 12 on sustainable production and consumption can encourage companies to offer tourists more sustainable products and to reduce wastage of energy, fresh water and food.

Efforts to capture the benefits of tourism while preventing overtourism should pay careful attention to the SDGs.

– ref. We’re in the era of overtourism but there is a more sustainable way forward – http://theconversation.com/were-in-the-era-of-overtourism-but-there-is-a-more-sustainable-way-forward-108906

Are Australian classrooms really the most disruptive in the world? Not if you look at the whole picture

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathon Sargeant, Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Classroom Management, Australian Catholic University

Recent reports suggest Australian classrooms, from the students’ perspective, are some of the most disruptive in the world. But do we have a behavioural crisis in our schools? Perhaps not.

At the end of this month, thousands of teachers and children begin or return to school. Throughout the day, each child will be expected to follow the instructions of multiple teachers, leaders, and mentors. In school, children are expected change activities with little prior notice. Some tasks require significant physical effort, while others exact a heavy intellectual toll.

The child’s performance in each activity is assessed in comparison with other children and with those who have gone before. The activities planned for them might occur in groups or alone, with or without technology, and with or without help.

Each child’s teacher will be focused on delivering the best possible learning experiences that are interesting, effective, and sometimes fun. Alongside this focus on learning is the task of classroom and behaviour management, an enduring challenge for teachers.

How is classroom disruption measured?

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparative study of student achievement directed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The PISA 2015 report provides an international comparison on how Australian 15-year old’s fare in scientific, mathematical, and reading literacy.

One part of this major report focuses on students’ accounts (with a focus on science classes) of the climate of classroom discipline. The report analysed student responses to questions about how often (every lesson to never) they experienced certain disruptions in science, such as “there is noise and disorder” and “students cannot work well”.

These results suggest Australian classrooms have a problem with in-class disruptions. Previous PISA study have explored this theme with relation to other literacy domains such as reading achievement in 2009. One study found the classroom climate didn’t always affect a nations performance. Australia’s students did not rank as poorly, which may offer some insights for the teaching of science.

Stages of personal development matter

It’s important to note this assessment is focused on 15-year-olds who are at a particularly challenging phase of personal development that includes increasing disconnection from their schools. It doesn’t necessarily represent the experiences of other ages, particularly not in the primary school years.

Secondary school sees the emergence of independence, boundary pushing and a period of social adjustment. Secondary schools are often large, busy systems where pupils mix beyond age groupings and are not anchored to a particular class group. At 15 years old, these students are ten years in with three to go.

Interest in a lesson alone is to enough to stop all disruption in a classroom. from www.shutterstock.com

The students surveyed reported experiences of not paying attention, not listening to what the teacher says and excessive noise and disorder. These results align with similar research that asked children about the causes of problematic behaviour.

While such knowledge is not new, the understanding that children themselves are aware of the complexities and dynamics of the school experience does need to be acknowledged. Neither teacher or students enjoy a disrupted class.

Why is Australia so low?

Our schools are busy, vibrant, and filled with lessons that promote interaction between students and teachers. The fact poor discipline is defined as not listening and being off-task is perhaps a little melodramatic compared with some of the more extreme but infrequent outbursts (less than 3%) that can occur. But multiply that by 15 or 20 and there’s a bigger problem.

Education systems that remain in some countries are no longer representative of Australian culture and are not reflective of the accepted standards of educational practice. In many respects, Australia is one of the hardest places to teach because of the importance placed on engagement as well as performance. For example, China and Singapore have high levels of direct instruction, where Australian education focuses on getting the student involved and ensuring the teacher knows the students as individuals.

The classroom management debate has raged for decades and often doesn’t move at the same pace as other society norms. This teacher education video from the 1940s is a good example of how different styles can impact students. It also shows how simple prevention techniques can influence class mood.

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In many ways, the best behaviour management relies on what happens when no misbehaviour is present. At these times, effective teachers are building positive relationships, acknowledging, and supporting students, gathering their feedback, and supporting those who need assistance. Most teachers do this well, most of the time, but disruptions still happen.

Problematic behaviour and school success are impacted by a multitude of factors such as bullying, poor motivation, difficulty in understanding, tiredness, competing curriculum priorities and the ever-present cycles of assessment.

There is enormous pressure on teachers to achieve results and the issue of a crowded curriculum is well documented. This pressure is also being felt by students and families, especially in the senior school years. Such pressures can affect a teacher’s ability to manage a class and can also affect a student’s ability to manage themselves.

Classroom management has been sidelined by academic performance

In recent years, teacher education programs have had to respond to government priorities that focus on academic performance. Programs relating to inclusive education and classroom management have drifted to the side.

Unfortunately, the skills of classroom management are far more complex than just “good teaching”. A false assumption made by as many early career teachers as experienced ones is that if their teaching is interesting, there should be no reason for misbehaviour.

But interest alone is not enough. Classroom energy fluctuates, ability levels vary and not everyone is motivated by the same content. Teachers have to read the room and respond to many different demands of students to keep things flowing.

Yes, teachers would benefit from more direct instruction in how to deal with behavioural challenges. But they should also be skilled at prevention and should be supported in building those skills.

This report alerts us to the importance of effective teaching, and the fact that students do care about their learning environment. Everyone is on the same page here: students are trying to learn and teachers are trying to teach. Things will still go wrong, but far less frequently when trust and respect flows both ways.

– ref. Are Australian classrooms really the most disruptive in the world? Not if you look at the whole picture – http://theconversation.com/are-australian-classrooms-really-the-most-disruptive-in-the-world-not-if-you-look-at-the-whole-picture-109888

Curious Kids: how do tongues taste food?

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paulomi (Polly) Burey, Senior Lecturer (Food Science), University of Southern Queensland

Curious Kids is a series for children. Kids can send questions to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au. You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

How do tongues taste food? – Ridley, age 4, Melbourne.

Dear Ridley,

This is a really good question. Tasting food actually uses all of your senses. Your senses gather up all the information and combine it into a message about the taste of food that gets sent to your brain. For example, your eyes help you recognise food and remember how it tastes.

It’s not just about the tongue. The five senses – taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell – help collect messages about a food and send it to your brain. Shutterstock

Your tongue has special parts that pick up flavour, bundled together as taste buds. They help you taste different flavours, like sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and a special one called “umami” which some people say is a bit like a mix of all the others put together.

The taste buds pick up clues about how a food tastes and sends messages about it to your brain along special wires called nerves.

Your brain gets messages from your taste buds via nerves. Shutterstock

To taste something properly, you need to chew food into small pieces and to have a lot of drool, or saliva. This help the flavour molecules (also known as “tastants”) reach your taste buds.

This picture shows a close-up of taste buds on a tongue. Shutterstock

Try this experiment: if you lick a piece of sliced apple, how does it taste? Now drink some water to wash away the flavour, and take a bite of the apple and chew it up. When you cut an apple, only some flavour is released. But if you chew it into smaller pieces, more flavour can escape into your mouth.

Foods taste sweeter if the sugar particles are smaller. Want to try another experiment? With permission, put some large sugar crystals on your tongue for five seconds. How sweet do they taste? Now rinse your mouth with water and put some fine icing sugar on your tongue – is it sweeter or less sweet than the big sugar crystals?

The smaller the sugar particles are, the easier it is for your tongue to taste the sweetness. (For the adults reading, this is because smaller particles have a higher surface area). This trick helps food scientists develop sweet foods with less sugar.

Saliva and smell

When you chew your food, you also produce saliva (or spit) which dissolves some of the food flavour for your to tongue taste.

Want to try another experiment? Stick out your tongue as far as it can go and dry the saliva off with some thick paper towel. While your tongue is still sticking out, have your parent put some food on your tongue, like yoghurt. How strong is the flavour? Next, pull your tongue back into your mouth and taste the food. Is the flavour stronger, weaker, or the same?

If your nose is blocked, food tastes weaker. This is because your nose also helps you “taste” food too.

Try it! While holding your nose closed, put some food in your mouth and chew. Can you taste it? While still eating the food, let go of your nose and keep eating. Is the flavour stronger, weaker, or the same?

In fact, without your sense of smell it can be hard to taste the difference between a raw apple and a raw onion!

When it comes to tasting flavour, your nose helps a lot. Flickr/Bruce Tuten, CC BY

So your tongue and nose work together to help you taste your food. I hope you can help your tongue taste more by chewing your food fully and using your saliva to help make the flavour stronger.

And if you have something to eat that you don’t like, try holding your nose!

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

CC BY-ND

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 do tongues taste food? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-tongues-taste-food-103744

A current affair: the movement of ocean waters around Australia

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography, University of Western Australia

Many people in Australia will head to the beach this summer and that’ll most likely include a dip or a plunge into the sea. But have you ever wondered where those ocean waters come from, and what influence they may have?

Australia is surrounded by ocean currents that have a strong controlling influence on things such as climate, ecosystems, fish migrations, the transport of ocean debris and on water quality.

We did a study, published in April 2018, that helps to give us a better understanding of those ocean currents.

Surface currents around the Australian continent. Ems Wijeratne/Charitha Pattiaratchi/Roger Proctor

Go with the flow: Indian Ocean

Our 15 year simulation indicates that water from the Pacific Ocean enters the Indonesian Archipelago through the Mindanao current (north) and Halmahera Sea (south).

It then enters the Indian ocean as the Indonesian Throughflow between many Indonesian Islands, with flow through the Timor Passage being the most dominant.

Most of this water flows west as the South Equatorial Current. Re-circulation of the SEC creates the Eastern Gyre that contributes to the Holloway Current. This in turn feeds the Leeuwin Current – the longest boundary current in the world (Ocean currents that flow adjacent to a coastline are called boundary currents)

The Leeuwin Current is the major boundary current along the west coast and as it moves southward. Indian Ocean water is supplied by the South Indian Counter Current increasing the Leeuwin Current transport by 60%.

The Leeuwin Current turns east at Cape Leeuwin, in Western Australia’s south-west, and continues to Tasmania as the South Australian and Zeehan Currents.

The Leeuwin Current passes the lighthouse at the Cape Leeuwin in WA. Flickr/Cheng, CC BY-NC-ND

There is a strong seasonal variation in the strength of the boundary currents in the Indian Ocean with a progression southwards of the peak transport along the coast.

The Holloway Current peaks in April/May (coinciding with changes in the monsoon winds), the Leeuwin Current reaches a maximum along the west and south coasts in June and August.

Go with the flow: Pacific Ocean

In the Pacific Ocean, the northern branches of the South Equatorial Current are the main inputs initiating the Hiri Current and East Australian Current.

At around latitude 15 degrees south the currents split in two: southward to form the East Australian Current, and northward to form the Hiri Current which contributes to a clockwise gyre in the Gulf of Papua.

The East Australian Current is the dominant current in the region transporting 33 million cubic metres of water per second southward.

At around 32S, the East Australian Current separates from the coast and 60% of the water flows eastward to New Zealand as the Tasman Front. The remaining 40% flows southward as the East Australian Current extension and contributes to the Tasman Outflow.

The Tasman outflow is the major conduit of water from the Pacific to Indian Ocean and contributes to the Flinders Current, flowing westward from Tasmania and past Cape Leeuwin into the Indian Ocean.

Along the southern continental slope, the Flinders Current appears as an undercurrent beneath the Leeuwin Current and a surface current further offshore. The Flinders Current contributes to the Leeuwin Undercurrent directly as a northward flow, flowing to the north-west of Australia in water depths 300 metres to 800 metres.

Impact of the currents

Understanding ocean circulation is a fundamental tenet of physical oceanography and scientists have been charting the pathways of ocean currents since the American hydrographer Matthew Maury, one of the founders of oceanography, who first charted the Gulf Stream in 1855.

One of the first maps of circulation around Australia was by Halliday (1921) who showed the movement of “warm” and “cold” waters around Australia. Although some of the major features (such as the East Australian Current) were correctly identified, a more fine scale description is now available.

Ocean surface currents around Australia by Halliday 1921.

The unique feature of ocean currents around Australia is that along both east and west coasts they transport warmer water southwards and influence the local climate, particularly air temperature and rainfall, as well as species distribution.

For example, the south west of Australia is up to 5C warmer in winter and receives more than double the rainfall compared to regions located on similar latitudes along western coastlines of other continents.

Similarly many tropical species of fish are found in the southwest of Australia that hitch a ride on the ocean currents.

The Pacific Ocean is the origin of waters around Australia with a direct link to the east and an indirect link to west.

Ocean water from the Pacific Ocean flows through the Indonesian Archipelago, a region subject to high solar heating and rainfall runoff, creating lower density water. This water, augmented by water from the Indian Ocean, flows around the western and southern coasts, converging along the southern coast of Tasmania.

So next time you head for a dip in the coastal waters around Australian, spare a thought for where that water has come from and where it may be going next.

Time for a plunge in the water at Bondi Beach, NSW. Flickr/Roderick Eime, CC BY-ND

– ref. A current affair: the movement of ocean waters around Australia – http://theconversation.com/a-current-affair-the-movement-of-ocean-waters-around-australia-96779

Weekly Dose: new drug MDPV, or ‘monkey dust’, found in Australia. What is it and what are the harms?

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Banister, Team Leader in Medicinal Chemistry, University of Sydney

Recent media reports have suggested a rise in a dangerous new party drug known as “monkey dust”. This is a slang name for the drug MDPV (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone), as well as other members of the chemical class known as “synthetic cathinones”, or “bath salts”.

The effects of monkey dust are similar to other stimulants such as ecstasy (MDMA) and cocaine. Revellers may be using the drug on purpose as a substitute for these, or may mistakenly think it’s MDMA. However, the potency and effects are different, and can lead to trouble.

Synthetic cathinones are synthetic derivatives of a stimulant found in the khat plant, a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. More than 140 individual synthetic cathinones have been identified as illicit drugs, so users can never be certain about a substance from its street name alone.

This class also includes drugs you may have heard of before including ephylone (the dangerous drug detected recently via pill testing at an Australian music festival), methylone, and mephedrone.

What is MDPV?

MDPV was developed by pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim in the mid-1960s as a central nervous system stimulant. But development never got far enough for it to be tested on humans.

It first reappeared in internet drug forum discussions around 2005, and became increasingly prevalent in the United States, Europe and elsewhere over the following years.

MDPV has been illegal in Australia since 2010, and around the same time in many other jurisdictions including the United States, Canada, and much of Europe, accounting for a decline in its availability.

The Drug Enforcement Administration reported that MDPV accounted for more than 50% of all synthetic cathinones encountered in law enforcement seizures in the US by 2011. The proportion had dropped to less than 1% by 2015.

The recent seizure of more than four kilograms of MDPV imported into Australia suggests a market for the drug still exists.

MDPV is a white crystalline powder in its pure form, but manufacturing impurities often render it from off-white to pale brown. It’s usually sold as a powder, powder-filled capsules or tablets. MDPV and other cathinones are often misrepresented as MDMA for sale due to similar appearance and some common effects. Laboratory testing of street pills containing MDPV shows it’s commonly mixed with other drugs.

What does MDPV do?

An oral dose of MDPV is estimated to be around 5-20 milligrams (compared to 100-150 milligrams for MDMA). The main psychoactive effects last two to three hours, and side-effects persist for several additional hours.

Users report MDPV produces euphoria, feelings of empathy (although less so than MDMA), increased sociability, mental and physical stimulation, and sexual arousal.

Side-effects, particularly at high doses, can include anxiety and paranoia, delusions, muscle spasms, and an elevated heart rate. In extreme cases, MDPV has been linked to rhabdomyolysis (rapid muscle breakdown), brain injury, and death.

Animals in lab studies wanted to self-administer the drug, meaning it’s addictive. from www.shutterstock.com

Like other cathinones, MDPV is a stimulant and shares some effects with other stimulants such as amphetamine, cocaine and MDMA. MDPV produces its effects by inhibiting the reuptake of two important signalling molecules (neurotransmitters) in the brain; norepinephrine and dopamine.

Norepinephine is generally responsible for preparing the brain and body for action in the so-called “fight or flight response”, while dopamine is involved in more complex functions such as arousal, motivation, reward and motor control.

By blocking the ability of certain brain cells (neurons) to reabsorb these neurotransmitters, MDPV effectively increases the intensity and duration of norepinephrine and dopamine signalling. Cocaine works in a similar way, but in a lab test, MDPV was a much more potent inhibitor than cocaine.

Other norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors (NDRIs) include pharmaceuticals such as methylphenidate (known as ritalin and used to treat ADHD) and buproprion (an antidepressant). But the psychoactive and stimulant effects of MDPV are much stronger than pharmaceutical NDRIs.

Pyrovalerone – a hybrid of mephedrone and MDPV – is an approved appetite suppressant used medically for weight loss. However, it’s rarely used due to its potential for abuse.

Studies in laboratory animals highlight the stimulating effects of MDPV, and also its potential for dependence. Mice trained to identify MDPV find it similar to both MDMA and methamphetamine. MDPV stimulates movement in rats approximately ten times more potently than cocaine, and rats will readily self-administer MDPV, suggesting it’s addictive.

Dangers

MDPV has been involved in dozens of deaths in Europe, detailed in a report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, as well as in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere.

But many of these deaths involved extreme doses, repeated dosing (“bingeing”), intravenous use or additional drugs. In fatal cases involving a single synthetic cathinone, death has been attributed to complications arising from extremely high body temperatures or damage to the vessels of the heart. Fortunately, specialised drug testing can detect MDPV and its derivatives.

Although simple colour-based reagent tests may identify MDPV, these tests may also cross-react with similar cathinones, some of which are less dangerous, and some of which are more so.

For reliable identification, more sophisticated technology such as mass spectrometry or infrared spectroscopy, of the type drug experts are campaigning to take place at festivals, is required. In this regard, small, portable, and relatively cheap infrared analysers may be useful for on-site testing services.

– ref. Weekly Dose: new drug MDPV, or ‘monkey dust’, found in Australia. What is it and what are the harms? – http://theconversation.com/weekly-dose-new-drug-mdpv-or-monkey-dust-found-in-australia-what-is-it-and-what-are-the-harms-109505

The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fran Sheldon, Professor, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Griffith University

The deaths of millions of fish in the lower Darling River system over the past few weeks should come as no surprise. Quite apart from specific warnings given to the NSW government by their own specialists in 2013, scientists have been warning of devastation since the 1990s.

Put simply, ecological evidence shows the Barwon-Darling River is not meant to dry out to disconnected pools – even during drought conditions. Water diversions have disrupted the natural balance of wetlands that support massive ecosystems.

Unless we allow flows to resume, we’re in danger of seeing one of the worst environmental catastrophes in Australia.

Dryland river

The Barwon-Darling River is a “dryland river”, which means it is naturally prone to periods of extensive low flow punctuated by periods of flooding.

However, the presence of certain iconic river animals within its channels tell us that a dry river bed is not normal for this system. The murray cod, dead versions of which have recently bought graziers to tears and politicians to retch, are the sentinels of permanent deep waterholes and river channels – you just don’t find them in rivers that dry out regularly.

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Less conspicuous is the large river mussel, Alathyria jacksoni, an inhabitant of this system for thousands of years. Its shells are abundant in aboriginal middens along the banks. These invertebrates are unable to tolerate low flows and low oxygen, and while dead fish will float (for a while), shoals of river mussels are probably dead on the river bed.

This extensive drying event will cause regional extinction of a whole raft of riverine species and impact others, such as the rakali. We are witnessing an ecosystem in collapse.

Catastrophic drying

We can see the effects of permanent drying around the world. The most famous example is the drying of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once the world’s fourth largest inland lake, it was reduced to less than 10% of its original volume after years of water extraction for irrigation.

The basin that once held the Aral Sea. The giant lake has shrunk dramatically since dams were built around it in the 1960s. AAP Image/NASA Earth Observatory

The visual results of this exploitation still shock: images of large fishing boats stranded in a sea of sand, abandoned fishing villages, and a vastly changed microclimate for the regions surrounding the now-dry seabed. Its draining has been described as “the world’s worst environmental disaster”.

So, what does the Aral Sea and its major tributaries and the Darling River system with its tributary rivers have in common? Quite a lot, actually. They both have limited access to the outside world: the Aral Sea basin has no outflow to the sea, and while the Darling River system connects to the River Murray at times of high flow, most of its water is held within a vast network of wetlands and floodplain channels. Both are semi-arid. More worryingly, both have more the 50% of their average inflows extracted for irrigation.

There is one striking difference between them. The Aral Sea was a permanent inland lake and its disappearance was visually obvious. The wetlands and floodplains of the Barwon-Darling are mostly ephemeral, and the extent of their drying is therefore hard to visualise.

An orphaned ship in former Aral Sea, near Aral, Kazakhstan. Wikipedia

All the main tributaries of the Darling River have floodplain wetland complexes in their lower reaches (such as the Gwydir Wetlands, Macquarie Marshes and Narran Lakes). When the rivers flow they absorb the water from upstream, filling before releasing water downstream to the next wetland complex; the wetlands acting like a series of tipping buckets. Regular river flows are essential for these sponge-like wetlands.

So, how has this hydrological harmony of regular flows and fill-and-spill wetlands changed? And how does this relate to the massive fish kills we are seeing in the lower Darling system?

While high flows will still make it through the Barwon-Darling, filling the floodplains and wetlands, and connecting to the River Murray, the low and medium flow events have disappeared. Instead, these are captured in the upper sections of the basin in artificial water storages and used in irrigation.

This has essentially dried the wetlands and floodplains at the ends of the tributaries. Any water not diverted for irrigation is now absorbed by the continually parched upstream wetlands, leaving the lower reaches vulnerable when drought hits.

By continually keeping the Barwon-Darling in a state of low (or no) flow, with its natural wetlands dry, we have reduced its ability to cope with extended drought.

Read more: Why a wetland might not be wet

While droughts are a natural part of this system and its river animals have adapted, they can’t adjust to continual high water caused in some areas by water diversions – and they certainly can’t survive long-term drying.

The Basin Plan has come some way in restoring some flows to the Barwon-Darling, but unless we find a way to restore more of the low and medium flows to this system we are likely witnessing Australia’s worst environmental disaster.

– ref. The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought – http://theconversation.com/the-darling-river-is-simply-not-supposed-to-dry-out-even-in-drought-109880

35 degree days make blackouts more likely, but new power stations won’t help

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guy Dundas, Energy Fellow, Grattan Institute

Summer is here with a vengeance. On hot days it’s very likely something in the power system will break and cause someone to lose power. And the weather bureau expects this summer to be hotter and drier than average – so your chances of losing power will be higher than normal.

We’ve analysed outage data from the electricity distribution networks over the past nine years and linked it to Bureau of Meteorology maximum daily temperature data for each distribution network. The findings are stark: customers are without power for 3.5 times longer on days over 35 degrees than on days below 35.

Grattan Institute

What causes outages on hot days?

Hot weather puts more stress on all parts of the power system. Wires sag and short, fuses blow, transformers overheat, and fires and storms damage power lines. And demand spikes when people get home from work and turn on the air-conditioner.

When the air-conditioner doesn’t work during a heat wave, people get upset and politicians rush to assign blame. They often point the finger at a lack of electricity generation capacity – just ask the current federal energy minister, who responded to a report forecasting supply shortages in Victoria this summer by saying:

This is a direct result of Victorian government policies forcing out reliable 24/7 power, and a failure to prioritise firming of heavily subsidised intermittent wind and solar generation.

Media reports highlight this risk, too. But the truth is, if you do lose power it’s much more likely to be because of problems in your local network.

There have been generation shortfalls in Australia on only three days in the past fourteen years, whereas there are network failures every summer all around the country, every year.

The last time a lack of generation affected large numbers of customers was in Victoria and South Australia in January 2009. But even on very hot days that summer, Victorians and South Australians lost 14 times more power because of network failures and weather damage than generation shortfalls.

Outages caused by generation shortfalls are also easier to manage than network problems. Power can be restored at a flick of a switch, as soon as demand falls or supply increases. And the blacked-out areas can be rotated, to reduce the impact on any individual customer. By contrast, if your power goes out because of a network failure or storm damage, you’re stuck with the problem until a crew can come out and fix it.

Our analysis of outages shows almost all customers affected by generation shortfalls in 2009 were back on line in less than an hour. By contrast, if your power goes out for other reasons, you will normally be waiting more than an hour to get back on line. In the worst cases, you can be left waiting for more than five hours.

Grattan Institute

What should we do (or not) about summer blackouts?

The main thing governments should to address summer blackouts is… nothing, just sweat it out. If governments over-react to newspaper headlines about blackouts, customers will pay more in the long run. Power failures on a hot day are unpleasant, but the bill to avoid them entirely would almost certainly be worse.

Blackouts in 2004 prompted the New South Wales and Queensland state governments to tighten network reliability standards. This caused over $18 billion of network over-spending and delivered only modest improvements in reliability. Network costs were the largest cause of increasing residential electricity prices in those states over the past decade, which increased more than 50% above inflation in New South Wales, and more than 70% in south-east Queensland.

Customers are unlikely to be willing to pay for more network “gold-plating”. Research by Energy Consumers Australia shows more customers are satisfied with the reliability of their power supply than with the price they pay.

Customers can also play an important role. If your power does go out, don’t buy into the political blame game. Contrary to the impression the politicians and media might give, it’s very unlikely the outage will have been caused by a lack of power supply – whether coal, gas or renewable.

So be sceptical when a hot-headed politician tells you the solution is their preferred energy generation technology. Neither a new coal-fired power station nor a giant solar-fed battery will keep the power on if your local network fails.

– ref. 35 degree days make blackouts more likely, but new power stations won’t help – http://theconversation.com/35-degree-days-make-blackouts-more-likely-but-new-power-stations-wont-help-109085

What you need to know if your child with a disability is starting school soon

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Roy, Lecturer in Education, University of Newcastle

This is a longer read at just over 1,300 words. Enjoy!

A new school year can be daunting for any parent, prompting many questions: will my child settle in, make friends and progress academically? If your child has a disability these worries can seem too big to overcome.

In Australia, teachers often feel unprepared to support children with disabilities in classrooms. Teaching organisations have raised concerns about the large amount of additional time and resources necessary to help children with a disability learn and meet their educational goals. Lack of professional knowledge about the impact disabilities have on a child’s development are often the reason for this concern, along with a lack of confidence about how to cater for the student’s needs.

Parents should also be aware a teacher might be concerned about how accepting a child with a disability might negatively affect the academic progress of other children in their class, risking complaint from other parents. Research suggests these worries are persistent, but also typically unfounded.

Talk to your local schools

The first thing to do is figure out whether your local school can meet your child’s specific needs. This will involve a discussion meeting, usually with the principal as well as the local support officer.

In all communication try not to be emotive, but polite and assertive. Keep records of all communication. Where possible, use email. If you have a meeting or telephone conversation, take a record of the key points and send it to the participants asking for their clarification that it’s an accurate record.

Schools have a legal and moral duty to provide education to students with a disability. from www.shutterstock.com

Talk to other parents in the area who also have a child with a disability. Two local schools can have very different responses to supporting children with a disability.

Schools have a legal duty to cater for students with a disability under the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Standards for Education. But as many parents know, this can fall significantly short in practice.

Admission to a new mainstream school can be a grey zone for inclusion. In some schools, the euphemism “we can’t cater for your child’s needs” is used to recommend sending a child somewhere else. In such extreme circumstances, parents can politely but firmly remind the school of their legal (and moral) responsibility to educate all children.

Mainstream is best when possible

Schooling in the mainstream classroom is considered the first and best option when possible in Australia for students with a disability.

One myth which needs to be disposed of immediately is that there is a special, unique method for teaching children with disabilities. This is not the case. Successful teaching for children with disabilities is simply very high quality teaching.

Parents need to be able to communicate their child’s specific needs to their teacher, for example if they get overwhelmed by too much noise. from www.shutterstock.com

Some key features of this excellent practice are: it’s clear and has a predictable structure, motivates the child calling on their interests, and is regularly reviewed against clear objectives to ensure it is effective.

All children have strengths and challenges. These attributes of excellent teaching also greatly benefit children without disabilities. For example, when they’re learning to read in the first years of primary school.

Consider what’s best for your child

If a school is not being supportive at the start, you need to consider whether you want your child to be in an environment of continual conflict and barrier. Luckily, this is a minority attitude in Australian schools. But statistics from a national survey in 2017 show 12% of children with a disability still appear to be refused initial enrolment in their local school.

If the admissions hurdle is simply too difficult, you may decide to send your child to a special school, or even home school. Look at your capability. Can you offer solutions to support the school? Can you make the commitment to teach at home? Is a School for Specific Purpose (SSP) the best setting for your child? Will your child receive a full educational experience?

Special schools don’t come in one format and vary considerably, but they tend to: educate students from reception or prep through to year 12, be attended by students with more severe or multiple forms of disability and deliver a modified curriculum.

This modified curriculum, for instance, might mean expectations of what a student should understand and be able to do at a given age in English, maths, or science are adjusted to their level of intellectual development, rather than being based on levels expected of typically developing children. Many special schools also focus on preparing students for independent living after age 18.

Parents and teachers working together

Let’s now assume your child has been accepted into a mainstream school, and you’ve established a cordial parent-teacher relationship with their teacher. The issue now becomes what parents and teachers should know and share about a child’s disability to provide the best chance the child will flourish in school.

Not all parents may be willing or able to undertake this time-consuming role. It’s vital parents and teachers are flexible in their expectations about how much parental involvement is possible in each case.

When everyone works together, everyone wins. from www.shutterstock.com

Some studies suggest schools are too often not receptive to the valuable advice parents have to give about their child. Teachers should consider the parent, at least initially, as an expert on their child’s needs. Parents are a priceless resource in planning, delivering and reviewing their child’s learning.

Listening to parents is especially important for children who have a disability which affects their ability to communicate or understand the world around them. This may include children with autism, intellectual disability or speech and language impairments.

Parents should do their research

For parents, doing your own research about the features of the disability that affects your child can help you better relay their needs to teachers, doctors and therapists.

Many parent-led, not-for-profit disability organisations in Australia, the UK and US have excellent public resources to develop your knowledge. For instance, there are great resources for autism, dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties.

The Australian government also provides high quality, research-based information about, for example, intellectual disability and other relatively common forms of disability. These resources can be a gateway to further reading and discussion with teachers.

One word of caution: parents and teachers should avoid or be ultra-sceptical of claims products or treatments can “cure” disability. Only accept therapies or interventions recommended by registered medical or clinical practitioners, such as occupational therapists, psychiatrists or paediatricians.

Maintaining strong relationships

The complexity of the three-way parent-school-child relationship raises the chance of confusion, misunderstanding or communication breakdown. If left unchecked, this can damage the relationship and negatively affect a student’s life in school. All parties need to listen to each other and put the child’s needs first – not the workplace or budget.

There is no universally agreed-upon model of what a good parent-school-child relationship looks like. But research offers practical suggestions for parents and teachers:

communication has to be three way between parents, the student and teacher if there is to be a shared responsibility for supporting the child’s learning
parents, the student and the teacher have to feel confident they can be honest and open about their views on where each has strengths and weakness
parents, the student and teacher have to feel their views are valid, will be listened to and, if agreed on, acted upon in good faith.

When everyone works as a team, everyone wins.

– ref. What you need to know if your child with a disability is starting school soon – http://theconversation.com/what-you-need-to-know-if-your-child-with-a-disability-is-starting-school-soon-107275

More than unpopular. How ParentsNext intrudes on single parents’ human rights

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beth Goldblatt, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney

ParentsNext is to be the subject of a Senate inquiry, with submissions closing on February 1.

The program has been widely criticised for making parents’ lives more difficult and for unfairly stopping payments.

But that wasn’t how it began, and it wasn’t what was trialled.

The program trialled from April 2016 provided intensive job-readiness training (and parenting programs) for single parents “at risk”, often Indigenous, to help prepare them to enter the workforce when their youngest was ready for school.

An announcement in the 2017 budget declared the trial a success and said that from July 2018 it would be expanded to an extra 20 locations with “a significant Indigenous population”, and to the entire country, less intensively.

[embedded content] ParentsNext promotional video, Department of Jobs and Small Business.

The expanded program would place participation requirements on parents such as reporting to a service provider and would lead to loss of benefits for non-compliance. This was supported by a new so-called Targeted Compliance Framework also introduced last year.

The ParentsNext that was implemented from July 1 made parenting payments and other benefits conditional on taking part in the program for targeted groups of vulnerable parents.

Parents have had their parenting payments docked for failing to attend “story time sessions”, and domestic violence survivors have been retraumatised by being made to retell their stories (sometimes in front of their children) in order to keep receiving payments.

[embedded content] Understanding compliance zones in Jobactive, Disability Employment Services and ParentsNext, Department of Jobs and Small Business.

Even ParentsNext providers are unhappy

ParentsNext service providers’ representative, Jobs Australia, has begged Jobs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer to disentangle ParentsNext from the compliance requirements, saying it is doing the opposite of what was intended.

It said that the compliance aspects of the program are adding to parents’ stress and financial hardship.

Examples of problems include: rural parents without smart phones or enough data are being suspended for not reporting if they can’t travel to providers in other towns to report. Parents are being referred to emergency relief on a Friday to buy food because payment suspensions can’t be lifted until Monday. A pregnant woman had payments suspended after she was rushed to hospital for a premature birth and was unable to report.

A key consideration for the Senate inquiry ought to be whether this violates human rights.

It threatens human rights

Australia is signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which establishes social security as a human right.

Social security is an entitlement provided by a society to members who are in need due to circumstances such as illness, disability, unemployment, old age and caring responsibilities.

That right, as with others in the International Covenant, must be “exercised without discrimination”, including on the basis of sex, race, language and national or social origin.

And leads to discrimination

Since a disproportionate number of people automatically enrolled in ParentsNext and facing payment cuts are Indigenous, the program appears to discriminate on the basis of race.

It might also discriminate against disadvantaged parents who are new to Australia and face language and cultural barriers making compliance a challenge.

Almost all of the participants – 96% – are women, meaning conditions attached to their social security payments could lead to gender discrimination in their access to social security rights. Selected mothers are being punished for undertaking the unpaid care work necessary to raise children, in a context where affordable child care and appropriate employment is often not available.

It might also discriminate against children on the basis of their family type. Children in disadvantaged sole parent families face discrimination as a result of the withdrawal of payments – which is less likely to affect children in families with lower vulnerability.

The United Nations is watching

Conditionality itself may be at odds with Australia’s obligations.

One interpretation of international human rights says that, to the greatest extent possible, states should refrain from imposing co-responsibilities or conditionalities on receipt of social protection, and instead should channel financial and human resources into improving the level of benefits provided and the quality and accessibility of social services available.

Withholding entitlements cannot be a correct response to structural challenges such as lack of jobs and childcare.

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has already expressed concern about the effect of cuts to the payments available to single parents.

These cuts, together with the compliance requirements attached to ParentsNext, raise questions about Australia’s stated commitments to its international human rights obligations.

When Australia joined the International Covenant in 1976 it promised to use its social security system to promote rather than chip away at human rights. The Senate committee provides an opportunity to ensure this does not continue.

– ref. More than unpopular. How ParentsNext intrudes on single parents’ human rights – http://theconversation.com/more-than-unpopular-how-parentsnext-intrudes-on-single-parents-human-rights-108754

New figures put it beyond doubt. When it comes to company tax, we are a high-tax country, in part because it works well for us

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

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

In international tax circles, as in other areas, we often talk about American exceptionalism.

But these days, it is becoming increasingly clear that Australia is exceptional in taxation, among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and indeed, compared to countries around the globe.

The OECD has just produced its first-ever detailed comparison of company tax collections and rates and effective rates around the world. The “statutory” or headline rate comparisons cover 94 countries. The harder to calculate “effective” tax comparisons cover 88 countries.

The bad news – for companies – is that Australia is close to the top among the 94 countries, and in one of the measures, the effective marginal company tax rate (more on this later), third from the top.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

Interestingly, in another recent report, the OECD shows that Australia clearly falls into the “low tax” group among OECD countries, with a tax-to-GDP ratio below 25%. But within that context we rely heavily on company tax.

Company tax revenues are high

Australia’s A$80 billion in company tax collections in 2016 was about 4.6% of GDP, ranking Australia twelfth out of the 88 countries for which the OECD had information.

Company tax accounted for 16% of Australia’s total tax revenue, the 27th highest out of the 88 countries.

The statistics have oddities. Luxembourg and Switzerland also have a high share of company tax revenues because they attract so much global capital. In contrast, the overall high-taxing countries of France, Denmark and Finland collect much less revenue from company tax.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

Headline rates are heading down

Corporate tax rates have been trending down for at least two decades. The Trump tax changes in 2017 that lowered the US federal rate to 21% was the latest dramatic change, but the United Kingdom now has a rate of 19% and many European countries sit at or below 25%. The change since 2000 has been dramatic and the global average is now 20%.

In our Asian region, the average headline corporate tax rate is 15%. As a result of tax incentives available around Asia, companies involved in manufacturing and supply chains often face a lower, or zero, rate.

This trend was identified by the Henry Tax Review in 2009, which recommended transitioning to a 25% rate, which today could be financed with a 1% increase in Australia’s GST rate, according to recent modelling by Chris Murphy.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

What matters are effective tax rates

The OECD also compares effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs), and effective average tax rates (EATRs), for corporate investment. These combine the headline rate with the rules for corporate investment, depreciation allowances for plant and equipment, and intellectual property investment.

In theory, investors choose to invest based on the expected after-tax rate of return, taking into account tax breaks and special rules.

The EMTR determines the tax cost of expanding an existing investment: putting one more dollar into that investment. In the EMTR ranking, Australia is third highest.

Countries that provide a tax break known as allowance for corporate equity, including Belgium and Italy, actually have negative tax rates on increased investment.

The EATR reflects the tax rate that would be paid on an entire new investment. In the EATR ranking, Australia is, again, near the top in ninth place, at 30% – the same as our statutory rate.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

Unlike many other countries, Australia has few tax incentives. We do not have a low tax regime for intellectual property or accelerated depreciation for new equipment – except for small businesses, and mining exploration. Only in research and development did Australia provide higher tax subsidies than some other countries and the R&D concession is being tightened.

Overall, Australia’s high rate and broad corporate tax base makes new investment, or the expansion of existing investment, expensive relative to other countries.

Why are we such an outlier?

Australia is a resource extraction and exporting economy.

We haven’t had to compete quite as hard for foreign investment as other countries.

Our relatively high rate of company tax serves two purposes: to tax company profits and to get a fair return on resources in the ground which state governments, through royalties, don’t properly charge for.

And we are geographically isolated, meaning that, even in the global digital economy, it is hard for companies to service us from offshore. Many have to be here and subject to tax.

Also, and importantly, our reliance on corporate tax is not as dramatic as it seems, because of our almost unique dividend imputation system. About one third to one half of corporate tax revenues are handed back to shareholders in credits against company tax already collected. (New Zealand, which has an imputation system, also has high corporate tax revenues).

Kevin Davies suggests that the “real” corporate tax rate in Australia, taking account of dividend imputation, is below 20%.

But that assumes a closed economy. The reality is that the imputation system subsidises some domestic investors – especially tax-free retirees with self managed super funds – while pushing the full weight of company tax onto foreign investment, at the expense of the economy as a whole, and at the expense of Australians who could potentially benefit from that investment.

The political heat generated by Labor’s proposal to end the payment of imputation cheques to retirees who don’t pay tax shows their high value to domestic investors. Self-managed super funds are massively overweight in stocks that provide imputation credits, skewing the Australian share market and the dividend policy of our largest companies.

Does it matter?

Australia’s high company tax rate, and the bias in our imputation system against foreign equity, mean that large multinationals will increasingly borrow to finance Australian investment rather than issue shares.

They will get tax deductions for outbound flows of interest, service fees and royalties, while shifting more and more of their sales, marketing and intellectual property offshore where they can.

Australia can, and is, clamping down on profit shifting, but it’s a never-ending battle.

A bold suggestion is that we should scrap our system of dividend imputation and use the money saved to dramatically cut the rate of company tax. It would make Australia much more attractive to foreign investors, although much less attractive to retirees.

Another idea aired in The Conversation late last year is that we should make new capital investment fully tax deductible, turning company tax into a “cashflow tax”.

What we’ll probably end up with is a compromise – a combination of permitting greater deductions for new investment and lowering the rate will be the answer, while limiting or ending dividend imputation.

There’s much to be proud of in being a weird mob.

But as David Ingles and I argued in a research paper last year, it is not smart to ignore what’s happening in other places.

It is true we are geographically isolated, and it is true our resources make us different, but we exist in a global tax environment in which investors consider tax when they decide where to put their money. It is beyond our control.

– ref. New figures put it beyond doubt. When it comes to company tax, we are a high-tax country, in part because it works well for us – http://theconversation.com/new-figures-put-it-beyond-doubt-when-it-comes-to-company-tax-we-are-a-high-tax-country-in-part-because-it-works-well-for-us-109875

Hidden women of history: Ruby Lindsay, one of Australia’s first female graphic designers

By The Conversation -

January 16, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Connory, PhD candidate, assistant researcher and teaching associate, Monash University

In this series, we look at under acknowledged women through the ages.

Ruby Lindsay was among the first women in Australian graphic design. In the early-20th century she pursued a full-time career in magazine and book illustration, likely the first woman in Australia to successfully do so.

Lindsay created a beautiful array of work during the arts and crafts movement, in the early 1900s. This was a period when artists and designers reacted against the mass production of the Industrial Revolution and focused instead on handmade work.

Born in 1887, Lindsay grew up in the gold rush town of Creswick, Victoria, with her five brothers and parents Robert (1843-1915) and Jane Elizabeth (1848-1932). She moved to Melbourne, at the age of 16. Her designs included hand drawn type and posters, like a Sydney Society of Artists poster from 1907, and black and white illustrations for newspapers of the day, including The Bulletin, Punch and The Gadfly.

Poster for the Sydney Society of Artists’ Picture Show, 1907 (left) and cover illustration for The Gadfly, both by Ruby Lindsay, 1907 (right). Both images are out of copyright.

Even though she made a significant contribution, most have never heard of Lindsay because women working at this time were marginalised by their gender and society. Restrictive ideas about identity, roles and expectations were something Lindsay quietly challenged through her practice in graphic design.

Overshadowed

Lindsay’s visibility was overshadowed by the men surrounding her – her brothers Percy Lindsay (1870–1952) and Sir Lionel Lindsay (1874-1961), who were also well known for cartoons they had published in The Bulletin; Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) who was the author and illustrator of The Magic Pudding; and Daryl Lindsay (1889-1976), who was knighted for his services to art in 1963. Her eventual husband was the Australian artist and political cartoonist William Dyson (1880-1938).

However, Lindsay went to great lengths to stand on her own two feet. She deliberately obscured her relationship to her famous brothers by changing her name and signing her work as “Ruby Lind”, “Ruby Lyne”, “Ruby Lyn” and once, in At the Labour in Vain, as “Ruby Ramsbottom.”

Ruby Lindsay (1887-1919). Image is out of copyright.

Lindsay also distanced herself from the general misogynistic tone of The Bulletin. This newspaper was extreme in its Nationalist tone, which, as various historians have noted, marginalised and mocked women.

Ironically it was her brother Daryl who wrote, in his memoir The Leafy Tree, of Ruby’s drive to break the suppressive female stereotype of the day. “Social engagements, affairs of the heart, all took second place to [her] overriding ambition to become a black and white artist,” he wrote. Lindsay was tough and showed how determination and a self-made image required an independent and forceful effort. She was “never without a sketch-book and pencil in her hands …”, Daryl wrote.

On show

It’s doubtful Lindsay could afford a formal education but due to her head-strong efforts she was noticed by William Moore in the short-lived magazine Native Companion. In 1907 he wrote, “She has turned out every variety of drawing, from book illustrations to designs for pantomimic costumes … Ruby Lindsay must realise that she has already made a distinct advance.”

In 1907, the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings hosted the extraordinary Women’s Work Exhibition, which gave Lindsay a chance to show her work. The event, according to the catalogue, drew both royal and international audiences and “over 250,000 attendees”, who flocked to see the work on display.

The event exhibited “women’s craftwork and patriotism … displaying a distinctly feminine response to Australian nationalism.” It came at a time when Australia was still new to Federation – in fact the Royal Melbourne Exhibition buildings were the location for the first sitting of the Federal parliament.

First Class Diploma design for Women’s Work Exhibition, by Ruby Lindsay, 1907 (left) and illustration for Punch, title ‘The Ascent of Woman’, by Ruby Lindsay, 31 October, pp. 639,1907 (right). Both images are out of copyright.

The political discourse in Australia, at this time, focused on Nationalism, childbearing and parenthood, and feminism, and the exhibition provided an opportunity for women to have a presence in these discussions. Following international events, such as the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Melbourne exhibition was significant because it was not a single pavilion but a fully dedicated event for women to demonstrate their participation in the amateur and paid workforce.

There is no denying this period in Australian history saw a woman’s place as being a mother and wife, however the exhibition was also an opportunity to challenge these ideas. Lindsay engaged enthusiastically in the event and submitted many pieces in competitive categories. She both designed and won the First Class Diploma.

Graphic design – referred to as applied art at this time – was also represented by Eirene Mort (1879-1977), who submitted an alphabet influenced by Australian flora and fauna, and also designed the second class diploma. Her illustrative certificate displayed women’s work that included depictions of manual and farm labour.

One of Lindsay’s illustrations that appeared in Punch at the time, communicated her will for women to succeed at the event. It shows a woman standing with an axe and ceramic pot in her Grecian garb. Signed “Ruby Lind”, it encourages woman’s contributions to society outside of the home. Through the image Ruby demonstrates that women should be viewed as more than domesticated objects.

Lindsay’s life was cut short when she died, of what might have been the Spanish Flu. She had married Dyson and given birth to her daughter Betty while living in London. Her almost forgotten legacy is worthy of celebration because it has laid a foundation the Australian design community can be proud of.

Her independent streak was with her to the end – the name on the headstone in London reads “Ruby Lind”.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Ruby Lindsay, one of Australia’s first female graphic designers – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-ruby-lindsay-one-of-australias-first-female-graphic-designers-109184

Venezuela is fast becoming a ‘mafia state’: here’s what you need to know

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthea McCarthy-Jones, Lecturer, UNSW

Last week, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for his second six-year term as Venezuela’s president. Maduro won the election off the back of international condemnation of vote buying and electoral fraud. While the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, called Venezuela’s government “illegitimate”, Maduro declared:

Venezuela is at the centre of a world war led by the United States imperialism and its satellite countries.

Such statements have become par for the course by a leader and government determined to frame Venezuela’s political, social and economic woes as a product of a protracted ideological battle with the United States.

While these discursive tactics may hold some traction with small parts of the population, the harsh reality of life in Venezuela and the government’s inability and, at times, unwillingness to address clear policy failings has significantly reduced support for President Maduro and his government.

The scale of Venezuela’s current social, economic and political crisis is so severe it is difficult to comprehend. Hyperinflation has decimated the national currency and crippled the economy. Oil production – which accounts for 95% of the country’s export revenues – has halved since President Maduro took power in 2013 and the industry has been further weakened by the collapse of the price of oil in 2014.

In 2018, the economy contracted by 18% and by the end of the year inflation had soared to 1 million percent. The IMF has predicted inflation will increase to 10 million percent by the latter half of 2019. These are dizzying figures but they only reflect one part of the complex situation Venezuela is facing.

Venezuela’s economy is in a dire state as shown by these shelves in a market in Caracas in 2016. MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EPA

Across the country there are power cuts, food and medicine shortages, increasing internal security problems, rising homicide rates and wide-spread malnutrition. According to the UN, these factors have resulted in three million people fleeing the country since 2015 making it the largest exodus in Venezuelan history.

So, how did it come to this?

The foundations of President Maduro’s current problems date back to the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013. The spectacular rise in popularity of Chavismo, which promoted the cult of Chávez as the liberator of the Venezuelan people, became the vehicle in which Chávez successfully consolidated his legitimacy and the significant political changes made during his time in power from 1999-2013.

Chávez employed a charismatic leadership style that positioned himself as a man of the people rather than a member of the elite. He used transformation and transaction tactics to govern and maintain legitimacy. He was a keen orator and used his weekly TV program to connect with the masses. Chavismo rests on socialist values and calls for an independent Latin America, free from the US.

The charismatic Hugo Chavez led Venezuela for over a decade. DAVID FERNANDEZ/EPA

While Maduro shares the same politics – and was the foreign minister in the Chávez government – his problems centre on his inability to emulate Chávez’s leadership style to generate the type of popular support and perceived legitimacy of his predecessor.

As a result, Maduro has increasingly sought to centralise power in the executive and systematically remove political rivals and members of the Venezuelan opposition from participating in democratic processes. For instance, he led the creation of a constituent assembly as a means to bypass the opposition-controlled national assembly.

His controversial changes to the 2018 presidential election, such as bringing it forward by six months to limit the time the opposition had to organise a strong campaign, as well as allegations of vote tampering, point to the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the regime.

However, Venezuela under President Maduro has gone beyond simply transitioning to a more concentrated authoritarian-style rule. Venezuela has now morphed into what has been termed a “mafia state”.

Venezuela – the mafia state

A mafia state refers to a state that has effectively been criminalised. Here, criminal entities have successfully infiltrated and compromised government institutions at all levels. Currently, more than 100 Venezuelan government officials – ranging from but not limited to individuals in the ministries of the vice president, defence, foreign affairs, intelligence and the national guard – have been implicated in criminal activity.

The clearest example of the complex nexus between criminality and the Venezuelan state has been the emergence of a powerful Venezuelan drug trafficking organisation known as the Cartel of the Suns. The organisation’s name is a reference to the gold stars on epaulettes of military generals but is more generally symbolic of the direct links between serving government officials and the drug trafficking organisation.

Former Vice President Tarek el-Aissami and former President of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello, are allegedly involved in the Cartel of the Suns and are among a litany of Venezuelan officials who have had sanctions imposed on them by the United States.

Venezuela’s first lady, Celia Flores, is also implicated by association. Her nephews have been convicted of trafficking cocaine in the United States, and according to Insight Crime, Ms Flores’s son is also under investigation in relation to drug trafficking activities.

Beginning with President Chávez and continuing under President Maduro, Venezuela has evolved into a rampant kleptocracy. The systematic removal of transparency and accountability in the Venezuela political system has allowed tens of billions of dollars to disappear from the treasury over the past two decades.

[embedded content] Maduro blames the US for the country’s crisis.

For example, in November 2018 a former bodyguard of President Chávez, who later went on to become the treasurer of Venezuela, pled guilty to receiving more than US$1 billion in bribes.

Venezuela’s outlook is bleak. The opposition remains fractured but continues to dispute President Maduro’s legitimacy and right to govern, and it appears to be almost impossible for the opposition to pressure President Maduro to negotiate while he continues to enjoy the support of the Venezuelan military.

At this point the parties have reached an impasse and if current trends continue, things will get much worse in Venezuela before they can have a chance of getting better.

– ref. Venezuela is fast becoming a ‘mafia state’: here’s what you need to know – http://theconversation.com/venezuela-is-fast-becoming-a-mafia-state-heres-what-you-need-to-know-109887

The future of the internet looks brighter thanks to an EU court opinion

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Co-Director Centre for Commercial Law, Bond University

Imagine an internet where you couldn’t access any content unless it complied with every law of all the countries in the world.

In this scenario, you would be prevented from expressing views that were critical of many of the world’s dictatorships. You would not be able to question aspects of some religions due to blasphemy laws. And some of the photos you post of your children would be illegal.

A development like this is not as far fetched as it currently may seem.

Every country wants its laws respected online. The scenario above may be an unavoidable outcome if countries are successful in seeking to impose their laws globally. Even though they can’t prosecute the person who posted the content, they can try to force the internet platforms that host the content to remove or block it.

A legal opinion released last week in a case currently before the courts in the European Union argues content should generally only be blocked in countries where it breaches the law, not globally. This is a sensible approach, and a necessity if we wish to continue to enjoy the benefits currently offered by the internet.

A trend of global orders

There have been numerous examples of courts seeking to impose their content restrictions globally by ordering the major internet platforms to remove or block access to specific content.

The most recent high profile case is a 2017 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, in which the court sought to compel Google to block certain search results globally. That dispute is still ongoing after a US court sided with Google.

Courts in Australia and the United States have also opted for global content restrictions, without regard for the impact on internet users in other countries. For example, in the Australian case, Justice Pembroke ordered Twitter to block all future postings globally – regardless of topic – by a particular Twitter user.

This is troubling. After all, what is illegal in one country may be perfectly legal in all other countries. Why should the harshest laws determine what can be posted online? Why should duties imposed by one country trump rights afforded to us by the laws in many other countries – particularly international human rights laws?

The Google France case

The latest case to address this question is an ongoing dispute in the EU. The French data protection authority (CNIL) sought to force search engines to remove search results (known as de-referencing) globally where those results violate the EU’s so-called “right to be forgotten” legislation.

The right to be forgotten is an aspect of the EU’s data privacy law that, in simplified terms, gives people the right to have online content blocked on search engines, where the content is no longer relevant.

Google disputed this and the matter has reached the EU’s highest court – the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). On 10 January 2019, an Advocate General of the court issued his opinion on the matter (so far only available in French). Such opinions are not binding on the court, but the judgment often follows the reasoning of the Advocate General. The judges are now beginning their deliberations in this case and their judgment will be given at a later date.

In his opinion, the Advocate General concluded that, in relation to the right to be forgotten, search engines:

…must take every measure available to it to ensure full and effective de-referencing within the EU.

He went on to say that de-referencing of the search results should only apply inside the EU.

But he didn’t rule out the possibility that:

…in certain situations, a search engine operator may be required to take de-referencing actions at the worldwide level.

This is similar to a nuanced approach advocated for by the Swedish data protection authority in a parallel case currently before the Swedish courts.

The significance

If the EU court adopts the approach of the Canadian Supreme Court and seeks to impose EU law globally, many other countries – including repressive dictatorships – are likely to view this as a “green light” to impose their laws globally.

But if the EU court adopts the more measured approach proposed in the Advocate General’s opinion, we may see a reversal of the current dangerous trend of global content restriction orders.

It may be months until we see the final judgment. But the stakes are high and the future of the internet, as we know it, hangs in the balance.

– ref. The future of the internet looks brighter thanks to an EU court opinion – http://theconversation.com/the-future-of-the-internet-looks-brighter-thanks-to-an-eu-court-opinion-109721

Dancenorth’s Dust is ambitious theatre in an age of uncertainty

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Shih Pearson, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Sydney

Review: Dust, Sydney Festival 2019

What kind of world are we leaving for our children? So goes our conversation everywhere these days, it seems, as our planet overheats and burns in winter as well as summer, coral and other species die in alarming numbers, glaciers melt and seas rise, sending more and more people on the move. What world might we leave at all?

Dust, Dancenorth’s new show currently playing in the Sydney Festival, is a reflection on the world our children will inherit – although not in any didactic way. The show, inspired by the birth of co-choreographers Kyle Page and Amber Haines’s son in 2017, is cohesive and yet leaves room for the poetic, exploring a world on the brink of turning back into dust.

Dust is cohesive and yet leaves room for the poetic. Pippa Samaya

Beautiful costumes by Harriet Oxley wrap the seven dancers in artfully dyed and sweat-soiled layers of cloth, seeming at times like crumpled paper, or the last shreds of social life clinging to our backs. A monolithic wall, designed by Liminal Spaces and lit by Nicklas Pajanti, intersects the space.

Over the course of an hour and a half, the wall unpacks and reforms into an enclosure, an ex-closure, a dividing wedge, a destroyed urban skyline, a road, and a boat lost at sea. A deep, electronic ostinato grows, augmented and manipulated by the live performance of Canadian violinist Jessica Moss with co-composer Alisdair Macindoe.

This is big-scale theatre with big aims. Dramaturgically, scenographically, and choreographically, Dust employs all elements at its disposal and knits them together in a satisfying way.

Dancenorth, a relatively small dance company based in far-north Queensland, should be commended on this big vision – they are making work equal in scope and polish to many of the big dance companies from “down south”, with a fraction of the resources. Since artistic director Page took on the company three years ago, Dancenorth has managed to create a buzz among audiences and the dance community alike.

As always, however, the big issues can be as congested as the M4 in peak-hour. As much as I enjoyed Dust, I also left with a lingering feeling of its … competence.

“Competency” is hardly a bad thing to achieve, but in the case of contemporary art, where the aim is always to find something new, I can’t help but acknowledge that there is a lot of pseudo-post-apocalyptic dance going around lately. Casts of dancers in muted, dusty colours, versions of pants and tops somewhere between martial arts uniforms (the timelessness of tradition) and abstracted landscape (beyond society as we know it) are not unique to this performance.

Dancenorth has managed to create a buzz among audiences and the dance community. Pippa Samaya

The movement itself is likewise familiar, even nostalgic, reminding me of choreographic strategies that were in vogue in the 1990s. For example, the sequence where highly articulate dancer Samantha Hines, inert and exhausted, manipulates hand, then chin, shoulder and hip each at a turn, in a moment of auto-puppetry.

This is not surprising, as both Kyle Page and Amber Haines cut their teeth as dancers with well-known Australian companies Chunky Move (under director Gideon Obarzanek) and Australian Dance Theatre (with director Garry Stewart).

Movement characteristic of these “schools” (if we can call them that) is evident in the extensive use of the floor and fluidity moving to and from the floor, the incorporation of street styles such as popping with release-based contemporary dance and even balletic movements, and the fluctuating speed changes and reversals like a DJ’s scratches embodied.

It is, in fact, heartening to see this next generation of Australian choreographers taking on our companies, rather than directors being imported from overseas as boards succumb to cultural cringe.

If this talk of familiarity sounds damning, I don’t mean it to be. The dancers are great, approaching their performances with intensity and deftness. Standout moments included Ashley McLellan’s opening solo, vulnerable and barely there one minute, insistent the next. I was taken up by this world that the dancers, along with all the creative team, made manifest on stage.

The dancers in Dust approach their performances with intensity and deftness. Pippa Samaya

Even more importantly, the show gave me more than enough to prompt my own flow of meanings and connections, drawn out from the daily fodder of news, social media likes (and un-likes), public transport chatter, etcetera, from the world around me. I confess I went to see Dust uninformed, by design – I didn’t read the program notes, or the Festival’s promotional material.

I was rewarded with an inundation of images: an early duo in which the dancers pause arms up in a hug but fail to reach one another, faces impassive, unable to touch another; Felix Sampson stuttering and trembling, air in short supply; the full ensemble traversing an uneven road, to end, nowhere, boxed in a cluster of futile half gestures.

That same box becomes a small boat lost in high seas, with Georgia Rudd and Ashley McLellan tossed adrift; a chaotic riot under yellow light gives way to a citadel centre stage; dancers open and close their mouths in a language that is only noise; the sound of drones overhead – we are caught up in a whirlwind.

This is, in the end, what theatre should do. It helps us make sense of our world, giving emotive, possibly, and also poetic, intellectual, political shape to the small and big, individual and communal issues of life.

The ending of Dust remains unclear. I counted at least five possibilities in the last fifteen minutes. But choosing which image to leave us with is a daunting task; after all, what world will we be leaving to our children?

– ref. Dancenorth’s Dust is ambitious theatre in an age of uncertainty – http://theconversation.com/dancenorths-dust-is-ambitious-theatre-in-an-age-of-uncertainty-109870

Buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions. What will it take to make them ‘green’ – and who’ll pay?

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Igor Martek, Lecturer In Construction, Deakin University

In signing the Paris Climate Agreement, the Australian government committed to a global goal of zero net emissions by 2050. Australia’s promised reductions to 2030, on a per person and emissions intensity basis, exceed even the targets set by the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea and the European Union.

But are we on the right track to achieve our 2030 target of 26-28% below 2005 levels? With one of the highest population growth rates in the developed world, this represents at least a 50% reduction in emissions per person over the next dozen years.

Consider the impact of one sector, the built environment. The construction, operation and maintenance of buildings accounts for almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. As Australia’s population grows, to an estimated 31 million in 2030, even more buildings will be needed.

In 2017, around 18,000 dwelling units were approved for construction every month. Melbourne is predicted to need another 720,000 homes by 2031; Sydney, 664,000 new homes within 20 years. Australia will have 10 million residential units by 2020, compared to 6 million in 1990. Ordinary citizens might be too preoccupied with home ownership at any cost to worry about the level of emissions from the built environment and urban development.

What’s being done to reduce these emissions?

The National Construction Code of Australia sets minimal obligatory requirements for energy efficiency. Software developed by the National Housing Rating Scheme (NatHERS) assesses compliance.

Beyond mandatory minimum requirements in Australia are more aspirational voluntary measures. Two major measures are the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) and Green Star.

This combination of obligatory and voluntary performance rating measures makes up the practical totality of our strategy for reducing built environment emissions. Still in its experimentation stage, it is far from adequate.

An effective strategy to cut emissions must encompass the whole lifecycle of planning, designing, constructing, operating and even decommissioning and disposal of buildings. A holistic vision of sustainable building calls for building strategies that are less resource-intensive and pollution-producing. The sustainability of the urban landscape is more than the sum of the sustainability of its component buildings; transport, amenities, social fabric and culture, among other factors, have to be taken into account.

Australia’s emission reduction strategy fails to incorporate the whole range of sustainability factors that impact emissions from the built environment.

There are also much-reported criticisms of existing mandatory and voluntary measures. A large volume of research details the failure of voluntary measures to accurately evaluate energy performance and the granting of misleading ratings based on tokenistic gestures.

On top of that, the strategy of using front runners to push boundaries and win over the majority has been proven ineffective, at best. We see compelling evidence in the low level of voluntary measures permeating the Australian building industry. Some major voluntary rating tools have penetration rates of less than 0.5% across the Australian building industry.

As for obligatory tools, NatHERS-endorsed buildings have been shown to underperform against traditional “non-green” houses.

That said, voluntary and obligatory tools are not so much a weak link in our emission reduction strategy as the only link. And therein lies the fundamental problem.

So what do the experts suggest?

We conducted a study involving a cohort of 26 experts drawn from the sustainability profession. We posed the question of what must be done to generate a working strategy to improve Australia’s chances of keeping the carbon-neutral promise by 2050 was posed. Here is what the experts said:

Sustainability transition in Australia is failing because:

government lacks commitment to develop effective regulations, audit performance, resolve vested interests (developers), clarify its own vision and, above all, sell that sustainability vision to the community
sustainability advocates are stuck in isolated silos of fragmented markets (commercial and residential) and hampered by multiple jurisdictions with varied sustainability regimes
most importantly, end users just do not care – nobody has bothered to communicate the Paris Accord promise to Joe and Mary Citizen, let alone explain why it matters to them.

Tweaking the rating tools further would be a good thing. Getting more than a token few buildings rated would be better. But the show-and-tell display of a pageant of beautiful, green-rated headquarters buildings from our socially responsible corporations is not going to save us. Beyond the CBD islands of our major cities lies a sea of suburban sprawl that continues to chew up ever more energy and resources.

It costs between 8% and 30% more than the usual costs of a building to reduce emissions. Someone needs to explain to the struggling home owner why the Paris climate promise is worth it. Given the next election won’t be for a few months, our political parties still have time to formulate their pitch on who exactly is expected to pay.

– ref. Buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions. What will it take to make them ‘green’ – and who’ll pay? – http://theconversation.com/buildings-produce-25-of-australias-emissions-what-will-it-take-to-make-them-green-and-wholl-pay-105652

It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Alexandra, PhD candidate, RMIT University

Fish deaths in the Darling River have once more raised the public profile of incessant political controversies about the Murray Darling Basin. These divisive debates reveal the deeply contested nature of reforms to water policy in the Basin.

It feels like Australia has been here before – algae blooms are not uncommon in these rivers. In 1992, the Darling suffered the world’s largest toxic algal bloom, over 1,000 kilometres long. This crisis became an iconic catalyst, and helped prompt the state and federal governments agreeing to water reforms in 1994.

Hopefully, our current crisis may be an opportunity to shine a strong light on the complexities of governing the Basin, and initiate the meaningful reforms needed to restore public trust.

Forewarned is forearmed

The rivers of the basin are unique and precious. Australia needs high quality and independent science to understand them and guide their management. Unfortunately in 2012 state and federal governments cut three important programs that provided vital research on the Basin’s rivers:

So while yesterday’s announcement of A$5 million funding to a new native fish recovery program is welcome, good science alone is not enough. Good policy processes and robust institutions are needed to apply this information. We cannot continue to ignore expert warnings.

Allegations have surfaced that experts warned of the possibility of mass fish deaths as far back as 2012. AAP Image/Supplied, Kate McBride

A crisis of trust

Since a 2017 Four Corners program exposed disturbing allegations of water theft and corruption, the media has revealed a host of further probity issues.

These and a plethora of formal inquiries into MDB governance indicates a crisis of trust, legitimacy and public confidence – in short, a loss of authority.

The 2018 federal Senate inquiry documents a litany of concerns, while disturbing evidence given at a South Australian Royal Commission raised substantive doubts about failures to heed the best scientific advice in the development of the Basin Plan.

More Commonwealth oversight is not enough

Without doubt pressure is mounting for more reforms. The Senate’s Rural and Regional Affairs Committee and the Productivity Commission have recommended splitting the Murray Darling Basin Authority into two entities – the MDB Corporation and a MDB Regulator – in order to clearly separate the Commonwealth’s regulatory oversight from other roles.

These proposals deserve critical scrutiny. Structural reorganisation can provide an illusion of government action, but can have long-term effects on the efficacy and justice of water governance.

The Murray Darling has a unique place in Australia’s history, environment, economy and culture. Agreements about its governance have their origins in debates leading up to Federation in 1901. Any renegotiation needs to respect the Constitution and the different legal powers of the states and the Commonwealth.

So reform to institutional arrangements need bespoke design. These are the legitimate remit of our discursive democracy. Nonetheless, the OECD’s 12 water governance principles usefully provide guidance about the need for clarity of roles, transparency, effectiveness, efficiency and broad stakeholder engagement.

Current calls for reorganisation focus on clarifying the Commonwealth’s regulatory role, but this is fairly narrow. Reforms are needed at all scales.

The governance challenges in the MDB require modernisation and redesign of arrangements across regional, state and Commonwealth agencies. This includes structuring “constructive tensions” that ensure transparency and accountability. Just like the police don’t control the courts, we need to more clearly define and separate roles in the water sector.

Embracing radical transparency

We need all water agencies to adopt a formal charter of transparency and openness. All state and Commonwealth agencies should open their books to scrutiny, rather than hiding information behind claims of “commercial in confidence” or opaque “freedom of information” processes.

Greater transparency measures should also be a condition of all water licences. It’s entirely feasible to create modern monitoring regimes, using state-of-the art digital metering coupled with annual water-use declarations. These would be similar to tax returns enforced with random audits and satellite verification of areas irrigated. If made publicly available, all interested parties could audit water extractions.

But doubts don’t exclusively focus on irrigators’ compliance. We also need to address the states and their willingness and capability to enforce regulations. Policies of radical transparency could be supported with openly available water data. With digital meters and automated gauging of river flows, we could create a computer platform where anybody could develop river models using real data, in near real-time.

Harnessing the power of citizen involvement, trust and openly sharing information has been a hallmark of Australia’s landcare and natural resource management. This is where we should look for the next generation of governance in the Basin.

Open books means communities, industries, research and educational institutions can all help monitor our institutions and ensure rivers are managed in the public’s interest.

Finally, droughts should not come as surprise. They are a recurrent feature of the Basin. With climate change, more frequent and intense droughts are predicted. As a nation we can do better than lurching from crisis to crisis each time drought returns.

We need careful deliberation about the institutions that will rebuild public confidence and restore trust in the governing of the Murray Darling. It’s time to develop a 21st century system that is cooperative, transparent and just.

– ref. It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin – http://theconversation.com/its-time-to-restore-public-trust-in-the-governing-of-the-murray-darling-basin-109797

Will talking to AI voice assistants re-engineer our human conversations?

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Elliott, Dean of External Engagment and Executive Director of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of South Australia

When you’re lost, Siri can be your best friend. But if she can’t retrieve the right address from your contacts, she can drive you crazy.

And so it is with the legion of virtual personal assistants that are entering our lives. From Amazon’s Alexa to Google’s Home, people are busy talking to intelligent machines as never before.

It’s estimated that more than 60% of internet traffic is now generated by machine-to-machine, and person-to-machine, communication. IT advisory firm Gartner has predicted that by 2020 the average person will be having more conversations with robots than with their partner. (Sometimes we don’t even know we are doing it).

And just as texting changed written communication, talking bots could change the way we communicate with each other.

Talk is social

The late sociologist Diedre Boden wrote that human sociability is created through “talk, talk, talk and more talk”.

Talking person-to-person is not only how we exchange information, but also how we used to carry out many tasks, such as ordering pizzas, booking plane tickets and confirming meetings. And it’s these tasks that we are increasingly subcontracting to robots.

When we communicate face-to-face there is an expectation of mutual attentiveness, but these norms could be wholly deconstructed if we were to have the majority of our conversations with non-humans.

Unlike face-to-face talk, chatbots do not require us put effort into making the conversation polite or interesting. We don’t need to be charming, amusing, or assert our intelligence.

Bots don’t need to like us, even if we have a need to be liked. In fact, this would wildly complicate matters. A machine will simply extract the information it needs to create an appropriate response.

It is possible that talking to machines all the time could re-engineer the way we have conversations. We could end up with the linguistic equivalent of emojis. As an article in the New York Times recently put it, interacting with robots could “mean atrophy for our social muscles”. If they’re just machines, why bother with pleasantries?

The scientific research on this is still unclear. Some studies have found people can actually be remarkably cordial to robots, while other research suggests we’re liable to be rude and curt when we know our conversational partner isn’t human. We could get used to bossing things around, and this behaviour could bleed into everyday life.

Remembering our manners

Tech companies are already trying to head off this problem. After fielding concerns from parents, Amazon created a politeness mode for its Echo devices that gently reminds its users to say “please.”

And some chatbots are being developed to go even further and mimic human emotion. For example, clinical psychologist Alison Darcy built a talking bot to help people with depression and anxiety. The delightfully named Woebot spoke to 50,000 people in its first week of deployment – more than a human psychologist could speak to in a lifetime.

In a study with 70 young adults, Darcy found that after two weeks of interacting with the bot, the test subjects had lower incidences of depression and anxiety. They were impressed, and even touched, by the software’s attentiveness.

One of the subjects told Darcy’s team:

Woebot felt like a real person that showed concern.

Glitches and misunderstandings

In 1950, scientist Alan Turing designed an experiment to answer one of science’s most enduring questions: Is it possible to create a robot that could be mistaken for a human?

To date, the answer has mostly been no.

The reason for this is that AI devices respond to speech by drawing from an enormous database of code, scripted utterances and network conversation. So they can rarely respond to the unexpected shifts in, and immense complexity of, human conversation, save in minor ways.

Brian Christian, author of two books about AI, says of such machine talk:

What you get, the cobbling together of hundreds of thousands of prior conversations, is a kind of conversational purée. Made of human parts, but less than a human sum.

At this stage, we can best get a glimpse into the differences between day-to-day talk and automated machine conversation when something goes awry, or there is a technical glitch.

Take, for example, the story of a family in Portland Oregon whose Amazon Alexa interpreted a background human conversation in the family home as answers to its questions. Alexa subsequently sent a recording of the conversation to a person in their list of contacts, just as (it thought) it had been requested to.

AI is all around us

Even though we might be having less of them, human conversations aren’t going to decrease in significance anytime soon.

Nevertheless, the ubiquity of the smartphone has essentially liquefied our social world, which almost always includes a level of digital engagement with others outside the immediate social context. This has created a complex, contradictory mix of being present with others, even when they’re not physically there.

AI is not about the future – our lives are already saturated in it. Chatbots, softbots, and virtual personal assistants are becoming an integral part of our daily lives, even if we are not always aware of their role.

If talking to chatbots and virtual personal assistants becomes the new normal, we should be aware of the ways they could change how we talk to each other, and how we relate to ourselves.

One thing is certain. AI is having a profound impact on what it means to be human.

Professor Elliott’s new book, The Culture of AI: Everyday Life and the Digital Revolution, is published by Routledge.

– ref. Will talking to AI voice assistants re-engineer our human conversations? – http://theconversation.com/will-talking-to-ai-voice-assistants-re-engineer-our-human-conversations-108922

Why the Indian Ocean region might soon play a lead role in world affairs

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Director and CEO of the Australia India Institute; Professor of Development Geography, University of Melbourne

In recent days, Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne announced efforts to strengthen Australia’s involvement in the Indian Ocean region, and the importance of working with India in defence and other activities. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi – a geopolitical conference co-hosted by the Indian government – Payne said:

Our respective futures are intertwined and heavily dependent on how well we cooperate on the challenges and opportunities in the Indian Ocean in the decades ahead.

Among Payne’s announcements was A$25 million for a four-year infrastructure program in South Asia (The South Asia Regional Infrastructure Connectivity initiative, or SARIC), which will primarily focus on the transport and energy sectors.

She also pointed to increasing defence activities in the Indian Ocean, noting that in 2014, Australia and India had conducted 11 defence activities together, with the figure reaching 38 in 2018.

Payne’s speech highlights the emergent power of the Indian Ocean region in world affairs. The region comprises the ocean itself and the countries that border it. These include Australia, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Somalia, Tanzania, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

In terms of global political significance, the Atlantic Ocean can be viewed as the ocean of our grandparents and parents; the Pacific Ocean as the ocean of us and our children; and the Indian Ocean as the ocean of our children and grandchildren.

There is an obvious sense in which the region is the future. The average age of people in the region’s countries is under 30, compared to 38 in the US and 46 in Japan. The countries bordering the Indian Ocean are home to 2.5 billion people, which is one-third of the world’s population.

The countries in the Indian Ocean region host a wide variety of races, cultures, and religions. from shutterstock.com

But there is also a strong economic and political logic to spotlighting the Indian Ocean as a key emerging region in world affairs and strategic priority for Australia.

Some 80% of the world’s maritime oil trade flows through three narrow passages of water, known as choke points, in the Indian Ocean. This includes the Strait of Hormuz – located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman – which provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

The economies of many Indian Ocean countries are expanding rapidly as investors seek new opportunities. Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Tanzania witnessed economic growth in excess of 5% in 2017 – well above the global average of 3.2%.

India is the fastest growing major economy in the world. With a population expected to become the world’s largest in the coming decades, it is also the one with the most potential.

The strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most strategically important choke points. from shutterstock.com

Politically, the Indian Ocean is becoming a pivotal zone of strategic competition. China is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across the region as part of its One Belt One Road initiative.

For instance, China gave Kenya a US$3.2 billion loan to construct a 470 kilometre railway (Kenya’s biggest infrastructure project in over 50 years) linking the capital Nairobi to the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa.

Chinese state-backed firms are also investing in infrastructure and ports in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bangladesh. Western powers, including Australia and the United States, have sought to counter-balance China’s growing influence across the region by launching their own infrastructure funds – such as the US$113 million US fund announced last August for digital economy, energy, and infrastructure projects.

In security terms, piracy, unregulated migration, and the continued presence of extremist groups in Somalia, Bangladesh and parts of Indonesia pose significant threats to Indian ocean countries.

Countries in the region need to collaborate to build economic strength and address geopolitical risks, and there is a logical leadership role for India, being the largest player in the region.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Shangri La Dialogue in June, 2008:

The Indo-Pacific is a natural region. It is also home to a vast array of global opportunities and challenges. I am increasingly convinced with each passing day that the destinies of those of us who live in the region are linked.

More than previous Indian Prime Ministers, Modi has travelled up and down the east coast of Africa to promote cooperation and strengthen trade and investment ties, and he has articulated strong visions of India-Africa cooperative interest.

China financed Kenya’s biggest infrastructure project in over 50 years – a railway running from Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa. DANIEL IRUNGU/EPA

Broader groups are also emerging. In 1997, nations bordering the Bay of Bengal established the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), which works to promote trade links and is currently negotiating a free trade agreement. Australia, along with 21 other border states, is a member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) which seeks to promote sustainable economic growth, trade liberalisation and security.

But, notwithstanding India’s energy and this organisational growth, Indian Ocean cooperation is weak relative to Atlantic and Pacific initiatives.

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper seeks to support IORA in areas such as maritime security and international law. Private organisations, such as the Minderoo Foundation, are doing impressive research – as part of the Flourishing Oceans intiative – on the migration of sea life in an effort to advance environmental sustainability and conservation.

But Australia could focus more on how to promote the Indian Ocean. In Australia’s foreign affairs circles, there used to be a sense Asia stopped at Malta. But it seems the current general understanding of the “Indo-Pacific” extends west only as far as India.

What this misses – apart from the historical relevance and contemporary economic and political significance of the Indian Ocean region generously defined – is the importance of the ocean itself.

Not just important for trade and ties

If the Ocean was a rainforest, and widely acknowledged as a repository of enormous biodiversity, imagine the uproar at its current contamination and the clamour around collaborating across all countries bordering the ocean to protect it.

The reefs, mangroves, and marine species that live in the Ocean are under imminent threat. According to some estimates, the Indian Ocean is warming three times faster than the Pacific Ocean .

Overfishing, coastal degradation, and pollution are also harming the ocean. This could have catastrophic implications for the tens of millions of fishermen dependent on the region’s marine resources and the enormous population who rely on the Indian Ocean for their protein.

Australia must continue to strengthen its ties in the region – such as with India and Indonesia – and also build new connections, particularly in Africa.

– ref. Why the Indian Ocean region might soon play a lead role in world affairs – http://theconversation.com/why-the-indian-ocean-region-might-soon-play-a-lead-role-in-world-affairs-109663

How Australian wildlife spread and suppress Ross River virus

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eloise Stephenson, PhD Candidate, Griffith University

Ross River virus is Australia’s most common mosquito-borne disease. It infects around 4,000 people a year and, despite being named after a river in North Queensland, is found in all states and territories, including Tasmania.

While the disease isn’t fatal, it can cause debilitating joint pain, swelling and fatigue lasting weeks or even months. It can leave sufferers unable to work or look after children, and is estimated to cost the economy A$2.7 to A$5.6 million each year.

There is no treatment or vaccine for Ross River virus; the only way to prevent is to avoid mosquito bites.

Mosquitoes pick up the disease-causing pathogen by feeding on an infected animal. The typical transmission cycle involves mosquitoes moving the virus between native animals but occasionally, an infected mosquito will bite a person. If this occurs, the mosquito can spread Ross River virus to the person.

Animal hosts

Ross River virus has been found in a range of animals, including rats, dogs, horses, possums, flying foxes, bats and birds. But marsupials – kangaroos and wallabies in particular – are generally better than other animals at amplifying the virus under experimental infection and are therefore thought to be “reservoir hosts”.

The virus circulates in the blood of kangaroos and wallabies for longer than other animals, and at higher concentrations. It’s then much more likely to be picked up by a blood-feeding mosquito.

Kangaroos are a common sight around Australia’s coastal wetlands. Dr Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), Author provided

Dead-end hosts

When we think of animals and disease we often try to identify which species are good at transmitting the virus to mosquitoes (the reservoir hosts). But more recently, researchers have started to focus on species that get bitten by mosquitoes but don’t transmit the virus.

These species, known as dead-end hosts, may be important for reducing transmission of the virus.

With Ross River virus, research suggests birds that get Ross River virus from a mosquito cannot transmit the virus to another mosquito. If this is true, having an abundance of birds in and around our urban environments may reduce the transmission of Ross River virus to animals, mosquitoes and humans in cities.

Other reservoir hosts?

Even in areas with a high rates of Ross River virus in humans, we don’t always find an abundance of kangaroos and wallabies. So there must be other factors – or animals yet to be identified as reservoirs or dead-end hosts – playing an important role in transmission.

Ross River virus is prevalent in the Pacific Islands, for instance, where there aren’t any kangaroos and wallabies. One study of blood donors in French Polynesia found that 42.4% of people tested had previously been exposed to the virus. The rates are even higher in American Samoa, where 63% of people had been exposed.

It’s unclear if the virus has recently started circulating in these islands, or if it’s been circulating there longer, and what animals have been acting as hosts.

What about people?

Mosquitoes can transmit some viruses, such as dengue and Zika between people quite easily.

But the chances of a mosquito picking up Ross River virus when biting an infected human is low, though not impossible. The virus circulates in our blood at lower concentrations and for shorter periods of time compared with marsupials.

Stop mozzies biting with insect repellents. Elizaveta Galitckaia/Shutterstock

If humans are infected with Ross River virus, around 30% will develop symptoms of joint pain and fatigue (and sometimes a rash) three to 11 days after exposure, while some may not experience any symptoms until three weeks after exposure.

To reduce your risk of contracting Ross River virus, take care to cover up when you’re outdoors at sunset and wear repellent when you’re in outdoor environments where mosquitoes and wildlife may be frequently mixing.

– ref. How Australian wildlife spread and suppress Ross River virus – http://theconversation.com/how-australian-wildlife-spread-and-suppress-ross-river-virus-107267

It’s not just the isolation. Working from home has surprising downsides

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby Sander, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond University

What if you never had to return to work? Never had to return to work at the office, that is.

You’d be able to juggle kids on school holidays. You wouldn’t need to navigate traffic jams. Your employer might gain increased productivity, lower turnover and lower lease costs. But there are less obvious downsides.

In 2010, as part of building a case for the national broadband network, the Gillard government set a target for teleworking, suggesting the Australian economy could save between A$1.4 billion and A$1.9 billion a year if 10% of the workforce teleworked half the time.

Her successors have cooled on the idea. The web address www.telework.gov.au no longer works and reliable statistics for telework don’t exist.

Yet it’s attractive.

It seems like a grand idea…

Studies find working from home cuts commuting times and associated fatigue, transport congestion, and environmental impacts. Worldwide, an increasing number of employers are allowing it in order to attract and retain staff.

Employees value it as a way to maintain a work-life balance, in particular millennials.

And the office has become a nightmare for some. A tide of research finds many employees working in modern open-plan offices are so distracted by noise and interruptions they can’t concentrate.

In my research on the workplace, employees frequently tell me they have to work from home to get work done.

Other research supports these findings. A two-year study using randomly assigned groups found a 13% productivity increase. It also found turnover decreased by 50% among those working at home and that they took shorter breaks and fewer sick days. And the company saved around US$2,000 (A$2,784) per employee on lease costs.

It’s enough to make employers allow working from home for everyone who can. But a key finding from the same study sounds a cautionary note.

More than half the volunteers that worked from home felt so isolated they changed their minds about wanting to do it all the time.

…until you try it

It’s not just isolation and loneliness.

Research shows working from home is far worse for team cohesion and innovation than working in the office.

In 2013 Yahoo chief executive Marissa Meyer banned working from home, saying that in order “to become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.”

Since then, other large corporates including Bank of America and IBM have followed suit.

Contrary to what we might think, research shows that as the availability of laptops and other remote work devices increases, proximity has becoming more important.

One study showed that engineers who shared a physical office were 20% more likely to stay in touch digitally than those who worked remotely. Employees who were in the same office emailed four times as often to collaborate on shared projects than staff who weren’t in the office. The result, for these sorts of projects, was 32% faster project completion times.

Other research finds face to face interaction is essential for identifying opportunities for collaboration, innovation and developing relationships and networks.

Another study of home workers from 15 countries found 42% of remote workers had trouble sleeping, waking up repeatedly in the night, compared to only 29% who always worked in the office.

Some 41% of highly mobile workers felt stress “always or most of the time” compared to only 25% who always worked at the office.

Part of the stress is due to being tethered to mobile devices, often kept by beds, as well as the challenges of working from home. Locating colleagues to keep projects moving and trying to do conference calls surrounded by children, barking dogs or delivery people at the door is not as easy as it sounds.

Perhaps not surprisingly then, another study finds that, rather than being helpful, working from home is likely to interfere with family life.

And other studies suggest not being in the office regularly can hinder your career, resulting in being overlooked for projects or promotions. Out of sight can mean out of mind.

For some, what’s best will be some of both

There are strong, evidence-based reasons to both work from home and the office. So, what’s best?

One thing that can be said with certainty is that workers shouldn’t be forced to work from home because the office is too noisy for them to concentrate.

Employers need to ensure the workplace is designed effectively for the type of work that needs to be done, and also for the type of people who work there.

Access to flexible work, including working from home is important, but it needs to be balanced with the benefits of face to face interaction.

A halfway house is for employees working from home to have access to shared coworking spaces (working with workers from other firms and other industries) where they can get some of the benefits of being in the office without having to travel there.

Coworking spaces have been shown to reduce isolation, while providing employees with the benefits of access to a more diverse network and exposure to innovative ideas.

– ref. It’s not just the isolation. Working from home has surprising downsides – http://theconversation.com/its-not-just-the-isolation-working-from-home-has-surprising-downsides-107140

Guide to the classics: The Water Margin, China’s outlaw novel

By The Conversation -

January 15, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josh Stenberg, Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Sydney

The Water Margin, also known in English as Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers, is one of the most powerful narratives to emerge from China. The book, conventionally attributed to an otherwise obscure Yuan dynasty figure called Shi Nai’an, takes the form of a skein of connected tales surrounding various heroic figures who — persecuted, exploited, wronged, or trapped by venal officials — eventually band together in the fortress of Liangshan (Mount Liang), in the present-day province of Shandong.

Its influence has gone far beyond the usual genres of fiction, film, art, and theatre. The stories provide, even today, a point of reference for codes of honour, social and economic networks, secret societies and political movements.

Generations of China’s governments have sought to represent themselves as guardians of an often explicitly neo-Confucian order characterised by a fixed and morally-grounded political and social order constructed of hierarchical relationships. But The Water Margin represents another, equally real and representative, Chinese worldview. In this world, local injustice is the rule, and defence against cruel local authority is a matter of vengeance, stratagem, and violence.

From this universe, itself a highly mediated depiction of the rapidly decaying Northern Song dynasty in the 12th century, derive fictional worlds of errantry, struggle and righteousness that have gone through endless narrative and cinematic iterations.

Illustration from The Water Margin. Circa 15th Century. Wikimedia

Of these descendants, the most familiar today are the fictional worlds of Hong Kong writer Jin Yong, which remain the closest thing to a reading list for adolescents in the Chinese world, and the kung fu genre that has been the global calling card of Sinophone film since at least Bruce Lee.

Rebels with a cause

With printed versions dating back to the 14th century, The Water Margin largely follows the adventures of strongmen, innkeepers, footpads, peasants, vagabonds, fishermen, hunters, petty officials and local gentry. Surrounding these protagonists are the thousands of nameless followers and victims who are knocked off or maimed (just as they might be casually dispatched in Homer) in the novel’s thousand-odd pages.

Women, when they (not so very often) appear, are hard-nosed mistresses, pugnacious sisters, hapless wives, strategising helpmeets, or murderous innkeepers (one of whom has hit on Mrs. Lovett’s idea of baking humans into pies a full 800 hundred years before her). This also sets it apart from the mainstream of imperial fiction, which is substantially preoccupied with the passions and travails of high-born, talented women and their ambitious scholar swains, not to mention emperors and generals.

It is only a novel after a fashion: The Water Margin’s text is substantially the record of stories that had already been circulating at the time at the time it was committed to the page. Shi Nai’an’s authorship is little more than a conventional attribution, and the text is far from stable, existing in various versions beginning from the 14th century, two hundred years after the events it depicts. It reached its usual present form in the 17th century.

Li Kui (李逵), from The Water Margin. Wikimedia

In the Ming (14th-17th century) and Qing (17th-20th century) dynasties, the bandits of The Water Margin continued to influence all manner of groups operating far from the seat of power, despite periodic attempts to ban the book.

The fact that the villains of the novel are local officials, while the bandits remain at least notionally loyal to the imperial court, has proven an enduring inspiration. Many are the brands of rebellion that have found it practical to be on the other side of the law while retaining a claim to the values of brotherhood, honour, loyalty and patriotism.

Enduring legacy

The plot’s political relevance has never gone away. Having been adopted in the 1930s by reformers as a healthily anti-feudal narrative, it was later deployed in a major 1975 government campaign, in which the leader of the Liangshan bandits in the book, Song Jiang, was criticised for accepting the emperor’s offer of amnesty. Had he not given the game away? And was he therefore not guilty of coexistence with forces inimical to the masses, just as party members, late in the Maoist era, would be guilty of capitulationism if their fervour flagged?

This move, widely interpreted as an effort to head off the fall of the Gang of Four shows how centrally the characters have been retained even in modern and contemporary Chinese consciousness.

A board for a Sichuan board game, based on The Water Margin. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

It’s commonplace to lament human transience and contrast it with the immutability of nature. But those going in search of the dense marshlands of Shandong —- where in the novel crafty fishermen might cause unwary inconvenient minor officials to disappear —- will be disappointed. The entire geography of the novel has been altered beyond recognition by river engineering and irrigation.

This of course does not prevent local governments continuing to put up buildings tagged to certain events in the novel, hoping at the same time that the message of righteous rebellion against local authority is never taken too literally. The formidable, impregnable, fortified mountain, Liangshan, rises just short of 200 metres in reality.

The place of The Water Margin has moved almost entirely into the imaginary, and it is the situations, the events, the stratagems and above all the characters – furious and righteous, looking to set the world right – that have left their mark on posterity.

– ref. Guide to the classics: The Water Margin, China’s outlaw novel – http://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-water-margin-chinas-outlaw-novel-99835

Roll-up screens and 8K resolution: what the future of television looks like

By The Conversation -

January 14, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc C-Scott, Senior lecturer in Screen Media, Victoria University

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) wrapped-up in Las Vegas last week. The annual event gives enthusiasts a taste of the latest gadgets and devices on the horizon of consumer technology.

This year, we saw advances in digital health, new integrations for voice assistants, an expanding door to secure your deliveries (which can be heated or cooled), a machine to fold your clothes, and even a flying vehicle.

Television technology was, once again, a focus. LG introduced a roll-up TV screen, we saw more inbuilt technology and integrations, and bigger and better pictures.

So what does this mean for the future of television in Australia?

What we mean when we talk about TV

Before we get into the technology, let’s have a chat about screens.

Television content is no longer limited to the television screen: we can now view it on our mobiles, tablets, desktop computers and laptops.

And research shows Australians are increasingly consuming media across multiple screens. In 2017, the average Australian home had 6.6 screens, up from 5.4 in 2012. This trend is likely to continue with the expansion of screen-based technology.

Companies such as Microsoft and Google are continuing to invest in the development of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technology. Take mixed reality glasses, for example, which were again showcased at CES this year.

These types of glasses have the potential to make the traditional television screens obsolete, by effectively giving users a mobile screen that allows them to view media of size, anywhere they want.

[embedded content] Microsoft HoloLens.

The future of the TV screen as we know it

After flirting with 3D television earlier in the decade, manufacturers have decided to cease investing in the technology, which means there was no 3D television at CES this year. Instead, we saw upgrades to traditional screen technology.

The most talked about was LG’s rollable screen television. It’s not quite origami, but it’s close. Imagine those old roll up projector screens integrated into a low TV unit, with a 65 inch OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV screen and 4K resolution. The screen also allows you to partly roll it down to remove those annoying top and bottom black bars, used in films of a wider aspect ratio.

[embedded content] LG Display rollable OLED TV hands-on.

In addition to rollable televisions, a number of brands showcased their 8K televisions. Unfortunately the increase in image quality won’t mean much for Aussies, other than a potential drop in the price of 4K televisions. Here’s why.

Currently, the maximum broadcast quality of free-to-air television in Australia is high definition (1920 x 1080 pixels). Some secondary channels are broadcast in standard definition (720 x 576 pixels). If you’re watching on a 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) or 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) screen, the image will be a much lower quality than you would expect, essentially pixelated.

While Foxtel has recently launched its dedicated 4K cricket channel, there is no clear sign of when, or if, other broadcasters plan to embrace broadcast technologies that offer greater resolutions – even though freeing up spectrum space was part of the reason for ending community television use of the broadcast spectrum.

So take note anyone planning to purchase an 8K television in the near future: you may have difficulty accessing image quality that will match the screen’s potential.

VOD continues to grow

One technology that has the potential to deliver higher image quality is video streaming. Operating via the internet, video-on-demand (VOD) services could adapt far quicker than Australia’s traditional broadcasters.

Image quality on HD, 4K and 8K screens. Shutterstock

And the VOD market will continue to expand in Australia in 2019.

We recently saw the launch of Network Ten’s subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) service, Ten All Access. It integrates Ten’s local programming with programming from the service of their US owner, CBS All Access.

A new dedicated sports streaming service, Kayo Sports, has also recently launched. The service leverages the current media rights obtained by Fox Sports, which allows for more than 50 sports to be delivered by the service.

Stan, one of the original SVoD services launched in Australia, has had a recent upgrade, obtaining the rights to stream Disney content. Disney has announced in will launch its own VOD service in 2019, although it’s currently unclear whether it will be available outside of US. But the deal with Stan will give Disney an indication of Australia’s appetite for its content.

Bandwidth is an issue

In addition to the introduction of new services, streaming continues to be integrated into Smart TVs, with Samsung announcing at CES that it will integrate iTunes into its TVs.

The use of internet-connected televisions is increasing in Australia. While 27% of households owned one in 2014-15, the figure jumped to 42% in 2016-17. But bandwith could impede streaming services from delivering higher resolution content. While more than 86% of Australian households have internet access, speed is an issue.

Netflix already offers a 4K option, but recommends “a steady internet connection speed of 25 megabits per second or higher”. According to a 2017 Ookla Speed Test Global Index, Australia was ranked 55th in the world for fixed broadband. With an average download speed of 25.88 Mbps. This speed is to be shared across devices in the home, making the Netflix 4K recommendation unattainable for many.

– ref. Roll-up screens and 8K resolution: what the future of television looks like – http://theconversation.com/roll-up-screens-and-8k-resolution-what-the-future-of-television-looks-like-109512

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

By The Conversation -

January 14, 2019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josh Calcino, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Curious Kids is a series for children. Send your question 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.

Why has nobody found any life outside of Earth? – Anna G, age 12, Strathfield, Sydney.

Anna, thank you for your amazing question.

Astronomers like us are hunting for “Earth-like” planets, but they’re not easy to find. And the conditions needed life for to exist have to be just right.

It’s likely that if such a planet exists, it will be outside our Solar System, and it’s very hard to study planets so far away.

But before we go on, it helps to remember how big the Universe is.

Our place in the Universe

Earth is inside our Solar System, along with the other planets (like Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter) orbiting a star we call the Sun.

But our Solar System is just one of many inside the huge Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way is just one of many, many galaxies in the Universe. Plus, we have no way of knowing exactly how big the Universe is beyond what we can directly see.

So while there may be life on other planets, it could be in another solar system in a different part of the Milky Way galaxy. Or in another galaxy far, far away.

We don’t have the technology yet to study such far away planets. But we are still trying to collect what clues we can using the technology we’ve got.

What makes a planet liveable? Follow the water

Much of the search for life has focused on trying to find liquid water, because it is essential for all life forms here on Earth.

Cells are mostly made up of water. Many of the chemical reactions that occur in our metabolism can only occur in the presence of water because it is an incredibly good solvent (meaning it will happily dissolve most things you put in it).

And water is very common. In fact, the components that make up water (hydrogen and oxygen) are the first and third most abundant elements in the Milky Way galaxy.

Oxygen loves grabbing onto other elements to make different chemicals. This means that we find water almost everywhere we look, from the surface of planets in our Solar System, to the depths of interstellar space.

Fountains of water expel out from Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

But for life as we know it to exist, you would need a planet where water exists in a liquid state. Otherwise your cells would freeze or boil away.

Earth is in a perfect position from our Sun to support water in a liquid state. Astronomers call this ideal location from a star the “habitable” or “Goldilocks zone”.

Scientists last year discovered that there is permanent liquid water on Mars, which made a lot of people very excited. Water is also inside craters on Mercury, and there are vast water oceans on some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons.

But we still haven’t found life on Mars, or any other planet in our Solar System.

What about outside our Solar System?

Planets outside our Solar System are called exoplanets. They orbit their own stars (as you know, our Sun is really just a big star).

For example, there is an exoplanet called Kepler-22b, which is in the habitable zone of another star called Kepler-22. Kepler 22b is bigger than Earth.

An artist’s depiction of Kepler 22b, an exoplanet in the habitable zone of a star called Kepler 22. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Fainter stars have habitable zones that are closer to them and brighter stars have their habitable zones further away.

A star’s habitable zone (shown here between the orange and red lines) ultimately depends upon how bright and hot the star is. Sonny Harman

Finding a world within a star’s habitable zone where liquid water can exist would be a great start to finding life. Unfortunately, we have not perfected the technology for it yet.

But finding a planet with the right conditions for life isn’t enough; we need to be able to detect signatures of life itself (scientists call these “biosignatures”). For example, we can look at a planet’s atmosphere and see what gasses are in it. If we found a planet with lots of oxygen, we can infer there may be life there.

At the moment, it is not possible to detect biosignatures on Earth-like planets around others stars.

Maybe, Anna, you might be the one of the scientists who develops the technology that makes all this possible, and will discover the first inhabited world beyond Earth.

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

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us on Twitter by tagging @ConversationEDU with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
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Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: why has nobody found any life outside of Earth? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-has-nobody-found-any-life-outside-of-earth-105128