Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Burke, Associate Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australia’s electricity sector has begun to transition away from coal, with coal’s contribution to our electricity mix falling from around four-fifths 13 years ago to around three-fifths today.

Twelve coal-fired power stations closed between 2012 and 2017.

There are clear upsides to the transition, among them an ongoing decline in carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector.

For local economies, however, the closure of a coal-fired power station can create economic challenges, including higher unemployment.

We’ve quantified the effects of 12 closures

In a new paper in the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, we use detailed Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) data to quantify the extent to which local unemployment rates have increased following the closures of twelve coal-fired power stations across Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

There are 87 SA4 regions in Australia, each with an average population of around 290,000 people. We found that on average the regional unemployment rate climbs by around 0.7 percentage points after a station closes.

The effect remains observable for year or two, although it varies from region to region.

Clearly, labour mobility and the creation of new jobs do not fully make up for the impact of such closures.

This means there is scope and need for strategies to smooth the labour market transition as we move towards a lower-carbon energy system.

What we found

A simple look at the data indicates that local unemployment rates tend to rise after closures, both in absolute terms and relative to what is happening at the state level.

We find that this effect remains when controlling for the impacts of other key factors, such as macroeconomic shocks and the coal export price.

Burke, Best, Jotzo, 2019

Typically the increase in the first year is around 0.7 percentage points – for example, from 6.0% prior to a closure to 6.7% afterwards. It is a sizeable effect. For males the increase is 0.9 percentage points.

The Latrobe Valley in Victoria faces one of the biggest structural adjustment challenges. It has seen two closures of coal-fired power stations in recent years: Morwell in 2014 and Hazelwood in 2017.

As the graph below indicates, the average unemployment rate in the Latrobe-Gippsland SA4 region climbed well above the Victorian average after the first closure, before turning down.

ABS Labour Force, detailed

A multitude of local transition efforts are underway, coordinated by the Latrobe Valley Authority. These have included a worker transfer scheme that has found places for displaced employees at other power stations.

At the even finer-grained level SA2 level, the unemployment rate in the town of Morwell remaines stuck at around 17%, one of the highest rates in Victoria, years after the closure. Before the closure it was around 13%.

The region’s remaining power stations – Yallourn W, Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B – are ageing. Yallourn W is the oldest, at 45 years.

We need to prepare

Structural change is an ever-present feature of a healthy economy. But, especially where rapid structural change happens due to closures of large plants in regional areas, it is important to have measures in place to ease the transition.

The Labor party has promised a national Just Transition Authority to plan for and manage the transition process as coal-fired power stations close. Whether it can help mitigate rises in local unemployment after plant closures remains to be seen.

Many of Australia’s remaining coal-fired power stations are likely to close over the next decade or two as renewable energy becomes more cost competitive and the pressure increases to meet emissions targets. The next cab off the rank is likely to be the Liddell power station in the NSW Hunter Valley, which is due to cease coal-fired operations in 2022.

And then there’s the larger question of the transition away from coal mining. Export demand for coal is set to fall over time, winding back a large export industry in New South Wales and Queensland.

The Just Transition Authority will have its work cut out.

This research was supported by the Coal Transitions Project and the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub. An open access version of the research paper is available here.

– ref. Bad news. Closing coal-fired power stations costs jobs. We need to prepare – http://theconversation.com/bad-news-closing-coal-fired-power-stations-costs-jobs-we-need-to-prepare-113369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

Between 1969 and 1972, a new type of archaeological site was created. For the first time, human bodies and the technology needed to sustain them altered the landscape of another world. The astronauts from the six Apollo missions left a suite of space-age artefacts behind on the lunar surface. And not only that: the missions brought to the Moon new kinds of shadows, cast by machines and bodies and flags and rovers, in an interplay of movement and stillness.

On Earth, the movement of living things, the changing of the environment, both natural and cultural; and the weather, which occludes sunlight to different degrees, make shadows very dynamic. Lunar shadows, however, are more passive at human time scales, their movement identical with the fortnightly passage of the Sun over the surface.

The Apollo missions brought shadows that were not so passive. The speed of the shadows differed, depending on the activity being carried out, and was much faster than the slow passing of the day. Some shadows were solid black and some were lacy and textured, reflecting the mesh on the umbrella-shaped antennas.

They crossed and uncrossed with the angle of the Sun and the movement of the astronauts around the tiny landscapes that constituted their lunar experience. The shadows were captured and frozen in many photographs of the Apollo missions; in these photos, they became another type of artefact.

The Apollo 17 lunar rover and its shadows. NASA

And then some shadows left, never to return, and others stayed to be swallowed by the lunar night and emerge into day again. The shadows of the objects left behind – descent modules, rovers, cameras and other equipment – will continue to be cast over the lunar surface until they decay in tens, hundreds or thousands of years. The objects don’t move, but their shadows circle them in diurnal devotion, sundials without a mission.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched in 2009, used the shadows to detect the presence of these orphaned items of material culture. We’ve been able to get images of Tranquility Base, and the other landing sites, from the satellite flying over. The famous Apollo 11 flag, planted in July 1969, is alas no longer standing, probably knocked over when the ascent module lifted off and blew dust all over the Dust Detector Experiment – a tiny cube made out of solar panels designed by Australian space scientist Professor Brian O’Brien.

Read more: Humanity’s next giant leap: our heritage in space is our future too

In my quest for the meaning of lunar shadows, I first had to investigate what kind of thing a shadow actually was. It was not a silhouette, which is the dark outline of an object, generally against a light background. Nor is it a reflection, where an object throws back light to create a counter-image. It’s not albedo, which is the amount of light a surface absorbs. (The more light is absorbed, the darker the surface appears.)

When we look at the Moon from Earth, much of the difference in light and dark areas results from albedo rather than shadows. It was Sir Isaac Newton, in the 17th century, who established that darkness was not a positive force like light, and shadows were caused by the absence of light.

Then there is chiaroscuro, meaning the contrasts between light and shadows – used by artists to create three-dimensional effects on two-dimensional flat surfaces. Chiaroscuro doesn’t just occur on the canvas either: we use shadows in depth perception in everyday life. Shadows themselves are 2D representations of 3D objects.

As I was scrolling through Apollo images in NASA’s online archives, I noted the many shadow astronauts with elongated legs, present yet absent in the photographs they were taking for the audience back on Earth. They seemed so lonely and silent; and I was reminded of a well-known series of paintings by the artist Giorgio de Chirico.

Shadow astronauts: Alan Bean and Peter Conrad, from the Apollo 12 mission in 1969. NASA

Around 1910, he started working on a theme in which shadows figured prominently. The paintings were often of empty town squares with statues, towers and arched building façades. The shadows were sharp and elongated and seemed at odds with the strength of the light. He wasn’t using the shadows to create depth, but to subvert the conventions of “perspective illusionism”.

Piazza, by Giorgio de Chirico, 1913. Museo Nacional de Belles Artes, Argentina

More than the physical perception, shadows are highly symbolic. They represent melancholy, concealment and secrecy. They symbolise death and the soul, the supernatural, dreams and ghosts, the underworld, coolness and rest on a hot day.

Shadows are visible but not tangible. Their disposition varies with the angle of the light sources. I wondered if shadows had been a factor in considering the aesthetic values of heritage sites on Earth.

My searches in the heritage registers of various countries did not produce much. Usually shadows were considered as part of the built environment, and their impacts were mostly characterised in negative terms, as shadows cast by more recent buildings could affect the perception of a heritage feature on an older building.

There were two exceptions I found in the World Heritage List. Both referred to shadows cast by fortified city walls. These shadows created a sense of belonging and protection for the communities living within them. So there was some precedent for considering shadows as part of the fabric and cultural significance of a heritage site.

The shadow of the vampire Nosferatu creeping up the stairs in the classic 1922 German silent film. Director F.W. Murnau used exaggerated shadows to evoke horror and suspense. Prana Film

A descent into darkness

It’s 21 July 1969. Neil Armstrong is descending the ladder from the Apollo 11 landing module. As he sets foot on the Moon, he utters words which have since become immortal. But he also says something else. “It’s quite dark here in the shadow and a little hard for me to see that I have good footing.”

He had descended into something the Moon had never seen before: the shadow cast by a crewed vehicle, the landing module. Shadows were to play a large role in the unfolding lunar mission.

Neil Armstrong working in the shadow of the Apollo 11 descent module. NASA

Landing the Eagle safely meant learning how to interpret what the shadows said about the unevenness of the terrain. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to conduct their scientific work in these unusual shadows, which often made parts of equipment that fell into their deep black invisible. But the shadows were also the subject of investigation. They assessed temperature changes within them. They observed the effects of shadows on visibility.

One of the first things the astronauts did was make observations about the impact of their boots on the lunar regolith, the dry dust and broken rock which covers the Moon’s surface. The ridges in the soles, images of which have been reproduced countless times, were in fact an experiment: the contrast between the light and shade in the ridges was a way to measure the reflectance properties of the dust, and the angles allowed calculation of the depth to which the astronauts sank into it. Armstrong commented:

It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.

Over the course of the surface mission, the astronauts took over 600 images and films. In these images we see the long shadows cast by the light of the Sun and Earth around the astronauts, the landing module, flag and other objects.

The Apollo 11 landing module and its shadows. According to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, ‘It is possible that this was an unintentional shot’. NASA

The disposition of the shadows forms part of the corpus of conspiracy theories claiming the lunar landings were faked. It’s argued that the angles of the shadows make no sense and are caused by the lighting in a film studio, where actors lumbered about pretending to be in low gravity. This very much reminds me of the counter-intuitive shadows of de Chirico’s paintings.

People with far greater knowledge than I have debunked the theories, but I think there’s another aspect to the shadow conspiracies. Shadows conceal and obfuscate; they create illusions by distorting height and proportions, but Moon conspiracy theorists look to shadows to reveal the truth. In Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, captives only know the world through the shadows cast on the cave wall by people and objects moving behind them. The shadows are an imperfect and distorted reflection of the real form of the objects. In their own minds, the conspiracy theorists are like the escaped captive who emerges from the cave to perceive the true cause of the shadows.

The shadows are signs that can be read, and the LRO used them to locate the six Apollo landing sites. Orbiting as close as 50 kilometres from the surface, it could see the shadows cast by the landing modules, instrument packages and even the flags. The astronaut traverses and rover tracks from Apollo 15–17 were visible as dark wiggles, like the burrowings of an insect in tree bark.

There’s no doubt in my mind, despite their intangible, ephemeral nature, that the Apollo shadows are a significant part of the fabric of the sites and of their cultural significance. Although abandoned by humans, the shadows mean the sites are not still. They’ve altered the temperature and light environment that existed in the landscape prior to the landings.

It is their difference from Earthly shadows which makes them significant; they are the shadows of humans and human artefacts in the light of another world, and they bring novel geometries and textures to lunar shadow topography.

Space archaeologist Beth Laura O’Leary and her team from the Lunar Legacy Project have already catalogued the artefacts at Tranquility Base; I would like to make a catalogue of the shadows. It’s not only the hardware and the relationships between objects at the Apollo sites which could be damaged by careless visitation. The chiaroscuro created by the actions of these first humans could also be destroyed.

The shadows I find most compelling, though, are the shadow selfies of absent astronauts stalking on their long legs over the regolith, camera raised to their visor. They feel like Sigmund Freud’s uncanny double or doppelganger, human but not quite.

Shadow astronauts: Dave Scott and Jim Irwin on the Apollo 15 mission, 1971. NASA

They’re silent, lonely and melancholy, as if Tranquility Base were a town square in a de Chirico painting. But there is also a kind of peace.

The shadow of mining

For a few decades, the lunar sites were safe from disturbance. But now everyone wants to return to the Moon. Distance will no longer protect lunar heritage, if we think it is worth protecting. It’s not all about science or prestige any more, either, in the era when wealth is the driving force behind space exploration. The Moon has resources that entrepreneurs on Earth would like to access.

These include rare earth elements, like yttrium and ytterbium, which are used in lasers, computers, mobile phones and car batteries; helium-3, which might be used as a clean nuclear fuel, and many others, such as water, which could be used to sustain a settlement on the Moon in what’s called In Situ Resource Utilisation.

The water ice hidden in the permanently shadowed polar craters is a resource that could be used to make fuel, as well as for habitation. People are going to be analysing the shadow landscape to locate resources for future industry.

Private companies have been established to pursue lunar and asteroid mining. Countries like the US and Luxembourg have put in place legislation to support commercial ventures on the Moon and in the asteroid belt. People seem to accept that industry on the Moon is not a matter of if any more, but when. And when it happens, there is going to be an almighty lot of abrasive, adhesive and corrosive lunar dust stirred up as rockets and rovers come and go. The future of lunar heritage is at risk.

My years of working in the terrestrial mining industry have suddenly become relevant to the future of space exploration. I think off-Earth mining companies are overlooking some critical processes.

Disturbing the surface of the Moon at an industrial level could have a negative impact on its cultural significance for the entire population of Earth. This is even before you consider possible damage to the lunar landing sites of many nations. There is an urgent need to develop an environmental management framework for space, and cultural heritage must be part of this. Space archaeologists have an important role to play in the next phase of human engagement with the solar system.

There are innumerable technical problems that need to be solved to have a viable lunar industry, but there’s one big one that affects everything we might do on the Moon. The Apollo astronauts found that lunar dust stuck to them and wouldn’t come off. It clogged up their equipment seals and caused mechanical equipment to stop working properly. It coated instrument faces so that they couldn’t be read – and this was after just a few days. We think of the astronauts in blindingly white spacesuits, but they ended up covered in dirt, much like an archaeologist in the trenches.

Magnified lunar dust particles. They have a vesicular texture and sharp edges, compared to terrestrial dusts which are often rounded by wind and water. NASA

The dust contains tiny, sharp spicules of obsidian, a natural glass, that are very abrasive. It’s also electrostatically charged from constant bombardment with solar particles and cosmic rays – there’s little atmosphere to protect the surface, as we have on Earth. This makes it highly adhesive.

With space vehicles ferrying equipment, personnel and commercial products between the Moon and Earth, there’s going to be a lot of dust blown around. If solutions aren’t found to control it, it’s even possible that it will be blown up into lunar orbit and create a dust cloud around the Moon. This is a critical problem to solve before any industrial activity takes place. John Young, the Apollo 16 commander in 1972, said, “Dust is the number one concern in returning to the Moon.”

Naturally the dust problem has occupied the minds of scientists working on lunar mining systems a great deal. Proposals to mitigate dust damage include building blast walls to contain it, fusing the dust into landing pads so that rocket take-offs and landings don’t blow it around, and creating materials that repel it.

Some of these proposals will also minimise dust abrasion damage on historic lunar spacecraft. This is a rare occasion where the research needed to develop lunar resources also helps us protect some of the most significant sites of the 20th century. So there is some hope that we can ensure that the early history of human adaptation to space environments is not erased.

This still leaves the bigger question. What about the Moon itself? How will people feel if they look at the Moon in the night sky, and know that it is being mined before their eyes? The Moon is a universal cultural symbol that unites us from the earliest human ancestors millions of years ago into the deep future of humanity.

So far, all lunar missions have been small-scale and scientific. The presence of human sites, which we can’t see from Earth even with the most powerful telescopes, has not diminished the intangible heritage of people’s beliefs and dreams. But it might be different when we know that private corporations are making a profit from digging up the Moon.

The Bingham Canyon copper mine, owned by Rio Tinto and located in Utah, is the largest open-cut mine pit in the world. It’s been in production since 1906. What started as a tiny pit is now four kilometres across, 1900 hectares in area, and 1.2 kilometres deep. Imagine something like this – but on the Moon. How would we feel if we could see a similar human-made crater from Earth – whether through telescopes or satellite images?

The Bingham Canyon (also known as Kennecott) mine, taken in 2003. The pit could be seen with the naked eye from the Space Shuttle. Wikipedia

We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be taken by surprise. We should be prepared for changes to the Moon we think we know – to have to make new meanings for it, as we have had to for Earth and other places in the solar system, like Pluto. The Anthropocene era involves redistributing minerals and elements in a way that’s geologically visible. If lunar mining goes ahead, there is going to be even more redistribution and exchange of terrestrial and lunar materials.

The search for water ice on the Moon will be a journey into deep cold shadows at the poles which have lain undisturbed for as much as 3.6 billion years. Compared to this, the Apollo shadows are mere blips in lunar history.

Shadows on the Moon create a symbolic landscape which can be read in many different ways. For me, Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, in his work In Praise of Shadows, captures the essence of these otherworldly shadows perfectly:

And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness, immutable tranquillity holds sway.

This is an edited extract from Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future, published by New South Books in April 2019.

– ref. Friday essay: shadows on the Moon – a tale of ephemeral beauty, humans and hubris – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-shadows-on-the-moon-a-tale-of-ephemeral-beauty-humans-and-hubris-114077

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

Scott Morrison’s ruling that the Liberals should put One Nation below Labor on their how-to-vote cards is less a stand on principle than a political gesture and a compromise.

A gesture that came because the Prime Minister recognised he must stiffen his spine publicly against One Nation, especially to stem further leaching of the Liberals’ crumbling support in Victoria.

A compromise, because the Liberals are not going all the way to placing One Nation last.

Notably, they are allowing for the Greens to be put under One Nation on Liberal tickets. For those on the right of the party – such as Tony Abbott – the Greens are far more unpalatable than One Nation.

Morrison was pushed by circumstances to make his Thursday announcement.

The New Zealand mosques massacre brought the issue of preferences into focus. Morrison parried, saying it was a matter for later, when candidates were known, and for the party organisation.

But with this week’s revelations about the extraordinary visit to the US gun lobby by James Ashby, Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff, and Steve Dickson, One Nation’s Senate candidate, Morrison’s shilly-shallying became untenable.

Morrison attributed his change of position to those revelations, saying he’d been waiting to see the reaction of One Nation’s leadership, and it had been “unsatisfactory”.

When Hanson appeared a few hours later, it was to claim victim status for One Nation – a pitch that might play quite well with some of her supporters, who see themselves as victims of one kind or another.

“If it wasn’t for Roger Muller and the Islamist Al Jazeera network, One Nation would never, never have had any association with the NRA [National Rifle Association],” she said. She stood by Ashby and Dickson, though Dickson got a mild rebuke for some of his (truly appalling) comments. Steve had been “stitched up”; he was “a victim of entrapment”.

In short, Hanson gave no ground.

She dismissed Morrison as “a fool” who had handed the Lodge keys to Bill Shorten by his preference decision.

In explaining his stand, Morrison harked back to John Howard. “I haven’t rushed into this decision, in the same way that John Howard, who I have been consulting with closely on this matter … did not rush into this decision when he took it 20 years ago. I have followed a similar considered process,” he said.

Did he miss the irony? Indeed, it was the same process (though Morrison didn’t take as long and hasn’t gone as far as Howard did). Far from leading from the front, both Howard and Morrison were pushed from behind. And now, as with Howard in the 1990s, Victorian Liberals, who are fearing a bloodbath in May, have been doing much of the shoving.

But Victoria is only part of the election story, and the Liberals are only one partner in the Coalition, albeit the major one.

Nationals leader Michael McCormack quickly declared his party’s decisions would be made “at a local level”.

McCormack said he personally always put the Greens last – “they represent a greater danger to regional areas than do any other party”. As for whether One Nation should be above or below Labor, he didn’t care – “voters have the choice”.

McCormack’s position is in sharp contrast to that of one of his predecessors. Tim Fischer, asked this week if One Nation should be put at the bottom, said: “My preference? I’d put them last”.

In Queensland the Liberals and Nationals are organisationally merged into the Liberal National Party (LNP). But they sit in different party rooms in Canberra and on preferences they’ll separate into their respective tribes.

The Queensland Nationals, facing a substantial One Nation vote in key seats, will do what they judge will maximise their chances, meaning a number can be expected to play ball with Hanson.

In lower house electorates Coalition preferences don’t matter to One Nation, which is not in the running for a seat. But One Nation preferences are important to some Coalition MPs. One Nation voters are ill-disciplined with their preferences, but in a tight contest a few votes can make the difference.

Leaving aside the fact they’d share certain One Nation policy views, vulnerable Queensland Nationals would be anxious to avoid anything that invites preference retaliation.

Whether Hanson spurns these needy Nationals remains to be seen. After Morrison’s statement Mark Latham, just elected for One Nation to the NSW parliament, was quick to threaten retaliation in Liberal and Nationals seats in that state.

It wasn’t just on preferences that Morrison grappled with the north-south divide this week.

When the government produced its announcement on underwriting “firm power” projects, it was against the background of a concerted pro-coal campaign from Queensland Nationals, supported by Barnaby Joyce (a former Queensland senator, who now holds a NSW seat).

But the commercial arguments can’t be ignored and there was just one coal project among the dozen ventures chosen – and that was an upgrade for an existing operation in NSW.

Beyond the short list, however, the government announced a feasibility study for a new coal-fired power station in Queensland. To be precise, the study would evaluate projects in north and central Queensland that “include but are not limited to a new HELE coal project in Collinsville, upgrades of existing generators as well as gas and hydro projects”.

This was both gesture and compromise.

The chances of such a study leading to a coal-fired power station would be very small, given the investment realities. But politically, it is the fact of the study that counts.

Faced with the Coalition’s coal lobby, for Morrison a feasibility study was an ideal fix. It appears to be doing something. It is relatively cheap. It can be trumpeted by the supporters of coal (as Joyce did). It doesn’t stir up the anti-coal voters in the south too much. And it delays for a long time a real decision.

The announcement of the study seems to have muted the noise from the Nationals on the coal question.

Its another story with the arguments over preferences, not least because it splits Liberal ranks.

Morrison would hope he’s done enough to satisfy supporters in those key Victorian seats.

But Malcolm Turnbull quickly set the bar higher, when he told the Australian Financial Review, “Scott Morrison has obviously gone some way towards that today, but hopefully he will go further.” And Victorian voters do have an ear for what the former prime minister says.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison struggles to straddle the south-north divide – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-scott-morrison-struggles-to-straddle-the-south-north-divide-114461

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Watts, Professor of Information Law and Policy, La Trobe University

Data ethics is now a cause célèbre.

“Digital ethics and privacy” shot into research and advisory company Gartner’s top ten strategic technology trends for 2019. Before that it barely raised a mention.

In the past year governments, corporations and policy and technology think tanks have published data ethics guides. An entire cohort of expert data ethicists have magically materialised.

Why this sudden interest in data ethics? What is data ethics? Whose interests are the guidelines designed to serve?

To understand what is going on, it’s necessary to take a step back and look at how the information landscape has unfolded.

The picture that emerges is of an industry immune from the regulatory constraints that apply to everyone else.

The shine has gone

Over the past few years the information industry has lost its lustre.

The Snowden revelations, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, social media’s enabling of hate speech, the weaponisation of information and its role in undermining democratic institutions have all contributed.

Read more: Four ways social media platforms could stop the spread of hateful content in aftermath of terror attacks

The business model that monetises personal information to sell advertising is now seen as a faustian bargain – perhaps the sacrifice is not worth it, after all. From 2017 to 2018 there was a 6% drop in Facebook users in the United States in the lucrative 12-34 year old market.

These concerns have led to calls for regulation. But these have struggled to gain traction against the prevailing regulatory orthodoxy for the technology sector. This dates back to Al Gore’s five principles for enabling what was then quaintly called the “global information superhighway.”

Principle three was that regulatory policy would “create a flexible regulatory framework that can keep pace with rapid technological and market changes”. This was code for no regulation, or self-regulation. In Australia it was known as “light touch” regulation.

Big tech acted with regulatory impunity, largely freed from the mundane concerns of the “old” economy such as consumer protection or product liability or competition law or, in particular, information privacy.

Circling closer

Europe never completely adopted this laissez-faire approach. Information privacy has always been high on its agenda, culminating in the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This provides individuals in the European Union with the most comprehensive data protection rights in the world. The rights have extraterritorial reach, involve regulatory oversight, and employ civil fines of eye-watering magnitude. Other jurisdictions are beginning to follow suit.

In parallel, regulators from other disciplines are beginning to circle. Anti-trust regulators are looking afresh at information monopolies and big tech’s use of market power to restrict competition.

In Australia, the ACCC has called for a new regulatory authority to monitor and investigate the effect of algorithms on ranking news and journalistic content.

Read more: The law is closing in on Facebook and the ‘digital gangsters’

The UK Select Committee on Communications report on Regulating in a Digital World has recommended a new Digital Authority to oversee the “fragmented” regulation of the digital environment around ten regulatory principles, noting that “[s]elf-regulation by online platforms is clearly failing”. Human rights regulators are examining the role of algorithms in creating and entrenching discrimination.

Data means money

Big tech does not want to be regulated. It does not want its unlimited ability to harvest personal information to be restricted or for GDPR-type protections to become the global norm. Personal information is the raw material for the algorithms that enable it to monetise our attention.

For an industry that prides itself on being “disruptive”, big tech’s greatest anxiety is to forestall the tightening regulatory environment to avoid being disrupted itself. Data ethics is one of the means it has developed to fight regulation. It does so by appropriating the virtues associated with ethics but by emptying them of content or consequence.

Take Google’s principles for AI. (AI is artificial intelligence). These are:

• be socially beneficial
• avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias
• be built and tested for safety
• be accountable to people
• incorporate privacy design principles
• uphold high standards of scientific excellence
• be made available for uses that accord with these principles.

These “principles” are strikingly similar to the feel-good homilies published on Instagram that urge us to “be good to each other” or not to “let the sun go down on our anger”, and are about as useful.

Really? Screen shot captured March 28 2019

Put to the test

Let’s test one of Google’s principles, “be accountable to people”.

There are several layers of ambiguity here. Does it mean that Google’s AI algorithms should be accountable to “people” in general, Google’s “people”, or someone else’s “people” such as an independent regulator?

If the latter, will Google supply the algorithm for analysis, correct any errors, and pay compensation for any harm caused?

If Google’s AI algorithms mistakenly conclude I am a terrorist and then pass this information on to national security agencies who use the information to arrest me, hold me incommunicado and interrogate me, will Google be accountable for its negligence or for contributing to my false imprisonment? How will it be accountable? If I am unhappy with Google’s version of accountability, to whom do I appeal for justice?

Read more: Digital platforms. Why the ACCC’s proposals for Google and Facebook matter big time

Useful ethics involves accountability

Ethics is concerned with the moral principles that affect how individuals make decisions and how they lead their lives.

Ethics have been studied and debated for aeons. Within western traditions, ethics are traced back to Socrates. They include philosophical positions such as deontological (duty-based) ethics, consequentialism, utilitarianism and existentialism, to name but a few. Unsurprisingly, none of these produce the same answers to questions about what an individual must do in any particular circumstances.

Read more: Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media

“Applied ethics” aims to bring the principles of ethics to bear on real-life situations. There are numerous examples.

Public sector ethics are governed by law. There are consequences for those who breach them, including disciplinary measures, termination of employment and sometimes criminal penalties. To become a lawyer, I had to provide evidence to a court that I am a “fit and proper person”. To continue to practice, I’m required to comply with detailed requirements set out in the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules. If I breach them, there are consequences.

The features of applied ethics are that they are specific, there are feedback loops, guidance is available, they are embedded in organisational and professional culture, there is proper oversight, there are consequences when they are breached and there are independent enforcement mechanisms and real remedies. They are part of a regulatory apparatus and not just “feel good” statements.

Feelgood, high-level data ethics principles are not fit for the purpose of regulating big tech. Applied ethics may have a role to play but because they are occupation or discipline specific they cannot be relied on to do all, or even most of, the heavy lifting.

The harms linked to big tech can only be addressed by proper regulation.

– ref. How big tech designs its own rules of ethics to avoid scrutiny and accountability – http://theconversation.com/how-big-tech-designs-its-own-rules-of-ethics-to-avoid-scrutiny-and-accountability-113457

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ivan Diaz-Rainey, Associate Professor of Finance & Director, Climate and Energy Finance Group, University of Otago

The greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, from burping and urinating livestock, account for about half of New Zealand’s total emissions. These agricultural emissions have been the elephant in the room of New Zealand climate policy for some time.

A report released by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) this week suggests New Zealand should treat biological emissions differently from carbon dioxide emissions. It also says afforestation is a risky approach to combating climate change if planting trees is used to offset carbon emissions.

The report threatens to turn environmental policy and its principal policy tool, the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), on its head.

Read more: A new approach to emissions trading in a post-Paris climate

Emissions trading in New Zealand

New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme, established by Helen Clark’s Labour administration in 2008, was meant to be a bold first in the world. It was going to cover all greenhouse-gases and all sectors and include forestry as an emissions sink. Critically, it was to include agriculture and the related biological emissions.

But the election of John Key’s National administration in 2009, with their rural electorate, meant agriculture never entered the scheme and was therefore “given a free ride” in the decade or so since. To put this “free ride” into context, the rest of the economy could buy cheap, and in some cases dubious, international carbon units for the bulk of that period.

After international trading was stopped, they could buy relatively cheap domestic forestry units. In truth, it was never much of a free ride for agriculture since no one was working particularly hard to mitigate anyhow.

The PCE report challenges the scheme’s architecture. It makes a number of recommendations. First, it suggests that biological emission should be treated differently to carbon dioxide emissions, with a zero target on carbon dioxide and a much lower but unspecified target for biological emissions.

The second recommendation is to no longer allow forestry sinks to be used to offset carbon dioxide emission, but to continue using them to offset biological emission.

This shifts the burden of mitigation away from biological emissions in agriculture towards carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and transport.

The PCE’s recommendations

The report provides an alternative vision to the “all gasses and all sectors” flexibility envisioned for the original NZ ETS. It differentiates between carbon dioxide and biological emissions since carbon dioxide is a long-lived greenhouse gas, but biological emissions include the long-lived nitrous oxide and the shorter-lived but potent methane.

The recommendation that afforestation sinks should no longer be used to offset carbon dioxide emissions represent a radical departure. It is likely to be opposed by foresters and those not wanting to create too much uncertainty in the NZ ETS. These are fair points that must be balanced against the logic behind the recommendation.

Using afforestation to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions is risky because forests may burn down (especially in a warming world) and release the carbon again. Commercial plantation forests only hold the carbon until the next harvesting cycle, and ultimately the land available for tree planting is limited and may crowd out other land uses.

Using afforestation to tackle carbon dioxide reductions also means we do not work hard enough to decarbonise the economy in more fundamental ways, including switching to electric vehicles, building houses for passive solar heating and making process heat renewable.

The search for cross-party consensus

Overall, the report signals a fundamentally different approach to climate policy from that envisioned for the NZ ETS over a decade ago. Differentiating carbon and biological emissions is sensible both from a science and a political expediency perspective.

The latter is particularly important if we are to have a political consensus behind the proposed Zero Carbon Act. Ultimately, the opposition National party will not back anything that unduly affects its agricultural electorate. Reducing reliance on carbon sinks also seems sensible as it pushes the cost of mitigation into the future, imposing it on future generations.

Read more: A fresh start for climate change mitigation in New Zealand

Does this mean a free ride for agriculture once more? Probably not, but the devil will be in the detail. What the reduction targets for biological emissions should be is not clear. The report cites a range of between 22% to 48% by 2050 as potentially feasible with investment in research and development.

The degree to which afforestation can be used to offset agricultural emissions also needs to be thought about. Unlimited forestry offsets could lead to landscapes that are either planted in trees or relatively intensive dairy farming, with little else in between. This is undesirable as it could lead to changes in biological diversity and water quality and ultimately damage New Zealand’s green and clean brand.

Clearly, there needs to be strong incentives to reduce biological emissions beyond the offset option that push towards more sustainable forms of farming. There is a strong case to limit offsets for agriculture as well, but this might depress the forestry sector.

Finally, to remove the carbon offset option from the market immediately or in the next few years would be unfair to foresters and companies that have been planning to use offsets based on the current architecture. A transition period would be needed to lessen the regulatory shock.

– ref. NZ’s environmental watchdog challenges climate policy on farm emissions and forestry offsets – http://theconversation.com/nzs-environmental-watchdog-challenges-climate-policy-on-farm-emissions-and-forestry-offsets-114281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amelia Thorpe, Associate Professor, UNSW

The federal Labor Party announced this week that, if elected, it will restore funding to Environmental Defenders Offices (EDOs) across Australia, in a package worth $14 million over four years.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek explained:

These organisations ensure that ordinary Australians have proper access to the law. We know that big corporations have deep pockets and they’re able to employ expensive legal teams but ordinary Australians – farmers, indigenous communities, ordinary citizens – should have just the same access to the law as anybody with the most expensive lawyers in the country.

What are EDOs?

The first EDO was established in New South Wales in 1985, following the passage of a suite of environmental laws in the late 1970s covering heritage protection, environmental planning approvals, and establishing the Land and Environment Court.

With growing public interest in planning and development, including the celebrated Green Bans movement, those laws introduced new requirements for environmental impact assessment, heritage protection and public participation. They also gave everyone the right to take legal action by bringing environmental matters to court.

Even the best legislation is of little value, however, if people don’t have the means to make use of it. That is where the EDO comes in.

In 1981, shortly after the opening of the new Land and Environment Court, a group of lawyers began working to establish an organisation to empower the community to make use of these new laws to protect the environment. After four years of planning and fundraising, the NSW EDO opened with a staff of one: solicitor Judith Preston.

The idea spread. EDOs were set up in Victoria and Queensland in the early 1990s, and eventually established in all eight states and territories, with an additional office in North Queensland. The various EDOs have always remained separate, each managed by an independent board, although since 1996 they have shared advice and support through a national network.

Punching above their weight

Despite their shoestring budgets, EDO lawyers have proved effective, developing impressive programs of litigation and legal education. With grants from groups such as the Myer Foundation and, later, recurrent funding from state and federal governments, EDOs were a well established part of the Australian legal landscape by the early 2000s.

NSW, Queensland and Victoria were particularly effective in securing funding, each boasting dozens of staff at their peak in the mid-2000s. Thanks to large grants from the NSW Public Purpose Fund and the MacArthur Foundation, the NSW EDO’s staff included not just lawyers but also environmental scientists, an Indigenous solicitor working specifically on Indigenous matters, and a team working from a new regional office in Lismore.

Despite salaries well below market rates, EDO lawyers have consistently punched above their weight. Landmark wins have included defending the WA tourist town of Margaret River against coal mining, and helping the Goolarabooloo community challenge approvals for a liquefied natural gas hub at James Price Point, north of Broome. In 2015 the NSW EDO successfully overturned the approval of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland, although the federal government later reapproved it.

Read more: Carmichael mine jumps another legal hurdle, but litigants are making headway

With success, particularly against Adani, came criticism. After almost 20 years of bipartisan support, the Abbott government abruptly cut funding to EDOs in 2013 amid allegations of activist “lawfare”. Coalition governments in several states followed suit, prompting staff cuts, restructures, and an increase in fundraising efforts among the EDO network. EDO Victoria became Environmental Justice Australia, the Lismore office closed, and EDOs generally reduced the scale and scope of their work.

While EDOs are best known for their litigation – running high-profile cases on issues such as climate change, conservation and alleged water theft in the Murray-Darling Basin – their work is much broader than this. All EDOs provide free legal education and advice, both via telephone and through community workshops and seminars, many in rural and remote areas. They publish plain-language explanations of a complex range of state and federal environmental laws, a vital resource used by government departments and universities as well as members of the public. EDOs also undertake law reform work, making submissions to parliamentary inquiries and giving expert evidence.

Read more: Around the world, environmental laws are under attack in all sorts of ways

This work remains vital. As in the 1980s, laws are only as effective as the people who enforce them. As the Productivity Commission explained in its inquiry into access to justice (see page 711 here), “The rationales for government support for environmental matters are well recognised.”

Legal education, outreach, advice and, occasionally, public interest litigation, are essential for environmental justice and should be funded accordingly.

– ref. Labor pledges $14m funding boost to Environmental Defenders Offices – what do these services do? – http://theconversation.com/labor-pledges-14m-funding-boost-to-environmental-defenders-offices-what-do-these-services-do-114360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Woollard, Head of Theatre and Performance, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, University of Tasmania

Review: The Mares, Tasmanian Theatre Company and Ten Days on the Island

The Mares, a new work by playwright Kate Mulvany, was commissioned by the Tasmanian Theatre Company as a vehicle for some of Tasmania’s leading female performers. The work draws on multiple Greek myths to concoct a contemporary mythological feminist play.

The success of this complex and ambitious work owes a lot to Mulvany’s knowledge of the actor’s craft, and director Leticia Cáceres’ ability to create simple theatrical magic. Each of the performers plays at least three roles, often needing no more than a lighting change and a flick of hat or belt to complete rapid transformations.

The Mares flips between an ancient world and the present day practice of racehorse breeding. The first world depicts an island of warrior women, under the leadership of Queen Hippolyta (Jane Longhurst), who are defending their island from Heracles and his cousin, Alexander the Great. As a result of ongoing war between the male and female societies, Hippolyta’s army has been depleted.

Her loyal band of warriors, Thalestris (Jane Johnson), Penthesilea (Melissa King) and Antiope (Ben Winspear) perform ritual remembrances of their departed sisters, either killed by men or “missing in action”. The list of Greek names chanted by Hippolyta and the warrior women is a theatrical version of feminist activist group Destroy the Joint’s list of Australian women who have died as a result of male violence since 2012.

In the contiguous narrative of the Trainer (Sara Cooper) and her Mare (Jane Longhurst), the Trainer explains to a student observer (Winspear), that the Mare must be kept awake under bright lights to stimulate her reproductive system and advance the breeding season.

Jane Longhurst evokes the Mare with skill, with her faraway gaze, distracted swinging head and heavy back and legs. It’s a powerful evocation of equine movement, which suggests that the Mare exists in two worlds at once – in a brightly lit modern dressage arena, and as companion to the mythological female warriors defending their island from the violent incursions of Heracles’ army.

Sara Cooper as Trainer, Jane Longhurst as The Mare and Ben Winspear as Observer. Amy Brown

But not all is well in Mulvany’s idealised ancient world of feminist sisterhood. Thalestris (Johnson) has fallen in love with Alexander the Great. When the warrior women make their way to a nearby islet for their annual breeding ritual with Greek men, Thalestris slips away to continue her enthusiastic love-making with Alexander (Longhurst).

Meanwhile, the virgin Antiope (Winspear), who is attending the breeding ritual for the first time chooses Theseus (Johnson) as her mating partner. Their awkward, teenage encounter allows for some humour and tenderness, a counterpoint to the high-minded tone of much of the text.

Odd wrinkles of comedy do appear in the fabric of the work. These may have been deliberately placed to break the attentive membrane between performers and audience, or perhaps were the result of off-kilter rhythms on opening night. However, the cast handles the swift shifts between mythological and contemporary worlds with flair.

Jane Johnson as Thalestris, Jane Longhurst as Hippolyta and Ben Winspear as Antiope in The Mares. Amy Brown

Nicholas Higgins’ lighting design flips between bright overhead fluorescence and a golden glow from a bank of lights on the side wall. The rocky rear wall of Hobart’s Peacock Theatre, the foot of an old quarry, is utilised by Cáceres and designer Jill Munro to great effect, as both Johnson and Winspear scramble up its face, vividly evoking Hippolyta’s island realm.

Jessica Dunn’s score provides textured sonic underpinning for the two worlds, as well as ritual song and music for the warrior women.

Mulvany’s text winds up to a violent and inevitable conclusion, as her idealised community of powerful women warriors is subjugated by Heracles and his army. In a final exchange between Hippolyta and Heracles (played in this scene by Cooper), the mythological world now tips into a very recognisable sneering misogyny of the present day. The conquering hero is full of contempt for the defeated Queen, because she “no longer bleeds”.

In the powerful final moments, Mulvany fuses the two worlds of the play. The Trainer cannot allow her Mare to mate with a violent stallion, and turns her back on the lucrative business of breeding champion racehorses. The beaten and violated Thalestris, alone on the island with her baby boy, meets the Trainer’s abandoned yet still proud Mare.

The play’s conclusion leaves us wondering about whether women and men can escape their calcified gender roles, and whether violence against women will ever cease.

The Mares bristles with energetic epic storytelling. It is an outstanding example of how skilled artistic collaborations, courageous commitment to big ideas, and support from state funding bodies can result in exciting new Australian theatre. Although made on the island, The Mares could have many more seasons, and should be seen by audiences in a wider world.

The Mares is playing at the Peacock Theatre in Hobart until March 30.

– ref. Kate Mulvany’s The Mares bristles with energetic feminist storytelling – http://theconversation.com/kate-mulvanys-the-mares-bristles-with-energetic-feminist-storytelling-114191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Dean’s Chair Professor, Massey University

The terrorist attack in Christchurch was an expression of racist hatred that is being disseminated systematically across the globe by some media, think tanks and grassroots groups.

To actively challenge and dismantle racism, we need to create communication platforms for people who experience it. At the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), we have developed an activist-in-residence programme as a framework for moving voices from the margins to the centre.

This month, Māori activist Tame Iti completed his residency.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

Global network of racist Islamophobia

The Christchurch terror attack is a manifestation of Islamophobia, cultivated by images, disinformation and false narratives that are anchored in the portrayal of a Muslim threat to civilisations, especially western civilisations.

An entire industry has built up to manufacture and amplify hate. It is funded by a small network of foundations, political interests and private donors. They profit from the circulation of hate and propel Islamophobia for political and economic gains.

Hate generates ratings. It captures viewers, justifies neocolonial policies and spawns an entire industry of hate products such as video games and music videos. Individual acts of racist violence have to be seen within this wider context.

Manufacturing a threat

The attack is part of a global network of racist terror that is often legitimised by the structures of the state. We need to examine the close relationship between donors and political parties and grassroots right-wing groups that circulate hatred toward Muslims.

Media images are rife with racist narratives of the Muslim threat, often juxtaposed with narratives of threats posed by migrants and refugees.

The alleged perpetrator of the Christchurch attack referred to US President Donald Trump as an inspiration for the fight to protect white supremacy. This offers an insight into the global reach of the Islamophobia industry. In several speeches on his campaign trail, Trump amplified the trope of Sharia law, stating that Muslims would have to denounce their commitment to Sharia before being granted immigration visas to the US.

Read more: Explainer: what is ‘sharia law’? And does it fit with Western law?

Similarly, politicians of various right-wing parties across western democracies have routinely circulated the image of the Muslim migrant threatening western civilisation. In the US, groups such as ACT for America, led by Brigette Gabriel with over 750,000 members, manufacture the threat of the Muslim “other” to organise communities around hatred of Islam. The group positions itself as a national security organisation, drawing up accounts of unwed Muslim migrant and refugee men who threaten white purity and exaggerating links between the influx of Muslim refugees and the threat of rape. Similarly, the image of the Muslim terrorist is often deployed as a heuristic for cultivating the fear of Muslims.

The effects of hatred

The effects of racism are documented in a substantive body of research. A study comparing reliance on media versus personal contact for information about Muslims found that media spread stereotypes, negative emotions and support for harmful policies. The opposite was found for those who relied on personal contact to learn about Muslims.

The study also observed that perceptions of Muslims as aggressive were associated with support for public policies harming Muslims, including military action in Muslim countries and restricting civil liberties of Muslims. Similar studies have observed that white Americans who rely on media as the primary source of information about African Americans – as opposed to personal contact – are more likely to express stereotypical beliefs and hold prejudicial attitudes.

In our own ethnographic work with African Americans in Gary, Indiana, we have documented the effects of racist attitudes and behaviours on the well-being of communities of colour. Racist discourse not only creates continued stress for people of colour, but has a direct impact through threats of violence. The colonial context of New Zealand is embedded in racist ideology that has an impact on the health and well-being of Māori.

Images of the Muslim “other” help sell entertainment programmes and video games, political campaigns cultivating the narrative of “white genocide” and weapons and new technologies sold by the arms industry.

Transforming Islamophobia through voice

Our research suggests that giving voice to people who experience racism forms the basis for a transformation of racist and colonialist structures. A commitment to challenging the industry of hatred targeting Muslims requires regulation and democratic processes. Everyday forms of normalised Islamophobia need to be challenged as much as extremist articulations of “white genocide”.

Acknowledging racism is the first step toward countering hate. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern responded to the attacks by saying “this is not us”. But we can only have a conversation about racism if we acknowledge the white privilege that enables and upholds it.

We need to create opportunities for face-to-face interactions with Muslims in societies that often normalise racism. This means listening to voices that express the uncomfortable experiences of racism.

Recognising the links between racism toward Muslims, immigrants and indigenous peoples is the first step toward dismantling it and beginning a process of decolonising anti-racist interventions.

– ref. How to challenge racism by listening to those who experience it – http://theconversation.com/how-to-challenge-racism-by-listening-to-those-who-experience-it-113909

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

In the wake of the far-right terrorist atrocity in Christchurch on March 15, there has been much condemnation of independent senator Fraser Anning’s anti-Muslim comments. Anning won just 19 personal votes below the line, so how was he fairly elected?

In the Senate, voters can either vote “above the line” or “below the line”. Above the line votes will go to the party’s candidates in the order they are placed on the ballot paper. Below the line votes are personal votes for a candidate.

At normal federal elections, six senators per state are elected, and a quota is one-seventh of the vote, or 14.3%. As the 2016 election was a “double dissolution”, where all senators were up for election, 12 senators per state were elected, and the quota was reduced to one-thirteenth of the vote, or 7.7%.

Electoral reforms were implemented at the 2016 election. Voters were asked to number at least six boxes above the line, though a “1” only vote would still be accepted. The effect was that voters would direct their own preferences once their most preferred party was excluded from the count. Previously, parties controlled their voters’ preferences, and still do in Victoria and WA, leading to bizarre results.

Read more: Victorian upper house greatly distorted by group voting tickets; federal Labor still dominant in Newspoll

Voting below the line was also made easier. Voters were asked to number at least 12 boxes, though only six numbers were required for a formal vote. Previously, every box below the line needed to be numbered.

In the Senate system, any candidate who has a quota is immediately elected, and their surplus is distributed. Major parties elect multiple senators by this method, as almost all of the top candidate’s surplus goes to the second candidate, and so on.

When there are no more surpluses to distribute, candidates are excluded from the count starting with the candidate with the smallest number of votes, and their preferences distributed. During this process, candidates that reach quota are elected, and their surpluses distributed.

With the current Senate system’s semi-optional preferential voting, there will often be two or more candidates short of a quota with all preferences finished. In this case, the candidates further ahead are elected.

How this applies to Anning

The whole One Nation ticket had over 250,000 votes (9.2% or 1.19 quotas) in the Queensland Senate. Over 229,000 of these votes were above the line ticket votes, and virtually all the rest were personal votes for lead candidate Pauline Hanson.

Hanson was immediately elected, and her surplus was passed on to One Nation’s second candidate, Malcolm Roberts, who had just 77 below the line votes. In the race for the last seat, the Liberal Democrats started the preference phase of the count with 0.37 quotas, and Roberts (0.19 quotas) was also behind Nick Xenophon Team (0.27 quotas), Family First (0.25 quotas), Katter’s Australian Party (0.23 quotas) and Glenn Lazarus Team (0.22 quotas).

With nine candidates left, two of whom were certain to be elected (Labor’s Chris Ketter and the LNP’s Barry O’Sullivan), Roberts already had 0.45 quotas, thanks to voter-directed preferences from Australian Liberty Alliance (0.14 quotas) and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (0.14 quotas). At this point, Roberts was tied for the lead with Family First from the seven contenders for the last seat, and ahead of everyone else.

With assistance from Glenn Lazarus Team and Katter’s Australian Party preferences, Roberts defeated Family First for the last seat by 0.78 quotas to 0.69.

Read more: Final Senate results: 30 Coalition, 26 Labor, 9 Greens, 4 One Nation, 3 NXT, 4 Others

When Roberts was disqualified by the High Court in October 2017 over Section 44 issues, he was effectively replaced in the count by Fraser Anning, One Nation’s third candidate. That is how Anning won his seat despite earning just 19 personal below the line votes.

Although the new Senate system makes it easier to vote below the line, above the line votes were still over 90% of all formal Senate votes in all jurisdictions except Tasmania and the ACT at the 2016 election, according to analyst Kevin Bonham. Only one candidate was elected against the party ordering of candidates on personal below the line votes: Labor’s Lisa Singh in Tasmania.

Read more: Tasmanian Senate result: 5 Labor, 4 Liberals, 2 Greens, 1 Lambie

Anning’s 19 personal votes and Roberts’ 77 are far fewer than those received by any other winning candidate in Queensland. The other 11 winners (five LNP, four Labor, one Green and Pauline Hanson) all received at least 1,000 personal votes. Prior to the election, there was no interest in any One Nation candidate other than Hanson.

Can the major parties prevent the election of extreme candidates?

In Queensland 2016, the major parties were not responsible for Roberts’ election. Both Labor’s fourth candidate, Ketter, and the LNP’s fifth candidate, O’Sullivan, started the preference phase of the count well short of a quota. O’Sullivan eventually made quota, but Ketter was elected with 0.97 quotas. O’Sullivan’s tiny surplus assisted Family First rather than Roberts.

In general, the total vote for the major parties has been declining in the past two decades, and as a result, their influence on who wins has been reduced. The combined share for the two major parties in the Queensland 2016 Senate was just 61.7%. By contrast, the last time One Nation was strong, gaining 10.0% of the Queensland Senate vote in 2001, the total major party vote was 75.1%.

In the lower house, Labor will put One Nation behind the Coalition on its how to vote cards, but there has been some infighting within the Coalition over whether to return this favour.

On March 28, Scott Morrison announced that the Liberals would preference Labor ahead of One Nation in all seats; this applies only to the Liberals, not the Nationals, and it is not clear what the Queensland LNP will do. There had been pressure on the Liberals following revelations that One Nation solicited donations from the US National Rifle Association.

Read more: View from The Hill: James Ashby rocks a few boats, including his own

One Nation won one seat at the 2017 Queensland election because the LNP preferenced it above Labor, so putting One Nation below Labor will assist Labor in any seats where One Nation is ahead of the Liberals.

In the Senate, neither major party is likely to put the other major party in its top six preferences for above the line voters. It is likely that, as far as vote recommendations go, both major parties will treat the other major party the same as One Nation in the Senate.

Even if the major parties placed the other major party in the top six preferences on their how to vote material, the follow the card rate was low in 2016. According to Bonham, about 30% of Coalition voters in the mainland states followed the card, 14% of Labor voters and 10% of Greens voters. No other party had a follow the card rate above 10%.

Coalition wins majority at NSW election

The ABC has called all 93 lower house seats for the March 23 New South Wales election. The Coalition won 48 of the 93 seats (down six since the 2015 election), Labor won 36 seats (up two), the Greens three (steady), the Shooters three (up three) and independents three (up one). The Coalition will have a three-seat majority.

Seat changes are compared with the 2015 election results, and do not include Coalition losses in the Wagga Wagga and Orange byelections. If measured against the pre-election parliament, the Coalition lost four seats.

Brexit delayed until at least April 12

On March 21, a European leaders’ summit was held. Leaders of the 27 EU nations, not including the UK, agreed to delay the date of Brexit until April 12 (originally March 29). If UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal passes the House of Commons, Brexit would be delayed until May 22 to allow necessary legislation to pass.

European parliament elections will be held from May 23-26. If the UK were to participate in these elections, a longer extension could be given, but the UK must inform the European Commission of its intent to participate by April 12, hence the new deadline.

I wrote for The Poll Bludger about Brexit on March 22. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow has ruled that May’s deal cannot be brought back to the House, but there is a workaround – if May had the votes. May’s deal was defeated by 149 votes on March 12, after a record 230-vote loss on January 15.

– ref. How Fraser Anning was elected to the Senate – and what the major parties can do to keep extremists out – http://theconversation.com/how-fraser-anning-was-elected-to-the-senate-and-what-the-major-parties-can-do-to-keep-extremists-out-114011

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate O’Brien, Associate professor, The University of Queensland

Still in 2019 women and men grapple with how best to balance work and other responsibilities in and out of the home.

Women bare the brunt of household labor, take career hits if they become mothers, and are poorly represented in the upper levels of professional careers. But the careers of men also suffer if they take time out from paid work.

Read more: We can we reduce gender inequality in housework – here’s how

Why do these issues still persist? It may be at least partly from a failure to recognise the full picture of equality.

A new paper gives eight different ways to view gender equality. Each is important but incomplete when viewed on its own in the real world, and the list is not exhaustive. These different aspects of equality need to be considered in tackling both gender inequality and work-home conflict.

My colleagues and I looked at this topic in the context of careers in science, but the findings are applicable across many industries, including medicine, law, engineering and education.

A two-minute wrap of the complexities of solving inequality in science.

Eight facets of inequality

Consider each of the following aspects of equality:

• gender pay parity
  – success is equal pay for men and women in comparable roles
• gender-balanced leadership
  – success is when the proportion of female leaders matches the proportion of junior women
• gender balance across disciplines
  – success is 50% women in all disciplines, including those historically viewed as male
• gender neutral assessment of individual performance
  – success is objective assessment of performance
• equal workforce participation by men and women
  – success is when women account for 50% of the workforce
• domestic labour shared equally by men and women
  – success is when women and men spend equal time on childcare and household labour
• motherhood does not affect career
  – success is when careers are unaffected by parenthood, for both genders
• career does not affect motherhood
  – success is when parenting choices are unaffected by career, for both genders.

Let’s look at what happens when we view workplace equality with an overemphasis on one or only a few of these aspects.

Mother of all conflicts

Work-home conflict is both a symptom and a cause of gender inequality, and highlighting the issue can reinforce stereotypes about women as carers. The assumption of “negative spillover” (that family responsibilities impair work performance and vice versa, rather than being mutually enhancing) could well discourage employers from recruiting and promoting primary carers.

Downplaying the importance of work-home conflict is not the solution, however, because it implicitly devalues caring work. The devaluation of caring underpins many aspects of gender inequality, including the pay gap.

Economic analysis trumpets the productivity gains from increasing female workforce participation, but often fails to account for the economic value of unpaid labour currently done by women, a large part of which is care-giving.

Men are called to play a larger role in childcare to promote gender equality, but they are penalised more heavily than women when they take up flexible work arrangements, especially in societies where gender roles are firmly entrenched.

Read more: What if we’ve had gender the wrong way around? What if, for workplace parity, we focused on men?

What would success look like?

So is the issue that women do more low-value caring work, both at home and at work? Or is the problem that caring work is perceived as less valuable because it’s done by women?

This conundrum exposes one of the biggest challenges for workplace gender equality: defining and measuring success. Inequalities between men and women are widespread, well-documented and routinely condemned, and yet it’s not clear how equality is best defined or measured. Each of our eight indicators is valid, but none is sufficient, and our list does not capture all aspects of equality.

For example, gender balance in the workplace is the goal of many equality initiatives. It is particularly important to increase the number of women in traditionally male jobs, and to provide role models and opportunities for women to meet their potential. Since male-dominated sectors attract better pay, this approach also addresses some aspects of the gender pay gap.

But efforts to attract women into traditionally masculine jobs (such as the Science in Australia Gender Equity Initiative) are not matched by equivalent efforts to attract men into feminised sectors (such as nursing and childcare). This imbalance reinforces the perception that men’s work is more important than women’s work. It also fails to address a major cause of the gender pay gap: low pay in industries dominated by women.

Read more: Why women still earn a lot less than men

Further, having more women around does not automatically create gender equality. Paradoxically, research suggests female retention and progression may actually be higher in scientific disciplines where there are fewer women.

Thus increasing the number of women in traditionally male areas is important for equality, but is only one piece of the puzzle. Workplace gender equality also depends on access to leadership roles, pay equality, workforce participation, social norms, flexible work arrangements, dealing with sexual harassment, explicit and unconscious bias, access to affordable high-quality childcare and more.

Read more: If we’re serious about supporting working families, here are three policies we need to enact now

Keeping track

Measuring progress is essential for holding leaders to account and evaluating whether equality initiatives actually work.

Equality metrics need to be used with care, however, because each only captures one dimension of success. For example, increasing the number of women in leadership roles is paramount for gender equality.

Working part-time or taking time off to care for children will almost inevitably slow career progression. Therefore women employees might be pressured to follow the “ideal worker” model to help an organisation achieve their female leadership targets. This model presumes that workers (particularly professionals) devote themselves completely to their work, and have the resources, support and desire to outsource family demands such as caring for young children or elderly relatives. Thus a narrow focus on leadership for women could inadvertently perpetuate the “ideal worker” assumption, which penalises both men and women for flexible work.

Around the world, governments, workplaces, families and individuals are working hard to tackle workplace gender inequality, but no single initiative can deliver on all dimensions of equality.

As we move forwards, it’s important to specify what aspects of equality are the focus of any given action, so that it’s clear what else needs to be done. Focusing too narrowly on any one indicator can have perverse outcomes, undermining other aspects of equality.

Co-authors of this research with Kate O’Brien are Milena Holmgren, Terrance Fitzsimmons, Margaret Crane, Paul Maxwell and Brian Head.

– ref. Why we still struggle with work-home conflict in women and men – http://theconversation.com/why-we-still-struggle-with-work-home-conflict-in-women-and-men-112698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney

NSW Labor leader Michael Daley’s “young Asians with PhDs taking our jobs” blunder cost him dearly in the recent NSW state election. His defeat also offered a taste of the crucial role the Chinese social networking platform WeChat could play in the forthcoming federal election.

After Daley’s comments were publicised, Liberal candidate and Chinese-Australian Scott Yung reportedly published articles on WeChat accusing Daley of being a “racist”. Yung says this helped him secure an 8.4% swing in the primary vote in the seat of Kogarah held by Labor candidate Chris Minns.

It’s likely WeChat also played a role played a role in Labor’s disastrous loss in the 2016 federal election, when the Liberal Party successfully harnessed the platform in the key marginal seat of Chisholm in Victoria.

Focusing more attention on the platform is a smart strategy for politicians. The 2016 Census counted approximately 1.2 million people of Chinese ancestry in Australia. Around 510,000 of these voters were born in China, and 597,000 speak Mandarin in the home. A large majority of these Mandarin speakers prefer WeChat as their social media platform.

Read more: How Australia’s Mandarin speakers get their news

Mainstream politicians are getting on board

Scott Morrrison’s WeChat account. Screengrab

Mainstream Australian politicians have long used social platforms like Twitter and Facebook to engage voters, but their use of WeChat is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison opened his official WeChat account in early February in anticipation of the forthcoming federal election. But he wasn’t the first Australian prime minister to open a WeChat account. Kevin Rudd claimed that honour nearly six years ago.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten had already taken to WeChat by May 2017, while Chris Bowen was the first federal Labor politician to own a subscription account. In October 2017, he became the first politician from either side of politics to use WeChat Live to engage and interact in real-time with the Chinese community.

Aiming to up the ante with Morrison, Shorten participated in a WeChat Live interaction session for the first time this week, answering questions from 500 WeChat users.

Major parties at federal and state levels, as well as an increasing number of politicians at federal, state and local levels – including Clare O’Neil, Craig Laundy, David Coleman, Sam Crosby, Chris Minns, Jodi McKay, and many others – have now opened WeChat accounts.

Bill Shorten took questions from 500 WeChat users on WeChat Live yesterday. Screengrab

Read more: Thinking of taking up WeChat? Here’s what you need to know

Candidates of Chinese heritage are using WeChat

Liberal candidate Scott Yung’s WeChat account. Screengrab

WeChat is not only a valuable way for mainstream politicians to reach out to Chinese Australians. It has also provided a crucial campaign platform for political candidates of Chinese heritage to garner support from Chinese communities.

Hong Kong migrant Gladys Liu (Liberal) and Taiwan migrant Jennifer Yang (Labor) are using WeChat to campaign for the federal seat of Chisholm in Victoria.

And Scott Yung, Liberal candidate for Kogarah in the recent NSW state election and possibly also for the federal election, has become such a celebrity on Chinese social media that he caught the attention of China’s CCTV.

These, and other political players, publicise their credentials and policies by posting material on “Moments” – a WeChat feature that allows users to reach everyone within their “circle of friends”. They also maintain an active, and often interactive, presence in the myriad WeChat groups – self-formed interest groups with as many as 500 Chinese-speaking members.

Polticians need a specific WeChat strategy

Whether WeChat will help federal candidates win Chinese votes depends on the extent to which candidates are prepared to invest in WeChat in the next few weeks, and how effective their communication strategies are.

So far, neither major party seems to have a coordinated strategic communication plan for WeChat. Users are yet to see a clearly articulated comparison between their respective policies on key issues. Nor is there evidence that politicians of any persuasion have figured out how to translate policies into information that Chinese voters can relate to or identify with.

The first problem seems to lie in attempts to use WeChat as a top-down, sender-to-receiver, one-to-all instrument of communication. In most cases, their accounts are maintained by Chinese-speaking proxies, which does little more than increase their visibility.

Sam Crosby on WeChat. Screengrab

Language barriers aside, a knowledge of how WeChat works as a culture-specific platform is also crucial. A Sydney Today story provides an example of how Sam Crosby, Labor’s candidate for the seat of Reid, managed to beat his erstwhile opponent Craig Laundy in a “popularity contest” on WeChat.

The story’s attention-grabbing, even sensational, headline uses words such as “secret conversation” and “exposed” to describe a routine WeChat interaction between Crosby and an individual WeChat user to attract readers.

Whether politicians should stoop to such sensationalism to gain popularity is debatable. Nonetheless, politicians need to adopt the communication styles, vernacular and personas that are preferred by Chinese-speaking WeChat users.

With Scott Yung poised for Liberal preselection in Reid, and even more active and better known than Crosby on WeChat, this is a seat to watch closely leading up to election.

Read more: How Tencent became the world’s most valuable social network firm – with barely any advertising

Treating the Chinese community as ‘us’ not ‘them’

One politician who has made effective use of Chinese-language media is Labor’s Jodi McKay, who retained the seat of Strathfield in the recent NSW election.

In addition to having a WeChat account, McKay has frequently engaged with Chinese communities through interviews with opinion leaders as well as various Chinese-language media. The content of these interviews, written in Chinese and relayed through WeChat, was widely circulated among Chinese-speaking WeChat users living in Strathfield and beyond.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing politicians is the temptation to use WeChat for political point-scoring. This is most clearly demonstrated in the uproar among Chinese-speaking communities following National Senator Barry O’Sullivan’s comment during a Senate Estimates hearing last month:

There’s a bigger chance of us having a biosecurity breach from some bloody old Chinaman that brings in his favourite sausage down the front of his undies.

Scott Morrison took to WeChat to distance himself from O’Sullivan’s remark. But some Chinese commentators noticed that Morrison’s statement was made only on WeChat, in Chinese.

There seems to be a view among Chinese communities that, in this instance, WeChat was used mainly to pacify a particular community, while also minimising the risk of alienating mainstream voters. This should alert politicians of all stripes that targeting Chinese-speaking communities via WeChat could backfire, if these communities feel that they are being treated as “them” rather than “us”.

It’s clear that WeChat is now a must for politicians, and the contest on this battleground will only intensify as the federal election looms. How best to harness WeChat to win key votes without being shafted by opponents is a trickier question.

– ref. Chinese social media platform WeChat could be a key battleground in the federal election – http://theconversation.com/chinese-social-media-platform-wechat-could-be-a-key-battleground-in-the-federal-election-113925

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Ravenswood, Associate professor, Auckland University of Technology

For decades, the people caring for the most vulnerable members of society have been paid as little as possible. Care and support workers in residential aged care, home and community care and disability support are predominantly women, and they were seen to be undertaking “women’s work” and paid barely above the minimum wage.

In 2017, after a long and groundbreaking legal battle, care worker Kristine Bartlett won a NZ$2 billion pay equity claim for 55,000 low-paid workers.

Our research, published today, explores the experiences of those directly impacted by the change. It shows that while the increased wages have made a big difference to care and support workers’ lives, there have been unintended negative consequences as well.

Read more: Disability workers are facing longer days with less pay

Women’s work, low value

Care workers have been historically disadvantaged because “women’s work” is seen as low skilled and of low value. But in 2012, Kristine Bartlett took a legal stand.

After three court cases and two appeals, the courts found that historic gender discrimination had suppressed wages for care and support work. To avoid further legal action, and to ring-fence potentially huge costs, the New Zealand government intervened, working with unions and provider representatives to devise a settlement that would address gender discrimination.

Discussions continued for several years until the government fast-tracked new funding arrangements and legislation in 2017. The deal provides for substantial increases in wages for care and support workers rising as a worker completes further qualifications. However, it also prevents further legal action from current care and support workers. The new bottom rate in 2017 was $19 per hour, compared to the minimum wage of $15.75 per hour at the time.

The expectation is that care and support workers are now financially better off. But our research shows mixed results.

Is pay inequity fixed now?

We spoke to nearly 70 people nationwide – managers and care and support workers in residential aged care, home and community care, and disability support – to find out what the pay equity settlement meant for them and their workplace. Looking below the surface we found some benefited, while others continue to struggle.

1) Pay equity was long overdue

Everyone thought it was high time care workers received higher wages There was no doubt that managers and care and support workers thought the work had been underpaid for a long time. Several care and support workers said the pay equity settlement, with its increased wages and training opportunities, made them feel their work is valued now and seen as a skilled career. They love their job, and can afford to keep doing it now.

2) Better lives for care and support workers

Many we spoke to could now afford things that had caused great concern to them previously, including visits to the doctor or dentist, or new glasses. Some were now able to save up to travel to visit relatives they had not seen for years. Some care and support workers who had worked long hours to earn enough to make ends meet could now reduce their hours and have time for their own family, sports or community activities.

3) Changes not fully funded

Most of the care and support workers and managers we spoke to felt they had not been consulted leading up to the final funding policy. It was a government decision, decided at a high level, including both workers’ and managers’ representatives, who were expert negotiators but did not necessarily understand the frontline reality of the work and workplace. That itself is symptomatic of the gender discrimination that has undervalued care and support work for years.

One manager asked why these workers weren’t paid more before. We weren’t privy to the budgets of organisations, but ultimately they are funded by the government – and the government was responsible for the low wages. Managers (in organisations of all sizes) reported that in reality the changes they were required to implement were not fully funded. This left them making difficult decisions about how to keep their businesses operating, providing quality care and managing their staff.

4) Discrimination not over yet

Not all managers have a good grasp of the idea that the increased wages are to address historically unfair low wages, rather than changing the nature of the work. Some of these managers thought that since care and support workers are now paid more, they should do more work. Others have increased care workers’ responsibilities – often delegating care tasks from registered nurses to care and support workers.

Some care and support workers have ended up worse off than before the pay equity settlement. Perhaps in order to make limited funding last the mile, their managers have reduced their hours and made it harder for these workers to maintain the guaranteed hours they are legally entitled to. Some of the care and support workers in home and community care, who were paid the top hourly rate because of their qualifications or experience, had their hours almost halved after the settlement. Because of this some are now struggling to pay mortgages and in some cases have resorted to finding second jobs to make ends meet.

– ref. Historic pay equity settlement for NZ care workers delivers mixed results – http://theconversation.com/historic-pay-equity-settlement-for-nz-care-workers-delivers-mixed-results-114283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Stratemeyer, Associate Lecturer, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne

A man sits in a doctor’s office after months of his wife’s increasingly desperate pleas for him to seek professional help for his constant coughing. In the end, she was the one who booked his appointment and even drove him there.

Another man is meeting with his manager, anticipating derision and mockery when he mentions he needs to reduce his workload to accommodate the birth of his first child.

A third man has a violent encounter outside a pub, fuelled by binge drinking and machismo. He cops a blow to the head and crumples, hitting his head against the pavement.

These aren’t just stereotypes of men. They are the types of experiences and outcomes that reliably differ between men and women. Men are 32% less likely to visit a health professional than women. Men are also less likely to seek therapy for psychological complaints, such as feeling down or anxious.

Men also experience higher rates of suicide and motor accidents, are more likely to drink excessively and smoke, and are more prone to serious health conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, and vascular disease.

Similarly, men are more likely to both perpetrate and experience violence, and to adopt beliefs and behaviours that increase the risk of violence.

Read more: How can we make families safer? Get men to change their violent behaviour

It is no surprise that men die four years earlier, on average, than women. A woman can expect to live to just over 84, while a man can expect to live to just over 80.

In a bid to improve men’s health and well-being, the American Psychological Association (APA) recently released guidelines for psychologists when working with boys and men.

These guidelines complement the APA’s 2007 guidelines for working with girls and women. Both guidelines share commonalities, such as focusing on gender-appropriate therapeutic practices and education.

The APA is acknowledging that gender issues are relevant to everyone, not just women, and that the experiences of men may differ to those of women.

The guidelines aim to dismantle the ideas that make it difficult for boys and men to express emotions and seek help. Annie Spratt

But despite the positive intentions of the guidelines, their release was met by backlash and unfounded criticisms in some parts of the media.

What do the guidelines actually say?

The guidelines aim to challenge some aspects of traditional masculinity that might cause problems in men’s lives.

Traditional masculinity encompasses a set of norms, ideas and beliefs about what it means to be a man. Such beliefs include identifying men as self-reliant, emotionally reticent, focused on work over family, and oversexed.

Read more: More than half of Aussie men report experiencing sexual difficulties

When these beliefs are taken to an extreme level, they can result in poor outcomes for men, such as being dissatisfied in romantic relationships, having mental health problems, and engaging in more risky behaviours.

To illustrate the impact of these traditional ideas of masculinity on men’s health and well-being, let’s look at three of the ten APA recommendations in detail.

First, the guidelines urge psychologists to address the high rates of problems like violence, substance abuse, and suicide, which are more commonly experienced by men.

The guidelines highlight the link between beliefs about traditional forms of masculinity and the encouragement of aggressive behaviour in boys by family, peers and the media. As a result, men are more likely to display violent behaviours and to be victims of violence.

The guidelines also highlight the negative links between male childhood abuse and victimisation, and later aggressive behaviour, suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse.

Recognising these patterns offers an opportunity for therapists to engage in gender-appropriate conversations and tailor behavioural change to the problems that plague men.

Read more: Clementine Ford reveals the fragility behind ‘toxic masculinity’ in Boys Will Be Boys

Second, the guidelines highlight the importance of encouraging men’s positive involvement in families.

Despite increasing numbers of dual-income households, there is still strong social pressure for men to be the providers and breadwinners rather than taking on nurturing and caring roles. This expectation can come at the expense of men’s relationships with their partners, children and extended family.

Encouraging men’s positive involvement with their families has been shown to improve health and well-being outcomes for men, their children and their partners.

It may have spillover benefits in making work practices more progressive, with better balance between paid work and time spent with loved ones.

Everyone benefits when men take on more nurturing roles. Caroline Hernandez

Third, the guidelines highlight the need for boys and men to more willingly seek help and health care.

Men are more likely than women to die from diseases such as colorectal cancer, which can be prevented with the right health care.

In terms of mental health, men’s reluctance to express emotions and seek help through therapy may underlie the high rates of self-harm and suicide.

Traditional masculinity also encourages risky and competitive actions in men, resulting in unintentional injuries being the leading cause of death in men under 45.

According to the guidelines, we need to shift beliefs around self-reliance so men feel more comfortable looking after themselves and seeking professional help and services when needed.

Taken together, the APA guidelines have the potential to improve the lives of men. The guidelines squarely focus on the disparities in outcomes between men and women, and provide clear suggestions on improving men’s well-being through strategies like strengthening family engagement and changing attitudes towards embracing healthy behaviours.

Many non-profit organisations and advocacy groups are already taking on this challenge to encourage healthy masculinity among boys and men. Our Watch, Australia’s national foundation to prevent violence against women and their children, for instance, provides resources and articles for young people on masculinity and what it means to be a man through their campaign, The Line.

By recognising that gender also affects men, we can move towards improving the way that clinicians, practitioners and society support boys and men.

This article is a co-publication with Pursuit.

– ref. How challenging masculine stereotypes is good for men – http://theconversation.com/how-challenging-masculine-stereotypes-is-good-for-men-114300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Letnic, Professor, Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW

A federal parliamentary inquiry into stopping cane toads’ relentless march across Australia has proposed creating “waterless barriers” in the semi-arid land between Western Australia’s Kimberley and Pilbara regions.

Because cane toads need regular access to water to survive, the plan is to fence off man-made watering points like dams and tanks, creating the equivalent of a firebreak the toads cannot cross.

My colleagues and I have been working with the federal inquiry to create this proposal. Here are the facts.

What is a waterless barrier?

There are large areas of Australia that are naturally dry. Except after big rains, there’s very little above-ground water. When people began farming sheep and cattle out in the western ranges, they created artificial water points with the help of dams, tanks and bores.

These water points are refuges for cane toads during droughts and act as stepping-stones when it rains, because the toads can move safely from point to point. This is how they are colonising large areas of Australia.

But if the toads can’t reach open water they cannot live through a dry season. The proposal aims to restrict the toads’ access to the water, but still let the cattle drink.

The poisonous cane toads are considered non-native pests in Australia. Shutterstock

What kind of fences are we talking about?

Many water sources are actually already inaccessible to cane toads. Steel or plastic tanks filled from pipelines or underground dams cannot be reached. Troughs give a very limited supply.

The main problem comes from turkeynest dams (these are classic dams: pools of water in the ground with a mounded earth edge). My colleagues and I did research years ago that found a simple 60cm fence is enough to keep cane toads out.

Read more: We’ve cracked the cane toad genome, and that could help put the brakes on its invasion

This doesn’t mean fencing dams is easy: the stations where this would be most helpful are very remote and have plenty of water sources, so fencing (and maintaining) them all presents a logistical hurdle. However many stations are increasingly replacing dams with tanks, which serve the same purpose (and lose far less water to leakage and evaporation).

Cane toads need moisture to survive. Shutterstock

Another promising development is the number of farmers installing “cut-off switches” for the pumps that fill dams. This is a move away from the older system of turning on a pump and leaving it on until the generator ran out of fuel – perhaps days later. This meant considerable overflow, and created ideal conditions for cane toads. Tanks with solar panels and a cut-off switch that senses when a trough is full can save farms water, power and money, as well as stranding cane toads.

Read more: Yes, you heard right: more cane toads really can help us fight cane toads

Would it affect native animals?

It’s true some of these dams are now part of the landscape – they’ve been there for a long time. On the other hand, we’re talking about areas that did not originally have much above-ground water before people showed up, and most animals native to the area don’t really need the water (of course, they will drink it if it’s there).

The other part of the equation is the presence of cane toads seriously threatens native wildlife. Cane toads are poisonous and kill native predators, with devastating effects to the environment.

Herd cows drinking water from a Northern Territory dam. Shutterstock

How big does the barrier need to be, and won’t the rains let the toads cross anyway?

The cattle stations in northern Australia are huge – often 5,000ha. On this scale, just a handful of stations could make a huge difference.

Research suggests a barrier of 50km across could stop toads in their tracks.

The distance a toad can travel in a day varies highly with the environment and weather. In a hot, humid environment a toad might be able to travel roughly 20-30km during a wet season; during cold or dry weather they’re stuck where they are.

Therefore even after heavy rains there won’t be enough water in standing puddles or river beds to let the toads cross the waterless barrier. The puddles would dry out, leaving the toads stranded and without access to dams they would quickly die.

Read more: The economics of ‘cash for cane toads’ – a textbook example of perverse incentives

Why should we do it?

Cane toads haven’t been found in this part of Australia, but we believe they will be soon. By creating waterless barriers we can cut them off.

Excitingly, this strategy also has potential to be used in other parts of the country to push cane toads back, reclaiming invaded areas.

Most of the pests Australia has really gone to war against affect agriculture. Cane toads, on the other hand, are an environmental pest: they wreak havoc on native fauna, but have comparatively little impact on cash crops.

Eradication of environmental pests receives comparatively little resources. This proposal would be both a win against a devastating invader, and also a symbol of how much we care for our natural environment, and how important it is to protect it.

– ref. What is a waterless barrier and how could it slow cane toads? – http://theconversation.com/what-is-a-waterless-barrier-and-how-could-it-slow-cane-toads-114363

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia E. Morris, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Education, Edith Cowan University

Early career teachers are more likely to stay on if they practise what they teach in their own time. We found that practitioner-teachers – such as art teachers practising art and biology teachers observing nature – see themselves as better quality teachers when measured against key principles of learning and teaching. These principles include providing clear assessment objectives and tasks to students or developing activities related to students’ lives.

Those who identified as better quality teachers had a higher intention to remain in teaching than those who did not. In the case of art teachers, we found participating in an art exhibition had a significant effect for teachers at the important five-year mark. Those who had produced even one artwork per year as part of the exhibition had higher intentions to stay in teaching compared to those who did not.

While induction and mentoring programs have supported teachers well in their first year or two, our study shows that encouraging them to practise their discipline could be a solution to retaining quality teachers long-term.

Read more: Teachers are leaving the profession – here’s how to make them stay

Why teachers leave

Australia loses about 30% of teachers in their first five years of teaching. Research consistently addresses why teachers are leaving, including burnout, workload pressures, physical isolation (especially for those teaching in rural areas), and feeling underpaid and undervalued.

One solution to supporting early career teachers (those in their first five years of teaching) has been to introduce induction and mentoring programs. But these programs are often removed after one to two years, which means teachers don’t have long-term support.

Our research explores if “practising what you preach” makes secondary school teachers stay in the game. Aspiring secondary school teachers generally enter the profession because they are passionate about their main subject area, be it art, sport or science. Our hypothesis is that actively engaging teachers with their subject discipline is one solution to the teacher exodus.

Why explore subject discipline?

While teachers might begin passionate about their subject discipline when they enter education, the issues of burnout, stress and workload can cause them to focus more on their teaching and less on their subject practice. As they hone their skills as an expert teacher, they might forget they are also an expert in their subject.

Read more: Teachers who feel appreciated are less likely to leave the profession

Maintaining relevant, up-to-date content knowledge is essential if teachers want to help students be active and informed citizens, ready for life post-school.

Our research follows secondary teachers once they graduate from university. Each year they are invited to participate in a subject-discipline intervention hosted at the university they attended.

We started the research in 2010 with visual arts teachers graduating from the courses we teach. The study has recently extended to include science teachers, and the exhibition has become a cross-disciplinary exposition of both art and science that has (and continues) to follow over 130 teachers.

A biology teacher could be taking photos of his garden as part of his professional practice. from shutterstock.com

Teachers who participate don’t need to be professionals in their field as well, for example, an English teacher with a long list of published novels. It’s more important for teachers to do what they love with achievable targets. For example, the art teacher who continues to develop skills by making art on weekends for fun or the science teacher who takes photographs of their garden for their biology class.

We receive over 100 responses to surveys from teachers every year which broadly show that teachers who practise what they teach see themselves as better quality teachers. One teacher said:

Everything I do in my practice affects my teaching because it provides me with more insight […] and what I have to offer, as a teacher.

Those who believe they are better quality teachers had a higher intention of staying on in the profession. Another teacher told us:

This makes me want to stay. It gives me a much better perspective on who I am as a teacher.

It’s fair to predict a similar approach for other subject disciplines such as sport and maths might elicit similar results.

Establishing a community

The reasons our teachers return to the exposition each year can be applied to any aspiring discipline-practice community.

• it’s achievable: for time-poor teachers, contributing to one project or output in their subject area is more achievable than maintaining a career in their subject area as well as in teaching
• it keeps them connected: all participants have a common thread in that they attended the same university. A point of connection increases participants’ sense of belonging to the group. In our study, teachers were both connected by a shared interest in their subject as well as maintaining a connection to their university peers.
• it has clear deadlines: submitting work for an event means teachers work towards the exposition rather than prioritising other tasks.

One remarkable thing about our intervention is its simplicity: a discipline-based intervention like this doesn’t need to occur in a university setting to be successful. It could be equally effective in schools or with small clusters of teachers.

It has also surprised us that these types of interventions aren’t more commonplace; supporting teachers to grow their subject skills while teaching seems obvious to developing better quality teachers.

– ref. Helping teachers ‘practise what they teach’ could help them stay teaching for longer – http://theconversation.com/helping-teachers-practise-what-they-teach-could-help-them-stay-teaching-for-longer-114078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karine Dupré, Associate Professor in Architecture, Griffith University

What does it take to be a happy and healthy city? In any city, myriad factors go into the mix – and of course we are not dealing with just one kind of city. But, due to the world history of colonisation, models are still too often European-centric. In particular, we need to adjust how we think about cities in the tropics.

For a start, almost half of the world’s population lives in the tropics and more than half of the world’s children. This makes it the fastest-growing region on the planet. The pace of economic and technological development is fastest in the tropics, too.

Read more: How the world is turning tropical before our eyes

The tropics are also home to the greatest diversity of architectural styles and urban places. Sandwiched between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, nearly 50 countries display singular tropical urbanism, which reflects first settlements, colonial history and the more friendly contact with other cultures. Nowhere else on Earth can we see such a mingling of vernacular, pre-Columbian, Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance and Modernist buildings and urban plans.

Designing for the tropics differs considerably from designing for temperate areas. The climate can be very hot and humid, causing extreme discomfort for city residents.

Read more: Requiem or renewal? This is how a tropical city like Darwin can regain its cool

Of course, they too aspire to the good health and well-being that have been promoted as being at the heart of urbanisation from the 18th-century hygienists onwards. Sustainable development entered the picture in the 20th century – the 1987 Brundtland Report coined the term.

Paul James took sustainable development beyond the original social-economic-environmental triad with the circles of sustainability. This draws attention to other significant elements, including culture (e.g. creativity, belief and meaning, etc.) and politics (e.g. organisation and governance, dialogue and reconciliation, etc.).

Paul James developed the concept of circles of sustainability that incorporate elements of politics and culture (this one represents Melbourne in 2011). SaintGeorgeIV/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

How do cities achieve all these goals?

With the prominence of good health and well-being in the New Urban Agenda and UN Sustainable Development Goals, cities are paying more attention to well-being and happiness indexes and reports. So how exactly can urban design and experience design – the design of how the visitor will live, appreciate and remember the place – enhance well-being and happiness in the world’s growing cities?

The Healthy Happy Cities in Tropical Environment (HHCTE) network was founded in 2018 to investigate these questions and report on best practices, as well as providing for critical exchange through workshops and conferences. Recently, at the inaugural two-day HHCTE workshop, urban researchers, professionals, civil society actors and decision-makers came together to identify challenges in achieving happy healthy cities in tropical environments and to propose solutions. Several significant findings emerged.

Firstly, and very fortunately, we can learn from many examples of best practice in urban design all around the world. These range from free public open-air swimming pools (e.g. in Cairns and Brisbane, both in Australia) to Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and Mumbai Marine Drive in India.

Gardens by the Bay in Singapore is an outstanding example of urban design for a tropical city. Pasi Virtamo, Author provided

Read more: Making a global agenda work locally for healthy, sustainable living in tropical Australia

However, when prompted to identify and describe the processes and principles that delivered such successful urban designs, HHCTE participants articulated very few of these clearly. This can partly explain why we so often face problems with transferring models or principles (besides the change of context, local features, etc.). It demonstrates how the understanding of experiences might be difficult to access and express. This sort of communication needs to be developed.

Second, we all come with bias. Our cultural background might determine, for example, whether it is important to have free or consumption-based urban experiences. For instance, for some the quality of shading and sitting areas through the journey from one place to another might be plenty, while for others the opening of a bright new shopping mall might symbolise a great urban experience.

Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast, one of Queensland’s largest shopping centres, puts the focus on providing an urban experience. Karine Dupre, Author provided

The idea that urban design should cater for multicultural diversity is not new, but the emphasis on money-based urban experiences raises questions about the role and meaningfulness of public spaces. Is this a shift from our traditional paradigm?

Third, when asked “what makes you feel happy and healthy in the city?”, all groups of participants, without exception, mentioned ease of walking, bike paths, greenery, public transport and safety. These urban infrastructures really do matter for everyone.

Read more: Cities can grow without wrecking reefs and oceans. Here’s how

But then, surprisingly, all participants seemed to don their urban designer hats and forgot to express their more personal feelings. The aim seemed to be to use a neutral vocabulary, as well as trying to reach a professional identity and consensus. Yet, when back home, will everyone not dream about something else – such as colours, music, smells, urban atmosphere and so forth – for the city they live in?

What next?

The main aim of participation workshops is to give voice to a variety of stakeholders and engage in bottom-up actions that lead to improvements. While we need to be aware of the pitfalls of participation, such as unbalanced processes, it remains a great tool to take the pulse of one society.

On the specific topic of healthy happy cities, the workshop again demonstrated that citizens have good ideas and are ready to be engaged. Yet it also showed that the broad city scale of the discussion influenced the proposals. Perhaps a discussion at the level of the house or street scales would have been closer to the heart of each participant.

We also learned it takes many little steps and aspirations to become a happy healthy city, all of which are feasible. What, then, are we waiting for?

– ref. Healthy, happy and tropical – world’s fastest-growing cities demand our attention – http://theconversation.com/healthy-happy-and-tropical-worlds-fastest-growing-cities-demand-our-attention-112069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Colledge, Senior Lecturer & Head of School of Philosophy, Australian Catholic University

Incredible as it may seem, the end of March marks 20 years since the release of the first film in the Matrix franchise directed by The Wachowski siblings. This “cyberpunk” sci-fi movie was a box office hit with its dystopian futuristic vision, distinctive fashion sense, and slick, innovative action sequences. But it was also a catalyst for popular discussion around some very big philosophical themes.

The film centres on a computer hacker, “Neo” (played by Keanu Reeves), who learns that his whole life has been lived within an elaborate, simulated reality. This computer-generated dream world was designed by an artificial intelligence of human creation, which industrially farms human bodies for energy while distracting them via a relatively pleasant parallel reality called the “matrix”.

‘Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?’

This scenario recalls one of western philosophy’s most enduring thought experiments. In a famous passage from Plato’s Republic (ca 380 BCE), Plato has us imagine the human condition as being like a group of prisoners who have lived their lives underground and shackled, so that their experience of reality is limited to shadows projected onto their cave wall.

Read more: The great movie scenes: The Matrix and bullet-time

A freed prisoner, Plato suggests, would be startled to discover the truth about reality, and blinded by the brilliance of the sun. Should he return below, his companions would have no means to understand what he has experienced and surely think him mad. Leaving the captivity of ignorance is difficult.

In The Matrix, Neo is freed by rebel leader Morpheus (ironically, the name of the Greek God of sleep) by being awoken to real life for the first time. But unlike Plato’s prisoner, who discovers the “higher” reality beyond his cave, the world that awaits Neo is both desolate and horrifying.

Our fallible senses

The Matrix recalls several philosophical thought experiments. Warner Bros

The Matrix also trades on more recent philosophical questions famously posed by the 17th century Frenchman René Descartes, concerning our inability to be certain about the evidence of our senses, and our capacity to know anything definite about the world as it really is.

Descartes even noted the difficulty of being certain that human experience is not the result of either a dream or a malevolent systematic deception.

The latter scenario was updated in philosopher Hilary Putnam’s 1981 “brain in a vat” thought experiment, which imagines a scientist electrically manipulating a brain to induce sensations of normal life.

Read more: How do you know you’re not living in a computer simulation?

So ultimately, then, what is reality? The late 20th century French thinker Jean Baudrillard, whose book appears briefly (with an ironic touch) early in the film, wrote extensively on the ways in which contemporary mass society generates sophisticated imitations of reality that become so realistic they are mistaken for reality itself (like mistaking the map for the landscape, or the portrait for the person).

Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving in The Matrix. Warner Bros

Of course, there is no need for a matrix-like AI conspiracy to achieve this. We see it now, perhaps even more intensely than 20 years ago, in the dominance of “reality TV” and curated identities of social media.

In some respects, the film appears to be reaching for a view close to that of the 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who insisted that our senses do not simply copy the world; rather, reality conforms to the terms of our perception. We only ever experience the world as it is available through the partial spectrum of our senses.

The ethics of freedom

Ultimately, the Matrix trilogy proclaims that free individuals can change the future. But how should that freedom be exercised?

This dilemma is unfolded in the first film’s increasingly notorious red/blue pill scene, which raises the ethics of belief. Neo’s choice is to embrace either the “really real” (as exemplified by the red pill he is offered by Morpheus) or to return to his more normal “reality” (via the blue one).

This quandary was captured in a 1974 thought experiment by American philosopher, Robert Nozick. Given an “experience machine” capable of providing whatever experiences we desire, in a way indistinguishable from “real” ones, should we stubbornly prefer the truth of reality? Or can we feel free to reside within comfortable illusion?

Read more: Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing

In The Matrix we see the rebels resolutely rejecting the comforts of the matrix, preferring grim reality. But we also see the rebel traitor Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) desperately seeking reinsertion into pleasant simulated reality. “Ignorance is bliss,” he affirms.

The film’s chief villain, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), darkly notes that unlike other mammals, (western) humanity insatiably consumes natural resources. The matrix, he suggests, is a “cure” for this human “contagion”.

We have heard much about the potential perils of AI, but perhaps there is something in Agent Smith’s accusation. In raising this tension, The Matrix still strikes a nerve – especially after 20 further years of insatiable consumption.

– ref. The Matrix 20 years on: how a sci-fi film tackled big philosophical questions – http://theconversation.com/the-matrix-20-years-on-how-a-sci-fi-film-tackled-big-philosophical-questions-114007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shelley Marshall, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, expert in corporate accountability, RMIT University

The idea of the living wage is back on the political agenda. In the United States the Democrats are proposing to double the federal minimum wage. In Australia the federal Labor Party has promised to deliver a living wage.

“A living wage should make sure people earn enough to make ends meet, and be informed by what it costs to live in Australia today – to pay for housing, for food, for utilities, to pay for a basic phone and data plan,” Opposition leader Bill Shorten said this week.

The principle of the living wage is the subject of my book published in January. To write the book I spent five years researching working conditions in countries including Australia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, India and Thailand.

What my research underlines is that there are limits to thinking about a living wage for Australian workers without also making the principle global.

A ‘reasonable’ standard

Australia first embraced the living wage more than a century ago in what is arguably the nation’s most famous labour law case. The Harvester Judgement of 1907 defined a living wage as “fair and reasonable” payment sufficient for an unskilled worker to support a family in reasonable comfort.

In deciding exactly how much income was needed to assure this, Australia’s Conciliation and Arbitration Court examined 11 households to determine the cost of typical living expenses. These included lighting, clothes, boots, furniture, insurance, union membership, sickness, books, newspapers, alcohol and tobacco.

Read more: Explainer: what exactly is a living wage?

Twelve years later the principle was enshrined in international labour law, when the International Labour Organisation was established in 1919. It defined a living wage as one “adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood in their time and country”.

A century on, Australia’s industrial relations system has long abandoned the central premise of the living wage. Around the world being paid enough to live on remains elusive. We are all intimately connected to many of these workers. They have assembled the phones we handle. They have sewn our clothes.

Bangladeshi garment worker Marium lost her left arm when an eight-storey building in Dhaka collapsed in April 2012. A reported 1,134 workers died in the tragedy. Abir Abdullah/EPA

Women in Bangladesh who make clothes for brands such as Big W, Kmart, Target and Cotton On earn as little as 51 cents an hour, according to an Oxfam report published last month.

The report is based on interview with 470 garment workers in Bangladesh and Vietnam. Three-quarters of the Vietnam workers and all of the Bangladeshi workers earned less than a living wage (as calculated by the Global Living Wage Coalition).

Read more: It would cost you 20 cents more per T-shirt to pay an Indian worker a living wage

Fear of capital flight

It is very hard for workers to mobilise for higher wages in many countries around the world. In January 5,000 garment workers in Bangladesh were sacked after going on strike for higher wages. During protests, police shot dead one worker. More than 50 others were injured. Striking garment workers in Cambodia have also been shot dead by police during protests.

Cambodian garment workers assist a woman injured during a protest in Phnom Penh on January 3, 2014. Mak Remissa/EPA

Especially in price-sensitive industries, globalisation exerts strong pressure on governments to keep minimum wages low, lest any increase lead to “capital flight”. This competition pits countries in a race to the bottom.

Should labour costs go up in Bangladesh, for example, its government fears garment brands moving production to, say, Ethiopia. It’s a legitimate fear; in my 15 years of research I’ve seen whole garment factories dismantled and trucked across borders to countries where the labour is cheaper.

Cooperation is the answer

The obvious solution would be for countries to cooperate and raise minimum wages collectively and incrementally (at an agreed percentage every year). This approach would help overcome “first mover risk”. Business would have less incentive to look for cheaper labour elsewhere.

For this to occur would, of course, require huge amounts of international political good will. Nation states would need to put aside the tendency to think in terms of immediate self-interest and work cooperatively for mutual benefit.

Here we face a problem with the architecture of international law in general, and labour law in particular.

Though the principle of a living wage was enshrined in the treaty that formed the International Labour Organisation, it is not codified in any of the eight fundamental international labour conventions. These cover forced labour, child labour, workplace discrimination and the right to unionise.

But even if it was, that wouldn’t necessarily make much difference. International law isn’t the same as national law. Most international treaties, conventions and agreements are not enforceable. There is no real penalty for any country that refuses to sign, nor for any signatory failing to meet its obligations. The ILO cannot enforce targets in the way needed to address a problem this big.

Emulating trade law

However, there is one area of international law that comes close to what we usually think of as law: international trade and investment law.

In addressing goals like reducing tariffs, countries faced similar coordination problems. Beginning with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which came into effect in 1948, half a dozen major multilateral trade deals were negotiated before the agreement in 1994 to establish the World Trade Organisation.

The WTO has since adjudicated hundreds of disputes in which one nation has accused another of failing to meet its WTO commitments. Investors can also take states to tribunals to seek compensation for unfair behaviour. States take these tribunals very seriously.

Why not emulate this architecture of international trade law for living wages?

Concrete targets for raising wages could be set through multilateral agreements. Countries would increase wages incrementally, by a certain percent each year, in a coordinated fashion, until they reached a living wage level.

An international tribunal would hear claims against states accused of failing to raise or enforce minimum wages as agreed. National tribunals would adjudicate cases involving corporations.

Cambodian garment workers, for example, would be able to take their government to the international tribunal for failing to raise wages or enforce minimum wage laws. A state held liable to pay compensation for wage breaches could pursue factory owners or their international buyers through national tribunals. This would be an incentive for states to police their own labour laws.

Instead of having separate national conversations about living wages, now is a good time to start the conversation at a global scale.

– ref. A national living wage is on the table. Now let’s talk about a global living wage – http://theconversation.com/a-national-living-wage-is-on-the-table-now-lets-talk-about-a-global-living-wage-112300

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

After more than two decades, Jenny Macklin is in her final days as a Labor MP. Her legacies from her time as a Labor minister include parental leave and the landmark National Disability Insurance Scheme.

In this podcast she tells The Conversation a Labor government would fix “one of the worst” problems of the NDIS by abolishing the cap on the number of staff that could be employed in the agency. “There are other issues as well […] there’s problems with the pricing of services. There just hasn’t been the quick response that has been needed,” Macklin said.

She also speaks about the need to listen to and support Indigenous-led programs to close the gap, as well as implement measures to address increasing inequality in Australia.

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Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

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AAP Image/Lukas Coch

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jenny Macklin on inequality and Labor values – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-jenny-macklin-on-inequality-and-labor-values-114366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samara McPhedran, Director, Homicide Research Unit/Deputy Director, Violence Research and Prevention Program, Griffith University

Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into the US National Rifle Association (NRA) has gained international headlines, partly because of One Nation political wannabes drunkenly bragging about how important they could be if only they had the money.

None of this should come as a surprise. You would have to be living under a rock to not know that the NRA has money, lobbies with it, and uses a standard set of PR tactics. Likewise, nobody has ever accused One Nation of being sophisticated or lacking grandiose delusions.

Read more: View from The Hill: James Ashby rocks a few boats, including his own

However, in a carefully timed release to the ABC, a report commissioned by Gun Control Australia and Getup! claims gun control in Australia is being eroded because of the gun lobby.

In reality, Australia’s gun laws remain virtually the same as when each state and territory introduced them more than 20 years ago. The last major change was in 2017, when all jurisdictions agreed to ban lever-action shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than five rounds of ammunition. Hardly “watering down”.

What is really going on?

Simple: when all we hear is guns, guns, guns, it means an election is on the horizon. It is not about guns, but politics.

Over the past few years, regular as clockwork, we have seen both major parties wheel out campaigns around gun laws, aided and abetted by the Greens. This occurred most recently in New South Wales, with the Liberal-Nationals running attack ads against the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.

The campaigns involve one or more of: releasing data obtained under Freedom of Information about how many guns are legally owned; claiming gun laws are being (or have been, or will be) dangerously watered down if an opposing major party or rising minor party gains power; and making scary statements about a well-funded gun lobby (which is somehow all-powerful despite having changed little in over two decades).

The goal is to create fear, in the expectation this will translate to voting patterns. Politicians also like to have an “enemy” to rally against, to display their own virtues. At times, this tactic has worked. It is a fair bet that politicians’ reactions to One Nation’s buffoonery reflect the hope that it will work again.

Based on past voting patterns, it is likely both major parties anticipate One Nation robbing them of votes in the upcoming federal election and are looking for ways to blunt that. The mudslinging over preferences makes this clear.

If the recent New South Wales state election is anything to go by, though, voters seem to be ignoring gun campaigns and making their own decisions based on much bigger issues.

However, there is a genuine danger arising from the Al Jazeera report. Unfortunately, we can now expect that anybody who suggests that effective firearm policy takes time and careful thought – and that it might not be as simple as it looks – will be denounced as an NRA shill. This is a silencing tactic that does absolutely nothing to improve the impoverished and tribalised nature of public debate in this country.

As New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently observed, firearm policy and legislation is a complex area. In addition to the technical aspects, evidence about what does and does not work to reduce gun violence is nowhere near as clear-cut as it is sometimes made out to be. Well-intentioned measures can have unintended consequences, which we should learn from and attempt to avoid.

It is not far-right madness to say that if a policy gains appeal primarily because of the emotions surrounding it, rather than on its merits, then it might not be an effective policy. It is not dangerous extremism to suggest that sound legislation comes from careful reflection and robust debate. It is not irrational to raise concerns about the negative outcomes that can arise when reacting is turned into a virtue and thinking into a vice.

Read more: Did Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into One Nation overstep the mark?

In fact, a rational and careful approach, based on rigorous evaluation and calm, measured discussion, is the very foundation of evidence-based policy – a much-touted model of how to approach decision-making.

Political failure to adopt evidence-based policy – despite politicians paying it lip service – is the subject of much scholarly teeth-gnashing, and for good reason. Some of the most ill-fated, costly and objectionable policies we have seen in Australia in recent years – in areas including immigration, Indigenous affairs, and youth violence, to give just three examples – have come as a result of ignoring evidence-based policy. We are quick to call these out, and rightly so. Why behave differently about guns?

If we are serious about wanting thoughtful and well-considered decisions, we cannot pick and choose the issues to which we apply reflection and analysis. And if we do want to pick and choose, then we cannot complain when politicians do the same with the issues we really want them to do better on.

– ref. Guns, politics and policy: what can we learn from Al Jazeera’s undercover NRA sting? – http://theconversation.com/guns-politics-and-policy-what-can-we-learn-from-al-jazeeras-undercover-nra-sting-114291

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Collins, PhD Candidate in Pharmacy Practice, University of Sydney

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is currently looking to expand the list of medicines available “over the counter” – that is, via a pharmacist without a prescription.

If these changes get off the ground, we could soon be able to head straight to the pharmacy for a range of medications including the contraceptive pill, Viagra®, and selected treatments for nausea and migraines.

This approach may reduce the need for trips to the doctor, saving time and lowering costs both for the patient and the health care system.

It could also result in people seeking help and advice for some conditions from their pharmacist, when they may not have otherwise sought medical help.

Read more: The role of pharmacists should be overhauled, taking the heat off GPs

How are medicines regulated in Australia?

The TGA is responsible for the regulation of medicines and medical devices in Australia.

Medicines and other substances considered to be poisons are divided into “schedules” numbered from 2 to 9. The schedules determine the availability of these substances, including where they can be sold, by whom, to whom, and what labelling is required.

Medicines fall into four schedules (2, 3, 4, and 8). A higher schedule means there are more restrictions on access.

Schedule 3 items are known as pharmacist only medicines – so they’re available to the public without a prescription. The pharmacist dispenses the medicine together with any relevant advice, and when necessary, will refer the person to a doctor.

Read more: Weekly Dose: new morning after pill makes it difficult to choose which to take

Examples of Schedule 3 medications include treatments for cold sores (famciclovir), vaginal thrush (fluconazole), and the morning after pill (levonorgestrel, ulipristal). Schedule 3 also covers medicines used for potentially life-threatening situations, such as salbutamol for asthma and adrenaline (epinephrine) for anaphylaxis.

Meanwhile, Schedule 4 denotes prescription only medicines – so those that need to be prescribed by a doctor. Examples include medicines for chronic conditions such as diabetes (metformin), heart disease (perindopril), as well as a variety of antibiotics for infections, among others.

What are the proposed changes?

Different schedules can have appendices which may stipulate other conditions.

A new appendix for Schedule 3 medicines – Appendix M – opens the door for medicines currently only available with a prescription to be made accessible via a pharmacist who has specific training and expertise in the health conditions (and medicines) of interest. Essentially, this means shifting some medicines from Schedule 4 to Schedule 3.

These changes are currently under a period of public consultation, so no medicines are listed in this appendix yet.

What medicines could become available over the counter?

One of Australia’s closest neighbours offers a good example of how this appendix might work in practice.

Trained pharmacists in New Zealand have been supplying certain medicines that require a prescription in Australia over the counter for a number of years, while Australia is falling behind.

Examples include trimethoprim, an antibiotic for urinary tract infections, sildenafil (Viagra®) for erectile dysfunction, triptans for migraines, and the contraceptive pill.

The TGA regulates what medicines we can get over the counter at the pharmacy, and which ones a doctor must prescribe. From shutterstock.com

Pharmacists may be required to document the supply of these medicines, and share this information with other health care professionals, such as the patient’s GP.

Research from New Zealand and Canada shows pharmacists can successfully manage the appropriate supply of these sorts of medicines.

Read more: Weekly dose: the hard facts on Viagra

Despite common fears switching medicines to be available without a prescription may result in a rapid increase in use, this is not necessarily the case. For example, no increase in use was found when New Zealand pharmacists were allowed to supply trimethoprim without a prescription.

This additional list of medicines available without prescription may benefit consumers, and would allow pharmacists to broaden their role within the health care system.

For a variety of more serious medical concerns, though, it’s still important to see a doctor.

Expanding the role of pharmacists

Pharmacists are well-positioned to provide advice on the safe and appropriate use of medicines.

The role of pharmacists has been extended in recent years. They now provide an increased number of Schedule 3 medicines, and deliver health services such as vaccinations.

The Australian public appears to support the expanded role of pharmacists. In a 2018 survey, two thirds of respondents agreed pharmacists should be allowed to administer more vaccinations. Many said this would be more convenient than seeing a doctor.

Read more: Discount chemists are cheapening the quality of pharmacy along with the price

The new Appendix M recognises the skills and knowledge of pharmacists to be able to directly provide additional medicines to the public in a timely manner under specified circumstances.

To ensure the supply of these medicines is appropriate, and that service delivery remains consistent, the TGA has proposed pharmacists will undergo additional training for each medication to be added to Appendix M.

Public submissions on the topic are open until April 1. It’s not yet known when we can expect the first medicine to become available in this new appendix.

– ref. Making more drugs available ‘over the counter’ would be a win for the public and the health care system – http://theconversation.com/making-more-drugs-available-over-the-counter-would-be-a-win-for-the-public-and-the-health-care-system-113453

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Natusch, Honorary Research Fellow, Macquarie University

We are all familiar with the concept of “fake news”: stories that are factually incorrect, but succeed because their message fits well with the recipient’s prior beliefs.

We and our colleagues in conservation science warn that a form of this misinformation – so-called “feelgood conservation” – is threatening approaches for wild animal management that have been developed by decades of research.

The issue came to a head in February when major UK-based retailer Selfridges announced it would no longer sell “exotic” skins – those of reptile species such as crocodiles, lizards and snakes – in order to protect wild populations from over-exploitation.

But this decision is not supported by evidence.

Read more: Guns, snares and bulldozers: new map reveals hotspots for harm to wildlife

Too simplistic

Banning the use of animal skins in the fashion industry sounds straightforward and may seem commendable – wild reptiles will be left in peace, instead of being killed for the luxury leather trade.

But decades of research show that by walking away from the commercial trade in reptile skins, Selfridges may well achieve the opposite to what it intends. Curtailing commercial trade will be a disaster for some wild populations of reptiles.

How can that be true? Surely commercial harvesting is a threat to the tropical reptiles that are collected and killed for their skins?

Actually, no. You have to look past the fate of the individual animal and consider the future of the species. Commercial harvesting gives local people – often very poor people – a direct financial incentive to conserve reptile populations and the habitats upon which they depend.

If lizards, snakes and (especially) crocodiles aren’t worth money to you, why would you want to keep them around, or to protect the forests and swamps that house them?

Women raise Burmese pythons at a small farm on Hainan Island, China. Daniel Natusch, Author provided

Read more: What Australia can learn from Victoria’s shocking biodiversity record

Biggest man-eaters in the billabong

The iconic case study that supports this principle involves saltwater crocodiles in tropical Australia – the biggest, meanest man-eaters in the billabong.

Overharvested to the point of near-extinction, the giant reptiles were finally protected in the Northern Territory in 1971. The populations started to recover, but by 1979-80, when attacks on people started to occur again, the public and politicians wanted the crocodiles culled again. It’s difficult to blame them for that. Who wants a hungry croc in the pond where your children would like to swim?

Saltwater crocs are the reason many beaches are not open for swimming in northern Australia. Shutterstock

But fast-forward to now and that situation has changed completely. Saltwater crocs are back to their original abundance. Their populations bounced back. These massive reptiles are now in every river and creek – even around the city of Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory.

This spectacular conservation success story was achieved not by protecting crocs, but by making crocs a financial asset to local people.

Eggs are collected from the wild every year, landowners get paid for them, and the resulting hatchlings go to crocodile farms where they are raised, then killed to provide luxury leather items, meat and other products. Landowners have a financial interest in conserving crocodiles and their habitats because they profit from it.

Saltwater crocodile eggs collected in the Northern Territory, Australia. Daniel Natusch, Author provided

The key to the success was buy-in by the community. There are undeniable negatives in having large crocodiles as neighbours – but if those crocs can contribute to the family budget, you may want to keep them around. In Australia, it has worked.

The trade in giant pythons in Indonesia, Australia’s northern neighbour, has been examined in the same way, and the conclusion is the same. The harvest is sustainable because it provides cash to local people, in a society where cash is difficult to come by.

Read more: Elephants and economics: how to ensure we value wildlife properly

Decisions without evidence

A collector captures a yellow anaconda in Argentina. Emilio White, Author provided

So the evidence says commercial exploitation can conserve populations, not annihilate them.

Why then do companies make decisions that could imperil wild animals? Probably because they don’t know any better.

Media campaigns by animal-rights activists aim to convince kind-hearted urbanites that the best way to conserve animals is to stop people from harming them. This might work for some animals, but it fails miserably for wild reptiles.

We argue that if we want to keep wild populations of giant snakes and crocodiles around for our grandchildren to see (hopefully, at a safe distance), we need to abandon simplistic “feelgood conservation” and look towards evidence-based scientific management.

We need to move beyond “let’s not harm that beautiful animal” and get serious about looking at the hard evidence. And when it comes to giant reptiles, the answer is clear.

The ban announced by Selfridges is a disastrous move that could imperil some of the world’s most spectacular wild animals and alienate the people living with them.

– ref. Banning exotic leather in fashion hurts snakes and crocodiles in the long run – http://theconversation.com/banning-exotic-leather-in-fashion-hurts-snakes-and-crocodiles-in-the-long-run-114173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Willsteed, Lecturer, School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts, Music and Sound, Queensland University of Technology

Pick your day — dark, rainy, lamps on — let those songs fill the room, and you’ll be lost in the most beautiful fog in the world. Stop all the clocks, Scott is gone — but the voice that made that world is here forever.

-Peter Milton Walsh, The Apartments

In Sydney in the very early 90s, my buddy Roger and I wanted to start a kind of acoustic ensemble. We were in a swooning, noisy, melodic guitar band called the Plug Uglies, darlings of the inner west, but we needed something else. Our big idea? We wanted to play the songs of Scott Walker and Jimmy Webb. We wanted to have a go at those grand stories, the soaring melodies. We called our little ensemble The Drunk, The Monk and The Spunk. (Don’t ask.) My fingers still thrill at playing those wonderful chords.

Scott Walker – born Noel Scott Engel in 1943 – almost exists outside time. His voice first came to greet us in the 1960s, in the Walker Brothers. A trio of Americans, not brothers at all, who found success in England in 1965 with Make It Easy on Yourself, My Ship Is Coming In and The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore – heartfelt and emotional pop ballads, with massive orchestral arrangements, and enormous, exploding choruses, produced for Philips Records by Johnny Franz.

The group, rivalling the Stones or The Kinks in popularity, collapsed under the pressure of this instant stardom, and Scott went on to release four solo albums between 1967 and 1969 – Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and Scott 4.

Scott Walker in 1971. Starstock/Photoshot

This was the Golden Age of the songwriters. The cultural earthquake of 1968 had been followed by a wave of astounding music, and Scott Walker lies at its heart. These records shudder and swell, his sometimes obtuse lyrics adrift on poetic orchestral arrangements, mainly by Angela Morley, which define the notion of Baroque pop.

It’s quite hard to measure the influence of these four records, but it runs deep, and in the last day many have been eloquent in their praise, from Thom Yorke and Damon Albarn to David Sylvian, Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley.

David Bowie owed Walker a huge debt, partly repaid by his contribution to the making of 30 Century Man, an excellent documentary on the work of Scott Walker.

Scott 4 was a commercial failure, and Walker disappeared, back into his quiet life. The Walker Brothers re-united in the 70s, and released three albums, but they also didn’t sell and he disappeared again. But in 1981, Julian Cope from Teardrop Explodes released a compilation of Scott’s 67-71 work, Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker. This album influenced a generation of post-punk musicians, and became the momentum which led Walker into the next phase of his career.

The albums Climate of Hunter, Tilt and The Drift were released across the next two decades, as Walker created a new music, unsettling and evocative and difficult. By now he had joined the British label 4AD, the home of the beautiful outsiders, in the company of true fans like The Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. Rob Young has described elegantly in the Guardian this later period of Walker’s creative output.

Although it appeared on 1978’s Night Flights, I find Walker’s song, The Electrician, in some ways, an aural lexicon for his entire career. Unsettling, ethereal soundscapes almost cut loose from tempo or time, bookend a rich centre, with grand melodies and exploding strings, harp notes cascading into Spanish guitar flourishes, and then the death knell of the de-tuned guitar leading us back into the cavern of torture.

But the song I, and many others, return to as a touchstone is Montague Terrace (In Blue) with its floating verses, a slow, ticking clock that, true to form, erupts into a grand chorus – “But we know, don’t we, And we’ll dream, won’t we?” It became the centre of our set of acoustic covers, the cello and accordion swelling under the chorus, the drifting trumpet solo. It was The Drunk, The Monk and The Spunk’s finest moment. A recording exists somewhere.

In 2017, 4AD staged a BBC Proms event to honour the music of Scott. One of the highlights for me is Norwegian singer-songwriter Susanne Sundfør wrapping her wonderful voice around The Amorous Humphrey Plugg (from Scott 2) – it peels back the domestic façade, the woman trapped and angry, with children and home, as mired in frustration as the man is trapped in his endless thirst, the nightly pleasures of the city.

The Apartments’ Peter Milton Walsh describes this ability of Walker’s: “His lyrics were so vivid and the language was completely personal, full of night and rain and loneliness. People in a certain kind of trouble. He owned that world, just as Sinatra once did.”

And, like Sinatra, Scott Walker had a voice. His will be with me as I drift into my twilight, as timeless as memory:

Oh to die of kisses
Ecstasies and charms
Pavements of poets will write that I died
In nine angel’s arms.

-Scott Engel

– ref. Scott Walker has gone but his voice will drift with us into the twilight – http://theconversation.com/scott-walker-has-gone-but-his-voice-will-drift-with-us-into-the-twilight-114299

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Parker, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Melbourne

Smart speakers equipped with digital voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa are now the fastest-growing consumer technology since the smartphone.

Nearly 100 million were sold in 2018 alone, a threefold increase on the year before. And nowhere is this growth faster than in Australia.

Read more: Skills like ‘crap detection’ can help kids meet cybersecurity challenges head on

But we should be concerned about what these smart speakers are actually listening to. It’s more than just our voice commands to play a piece or music or turn down the lights.

We need to think carefully about where this sort of technology is heading. Very soon it won’t just be our smart speakers listening, but all manner of other devices too.

Security systems that listen for the sound of gunshots or broken glass, CCTV cameras outfitted with microphones, auditory surveillance at work, and a growing range of other devices are all cause for concern.

Rapid take up

By the end of 2018 the percentage of Australian adults with a smart speaker had risen from zero to 29% in only 18 months, according to the Australia Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report released this month. The report was joint work of tech news site and Voicebot and digital consultants FIRST.

Based on a survey of 654 Australians, the report estimates that some 5.7 million Australians now own smart speakers out of a total adult population of around 19.3 million.

The Australian user base relative to population now exceeds that of the US (26%), despite the devices being available here for less than half the time.

If the upward trend continues – Deloitte expects the market to be worth at least US$7 billion in 2019, up 63% on 2018 – smart speakers will soon be even more common.

They’re already in our homes and workplaces, hotels, hospitals and universities.

We are also getting increasingly comfortable talking to our technology, according to the consumer adoption report:

Over 43% of Australian smart speaker owners say that since acquiring the devices they are using voice assistants more frequently on smartphones.

We are no longer surprised to find we can talk to our phones, cars, televisions, watches, even our Barbie dolls, and expect a response.

What about privacy?

But the recent consumer report also says Australians worry about such speakers. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed say they had some level of concern over the privacy risks posed by smart speaker technology – 17.7% said they were “very concerned”.

The report doesn’t specify what those concerns are. Perhaps we are concerned about recordings of our conversations being emailed to colleagues without our knowledge or consent, or admitted as evidence in court.

But I believe we are much less concerned than we should be about where this industry is headed next. Smart speakers aren’t just listening to what we say. Increasingly, they are also listening to how and where we say it.

They’re listening to our vocal biometrics, to how we stutter and pause, to our tone of voice, accent and mood, to our state of wellness, to the size and shape of the room we’re sitting in, and to the ambient noises, music and TV shows on in the background. All for the purpose of extracting more and more data about who we are and what kinds of things we do.

Who’s listening?

Even more importantly, though, the rapid rise smart speakers heralds the coming era of machine listening, where we can expect all manner of networked devices to be listening to, processing and responding autonomously to our auditory environments: listening for both sound and speech, with and without our consent, virtually all the time.

Audio Analytic, one of the more prominent companies in this area, states on its website:

We are on a mission to give all machines a sense of hearing […]

This is much less far-fetched than it sounds. Audio Analytic’s flagship software, ai3TM, claims to be able to recognise “a large number of audio events and acoustic scenes”, with a view to enabling devices to understand and respond to sonic environments in their own right.

Already, this includes headphones that know when someone is talking to you and can tweak the volume accordingly; cars that autonomously adjust to the sound of horns blaring; security systems able to identify the sound of arguments brewing, windows shattering, as well as other acoustic anomalies. Systems can then either respond autonomously or notify the relevant authorities.

Another company, Shooter Detection Systems, sells technology for the autonomous detection of active shooter situations including gun shots. Its so-called Guardian System can quickly pinpoint the location of any gunshot and issue alerts.

Gun shooting technology already listening in US schools.

In a similar but even more troubling vein, AC Global Risk, reportedly claims to be able to determine potential risk level of someone with greater than 97% accuracy simply by analysing the “characteristics” of few minutes of their speaking voice.

Walmart recently patented a new employee performance metric based on algorithmic analysis of audio data (employee speech patterns, the rustling of bags, sounds from carts, footsteps and so on) gathered from microphones installed at terminals and other locations throughout its stores.

In 2017, Moreton Bay regional council in Queensland introduced always-on listening devices to 330 CCTV cameras throughout its council area, a move the mayor said was to help police fight crime.

Sound the warning

Each of these examples raises complex questions of ethics, law and policy.

The kinds of questions we have recently begun asking about all AI – about the possibilities of algorithmic overreach, bias, profiling, discrimination and surveillance – all need to be asked of smart speakers too.

Read more: Your car is more likely to be hacked by your mechanic than a terrorist

But it is also important to understand the ways in which smart speakers are connected to a much broader field of machine listening and auditory surveillance that many are rightly worried about.

Machine listening isn’t just coming, it’s already here and it demands our attention.

– ref. Smart speakers are everywhere — and they’re listening to more than you think – http://theconversation.com/smart-speakers-are-everywhere-and-theyre-listening-to-more-than-you-think-114018

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

It’s appalling, sinister and faintly ludicrous that Pauline Hanson’s right-hand man James Ashby and former Queensland MP Steve Dickson played footsie with the American gun lobby, talking up One Nation’s book, trailing their coats for gun or any other gold.

That they fell victim to an Al Jazeera “sting”, trusting a man in an Akubra whom they now call a “spy”, is stunning but sort of fitting. It was Ashby who was involved in a different kind of sting that brought down former speaker Peter Slipper.

Indeed, Ashby’s political career is a dark, rolling soap opera. Currently he’s banned from entering Parliament House over a physical altercation with a former One Nation senator.

These two political cowboys are crying foul after being duped and publicly trashed by an extraordinarily elaborate Al Jazeera plot.

They’ve called in the police and ASIO, denounced political interference from a “Middle Eastern country”, claimed they didn’t set out to seek money, let alone to weaken Australia’s gun laws. They just wanted to tap into America’s National Rifle Association about campaigning techniques.

As for those damning recorded references to $10 million, $20 million, they’d “got on the sauce” – it’s what happens when there are “three men talking together and having scotches for about three or four hours”.

They might as well not bother with the spin and excuses. Claims about “context” are lame; they damned themselves most times they opened their mouths and that was often.

The whole sordid episode, in long version, is there in pictures and audio. Ashby and Dickson grabbed the entree to the US gun advocates, and if the millions of dollars they fantasised about had materialised from somewhere they’d have grabbed them too.

Subject, no doubt, to what Hanson said – a couple of months later she voted to ban foreign donations.

Read more: Did Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into One Nation overstep the mark?

Not that the dollars were a prospect. Just as, all those years ago in the 1970s, the money the Labor party sought from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Baath party was never seen. It’s like that when you deal with dubious characters – or ones who are much too clever for you.

Ashby knew he was playing a dangerous game; as we hear him saying in the Al Jazeera documentary, “If it gets out, it’ll fucking rock the boat”. And Hanson, though invited, sensed this was a trip not to be on.

Well, boats have been rocked. Hanson’s for one. Scott Morrison’s for another. To say nothing of Ashby’s.

The extraordinary expose is a blow for the One Nation leader, days after her star recruit Mark Latham was elected to the NSW upper house. Hanson – who did not appear on Tuesday, reportedly feeling very unwell – and Ashby are joined at the hip. He’s the political figure to whom she is closest, and she’s stood by him in previous embarrassments. She should, of course, immediately send him packing.

Read more: Coalition wins a third term in NSW with few seats changing hands

How much the affair will hit the One Nation vote is a matter of conjecture. Logically, you’d expect substantially, especially coming after the New Zealand massacre. There has been much praise for the strength and value of Australia’s gun laws.

But I’m not sure logic is the best prism to use here. Hanson has a certain Teflon quality in the eyes of her supporters, who routinely have overlooked the chaos, and worse, around her shambolic party.

Many of those in One Nation heartland are protesting against perceived grievances; they may see this as a sideshow. Anyway, some potential One Nation voters would be quite in sync with the gun lobby. On Saturday in NSW, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers picked up two more seats.

The Ashby-Dickson debacle complicates Scott Morrison’s struggle in handling what were already awkward questions about his attitude to preferencing One Nation.

Since the Christchurch killings Morrison has been on the barbed wire fence when repeatedly pressed on whether the Coalition should or would put One Nation last on how-to-vote cards.

In the Coalition this is another north-south issue, like coal and climate change. Southern Liberals insist One Nation should be at the bottom of voting tickets. Cabinet Minister Kelly O’Dwyer (retiring from the Melbourne seat of Higgins) said on Tuesday, “I can’t see any reason why One Nation wouldn’t be preferenced last”.

In Queensland it’s another story. Nationals Ken O’Dowd on Monday said One Nation should be above Greens and ALP.

In general, the preference debate is encouraging the Coalition to demonise the Greens even more than usual, with some in the government painting them as being as bad as, or worse than, One Nation.

Morrison initially used his favourite look-over-there tactic, trying to fend off the questions by saying there would be no preference deal with One Nation. That didn’t wash. No one ever thought there would be a “deal” (quite apart from remembering the Liberals’ bad experience in the Western Australian election, when they did one).

The issue is where the Liberals and Nationals decide to put One Nation on their tickets, regardless of what One Nation does with its preferences.

As the preference debate has raged, some are urging Morrison to take John Howard’s “principled” position when the then prime minister said One Nation should be placed last. Talk of Howard’s “principle” overlooks that he was dragged to this position. His inclination was for a seat-by-seat approach, but this became untenable.

In the wake of the Al Jazeera revelations, Morrison on Tuesday hopped into One Nation while making a direct appeal to those inclined to vote for it.

It was “abhorrent” that its officials “basically sought to sell Australia’s gun laws to the highest bidders, to a foreign buyer,,” Morrison said.

He went on: “I’m not interested in getting One Nation’s preferences, I’m interested in getting their primary vote”. The answer to the grievances of these votes “is not One Nation, the answer is not to go to those extremes. The answer is the Liberal and National Parties”.

But that is not the answer to the preference question. And on that Morrison’s not for turning. It’s a matter for closer to the election, he says, when all the candidates can be seen. (One convenient diversionary line is: what about if there are Fraser Anning candidates?)

The signs are that come the election, the Coalition preference picture will likely be a patchwork, with One Nation being treated benignly at least in parts of Queensland. Possibly Morrison coouldn’t stop that if he wanted to; probably he doesn’t want to.

– ref. View from The Hill: James Ashby rocks a few boats, including his own – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-james-ashby-rocks-a-few-boats-including-his-own-114324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catharine Phillips, Acting Superintendent, Karnet Prison Farm, Edith Cowan University

I’ve spent many years working within the prison system, in minimum and maximum security facilities, with adults and juveniles, men and women. I often hear people say that people who commit crimes, particularly serious crimes, should be imprisoned so they can no longer hurt people.

What the public often doesn’t realise is that imprisonment itself does not prevent some people from engaging in misconduct, or from committing serious offences.

I have conducted the first study in Australia to investigate offences carried out in prison. Understanding the prevalence, incidence and type of prison offences that occur in adult prison facilities could help improve the security of prisons, and the safety of staff, prisoners and visitors.

Read more: I deliberately sent myself to prison in Iceland – they didn’t even lock the cell doors there

Offences range from disobedience to assault

I studied the offences of all prisoners imprisoned in Western Australia over a period of 12 months. That included 1959 male prisoners (2014 offences), 125 female prisoners (166 offences), 648 Aboriginal male prisoners (1029 offences), and 1311 non-Aboriginal male prisoners (372 offences).

Details of offences were sourced from official databases. The study included only those offences where prisoners were found guilty as charged.

Minor offences include:

• disobeying a rule or order
• disorderly behaviour
• swearing or the use of indecent language
• breaking or damaging property

Aggravated offences include:

• behaving in a riotous manner
• assaulting another person
• escaping or preparing to escape
• use of possession of drugs or alcohol
• refusing to submit to a drug test

The majority of prisoners see out their imprisonment without incident. Of the sample studied, 55% had no prison offences recorded across the study period. But for some, imprisonment is an opportunity to continue their offending ways. A number of those studied occasionally engaged in acts that disrupted the good order, government or security of the prison. Others routinely and consistently violated prison rules.

Younger prisoners commit more minor offences

Younger prisoners were found to commit minor offences more often than older prisoners. This finding has also been documented within community settings, where age is one of the strongest factors associated with criminal activity.

Researchers in the field of psychology suggest that the gaining of maturity from late adolescence to early adulthood plays a significant role in lowering crime rates as people age. Some researchers have speculated that younger prisoners may have a more difficult time than older prisoners in adjusting to prison life.

Others have indicated that young people may commit acts of misconduct in prison to meet a range of emotional needs. That might include getting attention, showing others that they are in charge of their situation, seeking revenge against authority or older people generally, or managing periods of boredom.

Young people need specific interventions that focus on the underlying causes of the behaviour, while taking into account their level of maturity. By understanding the reasons behind young people’s propensity to commit offences in a controlled environment, such as a prison or detention centre, specific, tailored and effective responses may be implemented to reduce such offending.

Read more: Australian governments should follow the ACT’s lead in building communities, not prisons

Race wasn’t a factor

While prisoners associated with gangs were found to commit more offences generally, they were no more likely to commit serious offences.

This might mean that gang members enlist other prisoners to carry out serious offences within prison. Such offences might involve trafficking or holding drugs on their behalf, and threatening and assaulting other prisoners as acts of reprisal or retaliation.

It may also demonstrate that management strategies employed to prevent serious offences from occurring are effective. Strategies include moving prisoners to higher security prisons, more intensive searches, and more stringent monitoring of movements, telephone calls and visits.

Aboriginality in itself was found not to be significantly related to the prevalence, incidence or type of prison offences committed, when other factors relating to offending were considered, such as prisoners’ age, offence type, security rating and number of years left to release.

Aboriginal prisoners represent 38% of the total prison population in Western Australia, and 28% of the national prisoner population. The findings are therefore generalised to other Australian prisoner populations, particularly where there is an over-representation of Aboriginal prisoners.

Imprisoning people is expensive

Prison offences have financial implications for prison systems, governments and taxpayers in terms of compensation for injured prison staff, prisoners and visitors, as well as the cost of repairing damage caused by prisoners.

Major disturbances such as the Greenough Prison riot in October 2018 reportedly cost $2.4 million. The Banksia Hill riot in 2013 reportedly cost around $1.5 million.

Prisoners who are unable to achieve parole due to their behaviour in prison can also result in costs to the taxpayer. The average cost of one prisoner in Australia’s prisons is almost $300 per day. Every extra day served is a substantial cost to society.

Read more: Prison is expensive – worth remembering when we oppose parole

Structured interaction is important

Aggravated offences are more likely to occur in areas of a prison, such as living units and in reception and recreation areas, where there isn’t a lot of structured interaction with other prisoners.

The results make clear that offending may be best managed by ensuring prisoners are offered as many opportunities as possible to engage in constructive and structured activities. That includes meaningful employment and education, and structured recreational activities during the day.

Prisoners interacting with each other, and with staff, without purpose and meaning should be reduced as much as possible. Resources should be allocated to providing meaningful employment, education and recreational activities.

While this has the added benefit of providing skills necessary for successful rehabilitation, practical interventions such as this may help to reduce the prevalence and incidence of prison offending, and the severity of such offending. Subsequently, the good order and security of prisons may be improved, as may the safety of staff, prisoners and visitors, while associated costs may be reduced.

– ref. The inside story on crime within prison – http://theconversation.com/the-inside-story-on-crime-within-prison-114075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Medlyn, Professor, Western Sydney University

Most citizen science initiatives ask people to record living things, like frogs, wombats, or feral animals. But dead things can also be hugely informative for science. We have just launched a new citizen science project, The Dead Tree Detective, which aims to record where and when trees have died in Australia.

The current drought across southeastern Australia has been so severe that native trees have begun to perish, and we need people to send in photographs tracking what has died. These records will be valuable for scientists trying to understand and predict how native forests and woodlands are vulnerable to climate extremes.

Read more: Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years

Understanding where trees are most at risk is becoming urgent because it’s increasingly clear that climate change is already underway. On average, temperatures across Australia have risen more than 1℃ since 1910, and winter rainfall in southern Australia has declined. Further increases in temperature, and increasing time spent in drought, are forecast.

How our native plants cope with these changes will affect (among other things) biodiversity, water supplies, fire risk, and carbon storage. Unfortunately, how climate change is likely to affect Australian vegetation is a complex problem, and one we don’t yet have a good handle on.

Phil Spark of Woolomin, NSW submitted this photo to The Dead Tree Detective project online. Author provided

Climate niche

All plants have a preferred average climate where they grow best (their “climatic niche”). Many Australian tree species have small climatic niches.

It’s been estimated an increase of 2℃ would see 40% of eucalypt species stranded in climate conditions to which they are not adapted.

But what happens if species move out of their climatic niche? It’s possible there will be a gradual migration across the landscape as plants move to keep up with the climate.

Read more: How the warming world could turn many plants and animals into climate refugees

It’s also possible that plants will generally grow better, if carbon dioxide rises and frosts become less common (although this is a complicated and disputed claim.

Farmers have reported anecdotal evidence of tree deaths on social media. Author provided

However, a third possibility is that increasing climate extremes will lead to mass tree deaths, with severe consequences.

There are examples of all three possibilities in the scientific literature, but reports of widespread tree death are becoming increasingly commonplace.

Many scientists, including ourselves, are now trying to identify the circumstances under which we may see trees die from climate stress. Quantifying these thresholds is going to be key for working out where vegetation may be headed.

The water transport system

Australian plants must deal with the most variable rainfall in the world. Only trees adapted to prolonged drought can survive. However, drought severity is forecast to increase, and rising heat extremes will exacerbate drought stress past their tolerance.

To explain why droughts overwhelm trees, we need to look at the water transport system that keeps them alive. Essentially, trees draw water from the soil through their roots and up to their leaves. Plants do not have a pump (like our hearts) to move water – instead, water is pulled up under tension using energy from sunlight. Our research illustrates how this transport system breaks down during droughts.

Lyn Lacey submitted these photos of dead trees at Ashford, NSW to The Dead Tree Detective. Author provided

In hot weather, more moisture evaporates from trees’ leaves, putting more pressure on their water transport system. This evaporation can actually be useful, because it keeps the trees’ leaves cool during heatwaves. However if there is not enough water available, leaf temperatures can become lethally high, scorching the tree canopy.

We’ve also identified how drought tolerance varies among native tree species. Species growing in low-rainfall areas are better equipped to handle drought, showing they are finely tuned to their climate niche and suggesting many species will be vulnerable if climate change increases drought severity.

Based on all of these data, we hope to be able to predict where and when trees will be vulnerable to death from drought and heat stress. The problem lies in testing our predictions – and that’s where citizen science comes in. Satellite remote sensing can help us track overall greenness of ecosystems, but it can’t detect individual tree death. Observation on the ground is needed.

These images show a failure of the water transport system in Eucalyptus saligna. Left: well-watered plant. Right: severely droughted plant. On the right, air bubbles blocking the transport system can be seen. Brendan Choat, Author provided

However, there is no system in place to record tree death from drought in Australia. For example, during the Millennium Drought, the most severe and extended drought for a century in southern Australia, there are almost no records of native tree death (other than along the rivers, where over-extraction of water was also an issue). Were there no deaths? Or were they simply not recorded?

The current drought gripping the southeast has not been as long as the Millennium Drought, but it does appear to be more intense, with some places receiving almost no rain for two years. We’ve also had a summer of repeated heatwaves, which will have intensified the stress.

Read more: Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated

We’re hearing anecdotal reports of tree death in the news and on twitter. We’re aiming to capture these anecdotal reports, and back them up with information including photographs, locations, numbers and species of trees affected, on the Dead Tree Detective.

We encourage anyone who sees dead trees around them to hop online and contribute. The Detective also allows people to record tree deaths from other causes – and trees that have come back to life again (sometimes dead isn’t dead). It can be depressing to see trees die – but recording their deaths for science helps to ensure they won’t have died in vain.

– ref. Are more Aussie trees dying of drought? Scientists need your help spotting dead trees – http://theconversation.com/are-more-aussie-trees-dying-of-drought-scientists-need-your-help-spotting-dead-trees-113756

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Petrova, Section Editor: Education

Voting is a key part of the democratic process. It allows all citizens of a certain age to have a say on matters important to them. Voting in federal elections and referendums is compulsory for every Australian aged 18 and over.

But decisions made by elected governments – especially in areas such as education, health and energy – impact young people too. Legal and political voices have long called for Australia to lower the voting age to 16. After all, people under 18 can leave school, get a job, drive a car and pay taxes. So why not vote?

A parliamentary inquiry is currently looking into the issue. In the meantime, we asked five experts their views. Here’s what they said.

Five out of five experts said yes

Here are their detailed responses:

If you have a “yes or no” education question you’d like posed to Five Experts, email your suggestion to: sasha.petrova@theconversation.edu.au

Disclosures: Louise Phillips has received competitively awarded funding from The Spencer Foundation, and the Queensland Department of Education, and is a current member of the Early Childhood Australia and the Australian Association for Research in Education.

Philippa Collin has received funding from a range of government and quasi-government agencies (NHMRC, Australian Research Council, Department for Industry and Innovation, Western Australian Children’s Commissioner, UNICEF) as well as industry (Google, Navitas English) and non-profits (Multicultural Youth Affairs Network NSW and the Foundation for Young Australians). She is a member of the Technology and Well-being Roundtable and the Australian NGO Child Rights Task Force and an expert advisor to the Raising Children Network.

– ref. We asked five experts: should Australia lower the voting age to 16? – http://theconversation.com/we-asked-five-experts-should-australia-lower-the-voting-age-to-16-104251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

I Need to Know is an ongoing series for teens in search of reliable, confidential advice about life’s tricky questions. If you’re a teen, send us your questions about sex, drugs, health and relationships and we’ll ask an expert to answer it for you.

Are kegel exercises actually beneficial?

– Anonymous

Key points

• Yes, they are very beneficial
• They are super easy to do (once you know how)
• Childbirth is the common reason why pelvic floor muscles weaken.

Hi, and thanks for your question. Kegel exercises are also known as pelvic floor exercises and were introduced back in the 1940s by a gynaecologist (a medical doctor specialising in women’s reproductive health) named, you guessed it, Dr Kegel. He developed these exercises as a method for improving control of urine leakage after childbirth.

These are the female pelvic floor muscles (click on the image if you’re having a little trouble seeing it). Even if you’re not thinking of having a kid any time soon, it’s still a good idea to get into a good routine of exercising them. Shutterstock

Your pelvic floor muscles are quite an amazing collection of layers of muscle. The work they do also involves the bones of the pelvis (hip bones and lower end of the spine), ligaments and nerves. Together, they work a bit like a hammock across the bottom of your pelvis not only to keep your organs from sagging but also work in sync with your bladder, rectum (the last part of your large intestine) and the vagina, making sure urine and poo are stored and released when you’re ready for it.

You might not want a kid today (or ever!) and you might be of any gender – it doesn’t matter because keeping your pelvic floor muscles fit is good for now and the future. There is much less research on whether Kegels make sex more enjoyable or easier to orgasm, despite what you may have read online or heard from friends. However, what we do know is having a strong pelvic floor helps with sexual enjoyment after giving birth, and might also help men experiencing erection problems.

Read more: I Need To Know: ‘is it normal to get sore down there after sex?’

How to do them

Doing Kegel exercises is super easy once you know how. Because there are several pelvic floor muscles, it’s good to work out where they are and to exercise all of them.

1. If you sit on the toilet to wee, try stopping the wee half way through and holding it like that for a few seconds, then let go. If you do that successfully, you’ve found some of your pelvic floor muscles.

2. Next try squeezing the muscles around your anus as though you are holding in some wind.

3. When you do pelvic floor exercises, you lift and squeeze all these muscles at once. Hold the squeeze for eight to ten seconds then relax for the same amount of time.

4. Repeat this eight to ten times, and do it three times a day. That’s a pretty good daily workout.

The good thing about Kegel exercises is that you can do them pretty much anywhere. Sitting in class, on the bus or train, driving, watching TV, or reading The Conversation.

All people have pelvic floor muscles (not just women), but childbirth is a common reason why the pelvic floor muscles weaken. Ageing and surgery to the pelvic floor area can also weaken these muscles. This can lead to incontinence (involuntary leaking of urine, or less commonly leaking of poo) as well as sagging of the organs inside the pelvis.

Read more: I Need to Know: ‘is it normal for girls to masturbate?’

Research shows doing Kegel exercises early in pregnancy can reduce incontinence later in pregnancy and after childbirth. It’s not certain how long the benefit lasts, but that’s because the research hasn’t extended beyond a few months.

If you do have problems with urine leakage, or have concerns about weakness of your pelvic floor muscles for some other reason, you might need help from a physiotherapist to get more personalised advice.

If you’re a teenager and have a question you’d like answered by an expert, you can:

• email us at intk@theconversation.edu.au
• submit your question anonymously through Incogneato, or
• DM us on Instagram.

Please tell us your name (you can use a fake name if you don’t want to be identified), age and which city you live in. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

– ref. I need to know: ‘are Kegel exercises actually good for you?’ – http://theconversation.com/i-need-to-know-are-kegel-exercises-actually-good-for-you-111747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Carey, Lecturer in Food Systems, University of Melbourne

If you’ve eaten fresh strawberries recently, they likely came from one of Australia’s city foodbowls. Around 40% of the nation’s strawberries are produced on Melbourne’s fringe and 28% on Brisbane’s fringe. All of Australia’s state capitals have city foodbowls that are an important source of fresh food, particularly fruit and vegetables.

These foodbowls also increase the resilience to pressures on city food supplies from climate change, particularly drought. But Australia’s cities are growing rapidly and their foodbowls are under threat as farmland gives way to housing.

Read more: The key to future food supply is sitting on our cities’ doorsteps

The Foodprint Melbourne research project today released its final report outlining a “roadmap” of recommended actions for protecting and investing in Melbourne’s foodbowl. And there are signs that state governments are waking up to the threat to fresh food supplies.

In 2017, the South Australian government took action to preserve Adelaide’s foodbowl. Legislated Environment and Food Production Areas now protect significant areas of farmland on the city fringe from urban development. The Queensland Farmers Federation has called for the Queensland government to take similar action to protect Brisbane’s foodbowl.

In Victoria, the government recently began public consultation on protecting Melbourne’s farmland. The government has committed to permanently protect “strategic agricultural land” on the city fringe.

This is an important step in preserving Melbourne’s foodbowl. Existing measures to protect this farmland – including the city’s urban growth boundary and “green wedges” – have not prevented ongoing loss of farmland. Stronger measures are clearly needed.

Apple orchards are among the farmland that has been lost to urban growth. Matthew Carey/Foodprint Melbourne, CC BY-NC-SA

Read more: To feed growing cities we need to stop urban sprawl eating up our food supply

What actions does the roadmap present?

Collaboration with stakeholders from local and state government, industry, civil society groups and farmers has informed the roadmap of actions to protect Melbourne’s foodbowl.

The report recommends permanently fixing the city’s urban growth boundary and introducing a “food production zone”. This could reduce speculative investment in farmland at risk of development. These measures would also create confidence to invest in farms and infrastructure in the foodbowl.

Protecting farmland is a critical first step in securing Australia’s city foodbowls, but this alone will not be enough.

If Australia’s city foodbowls are to continue to feed cities, farmland protection must be accompanied by other strategies. These would promote farm viability, water access, sustainable farming and recycling of nutrients essential to food production (like phosphorous and nitrogen).

Roadmap for a resilient and sustainable Melbourne foodbowl. Foodprint Melbourne

Promoting the viability of farming in city foodbowls and ensuring farmers have access to water are just as important as protecting farmland.

Foodbowls can recycle city waste

City foodbowls have access to large volumes of city wastewater and organic waste. This can increase these farms’ resilience to growing environmental pressures on food production. City foodbowls offer opportunities to use natural resources more efficiently by creating circular food systems that “close the loop” on valuable resources from city waste by returning these to the soil.

City wastewater, such as recycled water from water treatment plants and treated stormwater, can provide a relatively secure source of water for food production in a drying climate.

Read more: When climate change hits our food supply, city foodbowls could come to the rescue

Composts and biofertilisers made from city organic waste can improve soils on farm. This is a more sustainable alternative to conventional fertilisers based on non-renewable resources (like phosphate rock).

Learning from other cities

Australia’s cities need to have flexible responses to increase the resilience of their food systems. This requires city planners to take a precautionary approach now to protecting their foodbowls. International leaders in protecting city fringe food production, such as Toronto and Vancouver in Canada, offer valuable lessons in how to achieve this.

Read more: Feeding cities in the 21st century: why urban-fringe farming is vital for food resilience

Our report recommends that Melbourne follow Vancouver in developing an integrated food systems planning strategy. This will support collaboration between government departments and other stakeholders in promoting farm viability, water access, nutrient recycling and sustainable farming in the city’s foodbowl.

The report also recommends that local governments on Melbourne’s fringe should form an alliance to develop a common vision and actions to strengthen the city’s foodbowl – as the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance has done in Toronto. And it emphasises the importance of actively promoting city foodbowls to the public. The Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation in Ontario is a good example of this.

If Australia’s city foodbowls are to keep producing fresh local food for current and future generations, the public needs to be more aware of city fringe farmers’ role in feeding cities.

– ref. To protect fresh food supplies, here are the key steps to secure city foodbowls – http://theconversation.com/to-protect-fresh-food-supplies-here-are-the-key-steps-to-secure-city-foodbowls-114085

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pat Ranald, Research fellow, University of Sydney

Australia scored a victory over the tobacco giant Philip Morris in the High Court in 2012. The court held that Australia’s plain cigarette packaging laws were legal and did not constitute an unjust confiscation of trademarks and intellectual property. Philip Morris had to pay all of Australia’s costs.

If it had been an Australian company, that’s where it would have ended.

But because of a once obscure but increasingly common class of provisions in international treaties known as an ISDS (remember that name) it tried again.

ISDS actions are costly…

ISDS or investor-state dispute settlement clauses give to foreign companies rights unavailable to local companies. They get to claim billions in compensation through an extraterritorial tribunal if they believe their rights have been infringed on even after losing in Australia’s highest court.

Philip Morris, a US company, moved ownership of its Australian operations to Hong Kong to take advantage of ISDS in an Australia-Hong Kong investment treaty.

The case made headlines around the world, in part because it scared other countries out of following Australia’s plain packaging law and being on the hook for massive compensation and legal fees if they lost.

Australia versus Philip Morris. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) February 2015.

In December 2015 Australia won, completely.

The tribunal decided said that Philip Morris was not a Hong Kong company and had moved ownership of its Australian operations to Hong Kong in order to take advantage of the ISDS provision.

And that’s where things rested until late last month when a half a decade later a freedom of information request revealed how much Australia’s win cost it.

Australia’s external legal fees and arbitration costs amounted to almost A$24 million. It is likely to have had to bear substantial internal costs in the departments of health, attorney generals and foreign affairs and trade on top of the A$24 million.

Even though Philip Morris had its case thrown out on the grounds that it was an abuse of process it will only have to pay half of Australia’s costs.

…even if you win

There are now 942 known ISDS cases, with increasing numbers against health and environment laws, including laws to address climate change.

Australia’s tobacco plain packaging laws were recommended by the World Health Organisation and designed to reduce the numbers of young people becoming new smokers. Research showed that young people were attracted to the glamorous images on the packaging, and that plain packaging could reduce the attraction.

The tobacco plain packaging law was passed with bipartisan support in 2011. The tobacco companies responded with a barrage of strategies to obstruct the law. They claimed billions of dollars of compensation in the High Court, and helped other governmentstake take a dispute with Australia in the World Trade Organisation.

And they are secretive

Until now the loss in the tribunal set up under ISDS provisions has been a secret. It was blacked out in the publication of the original costs decision in 2017.

ISDS tribunals have notoriously lower standards of transparency than national courts but costs figures have been published in other ISDS cases. The refusal to reveal them was a new low in secrecy. Community organisationsargued that taxpayers had the right to know.

The first FOI case to reveal the costs, launched by Senator Nick Xenophon and continued by Senator Rex Patrick, resulted in the Australian government releasing internal government figures in 2018 which showed invoices for external legal costs of A$39 million.

The government later claimed the A$39 million covered the ISDS case, the earlier High Court challenge and the World Trade Organisation case. It refused to reveal the specific ISDS legal costs and what percentage of the total costs had been awarded to Australia.

The most recent FOI case on the ISDS costs, launched in 2017 by a legal publication, took another two years to reveal in February that the costs were almost $A24 million but Australian taxpayers were awarded only half of this.

This decision reinforces the case against ISDS provisions. Australia could afford to defend the case, but A$12 million is still a loss to taxpayers that could have been spent on health or other community services.

Other countries are phasing them out

It is a cost poorer countries simply cannot afford. Uruguay was only able to defend its tobacco regulation against a Philip Morris ISDS case because the Bloomberg Foundationfunded its legal costs.

Faced with increasing numbers of ISDS cases, India, South Africa and Indonesia have cancelled ISDS arrangementswithout negative impacts on investment.

The EU is excluding ISDS from its current deals, including the EU-Australia FTA now being negotiated, but is pursuing longer-term but equally controversialproposals for a multilateral investment court. The US and Canada have excluded ISDS from the revised North America Free Trade Agreement.

On Tuesday this week Australia and Hong Kong signed a free trade agreement and a new investment agreement, that continues to include ISDS.

The government claims that it has more safeguards for changes to public health laws than the old one that it replaces. It specifically excludes tobacco regulation and regulation relating to Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Gene Technology regulator.

Read more: Canada has an ISDS clause with the US. It has faced 35 challenges. Is this Australia’s future?

But the need for those specific exceptions suggests that the general safeguards for public interest regulations are ineffective. They wouldn’t prevent cases being brought against Australia over energy or climate change regulations or changes in industrial relations laws.

Australia should exclude ISDS from current trade negotiations, and remove it from existing agreements. The Coalition government still supports ISDS, but Labor has pledged to outlaw it and remove it from the deals we have, as have the Greens and Centre Alliance.

It will take continued community pressure to ensure that actually happens if the government changes in the coming election.

– ref. When even winning is losing. The surprising cost of defeating Philip Morris over plain packaging – http://theconversation.com/when-even-winning-is-losing-the-surprising-cost-of-defeating-philip-morris-over-plain-packaging-114279

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Morey, Senior Lecturer, Department of Languages and Linguistics, La Trobe University

By now, most of us would know that 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage along the East Coast of Australia. The federal government has allocated $48.7 million to commemorate the occasion, with a replica of Cook’s HMB Endeavour to circumnavigate the country.

But at the time of the voyage, Indigenous Australians often travelled great distances too, with most of those journeys being unrecorded. One that was, however, was the journey of Weitchymumble, a man of the Wati Wati (Wadi Wadi) from the Murray River around Swan Hill who travelled by foot across the dry regions of northwest Victoria around 200 kilometres to Lake Hindmarsh and back. He endured extreme heat, food shortages and exhaustion during this trek.

Back in 1877, Peter Beveridge, a squatter on the Murray River, published an article detailing Weitchymumble’s journey in the Ballarat Star. It had been told to him by Turrangin, a senior elder of the Wati Wati, who was Weitchymumble’s great-grandson.

We don’t know exactly when this happened, but Turrangin did tell us a little about the timing (Beveridge included words in the Wati Wati language in brackets):

When my cokernew (grandfather) was but a very small boy, long before the turrawil ngurtangies (white devils) came with their numberless stock to overrun the country, and drive away the teeming game, from whence the Woortongies (aborigines) drew their food supply […] his father, then quite a young man, was deputed by the tribe to accompany the Ngalloo Watow to the far Wimmera on tribal business.

The Ngalloo Watow was described by Beveridge as a “postman”, who carried news and conducted barters, able to travel “with impunity”.

At the time of the journey Turrangin’s grandfather was perhaps aged 10. Since Turrangin was a senior elder when he told the story to Beveridge in the 1850s, he might have been born around 1810. His grandfather might then have been a boy around 1770, the same time as Cook’s journey.

A journey through a land of plenty

Weitchymumble’s name means “welcome swallow”. The late Luise Hercus, a linguist who recorded many Indigenous languages, heard this word 50 years ago spoken by Mrs Jackson Stuart, one of the last to speak the Werkaya (Wimmera) language as a mother tongue. Hercus spelled it “wity-wity-mambel”.

Read more: How Captain Cook became a contested national symbol

We don’t know what the business of Weitchymumble’s trip with the Ngalloo Watow was, but it started in the spring, “the season of peetchen-peetchen (flowers), when the whole country was glowing with bloom”. They reached Lake Hindmarsh after “a long weary tramp of many days”.

After a bath and meal of wallup (sleeping lizard), they were spotted by scouts of the Wimmera tribe, who:

fraternised after the fashion of the Aborigines prior to the advent of European customs; […] they walked up to the fire, squatted down by its side without saying one word, until the time (which was considerable) had expired which Australian savage etiquette demands on these occasions. After that, however, they talked fast enough […]

Returning from Lake Hindmarsh in heat described as having “the fervency of a wean chirrick (a reed bed on fire)”, soon they had run short of water and food when they came upon the nest of a lowan, or Mallee Fowl. Lowan is one of the few words from an Indigenous Victorian language borrowed into English.

In the Lowan’s nest, they found “politulu murnangin mirk” (eggs to the number of the fingers on both hands). The Ngalloo Watow made fire “by rubbing a narrow lath-like piece of saltbush across a sun crack in a pine log” then set the eggs on the sand until they simmered, stirring them with a thin twig, through an opening at the top end. When cooked there was a rich yellow paste of yolk and white mixed, the taste was “talko” (good).

Ebenezer Edward Gostelow, The Mallee fowl (or lowan), watercolour, 1939. National Library of Australia

But, within a few days, they were again short of food when they saw a sleeping “little old man” threatened by a mindi (large snake). Weitchymumble immediately dashed, grabbed the snake, rescued the old man from it, cut off the snake’s head and then collapsed from exhaustion.

Seeing Weitchymumble lying, the old man exclaimed “”Niniwoor wortongie birra. Yetty tumla coorrongendoo. Ka ki nginma. Boorm.” (Ah, the young man is dead. I shall cry very much. Come here you. Quickly.) These words are the longest single piece of continuous written text in this language.

Weitchymumble was carried into a large conical stone, where the old man gave him a special drink and he revived. The old man turned out to be the Ngowdenout, the “spirit of the Mallee”. As Beveridge wrote: “He is both good and bad by turns […] all-seeing, all-powerful, and unvulnerable to everything earthly.”

Because Weitchymumble had acted to save the old man, the Ngowdenout was good to both the travellers, providing them with food and then when they were sleeping, disappearing. When they woke, the stone was nowhere to be seen but a clear path for them to return home had been marked out.

Read more: The ring trees of Victoria’s Watti Watti people are an extraordinary part of our heritage

Beveridge concludes the story by noting that “the story of the Ngowdenout and his coorongandoo muckie loondhal (big stone house) is as fresh in the memory of the Watty Watty tribe as it was the day after Weitchymumble and his companion had related it”.

While the Ngowdenout is perhaps a mythical entity, at the core of this story is a real journey. It tells of a land of plenty, of Indigenous tribes meeting and interacting in their own customs’ manners, and of ways of life, like the method of cooking eggs. Such journeys would have happened regularly, but this is the only one from Victoria recorded in such detail.

Along with the Cook voyage, then, in 2020 let’s honour Weitchymumble’s journey and the people of the inland.

– ref. When we celebrate Captain Cook’s voyage, let’s mark the epic journey of a Wati Wati man also – http://theconversation.com/when-we-celebrate-captain-cooks-voyage-lets-mark-the-epic-journey-of-a-wati-wati-man-also-112692