Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Rawling, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

Hot on the heels of the gig economy company Foodora shutting up shop in Australia amid accusations about its labour abuses, a Senate Committee report has recommended more robust laws to protect gig economy workers. But this doesn’t go far enough.

Foodora, which uses bicycle couriers to deliver food, says it has pulled out of Australia to focus on opportunities in other countries. Legal cases against it might also have had something to do with it.

The Fair Work Ombudsman took the company to court for sham contracting – treating its employees as independent contractors to avoid paying minimum wages, annual leave, sick leave and superannuation. The Australian Taxation Office is pursuing Foodora for unpaid employee entitlements.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has now dropped its case.

In two other cases the Fair Work Commission has decided that other gig workers – namely Uber drivers – are contractors for the purpose of unfair dismissal laws.

Read more: Explainer: what rights do workers have to getting paid in the gig economy?

So the Senate committee report offers the best relief on the horizon to the “gig workers” that companies such as Foodora have used to drive down employment costs.

The report recommends changing the legal definition of employee to capture gig workers and ensure they are fully protected by Australia’s industrial relations system.

This would no doubt help. But it might not be enough to protect gig workers into the future.

The work rights of these gig workers needs to be clear from the start. The federal government not only needs to broaden the definition of employee but also empower the Fair Work Commission to set minimum rates and conditions for gig workers even if classified as contractors.

Manipulating legal loopholes

The Senate Committee to examine the future of work and workers was established in October 2017. Its scope included considering “the adequacy of Australia’s laws to deal with the ”employment landscape of tomorrow“. Its recommendations are directly relevant to the rise of the gig economy.

The crucial question has been whether gig workers are employees or independent contractors.

This legal distinction has allowed companies to circumvent or evade employee entitlements by engaging workers purportedly as contractors. Digital platform providers such as Uber, Deliveroo and Foodora have aggressively touted their workforce as “partners” or even “micro-entrepreneurs”. They describe themselves as providers of technology, not of services.

In Britain, the Employment Appeals Tribunal has disagreed. It has ruled that Uber is indeed a provider of transport services, and enters into dependent work arrangements with transport workers.

Read more: People power is finally making the gig economy fairer

Similarly, the Senate committee report does not regard gig economy workers as independent contractors “in the true spirit of the term”. It argues that if a worker depends on a company for work and income, and the company profits from their labour, they are employees. It therefore recommends changing the legal definition of employee to include what gig workers do.

Work status shouldn’t matter

But effective government action to protect gig economy workers cannot solely rely on changing the legal definition of employee. This just sets up another artificial boundary that could be circumvented.

By tweaking their arrangements with their workforce, gig companies could find new grounds to argue their workers are contractors, not employees.

Broadening the definition of employee is not enough. It is also necessary to give the Fair Work Commission the power to inquire into any gig economy work arrangements and determine if the workers are getting fair pay and conditions.

Read more: Protecting the rights of the digital workforce in the ‘gig’ economy

This would be a better, and cheaper, approach than having to test the legality of a work arrangement in court. Gig companies would be on notice that they have to pay their workers fairly, regardless of whether they call them employees or contractors.

Keeping up with technology

Better regulating the gig economy is important to ensure everyone benefits from technological change. We need to consider the gains to workers, not just companies and consumers. Is technology going to provide quality jobs and increase people’s control over their work? Or is it going to be used to circumvent the basic minimum wage and drive down working conditions?

These questions about the emerging gig economy are part of a wider social conversation we need to have about technological change and the challenges of the digital divide. For starters, there needs to be a focus on transparency about who profits the most from technology. We need to implement technology in terms of net social benefit.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brad Elphinstone, Lecturer in psychology., Swinburne University of Technology

Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley recently revealed that he’d embraced the Japanese art of kintsugi in coaching a team that few predicted would make the AFL Grand Final at the start of the year.

Even though the result didn’t work out as he would have hoped – his team lost to the West Coast Eagles – Buckley said kintsugi can help the team grow from the defeat. He said:

The philosophy underneath that is about celebrating your hardships, about understanding that the things that break you can actually have you coming out the other side stronger, can actually have you coming out the other side more resilient, a better version of you. I have got no doubt that we have celebrated that this year.

What is kintsugi?

Kintsugi is a Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics or pottery with lacquer, often coloured with gold. Rather than discarding the broken vase, it is repaired and given a new lease on life by proudly and beautifully wearing the scars of being once broken.

Read more: A history of sporting lingo: a linguistic ‘shirtfronting’ for lovers and haters of sports alike

It is a powerful metaphor that hardship does not mean failure or the end of the road, but an opportunity to bounce back, potentially better than before. Lessons about the importance of failure, and that our failures can lead to our greatest success, can be challenging to acknowledge, especially as they occur.

But through the related Buddhist notion of non-attachment, we can openly accept and embrace those lessons. Non-attachment is about not “clinging to” or being fixated on ideas, objects, relationships or experiences that are seen as desirable, or “pushing away” those that are undesirable.

This is important, because whether you like it or not, every aspect of your life will inevitably change. Every relationship you have will end, whether by growing apart or by death.

Your career will one day end, either through planned retirement or by other means. The new car that was once shiny and impressive gradually becomes just another car, sporting faded paint and the battle scars of runaway shopping trolleys. All things in life will change.

How things really are

If we go through life clinging to the hope or belief that our relationships will stay the same, that our possessions won’t break or degrade over time, and that people won’t get sick and die, we are living a life fixated on our mental representations of how we want things to be, rather than how they really are.

According to Buddhist philosophy, it is these mental representations, or attachments, that increase our potential for suffering – stress, anxiety and negative emotions – as we struggle to deal with this inevitable change.

At a deeper level, by relinquishing our attachments and coming to realise that everything, even our concept of who we are, is just a series of mental representations and ideas that come and go, we realise that there is not even a static unchanging “self” to build up or defend.

Research has shown non-attachment to be a balanced approach to life associated with greater well-being; flourishing in life; self-compassion; reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression; and greater empathy, kindness, and helpfulness towards others.

Kintsugi can be viewed as a visual metaphor of non-attachment insofar as there is no singular form or appearance that a piece of pottery must take or retain. It is through embracing the ever-changing flux and possibility present in all things that we can openly experience what they have to offer.

With this realisation we can reduce the stress and negativity that often accompanies failure, being wrong, making mistakes, or losing a Grand Final. These are not necessarily situations that reflect poorly on us as a person or indicate that future improvement and success is unachievable.

This type of radical acceptance and openness can make it easier to be more adaptable and to consider alternative approaches and strategies that can help future success.

The sporting connection

So how does this all relate to sport, where the focus is about winning?

In a team setting, this may even require the realisation that personal goals need to be set aside in pursuit of team success.

Losing a Grand Final should not be viewed as an outcome that forever brands the “self” as a loser, or seen as evidence that it is impossible to succeed in the future.

Read more: Stay alive, and if something moves, shoot it: one year of phenomenal success for Fortnite

By fixating on these beliefs someone may miss out on the opportunity to identify the positives that could lead to future success. Alternatively, not reflecting on the experience so as to avoid negative emotions or feelings of inadequacy may also result in missing out on opportunities for growth.

Instead, through non-attachment the experience should be embraced and accepted, with the knowledge that one’s “self” will only be enhanced rather than diminished by the experience.

In other words, while the vase may be broken now (or the team lost this season’s Grand Final), there is nothing to be gained by leaving it be or discarding it entirely. With the art of kintsugi, if the vase can return better than before, then why not Collingwood’s hope for success next season too?

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Elliott, Professor of Education, CQUniversity Australia

On Thursday, the Labor party pledged an additional A$1.75 billion for early education if elected the next government of Australia. This is the largest investment in early childhood education in Australian history.

Most of this investment will go towards funding 15 hours a week of free preschool or kindy for three-year-old children. This means all Australian children will have access to two years of quality early childhood education before they start school.

Current funding only supports preschool programs for children the year before they start formal schooling. Typically, 15 hours a week equates to five short days per fortnight or two days a week of a preschool program in a school preschool, community kindy or long day care centre.

Early childhood educators, researchers and economists have long advocated the importance of early childhood education. If Labor does win the next election and commit to this promise, everyone will benefit. Two years of preschool will give young Australian children the best start in life.

What does the research say about development?

Neuroscience has shown the early years, particularly birth to eight years, are critical for optimal learning and development. Preschool attendance has shown consistent positive short and long-term effects across the world including in the US, Europe, Canada and New Zealand.

Play-based preschool programs delivered by qualified early childhood educators improve children’s learning and developmental outcomes and are particularly important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

A recent independent report to state and territory education ministers argued, in terms of improving school outcomes, the single most impactful reform Australia could make would be to increase access to quality early childhood education (preschool) for three-year-olds.

Another report showed two years of preschool has more impact than one, especially for children who are developmentally vulnerable (such as those from a low socio-economic background).

Compared to other OECD countries, Australia is lagging behind in early childhood education. Australia ranked in the bottom third for participation in early childhood education and care. Only 15% of Australian three-year-olds are enrolled in a preschool program.

It also makes economic sense

Economists also back getting three-year-olds into preschool, as it’s a great opportunity for investment in human capital and the future workforce. It’s much more cost effective and beneficial to invest in early education than later remedial interventions targeted at poor literacy, school drop-outs and adults with limited basic skills. In early childhood, we set the foundation for learning dispositions and life skills.

Read more: Why Australia should invest in paying early childhood educators a liveable wage

Preschool education has positive effects on early language and literacy, and school achievement. A recent study showed two years of preschool had a cost benefit ratio of four, meaning for every one dollar invested, four dollars are returned to the economy.

What would these programs look like?

Universal access means younger children will have access to a four-year degree qualified teacher who provides a play-based program aligning with the Early Years Learning Framework. Play-based learning is where children learn through play, either self-directed (often called free play), or guided play where an adult intentionally extends children’s learning through play and related activities.

Read more: Play-based learning can set your child up for success at school and beyond

High quality preschool programs promote children’s academic and social development and provide a balance of intentional teaching and freely chosen play activities. Educators extend children’s learning by engaging in prolonged conversations where the educator and child solve problems together, clarify concepts or evaluate things that develop and extend thinking or understanding.

And what about these children and their parents?

Labor has promised the three-year-old preschool programs will be delivered through a range of early education settings. These include long day care centres, community preschools/kindies and schools. This is good news for parents who will be able to choose a program that suits their family’s needs and especially for children who currently attend child care. Embedding strong early learning programs with qualified teachers into child care means a more integrated and seamless learning experience for children.

Three-year-old preschool programs will also help parents with childcare affordability. For parents with children already in care, 15 hours will be funded by the government, cutting costs to families.

The one caution in thinking about the logistics of providing 15 hours of preschool is around the current extreme shortage of early childhood teachers and other early childhood educators. As the 2015 Productivity Commission reported, supply of early childhood teachers does not meet demand. Unless there is a massive increase in training early childhood teachers the likelihood of staffing the new preschool places by 2021 is slim, especially in rural and remote Australia.

Today’s announcement of free training for early childhood education and care qualifications through the vocational education and training (VET) system should Labor be elected next year is welcome.

But caution is warranted as VET-credentialed educators (with certificates and diplomas) are not qualified early childhood teachers. Simply offering free training is a long way short of ensuring qualified educators are willing and able to actually work where they’re most needed.

And as the recent ASQA report highlighted, the quality of delivery of many VET courses in early childhood education and care is variable and often problematic.

No matter what your political or educational perspective, giving children the best start to early learning makes good sense. Investment in early childhood education can only benefit children, families and the nation.

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

Michelle Grattan speaks with University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini about the week in Australian politics. They discuss the Labor party’s announcement of a series of roundtables to hear more banking victims where the Royal Commission hasn’t visited, and their announcement that a Labor government would subsidise preschool education for three-year-olds. They also talk about the Morrison government’s new formula for carving up the GST revenue.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Cunningham, Distinguished Professor, Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology

Until 2010, the pathway to success in the screen industry depended on convincing broadcasters and film producers to give to you airtime or production resources. These days, all you need is an internet connection and a laptop or smartphone.

A new creative industry has been born in the last decade called “social media entertainment”. It’s peopled by young entertainers and activists who you may never have heard of: Hank Green, Casey Neistadt, PewDiePie and Tyler Oakley.

These creators started out as amateurs, but have evolved into media professionals who make money from content they publish on social media platforms. They are incubating their own media brands, building global fan communities, and enhancing Australia’s profile among young people around the world.

The Australian government is currently conducting separate inquiries into the future of film and television content in this country, and the market effects of digital platforms. Any decisions we make in these domains could affect social media entertainment, so it’s critically important we understand the industry lest we inadvertently strangle it as it’s just getting started.

Read more: How social media stars are fighting for the Left

The Australian market is growing

Social media entertainment emerged soon after Google acquired YouTube in 2006 – around the same time as the launch of Twitter, and their counterparts in China, Youku and Weibo.

It can be a lucrative profession. More than three million YouTube creators globally make money from the content they upload. Then there’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Twitch, among others. The larger the audiences, the more money to be made. In 2016, content creators earned more than US$5.9 billion across nine digital and social media platforms in the United States alone.

The majority of the highest paid creators are based in the US, but popular Australian creators include the Van Vuuren brothers, Wengie, and the SketchShe group. Estimates suggest the number of content creators in Australia has more than doubled in the last 15 years. That increase is almost entirely driven by an extra 230,000 creators of online video content entering the industry.

A new kind of revenue model

Social media entertainment is certainly part of the gig economy. It’s inherently unstable, with huge growth over a ten year period. But the business models of social media entertainment have undergone fundamental changes during that time.

Creators have learned how to manage risk by diversifying their offerings in response to platform competition. For example, instead of making money from a single source – such as advertising income from YouTube – creators now earn revenue from multiple sources, including merchandising, licensing, crowdfunding and live appearances.

One of the biggest changes has been the rise of the “influencer” making money from brand integration. For example, when an Instagram star is paid to post pictures of themselves using a company’s product.

Read more: How copyright law is holding back Australian creators

Successful creators of social media entertainment engage in a model of entrepreneurial practice that pays as much, if not more, attention to building and maintaining a subscriber community as they do to actually creating content. These fan communities are passionate enough to follow creators through thick and thin. And feedback is in real time, constant, fulsome and often confronting. This includes negatives, such as trolling.

Every kind of revenue model in this practice depends on activated community support. Mainstream arts, culture and screen industries, with all their talk of audience building, have a lot to learn about this from creators.

Of course, this takes a lot of work. Creators often upload content several times weekly, build and maintain their communities, deal with the vagaries of algorithms, and risk-manage their authenticity with demanding brands, and even more demanding communities. But still they enter the industry, in their thousands.

A new kind of engagement

It’s premature to bracket social media entertainment in the same category as traditional entertainment formats, such as film, television, print and radio – all of which are subject to Australian content regulation or receive public subsidy. Nevertheless, there’s still a lot for industry, policymakers and regulators to get their heads around.

One difficulty is where to draw the line between amateur creators and professionals, which isn’t always clear. Taste and quality are firmly in the eye of the beholder when it comes to screen content. But to be useful for policy makers, debates about quality need a much stronger dose of demand-side thinking. It’s not only about the quality of the content, but also the quality and diversity of engagement.

The younger generation has largely switched off from linear television. But these young people, from eight to 22 years of age, constitute a huge video market – around 20% of the Australian population.

Social media entertainment engages this demographic. It also provides production and career building opportunity for new voices. That includes young, culturally, racially and ethnically diverse creators and audiences – most of whom have never been near a screen production course or a funding agency.

Read more: Rude comments online are a reality we can’t get away from

And there is a lot of social innovation practice going on. For example, Nerdfighters is a global online community of young people that sprung up around a YouTube video series. Several thousand Australians are Nerdfighters, who often get together in real life to support each other.

Social media entertainers have arguably achieved levels of entrepreneurial professionalisation greater than many mainstream screen businesses. So it’s a mistake to perpetuate the “us professionals” versus “them amateurs” line, even if, for regulatory purposes, you have to draw the line somewhere.

Supporting content creators

There has been a great deal of movement globally around screen, broadcasting and arts agency support for social media entertainment. And support and enablement programs in this arena can afford to be more immediately responsive and experimental due to much lower production costs.

In 2016, RackaRacka, run out of Adelaide by brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, were beneficiaries of the Skip Ahead program. By then, their work making action-packed videos full of choreographed fight scenes, comic violence, and pop culture references was already reaching a wide audience. Their Marvel VS DC video alone boasted some 37 million views (it now has nearly 60 million).

Graeme Mason, the CEO of Screen Australia, has described RackaRacka as Australia’s most successful content creators, and they were rated 5th on Australia’s Cultural Power Index in 2017, ahead of screen icon, Nicole Kidman.

How social media regulation could hurt

The big digital platforms that host these creators have been a provocative influence in the Australian communications and cultural policy space, to say the least. We have now entered a new era of potential regulatory oversight of the platforms.

While it’s not at all clear what benefits regulation might bestow on social media entertainment, it is abundantly clear how it could harm it.

Let’s not forget the “adpocalypse” and its unintended, but very unfortunate, consequences. In 2017, the revenue streams of numerous creators were lost when Google and Facebook changed the rules around the kinds of videos that could be monetised. It was done in response to some major brands withdrawing their advertising from the platforms after their ads were sometimes placed by algorithms beside extremist content.

RackaRacka’s content was caught up in the adpocalypse and the brothers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue. They are now in Los Angeles pursuing international opportunities.

Read more: Art, activism and our creative future

Policymakers should tread carefully

The rapid response of the platforms was necessary to protect their major advertisers, but the consequences demonstrate how seemingly minor policy decisions can have widespread detrimental effects on this nascent industry, and the people driving it.

In media policy, we need better demand-side understanding of what young people have substituted for linear television. In screen support policy, we need greater attention to business model innovation, some of which must be modelled on social media entertainment.

We must take these creators seriously. With better recognition and support, the new voices found in social media entertainment will help to secure the generational future of Australian screen

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

Bill Shorten can’t be accused of lacking flexibility – or sensitivity to the risk of getting wedged on national security.

Polling shows Shorten is vulnerable on security issues.

A year ago, he decried then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to create a new super ministry under Peter Dutton with broad responsibilities for national security.

“I’d like to be convinced this is about national security, not Malcom Turnbull’s job security,” Shorten observed at the time.

Now, he has said he will not pursue “change for change’s sake”.

Read more: Explainer: how the Australian intelligence community works

In his criticism of Turnbull bestowing expanded ministerial responsibilities on Peter Dutton, Shorten had a point.

Mistakenly, Turnbull sought to bolster a Praetorian guard on his right, namely Dutton and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, by drawing them into his inner circle.

Both repaid that preferment by turning on him. Turnbull’s poor political judgement was manifest in those attempts.

In Shorten’s case, his resistance to the idea of stripping away some of the powers of the Home Affairs ministry accrued under Dutton has less to do with the merits of the case than it does with electoral politics.

Labor’s overwhelming concern is not to be outflanked on border security and immigration, both responsibilities of Home Affairs. Any sign of backsliding on these issues would be seized upon by the Coalition.

Shorten is under pressure from Labor’s left to consider an amnesty for asylum seekers, held in some cases in offshore detention centres for five years.

The case for such amnesties would seem to be compelling – unless you are an aspiring prime minister anxious to avoid a security wedge.

In considering options for a rejigging of a Home Affairs ministry cobbled together by Turnbull when he felt under pressure from the right, Shorten should consider returning responsibility for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to the Attorney-General.

In Mark Dreyfus Labor has an able shadow Attorney-General who could be expected to oversee ASIO with the sensitivity required.

Removing that responsibility from then Attorney-General George Brandis and handing it to Dutton caused significant tensions within the Coalition government.

It was no secret in Canberra that Brandis and then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop resisted moves that would enhance Dutton’s range of responsibilities.

They lost, although the Attorney-General did retain authority for ASIO surveillance warrants.

So, the question becomes: what is in the country’s best interests when it comes to deciding whether a ministry with responsibilities for the Australian “para-military” Border Force, the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, cyber-security, and immigration is too unwieldly?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared to acknowledge that unwieldiness when he appointed a separate immigration minister within Home Affairs, but without cabinet rank.

Dutton retained his Home Affairs portfolio, and thus oversight of immigration. Newly-appointed immigration minister David Coleman sits outside the cabinet.

Labor would be wise to restore cabinet rank to the immigration minister. It should also consider detaching the portfolio from Home Affairs, given the sensitivities involved in administering a contentious area.

Immigration and citizenship responsibilities range across a swathe of government activities. They include administering the immigration intake itself, managing the country’s refugee programme, and dealing with the myriad discretionary immigration issues that cross a minister’s desk every day.

If we accept Australia is a “country of immigrants” – which it is – this would seem to dictate the need for a stand-alone ministry separate from the policing responsibilities of a Home Affairs portfolio, where the focus is on security.

Shorten should take this on board.

Apart from the Home Affairs ministry, the government has also embarked on a sweeping reform of its intelligence assessment processes.

An Office of National Intelligence will be established to oversee intelligence gathering and assessment, including the work of the Office of National Assessments.

This is a significant reform aimed at strengthening prime ministerial oversight – and coordination – of intelligence agencies. It grows out of an Independent Review of the Australian Intelligence Community led by former senior public servant Michael L’Estrange.

The ONI will have similar status within the Australian bureaucracy as the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Both agencies distil intelligence provided by their respective country’s intelligence agencies to the president in the case of the US, and prime minister in Britain. In the US the Director of National Intelligence is a cabinet level post.

Read more: The new Department of Home Affairs is unnecessary and seems to be more about politics than reform

National security is a highly complex area of government. It requires careful monitoring and coordination. Our leaders should always remember how the rush to war in Iraq – based on faulty intelligence and politically compromised analysis of that intelligence – prompted a security fiasco.

But back to Shorten and his change of heart on the Home Affairs “super” ministry.

In July last year, when Turnbull announced his shake-up of the intelligence and security agencies and establishment of a new Home Affairs ministry after peremptory cabinet consideration, Shorten expressed concern about what appeared to be a rushed job. He said:

I don’t think this is a captain’s call, I think this is Peter Dutton’s call.

I’m very concerned these proposals aren’t being pushed by our security agencies, they’re being pushed by Peter Dutton.

Twelve months later, Dutton as a Labor bogeyman has faded somewhat, along with Shorten’s own opposition to the Dutton super ministry.

That reassessment might make sense given that a good deal of disruption would be caused by unscrambling the egg. But if the opposition were to win government, it should subject the new ministry to an assessment of just what has been achieved, and the extent to which its activities may have been politicised.

Community confidence in such a body would be enhanced if a less controversial minister than Dutton was in charge. Playing politics with national security needs to be avoided.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Majewski, Laboratory Head & Victorian Cancer Agency Fellow, Cancer & Haematology Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

As we age, our bodies inevitably deteriorate. Some changes, like grey hair and wrinkles, are easily visible. Others, like high blood pressure, often go unnoticed, but can be deadly.

Just as our body shows signs of ageing, so does our genome. Damage comes from chemical reactions that alter our DNA, and from errors introduced when it is copied. Our cells protect against these ravages, but these mechanisms are not foolproof and cells gradually accumulate DNA damage over a lifetime.

As a consequence of this damage, your genome is not the same in every cell; you are a patchwork of cells with subtle differences in their DNA. When a cell divides it will pass on these changes, and as they accumulate there is more and more likelihood that there will be consequences.

If these changes – we call them mutations – chip away at the systems that govern cell proliferation and survival, this can lead to cancer.

Our latest research, published today in the journal Blood, provides new clues about how our cells protect their genome and guard against cancer.

Guarding the genome

Nearly 10% of cancers have a familial component. Genes like BRCA1 and TP53 are among the best known cancer susceptibility genes, and both are involved in coordinating the cell’s response to DNA damage.

BRCA1 helps to repair a specific type of DNA damage, in which both strands of DNA are broken. Inheriting a defective BRCA1 gene elevates the lifetime risk of both breast and ovarian cancer.

Read more: Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy, so what is BRCA1?

When DNA repair mechanisms break down, cells can accumulate staggering numbers of mutations, and cancer becomes almost inevitable.

Beyond genetics, a complex mix of environmental and lifestyle factors modify cancer risk.

When we read the genome of a cancer it is possible to attribute mutations to certain types of stress. UV radiation, for example, will fuse certain DNA bases. The UV damage signature is writ large in melanoma, a cancer linked to sun exposure.

Lung cancers from smokers and non-smokers have different mutation patterns because of the action of chemicals in cigarette smoke that attack the DNA.

We can also use this approach to diagnose defective DNA repair, as each defect triggers a characteristic pattern of mutations. In this way, mutation signatures can help us understand why a cancer has developed.

A ticking genetic clock

Smoking, UV radiation and X-rays all damage your DNA, but damage also comes from reactive molecules present within the cell. These molecules are fundamental to the chemistry of life – take water, for example.

Read more: Chemistry Nobel DNA research lays foundation for new ways to fight cancer

Water is a very reactive molecule and can do damage to our DNA. One of the most common mutations, either in cancer or in normal cells, results from water molecules reacting with methylated DNA.

DNA methylation is a small chemical modification that acts as a signpost on top of our genetic code. It helps to control which genes are switched on or off. This fine-tuning is essential for normal development, but methylation also makes DNA more susceptible to damage. Most of these events are quickly repaired, but the damage is unrelenting and some sneak through.

Methylation damage is the most prominent feature of an ageing genome. It’s so pervasive and reliable it has been proposed as a molecular clock that marks ageing. But our new research shows this process occurs more rapidly in some people.

We found and studied three people whose pathways to repair methylation damage had broken down. They all lacked a DNA repair protein called MBD4, which led to a marked accumulation of methylation damage – as though their cells were ageing prematurely.

All three developed an aggressive form of leukaemia in their early 30s, a cancer which usually wouldn’t be seen until the person is in their 60s or 70s.

Methylation damage plays a role in most cancers, but in these cases it was the primary driver of the disease.

While complete inactivation of MDB4 – as occurred in the three participants – is extremely rare, our findings raise the question of how more subtle differences in DNA repair shape cancer risk, particularly in the context of ageing.

Turning back the clock

Ageing contributes to cancer risk in myriad ways. While we’ve focused here on the buildup of DNA damage, our immune system also plays an important role and tends to fade as we get older.

Lifestyle factors – such as obesity, stress and diet – also provide a cumulative risk that builds over a lifetime.

Read more: What does DNA sound like? Using music to unlock the secrets of genetic code

Understanding the interplay between these factors is key to finding strategies that will effectively diffuse the health consequences associated with ageing.

Our research is helping to tease apart the contribution of DNA damage in different disease processes. Our findings suggest that some people accumulate more DNA damage than others – their clocks are ticking a little faster – and measuring these differences may help to spot people at risk of developing cancer, or help match them with more effective treatments.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tayanah O’Donnell, Honorary senior lecturer, Australian National University

The Kingscliff seawall, in the Tweed Shire in northern New South Wales, is an engineering marvel. It is 300 metres long and 6 metres deep, with a projected cost of between A$3 million and A$5 million. Its depth enables it to be covered in sand. When beach erosion occurs, the wall’s large concrete steps should, in theory, allow the public to carry on using and enjoying the waterfront.

The main purpose of the wall is to protect a beachfront caravan park, the main street, and the beach itself, from coastal erosion.

But while the seawall is innovative, it symbolises a major problem with how we approach coastal erosion and rising sea levels. Councils around Australia must chose between long-term adaption to a changing coastline, or fighting an expensive rearguard battle to protect mainly private property.

Read more: Far-sighted adaptation to rising seas is blocked by just fixing eroded beaches

My PhD research has found that some elected councillors are willing to override long-range climate change planning so as to protect voters’ private property.

The problem with just building walls

The construction of seawalls is usually controversial. A plethora of research has shown that community interests diverge on the question of whom these walls are protecting (and who should have to pay for them).

Fundamentally, this can be categorised as a conflict of private versus public interests, especially where sea walls protect private property at the expense of public amenity and access to beaches.

Seawalls also provide a false sense of security to property owners who should not be encouraged to buy in high-risk locations. While it’s true that Kingscliff’s wall is sensitively designed, seawalls do not allow the coast to function as as a coast should. Coastal environments are dynamic and movable ecosystems; they are special places.

Sometimes, adapting to climate change means allowing places to change. Change can include retreating from some locations, well before disaster strikes. Climate change impacts will render some environments unrecognisable to the people who live in them now. The ultimate injustice would be for marginalised communities to fund the protection of high-risk private properties.

Protecting private property

The problem for local councils is that the main options for coastal adaptation (defend, manage, or retreat) are all likely to curtail individual property freedoms in some way. A key challenge for coastal management and climate adaptation planning is the ongoing priority afforded to private property rights.

During my PhD I explored how residents, local government staff and councillors in Port Stephens and Lake Macquarie approached climate change adaption.

I found that strategies are developed in negotiation between local councils, property owners and local communities, with reference to state policy. This dynamic makes it easier for the advancement of private property rights to become a default priority for some local governments.

This is not because of council staff – quite the opposite. Overwhelmingly, council staff are working hard to implement robust long-term planning to respond to climate risk. However, elected councillors have sometimes overridden staff decisions. They usually do so where decisions negatively affect local constituents’ private property rights or values. One councillor told me “it’s common sense” to allow people to do as they liked with their property. To protect themselves against future liability, some staff minuted legal advice.

Another interesting result of my research was seeing how residents rely on law and popular ideas associated with private property to advance individual property rights (such as exclusivity and freedom to redevelop). At the same time many look to the state for help when their own property is threatened by climate variability.

My data show that residents tend to view coastal residential property in two primary ways: as an asset, and through lived experiences. Most of the residents involved in my research had lived in their localities for decades.

Many respondents said they wanted intervention to protect their own properties from climate change impacts. However, they favoured no intervention for broader property protections. This was especially so where these interventions were because of “climate change”, or where these interventions would reduce property values or public amenity. Others thought we shouldn’t be paying to protect someone who has chosen to live in a high-risk location.

Local governments remain at the forefront of climate adaptation planning on developed coastlines around the world. Authorities can no longer ignore the legal, political, and cultural consequences of climate change impacts to our coastlines.

Read more: Coral reefs work as nature’s sea walls – it pays to look after them

To respond effectively, elected officials must trust their staff to act in the best interests of the council. Council staff can and should create evidence-based policy, recognise their legal responsibilities, work with key stakeholders for effective community engagement, and most importantly, keep good, clear records.

This research, including additional fieldwork, is currently under contract for a monograph with Palgrave MacMillan, for publication in 2019.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erica Smith, Professor of Vocational Education and Training, Federation University Australia

This article is part of a series on the Future of VET exploring issues within the sector and how to improve the decline in enrolments and shortages of qualified people in vocational jobs. Read the other articles in the series here.

Vocational Education and Training (VET) is an important part of the education sector and trains people of all ages for occupations vital across all sectors of the economy. It also makes a major contribution to social inclusion.

Australia endlessly debates the ATAR level needed even to enter teacher-training programs for school teaching.

Read more: Viewpoints: should universities raise the ATAR required for entrance into teaching degrees?

But it doesn’t seem to care about the qualifications of those who teach our young people, workers and citizens in VET. For the last 20 years, VET teachers have only been required to have a Certificate IV level qualification in VET teaching, and the industry qualification at the level at which they are teaching people.

Teacher preparation has been identified as a key factor in the quality of education, so to improve the quality of the VET sector, we need to ensure teachers and trainers are getting the right training themselves. Other factors – such as funding – affect VET quality and student success.

But, in the school sector, it has been shown teachers make the most difference, so the same is likely to be true of VET. Teaching in any sector is a highly skilled activity and VET, especially, has such a range of learners that diverse teaching strategies are needed.

Who are these teachers and trainers?

VET teachers work in TAFE (the public provider) private registered training organisations (RTOs), community colleges or enterprise RTOs (providing qualifications to their workforces). They may teach full-time, have a portfolio of jobs across several providers, or may still work in their industry while they teach part-time.

They are “dual professionals”, needing to keep up with changes in industry, the economy and society, and developing their teaching skills to deal with increasingly complex learner groups and teaching environments.

Until 1997, all full-time TAFE teachers nationally were helped to get degrees in VET teacher training after recruitment, or graduate diplomas if they already had a degree in another area. They studied part-time while teaching.

Read more: Expert panel: what makes a good teacher

In 1998, the minimum qualification – the Certificate IV level – was introduced for all VET teachers and trainers. States and territory TAFE systems gradually stopped requiring higher-level qualifications. The Certificate IV floor became a ceiling.

While some teachers undertake higher-level study, they are now the minority. Yet, those who undertake higher level qualifications can clearly point to their value.

Where’s the evidence these qualifications benefit teachers?

Our national study, conducted from 2015 to 2017, looked at whether and how VET teachers’ qualifications made a difference. The project had seven phases of qualitative and quantitative research over three years, with 1,255 participants from the sector, from all types of training provider and industry areas. We had good numbers of teacher participants at all qualification levels.

In TAFE and RTO case studies for this project, we interviewed supervisors, managers, professional development staff and students as well as teachers.

Based on detailed survey responses and our case study results, we found:

1. higher level qualifications, either in VET teaching practice or another discipline improve teaching approaches, confidence and ability

2. higher level qualifications in VET teaching specifically make a significant difference to VET teachers’ confidence in teaching a diversity of learners

3. the qualification level that makes the most difference is a degree.

How many VET teacher are qualified at different levels?

There is no national source of information on how many VET teachers are qualified at different levels. In our main survey, twice as many VET teachers had degrees in their industry area (37%) as had degrees in VET teaching (19%). Some 27% had qualifications only at Certificate III or Certificate IV in their industry area, and 64% had only a Certificate IV qualification in VET teaching.

By far, the greatest proportion of teachers sat in the lowest qualification combination (sub-degree qualification in their industry area and Certificate IV in VET teaching). Only 11.9% had qualifications at degree level or above in both their industry area and in VET teaching.

But our study showed teachers with degree-level knowledge in teaching and their industry area were the most confident in passing on knowledge and skills to their students. Some teachers with lower qualification levels did show the characteristics of excellent teaching, but these were more common in highly-qualified teachers.

What’s stopping VET teachers from qualifying themselves?

Perhaps the existence of a mandated minimum VET teaching qualification may provide an excuse not to progress further than the minimum. Some people think professional development can act as a substitute for qualifications – but our study found people with lower level qualifications undertake less professional development.

In most jobs, professional development supplements rather than replaces initial qualifications. Perhaps resourcing is an issue. TAFE teachers may expect their study to be supported by employer funding and a workload allowance, neither of which may be possible.

Some people imagine to get a university qualification in VET teaching, people must give up their jobs and go to university for three years. This could, of course, be difficult if it were true – but it isn’t.

All VET teacher-training courses at universities are part-time and offered flexibly, as most students are working full-time in VET or in industry and may live at a distance. Universities work closely with individual TAFE and other providers in making their VET teacher-training courses relevant.

What could help VET teachers become more qualified?

Already, a higher level qualification in adult education (the Diploma of VET or university degree) is recognised by the VET regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), as an alternative to the Certificate IV. VET teachers must now show continuous professional development in VET as well as in industry. Undertaking a VET teaching qualification can meet this requirement.

A more open attitude from some in the VET sector – allowing teachers to attain higher-level qualifications rather than the sector insisting only on educating its own – would help. Ambassadors, such as graduates of higher level courses, could spread the word about what they’ve gained from their studies, personally and in their careers.

Federal and state government could introduce policy provisions to improve teacher/trainer qualification levels, as they do with school teaching and have done with early childhood education.

Read more: Teach for Australia: a small part of the solution to a serious problem

Finally, a “Teach VET for Australia” program, similar to Teach for Australia would be useful. The idea of taking adults with life experience and training them as teachers is what VET teacher-training has done for decades. A named and targeted program could demonstrate the benefits of higher-level qualifications.

The author would like to thank Keiko Yasukawa, Roger Harris, Jackie Tuck, Patrick Korbel and Hugh Guthrie who were researchers on the ARC-funded project, and Steven Hodge who was involved in an earlier project.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jayanta Sarkar, Senior Lecturer, Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology

Have you ever noticed that casinos don’t have clocks or windows?

That’s partly to encourage customers to lose track of time. Their owners have instinctively understood – long before this recent neuroscience study confirmed it – that sleep-deprived people tend to take more risks.

We have a wealth of knowledge from laboratory studies about what sleep loss does to mood, behaviour and our ability to think and work.

We get a taste of it when we travel across time zones, work night shifts or pull all-nighters before exams.

Read more: Daylight saving: why changing SA’s clocks could make us sleepy and accident-prone

But what do we know about the real-life effects of the one hour of sleep loss that most of us experience on the same weekend each year due to daylight saving?

Spring forward

On the first Sunday of October, at 2am, clocks in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory spring forward an hour. People in those states are forced to get up earlier than they are used to.

Our cycle of sleep and waking is called our circadian rhythm – from the Latin circa (about) and dies (day). It is controlled by a tiny region in the hypothalamus of our brains that also regulates our hormone production, digestive function, electrolyte levels, body temperature and resting heart rate.

Read more: 100 years later, the madness of daylight saving time endures

Jumping forward an hour means that, to start with, these things happen when we don’t want them to. It’s a bit like mild jet lag. Jumping forward at the beginning of daylight saving is worse than slipping back at the end, because it also eats into our sleep.

More risks

Many experts attribute accidents (such as the crash of American Airlines Flight 1420, the explosions of the space shuttle Challenger and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill) to human error caused by lost sleep.

It can also affect our normal approach to “economic risks”.

A “daylight saving anomaly” has been described in international financial markets. According to a well-known study published in 2000, stock market returns were negatively affected in the weeks after both the change to and from daylight saving time. “In the United States alone,” they concluded, “the daylight saving effect implies a one-day loss of $31 billion on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ indexes.”

The neuroscience study mentioned above provides the first solid evidence that sleep deprivation makes gambling more tempting. This supports a previous finding that people with disturbed sleep are more likely to be problem gamblers.

Another study finds that sleep deprivation accentuates the tendency to take risks in pursuit of potential gains but to be even more risk-averse when faced with potential losses.

Read more: The dark side of daylight saving time

The results from the laboratory studies are usually hard to generalise to real-life situations.

The annual move to daylight saving in some states but not in others provides a real-world opportunity to examine if missing an hour’s sleep by bringing the clock forward an hour makes a practical difference to ordinary people going about their lives.

Not in Australia

I and colleagues Markus Schaffner, Benno Torgler and Uwe Dulleck recruited volunteers from both sides of the Queensland-NSW border. All lived within a short distance of each other. None were told to lose sleep.

The only known difference between those on each side of the border (except for their State of Origin jersey colours) was that those in NSW had their rhythms disrupted by the start of daylight saving.

Read more: Is daylight saving time worth the trouble? Research says no

A week before the switch we had participants do two tests. The first required them to call mismatches between the name of a colour (i.e. “RED”) and the colour the word was displayed in. The second asked them to choose between different types of lotteries offering small amounts of cash as prizes.

We did it again immediately after the switch to daylight saving, and again a week later.

We found no statistical difference in cognitive performance or risk-taking behaviour, either on the day of the switch or one week after.

The results suggest that, away from the laboratory, the lost hour of sleep and the changed displays on our clocks don’t affect us much.

Fingers poised

It doesn’t mean bigger sleep disruptions don’t make a difference.

Many heads of states appear to be sleep-deprived. US president Donald Trump says he sleeps just four to five hours a night.

He has his finger on the world’s biggest nuclear button. Should that alarm us? I’ll leave that to you.

Drive safely on Monday.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyn McCredden, Personal Chair, Literary Studies, Deakin University

One of the most rancorous, persistent and polarising dualisms today is, arguably, that between the secular and the sacred. Sacred and secular are capacious categories, but in the field of lived and popular culture, such terms are being transformed kaleidoscopically, with the songs of Nick Cave, Hozier, and many others exploring the sacred embedded in very human, secular contexts.

So what happens if we unpack our individual relationship to that dualism? Do the safe walls we have, possibly, built around ourselves, either against religion (or more broadly, the sacred), or against atheism, stand unbudgeable, untouchable? There’s always that middle ground, agnosticism. But do we feel the need to open the gates, prepared to hear our own clichés fly: “Australia is such a modern secular nation”; religion, isn’t that an opiate?; “priests are all pedophiles”; “nothing’s sacred anymore”; “thanks to my Catholic childhood, but no thanks …”

Well, guess what? The enquiry into sacredness is not over, it’s just beginning for the 21st century, and in wildly, playfully, wonderfully disparate modes and places. Enter Nick Cave, that dark prince of early punk music, now striding restlessly back and forth between punk and popular. His song lyrics, with those often melancholy, churchy organ chords, are dripping in references to what might be called sacredness in a secular world.

Read more: New research shows Australian teens have complex views on religion and spirituality

Take, for example, the wry, self-deprecating lyrics of his popular song Into my Arms: “I don’t believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do / But if I did, I would kneel down and ask Him …”

Or the lyrics of a lesser-known song, Brompton Oratory, which takes as its scene the beautiful old church in central London, where a dispirited lover sings to himself, to his absent love, and to a God who is transposed across the absent lover:

Up those stone steps I climb
Hail this joyful day’s return
Into its great shadowed vault I go
Hail the Pentecostal morn.
The reading is from Luke 24
Where Christ returns to his loved ones
I look at the stone apostles
Think that it’s alright for some

And I wish that I was made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define
A beauty impossible to believe
A beauty impossible to endure
The blood imparted in little sips
The smell of you still on my hands
As I bring the cup up to my lips

The music of Brompton Oratory juxtaposes a restless, walking, syncopated rhythm and the moody tones of the church organ. In Cave’s by now famous metaphorical merging of flesh and spirit – “the smell of you still on my hands/As I bring the cup up to my lips” – the singer presses imaginatively, movingly, against the border between death and life, worldly and spiritual love.

Hope and belief merge too, because the sacred here does not equate with dogma, religion, or institution (though the Oratory’s steps are hard, and the apostles are made of stone), but rather with the raw, recognisable longing of one who desires rather than knows, who yearns both spiritually and in the flesh.

Cave’s 10th album, The Boatman’s Call (1997), where these two songs appear, is immersed in sacred and secular intertwined, two lovers knotted together, wrapped in each other’s arms in mutual need, suspicion and recognition. Have a look at the lyrics to There is a kingdom or Idiot Prayer . The idiot in the latter poem has faith, but also doubt. He hopes for heaven and yet sees hell all too viscerally:

This prayer is for you, my love
Sent on the wings of a dove
An idiot prayer of empty words.

Imagination is one route towards the sacred, but it so often crumbles into “empty words” in Cave’s ecstasies. This blend of lyric rapture and melancholy is familiar if you are a Leonard Cohen fan too. In Cohen’s 1984 song Hallelujah, so exquisitely rendered by Jeff Buckley, as well as by John Cale and many others, sacred possibilities are embedded in a lyric of high desire and doubt:

Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift,
The baffled king composing hallelujah…

Cohen’s complicated sexual and spiritual meditation does not shy away from the entanglement of the sacred and the secular (material, sexual, bodily) urges of human life: “There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)/That’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen, Anthem). His hallelujah is “not a victory march/It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

“That’s muzak now, isn’t it?” my partner groaned, as I played Buckley singing his version. And it is. But read Alan Light’s 2012 book, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’ for a gripping account of the journey of the song into popular culture.

Irish singer Hozier’s Take me to Church, covered by Ed Sheeran and others, sings of a he and a she enthralled with each other, making sense of what is human, clean, innocent, generous, in terms that collapse the sacred and the secular.

No masters or kings when the ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin
In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean
Amen, Amen, Amen

Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life

But Hozier’s video for the song (one of two videos, the other a balletic production) is of a he and a he, a gay relationship, which presents another twist to our understanding about why the dualisms of right and wrong, embedded in heteronormativity, must be questioned. The video presents a confronting narrative of persecution and violence against gay sexuality. At the same time, it is a lover’s paean.

The chorus’ “Amen, Amen, Amen” is sung against the visual images of brute hatred and destruction, producing a complex response to the injustice of “the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene”.

Yes, the dualisms of sacred and secular, right and wrong, which fuel homophobia still motivate many cultures, with their need to hierarchise, dominate, or exterminate the other.

But Hozier’s song holds on, through images of total violence, to the beauty and rapture of lovers finding the ground for a love which “dares not speak its name”, still, in many places.

Read more: Friday essay: The Qur’an, the Bible and homosexuality in Islam

Relating to difference

How far have we come from the rigid linguistic and lived dichotomies that shape people’s identities, that police who they can love, that dictate what we should find sacred? Perhaps it’s not a question of “how far have we come”, but of the fecundity of our processes that seek to understand and learn from difference.

Cultures seek sameness, likeness, but more and more, globally, we need to relate to difference, to keep trying to comprehend how different skins, different histories, different sexualities, different beliefs might find openness in living together. That quest for enlightened attitudes to difference speaks into what is at the root of both sacred and secular approaches to living on the earth.

It is a continuing conundrum that in this so-called secular nation of Australia we cannot find fuller and richer ways – politically, religiously – of acknowledging past violence and failure, of moving forward into places where differences are proudly enunciated, rather than nourishing the roots of hatred and dismissal of the other. This conundrum is highlighted when we consider relations between white and Aboriginal Australia.

How often have I heard (white) academics making welcome to country pronouncements, acknowledging Aboriginal sacred relations to place and country, but then in more ways than one eschewing, for themselves, the category of the sacred?

What is it that makes one people declare its sacred relation to ancestors and country, and another people so committed to a modern, secular existence – the material, or hyper-capitalist, or individualistic – while cohabiting the same country?

It was good, therefore, to hear recently of Australian academic David Newheiser’s current research project, Atheism and Christianity: Moving Beyond Polemic, emerging from a team at the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry.

Yes, the Catholic institutional context of ACU might raise some immediate questions about the nature of real debate in this evaluation of atheism. But listening to the reach and openness of this project is fascinating and uplifting (for more, go to ABC Radio National’s The Spirit of Things podcast). Old, cold dualisms are tumbling in this piece of research into the interrelatedness of belief in both atheism and Christianity.

And in relation to our joint life in Australia, racially and spiritually, Aboriginal people today are addressing the present Prime Minister, asking that he hear their claims to sovereignty and deep, historical, sacred relations to culture, country and language. The words of that enormously popular 1991 Yothu Yindi song Treaty still ring out.

Now two rivers run their course
Separated for so long
I’m dreaming of a brighter day
When the waters will be one

Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now
Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now

Nhima djatpangarri nhima walangwalang
Nhe djatpayatpa nhima gaya’ nhe marrtjini yakarray
Nhe djatpa nhe walang gumurrt jararrk gutjuk

With its wonderful, 1980s guitar riffs, the song still holds up, still provokes dreams of “a brighter day/When the waters will be one.”

Of course “one” here doesn’t suggest homogenization, a cloaking of all difference, a refusal to acknowledge racial distinctions, languages and cultures. There are two rivers, different languages, the need for a treaty between different worldviews; but there is, equally, a dream of harmony and respect, a hearing of the others’ voices, a reflective displacing of the dichotomy “us and them”.

In political reality there is, of course, still a great divide, a hierarchy of black and white, of them and us, pre-modern and modern, colonised and coloniser. But there is also lyrical, even utopian, hope. A moving beyond dualisms listened to by many in the music of Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, and the transcendent Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.

Read more: How Dr G.Yunupiŋu took Yolŋu culture to the world

In his monumental and widely influential 2007 work A Secular Age, theologian Charles Taylor wrote of the West’s history of belief and secularism, up to the current moment where, in what he describes as the secular wasteland: “… young people will begin again to explore beyond the boundaries”, eschewing the disembodying of spiritual, celebrating “the integrity of different ways of life”.

Today, flesh and spirit are in new forms of exploration, popular music soaring in the updraught.

For an extended discussion of Cave’s lyrics see Lyn McCreddin’s essays in Lovely Creatures: The Best of Nick Cave, and the Bad Seeds (1984-2014) or in Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave, (2009). eds. Karen Welberry and Tanya Dalziell.

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

While the Coalition took a hit in its two-party vote after the leadership change, the next few Newspolls will tell whether Scott Morrison – who’s started better than many anticipated – restores the government to the 49-51% position of Malcolm Turnbull’s last days.

That would still leave Labor election favourite, not least because the government has no fat in terms of seats and the redistribution works against it. Plus, of course, the voters’ sour mood.

But the narrowing would put Labor nerves on edge. It would judge that if, come election time, it goes into a campaign against Morrison with a lead around 51-49%, the fight could be tougher than if the margin were similar but the opponent had been Turnbull. Turnbull was a poor campaigner; Morrison shows the signs of a good one.

Labor has had plenty of luck, but it needs to keep up the momentum, to look the positive alternative, not just a fallback for disillusioned voters.

This week again saw Bill Shorten on the move. His proposed funding to extend subsidised pre-schooling to three-year-olds is playing to Labor’s policy strength in education.

Read more: A Shorten government would subsidise pre-school for three year olds

His other initiative – roundtables to hear the stories of more victims of the banks and other financial institutions – exploits the potent politics of a scandal that has gripped most people’s attention. Labor’s research tells it the public are red hot with anger about what’s come out at the royal commission.

The government accuses the opposition of disrespecting the commission by launching its own listening tour.

But it’s unlikely too many voters will see it that way. And the sessions, especially those in regional areas, will build on another strength. As leader Shorten has held town hall meetings all over the country. Such grassroots gatherings are useful for establishing Labor’s presence on the ground.

Read more: Labor to hold its own ‘hearings’ for bank victims

Between now and Christmas Shorten will be rolling out more policy. Meanwhile, the government continues working on removing negatives.

Morrison as treasurer had started on one of these when in July the government announced a new formula for distributing the GST revenue, rectifying Western Australia being disadvantaged under the existing one. To smooth the way, the Commonwealth threw in an extra $9 billion over a decade so no state or territory would be left worse off.

With several WA Liberal seats at risk, getting this sorted was urgent; the government decided not to haggle with the states for an agreementbut to legislate the change.

But, despite the assurance there’ll be no losers, state treasurers on Wednesday conjured up possible adverse scenarios and insisted the “no worse off” guarantee must in the legislation, a demand the federal government is resisting.

The legislation is expected to pass in the end, but only after more argy bargy. It is another example of how messy barnacle-removal can be.

Read more: States want the GST guarantee set in legislative stone

Especially when it involves state governments that have elections pending: Victoria goes to the polls on November 24 and NSW on March 23. NSW treasurer Dominic Perrottet was particularly vocal on the GST guarantee.

The Berejiklian government has its elbows out more generally. It recently attacked the Morrison deal to give a pot of money to the Catholic (and other non-government) schools to buy peace. NSW complained this was unfair because it left out government schools and distorted the Gonski-based policy announced by Turnbull.

The Morrison and Berejiklian governments might be of the same stripe but, with both facing elections in the first half of 2019, their interests rub up against each other uncomfortably.

Each is on the nose. The thinking is that whichever goes to the peoplefirst could get a double hit, with NSW voters taking out their angersimultaneously against both administrations.

This is a big strike against a March federal poll in the eyes of federal Liberals, apart from the problem of partially overlapping campaigns. The NSW government would dearly like Morrison to run first but all the federal Liberal planning appears to be heading towards May.

“Morrison needs time,” is the mantra. Maybe. But there is a counter argument, even if it is not being run.

Morrison hasn’t received a honeymoon bounce in the two-party vote, but he has had good publicity. He’s been cast as a can-do guy. But will this fade as the months wear on?

By the time the governments gets to the weeks before a May election, the arguments about policy will have deepened, and how will Morrison go then?

In particular, will the Coalition’s energy policy uncertainty be difficult to handle as the weather starts to chill and people look to another winter?

It is unlikely there will be serious good news on consumer prices. It’s early days but the new energy minister, Angus Taylor, has not at yet come across strongly or indeed been much in evidence. Will he be convincing when he’s put under pressure?

An election launched at the start of February for early March would come off a non-parliamentary period; one launched in April for May (with, incidentally, Easter falling awkwardly during the campaign) would come after parliamentary sittings, which often are difficult for the government.

A factor in the government’s standing over the summer will be the October 20 Wentworth byelection – the outcome will affect its morale and subsequent media coverage.

One reason for the May timetable is that the government needs to fit in a pre-election economic statement (because there would not be a budget before the poll). But though a squeeze, it wouldn’t be too hard to have that statement early.

The conventional wisdom is that a prime minister (who can choose the date, unlike a premier faced with a fixed date) will go when the evidence suggests they can win. This is trickier if a loss seems more probable than victory, whatever the date.

So the assessment becomes: when will the government be at its peak, whatever that peak might be?

Whether Morrison would be at his strongest in March or May is a moot point.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa A Williams, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, UNSW

Friends, children, romantic partners, family members – many of us exchange hugs with others on a regular basis. New research from the United States, published today in PLOS, now shows hugs can help us to cope with conflict in our daily life.

Hugs are considered a form of affectionate touch. Hugs occur between social partners of all types, and sometimes even strangers.

They often arise in positive contexts – while greeting, celebrating an achievement, or simply enjoying the presence of a loved one – but they can also occur in negative contexts when support is needed.

Read more: We need to talk about the mental health of content moderators

Affectionate touch buffers anxiety associated with potential negative events. For instance, in one study, brain activity among participants who held their romantic partner’s hand during a stressful situation reflected less intense threat responses compared to that of participants who held a stranger’s hand, or no hand at all.

Hugs and conflict

The new research, led by Carnegie Mellon’s Michael Murphy, reveals the important role that hugs can play in buffering against the negative impact of interpersonal conflict such as disagreements and arguments.

This study used data from 404 generally healthy adults. They were interviewed via phone by a researcher at the end of the day, each day, for 14 days.

Participants indicated whether or not they had experienced any interpersonal tension or conflict during their day, and whether anyone had hugged them in the past 24 hours. They also rated their experience of both positive affect (such as happy, calm, cheerful) and negative affect (for instance, unhappy, angry, tense) that day.

Most participants (93%) reported receiving a hug on at least one day of the interview period. The same was true for interpersonal conflict (69%). Four per cent of total days of interview data involved conflict with no receipt of a hug. Ten per cent of days involved conflict and receipt of a hug.

How did interpersonal conflict and hugs contribute to emotional experience? On days when individuals experienced conflict when they had had a hug, they experienced less negative affect and more positive affect than on days when they experienced conflict when they had had no hug. The pattern for negative affect even carried over to the next day.

You might wonder how robust these results were. When the researchers examined participant sex, they found a few overall results (e.g., men reported both more conflict and more hug receipt than women), but the key finding above held for both sexes.

Further, in all analyses, the researchers controlled for participants’ age, ethnicity, marital status, education, and the number of unique individuals participants had interacted with on a given day – thus ruling out many alternative explanations.

What we don’t yet know is the causal order of this relationship. The study design only assessed whether a hug was received and whether interpersonal conflict had occurred. So, it’s unclear whether the hug preceded or followed from the conflict.

We also don’t know whether the hug and the conflict involved the same person, nor do we know the type or severity of the conflict. So we should be careful about advocating “hugging it out”.

Those caveats aside, this research fits within a broader field of research that points to the importance of affectionate touch – for both physical and social wellbeing. For instance, other findings from this research team show that receiving hugs reduces the likelihood of catching the common cold, and reduces the severity of symptoms even if infected.

Why are hugs beneficial?

Why might hugs be beneficial? Being hugged leads to release of the hormone oxytocin, setting off a range of downstream outcomes that could explain the benefits of hugging. Oxytocin is involved in a complex range of social processes, but has been implicated romantic bonding and trust.

Other research suggests the benefits of hugs and affectionate touch more generally rest within the cardiovascular system. One study found lower systolic blood pressure in the husbands of couples asked to increase the frequency of affectionate touch with one another. Other research documents lowered blood pressure and heart rate among women who receive frequent hugs.

Psychologically, hugs and affectionate touch more generally communicate social support.

We hug to convey that we care, that we’re grateful for a benefit received, that we share in an achievement. Receiving a hug therefore serves as a signal that the social relationship is characterised by closeness and concern. It’s no surprise then, that relationships characterised by frequent affectionate touch are happier relationships.

Hug specifics

Not all hugs are alike. Does variability in hug characteristics matter?

Does giving hugs carry similar benefit as receiving hugs? Some research indicates that being on the receiving end of affectionate touch has the most benefit. Chances are, though, that fully reciprocal hugs are equally beneficial.

Read more: A survival guide for the coming AI revolution

Can the benefits of affectionate touch carry beyond humans? The answer is yes. Hugging and affectionate touch with robots, therapy dogs and pets of all types produce a range of positive outcomes, likely supported by the same underlying mechanisms as human to human touch, such as oxytocin release.

Does the number of hugs and the number of people you hug matter? More hugs are better, at least among romantic couples, but we don’t yet know if more frequent hugs with a larger number of people is important.

Does the duration of the hug matter? Most hugs are three seconds long, but evidence suggests that hugs of 20 seconds are those that kick off the cardiovascular benefits mentioned above.

So seek out a hug. Chances are, you’ll be better for it.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Fankhauser, Deputy Chair, Aviation Department, Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology

The world is running out of experienced pilots. Supply is not keeping up with the growing demand for air travel. In Australia the effects are already starting to bite.

Even flagship carrier Qantas is having problems. In recent months it has had to perform a very nimble tap dance to crew its vast fleet and maintain its extensive flight schedule.

In response Qantas has plans for one of the biggest pilot training programs in its history. It has just announced its first ever pilot training academy, training 250 pilots a year, will be based in Toowoomba. A second site, to train a similar number of pilots, is still to be announced.

Training this many pilots, though, will be a struggle. The academy will first have to find enough instructional pilots to deliver the required training flights.

Ruptured training pipelines

The reason airlines and other operators are in this predicament stems from the rupturing of the training pipelines that historically supplied pilots across all levels of the aviation industry.

Experience is everything in aviation. Qantas and Australia’s other major carriers – Virgin Australia, Tiger and Jetstar – have mostly employed pilots with high levels of flying experience. Pilots gained that experience flying for regional airlines, charter operators and, critically, as instructors at flight training schools.

As pilots gained experience and progressed to more lucrative flying positions, newly qualified pilots were employed to replace them. Together with a trickle of ex-military pilots topping up the airlines, the whole system had sat more or less in equilibrium.

Read more: One flies planes, the other makes money: the two sides of aviation

Reaching a tipping point

This equilibrium has been at tipping point for some time. Almost a decade ago (in 2009) a government white paper predicted the training system would fail without remedial action.

Some measures were put in place, but not enough. Most of the weaknesses went uncorrected. It was only because of the Global Financial Crisis, which suppressed global demand for air travel, that crisis was delayed.

A leading indicator of system failure is a dearth of available experienced trainers, as flying school instructors move into airline employment. Without these instructors, flight schools struggle to train new pilots to feed the industry from the bottom up.

In Australia there is no mechanism to maintain this vital pool of flight instructors. There are no formalised career pathways and minimal financial support to those looking to teach others to fly. A bespoke airline training scheme won’t remedy the problem if its pilots all go straight into the airline’s employ.

Taking care of training pathways

In the US the system is somewhat different. Despite substantial evidence to show that airline cadetship programs posed no negative impact to flight safety, in 2013 the US Federal Aviation Administration chose to stipulate a substantial minimum level of experience a pilot must have to be employed by a major airline.

While this has exacerbated the pilot shortage issue for American airlines, it has also forced the industry to create formal pathways to train new pilots and help freshly qualified pilots progress to an airline career. Such pathways often include a period of employment as a flying instructor.

A similar “instructing pathway” needs to be a central part of Australia’s airline training programs if they are going to be sustainable.

Read more: We’re flying into an aviation skills crisis, with safety under the radar

Government also has a role to play, as noted by the expert panel charged with recommending strategies for a sustainable and successful aviation training sector in Australia. A key issue is education funding.

Sky-high student costs

The cost to become a commercial pilot is comparable to that of becoming a doctor or a veterinarian. A university-trained commercial pilot with a flight-instructor rating will pay more than $140,000 in fees.

But unlike those doing medicine or veterinary science courses, trainee pilots have never been adequately assisted by federal student subsidy and loan schemes such as HECS, FEE-HELP of VET Student Loans.

Recent amendments to the Higher Education Support Act cap the maximum debt a student can have under the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) at $104,440. The only exceptions are medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, where the cap is $150,000.

This effectively means students wanting to undertake a flight training degree need to find close to $35,000 upfront. The effect will be profound. Many talented potential pilots will not be able to pursue the career.

Over the horizon

Looking further into the future, we must find more ways to maintain the pilot training pipeline. Encouraging more female and Indigenous students to pursue the career would be a start. The numbers now are woefully low.

Read more: Life in a post-flying Australia, and why it might actually be ok

Finally, the entire process of pilot training needs to be made more effective and efficient. Practices have remained essentially unchanged since flight training began.

Our future training systems must make pragmatic use of learning technologies and theory to enhance student progression, reduce failure and maximise the use of expensive aircraft resources. This requires investment.

In Canada, the training and simulation giant CAE, in partnership with the national and Quebec governments, is investing C$1 billion over the next five years to develop the next generation of aviation training systems.

In Australia we need to recognise this opportunity for innovation and act now, before our pilot training system completely crumbles.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria J Palmer, Senior Research Fellow & Honorary Fellow (Applied Ethics) Melbourne Networked Society Institute, University of Melbourne

John Hancock Insurance, the US division of Canadian insurance company Manulife, came under scrutiny last month for offering lower premiums to individuals who agreed to share their fitness tracking data with the company.

It’s another example of the new era of information capital, in which companies commercially benefit from users’ data. Aside from health data, companies around the world currently make money from tracking location information, purchasing patterns, sleep data, and social interests.

Read more: The social factors that influence whether you’ll use your wearable device

According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, those in society who hold capital can grow advantage and pass it on. But it doesn’t always follow that accumulated advantage is put to ethical use, or that the benefits are passed on to serve the greater good.

When it comes to information capital, often the result is the opposite. And often advantage is gained in the first place by what can only be deemed as perverse incentives.

What is a perverse incentive?

A perverse incentive refers to the unintended consequences, or harms, of a reward that’s on offer.

For example, a company might suggest that the adoption of a fitness tracking program is positive because it will produce health benefits for the individual and the community. But, in the long term, these incentives could create economic inequities, or serve to frame some groups negatively.

Consider if a fitness tracking program offered by an insurer was linked with an employer. If data about who adopted the fitness tracking program and who didn’t was made public, employers might offer additional rewards and benefits to those who take part. One consequence of this could be that people who choose not to participate in the program are stigmatised, or portrayed as social deviants through noncompliance. A culture of competition for rewards could emerge.

In the brave new world of information capital, sharing data collected from wearables and other technologies could be a slippery slope towards the kind of social hierarchy evident in China’s much-criticised social credit system.

Read more: China’s Social Credit System puts its people under pressure to be model citizens

These kinds of incentives could also lead to loss of personal autonomy, particularly in cases where companies prescribe the devices and the brands that support their programs. When a person’s right to choose is impinged upon, these devices start to shape our private and social lives.

Is this happening in Australia?

Similar incentives to those offered by John Hancock Insurance are already available from Australian insurance firms.

To be eligible for premium discounts and rewards, you need only to complete regular online health assessments, join partnered gyms, use a prescribed fitness tracker and the associated health program, or show a body mass index of lower than, or equivalent to, 28. Some insurers also request a complete blood test to be stored on their files.

Aside from being used to determine premium costs, what other uses this data is put to is unknown.

Genetic discrimination by insurers has previously been identified in Australia. This means that people with identifiable health conditions, or predispositions to future risk, are charged increased premiums, excluded from certain covers or refused insurance outright.

In 2017, an Australian parliamentary enquiry was held into discrimination by insurers regarding predictive genetic information and the use of medical information. A moratorium was imposed on the use of predictive genetic information by life insurers. Other recommendations included the development of standards and protocols around storage of medical files and access by insurers, and disclosure to consumers about any requests made for medical information.

Read more: Why life insurance companies want your Fitbit data

Where is the consumer advantage?

In the new era of information capital, it’s essential that we better understand what data government and companies are collecting, how it’s being used and who it might be shared with.

This can be a lot of work. Look at what’s happening with My Health Record: you must explicitly opt out to prevent your data from being used for secondary purposes, such as to inform research, policy and planning. The new Data Sharing and Release Legislation will play help determine how data can be shared and and consumer data rights.

Like all forms of capital, information capital has the ability to shape advantage. In this case, those in the top tier receive the economic and social benefits, while those in the bottom tier are punished with higher costs, possible exclusion and maybe even less access to treatments in the future. So, information capital is creating an advantage that almost certainly will not be passed on here.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Keys, Associate Professor of US and International History, University of Melbourne

This article is part of our series of explainers on key moments in the past 100 years of world political history. In it, our authors examine how and why an event unfolded, its impact at the time, and its relevance to politics today.

At 8:46am on a sunny Tuesday morning in New York City, a commercial jet plane flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre, cutting through floors 93 to 99.

As the news was beamed around the world, shaken reporters wondered whether the crash had been an accident or an act of terrorism. At 9:03am, viewers watching the smoke billowing from the gash in the building were stunned to see a second jet plane dart into view and fly directly into the South Tower. Suddenly, it was clear that the United States was under attack.

The scale of the assault became apparent about 40 minutes later, when a third jet crashed into the Pentagon. Not long after, in the fourth shock of the morning, the South Tower of the World Trade Centre unexpectedly crumbled to the ground in a few seconds, its structural integrity destroyed by the inferno set off by the plane’s thousands of gallons of jet fuel. Its twin soon succumbed to the same fate.

What happened?

Over the next days and weeks, the world learned that 19 militants belonging to the Islamic terrorist group, al Qaeda, armed with box cutters and knives missed by airport security, had hijacked four planes.

Three hit their targets. The fourth, intended for the White House or the Capitol, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania when passengers, who had learned of the other attacks, struggled for control of the plane. All told, close to 3,000 people were killed and 6,000 were injured.

Immediate impact of the attacks

The events of 9/11 seared the American psyche. A country whose continental states had not seen a major attack in nearly 200 years was stunned to find that its financial and military centres had been hit by a small terrorist group based thousands of miles away. More mass attacks suddenly seemed not just probable but inevitable.

Read more: How the pain of 9/11 still stays with a generation

The catastrophe set in motion a sequence of reactions and unintended consequences that continue to reverberate today. Its most lasting and consequential effects are interlinked: a massively expensive and unending “war on terror”, heightened suspicion of government and the media in many democratic countries, a sharp uptick in Western antagonism toward Muslims, and the decline of US power alongside rising international disorder – developments that aided the rise of Donald Trump and leaders like him.

War without end?

Just weeks after 9/11, the administration of US President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan with the aim of destroying al Qaeda, which had been granted safe haven by the extremist Taliban regime. With the support of dozens of allies, the invasion quickly toppled the Taliban government and crippled al Qaeda. But it was not until 2011, under President Barack Obama, that US forces found and killed al Qaeda’s leader and 9/11 mastermind – Osama bin Laden.

Though there have been efforts to end formal combat operations since then, over 10,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan today, fighting an intensifying Taliban insurgency. It is now the longest war the United States has fought. Far from being eradicated, the Taliban is active in most of the country. Even though the war’s price tag is nearing a trillion dollars, domestic pressure to end the war is minimal, thanks to an all volunteer army and relatively low casualties that make the war seem remote and abstract to most Americans.

Even more consequential has been the second major armed conflict triggered by 9/11: the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was not linked to 9/11, officials in the administration of George W. Bush were convinced his brutal regime was a major threat to world order. This is largely due to Saddam Hussein’s past aggression, his willingness to defy the United States, and his aspirations to build or expand nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs, making it seem likely that he would help groups planning terrorist attacks on the West.

The invading forces quickly ousted Saddam, but the poorly executed, error-ridden occupation destabilised the entire region.

In Iraq, it triggered a massive, long-running insurgency. In the Middle East more broadly, it boosted Iran’s regional influence, fostered the rise of the Islamic State, and created lasting disorder that has led to civil wars, countless terrorist attacks, and radicalisation.

In many parts of the world, the war fuelled anti-Americanism; in Europe, public opinion about the war set in motion a widening estrangement between the United States and its key European allies.

Monetary and social costs

Today, the United States spends US$32 million every hour on the wars fought since 9/11. The total cost is over US$5,600,000,000,000. (5.6 trillion dollars). The so-called war on terror has spread into 76 countries where the US military is now conducting counter-terror activities, ranging from drone strikes to surveillance operations.

The mind-boggling sums have been financed by borrowing, which has increased social inequality in the United States. Some observers have suggested that government war spending was even more important than financial deregulation in causing the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Eroding democracy

The post-9/11 era has eroded civil liberties across the world. Many governments have cited the urgent need to prevent future attacks as justification for increased surveillance of citizens, curbing of dissent, and enhanced capacity to detain suspects without charge.

The well publicised missteps of the FBI and the CIA in failing to detect and prevent the 9/11 plot, despite ample warnings, fed public distrust of intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Faulty intelligence about what turned out to be nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) undermined public confidence not only in the governments that touted those claims but also in the media for purveying false information.

The result has been a climate of widespread distrust of the voices of authority. In the United States and in other countries, citizens are increasingly suspicious of government sources and the media — at times even questioning whether truth is knowable. The consequences for democracy are dire.

Increasing Islamophobia

Across the West, 9/11 also set off a wave of Islamophobia. Having fought a decades-long Cold War not long before, Americans framed the attack as a struggle of good versus evil, casting radical Islam as the latest enemy. In many countries, voices in the media and in politics used the extremist views and actions of Islamic terrorists to castigate Muslims in general. Since 9/11, Muslims in the United States and elsewhere have experienced harassment and violence.

In Western countries, Muslims are now often treated as the most significant public enemy. European populists have risen to power by denouncing refugees from Muslim majority countries like Syria, and the willingness and ability of Muslims to assimilate is viewed with increasing scepticism.

A week after his inauguration, US President Donald Trump kept a campaign promise by signing the so-called “Muslim ban”, designed to prevent citizens of six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Following attacks

One of the most widely expected consequences of 9/11 has so far been averted. Though Islamic terrorists have engaged in successful attacks in the West since 9/11, including the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 2015 attacks in Paris, there has been no attack on the scale of 9/11. Instead, it is countries with large Muslim populations that have seen a rise in terrorist attacks.

Yet the West still pays the price for its militant and militarised response to terrorism through the weakening of democratic norms and values. The unleashing of US military power that was supposed to intimidate terrorists has diminished America’s might, creating a key precondition for Donald Trump’s promise to restore American greatness.

Although many of the issues confronting us today have very long roots, the world we live in has been indelibly shaped by 9/11 and its aftermath.