Mixed reactions in Hong Kong after protesters stormed the Legislative Council on Monday, the anniversary of the former British colony’s 1997 return to Chinese rule. Video: Al Jazeera
Authorities in Hong Kong should swiftly investigate the vandalism of the Citizens’ Radio office and hold those responsible to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Yesterday, at about 2:45 a.m., four men wearing masks forced their way into the offices of Citizens’ Radio and smashed its door, windows, and broadcasting equipment, according to news reports and Tsang Kin Shing, the station’s founder, who spoke to CPJ via phone.
The men broke broadcasting equipment that Tsang planned to use to cover yesterday’s protests, he told CPJ.
Police guard outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong yesterday. Image: CPJ/Vincent Yu
Citizens’ Radio was still able to cover the protests, as seen in video it posted to Facebook.
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Hong Kong has faced protests since May, chiefly against a proposed amendment to its extradition law that would allow Hong Kong to send fugitive suspects to places where it lacked extradition agreements, including mainland China, according to news reports.
“Hong Kong authorities must take swift action to apprehend those responsible for vandalising Citizens’ Radio,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator, in Washington, DC.
“Authorities need to demonstrate that the use of violence to halt news coverage has no place in Hong Kong.”
Tsang told CPJ that he witnessed the men enter the station brandishing hammers and a baseball bat, vandalise the office, and leave, and said that the entire incident lasted about two minutes.
He estimated the damage at between HK$20,000 to $30,000 (US$2560 to US$3845), and told CPJ that he filed a report with the local police.
Citizens’ Radio is a nonprofit broadcaster affiliated with the League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy political party in Hong Kong, which broadcasts without a permit since its license application has been pending since 2005, according to news reports.
Tsang and other employees of the broadcaster have been prosecuted and fined for broadcasting illegally, and the station has been shut down by authorities multiple times since 2005, according to media reports.
The Hong Kong Police Force did not answer CPJ’s phone call requesting comment.
Hong Kong police crack down on protesters who had stormed the Legislative Assembly on Monday. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot PMC
The poorer people are, the higher their chances of contending with domestic violence, crime, social conflict, homelessness and unemployment.
All these factors contribute to increased levels of psychological distress, which is associated with common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety.
In our research, of adults who recorded “very high” levels of psychological distress on what’s called the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, more than three times as many (30%) came from the most socioeconomically disadvantaged fifth of Australian areas than from the most affluent fifth (9%).
Along with where you live, personal income is an important influence: among the poorest fifth of Australians, one in four people reported “high” or “very high” psychological distress when compared to about one in 20 people in the richest fifth.
To begin to tackle this problem, we need to see more equitable distribution of mental health care; that is, delivery of care proportionate to need. As it currently stands, socioeconomically disadvantaged groups very often do not get optimal mental health care.
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System has begun its public hearings this week in Melbourne. Hopefully, it will provoke improved collaboration between state and Commonwealth services, enabling better access to mental health services for those who need it most.
Socioeconomic disadvantage affects mental health from birth
Unintended pregnancy, being younger, experiencing intimate partner violence and having insufficient emotional and practical support can lead to mental disorders, including depression, among pregnant women and new mothers.
One study showed the mental health of four-year-old children is affected by factors including family income, maternal education and neighbourhood disadvantage. The researchers followed children in this study until the age of 14 to 15 and found the effects persisted.
People in countries with greater socioeconomic inequality are more likely to have poor mental health than people in more equal societies. Australia is a high-income country, but there remains a significant gap between the richest in our society and the poorest.
Many health, educational, transport, housing, welfare and fiscal policy shifts could improve mental health in communities by addressing socioeconomic disadvantage and its impacts across the lifespan.
But while this issue persists, we need to look at what people from disadvantaged groups with mental illness are getting by way of treatment.
Most commonly, people with depression and other mental disorders will be prescribed medications, and/or receive “talking therapies” which might include sessions with a psychologist or other mental health professionals.
From young children to older adults, disadvantage can be linked to mental ill health at all stages of life.From shutterstock.com
But as we know, many Australians with common mental disorders such as depression live in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage. Here, despite the greater need, fewer psychological treatment services are delivered. Location of therapists and out-of-pocket costs can both act as barriers to accessing these services.
Ultimately, while poor people generally need mental health services more, rich people tend to access them at a much higher rate. So poorer people often receive only antidepressants, and alone, these may have only a modest effect, placing them on the back foot in terms of their recovery.
Much of this care provision rests with Commonwealth Medicare-funded services. State services, meanwhile, struggle to respond to needs left unmet.
The Commonwealth and the states must work together
Although spending on mental health has increased in recent years, so too has the system’s complexity and fragmentation. Delivering equitable mental health care for Australians is complicated by the federal structure and divisions of responsibilities.
For private provider services, there is a need for incentive structures that secure the delivery of free or lower-cost services for the people and in the places where there is greatest need.
The Victorian royal commission into mental health is asking about drivers of poor community mental health, and flagging the importance of community and economic participation in improving mental health.
Within state mental health policy, funding models should ensure that while all communities get a decent level of mental health care, there is more service availability in areas and communities we know have higher rates of mental health problems.
We’d also be well-served by adopting newer strategies to facilitate access. For example, some people in difficult circumstances may nevertheless have broadband internet sufficient for video links. Getting psychological therapies into people’s homes through this route may be one way around other access problems.
The challenge for governments now is to cooperate with and support mental health service providers to ensure these services are better connected with each other, and importantly, more fairly and consistently delivered in relation to need.
Submissions for the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System are open until July 5.
The United Kingdom will have another prime minister by the end of July, when members of the Conservative party choose between Jeremy Hunt (who?) and Boris Johnson (yes, really).
Aside from the morbid fascination of watching this from afar, this leadership contest matters because it will determine who will (presumably) lead the UK out of the European Union, with or without a deal.
One way or another, this will affect Australia’s future trade relationship with the UK.
Selecting a new Tory leader
Selecting a leader of the Conservative party (or Tories) used to be easy. As late as 2003, a series of potential candidates would be “sounded out” behind-the-scenes by grandees, including lords and senior MPs, to see if they wanted the honour of leading the party (and, as a happy by-product, the country).
As with all leadership positions, not everyone wanted the job. When the men in suits offered Sir Alec Douglas-Home the honour of being prime minister in 1963, he famously replied: “Please, please not me!”
They ignored him and he went on to become one of the least successful prime ministers in British history.
But the sounding-out process was democratised in 1998 so that the party base could have a say. The process for electing a new leader of the Conservative party is that any or all members of parliament (MPs) can put their hat in the ring. If they gain enough support from fellow parliamentarians, they compete against each other in a series of votes among MPs, until there are only two contenders left standing.
At this point, the party members in the towns and shires (the so-called grassroots members) get to vote on who next becomes leader.
This innovation came at a moment in time when the Conservative membership was becoming highly unrepresentative of the country as a whole. And since the late 1990s, the number of members in the Conservative party is declining, the average age is increasing, and the membership is overwhelmingly white. This has led some people to describe the conservatives as “pale and stale”.
Johnson vs Hunt
This time round there were 10 runners. The field became “pale, male and stale” when the two female contenders, Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom, did not gain the required number of votes to progress to the next round.
Eventually we got down to Hunt and Johnson.
Johnson favours a hard Brexit. Hunt initially voted to ‘Remain’, but is now hardening his language.AAP
He may scandalise opinion outside the Conservative party, but the grassroots members still rate him. This is partly because he stands for leaving the EU without a deal on Oct. 31, 2019 – an article of faith among Brexit-supporting Conservatives.
In contrast, Hunt, the current foreign secretary, is more measured and presents himself as the more likely of the two candidates to secure a deal with the EU, as Johnson is not taken seriously in Brussels.
What’s working against Hunt, however, is that he voted to “Remain” in the EU in 2016, leading some to call him “Theresa May in trousers”.
Of course, Johnson and Hunt’s respective positions on Brexit matter only so much because no change of leader affects the numbers in parliament. The real question then becomes, will the new leader call – or be forced into – a general election to break the parliamentary deadlock over Brexit?
Brexit has radicalised the Tory base, which is broadly in favour of leaving with a no deal (unlike the rest of the country). A no-deal, or hard, Brexit means the UK would leave the EU without any agreements in place to soften the economic shock of leaving its largest trading partner, the EU. This is now Johnson’s stated position.
Underlying this drift towards a hard Brexit is the de-alignment of voters from the two main parties, which has scared the Conservatives.
There is growing weight to the idea that Brexit is, essentially, an English nationalism movement.AAP
The success of the Brexit Party and a threat from the resurgent centrist and pro-Remain Liberal Democrats makes these challenging times for party strategists. In fact, the Conservatives are only united in their dislike of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Significantly, neither leadership contender really understands the multinational United Kingdom or seemingly cares about the strain Brexit is putting on the union.
Neither candidate has an answer to the Northern Ireland “backstop” issue, for instance, which seeks to avoid the reestablishment of a political border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland in Ulster (the source of past conflict). And a hard Brexit will see increased support for independence in Scotland.
What’s more, the results of a recent YouGov survey of Conservative party members and their attitudes toward Brexit added more weight to the idea that Brexit is, essentially, an English nationalism movement.
So, in keeping with the permanent state of political misery induced by Brexit, any outcome of the leadership contest and the subsequent UK-EU politics will make almost everyone unhappy.
Both sides feel like they are losing. This is a result of the referendum format; in an election cycle, you at least think your side might have a chance next time.
But deep divisions over Brexit mean that the future of the Conservative party is at stake. Like turkeys voting for Christmas, if Johnson is elected leader, there may not be a next time for either the Conservative party or the United Kingdom.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nerilie Abram, ARC Future Fellow, Research School of Earth Sciences; Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Australian National University
Greenland has been in the news a bit lately. From Huskies seemingly walking on water, to temperatures soaring to 20℃ above average for the time of year, to predictions of the vast ice sheet being lost entirely, what is going on?
At its most simple: ice melts when it gets too warm.
Of course, some ice melts every time summer rolls around, but the amount of Arctic ice that melts each summer is growing, and we’re waiting to see whether this turns out to be a record-breaking year for Greenland ice melt.
No part of the planet is free from the impacts of human-caused climate change. But Greenland, and the Arctic more generally, is experiencing the impacts particularly severely. Temperatures in the planet’s extreme north are rising twice as fast as the global average.
Greenland is warming so rapidly because of what climate scientists refer to as a “positive feedback”. Despite the name, these are not good. A better term might be “climate change amplifier”.
The Arctic has many “positive feedbacks” or “amplifiers” that worsen the effects of climate change here. For example, as snow and ice begin to melt, the surface darkens, allowing it to absorb more heat and thus melt even more.
This effect is most dramatic when snow and ice are lost completely, as in the case of the dramatic loss of the sea ice covering the Arctic ocean. Arctic sea ice loss is one of the major factors that explains why the Arctic is warming so much faster than the rest of the planet.
Another worrisome characteristic of climate change in the Arctic is the potential for ice melt to accelerate. The temperature threshold at which ice begins to melt means that once the climate has warmed enough to start melting ice, any further warming will rapidly cause an even larger amount of melting to occur. That is the reality beginning to play out in Greenland.
Beginning of the 2019 summer melt season
Last month, ice melt across the surface of Greenland made headlines. Surface melting spiked rapidly and was unusually strong for June. Melting was most intense around the edges of the Greenland ice sheet, and about 40% of the entire ice sheet surface was affected to some extent.
Greenland ice melt is typically very irregular during each summer, spiking as weather systems bring warm air masses over the ice sheet. Given this variability, it is not yet clear whether 2019 is going to be an unusually bad year for melting over Greenland – and whether it will rival the worst year on record, 2012, when the entire surface of the ice sheet experienced melting.
But what is very clear from observations since the 1970s (and completely consistent with simple physics) is that as the Arctic climate warms, the Greenland summer melt season is starting earlier, lasting longer, and becoming more intense.
Samples of older ice from inside Greenland’s ice sheet paint an even clearer picture of the changes that climate warming is causing. The amount of summer melting first began to increase in the mid-1800s, not long after human-driven climate warming began. Summer melt over the past two decades has reached levels roughly 50% higher than before the Industrial Revolution, and the speed of ice loss from the Greenland sheet has increased nearly sixfold since the 1980s.
An ice sheet has existed on Greenland for millions of years. But the geological timescales of ice sheet growth and renewal are vastly outpaced by the human-caused changes we see today.
A study published in June this year, at the same time surface melting of the ice sheet was spiking, predicts that if human greenhouse emissions continue unabated, by the end of this century ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet could see the ocean rise by up to 33cm.
If all of the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, global sea level would rise by more than 7 metres. According to the same study, that could potentially happen within 1,000 years.
The evidence is abundantly clear: the rising temperature of the planet is causing more Arctic ice to melt during the northern summer. We cannot avoid further ice loss in coming decades, and people and ecosystems will have to adapt to this.
But there is still a window of opportunity to avoid the worst impacts of future climate change in the longer term. The evidence tells us that the only way to prevent the destruction of the Greenland ice sheet, and multi-metre rises in global sea level, is to make rapid, deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. That is a choice we still have a chance to make.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Seetu Bajracharya, Graduate student of master of urban and regional planning, The University of Queensland
In just ten years, the inner city populations of Australia’s biggest state capitals have boomed.
We examined Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census data comparing the population in 2006 and 2016 and found, in Brisbane, the inner-city population grew by 22% in that period. In Sydney, the increase was 33%. And in Melbourne, the population grew by a whopping 78%.
But where is this growth coming from? Like the United States and the United Kingdom, Australia’s major inner cities are “youthifying”.
Families with children are moving away to the suburbs, while young adults, singles and childless couples are moving in.
Despite their smaller housing sizes, the inner cities offer more convenience and accessibility to work, study and recreation. But they’re failing to meet the needs of families in terms of space, amenities and affordability.
In all three cities, especially in Sydney, the 25-34 age group dominates the population, a phenomenon that has become more pronounced since 2006.
Migrants also move to the inner city
Most new inner city residents are international migrants. Inner Sydney and Melbourne, in particular, which were already quite diverse, diversified even more between 2006 and 2016.
Primarily, people born in the Asia-Pacific region move to the inner city, many of them international students and skilled migrants. And for Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne the numbers have increased since 2006.
Meanwhile, the traditional dominance of European migrants in Australia has weakened considerably.
Inner cities aren’t ‘familifying’
While Australian inner cities are “youthifying” and somewhat “studentifying”, they aren’t “familifying”. And while migrants may initially choose to live in the inner cities, there is some evidence they eventually move to the suburbs as they adjust to local patterns and lifestyles.
In Sydney, the number of families living in the inner city has hardly budged for ten years, and the situation is quite similar in Melbourne. But Brisbane is an outlier, which may show how the ABS defines “inner city”, with the area being much larger and more suburban in character than that of Sydney and Melbourne.
So why don’t more families move to the inner city?
Families that choose the inner cities tend to have higher incomes, but also spend more on housing. This suggests inner city living is increasingly pushing out lower income families.
While households with children represent a minority of the inner city, they are increasingly living in apartments, as opposed to traditional (but costlier) child rearing options, such as single family or row houses.
But apartments only make up a tiny fraction of housing options in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
These results are discouraging for Australia’s urban sustainability outlook since the Australian Dream of home-ownership in sprawling suburbs continues to be alive and well.
Bringing families into the inner city
Australian planners must find ways to facilitate a shift toward more compact living to create more diverse neighbourhoods, bring people closer to their jobs, and give families more flexibility.
A promising initiative that has been incorporated into a number of plans, including the Shaping SEQ Regional Plan, is the focus on “missing middle” housing which seeks to encourage more housing in the gap between single family houses and high rise apartments in South East Queensland.
Future policies should integrate people’s non-negotiable needs and wants, including a desire for ample space, privacy, quietness and livability. New urban housing design, including row houses and apartments, must provide sufficient space for families.
Developers should be required to offer mid-rise buildings with affordable and sound-proofed three or four-bedroom units. Inner-city units should include multiple bathrooms, storage rooms and large porches where residents can keep plants and pets.
They should also include enclosed communal front yards to ensure the safety of children. And communal spaces for adults, such as community gardens and barbecues, are desirable to sustain the beloved aspects of Australian culture in the inner city.
Rarely does a Reserve Bank governor get to remake Australia.
HC “Nugget” Coombs, the first Reserve Bank governor, did.
As director general of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction from 1943, he was instrumental in creating the White Paper on Full Employment in Australia that was adopted as a guide by prime ministers from Chifley to Menzies to Whitlam.
He ensured the objective of full employment became part of the charter of the Reserve Bank when he became its first governor in 1959, moving over from the then government-owned Commonwealth Bank, which had performed the Reserve Bank’s functions up to then.
After once again cutting interest rates to a new record low at a special Reserve Bank board meeting in Darwin on Tuesday, his latest successor Philip Lowe will travel to Yirrkala in Arnhem Land to visit the site where some of the Coombs ashes were buried.
HC Coombs gave us full employment
On Tuesday night in Darwin, he paid tribute to Coombs. He said that in his dual roles as governor of the Reserve Bank and chair of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, he was a strong advocate for land rights and the preservation of cultural values and traditions.
Another governor who remade Australia was Bernie Fraser, head of the treasury when Prime Minister Paul Keating made him governor of the Reserve Bank in 1989 – shortly before Australia plunged into recession.
He cut rates dramatically from early 1990, as might have been expected in order to bring about a recovery. But then, well before the recovery was complete (and the unemployment rate was still about 10%), he stopped cutting and started pushing rates back up – much to Keating’s displeasure.
Bernie Fraser gave us low inflation
His rationale appears to have been to salvage something out of the unusual circumstances in which Australia found itself. With inflation on the ropes because of the recession, he decided to keep it there – to squeeze out high inflation forever. With one temporary exception during the introduction of the goods and services tax in 2000 it never again returned to the rates of 5% or more that had been common.
He did it not because of an unusual opportunity, and changed Australia forever.
And so to Philip Lowe, who on Tuesday night in Darwin indicated that he too was taking advantage of an unusual opportunity and would probably change Australia forever.
Until a few years ago, it was thought that Australia’s rate of “full unemployment” – the rate below which unemployment couldn’t stay without stoking inflation – was touch over 5%. As it has fallen to 5% in the past year without stoking either inflation or much-wanted wage growth, the bank has come to revise its view. It now thinks something has changed and the “full employment” is probably 4.5% or lower, a low that was reached during the peak of the mining boom but hasn’t been sustained since the early 1970s.
Philip Lowe wants unemployment lower
Lowe could have ignored the opportunity to push unemployment down that far, to a low that hasn’t been sustained since the 1970s. Instead, in Darwin on Tuesday night, he embraced the opportunity, saying his board was:
prepared to adjust interest rates again if needed to get us closer to full employment and achieve the inflation target in a way that supports the collective welfare of all Australians
Governor Lowe plans to usher in the lowest unemployment target in half a century. He believes the economy can sustain it, and he said several times on Tuesday that he would prefer the government to help out with infrastructure projects and the like, but if it won’t he is “prepared to adjust interest rates again if needed to get us closer to full employment”.
He is doing it because the opportunity is there, as did Coombs and Fraser before him. There’s no telling (yet) how far rates will have to fall to achieve it. Without planning to, he is remaking Australia.
Our Bodies, Our Voices, Our Marks, a suite of exhibitions at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, offers visitors a chance to engage with tattoo on a level deeper than skin. Here, stories of culture, tradition and migration speak through embedded ink.
Without personally experiencing a tattoo, it may be hard to understand why somebody would undergo the painful procedure. For instance, Joseph Banks, the 18th century naturalist on board Cook’s first voyages, was quite taken aback at the tattooing process of a Samoan girl:
What can be sufficient inducement to suffer so much pain is difficult to say; not one Indian (tho I have asked hundreds) would ever give me the least reason for it; possibly superstition may have something to do with it, nothing else in my opinion could be a sufficient cause for so apparently absurd a custom.
Banks, like so many of his time, disregarded the ritual as quaint – a primitive custom in need of Enlightenment. Missionaries and colonists sought to discontinue the “savage” practice, all but effacing it from the Islands.
Today, the museum explores the contemporary form of Polynesia’s ancient tatau alongside the potent tattoo tradition of Japanese irezumi in two photography exhibitions. In addition, four installations – curated by Stanislava Pinchuk (aka MISO) – provide a local perspective on tattoo and identity outside of tradition.
These four mixed media installations feature work by Pinchuck, Brook Andrew, Angela Tiatia, Zaiba Khan and that of Melbourne-based tattoo artist, Paul Stillen. Stillen’s work, Connected Bodies, explores the relationship he develops with clients as they collaborate to create tattoos that pay homage to the wearer’s individual cultural heritage. The exchange between tattooist and client can be one of mutual vulnerability, where the artist strives to materialise what can often be hidden deep within a client’s psyche.
Paul Stillen, Chrystal, 2019.Photograph courtesy of Lekhena Porter
The exhibition Tatau: Marks of Polynesia examines the ancient custom of Samoan pe’a (traditional male tattoo) and malu (traditional female tattoo). It provides insight into how tatau forms a complex body of rituals and motifs embedded into transitions to adulthood, culture, and sacredness.
A contemporary Polynesian style draws on these customs, utilising similar fine lines, geometrical and black work. The creations of Samoa’s oldest and most revered custodians of the sacred practice – the Sulu’ape family – are also displayed. They have carried the tradition of tatau for generations.
Tatau: Marks of Polynesia.Photographer: John Agcaoili
The process of attaining a pe’a in a traditional manner – using handmade tools of bone and wood – lasts up to five consecutive days. The physical and psychological punishment cannot be expressed in words, yet an incomplete pe’a is considered a mark of shame.
Notably, Polynesian tatau – heavy black work and the absence of pictorial iconography – was instrumental to the expansion of global tattoo art, with pioneering American publication Tattootime featuring it in their 1983 issue, New Tribalism. This gave birth to the “tribal” style contemporary tattoo, which swiftly became popular.
An exhibition on the museum’s third floor highlights what is arguably tattoo culture’s most distinct and recognisable style. Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World, curated by Takahiro Kitamura, features the work of seven pioneers of contemporary Japanese decorative tattooing: Junii, Shige, Yokohama Horiken, Miyazo, Horitomo, Horitaka, and Horishiki. Here, the intricacies of regional and tutelage differences can be scrutinised in the pores of their work.
Tattoo by Shige.Photo by Kip Fulbeck
Traditional Japanese decorative tattoo, known as Irezumi, flourished during the Edo period (1603-1868). Its iconography and symbolism were developed from the popular arts of ukiyo-e (woodblock prints). Ukiyo-e began around the 1660s. These single-sheet prints were used in advertising and valued as art. Ukiyo-e artists portrayed outlaw heroes from the classic Chinese novel Shui hu zhuan with full body tattoos.
Irezumi peaked in popularity around 1872. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s new government banned the practice as out of step with other modern, industrialised nations. But the law only served to increase its mystique by driving it underground.
Thanks to the combination of prominent American tattooist Sailor Jerry’s early correspondence with Japanese tattoo masters during the 1950s and pioneering American tattooist Ed Hardy’s journeys to Japan in the early 1970s, Japanese style and structure (full-body, custom tattoo) was adopted outside of Japan, revolutionising tattoo in the west.
While Polynesian and Japanese tattoo are steeped in tradition, Pinchuk’s own tattoo work, displayed in a series of photographs, represents its antithesis.
Small, delicate, and rudimentary, its broken lines symbolising migration journeys. Yet it is without objective meaning and administered by someone for whom tattoo is not a primary medium.
C.L. ( Mustard )Photograph courtesy of Gavin Green.
The contrast between this tattoo art and those shrouded in tradition encapsulates what makes tattoo, in my opinion, so magical, timeless, and powerful. No matter the context, time or place, tattoo is a potent tool for meaning making.
Free speech is in the news. Not least because several leading universities have adopted a “model code” to protect it on campus. And then there’s the Israel Folau saga, and debate over whether his Instagram post was free speech, or just hate speech.
If the Bible is to be believed, humans have sought knowledge since Eve. They have been disagreeing since Cain and Abel. From long before kings, people have been subject to rulers with a vested interest in controlling what was said and done.
Humans have always had a need to ask big questions and their freedom to ask them has often pushed against ortodoxies. Big questions make many people uneasy. Socrates, killed by the Athenians for corrupting the youth in 399 BCE, is only the most iconic example of what can happen when politics and piety combine against intellectuals who ask too many questions.
Or questions of the wrong kind.
In all this, there’s an implicit idea we understand the basic meaning of “free speech”, and we are all entitled to it. But what does it really mean, and how entitled are we?
Where does it come from?
The Ancient Greek Cynics – who valued a simple life, close to nature – valorised “parrhesia” or frank speech as an ethical, not a legal thing. Ancient polytheism (the belief in many gods) made the idea of religious intolerance unheard of, outside of condemning the odd philosopher.
But it was only in the 17th and 18th centuries that arguments for religious tolerance and the freedoms of conscience and speech took the forms we now take for granted.
Protestantism, which began in Europe in the early 16th century, challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and its priests to interpret the Bible. Protestants appealed to individuals’ consciences and championed the translation of the Holy Book into the languages of ordinary people.
Protestant thinker John Locke argued, in 1689, that no person can compel another’s God-given conscience. Therefore, all attempts to do this should be forbidden.
At the same time, philosophers began to challenge the limits of human knowledge concerning God, immortality and the mysteries of faith.
People who claim the right to persecute others believe they know the truth. But the continuing disagreements between different religious sects speaks against the idea God has delivered his truth uniquely and unambiguously to any one group.
We are condemned by the limits of our knowledge to learn to tolerate our differences. But not at any cost.
We are condemned by the limits of our knowledge to learn to tolerate our differences.from shutterstock.com
Defending freedom of conscience and speech is not an unlimited prospect. None of the great 18th century advocates of free speech, such as Voltaire, accepted libel, slander, defamation, incitements to violence, treason or collusion with foreign powers, as anything other than crimes.
It was not intolerant to censor groups who expressed a wish to overthrow the constitution. Or those who would harm members of a population who committed no offences. It was not intolerant to sanction individuals who incite violence against members of other religious or racial groups, solely on grounds of their group identities.
At stake in these limits of free speech is what 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill called the “harm principle”. According to this idea, supposedly free speech that causes or incites harm to others is not truly “free” at all.
Such speech attacks the preconditions of civil debate, which requires a minimum of respect and safety for one’s opponents.
Mill also held that a good society should allow a diversity of views to be presented without fear or favour. A group in which unquestioned orthodoxy prevails may miss evidence, reason badly, and be unduly influenced by political pressures (making sure the “right” view is maintained).
A society should be able to check different views against each other, refute and rectify errors, and ideally achieve a more comprehensive and truer set of beliefs.
Freedom of debate
Critics of Mill’s diversity ideal have said it mistakes society for a university seminar room. They contend politicians and academics have a more qualified sense of the value of seeking knowledge than impartial inquirers.
This criticism points to the special place of universities when it comes to concerns surrounding freedom of speech, past and present.
When the great medieval universities were founded, they were established as autonomous corporations, as against private businesses or arms of public government.
If free inquiry to cultivate educated citizens was to flourish, the thought was, it must be insulated from the pressures of economic and political life. If an intellectual is a paid spokesman of a company or government, they will have strong incentives to suppress inconvenient truths, present only parts of the evidence, and to attack opponents, not their arguments, so as to lead critics from the trail.
A large part of the medieval syllabus, especially in the Arts faculties, consisted of teaching students how to question and debate competing opinions. The medieval summas reflect this culture: a form of text where propositions were raised, counter-propositions considered and rebutted, and comprehensive syntheses sought.
Students were taught to debate by putting forward an argument and addressing counter-arguments.Jonathan Sharp/Unsplash
This is not to deny some counter-positions were beyond the pale. It served a person well to entertain them only as “the devil’s advocate”.
And at different times, certain propositions were condemned. For instance, the so called “Condemnations” of 1210-1277 at the medieval University of Paris, constrained a set of teachings considered heretical. These included teachings of Aristotle such as that human acts are not ruled by the providence of God and that there was never a first human.
At other times, books considered immoral by the Roman Catholic Church were burnt or put on the Index of prohibited works. And those that published such works, such as the 12th Century philosopher and poet Peter Abelard, were imprisoned.
Such practices would survive well into the 18th century in Catholic France, when encyclopedist Denis Diderot suffered a similar fate.
Early modern forms of scientific inquiry challenged the medieval paradigm. It was felt to rely too much on an established canon of authorities and so neglect peoples’ own experiences and capacities to reason on what these experiences revealed about the world.
Since nature is so vast, and humans so limited, we would also need to inquire as part of a shared scientific culture, rather than placing our faith in individual geniuses.
Each inquirer would have to submit her results and conclusions to the scrutiny and testing of their peers. Such dialogue alone could make sure anyone’s ideas were not the fancies of an isolated dreamer.
Without this form of freedom of inquiry, with active fostering of dissenting voices, there could be no sciences.
Where are we now?
People from different political camps agonise about the fate of free speech. Those on the right point to humanities departments, arguing an artificial, unrepresentative conformism presides there. Those on the left have long pointed to economics and business departments, levelling similar accusations.
All the while, all departments are subject to the changing fate of universities that have lost a good deal of their post-medieval independence from political and economic forces.
So, the situation is not as simple as the controversies make it.
On one hand, charges of ideological closure need to be balanced against the way a certain (already discovered) truth exerts what philosopher and political analyst Hannah Arendt termed a coercive value.
No one is intellectually “free”, in any real sense, to claim the earth is flat. Blind denial of overwhelming evidence, however inconvenient, is not an exercise of liberty.
On the other hand, in more behavioural disciplines like politics, there is no one truth. When learning about social structures, to not consider conservatives as well as progressives is to foreclose students’ freedom of inquiry.
To teach a single economic perspective as unquestionably “scientific”, without considering its philosophical assumptions and historical failings, is likewise to do free inquiry (and our students) a disservice.
The question of how we should teach openly anti-liberal, anti-democratic thinkers is more complex. But surely to do so without explaining to students the implications of these thinkers’ ideas, and how they have been used by malign historical forces, is once more to sell intellectual freedom (and our democracy) short.
The final curve ball in free speech debates today comes from social media. Single remarks made anywhere in the world can now be ripped from their context, “go viral”, and cost someone their livelihood.
Freedom of speech, to be meaningful, depends on the ability of people of differing opinions to state their opinions (so long as their opinions are not criminal and don’t incite hatred or violence) without fear that, by doing so, they will be jeopardising their own and loved ones’ well-being.
When such conditions apply, as the Colonel used to say on Hogan’s Heroes, “we have ways of making you talk”. And also ways of keeping people silent.
Scott Morrison Anthony Albanese will discuss on Wednesday the government’s plan for an inquiry into the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on press freedom.
The government will have the powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security undertake the inquiry.
But Labor argues this is not the best forum and says the issue should go to a new parliamentary joint committee.
In the Senate on Tuesday shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally gave notice of a motion to establish a new select committee. Her motion is due to be voted on this Thursday.
In practice, the opposition could not get parliamentary support for a joint select committee – the best it could achieve would be getting the numbers for a Senate committee, and that would mean two inquiries. But another option would be for the opposition to press for the terms of reference of the PJCIS inquiry to be widened.
The terms of reference of Keneally’s proposed inquiry into “the appropriate balance between the public’s right to know, the freedom of the press and Australia’s national security” overlap some of the government’s but are considerably wider.
They would, for example, deal with whistle blowers, who are not covered in the government’s inquiry. The Keneally committee would also have crossbench representation; the security committee has only government and opposition members.
Press freedom suddenly became a big issue after Australian Federal Police raids recently on the home of a News Corp journalist and on the ABC. The police were pursuing separate leaks of classified information. The ABC and News Corp have legal actions underway.
Media organisations have banded together in calls for strengthened protections for journalists.
Labor received Morrison’s letter to Albanese about the inquiry after Keneally gave her notice of motion, although the government said cabinet made the decision on Monday.
The PJCIS operates in a bipartisan fashion, albeit with a government majority, and has been where much security legislation has been refined.
Morrison’s letter said: “The Government is committed to ensuring our democracy strikes the right balance between a free press and keeping Australians safe – two fundamental tenets of our democracy”. The government would consider proposals that aim to ensure that balance, he said.
The government’s proposed terms of reference for the inquiry – reporting by October 17 – include looking at
… The experiences of media and media organisations that have, or could become, subject to the powers of law enforcement or intelligence agencies, and the impact of the exercise of those powers on journalists’ work, including informing the public;
… the reasons journalists and media organisations have, or could become, subject to those powers;
… whether any, and if so what, changes could be made to procedures and thresholds for exercising those powers to better balance the need for press freedom with the need for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate serious offending and obtain intelligence on security threats.
Two issues are nominated for specific inquiry
..whether and in what circumstances there could be contested hearings on warrants authorising investigative action involving media; and
.. the appropriateness of current thresholds for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access electronic data on devices used by media.
Morrison said in his letter the terms of reference would give the committee an opportunity “to hear from both journalists and media organisations about the experience of being subject to the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers, as well as from government officials and agencies as to the reasons why these powers are used”.
He said the security committee was “well placed to conduct this inquiry given its responsibility for, and experience in, handling issues concerning national security information and legislation”.
The Keneally committee’s proposed terms of reference would cover
…Disclosure and public reporting of sensitive and classified information, including the appropriate regime for warrants in relation to the media, and adequacy of existing legislation;
… whistle-blower and public sector protections;
.. referral practices of the government after leaks;
..appropriate culture, practice and leadership for government and senior public employees;
.. mechanisms to ensure the Australian Federal Police have sufficient independence in investigating politically sensitive matters.
Keneally said: “The events of the past month have raised the question – is a free press a right Australians can continue to rely on under the Morrison government?
“There is a culture of secrecy and perverting the public’s right to know that has been making its way through this government for too long, and it’s time to call it out.”
A LEADING cyber security expert has called on universities to play a more active role in implementing ethics and legal frameworks for communications smart technology to save society from an Orwellian future.
Dr Mohamed El-Guindy, an Egyptian consultant to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC-ROMENA), says communication research programmes should promote “ethically aligned” design.
In an era of “accelerated addictiveness” to smartphone and other digital technologies, he told media researchers, policy advisers and journalists at the recent 27th Asian Media Information and Communication (AMIC) conference in Bangkok, Thailand, that it was vital for democracy that universities stepped up.
He also said families and parents needed to be more critically active by balancing screen time and promoting “real social interaction”.
Addressing the “persuasive technologies” industry, Dr El-Guindy spoke about being “hooked”, the “scrolling dopamine loop” and the “digital skinner box” models and how they had made smartphones fill psychological needs.
“Our social fabric is being torn apart,” he said. “As we expect more from technology, we expect less from each other as people.
“We have suffered a loss of ability to focus without distraction. The result is mental health issues, less empathy and more confusion.”
‘Misinformation, lies’
Dr El-Guindy said societies were engulfed in “misinformation, propaganda and lies”.
He quoted from educator and media theorist Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, originally published in 1985 and drawn from a talk reflecting on George Orwell’s 1984.
“Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in [Aldous] Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to ignore the technologies that undo their capacity to think.”
In a separate address, Dr El-Guindy and other presenters spoke about facial recognition technologies, voice generators that can put words in people’s mouths and how artificial intelligence is compromising and undermining privacy.
The three-day AMIC conference at Chulalongkorn University featured the theme “Are you human? Communication, Technology and New Humanism”.
Manila-based AMIC is the major global organisation focused on Asian media policy and research and publishes two leading journals, the Asian Journal of Communication and Media Asia.
AMIC board chair Professor Crispin Maslog challenged the more than 200 participants to take a more “humanist” approach to communication research and policy building.
“We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another,” he said. “In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.
“As the millennials would say, OMG!”
Climate change guide
Among four new international books about communication research and technology, prolific Filipino author and communications expert Dr Maslog launched his 36th title, Science Writing and Climate Change.
Developed as a guide for journalists in the Asia-Pacific region, it has been co-authored with New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie and regional editor Joel Adriano of SciDev.Net, a leading online publication with a focus of science and development.
Among several UNESCO delegates and speakers at the conference, Dorothy Gordon, of the governing board of the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, called on participants to lobby through their national commissions and global agencies if they wanted action.
“Asia has the potential to be in control, it can make changes for tech for peace,” she said. “UNESCO is made up of member states. If you want something to happen, you need to lobby your own country first to take up the issue.”
Malaysia’s Dr Azman Azwan Azmawati, an associate professor at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang and president of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC), called for more critical research on patriarchal systems.
“It is crucial for more study of patriarchal systems because of their negative impact on women and stereotyping of women,” she said. “The patriarchal system hinders women from reaching their potential.”
Power imbalance
Much more research was needed to focus on the imbalance of power – ‘deconstructing the power of the powerful over the powerless.
“Cultural norms and mindsets must be re-examined, critiqued, reevaluated and rethought.”
Professor Mark Pearson of Australia’s Griffith University spoke of human rights advocacy journalism in a global justice context.
“Global justice can be a legitimate ethical objective of advocacy journalism, requiring factuality as a platform,” he said.
“It is achievable in some cases through a wise and intentional position of ‘advocacy journalism’ which sits comfortably with the professional values of the livelihood of journalists.”
He cited several examples of advocacy journalism in Australia and New Zealand, including Greenpeace investigative journalist Phil Vine.
Dr Pearson, author of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law, also spoke about “mindful journalism”, a form of journalism with “wisdom and compassion” drawing from elements of secular Buddhist approaches to meditation and ethics.
He dedicated a separate paper on the topic to the memory of Dr Shelton Gunaratne, who died in March this year after being awarded the 2016 AMIC Asia Communication Award for his “ground-breaking scholarship and intellectual contribution to Asian media and communication research”.
High tech ‘slavery’
Professor Jack Linchuan Qiu, author of Goodbye iSlave and director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s C-Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research, gave an inspired address on the impact of modern day “slavery” in the high tech industries.
Taiwan’s Professor Georgette Wang of the National Chengchi University engaged with the debate about Asian research methodologies, saying that perhaps the right questions were not being asked.
She said there was an absence of “East-West dialogue” over research methodologies and there needed to be more engagement. Blaming globalisation, she said that while the “periphery” had gained greater presence in the international arena, it had also “brought the profile of theories and questions originating in the West to greater prominence”.
Instead of rejecting Western research models in an Asian context, more effort was needed to “develop a new paradigm” drawing on both East-West traditions.
The “problem” Michael de Adder cartoon … too close to the truth?
By CAFE PACIFIC
CANADA’S “most read” cartoonist has been “let go” from all newspapers in New Brunswick, apparently over a Trump and migrants cartoon that went viral.
“I’m a proud New Brunswicker. I’ll miss drawing cartoons for my home province,” cartoonist Michael de Adder was quoted by The Daily Cartoonist as saying.
The above cartoon was the one that apparently caused the fuss.
“The highs and lows of cartooning. Today I was just let go from all newspapers in New Brunswick.”
Michael de Adder was born, raised, and educated in New Brunswick province and was a regular presence in its newspapers.
Brunswick News Inc., which owns the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, the Moncton Times&Transcript, and the Fredericton Daily Gleaner, has now disassociated itself from de Adder.
De Adder told The Daily Cartoonist: “What’s crazier, a cartoonist getting fired from a newspaper for a cartoon he didn’t draw [@chappatte] or a cartoonist being fired from a newspaper for a cartoon they didn’t run?
“Technically I wasn’t fired. I was under contract not employed,” he added.
But he isn’t too fazed – “it’s a setback not a deathblow”. He has a new book coming out with a collection of his cartoons, You Might Be From New Brunswick If …
According to Wikipedia, de Adder “draws approximately 10 cartoons weekly and, at over a million readers per day, he is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.”
Wes Tyrell, president of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists, said in a statement:
“Cartoonist Michael de Adder was let go from his job drawing editorial cartoons for all the major New Brunswick newspapers 24 hours after his Donald Trump cartoon went viral on social media, a job he held for 17 years.
“Although he has stated there was no reason given for his firing, the timing was no coincidence.
“Michael told me once that not only were the J.D. Irving owned New Brunswick newspapers challenging to work for, but there were a series of taboo subjects he could not touch. One of these taboo subjects was Donald Trump.”
The Reserve Bank has cut the official interest rate by another 0.25 percentage points to a new low of 1%, reflecting continuing concern over the slow economy.
Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe said the latest cut, which came a month after the RBA made a similar cut of 0.25 percentage points, would help “make further inroads” into the economy’s spare capacity, assist in reducing unemployment, and achieve more progress towards the inflation target. The last back-to-back reduction was in 2012.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the government “expects all banks to pass on the benefits of sustained reductions in funding costs.” ANZ Bank immediately announced it would pass on the full cut.
The Reserve Bank made it clear it could cut further if necessary. The wording of Lowe’s statement makes clear that he will continue to cut rates until the unemployment rate falls, probably to around 4.5%, which the bank has identified as a target consistent with its inflation target.
Sub-5% unemployment the new RBA target
Over the past six months, the unemployment rate has climbed from 5% to 5.2%, instead of falling as the bank believes it should.
Lowe’s statement says the Australian economy “can sustain lower rates of unemployment and underemployment”. It says its inflation target of 2-3% is not at risk. It expects underlying inflation to climb from its present 1.4% to around 2% in 2020 and then a little higher after that.
After the announcement, JP Morgan predicted another two cuts, taking the cash rate from 1% to 0.5% by mid next year. It said the risks to this view were that the bank “gets there earlier, not later”.
The cut in the cash rate will bring some mortgage rates down to less than 4% for the first time in records that date back to 1959.
The latest Reserve Bank decision comes as the Coalition government gathers the Senate numbers to pass its income tax package this week. The first tranche will provide an early stimulus to the economy.
Frydenberg said the government’s economic plan, “including significant tax cuts of which the legislation will be introduced into the parliament today, will boost household consumption and overall economic activity”.
While the Reserve Bank described the outlook for both the global and domestic economies as “reasonable”, it pointed to uncertainties in each.
The central scenario for the Australian economy remains reasonable, with growth around trend expected. The main domestic uncertainty continues to be the outlook for consumption, although a pick-up in household disposable income is expected to support spending.
Lowe pointed out that while there had been a pick up in private sector wages growth, “overall wages growth remains low”.
Labor puts the case for bringing tax cuts forward
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers said “two rate cuts in two months are a damning indictment of the Liberals’ economic mismanagement”.
Rates are now a third of their level during the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, he said.
Chalmers said the decision to cut rates boosted the case for Labor’s proposed amendments to the tax package. These amendments would embrace the first stage of the tax plan, bring forward some of stage two and drop the third stage.
But the government is insisting the package must go through without change, and is negotiating with the crossbench to bypass Labor if necessary.
In his speech opening the parliament on Tuesday, Governor-General David Hurley said the government believed “a strong economy is the foundation of the compact between Australians and their government”.
“A strong economy makes us more resilient when economic shocks and global headwinds confront our country,” he said, in an address that is written by the government.
My government understands that you can’t take economic growth for granted and it requires continual work – in improving confidence, competitiveness and productivity.
The speech outlined the government’s program but did not contain anything new.
In the first meeting of the Coalition parties in the new parliament, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he wanted the government to be known for its humility and urged his troops to be humble.
He declared this as “the year of the surplus” – a reference to the budget’s promise of a return to surplus this financial year.
A report on the alleged mismanagement and abuse charges at the University of the South Pacific is due by August 16, reports Islands Business.
New Zealand accounting firm BDO Auckland has been selected to conduct the special investigation in response to allegations of speedy appointments and contract renewals as well as issues with staff salary under the former vice-chancellor.
Islands Business reports that USP’s audit and risk committee (ARC) met last week on Tuesday to evaluate bids to conduct the special investigation from three Auckland firms.
A fourth firm was invited to tender, but did not do so.
-Partners-
“The three bids were put through a rigorous evaluation by the members of the ARC using the structured evaluation template that was included in the bid document and [the] ARC selected BDO Auckland as the successful bidder,” a USP statement said.
The USP ARC also confirmed that its chairman, Mahmood Khan, declared a conflict of interest at the start of the bidding process and excused himself from the meeting room. Khan retired as a partner/director of BDO Northland (NZ) on 31 December 2016.
A group of University of the South Pacific journalism students have returned from a week-long trip in the Solomon Islands covering communities at the forefront of climate change.
Rosalie Nongebatu, Romeka Kumari and Ben Bilua, who are also part of Wansolwara team, were selected to be a part of the project “Adapting to and mitigating effects of climate change and island sea level rise,” funded through the Internews/Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific and Bay of Bengal 2019 media grants.
Wansolwara editor and trip leader Geraldine Panapasa, said it was a very successful and valuable experience for the students.
“The students were able to apply their journalism production skills for print, online and broadcast. Part of the field reporting training included mojo (mobile journalism) skills for short news videos,” she said.
“We visited vulnerable communities in the greater Honiara area, spoke to those at the forefront of climate change, those in resilience and adaptation projects, those suffering from the devastating impact of climate change, those in decision-making positions and the future generation.”
-Partners-
The students found that unlike in Fiji, climate change does not get much exposure in the Solomon Islands. Government agencies usually supply environmental reports to the newspapers rather than journalists doing the reporting themselves.
Communities seldom visited Because communities seldom get visits by local media or government, the students met many people who wanted to share their stories about shortages of water, depleted fish stocks and other climate change effects.
When the students visited the Lord Howe Settlement in Honiara, they found that the residents, most of Polynesian decent had very little food gardens and depended on the sea for their livelihood.
Ben Bilua with a Lord Howe Settlement resident…”They appear to have very little food gardens, and depend on the sea for their livelihood”…Image: Geraldine Panapasa
“Sanitation wise, they also use the sea for bathing and other ‘toilet’ business. Proper water supply, health and sanitation are clearly lacking in this community,” Panapasa said.
However, she said that many people have come to see climate change reporting as a money making opportunity and only supply information for payment.
“This, of course, would taint the credibility of their views. Would they really tell us what they’re going through or tell us what we want to hear?” Panapasa said.
Balanced and thorough coverage However, the group ensured their coverage was both balanced and thorough and spoke to representatives across the community.
“We felt it was important to cover all aspects of the project by speaking to stakeholders – grassroots communities, UN agencies, NGOs & CSOs, Government, youths etc.
“We also took into consideration the importance of providing gender balanced views on the issues we intended to cover with climate change, resilience and mitigation.”
USP Journalism coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh thanked the grant sponsors, saying that it had enabled the students to report on pressing issues through a professional experience.
“The USP journalism program would like to thank the Earth Journalism Network for making this project possible.
“Next we will take a student team to the Cook Islands on a similar assessment.
“We look forward to our continued partnership with EJN to develop both environmental journalism and student journalists in the Pacific.”
Lord Howe Settlement where water supply, health and sanitation are clearly lacking. Image: Geraldine Panapasa
The phenomenal success of K-pop (Korean pop music) and its biggest export bands such as BTS, EXO, Blackpink, MONSTA X and Red Velvet can largely be credited to their highly active and dedicated fandom. This is a group not to be dissed, as Channel Nine discovered recently after airing a segment on “global crazes” featuring BTS, a Billboard chart-topping band.
The program’s attempt to poke fun at the band quickly drew the ire of dedicated fans (known as the BTS Army) who felt the presenters had not only disrespected the band, but also its diverse, global support base. They mounted a social media campaign, accusing Nine of racism. The hashtag #Channel9Apologise went viral and the station issued a statement apologising for offending anyone.
K-pop fans often complain how Australian mainstream media is, in their view, racist and insensitive in its reporting on the groups. While it may be tempting to dismiss fan activity as evidence of highly successful marketing techniques, these fan networks actually perform an increasingly important role as a source of social belonging.
Contrary to common perception, most fans are not socially withdrawn nerds – because the social aspect of K-pop fandom is central to being a true fan. Fan clubs typically consist of global networks of loosely organised local chapters, comprising diverse nationalities and ages. There are also many middle-aged and retired fans, some of whom (such as Shinhwa fans) have grown older with their idols.
20th anniversary concert of K-pop band Shinhwa.
While there are no reliable statistics quantifying the number of K-pop fans, The Korea Foundation (which is affiliated with Korea’s ministry of foreign affairs) recently estimated the number of fans of Korean pop culture in general to be 89 million across 113 countries. BTS was the first Asian act to surpass 5 billion streams on Spotify. They have over 9 billion views on YouTube and 20.7 million Twitter followers, compared with EXO’s 5.7 million , Blackpink’s 2.5 million and MONSTA X’s 3 million.
K-Pop bands are not simply perceived as pretty and talented people to be admired from afar. They are seen as the ultimate embodiment of “ideal self” achieved through hard work.
The work of transforming from an ordinary mortal into a K-pop star is often well documented through groups’ official social media feeds or behind-the-scenes videos. Polished (often cosmetically enhanced) appearances are seen as the hallmark of investment in self.
K-pop band members also work hard to reduce social distance between themselves and their fans; either by meeting them in person or using social media. In a recent tweet, BTS member J-Hope posted a photo in anticipation of a fan meet the following day, with the line “Thank you Army! See you tomorrow!”.
The use of purple heart emojis has a special significance, representing the connection the band and BTS fans share.
Frequent livestream interactions with fans via Instagram live or South Korean video service VLive also reduce the social distance between idols and fans, who can quickly build a real sense of attachment to their idol.
As “ideal selves”, K-pop stars rarely say or do anything controversial and are thus stable, predictable role models. (Although when they do trip up, as happened recently with the former Big Bang boy band member Seungri, the fall from grace can be swift).
K-pop fandom involves much more than buying merchandise or attending concerts – fans are cultural producers themselves. They run fan sites, create self-designed band merchandise and produce fan chants: lyrics shouted out during performances at collectively agreed points of the song.
Fan chants are also popular in Japan, but K-pop fans have taken them to a new level. They are disseminated through fan sites and social media.
A K-pop band performance and fan chant.
Fan clubs even have unique pet names bands use, such as Exo-L (“L” for the love the band has for their fans) and V.I.P. for Big Bang (denoting how each fan is important to them).
Committed K-pop fans also demonstrate their dedication through orchestrated mass voting to ensure the bands’ success in music charts and awards. In return, the idols acknowledge the importance of their fans, and actively seek to nurture this relationship.
“Thank you to ARMYs for giving us such a big happiness. We will never forget the magical time we had with you at the Magic Shop”, said BTS in a tweet after wrapping up the fan meetings in Seoul and Busan. The Seoul event was beamed live to global audiences – allowing for those outside Korea to “take part” through live streaming and commenting.
Philanthropy
Philanthropy is an increasingly important part of K-pop fandom. Many fan clubs pool resources to support charities. BTS have also promoted UNICEF, joining forces with it in their Love Myself campaign, which raised more than US$1.4 million (much via direct donations from fans).
Western media should also bear in mind that bands such as BTS are not popular in spite of being Korean, but precisely because they are Korean.
The number of Australians learning Korean has grown exponentially over the past few years, with five major Australian Universities now offering a BA major in Korean Studies. Much of that interest has likely have been sparked by an encounter with Korean popular culture.
Critics may also be wise to note that fan clubs such as the global BTS Army are increasingly succeeding in what years of government policies in Australia have failed to do: a real and meaningful desire to connect with cultures outside our borders.
Federal MP Amanda Rishworth raised concerns over the weekend that Australia could be headed for another robo-debt ordeal after the government reportedly confirmed the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will use data matching to audit childcare rebates.
Government agencies increasingly use automated tools to make or facilitate decisions that affect citizens’ lives, but it’s not always appropriate for important decisions to be made by a computer.
In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) prohibits certain types of decisions from being solely automated. It also creates rights for individuals who are affected by automated processing.
We need similar safeguards in Australia for high stakes automated decisions made by government agencies.
Automated tools are now used to make or facilitate decisions in a range of government agencies, including decisions about welfare, tax, health, visas and veterans’ affairs. Centrelink’s employment income confirmation system, known as “robo-debt”, is a high profile example of what can go wrong with automated decision making.
Automation can improve the consistency and efficiency of government processes. But if there is bias or error in the computer program or data set, a flawed decision-making logic will be applied systematically, meaning large numbers of people could be affected.
Guidelines aren’t enforceable
The government has previously published guidelines on automated government decision making, including Best Practice Principles in 2004, and the Better Practice Guide in 2007. Both reports provide important advice about how to design automated systems to align with the values of public law.
But the recommendations in these reports aren’t enforceable. They also fail to create legal protections for those affected by automated decisions.
In May, there was public consultation about an artificial intelligence (AI) ethics framework for Australia. It highlighted the need for updated ethical principles to apply to new AI technologies. It also recommended a range of tools for improving the design of AI systems, including impact and risk assessments.
But, again, these recommendations will not be enforceable, even if they are included in the final framework. The current draft stops short of restricting the use of AI for certain types of decisions.
In contrast to Australia’s non-restrictive approach, legislative controls on data protection and automated decision making included in the GDPR are an example of best practice.
Article 22 of the GDPR is of particular interest for Australia. Unless specified exemptions apply, it prohibits the use of solely automated processing for decisions that produce legal or other significant effects for individuals.
To avoid this prohibition, decisions require meaningful human involvement and oversight. Having a human “rubber stamp” a decision made by automated outputs is insufficient.
Similar protections are needed in Australia, particularly for government decisions that affect individual rights and interests. Such safeguards would limit the types of government processes that can be fully automated.
‘Robo-debt’ would require meaningful human involvement under the GDPR
Let’s take a closer look at “robo-debt” to see how a prohibition on solely automated decision making might work.
The robo-debt system uses an automated data-matching and assessment process to raise welfare debts against people who the system flags as having been overpaid. Someone who receives a debt discrepancy notice can respond by giving income evidence to Centrelink. If no information is provided, an algorithm generates a fortnightly income figure by averaging income data from the ATO.
Of course, many welfare recipients have variable income as they are engaged in casual, part-time or seasonal work. It’s not surprising that the reliance on averaged data has led to a high number of reported errors. Receiving incorrect robo-debt notices has contributed to stress, anxiety and depression for many people.
One former member of Australia’s government review tribunal has described the system as a form of “extortion”.
If Australia had GDPR-type protections, meaningful human involvement would be required before an automated debt notice was sent. Manual review by human decision makers is important to ensure that a welfare debt is in fact owed.
There should also be restrictions on fully automating other high stakes decisions by government agencies. Decisions about visas and tax debts, for example, ought to be overseen by humans.
Automated decisions made by private bodies that have significant impacts on individuals require legal safeguards too. Such protections are already included under the GDPR.
Similarly, in the United States, a bill for an Algorithmic Accountability Act has been proposed. If this bill is passed, it will require certain companies that use “high-risk automated decision systems” to conduct algorithmic impact assessments.
Australia’s non-binding guidance on automated decision making is a step in the right direction, but it needs to be bolstered by legislation that restricts the types of decisions that can be fully automated. This is particularly important for government decisions with serious consequences for individuals, like robo-debt and auditing of childcare rebates.
Gestational diabetes is a specific type of diabetes that occurs in pregnancy.
Once you’ve had gestational diabetes, your risk of having it again in your next pregnancy is higher. So too is your lifetime chance of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The good news is taking steps such as adopting a healthier diet and being more active will lower those risks, while improving health and well-being for you and your family.
Screening is designed to ensure women with gestational diabetes receive treatment as early as possible to minimise health risks for both the mother and the baby. Risks include having a baby born weighing more than four kilograms, and the need to have a caesarean section. Management of gestational diabetes includes close monitoring of blood glucose levels, a healthy diet, and being physically active.
If type 2 diabetes goes undiagnosed, the impact on your health can be high – especially if it’s not detected until complications arise.
Early signs and symptoms of type 2 diabetes include extreme thirst, frequent urination, blurred vision, frequent infections and feeling tired and lethargic.
Doing regular exercise can lessen the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.From shutterstock.com
Long-term complications include an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, damage to nerves (especially those in the fingers and toes), damage to the small blood vessels in the kidneys, leading to kidney disease, and damage to blood vessels in the eyes, leading to diabetes-related eye disease (called diabetic retinopathy).
If you’ve ever been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, here are five things you can do to lower your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
All women diagnosed with gestational diabetes should have a 75g oral glucose tolerance test at 6–12 weeks after giving birth. This is to check how their body responds to a spike in blood sugar after they’ve had the baby, and to develop a better picture of their likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.
From that point, women who have had gestational diabetes should continue to have regular testing to see whether type 2 diabetes has developed.
Talk to your GP about how to best monitor diabetes risk factors. Diabetes Australia recommends a blood glucose test every one to three years.
2. Aim to eat healthily
Dietary patterns that include vegetables and fruit, whole grains, fish and foods rich in fibre and monounsaturated fats are associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
In more than 4,400 women with prior gestational diabetes, those who had healthier eating patterns, assessed using diet quality scoring tools, had a 40-57% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with women with the lowest diet quality scores.
Glycaemic index (GI) ranks carbohydrate-containing foods according to their effect on blood glucose levels. The lower the GI, the slower the rise in blood sugar levels after eating. Research suggests that a higher GI diet, and consuming lots of high GI foods (glycaemic load), is associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, while a lower GI diet may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Take our Healthy Eating Quiz to check how healthy your diet is and receive personal feedback and suggestions on how to boost your score.
Engaging in 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, such as walking for 30 minutes on five days a week; or accumulating 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity a week by swimming, running, tennis, cycling, or aerobics, is associated with a 45% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes after having had gestational diabetes. Importantly, both walking and jogging produced a similar lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
In contrast, prolonged time spent watching TV was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes in women with a history of gestational diabetes.
Women who did both strength training and aerobic activity had an even lower risk of developing either type 2 diabetes or heart disease.
Breastfeeding has been shown to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, even in mums who haven’t had gestational diabetes.From shutterstock.com
4. Breastfeed for as long as you can
Research shows breastfeeding for longer than three months reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by about 46% in women who have had gestational diabetes. It is thought that breastfeeding leads to improved glucose and fat metabolism.
The Nurses Health Study followed more than 150,000 women over 16 years. It found that for every additional year of breastfeeding, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes was reduced by 14-15% – even in mothers who had not been diagnosed with gestational diabetes.
Organisations such as the Australian Breastfeeding Association and lactation consultants offer support to help all women, including those who have had gestational diabetes, to breastfeed their infants for as long as they choose.
Another study saw 1,695 women with previous gestational diabetes followed up between eight to 18 years after their diagnosis. This research found that for each 5kg of weight gained, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes increased by 27%.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University
As China solidifies its new status as superpower, we’re publishing a series looking at what this means for the world – how China maintains its power, how it wields its power and how its power might be threatened.
Visiting Wellington in April 1996, I fell into conversation with a very wise and experienced New Zealand government official. We talked about the still-unfolding Taiwan Straits crisis, during which Washington had deployed a formidable array of naval power, including two aircraft carrier battle groups, to the waters around Taiwan. The aim was to compel China to abandon a series of missile firings near Taiwan intended to intimidate voters in forthcoming presidential elections.
In this, the Americans had clearly been successful, but my Kiwi friend was worried.
Success has consequences, and the consequences here are plain: the Chinese will now do whatever it takes to make sure the Americans can never do that to them again.
That remark sparked one of the trains of thought which led to the arguments in my new book, How to Defend Australia.
His remark has been proved right. China has always had a formidable army, but only since 1996 has it begun to develop as a maritime power, as well. In that time, it has made massive and, it seems, very effective investments in the air and naval forces required to fight at sea.
Today, it is quite plainly the world’s second maritime power, behind only the United States. And it now threatens America’s maritime preponderance in the western Pacific, on which US strategic primacy in the region ultimately and absolutely depends.
This is a remarkable achievement in such a short time, with immense implications for the security of countries throughout the region, so it is important to be clear about how it has happened and what it means, including for our own defence.
This is especially important because China’s achievement has been largely misunderstood by traditional naval powers like America, Britain and Australia, whose approach to maritime strategy is markedly different from China’s.
Was the visit last month by Chinese warship to Sydney Harbour a ‘reciprocal visit’, as Scott Morrison explained, or a show of force?Bianca De Marchi/AAP
China’s ‘sea denial’ strategy
When it comes to maritime strategy, traditional naval powers emphasise “sea control” and power projection. This means their maritime forces are designed primarily to defend major platforms like aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, with which they aim to project power against distant adversaries.
China’s primary strategic aim has been the opposite. It has developed its naval forces to prevent adversaries – particularly the United States – from projecting power against China the way the Americans did in 1996. This is what naval strategists call “sea denial”, which boils down simply to the capacity to find and sink the other side’s ships.
In doing this, the Chinese have had three big advantages:
First, they have been able to exploit inherent advantages of “sea denial” over “sea control”. Since the late 19th century, a whole range of systems, weapons and technologies – including radio, radar, aircraft, submarines, sea mines, torpedoes, guided missiles and space-based surveillance – have made it progressively easier to find and sink an adversary’s ships, and correspondingly harder to defend them.
Second, the Chinese were able to access an array of Soviet military technologies and develop them further as their own technological base expanded and deepened.
And third, they have had a lot of money to spend, without breaking the bank, thanks to their fast-growing economy.
As a result, Beijing is now well-placed to prevent America doing again what it did in 1996. A US naval carrier approaching Taiwan today would be at serious risk of attack from China’s formidable ships, aircraft and submarines, as well as from its notorious, carrier-killer, land-based ballistic missiles.
So much so, in fact, that Washington would now be very unlikely to risk such an operation.
China’s navy is now only second to the US in terms of strength.Bianca De Marchi/AAP
America’s loss of military might
This comes as a surprise to those who still believe that America’s military is unchallengeable.
Of course, it is still very powerful, with an unmatched capacity to deploy and sustain armed forces far from its own shores. But that doesn’t mean it can automatically defeat any adversary it faces, especially when that adversary enjoys the advantages of fighting on its home ground, as Russia would, for example, in a war over Ukraine or the Baltic states, or China would in east Asia.
And wiser heads in the US military establishment understand this all too well. The Pentagon’s recent Indo-Pacific strategy report concedes that China is “likely to enjoy a local military advantage at the onset of conflict” in east Asia.
In fact, that understates the problem. America has no credible military strategy to overcome China’s “early local advantages” to achieve the kind of swift, low-cost victory in a potential war at sea that everyone has taken for granted for so long.
The only serious attempt to develop such a strategy – the US military’s “Air Sea Battle Concept” – was abandoned soon after it was promulgated six years ago. The reality today is that America relies on the implicit threat of nuclear escalation, embodied in its refusal to rule out using nuclear weapons first, to compel China to concede victory when US conventional forces cannot.
And how credible is that threat when China can retaliate against any nuclear attack with a nuclear counter-strike?
This swift shift in Asia’s maritime strategic balance has profound implications for the region’s strategic future. It does not just undermine America’s ability to defend Taiwan from Chinese military pressure, it undermines the credibility of US security guarantees to all its allies in the western Pacific, including Australia.
And that, in turn, undermines the foundation of America’s strategic leadership in east Asia, and paves the way for China to take its place – just as China intends.
It is this major change in the regional military balance, along with China’s relative economic weight, which makes the rapid eclipse of the old US-led order in our region now so likely.
China’s new maritime challenge
As this happens, however, China faces a new strategic challenge. Its cost-effective maritime denial strategy has been enough to undermine US regional primacy, but it will not be enough to take America’s place and establish dominance of its own in east Asia.
For that, it will need to be able to project its own military power across the vast expanse of the Asia-Pacific region. And that requires China to build its own carriers and amphibious forces – as it is now doing – and expand its capabilities to defend them from future potential adversaries.
This poses a whole new problem for China because now the boot is on the other foot. China has been able to leverage the inherent advantages of “sea denial” over “sea control” to counter US power projection in the region, but future adversaries can do the same to thwart China’s own power projection.
And that has very important implications for Australia’s future defence strategies.
The bad news is that we can no longer depend on America to ensure that a major power like China does not threaten us militarily in the decades ahead, or to defend us if one does. We must therefore explore – more seriously than we have ever done before – whether we can defend ourselves from a major Asian power.
It is a daunting task, but the good news, as I argue in my book, is that we can exploit the advantages of maritime denial over maritime control against China if it tries to project its power against us, or our close neighbours by sea.
By rigorously optimising our forces for a maritime denial strategy, we might be able to sustain an effective defence against a major power. That would come at a high price – much higher than we are paying for defence now – but it is a price we could afford if we decided the risks we face in Asia in the future were high enough to justify it.
Are they? That’s the big defence debate we need to have now.
The public’s trust in the competency and integrity of the public service is an essential element of any democracy. If citizens think that those running government departments are foolish, dishonest, or dodgy, then the whole system can start to fall apart. We see the results of such distrust in plenty of other countries. Here in New Zealand the public generally has faith in government departments.
It would not be surprising if this faith is slightly eroded as a result of the fiasco over how Treasury handled the so-called Budget “hack” – when the Police were called in, and a panic started over the notion that New Zealand government agencies might be losing a war in a serious and criminal cyber-attack. The whole episode was bewildering.
The release of the report from the official investigation was supposed to resolve the issue. It was hoped that it would clarify, once and for all, the disturbing question of whether the senior public servant earning about $670,000/year had been incompetent or whether he had misled the public. And it was supposed to lead to some sort of closure, allowing the public to feel that accountability had been achieved.
However, the report released on Thursday – a day that was notable for being both Gabriel Makhlouf’s last day of work and also the time that a Cabinet reshuffle announcement was expected – was less than clear in its outcome.
On the one hand, the report clearly identifies that Makhlouf erred, providing numerous criticisms of how he handled the situation. The public record now shows that the Treasury boss acted “unreasonably” in coming out with alarmist and inaccurate explanations for how Budget secrets had come into the Opposition’s hands.
For the best news coverage on this, see Derek Cheng’s Gabriel Makhlouf responds: ‘My honesty and integrity are not in question’. This discusses the State Services Commission (SSC) report on the whole scandal, and details how the Treasury was actually well aware that the Budget leak had probably come from their own website, and that Makhlouf was informed of this before he went nuclear with his inflammatory public statements.
This article also makes it clear that the SSC boss Peter Hughes is completely condemning of Makhlouf’s actions. Hughes is reported saying, “It was a clumsy response to a serious issue and is not what I expect of an experienced chief executive.”
Hughes also told journalists that he had high expectations of government department bosses: “When things go wrong, I don’t want ducking, diving, running for cover, spinning. I want people to stand up, own it, fix it, learn from it and be accountable.”
However, the main problem is that the SSC has chosen not to take the issue further. No sanction or penalty was imposed on Makhlouf. This lack of reprimand is discussed by Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva who asks “why don’t the State Services Commissioner’s actions regarding Gabriel Makhlouf match that ethos” of high standards? – see: Makhlouf falls short – so why the shortage of SSC action?. He concludes “While the SSC report is clear, it is the response to those findings where it feels like Hughes has fallen short.”
Hughes explains that a formal reprimand of Makhlouf was out of the question because he was leaving his job anyhow. Hughes believes it would have only been symbolic, and therefore “meaningless and cynical”. To this, Sachdeva replies: “but it seems just as cynical to deliver a tongue lashing for inappropriate behaviour yet stop short of doing anything tangible to register that impropriety. Does failing to register an official caution now set a precedent for any SSC employees who find themselves in a similar situation?”
Herald political editor Audrey Young also takes issue with Makhlouf’s lack of leadership and his failure to take responsibility for what he’d done wrong. On reading the report, she says: “what is clear is that there were more than sufficient grounds for Makhlouf to have offered his resignation” – see: A case of good faith butt-covering by the head of Treasury (paywalled).
So why did the Treasury boss act so badly in this? Here’s Young’s explanation: “One is left to surmise that he believed admissions of failure and responsibility might impact on his new job than protestations that he acted in good faith at all times. It appears a clear case of good faith butt-covering”. And she takes issue with the report describing Makhlouf as having acted in “good faith”, suggesting this could simply mean that he was acting “sincerely” out of self-interest.
The most scathing critique of the scandal comes from veteran political journalist John Armstrong who suggests that the New Zealand public service now has an accountability problem: “So just where exactly does the buck now stop in the separate, but interconnected worlds of politics and the public service? If your regard for accountability is as similarly bankrupt as seems to have been the case with Gabriel Makhlouf, the now (thankfully) former boss of the Treasury, then the answer is that the buck never stops at your door” – see: Gabriel Makhlouf’s refusal to resign over ‘Budget hack’ saga sets a truly awful example.
Armstrong describes Makhlouf’s actions over the whole episode as panicking, wreaking havoc, “bungling and blundering”, and resulting in a “spectacular gaffe” which has overshadowed everything else in his career. Armstrong says what he did was “inexcusable”.
Makhlouf did put out a statement on the same day as the report was published, in which he showed scant contrition, instead suggesting exoneration. On this, Armstrong is highly critical: “Makhlouf’s parting gesture was to instead issue a brief statement in which he belatedly apologised ‘that Budget information was not kept secure’. That offering was very carefully worded. It might have been an apology. It was not an acceptance of responsibility.”
Armstrong’s problem isn’t just with Makhlouf, but with the SSC – the government agency tasked with ensuring the integrity of the public service. He concludes his piece by saying: “Faced with Makhlouf’s refusal to be accountable for the mess, Hughes should have fired him. Failing that, Hughes should have formally reprimanded Makhlouf. The State Services Commissioner acknowledged the inherent symbolism of such a reprimand. His decision not to issue one is just plain wrong.”
Long-time critic of public service standards, economist Michael Reddell, has been outraged by how the SSC has handled the scandal. Reddell focuses on why no one else in Treasury or in the SSC were apparently helping Makhlouf and preventing him making his endless mistakes: “it was Makhlouf’s job to lead the organisation above the embarrassment and to do the right thing. He simply didn’t do that, and no one else – in his department or elsewhere in the public sector (the very top tier of public servants) – was willing or able to stop him. Where, for example, was his employer – Peter Hughes” – see: The SSC on Makhlouf.
Reddell says “We – citizens – deserve much better. We deserve more answers from SSC themselves.” The answers don’t appear to be in the report. And he’s highly critical of Hughes for so publicly and effusively praising Makhlouf at his farewell party, just a week or so before the damning report was published.
According to Reddell, Hughes praised Makhlouf as “authentic and straight up” as well as being “calm and unflappable”. In Reddell’s view, “In no conceivable universe (except perhaps some parallel one inhabited by SSC) could Makhlouf during that Budget episode be said to have displayed ‘calm and unflappable’ leadership. Had he done so, there’d have been no inquiry. And the inquiry report demonstrates just how far from calm and unflappable Makhlouf’s conduct appears to have been, and how little ‘strong leadership’ and ‘personal integrity’ has been on display.”
In the end, according to Reddell, the SSC seems to have shown their tolerance for Makhlouf’s very poor performance. And there’s a suggestion that the close relationships between the top echelons have simply helped protect him: “What message does that send? That really severe misjudgement by one of the most senior public servants in the end doesn’t matter that much, cos’ he’s a good bloke?”
Of course, there was always a chance that the whole scandal would prevent Makhlouf from taking up his new job as the next governor of Ireland’s central bank, but Derek Cheng has confirmed that Gabriel Makhlouf’s job in Ireland appears to be safe.
Cheng also confirms that right up until the end, the top public servant has also refused to make himself accountable to the public via media interviews: “Makhlouf has repeatedly refused any interviews since May 29, the day before Budget day, and again refused interviews yesterday, his last day of work at the Treasury.”
Finally, Maklouf’s replacement has now been announced: Australian economist and academic Caralee McLiesh. Most, but not all, are impressed. Victoria University of Wellington’s Simon Chapple puts the argument against employing, once again, a non-New Zealander for this crucial role – see: Public sector pick carries disheartening message. And for a reply from one of Chapple’s colleagues, see Jeroen Van Der Heijden’s Treasury pick carries risk of tall poppy paradox.
There’s a very good chance that later today the Reserve Bank will cut its cash rate to 1%. Some predict more cuts by the end of the year, perhaps to 0.5%.
It’s understandable. Economic growth is under-performing; prices and wages are scarcely growing; and for three quarters now the economy has been in what might be called a per-capita recession (the economy is not growing as fast as the population).
In the central banker cookbook there’s a note in red next to this description. It reads: “cut interest rates.”
But the Reserve Bank’s cash rate is already close to zero, at 1.25%. What if the needed cut is 2 or 3 percentage points?
Lowe knows his cookbook
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe hopes that cutting the rate will help in two ways.
First, it will ease the mortgage burden on households, freeing up money for spending and making it easier for them to borrow. This may help sustaining house prices and reigniting the construction boom.
Second, by cutting the rate offered on Australian bonds and deposits, cutting the rate will devalue the Australian dollar, making Australian exports more attractive overseas.
The problem with the first channel is that more borrowing builds up debt. But Australian households are already among the most indebted in the world, with private debt worth twice what the whole economy can produce in an entire year, so more debt may leave Australians even more exposed if things turn down and they lose their job. The Irish economy collapsed when that happened during the global financial crisis.
The problem with the second channel is that it makes it harder to import. Bear with me.
Which Australia?
When I arrived in this sunny country in 2011, my colleagues and friends were always talking of the transition out of the mining and construction economy.
In few words, the story goes like this: the Australian economy boomed when East Asia started demanding our iron and coal. When that slowed down, the economy stayed afloat, because mining workers transferred to the cities to build new residential neighbourhoods for the growing population. By the time that ends we will have built a strong service economy–strong enough to take the place of construction.
But this transition hasn’t really happened, perhaps in part because of low interest rates.
Unlike mining, services need to import most of their inputs and compete on a global market for workers. A weaker dollar increases their costs.
And unlike construction, they are not particularly capital intensive. So low interest rates don’t much help them.
All isn’t lost
The services industries that are our future would be better off if it the Reserve Bank didn’t need to try so hard – there is a lot the government can do.
The services sector needs investments in the sort of infrastructure that would make out global cities attractive to live in.
It also needs reforms to make our services more competitive at home, perhaps by disturbing the distribution duopoly or by making the big four banks compete harder for costumers. As well, the government has a role in absorbing (directly and indirectly) some of the workforce that inevitably will lose out when the mining and construction sectors contract.
At best, the Reserve Bank is buying time for the government. Alone it probably can’t avoid a recession forever.
Maiken Ueland at the AFTER facility run by UTS.Supplied by UTS, Author provided
Taphonomy is the study of how an organism breaks down after death. Research underway at the University of Technology Sydney’s AFTER facility is yielding some surprising new findings about how bodies decompose in the Australian bush.
And here’s an astonishing detail: until AFTER opened in Sydney in 2016, there was no facility like it in the southern hemisphere. Most of the world’s taphonomic research came from the US, meaning we were missing vital clues relating to how Australian weather, bugs and climate conditions affect the way a human body decomposes in the bush.
Today on our podcast, Trust Me, I’m An Expert, we take you on a journey to AFTER. The facility’s interim director, Maiken Ueland, and PhD student Samara Garrett-Rickman share with us:
some of the unexpected findings emerging from AFTER on determining time since death;
why AFTER researchers prefer not to use the term “body farm”;
how the stages of decomposition work
a process of “mummification” that research suggests may be unique to Australian bushland conditions;
what the TV shows get wrong about forensic science;
why it’s harder to bury a body than most people think;
what investigators look for to spot a clandestine grave;
And if you’re interested in finding out more about how to donate your body for such research, you can start here.
Looking for odours at the AFTER facility, run by UTS.Anna Zhu, Author provided (No reuse)
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Genetic testing used to be something that happened in a specialist clinic for those few families that had serious inherited conditions, like Huntington’s Disease or rare cancers.
Now, new genetic tests called “polygenic risk scores” have increased access to genetic risk information for a wide range of conditions. With a few clicks of a mouse and a few hundred dollars, anyone can access their or their genetic risk scores for diabetes, obesity, breast cancer, autism, and schizophrenia.
These scores aren’t always useful, and, in some cases, they could be harmful.
Previous approaches to genetic testing looked at just one gene for which particular mutations are known to cause a disease. The newer technology of polygenic risk scores are calculated from hundreds, if not thousands, of genetic markers measured from your DNA at many points on the genome. These measurements are fed into a formula, based on studying people who do or do not have a condition, to produce a “personalised” genetic risk score.
Before we jump wholeheartedly into the new world of genetic health and medicine, it’s important to consider the implications for patients and clinicians, and especially for consumers outside the clinic. Even if risk scores incorporate information from many different genes, there are two things they currently miss.
First, polygenic risk scores currently account for only a small proportion of a person’s total genetic risk. Second, environmental risk factors are also important, and likely multiply the risks associated with genetic factors. A genetic risk score alone can give a misleading picture of your actual disease risk.
They can be inaccurate
There are questions about the accuracy of the genetic scores. Scores are calculated using past research into genetic associations with a particular condition. That is, the gene variants that are more commonly seen in people with the disease.
But knowing what gene variants are more common in people with a disease is different to knowing what gene variants will predict that someone without the disease will get it later in life. While more research is needed to develop genetic tests that are useful for predicting complex chronic diseases, some companies are forging ahead with genetic risk products of doubtful accuracy.
Companies marketing genetic risk scores might use their own specific formula drawing on different published data to generate the risk predictions they return to their consumers. This means that one person could submit their samples to multiple companies and have different – and sometimes conflicting – results returned to them.
Some consumers of genetic ancestry tests know this well, as results from the same company drastically change when they update their formulas.
In rare cases, the results of genetic testing can be plain wrong, with distressing consequences. One woman had her breasts surgically removed to reduce her risk of breast cancer after receiving a genetic test result that turned out to be incorrect.
In addition, the jury is still out on whether knowing you are at an increased genetic risk for something will lead to a decrease in your risk of developing the condition. There is evidence from research on depression, for example, that suggests knowing you are genetically at risk may hinder rather than help recovery.
Testing could increase health disparities
Even if the predictive power of a particular genetic risk score is beyond doubt, it may only be accurate for a minority of the population who have only European ancestors.
About 80% of the data used to derive the scores have come from studies of people of European descent (who account for only 16% of the world’s population).
So these scores might be less accurate for people from other backgrounds. If these new tools are applied to improve health for people of European ancestry, they could actually increase health disparities.
The ethics of ‘designer babies’
All these issues are compounded if the person buying the test is a prospective parent seeking to select an embryo for implantation.
Within the clinical setting, pre-implantation genetic testing – used in tandem with IVF – can help parents who want to ensure their future child does not develop a serious genetic disease that runs in their family. But some companies are now offering to calculate polygenic risk scores that allow prospective parents to select embryos that have a lower risk score for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, short stature or low intelligence irrespective of the family history.
National agencies that regulate the use of these emerging technologies will need to tread carefully when considering how polygenic risk scores could be used in embryo selection.
For now, more research is required to improve the accuracy of polygenic risk scores, to assess their appropriate use outside of the clinical setting, and to work out how to best support consumers who may find themselves in an uncertain position.
Over the first weeks of July 2016, a strange phenomenon started to unfold in many parts of the world. A mobile game went viral. Streets in Barcelona, Melbourne, Singapore and New York began to fill with hordes digital wayfaring as part of the augmented reality (AR) game, Pokémon Go.
The game popularised the digital overlay technique of AR, in which real-time wayfaring could be converged with digital play.
In its hey-day, Pokémon Go searches surpassed porn on the internet. Then, it became mundane media – and this is when it became really interesting.
Meet the 67-year-old nurse Sofia, who lives in Badalona in Spain. After losing her husband to cancer a decade ago, Sofia initially found it hard to fight the grief and depression. Her daughters and grandchildren helped her in this transition.
Sofia is especially close to her seven-year-old grandson, Diego. They do many activities together, constantly sharing intergenerational skills. It was Diego who first introduced Sofia to Pokémon Go.
As they wandered the streets of Badalona together, Diego would show her the digital overlays of Pokémon Go that reinvented Sofia’s everyday experiences of mundane spaces.
Gotta catch ‘em all! Who knows what can be found in mundane spaces?Shutterstock
Diego taught Sofia how to flick the touch screen to capture Pokemon. And he taught Sofia digital wayfaring – that is, how the digital is entangled with the body’s movement.
Pokémon Go allowed Sofia to learn some of the multiple ways her familiar city could be reinvented. Eventually, Sofia opened her own Pokémon Go account.
She would sometimes find herself briskly walking the streets in search of Pokémon. Mundane trips to the market or shops became Pokémon Go adventures in which she would reinvent the routes to capture more Pokémon.
The city became a complex overlay of digital, material, environmental and social cartographies.
The game also made Sofia feel fit and socially engaged in her community. And she became an outstandingly super-cool grandmother in the eyes of her grandson, Diego.
The “old media” of Pokémon Go enriched Sofia’s life: it reinvented the city she has lived in for all her life; it allowed her playful ways to further develop her relationship with her grandson; and it afforded her new ways to connect with other generations.
But Sofia’s story is not an exception.
In fact, her story is one example of an increasingly common way “old” mundane technologies are being playfully deployed for digital health solutions, one that brings older generations closer to their urban communities.
Social workers recommend Pokémon Go in Badalona
Badalona is renowned for its innovative and integrated healthcare system, centralised through the city council.
There, social workers are recommending Pokémon Go to clients to boost two key dimensions of ageing well: exercise and social inclusion. Part of the game play involves cooperation, for example, to win in a raid, players need to organise to meet up and battle together.
Our yet-to-be-published research uses data from a meet-up bot we built on the messenger program Telegram, to help people organise Pokémon Go raid boss battles.
Over 6,000 battles were fought throughout 2018, with almost 29,000 individuals meeting and establishing social connections and relationships in Badalona.
What’s more, there is much to learn from the lived experiences of Sofia that requires us to change how we think about play and digital health. For instance, the haptic sensibility of the game (the perception of objects through the sense of touch) privileges motion awareness, so it’s more attuned to Sofia’s fading eye sight.
Badalona is a great example of how intergenerational play can redefine a city by allowing users to navigate through multiple senses – touch, sound and sight – that digital play stimulates.
Pokemon Go encouraged physical exercise and social inclusion as part of its strategic game play.Shutterstock
Play can expose bias in a city
When we spoke to Sofia for our research, we were able to reflect on how games like Pokémon Go highlight the paradoxes of a city that’s datafied to an app.
While Pokémon Go encouraged physical exercise and social inclusion as part of its strategic game play, it also exposed how inherit social, cultural and economic biases in cities become embedded in every day movement.
For example, Pokémon Go’s game engine drew on algorithms of Badalona which had inherent biases in the form of redlining. In other words, peripheral neighbourhoods had fewer Poke stops.
This includes areas or zones of the city with a high concentration of socially excluded people, and the places that are physically further away from the centre of the city.
The Spanish city of Badalona is dubbed the ‘silver city’ for its innovative healthcare system.Shutterstock
Play prioritises the human experience
There are many things we can learn from Badalona’s strategies for ageing well, which centres on lived experience. Rather than inventing new apps for the cartographies of the city, they playfully reinvent the mundane. We should look towards civic urban play for innovation.
Play is an interdisciplinary concept linking culturally specific ideas of creativity with expression. And it allows for different forms of social innovation across digital, material and social worlds.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon O’Connor, Associate Professor in American Politics at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney
An unprecedented 24 Democrats are currently running to be their party’s 2020 presidential nominee. Why are so many well-qualified, ambitious and smart people in the race?
The answer is Trump. The triumphant Democrat will face a president who was elected in 2016 with a historically high unfavourability rating, and the party is hoping this could mean an easy path to victory. In fact, many potential Democratic candidates are already significantly outpolling Trump.
In addition, those running view Trump as an existential threat to America, which means their candidacy can be spun as a calling rather than a career move.
On top of Trump’s ignorance, misogyny and frequent lying, he is despised by Democrats for his cruel immigration policies, loosening of environmental regulations, tax cuts for the wealthy, appointment of conservative anti-abortion judges, and habitual praise for dictators.
Yet despite his policies and character, the president could well be re-elected. As Hillary Clinton discovered, running against Trump has its challenges. His attack-based, fear-mongering style is more electorally effective than many would hope.
Pundits frequently write about the loyalty of Trump’s base – rusted-on Republicans and whites without college degrees. However, Harvard voting data suggests that, in key swing states, registered independents and self-described moderates switched parties or turned out to deliver Trump victory.
So many Democrats are running for the nomination, the field was split in two for the first debate.Giorgio Viera/EPA
The leader: Biden
Last week, we saw the 2020 election season officially kick off, with two televised debates featuring ten Democratic candidates apiece. But while the stages were packed, only a few candidates seem to have a genuine chance of taking out Trump: former Vice President Joe Biden; senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris; and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Currently, Biden is well ahead in the polls. He also claims to be the most “electable” Democrat in the field. However, primary voting does not start until February, and early leads can evaporate between the first debate and the first vote.
And since May, Biden’s polling average has declined from around 41% to 31%, according to an average of eight major polls. Right now, he’s riding name recognition and the warm glow of association with still-popular former President Barack Obama.
Joe Biden suddenly finds himself in unfamiliar territory as the front runner.Tannen Maury/EPA
We’re particularly cautious about Biden’s chances, because when he campaigned to be president in 1987-88 and 2007-08, he was unimpressive. The former vice president remains notoriously gaffe-prone and his speech-making abilities are middling. In 2006, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote:
The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth.
But in the race, Biden will look to highlight some of his positive policy achievements, such as his advocacy for landmark 1994 Violence Against Women Act and his involvement in promoting global poverty alleviation goals through proposed bills such as the 2007 Global Poverty Act.
The progressives: Warren and Sanders
Biden’s career of centrism and bipartisanship contrasts starkly to those of Sanders and Warren, his two closest competitors. Warren has been steadily improving her position in national polls in recent months, as Sanders’ has slightly declined – Sanders now averages around 17% of Democratic primary voters and Warren 13%.
Why has America arrived at a moment where progressive policies are popular and it is conceivable Sanders or Warren could become the next US president?
The short answer is that status quo politics and economics have failed many Americans and the nation seems open to new solutions. Those “solutions” might still look like Trump, but they might also take the form of leftist policies that have long been considered irrelevant or unrealistic.
In the past, the Democrats have offered younger voters a less moralistic and more inclusive form of capitalism. Sanders and Warren, in particular, are now promising a social democratic vision that is far easier to communicate to the electorate than the complicated social policies promoted by the Clintons.
Gaining ground: Harris and Buttigieg
Harris and Buttigieg both sit to the left of Biden, but to the right of Sanders and Warren. Harris performed especially well in the debate – she effectively attacked Biden’s political history, and used her own past as a prosecutor to push for a ban on assault weapons. After the debate, one poll showed her moving from 6%-12% among Democratic voters.
Harris’ own history as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, however, could prove a weakness, particularly in an environment where candidates are being challenged on progressive terms. In January, a New York Times op-ed argued that, when in power, Harris failed to push criminal justice reform and worked to uphold wrongful convictions.
A debate clash with Biden helped raise Kamala Harris’ profile among voters.Etienne Laurent/EPA
Buttigieg is attempting to stake out the ground of the “scholar politician,” echoing Obama’s Ivy League credentials. He’s a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, and reportedly speaks seven languages. He also served in the US military and would be the first openly gay presidential nominee.
Among the challenges confronting Buttigieg is his response to the shooting of a black man by a police officer in his city, South Bend. At the Democratic debate, he was asked why he has been unable to improve African-American representation on the city’s police force. Buttigieg responded, “Because I couldn’t get it done”.
As the campaign wears on, we will likely see increasingly heated debate among the winnowing field, with any weakness that puts a candidate at risk of being defeated in the presidential race ruthlessly confronted and thoroughly interrogated.
As we approach February 2020, when the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses, the Democrats will continue to go through an existential struggle between those who believe the time has come for fundamental social reform, and those who believe such a platform would make a candidate un-electable, even against Trump.
Labor has left the way open to wave through the government’s tax package in its entirety by the end of the week, but is continuing to play a game of brinkmanship by strongly attacking the third stage, which does not start until 2024-25.
If the legislation – consideration of which is being fast-tracked with Labor’s co-operation – is passed this week, the tax offset could be available to be paid from about a week later.
Scott Morrison on Monday night said he was “very confident” of the package being passed. Asked on the ABC what his pathway was for getting the full $158 billion plan through the parliament, he nominated “working with the crossbench”.
Leaving Labor aside, the government needs the support of four of the six member non-Green crossbench. It has on side Centre Alliance’s two senators and independent Cory Bernardi. It needs just one more out of One Nation’s two senators and Jacqui Lambie.
Sources last night believed Lambie was sympathetic to the government’s position. Lambie’s staffer said she was consulting but was not talking to the media.
Pauline Hanson, who has been critical of the package, said the government was not interested in talking to her about it. “I’m not in the mix,” she told Sky. “They are not interested in what I have to say.”
The opposition is still refusing to state its final position, saying it will press amendments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But it has carefully left open what position it will adopt if the Senate rejects its amendments.
Shadow cabinet and the caucus considered the tax plan on Monday, ahead of its introduction to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, immediately after the formal opening of parliament.
Labor’s amendments are to split the three stage package, and bring forward part of the second stage.
The package will go to the Senate on Thursday. Labor is making it clear it is anxious to see the fate of the package determined by the end of the week. The first tranche was due to take effect from July 1.
The first stage gives an offset to low and middle income earners. The second stage, beginning in 2022-23, increases the income threshold for the 32.5% rate from $90,000 to $120,000 (the part Labor wants brought forward) and also increases the top income threshold for the 19% bracket from $41,000 to $45,000.
The third stage would apply a rate of 30% on incomes from $45,000 to $200,000.
Anthony Albanese told caucus: “The government is trying to change the country. What they are trying to do with stage three is an attempt to permanently reduce the amount of help the government is able to give to people.”
Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers also continued to attack stage three, telling a news conference: “We don’t think it’s responsible to sign up to stage three of the tax cuts, which cost $95 billion and won’t come in for another five years.”
He said bringing forward some of stage two would give the economy a desperately needed boost.
Meanwhile on Monday Albanese reaffirmed that he will press ahead with seeking the expulsion from the ALP of construction union official John Setka, although Setka, whose expulsion was due to be considered by the ALP national executive on Friday, has now been given until July 15 to prepare his case. Albanese told caucus: “No individual is more important than the movement.”
The first item of business when parliament resumes today will be the proposed tax cuts.
They are actually three rounds of tax cuts, up to half a decade apart – each very different in its cost, beneficiaries and rationale.
The government’s refusal to “split the bill” holds the first and most sensible of the three hostage to the fate of the third and least affordable.
Stage 3 is not due to be delivered until 2024-25, in the lead-up to the election after next.
Stage 3 costs many times Stage 1
All three stages are already legislated. What’s before the parliament now is supercharging each, boosting the cost of Stage 1 by two thirds, increasing the cost of Stage 2 by half, and tripling the cost of Stage 3.
Stage 1, the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset (the so-called “lamington”) was set to cost around A$20 billion over four years. The boost, extending it to a tax offset of up to $1,080 for taxpayers earning up to $126,000, will cost an extra $14 billion.
Stage 2, which largely compensates low and middle income earners for the withdrawal of the lamington in 2022-23 while extending the benefits to high-income earners was set to cost $87 billion out to 2029-30. The boost would cost another $45 billion.
Stage 3, which delivers the same marginal tax rate of 32.5 cents for all income between $45,000 and $200,000 in 2024-25 was to cost $46 billion. The boost, which would cut that rate to 30 cents from July 2024, would on our estimates cost an extra $85 billion.
The treasury’s estimate is bigger – $95 billion. There are big questions about whether this is affordable, on top of the substantial costs of the already legislated cuts.
The government says that the budget numbers point to a decade of surpluses, exceeding 1% of GDP by 2026-27, even with the tax cuts.
But beyond the next two years those budget numbers look highly optimistic. The projections assume that the economy grows at a healthy pace every year for the next ten years and that the government is able to keep spending growth at a level below that achieved by any government in the past half century.
Should things be less rosy, the cuts would prevent the government from delivering on its promise of surpluses on average over the economic cycle.
The economic case for Stages 1 and 2 is clear
The extra Stage 1 tax cuts are well timed to offer stimulus as the economy softens. They will put money in the hands of low and middle income earners who will likely spend it.
Some estimates say these tax cuts will have an impact equivalent to a 50-point cut in interest rates.
There is also a broader economic case for tax cuts. Over time, as wages grow, bracket creep will push more of people’s incomes onto their highest marginal tax rate, eroding incentives to work and invest. Tax cuts hold bracket creep at bay.
Stages 1 and 2 would give back some bracket creep, right across the income distribution. Stage 3 would over-compensate for bracket creep but only for the top 15%.
The government has emphasised the benefits of Stage 3 in boosting incentives to work and maintaining reward for effort. But more targeted interventions would deliver a much bigger “bang for buck” in terms of workforce participation.
The group most responsive to effective tax rates in work decisions are second-earners (mainly women) working part-time.
Stage 3 would make income tax the least progressive since the 1950s
The distributional effects of the tax package have been hotly contested.
Our new work finds that if all three stages of the plan were enacted, the top 15% of income earners would pay a lower share of their income in tax than they do now, but middle-income earners would pay a higher share of their income in tax.
Using a simple measure of progressivity (the difference in the proportion of income taxed between someone on half average earnings and someone on two and a half times average earnings) we find that that the Stage 3 cuts would make income tax its least progressive since the 1950s.
Australia would go from having a relatively progressive income tax system by international standards to having one below average among OECD countries.
Whether this is desirable or not is a values decision, but it is a decision that parliament should make with its eyes open.
Stage 3 can wait
The tax bill unnecessarily bundles together three very different cuts.
The Stage 1 and 2 cuts should pass without encumbrance. They are likely to be needed and they are nowhere near as expensive – they should not be held hostage to Stage 3.
The case for – or against – Stage 3 will be clearer nearer to 2024-25. There are few benefits (and big economic and budget risks) from locking it in now.
The ACTU leadership has pushed controversial construction boss John Setka to quit his union job but its president Michele O’Neil says the final decision on his leadership rests on the union membership.
She told The Conversation “members of unions elect their leadership and that’s an important principle”.
In this podcast episode O’Neil denounces the government’s plan to bring back to parliament the Ensuring Integrity Bill – which would give the government greater power to crack down on union lawbreaking – saying it is a “very extreme and dangerous bit of law”.
“It is not about integrity, it’s a political attack,” she says, citing the ability of banks and politicians to adopt voluntary codes of practice.
O’Neil is highly suspicious of Scott Morrison putting industrial relations back on the policy agenda, with a review now in train, to which the unions, unlike business, haven’t yet been invited to contribute. But she flags they will strongly argue their case over coming months, saying “we’ve written to Christian Porter asking why he hasn’t asked to meet with us…[this] won’t stop us advocating and putting forward what we think because it’s important for workers”.
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denise Varney, Professor of Theatre Studies and co-director of the Australian Centre in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne
Review: Wake in Fright, Malthouse Theatre
Australian literary classics are currently enjoying a comeback at our major theatre companies. Over the past three years Cloudstreet, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Drover’s Wife, among others, have been adapted for the stage. At their best, stage adaptations recognise the cultural value of the original texts, while offering fresh insights for new audiences through the medium of theatre.
In keeping with this trend, Declan Greene has reinterpreted Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel Wake in Fright at the Malthouse Melbourne. Greene’s is a radical adaption that tells the story of teacher John Grant’s outback nightmare through a multivocal and physical performance by actor Zahra Newman (who is also a co-creator of the piece).
Newman is alone on stage for the duration of the 70-minute performance, flanked by two members of the technical crew who, like musicians, annotate her performance with visual and aural spectacle.
In the novel and play, Grant finds himself in the fictional mining town of Bundanyabba or “the Yabba” on his way back to Sydney.
Grant is fresh meat for the alcoholic men of the town, who pour beer down his throat, lure him into a two-up joint, revive him with stringy meat, offer him a sweet girl, and send him on a kangaroo hunt and an endless night of debauchery. “New to the Yabba? Best place in Australia,” says everyone he encounters.
He is inducted into a menacing, bullying, violent masculinity that takes him to the abyss of despair. Our protagonist finally returns to Tiboonda with more questions than answers about the meaning of human life.
In Greene’s adaptation, Cook’s story is told with one actor accompanied by visual and aural spectacle.Pia Johnson
Those familiar with the novel, or with Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 film adaptation, enter the Beckett theatre with some trepidation. How will the young teacher’s nauseating beer-binge, and the infamous moments of kangaroo slaughter, be staged?
Instead, we’re unexpectedly greeted by the mascot Lead Ted – the friendly, cuddly bear designed in the 1990s to teach the children of Broken Hill how to avoid lead poisoning (Bundanyabba is said to be based on Cooke’s impressions of Broken Hill). Once everyone is seated, Newman appears from within the bear to banter with the audience about contemporary immigration politics, the exploitation of Uber drivers, and lead poisoning in Broken Hill. This introduction welcomes the audience and establishes a contemporary context for the adaption.
As Newman kindly warns the audience about noise levels, one suspects she’s also setting up for an imminent loss of audience rapport. Indeed, once the house lights dim, an invisible curtain descends between performer and spectator. As the story of John Grant’s hellish bender progresses, Newman digs deeper into the character and the separation is almost complete.
She brilliantly narrates the story, alternately voicing the town’s people and embodying Grant with a physicality that manifests his deteriorating mental state. Newman’s enactment of Grant’s unlucky night at the crowded two-up joint is a highlight. She shows how, like a boxer, he is up for a round, and then, dancing around the stage high on power and luck, he bets it all and loses.
Newman next voices the trio of manipulative alcoholics – Crawford the cop, Tydon the doctor (interpreted in the play as an expat white South African), and the Irishman Tim Hynes – who present the now-penniless Grant with a solution: have another beer. In this world, women are either housekeepers or sexualised daughters used as bait for male bonding rituals. Hynes’ daughter Janette is offered to Grant, who manages only to vomit noisily; Newman enacts his writhing and wretching on the stage floor covered in dust.
Zahra Newman acts as both narrator and a cast of characters in Wake in Fright.Pia Johnson
The horror depicted in the novel’s kangaroo hunt is translated into a techno nightmare of melting coloured images, glimpses of kangaroos, and loud amplified sound effects. While drawing on aspects of the hunt that are described in the novel as a “rush of visual effects”, a problem for the spectator with this virtuoso performance is that the specific cruelty of the kangaroo hunt is obscured. The audience is spared the detail of what lies behind the spectacle and with it the explanation of Grant’s breakdown.
The reader of the novel, on the other hand, experiences an innocent young “hero” undergoing a cruel initiation into outback life. Within that social environment, he finds himself capable of disembowelling dying kangaroos. In the book, only this act of human cruelty to an animal explains why Grant attempts suicide.
In the performance, the sight of Newman’s body harnessed to and suspended from a pulley ends the story, as a voiceover simultaneously explains that Grant returns to Tiboonda Station to begin another year of teaching – creating ambiguity about his fate.
Newman and the creative team wisely reject a naturalistic adaptation of the novel, full of fake beer and blood. The use of a sole narrator to voice and embody the multiple characters, the presentational style of direct audience address and the cross-gender representation of masculinity is engaging.
The spectator certainly experiences a theatrical take on the original – Newman’s female voice eviscerates the dominance of the male voices that endure in the novel. The question that remains in this adaptation is whether the audience has enough access to the background of the spectacle to leave the theatre with new knowledge of this Australian classic.
Wake in Fright is on at Malthouse Theatre until July 14.
The search for the missing Indonesian military Mi-17 helicopter, which disappeared on Friday, continues around the Mol and Aprok mountains near Jayapura, Papua, Jakarta news media reported today.
“We are currently searching over ground and air, with a helicopter unit dispatched as well,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Chandra Dianto of the Jayawijaya Military Command as quoted by Antara.
The search was halted yesterday afternoon and was expected to be continued today, reported the Jakarta Post.
The ground team had climbed the Mol and Aprok mountains and reached 762m above sea level.
Chandra also said that the air search had covered the route the Mi-17 had used to return from Oksibil.
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“There’s no sign of the Mi-17 as of now,” Chandra added.
The local air traffic control lost contact with the Mi-17 helicopter at the same time as a cumulonimbus cloud suddenly appeared over the district of Oksibil in the Bintang mountains, according to the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), region V, of Jayapura.
A cumulonimbus cloud is considered dangerous as it possesses elements that could disrupt flights.
The Mi-17, registration number HA-5138, carried 12 passengers and air crew who were assigned to Okibab prior to the incident. The flight was carrying supplies for on-duty soldiers in the region.
RNZ News reported that rescue efforts were focused on the mountainous Pegunungan Bintang regency on the Papua New Guinea border.
A military spokesperson, Muhammad Aidi, said four helicopters and a surveillance aircraft are being sent out today.
One might question the strategy and motivations behind Trump’s latest diplomatic engagements. Known for his unorthodox approach to diplomacy, Trump’s latest activities are more likely driven by the prospect of a fight in the 2020 US elections than a genuine concern for regional and global stability. Trump’s turn towards dialogue has averted the immediate disaster of a trade war and confrontation with North Korea, but the longer-term implications point to a more significant shake-up in global diplomacy.
Limited success and blurred optics
As host of the 2019 G20 summit, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to be credited for his efforts in bringing global leaders together under what appeared to be difficult circumstances.
It was always going to be a tough meeting. Overshadowed by the US-China trade war, and set against a global backdrop of widening political fault lines, seething populism and fraying institutions, Abe certainly had his work cut out for him.
Just bringing together the leaders and other officials from 19 of the world’s biggest economies, plus the European Union, for a summit on global economic governance was, in itself, a major achievement. They were joined by a raft of invited guests, including the leaders of Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand, as well as representatives of key international organisations.
More importantly, it provided the much-needed platform for US-China dialogue, bringing the escalating trade war to a halt.
Ultimately, though, the G20 gains were limited. The final communiqué reflected the deep political tensions globally at the moment and the overriding domestic focus of many leaders. For example, it stopped short of affirming the G20’s customary commitment to anti-protectionist measures and included watered-down language on climate change action.
Of course, optics matter, and the images revealed much about the diversity and dynamics at play within this “premier” economic forum. Trump’s friendly interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, for instance, raised eyebrows and ire at home.
But it’s not all about the photo opps. The G20 leaders’ summit is the culmination of months of intense negotiations, and most importantly reinforces the underlying habits of cooperation so desperately needed for ongoing global economic stability.
Theresa May and Vladimir Putin shared one of the weekend’s more cringe-worthy moments.Mikhail Metzel/Tass handout/EPA
Side-show diplomacy
As with any major summit, the G20 gathering offers the opportunity for leaders to engage in bilateral or minilateral discussions. For many, this is the main event, and for Abe, especially, the stakes on the sidelines at this G20 were high.
Saturday’s bilateral meeting between Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping did not disappoint, with both leaders agreeing to resume trade talks, stalled since the last G20 in Buenos Aires. Notably, Trump announced his suspension of some US$300 billion in threatened tariffs and eased restrictions on US companies selling components to Chinese telco, Huawei.
Other G20 sideline events, including Trump’s bilateral with Putin created their own drama, but it was Trump’s Saturday morning tweet suggesting a spontaneous visit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his subsequent trip to Korea, that caught everyone off guard.
And with that, arrangements fell miraculously into place for Trump to take a historic first step for a sitting US president into North Korea, and for Kim and Trump to spend an hour in conversation in Freedom House on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone.
Importantly, the two have now agreed to further talks intended to advance their ongoing denuclearization negotiations. Spectacle aside, there may well be positives to come from this interaction, but for the moment the endgame just isn’t clear.
Thumbs up for Morrison
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison performed remarkably well at his second G20 leaders’ summit, marking a positive turn from last time round.
To be fair, Morrison attended his first G20 summit in November just three months into his term as prime minister following the Coalition leadership spill. He was unknown and inexperienced at the time.
In Japan, Morrison was attending his first G20 as Australia’s elected leader, with decent summitry experience and far more established relationships with his global counterparts in place. His key message – that a US-China trade war was in nobody’s interests – was well-prepared, and it resonated with key G20 counterparts.
Other highlights for Morrison included his dinner on the eve of the summit with Trump. While the press pool may have been unimpressed, the fact that this was Trump’s first bilateral event of the summit is significant, even if it was, as some suggest simply to fill a gap in Trump’s program. Trump’s reflection on the US alliance with Australia, and Morrison’s election win with Australia was replete with praise.
Scott Morrison had plenty of face-time with Donald Trump over the weekend.Lukas Coch/AAP
More importantly, though, Morrison’s win on curbing terrorist activities via social media was an important contribution to the summit outcome. G20 leaders were unanimous in their backing for the proposal that would increase pressure on tech giants like Facebook to block or remove the spread of violent extremism online.
The fact that Morrison shared news of the outcome with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern added to the credibility of the concept within the G20 grouping and lifted its profile at home.
No clear path ahead
In all, the G20 summit was an important exercise in diplomacy and resulted in a positive outcome for Abe. This sort of cooperation is so desperately needed if the institutions, rules and norms underpinning economic governance are to carry any weight at all. And as Japan hands the G20 reins over to the 2020 host, Saudi Arabia, supporting diplomacy and cooperation will be more important than ever.
Trump’s sideshow-style diplomacy certainly stole the limelight. The resumption of dialogue with both China and North Korea reaffirms the necessary place of diplomacy in the region. But Trump is navigating dangerous territory, and the lack of clear strategy, dubious motivations and self-serving tactics should have everyone – including his allies – on guard.
On Friday the Australian Federal Court found in favour of Kimberly-Clark’s “flushable wipes” in a legal action brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
There was insufficient evidence to convince Justice Gleeson that Kimberly-Clark’s wipes were primarily responsible for significant blockages and were therefore unsuitable for flushing down the toilet.
This was a very different outcome to a 2018 court case, also in the Federal Court, in which White King Flushable Wipes were fined A$700,000 for misleading claims.
This case highlights the need to determine what “flushable” really means. Does it mean you can physically flush it down a toilet? Or that it will biodegrade without major issue in the sewerage system, in the manner of toilet paper?
Flushable problems
ACCC Chairman Rod Sims explained that the commission pursued the case against Kimberly-Clark because of increasing reports from Australian water authorities of “non-suitable products being flushed down the toilet and contributing to blockages and other operational issues”.
The water industry is frustrated with frequent sewer blockages, many of which are caused by materials people should not have flushed down the toilet. The industry slogan is that only the “three Ps” – pee, poo, and (toilet) paper – should be flushed down the toilet.
What is all the fuss about?
Blocked sewers are deeply unpleasant for everyone involved: professionals who have to unblock them, local residents, and the animals and plants that live nearby.
This is also linked to another chronic problem in sewers: fats. These mainly come from cooking fats and oils that coagulate in sewers. They have combined to create horrific “fatbergs”, often photographed with disgusted fascination.
‘Fatbergs’ are made when fats and oils coagulate in sewers, trapping other material – like so-called ‘flushable’ wipes.Courtesy of Sydney Water
Much less common are the images showing the discharge of liquid sewage due to the blockages. In my previous career as a scientist in the water industry, I visited hundreds of such scenes.
They are smelly and unsightly, but of more concern is the public health hazard they pose. Raw sewage is dangerous due to its abundance of disease-causing organisms. Overflows can happen anywhere, often in very public places.
Sewers are underground, and often beside waterways. This means they might be blocked and leak raw sewage for weeks before it is noticed.
Tree roots and drought
Drought and trees are also contributing to the problem wipes pose. Currently much of southeastern Australia is in drought. Many trees in our cities are desperate for water, and their roots invade sewers.
Wipes and similar materials are readily entwined in tree roots. Wipes have a well-known tendency to become entangled and accumulate gradually to build a blockage.
Whose standard do you believe?
The industry body Water Services Australia is currently working on an Australian industry standard for testing “flushability”. This is expected later in the year.
On the other hand, many wipes companies claim their products do break down when flushed – although Kleenex, for example, advises not flushing more than two wipes at a time. These wipes comply with an existing industry standard for “flushability”, although this standard was developed by two trade associations that represent wipe manufacturers.
The development and application of a comprehensive Australian standard is urgently needed to address this problem.
This results in a change in the fine balance between the good and bad bacteria that live in our stomachs, and consequently, the relationship between the gut and the brain.
So, in winter when we eat our favourite comfort foods, we get a rush of happiness chemicals sent from the gut to our brain and this make us feel happy and content.
The second reason we crave more comfort foods during the winter months could be evolutionary. Before we enjoyed technological advances such as housing, heating, supermarkets and clothing, humans who increased their body weight during winter to keep warm were more likely to survive their environmental conditions. Craving carbohydrate and sugar rich foods was therefore a protective mechanism.
Although we are not still living in shelters or foraging for food today, food cravings in winter may still be programmed into our biology.
Social learning theory says people learn from each other through observing, imitating and modelling. In the context of food cravings this suggests that what our caregivers gave to us in winter as children has a striking impact on what we choose to eat in winter as adults.
A review of studies on the psychological reasons behind eating comfort food says this food may play a role in alleviating loneliness and boosting positive thoughts of childhood social interaction.
In winter due to it being darker and colder, we tend to stay indoors longer and self-medicate with foods that are carbohydrate and sugar rich. These types of foods release glucose straight to our brain which gives us an instant feeling of happiness when we are feeling cold, sad, tired or bored.
For all the comfort they provide, comfort foods generally receive a bad rap because they are usually energy and calorie dense; they can be high in sugar, fat and refined carbohydrates.
However, not all comfort foods are created equally, nor are they all bad for our health.
You still get a comforting feeling with a hearty bowl of soup, but without the extra calories.from www.shutterstock.com
You can get the same comforting feelings from winter foods containing ingredients that are good for you. For example, a hearty bowl of soup with a slice of wholegrain bread can give you all the components you need for optimal physical and psychological health. Steaming bowls of chilli and curries can provide immunity boosting properties with the use of their warming spices. So too are all the wonderful citrus fruits that become available in the winter.
If you are craving something that is carbohydrate rich, try swapping white varieties for wholegrain versions that will dampen carbohydrate cravings. If you crave a hot chocolate try swapping the cocoa powder for cacao which has a higher concentration of vitamins and minerals.
More good news
The good news for all of us who crave comfort foods in winter is studies that assess intuitive eating — eating when you are hungry, stopping when you are full and listening to what your body is telling you to eat — suggest people who eat this way are happier with their body image, feel better psychologically and are less likely to have disordered eating.
So, embrace this wonderful chilly weather. Rug up in your favourite woolly jumper, sit by the fire, cuddle up with a loved one, make some healthier swaps to your classic comfort foods, remove the food guilt and listen to what your body is telling you it needs during these cold winter months.
Indonesia will use a landmark business and trade exposition next week in New Zealand to launch a fresh diplomatic push in the Pacific, as the Southeast Asian nation continues to face regional scrutiny over alleged human rights abuses in West Papua.
The Pacific Exposition, which will take place in Auckland from July 11-14, is expected to bring together the foreign ministers of Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia, as well as senior government officials from across Polynesia and Melanesia. A bilateral agreement is to be signed with the Cook Islands at the same time.
The event is the latest foray in a determined diplomatic outreach in the Pacific region that Indonesia’s government of Joko Widodo has overseen in the past few years.
Jakarta has made no bones about its aim of greater connectivity with a region that has been critical of Indonesian administration of restive Papua. The Auckland expo is the strongest sign yet of Indonesia’s intent.
Pitched as a trade, investment and tourism forum, it will involve dozens of government and private sector representatives from several Pacific Island countries, with most of their expenses paid for by the Indonesian government.
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“The exposition is also the first step towards connecting goods and people of the Pacific and Southeast Asia,” reads a flier for the event.
Vanuatu refuses invite Indonesian embassy officials — who in April quietly toured several Pacific nations to drum up support for the forum — said it has been well-received across the region. Still, according to one person who has advised embassy officials, Vanuatu’s government has refused to attend, the only Pacific nation approached to do so.
The person, who requested anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter, said Indonesia also hoped to establish a trade “hub” in one Pacific Island country which it could use to facilitate the flow of goods throughout the region.
The Pacific Exposition…Indonesia’s pitch to the Pacific as it continues to face scrutiny over alleged human rights abuses in West Papua. Image: RNZ Pacific
Although Indonesian embassy officials stressed that the event was apolitical and trade-focused, they said they were worried it would be protested by activists and advocates critical of Indonesia’s handling of human rights in Papua. Local government officials from Papua and West Papua will be in attendance and stalls promoting investment in the two provinces will be set up as part of the trade show.
It comes as Papua has reentered the spotlight, after an escalating war between the West Papua Liberation Army and Indonesia’s military forces since December sent the Central Highlands region into chaos.
Rights groups estimate tens of thousands have been displaced by the violence — which was sparked in part by the massacre of at least 16 Indonesian construction workers by the Liberation Army in Nduga regency. Disputed accounts from military forces and rebel fighters indicate dozens on both sides have been killed in ongoing skirmishes.
High level attendance New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who is expected to attend the expo alongside his Australian counterpart Marise Payne, last month said he would raise concerns over human rights abuses in West Papua with Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi.
It is unclear whether talks would take place during the exposition, and the offices of Peters and Payne did not respond to emailed questions.
Senior Indonesian cabinet members have in recent months openly talked about influencing the Pacific Islands into supporting its claims over Papua.
In September, local media reported Indonesia’s top security minister, Wiranto, as proposing $US4 million in funding toward convincing South Pacific nations that Jakarta was promoting development in Papua. He also invited the leaders of Vanuatu and Nauru to see the positive work in Papua for themselves. Neither took up his offer.
Marsudi, the Foreign Minister, recently said her country considers the Pacific Islands as “family”, noting that technical cooperation and capacity building with regional countries will grow significantly in the coming years.
Indonesia’s pitch Despite their strong ties with New Zealand, Niue and the Cook Islands have been in Indonesia’s sights and bilateral relations are expected to open for the first time in the coming weeks. In March, while pitching the opening of ties to Indonesia’s House of Representatives, Marsudi said the two countries did not support “separatism” in Papua.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna will be attending the exposition next week — the only head of state to do so — and an official with his office said a cooperation agreement would be signed on July 12 in Rarotonga. Niue Premier Sir Toke Talagi was also slated to attend the event and sign a similar agreement but illness has reportedly expected to prevent him from attending.
Among those attending will be New Zealand Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis and Maori Development Minister, Nanaia Mahuta. According to a draft agenda of the event, Tonga’s Deputy Prime Minister, Semisi Lafu Kioa Sika is also expected to attend. Tonga’s Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva is a vocal supporter of West Papuan self-determination aims. His government advocates for the re-listing of West Papua on the agenda of the UN Decolonisation Committee so that there is UN oversight over the human rights of West Papuans.
Vanuatu is preparing a UN resolution along these lines, but will be hard pushed to gain majority support in the General Assembly, given Indonesia’s growing influence.
The appearance of high level officials will be a boon for Indonesia’s investment pitch to the Pacific, a region where strategic competition between western powers and China has overshadowed Indonesia’s growing economy and regional leadership ambitions.
A western diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Indonesia had “relentlessly pursued” Pacific Island nations into attending the event, adding that its no-expenses-spared policy of providing travel and accomodation costs to delegates had likely encouraged many to attend.
This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.
How can penguins and polar bears stay warm in the freezing cold waters of Antarctica? – Riley, age 8, Clarksville, Tennessee USA.
Thanks for your question, Riley. The first thing I should probably say is that while a lot of people think polar bears and penguins live together, in fact they live at opposite ends of the Earth. Polar bears live in the northern hemisphere and penguins live in the southern hemisphere.
I’m a penguin researcher so I’m going to explain here how penguins can stay warm in Antarctica.
There are four species of penguins that live in Antarctica: emperors, gentoos, chinstraps, and Adélies.
Here’s an Adélie penguin.Jane Younger, Author provided (No reuse)
All these penguins have special adaptations to keep them warm, but emperor penguins might be the most extreme birds in the world. These amazing animals dive up to 500 metres below the surface of the ocean to catch their prey, withstanding crushing pressures and water temperatures as low as -1.8℃.
But their most incredible feat takes place not in the ocean, but on the sea ice above it.
Surviving on the ice
Emperor penguin chicks must hatch in spring so they can be ready to go to sea during the warmest time of year. For this timing to work, emperors gather in large groups on sea ice to begin their breeding in April, lay their eggs in May, and then the males protect the eggs for four months throughout the harsh Antarctic winter.
It’s dark, windy, and cold. Air temperatures regularly fall below -30℃, and occasionally drop to -60℃ during blizzards. These temperatures could easily kill a human in minutes. But emperor penguins endure it, to give their chicks the best start in life.
Emperor penguins have special physical and behavioural adaptations to survive temperatures that could easily kill a human in minutes.Flickr/Ian Duffy, CC BY
A body ‘too big’ for its head
Emperor penguins have four layers of overlapping feathers that provide excellent protection from wind, and thick layers of fat that trap heat inside the body.
Emperor penguins have a small beak, small flippers, and small legs and feet. This way, less heat can be lost from places furthest from their main body.Anne Fröhlich/flickr, CC BY-ND
Have you ever noticed that an emperor penguin’s body looks too big for its head and feet? This is another adaptation to keep them warm.
The first place that you feel cold is your hands and feet, because these parts are furthest from your main body and so lose heat easily.
This is the same for penguins, so they have evolved a small beak, small flippers, and small legs and feet, so that less heat can be lost from these areas.
They also have specially arranged veins and arteries in these body parts, which helps recycle their body warmth. For example, in their nasal passages (inside their noses), blood vessels are arranged so they can regain most of the heat that would be lost by breathing.
Male emperor penguins gather close together in big groups called “huddles” to minimise how much of their body surface is exposed to cold air while they are incubating eggs.
This can cut heat loss in half and keep penguins’ core temperature at about 37℃ even while the air outside the huddle is below -30℃.
The biggest huddles ever observed had about 5,000 penguins! Penguins take turns to be on the outer edge of the huddle, protecting those on the inside from the wind.
Incredibly, during this four-month period of egg incubation the male penguins don’t eat anything and must rely on their existing fat stores. This long fast would be impossible unless they worked together.
Emperor penguins are uniquely adapted to their Antarctic home. As temperatures rise and sea ice disappears, emperors will face new challenges. If it becomes too warm they will get heat-stressed, and if the sea ice vanishes they will have nowhere to breed. Sadly, these incredible animals may face extinction in the future. The best thing we can do for emperor penguins is to take action on climate change now.
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.auPlease tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.
Australia now has a space agency, and our federal and South Australian governments are looking to grow a prosperous space industry to boost productivity and employment.
The challenge for Australia is to find a niche in the expanding global race to commercialise space.
I suggest we should focus on microgravity experiments.
First of all, let’s get the definition of microgravity right.
Micro means very small, so the term microgravity is used interchangeably with “Zero-G” or zero gravity.
If you’ve seen videos of people floating on board an aircraft known as the “vomit comet”, they’re in microgravity. That doesn’t mean there’s no gravity; it means they are in freefall.
It’s the same sensation you may have felt at an amusement park, or in a fast-moving elevator when your stomach lifts up.
Objects in freefall are all falling towards something at the same speed. So in the vomit comet: the aircraft, the people and everything inside are all falling towards the ground at the same speed.
A spherical flame
Microgravity research makes use of that freefall condition to conduct scientific experiments. It’s particularly interesting to do so because most systems we understand well usually behave differently in microgravity.
For example, on Earth the flame from a struck match looks like an inverted teardrop shape and is orange. In microgravity, that same flame is spherical and blue in colour. This is because heat transfer is very different in microgravity than in normal gravity.
We learn in school that heat rises: this is what makes the match flame become pointed at the top – all the heat in the flame is rising upwards.
In microgravity, heat doesn’t rise. It stays exactly where it is. So the flame in microgravity keeps its heat focused around the match and burns much hotter, which is why it appears blue.
Understanding these simple processes allows scientists and engineers to design equipment for use in spacecraft, which experience microgravity all the time.
Experiments at microgravity
There are more than 300 experiments currently happening aboard the International Space Station, making it the largest off-world scientific laboratory. From biotechnology to earth and space science, and from physics to human research, we are continually finding out new things about our world from experiments in microgravity.
Scientifically, such experiments have great value. For example, crystal forms of a protein involved in the disease cystic fibrosis – a life-threatening lung disease caused by a genetic mutation – can be grown in microgravity. Without the effects of gravity, the crystals grow much bigger and with higher purity. Researchers can use these “super crystals” to determine protein structure, and improve the drugs currently used to treat cystic fibrosis. More efficient drugs reduce the need for lengthy lab-based research and development and improve the quality of life of patients.
Data from observations of how liquid metals solidify in microgravity has been used to change how we cast turbine blades on Earth. Changes to these models and processes has resulted in the manufacture of lighter and stronger blades for aircraft engines. Lighter aircraft leads to lower fuel consumption and so less greenhouse gas emission resulting in reduced airfares to the consumer.
Opportunity for Australia
Australia has little involvement with the International Space Station and we don’t have a Zero-G aircraft. So we must look to other types of microgravity platform to conduct any research.
The rocket launches with a rapid acceleration which lasts for a few seconds. After the motor has used up all its fuel, the rocket traces out a huge arc in the sky, where everything inside is in zero gravity before it falls back down to earth.
Because we only need the rocket to be in freefall to achieve microgravity, the rocket doesn’t even need to go into space to conduct the experiment.
This growing number of microgravity platforms available in Australia provides scientists with a new environment in which to conduct experiments.
Cost versus risk
Student-built rockets are low cost – however, model rocketry is also high-risk, and not ideal for precise scientific measurements. If the safety parachute fails to deploy, the rocket risks a ballistic landing, destroying the rocket and everything on board – including that valuable scientific experiment.
Many nations have active sounding rocket programmes using reliable rockets that regularly launch to altitudes well above 100 km, the boundary that separates aeronautics from astronautics and the commonly accepted “edge of space”.
In Australia, Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA) are working with The Gumatj Corporation Limited, Developing East Arnhem Limited and the Northern Territory Government to build Australia’s first spaceport.
The site in the Northern Territory is sufficiently well advanced that NASA recently announced they would work with ELA to launch sounding rockets into sub-orbital space from the Arnhem Space Centre in 2020.
Thanks to the proximity of northern Australia to the equator and expertise in ground station operation, Australia has an opportunity to carve out a niche in launching sounding rockets to conduct microgravity research.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Salisbury, Research Associate, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland
This week marks 30 years since the landmark Fitzgerald Inquiry report was handed down in Queensland.
It’s no overstatement to suggest the inquiry’s findings transformed Queensland’s political landscape more than any event in the past six decades. Such was the inquiry’s impact that the state’s politics are now typically characterised in “pre-” and “post-Fitzgerald” terms.
‘Players in a vast drama’
The Fitzgerald Inquiry – officially the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct – was a watershed moment in exposing entrenched police and government corruption.
It’s regarded as having established important procedural precedents for investigating official malfeasance. These included granting indemnities to witnesses for providing crucial evidence, and holding public hearings with open media access.
The inquiry was instigated by Queensland’s police minister and deputy premier, Bill Gunn, in May 1987. Gunn was prompted to act following media reports of barely restrained criminal activity in Brisbane “vice dens”, under the protection of police officers.
Most notable among this media coverage were reports by Courier-Mail journalist Phil Dickie, and the now renowned Moonlight State Four Corners episode, filed by ABC investigative reporter Chris Masters.
Earlier Queensland investigations into illicit activities, such as the Sturgess Inquiry in 1985, had resulted in little change to police practices and were largely overlooked by government.
Gunn wanted an inquiry to root out the problem of corruption in police ranks, but expected the task to last only a matter of weeks. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen warned his deputy that “you’ve got a tiger by the tail, and it’s going to bite you”.
Undeterred, Gunn eventually appointed little-known barrister and judge Gerald “Tony” Fitzgerald QC to head a Commission of Inquiry, established by Order in Council while Bjelke-Petersen was absent on a US trade mission.
Referred to colloquially as the “Fitzgerald Inquiry”, its twice-broadened terms of reference and later expanded powers of investigation helped lay bare a secretive political establishment and a sordid network of police graft (known as “The Joke”), depicted recently in unprecedented detail in Matthew Condon’s gripping trilogy.
The inquiry’s hearings lasted almost two years, with startling evidence from 339 witnesses broadcast regularly to an incredulous public. Several senior police figures – including disgraced Police Commissioner Terry Lewis – and three state government ministers were found to have engaged in corrupt conduct and were later jailed.
“Minister for Everything” Russ Hinze was also identified as corrupt, but died before facing court. At the very top, Bjelke-Petersen was charged with perjuring himself before the inquiry, but his 1991 trial was abandoned with a hung jury.
Fitzgerald’s broad and immediate impact
The Fitzgerald report has been described since as a “blueprint for accountability” in Queensland. Previously, commitment to this principle had been sadly lacking.
The report, and Fitzgerald’s interim media briefings, were damning of not only a defective police leadership, but also a self-serving political culture of patronage and unaccountability. It made dozens of recommendations intended, in Fitzgerald’s words, “to bring about improved [administrative] structures and systems”. The bulk of these went to criminal justice oversight and electoral law reform.
In the slightly frenzied aftermath of Bjelke-Petersen’s drawn-out resignation in December 1987, new Premier Mike Ahern might have been expected to sideline such reform proposals and concentrate primarily on readying Brisbane to host World Expo ‘88.
As Queensland premier, Mike Ahern was determined to tie his government to Fitzgerald’s recommendations.AAP/Dave Hunt
Yet Ahern preemptively – and quite deliberately, as he later told Masters in a Four Corners interview – tied his government to Fitzgerald’s recommendations “lock, stock and barrel”.
Ahern’s sincerity towards the accountability agenda was evident in late 1988 when he established the long called-for Public Accounts Committee to scrutinise government expenditure.
Despite such commitments, the repercussions for the National Party from the inquiry’s findings, delivered in Fitzgerald’s report on July 3, 1989, were politically grave and probably unavoidable.
Shortly afterwards, and barely two months out from an election, the rattled Nationals jettisoned Ahern for Russell Cooper as leader. But they could not stem the popular tide turning against a government seen as lacking legitimate authority.
After Wayne Goss was elected premier in December 1989, his government was quick to begin the electoral reform and public administration overhaul that marked its first term in office.
Goss’ win signalled “the end of the Bjelke-Petersen era”, as he put it on election night. He might have added, the “beginning of the Fitzgerald era”.
Labor leader Wayne Goss claims victory in the 1989 Queensland state election.AAP/Queensland ALP
An Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) and Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), major recommendations of the inquiry report, had been legislated or instigated under Ahern and then Cooper. In both cases, their implementation, staffing and resourcing were rounded out and given momentum by Goss.
Notably, Goss had a “fractious” relationship with the CJC’s inaugural commissioner, Sir Max Bingham, and revealed in interview prior to his premature death his personal misgivings about the Commission’s operations while he was premier.
Several other “Fitzgerald reforms” and initiatives were promptly implemented by Goss’ administration, including freedom of information (FOI) provisions, MPs’ pecuniary interest registers, and the right to peaceful public assembly. It also dismantled the state’s system of electoral malapportionment (the long-derided “gerrymander”).
The Electoral Act 1992 established an electoral redistribution based largely on the principle of “one vote, one value”, applying for the first time at the September 1992 state election – at which Goss was duly returned.
Yet even under Goss’ leadership, the full extent of reforms mapped out in Fitzgerald’s report were not wholly realised.
Lasting legacy, or unfinished business?
Changes to Queensland’s accountability systems since the Fitzgerald Inquiry have been significant, if not committed to consistently by ensuing administrations.
Critics point to periodic regressions or executive reluctance to maintain the reform process. Insufficient whistleblower protections and impediments to FOI access, among other transparency failings under governments on both sides of politics, have at times dulled the shine on the post-Fitzgerald integrity framework.
Fitzgerald himself has seen fit on occasion to highlight Queensland politicians’ departures from a commitment to reform and accountability.
Campbell Newman found this to his cost when sustained criticism of his “undermining” of the judiciary’s independence, or harking back to Joh-era electoral pork-barrelling, eroded his hold on executive authority.
Equally, the current Palaszczuk government’s changes to Queensland’s voting laws, opportunistically reverting to full preferential voting, were decried as being against the intent of Fitzgerald reforms.
An often-cited illustration of improved accountability is the example of Gordon Nuttall, the former Beattie government minister sacked then convicted in 2009 and 2010 on charges of corruption and perjury. He was sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison.
As Queensland political scientist Rae Wear eloquently put it:
…denial [of corruption] of the kind practised by Bjelke-Petersen and Russ Hinze was no longer a viable option. Nor was the acceptance of cash in brown paper bags.
The CJC and its successor, the Crime and Misconduct Commission (now the Crime and Corruption Commission) – as well as New South Wales’ ICAC, established in 1988 – are held up as models for corruption watchdog agencies, potentially including a future federal ICAC.
The inquiry’s report has become something of an article of faith within Queensland’s civic life. Noted Queensland historian Raymond Evans described it as the product of “the most remarkable Commission of Inquiry in Australia’s history”.
Indeed, elected members (including the current Labor Premier) have been known to brandish the report in parliament, manifesto-like, to cast aspersions of impropriety at their opposite numbers. This reflects the extent to which the Fitzgerald Inquiry became a millstone around the necks of conservative Queensland politicians at its inception over 30 years ago.
The taint of official corruption exposed by the inquiry, and the public’s faith in accountability reforms embodied in Fitzgerald’s report, can partly explain why the Nationals and Liberals (now LNP) have struggled to regain and hold office over the past three decades in Queensland.
But the accountability agenda is one that leaders on both sides of Queensland politics have pursued before and should commit to upholding still.
If a doctor suspects a patient may be at risk of depression, they will likely ask about the person’s mood, appetite, sleep patterns, and energy and concentration levels, among other questions.
But understandings of mental health differ across cultural groups. So when a doctor is screening for mental illness, it’s important they consider the patient’s culture.
Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians take a holistic view of health, which may differ from non-Indigenous Australians, who often take a more individualistic approach. In terms of mental health, social and emotional well-being is central to the “spirit” of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
For Australia’s First Nations peoples, routine screening tools have not always seemed appropriate. Earlier research has found many questions are being lost in translation. Some people who should have scored highly to indicate their risk of depression scored much lower, missing out on potential opportunities for treatment.
Where a diagnosis of depression is based on the answers to a set of questions, it’s important the language used in these questions aligns with a person’s understanding of mental illness.
The good news is, we now have a validated culturally specific tool, developed with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members, to screen for depression in Indigenous Australians.
We anticipate this will allow doctors to identify many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with mental illness who might have otherwise gone undiagnosed. And the better our capacity to accurately diagnose depression, the better our capacity to treat it.
The new screening tool
The culturally specific screening tool is called the aPHQ-9. It’s an adapted version of the existing tool, called the PHQ-9 – nine questions routinely used by doctors in Australia and overseas to screen for depression.
In our research published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, we’ve shown the culturally specific tool to be effective in screening for depression among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living in urban, rural and remote areas.
GPs now have access to a questionnaire designed to spot depression specifically among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.From shutterstock.com
Some 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants completed the new questionnaire, then took part in a structured psychiatric interview by a trained clinician who hadn’t seen their answers.
We compared the questionnaire results with the interview results, and found the new tool reliably identified those who need further assessment of their mood and those unlikely to have depression.
The culturally specific tool contains questions about the same topics as the original one, but it’s presented in a way that better aligns with Aboriginal understandings of mental health and well-being.
Alongside differences in understandings of mental health, there are important differences between communication styles used in non-Indigenous Australian culture, and those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. For example, white Australians will often use a more direct communication style.
This example shows how the new tool factors in the subtle differences in cultural understandings of mental health, and communication styles.
The original questionnaire asks “Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems:
little interest or pleasure in doing things?
feeling down, depressed or hopeless?”
The adapted tool asks “Over the last two weeks:
have you been feeling slack, not wanted to do anything?
have you been feeling unhappy, depressed, really no good, that your spirit was sad?”
Words like “slack” and “spirit” are more consistent with Aboriginal English. Spirit implies a holistic understanding of health consistent with the definition of health held by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.
Another question asks about “letting your family down”. This is also consistent with a holistic view of health and the importance of family in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, but might seem out of place in a consultation with a non-Indigenous Australian.
Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will recognise that the language in the new tool has been respectfully developed in a culturally appropriate way. They may be more likely to trust the clinician and service administering the questionnaire, and give answers that reflect their true state of mind.
Doctors can now use the new tool
In 2014-15, more than half (53.4%) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples aged 15 years and over reported their overall life satisfaction was eight out of ten or more. Almost one in six (17%) said they were completely satisfied with their life. These positive data are testament to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ ongoing endurance.
But over the years, events like colonisation, racism, relocation of people away from their lands, and the forced removal of children from family and community have disrupted the resilience, cultural beliefs and practices of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. In turn, these factors have impacted their social and emotional well-being.
This may explain why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are twice as likely to be hospitalised for mental health disorders and die from suicide than their non-Aboriginal counterparts.
Teenagers aged 15 to 19 are five times more likely than non-Indigenous teenagers to die by suicide.
The importance of being able to more accurately identify those at risk can’t be understated.
While screening all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who present to general practice for depression is not recommended, the new questionnaire is a free, easy to administer, culturally acceptable tool for screening Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at high risk of depression.
Without a culturally appropriate tool, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with depression and suicidal thoughts might fly under the radar. This questionnaire will pave the way for important discussions and the provision of treatment and services to those most in need.
If this article has raised issues for you or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Visit the Beyond Blue website to access specific resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
