Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wencheng Yang, Post Doctoral Researcher, Security Research Institute, Edith Cowan University

Despite what every spy movie in the past 30 years would have you think, fingerprint and face scanners used to unlock your smartphone or other devices aren’t nearly as secure as they’re made out to be.

While it’s not great if your password is made public in a data breach, at least you can easily change it. If the scan of your fingerprint or face – known as “biometric template data” – is revealed in the same way, you could be in real trouble. After all, you can’t get a new fingerprint or face.

Your biometric template data are permanently and uniquely linked to you. The exposure of that data to hackers could seriously compromise user privacy and the security of a biometric system.

Current techniques provide effective security from breaches, but advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are rendering these protections obsolete.

Read more: Receiving a login code via SMS and email isn’t secure. Here’s what to use instead

How biometric data could be breached

If a hacker wanted to access a system that was protected by a fingerprint or face scanner, there are a number of ways they could do it:

1. your fingerprint or face scan (template data) stored in the database could be replaced by a hacker to gain unauthorised access to a system

2. a physical copy or spoof of your fingerprint or face could be created from the stored template data (with play doh, for example) to gain unauthorised access to a system

3. stolen template data could be reused to gain unauthorised access to a system

4. stolen template data could be used by a hacker to unlawfully track an individual from one system to another.

Biometric data need urgent protection

Nowadays, biometric systems are increasingly used in our civil, commercial and national defence applications.

Consumer devices equipped with biometric systems are found in everyday electronic devices like smartphones. MasterCard and Visa both offer credit cards with embedded fingerprint scanners. And wearable fitness devices are increasingly using biometrics to unlock smart cars and smart homes.

So how can we protect raw template data? A range of encryption techniques have been proposed. These fall into two categories: cancellable biometrics and biometric cryptosystems.

Read more: When your body becomes your password, the end of the login is nigh

In cancellable biometrics, complex mathematical functions are used to transform the original template data when your fingerprint or face is being scanned. This transformation is non-reversible, meaning there’s no risk of the transformed template data being turned back into your original fingerprint or face scan.

In a case where the database holding the transformed template data is breached, the stored records can be deleted. Additionally, when you scan your fingerprint or face again, the scan will result in a new unique template even if you use the same finger or face.

In biometric cryptosystems, the original template data are combined with a cryptographic key to generate a “black box”. The cryptographic key is the “secret” and query data are the “key” to unlock the “black box” so that the secret can be retrieved. The cryptographic key is released upon successful authentication.

AI is making security harder

In recent years, new biometric systems that incorporate AI have really come to the forefront of consumer electronics. Think: smart cameras with built-in AI capability to recognise and track specific faces.

But AI is a double-edged sword. While new developments, such as deep artificial neural networks, have enhanced the performance of biometric systems, potential threats could arise from the integration of AI.

For example, researchers at New York University created a tool called DeepMasterPrints. It uses deep learning techniques to generate fake fingerprints that can unlock a large number of mobile devices. It’s similar to the way that a master key can unlock every door.

Researchers have also demonstrated how deep artificial neural networks can be trained so that the original biometric inputs (such as the image of a person’s face) can be obtained from the stored template data.

Read more: Facial recognition is increasingly common, but how does it work?

New data protection techniques are needed

Thwarting these types of threats is one of the most pressing issues facing designers of secure AI-based biometric recognition systems.

Existing encryption techniques designed for non AI-based biometric systems are incompatible with AI-based biometric systems. So new protection techniques are needed.

Academic researchers and biometric scanner manufacturers should work together to secure users’ sensitive biometric template data, thus minimising the risk to users’ privacy and identity.

In academic research, special focus should be put on two most important aspects: recognition accuracy and security. As this research falls within Australia’s science and research priority of cybersecurity, both government and private sectors should provide more resources to the development of this emerging technology.

– ref. Fingerprint and face scanners aren’t as secure as we think they are – http://theconversation.com/fingerprint-and-face-scanners-arent-as-secure-as-we-think-they-are-112414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Attfield, Scholarly Teaching Fellow, Communications, University of Technology Sydney

When I heard about the new ABC TV soap The Heights (set in a fictional suburb of Perth), I was pretty excited. The promos suggested the show would include representation of working-class social housing residents. I tried to recall any Australian show (of any genre) that was set on a social housing estate and couldn’t think of one (happy to be proven wrong on this one).

I was a bit concerned – would this be a middle-class imagining of working-class life? But I was reassured by an article written by one of the show’s co-creators, Que Minh Luu. In her piece, she speaks of the need to diversify Australian television and bring the stories of minorities and marginalised communities to our screens. She mentions too that she has lived in social housing, which signalled to me that she understands the experiences of the characters.

The Heights is a soap opera – a television genre that is generally undervalued. Soaps don’t usually have the high production values of so-called “quality television”. They are made in bulk (The Heights already has 30 episodes), and have large ensemble casts. They have fast-moving storylines and require exposition and shortcuts to set the scene. But soaps also require actors to display enormous range, and the production process requires speed and agility, particularly when working with tight budgets.

There is some clunky dialogue in the first couple of episodes, as characters deliver expository lines to bring the viewer up to speed. There isn’t time for lengthy character development – we need to know pretty quickly who is who. Overall though, The Heights is a soap seeped in realism, and by the end of the first series (binge-watched on ABC iview), I was hooked.

Official trailer for ABC TV’s The Heights (2019).

There is a lot to love about this show, but particularly from a working-class perspective. The residents of Arcadia Heights are believable and the main thrust of the drama comes from their everyday lives, rather than ridiculous over-the top plots (no Bouncer’s Dream so far). Daily life for these characters is represented with nuance and a real understanding of the kinds of struggles and triumphs experienced by working-class people.

There are moments in the show that made me sigh with relief – at last! Yazeed Daher’s character Kam, for example, is a school student living with his older brother, his aunty, uncle and two cousins in a small apartment. Kam is keen to study, but there is no space at home. He is seen studying in the apartment block corridor.

Kam eventually finds a quiet place to study when his neighbour Iris (Carina Hoang), allows him to use the back room of her corner store. This moment demonstrates the obstacles that working-class students face.

Kam’s older brother, Ash (Phoenix Raei), is a builder’s labourer who falls in with a group of rich kids. He is initially enthralled by their excess – they can afford to party every night. They have beautiful clothes and lush homes. But Kam warns Ash that he’ll never fit in with the rich kids. And he is right. It becomes clear that Ash’s rich friends are intrigued by his cultural background (he is Iranian) and they exoticise him. They also display class fetish – he is their “bit of rough”.

Having been that “bit of rough” when I was young, I know how this works. Ash soon realises that unlike his new group, his family and his friends back in Arcadia Heights won’t treat him like a pet or a project.

The neighbours have your back

The community in Arcadia Heights is tight. Everyone helps each other. People watching from a distance might find this part rather hard to believe, but those of us who grew up in social housing know that your neighbours have your back. Everyone pitches in when needed. You can rely on the community.

Iris helps Kam. Everyone helps Hazel (Fiona Press) when she takes on the full-time care of her grandchild. Uncle Max (Kelton Pell) helps his elderly and disabled neighbour Audrey (Davilia O’Connor) and the community all comes together to keep the local pub alive (the unofficial community centre).

The working-class characters are representative of social housing communities and are diverse in terms of cultural background, religion, sexuality, gender, ability. This diversity is the reality of working-class neighbourhoods – there is a tendency elsewhere to use “working class” as shorthand for “white”, but this is just not the case.

Phoenix Raei as Ash, Yazeed Daher as Kam and Eddie Stowers as Fetu in ABC’s The Heights. Bohdan Warchomij/ABC TV

This show demonstrates the intersections between class, race, gender, sexuality, ability and religion. Ash is uncomfortable when his rich friends press him to talk about his experiences as a refugee – they might be “woke” but they don’t understand his lived experience. High school student Sabine (Bridie McKim) moves into the neighbourhood with her mother Claudia (Roz Hammond), an emergency doctor. Sabine has previously lived in an affluent area and has a private school boyfriend, Dane (Nicholas Di Nardo).

Then she makes friends with Mich (Calen Tassone) who is a “class straddler”. His mother is a lawyer and his father is an ex-cop living in the social housing block. Mich is Indigenous and understands racism and discrimination and is also trying to understand his own identity as an Indigenous person. Sabine is disabled and has also experienced discrimination – they form a strong bond.

Social issues abound in the show – the storylines include gambling addiction, teenage sex, gentrification among others, but running through the writing is a great deal of humour and heart.

The Heights isn’t perfect – there is some stilted dialogue at times and some rather unbelievable sets. The house occupied by Renee (Saskia Hampele) and her tradie husband Mark (Dan Paris), is a TARDIS with an unfeasibly large interior. There are some stereotypical characters too – particularly Watto (Noel O’Neill), the drunken Irishman who lives for the pub, and Iris does sometimes border on an Asian stereotype with her “Tiger Parent” impulses.

But overall, the characters feel pretty real to me and there are some stand out performances from the younger cast members. Calen Tassone and Bridie McKim are fantastic and their banter is delivered with great timing.

The Heights has a lot to offer. I look forward to watching the next series and spending more time with the community in Arcadia Heights.

– ref. The Heights – at last, a credible Australian working-class soap – http://theconversation.com/the-heights-at-last-a-credible-australian-working-class-soap-112961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Elphick, Honorary Research Fellow, Law School, University of Western Australia

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

Wednesday, November 15 2017, Northbridge Plaza, Perth, 7.00am:

“Yes responses, 7,817,247, representing 61.6% …” read the chief statistician of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, David Kalisch, on the big screen. The huge crowd erupted. Hugging, crying, comfort, joy.

That was one of the happiest moments of my life, along with December 7 2017, when marriage equality legislation passed the federal parliament.

For younger generations, this was the moment one of our defining and most hard-fought social movements had succeeded. We had won, despite the barriers put in front of us and the damaging impact of the postal survey.

Read more: New research reveals how the marriage equality debate damaged LGBT Australians’ mental health

However, just as gaining the right to vote did not end the women’s rights movement, so, too, will marriage equality not end the LGBTI+ rights movement.

As concisely put by Anna Brown, director of legal advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre:

Our victory in the marriage equality campaign was the starting point for something even bigger.

Below, I consider what’s next for LGBTI+ rights in Australia, outlining key areas for reform. Importantly, it is just one perspective and cannot reflect every concern of the very large and diverse LGBTI+ community.

Equality and non-discrimination rights

In the aftermath of marriage equality becoming law, the federal government commissioned the Ruddock inquiry into religious freedom, with the report eventually released in December.

Much of the reaction to this inquiry has centred on existing exemptions that allow religious schools to discriminate against LGBT students, teachers, staff and contract workers (these federal exemptions do not apply on the basis of intersex status).

A bill before the Senate, sponsored by Labor’s Penny Wong, would remove exemptions for LGBT students. This would ensure they cannot be excluded from schools on the basis of their LGBT status.

However, we must go further. The Greens have proposed also removing exemptions for LGBT teachers, staff and contract workers. This reflects a just.equal survey finding last year that 79% of Australians opposed religious schools being allowed to sack LGBT staff.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has indicated Labor’s broad support for the principle that teachers should not be discriminated against, but has not specified if religious qualifications will remain.

Whatever its form, all LGBTI+ people should be protected from federal discrimination law in religious schools, without qualification. Some state and territory discrimination laws also provide exemptions to religious schools and these should also be removed.

Read more: Ruddock report constrains, not expands, federal religious exemptions

Most states and territories also have other exemptions to LGBTI+ protections, which should be scrutinised.

One example is sporting exemptions. These allow individuals to be excluded from competitive sporting activities on the basis of their gender identity or intersex status.

Even without exemptions, other forms of discrimination against LGBTI+ people remain permissible.

The federal Fair Work Act does not provide protection on the basis of gender identity or intersex status. Only under federal laws and ACT, South Australian and Tasmanian laws are intersex status and non-binary gender identity explicitly protected from discrimination.

In New South Wales, even bisexuality is not protected.

Equality Australia’s recent survey of LGBTI+ people found discrimination to be respondents’ number one concern. The discrimination law gaps identified above should be filled as soon as possible.

Freedom from harmful practices

The intersex community is often the forgotten “I” in “LGBTI+”, despite comprising up to an estimated 1.7% of the global population.

In an interview for this article, Morgan Carpenter, co-executive director of Intersex Human Rights Australia, points out that:

Intersex people – born with variations of sex characteristics – are still largely misunderstood, and our rights to autonomy over our own bodies remains denied. Children with intersex variations are still subjected to harmful practices, including surgeries designed to “enhance” genital appearance, with judicial sanction.

It should be a priority to end these harmful practices and ensure the sex characteristics of intersex children are not altered without their informed consent.

The harmful practice of conversion therapy – whereby LGBT people are “treated” in an attempt to diminish or suppress their sexual orientation and/or gender identity – also remains prevalent in Australia.

A recent La Trobe University report found that up to 10% of LGBTI+ people in Australia are still subjected to conversion therapy. A PFLAG/just.equal survey last year found the top political priority of LGBTI+ Australians was to ban conversion therapy.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews recently announced that conversion therapy will be banned in that state, though further details are not yet known.

While banning the practice is an important step that should be followed by other states and territories, conversion therapy survivors Nathan Despott and Chris Csabs have argued that preventing conversion therapy requires further nuance:

[A] broader focus opens the way for the key recommendations of survivor advocates, namely legislation to address practitioners and referrers, protections for children, support for survivors, regulation of the counselling industry, and a public education campaign.

Legal and identity-related rights

In most states and territories, transgender and gender-diverse people – those whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex – are required to undergo surgery or medical treatment prior to changing their sex or gender marker on their birth certificate.

Many transgender and gender-diverse people choose not to have surgery, or cannot afford it. This should not stop them from obtaining identity documents that match their actual identity.

Tasmania also still requires transgender people to be unmarried prior to changing the sex or gender marker on their birth certificate.

This has the effect of forcing divorce on transgender people who are married and want their birth certificate to match their gender identity. True marriage equality will only be achieved when these requirements are removed.

There is also a debate to be had, as in Tasmania, on whether we should remove sex entirely from birth certificates.

Finally, there is no federal prohibition of vilification on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. Four states and territories also do not prohibit LGBTI+ vilification.

One area in which vilification remains prevalent is sport. The Out on the Fields survey found that 82% of LGBT respondents reported witnessing homophobia at sport. And 84% of all respondents believed an openly LGB person would not be very safe as a spectator at a sporting event.

Just as racial vilification is now unacceptable and unlawful, so too should vilification on the basis of LGBTI+ status be unacceptable and unlawful.

Restoring funding of Safe Schools at a federal level would go some way to preventing this kind of bullying and harassment of LGBTI+ children.

Read more: FactCheck: does the Safe Schools program contain ‘highly explicit material’?

Health rights

Another key area for reform is LGBTI+ health rights.

Medicare and private health insurance do not cover many treatments that transgender and gender-diverse people may require to transition, such as surgical changes, because these are deemed “cosmetic”.

As transgender advocate and lawyer Dale Sheridan told me:

While an approximate 10% Medicare rebate is provided for genital surgery, the treatment undertaken for most transgender and gender-diverse people is far in excess of this. For example, I have spent over $15,000 on four years of electrolysis to remove my facial hair, and there is no rebate available because this is considered cosmetic. However, having a beard does not match my female appearance and has caused much dysphoria.

The LGBTI+ community also lacks access to appropriate mental health care.

Under a Mental Health Care Plan, which can be granted by a general practitioner in Australia, individuals can access rebates for ten sessions with a psychologist per year. This is the case whether a person identifies as LGBTI+ or not.

Read more: Explainer: what treatment do young children receive for gender dysphoria and is it irreversible?

However, this upper limit places a particular burden on the LGBTI+ community. Those who are LGBTI+ are more likely to experience poor mental health. LGBTI+ people aged 16 to 27 are five times more likely to attempt suicide compared to the general population.

The out-of-pocket expenses associated with regular mental health care are too great for many LGBTI+ people, particularly when you consider they are three times more likely to experience homelessness.

Particular groups face further burdens. For example, there is often very little awareness of specific issues facing the bisexual community. Visibility is a key advocacy priority. As bisexual advocate Misty Farquhar told me:

The mental health of bisexual people is incredibly poor due to the double discrimination we face, both from straight people and gay/lesbian folk. Our levels of psychological distress are second only to the transgender community, and the intersection of bisexuality and transgender identities is significant. We need to feel genuinely included and treated as equals, both in mainstream society and the LGBTIQ+ community. This can start to be addressed by genuine representation and targeted services.

Developing a national suicide and mental health strategy for LGBTI+ people could help to address some of these issues.

Intersectional rights

What is often forgotten about the LGBTI+ community is that many of us face intersectional and compounding forms of discrimination. This may be through our age, gender, race, disability or other attributes.

A 2018 report showed that 46% of people with a disability who identified as LGBTI+ had experienced discrimination, harassment or abuse in the preceding year. They were nearly five times more likely to be unemployed than LGBTI+ people without a disability.

LGBTI+ refugees seeking asylum in Australia are regularly required by tribunals and courts to name gay clubs in Sydney, answer questions about Madonna, and provide evidence of their sexual promiscuity. Sometimes, applications are rejected on the basis that an applicant does not “look gay”.

Indigenous Australians who are LGBTI+ are often marginalised and excluded from the queer community. The prevalence of racism on LGBTI+ dating apps is notorious.

Furthermore, the experiences of older LGBTI+ people remain under-examined and stigmatised.

In any further steps to advance LGBTI+ rights, we must not forget the diversity of our community. We need to devote special attention to those facing intersectional, compounding forms of discrimination and rights abuse.

Overall, acting on the key areas outlined in this article would represent significant strides forward in promoting LGBTI+ rights in Australia. Though marriage equality was an important step, it was but one in a struggle that has a long way to go.

– ref. Marriage equality was momentous, but there is still much to do to progress LGBTI+ rights in Australia – http://theconversation.com/marriage-equality-was-momentous-but-there-is-still-much-to-do-to-progress-lgbti-rights-in-australia-110786

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Goss, School Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

School funding debates in Australia are complex and messy. Stakeholders routinely complain about being hard done by. But the real unfairness is that state schools get less government funding than governments themselves say the schools need, and will continue to do so.

Read more: Explaining Australia’s school funding debate: what’s at stake

Meanwhile, many private schools are already funded at 100% of their target level, and the rest are on the way.

This fails the playground test: the lament of a five-year-old when an adult says one thing and does another. Australian school funding is unfair because it doesn’t live up to its own rules and standards.

School resources

Needs-based funding has broad public and political support. David Gonski’s 2011 report stated differences in educational outcomes should not be the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions. It’s written in legislation, which defines each school’s target level of government funding, or Schooling Resource Standard.

David Gonski at the public release of the Gonski Report in 2012. Alan Porritt/AAP

Under the SRS, every student receives a base amount of funding. When parents choose a non-government school, base funding is reduced according to their capacity to contribute. Students with higher needs attract more funding, regardless of their parents’ capacity to contribute.

No model is perfect, but the structure of the SRS is sound. Schools get more money if their students need it.

Parents can (generally) afford to exercise their right to choose, because non-government schools that serve disadvantaged communities are nearly fully funded by government. Meanwhile, taxpayers save money – at least in theory – when parents opt out of the state school system.

Read more: Gonski 2.0: Is this the school funding plan we have been looking for? Finally, yes

Of course the formula could be improved. The SRS is long overdue for a refresh.

A proposed new model for calculating parent’s capacity to contribute, based on their family income, still needs to be finalised and legislated. But it’s clearly fairer than the previous model based on where families lived.

Looking beyond the formula, the federal Coalition’s A$1.2 billion Choice and Affordability Fund should go. It subsidises low-fee private schools even when parents can afford to pay their way. And education systems (such as Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican, plus state education departments) need to better account for how they distribute the funding they receive as a lump sum.

Theory doesn’t necessarily translate to practice

But these issues pale in comparison with the gap between funding theory and funding practice.

Very few schools actually get their target level of government funding. Most schools get less, some much less. A few schools get more. And a handful of high-fee private schools – the schools least in need of extra cash – get nearly three times what the formula says they need.

Public state schools get less government funding than governments themselves say they need. Dan Himbrechts/AAP

The discrepancies are not random. Government schools educate the bulk of disadvantaged students, but in 2017 were funded at 90% of SRS on average. The non-government school average was about 95%.

Recent analysis by the ABC shows the funding gap grew over the past decade. Because parents pay fees, non-government schools should never get more public dollars per student than comparable government schools. A decade ago, one in 20 private schools did. By 2016, it was more than one in three.

What about the coming decade?

Under the Coalition’s 2017 legislation, federal funding will transition to 80% of SRS for private schools and 20% for government schools. It will be consistent across states – a big improvement. And overfunded schools finally lose funding, something Labor never managed to achieve.

The 2017 legislation also requires minimum contributions from state governments. But based on the recently signed National School Reform Agreement, it looks like most government schools will be stuck at 95% of their target level (20% federal funding, 75% state), while private schools will hit 100% (80% federal, 20% state).

Under Coalition management, overfunded schools will finally lose some excess funding. Joel Carrett/AAP

And there’s one last sting in the tail. The National School Reform Agreement allows state governments – for the first time – to claim depreciation, transport and part of their expenditure on regulatory authorities as up to 4% of their contribution to school funding. But only for government schools. This reduces effective funding for government schools by about A$2 billion per year by 2027.

Read more: Explainer: how does funding work in the Catholic school system?

Under Coalition policy, the effective funding for each state school will plateau at 91% of SRS, while non-government schools get full whack. Private schools serving disadvantaged students will continue to get more taxpayer dollars than similar government schools. As a five-year-old might say, it’s not fair.

Labor is on course to deliver fairer funding, having committed to building on the 2017 legislation. Labor should lock in the new model for calculating parents’ capacity to contribute, instigate a broader review of the SRS formula and abolish the Choice and Affordability Fund.

Bill Shorten’s Labor is on track to deliver fairer school funding. Daniel Pockett/AAP

Labor has also promised A$14 billion extra for government schools over a decade. This would lift the federal contribution to 22.2% of SRS by 2022. Yet government schools would still be underfunded relative to SRS, especially if states could continue to count depreciation, transport and regulatory expenditures as if they represented real money for schools.

If Labor wins the 2019 federal election, it should leverage its budget war chest to renegotiate the national agreements so states can no longer claim depreciation, transport and regulatory expenditures as part of their schools funding. That would put government schools on track to reach 97.2% of SRS. Not quite full funding, but within touching distance.

Read more: FactCheck: does Victoria have Australia’s lowest rate of public school funding?

For an average government school, the difference between 91% and 100% of SRS is about A$1,500 per student per year. With just half of that money, a typical state primary school could employ two dedicated instructional leaders to improve teaching practice and pay for relief time for other teachers to work with them. Fair funding just might transform the education of the children at that school and the thousands of schools like it.

– ref. What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding – http://theconversation.com/what-the-next-government-needs-to-do-to-tackle-unfairness-in-school-funding-110879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Johnstone, Security Researcher, Associate Professor in Resilient Systems, Edith Cowan University

When it comes to personal cybersecurity, you might think you’re doing alright. Maybe you’ve got multi-factor authentication setup on your phone so that you have to enter a code sent to you by SMS before you can login to your email or bank account from a new device.

What you might not realise is that new scams have made authentication using a code sent by SMS messages, emails or voice calls less secure than they used to be.

Multi-factor authentication is listed in the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight Maturity Model as a recommended security measure for businesses to reduce their risk of cyber attack.

Last month, in an updated list, authentication via SMS messages, emails or voice calls was downgraded, indicating they’re no longer considered optimal for security.

Here’s what you should do instead.

What is multi-factor authentication?

Whenever we login to an app or device, we are usually asked for some form of identity check. This is often something we know (like a password), but it can also be something we have (like a security key or an access card) or something we are (like a fingerprint).

The last of these is often preferred because, while you can forget a password or a card, your biometric signature is always with you.

Multi-factor authentication is when more than one identity check is conducted via different channels. For instance, it’s common these days to enter your password, and an extra authentication code you need to enter is sent to your phone via SMS message, email or voice mail.

Lots of services, such as banks, already offer this feature. You’re sent a “one-time” code to your phone in order to confirm authority to enact a transaction.

This is good because:

• it uses two separate channels
• the code is randomly generated, so it can’t be guessed
• the code has a limited lifetime

How could this go wrong?

Suppose a cybercriminal has stolen your phone, but you have it locked via fingerprint. If the criminal wants to compromise your bank account and attempts to login, your bank sends an authentication code to your phone.

Depending on how your phone settings are configured, the code could pop-up on your phone screen, even when it’s still locked. The criminal could then input the code and access your bank account. Note that “do not disturb” settings on your phone won’t help as the message still appears, albeit quietly. In order to avoid this problem, you need to disable message previews entirely in your phone’s settings.

A more elaborate hack involves “SIM swapping”. If a criminal has some of your identity details, they might be able to convince your phone provider that they are you and request a new SIM attached to your phone number to be sent to them. That way, anytime an authentication code is sent from one of your accounts, it will go to the hacker instead of you.

This happened to a technology journalist in the US a couple of years ago, who described the experience:

At about 9pm on Tuesday, August 22 a hacker swapped his or her own SIM card with mine, presumably by calling T-Mobile. This, in turn, shut off network services to my phone and, moments later, allowed the hacker to change most of my Gmail passwords, my Facebook password, and text on my behalf. All of the two-factor notifications went, by default, to my phone number so I received none of them and in about two minutes I was locked out of my digital life.

Then there is the question of whether you want to provide your phone number to the service you are using. Facebook has come under fire in recent days for requiring users to provide their phone number to secure their accounts, but then allowing others to search for their profile via their phone number. They have also reportedly used phone numbers to target users with ads.

This is not to say that splitting identity checks is a bad thing, it’s just that sending part of an identity check via a less-secure channel promotes a false sense of security that could be worse than using no security at all.

Multi-factor authentication is important – as long as you do it via the right channels.

Which authentication combinations are best?

Let’s consider some combinations of multi-factor authentication that have varying degrees of ease of use and security.

An obvious first choice is something you know and something you have, say a password and a physical access card. A cybercriminal has to obtain both to impersonate you. Not impossible, but difficult.

Another combination is a password and a voiceprint. A voiceprint recognition system records you speaking a particular passphrase and then matches your voice when you need to authenticate your identity. This is attractive because you can’t leave your voice at home or in the car.

But could your voice be forged? With the aid of digital software, it might be possible to take an existing recording of your voice, unpack and re-sequence it to produce the required phrase. This is somewhat challenging, but not impossible.

A third combination is a card and a voiceprint. This choice removes the need to remember a password, which could be stolen, and as long as you keep the physical token (the card or key) safe, it is very hard for someone else to impersonate you.

There are no perfect solutions yet and using the most secure version of authentication depends on it being offered by the service you are using, such as your bank.

Cyber security is about managing risk, so which combination of multi-factor authentication suits your needs depends on the balance you accept between usability and security.

– ref. Receiving a login code via SMS and email isn’t secure. Here’s what to use instead – http://theconversation.com/receiving-a-login-code-via-sms-and-email-isnt-secure-heres-what-to-use-instead-112767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

A landmark ruling by an Australian court is expected to have international consequences for newsrooms, with media companies on notice they face large compensation claims if they fail to take care of journalists who regularly cover traumatic events.

The Victorian County Court accepted the potential for psychological damage on those whose work requires them to report on traumatic events, including violent crimes. The court ruled on February 22 that an Age journalist be awarded $180,000 for psychological injury suffered during the decade she worked at the Melbourne-based newspaper, from 2003 to 2013.

The journalist, known in court as “YZ” to protect her identity, reported on 32 murders and many more cases as a court reporter. She covered Melbourne’s “gangland wars”, was threatened by one of its notorious figures, and found it increasingly difficult to report on events involving the death of children, such as the case of four-year-old Darcey Freeman who was thrown by her father from West Gate Bridge in 2009.

Read more: New research reveals how Australian journalists are faring four years after redundancy

After complaining that she was “done” with “death and destruction”, the journalist was transferred to the sports desk. But a senior editor later persuaded her, against her wishes, to cover the Supreme Court where she was exposed to detailed, graphic accounts of horrific crimes, including the trials of Donna Fitchett, Robert Farquharson and Darcey Freeman’s father.

The repeated exposure to traumatic events had a serious impact on her mental health. YZ took a voluntary redundancy from the newspaper in 2013.

In her court challenge, the journalist alleged The Age:

• had no system in place to enable her to deal with the trauma of her work
• failed to provide support and training in covering traumatic events, including from qualified peers
• did not intervene when she and others complained
• transferred her to court reporting after she had complained of being unable to cope with trauma experienced from previous crime reporting.

The Age contested whether the journalist was actually suffering from post-traumatic stress. It argued that even if a peer-support program had been in place it would not have made a material difference to the journalist’s experience.

Further, The Age denied it knew or should have known there was a foreseeable risk of psychological injury to its journalists and simultaneously argued that the plaintiff knew “by reason of her work she was at high risk of foreseeable injury”.

Judge Chris O’Neill found the journalist’s evidence more compelling than the media company’s, even though the psychological injury she had suffered put her at a disadvantage when being cross-examined in court.

Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in the United States, says:

This is a historic judgment – the first time in the world, to my knowledge, that a news organisation has been found liable for a reporter’s occupational PTSD.

Media companies need to take PTSD seriously

This is not the first time a journalist has sued over occupational PTSD, as Shapiro calls it, but it is the first time one has succeeded. In 2012, another Australian journalist unsuccessfully sued the same newspaper.

In that earlier case, discussed by a co-author of this article (Ricketson) in Australian Journalism Review, the judge was reluctant to accept either the psychological impact on journalists covering traumatic events or The Age’s tardiness in implementing a trauma-aware newsroom. In stark contrast, the judge in the YZ case readily accepted both these key concepts.

Historically, the idea of journalists suing their employers for occupational PTSD was unheard of. Newsroom culture dictated that journalists did whatever was asked of them, including intrusions on grieving relatives, or “death knocks” as they are known. Doing these was intrinsic to the so-called “school of hard knocks”. Cadet journalists were blooded in the newsroom by their ability to do these tasks.

The academic literature shows that newsroom culture has been a key contributor to the problem of journalists feeling unable to express concerns about covering traumatic events for fear of appearing weak and unsuited to the job.

What is alarming from the evidence provided to Judge O’Neill is the extent to which these attitudes still hold sway in contemporary newsrooms. YZ said that as a crime reporter she worked in a “blokey environment” where the implicit message was “toughen up, princess”.

Duty of care

The YZ case shows The Age had learnt little about its duty of care to journalists from the earlier case it defended. One of its own witnesses, the editorial training manager, gave evidence of his frustration at being unable to persuade management to implement a suitable training and support program. Judge O’Neill found him a compelling witness.

Read more: Media Files: Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy and former MP David Feeney on the digital disruption of media and politics

The Dart Center has a range of tip sheets on its website for self-care and peer support. What is clear from this case is that it’s not just about individual journalists and what they do, but about editors and media executive taking action.

One media organisation that is leading the way is the ABC. The national broadcaster has had a peer-support program in place for a decade.

Such programs are vital, not just for individual journalists, but for democracy and civil society. This is because whatever changes have been sweeping through the news media, there is no change in the incidence of disasters, crimes and traumatic events that need to be covered.

News workers need help. And they are beginning to demand it.

– ref. Media companies on notice over traumatised journalists after landmark court decision – http://theconversation.com/media-companies-on-notice-over-traumatised-journalists-after-landmark-court-decision-112766

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rae Thomas, Associate professor, Bond University

Sarah lives in London. She is pregnant with her first child. Her mother had gestational diabetes and Sarah is told this puts her into a higher risk category for the condition, thus she should have a test.

At 26 weeks, she has a 75g fasting glucose test to see if she has gestational diabetes. The test requires fasting, drinking the equivalent of two cans of soft drink, and takes several hours.

The next week her doctor tells her the initial fasting blood test showed a blood glucose level of 5.5 millimoles per litre (mmol/l), and that the two-hour level was 7.5mmol/l. This means she is under the cut-off and so not diagnosed with gestational diabetes. She is delighted.

Read more: How to rein in the widening disease definitions that label more healthy people as sick

Donna lives in Brisbane and is pregnant with her first child too. In Australia all women are tested for gestational diabetes and Donna is told to have a routine test for diabetes at 26 weeks.

She takes the same test which shows she has the same blood glucose level as Sarah. But because Donna lives in Australia she is diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Donna is devastated.

Donna was allocated a dedicated care provider when she was 15 weeks pregnant. But now she is considered “high risk” and is transferred to “standard care” where she has a different health provider every visit. She also has more medical appointments than before and sees a dietitian.

Since 2014, more Australian women have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes than in previous years and compared to women in other countries. But it’s not because they’re less healthy – it’s because the threshold for diagnosis has changed.

What is gestational diabetes?

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a diagnosis some pregnant women receive when they have elevated blood sugar (glucose) in pregnancy. A diagnosis can occur in several ways.

Some are diagnosed with diabetes while pregnant but have blood glucose levels high enough to be similar to diabetes diagnosed outside of pregnancy.

Some women diagnosed with gesational diabetes may still have lower blood sugar levels than those with diabetes who aren’t pregnant. Echo Grid

Others have glucose levels higher than normal and so are diagnosed with developing diabetes while pregnant but wouldn’t fulfil the usual criteria for diabetes if they weren’t pregnant. These two different women would be diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

Some women may have been diagnosed with diabetes before they were pregnant. These women would be diagnosed with pregestational diabetes.

These diagnostic pathways differ and the health risks to the mothers and babies diagnosed in these different pathways also differs, but all women are treated the same: their blood glucose levels are monitored and their diet restricted.

Why does gestational diabetes worry clinicians?

Several health problems can occur for mothers diagnosed with high glucose levels in pregnancy and their babies, including a higher risk of having a “big” baby. The average baby weighs just over 3kg but “big” babies are over the 90th percentile and weigh around 4kg.

Other risks include having a pre-term delivery, having a cesarean section and babies having low glucose levels at birth. Rarely, babies can have a stuck shoulder during birth.

Chance of having a big baby

Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome study cohort., Author provided

Chance of having a cesarean section

Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome study cohort, Author provided

Chance of the baby sustaining a shoulder or other birth injury

Shoulder dystocia is where one of the baby’s shoulders becomes stuck behind the mother’s pelvic bone during childbirth. Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome study cohort, Author provided

Women diagnosed with gestational diabetes also often report feelings of self-blame, anxiety, confusion and stress of managing a new dietary regime.

Why is Donna diagnosed and not Sarah?

There is currently no internationally uniform definition of gestational diabetes. Experts disagree about the degree of glucose intolerance that poses a sufficiently increased risk to mother or baby.

A multinational study published in 2009 was supposed to clarify the uncertainty but the results showed that increased glucose levels were a continuous risk for poor outcomes in pregnancy. There was no clear cut-off; the more glucose intolerant, the more risk to mother and baby.

An international group recommended a cut-off but different countries have adopted different testing regimes and cut-offs.

In Australia, the diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes changed in 2014 with the aim to improve diagnostic accuracy and prevent harmful health outcomes for women and their babies.

This figure shows you how complicated it is. The glucose results of 1,248 Brisbane women from the HAPO study were matched to four different international criteria for gestational diabetes. Although 191 women would have met one or more criteria, only 30 (15%) met criteria for all four.

Abbreviations: ADIPS Australasian Diabetes in Pregnancy Society; IADPSG International Association of the Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups; NICE National Institute for Clinical Excellence; ACOG American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Adapted from McIntyre HD, Gibbons KS, Lowe J, Oats JJN. Colour and pictures added., CC BY-NC-ND

Testing processes can also differ. Australia has universal screening, with a one-step process where all women have a test for diabetes, and those who test positive are diagnosed.

New Zealand has a two-step confirmatory process where women who test positive on an initial test (around 25% of women) go onto have a second confirmatory test. Only women with a positive result in the second test are diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

In some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, only women with at least one risk factor for gestational diabetes will be offered testing.

Rising rates in Australia

Rates of gestational diabetes diagnoses in Australia have increased from 2% in 1990 to nearly 14% in 2017.

Some of this is due to the increasing age of women becoming pregnant, more women being overweight, more testing, and better recording. But much of the rise has occurred since 2014 when the Australian definition changed.

Read more: Weight gain during pregnancy: how much is too much?

The percentage of women diagnosed with gestational diabetes in Mackay in Far North Queensland increased from 9.8% to 19.6% in the first year of the change.

In a Melbourne hospital, researchers found the percentage of women diagnosed with gestational diabetes increased from 5.9% in 2014 under the old criteria, to 10.3% in 2016 under the new criteria.

In both studies, there was little to no change in health outcomes for mothers or babies.

A diagnosis depends, at least in part, on where you live. Adi Saputra

So although there were significant increases in the number of women diagnosed with gestational diabetes, there are seemingly negligible health benefits.

However there were substantial health care costs. The Melbourne hospital above spent A$560,000 more caring for the additional women diagnosed with gestational diabetes under the criteria change.

Applying the same formula to the Australian population data, we estimate the net increase in Australian health costs due to the change in gestational diabetes criteria to be around A$28 million per year.

Guidelines and clinical practices are often revisited every two to five years, especially when there is emerging evidence of benefits or harms. It’s time to review how we define gestational diabetes and the impact on women, their babies and the Australian health system.

Read more: The risks associated with gestational diabetes don’t end after pregnancy

– ref. Are you at risk of being diagnosed with gestational diabetes? It depends on where you live – http://theconversation.com/are-you-at-risk-of-being-diagnosed-with-gestational-diabetes-it-depends-on-where-you-live-112515

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fan Zhang, Lecturer in Architectural Science, Griffith University

It might be blisteringly hot outside, but if you work in an office building, the chances are it’s always reassuringly cool (or cold, depending on your preference) once you walk inside.

In Australia and much of the rest of the world, it’s become standard practice for offices to be cooled or heated to a uniform 22℃. In many Australian offices, this temperature is even officially enshrined in commercial tenancy agreements.

And yet temperature is routinely one of the sore points of office politics – many office workers constantly feel too hot or cold at work. Of course, that might simply be because the air conditioning doesn’t work very well where you work. But it’s also reasonable to ask whether 22℃ is really such a magic number after all.

Our review of the available research, published recently in the journal Applied Energy, suggests not.

Read more: Shivering in summer? Sweating in winter? Your building is living a lie

The air conditioning industries certainly view 22℃ as the magic number, judging by guidelines published by the European and US industry peak bodies. Both claim that office workers’ cognitive performance at different temperatures follows an “inverted U” shaped curve, which peaks at 22℃.

Inverted-U function between temperature and cognitive performance. CREDIT

This explains why 22℃ has prevailed as the chosen figure all over the world, regardless of how much it might cost to heat or cool work spaces to that temperature in different climates. In the heat of an Australian summer this typically involves lots of cooling, but the view is that the prodigious output of comfortably cool workers more than justifies the electricity bill.

But are things really as simple as the graph above would have us believe? To answer that question, we critically reviewed almost 300 studies from a wide range of disciplines including physiology, psychology, ergonomics, neuroscience, sports science, human-technology interaction, and more.

We concluded that the relationship between temperature and performance is not an “inverted U” but rather an “extended U”. The evidence in fact suggests that human performance remains relatively stable across a broad range of acceptable temperatures, but then rapidly deteriorates once it gets any hotter or colder than this. The boundaries of the acceptable ranges depend on a lot of factors, such as the type of task you are doing, how demanding the task is, how adverse the temperature is, how skilled and motivated you are in doing your task, to name just a few. Our previous research found that workers perform just the same at 25℃, for instance.

Extended-U relationship between temperature and cognitive performance. CREDIT, Author provided

This is because humans are not just simple, passive machines. We can adapt in all sorts of ways to moderate levels of thermal stress. Common ways of adaptation include behavioural adjustment, physiological acclimatisation, psychological habituation, and probably most important of all, expectation adjustment.

So it turns out that our brains can still be at their sharpest even if it’s not exactly 22℃. But that’s not the only reason why the magic temperature is a myth. The existing rationale conflates “cognitive performance” with “office productivity”, when in reality these are two very different things.

Read more: Chill out. A slightly warmer office won’t make it too hot to think

“Performance” is a person’s ability to produce “goal-directed activity”. In performance science, a job or task is often broken down into different performance components, such as memory, concentration, logical thinking, executive function and so on. “Productivity” is the extent to which an organisation is progressing towards its systemic goals, whether that be the amount of products they sell in a year, or the number of customers served within a specific period of time and how satisfied those customers are with the quality of service they received.

But there is no standard way to quantify office productivity. The common practice is to use performance measures as a proxy for overall productivity, but this is problematic for several reasons.

The first is that simulated performance tasks do not accurately represent the nature of real work carried out in actual workplaces. Standard cognitive tasks testing your memory, concentration and vigilance performance might not faithfully capture your ability to generate useful contribution towards achieving your company’s goals.

Second, productivity can also depend on many factors besides workers’ ability to perform. These might include workplace culture, organisational structure, job security and satisfaction, workload, management style, and personal factors such as injury, loss of sleep, life events, health and well-being, or financial stress. Distracted, disgruntled or worried workers aren’t going to be very productive, regardless of what the office temperature will be.

Read more: Five tips to get the most out of your workday

There are practical implications to this. Office managers might be wasting money chasing the “best” temperature for maximum productivity while ignoring other factors that have a much larger bearing on it.

An air-conditioning setpoint which is closer to the outdoor weather, aided by Personal Comfort Systems (like a desk fan, or contact cooling/heating device) may save energy bills while maintaining high levels of workplace satisfaction and mental performance.

– ref. Why the ‘perfect’ office temperature is a myth – http://theconversation.com/why-the-perfect-office-temperature-is-a-myth-111823

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Whitzman, Professor of Urban Planning, University of Melbourne

The worst-case scenario has happened twice for young women using public transport in Melbourne in the past nine months. In June 2018, Eurydice Dixon, 23, was walking from the tram to her home, through a well-used park just north of the central city, when a young man is alleged to have stalked, raped and murdered her. In January 2019, another young man is alleged to have raped and murdered 21-year-old Palestinian exchange student Aiia Maasarwe 100 metres from the tram she took home from central Melbourne.

Even before these attacks, students reported feeling unsafe when using public transport. In April to June 2018, we undertook a survey, as part of a 17-city global study of tertiary students’ safety on public transport. We received over 500 completed surveys.

What did our survey find?

A large proportion of female students report a climate of fear on public transport. Just under half (45.1%) said they “rarely” or “never” feel safe on public transport after dark, compared to 11.3% of men.

Almost three in five women (58.9%) say they try to reduce their risk of victimisation in various ways. These include avoiding certain lines and stops, ensuring they are met at a stop and being constantly on alert. Just under half (45.4%) of female students report fear of victimisation as a reason for not using public transport.

This was not just a matter of perceptions. Almost four-fifths (79.4%) of female students and an equivalent proportion of LGBTI+ students said they had been victims of unwanted sexual gestures, comments, advances, exposed genitals, groping or being followed on public transport in the previous three years.

Over half (51.7%) of men reported having been victimised. These incidents were more likely to be gestures and comments rather than groping or being stalked.

Only 5.7% of those who had been victimised reported this to anyone in authority. This is hardly surprising. The public safety messages from police, transport authorities and tertiary educational institutions do not encourage the reporting of incidents. Instead, they emphasise the responsibility of potential victims to protect themselves.

The immediate response of police to the killing of Eurydice Dixon was this statement: “Make sure you have situational awareness. Be aware of your own personal safety. If you’ve got a mobile phone, carry it; if you’ve got any concerns, call the police.”

But both Eurydice Dixon and Aiia Maasarwe were allegedly carrying their phones and sending messages as to their whereabouts when attacked.

As Change.org executive director Sally Rugg said, these messages “suggest that the police can’t stop men from raping people, so it’s up to the women to take precautions, which is insulting to men, unhelpful and untrue”.

Outrage at any suggestion that Eurydice Dixon might have contributed to her death was rooted in women’s own widespread experience of harassment and violence. Julian Smith/AAP

Counting the cost of student safety concerns

With 18 tertiary institutions located throughout Greater Melbourne, safe public transport access touches on issues of social justice, environmental sustainability and economic productivity. The situation in most tertiary institutions is one of car dependence. For instance, at the largest Deakin University campus, 61% of students and staff drove alone to work in 2012.

The outer suburbs fare worst – 50% of these areas have “very low” or “low” public transport frequency. Yet these suburbs have very high needs for public transport in terms of the proportion of adults without cars, including many tertiary students – a concept called “transport disadvantage”. Students living in middle and outer Melbourne tend to be more dependent on public transport and more likely to travel in the evenings, two risk factors for victimisation.

Tertiary students have a huge economic impact, through the revenue they generate for their institutions, their role in the workforce, the services they use and the purchases they make. The 2016 census recorded 1.4 million university students in Australia – 26% of them, or almost 400,000, international students.

A national survey of university students found public transport is where sexual harassment is most common. Dennis Diatel/Shutterstock

In 2016, the City of Melbourne had 227,000 students living and/or studying within the municipality, with 45,000 students calling it home. A third are international fee-paying students, who often live in high-priced apartments sold on the basis of safe and convenient access to campuses.

The issues of safety are nationwide. In 2016, a study involving 30,000 students in all 39 Australian universities underscored the high rates of assault and harassment of women and sexual minorities. Public transport was the most common location for sexual harassment – 22% of incidents, as opposed to 14% on university grounds and 13% in a university teaching space. And 57% of perpetrators of sexual harassment were identified as male students from their university.

We need a better approach

There are precedents for a better approach. In 2015, Transport for London, in partnership with police, launched its “Report it to Stop it” campaign.

The campaign built on a series of videos encouraging women to come forward in reporting unwanted sexualised staring, remarks, groping and stalking on public transport. The videos also show the consequences of reporting, with a man being identified and arrested for sexual harassment. A reporting hotline can be called or texted 24 hours a day, every day.

In the first year of the campaign, reports of harassment on public transport increased by 36%, with a 40% increase in criminal charges. An evaluation after the first year found 84% of women respondents agreed the campaign “made me feel more confident to take action against unwanted sexual behaviour if it occurred”.

Our report recommends that the Victorian government work with police, public transport providers and tertiary institutions on a coordinated campaign to encourage better reporting of sexually related crimes on public transport. This would include:

• investing in a common hotline
• creating publicity materials (including posters, videos, ad campaigns) to encourage reporting by both victims and witnesses
• employing consistent messaging on all these organisations’ websites that put the onus for safety where it belongs: on offenders not to offend, and on institutions to respond properly to offences. This should include public education on consequences of offences.

We also recommend that people who make reports be treated respectfully and their concerns treated seriously. All reports should be immediately followed up and all efforts made to arrest, charge and convict offenders. All public security and authorised officers, drivers and station attendants should be trained in how to respond to complaints and concerns.

Our third recommendation is that tertiary educational institutions have a role to play in cases where offenders as well as victims are students. Very clear messaging is needed on campus that offences on public transport as well as on campus are an institutional responsibility.

Our final recommendation is that state government recognise the impacts of infrequent, unreliable and inadequate transport services on the mobility and safety of people with lower incomes and less access to cars, including tertiary students. Authorities should consider partnering with ride-sharing services to make “the last kilometre” home from some public transport stops safer and more secure. Without a coordinated campaign to tackle the root causes of victimisation and fear, putting more CCTV, lighting and officers on trains is no longer enough.

– ref. Students don’t feel safe on public transport but many have no choice but to use it – http://theconversation.com/students-dont-feel-safe-on-public-transport-but-many-have-no-choice-but-to-use-it-112225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pat Ranald, Research fellow, University of Sydney

Australia’s trade minister Simon Birmingham and his Indonesian counterpart Enggartiasto Lukita signed the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement on Monday. Only afterwards (as is often the case) did we get to see what was in it.

We might never see an independent assessment of its costs and benefits.

Beforehand the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released a summary of the good news about increased Australian agricultural and education exports, together with statements of support from export industry representatives.

It said more than 99% of Australian goods exports by value would enter Indonesia duty free or under significantly improved preferential arrangements by 2020. Indonesia will guarantee automatic issue of import permits for key products including live cattle, frozen beef, sheep meat, feed grains, rolled steel coil, citrus products, carrots and potatoes. Australia will immediately eliminate remaining tariffs on Indonesian imports into Australia.

But most deals have winners and losers. The devil is in the detailed text, released only after the ceremony.

Employment rights? The environment?

First, what’s missing. There are no chapters committing both governments to implement basic labour rights and environmental standards as defined in the United Nations agreements, and to prevent them from seeking trade advantages by reducing these rights and standards.

Such chapters are increasingly included in trade deals, like the completed but not yet implemented Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11) encompassing nations including Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru and Vietnam, and the Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement at present under negotiation.

They acknowledge that trade agreements increase competitive pressures, and are intended to prevent a race to the bottom on labour rights and environmental standards.

The fact they are missing from the Indonesia-Australia agreement shows neither government sees them as a priority.

Extra-national tribunals

The deal does include something else contentious that was included in the Trans-Trans-Pacific Partnership; so-called investor-state dispute settlement clauses, in Chapter 14, Section B.

They give special rights to foreign corporations to bypass local courts and sue governments for millions of dollars in extra-national tribunals if they believe a change in law or policy will harm their investment.

The tobacco giant Philip Morris tried it in 2011 using investor-state dispute settlement provisions in an obscure Australia Hong Kong agreement after it lost a fight against Australia’s plain packaging laws in the High Court. It eventually lost in the international tribunal, although after four years and at the cost to Australia of nearly 40 million dollars.

Temporary migrant workers

Article 12.9 of the Indonesia-Australia agreement will give Indonesia an additional 4,000 temporary working holiday visas, and a commitment over the next three years to negotiate arrangements for more “contractual service providers”.

Unlike permanent migrants, who have the same rights as other workers, temporary workers and contractual service providers are tied to one employer and can be deported if they lose their jobs, and so are vulnerable to exploitation, as shown by recent research.

After signing, the implementing legislation has to be passed by both the Australian and Indonesian parliaments before it can come into force.

And not for some time

In Australia, the next steps are for the treaty to be reviewed by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. But the likely calling of the federal election in April will dissolve this committee. The committee will be reconstituted after the election with the winning party having a majority.

Last year Labor faced a strong backlash from its membership and unions when it supported the implementing legislation for the TPP-11 despite the fact that it was contrary to the then Labor policy.

This led to the adoption of an even stronger policy at its national conference and a draft bill that would apply to both future and existing trade agreements.

It requires independent assessments of the economic, social and environmental impacts of future trade agreements before they are ratified, outlaws investor-state dispute settlement clauses and the removal of labour market testing for temporary workers, mandates labour rights and environmental clauses and requires the renegotiation of non-compliant agreements should Labor win office.

Read more: The Senate is set to approve it, but what exactly is the Trans Pacific Partnership?

If the Coalition wins office but not a Senate majority, and Labor implements its policy, a Coalition government could face opposition to ratification of the Indonesia-Australia agreement in the Senate.

If Labor wins government, it will face pressure from its base to implement its policy to conduct an independent assessment and renegotiate the provisions before ratification.

In Indonesia, which has elections in April, the deal could also face a rocky road.

Criticisms of the process led civil society groups to lodge a case which resulted in a ruling by the Indonesian Constitutional Court in November that the Indonesian President cannot approve trade agreements without parliamentary approval.

The opposition parties have been sceptical about the deal. Azam Azman Natawijana, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing trade, was quoted in The Australian saying he expected the ratification process to be protracted.

Read more: Investor rights to sue governments pose real dangers

– ref. It’s more than a free trade agreement. But what exactly have Australia and Indonesia signed? – http://theconversation.com/its-more-than-a-free-trade-agreement-but-what-exactly-have-australia-and-indonesia-signed-112853

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

At 45, it is no longer a question of whether Ben Quilty is the next big thing in Australian art, but of how big will he get – a Storrier, a Whiteley or a Nolan?

Quilty is a large exhibition of monumental paintings, selected by the curator Lisa Slade, mainly from work made by the artist over the past six years. After its inaugural showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia, as part of the Adelaide Festival, it will tour to the state galleries in Brisbane and Sydney.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Self-portrait after Afghanistan, 2012, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 130.0 x 120.0 cm. Private collection, Sydney, Courtesy the artist, photo: Mim Stirling. L/BQ/9-1

To call it a survey show may be a bit of a misnomer for apart from a couple of early Torana paintings – Quilty’s emblems of masculinity personified in a car – most of the show consists of huge slabs of paint. Some commemorate the artist’s service as an official war artist in Afghanistan, others his ultimately futile campaign to save the lives of Bali Nine pair Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. There are refugees and the life vests on Lesbos, Aboriginal massacre sites, Trump and the Last Supper as well as portraits of himself, his family and friends.

Missing are Quilty’s smaller and more intimate paintings, drawings and prints. Quilty is a remarkably prolific artist and the curatorial choice was made to focus on his more recent, “public manifesto” pieces. As the artist explained to me, “I left it completely up to the curator – the selection, the hang, everything”.

Installation view: Quilty featuring Self Portrait, the executioner and Myuran by Ben Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019. Photo: Grant Handcock.

Read more: Myuran Sukumaran’s artistic voice is raw, premature and unsettling

Quilty outlines the narrative of the exhibition,

My work is about working out how to live in this world, it’s about compassion and empathy but also anger and resistance. Through it I hope to push compassion to the front of national debate.

It is a very “noisy” exhibition, where the works scream at you from the walls, proclaiming the urgency, passion and raw emotion of the narrative content, as well as the energy and exuberance of the young artist wishing to demonstrate his mastery of a painter’s bag of tricks.

Thick sensuous slabs of oil paint, endless Rorschach blots and the juxtapositioning of negative and positive spaces are some of Quilty’s favourite formal strategies. There is a prevailing sameness of medium and technique that runs throughout this exhibition.

Installation view: Quilty featuring Irin Irinji and Fairy Bower Rorschach, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019. photo: Grant Handcock.

John Brack, arguably the finest painter Australia has produced, related to me the experience of visiting the Louvre in Paris and being overwhelmed by the great halls of masterpieces all screaming at the viewer, “look at me, I’m a genius”. Finally Brack took refuge with the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians and the silence and eternal validity of their work. The “en masse” emotional pitch of Quilty’s exhibition, after a while, loses its ability to shock.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Captain Kate Porter, After Afghanistan, 2012, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 180.0 x 170.0 cm. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Collection of Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Courtesy the artist, photo: Mim Storling. L/BQ/4-1

Quilty ascribes to the philosophy that the artist is the conscience of society and it is up to the artist to take a stand and lead on issues that matter. In his case, these include the plight of refugees, global warming and the environment, the unfinished business of recognising Australia’s Aboriginal heritage and the bloodshed of the colonial period, and the mounting anxiety associated with living in the “post-truth” age.

Quilty’s Last Supper series of paintings had their origins in the unexpected victory of President Donald Trump in 2016. They are basically eschatological images dealing with a gathering of drunken, evil elders around a festive table set to mark the end of the world. While a grotesque image of a large man with a blonde wig may be discernible in some of the paintings, an attempt is made at universality, rather than specificity.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, The Last Supper, 2016, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 204.0 x 267.0 cm. Private collection, Courtesy the artist.

These are possibly some of the more abstracted images in the exhibition where contorted masses of flesh and bone writhe as if some sort of surrealist anatomical monstrosity.

As the series progresses chronologically, the early thematic literalness is progressively abandoned as increasingly Quilty seeks to create an image of universal anxiety. These are some of the more successful paintings by the artist to date.

Quilty is an artist who appears to be always in a hurry. Passion and urgency inherent in the subject matter, perhaps may require a more distilled and deliberate technical resolution to increase the effectiveness as paintings. It is difficult to doubt the artist’s sincerity and commitment to the causes he champions, but one can question the technical resolution of some of the pieces.

If 15 years ago, images of a backyard Torana could be painted with gusto in thick impasto as a measure for male testosterone levels, the abandoned orange life vests of 2016, washed up on the island of Lesbos and presented as emblems of human sacrifice could, perhaps, call for an alternative artistic strategy.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Omid Ali Avaz, 2016, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 130.0 x 110.0 cm; Gift of Paul Walker and Patricia Mason in memory of Omid Ali Avaz through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2018. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Brenton McGeachie. 20183P84

Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Chaim Soutine could all empower an inanimate object with the profound power of a spiritual icon. In Quilty’s huge series of life vests, the materiality of the object is perfectly conveyed in paint, but it is left to the beholder to value add to the experience through their imagination.

Quilty is an interesting phenomenon in the Australian art scene, my hope is that he will not be eaten up by the Sydney art machine, as has been so frequently the case for artists in the past. The hope is that he will be allowed, and will allow himself, to explore and find his true potential as an artist.

Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide March 2 – June 2, touring to Queensland Art Gallery + Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 29 Jun – 13 Oct 2019 and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 9 Nov 2019 – 2 Feb 2020.

– ref. A noisy, passionate show from an artist in a hurry, Quilty has just one emotional pitch – http://theconversation.com/a-noisy-passionate-show-from-an-artist-in-a-hurry-quilty-has-just-one-emotional-pitch-112943

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Pavlovich, Assistant Lecturer in Taxation, Massey University

As part of a major review of New Zealand’s tax system, the government’s Tax Working Group recommended a comprehensive capital gains tax. New Zealand is one of few countries without a capital gains tax, and the proposal has generated outrage.

Commentators have described the proposed tax as a “mangy dog”, “an envy tax”, an “attack on the kiwi way of life” and “offensive to New Zealand values”.

Digging deeper beyond the headline-grabbing rhetoric, some commentators have expressed concern the proposed tax will have a detrimental impact on the economy by distorting investment decisions and creating an excessive administrative burden on taxpayers and the Inland Revenue Department (IRD). There are also claims about the lack of fairness in taxing “hard earned gains” that have been built up for retirement.

Missing from the debate is the fact that a capital gains tax should reduce income taxes for most New Zealanders.

Read more: Stranger than fiction. Who Labor’s capital gains tax changes will really hurt

A fair tax system

The debate strikes at the heart of two essential elements used to assess the quality of a tax: equity and efficiency.

In order to be equitable, a tax should treat people with similar economic situations in a similar way. This is called horizontal equity. Equally, taxation should fall more heavily on those who have the ability to pay. This is referred to as vertical equity.

These are the principles set out by the great Scottish economist Adam Smith in his 18th-century magnum opus The Wealth of Nations. In order to evaluate the tax proposals, New Zealand’s Tax Working Group used Smith’s principles of fairness alongside two distinctly New Zealand frameworks: Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview) and the Living Standards Framework. These two frameworks have been developed to guide policy makers toward the objective of inter-generational well-being, including the effect of policy on growing inequality and non-economic factors such as social and environmental capital.

Not taxing capital gains results in a failure to achieve both horizontal and vertical equity.

Taxing passive gains

Currently, in New Zealand, some income is taxed and some is not. The income that is taxed is typically derived from personal services (“hard work”) and from investments of capital (interest, rent and dividends). The income that is not taxed is typically derived from market movement, such as capital gains on assets.

On the whole, we have a counterintuitive approach to taxation in New Zealand where we tax “hard work” and fail to tax gains that accrue passively. Two people in similar situations are taxed differently. A person who invests in a small business that produces goods and services pays tax on all their profits, while another who invests in property that accumulates passive gains, does not.

In a world where the accumulation of capital through passive gain is increasingly being held by a smaller group, the need to tax those gains is becoming more urgent.

Statistics provided by the Tax Working Group indicate the taxation burden is flat across all income groups. This means our tax system does not operate according to Smith’s ability-to-pay principle. We have progressive tax rates but those in the highest income deciles enjoy much of their income in the form of tax-free capital gains. New Zealand’s failure to tax capital gains is inequitable.

Tax efficiency

The claims that a capital gains tax is inefficient centre around administrative issues and investment distortions. The first claim has some merit – new taxes usually result in additional administration, especially early on. The second has no merit whatsoever.

For New Zealand’s economy to thrive, greater investment in the production of goods and services is required. However, these investments are often risky. And they are taxed when profitable. Hence it is a far more attractive investment proposition to invest in low-risk assets that attract little or no tax, such as land.

Contrary to popular belief, land investment, in itself, is not a productive activity. The land is there regardless of who owns it. Someone may conduct productive activity on the land, such as farming or building houses, but the ownership itself does not produce goods or services. A capital gains tax would reduce distortion in investment choices, not increase it.

If tax applies to gains on investment in assets as it does to business profits, it will encourage investment decisions based on where the greatest return can be made, not where tax-free gains are derived. The lack of capital gains tax has been distorting investment decisions for decades.

Impact on economy

In the longer term, it would be a positive outcome to attract some investment out of property and into production of goods and services, regardless of any possible adjustments that might occur in the short term.

And the tax cuts? Missing from this debate entirely has been recognition of the Tax Working Group’s recommendation that the additional tax collected from a capital gains tax should be used to reduce income taxes. This is not a “tax grab” but a reallocation of the tax burden.

If the government were to implement the recommendations of the Tax Working Group report, most New Zealanders would find themselves with an increase in their after tax income. Greater equality would seem to be more consistent with kiwi values than the status quo.

– ref. Why a proposed capital gains tax could mean tax cuts for most New Zealanders – http://theconversation.com/why-a-proposed-capital-gains-tax-could-mean-tax-cuts-for-most-new-zealanders-112852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

We need nature. It gives us inspiration, health, resources, life. But we are losing it. Extinction is the most acute and irreversible manifestation of this loss.

Australian species have suffered at a disproportionate rate. Far more mammal species have become extinct in Australia than in any other country over the past 200 years.

The thylacine is the most recognised and mourned of our lost species, but the lesser bilby has gone, so too the pig-footed bandicoot, the Toolache wallaby, the white-footed rabbit-rat, along with many other mammals that lived only in Australia. The paradise parrot has joined them, the robust white-eye, the King Island emu, the Christmas Island forest skink, the southern gastric-brooding frog, the Phillip Island glory pea, and at least another 100 species that were part of the fabric of this land, part of what made Australia distinctive.

And that’s just the tally for known extinctions. Many more have been lost without ever being named. Still others hover in the graveyard – we’re not sure whether they linger or are gone.

Read more: What makes some species more likely to go extinct?

The losses continue: three Australian vertebrate species became extinct in the past decade. Most of the factors that caused the losses remain unchecked, and new threats are appearing, intensifying, expanding. Many species persist only in slivers of their former range and in a fraction of their previous abundance, and the long-established momentum of their decline will soon take them over the brink.

The toolache wallaby is just one of Australia’s many extinct species. John Gould, F.R.S., Mammals of Australia, Vol. II Plate 19, London, 1863

Unnecessarily extinct

These losses need not have happened. Almost all were predictable and preventable. They represent failures in our duty of care, legislation, policy and management. They give witness to, and warn us about, the malaise of our land and waters.

How do we staunch the wound and maintain Australia’s wildlife? It’s a problem with many facets and no single solution. Here we provide ten recommendations, based on an underlying recognition that more extinctions will be inevitable unless we treat nature as part of the essence of this country, rather than as a dispensable tangent, an economic externality.

1. We should commit to preventing any more extinctions. As a society, we need to treat our nature with more respect – our plants and animals have lived in this place for hundreds of thousands, often millions, of years. They are integral to this country. We should not deny them their existence.

2. We should craft an intergenerational social contract. We have been gifted an extraordinary nature. We have an obligation to pass to following generations a world as full of wonder, beauty and diversity as our generation has inherited.

3. We should highlight our respect for, and obligation to, nature in our constitution, just as that fusty document could be refreshed and some of its deficiencies redressed through the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Those drafting the blueprint for the way our country is governed gave little or no heed to its nature. A constitution is more than a simple administrative rule book. Countries such as Ecuador, Palau and Bhutan have constitutions that commit to caring for their natural legacy and recognise that society and nature are interdependent.

4. We should build a generation-scale funding commitment and long-term vision to escape the fickle, futile, three-year cycle of contested government funding. Environmental challenges in Australia are deeply ingrained and longstanding, and the conservation response and its resourcing need to be implemented on a scale of decades.

5. As Paul Keating stated in his landmark Redfern speech, we should all see Australia through Aboriginal eyes – more deeply feel the way the country’s heart beats; become part of the land; fit into the landscape. This can happen through teaching curricula, through reverting to Indigenous names for landmarks, through reinvigorating Indigenous land management, and through pervasive cultural respect.

6. We need to live within our environmental limits – constraining the use of water, soil and other natural resources to levels that are sustainable, restraining population growth and setting a positive example to the world in our efforts to minimise climate change.

7. We need to celebrate and learn from our successes. There are now many examples of how good management and investments can help threatened species recover. We are capable of reversing our mismanagement.

8. Funding to prevent extinctions is woefully inadequate, of course, and needs to be increased. The budgeting is opaque, but the Australian government spends about A$200 million a year on the conservation of threatened species, about 10% of what the US government outlays for its own threatened species. Understandably, our American counterparts are more successful. For context, Australians spend about A$4 billion a year caring for pet cats.

9. Environmental law needs strengthening. Too much is discretionary and enforcement is patchy. We suggest tightening the accountability for environmental failures, including extinction. Should species die out, formal inquests should be mandatory to learn the necessary lessons and make systemic improvements.

10. We need to enhance our environmental research, management and monitoring capability. Many threatened species remain poorly known and most are not adequately monitored. This makes it is hard to measure progress in response to management, or the speed of their collapse towards extinction.

Read more: Eulogy for a seastar, Australia’s first recorded marine extinction

Extinction is not inevitable. It is a failure, potentially even a crime – a theft from the future that is entirely preventable. We can and should prevent extinctions, and safeguard and celebrate the diversity of Australian life.

– ref. An end to endings: how to stop more Australian species going extinct – http://theconversation.com/an-end-to-endings-how-to-stop-more-australian-species-going-extinct-111627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

Values such as care, compassion and safety are more important to us now than they were in the 1980s. The importance of respecting authority has fallen since the beginning of the 20th century, while judging right and wrong based on loyalty to country and family has steadily risen.

Our analysis, using the Google Books database and published in Plos One, showed distinctive trends in our moral priorities between 1900 to 2007.

How we should understand these changes in moral sensibility is a fascinating problem. Morality is not rigid or monolithic. Moral Foundations Theory, for instance, puts forward five moral grammars, each with its own set of associated virtues and vices.

These are:

• purity-based morality, which is rooted in ideas of sanctity and piety. When standards of purity are violated, the reaction is disgust, and violators are seen as unclean and tarnished

• authority-based morality, which prizes duty, deference, and social order. It abhors those who show disrespect and disobedience

• fairness-based morality, which stands in opposition to authority-based morality. It judges right and wrong using values of equality, impartiality and tolerance, and disdains bias and prejudice

• ingroup-based morality, which esteems loyalty to family, community or nation, and judges those who threaten or undermine them as immoral

• harm-based morality, which values care, compassion and safety, and views wrongness in terms of suffering, mistreatment and cruelty.

People of different ages, genders, personalities, and political beliefs employ these moralities to different degrees. People on the political right, for instance, are more likely to endorse the moralities of purity, authority and ingroup loyalty. Those on the left rely more on the morality of harm and fairness. Women tend to endorse harm-based morality more than men.

We used these five moral foundations in our analysis. Put simply, our culture, at least as revealed through moral language in the books we read and write, is increasing the emphasis it places on some moral foundations and decreasing its emphasis on others.

Read more: The greatest moral challenge of our time? It’s how we think about morality itself

Historical change in moral concepts

Moral psychologists know a lot about how people today vary in their moral thinking, but they have largely ignored how moral thinking has changed historically. As cultures evolve and societies develop, people’s ways of thinking about good and evil also transform. The nature of that transformation is a matter of speculation.

One narrative suggests our recent history is one of de-moralisation. On this view, our societies have become progressively less prudish and judgmental. We have become more accepting of others, rational, irreligious, and scientific in how we approach matters of right and wrong.

A contrary narrative implies re-moralisation. By this account, our culture is increasingly censorious. More things offend and outrage us, and the growing polarisation of political debate reveals excesses of righteousness and self-righteousness.

We wanted to find which of these stories best captured how morals have changed over time, and we used an emerging field of inquiry to do so – culturomics. Culturomics uses very large text databases to track changes in cultural beliefs and values. Changing patterns of language use over time may reveal alterations in how people have made sense of their world and themselves.

Patterns of language is one of way to see how people make sense of themselves and the world. Annie Spratt/unsplash

The most common platform for examining such cultural shifts is the Google Books database. Containing more than 500 billion words from 5 million scanned and digitised books, the database is a rich source of information on the rising and falling popularity of words.

Studies using English-language books, for example, have shown increases in individualist values, revealed through decreases in “us” and increases in “me”. Studies in Chinese-language books have shown similar declines in words associated with collectivist values in recent decades.

Read more: Google’s vast library reveals the rising tide of climate-related words in literature

To date, there has only been one culturomic study of moral language. The researchers examined changes in the frequency of a set of virtue words such as “conscience”, “honesty” and “kindness” over the 20th century. As the de-moralisation narrative would predict, most of these words showed a significant decline in popularity, suggesting ideas of moral virtue became less culturally salient.

In our study, we explored changes in 20th century morality in greater depth. Each of the five foundations was represented by large, well-validated sets of virtue and vice words. We also examined changes in a set of basic moral terms such as “good”, “moral”, “righteous”; and “bad”, “evil”, and “wrong”.

We extracted the relative frequency of each word in a set for every year, standardised it so that the year in which this frequency peaked scored 100, and then averaged the words in the set. The trajectory of these averaged values over time reflects broad changes in the prominence of each form of morality.

Differently moral

We found basic moral terms (see the black line below) became dramatically scarcer in English-language books as the 20th century unfolded – which fits the de-moralisation narrative. But an equally dramatic rebound began in about 1980, implying a striking re-moralisation.

The five moral foundations, on the other hand, show a vastly changing trajectory. The purity foundation (green line) shows the same plunge and rebound as the basic moral terms. Ideas of sacredness, piety and purity, and of sin, desecration and indecency, fell until about 1980, and rose afterwards.

The other moralities show very different pathways. Perhaps surprisingly, the egalitarian morality of fairness (blue) showed no consistent rise or fall.

In contrast, the hierarchy-based morality of authority (grey) underwent a gentle decline for the first half of the century. It then sharply rose as the gathering crisis of authority shook the Western world in the late 1960s. This morality of obedience and conformity, insubordination and rebellion, then receded equally sharply through the 1970s.

Ingroup morality (orange), reflected in the communal language of loyalty and unity, insiders and outsiders, displays the clearest upward trend through the 20th century. Discernible bumps around the two world wars point to passing elevations in the “us and them” morality of threatened communities.

Finally, harm-based morality (red) presents a complex but intriguing trend. Its prominence falls from 1900 to the 1970s, interrupted by similar wartime bumps when themes of suffering and destruction became understandably urgent. But harm rises steeply from about 1980 in the absence of a single dominating global conflict.

What can we say about this?

The decades since 1980 can be seen as a period when moral concerns experienced a revival. What has driven this revival is open to speculation. Some might see the election of conservative governments in the US, UK and Australia at the start of this period as a pivotal change.

That might explain the rise of the typically conservative purity-based morality but not the even steeper increase in the typically liberal harm foundation.

Others might point to the rise of social justice concerns – or “political correctness” to critics – as the basis for the upswing in harm-based morality. The surge of harm language during early- and mid-century wartime may point to the late century rise being linked to the so called “culture wars”. Certainly, the simultaneous rise in conservative (purity) and left-liberal (harm) moralities since that time is a recipe for moral conflict and polarisation.

Read more: How we decide who and what we care about – and whether robots stand a chance

Our research has its limitations. Books are windows into only some aspects of culture. The population of English-language books is dominated by American and to a lesser extent British volumes, and we cannot isolate patterns specific to different English-speaking nations. The Google Books database does not allow us to examine changes in morality over the past decade.

Even so, this research points to some important cultural transformations. How we tend to think about matters of right and wrong is different now from how we once did and, if the trends are to be believed, how we will in the future.

– ref. Changing morals: we’re more compassionate than 100 years ago, but more judgmental too – http://theconversation.com/changing-morals-were-more-compassionate-than-100-years-ago-but-more-judgmental-too-112504

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Staples, Senior Lecturer in Management, RMIT University

The words are a little different, but the requirements are as good as unchanged. The new Australian Securities Exchange corporate governance principles adopted last week have shuffled more words than they have altered.

When the ASX first published its governance principles in 2003 it was a decade late to the global governance party and playing catch up after the A$5.3 billion collapse of HIH Insurance.

In 2003 it modelled its new code on the British 1992 Cadbury Report.

A decade and a half on it is still playing catch-up, tweaking and reheating its code a fourth time in the wake of the banking royal commission.

The 2019 reheat is straight out of the 1992 playbook.

In 1992 City of London grandee Sir Adrian Cadbury was given the job of pulling British corporate high fliers into line after a string of scandals and collapses.

While his “restoring trust” strategy worked, it was never a rigorous, evidence-driven exercise. It was instead a cobbling together of “best practice” ideas with the aim of warding off tougher legislation.

Some 25 years on, that self regulatory approach remains deeply flawed.

Australia’s 2003 code didn’t stop the company collapses during the global financial crisis or the systemic misconduct revealed in the royal commission.

The latest revisions have variously been reported as a “potent mix of new and increased recommendations for company directors” and worthy of applause, but the commentary glosses over some fairly obvious problems with self-regulation.

The changes are minor.

What do the changes do?

The tweaks focus on the composition of the board, the role of the board in instilling a culture of acting lawfully and ethically and responsibly, and integrity of corporate reports.

Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne wanted boards to take responsibility for their role in establishing culture.

The ASX is signalling that it has listened to him, saying “a listed entity should articulate and disclose its values”, but it is also signalling that it doesn’t want to go as far as incorporating corporate social responsibility via a “social license to operate”, a phrase AMP chair David Murray labelled politically correct nonsense.

Other changes re-emphasise having the right people on boards (dovetailing into debates about diversity and gender equality) and safeguarding the integrity of corporate reports in light of scandals such as the collapse of Carillion in the UK, and the Gupta corruption scandal in South Africa which engulfed international heavyweights KPMG, McKinsey and Bell Pottinger.

Why are companies writing their own rules?

While the royal commission revealed damning misconduct, its final report left commentators such as Satyajit Das, Stephen Long, Alan Kohler, Adele Ferguson, and Tim Colebatch scratching their heads.

Of most concern was the heavy onus placed on the banks themselves to resolve their problems – to self-regulate.

It creates the opportunity for the Australian Securities Exchange working with the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Business Council of Australia to claim the field for themselves.

The Institute wants to broaden directors duties but not to change board structures. The Council labels criticism “business bashing”.

Hayne wants the codes to be enforceable. But the principles are written using loose “if not, why not” language. They are anything but enforceable.

What’s the way forward?

The current ASX code should be abandoned.
If Australia is to have a corporate governance code it should be written by a government-convened commission of experts and community representatives – as has happened in Germany – rather than by and for industry insiders.

Read more: Solving deep problems with corporate governance requires more than rearranging deck chairs

– ref. Word games and virtue signalling as the stock exchange reworks its corporate governance code – http://theconversation.com/word-games-and-virtue-signalling-as-the-stock-exchange-reworks-its-corporate-governance-code-112768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Farmer, Senior Research Officer, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

How much does a brain weigh? – Question from the students of Ms Young’s Grade 5/6 class, Baden Powell College, Victoria.

A newborn baby’s brain weighs about 400 grams – a bit lighter than half a litre of milk, or about the same as four medium-sized rainbow lorikeets. By the time that baby reaches her teens, her brain now weighs about 1.4 – 1.5 kilograms: one whole extra litre of milk or a whopping nine or 10 extra lorikeets!

And while a teenager’s brain is still learning and developing, it won’t get much bigger in size – an adult brain is about 1.4 – 1.5kg too.

That 1.5 kilograms takes up about 1300 millilitres, and is about 70% water. The remaining 30% is made up of fat and protein with a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt.

This makes the brain sound quite similar to pancakes but the brain is much more useful for thinking and (as you might imagine) far less delicious than pancakes.

I don’t have to imagine how delicious brains are because I once tried eating some at a Teppanyaki restaurant in Japan. At least, I think that it was brain: it was listed on the menu as “meat of the head” and I think that it was chicken brain. At least, I hope that it was chicken brain. At the time, I wished that it was pancakes.

Delicious or not, these ingredients make up the 86 billion thinking cells (called “neurons”) and 80 billion or so supporting cells that, together, make up your brain.

This is a whole lot of cells; it is similar to the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy!

Your brain has lots of different parts that all take care of different things, like memory, movement, feelings, imagination. Shutterstock

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

Big brains, little brains

One of the smallest “brains” belongs to a microscopic worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. It only has 302 brain cells, each one with its own name.

The sperm whale, on the other hand, has a whopping big brain. The biggest brain on Earth, in fact. It is 8 litres: about the size of a small school backpack, or considerably more lorikeet parrots than you could fit into a small school backpack. But please, do not try this at home. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

The biggest brain on Earth belongs to the sperm whale. Shutterstock

“But wait!” I hear you cry. “The blue whale is the biggest whale on Earth. Why doesn’t it have the biggest brain?!”.

Blue whales might be the biggest whales, but they don’t have the biggest brains. Unlike blue whales, sperm whales need to do complicated things like herding and hunting in order to survive.

These tricky tasks require more brain power than simple filter-feeding (which is what blue whales do), and that may be why sperm whales have bigger brains.

As for your brain, you can keep it healthy by eating healthy food (so, not pancakes… OK some pancakes), drinking lots of water, getting some exercise, thinking and using your imagination.

You can use your imagination to wonder what brains taste like or imagine how big your school bag would have to be to comfortably accommodate 64 lorikeets.

Above all, keep thinking up excellent questions about the world around you.

David Farmer is the brains (pun absolutely intended) behind the Melbourne Comedy Festival show “Why You’re Not Dead Yet” which is all about brain function.

Read more: Curious Kids: If Australia is at the bottom of the world, why are we the right way up?

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: how much does a brain weigh? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-much-does-a-brain-weigh-112000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders University

Review: Two Feet, Adelaide Festival

There are many reasons for a dance choreographer to revisit a work from their back catalogue. With Two Feet, an exhilarating two-hour work that brought audiences to their feet for the opening weekend of the Adelaide Festival, acclaimed Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard has added another.

When Two Feet premiered in 1988, Tankard herself played one of the early 20th century’s greatest ballerinas, Russian Olga Spessivtzeva. She has recreated the work for one of the most brilliant ballet dancers of the current generation, Russian Natalia Osipova.

Tankard has a long association with Adelaide, and it was during her tenure as Artistic Director of the Australian Dance Theatre (1993-1999) that the company developed a solid international reputation. Local audiences would recognise aspects of her quirky, homespun style in this work, while it also bears the traces of her six years as a featured dancer with Pina Bausch’s famed Wuppertaler Tanztheatre.

Spessivtzeva was a dancer known for her work with the Ballet Russes and Paris Opera Ballet from 1916-1934, and perhaps more famously, for a series of mental breakdowns. In 1934, following a successful Australian tour, she was found wandering down a deserted road outside of Sydney.

Natalia Osipova plays fellow Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva. Both dancers are renowned for their interpretations of Giselle. Regis Lansac

The dancer’s most famous role was that of the title character in Giselle, one of the great 19th century romantic operas. And like Giselle, whose madness is expressed by the compulsion to dance to the point of being consumed by it, Spessivtzeva was known for her fanaticism and a perfectionism that ultimately proved too onerous for her body.

She famously identified with the character, and her interpretation of the role, which includes a tragic scene in which she literally dances herself to death, has remained a fixed reference point for all future Giselles.

Read more: Dada Masilo’s Giselle is a courageous retelling for our times

Enter Osipova, who like Spessivtzeva, has been critically acclaimed for her Giselle. She has been lauded both for her raw, emotional approach to the character, but also for her high leaps, which make it appear as though she is flying across the stage in the ballet’s key dance scenes. In an interview late last year Tankard observed of Osipova, “she’s like a modern day Olga”.

Yet this is no autobiography of Spessivtzeva – we know little of her actual inner emotional life. Instead, with new sequences developed with Osipova, Tankard offers up a rich piece of dance theatre which riffs on what would today be recognised as Olga’s struggle with depression. Known for her obsessive repetition of dance exercises along the barre prior to performing, Olga’s mental illness is linked to the rigorous demands of dance training.

The internal logic of the work weaves a twisted but uncannily connected web connecting Osipova and her mental state with the extreme, cruel, and sometimes comic ways in which dance is taught and learned.

Spessivtzeva was known for her obsessive dance training along the barre. Regis Lansac

One of the comic sequences is drawn from a 1957 primer, Every Child’s Book of Dance and Ballet, which sets out with diagrams and writing how a young girl is to perform the absurdly over-mimed “Shrimp” dance. Osipova attempts to master the steps as they are authoritatively delivered via voice-over in English and Russian.

The instructions are frequently ridiculous, as the girl, net in hand, is instructed how to dance out the capture and eventual release of a large shrimp while acting cute for the audience. In its silliness, it is also vaguely menacing.

So too are some of Osipova’s own revelations, as when she reveals in one sequence that her mother frequently found her with her legs strapped behind her head to the bed post. As she demonstrates the pose, she tells us, “I never felt anything because I’m used to pain”.

Adding further depth to this richly layered show were the projections of Tankard’s long-time collaborator Regis Lansac. His photographic and video images created the physical world that commented on, shaped, encased, and made the dance possible.

Regis Lansac’s photographic and video projections added a rich layer to Tankard’s production. Regis Lansac

Nowhere were Lansac’s projections more magical and necessary than in the work’s final scene. Mirroring Giselle’s breakdown, Olga finds herself in a forest, where she dances herself into an emotional and physical breakdown. We feel the chill of the air as a forest of trees is revealed in the mist, then reflected in the light pool of water that floods the stage.

When Osipova, as Olga playing both Giselle and herself enters this world in a calf-length tutu, the juxtaposition of the elegant, Romantic world, and a menacing natural one elevate the drama. Osipova’s Olga is now a body that is contained, restrained, confined. Her movements are jerky, defeated, those of someone struggling in vain to discipline an uncooperative body.

As she falls, repeatedly, we are witnessing an excruciating beauty unfolding in front of us. There is no happy ending here, only the dancer and the audience alone together, in the dark.

Two Feet is playing as part of the Adelaide Festival until March 5.

– ref. Meryl Tankard revisits Two Feet, the tragic story of a dancer’s perfectionism – http://theconversation.com/meryl-tankard-revisits-two-feet-the-tragic-story-of-a-dancers-perfectionism-112947

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sabine Braat, Biostatistician, University of Melbourne

This article is in the series This is research, where we ask academics to share and discuss open access articles that reveal important aspects of science.

Today’s piece explains the term “number needed to treat” or NNT. It’s a way to get a sense of whether the treatment you’re considering is likely to have an impact or not.

Whether it’s quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake or making healthier dietary choices, many of us have habits we’d like to change. But it’s really hard to know which treatment path to take.

To advise their patients on the best of course of action, doctors sometimes compare treatments using something called the “number needed to treat” (NNT).

In deciding whether to embark on a course of treatment, NNT can help. But the term is easily misunderstood by patients, and doctors as well.

So it’s useful to break down what NNT means.

Read more: Trust Me, I’m An Expert: What research says about how to stick to your New Year’s resolutions

Comparing treatments

The NNT is a measure used to compare the benefits and harms of treatments. It was developed by three epidemiologists about 30 years ago.

Doctors like it for a couple of reasons:

1. it’s easy to calculate
2. it allows doctors to describe the effect of a treatment in terms of the number of patients that need to be treated in order to help one additional patient.

To understand how, let’s imagine we are running a randomised controlled trial to compare the effect of two different treatments intended to help smokers quit. Quitting smoking is notoriously hard, even with good intentions.

Read more: Randomised control trials: what makes them the gold standard in medical research?

Study participants are randomly assigned to a prescribed treatment (for example, a drug, let’s call it “NoSmoke”) or some minimal behavioural support (such as counselling).

Suppose we find that 16.5% of the smokers who received NoSmoke stopped smoking, while only 7.5% of those who received counselling quit.

It would seem obvious to compare these treatments by looking at the difference between these two percentages. Since 16.5% is greater than 7.5% (by 9%!), we could conclude that NoSmoke is more beneficial than counselling in helping people to stop smoking.

Looking at the percentages of smokers that quit, NoSmoke seems to be more effective than counselling. Karen Lamb and Sabine Braat, Author provided

Although the difference in percentages is a useful way to compare the effect of treatments it can be tricky to interpret because it is abstract: it involves a probability. In our example, the probability for a person to stop smoking increases from 7.5% with counselling to 16.5% with NoSmoke.

The NNT gives us an alternative way to understand the impact of a treatment.

Real outcomes for patients

In this smoking example, the NNT helps you see how many patients need to receive a stop smoking treatment (compared to another treatment) for one more patient to stop smoking.

Read more: Why Australian prisoners are smoking nicotine-infused tea leaves

The NNT is obtained by dividing 100% by the difference in percentages of patients with the outcome. In our example above, the NNT is about 11 (100 divided by 9 – since 16.5 minus 7.5 is 9). This means that to have one additional smoker quitting, on average 11 smokers need to use NoSmoke (rather than receive minimal behavioural support).

A higher NNT means that more patients need to receive the new treatment in order for one additional patient to reach the outcome compared to the reference treatment.

Nicotine replacement therapy

Let’s look at some real data. In a large review paper published in 2016, the NNT for all types of nicotine replacement therapy was reported to be 23. This means that on average 23 smokers need to receive nicotine replacement therapy – such as a patch, gum, or lozenge – for one additional smoker to quit (compared to behavioural support only).

Comparing this value with our hypothetical clinical trial NoSmoke data presented above, we can quickly see that the use of NoSmoke (which had an NNT of 11) is about 2 times more likely to result in quitting than use of nicotine replacement therapy.

NNT values show how many people need to be treated in order for a treatment to be effective for one person. Karen Lamb and Sabine Braat, Author provided

The ideal NNT for treatment benefit is 1, in which case every single patient on the new treatment should benefit from receiving this new treatment.

The NNT can express both benefits and harms. For instance, the NNT for heart palpitations or chest pains with nicotine replacement therapy is 94: this means on average 94 persons would have to use nicotine replacement therapy to observe one additional person with a harmful outcome (heart palpitations or chest pains).

Understanding the NNT

While the use of NNT is widespread, it has been reported that the NNT is actually frequently misunderstood by patients and doctors alike.

In addition, shortcomings of the NNT are well described in the scientific literature. The NNT varies with the risk of the outcome under the reference treatment (in our example this is the “risk” of stopping smoking for those that received counselling) and depends on duration of treatment and follow-up. These factors should be similar between studies when comparing NNTs.

The NNT may claim to be a helpful way to compare treatments quickly, however measures such as the difference in percentages may actually be easier to grasp and less likely to mislead both patient and doctor.

The open access research paper referred to in this analysis is Nicotine receptor partial agonists for smoking cessation.

– ref. Want to quit a bad habit? Here’s one way to compare treatments – http://theconversation.com/want-to-quit-a-bad-habit-heres-one-way-to-compare-treatments-109144

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

Values such as care, compassion and safety are more important to us now than they were in the 1980s. The importance of respecting authority has fallen since the beginning of the 20th century, while judging right and wrong based on loyalty to country and family has steadily risen.

Our analysis, using the Google Books database and published in Plos One, showed distinctive trends in our moral priorities between 1900 to 2007.

How we should understand these changes in moral sensibility is a fascinating problem. Morality is not rigid or monolithic. Moral Foundations Theory, for instance, puts forward five moral grammars, each with its own set of associated virtues and vices.

These are:

• purity-based morality, which is rooted in ideas of sanctity and piety. When standards of purity are violated, the reaction is disgust, and violators are seen as unclean and tarnished

• authority-based morality, which prizes duty, deference, and social order. It abhors those who show disrespect and disobedience

• fairness-based morality, which stands in opposition to authority-based morality. It judges right and wrong using values of equality, impartiality and tolerance, and disdains bias and prejudice

• ingroup-based morality, which esteems loyalty to family, community or nation, and judges those who threaten or undermine them as immoral

• harm-based morality, which values care, compassion and safety, and views wrongness in terms of suffering, mistreatment and cruelty.

People of different ages, genders, personalities, and political beliefs employ these moralities to different degrees. People on the political right, for instance, are more likely to endorse the moralities of purity, authority and ingroup loyalty. Those on the left rely more on the morality of harm and fairness. Women tend to endorse harm-based morality more than men.

We used these five moral foundations in our analysis. Put simply, our culture, at least as revealed through moral language in the books we read and write, is increasing the emphasis it places on some moral foundations and decreasing its emphasis on others.

Read more: The greatest moral challenge of our time? It’s how we think about morality itself

Historical change in moral concepts

Moral psychologists know a lot about how people today vary in their moral thinking, but they have largely ignored how moral thinking has changed historically. As cultures evolve and societies develop, people’s ways of thinking about good and evil also transform. The nature of that transformation is a matter of speculation.

One narrative suggests our recent history is one of de-moralisation. On this view, our societies have become progressively less prudish and judgemental. We have become more accepting of others, rational, irreligious, and scientific in how we approach matters of right and wrong.

A contrary narrative implies re-moralisation. By this account, our culture is increasingly censorious. More things offend and outrage us, and the growing polarisation of political debate reveals excesses of righteousness and self-righteousness.

We wanted to find which of these stories best captured how morals have changed over time, and we used an emerging field of inquiry to do so – culturomics. Culturomics uses very large text databases to track changes in cultural beliefs and values. Changing patterns of language use over time may reveal alterations in how people have made sense of their world and themselves.

Patterns of language is one of way to see how people make sense of themselves and the world. Annie Spratt/unsplash

The most common platform for examining such cultural shifts is the Google Books database. Containing more than 500 billion words from 5 million scanned and digitised books, the database is a rich source of information on the rising and falling popularity of words.

Studies using English-language books, for example, have shown increases in individualist values, revealed through decreases in “us” and increases in “me”. Studies in Chinese-language books have shown similar declines in words associated with collectivist values in recent decades.

Read more: Google’s vast library reveals the rising tide of climate-related words in literature

To date, there has only been one culturomic study of moral language. The researchers examined changes in the frequency of a set of virtue words such as “conscience”, “honesty” and “kindness” over the 20th century. As the de-moralisation narrative would predict, most of these words showed a significant decline in popularity, suggesting ideas of moral virtue became less culturally salient.

In our study, we explored changes in 20th century morality in greater depth. Each of the five foundations was represented by large, well-validated sets of virtue and vice words. We also examined changes in a set of basic moral terms such as “good”, “moral”, “righteous”; and “bad”, “evil”, and “wrong”.

We extracted the relative frequency of each word in a set for every year, standardised it so that the year in which this frequency peaked scored 100, and then averaged the words in the set. The trajectory of these averaged values over time reflects broad changes in the prominence of each form of morality.

Differently moral

We found basic moral terms (see the black line below) became dramatically scarcer in English-language books as the 20th century unfolded – which fits the de-moralisation narrative. But an equally dramatic rebound began in about 1980, implying a striking re-moralisation.

The five moral foundations, on the other hand, show a vastly changing trajectory. The purity foundation (green line) shows the same plunge and rebound as the basic moral terms. Ideas of sacredness, piety and purity, and of sin, desecration and indecency, fell until about 1980, and rose afterwards.

The other moralities show very different pathways. Perhaps surprisingly, the egalitarian morality of fairness (blue) showed no consistent rise or fall.

In contrast, the hierarchy-based morality of authority (grey) underwent a gentle decline for the first half of the century. It then sharply rose as the gathering crisis of authority shook the Western world in the late 1960s. This morality of obedience and conformity, insubordination and rebellion, then receded equally sharply through the 1970s.

Ingroup morality (orange), reflected in the communal language of loyalty and unity, insiders and outsiders, displays the clearest upward trend through the 20th century. Discernible bumps around the two world wars point to passing elevations in the “us and them” morality of threatened communities.

Finally, harm-based morality (red) presents a complex but intriguing trend. Its prominence falls from 1900 to the 1970s, interrupted by similar wartime bumps when themes of suffering and destruction became understandably urgent. But harm rises steeply from about 1980 in the absence of a single dominating global conflict.

What can we say about this?

The decades since 1980 can be seen as a period when moral concerns experienced a revival. What has driven this revival is open to speculation. Some might see the election of conservative governments in the US, UK and Australia at the start of this period as a pivotal change.

That might explain the rise of the typically conservative purity-based morality but not the even steeper increase in the typically liberal harm foundation.

Others might point to the rise of social justice concerns – or “political correctness” to critics – as the basis for the upswing in harm-based morality. The surge of harm language during early- and mid-century wartime may point to the late century rise being linked to the so called “culture wars”. Certainly, the simultaneous rise in conservative (purity) and left-liberal (harm) moralities since that time is a recipe for moral conflict and polarisation.

Read more: How we decide who and what we care about – and whether robots stand a chance

Our research has its limitations. Books are windows into only some aspects of culture. The population of English-language books is dominated by American and to a lesser extent British volumes, and we cannot isolate patterns specific to different English-speaking nations. The Google Books database does not allow us to examine changes in morality over the past decade.

Even so, this research points to some important cultural transformations. How we tend to think about matters of right and wrong is different now from how we once did and, if the trends are to be believed, how we will in the future.

– ref. Changing morals: we’re more compassionate than 100 years ago, but more judgemental too – http://theconversation.com/changing-morals-were-more-compassionate-than-100-years-ago-but-more-judgemental-too-112504

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Orr, Veterinarian and PhD candidate, University of Sydney

You might think raw meat pet food is good for your dog. But a new study, published today in Vet Record, has found it can have high levels of bacteria that may pose health risks for your pet.

The researchers also warn that such food could present a health risk to you, or someone else in your house if his or her immune system is compromised. That includes children, the elderly or anyone taking any immune system suppressant medication for a health condition.

Read more: Vets can do more to reduce the suffering of flat-faced dog breeds

This is not the first time raw pet meat has been found to be contaminated with bacterial pathogens.

The latest study looked at samples from 60 commercially available raw pet meat products in Europe. The Swedish researchers tested these samples in the laboratory for pathogens such as E. coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter, which can cause disease in both pets and people.

All 60 samples were found to be contaminated with Enterobacteriaceae bacteria (the family to which E. coli belongs).

The finding of E. coli on a meat product suggests faecal contamination, as the bacteria are found in the gastrointestinal tracts of animals. It is also an indicator of poor hygiene during processing of the meat.

The contamination levels were found to vary among manufacturers but more than half the samples – 31 (52%) – exceeded the maximum threshold set by European Union regulations.

Other bacteria found in some of the samples, such as Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens and Campylobacter, are considered potentially pathogenic, which means they can cause serious illness in both animals and humans.

Would you eat that? The standards are different for meat for pets compared to meat for human consumption. Shutterstock/Dvorakova Veronika

What is pet meat?

In Australia, raw meat pet foods, or pet meat, is defined as “meat in a raw state that is intended as food for pets”. This differentiates it from human-grade meat.

Human-grade meat is tightly regulated. For example, it is often subject to bacterial contamination testing to ensure the product is safe for human consumption.

Essentially, human-grade meat products are swabbed for E. coli and Salmonella just as they leave the abattoir. These swabs indicate the cleanliness of the meat processing and if there has been any faecal contamination.

Pet meat isn’t legally required to undergo bacterial testing in Australia, so it is unknown if pet meat here is contaminated like the samples in this Swedish study.

There are laws on how pet meat is manufactured and handled. But these laws are mainly concerned with protecting human safety from contamination and exposure to the pet meat, rather than ensuring it’s safe and wholesome for pets.

Laws for pet meat in Australia differ between states, which has been identified as an issue. The regulation of pet food (including pet meat) in Australia might soon be changing.

The risk to humans

The danger of raw pet meat contaminated with potentially pathogenic bacteria isn’t restricted to dogs eating the food as part of their diet.

Handling raw pet meat in your kitchen can also present a very real risk. The liquids from the meat can easily contaminate kitchen surfaces. Your dog’s mouth can also harbour these bacteria and spread them to you via licks and kisses.

That’s why anyone whose immune system may be compromised should not be exposed to raw pet meat.

It’s also for this reason, as well as the risks to the dogs themselves, that the US Food and Drug Administration does not support feeding dogs raw food.

Dogs can eat raw meat

We know that dogs have evolved to be able to eat raw meat. Dogs have stomachs and intestinal tracts that are slightly different from ours, which allows them to eat food that humans can’t eat.

But dogs can still get sick from bacteria in their food. We also know that dogs with gastrointestinal illness shed bacteria species, like those mentioned in the Swedish study, in their faeces to a much greater extent than healthy dogs.

Dogs can also get gastro from pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella just like us.

Stressful environments such as kennels and veterinary hospitals can dampen the immune system. Dogs on medications like steroids or chemotherapy will also have reduced immunity to bacteria, including those in their diet.

How to keep yourself safe

The authors of this new study offer some great practical tips on how to keep yourself safe when handling raw pet meat.

1. keep raw pet meat frozen until use
2. handle raw pet meat separately from all other human food, and either use dedicated pet meat utensils or wash equipment thoroughly after use
3. avoid kisses and licks from dogs that have just eaten raw pet meat
4. do not feed raw pet meat in households with immunocompromised people.

Read more: Don’t waste your dog’s poo – compost it

You can further reduce the risk by only feeding human-grade meat to your dog, rather than pet meat, as the bacterial load and presence of other contaminants should be minimal.

Dogs require balanced diets with vitamins and minerals in certain ratios to avoid sickness, so all homemade diets should only be fed under the guidance of a veterinarian.

Your dog needs a balanced diet. Bronwyn Orr, Author provided

– ref. Raw meat pet food may not be good for your dog, or your own health – http://theconversation.com/raw-meat-pet-food-may-not-be-good-for-your-dog-or-your-own-health-112860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

With a rapidly changing climate and increased instability in the world order, patterns of people movement are likely to change dramatically in the future. It is not a tenable response to isolate Australia from the shocks of these changes.

Sadly, the politicisation of refugee policy since the Tampa crisis of 2001 indicates that our major political parties are incapable of the kind of honest and open decision-making that is required in this complex and vexed policy space. However, the passing of the Kerryn Phelps-led amendments to the Migration Act to facilitate medical evacuations from Manus Island and Nauru may point to a shift in the nation’s mood on the issue.

In the second half of the 20th century, Australia transformed the idea of itself into a multicultural nation. An important part of this story has been Australia’s contribution to the resettlement of refugees.

Australia was the first country outside Europe to accede to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Australia was also an early adopter of the 1967 protocol that extended the convention beyond Europe. Australia’s generous resettlement of refugees under the convention has reinforced its identity as a nation built on migrants.

Australia’s acceptance of refugees remained uncontroversial while the numbers of refugees could be strictly controlled through its immigration program. The first serious challenge to control was the arrival of boatloads of Vietnamese refugees in 1976. However, the Fraser Coalition government maintained control through an arrangement with South East Asian countries that Australia would resettle a high number of Vietnamese refugees if those countries stopped redirecting boats that arrived on their shores back out to sea.

How the Tampa changed Australian asylum-seeker policy

When boats began arriving in larger numbers from 1999 to 2001, the struggling Howard Coalition government used the rescue of 438 asylum seekers by the MV Tampa as an opportunity to implement a more restrictive policy. This included boat turn-backs, offshore processing and detention, and issuing temporary protection visas for people arriving by boat whose applications for asylum were accepted. The boats stopped arriving within months.

Read more: Australian politics explainer: the MV Tampa and the transformation of asylum-seeker policy

In 2007, the Labor government dismantled these policy settings. Asylum seekers arriving by boat were rescued at sea and processed on the Australian territory of Christmas Island. If they were found to be refugees, they were granted permanent protection visas. This policy was premised on boat arrivals being at similar levels to those experienced previously. But this proved mistaken.

The Norwegian cargo ship Tampa collected 438 stranded asylum seekers and changed Australian policy on the issue. AAP/Wallenius Wilhelmsen

By 2013, refugee policy was in disarray. In 2012, 17,204 people arrived by boat, rising to 20,587 in 2013. This far outnumbered the planned refugee intake of 13,750 and reinforced the fear that Australia was in danger of being “swamped” by asylum seekers.

Prior to this rapid rise in boat arrivals, the Labor government had attempted to introduce a novel policy response, the Australia-Malaysia asylum-seeker transfer agreement. The Malaysian government agreed to the return to Malaysia of asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia by boat via Indonesia. Malaysia guaranteed housing, education and work rights for these asylum seekers, but also that they would receive no advantage in resolving their application for refugee resettlement.

This arrangement removed the incentive to take a risky boat journey to Australia. We will never know if it would have stopped the boats, as the High Court held the government did not have the power to implement the arrangement, and the Coalition and the Greens blocked an attempt by the government to amend the Migration Act to provide it with the requisite power.

In mid-2013, the Labor government changed direction radically. It committed to offshore processing for the first time, stating categorically that no asylum seeker reaching Australia by boat would ever be resettled here.

When it was returned to government in 2013, the Abbott Coalition government readily adopted Labor’s policy and added a policy of aggressive boat turn-backs covered in a veil of operational secrecy. It also reintroduced temporary protection visas for the 30,000 asylum seekers who had entered Australia during the six years of Labor government. Within a few months, boat arrivals had ceased completely.

Asylum-seeker policy becomes a national security issue

The current Coalition government has successfully cast refugee policy as an issue of border security. The ministers for immigration, first Scott Morrison and then Peter Dutton, have spun a narrative that any softening of the government’s stance on resettlement would risk relaunching a flotilla of boats.

The line they have drawn is breathtaking in its strictness. The government has been unwilling even to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees a year from offshore detention for fear they will then have backdoor entry to Australia. It has also made it very difficult for asylum seekers to get emergency medical treatment in Australia.

The government’s narrative of border protection does not acknowledge the human cost of long-term offshore detention. Since detention centres on Nauru and Manus were opened in 2014, 3,127 people have been transferred there. As of early February 2019, as a result of third-country resettlements and voluntary returns, about 1,000 remain. The last children on Nauru were resettled in the US in February 2019.

Read more: As children are airlifted from Nauru, a cruel and inhumane policy may finally be ending

Despite strictly controlling access to information from Nauru and Manus, the government has not been able to prevent courageous medical officials bearing witness to the human suffering of refugees. This includes suicides and self-harm, and children simply giving up. It has not been able to prevent Behrouz Boochani using mobile phone messages to write an award-winning book bearing witness to the official strategies used to break the spirit of refugees on Manus Island.

Asylum seeker and journalist Behrouz Boochani wrote the award-winning book No Friend but the Mountains. Amnesty International handout

Finding a more humane way forward

As on so many policy issues facing Australia, we need an honest discussion on refugees. On the one hand, it needs to be acknowledged that refugees are victims of regimes intent on persecuting them and are deserving (and entitled) to our protection.

As a nation, we continue to have a policy of high levels of immigration, and refugees can be a significant part of our strategy for future prosperity. We have a responsibility not to contribute further to people’s suffering, and thus long-term detention of refugees is untenable.

On the other hand, Australians believe they are entitled to determine who is provided access to the benefit of membership in the Australian state. This being the case, refugee policy must be able to control the number of people who are accepted for resettlement. The most effective mechanism of control is to prevent onshore arrivals by boat and plane, and to use planned resettlement from refugee camps in consultation with the UNHCR.

The unprecedented number of boat arrivals in 2012-13 tilted the equation towards control over compassion. However, there is a sensible middle ground more in line with Australian values.

First, it is possible to resettle all the asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus in Australia expeditiously, without triggering large numbers of boat arrivals. This resettlement must be the immediate priority of a new government. It was never envisaged that refugees would spend up to six years in offshore detention.

Retaining the architecture of offshore detention and processing for the future and the possibility of boat turn-backs is more than adequate deterrent to prevent people risking the perilous journey to Australia by boat. The Coalition governments in 2001 and 2013 demonstrated that if this proves to be wrong, introducing a hard-line policy can stop the boats very quickly.

Second, all those refugees on Temporary Protection Visas and Safe Haven Enterprise Visas in Australia need to be offered permanent protection. Temporary visas create a huge psychological and social burden on refugees in Australia, with no benefits.

Third, the movement of refugees, particularly from the Middle East, through South East Asia to Australia is a regional problem. The Australian government needs to resume discussions with Indonesia and Malaysia about a more nuanced solution.

With the Coalition cutting through with its narrative of fear of invasion and Labor still spooked by policy failure during its previous term in government, it has taken independent MPs to begin to push Australian refugee policy to a sensible middle ground.

Kerryn Phelps’ amendment to the Migration Act, supported by Labor and the Greens, provides for the evacuation of asylum seekers and refugees to Australia if two doctors assess that they require medical treatment not available on Nauru or Manus Island. The minister for home affairs retains the power to reject a transfer on security grounds. The law is also limited in its application to refugees already on Nauru and Manus Island.

In parliament, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten framed their positions on the “Medivac” law as a test of character. Morrison focused on the importance of “mettle” and “holding the line”. Shorten focused on “compassion” and “balance”.

The passing of the law ensures refugee policy will be a key election issue once again. The Australian people will determine what version of character prevails.

– ref. How the next Australian government can balance security and compassion for asylum seekers – http://theconversation.com/how-the-next-australian-government-can-balance-security-and-compassion-for-asylum-seekers-110713

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shaun Brooks, PhD Candidate, University of Tasmania

Most people picture Antarctica as a frozen continent of wilderness, but people have been living – and building – there for decades. Now, for the first time, we can reveal the human footprint across the entire continent.

Our research, published today in the journal Nature Sustainability, found that while buildings and disturbance cover a small portion of the whole continent, it has an outsized impact on Antartica’s ecosystem.

Read more: Explainer: what any country can and can’t do in Antarctica, in the name of science

Our data show 76% of buildings in Antarctica are within just 0.06% of the continent: the ice-free areas within 5km of the coast. This coastal fringe is particularly important as it provides access to the Southern Ocean for penguins and seals, as well as providing a typically wetter climate suitable for plant life.

A hard question to answer

How much land we collectively impact with infrastructure in Antarctica has been a question raised for decades, but until now has been difficult to answer. The good news is it’s a relatively small area. The bigger issue is where it is. Together with our colleagues Dana Bergstrom and John van den Hoff, we have made the first measurement of the “footprint” of buildings and disturbed ice-free ground across Antarctica.

This equates to more than 390,000 square metres of buildings on the icy continent, with a further 5,200,000m² of disturbance just to ice-free land. To put it another way, there is more than 1,100m² of disturbed ground per person in Antarctica at its most populated in summer. This is caused primarily by the 30 nations with infrastructure in Antarctica, along with some presence from the tourism industry.

Figure Building footprint density. Nature Sustainability

It has taken until now to find the extent of our impact because of difficulty in gathering the data. Because so many countries are active in Antarctica, getting them to provide data on their infrastructure has been very slow. As two-thirds of research stations were built before the adoption of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, they did not require environmental impact assessments or monitoring, so it is quite likely many of the operators do not have accessible data on their footprints. In addition, due to the inherent difficulty in accessing Antarctica, and the vast distances between each station, it is not possible to conduct field measurements on a continental scale.

To address these problems, our team took an established approach to measuring a single station’s footprint, and applied it to 158 locations across the continent using satellite imagery. The majority of images used were freely sourced from Google Earth, enabled by continually increasing improvements in resolution and coverage.

This process took hours of painstaking “digitisation” – where the spatially accurate images of buildings and disturbed ground were manually mapped within a computer program to create the data.

Davis Station, one of Australia’s three permanent research outposts in Antartica. Researchers used Google Earth images to map the footprint of human infrastructure across the continent. Shaun Brooks, Author provided

Interestingly, one of the most difficult sites was the United States’ Amundsen-Scott Station. As this station is located on the geographic South Pole, very few satellites pass overhead. This problem was eventually solved by trawling through thousands of aerial images produced by NASA’s Operation IceBridge, where we found their aircraft had flown over the station in 2010. After capturing these data, we then compared our measurements against existing known building sizes and found our accuracy was within 2%.

Unlike buildings, we didn’t have measurements to compare for disturbed ground such as roadways, airstrips, quarries and the like. We believe we have produced a significant underestimate, due to factors including snow cover and insufficient image resolution obscuring smaller features such as walking tracks.

Read more: Antarctic seas host a surprising mix of lifeforms – and now we can map them

Location, location, location

After mapping the footprint of buildings and ground disturbance our data has yielded some interesting results. For practical reasons, most stations in Antarctica are located within the small ice-free areas spread across the continent, particularly around the coast. In addition to being attractive to us, these areas are essential for much of Antarctica’s biodiversity by providing nesting sites for seabirds and penguins, substrate for mosses, lichens, and two vascular plants, and habitat for the continent’s invertebrate species.

Adelie penguins need ice-free areas to access the ocean. Shaun Brooks, Author provided

Another interesting finding from these data is what they tell us about wilderness on the continent. Although the current footprint covers a very small fraction of the more than 12 million square kilometres of Antarctica, we found disturbance is present in more than half of all large ice-free areas along the coast. Furthermore, by using the building data we captured, along with existing work by Rupert Summerson, we were also able to estimate the visual footprint, which amounts to an area similar in size to the total ice-free land across the whole continent.

The release of this research is timely, with significant increases in infrastructure proposed for Antarctica. Currently there are new stations proposed by several nations, major rebuilding projects of existing stations underway (including the US’s McMurdo and New Zealand’s Scott Base), and Italy is building a new runway in ice-free areas.

Australia has proposed Antarctica’s first concrete runway, which if built would be the continent’s largest.

Read more: Why Antarctica’s sea ice cover is so low (and no, it’s not just about climate change)

Until now, decisions on expanding infrastructure have been without the context of how much is already present. We hope informed decisions can now be made by the international community about how much building in Antarctica is appropriate, where it should occur, and how to manage the future of the last great wilderness.

– ref. For the first time, we can measure the human footprint on Antarctica – http://theconversation.com/for-the-first-time-we-can-measure-the-human-footprint-on-antarctica-112856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Smale, Research Fellow in Marine Ecology, Marine Biological Association

In the midst of a raging heatwave, most people think of the ocean as a nice place to cool down. But heatwaves can strike in the ocean as well as on land. And when they do, marine organisms of all kinds – plankton, seaweed, corals, snails, fish, birds and mammals – also feel the wrath of soaring temperatures.

Our new research, published today in Nature Climate Change, makes abundantly clear the destructive force of marine heatwaves. We compared the effects on ecosystems of eight marine heatwaves from around the world, including four El Niño events (1982-83, 1986-87, 1991-92, 1997-98), three extreme heat events in the Mediterranean Sea (1999, 2003, 2006) and one in Western Australia in 2011. We found that these events can significantly damage the health of corals, kelps and seagrasses.

This is concerning, because these species form the foundation of many ecosystems, from the tropics to polar waters. Thousands of other species – not to mention a wealth of human activities – depend on them.

We identified southeastern Australia, southeast Asia, northwestern Africa, Europe and eastern Canada as the places where marine species are most at risk of extreme heat in the future.

Read more: Marine heatwaves are getting hotter, lasting longer and doing more damage

Marine heatwaves are defined as periods of five days or more during which ocean temperatures are unusually high, compared with the long-term average for any given place. Just like their counterparts on land, marine heatwaves have been getting more frequent, hotter and longer in recent decades. Globally, there were 54% more heatwave days per year between 1987 and 2016 than in 1925–54.

Although the heatwaves we studied varied widely in their maximum intensity and duration, we found that all of them had negative impacts on a broad range of different types of marine species.

Marine heatwaves in tropical regions have caused widespread coral bleaching.

Humans also depend on these species, either directly or indirectly, because they underpin a wealth of ecological goods and services. For example, many marine ecosystems support commercial and recreational fisheries, contribute to carbon storage and nutrient cycling, offer venues for tourism and recreation, or are culturally or scientifically significant.

Read more: Australia’s ‘other’ reef is worth more than $10 billion a year – but have you heard of it?

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Marine heatwaves have had negative impacts on virtually all these “ecosystem services”. For example, seagrass meadows in the Mediterranean Sea, which store significant amounts of carbon, are harmed by extreme temperatures recorded during marine heatwaves. In the summers of both 2003 and 2006, marine heatwaves led to widespread seagrass deaths.

Read more: Seagrass, protector of shipwrecks and buried treasure

The marine heatwaves off the west coast of Australia in 2011 and northeast America in 2012 led to dramatic changes in the regionally important abalone and lobster fisheries, respectively. Several marine heatwaves associated with El Niño events caused widespread coral bleaching with consequences for biodiversity, fisheries, coastal erosion and tourism.

Mass die-offs of finfish and shellfish have been recorded during marine heatwaves, with major consequences for regional fishing industries.

All evidence suggests that marine heatwaves are linked to human mediated climate change and will continue to intensify with ongoing global warming. The impacts can only be minimised by combining rapid, meaningful reductions in greenhouse emissions with a more adaptable and pragmatic approach to the management of marine ecosystems.

– ref. Suffering in the heat: the rise in marine heatwaves is harming ocean species – http://theconversation.com/suffering-in-the-heat-the-rise-in-marine-heatwaves-is-harming-ocean-species-112839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture, UNSW

On the last day of summer for 2019, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) delivered a burst of sunshine to apartment owners at the high-rise Lacrosse building in the Melbourne Docklands precinct. Lacrosse suffered a serious cladding fire on November 24 2014, started by a single cigarette on a balcony. Last Thursday, Judge Ted Woodward ordered the owners be immediately paid A$5.7 million in damages.

The judge also indicated that the owners would receive most of the balance of their A$12.7 million claim – including nearly A$6 million in calculated costs of compliance with building codes.

However, in our adversarial legal system, there are losers as well as winners. The losers in this case are the fire engineer, the certifier and the architects.

The builder, LU Simon, was ordered to pay more than A$5.7 million to apartment owners. However, the architect, fire engineer and building certifier who worked on the project would pay most of that to LU Simon after Judge Woodward found they had breached contractual obligations.

Fire engineer Thomas Nicholas was ordered to pay 39% of the damages, certifier Gardner Group 35% and architects Elenberg Fraser 25%. Incredibly, the builder, LU Simon, is a winner, assessed to pay only 3% of the damages.

Read more: Cladding fire risks have been known for years. Lives depend on acting now, with no more delays

So shocking is the VCAT decision to architects that the national president of the Australian Institute of Architects suggested in an email to members last Friday that they might need to seek counselling.

The decision reminds architects and other consultants that abiding by common practice is no defence if that practice is inadequate. Even though an architect may work for the builder and be employed on a limited commission during construction, they still bear primary responsibility for the safety of the building as the “lead consultant”. According to the decision, architects and consultants are required to exercise high standards of professional judgement and skill even if their commissioning arrangements and fees militate this.

So is this a win for all owners?

It looks like a cause for celebration by the owners. But is it?

Well, for a start, this decision has taken over four years to emerge. It may yet be the subject of an appeal. In the meantime, owners and residents have had to live in a building that is not safe, although work to replace the cladding should be complete by May.

Judge Woodward said the decision applies to the specific circumstances of Lacrosse only, so the owners of other buildings, including Neo200, which was evacuated on February 4 after a similar fire, might not also be in the winner’s circle.

Read more: Don’t overlook residents’ role in apartment building safety

Fourteen of the Neo200 apartments are so badly damaged that rectification works could take up to a year to complete. If Lacrosse is any indication, the Neo200 legal case might take until 2022 to conclude.

The Lacrosse case ran for 22 days, involved five QCs, five juniors and an army of instructing solicitors, paralegals and expert witnesses. There were 91 volumes of documents tendered as evidence. Legal costs almost certainly exceeded A$2 million, or more than 15% of the damages sought.

Around the country, based on state audits, I estimate around 1,000 buildings have combustible aluminium composite panels on their facades. If they all generate a court case half as complex as Lacrosse, the legal bills alone could total over A$1 billion.

Government must also answer for deregulation

Those who eased the regulatory framework in place in Australia since the late 1980s share culpability with the consultants for the fires at Lacrosse and Neo200. Until the early 1990s, Australian building codes prohibited the use of combustible elements on the facades of tall buildings. Throughout the 1990s, the then Building Code of Australia (now the National Construction Code or NCC) was relaxed to a “performance standard”, which allowed builders and consultants to believe aluminium composite panels and timber were permissible.

By 2000, despite plenty of evidence that these panels were combustible and therefore not suitable as facade material on tall buildings, the market for them continued to grow. The Australian Building Codes Board did nothing about this, encouraging a potentially fatal error.

Read more: Cladding fires expose gaps in building material safety checks. Here’s a solution

The ABC reports on the hidden potential killer in Australian buildings following the Lacrosse fire.

So far, on the regulatory side, no one has actually owned up to a mistake. However, the Building Ministers’ Forum is considering the 24 recommendations of a report it commissioned from Peter Shergold and Bronwyn Weir. New South Wales’ minister for innovation and better regulation, Matt Kean, has promised to crack down on dodgy certifiers. In the light of the cladding panel fiasco, he probably should be reviewing his own remit, which is based on the premise that less regulation is better.

The NCC has a goal to encourage innovation in building by allowing alternative solutions to “deemed to satisfy” provisions. Unfortunately, in the case of the cladding panels and other “innovations”, the cost savings may be only a tiny proportion of the costs of rectifying the problems.

Read more: Beyond Opal: a 10-point plan to fix the residential building industry

Penitent governments should ensure flammable cladding is replaced now, not next year and certainly not in five or six years’ time when another round of court cases are finally decided after appeal. Unless governments act to fix this mistake, one that they are substantially responsible for, someone is going to be killed in a cladding fire in Australia.

As Judith Hackitt, who headed the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster, said last week, a Grenfell-like event in Australia is “entirely foreseeable”.

– ref. Lacrosse fire ruling sends shudders through building industry consultants and governments – http://theconversation.com/lacrosse-fire-ruling-sends-shudders-through-building-industry-consultants-and-governments-112777

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Langley, ARC DECRA Research Fellow, Griffith University

Four small artefacts found on the island of Tongatapu, Tonga are among the earliest tattooing equipment known. Two have been found to be made from human bone.

Since their original discovery in 1963, the Tongatapu artefacts have been in storage at the Australian National University awaiting further examination. In 2016, we took the first really good look at these artefacts using the modern methods and techniques now available to archaeologists.

Through directly dating a sample from one of the combs (the blades that drove the ink into the dermis layer of skin), we determined that the four artefacts were 2,700-years-old – much older than originally thought.

Careful examination also discovered that while two of the combs were made of sea bird bone (such as albatross), the other two were made from the bones of a large land mammal – probably human.

Why human bone? No large mammals were present on Tonga apart from people at that time and early burials from the Pacific show that bones were often taken from burials. We also know that human bone was a favoured material used to make tattooing combs in more recent times.

Ink staining on one of the human bone combs. Author provided

Tattoo combs made from human bone could mean that people were permanently marked by tools made from the bones of their relatives – a way of combining memory and identity in their artwork.

Originally found alongside the combs was a small pot likely containing tattooing ink. Together, these artefacts made up a tattoist’s toolkit – something exceedingly rare in the archaeological record – and the oldest set of its kind found.

Evidence rarely survives

There is little evidence for early tattooing because tattooed human skin rarely survives intact enough for us to be able to see an inked design.

Thus far, the earliest evidence for tattooing reaches back to 5,300 years – the oldest known case being two ancient Egyptian mummies with small motifs inked into their upper arms.

Other early examples include the famous “Ice man” of the Italian Alps and the Siberian “princess” found with extraordinarily complex designs across her body.

The discovery of implements used in tattooing is even rarer. This is because identifying tools used to ink one’s skin is exceptionally difficult – any sharp object could potentially be utilised. Also, the kind of evidence needed to positively identify a tattooing blade (such as ink) often doesn’t survive.

The oldest surviving tattooing tools found so far are sharp flakes made of obsidian (volcanic glass) used 3,500 years ago in New Guinea for piercing or puncturing the skin, and in Egypt, single metal or stone points that might be tattooing equipment dating back to 3,200 BC.

In Oceania, we don’t have mummies to help us figure out when tattooing first appeared because skin doesn’t survive our harsh tropical conditions. So, instead we must look for less direct clues – such as tools.

Technology still used today

While the Tongatapu bone combs are younger than the metal and stone points previously found, they are part of a far more complex technology – one which is still used in present day traditional tattooing.

In the Pacific, tattooing has a long history. The unique and powerful designs made an impact on early European explorers to the region, and the return of tattooed sailors, beachcombers, and Indigenous peoples to Europe created lasting interest in the practice.

Ultimately, it was this contact between European and Pacific cultures that led to the vibrant modern tattooing traditions and the spread of Polynesian inspired tattoos all over the world today. (Ironically, in the 19th century missionaries suppressed tattooing in parts of the Pacific and in Tonga itself, people had to travel to Samoa to be tattooed.)

Hear about the importance of tattooing in the Pacific from those using tools near identical to the Tongatapu artefacts.

Despite the importance of tattooing to past and current Pacific peoples, we don’t actually know if it was something that arrived with the first human colonists to the islands around 3,500 years ago – or if it was invented at some point afterwards.

With this discovery, however, we now know that the complex inline tattooing combs were already present in Tonga almost 3,000 years ago and that they may very well have been invented there.

– ref. World’s oldest tattooist’s toolkit found in Tonga contains implements made of human bone – http://theconversation.com/worlds-oldest-tattooists-toolkit-found-in-tonga-contains-implements-made-of-human-bone-109427

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erik Malcolm Champion, UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation, Curtin University

Back in 2001, an acquaintance who worked for Lonely Planet told me about a surprise discovery. The travel guide business had an audience of people who would buy their travel books, but never travel. Lonely Planet dubbed them “virtual tourists”.

Now Lonely Planet, and others, have become excited by tourism powered by virtual reality (VR) – both on this planet and, thanks to NASA, on others.

VR films are also being developed by travel companies, such as Thomas Cook. And Tourism Australia has partnered with Google to understand the marketing potential of VR (well, 360 degree panoramic videos).

But VR tourism isn’t only about recreating a virtual version of reality that renders travel to the destination unnecessary. It can enhance tourism in other ways – by allowing tourists to handle precious historical artefacts in virtual form, or by retelling contested histories from previously unexplored perspectives.

Read more: Tourist attractions are being transformed by immersive experiences – some lessons from Scotland

What is virtual tourism?

In contrast to Lonely Planet’s definition, let’s consider virtual tourism to be the application of virtual reality – including augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) – to tourism.

The term virtual reality is most commonly used to describe what happens when you are completely immersed in a virtual environment you can see through a headset. Enhanced forms of virtual reality allow you to interact with that environment using extra equipment, such as gloves fitted with sensors.

Virtual reality is also used as a catch-all term to describe the overall spectrum of digitally mediated reality, which includes virtual reality, as well as mixed reality and augmented reality.

Augmented reality and mixed reality are computer-generated visualisations that augment our sense of the real world around us or merge the real and virtual together. You still wear a headset, but rather than blocking out the world, an AR or MR headset enables you to see visualisations within your real world surroundings.

PhD student Mafkereseb Bekele demonstrates a digital underwater landscape augmented over the real world as it would appear through a Microsoft Hololens headset. Author provided

Augmented reality and mixed reality is usually visual, but you can now get audio augmented reality, that will play audio recordings through special glasses about sites you’re looking at. There is even olfactory-augmented reality that can enhance your experience with smell.

Read more: VR technology gives new meaning to ‘holidaying at home’. But is it really a substitute for travel?

Moving beyond realism

Virtual reality can be more than a mirror that gives you a realistic interactive simulation of the current world: it can bring the past into the present.

As Sir David Attenborough has noted:

The one thing that really frustrates you in a museum is when you see something really fascinating, you don’t want to be separated from it by glass. You want to be able to look at it and see the back of it and turn it around and so on.

The London Natural History Museum’s app Hold the World gives users a chance to move and manipulate virtual objects that are fragile, expensive or remote.

Virtual tourism is also breathing new life into mythology and folklore. In Denmark, there are plans to turn a virtual reality exhibition exploring Viking history and Norse mythology into a permanent theme park. Visitors will be able to fight giants and dragons, and explore a complete “Nordic” landscape.

Virtual tourism can allow people to hear fresh interpretations of history. For example, the augmented reality app Dilly Bag connects users with the stories of Indigenous Australian servicemen via a smartphone.

Stories can be told from the perspective of flying animals, or provide thrills and spills that appear more dangerous, immediate and visceral than the real thing (see this VR rollercoaster theme park in China).

Whether virtual tourism proves to be only a pale imitation of the real thing depends on how imaginative we are.

Read more: How Virtual Reality is giving the world’s roller coasters a new twist

How common is virtual tourism?

Given the expense and complexity of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality arguably have more potential for virtual tourism.

Wi-Fi, which is required for many virtual tourism experiences, is now commonplace, and many people do have their own devices. But content must be tailored to specific devices – smartphones can overheat from processing so much data, and the size of tablets can make them unwieldy.

The number of exciting technological showcases is matched by the number of failed or broken equipment and deserted VR centres. Hyped promises proliferate – apparently every year is the year that VR, AR and MR will break though.

Yet any VR software and hardware currently full of promise seems to get old very, very, quickly. If we are to move past one-hit AR wonders such as Pokémon Go, we need scalable yet engaging content, stable tools, appropriate evaluation research and robust infrastructure.

Formats such as WebVR and Web XR promise to supply content across both desktops and head mounted displays, without having to download plugins.

But before we see virtual tourism become widespread, we need to change our preconceptions about what virtual reality is. Let’s not limit VR experiences to recreations of the real world, instead let’s open our minds to history, mythology and fresh perspectives from real people.

– ref. Virtual reality adds to tourism through touch, smell and real people’s experiences – http://theconversation.com/virtual-reality-adds-to-tourism-through-touch-smell-and-real-peoples-experiences-101528

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eddie Synot, Senior Research Assistant, Griffith University

In December 2018, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) resolved to “work collaboratively and in genuine, formal partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. This commitment was in response to issues arising from the national review of Indigenous affairs policy.

COAG noted in its Closing the Gap statement that it was responding to a “Special Gathering of prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians”. It was this group that called for “the next phase of Closing the Gap to be guided by the principles of empowerment and self-determination”.

Read more: The Indigenous community deserves a voice in the constitution. Will the nation finally listen?

This unfinished business is an important challenge for all Australians, regardless of the outcome of this year’s federal election.

Labor and the Greens have committed to reforms called for by the Uluru Statement from the Heart. These reforms would enable Indigenous empowerment and self-determination. However, the Coalition government, yet to respond to the Joint Select Committee Report on Constitutional Recognition, has demurred on a First Nations Voice in favour of “practical” concerns.

The relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is a responsibility beyond political divisions. It extends beyond policy concerns to the presumptions that inform them.

The continued interpretation of Indigenous concerns about Australia Day as simple demands to “change the date” exemplifies this issue. It is not the case that Indigenous people protesting Australia Day don’t care about “practical” issues. They live with these issues every day. They know all too well the challenges they face.

Rather, the issue remains the deeply ingrained and negative attitude toward Indigenous people and their experiences within Australian society. This includes:

• the denial of Indigenous history and experience
• the failure to establish legitimate mechanisms for the recognition of this history and agreement making
• the continued denial of legitimate Indigenous rights and demands.

The problems with Indigenous affairs policy

Closing the Gap guides Indigenous affairs policy along with the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. This policy apparatus has focused on areas such as employment, education, health, economic development and community safety.

However, Australian governments have failed to achieve their policy goals. Some policies – such as the Community Development Program and the Basics Card – have been heavily criticised for further entrenching Indigenous inequality and disadvantage.

Indigenous affairs decisions are too often reactionary and crisis-focused. Significant resources are distributed without evidence and without Indigenous oversight and evaluation.

Moving from crisis to crisis, non-Indigenous actors make key policy decisions. These actors fail to appropriately understand issues at hand and force ineffective policy solutions onto Indigenous communities as the only solution. The approach to Indigenous youth suicide is a key example of this.

These policymakers fail to address the ineffective policy decisions and maintain the impoverished position of Indigenous people. They also fail to respect and recognise Indigenous people as First Nations, and the rights that inhere as a result.

Hearing Indigenous Australians

Indigenous people have raised many concerns with these policies. These include being ignored by decision-makers, the denial of Indigenous experience and the failure of policies to enable effective outcomes. The Commonwealth government’s own review of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy and Closing the Gap confirmed these issues.

In response, COAG has offered support to “discuss” the co-design process that would explore a First Nations voice to parliament. However, there has been no mention of specific targets for Indigenous empowerment and self-determination. Rather, COAG’s communique emphasises “strengthening mechanisms to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have an integral role in decision-making and accountability processes”.

Read more: Will treaties with Indigenous Australians overtake constitutional recognition?

This approach aims at incorporation within a structure that has failed Indigenous people. COAG has uncritically repeated a form of rights ritualism: it appears to support Indigenous rights, without actually implementing them.

Even when provided with some semblance of recognition, those rights are only ever minimal and subject to restrictive arrangements. These continue to hold Indigenous people at the whim of government priorities and decision-makers, rather than being led and informed by Indigenous community needs and processes themselves.

Realising a better Australia

These issues reflect the entrenched position of Indigenous Australians and the past inability of “Australia” to recognise their place as First Nations. These practices have real implications for policy development, which are reflected in the wider Indigenous affairs debate. Examples include attitudes that dismiss Australia Day concerns as mere symbolism while emphasising practical matters such as youth suicide, sexual and domestic violence, and getting kids into school.

The challenge ahead is to achieve reform that goes beyond limited understandings of these issues as being symbolic or practical. This requires a transformative approach to the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that will realise a better future for all Australians. The call from many Indigenous Australians following the Uluru Statement from the Heart for a progressive process forward toward Voice, Treaty and Truth provides an authoritative pathway toward achieving this change.

Indigenous Australians have provided important leadership by issuing the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It is up to all Australians, regardless of political persuasion, to accept the invitation and “to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future”.

– ref. The Uluru statement showed how to give First Nations people a real voice – now it’s time for action – http://theconversation.com/the-uluru-statement-showed-how-to-give-first-nations-people-a-real-voice-now-its-time-for-action-110707

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Rosenberg, Fellow, Centre for Mental Health Research, Australian National University

In recent weeks, the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Tasforce’s Mental Health Reference Group published its report and recommendations, part of a wide-ranging review of services subsidised by Medicare.

They recommended a massive expansion of the $1.5 billion Better Access program, which enables Medicare-subsidised visits to psychologists and other health professionals.

But simply striving to get more people into face-to-face care with health professionals is a limited and expensive strategy.

If we’re serious about improving access to mental health care, we need to look to online therapies. The evidence says they can be effective instead of, or as well as, seeing someone face-to-face.

Read more: For people at risk of mental illness, having access to treatment early can help

Digital approaches to mental health care

Some studies have found online therapy to be as effective in reducing symptoms as therapy delivered face-to-face by a clinician. This evidence is strongest in relation to depression, stress and anxiety.

One meta-analysis of data from 3,876 adults found those who underwent internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy to treat symptoms of depression had better outcomes than those who didn’t use online therapies. They were also more likely to stick to their treatment.

So self-guided internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy is a viable alternative to current first-step treatment approaches for symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Online approaches vary, but they commonly present a course of psychological therapy structured so the participant can track their progress over time and seek further assistance if their situation deteriorates.

As an example, Mindspot offers a three step online process of therapy, beginning with information, followed by assessment, and finally, treatment.

Treatment consists of online courses across several areas, depending on the user’s needs. These courses might cover mood issues, obsessive compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

People can elect to do a course independently, or could be referred by a health care professional, such as their GP. When health practitioners refer their patients into Mindspot they receive patient progress reports.

Mindspot takes users through a three step process which starts with learning about mental health. Screenshot, Author provided

These online therapies can be critical for reaching traditionally under-serviced groups, such as young people and people living in rural areas.

Other key advantages of these stand-alone digital approaches include 24/7 availability of care, and the absence of the fees that would otherwise be paid out-of-pocket for a face-to-face consultation.

Read more: Is online therapy as good as talking face-to-face with a clinician?

The range of online mental health tools available has expanded enormously over recent years. This has spawned review sites that help users navigate to online mental health therapies that best meet their needs.

And new research is looking at how digital technologies can be used for the prevention of mental illness as well as its treatment. The Black Dog Institute’s Future Proofing Study will engage 20,000 year 8 students to see how they can use their smartphones to prevent anxiety and depression.

We can facilitate team-based care online

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for enhanced mental health service delivery is to start to use digital technologies to drive new models of care specifically designed to meet the needs of each individual.

For people with more complex, disabling and persisting conditions, the international evidence clearly indicates bringing together a team of professionals is best practice.

For example, a person with an eating disorder is likely to benefit from integrated, multidisciplinary care provided by a GP, a nurse, a dietitian, a psychologist, a peer worker, and so on.

There are already some efforts to foster this online. An example of this can be found in the InnoWell platform, which service providers can use to bring together different professionals and resources tailored to suit each patient’s needs.

As well as online therapies, there are a variety of mobile apps that target mental health and well-being. From shutterstock.com

Using online assessment tools at the point of service request, those with milder needs are connected to a range of evidence-based apps and e-tools matched to their needs. Meanwhile, those with more complex needs are connected to care which will benefit them, including face-to-face services.

Read more: Does more mental health treatment and less stigma produce better mental health?

As a proportion of the total, new clients into Better Access were 68% in 2008, 57% in 2009, and just 32.6% in 2016-17. This increase in repeat customers suggests two things. First, perhaps people did not get the help they needed or had problems too complex to be managed within the program. And second, there may be limits on the extent to which the program can continue to meet its stated goal of increasing access to mental health services.

While the Medicare review relegated online therapies to “longer-term” reform, new digital and team-based approaches are key to driving improved models of increased access, at relatively low individual cost, to high quality mental health care.

Australia’s e-Mental health strategy needs action. The Medicare review into mental health represents a significant opportunity to get future investments right.

This means shifting from a focus just on access to instead considering how best to provide high quality, individualised services at scale – particularly to those who are disadvantaged economically, socially or geographically.

– ref. Online therapies can improve mental health, and there are no barriers to accessing them – http://theconversation.com/online-therapies-can-improve-mental-health-and-there-are-no-barriers-to-accessing-them-111357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Executive Director, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

This is an edited version of Steve Hatfield-Dodds’ opening address to the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics National Outlook Conference to be delivered on 5 March 2019.

The National Farmers Federation wants to lift the value of Australian agricultural production to $100 billion by 2030.

While that might be possible – on the current trajectory it is forecast to reach $84 billion by 2030 – we should be mindful of the substantial, and sometimes painful, reforms that have been needed to achieve the growth we have in recent decades; and that price increases accounted for 90% of that past growth.

Furthermore, the rate of productivity growth has been slowing. Key reasons include adverse shifts in climate and seasonal conditions, reduced investment in research relative to the value of production, and that fact that the easiest productivity gains have already been made.

This suggests nothing can be taken for granted.

Instead, we should recognise that achieving the best for agriculture, our rural communities and the national economy will require tough choices.

Making farming attractive to workers and investors

The sector is well aware of the need to attract workers with the right mix of skills, and is taking steps to do it. The 2018 Budget provided funds to improve our evidence base about labour force issues.

It is encouraging to see sector leaders acknowledging the need to eliminate exploitation of workers, particularly seasonal workers and other vulnerable groups, but actions are always going to speak louder than words in ensuring a positive experience for farm workers.

Investment is crucial to lifting productivity and strengthening supply chains. Unfortunately agriculture faces some headwinds in attracting investment, including high seasonal variability relative to other nations and some persistent policy uncertainty.

This makes it crucial that Australia’s foreign investment rules are applied transparently and predictably, respecting community caution that investment should deliver social and economic benefits, while maintaining Australia’s reputation as a stable and attractive investment destination.

Harnessing innovation

Australia is not immune to global shifts in research and development.

This includes slower growth in public R&D, which in the past has provided the foundation for growth in private R&D.

Our distinctive use of government and levy funded Research and Development Corporations has served us well in the past, but needs some adjustment to ensure that the resources available deliver the best possible outcomes for agriculture and the nation as a whole.

Priorities should include reducing fragmentation and improving collaboration on “whole of sector” challenges, greater clarity and consistency around contributions and benefit sharing, and achieving faster adoption and commercialisation of successful research.

Promoting resilience

Australian farmers manage very significant variability, including variability in climate and prices. Climate variability is increasing and extreme events, such as droughts and floods, are becoming more frequent and severe, impacting on output and incomes. Increased variability is also likely to contribute to more volatile global prices.

It is a good bet in these circumstances that future droughts and weather events will continue to trigger calls for government to do more to help famers. But policy makers should continue to be careful in how they respond, as poorly designed polices have the potential to slow farm adaption and structural adjustment, hurting productivity.

Australia’s national drought policy rightly establishes a clear separation between promoting proper risk management by farm businesses and providing support to farm households and communities in need.

Read more: Helping farmers in distress doesn’t help them be the best: the drought relief dilemma

Eligibility criteria for the Farm Household Allowance are more generous than those that apply to income support available to other groups.

Programs such as the Farm Household Allowance, the Farm Management Deposit Scheme and tax concessions provide important relief for farm households and are consistent with Australian community values.

Overall, their current settings are unlikely to undermine resilience and drought preparedness or to have substantial adverse impact on agricultural productivity.

This is an achievement worth defending against well meaning – or occasionally self-interested – calls to blur the lines between household support and business assistance.

And we should always seek further improvements. Here the remaining policies that provide business assistance, such as concessional finance, need careful assessment.

Over time, the perceived need for such policies could be reduced by further development and uptake of market-based risk management tools, such as multi-peril crop insurance, and index-based insurance for cropping and livestock.

Persisting with water reforms

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was inspired, in part, by the 2003 Living Murray Initiative and its vision of a “healthy working river” and in part by a reaction to the realities graphically exposed by the Millennium drought.

It was predicated on the conviction that healthy communities and regional economies required a healthy river, and that achieving it required substantial changes to water management.

These changes were twofold: promoting water trading across the basin, which allows water to move to higher value uses and altering the balance between consumptive and environmental uses to achieve healthy river ecosystems.

Read more: It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin

This view that healthy industries require healthy catchments has not always been visible in recent debate and finger pointing, which is often framed in terms of trade-offs between “industry” or “development” versus the “environment”.

It is self evident that achieving the National Farmers Federation aspiration for agriculture will require sustainable management of scarce water resources.

Irrigated crops are one of the strongest growing agricultural sectors, with excellent future prospects. Realising the full potential of the irrigation sector will require clear and confident water policy settings which support the sector’s social licence, and avoid the uncertainty associated with acrimonious ongoing debate.

Respecting evolving consumer expectations

Staying ahead of the curve on consumer expectations sits at the heart of agriculture’s value proposition, reputation, and future growth – and can only be effectively led by industry.

Shifts in social expectations may well be both the greatest opportunity, and the greatest threat, facing Australian agriculture.

Rising real incomes allow consumers and citizens to care about issues they have previously ignored, and to express this care through their purchasing decisions and networks. These issues might be personal – such as health – or more general – such as concern for the environment or animal welfare.

Shifts in consumer sentiment can occur rapidly, and be difficult to predict. In 2016, for example, around 15% of milk consumers voted unexpectedly with their wallets by shifting from cut price $1 milk to more expensive branded milk, delivering an additional $100 million in sales revenue, in response to concerns about the plight of dairy farmers.

Read more: Low milk prices unearth the supply chain’s dirty secrets

But capitalising on consumer concerns over the long term involves risks and hard work.

Back in 2003, Perth-based Austral Fisheries caused some waves when it set out to secure independent Marine Stewardship Council sustainability certification for Patagonian toothfish, as a first step in a sophisticated customer engagement strategy.

Their persistence paid off: today more than half the global catch is certified, its premium market position has been restored and prices increased by around 300%.

Some shifts will involve more threats than opportunities, at least in the absence of stronger engagement by industry. Producers are particularly exposed on environmental and animal welfare issues, where real or perceived poor behaviour by a few players can tarnish the reputation or market access of an entire sector.

Assessing these risks and opportunities requires industry to understand how consumers think and feel, even when this is confronting.

As an example, debates about land clearing can be polarising, generating more heat than light. To be hard nosed about this, however, it is in industry’s interest to consider how the economic rewards of land clearing for some graziers stack-up against the potential risks to the reputation, social licence and market position of the industry nationally, and the various ways these risks could be managed.

Focusing on the main game

Australian agriculture has many advantages, and a track record of good performance, underpinned by tough choices.

If we continue in this tradition Australian agriculture will prosper, enhancing the well-being of producers, consumers, regions, and the nation.

– ref. Droughts, extreme weather and empowered consumers mean tough choices for farmers – http://theconversation.com/droughts-extreme-weather-and-empowered-consumers-mean-tough-choices-for-farmers-112857

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

The Australian Election Study, conducted by the Australian National University, has been running since 1987.

Its director Ian McAllister says one thing voters will want at this poll is stability.

McAllister says that for the first time in a long while, one of the major parties – Labor – has put forward some “very constructive policies”. But, he told The Conversation, Bill Shorten is very unpopular: he “ranks below any leader we’ve ever recorded across virtually every personal quality including things like trust, competence, integrity”.

McAllister says the Coalition’s challenge is that the Liberals haven’t been looking after their base.

He expects the election to highlight a “generational gap in voting” and probably a much higher level of “split-ticket voting” – people voting differently for the two houses.

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– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Ian McAllister on voters and issues in the coming election – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-ian-mcallister-on-voters-and-issues-in-the-coming-election-112875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allen Cheng, Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Monash University

For most infections, the long-standing advice is to take a full course of antibiotics.

The rationale for not simply stopping antibiotics as soon as you start to feel better is that antibiotics don’t kill the bacteria instantly. If stopped too early, the remaining bacteria, which are exposed to low concentrations of antibiotics, tend to be more resistant. These can then re-grow, causing recurrent infection, or spread to other people.

The recommended length of the course depends on the type of infection, the likely cause, and how effective the antibiotics are at killing the bacterium and penetrating to the site of infection.

For infections commonly seen in general practice, most recommended courses last between three and seven days. For more serious infections requiring hospitalisation, the recommendations are generally a little longer.

Read more: Use them and lose them: finding alternatives to antibiotics to preserve their usefulness

A recent study from the United Kingdom found a substantial proportion of antibiotic prescriptions in general practice were for longer than these recommendations. While for each prescription this may have only been a few days longer, for the UK as a whole this amounted to about 1.3 million days of antibiotics more that would have been necessary.

Researchers are currently investigating how much of a problem this is in Australia.

There’s little evidence to suggest longer courses of antibiotics benefit patients. In fact, even the recommended lengths could be too long for many infections.

Why are courses longer than recommended?

The most important determinant of duration in primary care is probably the size of the pack the antibiotics come in.

But the number of tablets in a pack is rarely the same as the length of a course. One Australian study looked at 32 common prescribing scenarios and found that the pack size only matched the recommended duration of antibiotics in four cases.

Other reasons antibiotics may be prescribed for longer than recommended is when patients are given “repeats” and taking a second course of antibiotics. Often, the doctor isn’t actively prescribing a second course, but their medical prescribing software is printing a “repeat” on their prescription by default.

Read more: FactCheck: Is Australia’s use of antibiotics in general practice 20% above the OECD average?

In hospitals, clinical uncertainty plays a large role. It is sometimes suggested that antibiotics are used for the benefit of the patient, but at other times to allay the treating doctor’s anxiety.

While the motivation to make sure infections are properly treated is understandable and well-intentioned, particularly in patients who might still be critically unwell for other reasons, continuing antibiotics for too long increases the risk of side effects and antibiotic resistance.

Do we even need a full course?

We may be able to stop antibiotics before we reach the end of our course. The body has the capacity of “mop up” small numbers of bacteria, so at least for milder infections, it may not be necessary to kill them all.

This is important because using antibiotics for too long can be a problem in causing antibiotic resistance. This can occur within individual patients by exposing bacteria elsewhere in the body to antibiotics, but also because antibiotics are eliminated from the body and can contaminate the environment.

We didn’t always standardise the duration of antibiotics. Harry Dowling, one of the pioneers of early antibiotic use, once said

The duration of treatment just evolved. There was no rationale for any single length of time. We saw how long it took for the temperature to come down and gave antibiotics until it did, and then some.

The durations recommended in guidelines often come from arbitrary decisions made in early studies, which have translated into some odd “rules” about antibiotics:

• prime numbers for durations of up to a week (three, five or seven days)
• even numbers for more serious infections that take weeks to eradicate (two, four or six weeks)
• multiples of three for really tenacious infections such as bone infections (three months) or TB (six months).

In writing guidelines for doctors, we often wrestle with whether to set a fixed duration (such as seven days), a range (five to ten days), a minimum (at least five days), a maximum (up to ten days) or wordy qualifications (usually five days, or ten days for severe illness or where there is a slow response).

Read more: We know _why_ bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, but _how_ does this actually happen?

What about serious infections?

For deep or severe infections, we want to be sure the infection won’t return. Recent research has focused on defining the shortest effective duration of treatments.

A recent trial compared whether seven days or 14 days of antibiotics were required for some types of bloodstream infection, and found outcomes to be similar.

Researchers have also been testing the use of oral antibiotics for two of the most difficult infections to treat – endocarditis (infection of the heart valves) and ostemyelitis (infection of bone) – which have needed intravenous antibiotics for six weeks or longer. These trials have shown a shorter course of intravenous antibiotics with an early switch to oral antibiotics may be adequate.

Shortening the duration of antibiotics is one important way to reduce antibiotic use, the key driver of antibiotic resistance.

Read more: Health Check: should kids be given antibiotics in their first year?

– ref. Doctors may be prescribing antibotics for longer than needed – http://theconversation.com/doctors-may-be-prescribing-antibotics-for-longer-than-needed-112609

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

The crimson cloaks and white bonnets of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian feminist classic The Handmaid’s Tale have become a distinctive feature of Trump’s America. They’ve been worn by protestors outside state legislatures across the country, as elected officials attempt to enact laws limiting women’s reproductive rights.

Let’s face it, there are few costumes in classic or contemporary literature that will immediately tell everybody exactly why you’re there. But for the unfamiliar, the cloaks are invariably accompanied by posters with slogans like “The Handmaid’s Tale is not an instruction manual” and “Make Margaret Atwood fiction again”.

Atwood’s dystopia was undoubtedly on the minds of the hundreds of people – nearly all of them women – who filled the concert hall at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday to listen to her speak. So eager were they to hear that the tickets to the talk hosted by UNSW’s Centre for Ideas sold out in a record 45 minutes.

Read more: Why women are dressing up as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaids

The Handmaid’s Tale describes a toxic world in which misogyny and environmental degradation has turned the US into a totalitarian theocracy. The fictional republic of Gilead has enforced a system of gender-based violence, enslaving the few women capable of bearing children to serve as “handmaidens” to the ruling class.

In Gilead, lesbians and “gender traitors” are hanged. Citizens are tracked, watched, and spied upon. Women are not permitted to read. Children are torn from the arms of their birth mothers. There are deadly skirmishes at the borders, as refugees attempt to flee.

Activists in the US have donned the red cloaks imagined by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/AAP

Little wonder so many critics have remarked on the unexpected parallels with the present – in a US in which a resurgence of threats to rollback women’s rights are accompanied by wider attacks on media freedom. News from the US border with Mexico – and from Australia’s detention centres – reads like something out of Atwood’s darkest imaginings.

It is tempting to stretch this looking-glass analogy to suggest the only substantive difference between The Handmaid’s Tale and our present moment is that environmental degradation is a pressing concern for the rulers of Gilead.

Atwood’s mind seldom runs in a straight line. It dances around what she wants to say – before skewering her point with a flash of dark humour. She recounted with affection some fashion advice from Dame Edna Everage about her hairstyle and – to the delight of her audience – actually sung. Then acknowledging the audience had possibly gathered to hear more about the “end of the human race”, said she would not delay them.

Control of women and children has been a feature of every repressive political regime on the planet and throughout history, Atwood told her audience. And oppression comes in many forms.

The power of words?

Writers write about the things that worry them. And Atwood’s work spans the major concerns of the century – climate change, species extinction, designer humans, the control and subjugation of women. Her work has been astonishingly adept at incorporating “each fresh hell” – as she calls them – as it arises.

And it was clear from the anxious laughter in the auditorium that the audience believed Gilead was already here – or at least, “there” in Trump’s America.

Atwood’s books paint a speculative or parallel reality. But she is careful to point out that they are also of their own historic moment. They contain nothing that has not already become part of what James Joyce once called the “nightmare of history” – no technology, no atrocity, “nothing goes on that has not already gone on”, she says.

She is also quick to insist that she is not a “prophet”. Atwood says – looking back on the Pollyanna decades of the 1990s – it could have gone the other way. She wished it had. We could have “all gone shopping” in Francis Fukuyama’s consumer capitalist utopia, she jokes. It would have been preferable.

Atwood is well known for her belief in the power of language to change things – something of an occupational hazard for writers. But she is also clear that words can obscure. They can damage. And they are often manipulated. “Who is going to decide how fake a piece of fake news is before it’s fake?”

One member of the audience claimed that she felt her whole life – from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump – had been an experience of living through a series of “high literary dystopias”, lurching from atomic threat to species extinction.

Atwood had an answer for that, too. The solutions, says Atwood, will not come to you as novels.

They will also not be hers to find. She is – she claims – already an old lady who is arranging her own “environmentally friendly funeral”, without plastics.

Perhaps the reality is that in these dark times words are simply not enough. Words can be sharp instruments. They often seem to cut through a maelstrom to catch at the truth. But what we need is not just words, but also actions on a global scale. And so perhaps it’s time to don the cloaks and bonnets.

– ref. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale feels real in 2019, but the solution won’t come from novels – http://theconversation.com/margaret-atwood-the-handmaids-tale-feels-real-in-2019-but-the-solution-wont-come-from-novels-112854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy McKenry, Professor of Music, Australian Catholic University

Giving children an instrumental music education can be expensive. In addition to purchasing an instrument and paying the cost of music lessons, parents invest their time by encouraging practice, attending recitals and driving their child to and from lessons. Parents rightly want value-for-money and confidence that their child’s teacher employs an evidenced-based, proven teaching method.

There are numerous approaches to teaching music, each with its own philosophy and history. To a parent looking to make an informed choice about music lessons, the options can be befuddling. But given the research highlights parental involvement as an important component for a successful music-learning experience, developing an understanding of the teaching method is vital.

Read more: How to stop nagging your child to practise their musical instrument

One method that polarises the music education community is Shinichi Suzuki’s (1898-1998) “talent education” (saino kyoiku), commonly known as the Suzuki method. It was first conceived as a system for teaching the violin. The Suzuki method arrived in Australia in the early 1970s and was quickly applied to a variety of instruments.

Research highlights a range of positive outcomes for children learning how to play an instrument via the Suzuki method. It also shows Suzuki is not the only method that works. While the degree of parental involvement may mean Suzuki is not right for every family, the caring learning environment it encourages is one worth emulating.

What is the Suzuki method?

Shinichi Suzuki playing the violin.

1. Talent is no accident of birth

The Japanese word saino has no direct English translation and can, in context, mean “talent” or “ability”. Shinichi Suzuki believed talent is not inherited, and any child could excel musically, given the right learning environment.

Today, advocates of the method continue to echo Suzuki’s idea that “the potential of every child is unlimited”, and caring learning environments help children unlock that potential.

2. All Japanese children speak Japanese

Suzuki credited the development of saino kyoiku to the realisation the vast majority of young children naturally and easily develop language skills. By examining the experiences that facilitate language development (including listening, imitation, memory and play), Suzuki devised the “mother-tongue” method for early childhood music education. Children can begin their music education from birth through listening, and can start learning an instrument from as young as three years old.

In contrast to some Western approaches to music teaching, reading music notation is not prioritised and is delayed until a child’s practical music ability is well established. In the same way a child generally learns to talk before learning to read, students of the Suzuki method start by listening to and imitating music rather than sight reading sheet music.

Read more: Learning music early can make your child a better reader

3. Character first, ability second

Taken from the motto of the high school Suzuki attended until 1916, “character first, ability second” is the overriding aim of the Suzuki method. In saino kyoiku, music learning is a means to an end: students are taught an instrument to facilitate them becoming noble human beings.

Some students of the Suzuki method have undoubtedly progressed on to a career in music. But creating professional musicians and celebrating child prodigies or virtuosos is not a priority of the method.

4. The destiny of children lies in the hands of their parents

The Suzuki method requires a major contribution from a parent and a home environment that wholeheartedly embraces the child’s music-making. A parent needs to participate in formal lessons, record instructions from the teacher and regularly guide and monitor practice at home.

The learning process is a three-way relationship between the child, the parent and the teacher. The parent becomes a “home teacher” who helps their child develop new skills, provide positive feedback and guide the content and pacing of practice sessions. The benefit of having a parent-mentor at home is the feature that sets Suzuki apart from other teaching methods. The parent can greatly regulate time spent practising and what they do during practice.

Some music teachers have criticised the Suzuki method for teaching children to a high level at an earlier age than usual, for an over-reliance on rote learning, for robotic playing, for a focus on classical music, and for a lack of engagement with music notation and improvisation.

Some aspects of the Suzuki method can work for teaching children music, other aspects are less evidence-based. Rogelio A. Galaviz C./flickr, CC BY-NC

What does the research say?

The research into music education supports many aspects of the Suzuki method. For example, one study that sought to compare different modes of parental involvement in music lessons found a clear benefit from parental involvement. This benefit was not limited only to the Suzuki method. The message from this study is: the more interested the parent, the better the learning for the child.

Another study compared Suzuki’s approach to teaching rhythm with the BAPNE method (Body Percussion: Biomechanics, Anatomy, Psychology, Neuroscience and Ethnomusicology). The study concluded both methods had merit and should be integrated.

A recent thesis from the University of Southern Mississippi compared the Suzuki method with the method of its fiercest critic, the O’Connor method.

The O’Connor method is an American system where a set of music books are sold to teachers and students, and training to accredit teachers. These books are tailored to different levels of ability.

This method is less focused on parental involvement in teaching and the selection of music is more geared towards American music. The study found the two approaches could both be effective and shared common aspects related to technique, expression and the mechanics of learning the violin.

The thesis does claim the O’Connor method embraces a more diverse musical repertoire. But the modern Suzuki organisation says its teachers have more flexibility in incorporating different styles of music.

Read more: Force-feeding kids classical music isn’t the answer

Finally, a study out of South Africa highlights ways the Suzuki method can be adapted for use in different cultural contexts. The authors examined the challenges associated with Suzuki’s requirement for high levels of parental involvement for orphans and children from low-income and single-parent families.

These challenges could be overcome by a community approach to music education. In a group learning setting, older and more advanced students mentored younger, less advanced students and provided the encouragement and guidance otherwise provided by a parent.

Some aspects of the Suzuki method remain steeped in controversy. There is no reliable evidence to support the idea that musical training improves character and a sizeable body of research contradicts the notion that genetics has no role in musical aptitude.

– ref. Does the Suzuki method work for kids learning an instrument? Parental involvement is good, but other aspects less so – http://theconversation.com/does-the-suzuki-method-work-for-kids-learning-an-instrument-parental-involvement-is-good-but-other-aspects-less-so-111995

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Senior Fellow, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

Long before the Turnbull government failed to land its climate-energy policy, the new Liberal prime minister had signalled his reluctance to pursue progressive causes, voluntarily garaging the republican campaign bus he had so famously driven.

Reasonably or not, the hopes of millions of Australian republicans had spiked when Malcolm Turnbull replaced the conservative monarchist Tony Abbott in September 2015.

Yet those hopes would quickly be dashed, as the erstwhile face of the Australian Republican Movement turned Liberal prime minister would relegate constitutional self-determination to third-order status. In the process, he depicted himself – only half tongue-in-cheek – as a modern “Elizabethan”.

Read more: A model for an Australian republic that can unite republicans and win a referendum

In the blink of an eye (or was it a royal wave?), republican ambitions returned to Labor’s Bill Shorten. They were no doubt sobered by the thought of further delays and the grim reality that the fleeting alignment of a republican prime minister and a republican opposition leader had still produced nothing.

But if Shorten becomes prime minister in 2019, will he drive the case for an Australian head of state forward? More fundamentally, can the feted republic even come to pass in the absence of muscular support from both hemispheres of politics?

A history of disappointments

Self-evidently, it is a difficult project burdened with overblown hopes, largely intangible benefits and commensurate disappointments. Reversals have been costly.

Well might Turnbull have described John Howard as the “prime minister who broke this nation’s heart” after the 1999 referendum defeat, because it would be a hardness in his own heart that would lead him to dismiss a republic while Queen Elizabeth II remained on the throne.

And Turnbull would go further, essentially telling voters it no longer mattered anyway. In January 2016, just months into his prime ministership, he said:

There are many more urgent issues confronting Australia, and indeed confronting the government, than the momentum or the desire for Australia to become a republic.

No politician, no prime minister or opposition leader or premier, can make Australia a republic – only the Australian people can do that through a referendum.

Presumably, this statement of the obvious served to remind proponents that, in matters of constitutional change, even starting with majority public support is merely that – a start.

It’s no revelation that constitutional reform is supremely difficult in Australia, given the need to secure a so-called “double majority”. This means a majority of votes nationwide plus a majority in at least four of the six states.

But withdraw the crucial ingredient of governmental leadership and that degree of difficulty switches to impossible.

Shorten’s two-step strategy

This is why Shorten wants to build support in stages. He has pledged to put the case to Australians “in principle” first via an indicative first-term plebiscite. The would be followed by a formal referendum, probably held over to a second term.

Typically reserved, Abbott branded this “completely toxic”. He argued it would “delegitimise the constitution we have without putting anything in its place”.

Some republicans had favoured this in 1999, but Howard saw the danger to the Crown’s authority arising from any popular republican mandate and the reform momentum it might generate.

So he determined to make an ally of the higher bar for success required by referendum, along with the divisions emerging in the republican camp between minimalists and direct electionists.

Perversely, Shorten’s two-stage approach has a more contemporaneous justification in the form of the calamitous 2016 Brexit referendum in Britain.

For all that country’s post-ballot dysfunction, Brexit graphically demonstrates the power of an initial yes or no choice when clearly expressed as an abstract principle. That is, when it is separated from the thornier and potentially deal-breaking details to be faced subsequently.

Few doubt that had Britons been fully apprised of the extraordinary extent of the changes and the enormous economic costs of withdrawing from the European Union, many more would have voted to remain.

However, a simple yes or no question is not the position of the Australian Republican Movement. Its national director, Michael Cooney, told a Museum of Australian Democracy forum in February 2019 that it favours a double-barrelled approach first up.

This would ask voters if they want an Australian head of state, and then how they would like that person to be chosen.

This is based on the group’s social research, which shows support for a directly elected president is as high as 75% among republicans. But that support trails away quickly if the head of state is to be chosen by the parliament – a model pilloried by many as a so-called “politician’s republic”.

That division, with its echoes of the unsuccessful push in 1999, underlines just how fragile the support for a republic is, and just how easily it can crumble when the details are considered.

A question of constitutional priorities

In any event, there are concerns that even a Labor government could delay the plebiscite, for fear of compromising a separate push for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.

Read more: First reconciliation, then a republic – starting with changing the date of Australia Day

Few republicans would begrudge First Australians that priority, notwithstanding that agreement is yet to be reached on the precise form so-called “Con-Rec” would take.

Labor insiders say Shorten remains committed to the republic plebiscite in his first term, if elected, but will ensure that Con-Rec is prioritised. As one put it:

The republic’s an open question because we don’t even know who would be leading the opposition and whether they’d be a supporter or not at this stage.

– ref. If Labor wins government, will an Australian republic finally take the crown? – http://theconversation.com/if-labor-wins-government-will-an-australian-republic-finally-take-the-crown-110723