The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Chambers, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Justice, RMIT University

Recent reporting paints a picture of surging road deaths and failing safety strategies for cyclists. The Australian Automobile Association’s Benchmarking report records 1,222 road deaths in the year ending June 2018. And cyclist deaths in particular remain stubbornly high, even as average speeds, which affect road deaths, continue to decline. If cars are much safer than 25 years ago, why are cyclist deaths increasing, from 25 the previous year to 45 this past year?

Of the untimely road deaths the AAA reports, 1,100 are due to how drivers were driving. In Australia, drivers are to blame for at least 79% of accidents with cyclists. And roughly 85% of reported cyclist casualty crashes involve another vehicle, not a bike or a pedestrian. Driver distraction accounts for roughly 25% of accidents.

These stats highlight a clear pattern of deadly harm: drivers hitting people, because of how they’re driving, is 90% of the problem on our roads.

Read more: Cars, bicycles and the fatal myth of equal reciprocity

What’s wrong with current safety strategies?

Calls are often made to install separation infrastructure and high-tech sensors in cars to fix the problem, as if the problem is cars and bikes mixing. These calls often follow the publication of reports or the deaths of cyclists in ways that make the news. Such claims are seldom met with critical scrutiny.

Although better infrastructure is needed and warranted, and high-tech sensors might reduce harm, people are still being needlessly killed. Mostly, that’s due to how people drive.

System-wide infrastructure and high-tech improvements are complex and take years or decades to complete. Installation has to be standardised and comprehensive to be truly effective. State-led infrastructure projects are often subject to budget blowouts. In crucial cases, the public has been left without the promised solution or service – regardless of whether it was publicly or privately led.

More deeply, calls for technical saviours are essentially wrongheaded because they disregard the root cause of the problems: driver behaviour – specifically, aggression and inattention. Separation of transport modes can’t fix aggression and inattention.

Indeed, separation contributes to irresponsibility by baking the assumption of danger and vulnerability into infrastructure. It works by diminishing the need for care and attention on the part of those responsible for the greatest harm: drivers.

This approach, we argue, reiterates a stigmatising, criminogenic understanding of bikes as inappropriate, unsafe and unwelcome on “our” roads. In this context, words are not weapons, but when they create aggressive drivers they do weaponise.

Read more: More people will cycle when everyone accepts cyclists’ right to be on the road

We need to focus on primary prevention

We’re clearly failing one another here. One way to begin responding better is by taking wisdom and insight from primary prevention approaches to male violence against women. This starts by acknowledging the root cause of systemic instances of deadly violence is banal, routine and excused and explained away because of its alignment with dominant cultural values.

Read more: Change the story: how the world’s first national framework can help prevent violence against women

The next step is to respond in ways that keep returning attention to the facts from best evidence. To repeat, whether you’re a driver, occupant, pedestrian or cyclist, roughly 90% of what causes death on Australia’s roads is driver behaviour.

For cyclists, the root cause of deadly harm is aggression and inattention. Drivers should be held to account and be pushed to change their behaviour and attitudes.

So what changes are needed?

Simple inexpensive changes in the law have been found to have dramatic effects on driver behaviour. These changes also work with existing infrastructure, technology, road conditions and our cultural expressions of human nature.

One change that’s in line with primary prevention and strong evidence of success is a move to a model of presumed liability for drivers. This would be a hard sell in light of current settings here, which support and excuse deadly violence by drivers because of the dominant motoring culture. But it’s proven to work in the Netherlands.

Read more: Cars overwhelmingly cause bike collisions, and the law should reflect that

Another welcome measure is a recent initiative to reduce urban speed limits to 30km/h. This has just been implemented in one of Melbourne’s inner urban areas without too much fuss. According to the research behind it, you’re twice as likely to survive being hit at 30km/h as at 40km/h.

Time will tell, but evidence suggests this change will reduce harm and improve traffic flows. As with moving to presumed liability, it does so without expensive infrastructure and unproven gizmos, while following the wisdom of primary prevention by putting the onus on the root cause rather than the victim.

Finally, we urge that this issue be considered as one of universal access to safe transport infrastructure. It’s not about “cars versus bikes”; it’s about the simple right to get where you’re going safely and sensibly. This shouldn’t be a privilege that’s extended only to those with the resources and bodies capable of driving.

In light of this, it’s crucial we note that cars are deadly, that 90% of the problem is driver behaviour, and that the motor car fails on its promise of delivering safe, efficient urban transport.

Read more: Contested spaces: ‘virtuous drivers, malicious cyclists’ mindset gets us nowhere

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rafal Chomik, Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), UNSW

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety on Sunday, responding to concerns about the sector one day before an ABC Four Corners program which was to air them.

Aged care is where the challenges of population ageing are most apparent and where policy choices have direct impact on the lives of Australians.

So, it’s not surprising that the system is under increasing scrutiny. Various reviews have looked at different aspects of aged care since 2011 when major reforms were first ushered in, including into quality, public financing, workforce, and the overall progress of reforms.

The outcomes all point to similar conclusions. Responding to the needs of older, often vulnerable, Australians is an extremely complex business. But it is also one in which making money is tough. The danger is that a combination of cost pressures, profit incentives, and inadequate oversight encourage or force providers to cut corners.

How providers make money

Most funding for aged care comes from government. Direct government expenditure on the overall system was about A$17 billion in 2016-17, with A$12 billion going to residential care.

The users of residential care topped this up with A$4.5 billion of their own money, via regulated fees that are capped for users who pass a generous means test.

Read more: Essential reading to get your head around Australia’s aged care crisis

But costs of care are high. Providers spend more than A$11 billion on staff, yet those staff aren’t highly paid. This is in part because they are mainly females, who face an unremitting gender pay gap.

The pause that hurt

The Aged Care Financing Authority reports that profits are climbing over the long term but are precarious year-to-year.

The residential industry saw profits fall by 4% to 5% in 2016-17, partly because of a pause and then a scaling back of the indexation of government funding.

Although one quarter of residential care providers made losses in 2016-17, two thirds continued to record profits.

Bigger centres

The tighter funding was justified as a measure to drive efficiency, but it provided further impetus to the longer term trend of big providers to merging with or taking over the small ones. While the number of care places has climbed 8% in four years, the number of providers has shrunk 13%.

One reason why unprofitable providers remain in the market is because they are, by definition, not-for-profit. So the system relies heavily on good will. While still dominant, they have lost share to private, for-profit providers, some of which have the advantage of economies of scale or capital ownership structures that allow them to pay less tax.

While some of those listed on the Australian Securities Exchange saw drops in their share prices in recent years, the sharp declines when the Royal Commission was announced may reflect investor concern about the risk of greater scrutiny of the relationship between their profits and quality of care.

Uncertain quality

It will be open to the Royal Commission to examine how these trends are affecting the quality of care.

The government influences the quality of care in other ways that might attract the interest of the Royal Commission. It sets standards and helps design the incentives that discipline the market.

The standards cover indicators including management, the health and personal care of residents, resident lifestyle, and resident safety. They have been enforced by initial accreditation, subsequent re-accreditation, self-reporting, the examination of complaints and (until recently) pre-announced visits.

In 2017 the government announced a move to unannounced visits after evidence suggesting that some were “staged” in order to present the centre “in the best possible light”.

In July 2018 the government began charging for unannounced visits, raising what it expects to be A$10 million a year.

It’s hard to switch

Consumers can themselves apply market pressure on poor performers, and it is increasingly possible through a move to so-called consumer directed care, where care recipients or their carers are given a budget and the ability to decide how to spend it. If one provider turns out to deliver poor services, they can switch and spend their money elsewhere.

But the transaction cost of switching can be high. The process isn’t easy for users experiencing cognitive decline and there’s not always another centre or service to switch to.

Next steps

The Royal Commission will expose much. For providers, it will be an opportunity to examine their operations to ensure that efficiencies and profits don’t come at the cost of quality. For government, it will be a chance to examine how its funding mechanism, regulations, enforcement and market design are working out in practice.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, PhD candidate, RMIT University

Review: The Beehive, ACMI Melbourne

A conventional documentary presents a singular argument or perspective. But Zanny Begg throws out the conventions in her film, The Beehive, by presenting 1,344 possible versions of the narrative. This prompts us to question how knowledge is constructed.

The Beehive is about the unsolved murder of the 38 year-old Sydney newspaper publisher and anti housing-development campaigner Juanita Nielsen in 1975. Nielsen’s body has never been found, and the identity of her murderer has long been the subject of speculation. Although no one was convicted, it is widely believed that her activism against big-town corporate development was instrumental in her murder.

The title, The Beehive, alludes to both Nielsen’s hairdo and a recurring motif of bees and their communal ways of living and working throughout the film.

Although presented in a linear form (a 30-minute documentary), the narrative of The Beehive is non-linear. It is comprised of sequences from which the viewer attempts to make sense of the landscape of Kings Cross and Sydney in the 1970s and its relationship to current issues around housing affordability and development, violence against women, Indigenous history, trade unions, activism and sexuality. But how you piece together these events depends on which version or versions you happen upon during your visit.

The film includes interviews with activists and those that knew Nielsen at the time. They give background and context, although this is only ever partial. Twelve different Juanita Nielsens, played by a refreshingly racially diverse array of actors, reflect on her persona while also giving insight into the struggles that many women today face in finding affordable housing.

The Beehive also includes re-creations at the Carousel Club in the Cross, where the murder is believed to have happened; as well as poetic and metaphoric images of bees and the rooftop beekeeper.

Narrative by algorithm

The beginning and the ending of each version are more or less the same, but the sequences in between vary. These are shuffled by an algorithm which produces one of the 1,344 possible combinations. The Beehive rewards repeated viewing. Over three visits I saw nine different versions. Each time there was new material, presented in different contexts, and increasingly varied ways.

On my first visit, I entered the gallery where the film is being exhibited midway through an interview about housing development and affordability but the subsequent few versions I watched did not include this material. Instead, they were more heavily focused on the recreations at the Carousel Club, which seemed to assume a kind of preexisting knowledge and context.

In one of the versions I watched, an interview with sex worker activist Julie Bates situated Nielsen’s campaign among other important movements of the era and within a history of grass-roots activism in Sydney.

In another, a conversation between a local Aboriginal woman and Nielsen (here played by Pamela Rabe) foregrounded the history of violence against Indigenous women. And in another version, Nielsen’s former partner David Farrell gave a more personal account of her nonconformist lifestyle.

Each of these configurations, and the way certain elements are highlighted, works to create a different perspective of Juanita and a different lens through which we view her murder.

The Beehive joins a collection of recent Australian documentary works focused on unsolved murders of women. These include the ABC podcast Trace, about the murder of bookshop owner Maria James, and The Australian’s The Teacher’s Pet, about the murder of Lyn Dawson. However, rather than presenting a journalistic investigation into Nielsen’s murder, Begg uses a range of strategies in her hybrid documentary.

By presenting 1,344 versions through a randomising instrument, devised by programmer Andy Nicholson, The Beehive dismantles the idea that documentaries can impart unequivocal knowledge about the world.

While The Beehive is the important story of an unsolved murder of someone who spoke truth to power and campaigned against gentrification and the erasure of community, the film’s form makes us do the cognitive work of connecting the pieces and finding patterns.

In presenting us with more versions than we will surely watch, and an awareness of material that we will not see, The Beehive highlights not only what can be known, but also what cannot.

The Beehive is showing at ACMI, Melbourne, until November 4.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Sharrock, Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, University of Melbourne

This is a longer read. Enjoy!

In Paris each year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publishes its Education at a Glance report. And each year, local reporting highlights our incredibly low public spending on tertiary education.

In this narrative, the 2016 edition ranked Australia second-lowest in the OECD. The 2017 edition put us in the bottom four, well below countries such as Portugal and Mexico, and 40% below the OECD average.

Read more: Six things Labor’s review of tertiary education should consider

With claims such as these making headlines, few would guess Australian tertiary education is not that under-funded, comparatively speaking. New figures in the 2018 edition, released last week, confirm this.

Local trends since 2008

The top line in the chart below shows OECD estimates of total spending on Australian tertiary institutions as a share of GDP, over 2008-2015. This is the OECD’s “B2” metric for institutional revenue. It shows the level of income from all sources that flow to universities and other tertiary providers.

The line below is the OECD’s “B4” metric: total public spending on tertiary education as a whole, from a government point of view. This includes direct public grants to institutions, and also government loans or grants to students for tuition fees, living costs, and so on.

Australia compared with other tertiary systems

The chart below shows Australia’s total public spending rate in cash outlay terms, between 2010 and 2014.

Australia’s rate rose from 1.1% to 1.4% of GDP, as the OECD average rate slid from 1.4% to 1.3%. The slide reflects flat or falling rates elsewhere, notably in Ireland – which fell from 1.4% to 1.0% – as well as in Spain, Hungary, Portugal and others.

Comparing total spending on institutions

The chart below shows how, in most OECD countries, total rates for tertiary institutions (revenue from all sources, public or private) were flat or falling between 2010 and 2015. Again, Ireland’s rate fell sharply, in this case from 1.6% to 0.8% of GDP. Rates also fell in Finland, Portugal, Slovenia and others. As the OECD average slid to 1.5% of GDP, the Australian rate rose markedly, from 1.6% to 2.0%.

A government spin-doctor might say tertiary funding in Australia ranks “fourth-highest” in the OECD. But not really.

In part, Australia’s high rate reflects high private revenue from our high volume of international enrolments. As well, universities have had a domestic enrolment boom financed by uncapped government grants and loans (until 2017). Also, public loans in the now closed VET FEE-HELP scheme, which had been misused by unscrupulous providers, peaked in 2015.

Institutional resourcing: rises and falls over time

In the chart below, total spending on Australian tertiary institutions rose by 44% between 2010 and 2015. The OECD average rose 12%. In some countries (Portugal, Italy, Slovenia and others) total spending on institutions fell.

Per student, Australian institutional spending rose 20%. The OECD average rose 11%. In Ireland, Spain, Germany and others per student spending fell.

To compare institutional resource levels per student across systems in any given year, the OECD uses “purchasing power parity in US dollar” estimates to compare spending rates across diverse economies on like-for-like terms.

As seen in the chart below, Australia’s total rate of institutional spending per tertiary student in 2015 was US$23,300. The OECD average rate was US$15,700. For Spain it was US$12,600, and US$11,800 in Portugal, US$11,300 in Italy, US$10,200 in Slovenia, US$8,800 in Hungary, and US$4,100 in Greece.

How can we be “second-lowest”?

From the evidence so far, many might wonder how Australia’s funding could be lower than in most European countries. This is because local reports of “second lowest”, “bottom four” and “40% below average” rely on a single slice of data from the OECD’s data set which shows public spending on tertiary institutions.

This version of “public spending” excludes HELP loans, historically classed as a “private” source of revenue in this dataset. Using this classification, the 2016 report put our “public” rate at just 0.7% of GDP against an OECD average of 1.1%. The chart shows how, on this view, we seemed “second-lowest” in 2013, ahead of Japan.

But as the OECD has recognised, its metrics which show total spending on tertiary institutions don’t show the real public cost of student loans in the UK or Australia.

Last year, Australian higher education expert Simon Marginson estimated that the UK’s 2014 “public” and “private” spending rates in this dataset (0.6% public and 1.3% private) came closer to a 50:50 split once unrepaid student loans were taken into account.

And in Australia last year, the government reduced the estimated value of accrued student HELP debt substantially, from A$55 billion to A$36 billion. In these cases, OECD’s data understates public and overstates private spending.

As the chart above shows, these “public spending” figures on their own present only a partial picture. A further problem with the “second-lowest” tag is that the OECD’s 2016 report had no data to show for Luxembourg or Greece. And until last year’s OECD report the UK was reporting student loans as public while Australia’s were reported as private.

Other news in the 2018 report

The 2018 report reflects OECD efforts to separate apples and oranges where public loans are a major policy instrument. The UK’s revised “public” rate now sits below Australia’s, not at the OECD average. And the OECD’s updated metric for public/private spending now shows figures for “initial” government payments to institutions, including public loans for tuition.

This puts “final” government funding in context, by showing how different approaches to public financing play out for tertiary institutions.

GDP growth effects

Even then, the latest “11th-lowest” view of Australian public spending needs more context.

In metrics like these – local spending as a share of national income – high economic growth in Australia often skews comparisons with countries hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis, as in much of Europe. Over 2001-2015, Australian GDP grew by 50%. The OECD average was 28%, and the Euro area average was 14%.

Read more: OECD comparisons don’t prove our unis are underfunded

Consider Greece: over 2008-2015 it cut public funding for public universities by 58%. According to the European University Association public university funding in Italy, Spain and Hungary also fell, by 17%, 22% and 30% respectively.

So, even if their public spending rates at times look higher in OECD metrics, we can’t assume universities in these countries are better-funded.

Read more: OECD figures are not what they seem in higher education

In fact, while Australian rates in some OECD metrics have risen faster than most, in many cases our GDP grew faster as well. The chart below shows how some countries with flat or falling rates of public funding (such as Italy, Portugal, Spain and France) also had flat or falling GDP.

Australia is best served by better local knowledge

The Australian tertiary sector is better-financed than the OECD’s most popular (and most “damning”) statistics suggest. In reality, places such as Portugal do not invest more and our funding is not really 40% below the OECD average.

From government reporting and analyses by the Grattan Institute, the Mitchell Institute and others, we know Australian spending on tertiary education has risen rapidly over the years. Compared to many others, ours is a big system growth story. In the end, Australian policy and funding debates are better served by tracking domestic data, and more informed and transparent use of the most relevant OECD metrics.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

This week’s federal Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers, conducted September 12-15 from a sample of 1,200, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a two-point gain for the Coalition since mid-August. Primary votes were 34% Coalition (up one), 31% Labor (down four), 15% Greens (up two), 7% One Nation (steady) and 13% for all Others (up two). The respondent allocated preference figure was also 53-47 to Labor.

Newspoll and Essential last week respectively gave Labor 42% and 37% of the primary vote, with the Greens at 10% in both polls. At the 2016 election, Ipsos consistently had the Greens higher than other polls, and the election results were in line with the other polls, not Ipsos.

Read more: Final House results and a polling critique

Ipsos is the only Australian pollster that still uses live phone interviews (mobile and landline) for its polls. All other pollsters now use either robopolling, online methods, or a combination of the two. However, live phone polling cannot be the only explanation for the high Greens vote, as Newspoll and Ipsos’ predecessor in Fairfax, Nielsen, once used live phone polling without a persistently high Greens’ vote.

While Ipsos’ primary votes are weird, the two party vote is more volatile than other pollsters, but it usually tracks other polling well. There may have been a decline for Labor because voters are no longer focused on the chaotic events leading to Malcolm Turnbull’s ousting as PM.

The last Ipsos poll (55-45 to Labor) was released on August 20, and four days later, Turnbull was gone. While this poll was not the reason for Turnbull’s downfall, it may have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back”. Two ReachTEL polls taken in the week of Turnbull’s ousting gave Labor a 51-49 and a 53-47 lead, so the 55-45 Ipsos lead was probably an outlier.

Read more: Poll wrap: Coalition slumps to 55-45 deficit in Ipsos, and large swing to federal Labor in Queensland

Scott Morrison debuted in Ipsos with a 46% approve, 36% disapprove rating, for a net approval of +10. The August Ipsos gave Turnbull a net -2 approval, but the July poll gave him a net +17 approval. Shorten’s net approval rose seven points to -4. Morrison led Shorten by 47-37 as better PM (48-36 to Turnbull in August).

Wentworth candidate poll

We now know that Dave Sharma is the Liberal candidate for the October 20 Wentworth byelection, and that former AMA President Kerryn Phelps will stand as an independent. A ReachTEL poll conducted August 27 correctly listed Sharma as the Liberal candidate, and asked for two prominent independents, Phelps and Alex Greenwich; Greenwich is not running.

Read more: Poll wrap: Labor retains big Newspoll lead; savage anti-Liberal swing in Wagga Wagga; Wentworth is tied

The results in this ReachTEL poll were 34.6% for the Liberals’ Sharma, 20.3% for Labor’s Tim Murray, 11.8% for Phelps, 11.2% for Greenwich, 8.9% Greens and 13.3% for all Others.

This poll was taken on the Monday after Turnbull was ousted, and the Coalition’s polling could improve by the byelection date. Sharma could also lift his profile before the byelection.

Victorian Galaxy poll: 53-47 to Labor

The Victorian election will be held on November 24. A state Galaxy poll for the bus industry gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since an early August Galaxy for The Herald Sun. No fieldwork dates, sample size or primary votes have been released yet.

Going back to April, there have been three successive Victorian polls with Labor just ahead by 51-49 from Newspoll, ReachTEL and Galaxy. It is likely Labor’s larger lead in this poll was due to a backlash over the dumping of Turnbull. On my personal website, an analysis suggested that the Coalition under Morrison was vulnerable among the well-educated, the young and in Victoria.

40% approved of Premier Daniel Andrews and 42% disapproved for a net approval of -2. Just 25% approved of Opposition Leader Matthew Guy and 44% disapproved for a net approval of -19.

In July I wrote that, unless legislation to abolish the group voting ticket system for the Victorian upper house passed both chambers by September 20, group voting would be used at the state election.

Read more: Victorian ReachTEL poll: 51-49 to Labor, and time running out for upper house reform

With just three days until the final sitting date of parliament before the election, there is no proposal for upper house reform. It is very disappointing that a left-of-centre government has not even attempted to improve the upper house voting system.

Wagga Wagga final result: independent McGirr defeats Liberals 59.6-40.4

As I reported last week, a byelection in the NSW state seat of Wagga Wagga was held on September 8. The Liberals held Wagga Wagga continuously since 1957.

Primary votes were 25.5% Liberal (down 28.3% since the 2015 election), 25.4% for independent Joe McGirr, 23.7% Labor (down 4.4%), 10.6% for independent Paul Funnell (up 0.9%) and 9.9% Shooters. After preferences, McGirr defeated the Liberals by 59.6-40.4, a 22.5% swing against the Liberals. 47% of preferences from the other candidates flowed to McGirr, 15% to the Liberals and the rest exhausted under NSW’s optional preferential voting.

Trump’s approval rating falls from 42% to 40% since late August

In the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregate, Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen from about 42% in late August to 40% now. Trump’s ratings are their lowest since February.

I wrote a detailed analysis on the November 6 US midterm elections for The Poll Bludger on Saturday. Trump’s ratings are highly correlated with Republican performance in the race for Congress, so worse ratings for Trump will result in larger Democratic leads in the race for Congress.

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

Looking back on events 25 years ago, when the Oslo Accords were struck on the White House lawn, it is hard to avoid a painful memory.

I was watching from a sickbed in Jerusalem when Bill Clinton stood between Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for that famous handshake on the White House lawn.

At that moment, I was recovering from plastic surgery carried out by a skilled Israeli surgeon and necessitated by a bullet wound inflicted by the Israeli Defence Forces. (I had been caught in crossfire while covering a demonstration in the West Bank by stone-throwing Palestinian youths.)

That scar – like a tattoo – is a reminder of a time when it seemed just possible Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians could bring themselves to reach an historic compromise.

All these years later, prospects of real progress towards peace, or as American president Donald Trump puts it, the “deal of the century”, seems further away than ever.

Read more: Russia expands in the Middle East as America’s ‘honest broker’ role fades

As a correspondent in the Middle East for a decade (1984-1993) and as co-author of a biography of Arafat, I had an understandable interest in the outcome of the Oslo process.

In hours of conversations with members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s historical leadership, I had tracked the PLO’s faltering progression from outright rejection of Israel’s right to exist to acceptance implicit in the Oslo Accords.

Throughout that process of interviewing and cross-referencing with Israeli sources, I had hoped an honourable divorce could be achieved between decades-long adversaries. Like many, I was disappointed.

In 1993, the so-called Oslo Accords, negotiated in secret outside the Norwegian capital, resulted in mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. This enabled the beginning of face-to-face peace negotiations.

A devastating event

Two years after the historic events at the White House, and by then correspondent in Beijing, I witnessed another episode of lasting and, as it turned out, tragic consequences for the Middle East.

On November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated while attending a political rally in Tel Aviv by a Jewish fanatic opposed to compromise with the Palestinians.

That devastating moment brought to power for the first time the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has distinguished himself by his unwillingness to engage meaningfully with the Palestinians through four US administrations: those of Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama, and now Trump.

Some argue the Palestinians and their enfeebled leadership bear significant responsibility for peace process paralysis. That viewpoint is valid, up to a point. But it is also the case that Netanyahu’s replacement of Rabin stifled momentum.

Under Trump, Netanyahu finds himself under no pressure to concede ground in negotiations, or even negotiate at all. Indeed, the administration seems intent on further marginalising a Palestinian national movement, even as settlement construction in the occupied areas continues apace.

On the eve of the accords, there were 110,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That number has grown to 430,000 today. In 2017, those numbers grew by 20% more than the average for previous years.

The Trump administration’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem without making a distinction between Jewish West or Arab East Jerusalem could hardly have been more antagonistic.

By taking this action, and not making it clear that East Jerusalem as a future capital of a putative Palestinian state would not be compromised, the administration has thumbed its nose at legitimate Palestinian aspirations.

The administration’s follow-up moves to strip funding for the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) and assistance to Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem have further soured the atmosphere.

UNWRA is responsible for the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinian refugees in camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. These are the ongoing casualties of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence against the Arabs.

In this context, it is interesting to note that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy, has urged that refugee status be denied Palestinians and their offspring displaced by the war of 1948.

In that year, two-thirds, or about 750,000 residents of what had been Palestine under a British mandate became refugees.

Against this background and years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, including two major wars – the Six-Day War of 1967 and Yom Kippur War of 1973 – the two sides had in 1993 reached what was then described as an historic compromise.

Hopes dashed

What needs to be understood about Oslo is that its two documents, signed by Rabin and Arafat, did not go further than mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO in the first, and, in the second, a declaration of principles laying down an agenda for the negotiation of Palestinian self-government in the occupied territories.

What Oslo did not do was provide a detailed road-map for final status negotiations, which were to be completed within five years. This would deal with the vexed issues of refugees, Jerusalem, demilitarisation of the Palestinian areas in the event of a two-state settlement, and anything but an implied acknowledgement of territorial compromise, including land swaps, that would be needed to bring about a lasting agreement.

Writing in the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1994, Oxford professor Avi Shlaim described the White House handshake as:

one of the most momentous events in the 20th-century history of the Middle East. In one stunning move, the two leaders redrew the geopolitical map of the entire region.

Now emeritus professor, Shlaim’s own hopes, along with those of many others, that genuine compromise was possible, have been dashed.

Referring to the recent passage through the Knesset of a “basic law” that declares Israel to be “the nation-state of the Jewish people”, Shlaim recently observed:

This law stands in complete contradiction to the 1948 declaration of independence, which recognizes the full equality of all the state’s citizens ‘without distinction of religion, race or sex’… Netanyahu has radically reconfigured Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, rather than a Jewish and a democratic state. As long as the government that introduced this law stays in power, any voluntary agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will remain largely a pipe dream.

Martin Indyk, now en route to the Council on Foreign Relations from the Brookings Institution, shared Shlaim’s hopes of an “historic turning point’’ in the annals of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As Clinton’s National Security Council adviser on the Middle East, Indyk was responsible for the 1993 arrangements on the White House South Lawn. He writes:

The handshake was meant to signify the moment when Israeli and Palestinian leaders decided to begin the process of ending their bloody conflict and resolving their differences at the negotiating table.

Two decades later, in 2014, the funeral rites were pronounced on the Oslo Process after then Secretary of State John Kerry had done all he could to revive it against Netanyahu’s obduracy. Oslo had, in any case, been on life support since Rabin’s assassination.

Read more: Fifty years on from the Six Day War, the prospects for Middle East peace remain dim

“Then,” in Indyk’s words, “along came Trump with “the Deal of the Century”. Indyk writes:

His plan has yet to be revealed but its purpose appears clear – to legitimize the status quo and call it peace. Trump has already attempted to arbitrate every one of the final status issues in Israel’s favor: no capital in East Jerusalem for the Palestinians; no ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees; no evacuation of outlying settlements; no ’67 lines; no end of occupation; and no Palestinian state… Over 25 years, in shifting roles from witness to midwife, to arbiter, the United States has sadly failed to help Israelis and Palestinians make peace, leaving them for the time being in what has essentially been a frozen conflict.

However, as history shows, “frozen conflicts” don’t remain frozen forever. They tend to erupt when least expected.

Twenty-five years ago, I shared a bloody hospital casualty station – not unlike a scene from M.A.S.H. – with more than a dozen wounded Palestinians. Some of them would not recover from terrible wounds inflicted by live ammunition.

I asked myself then, as I do now: what’s the point of it all?

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Hughes-D’Aeth, Associate Professor, English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia

Review: Reading the Landscape, a Celebration of Australian Writing (UQP).

It is actually quite difficult to imagine what Australian literature would look like without the University of Queensland Press (UQP). Since it was established in 1948, it has done as much as any Australian publisher to shape Australian creative writing. The title of this excellent anthology Reading the Landscape refers to this literary landscape rather than any thematic interest in Australia’s land.

Whether writers like David Malouf, Rodney Hall, Peter Carey, Doris Pilkington-Garimara and Alexis Wright would have become the writers they became without UQP is a moot point. One assumes, with the benefit of hindsight and the stratosphere they now inhabit, that they certainly would have. How could we not have Oscar and Lucinda, Remembering Babylon, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence and Carpentaria? How could they not exist? But the fact is that each of these writers, and dozens of others, were first published by UQP.

Against considerable economic pressures, UQP is one of a handful of Australian university presses that continue to produce quality scholarly publications for academic and general markets. While academic scholarship is considered the natural province of a university press, UQP is distinctive in having developed significant fiction and poetry lists from the late 1960s.

Recently, the University of Western Australia’s UWAP has followed UQP in developing fiction (and creative nonfiction) and poetry lists, and last year UWAP author Josephine Wilson won the Miles Franklin for her novel Extinctions. But UQP’s record of discovering, nurturing and supporting Australian writers, is really without peer in the other Australian university presses, and unique in world terms.

Reading the Landscape is a cross-section of living writers who currently publish with UQP or have in the past. At least three generations feature — those who debuted in the 1970s and 80s, those who appeared for the first time in the 90s and 2000s, and the current range of new writers.

Read more: Grief, loss, and a glimmer of hope: Josephine Wilson wins the 2017 Miles Franklin prize for Extinctions

In the first generation, we see not only Malouf, Carey and Hall, but important writers like Nicholas Jose, Peter Skrzynecki and Gabrielle Carey. In the next generation, there are writers like Lily Brett, Melissa Lucashenko, Larissa Behrendt, David Brooks, Venero Armanno and Samuel Wagan Watson. And finally, we have writers only recently to emerge such as Jaya Savige, Julie Koh and Ellen van Neerven.

Those familiar with some of those writers will be reminded, in this anthology, of just why they have been celebrated. Rodney Hall’s Glimpses of Lost Europe, for instance, is a charming reminder of his effortless brilliance. It begins in 1954 like this:

Dr Bródy – philosopher, philologist and metaphysician ­– was grateful to find work in Brisbane as an umbrella salesman.

And spins outwards from there. Various trends and movements suggest themselves from these contributions. One is the turn towards factual stories in the genre now known as creative non-fiction. Another is the rise of the young-adult genre as a powerful and lucrative publishing phenomenon.

One of the creative non-fiction highlights of this anthology is Patti Miller’s riveting account of her uncle’s hang-gliding accident. Icarus is the spellbinding story of a quiet and meticulous man who becomes, in his 60s, a devoted hang-gliding enthusiast, only to have his spine shattered by an accident while landing.

Spiky and lyrical, smouldering and rueful

I was also taken by the quality of the poetry by younger writers like Savige, van Neerven and Ali Alizadeh. Their respective poems were by turns spiky and lyrical, smouldering and rueful. The way that they mix politics and memory, urgency and metaphysics, affirms the continuing possibilities of poetic expression in what often seems like an increasingly prosaic age.

Perhaps most significant, though, is the rise of Indigenous writing visible in the contributions from acclaimed authors like Lucashenko, Behrendt, Wagan Watson and van Neerven (the last three each won the David Unaipon award).

The appearance of modern Indigenous writing is often dated to the publication by Jacaranda Press, another largely independent Brisbane press, of Kath Walker’s (Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s) We are Going in 1965. UQP published Kevin Gilbert’s People are Legends: Aboriginal Poems in 1978, and as Bernadette Brennan reminds us in her fine introduction to Reading the Landscape, the press contributed very significantly to the emerging study of Indigenous writing with seminal monographs on the subject by J.J. Healy and Adam Shoemaker.

Many of the key Indigenous writers to follow in the wake of Oodgeroo, Kevin Gilbert, and Jack Davis have come through UQP, although the WA presses Fremantle Press and Magabala Books have also been crucial. In van Neerven, in particular, one sees a worthy successor to Oodgeroo, as invidious as that comparison might seem. Oodgeroo’s trademark mixture of acerbic humour and gut-punching honesty shines through van Neerven’s verse, and her poem 18C is a fitting conclusion to the anthology.

Written in answer to the recent controversies that have surrounded the anti-vilification provision of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act, the poem’s 18 stanzas thread in and out of the complexities of black life. The final stanza, and the book’s last words are these:

Courage is telling them what you think of that play, that script they try and write us in will no longer contain us, bring me a new coat of oppression, this one’s wearing thin.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Dean, Honorary Associate in Philosophy, University of Sydney

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

How do you know that we aren’t in virtual reality right now? It could be so realistic that it feels like normal life. – Erin, 13, Strathfield.

Have you ever had a dream where you thought everything around you was real, and then you wake up and realise it was all a dream? If so, how do you know you’re not dreaming right now?

The Chinese philosopher Zhaungzi had this very thought more than 2,000 years ago. He woke up from dreaming that he was a butterfly, but then couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

It is easy to believe the world around us is real. But it’s possible that it’s a dream or a very complex computer simulation. Maybe we’re all plugged into a very powerful computer that is providing us with a virtual reality experience that makes us think we’re somewhere else.

If the simulation is really good and looks like the real world, we might not know we’re in a simulation.

So the short answer is we cannot ever be absolutely 100% certain we’re not in a computer simulation, or that we’re dreaming instead of being awake.

But while this might seem like a strange or disturbing thought, it actually makes no difference to the way we live.

If you have friends and family, and things you enjoy doing, it doesn’t really matter if they’re a part of a dream or a simulation, because you will still behave in the same way.

You’ll still be nice to your friends, you’ll still love your family (even if they might annoy you), you’ll still enjoy the taste of your favourite foods, and you’ll still hate getting up early in the morning.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do our brains freak us out with scary dreams?

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

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

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerry Redmond, Associate Professor, College of Business, government & Law, Flinders University

Australia as a nation has never been richer. But it is now also more unequal than at any time since the early 1980s. This inequality takes many forms, not least between suburbs and neighbourhoods. And our research suggests the few celebrated examples of famous Australians who emerged from disadvantaged neighbourhoods are the exceptions to the rule for children who grow up in them.

The Dropping Off The Edge research program, started by the late Professor Tony Vinson in the early 2000s, identifies the most disadvantaged suburbs and local government areas in each state and territory. This shows that as few as 3% of communities bear a disproportional burden of disadvantage. They are characterised by low rates of education and employment, and high rates of disability, criminal convictions and poverty.

Read more: How the housing boom has driven rising inequality

Children growing up in these disadvantaged communities enjoy few opportunities for upwards social mobility when compared with peers in more affluent suburbs. And, significantly, the children of low-income families in better-off suburbs have higher aspirations and know what they need to do to achieve those.

Our recent research with young people in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide shows children in disadvantaged communities are not only more likely to live in poverty, but are also less likely to have access to sports clubs, libraries and other recreational and arts facilities, which those in more affluent suburbs appear to take for granted. Their schools are also less likely to offer extracurricular activities that enable young people to engage with others who live in different areas and have different life experiences.

Most young people see these activities as fun and a good way to connect with other young people. However, the implications for young people’s life chances of missing out on these activities stretch far beyond recreation.

‘Soft skills’ and social mobility

As Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman states:

Conscientiousness, perseverance, sociability and curiosity matter.

While these “soft skills” can be learned in the home and in the classroom, they are reinforced and embedded in structured out-of-school activities. Parents who recognise the long-term benefits of these activities often invest heavily in their children’s participation in them.

For young people in low-income families, access to these activities is made difficult by not being able to afford registration fees, uniforms and other equipment, or even the petrol for transport to the activities. For young people in low-income families living in disadvantaged suburbs, these challenges are multiplied.

Affluent suburbs tend to have good opportunity structures – a combination of physical facilities, institutional support and social networks that provide access to education, jobs and other valued opportunities. Poor suburbs often lack these opportunity structures.

Read more: Schools will teach ‘soft skills’ from 2017, but assessing them presents a challenge

While poor suburbs often abut more affluent suburbs with good opportunity structures, our research suggests young people in the disadvantaged suburbs do not often feel welcome there. As one girl told us when asked if she mixed with young people in the better-off neighbouring suburbs:

No, but if I did, I know it would be my fault.

Her worry is that if her interactions with better-off counterparts end in a conflict, she will be accused of something.

Young people in better-off suburbs, on the other hand, regarded their less well-off neighbours as in need of remediation. When one young man was asked if he went to the youth club in the neighbouring disadvantaged suburb where they offered a range of short workshops (for example; hip hop or graffiti skills), he replied:

Oh there, no! That’s for troubled kids.

These comments capture the social exclusion that keeps young people living in disadvantaged suburbs from connecting with young people in more affluent suburbs, or using facilities near them.

Neighbourhood overcomes lack of money

Not all poor kids live in poor suburbs. We talked with several young people living in low-income families in affluent suburbs who did take part in a range of recreational activities. Their parents struggled to pay registration fees, buy the right equipment and have petrol to take them to activities, but they were able to cobble together arrangements. Often the support of other parents helped with their children’s participation.

The contrast in outlook and aspirations between these young people and those living in the disadvantaged suburbs was notable. Most of the young people in the disadvantaged suburbs who we spoke with had low aspirations for their future careers. But most young people from low-income families in the more affluent suburbs aspired to university and knew what they needed to do to get there.

These differences in opportunities and aspirations underline how life chances are connected to young people’s community contexts as well as their individual and family situations. Young people’s perceptions of these contexts, the people they meet in their out-of-school lives and how they understand the possibilities of their own futures all have impacts on their capacity to take up opportunities.

Read more: Students’ own low expectations can reinforce their disadvantage

In order to have equal access to opportunities that improve life chances, young people in the most disadvantaged suburbs need to have access to and feel welcome in the same opportunity structures that are available to more advantaged young people. This demands investment in recreational facilities and a focus on a culture of inclusion in these facilities. Redressing this problem also requires policies that reduce inequalities more broadly, so that progressively fewer suburbs can be defined as “dropping off the edge”.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grayson Cooke, Associate Professor, Deputy Head of School (Research), Southern Cross University

There are more than 4,800 satellites orbiting Earth. They bristle with sensors – trained towards Earth and into space – recording and transmitting many different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.

Governments and media corporations rely on the data these satellites collect. But artists use it too, as a new way to image and view the Earth.

I work with Geoscience Australia and the “Digital Earth Australia” platform to produce time-lapse images and video of Australian landforms using satellite data.

My Open Air project, produced through a collaboration with Australian painter Emma Walker and the music of The Necks, features macro-photography of Emma Walker’s paintings set against time-lapse satellite imagery of Australia.

Open Air will be launched in Canberra on September 20, 2018.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do satellites get back to Earth?

Open access to satellite data

We see satellites as moving pin-pricks in the night sky, or occasionally – as with the recent return to Earth of the Chinese Tiangong space station – as streaks of light. And most us would have heard about satellite data being used for surveillance, for GPS tracking and for media broadcasting.

But artists can divert satellite data away from a purely instrumental approach. They can apply it to produce new ways of seeing, understanding and feeling the Earth.

Of course satellites are expensive to launch and maintain. The main players are either powerful corporate providers like Intelsat, enormous public sector agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), or private sector startups with links to these groups.

Luckily, many of these agencies make their data freely available to the public.

The NASA/US Geological Survey Landsat program makes 40 years of Earth imaging data available through Earth Explorer. The ESA provides data from their Sentinel satellites to users of the Copernicus Open Access Hub.

In Australia, Geoscience Australia‘s Digital Earth Australia platform provides researchers and the public with access to Australian satellite data from a range of agencies.

Understanding and processing the data

Making satellite imaging data accessible, though, is not the same thing as making it usable. There is considerable technical know-how required to process satellite data.

The Landsat and Sentinel satellites are used by scientists and the private sector to monitor environmental change over time, using what is known as “remote sensing”. They travel in the low Earth orbit range, around 700km above the Earth and circle the Earth in around 90 minutes. After numerous orbits, they return to the exact same spot every 16 days.

Landsat and Sentinel satellites are equipped with sensors that record reflected electromagnetic radiation in a range of wavelengths. Some of these wavelengths fall within the visible light part of the spectrum (between 390-700 nanometers). In that sense, satellites image the Earth in a way comparable to a digital camera.

Read more: A sports car and a glitter ball are now in space – what does that say about us as humans?

But the satellites also record other wavelengths, particularly in the near and shortwave infrared range. Vegetation, water and geological formations reflect and absorb infrared light differently to visible light. Recording these wavelengths allows scientists to track, for instance, changes in vegetation density or surface water location that indicate drought, flood or fire.

A single satellite image is made up of numerous bands recording data in very specific wavelengths. Getting a full-colour image requires processing in a GIS application to combine them, and assign the bands to either red, green or blue in an output image.

Bringing creativity to the data

This is where creativity can enter the picture. Being able to create false colour images that combine infrared and visible light in different ways allows me to produce beautifully surreal images of Australian landforms.

The image below shows the variance in environmental conditions over 12 months in 2016 at the Stirling Range National Park in WA.

Because geoscientists need clear images of the earth’s surface to analyse, they filter clouds from the data. I chose to take the opposite approach, highlighting the incredible array of meteorological conditions experienced by the country.

There are many other artists working with satellite data. Clement Valla’s Postcards from Google Earth focuses on glitches in Google’s mapping algorithm, and bio-artist Suzanne Anker uses satellite imaging to produce extruded 3D environments in petri dishes.

Working with the Nevada Museum of Art, photographer Trevor Paglen will launch the Orbital Reflector satellite as an inflatable, visible sculpture, a prompt for wonder and reflection.

Artists place satellite data and usage in new contexts. They question surveillance practices and expose scientific tools and representations to new audiences outside science and the private sector.

The thousands of satellites winging their way around the Earth represent power and possibility, a chance to look again at the intersection between humankind and a changing planet.

“Open Air” will be officially launched at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra on September 20. It will also screen at the Spectra conference in Adelaide in October.

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

From Friday, September 21, the Uniting Church (UCA) will be the first of the three major Australian Christian denominations to endorse same-sex marriage, and thus the first to offer gay and lesbian Christians the option of a church ceremony.

This move comes nine months after same-sex marriage was made legal in Australia, and as a result of a decision made at the Uniting Church’s national Assembly in July 2018.

It permits those being married in the UCA to choose between two authorised marriage liturgies – one that continues to use the traditional language of “husband and wife” and one that speaks of the union of “two people” and is therefore open to same-sex couples.

The choice also allows clergy, like myself, to exercise individual freedom of conscience. Ministers will not be compelled to marry a same-sex couple if it goes against their personal understanding of marriage. This freedom reflects the diversity of opinion on the matter while upholding a fundamental commitment of the UCA to maintain diversity in unity.

Read more: Same-sex marriage is legal, so why have churches been so slow to embrace it?

While a shock for some, for others this change has been painfully slow. It is the result of decades of conversation, education, resourcing, discernment, and debate that began in the early 1980s.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the UCA Assembly – the church’s national council responsible for policy and doctrine – actively encouraged conversations about sexuality and theology.

They produced Bible studies and other resources for congregations. They also commissioned doctrinal groups to examine the matter in response to growing requests for clarity on such matters from their regional bodies.

Notable among these resources was the 1997 Report “Uniting Sexuality and Faith”, which proposed the development of liturgies to bless same-sex couples.

At a national level, motions relating to sexuality were often on the Assembly’s agenda. In 1997, the big issue was whether LGBTIQ Christians could be full members of the UCA, with the implication that such members could then serve on leadership committees and have equal status within the church.

No decision was made at that time, in part because of the UCA’s commitment to Aboriginal and Islander Christians , who were unprepared to accept such a move towards inclusion. The Assembly advised continued respectful conversation.

In 2003, the issue was whether lesbian and gay Christians could be ordained as ministers in the Uniting Church. The reality was that several gay and lesbian clergy had been ordained, some of whom were out, and others who had kept their sexuality private.

As the Assembly itself has noted at times, homosexual people have always been involved in the church. The question is, how openly and what can the church say theologically about the diversity of human sexuality?

Ordination of openly gay clergy signified a shift away from the traditional view that anything other than a heterosexual orientation was sinful and towards a view that considers diverse sexualities part of God’s good creation.

Over 75% of that meeting supported the motion that sexuality was not, in itself, a barrier to ordination, making it the first Christian denomination to allow ordination of openly gay ministers.

At each of these stages, opponents claimed decisions that increased inclusion of LGBTIQ Christians would split the church or be its demise. While such data is notoriously difficult to track, there is little evidence great numbers have left over such decisions. Nor has the church been split.

Critics of the UCA’s marriage change, both within and external to the UCA, have argued this decision sets the UCA at odds with worldwide Christianity. That is not quite accurate. While the majority of Christian institutions worldwide continue to limit marriage to the traditional arrangement of one man and one woman, several mainstream churches already marry same-sex couples.

Australia’s Uniting Church now stands with Canada’s United Church of Christ, the USA’s Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA), the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church of Sweden, and closer to home, the Methodist Church in New Zealand in marrying same-sex couples.

Many other churches are moving in this direction or offering blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples.

Unlike the aforementioned decisions, the 2018 Assembly vote about marriage was conducted behind closed doors in a private session. As historian, Dr Avril Hannah-Jones, points out in her recent article, one of the significant shifts that allowed the motion to go to a vote was a statement by the UCA’s Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress that acknowledged a diversity of views in their own communities.

This meant they would not be moving to block such a change. In doing so, they embodied the “unity in diversity” that is almost a catch-cry of the UCA.

Read more: To Christians arguing ‘no’ on marriage equality: the Bible is not decisive

None of these decades-long decisions have been easy or without controversy or personal cost to many, something acknowledged by Dr Deidre Palmer, UCA President, in her pastoral letter.

But the outcome of that work can now be seen in a Christian denomination that could remarkably quickly respond to a change in the federal Marriage Act with a same-sex service of their own. Fundamental differences remain, certainly.

But I suspect the church that was birthed by bringing together three different denominations in the 1970s knows how to handle diversity and should be well equipped to live with the tension of differing views within its people.

Change of this nature is never easy for an institution and especially for the church where tradition is so highly valued. For some, same-sex marriage challenges their belief in a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, although the UCA’s own stance towards the Bible is one that takes the text seriously but not literally.

For others, this recent decision is a source of celebration and perhaps even symbolic, finally, of full equality in the church for gay and lesbian members.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John McNeil, Professor, Head of School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Taking low-dose aspirin daily doesn’t preserve good health or delay the onset of disability or dementia in healthy older people. This was one finding from our seven-year study that included more than 19,000 older people from Australia and the US.

We also found daily low-dose aspirin does not prevent heart attack or stroke when taken by elderly people who hadn’t experienced either condition before. However it does increase the risk of major bleeding.

It has long been established that aspirin saves lives when taken by people after a cardiac event such as a heart attack. And it had been apparent since the 1990s there was a lack of adequate evidence to support the use of low-dose aspirin in healthy older people. Yet, many healthy older people continued being prescribed aspirin for this purpose.

Read more: How Australians Die: cause #1 – heart diseases and stroke

With the growing proportion of elderly people in our community, a major focus of preventive medicine is to maintain the independence of this age-group for as long as possible. This has increased the need to resolve whether aspirin in the healthy elderly actually prolongs their good health.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine today, the ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) trial was the largest and most comprehensive clinical trial conducted in Australia. It compared the effects of aspirin and a placebo in people over the age of 70 without a medical condition that required aspirin.

Our findings mean millions of healthy people over the age of 70, and their doctors, will now know daily aspirin is not the answer to prolonging good health.

Why aspirin for prevention?

Aspirin was first synthesised in 1898. Since the 1960s it has been known that aspirin lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke among those who have had heart disease or stroke before. This is referred to as secondary prevention.

Read more: Weekly Dose: aspirin, the pain and fever reliever that prevents heart attacks, strokes and maybe cancer

This effect has been attributed to aspirin’s ability to prevent platelets from clumping together and obstructing blood vessels – sometimes referred to as “thinning the blood”.

It had been assumed this protective action could be extrapolated to people who were otherwise healthy to prevent a first heart attack or stroke (known as primary prevention). A number of early primary prevention trials in middle-aged people appeared to confirm this view.

However more recent trials, including the ASCEND trial in diabetes and the ARRIVE trial in younger high-risk individuals, have thrown doubt on this proposition.

In older people, any effect of aspirin on reducing heart disease or stroke might be expected to be enhanced because of their higher underlying risk. But aspirin’s adverse effects (mainly bleeding) might also be increased as older people are at higher risk of bleeding.

The balance between risks and benefits in this age group was previously quite unclear. This was also recognised in various clinical guidelines for aspirin use, which specifically acknowledged the lack of evidence in people older than 70.

The ASPREE trial

A trial of aspirin in the elderly was first called for in the early 1990s. But since aspirin was off patent, there was little prospect of securing industry funding to support a large trial. But controversy arising around the use of aspirin for primary prevention in the mid 2000s led to Monash University receiving initial funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Funding in Australia was only a part of that required to establish a trial the size and complexity of ASPREE. A grant from the US National Institute on Ageing (and subsequently from the US National Cancer Institute) made the study become feasible.

Another challenge was recruiting the necessary thousands of older volunteers who were healthy and living and often working in their community. Unlike most studies, we required participants who weren’t in hospital or sick.

Read more: Both statins and a Mediterranean-style diet can help ward off heart disease and stroke

This was addressed with the assistance of more than 2,000 GPs who collaborated with the research team supporting recruitment of their patients and overseeing their health. In Australia, 16 sites were established across south-eastern Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, the ACT and southern NSW, to localise study activity and host community events that kept our volunteers updated and involved.

ASPREE is the first major prevention trial to use disability-free survival as the primary health measure. Disability-free survival provides a single integrated measure of whether an intervention such as aspirin provides net benefit. The rationale is that there is little point for elderly people to be taking a preventive medication unless it preserves good health and unless benefits of the medication outweigh any adverse effects.

Large-scale preventive health studies like ASPREE will become increasingly important to help keep an ageing population fit, healthy, out of hospital and living independently. As new preventive opportunities arise they will typically require large clinical trials, and the structure of the Australian health system has proven an ideal setting for this type of study.

Other results from the ASPREE trial will continue to appear for some time. These will describe longer-term effects of daily low dose aspirin on issues such as dementia and cancer. It will also provide valuable information about other strategies to promote healthy ageing well into the future.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Becher, Associate Professor of Business Law, Victoria University of Wellington

Last week’s fake honey scandal, involving Australia’s largest honey producer Capilano, prompted calls for better purity tests and regulation of the industry.

Tests by Germany’s Quality Services International allegedly showed that some of Capilano’s product, marketed as 100% honey sourced from Australia and China, had been adulterated with cheaper syrups.

Read more: What is fake honey and why didn’t the official tests pick it up?

Trust and confidence

The honey and bee products industry is fast-growing, innovative and to a significant extent based on science.

For suppliers, especially those from less regulated markets, there is a strong economic incentive to engage in false or misleading marketing. After all, claims regarding exact ingredients, or health benefits and country of origin, are “credence qualities”. They are hard (if not impossible) for the average consumer to verify. At the same time, ensuring that products are known for their authenticity and integrity is essential for the industry’s reputation and growth.

The problem is widespread. Apart from Australia, recent examples of misconduct, including dubious labelling, can be found in Europe, New Zealand, the United States and China. In a globalised world, this presents some complex challenges.

Mislabelling and misleadingly marketing products can have weighty consequences. Fraudulent behaviour reduces consumers’ ability to make informed decisions, while undermining their trust and confidence. Consumer trust in the marketplace, however, is essential for the proper functioning of markets. More generally, trust is a fundamental component in modern societies.

Spilling the honey

From an economic perspective, the misconduct of one firm can have spillover effects on other companies. When consumers learn about misleading or deceptive behaviours, they may question the integrity of other players in that market.

The reduction of trust and confidence can prompt consumers to doubt firms’ statements and may lead some to stop buying the products. As a consequence, producers have to invest more resources to convince consumers that their statements are true and honest.

Misleading conduct can also increase regulation costs when higher or stricter standards are employed. The Capilano case, with its controversy around the adoption of more effective testing methods, illustrates this. Capilano’s product passed the official Australian test method, which scientists consider substandard by international comparison.

Following media coverage of this scandal, some have called for consumer organisations to step in and be more vigilant in monitoring this market. For instance, it has been reported that former competition watchdog chairman Allan Fels called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to prioritise anything involving food adulteration. Consumer law, of course, can be used to punish misleading and deceptive labelling. However, using the legal system is not a panacea, and can be costly.

Furthermore, enforcement agencies – which operate with scarce resources – cannot enforce all laws all of the time. Hence, breaches of the law are not always detected. Even when they are, they are not always followed by legal enforcement.

How to solve a sticky problem

It is in the market’s best interest to promote informal and formal self-regulation. In New Zealand, the Mānuka Honey Appellation Society Inc has filed for a certification trademark for the term mānuka honey. Accordingly, traders in New Zealand would only be able to market their products as mānuka honey if they satisfy the standard and are certified as such.

Read more: Science or Snake Oil: is manuka honey really a ‘superfood’ for treating colds, allergies and infections?

Similarly, Comvita and UMF Honey have separately filed patent applications for marker compounds that can be used to identify true mānuka honey. Such standards should be clear and unified, so not to confuse consumers.

Offsetting the economic incentive to cheat is not a simple task. It requires combining social and moral incentives with legal deterrence. Clear rules and standards, honest industry norms, and encouragement and protection for whistle-blowers all help to prevent dishonest and distrustful behaviour. At the end of the day, we want to live in an ethical and trusting society, where we can simply enjoy our honey and know that it is what it claims to be on the packaging.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Rumours have circulated for months that the National Party and National Farmers Federation are pushing for a new so-called agricultural visa for temporary migrants. Now they have gained momentum, and reports indicate an announcement early next week.

Details are scarce, but it seems the visa will differ from the two existing visas for agricultural workers from the Pacific – the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) and the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS) – in being more flexible and also open to workers from across Asia.

The SWP allows workers to come to Australia from the Pacific or Timor Leste for up to six months to pick fruit and vegetables. It is growing rapidly: by almost 40% per year.

The newer PLS allows Pacific Island workers to come to regional Australia to work in any sector for up to three years. Only a year old, it too could grow rapidly.

No longer solely Pacific

Here are the three reasons why an additional extra agricultural visa is not just a bad idea, but one that makes no sense.

First, we don’t need one. Farmers can already hire SWP workers to meet their short-term needs (up to six months) and PLS workers for their long-term needs (up to three years). If there are problems with these schemes, the best approach would be to fix them.

Second, a new agricultural visa would reduce our leverage in the Pacific relative to China’s.

The one thing we can offer Pacific nations that China can’t is labour mobility. More than 10% of Tongans aged 20–45 travel to Australia or New Zealand each year for seasonal work.

If they were partly or largely replaced by workers from countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, it would greatly antagonize our Pacific island neighbours, shred our credibility in the Pacific, and it would drive Pacific countries towards China.

Less closely regulated

Third, the new class of visa is being touted about as more flexible.

There’s a risk that’ll might mean fewer safeguards, and easier worker exploitation. The SWP is a well regulated, and has far fewer compliance problems than the unregulated backpacker scheme.

In practice, it probably won’t have a weaker set of standards to the two existing Pacific schemes, because to do so would be to treat workers from different countries differently, meaning the flexibility promised won’t be delivered.

If the National Party was serious about improving the access of Australian farmers to workers from overseas, it would be demanding reforms to the existing SWP and PLS. Those reforms could make the conditions more employer-friendly or add more countries to the list.

Those proposals could be publicly debated.

Creating a new extra agricultural visa makes no sense. It would not help farmers, and, from a strategic perspective would be a serious own goal.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alastair Blanshard, Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School, The University of Queensland

When the Australian Ballet premieres its new production of Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus this week, it will be another moment in an extraordinary story of rehabilitation. Spartacus, a lowly barbarian slave whose rebellion ultimately proved a failure and whose followers died in the most ignominious of fashions, has become a modern symbol of the power of freedom and the dignity of humanity.

The contemporary popularity of Spartacus must be especially galling to the many Roman heroes of the Republic. These men paid a great price to defend the state at various times. Yet nobody remembers their names. The consul Lucius Junius Brutus was such a patriot that he sentenced his own sons to death when he discovered that they were guilty of treason. The Horatii brothers swore an oath to defend Rome as her champions. Only one came back alive.

Gaius Mucius stuck his right hand into a blazing fire in order to demonstrate to the invading Etruscans just how brave and stoic the Romans were. It worked. The Etruscans sued for peace and Mucius was known for the rest of his life as “Lefty”. Yet today, these figures are almost entirely forgotten.

Talk about a figure standing alone on a bridge yelling, “You shall not pass”, and everybody thinks of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, not Horatius Cocles who single-handedly defended the bridge across the Tiber from overwhelming forces keen to sack Rome.

Roman history is not lacking in acts of bravery or self-sacrifice. What makes the Spartacus story different is the status of the protagonist.

We know little about the precise background of Spartacus. Our sources have him coming from Thrace, roughly modern Bulgaria. One ancient text claims he had once fought in the Roman army before being imprisoned. All agree he had been reduced to slavery and had been condemned to fight as a gladiator.

Spartacus the rebel

These days we tend to over-glamourize the status of gladiators. To the Romans, gladiators were the lowest of the low. You might admire their skill with a sword, but you were never in any doubt about their depravity and lack of moral fibre. They were no match for a proper Roman citizen.

Read more: Roman gladiators were war prisoners and criminals, not sporting heroes

It was this over-confident belief in their natural superiority that would prove the downfall of many of the Roman commanders sent against Spartacus. When Spartacus and 70 or so of his comrades revolted and escaped from their gladiatorial school near Capua in 73 BC, everyone imagined the matter would soon be dealt with.

They underestimated the skill of their opponent. Spartacus would turn out to be a master of the art of the surprise attack. He tied vines together to make ropes and climbed down cliffs to launch attacks on his enemies from behind. He waited until the Romans were bathing before springing a raid on their encampment.

This success was so unexpected that the Romans began to wonder if there wasn’t something supernatural about it. Quickly stories began to circulate about how Spartacus had been marked out by portents and signs of divine favour. In a sign of desperation, the Romans revived the punishment of decimation, killing one in ten of the most cowardly troops, in order to show the others the price of failure.

Spartacus was also assisted by a tremendous influx of slaves and the rural poor who joined his rebellion. The figures are unreliable, but some put the size of his army of outcasts as high as 90,000 men.

Certainly, the damage they did was significant. For two years they ravaged the Italian countryside from North to South until finally the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus was able to defeat Spartacus and his army in open combat in 71 BC. Spartacus’ body was never recovered. Six thousand prisoners were crucified. Their bodies lined the road from Capua to Rome.

It had been a cruel war with acts of barbarism on both sides. Spartacus routinely killed the Roman prisoners he captured. Despite his entreaties, Spartacus’ army raped women, mutilated bodies, tortured captives, and burnt people alive in their houses. According to a late source, one of his commanders even staged a gladiatorial show using captives as gladiators. Those who had once been spectators were now the spectacle.

Strange legacy

It was the twin aspects of popular revolt and his status as a slave which ensured Spartacus’ rebellion did end up as just a footnote in the history books. In the 19th century, anti-slavery campaigners were quick to seize on this story and transform it into an epic tale of a noble slave fighting for freedom.

Romantic dramatisations of the Spartacus story such as Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator played to packed houses in the United States and helped to galvanise abolitionist sentiment.

The Spartacus story proved equally popular within communist circles who were attracted to the idea of his rebellion as precursor to their own popular working-class revolutions. Karl Marx was a fan. Rosa Luxemburg when she founded the German communist Party named it after Spartacus.

When the communist Howard Fast was imprisoned for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions put to him by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he used his time in prison to write a novel about Spartacus and his revolution. The novel would later be transformed by Dalton Trumbo, himself a victim of anti-Red purges in Hollywood, into the script for the celebrated film Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas as the rebellious leader.

Given such communist credentials, it’s understandable Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus became a popular work within Soviet Russia. The work won the Lenin prize for composition in 1954 and was a staple of the Bolshoi for many years.

Yet, the success of the ballet is not just the result of its ideological sympathies. It’s a ballet of powerful physicality. It makes tremendous demands of its male leads. Soldiers and gladiators clash. Slaves suffer. Violence and eroticism mingle. The ballet compels us to confront the very limits of muscle and sinew.

It exposes our humanity, our cruelty and nobility. It may take tremendous licence with historical events, but there is profound truth in its recognition that the appeal of Spartacus lies in the primal instinct of bodies to be free.

The Australian Ballet’s production of Spartacus begins in Melbourne on September 18.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gwenda Tavan, Associate Professor, Politics and International Relations, La Trobe University

This week, nine-year-old Queensland school girl, Harper Nielsen, was threatened with suspension by her school for refusing to sing the Australian national anthem. The heated and at time preposterous reaction to the story adds fuel to a question that has been lingering in public debate for a while now: is Australian nationalism on the rise?

According to Nielsen and her parents, her refusal was intended as a gesture of solidarity with Indigenous Australians, whom she felt were marginalised and disrespected by a song that glorifies white Australia in its declaration that we “are young and free”.

Read more: The far-right’s creeping influence on Australian politics

While many people praised the young girl’s brave and principled stand, conservative Liberal politician Tony Abbott indirectly criticised her actions as impolite. Other self-described “patriotic” politicians went further, strongly attacking the character and motives of Nielsen and her parents.

Jarrod Bleijie, the Queensland shadow minister for Education, tweeted:

Senator Pauline Hanson advocated physical abuse as a suitable penalty for the young girl’s transgression: “It’s about who we are as a nation, it’s part of us … Here we have a kid who’s been brainwashed and I’ll tell you what, I’d give her a kick up the backside.”

The incident appears to confirm that in Australia, like many liberal democracies around the world, much-vaunted values of openness, tolerance and respect for diversity and freedom of opinion are in decline, while aggressive nationalism is increasing.

There are numerous other examples to support this view: the rise of far-right, populist, anti-immigration political parties and movements, the increasingly exclusionary and racist tones and language of “mainstream” political leaders both here and overseas, violent street clashes between right-wing nationalist and anti-racist forces.

This is capped off by shrill demands by politicians and sections of the media for unquestioning displays of loyalty to “nationalist” symbols and institutions including the flag, the national anthem and contentious national days like Australia Day and ANZAC Day.

Whether such incidents reflect an increase in the actual numbers of Australians embracing aggressive nationalism, or simply an intensification of feeling and behaviour amongst a select minority, is not clear at this point.

But ultimately, the issue of numbers is less important than the general mood such controversies convey. Right-wing xenophobes and nationalists are clearly feeling emboldened. Collectively, we must ask ourselves why this is the case and what should be done about it.

There is good reason for concern. History shows us how dangerous nationalist and racist sentiment is for the quality and character of liberal democracies. Assertions of the primacy, unity and superiority of the national group can easily slip into the denigration, marginalisation, oppression, expulsion and even decimation of individual and minority groups considered to be “other”.

Demands for unquestioning loyalty and conformity in the name of national unity and pride can undermine much vaunted liberal traditions of freedom of speech, thought and association.

White Australia is a country seemingly so inured to its own racist traditions that the systematic mistreatment of Indigenous people, refugees and asylum-seekers, though hotly debated in public forums, is tolerated by a large section of the population. Now that right-wing politicians feel empowered enough to publicly denigrate and threaten a nine-year-old child for her political views, perhaps more people will feel compelled to pay attention.

There is, of course, a discernible double standard at work in the claims that Nielsen should be “punished” for her views and should just “follow the rules.” These, after all, are the very same people who have demanded the right to express their views on all manner of issues, including “the right” to be bigots or deny equal treatment to others on the basis of religious belief. Free speech is fine, it seems, as long as it expresses a view social conservatives agree with.

History is also often the victim of nationalist mobilisations. By this I mean the tendency of “patriots” to select those aspects of the national story that “fit” the narrative of a timeless, unified, undifferentiated, organic community to which they are “loyal”. In the process, they edit out the bits that show how contested and contingent our national story really is.

Read more: Explainer: what is free speech?

The national anthem, Advance Australia Fair, is a case in point. Claims that not singing the anthem “disrespects our country and our veterans” assume the song holds deep historical, moral and sacred meaning. The truth is more prosaic.

Advance Australia Fair became our national anthem in 1974, following a competition launched by the Whitlam Labor Government and a public opinion poll by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to identify the relative popularity of three “unofficial” Australian songs: Advance Australia Fair, Waltzing Matilda and Song of Australia. Advance Australia Fair was the clear front-runner, but it is worth remembering that only just over half of respondents (51.4%) nominated it. In other words, nearly 50% of the population did not. So much for collective unity.

Indeed, it was not so long ago that those who showed loyalty to symbols of independent Australian identity such as the current national anthem were derided for their lack of patriotism. In 1943, when Minister for Information, Arthur Calwell, directed Advance Australia Fair be played in Australian cinemas as part of a broader effort to deepen nationalist sentiment and mobilise popular support for the war effort, conservatives criticised the move as disloyal to the British Empire.

Calwell was similarly derided when he introduced an independent Australian citizenship in the form of the Australian Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948. One Liberal MP in the House of Representatives argued the legislation would “be supported by every enemy of Great Britain and Australia”.

The public bullying of Harper Nielsen should concern us as yet another example of the dangers of unbridled nationalism, and the potential it has to undermine our cherished freedoms.

Nonetheless, the incident provides some cause for hope. It is heartening to see someone so young working thoughtfully through the issues, resisting the pressure of demands for unthinking, unblinking conformity to someone else’s ideal of what national belonging is all about, and reach her own conclusions.

Those who like the story Australians tell themselves of their inherent anti-authoritarianism, might even be tempted to say: “how very Australian” of her.

The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Worboys, Laboratory and Technical Support Officer, Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University

Sometimes, in rainforest research, the only way to go is up. Twenty years ago I chose the rare rainforest tree Idiospermum australiense as a research subject for my Master’s degree, and some months into the project I discovered it only produces flowers high in the canopy.

Read more: The mysterious Pilostyles is a plant within a plant

So, after a short course in single-rope technique, I found myself dangling 15 metres up in the rainforest canopy, surrounded by its sweetly fragrant, rose-like flowers. I followed the flowering process over a 24-hour period, taking photographs and catching potential pollinators. The tree is known locally as the “idiot fruit” (a loose translation of its scientific name) and there was I, dangling on a thin rope in its canopy, watching tiny insects. Oh, the irony.

Intricate floral movements

Idiospermum australiense (also known as “ribbonwood”, or the “dinosaur tree”) makes for a fascinating and relatively approachable study subject. It is rare, with scattered populations covering a total of just 23 km². Known populations are mostly close to roads in very wet lowland tropical rainforests of Far North Queensland’s wet tropics.

Read more: Wollemi pines are dinosaur trees

My research sites were idyllic locations close to crystal clear streams, and the tedium of solo field work would occasionally be broken by the wollock-a-woo call of the colourful wompoo pigeon or a wandering curious cassowary.

The hours of observations high in the forest canopy revealed an intricate process of floral movements that allow the plant to control their insect pollinators and prevent self-pollination.

The flowers of Idiospermum start as small spherical buds. Over a period of two days, the numerous cream-coloured, petal-like structures (called “tepals”) unfurl. They emit a fragrance that is sweet and fruity, and attract large numbers of small beetles and thrips (minute insects with fringed wings).

At the centre of the flower, the stamens are covered by a ring of hard rigid tepals, and the stigma – the female part of the flower – is accessible to pollinators via an open crater. But on the third day, things start to change. The stamens move and block the crater, while the ring of hard rigid tepals lifts and the stamens release their pollen. Pollinators can now feast on a reward of messy, sticky pollen, but are prevented from moving that pollen onto the flower’s stigma, thus preventing self-pollination.

Fertilisation only occurs if a pollen-covered insect enters the central crater in a newly opened flower elsewhere. Meanwhile, the ageing flowers start to change colour, first to a pale pink, then slowly deepening to crimson. If pollination has occurred, the flower will develop into a fruit containing one, rarely two, seeds.

The seeds themselves are remarkable. At up to 225 grams, they are probably the largest seed produced by any Australian plant (apart from the coconut). Unlike other rainforest plants with large fruits, they are not dispersed by cassowaries.

In fact, these enormous seeds have no known disperser: instead, they fall and germinate where they come to rest. The starchy reserves and protective poisons contained in the seed give the young seedling a great start in the dark and dangerous environment of the forest floor. But arguably, these seeds are the reason for the tree’s rarity. Their lack of a disperser, and reliance on a humid environment to prevent potentially fatal desiccation, may be the reason why their distribution is so restricted.

Refugees from deep time

Idiospermum occurs in just three widely separated populations, one in the Daintree, and two others 150km to the south, in the foothills of Queensland’s two highest mountains. They grow in “environmental refugia”: habitats, usually close to rain-attracting mountains, that have remained climatically stable for millions of years while the remainder of the continent has dried out. These refuges provide a safe and stable habitat for an extraordinary diversity of plants found nowhere else, including many that have been described as “primitive”.

“Primitive species” are modern species whose lineage branched off at a very early stage in the evolution of flowering plants, and who have retained primitive anatomical and genetic features that are similar to those seen in fossils of ancestral flowering plants.

The concentration of ancient flowering plant lineages within Queensland’s wet tropics makes the region internationally significant. With some 15 of the world’s 27 ancient plant families occurring within its 2 million hectares, it can be considered a living museum showcasing the evolution of the flowering plants.

Among the flora of the wet tropics, Idiospermum is truly iconic. It is the only member of its family (the Calycanthaceae) in the southern hemisphere: its closest relatives grow in China and North America. Its attractive, fragrant flowers retain a set of features seen in fossils some 88 million years old.

Read more: The Lord Howe screw pine is a self-watering island giant

It occurs in beautiful lowland rainforest locations, where it can often be easily found due to the scattering of seeds around its base. Idiospermum provides a focus for the region’s flora – its beauty, its rarity, its relictual nature, and its significance on a world scale.