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

Scott Morrison has used his address to the United Nations to strongly defend the government’s performance on climate change, declaring defiantly Australia was “doing our bit” and “we reject any suggestion to the contrary”.

In a speech concentrating on Australia’s response to “the great global environmental challenges” Morrison emphasised dealing with plastic waste.

“To protect our oceans, Australia is committed to leading urgent action to combat plastic pollution choking our oceans, tackle over-exploitation of our fisheries, prevent ocean habitat destruction and take action on climate change,” he said.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on Wednesday, calls for urgent climate change action “to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere”.

The IPCC says that with the increase in temperature that has already occurred “the ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe”.

With much international attention on the Great Barrier Reef, Morrison declared the reef was “vibrant and resilient and protected under the world’s most comprehensive reef management plan”.

He said that on climate change Australia was “taking real action … and getting results”, and attacked critics.

“We are successfully balancing our global responsibilities with sensible and practical policies to secure our environmental and economic future.

“Australia’s internal and global critics on climate change willingly overlook or ignore our achievements, as the facts simply don’t fit the narrative they wish to project about our contribution.”

Read more: View from The Hill: What might Lily and Abbey say to Scott Morrison about Greta Thunberg?

Morrison’s speech came in the wake of considerable criticism of his failing to attend the UN leaders summit on climate at the start of the week.

Reeling off facts and figures on Australia’s performance, the Prime Minister told the General Assembly, “this is a credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action. It represents a halving of emissions per person in Australia, or a two thirds reduction in emissions per unit of GDP”.

Australia had the world’s highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies, he said, and one in five households had rooftop solar systems.

Referring to the Australian government’s decision not to put more money into the Global Green Climate Fund, Morrison said it preferred to invest directly, targeting Pacific island countries.

In sum, Australia was taking “significant and comprehensive action … in response to the world’s greatest environmental challenges”.

On the push by young people on climate issues – highlighted last week by the school strikes and this week by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s much publicised address to the summit – Morrison said that like other leaders he received many letters from children about their future.

“I deeply respect their concerns and indeed I welcome their passion, especially when it comes to the environment.

“My impulse is always to seek to respond positively and to encourage them. To provide context, perspective and particularly to generate hope.

“To focus their minds and direct their energies to practical solutions and positive behaviour that will deliver enduring results for them.

“To encourage them to learn more about science, technology, engineering and maths – because it’s through research, innovation and enterprise that the practical work of successfully managing our very real environmental challenges is achieved.”

Read more: Here is a global solution to the plastic waste crisis – and A$443 million to get it started

The passion and aspiration of the young must be respected and harnessed, he said. At the same time “we must guard against others who would seek to compound or, worse, facelessly exploit their anxiety for their own agendas. We must similarly not allow their concerns to be dismissed or diminished as this can also increase their anxiety.

“Our children have a right not just to their future but to their optimism.

“Above all, we should let our children be children, let our kids be kids, let our teenagers be teenagers – while we work positively together to deliver the practical solutions for them and their future.”

Before delivering his speech Morrison visited an Australian company’s recycling facility in New York.

At a press conference there, he told reporters his talks had reinforced the fact “that we’ve just got to keep working hard to get our energy costs down” so they could compete globally.

“I keep coming back to this issue of gas and looking at all the alternatives on the table.” he said.

There was more work to be done on dealing with electricity prices.

“It’s a constant challenge”, he said, while shifting a lot of the weight to the state governments.

The federal government wasn’t the primary government with the impact on electricity prices, he said.

“We all know that it’s the state governments who basically are in charge of the assets and resources access that principally determines these costs and the cost of the system and the utilities.

“They also determine whether you can get gas out from under people’s feet. Now the reason electricity prices are as low as they are in the United States, and particularly down south, is because of access to gas. We’ve got heaps of gas and it’s being kept under people’s feet. So that’s something we’ve got to change,” he said. The states needed to change the rules.

– ref. Defiant Scott Morrison tells the world Australia is ‘doing our bit’ on climate change – http://theconversation.com/defiant-scott-morrison-tells-the-world-australia-is-doing-our-bit-on-climate-change-124269

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

Scott Morrison has used his address to the United Nations to strongly defend the government’s performance on climate change, declaring defiantly Australia was “doing our bit” and “we reject any suggestion to the contrary”.

In a speech concentrating on Australia’s response to “the great global environmental challenges” Morrison emphasised dealing with plastic waste.

“To protect our oceans, Australia is committed to leading urgent action to combat plastic pollution choking our oceans, tackle over-exploitation of our fisheries, prevent ocean habitat destruction and take action on climate change,” he said.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on Wednesday, calls for urgent climate change action “to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere”.

The IPCC says that with the increase in temperature that has already occurred “the ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe”.

With much international attention on the Great Barrier Reef, Morrison declared the reef was “vibrant and resilient and protected under the world’s most comprehensive reef management plan”.

He said that on climate change Australia was “taking real action … and getting results”, and attacked critics.

“We are successfully balancing our global responsibilities with sensible and practical policies to secure our environmental and economic future.

“Australia’s internal and global critics on climate change willingly overlook or ignore our achievements, as the facts simply don’t fit the narrative they wish to project about our contribution.”

Read more: View from The Hill: What might Lily and Abbey say to Scott Morrison about Greta Thunberg?

Morrison’s speech came in the wake of considerable criticism of his failing to attend the UN leaders summit on climate at the start of the week.

Reeling off facts and figures on Australia’s performance, the Prime Minister told the General Assembly, “this is a credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action. It represents a halving of emissions per person in Australia, or a two thirds reduction in emissions per unit of GDP”.

Australia had the world’s highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies, he said, and one in five households had rooftop solar systems.

Referring to the Australian government’s decision not to put more money into the Global Green Climate Fund, Morrison said it preferred to invest directly, targeting Pacific island countries.

In sum, Australia was taking “significant and comprehensive action … in response to the world’s greatest environmental challenges”.

On the push by young people on climate issues – highlighted last week by the school strikes and this week by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s much publicised address to the summit – Morrison said that like other leaders he received many letters from children about their future.

“I deeply respect their concerns and indeed I welcome their passion, especially when it comes to the environment.

“My impulse is always to seek to respond positively and to encourage them. To provide context, perspective and particularly to generate hope.

“To focus their minds and direct their energies to practical solutions and positive behaviour that will deliver enduring results for them.

“To encourage them to learn more about science, technology, engineering and maths – because it’s through research, innovation and enterprise that the practical work of successfully managing our very real environmental challenges is achieved.”

Read more: Here is a global solution to the plastic waste crisis – and A$443 million to get it started

The passion and aspiration of the young must be respected and harnessed, he said. At the same time “we must guard against others who would seek to compound or, worse, facelessly exploit their anxiety for their own agendas. We must similarly not allow their concerns to be dismissed or diminished as this can also increase their anxiety.

“Our children have a right not just to their future but to their optimism.

“Above all, we should let our children be children, let our kids be kids, let our teenagers be teenagers – while we work positively together to deliver the practical solutions for them and their future.”

Before delivering his speech Morrison visited an Australian company’s recycling facility in New York.

At a press conference there, he told reporters his talks had reinforced the fact “that we’ve just got to keep working hard to get our energy costs down” so they could compete globally.

“I keep coming back to this issue of gas and looking at all the alternatives on the table.” he said.

There was more work to be done on dealing with electricity prices.

“It’s a constant challenge”, he said, while shifting a lot of the weight to the state governments.

The federal government wasn’t the primary government with the impact on electricity prices, he said.

“We all know that it’s the state governments who basically are in charge of the assets and resources access that principally determines these costs and the cost of the system and the utilities.

“They also determine whether you can get gas out from under people’s feet. Now the reason electricity prices are as low as they are in the United States, and particularly down south, is because of access to gas. We’ve got heaps of gas and it’s being kept under people’s feet. So that’s something we’ve got to change,” he said. The states needed to change the rules.

– ref. Defiant Morrison tells the world Australia is ‘doing our bit’ on climate change – http://theconversation.com/defiant-morrison-tells-the-world-australia-is-doing-our-bit-on-climate-change-124269

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Thomas, Lecturer in Sustainability Governance and Leadership, University of Melbourne

Since 2013, Australia’s policy response to climate change has been the Emissions Reduction Fund, which awards government contracts to projects that reduce carbon emissions by planting trees, flaring landfill gas, improving energy efficiency, and other methods. It is supported by a “safeguard mechanism” that imposes a cap on the largest emitters.

Under the Emissions Reduction Fund, the government has contracted 192 million tonnes of emissions reductions from 433 projects, at an average price of about A$12. There are mixed views about whether these projects will be delivered and if they will effectively reduce emissions.

Read more: Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund is almost empty. It shouldn’t be refilled

The Emissions Reduction Fund has been criticised for its high transaction costs and administrative complexity. It also limits the development of a secondary market, whereby people would be able to trade carbon credits among themselves rather than directly under contract to the government.

Despite these criticisms, earlier this year the fund was extended and rebranded as the Climate Solutions Fund.

This policy is set for the foreseeable future, but may eventually be replaced with a more open market mechanism. It is important to consider how to improve the current system and lay foundations for future developments.

Blockchain is an emerging technology that promises to transform how individuals, industry, and government operate. The current Australian carbon market is ripe for such a technical transformation.

How does blockchain work?

Blockchain is a record of transactions, also known as a ledger. It is the design and process of blockchain that distinguishes it from other established ledgers.

Blockchain uses online networks to conduct, validate, and record transactions. These can range from simple transactions to more complex smart contracts that only execute when defined conditions are met.

Network members can access the distributed ledger and independently verify transactions. Once the network is satisfied that a collection of transactions (known as a “block”) is legitimate, they are added (or “chained”) to the ledger, creating a permanent record.

Our research explored how blockchain could be applied to the Australian carbon market. We used a structured design process to consider each technical component of a carbon market blockchain.

The key element of our design was a partially decentralised blockchain, featuring smart contracts of the type described above. A regulator would have particular powers to issue and verify carbon credits, and administer decentralised transactions. This decentralisation would be backed by smart contracts that would automate transactions if certain conditions were met.

Suppose a company has a government contract to provide a certain amount of emissions reductions by planting trees. Once these reductions were achieved, the blockchain would verify that the activity was complete. The company might then be able to plant more trees, and potentially sell further carbon credits to a non-government client. This could be a company that needed to offset its own emissions that had gone above the levels set in the safeguard mechanism, for example.

In this case, the blockchain would allow all parties to transparently see the verified reductions and ensure that no credits were double-counted.

How can this help the Australian carbon market?

Currently the Clean Energy Regulator is intimately involved in every aspect of project monitoring, reporting, and verification. But there is a smarter way.

Smart contracts could be programmed according to a project’s particular emissions reduction method (tree planting, improving energy effiency, and so on). Market rules could then be designed to automate the regulator’s functions.

As a project met conditions specified in its smart contract – meeting a certain amount of emissions reductions, for instance – it would be verified and issued with the carbon credits it has earned. For projects currently contracted to the Emissions Reduction Fund, an extension could be added to automatically award the credits.

Using smart contracts could create a more independent regulator. The regulator would be able to demonstrate transparency and consistency in credit issuing and purchasing. This would remove the uncomfortable conflict of interest that currently exists, whereby the regulator is currently in charge of both issuing and buying the credits.

Smart contracts would also create a more effective regulator, with access to real-time information about the performance of projects, rather than having to wait months or years for reporting. This would enable the regulator to more quickly identify non-compliance or suspicious activity in projects.

Smart contracts would also speed up processing times for project reporting and encourage more frequent reporting. This would benefit projects by cutting transaction costs and allowing credits to be issued more quickly, thereby improving cash flow.

At the scheme level, lower administrative burdens and improved project cash flow would reduce overall project costs. This would in turn lead to more projects, promote more competition in Emissions Reduction Fund auctions, and thus allow the government to save money when buying emissions reductions.

Smart contracts would let the government monitor its portfolio of contract projects more closely. This would allow faster reallocation of funds from poorly performing projects.

Read more: The future of blockchain according to experts in the energy sector

The Australian government often declares its commitment to free markets. But the current system puts all the responsibility for the carbon market squarely on the government’s shoulders. This must be uncomfortable, and an alternative approach would surely be attractive.

Introducing a blockchain technology to the market’s processes would boost transparency, security, efficiency, and integrity. It would also reduce costs, increase competitiveness, and improve equity for participants in the market.

An Australian carbon market blockchain is an attractive potential solution to some of the problems with the current approach to emissions reductions, and a promising foundation for a more open Australian carbon market in the future.

This article and the research it describes were co-authored by Sam Hartmann, who led the work as a graduate researcher at the University of Melbourne.

– ref. Australia’s carbon market needs to be faster and smarter. Blockchain can help – http://theconversation.com/australias-carbon-market-needs-to-be-faster-and-smarter-blockchain-can-help-123991

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beatrice Alba, Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Sexism and misogyny harm women in many obvious ways. Women experience economic, workforce and health-care disadvantages, intimate partner violence, gendered violence in public places, and street harassment.

Women are also faced with denials gender inequality still exists in 2019. Some people presume anti-discrimination legislation, equal pay, and ensuring motherhood is not a barrier to workforce participation are all that’s needed to achieve gender equality.

But sexism pervades society in many more subtle ways – and its impacts are not always so tangible. This discrimination is committed not just in the workplace and on the streets, but in social settings and in our own homes, sometimes by the people who love us.

It can also start young, like when parents enlist daughters to serve guests at a family gathering, and sons are free to relax with their male relatives.

Everyday sexism might not be noticed by perpetrators or bystanders, but it can wear women down and is linked to poorer physical and mental health.

Read more: Whistling and staring at women in the street is harassment – and it’s got to stop

What is ‘everyday sexism’?

Researchers have examined experiences of everyday sexism using a daily diary method. In series of studies from the United States, researchers asked 107 women and 43 men to record in a diary any sexist incidents they encountered over a period of two weeks.

One type of sexism the participants encountered was the endorsement of traditional gender role prejudices and stereotypes. One participant, for example, reported being told not to “worry her pretty little head about these complex insurance issues”.

Another type of everyday sexism participants encountered was demeaning or derogatory treatment, such as sexist jokes and language.

A third type of sexism was sexual objectification, such as street harassment and unwanted touching. For example, one participant reported having a stranger at a party squeeze her waist while he was walking past.

In some contexts, women may not experience any formal barriers to participation, but may still be faced with cultural norms that disadvantage them.

Women in traditionally male-dominated fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), for instance, can be targets of prejudice and negative stereotyping which undermines their success.

This negative stereotyping may include being underestimated and assigned easier tasks. Women might also experience social exclusion and isolation, such as not being invited to out-of-hours catch-ups.

Read more: Overt or covert, sexism at work causes real harm

Rules and laws against gender discrimination don’t prevent people with sexist attitudes from treating others unfairly in everyday interactions. This is particularly true when it is perpetrated unconsciously, in ways that aren’t detectable to everybody.

Discrimination gets under your skin

While individual instances of this unfair treatment might seem so minor as to be harmless, they can be frequent and ubiquitous. Everyday sexism is often present at a constant low-level in the background of our lives, adding an extra layer of stress.

Unsurprisingly, these subtle forms of everyday sexism have been linked to poorer mental health.

The daily diary study described above found more frequent reports of everyday sexism predicted poorer psychological well-being.

Earlier research showed that experiences of sexism were linked to poorer mental and physical health, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), binge drinking and smoking.

More recently, a study found experiences of gender discrimination in the workplace accounted, in part, for poorer health outcomes in women compared to men.

There are, however, factors that moderate the relationship between discrimination and health outcomes. Women with higher self-esteem, for example, don’t seem to suffer the ill-effcts of discrimination as much.

Read more: Sexism isn’t just unfair; it makes women sick, study suggests

Given the pervasiveness of gender discrimination, research on its impact on mental health is still disproportionately low. But the existing research findings are corroborated by studies of the mental health impacts of discrimination based on race and sexual orientation.

It might be invisible to some

Studies consistently show that the perception you’re being discriminated against on any grounds is linked to poorer mental and physical health. And subtle forms may be as harmful as more overt forms of discrimination.

Everyday sexism might be difficult to recognise by those who don’t experience it. Research shows men are less likely to accept evidence of gender discrimination than women. This is likely due to perceptions and everyday observations being limited by our own experiences and our biases.

Anecdotal evidence alone is insufficient to demonstrate the full reality of everyday sexism and its impacts. Scientific research reveals far more than our intuitions do about the nature of these phenomena, with greater accuracy.

Sexism is a health issue

Given this link to well-being, it’s reasonable to consider sexism a public health issue.

Doing so widens the circle of those considered responsible for protecting the well-being of those affected. Governments are obliged to reduce this health disparity, just as they invest in reducing other public health concerns, such as smoking and obesity.

Read more: Sexism isn’t just unfair; it makes women sick, study suggests

While gender stereotypes remain as entrenched now as they were 30 years ago, there is promising evidence we can learn to reduce everyday sexism.

One such intervention simulates an experience of discrimination by randomly assigning one group of participants to experience “small and seemingly innocuous advantages” in a game.

Direct experience of discrimination, and critical reflection on it, increases recognition of the harm it causes and increases the intention to overcome it.

Creating a fairer society requires some antidote for the health impacts caused by sexism. But as we know, prevention is better than cure.

– ref. Still serving guests while your male relatives relax? Everyday sexism like this hurts women’s mental health – http://theconversation.com/still-serving-guests-while-your-male-relatives-relax-everyday-sexism-like-this-hurts-womens-mental-health-116728

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeremy Moss, Professor of Political Philosophy, UNSW

There are many reasons for Australia’s absence from the podium of the the United Nations Climate Action Summit this week. No doubt it would send a poor message if emission reduction laggards such as Australia had taken centre stage.

But Australia is also the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquified natural gas. And by providing fossil fuel subsidies and exploration rights, the Australia federal government encourages its major mining companies to export more. This situation is now profoundly hostile to action on climate change.

Read more: Australia’s energy exports increase global greenhouse emissions, not decrease them

The emissions produced from the fossil fuels extracted by Australia’s major gas, coal and oil producing companies – our “carbon majors” – such as BHP, Glencore and Yancoal, are now larger than all Australia’s domestic emissions.

While these companies, and Australia itself, have no legal responsibility for these “exported” emissions, morally it is comparable to selling uranium to a failed state or dumping medical waste unsafely. We understand the harm our exports cause, and are therefore at least partially culpable for the harms they cause.

We think in nations, not companies

Why aren’t Australian carbon majors considered to be responsible for addressing their emissions and their consequences? One reason is when we think about reducing emissions, we typically focus on the role of nations.

After all, it is nations that negotiate climate agreements, and their policies are substantially responsible for the contribution their citizens make to the problem of climate change.

But the impact of carbon majors is now so large, we must make the case for holding them responsible for the consequences.

In 2018 alone, BHP’s global fossil fuel production led to the emissions of the equivalent of 596 megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂-equivalent . Over the last 15 years BHP’s Australian coal operations have produced 1,863Mt of CO₂-e.

These figures would be significantly higher still if we included the remainder of the emissions since 1990, when the first major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed the risks of climate change and the consequences of emissions.

To put that in perspective, in 2018 BHP’s emissions from its global fossil fuel operations alone were more than the whole of Australia’s domestic emissions (534Mt CO₂-e) for 2018. If BHP were a country, the products it produces would cause emissions greater than those emitted by 25 million Australians.

As well as their current levels of production, many of the carbon majors hold vast reserves to be extracted in the future as well as new fossil fuel projects. Glencore, the largest coal mining company in Australia, reported in 2018 that they have 6,765Mt of measured metallurgic coal resources, and 1,565Mt of thermal coal in proved marketable reserves. Together, that’s the equivalent of 18,202Mt of CO₂, more than 34 times Australia’s 2018 carbon emissions.

Moral responsibility

But why should we hold the companies themselves responsible for these emissions? After all, except for the emissions created during the extraction process, they don’t themselves directly produce these emissions. For the most part, carbon majors contribute by being producers and suppliers of fossil fuels.

Like nations, carbon majors are seen as having responsibility only for emissions they have produced directly in operating a mine or transporting their commodities to port. This is the “territorial” model of emissions attribution.

Yet the responsibility of carbon majors is much greater than this territorial model suggests. To see how this might be the case, it is useful to draw on some basic moral and legal theory.

Read more: Youth climate movement puts ethics at the center of the global debate

For example, a murderer or thief is directly responsible for the harm they cause their victim. They pulled a trigger or absconded with the money, and no-one else shares that direct blame.

But in the case where a person intends to shoot another person and I announce that I will sell them a gun — knowing full well what it will be used for — the responsibility for the murder no longer falls solely on the person who pulls the trigger. Given I sold the gun knowing that someone would be harmed, I am now an accomplice to the crime and should share at least some of the blame.

In this case, there is a relationship between my actions and the murder that ought to make me at least partially responsible.

In the case of carbon majors, by producing and selling fossil fuels which are, in turn, consumed in another country, they are complicit in the harm directly caused by their customer: the releasing of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by consuming the fuel.

Australia’s carbon majors are accessories to the wrongful harm of climate change.

Shared blame

These companies of course point out they are not wholly responsible – other companies and people actually use the fossil fuels overseas, where the emissions count towards another country’s tally. But accepting even some fault for the effect of their exports is a huge increase in a company’s moral responsibility over what they currently admit.

What does this mean in practice? First of all, it means that they have a strong moral reason to stop contributing to the harm by appropriately cutting their fossil fuel operations in line with IPCC timeframes and take a fair share of their climate-related liabilities. They should also stop seeking support for fossil fuels through lobbyists, politicians, “think tanks” and industry groups.

It will be argued that such actions will be costly to the carbon majors. But unless we are willing to concede that it is acceptable to harm others without sanction or an end it sight, this is not a convincing response.

Read more: Coal does not have an economic future in Australia

However as citizens, we also need to move beyond reducing our domestic emissions. As voters, investors and consumers, we share a responsibility for our exported emissions. Ending state and institutional support for carbon majors should now be a major focus of climate action.

– ref. When it comes to climate change, Australia’s mining giants are an accessory to the crime – http://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-australias-mining-giants-are-an-accessory-to-the-crime-124077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoran Endekov, Education Policy Fellow, Victoria University

In recent months, one of Victoria’s oldest Catholic girls’ schools, Presentation College, announced it was closing down, citing falling enrolments. Other Catholic schools have decided to merge together, some also pointing to dwindling enrolments.

Meanwhile, Australia is in the midst of a population boom with new schools being built and overall enrolment numbers on the rise. So, are enrolments in Catholic schools going down across the country, and if so, why?

Enrolment numbers over the last decade

School enrolments across Australia are, overall, trending upwards. Our calculations show enrolments increased by nearly 12% from 2009-2018, representing around 409,000 extra students across all schools. If the current trend continues, four million students will be studying in Australian schools by 2022.

The trends show government and independent schools are becoming more popular than Catholic schools.

As the graph below shows, government primary school enrolments steadily increased until 2014. There was a fall in 2015, but then the numbers kept climbing. Government secondary school enrolments showed no similar lull, steadily increasing over the last four years.

The trend for independent schools was similar to that of government schools. The only difference is that independent schools generally have higher enrolments in secondary schools than in primary, as parents are more likely to make the choice to transition to an independent school in the secondary years.

Catholic primary school enrolments increased until 2014, then dropped slightly in 2015, like the government and independent school enrolments. However, Catholic primary enrolments didn’t recover and have remained reasonably stagnant since 2015.

Read more: Three charts on: why Catholic primary school parents can afford to pay more

Catholic secondary schools have been on a slight downward trajectory from 2016, with a loss of 1,798 students in the last two years.

The difference in primary and secondary student enrolments from 2014-2015, in part, reflects changing definitions of primary and secondary students in Western Australia and Queensland. The trend is mirrored in secondary schools where enrolments went up between the two years.

Enrolments increasing, but slower for Catholic schools

Government schools saw enrolments grow by 11% between 2009 and 2018 – an increase of around 260,000 students. Independent school enrolments grew by around 17% (84,600 new students) while Catholic school enrolments grew by only 8%, which accounted for around 61,000 new students.

As a share of the total enrolment growth, government schools accounted for around 64%, Catholic schools for 15% and independent schools 21%.

Government schools experienced significant growth from 2011. There was a decrease in extra student numbers between 2017 and 18, but the overall trend is up. Independent schools have maintained similar enrolment levels with a noticeable increase in enrolments over the last two years. But Catholic school enrolment growth steadily decreased each year since 2013.

In 2017 and 2018, Australian Catholic schools had a net decrease of 180 and 1,135 students respectively. Victoria and Queensland are the only jurisdictions that have experienced increases over the same period, with 839 and 1,153 additional enrolments respectively.

Why is this happening?

So, what’s driving the overall downturn in Catholic school enrolments? There has been some speculation, such as from the NSW Teachers Federation, it may be due to fallout from the Royal Commission into child sex abuse (which ran from 2013 until the final report’s release in December, 2017).

But the data also indicate enrolment patterns may be driven by broader demographic and social trends. New migrants may be partly responsible. Over the last ten years Australia has experienced a net overseas migration of more than two million people.

Analysis of census data shows students who arrive in Australia in the three years before the census date are most likely to go to a government school. In 2016, 77% of these students attended a government school.

Fewer of these students attend Catholic schools, with enrolments dropping from 12% in 2011, to 9% in 2016 among migrant groups. Migrant enrolments in independent schools have remained steady over those five years.

For many parents, the decision about which school their children will attend can be complex and dependent on many factors. Most of the research on school choice shows families typically exercise this choice at the secondary school level.

Read more: Why I’m choosing the local state school – even though it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles

The key factors influencing parents when choosing a particular government primary school is the convenience of its location and whether other family members are at the school.

Research on school choice shows parents of children attending an independent school most frequently referred to academic results as the motivating factor behind their decision to send their child there. For Catholic schools, it was the religious values.

More Australian families are identifying as having “no religion”. Since 2006, students in the “no religion” category have increased, and those with a Catholic affiliation have decreased, from 30% to 27% respectively.

Read more: As Australia becomes less religious, our parliament becomes more so

Of course, many families choose schools based on financial considerations. Recent analysis by the ANZ shows mid-tier private schools (which charge between A$10,000 and A$20,000 a year in tuition fees) saw a drop in enrolments in 2017 and 2018.

These families may be opting for so-called “magnet schools” which are high performing government schools where parents move to the catchment area to increase their chances of admission. This shows parents make strategic choices within school sectors as well as between them.

Note: Data was sourced from the ABS and ACARA and may not correspond with annual data released by school system authorities. However the overall trends are the same.

– ref. Five charts on Catholic school enrolments: they’re trending down while Australia’s population booms – http://theconversation.com/five-charts-on-catholic-school-enrolments-theyre-trending-down-while-australias-population-booms-121616

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David M. Herold, Sustainable Logistics Researcher, Griffith University

A rise in online shopping is often blamed for an increase in the number of parcel delivery vehicles clogging up our busy city roads.

But a study we at Vienna University carried out for a European postal service found parcel delivery vehicles made up only a fraction (0.8%) of a city’s traffic flow. Tradespeople and other services were more than seven times more likely to be making up the business traffic.

Yet the claim that parcel delivery plays a significant part in urban road traffic is used regularly in reports. Hopefully our study can help to change the attitude.

Read more: Fancy an e-change? How people are escaping city congestion and living costs by working remotely

Who’s on our city roads?

The unfair focus on parcel delivery neglects other commercial sectors using vehicles on a city’s roads for transport and parking. In fact, there is a lack of studies investigating specifically to what extent parcel delivery impacts and contributes to urban road traffic in major cities worldwide.

To examine the true impact of parcel delivery – technically known as CEP for courier, express and parcel deliveries – our team at the Vienna University of Economics in Business was commissioned by the Austrian postal organisation to study the traffic composition in Vienna, Austria, between March and June 2019.

The goal of the study was to identify the share of parcel delivery and other specific categories of light commercial vehicles used in the city.

The city’s traffic was videoed and manually counted at key times over a 15 week period on main and secondary roads. In addition, we used secondary data from the city of Vienna for validation.

The results showed passenger cars accounted for 86.5% of urban road traffic. The remaining share of light and heavy commercial vehicles comprised 13.5% of traffic.

Of that, we found parcel delivery vehicles accounted for only 0.8% of the traffic. This clearly contradicts the often-heard and reported claim that they are a main contributor to urban congestion and delays.

Other light commercial vehicles played a much more significant part in urban road traffic.

Tradesmen and technicians had the largest share among light commercial vehicles with 6.0% of traffic. This is more than seven times higher than the share of parcel delivery.

Any transport policies that aim to deal with traffic reduction should consider all vehicle categories and the respective industry specific logistics.

From Austria to Australia

Some may argue that European cities differ from Australian cities, but we believe our findings are also relevant to cities here and in other industrialised counties.

For example, Vienna is not that different to Brisbane, in Queensland. Vienna is a city with almost 2 million people – similar to Brisbane (depending on how you define the area).

Moreover, Vienna’s traffic is – like Brisbane’s – impacted by a significant share of commuters travelling in and out of the city every business day.

Both cities have similar congestion rates – Brisbane 27% and Vienna 25% – and are served by all major local and global parcel delivery companies.

But more importantly, the traffic composition in Austria and Australia’s bigger cities seems to be very similar. Researchers in Melbourne measured the share of light commercial vehicles entering the CBD and found 13.4% cent of the vehicles entering the central business district were light commercial and service vehicles.

This corresponds almost exactly with our Vienna findings.

Congestion is getting worse

Traffic is on the rise in many cities around the world, including here in Australia, which already creates traffic congestion.

One area of growth in Australia is also the number of light commercial vehicles on our streets, up from 39.3 billion kilometres travelled in 2008 to 54 billion kilometres in 2018. That means potentially more such vehicles in our cities.

Read more: Urban growth, heat islands, humidity, climate change: the costs multiply in tropical cities

When it comes to looking at who needs to do more to try to cut congestion, you need to consider more than just the parcel delivery companies.

Studies show that further consolidation efforts within the parcel delivery industry would only lead to a maximum saving of a further 10% of delivery vans, that’s 9 instead of 10 delivery vans on the street. Given they only have a share of 0.8% of total traffic, that would only lead to reduction in traffic of less than 0.1%.

But for tradespeople and technicians, for example, with a share of 6.0% in city traffic, developing better logistics could lead to a greater reduction in the overall traffic in cities.

– ref. Don’t blame parcel delivery vans for clogging up city traffic, look to the tradies – http://theconversation.com/dont-blame-parcel-delivery-vans-for-clogging-up-city-traffic-look-to-the-tradies-123776

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Dawel, Lecturer, Australian National University

In 2016, the Richmond Tigers failed to reach their potential, finishing 13th on the AFL ladder.

They had not taken home a premiership for more than three decades.

As is often the case when things are this low, the club looked to change the leadership. Coach Damien Hardwick narrowly escaped dismissal — which turned out to be an extremely fortunate decision for the Tigers.

In 2017 they won the premiership; and they look set to do it again in 2019.

This dramatic turnaround left everyone wondering: how did things go from awful to sensational so fast?

Luckily, psychology can help us understand exactly what went wrong, what went right, and how we can apply these lessons in our own lives.

What went wrong?

In 2016, Hardwick was focused on winning. He had been coach of the Tigers since 2010, and had taken the team to the finals for the previous three years – without a win.

Hardwick was experienced, skilled, and determined. So were his players. Shouldn’t this be a recipe for success?

It often isn’t. Winning is an external reward: an outcome contingent on performance. Being motivated by external rewards worsens performance and, ironically, makes success less likely.

External rewards also have other negative impacts: focusing on reward alone sucks out the joy. Hardwick was angry and unhappy about events in both his personal and professional life.

Reflecting on this time, Hardwick says he was forced to take a long, hard look at himself at the end of 2016.

He looked for when he was at his best. “It was when I was coaching my daughter’s under 13 basketball side.”

“There was no fear of outcome,” he said.

There was just the love of the game.

What went right?

Connecting with Hardwick’s intrinsic love of football and the Tigers was key.

Humans flourish when they are intrinsically motivated by love of the journey, not the destination.

In football, this is the difference between playing for love of the game and playing to win. The irony is, we are more likely to win when we play for love of the game.

People do better in environments that foster intrinsic motivation: when we get joy or satisfaction from the activity in itself. Children are intrinsically motivated when they play, by having fun. Adults are also intrinsically motivated by activities they find meaning in: this could be as big as parenting, or as small as baking a cake.

Read more: Having a sense of meaning in life is good for you – so how do you get one?

The benefits of intrinsic motivation are broad. Child mental health and school performance outcomes are better. Students are more confident and learn more deeply. Patients eat better and exercise more. Athletes are more likely to stay engaged and succeed at their sport. And employees perform better, leading to better business outcomes.

Unfortunately, a focus on external rewards remains pervasive. We encourage our children to get good grades and praise them when they do. In academia, our currency is publications and citation counts. Many people work to get paid. To some extent, these types of rewards are a necessary evil. Grades help measure student learning – and I do not want my employer to stop paying me.

But like Hardwick and his team, there are things we can do to encourage ourselves and others – our children, our students, and our employees – to connect with love of the game.

What can we do?

1. Focus on the joys of the activity itself, not what comes out of it. Mindfulness — focusing your attention on the present moment — is an empirically supported strategy for connecting with what is happening right now. You can embrace mindfulness by taking a moment to notice each of your senses: notice what you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Parents can help children by asking what they enjoyed or found satisfying about an activity. For example, a parent might say, “I noticed that you were smiling when you were reading that book. What was it that made you smile?”

2. Connect with your values. Values are the things that are most important to us, like kindness, integrity, or personal growth. Our intrinsic motivation is strongest when we put our values into action. For students and academics, this might mean connecting with a value of curiosity or continued learning, and pushing grades and publications out of mind.

3. Maximise freedom of choice. Part of the problem with external rewards is that they make us feel controlled. Humans have a basic psychological need for autonomy, or self-determination. Hardwick brings out the best in Dustin Martin by supporting his autonomy on the field. For managers, this is a reminder that delegation means trusting your team to find their own solutions.

4. When you need to give someone direction, give clear reasons. Understanding why doing something a certain way is important because it helps people connect with the intrinsic value of a task. Your child might try to avoid helping out with chores, whining “Why can’t you do it?”. Talking with your child about how your family is a team that supports one another will help them develop intrinsic pride in their contribution.

It’s about the game itself

If we want people and teams to thrive, we need to shift focus away from outcomes and take Hardwick’s advice:

For us as a team, [the approach is] staying totally focused in the moment and not being distracted by anything else.

It is believing in your strengths as an individual, and our strengths as a team. It is also about enjoying what we do and more importantly, who we are. It is about playing the game, and that’s what we do best.

Success will take care of itself.

– ref. Playing without fear of the outcome: a psychologist tells us what we can learn from the success of the Richmond Tigers – http://theconversation.com/playing-without-fear-of-the-outcome-a-psychologist-tells-us-what-we-can-learn-from-the-success-of-the-richmond-tigers-123992

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

Scott Morrison doesn’t shy away from talking about his family, so it was perhaps unsurprising he told reporters he discussed climate change with his daughters, aged 10 and 12.

“We don’t have deep conversations about emissions reduction targets and what’s happening with the Kyoto Protocol and Paris,” he said. “But we talk about fossil fuels and we talk about what they learn at school.

“And I encourage them to have a passionate, independent view about how they see the world, but I also give them a lot of context. I don’t allow them to be basically contorted into one particular view, I like them to make up their own mind. But I also like to give them reassurance, because the worst thing I would impose on any child, is needless anxiety.”

What Morrison didn’t share, unfortunately, were the girls’ views on the subject.

Even more interesting will be what Lily and Abbey might have to say to their parents, when Scott and Jenny get home, about 16 year old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, founder of the school strike movement, whose passionate speech to the United Nations leaders summit on climate has fired up a sub-battle of the climate wars.

Morrison bypassed the climate summit, so he won’t be able to give his daughters a first hand description. But they may have opinions.

Read more: With 15 other children, Greta Thunberg has filed a UN complaint against 5 countries. Here’s what it’ll achieve

As school students have mobilised in strikes all over the world, kids have become a centre of debate on a couple of fronts.

Activists argue denialists represent a predatory threat to children because they are destroying the planet that future generations will inherit.

Sceptics declare activists are indoctrinating, alarming and exploiting vulnerable children, recruiting them for their cause.

While it is wrong for parents, teachers or anyone else to irresponsibly fan fears in children, some of whom are reportedly displaying high anxiety about the climate threat, it is denying reality for critics to try to dismiss the students’ protest as just the product of manipulation.

This generation of youth has made climate change its issue – as previous generations mobilised against the Vietnam war, and the threat of nuclear war.

The “students” in earlier times were mostly older, in university. But these days young people do most things sooner (except leave home).

And while some may be along for the ride in the marches, or encouraged or pressured to take part, many have strong and well-formed views.

Read more: The gloves are off: ‘predatory’ climate deniers are a threat to our children

It’s also inaccurate denigration to disparage their protest on the grounds they are too young to know what they’re doing. Some are. But 16 and 17 year olds are on the brink of adulthood. In a number of countries they can vote. In Australia there has been debate about whether they should be given the right to do so. And many younger than that have done as much thinking as a lot of their elders.

For all the railing from critics about the attention paid to this girl with a challenging personal history (including being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome) who lectures world leaders in a most confronting way – a way someone older and more inhibited wouldn’t do – Greta Thunberg has become a symbol of the push for greater action on climate change.

Her youth and fire have the power to shock. Her performance – celebrity advocacy – was galvanising at the climate summit. Outside that forum it was immediately divisive – as has been her activism previously – but it grabbed the attention of millions around the world.

Donald Trump’s attempt to put her down with a tweet – “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see! – would likely just attract more supporters to her. She immediately turned it back on him by appropriating his line.

It would be naïve in the extreme to think Thunberg’s presence at the summit has made it easier to force more extensive and faster action on climate change. But her extraordinary crusading is part of the wider international pressure on governments.

The significance of her appearance at the summit was that she waved a big flag. Her audience was less the leaders than those young people who will be encouraged to join her already mass following.

– ref. View from The Hill: What might Lily and Abbey say to Scott Morrison about Greta Thunberg? – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-what-might-lily-and-abbey-say-to-scott-morrison-about-greta-thunberg-124179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sue Green, Deputy Co-ordinator, Journalism Program, Swinburne University of Technology

The spare, white-walled Australian Tapestry Workshop gallery is very much of its place, a wall of windows fronting the South Melbourne street. Cars, trams and shoppers are just metres away, the occasional pedestrian observing the observer. It’s a stark space ill-suited to introspection, but perhaps apposite given that the eight artists showing here are examining their own place and the intersection of their heritage with life in present-day Australia.

Five are migrant women drawing on textile traditions in exploration of their identity in a contemporary Australian context, although little information is provided to illuminate those traditions. Two or three paragraphs in the free program’s four pages of notes are devoted to each artist and, for all except two, this information is duplicated on a wall plaque. More about the artists, their works and the techniques used might have enabled a more nuanced appreciation.

The woven tapestry style associated with the Australian Tapestry Workshop features in some work. Karen migrant Mu Naw Poe learned weaving from her mother and continued it in a refugee camp for 20 years. Once in Australia she undertook an Australian Tapestry Workshop program. Her Night Sky 2018 and Global Warming 2014 are bold, multicoloured geometrics; Faces 2016 is more abstract. The three woven strips of Here We Are Sisters 2018 by noted textile artist Kay Lawrence record the names of participants in a Women’s Wealth Project in traditional European storytelling style.

For Ema Shin, of Japanese and Korean descent, such techniques are the starting point for two densely woven, three-dimensional works, Soft Alchemy (My Pelvic Bone) 2018 and Soft Alchemy (Fertile Heart) 2019. Referencing her pregnancy and including tufted Korean floral symbols of fertility, she adds padding and wrapped wire to produce an alarming profusion of veins.

Lisa Waup’s works also have a 3D quality. A Gunditjmara and Torres Strait woman, her small, woven vessels combine thread, feathers, found objects, even false hair. Her three-part 2019 series It’s in my DNA symbolises passing her DNA to her children, while the other, Past, Present, Future 2019 references living family and ancestors.

Indigenous Australian Bronwyn Razem (Gunditjmara/Kirrae Whurrong), a Master Weaver, is keeping alive weaving skills used to create a traditional eel trap and the weaving’s cultural importance. Eel Trap 2018, is precisely that – a metre-long raffia trap, as used by her people in Victoria’s Western District. The program notes she has played a vital role in this trap’s revival but this information is tantalisingly brief.

Somali weaver Muhubo Suleiman’s Raar 2018 hangs in the window with no identifier, the program revealing who made it and her use of traditional Somalian finger weaving, once essential in nomadic communities, now evoking home in her new country.

Three striking beaded works by Uruguayan migrant Paula Do Prado, one of which, El Grito 2018, is on the program cover, are described as using traditional and non-traditional craft techniques and materials. Open shapes are made from beaded wire and blanket-stitched rope. The work is described as “highly personal and autobiographical”, but just how so remains elusive. So, too, Yunuen Perez’s weaving, which draws on Mexican Indigenous stories and traditional textile techniques.

This is a small but important exhibition, showcasing textile work by women of extraordinary patience, dexterity and expertise. Traditional techniques are given new life, record reflections, keep history alive and salve divided loyalties by weaving links between home and home. Rich histories, personal and cultural, are embedded in these works but the audience is denied access to these histories given the paucity of information available about them.

Place Makers can be viewed at the Australian Tapestry Workshop until December 6. A community workshop will be held on Saturday 16 November

– ref. Place Makers review: tapestries interweave traditions with a new sense of place – http://theconversation.com/place-makers-review-tapestries-interweave-traditions-with-a-new-sense-of-place-123514

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juliette McIntyre, Lecturer in Law, University of South Australia

Yesterday, climate activist Greta Thunberg joined 15 other children from around the world to submit a complaint – or “communication” – to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. They targeted Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey.

Ranging from nine to 17 years old, and from twelve different nations, the group includes a young Sami reindeer herder, a member of the Indigenous Yupiaq tribe, and teenagers from the Marshall Islands who fear their island home will vanish under rising sea levels.

Read more: Greta Thunberg’s voice speaks just as loud as her words

Their communication argues these countries are violating the standards set in the Convention of the Rights of the Child – which is run and monitored by the committee.

They allege these countries are:

recklessly causing and perpetuating life-threatening climate change [and] have failed to take necessary preventive and precautionary measures to respect, protect, and fulfill the petitioners’ rights.

In particular, the communication alleges the petitioners’ rights to life, health, and culture have been violated.

But whether or not the petitioners are successful, the mere act of filing the complaint has already brought the matter into the public eye.

So what role does the committee play? And can their claim actually change international climate policy?

Standing up for the rights of the child

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an international human rights treaty that concerns the right to protection and the economic, social, cultural and political development of all children.

And it’s the job of the Committee on the Rights of the Child – a group of 18 independent experts – to monitor the worldwide implementation of the convention’s standards.

The convention came into force in 1990 and is “the most rapidly and widely ratified human rights treaty in history”. All the countries of the world bar one – the United States – have ratified the treaty.

The CRC establishes global standards with respect to human rights as they apply to children. In particular, article 3 of the CRC requires:

in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.

How the CRC works

The CRC committee has two functions. First, it oversees the implementation of the convention by receiving reports every five years from participating countries outlining the steps taken to fulfil their obligations.

Read more: Climate change: children are carving out a place in politics – now adults must listen and act

Information is also gathered from NGOs and other sources to identify areas of concern. For example, Australia’s last report to the committee was submitted in January 2018. It addressed issues such as the offshore detention of child refugees.

The Australian government appeared before the committee on September 9 and 10, and the committee’s recommendations will be received by the end of this week.

But the second, relatively new, function of the committee permits an individual, or group of individuals, submit a communication arguing their rights have been violated. This “Optional Protocol” – adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2011 – is what Greta Thunberg and the 15 other children are using.

Communications may only be made in respect of countries that have ratified the Optional Protocol and, to date, only 45 out of the 196 state parties have done so. Australia, the United States, Great Britain and China are among those countries that have not signed or ratified.

Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey have ratified the Optional Protocol and have also ratified the substantive international legal obligations relating to climate change. As Greta recently tweeted, this is why these particular five countries were selected.

What next?

There are a number of procedural legal hurdles that must be cleared before the committee can address the substance of the issue.

First, it must be determined if the communication is actually admissible, which includes whether the petitioners have exhausted the legal options in their home countries for addressing their concerns.

But while Thunberg and her co-petitioners have not brought any actions in state or federal courts it may be the committee allows the matter to proceed anyway, since taking such action may have been “unreasonably prolonged or unlikely to bring effective relief”.

Second, the committee must rule on jurisdiction, as the obligations of the CRC only apply to each child within a country’s jurisdiction.

Some of the petitioners meet this requirement by virtue of their nationality or residence, but the communication makes a broader claim: any child is within the jurisdiction of a country when its polluting activity impacts the rights of children, within or outside that country’s territory.

This is a very significant claim: essentially, that carbon pollution leading to climate change violates the rights of children worldwide.

Only once these hurdles are cleared will the committee investigate the substance of the complaints, proceed to a hearing, and make recommendations to any country responsible for violation.

Are they likely to succeed?

The success of the claims may seem a foregone conclusion, as the committee is one of five UN human rights treaty bodies to recently issue a joint declaration stating: “climate change poses significant risks to the enjoyment” of human rights. And that climate change is “a children’s rights crisis” seems an inevitable conclusion.

Still, the communication must clear all the legal hurdles set out above.

But even should the committee agree with Thunberg, the options for redress are limited. After the committee transmits its views and recommendations, they’ll follow up six months later to see if its recommendations have been implemented.

Read more: ‘They’ll give me a detention but it’ll be worth it’ – a climate scientist interviews his climate striking daughter

If they haven’t, there’s not much the committee can do to compel a country to take action.

But the committee’s conclusions are not without impact. Its views and recommendations are strong advocacy tools.

Alongside the school strikes, the communication is part of a broad campaign designed to focus political attention on the issue of urgent action on climate change.

– ref. With 15 other children, Greta Thunberg has filed a UN complaint against 5 countries. Here’s what it’ll achieve – http://theconversation.com/with-15-other-children-greta-thunberg-has-filed-a-un-complaint-against-5-countries-heres-what-itll-achieve-124090

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Forrest, PhD Candidate, University of Western Australia

Since the mass production of plastic began, almost six billion tonnes of it – approximately 91% – has remained in our air, land and water. Plastic production and use is embedded in the global economy, and in our natural environment. This culture of waste is clearly perilous and unsustainable.

Our paper, published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, argues that only a global, market-driven intervention can stop the plastic tide.

It is backed by a commitment by the Minderoo Foundation, chaired by the lead author, of up to US$300 million (A$443 million) to help establish the scheme and ensure its integrity.

The paper argues that the intervention – a voluntary financial contribution paid by global manufacturers of fossil fuel-based plastic – would drive a system-wide transition to recycled plastic. Our modelling shows that this would lead to a dramatic slowdown in the production of new plastic – creating huge benefits for marine life and human health.

We must turn off the tap

Plastic takes so long to break down that every piece produced since its inception in 1856 still exists today, except the small share we’ve burned into poisonous gases.

Many strategies to address the plastic problem have been proposed to date, and efforts have been commendable. But we are bailing out a bathtub with a thimble – while the tap is running.

We have identified a simple solution: a voluntary industry contribution for new fossil fuel-based plastic production.

We believe this technical and financial initiative would level the playing field by making recycled plastic more competitively priced, establishing the right market conditions for a circular plastics economy.

We know from our discussions with industry that this would release technology, in particular chemical or ‘polymer-to-polymer’ recycling, that is proven today but cannot yet compete economically with new fossil fuel-derived plastic. Increased demand from recyclers would transform plastic waste into a commodity, driving plastic recovery and creating incentives for industry to invest and transition. This is already true for materials like aluminium cans, which are highly recycled because the metal has an inherent value.

By mobilising new technology to increase recycling rates, plastic flows to the ocean and the broader environment would slow, and hopefully cease altogether. A circular plastics economy would also significantly reduce carbon emissions created through new plastic production.

Read more: Plastic warms the planet twice as much as aviation – here’s how to make it climate-friendly

Our relationship with plastic is broken

The vast majority of plastics produced to date are derived from fossil fuels. Plastics are made from polymers – long molecular chains comprising smaller carbon-based molecules. Oil and gas are the cheapest materials from which to produce raw polymer resin. This resin is then made into plastic by adding dyes, plasticizers and other chemicals.

Fossil fuel-based plastic has countless uses and is produced very cheaply. Plastic recycling has largely been overlooked because, in the developed world at least, our waste is carted away from our homes and often shipped overseas. This leaves little incentive to tackle our plastic addiction.

But our “out of sight, out of mind” mentality cannot persist.

In 2017, China banned imports of 24 types of solid waste, mainly plastics. This revealed the extent to which developed countries had been sending their waste problem elsewhere. In Australia this led to recyclables being stockpiled, landfilled or sent to countries ill-equipped to handle them.

Read more: China bans foreign waste – but what will happen to the world’s recycling?

Media coverage is also increasingly highlighting the environmental impact of our throwaway culture: plastic washed up on beaches, filling the guts of endangered marine animals and accumulating en masse in circular ocean currents.

This is an abhorrent market failure, which conservatively costs US$ 2.2 trillion (A$3.25 trillion) each year in environmental and socioeconomic damages not taken into account by business or the consumer.

The Sea The Future initiative

We propose an initiative led by global manufacturers in which they make a voluntary financial contribution for each unit of new fossil fuel-based plastic produced. We have dubbed the initiative “Sea The Future”.

Placing a value on plastic both drives its collection and diverts new production away from fossil fuels. The contribution, estimated in our paper as averaging US$500 (A$738) per tonne, would be key to encouraging the small number of global resin producers to choose recycled plastic over fossil fuel as their raw material.

The cost would be passed onto consumers via trillions of individual plastic items. The impact would be negligible – say, a few cents on a cup of coffee – and so is likely to gain broad public acceptance.

Anticipating the concerns of regulators that such a move could be perceived as anti-competitive, the lead author has engaged with global law firms to ensure that the initiative is compatible with free market competition law in countries across the world.

The estimated US$20 billion (A$29.5 billion) per year raised through the initiative would be used to help establish recycling infrastructure, aid industry transition and remediate the environment. Increased demand and a higher price for recycled material also promises to significantly improve the livelihoods of waste pickers – hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people who currently carve meagre earnings from collecting plastic.

Read more: The small hands of Moroccan recycling

The funds would be administered by a self-regulated global industry body, independently audited to ensure performance, accountability and transparency. To address concerns over governance costs, the Minderoo Foundation has committed to underwrite up to five years’ worth of audit fees totalling US$260 million (A$384 million), plus cover US$40 million (A$59 million) in start-up costs, subject to appropriate conditions.

The future is circular

Public pressure is mounting for action on plastics – and what is bad for the planet is ultimately bad for business. The alternatives to an industry-led approach are less appealing. Plastic bans deny us a useful product upon which our economies rely; taxes typically go directly to general revenue and are unlikely to be applied to plastic waste management. So, tax-derived funds are seldom transferred between nations, ignoring the transboundary nature of plastic pollution.

Our global discussions with companies throughout the plastics supply chain have revealed that the vast majority recognise the need to move away from a linear plastics economy. They also understand that a global, market-based mechanism is the only path to achieving the system-wide transformation required.

Society discards over 250 million tonnes of valuable polymer, worth at least a US$ 1,000 per tonne recycled, in plastic waste each year. Soon, if we do nothing, that could grow to 500 million tonnes per annum. What industry would allow half a trillion US dollars of waste each year? Recovering it is simply good business for the environment.

– ref. Here is a global solution to the plastic waste crisis – and A$443 million to get it started – http://theconversation.com/here-is-a-global-solution-to-the-plastic-waste-crisis-and-a-443-million-to-get-it-started-123762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hiba Jebeile, PhD candidate/Research Dietitian, University of Sydney

Instagram recently announced posts promoting diet products and cosmetic procedures will no longer be visible to users under the age of 18. While the initiative is being led by Instagram, the policy will also be in place on Facebook.

Under the policy, posts that feature an incentive to buy a product, such as a discount code, or include a price, will be restricted to users over 18.

Instagram says this new measure comes in response to the increased frequency of “influencers” advertising weight loss products, diet teas and supplements, and cosmetic procedures.

Read more: Social media can damage body image – here’s how to counteract it

Meanwhile, posts that make “miraculous claims” about diets or weight loss products and are linked to a commercial offer will be removed completely from the app. So for example, if an influencer posts a picture of themselves drinking diet tea, telling their followers they managed to lose 20 kilos solely thanks to the tea, and promoting a discount code, this post will be removed.

As well as individual posts, it appears entire Instagram accounts have already been taken down. And while the onus falls on Instagram to enforce the policy, users can also report posts that violate the guidelines.

On a broad scale, it’s great to see an influential tech giant like Instagram taking action to prevent the proliferation of health claims that have no scientific basis.

For young people in particular, this new policy will ensure they’re not marketed treatments they don’t need, or that could even harm their health.

Why is this a good thing?

This latest policy follows Instagram’s stance against online bullying, and their move to hide the number of “likes” from posts. These recent actions recognise the growing body of evidence pointing to the effects of social media on young people’s mental health and self–esteem.

Adolescence is a time of heightened body image concerns. A large Australian survey found 22.8% of adolescent girls described themselves as “very concerned” about their body image, and 18.7% described themselves as “extremely concerned”. Of boys, 9.4% described themselves as “very concerned” and 6% described themselves as “extremely concerned”.

High levels of social media use by adolescents is associated with poorer mental health, and, in particular, increased body image concerns.

This is especially the case when it comes to engagement with highly visual social media, like Instagram, and involvement in photo-based activities such as taking “selfies” and digitally altering images.

Read more: A weight loss app may be a risky way to address obesity in children

Some popular types of social media posts have been shown to have a particularly negative influence on body image. These are ones specifically promoting being thin – “thinspiration” (or “thinspo”), and those promoting fitness and muscle tone – “fitspiration” (or “fitspo”).

Greater social media use increases a teen’s belief in the importance of achieving the thin body ideal for girls and the lean, muscular ideal for boys. This can lead them to judge their own bodies against the highly selected images presented by celebrities and peers on social media.

Research has shown viewing images of females with cosmetic enhancements influences young women’s desire for cosmetic surgery.

So in pursuit of what’s seen as the ideal body type, young people may be vulnerable to the marketing of diet products and cosmetic surgery. Especially when promoted by someone they admire, they could be easily seduced into believing these offerings will provide the solution to their problems – regardless of their actual appearance.

These products can cause harm

From detox teas, to diet pills, to “appetite-supressing” lollipops, the list goes on. Diet products often promote a “quick-fix” solution for weight or fat loss which is tempting to believe. However, there’s rarely reliable evidence to support these claims.

Marketing these products as foods means they bypass the usual controls to determine if a product is effective and safe to use.

Many products are potentially unhealthy. For example, detox teas act as a laxative and can cause dehydration. For other products, the risks associated with their use are unknown.

Use of diet products and self-directed dieting may also lead to other health problems. Once engaged in dieting behaviour, young people are more likely to use more extreme measures including laxatives and diet pills.

They may also begin patterns of restrained food intake or binge eating, increasing their risk of developing clinical eating disorders.

Read more: What’s not to like? Instagram’s trial to hide the number of ‘likes’ could save users’ self-esteem

There’s still more to be done

With these issues in mind, it’s encouraging to see Instagram and Facebook taking this socially responsible step.

But why stop at diet and cosmetic procedure products? Adolescent boys seeking to achieve “ideal” muscle tone are highly vulnerable to exploitative marketing of muscle-building dietary supplements.

These products are seldom effective and may also be harmful, having been linked to severe health issues in children and adolescents, including liver failure. Further, regular use of muscle-building supplements can be a gateway to anabolic steroid use.

Read more: Women can build positive body image by controlling what they view on social media

Although enjoyed by millions, social media has a dark side, and it’s impossible to provide a safe environment for all. It’s essential teens are equipped with skills to understand and negotiate their social media environment and the images they see.

But it’s also valuable to have the support of social media providers in managing the commercial and advertising aspects of social media in this way. The challenge now for Instagram will be ensuring this new policy is enforced consistently.

– ref. In a virtual universe of ‘perfect’ bodies, Instagram’s new policy offers important protection for young users – http://theconversation.com/in-a-virtual-universe-of-perfect-bodies-instagrams-new-policy-offers-important-protection-for-young-users-123912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dempster, Director, Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research; Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW

In the wake of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, the Australian government announced on Sunday a commitment of A$150million “into our local businesses and new technologies that will support NASA on its inspirational campaign to return to the Moon and travel to Mars”.

It is unclear at this point where the government intends to spend this money, but there’s no harm in some reflective speculation.

Read more: The big global space agencies rely on Australia – let’s turn that to our advantage

Because this new commitment is to deep space missions, clearly it is separate from the A$245 million being invested in Australia’s Smartsat Cooperative Research Centre or the A$4.5 million for the Centre for Cubesats, UAVs and their Applications, both of which are generally looking at applications in Earth orbit.

The funding should also be separate from that committed to two Australian Space Agency initiatives: the A$6 million Mission Control Centre for South Australia, and the A$4.5 million Robotics, Automation and Artificial Intelligence Command and Control Centre for Western Australia. Both of these centres could, however, be used in any planned Moon and Mars initiatives.

The funding allocation should also not include the money already committed to space projects by CSIRO under its Space Technology Future Science Platforms initiative.

Where should it be spent?

In thinking about where the money can be spent, it’s worth noting the brief is explicitly to “support NASA”. So, where could Australia help?

NASA’s two main lunar initiatives are the Lunar Gateway and Project Artemis, both of which have been mentioned in relation to Australia’s funding pledge. Mars may be the long-term destination, but the Moon is where it’s at right now.

The Lunar Gateway is infrastructure: a spacecraft placed in a halo orbit (always in view of Earth) that is sometimes as close as 3,000km to the Moon’s surface. It will be used as a hub for astronauts, equipment and communications, and a staging post for lunar landings and returns.

Artemis aims to use NASA’s large new rocket, the Space Launch System, to deliver astronauts, including the first woman to walk on the Moon, to the lunar surface by 2024. It will develop a host of new technologies and is openly collaborative.

Read more: Why isn’t Australia in deep space?

One contribution that cannot be ignored in this context is the technology emerging from Australia’s dominant mining industry. The strength in robotics, automation and remote operations has led to the above-mentioned robotics centre being slated for WA. What’s more, the Australian Remote Operations in Space and on Earth institute, a wide-ranging industry collaboration launched in July, is also likely to be headquartered in WA.

Another area where Australia is developing interesting technology is in optical communications with spacecraft, being driven by research at the Australian National University. At a recent CSIRO workshop to develop “flagship” missions for Australia, the idea of using lasers to beam communications rapidly to the Moon and back was highly rated.

Putting ideas out there

Of the nine possible flagships considered, seven are potentially relevant to the new funding. These include a space weather satellite, an asteroid detection system, a cubesat to Mars, a radiotelescope on the Moon, and a solar sail that could power spacecraft to the Moon. There are plenty of good Australian ideas around.

However, the flagship most closely related to the content of the announcement was a project proposal (disclosure: it’s mine!) that would place an orbiter around the Moon and design a lander/rover to establish our ability to extract water from permanent ice. Water can be used for many things in a settlement, and when split into hydrogen and oxygen it can be used as rocket fuel to move things around, including to Mars.

Read more: Australia can pick up its game and land a Moon mission

All of our research in this area has focused on how this can be done in a commercial way, very much in line with the philosophy of “Space 2.0”. We are putting together a significant team of academics, companies (not just mining and space ones), and agencies to pursue these missions seriously.

There has never been a better time to be working in the space sector in Australia. I and all of my colleagues in the field hope the latest announcement is the next step in establishing the vibrant, sustainable space industry so many in Australia now see as achievable.

– ref. Dig deep: Australia’s mining know-how makes it the perfect $150m partner for NASA’s Moon and Mars shots – http://theconversation.com/dig-deep-australias-mining-know-how-makes-it-the-perfect-150m-partner-for-nasas-moon-and-mars-shots-123994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Bush, Research Fellow in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne

The National Party, Queensland farming lobby group AgForce, and MP Bob Katter have banded together to propose an “independent science quality assurance agency”.

To justify their position, Liberal-National MP George Christensen and AgForce’s Michael Guerin specifically invoked the “replication crisis” in science, in which researchers in various fields have found it difficult or impossible to reproduce and validate original research findings. Their proposal, however, is not a good solution to the problem.

The more important context is that these politicians and lobbyists are opposed to new laws to curb agricultural runoff onto the Great Barrier Reef that are underpinned by research finding evidence of harm from poor water quality. Christensen suggests that many scientific papers behind such regulation “have never been tested and their conclusions may be wrong”. But Christensen seems to be targeting specific results he doesn’t like, rather than trying to improve scientific practice in a systematic way.

Read more: Science is in a reproducibility crisis – how do we resolve it?

In various scientific areas, including psychology and preclinical medicine, large-scale replication projects have failed to reproduce the findings of many original studies. The rates of success differ between fields, but on average only half or fewer of published studies were successfully replicated. Clearly there is a problem.

Much of the problem is due to hyper-competitiveness in science, funding shortfalls, publication practices, and the use of performance metrics that privilege quantity over quality.

Scientists themselves have documented the poor practices that underlie this crisis, such as the misuse of statistics, often unwittingly, in ways that bias findings towards attention-grabbing conclusions. These practices distort the evidence available to policy-makers and other researchers.

Scientists have also already produced responses to some problems: reforms in peer review, guidelines for methods and statistical reporting, and new platforms for data sharing. These improvements are possible only by taking the replication crisis seriously. Paying lip service to it so as to attack particular legislation is the opposite of this.

Making decisions under uncertainty

Establishing an agency with a mission to adjudicate on hand-picked scientific results would make things worse.

At best, such an agency will be one more review panel. At worst, it will be a bureaucratic front for the political agenda of the day. Either way, it will make scientists even more cautious, and delay the flow of information to policy-makers.

The track records of the lobbyists involved in this latest move suggests that they have little genuine interest in improving science. AgForce reportedly deleted more than a decade’s worth of data meant for a government water quality program in advance of the new runoff regulations taking effect.

Exploiting scientific uncertainty has long been a classic tactic of industry lobbyists. It has been used to justify inaction on everything from tobacco to climate change. Local politicians and lobby groups seem to be copying moves from a well-worn overseas playbook in their misuse of the replication crisis.

Scientists can never make pronouncements with the certainty of a politician. But if, as a society, we want to benefit fully from science, we need to accept the idea of scientific uncertainty. The existence of uncertainties does not justify rejection of the best available evidence.

To defend science we need to improve it

It is tempting to respond to politically motivated attacks on science by simply pointing to the excellent track record of scientific knowledge, or the good intentions of the vast majority of scientists.

But there is a better reason: scientists themselves have been improving science. As advocates of reform, we have been told that pointing out problems helps the anti-science movement. We disagree: being open about our work to improve science is essential for building public trust.

Science is something that humans do. It is self-correcting when, and only when, scientists correct it. Research is hard work, and we can’t expect scientists never to make errors or to provide complete certainty. But we can expect scientists to create a culture that values detecting and correcting errors.

Admitting errors in one’s own work, finding them in others’ work, reporting them, retracting results when necessary, and correcting the record are activities that should be the most highly regarded of scientific practices. We need to shift the balance of rewards away from rewarding only groundbreaking discoveries, and towards the painstaking work of confirmation.

A cultural shift in this regard is already underway, to better align scientific practices with scientific values. But there is more to be done, and governments can help.

Read more: Scientific data should be shared: an open letter to the ARC

There are sensible policies to support the open science initiatives that will reduce error production and increase error detection in scientific work. Different fields need different approaches, but here are two ideas.

First, improve funding allocation procedures. Reward self-correcting activities such as replication studies. Don’t require every piece of funded research to be groundbreaking. Don’t rely on flawed metrics. Enforce best-practice data management and open data practices whenever feasible. This can all be done without establishing an inefficient agency whose likely effect is to delay action.

Second, establish a national independent office of research integrity to allow errors in the scientific literature, whether deliberate or accidental, to be corrected in a fair, efficient, and systematic way. Unlike the politicians’ proposal, this would improve the process for all researchers, not just act as a handbrake on research findings that lobbyists don’t like.

– ref. Real problem, wrong solution: why the Nationals shouldn’t politicise the science replication crisis – http://theconversation.com/real-problem-wrong-solution-why-the-nationals-shouldnt-politicise-the-science-replication-crisis-124076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Fisher, Professor of Cattle & Sheep Production Medicine, University of Melbourne

The ban on live sheep exports was only ever intended to be temporary. The Australian government enacted the ban earlier this year to prevent sheep from being shipped to the Middle East from the beginning of June through to September 22 – the highest heat stress risk period.

During this time, sheep are adapted to the cooler temperatures of a southern Australian winter. And for this reason they find it difficult to cope with the sudden increase in temperature and humidity as the transport vessels undertake the two week journey to the Persian Gulf region.

Read more: Can meat exports be made humane? Here are three key strategies

This ban affected any voyages where the vessel would travel through waters in the Arabian Sea north of latitude 11°N at any time – effectively stopping the Middle East sheep trade as the entrance to the Gulf of Aden is at 12°N.

Why are Australian sheep shipped to the Middle East?

It seems outwardly strange to ship live animals (and their feed) across an ocean just for them to be slaughtered for meat shortly after arrival.

But there is a demand for live Australian sheep in the Middle East, which means it’s economically viable for exporters to ship animals from southern Australia, particularly out of Fremantle, but also from ports including Portland and Adelaide.

Read more: Government suspends licence of biggest live sheep exporter

Western Australian farmers received an average price of A$117 for each exported sheep during 2018, so the price of each sheep at the other end must be substantively greater.

There are significant animal welfare challenges in successfully live exporting sheep. Part of the problem has been that the location of the greatest concern for animal welfare is the Australian public. But the Australian public have no consumer power, they’re not the ones buying the sheep.

So, the Australian government has been required to “push” animal welfare requirements down the industry supply pipeline, rather than having these requirements being “pulled” through by market demand.

What we do not know is how the economics would change and whether additional market lines would open up for boxed meat – rather than live sheep – if the live trade were to be stopped.

Why was the ban put in place for the first time in 2019?

The ban was one of the consequences for the live sheep trade after disturbing video footage was revealed in April 2018. The graphic video showed sheep suffering and dying due to apparent heat stress on voyages from Australia to the Middle East.

The government immediately commissioned a review into the conditions for the export of sheep to the Middle East during the northern hemisphere summer.

Read more: Government to announce increased penalties for live sheep trade

That review made a number of recommendations, which were then implemented by the government, including increases in space allowance for sheep on board and independent auditing of ship ventilation systems. Government-appointed observers were also included on voyages, and the notifiable mortality threshold reduced from 2% to 1% of animals during a voyage.

A key recommendation was that the regulatory framework should change from minimising mortality from heat stress to, instead, safeguarding animal welfare.

The government then commissioned further reviews to determine how to implement this recommendation, including an independent technical reference group.

This report was released on September 20, and the government has stated it will be used along with other information to determine the regulations for how (or if) live sheep shipments occur during the northern summer of 2020.

Are the changes sufficient?

The live export industry argues they have succeeded in making substantial changes to how it operates since the original footage was revealed in 2018.

Whether these will be sufficient to prevent further revelations of heat stress incidents or other adverse animal welfare outcomes remains to be seen.

Read more: Australia’s history of live exports is more than two centuries old

Including independent observers on voyages to keep an eye on animal welfare should increase the transparency of what happens to sheep during live export shipments. Although, there has been criticism of the delay in reporting from this initiative.

The new arrangements in place since 2018 and the temporary ban from June to September are unlikely to satisfy animal welfare advocates who are against live exports. On the other hand, the live export industry argues the sector is important for Australian livelihoods, including supporting sheep farmers.

What’s more, the current coalition government has repeatedly stated its commitment to maintaining a live export industry. Interestingly, the 2019 federal election was the first time there was a clear policy difference on the issue between the major parties, with the ALP committed to a phase-out of the live export sheep trade.

It will be interesting to watch whether this policy difference will remain after the ALP’s review of its 2019 election policies.

Read more: The ALP promises to phase out live sheep export

But in terms of what more needs to be done, it’s likely impossible for policy-makers to satisfy all parties in the live export debate.

New overarching standards for the export of livestock from Australia are scheduled to be introduced soon, covering more than just heat stress risk.

However, those who are against the trade in live animals are unlikely to be persuaded to desist in their efforts. A repeated history of damaging incidents and revelations serves as a reminder of what may happen again in the future if the industry does not get to grips with its animal welfare responsibilities.

– ref. The ban on live sheep exports has just been lifted. Here’s what’s changed – http://theconversation.com/the-ban-on-live-sheep-exports-has-just-been-lifted-heres-whats-changed-123998

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Miller, Professor of Violence Prevention and Addiction Studies, Deakin University

The impacts of heavy drinking, gambling and unhealthy food are among the leading causes of preventable health harm in Australia. And for the most part, we know what to do to reduce them.

Most of us would hope the policies governments introduce are based on the best available evidence. However, our study published today suggests that may not be the case.

We found former politicians, staffers and public servants who go on to work for the industries they once regulated have a major influence on the current policy environment. They’re paid to advocate what’s best for their client, not for the Australian public.

Read more: Big Food lobbying: tip of the iceberg exposed

Of the 560 people on the Australian government Register of Lobbyists in 2017, 197 stated they had previously been a government representative. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as most “lobbyists” are directly employed by the companies they lobby for and are therefore not recorded on the register.

In interviews with former politicians and advisers, we found the policymaking process could be corrupted by using knowledge gained in service of the community to advocate for industry.

Lessons from tobacco lobbying

Just like tobacco lobbyists have done over the past 50 years, profit-driven industries such as alcohol, junk food and gambling seek to deter, delay and water down effective public health polices that could restrict the availability of their harmful products.

These industries use lobbying tactics established by the tobacco industry to achieve their goals – from offering free tickets to sporting events and parliamentary wine-tastings, to faking grassroots campaigns and using PR organisations, to donating to political parties.

Read more: Profits, death and disease: big tobacco’s business model

These strategies have been described as “water dripping on stone”. They rely on persistence, rather than force, to persuade.

Another key tactic is to employ political representatives and public servants into industries they have recently been tasked with governing.

Our research

We obtained basic data about this last tactic from three soures: the Australian Government Register of Lobbyists, LinkedIn, and lobbyist business websites.

We have analysed the results from the Register of Lobbyists previously in 2014 and 2015. We found the registers did not meet the stated objective of making lobbying activity transparent to the Australian public.

In that study, we concluded the processes were in urgent need of reform in order to keep accurate records on lobbying, allow free and real-time access to the public, and ensure the records were adequately archived.

For this latest study, we looked at the job history of 122 lobbyists. Of those, most had held influential positions: 18% had been a member of parliament or senator and 47% had been a senior advisor or chief of staff.

The majority had spent more than ten years in government prior to their roles as lobbyists.

We also interviewed 28 key informants, including current and former Australian politicians, journalists, former political staffers, current civil servants and lobbyists.

These interviewees reported on several examples of people working at senior levels of government going on to work directly for alcohol, food or gambling industries, often in areas directly related to their previous government role.

Read more: Lobbying 101: how interest groups influence politicians and the public to get what they want

What’s the problem?

This so-called “revolving door” between government and the food, alcohol and gambling industries can potentially favour industry interests by enhancing insider knowledge and providing access to policymakers through personal ties.

Allowing these industries privileged access to government threatens unbiased policymaking and creates an imbalance between the influence of industry and evidence-based public health advocacy.

One example of industry influence undermining evidence-based policy is the continued delays in implementing alcohol warning labels. The alcohol industry successfully delayed the mandatory implementation of alcohol warning labels about drinking when pregnant for more than six years after a parliamentary committee called for them in 2012.

Other warning labels about the links between alcohol use and cancer remain off the agenda completely.

Read more: Alcohol increases cancer risk, but don’t trust the booze industry to give you the facts straight

A second example is the lack of gambling reform, despite strong public support. Simple reforms such as bet limiting or allowing communities to self-determine the number of pokies they have remain off the agenda.

What can we do about the ‘revolving door’?

Participants also spoke about the importance of the networks and relationships established through the revolving door.

One politician told us:

So someone retires from politics and then they have a ready-made set of relationships nurtured over many years of being colleagues with other Members of Parliament that they can then go and leverage on behalf of a commercial partner.

Another former politician reported:

You see former politicians popping up in these lobbying organisations, and the only reason they’re employed is because they can wield influence.

We urgently need to rethink how we regulate this process.

We need tighter and more robustly enforced regulations around “cooling-off periods” between government employment and lobbying roles. Although rules prevent federal ministers and parliamentary secretaries from lobbying in related areas for 18 months, these rules are poorly enforced.

Read more: Australia’s political lobbying regime is broken and needs urgent reform

Other countries have considerably longer cooling-off periods, with both the United States and Canada adopting a five-year ban on administration officials working in lobbying roles. Australia should follow the Canadian example as best practice.

Our research adds even more weight to existing calls for a federal anti-corruption body to provide oversight and transparency.

Government’s continued failure to adequately regulate the behaviour of former politicians, political staffers and public servants isn’t just an issue for public health policy. It also represents a fundamental corruption of our democracy.

Read more: Essays on health: how food companies can sneak bias into scientific research

– ref. Politicians who become lobbyists can be bad for Australians’ health – http://theconversation.com/politicians-who-become-lobbyists-can-be-bad-for-australians-health-124078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Clack, PhD Candidate, Victoria University of Wellington

Depression is a serious disorder marked by disturbances in mood, cognition, physiology and social functioning.

People can experience deep sadness and feelings of hopelessness, sorrow, emptiness and despair. These core features of depression have expanded to include an inability to experience pleasure, sluggish movements, changes in sleep and eating behaviour, difficulty concentrating and suicidal thoughts.

The first diagnostic criteria were introduced in the 1980s. Now we have an expanded set of concepts for describing depression, from mild to severe, major depressive disorder, chronic depression and seasonal affective disorder.

Over the past 50 years, our understanding of depression has advanced significantly. But despite the wealth of research, there is no clear consensus on how this mental disorder should be explained. We propose a new route through the thicket.

Read more: What causes depression? What we know, don’t know and suspect

Classifying mental disorders

How we describe and classify mental disorders is a fundamental step towards explaining and treating them. When carrying out research on people with depression, diagnostic categories such as major depressive disorder (MDD) shape our explanations. But if the descriptions are wrong, our explanations will suffer as a consequence.

The problem is that classification and explanation are not completely independent tasks. How we classify disorders directly impacts how we explain them, and these explanations in turn impact our classifications. In this way, psychiatry is stuck in a circular trap.

The danger – for depression and for other mental disorders – is that we tailor our explanations to fit the classifications available and that the classifications are inadequate.

Traditionally, research has focused on understanding mental disorders as classified in manuals such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Most of these disorders are what we call “psychiatric syndromes” – clusters of symptoms that hang together in some meaningful way and are assumed to share a common cause.

But many of these syndromes are poorly defined because disorders can manifest in different ways in different people. This is known as “disorder heterogeneity”. For example, there are 227 different symptom combinations that meet the criteria for major depressive disorder.

Read more: We’ve all heard about postnatal depression, but what about antenatal depression?

Improving how we classify disorders

The other problem is that diagnostic criteria often overlap across multiple disorders. Symptoms of restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability and sleep disturbance can be common for people experiencing generalised anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder.

This makes studying disorders like depression difficult. While we may think we are all explaining the same thing, we are actually trying to explain completely different variations of the disorder, or in some cases a completely different disorder.

A significant challenge is how to advance classification systems without abandoning their descriptive value and the decades of research they have produced. So what are our options?

A categorical approach, which sees disorders as discrete categories, has been the most prominent model of classification. But many researchers argue disorders such as depression are better seen as dimensional. For example, people who suffer from severe depression are just further along a spectrum of “depressed mood”, rather than being qualitatively different from the normal population.

Read more: For women’s sake, let’s screen for depression as part of the new heart health checks

Novel classification approaches such as the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology and research domain criteria have been put forward. While these better accommodate the dimensional nature of disorders and are less complex to use, they are conceptually limited.

The former relies on current diagnostic categories and all the problems that come with that. The latter relies on neuro-centrism, which means mental disorders are viewed as disorders of the brain and biological explanations are used in preference to social and cultural explanations.

A new approach called the symptom network model offers a departure from the emphasis on psychiatric syndromes. It sees mental disorders not as diseases but as the result of interactions between symptoms.

In depression, an adverse life event such as loss of a partner may activate a depressed mood. This in turn may cause neighbouring symptoms, such as insomnia and fatigue. But this model is only descriptive and offers no explanation of the processes that cause the symptoms themselves.

A simple way forward

We suggest that one way of advancing understanding of mental disorders is to move our focus from psychiatric syndromes to clinical phenomena.

Phenomena are stable and general features. Examples in clinical psychology include low self-esteem, aggression, low mood and ruminative thoughts. The difference between symptom and phenomena is that the latter are inferred from multiple information sources such as behavioural observation, self-report and psychological test scores.

For example, understanding the central processes that underpin the clinical phenomenon of the inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia) will provide greater insight for cases that are dominated by this symptom.

In this way we can begin to tailor our explanations for individual cases rather than using general explanations of the broad syndrome “major depressive disorder”.

The other advantage is that the central processes that make up these phenomena are also more likely to form reliable clusters or categories. Of course, achieving this understanding will require greater specification of clinical phenomena we want to explain. It is not enough to conclude that a research finding (such as low levels of dopamine) is associated with the syndrome depression, as the features of depression may vary significantly between individuals.

We need to be more specific about exactly what people with depression in our research are experiencing.

Building descriptions of clinical phenomena will help us to better understand links between signs, symptoms and causes of mental disorder. It will put us in a better position to identify and treat depression.

– ref. Depression: it’s a word we use a lot, but what exactly is it? – http://theconversation.com/depression-its-a-word-we-use-a-lot-but-what-exactly-is-it-122381

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Stocks, Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University

In Australia, renewable energy is growing at a per capita rate ten times faster than the world average. Between 2018 and 2020, Australia will install more than 16 gigawatts of wind and solar, an average rate of 220 watts per person per year.

This is nearly three times faster than the next fastest country, Germany. Australia is demonstrating to the world how rapidly an industrialised country with a fossil-fuel-dominated electricity system can transition towards low-carbon, renewable power generation.

When the Clean Energy Regulator accredited Tasmania’s 148.5 megawatt (MW) Cattle Hill Wind Farm in August, Australia met its Renewable Energy Target well ahead of schedule.

Read more: Australia has met its renewable energy target. But don’t pop the champagne

We have analysed data from the regulator which tracks large- and small-scale renewable energy generation (including credible future projects), and found the record-high installation rates of 2018 will continue through 2019 and 2020.

Record renewable energy installation rates

While other analyses have pointed out that investment dollars in renewable energy fell in 2019, actual generation capacity has risen. Reductions in building costs may be contributing, as less investment will buy you the more capacity.

Last was a record year for renewable energy installations, with 5.1 gigawatts (GW) accredited in 2018, far exceeding the previous record of 2.2GW in 2017.

The increase was driven by the dramatic rise of large-scale solar farms, which comprised half of the new-build capacity accredited in 2018. There was a tenfold increase in solar farm construction from 2017.

We have projected the remaining builds for 2019 and those for 2020, based on data from the Clean Energy Regulator for public firm announcements for projects.

A project is considered firm if it has a power purchase agreement (PPA, a contract to sell the energy generated), has reached financial close, or is under construction. We assume six months for financial close and start of construction after a long-term supply contract is signed, and 12 or 18 months for solar farm or wind farm construction, respectively.

This year is on track to be another record year, with 6.5GW projected to be complete by the end of 2019.

The increase is largely attributable to a significant increase in the number of wind farms approaching completion. Rooftop solar has also increased, with current installation rates putting Australia on track for 1.9GW in 2019, also a new record.

This is attributed to the continued cost reductions in rooftop solar, with less than A$1,000 per kilowatt now considered routine and payback periods of the order of two to seven years.

Looking ahead to 2020, almost 6GW of large-scale projects are expected to be completed, comprising 2.5GW of solar farms and 3.5GW of wind. Around the end of 2020, this additional generation would deliver the old Renewable Energy Target of 41,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) per annum. That target was legislated in 2009 by the Rudd Labor government but reduced to 33,000GWh by the Abbott Coalition government in 2015.

Maintaining the pipeline

There are strong prospects for continued high installation rates of renewables. Currently available renewable energy energy contracts are routinely offering less than A$50 per MWh. Long-term contracts for future energy supply have an average price of more than A$58 per MWh. This is a very reasonable profit margin, suggesting a strong economic case for continued installations. Wind and solar prices are likely to decline further throughout the 2020s.

State governments programs are also supporting renewable electricity growth. The ACT has completed contracts for 100% renewable electricity. Victoria and Queensland both have renewable energy targets of 50% renewable electricity by 2030. South Australia is expecting to reach 100% by 2025.

The main impediment to continued renewables growth is transmission. Transmission constraints have resulted in bottlenecks in moving electricity from some wind and solar farms to cities.

Tasmania’s strong wind resource requires a new connection to the mainland to unlock more projects. The limitations of current planning frameworks for this transition were recognised in Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s review of the National Electricity Market, with strong recommendations to overcome these problems and, in particular, to strengthen the role of the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Read more: Here’s how a 100% renewable energy future can create jobs and even save the gas industry

Now we need state and federal governments to unlock or directly support transmission expansion. For example, the Queensland government has committed to supporting new transmission to unlock solar and wind projects in the far north, including the Genex/Kidston 250MW pumped hydro storage system. The New South Wales government will expedite planning approval for an interconnector between that state and South Australia, defining it as “critical infrastructure”.

These investments are key to Australia maintaining its renewable energy leadership into the next decade.

– ref. Australia is the runaway global leader in building new renewable energy – http://theconversation.com/australia-is-the-runaway-global-leader-in-building-new-renewable-energy-123694

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will J Grant, Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University

Call it lies, fake news, or just plain old bullshit – misinformation seems to flutter wilfully around the modern world. The truth, meanwhile, can take tedious decades to establish.

It seems that every day, new “alternative facts” are peddled in the public realm. YouTube’s algorithm reportedly promotes fake cancer cures, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “troll factory” floods the internet with toxic propaganda, and a fake health booklet in the US advocating against vaccines recently fuelled a major measles outbreak.

In Australia in recent days, a pro-coal Facebook group claimed Sydney’s Hyde Park was trashed by those who attended Friday’s climate strike. But the photo, shared thousands of times, was actually taken in London, months ago, at an unrelated event.

And this week Labor called for an investigation into whether social media giants are damaging the democratic process, claiming that during the May election Facebook refused to take down fake news about the party’s “death tax”.

As the saying goes, a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. But while this saying clearly resonates in our current age of misinformation, the idea itself dates back at least 300 years.

Read more: Who are you calling ‘anti-science’? How science serves social and political agendas

Misinformation is not a new phenomenon

Some claim the idea of the fast travelling lie was crafted by Winston Churchill in the mid-20th century; others by author Mark Twain at the end of the 19th. Yet the saying, or at least the sentiment underpinning it, is probably much older.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a Baptist preacher of Victorian London, cited a version of it in 1855, describing it as an “old proverb”. Author Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal fame, is said to have written in 1710 that “falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it”.

So the recognition that lies disseminate far more quickly than the truth appears to be several centuries old. This matters because while social media may have ramped up the problem of misinformation, the root causes remain the same – our cognitive and social biases.

It’s us!

There are huge bodies of research on what motivates us to not only believe, but seek out information that isn’t true. But often the simplest explanations are the best.

We tend to do and believe things that people we like, admire or identify with do and believe. It reinforces the bonds among our families and friends, our communities and countries, and is often referred to as the consensus heuristic. You see it in action, and use it yourself, every day.

Every time you uncritically accept the opinion of someone you like, you are applying consensus thinking – the consensus as you perceive it to be among “your” people.

What they say may well be entirely fact-based. But if it doesn’t correspond with facts, that won’t matter. You’ll buy it regardless because you are motivated to reinforce your connections with groups and ideas that are significant to you. We all do it, and there’s no shame in that.

Read more: Climate change deniers are dangerous – they don’t deserve a place on our site

Building on this, we regularly accept false, dodgy and downright incorrect information because it makes us happy, or at least minimises discomfort. It means we don’t have to change, confront flaws in our personal world view or stop doing something we like.

Smokers don’t keep smoking because they don’t think it’s harmful, but they might believe at some level it won’t be harmful to them. And they can always find “evidence” this is true: “my Uncle Chuck lived to 89 and he smoked two packs a day”.

As for contributing to climate change, a person might think: “I only drive my petrol-guzzling car a short distance work and back, I’m barely contributing to climate breakdown”. Or they might tell themsleves: “changing my behaviour wouldn’t even register, it’s the big companies and the government that need to do something about emissions reduction”.

With this way of thinking, any “facts” that support my kind of thinking are right, and those that don’t are wrong.

Understanding people’s values is key

Misinformation exists, and all of us – even the most critically minded – are in some ways sucked in. And there is no doubt scientific misinformation thwarts efforts to resolve key policy issues, such as vaccination rates or climate change.

But “fixing” scientific misinformation will not, on its own, solve these problems. Inspiring mass action requires more than just ensuring the “right” information exists in the library of human knowledge.

Read more: Why attending a climate strike can change minds (most importantly your own)

If we’re to motivate people to change, we have to understand the values that underpin their assertions and actions and work in ways that resonate with them.

This might mean pressuring elected officials to provide large-scale, realistic, and well mapped-out transition plans for workers and communities that depend on coal for their livelihood. Coal miners, like all of us, are pretty damned keen on being able to earn a living. That is a value we can all relate to.

As a rule, change is not something that comes easily to most people – especially if it’s forced upon us. But when we agree on why it’s necessary and have a clear way to handle it, it’s possible to move forward.

– ref. Merchants of misinformation are all over the internet. But the real problem lies with us – http://theconversation.com/merchants-of-misinformation-are-all-over-the-internet-but-the-real-problem-lies-with-us-123177

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

Qantas boss Alan Joyce is reportedly Australia’s highest-earning chief executive. He’s also a firm believer in corporate activism.

His pay packet is estimated to have been A$23 million last year – though it’s apparently dropped a little since.

Joyce thinks he should use his position to push social causes he believes in. Under his watch, Qantas strongly backed the 2017 campaign for same-sex marriage, much to the chagrin of politicians with a different view.

Read more: The market for virtue: why companies like Qantas are campaigning for marriage equality

Senior government minister Peter Dutton told business leaders at the time of the same-sex debate to “stick to their knitting”. Similar sentiments have been expressed recently by Ben Morton, the point man of prime minister Scott Morrison.

Corporate leaders should mind their own business and focus on maximising shareholder value, Morton told the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Joyce responded. “That’s democracy and companies are part of democracy, we represent individuals, passengers, employees, shareholders,” he said “We should have a voice on that, and it shouldn’t get to a stage if you don’t agree, don’t speak up, because I think that’s bad for democracy.”

It seems like it has the makings of heavyweight stoush. But really it’s a phoney war.

All this twisted debate in which chief executives talk about democracy and politicians about business management shows are the limits of corporate activism.

The whole thing is simply a distraction from the need for a real debate about the fact already huge CEO salaries continue to grow while average wages stagnate.

Moral postures

Morton, who is assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, unleashed his critique in the wake of reports companies were giving employees time off to attend climate change rallies on September 20.

“Too often I see corporate Australia succumb or pander to similar pressures from noisy, highly orchestrated campaigns of elites typified by groups such as GetUp or activist shareholders,” Morton said.

Read more: What’s behind the current wave of ‘corporate activism’?

“Too often big businesses have been in the front line on social issues, but missing in action when arguing for policies which would grow jobs and the economy.”

This could well have been interpreted as criticising the likes of Joyce – and Joyce certainly appeared to jab back when he addressed the National Press Club a few days later.

He listed advocating for company tax cut and its industrial relations reforms as evidence he and other chief executives talked about major economic issues.

But businesses that ignored social issues, he said, hurt their bottom line: “You have to do both – and good companies will do both.”

In defence of inequality

Looking beyond Joyce and Morton’s hyberbole, what’s evident is what the debate is not about.

It entirely avoids the problem of the broadening gap between the rich and poor.

Whatever Joyce’s social justice instincts on other issues, he is clearly not the person to talk about about inequality. But it’s not just that he’s silent on this issue. Instead of retreating to his counting house, he came out swinging in defence of his earning almost 300 times the average Aussie income.

Read more: CEO pay is more about white male entitlement than value for money

“My salary was determined by our shareholders,” he said. “That’s because our market capital went from just over $2 billion to $10 billion. And our shareholders did exceptionally well out of it”.

So much for the quiet Australians

Morton said he had “an old-fashioned view” that businesses should “maximise return to their shareholders”.

The case of Alan Joyce shows profit maximisation is not at all incompatible with corporate activism. Nor is support for a limited range of progressive social causes incompatible with defending the inequality epitomised by super-size executive salaries.

Morton described himself as standing up for the “quiet Australians”. So it might be considered an irony that his complaints about CEOs pandering to a left elite helped distract attention from the issue of inequality.

Read more: Another official Australian report has been doctored to gloss over rising inequality

Joyce meanwhile insisted he would continue to do what is “morally right” for society.

But declaring unelected corporate executives have a responsibility to use their privileged position in the economic pecking order to push business-friendly political causes is, at best, controversial. At worst, his belief he has the right as a chief executive to represent people who haven’t chosen his as a political representative is downright anti-democratic.

All this quibbling narrows the political and economic agenda to a sterile debate between “good ethics is good business” activism and good old-fashioned capitalism.

Whichever one you pick, the fair distribution of economic prosperity among working Australians has been left off the democratic table. Such are the limits of CEO activism.

– ref. Swollen executive pay packets reveal the limits of corporate activism – http://theconversation.com/swollen-executive-pay-packets-reveal-the-limits-of-corporate-activism-123988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Power, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University

Jonathan Van Ness, the high-profile star of Queer Eye, has revealed he is living with HIV, having been diagnosed seven years ago at the age of 25.

Media headlines have described the outpouring of support received by Van Ness since coming out as HIV positive to be indicative of changing social attitudes toward HIV.

However, understanding and acceptance of people living with HIV is far from assured.

Disentangling HIV and homophobia

Van Ness is among the most famous queer and gender non-binary people in the world. Yet he found revealing his HIV status presented a level of fear and risk above coming out as queer.

“I’ve had nightmares every night for the past three months because I’m scared to be this vulnerable with people,” he told the New York Times about the release of his memoir, Over the Top.

HIV-related stigma has always been entangled with homophobia and social fears about immorality and deviance. Growing acceptance of the LGBTI community has muted some of the moral panic about HIV, but most people know very little about what it means to be living with HIV in 2019.

Since the mid-1990s, improved antiretroviral treatment (ART) has enabled HIV be managed as a chronic condition, and often people with HIV can assume normal life expectancy. ART can also suppress HIV in a person’s body, which means it cannot be transmitted to a sexual partner — colloquially known as U=U (undetectable = untransmissible).

Despite this, HIV is still marred by high levels of stigma and misunderstanding which make it incredibly challenging for people to “come out” as HIV positive.

Changing faces of HIV

For many Australian adults, the darkly disturbing imagery of the 1987 Grim Reaper media campaign still stands as the dominant cultural image of HIV. The Grim Reaper fuelled a sense of panic with the message that HIV “could kill more Australians than World War Two” and firmly grounded HIV stigma in public sentiment.

At this time, one of the most visible Australian faces of HIV was that of Eve van Grafhorst, a child from NSW whose family was forced into hiding due to harassment they received when Eve was outed as HIV positive in 1985.

In 1990, Time Magazine published the now infamous image of David Kirby dying from AIDS, lying semi-conscious on his bed surrounded by his grieving family. Similar images of deathly thin, young gay men were the prevailing cultural stereotype of HIV at the time, but they in no way told the whole story.

Since the early 1980s, many thousands of activists have publicly disclosed their HIV status in an act of resistance to discriminatory images of people living with HIV and to provide leadership in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

In 1991, LA Lakers star point guard Magic Johnson publicly revealed his HIV status. As a heterosexual sporting hero, Johnson’s coming out disrupted some of the homophobic narrative around HIV, but he also had to confront a shocked public and ongoing media revelations about his sexual history.

This narrative has remained sadly consistent. In 2015, Charlie Sheen announced that he was HIV positive in an effort to stop threats to “out” him. At this point, Sheen had already spent upwards of US$10 million on extortion payments.

Media reporting on Sheen’s HIV status commented on his sexual morality and demeaned the character of sex workers he had engaged.

While the mainstream media around Van Ness has been celebratory of his willingness to share his story so openly, this does not necessarily mean it will be easier for others to reveal their status.

Ongoing stigma and isolation

Last week, the results of an Australian national survey of people living with HIV run by La Trobe University, the HIV Futures 9 study, were released, revealing the extent to which HIV stigma can lead to invisibility and isolation.

One in three respondents indicated that almost no-one in their life was aware of their HIV status. A similar number reported that they knew no other people living with HIV with whom they could speak about their experiences.

The survey findings also showed HIV status had a significant impact on the way people approached relationships with friends, family and potential partners: nearly half the heterosexual women surveyed indicated they had avoided intimate relationships or sex since their HIV diagnosis.

Read more: HIV in Australia: we’ve come a long way but there’s more to do

Coming out to build community

Van Ness came out about his HIV status by describing himself as a “member of the beautiful HIV positive community.”

The sense of support and solidarity that comes with community is an important buffer against the negative impact of stigma and discrimination. For this reason, adequately funded peer programs and community organisations that connect HIV positive people with each other remain a vital part of the social response to HIV.

These programs rely on the willingness of people living with HIV to be open about their status – despite the risks – as a means to offer advocacy and care for others.

Public support for Van Ness has been powerful, and Van Ness’ fame provides a platform from which he can extend this legacy of building community around HIV. But it should not mask the reality that many people living with HIV continue to be silenced and isolated by stigma.

For that to change, we need to build much greater awareness about the contemporary experience of living with HIV.

– ref. ‘The beautiful HIV-positive community’: Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness shines a spotlight on the changing face of HIV – http://theconversation.com/the-beautiful-hiv-positive-community-queer-eyes-jonathan-van-ness-shines-a-spotlight-on-the-changing-face-of-hiv-123993

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

Anthony Albanese has attacked Scott Morrison for sending a message to Beijing while in the United States, and also split with him over the economic status of China.

Albanese accused Morrison of using “a loud hailer” to talk to China during a visit in which he was seen to be very close to the American President, including “being a partner in what would appear to be some of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign there in Ohio”. This was a reference to their joint appearance at billionaire Anthony Pratt’s new paper recycling factory.

The opposition leader’s comments open a partisan rift at a time when Australia-China relations are at a low point.

In his address on foreign policy in Chicago, Morrison described China “as a newly developed economy”, and said it needed to reflect this new status in its trade arrangements and meeting environmental challenges.

But Albanese told the ABC China quite clearly was “still developing”.

“It is still an emerging economy”, he said, pointing to the disparity between China’s per capita income and that of advanced economies such as the US and Australia.

Albanese, who made a series of comments, suggested it was not constructive “to send a message to China from the US in the way that it has occurred”.

Read more: Highly touted UN climate summit failed to deliver – and Scott Morrison failed to show up

While there was a legitimate debate around the World Trade Organisation system, “the conflict between China and the United States [over trade] is one that is not in Australia’s interests. We want that to be resolved rather than be overly partisan about it,” he said.

“Of course our alliance with the United States is our most important relationship. That won’t change. But we need to, I think, be very measured in our comments particularly comments from the United States in the context in which they’ve been given.”

If Morrison was sending a message to China “it would have been better sent from Australia so that there was no confusion that the Prime Minister was advancing Australia’s national interests.”

Morrison had changed “the characterisation of the entire Chinese economy from Chicago,” Albanese said. “Does he think that will be well received and will reduce tension between China and the United States over trade?”

In fact, while Morrison’s language on China’s economic status went further than before, he had gone a considerable way down this path previously. In a major address in June he said: “China’s rise has now reached a threshold level of economic maturity”, with its most successful provinces sometimes exceeding the economic sophistication of global competitors. Yet they enjoyed concessions on trade and environmental obligations not available to other developed economies, he said.

In his Chicago speech Morrison said there was a need to reduce trade tensions that had developed in recent years.

“China’s economic growth is welcomed by Australia and we recognise the economic maturity that it has now realised as a newly developed economy,” he said.

It was important this was reflected in its trade arrangements, participation in addressing important global environmental challenges, transparency in its partnerships and support for developing nations.

“All of this needs to reflect this new status and the responsibilities that go with it as a very major world power,” Morrison said.

He also said: “The world’s global institutions must adjust their settings for China, in recognition of this new status. That means more will be expected of course, as has always been the case for nations like the United States who’ve always had this standing.”

Asked at a news conference what he wanted China to do that it was not doing now, Morrison said the objective was that “similar rules will apply to countries of similar capabilities”.

Read more: Yes, the US-Australia alliance is important, but Scott Morrison needs to take a careful approach with Donald Trump

Meanwhile in a speech in Beijing this week Richard Marles, Labor’s deputy leader and defence spokesman, urged a deepening of Australia’s relations with China, including even at the defence level.

“I firmly believe it is possible for Australia to maintain our strong alliance with the United States while also deepening our engagement with China. In fact, not only is this possible, it is vital,” Marles said.

“And that must be obvious. Because from the perspective of Australia, the world looks a lot safer when the United States and China are talking to each other and improving their relations.

“And if this is our view, then it stands to reason that Australia’s interest lies in having the best possible relations we can with both the United States and China.

“And from the perspective of Australia the world also looks a lot more prosperous when China and the United States trade with each other.”

“Our starting point has to be that we respect China and deeply value our relationship with China. We must seek to build it. And not just in economic terms, but also through exploring political co-operation and even defence co-operation.

“To define China as an enemy is a profound mistake. To talk of a new Cold War is silly and ignorant,” Marles said.

Asked about the defence reference, Albanese played it down.

Read more: View from The Hill: To go to China you have to be invited: Morrison

In a Tuesday speech in Jakarta, Labor’s shadow minister on foreign affairs Penny Wong said: “It is clear that the United States and China now treat each other as strategic competitors.

“The strategic competition in our region means we need to think carefully and engage actively to avoid becoming collateral. Great powers will do what great powers do – assert their interests. But the rest of us are not without our own agency,” she said.

“What our region is looking for is less a contest about who should be or will be number one, than how we foster partnerships of enduring connection and relevance”.

Wong said the US should “present a positive narrative and vision about the future, by articulating and presenting what it offers not only what it is against.”

“A greater focus on the likely settling point will enable the United States to recognise – and embrace – the fact that multi-polarity in the region is likely to get stronger.

“And in the context of Beijing’s ambitions, this growing multi-polarity – with countries like Indonesia, India and Japan playing increasingly important leadership roles in the region – is beneficial to Washington’s interests.

“Defining a realistic settling point will also help the United States recognise and accept that decisions relating to China will vary depending on the issues and interests at stake.”

Albanese also criticised Morrison for not attending the United Nations leaders summit on climate.

Morrison said that when he addresses the UN General Assembly this week: “I’ll be focusing very much on Australia’s response to the global environmental challenges. Which isn’t just climate change … it’s about plastics, it’s about oceans, it’s about recycling”.

– ref. Albanese slams Morrison for using a “loud hailer” to talk to China from US – http://theconversation.com/albanese-slams-morrison-for-using-a-loud-hailer-to-talk-to-china-from-us-124097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Fear. Shame. Blame.

Silence.

Young women are often made to feel sexual shame before they have a language capable of articulating what they think and feel about their bodies and themselves.

One of the most deeply moving themes in Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment and Survival, a new comics anthology edited by Diane Noomin, is its subtle recognition of the ways in which shame functions as a means of exerting control over the bodies of young women. Women are made to feel they must remain silent about sexual violence or face the additional burden of public judgement and disbelief.

Drawing Power brings together the visual testimonies of 60 graphic artists who are survivors of gender-based violence including domestic violence, sexual harassment, child sex abuse, rape and assault. It gives emotional weight and resonance to such experiences in a way words alone might not.

It is an often chilling read. Regardless of the diverse ages of the contributors, the stories the artists choose to tell overwhelmingly focus on the harm inflicted on women and girls at age 12, 17, or 23, which functions to teach them that pain is a “natural” part of growing up as a woman in the world.

It is not.

Lifelong scaring

In Borders Broken, Edges Blurred, Sabba Khan tells an extraordinarily powerful story about child sex abuse, rendering a maelstrom of experience in delicately drawn panels that are almost whimsically washed in pastel pink and blue.

In one panel, Khan draws a map of a doll’s house-like home, tucked inside an intricately drawn neighbourhood, where “a little one, not yet a teenager” is sexually assaulted in the midst of a family gathering.

It is soon apparent the child’s parents are more worried about the shame that may be brought on the family than concerned for their child.

“But how can this be? We are family! Family does not do these things,” they say. “How will we show our faces in our circles?”

In panel after panel, shattered bricks follow the lonely figure of the child, piling up to form a wall. Inexorably the wall becomes a silo and then a pit. “A hell. A hole.”

“I’ll stay quiet,” says the child. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Read more: Rape culture: why our community attitudes to sexual violence matter

Silence and fear are visual motifs that weave their way through every work in this collection.

It is Always There, as the title of Nicola Streeten’s story about the inter-generational experience of violence makes clear.

It is “like a coat you can get too comfortable in,” writes Avy Jetter in Hurt Not Broken, a personal story about domestic violence.

It is not just the ferocity of the physical violence that instils fear, but the depth of the terror conveyed by Jetter’s tense black ink drawings.

Violence is kept secret. A sense of lifelong scaring is conveyed through panels that flick backwards and forwards in time. We sense the impact on children, and the sheer despair of ever leaving when there’s nowhere to go.

The protagonist attempts to report to the Minnesota Police as early as 1962. “But they just laughed.”

‘A joke’

Disempowerment of this sort has clear and measurable social and economic costs.

In Sausage Fest, Australian artist Sarah Firth tells a frightening story about sexual harassment in the workplace, and the serial victimisation of young women too often deemed to be disposable by employers.

Firth shows the joy of landing a coveted job abruptly giving way to stress and terror. In a sharp, jarring sequence, a series of symbolic objects are left on the young woman’s office chair including a carrot, a cucumber, and a broken light tube – followed more menacingly by a hammer, a photograph defaced by a penis and testicles, an open Stanley knife and then the word “slut” spelled out in copper pipes across the floor.

The perpetrator – in an eerily familiar scenario – explains away his actions as “a joke”. The victim is instructed to mediate. Eventually, the perpetrator is given two weeks paid leave and the woman is forced to negotiate the termination of her work contract.

Read more: Women don’t speak up over workplace harassment because no one hears them if they do

Again, the brightly coloured panels belie the glaring horror – and sad familiarity – of the story. It is clear this young woman is not the first to leave.

Searing consequences of silence

Drawing Power is filled with powerful works by creators of diverse ages, sexual orientations and cultural backgrounds. Ajuan Mance shows the reader how “being the only woman in a room full of people of colour can feel more like safety” than “being the only person of colour in a room full of women”.

Marian Henley deploys an image of a tank as a metaphor for the violence inflicted on rape victims by the criminal justice system. Marcela Trujillo uses the image of her mother’s lacquered hairstyle as a means to talk about gang rape, self-imposed silence and self-protection.

In Miriam Libicki’s He Said, She Said, the young female protagonist is too frightened to fight off the sexual depredations of a taxi driver, and too frightened to run from the taxi in an unsafe city in the middle of the night.

Australian creator Rachel Ang conjures up the pain of an abusive relationship, with spectral effects, until there is nothing but rage and pain spilling out across the black washed panels.

Throughout each of the 60 comics, what stays with the reader is the searing consequences of so much silence. And the desperate need to speak.

Pain of this sort is not – or should not be – seen as just a natural part of growing up female in the world. Drawing Power shows women sharing and reshaping their own narratives, in the desperate hope that by drawing and speaking they can let other women know they are not alone, this is not normal, and they can change the story for new generations.

– ref. Drawing Power review: a searing comics anthology on sexual violence – http://theconversation.com/drawing-power-review-a-searing-comics-anthology-on-sexual-violence-124089

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terese Henning, Director of the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute, University of Tasmania

After serving more than 30 years in prison, the man who committed what’s often described as Tasmania’s most horrific crime is up for parole. The surviving victim is speaking out against it, but not under her real name, despite wanting to be publicly identified.

This is because of a provision – section 194K of the Evidence Act 2001 – in Tasmanian law that prevents anyone who has been sexually abused from publishing details about the matter even if they wish to do so.

It has also been claimed this section is a “gag law” and would prevent participation in the Me Too campaign in Tasmania. But section 194K is currently under review, in part thanks to the #LetHerSpeak campaign, and the Tasmanian government is expected to change the law early next year.

Read more: If you’ve been sexually assaulted, here’s what doctors and nurses do next

While controversy has surrounded section 194K, it’s important to clarify the provision’s aim is to protect victims of sexual assault from any possible external pressure – such as from the media – to reveal their identities.

So what does the law say?

Section 194K provides that, in relation to any court proceedings, a person must not publish the “the name, address, or any other reference or allusion likely to lead to the identification” of victims of sexual offences.

This prohibition also applies to information likely to identify other witnesses in sexual offence cases, with the exception of the defendant. However, courts can make orders permitting identifying information to be published, including in the media.

Section 194K serves a number of purposes. It protects sexual offences victims’ privacy, encourages reporting offences to the police, and protects victims from harms caused by identification, especially those resulting from prurient media interest in details of victims’ lives and the offences against them.

When these victims do choose to reveal their identity, they become exposed to significant harms that can arise from outdated stereotypes and stigma attaching to sexual offence victims.

Both historically and currently, it’s claimed sexual offence victims lie about offences committed against them and they were somehow to blame for the commission of those offences.

Identification can cause great distress to victims. It can lead to disclosures about their prior sexual history which may exacerbate their suffering. The media may report details of the offences inaccurately, ruthlessly and salaciously with little regard to victims’ well-being.

Read more: Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment: what’s the difference?

These harms all support the protection of victims’ privacy and the existence of the prohibition in section 194K.

Why the provision stops victims revealing their own identity

The prohibition doesn’t prevent the media from attending court and reporting on the facts of cases or the conduct of the trial. What’s more, it doesn’t prevent reporting on cases that aren’t the subject of court proceedings.

So, it is not accurate to say section 194K would prevent the Me Too campaign gaining traction in Tasmania.

Similar legislation exists in all other Australian jurisdictions, in New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. But generally, enactments elsewhere permit publication of identifying details with victims’ consent, where the victim is not a child or is over a specified age.

This feature is absent from section 194K in Tasmania, and from similar provisions in the Northern Territory.

There are strong arguments for permitting publication with complainants’ consent. It may help overcome the stigma associated with these offences. It may encourage other victims to come forward. And it may assist victims by empowering them and vindicating their experience.

But it’s also important to ensure complainants are not feeling pressured to reveal their identities to satisfy media.

In one case, a Tasmanian Supreme Court judge pointed to the risk of the media pestering victims to consent to publication, particularly when they may be experiencing emotional turmoil and high levels of stress.

Also, problems may arise where there are multiple victims, only one or two of whom are willing to have their identities disclosed.

The provision under review

In 2013, the Tasmania Law Reform Institute (TLRI) reviewed the operation of section 194K.

It examined how well the law protects victims of sexual offences, and considered the position of victims who don’t wish to remain anonymous, but who prefer their voice be heard.

The TLRI also examined whether the law requires clarification in terms of its scope and whether it strikes the right balance between protecting the interests of victims of sexual assault and the paramount public interest in open justice.

Read more: How to talk to your children about sexual consent

Eight major recommendations for reform were made. To date the Tasmanian government has not enacted any of those recommendations, but has announced it will reform the provision in early 2020. But it’s not known what form that reform will take.

A lack of clarity

Still, the provision has been criticised for not providing enough protection. This criticism is based on the view the section lacks clarity, because it’s uncertain precisely what conduct it forbids.

This was also in the 2013 TLRI report, which recommended the scope of section 194K be clarified, so it’s made clear what behaviour it prohibits. The current government review asks whether the TLRI recommendations should be enacted.

The TLRI also recommended clarifying what the media is allowed to publish. In this regard, it recommended publication should be permitted with the permission of the court where complainants consent.

Age restrictions should apply in such cases (18 years of age). Further, non-publication orders should only be made taking into account complainants’ views.

But importantly, the TLRI didn’t recommend consent alone without the court’s permission should legitimise publication.

The recent controversies surrounding the operation of section 194K only serve to highlight the need for reform in this area. To this end, the TLRI continues to endorse the recommendations contained in its 2013 report.

If this article has raised issues for you or someone you know, contact https://www.1800respect.org.au or call 1800 737 732, the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service.

– ref. Why can’t rape survivors in Tasmania reveal their name, even when they want to? – http://theconversation.com/why-cant-rape-survivors-in-tasmania-reveal-their-name-even-when-they-want-to-123995

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Mintzes, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney

It’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t been touched by cancer. People who haven’t had cancer themselves will likely have a close friend or family member who has been diagnosed with the disease.

If the cancer has already spread, the diagnosis may feel like a death sentence. News that a new drug is available can be a big relief.

But imagine a cancer patient asks their doctor: “Can this drug help me stay alive longer?” And in all honesty the doctor answers: “I don’t know. There’s one study that says the drug works, but it didn’t show whether patients lived longer, or even if they felt any better.”

This might sound like an unlikely scenario, but it’s precisely what a team of UK researchers found to be the case when it comes to many new cancer drugs.

Read more: We don’t need to change how we subsidise ‘breakthrough’ cancer treatments

A look at the research

A study published last week in the British Medical Journal reviewed 39 clinical trials supporting approval of all new cancer drugs in Europe from 2014 to 2016.

The researchers found more than half of these trials had serious flaws likely to exaggerate treatment benefits. Only one-quarter measured survival as a key outcome, and fewer than half reported on patients’ quality of life.

Of 32 new cancer drugs examined in the study, only nine had at least one study without seriously flawed methods.

The researchers evaluated methods in two ways. First, they used a standard “risk of bias” scale that measures shortcomings shown to lead to biased results, such as if doctors knew which drug patients were taking, or if too many people dropped out of the trial early.

Second, they looked at whether the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had identified serious flaws, such as a study being stopped early, or if the drug was compared to substandard treatment. The EMA identified serious flaws in trials for ten of the 32 drugs. These flaws were rarely mentioned in the trials’ published reports.

From clinical trials to treatment – faster isn’t always better

Before a medicine is approved for marketing, the manufacturer must carry out studies to show it’s effective. Regulators such as the EMA, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) then judge whether to allow it to be marketed to doctors.

National regulators mainly examine the same clinical trials, so the findings from this research are relevant internationally, including in Australia.

Read more: Spot the snake oil: telling good cancer research from bad

There’s strong public pressure on regulators to approve new cancer drugs more quickly, based on less evidence, especially for poorly treated cancers. The aim is to get treatments to patients more quickly by allowing medicines to be marketed at an earlier stage. The downside of faster approval, however, is more uncertainty about treatment effects.

One of the arguments for earlier approvals is the required studies can be carried out later on, and sick patients can be given an increased chance of survival before it’s too late. However, a US study concluded that post-approval studies found a survival advantage for only 19 of 93 new cancer drugs approved from 1992 to 2017.

So how is effectiveness measured currently?

Approval of new cancer drugs is often based on short-term health outcomes, referred to as “surrogate outcomes”, such as shrinking or slower growth of tumours. The hope is these surrogate outcomes predict longer-term benefits. For many cancers, however, they have been found to do a poor job of predicting improved survival.

A study of cancer trials for more than 100 medicines found on average, clinical trials that measure whether patients stay alive for longer take an extra year to complete, compared to trials based on the most commonly used surrogate outcome, called “progression free survival”. This measure describes the amount of time a person lives with a cancer without tumours getting larger or spreading further. It’s often poorly correlated with overall survival.

A year may seem like a long wait for someone with a grim diagnosis. But there are policies to help patients access experimental treatments, such as participating in clinical trials or compassionate access programmes. If that year means certainty about survival benefits, it’s worth waiting for.

Approving drugs without enough evidence can cause harm

In an editorial accompanying this study, we argue that exaggeration and uncertainty about treatment benefits cause direct harm to patients, if they risk severe or life-threatening harm without likely benefit, or if they forgo more effective and safer treatments.

For example, the drug panobinostat, which is used for multiple myeloma patients who have not responded to other treatments, has not been shown to help patients live longer, and can lead to serious infections and bleeding.

Inaccurate information can also encourage false hope and create a distraction from needed palliative care.

And importantly, the ideal of shared informed decision-making based on patients’ values and preferences falls apart if neither the doctor nor the patient has accurate evidence to inform decisions.

Read more: If we don’t talk about value, cancer drugs will become terminal for health systems

In countries with public health insurance, such as Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), patients’ access to new cancer drugs depends not just on market approval but also on payment decisions. The PBS often refuses the pay for new cancer drugs because of uncertain clinical evidence. In the cases of the drugs in this research, some are available on the PBS, while others are not.

New cancer drugs are often very expensive. On average in the US, a course of treatment with a new cancer drug costs more than US$100,000 (A$148,000).

Cancer patients need treatments that help them to live longer, or at the very least to have a better quality of life during the time that they have left. In this light, we need stronger evidence standards, to be sure there are real health benefits when new cancer drugs are approved for use.

– ref. Do new cancer drugs work? Too often we don’t really know (and neither does your doctor) – http://theconversation.com/do-new-cancer-drugs-work-too-often-we-dont-really-know-and-neither-does-your-doctor-123768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland

Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg had an angry message for world leaders at the United Nations climate summit in New York overnight.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said.

“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”

The summit was touted as a chance for the world to finally get its climate action on track. But by almost any standard, the event was a disappointment.

Read more: The good, the bad and the ugly: the nations leading and failing on climate action

There was a handful of positive stories. Almost 80 countries and more than 100 cities promised to achieve net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Some (mainly developing) nations pledged an end to coal use. And a few developed nations committed more money to the Green Climate Fund, which helps poor nations deal with climate change.

But for the most part, the urgent action needed to avert a global warming catastrophe looked a long way off.

High hopes but low expectations for the summit

Days out from the summit, millions of protesters marched at global climate strikes to call for strong climate action.

The task was given even greater urgency by a new report by the World Meteorological Organisation, coinciding with the summit, which said emission reduction efforts must at least triple to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

In his opening remarks, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on world leaders to take swift, dramatic climate action.

“Nature is angry. And we fool ourselves if we think we can fool nature, because nature always strikes back and around the world, nature is striking back with fury,” Guterres said.

Read more: Why our response to climate change needs to be a just and careful revolution that limits pushback

Guterres convened the summit to ensure countries are developing concrete, realistic pathways to enhance their pledges under the Paris climate treaty. He wanted world leaders to outline plans to become carbon-neutral by 2050, tackle subsidies for fossil fuels, implement taxes on carbon, and end new coal power beyond 2020.

Few predicted the summit would deliver the global change required. For the most part, world leaders lived up to these low expectations.

The summit did not deliver

Under President Donald Trump, the United States had already pulled out of the Paris agreement – and its emissions continue to rise. China, arguably disincentivised to act without American participation, also failed to announce new targets and insisted developed nations should lead climate action efforts.

India outlined new plans for reaching emissions targets, but remains committed to coal projects well beyond 2020. And even the European Union, a traditional international leader on climate change ambition and action, did not announce a plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

In a few bright spots, Slovakia confirmed that its subsidies to coal mines will end in 2023. Finland says it will be carbon-neutral by 2035, and Greece will reportedly close its brown coal plants by 2028.

But the disappointing showing by the world’s largest emitters means the summit was effectively a failure.

Australia: a climate summit wallflower

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not attend the summit – despite being in the US at the time. Foreign Minister Marise Payne attended but did not speak.

Morrison’s non-attendance largely reflected the position Australia took to the summit: ever-increasing emissions, no new mitigation targets beyond those announced in Paris, and no new strategies to reach the targets.

Read more: Why our response to climate change needs to be a just and careful revolution that limits pushback

Morrison was in good company. His host, Trump, also did not attend, except for a brief entry to hear Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel speak.

Australia was not alone in failing to announce new climate action. But its wallflower status at the summit cemented its global reputation as a climate action laggard. Australia was also roundly criticised by our vulnerable neighbours at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu weeks before, confirming the growing gap between Australia’s climate action and its view of itself as a responsible global citizen.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison was not in the crowd to hear Thunberg demand that the leaders keep global warming below 1.5℃. Nor was he there to hear Gutteres tell leaders that the world remains on track for catastrophic global warming, and they must commit to new and concerted action on climate change.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Andrew Highman, chief executive of global climate lobby group Mission 2020, said representatives from other countries had noticed Australia’s lack of participation.

“It is really very obvious who is absent from the room,” he reportedly said.

“Everyone is well aware that Australia has not made good on its promises in Paris to scale up its commitment to climate action.”

Where to now?

The World Meteorological Organisation said the five years to 2019 will likely be the hottest on record. We are in the midst of a climate crisis, and urgent action is clearly required.

Internationally, the challenge will be to create momentum in the face of US obstructionism and Chinese ambivalence. Guterres indicated he will continue to host these summits and will expect nations to pledge more specific and ambitious targets. Global protest action and mounting scientific reports of accelerating climate change may ramp up pressure for international action.

What about implications for Australian climate politics and policy? The US’ planned withdrawal from the Paris deal may have given Australia some cover for its own lack of climate action. But criticism from other international peers, including our Pacific neighbours, suggests that substantive action may be needed to achieve our foreign policy goals and restore our international reputation.

Pressure is also likely to build on the Morrison government at home. Opinion polls since 2012 have consistently shown growing public support for climate action, in the face of reduced government ambition. In the face of this, the federal government may eventually be prodded into meaningful action. But the climate clock is ticking fast.

– ref. Highly touted UN climate summit failed to deliver – and Scott Morrison failed to show up – http://theconversation.com/highly-touted-un-climate-summit-failed-to-deliver-and-scott-morrison-failed-to-show-up-123979

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ken Doust, Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management , Southern Cross University

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.

Why can’t we build a pipe or find some other way to move fresh water from state to state, from areas with plenty to areas that are experiencing drought? – the pupils of Livingstone Primary School, Victoria, Australia.

It is true we could build a pipe or canal to move water around. In fact, a 1930s plan called the Bradfield Scheme suggested using dams, pumps and pipes to move flood waters from Australia’s north to drier inland areas.

Some politicians still support this plan but some environmental experts have said it wouldn’t really work and would be very expensive.

It has been reported that the NSW government is considering exploring a similar idea.

Before moving water around like this, we’d need to think really hard about whether we might be upsetting the balance of water – both in the place of drought and the area of plenty.

The Australian landscape is very old and the soils in inland areas can be very fragile.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do we have a drought?

Moving water around can affect soil, plants and animals

Let’s say we took a lot of water from the coast and piped it to a dry inland area.

Adding a lot of extra water to the dry inland area may end up damaging the soil there by upsetting the natural balance of salts and chemicals. Plants and animals that live in that area may also be affected by all the extra water suddenly arriving.

And the coastal area that water is taken from? It may also suffer. Suddenly having less water in a flood plain, for example, may upset the natural health of the soil and the environment in those places.

We also need to think about how taking water from one area might affect the agriculture and fishing industries from that place, or put extra pressure on those industries in time of drought.

Another factor is the impact the pipes or canals may have on the landscape. They can create problems for plants and wildlife.

Finally, we’d need to consider the cost of big projects like this. It would be expensive and there may be cheaper ways to help address the problems.

Working together to find solutions

Scientists think that climate change will increase how severe weather events are and make droughts worse.

Good design takes into account things that are important to the traditional owners of various places, to people who live in those places, and to the land itself.

Science, together with long-term knowledge from Aboriginal traditional owners and more recently, farmers, can help us better understand how these sorts of schemes might affect the landscape.

Thank you for your great question! I hope you keep exploring ideas and looking for solutions.

Read more: Curious Kids: how is water made?

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

– ref. Curious Kids: why can’t we just build a pipe to move water to areas in drought? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-cant-we-just-build-a-pipe-to-move-water-to-areas-in-drought-123454

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

Last week, a very special event took place in Parliament House. The daughters of Sir Robert Menzies and Arthur Calwell – Heather Henderson and Mary Elizabeth Calwell – came together to reflect on their fathers’ legacies, and to offer their perspectives on a different era in Australia’s political history. Michelle Grattan moderated the conversation.

The event was organised by the Menzies-Calwell Group, made up of members of parliament from both sides of the political divide. Inspired by the friendship between Menzies and Calwell, the group aims to inject a degree of bipartisanship into our present hyper-partisan politics.

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Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

Image:

Office of Maria Vamvakinou MP

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: daughters of Robert Menzies and Arthur Calwell say parliament wasn’t always a “fort” – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-daughters-of-robert-menzies-and-arthur-calwell-say-parliament-wasnt-always-a-fort-123598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery and Higher Degree Director, Western Sydney University

Becoming a parent is a wonderful experience but it can also be incredibly daunting. There is no qualification or test you can take to make sure you’re ready; you have to rely on life experience, advice from friends, family and experts, and trial and error.

But while most of the time we get parenting right, some people need more support than others.

Our research, published today in the journal BMJ Open, found that while every baby is different, some factors increase the likelihood new mothers will experience difficulties with early parenting. These include the mother’s mental health, birth intervention or emergencies during labour, and lack of support.

Read more: ‘I didn’t know who I was anymore’ – myths vs realities of early parenthood

Australia has a unique health system

More than 30% of new mothers in Australia report severe problems getting their baby to sleep and settle. This often results in exhaustion, and poorer mental and physical health.

Poor physical and mental health during pregnancy and after birth can also have significant short- and longer-term impacts on the health and development of the child. So treatment is vital.

Australia has a unique health system in place to support new parents who struggle to cope and their babies, including residential parenting services – sometimes referred to as “sleep schools” – such as Tresillian in New South Wales and Tweddle Child and Family Health Service in Victoria.

These services provide structured programs to help develop parenting skills. Parents attend and stay in the facility for three to four days and are guided through sleep, settling and feeding skills and strategies.

These services are mostly publicly funded and there are often waiting lists due to high demand.

Our research

We studied why some women and their partners end up requiring admission to residential parenting services in the first year after birth.

We looked at all births in NSW over 12 years and randomly analysed 300 medical records from women and babies who had a stay in residential parenting services in NSW. We then did in-depth interviews with women who used the services and focus groups with staff who worked there.

The primary reason women sought support in residential parenting services was for sleep and settling (83%).

Over half had a history of mental health issues.

During their stay, women used a number of services, including social workers (44%), psychologists (52%) and psychiatrists (4.5%).

Intervention in birth can leave women with negative feelings about the birth, leading to struggles with early parenting and depression. This can alter the way women engage with their baby, which can impact on the baby’s development.

One in ten women said they had mental health issues related to the birth and many were traumatised by their births, especially where unexpected intervention had occurred, such as a caesarean section, forceps or vacuum, or the baby needing resuscitation or intensive care.

Read more: So your birth didn’t go according to plan? Don’t blame yourself

Around one in three babies (36%) admitted to residential parenting services had a history of reflux. We have found a strong link between reflux and intervention in birth, babies being born early and maternal mental health issues, particularly anxiety.

We also found women admitted to the service were more likely to:

• be admitted as a private patient
• be born in Australia
• have had their first baby
• have experienced intervention during the labour and birth (induction, forceps or vacuum birth, caesarean section, epidural and episiotomy)
• have twins
• have a boy
• have a baby who needed to be resuscitated at birth, go to intensive care, or who experienced birth trauma (particularly to the scalp)
• be aged in their 30s
• have little support.

How the health system can support new parents

Screening and support for psychological and social vulnerabilities needs to be routine.

Depending on the state or territory, most women in the public sector receive a “psychosocial” assessment from midwives when they first book in for care during pregnancy and again from child and family health services after they have had the baby. This screens for depression, anxiety, childhood abuse, domestic violence, support and stress.

But this is still not done routinely in the private sector where 25% of women give birth. This urgently needs to be prioritised, so all women can receive appropriate support.

Women need support to prepare for birth, which may include having a birth plan and quality childbirth education. This gives couples tools to manage the pain of labour, avoid unnecessary intervention and prepare for parenthood.

They also need health providers they know and trust. Women who have a midwife they know through the pregnancy, birth and postnatal period have fewer interventions, better outcomes and greater satisfaction than those who are allotted whoever is on duty that day.

Relationship-based care gives women the opportunity to discuss what happened afterwards and debrief.

Read more: Call the Midwife: playing catch up with Australia’s maternity care

It takes a village to raise a child

Parents have lost the village it takes to raise a child and increasingly feel isolated and unsupported.

We need to have conversations with parents about how important this village will become and to start putting this support in place before the baby comes. This may be moving closer to your parents, finding a good parenting network, connecting with positive online support networks, and not feeling pressured to go back to work before you’re ready.

Sharing the parenting and work arrangements as a couple can also help.

– ref. 1 in 3 new mums struggle to get their baby to sleep, but some women have a tougher time – http://theconversation.com/1-in-3-new-mums-struggle-to-get-their-baby-to-sleep-but-some-women-have-a-tougher-time-102269

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Md Abdul Alim, Postdoctoral researcher on sustainable development (Energy and Water), Western Sydney University

Despite being such a sunkissed country, Australia is still lagging behind in the race to embrace solar power. While solar panels adorn hundreds of thousands of rooftops throughout the nation, we have not yet seen the logical next step: buildings with solar photovoltaic cells as an integral part of their structure.

Our lab is hoping to change that. We have developed solar roof tiles with solar cells integrated on their surface using a specially customised adhesive. We are now testing how they perform in Australia’s harsh temperatures.

Our preliminary test results suggest that our solar roof tiles can generate 19% more electricity than conventional solar panels. This is because the tiles can absorb heat energy more effectively than solar panels, meaning that the tiles’ surface heats up more slowly in sustained sunshine, allowing the solar cells more time to work at lower temperatures.

Australia’s greenhouse emissions continue to rise, making it harder to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement.

Globally, commercial and residential buildings account for about 40% of energy consumption. Other countries are therefore looking hard at reducing their greenhouse emissions by making buildings more energy-efficient. The European Union, for example, has pledged to make all large buildings carbon-neutral by 2050. Both Europe and the United States are working on constructing buildings from materials that can harness solar energy.

Here in Australia, buildings account for only about 20% of energy consumption, meaning that the overall emissions reductions on offer from improved efficiency are smaller.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t go for it anyway, especially considering the amount of sunshine available. Yet compared with other nations, Australia is very much in its adolescence when it comes to solar-smart construction materials.

Read more: New solar cells offer you the chance to print out solar panels and stick them on your roof

Taking Australia’s temperature

In a recent review in the journal Solar Energy, we identified and discussed the issues that are obstructing the adoption of solar power-generating constructions – known as “building-integrated photovoltaics”, or BIPV – here in Australia.

According to the research we reviewed, much of the fear about adopting these technologies comes down to a simple lack of understanding. Among the factors we identified were: misconceptions about the upfront cost and payback time; lack of knowledge about the technology; anxiety about future changes to buildings’ microclimates; and even propaganda against climate change and renewable energy.

Read more: Are solar panels a middle-class purchase? This survey says yes

Worldwide, BIPV systems account for just 2.5% of the solar photovoltaic market (and virtually zero in Australia). But this is forecast to rise to 13% globally by 2022.

Developing new BIPV technologies such as solar roof tiles and solar façades would not only cut greenhouse emissions but also open up huge potential for business and the economy.

According to a national survey (see the entry for Australia here), Australian homeowners are still much more comfortable with rooftop solar panels than other systems such as ground-mounted ones.

In our opinion it therefore stands to reason that if we want to boost BIPV systems in Australia, our solar roof tiles are the perfect place to start. Our tiles have a range of advantages, such as low maintenance, attractive look, easy replaceability, and no extra load on the roof compared with conventional roof-mounted solar arrays.

Challenges ahead

Nevertheless, the major challenges for this technology are the current high cost, poor consumer awareness, and lack of industrial-scale manufacturing process. We made our tiles with the help of a 3D printing facility at Western Sydney University, which can be attached to an existing tile manufacturing machine with minor modifications.

The current installation cost of commercial solar tiles could be as high as A$600 per square metre, including the inverter.

What’s more, we have little information on how the roof tiles will perform in long-term use, and no data on whether solar tiles will have an effect on conditions inside the building. It is possible that the tiles could increase the temperature inside, thus increasing the need for air conditioning.

Read more: There’s a looming waste crisis from Australia’s solar energy boom

To answer these questions, we are carrying out a full life-cycle cost analysis of our solar tiles, as well as working on ways to bring down the cost. Our target is to reduce the cost to A$250 per square metre or even less, including the inverter. Prices like that would hopefully give Australian homeowners the power to put solar power into the fabric of their home.

The lead author thanks Professor Bijan Samali for valued supervision of his research.

– ref. We can make roof tiles with built-in solar cells – now the challenge is to make them cheaper – http://theconversation.com/we-can-make-roof-tiles-with-built-in-solar-cells-now-the-challenge-is-to-make-them-cheaper-123775

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penelope Hasking, Associate Professor of Psychology, Curtin University

Non-suicidal self-injury is the deliberate damage of body tissue without conscious suicidal intent. It’s more specific than self-harm, a broader term that can also include suicide attempts.

Self-injury is reasonably common, particularly among young people. In community samples, 17% of adolescents and 13% of young adults had engaged in self-injury.

Self-injury is associated with underlying psychological distress, and increased suicide risk. People who self-injure are typically doing so to cope with intense emotions.

Read more: Why do people intentionally injure themselves?

Although we continue to understand more about self-injury, there remains significant public stigma towards people who self-injure.

This stigma can make people who self-injure reluctant to seek help or disclose their experiences to others. Research shows only half the people who are already seeing a therapist for mental health concerns will tell even their therapist about it.

One way to combat stigma, and support disclosure and help-seeking, is to debunk the common myths and misconceptions that surround self-injury.

Myth 1: only teenage girls self-injure

Self-injury is often thought of as a “teen fad”, and as especially prevalent among teenage girls. It’s true self-injury usually starts during adolescence, but people of all ages and genders self-injure. Recent research shows the second most common time to start self-injury is in a person’s early 20s.

Consistent with this, self-injury is common among university students; up to one in five report a history of self-injury, with about 8% self-injuring for the first time during university.

Although more women in treatment settings report self-injury, it’s likely that in community settings, self-injury is equally common among males and females. This may be because women are more likely than men to seek help.

Myth 2: people who self-injure are attention-seeking

One of the more pervasive myths about self-injury is that people self-injure to seek attention. Yet, self-injury is usually a very secretive behaviour, and people go to great lengths to hide their self-injury.

Instead, in the majority of research, people report the main reason they self-injure is to cope with intense or unwanted emotions.

Read more: Talking about suicide and self-harm in schools can save lives

Other common reasons people self-injure are to punish themselves or to stop an escalating cycle of painful thoughts and feelings. People may self-injure to communicate how distressed they are, particularly if they have trouble verbally expressing their feelings. In other words, their self-injury is a cry for help.

A recent study found influencing and punishing others was the least likely reason for self-injury.

Myth 3: people who self-injure are suicidal

By definition, non-suicidal self-injury is not motivated by a desire to end life. In addition to serving a different function, the frequency of suicidal and non-suicidal behaviours differs. That is, suicide attempts are generally infrequent, whereas non-suicidal behaviours can occur more often.

The methods used, the outcomes of the behaviours, and appropriate treatment responses also all differ. People at risk of suicide may require immediate and more intensive intervention; although both non-suicidal self-injury and suicidal behaviour need to be taken seriously and responded to compassionately.

For these reasons, it’s important to be clear when we are talking about self-injury and when we are talking about suicidal thoughts or behaviour.

Myth 4: there is a self-injury ‘epidemic’

While many people report at least one instance of self-injury, fewer people engage in repeated episodes.

Further, there is little evidence rates of self-injury have increased in recent years. Hospital records indicate an increase in presentations for “deliberate self-harm”, but these are predominantly poisonings, not self-injury.

Other studies show more people reporting self-injury, but it’s unclear whether this is because people are more comfortable disclosing their self-injury, or because self-injury is increasing.

Research suggests when the methodologies of the studies are taken into account, rates of self-injury have not increased over time.

Read more: Does more mental health treatment and less stigma produce better mental health?

Myth 5: social media contributes to self-injury

Internet and social media are highly relevant to many people who self-injure as they offer a means to obtain social support, share their experiences with others who have been through similar things, and obtain coping and recovery-oriented resources (for example, stories about other people’s experiences).

This is not surprising given the stigma attached to self-injury, which leaves many people who self-injure feeling isolated from others.

Despite these benefits, there are concerns online material, including graphic images and videos depicting self-injury, may trigger people to engage in self-injury. While only a few studies explicitly examine this, there is some evidence viewing graphic imagery is associated with self-injury. However, images of scars may not be as triggering.

There are also concerns exposure to messages that carry hopeless themes (for example, “it’s impossible to stop self-injuring”), may contribute to continued self-injury and impede help-seeking.

But at the same time, exposure to more positive messages may offer hope about recovery.

Fostering understanding

Self-injury is a common behaviour engaged in by a broad spectrum of people. Given its association with psychological difficulties and suicide risk, it’s critical self-injury be taken seriously and not dismissed or glossed over.

Read more: Australian teens doing well, but some still at high risk of suicide and self-harm

People who engage in self-injury need to know it’s okay to seek support (from friends, family, and health professionals) and that people can and do recover.

For anyone who knows someone who self-injures, it’s important to respond to that person in a non-judgemental and compassionate manner. Just knowing there is someone supportive who is willing to listen can make a big difference to a person who self-injures.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. It’s not only teenage girls, and it’s rarely attention-seeking: debunking the myths around self-injury – http://theconversation.com/its-not-only-teenage-girls-and-its-rarely-attention-seeking-debunking-the-myths-around-self-injury-120214

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Tietz, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design, UNSW

With two-thirds of a global population of 9.4 billion people expected to live in urban areas by 2050, we can expect a change in the domestic living arrangements we are familiar with today.

In high-density cities, the static apartment layouts with one function per room will become a luxury that cannot be maintained. The traditional notion of a dedicated living room, bedroom, bathroom or kitchen will no longer be economically or environmentally sustainable. Building stock will need to work harder.

The need to use building space more efficiently means adaptive and responsive domestic micro-environments will replace the old concept of static rooms within a private apartment.

Read more: Urban density matters – but what does it mean?

These changes will reframe our idea of what home means, what we do in it, and how the home itself can support and help inhabitants with domestic living.

So how will these flexible spaces work?

Sidewalk Labs and IKEA are collaborating with Ori, a robotic furniture startup that emerged from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to transform our use of increasingly sparse urban living space. They have developed ways to enhance existing apartments with pre-manufactured standardised products to make living spaces flexible.

Leading product designers have produced tantalising concepts of how these newly developed products could enhance our lives in cities where space is at a premium. One example is based on a floor plan measuring just 3m by 3.5m.

The more intensive use of building space with hyper-dense living will have impacts on circulation spaces. It will require more services in tighter spaces and a vigilant eye on emergency evacuation pathways. Public space will be much more crowded and play a more important role in our well-being.

Read more: People-friendly furniture in public places matters more than ever in today’s city

The robotic furniture that is available now could also help people with some form of impairment negotiate their home environment. An example is a bed that tilts up into a position that makes it easier to get out.

Some furniture now on the market has similar mechanically assisted functions to help people get out of a chair. This can be expanded into a broader range of facilitated living aids for people with physical and other impairments.

Ease of transformation is the key

Mobile furniture is not a new idea. The late 1980s and early 1990s spawned a whole range of mobile furniture, such as tables on wheels and sideboards with castors.

We have always tried to make rooms adaptable. Japanese screens or room dividers were one way. We have space-saving and transforming furniture from IKEA such as folded-up hallway tables that can become dining tables.

The idea of being able to transform our living space made these mobile furnishings enticing. But they all required a range of manual actions and this effort meant that, after a few initial experiments with them, they ended up in one static position. These mobile items became integrated and firmly located within the accumulations of things that make up our private sphere and who we are.

Read more: Reinventing density: co-living, the second domestic revolution

Industrial designers such as the late Luigi Colani designed pre-manufactured dwellings with rotating interiors – but the ease of transformation is what really makes a difference now. It’s likely to have reverberating effects.

The term robotic furniture conjures up Jetsons-like images, but what this means is we will have adaptive spaces. Rooms will transform from bedroom into living room or from study into entertainment space at the touch of a button, a gesture, or a voice command.

While the videos (above) of beautifully designed spaces make the idea tantalisingly attractive, we need to bear in mind these are initial concepts, even though well-developed. But this heralds the beginning of an entirely new way of conceiving and inhabiting space. We have reached a time where everything is in flux.

It introduces another element into our daily routine. The time it takes for the transformation to be completed plays a big role. Too slow and we think twice about it, too fast and it might knock a few things about. In the examples shown (above) they are workable and safe.

If we take this development a step further, the way our cupboards store and provide access to our things might be next in line for robotic optimisation.

It’s not just rooms that will be transformed

There are still questions to be answered. For example, will the speed of the spatial transformation taking place influence the speed of our personal routines, like the time we allow for our morning coffee routine before heading out the door?

How will these new flexible spaces affect our sense of belonging and feeling at home, when everything can change with a voice command?

Read more: Control, cost and convenience determine how Australians use the technology in their homes

Robotically optimised homes might change culture in similar ways to how digital communications altered our conversations, social conduct, personal relationships, and behaviour.

The way we think about building and living in high-rise apartments, which we have done for hundreds of years, is about to take a turn. It could transform how we conceive of and inhabit vertical space.

Existing building typologies and the ways and means of how buildings are designed and developed will change entirely. This has the potential to have a massive and disruptive impact on real estate development, building design and regulation, construction methods, housing and social policy.

– ref. ‘Transformer’ rooms and robo-furniture are set to remake our homes – and lives – before our eyes – http://theconversation.com/transformer-rooms-and-robo-furniture-are-set-to-remake-our-homes-and-lives-before-our-eyes-123682