Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Hogan, Associate Professor and Honorary Associate, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

The resignation of Luke Foley as Labor opposition leader in New South Wales is a disaster for the party as it faces a March 23 general election – but it isn’t necessarily great news for the ailing Berejiklian government either.

To form a judgement about the impact of Foley’s resignation on Labor’s electoral chances, just take a look at the state of play about a month ago.

First, we need to look at how the government and opposition were travelling before Corrections Minister David Elliott accused Foley of sexual misconduct under parliamentary privilege on October 18, effectively setting off Labor’s leadership crisis.

Virtually all media attention was on the performance of the Berejiklian government and on the premier herself. Foley was little known and little regarded. However, he was steering the ship with some skill, albeit with occasional problems.

It says a great deal about the low political esteem in which the government was held that, even without a popular opposition leader, the Coalition was seen to be in electoral difficulty. Not that a wager on a Labor victory would have been a safe bet back then, either. Still, the Coalition was likely to lose seats and quite likely to lose majority status in parliament at the upcoming elections.

Nothing has changed on that side of politics. Berejiklian still faces discontent about her hasty policy decisions and frequent backtracking; uncompleted grand projects like the new tram network and WestConnex remain problems rather than achievements.

Read more: Privatising WestConnex is the biggest waste of public funds for corporate gain in Australian history

Add to that the difficulties over electoral support for the Coalition – especially for the National Party in regional New South Wales, and there is a flow-on from the disastrous performance of both Coalition parties at the federal level.

The unhappy picture only gets worse with the prospect of factional warfare in the Liberal Party as conservatives, led by Tony Abbott, attempt to take control of pre-selections and the state party machinery in the next few months.

Maybe the present crisis in the Labor Party will also have a negative effect on the Coalition, since David Elliott’s intervention smacks of the worst kind of “bear pit” politics that brings party politics into disrepute.

A mea culpa from Foley might have helped

Still, the Foley resignation is a disaster for the prospects of the Labor Party. Perhaps a quick transfer of power to a new leader, and apologies all round, might have left the party with a chance of winning the election. But Foley’s stated determination to fight the accusation with defamation proceedings makes the situation worse.

Foley can hope to remedy his plight only if he can prove that the allegations against him are false. As the likely new leader of the party, deputy leader Michael Daley, has pointed out, it is not politically (or ethically) acceptable for a political leader to blame his alleged victim.

Daley is also the shadow planning minister, and served as a former roads and police minister before Labor lost government. After Foley stood down, Daley quickly emerged as the most likely successor.

He was Foley’s main rival in the wake of the resignation of former Labor leader John Robertson in 2014.

Foley’s likely successor urges Foley to leave parliament

Daley, quite sensibly, has said that Foley should consider his position, and resign from parliament, and presumably drop his plan to sue for defamation. Foley has since said he will not re-contest his seat in the March 2019 election.

Presuming that Daley is the new leader, he will have little time to assert his authority and impress the electorate. He has ministerial experience, but that was in the disastrous last Labor administration, which was thrown out of office for the corruption that resulted in two of his ministerial colleagues going to prison.

His reputation in the party is of experience and competence, but he can expect to be reminded of his friends and colleagues, Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald. That is a lot of baggage to carry.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

Addressing the UN General Assembly in September, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world is “suffering from a bad case of trust deficit disorder”.

Trust is at a breaking point. Trust in national institutions. Trust among states. Trust in the rules-based global order. Within countries, people are losing faith in political establishments, polarization is on the rise and populism is on the march.

Yet, it takes global collective action, and hence trust, to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, address climate change and uphold human rights. It takes trust across political parties and across generations to create a durable consensus to reduce economic inequality and poverty.

Read more: If politicians want more trust from voters, they need to start behaving with civility and respect

Decline in trust

Surveys of people’s trust in politicians and governments generally show a long-term decline, especially in the United States which has surveys dating back to 1958. As President Trump thrives on distrust, this trend is unlikely to reverse anytime soon.

Decline of trust is not uniform in all democracies, but, if you ask people whether they trust politicians, the answer is likely to be negative, even in countries like Norway. Furthermore, voter turnouts are in decline – another symptom of distrust. But, if we lack political trust, then we lack the foundation on which to negotiate collectively any sustainable solutions to the world’s most urgent problems.

In western political thought, trust is traditionally seen in two closely related dimensions. In John Locke’s version, trust is a gift from the people to those who rule, conditional upon powers being used for the people’s security and safety. In John Stuart Mill’s version, the elected representative is regarded as a trustee who acts on voters’ behalf rather than a delegate acting only at our behest.

Room for scepticism

In general, people who vote are more likely to express higher levels of trust in politicians and in government. But some may vote in order to defeat a candidate or party regarded as untrustworthy (on an “anyone but” basis) while others may not bother voting because they are highly, if not naively, trusting.

In any political system, it is not prudent to trust completely, however. We have constitutional checks and balances precisely because we trust no one at all with absolute and unaccountable powers. In a democracy, whether one votes or not, we have little choice but to entrust a relatively small number of representatives with powers to pass laws and to govern, but we are not called on to abandon scepticism or to have blind faith.

The big issue, though, is how to develop greater trustworthiness in the individuals whom we do elect, and how to build greater popular trust in decision-making systems, even when we disagree openly and strongly over particular concerns.

Trust in politics

Trust is not a thing that one can literally build, break and then rebuild. Political leaders cannot simply approve a policy and a budget to rebuild trust in the way that we rebuild worn-out infrastructure.

If we demand trust from people, they are likely to react with scepticism. Sledge Hammer’s famous “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” was funny for good reason.

Political and economic systems that are “rigged” (when they produce unfair outcomes or are downright corrupt) are unlikely to be trusted, moreover. Many people in affluent countries are finding that hard work for long hours is not providing a standard of living sufficient to achieve reasonable life goals.

Electoral systems often deliver disproportionate results. Politicians attack one another for short-term gain rather than work for the good of the country. Reducing economic inequality and reforming electoral systems or campaign finance laws may help to address the problem of political trust.

Read more: New Zealand politics: how political donations could be reformed to reduce potential influence

What to do

But there is a deeper “bootstraps” problem, as it takes political trust to gain the consensus to take the actions needed for such significant reforms. It takes trust to build trust. It would be morally unacceptable, however, to give up on the project of restoring political trust on the grounds that it’s too hard.

We need first to understand clearly the kinds of actions entailed in trustworthy conduct – for example, abstaining from taking advantage of the vulnerable, paying heed to people’s complaints, promising no more than one can deliver. If we adopt these characteristics in our own behaviour, then we are in a much better position to expect them of others.

Beyond individual conduct, we need to examine carefully our economic and political systems. The world will never be perceived by all as completely fair. But the difficult task of restoring political trust is inextricably entwined with the tasks of critically reflecting on our own behaviour as leaders in our communities and then working for significant reforms to social and economic policies and electoral systems.

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

Michelle Grattan speaks to University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini about the week in Australian politics. They discuss Malcolm Turnbull’s special interview on ABC’s QandA, Scott Morrison’s bus tour campaign in Queensland, former federal Labor opposition leader Mark Latham running as a One Nation candidate in the NSW upper house, and Luke Foley resigning as NSW opposition leader over alleged inappropriate behaviour.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn McMahon, Deputy Dean, School of Law, Deakin University

Jennifer Morant, 56, died of carbon monoxide poisoning in her car in November 2014. Last month, a jury found her husband, Graham Morant, 69, guilty of two crimes under section 311 of Queensland’s Criminal Code Act 1889: counselling her to commit suicide, and aiding her to do so. He had repeatedly encouraged Jennifer to commit suicide (counselling), and had even driven her to a hardware store to purchase the equipment she used to kill herself (aiding).

Jennifer Morant suffered from chronic illnesses, including depression, anxiety and back pain. But this was not a case where a loving husband helped his terminally-ill wife to end her suffering. Instead, the Court found that Morant had been motivated by greed, and that the self-styled religious leader wanted access to the $1.4 million from his wife’s life insurance policies so he could build a religious retreat.

Read more: Could long-distance bullies in Australia face up to 20 years in jail for encouraging suicide?

Justice Peter Davis of the Supreme Court of Queensland sentenced Morant to ten years in prison. He is believed to be the first person in Australia to be sentenced for counselling suicide.

The maximum penalty for this offence in Queensland is life, but in some other jurisdictions can be as low as five years’ imprisonment – so the same offence in NSW or Victoria would attract a much lighter penalty.

Morant was aware his wife was thinking about killing herself, and encouraged and helped her to do so, according to the Supreme Court of Queensland. So a key question is: should he have been charged with a more serious offence, such as murder or manslaughter?

The answer relates to the unusual status of suicide under the criminal law, and the extent to which the law assumes people act “voluntarily” and of their own free will.

The legal status of suicide

For half a century, suicide has not been a crime in Australia (though in practice, of course, only attempted suicide could be prosecuted). As a result, Morant could not be found guilty of complicity – often called “aiding and abetting” – in his wife’s suicide.

Mostly, telling someone else to commit a crime can mean both people are charged: the person who actually did the crime is the main offender, and the person who counselled them is an accessory.

But for a person to be an accessory, the other person must have committed a crime. Given that suicide has been decriminalised, Morant could not be charged as an accessory to his wife’s death; her behaviour was not a crime.

Suicide as a voluntary act

Another issue is the voluntariness of suicide. The criminal law is reluctant to assign responsibility to a person for the voluntary acts of another.

Justice Davis said Jennifer Morant “voluntarily sat in the car with the windows and doors all closed” and therefore caused her own death.

Although this was not a matter Justice Davis was required to adjudicate, he suggested that Graham Morant did not legally cause his wife’s death and could not, therefore, be responsible for manslaughter or murder.

However, there is precedent in Australia and other jurisdictions which suggests that a person could be found to be guilty of manslaughter in broadly analogous circumstances. We explore this issue in a recent article in the Alternative Law Journal, and it is illustrated in a couple of cases from the United States.

Encouraging suicide can constitute manslaughter

In 1961, a Massachusetts man was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after encouraging and helping his wife to commit suicide.

After he told her that he was going to obtain a divorce, she threatened suicide. He said she had tried twice before and was too “chicken”, then told her to get a rifle they owned, loaded it for her and told her how to position it so she could shoot herself. She did so, killing herself, and he was convicted of manslaughter.

In another US case, currently pending a decision by an appeal court, a woman, now 22, was found guilty last year of involuntary manslaughter after texting her suicidal boyfriend with messages encouraging him to take his life.

Read more: Will guilty verdict in teen texting suicide case lead to new laws on end-of-life issues?

Prosecuting someone like Graham Morant for manslaughter should not be dismissed as fanciful. According to court judgements in this case, the Morants had been married 14 years, and his wife had previously contemplated suicide and was thinking of it in the days before her death. The prosecution also argued that he had told her that she ‘was not strong enough to survive the raptures which were imminent’, a reference to his belief the end-times were coming.

When sentencing Morant, Justice Davis said that he “took advantage of her vulnerability as a sick, depressed woman”.

In short, the court found that Graham Morant exploited both his wife’s vulnerable mental state and the trust inherent in their intimate relationship in order to benefit financially from her death.

We as a society are becoming increasingly aware of the effects of psychological coercion in the context of family violence, and the extent to which a person can overbear the free will of their partner. Consequently, Justice Davis’ conclusion that it wasn’t necessary to make detailed findings about Jennifer Morant’s emotional state or mental health is perhaps surprising.

Greed versus compassion

There are, of course, numerous issues to be addressed before people are held responsible for manslaughter for causing someone else’s suicide.

For instance, one key issue concerns motivation. Should the law respond differently to financially-motivated offenders and altruistically motivated offenders whose behaviour is driven by love (such as Heinz Klinkermann in Victoria)?

In the United Kingdom, for example, prosecutors are expressly told to take into account whether the offender was “wholly motivated by compassion” when deciding whether to even prosecute someone for causing another person’s suicide.

Whatever approach we adopt, it is important that an accused’s criminal conviction is commensurate with their moral culpability.

* If this article raises any concerns for you, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or BeyondBlue on 1300 22 4636.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon McLennan, Lecturer in International Development, Massey University

Honduras is a wonderful place for a short visit, despite its reputation as a one of the most dangerous places on the planet. It is a small, beautiful country with an abundance of natural resources and a warm, welcoming culture. But it is a very hard place to live.

I first travelled there nearly 20 years ago to do volunteer work, meeting my Honduran husband in the process. I have visited multiple times since then, including living in Honduras for nearly a year while doing my PhD research. In September this year we visited for a month, spending time with family and friends, with discussions often revolving around politics, violence, and the difficulty of life in Honduras.

When news emerged two weeks after we left of a caravan of migrants making their way across Guatemala and Mexico to the United States, I wasn’t surprised. Here are five reflections on the origins and implications of the caravan.

Corruption as the operating system

The place migrants are leaving is more important and relevant than the place they are going to. Political corruption and repression, gangs, drug cartels, land pressures and climate change make life very difficult for most Hondurans, and impossible for some. Every Honduran has a story of violence.

Business owners sleep on the premises with a gun for protection, and drivers carry extra cash to pay corrupt police if pulled over. People avoid the centre of large cities wherever possible.

For those who have crossed paths with the gangs or drug cartels, dared to protest against the government, or tried to stand up for community rights in the face of mining corporations and dam builders, it is unimaginably difficult.

In 2017, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that in Honduras, “corruption is the operating system”, with “repression … carefully targeted for maximum psychological effect.”

When conditions are this bad, large-scale migration is inevitable, and many of these migrants are, in effect, refugees.

US complicit in crisis

Rather than being the victim of a migrant invasion, the United States is complicit. While local elites and politicians carry much of the blame for the chaos, decades of US meddling in the region has played a significant role.

Read more: How US policy in Honduras set the stage for today’s migration

Poverty and inequality in Honduras has roots in the activities of American fruit companies throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The current instability can be traced to the 2009 coup, the success of which was partly attributable to US policy.

More recent meddling includes the endorsement of the fraudulent election of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández in 2017.

Since that election, there has been another major increase in political violence and repression. Through close ties with the Honduran business elites, US and transnational corporate interests are also linked to the repression of environmentalists and indigenous leaders.

Fewer migrants, but larger groups

Although the caravan seems huge to us, this is just a drop in the bucket. More than 300,000 individuals were apprehended crossing the border illegally from Mexico into the USA in 2017. This was an historic low, down from 1.6 million in 2000.

Read more: Today’s US-Mexico ‘border crisis’ in 6 charts

It is as also just a tiny fraction of the number of undocumented migrants, refugees and asylum seekers worldwide.

However, this caravan is part of a trend towards migrants and refugees travelling in larger groups. The journey through Mexico is dangerous. For example, rape is very common.

Amnesty International estimates that 60% of women and girls who attempt the journey individually or in small groups are raped en route, and girls as young as 12 take measures to avoid pregnancy.

Stories of hope

Individual stories often get lost in the numbers and rhetoric. Focusing on the numbers lends credence to the rhetoric of invasion. It is important to remember that each member of the caravan is a person, with a story, a family, and dreams for the future.

The caravan includes many young men, but rather than being criminals to be feared, many are escaping the gangs, planning to work hard to send money home to families in Honduras. Indeed, the remittances that will be sent by migrants and refugees is potentially of far greater value to Honduran development than any official aid, reducing poverty and increasing household spending across Honduras.

The key to reducing future migration may well be development stimulated by the money these migrants will send home.

A call for compassion

Finally, this caravan might seem far away and irrelevant to people in New Zealand and Australia. As my Honduran husband can attest, the number of Central Americans who make it here is tiny. However, we should take notice, because the global climate that has both led to the emergence of migrant caravans and the racist, anti-immigration rhetoric of US President Trump and others affects us too.

The rhetoric of Australian politicians and their refusal to show any compassion towards those who attempt to reach their shores should sound a warning. Generalising and stereotyping migrants and refugees is a dangerous step towards an even more insecure world, where those who already have the good life are protected, and those who don’t are stuck in a no-man’s land of poverty, violence and insecurity.

Compassion and recognition of the humanity of refugees and migrants is an important step towards building a more secure future and a peaceful world.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tiffany Gill, Senior Research Fellow, University of Adelaide

This article is part of 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 looks at a vital concept in medical studies: the cohort.

Are you in a cohort? Perhaps a posse of friends, a sporting team, the “class of 1989” Facebook group from your former school?

“Cohort” is collective term used to refer to people with something in common – historically it described a group of soldiers, but now is most often used in research contexts.

Cohort studies typically involve recruiting a group of people to look at causes of disease. Cohorts are followed over time, in longitudinal studies – imagine the people marching forward together through the years, like a group of soldiers.

One of the most well-known cohort studies – the Framingham Heart Study – first clearly identified something that most of us now take for granted: heart attacks and other forms of heart disease run in families.

Read more: Heart attacks more frequent in colder weather

The causes of heart disease

The Framingham Heart Study commenced in 1948, and was designed to understand why increasing numbers of people in the United States had heart disease. It was so named because the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, was chosen as the study site.

The main aim of the study was to determine risk factors for heart disease, and then use these to create public health programs.

To date, the study has been vital in identifying important risk factors in heart disease development, such as:

• high blood pressure, weight gain and high cholesterol
• male sex and increasing age
• diabetes
• smoking.

Initially, 5209 men and women took part in the study. But since then, researchers have recruited children of the original cohort, and a third generation cohort of grandchildren. The original recruits have now been examined over 30 times.

The population of Framingham has also changed over the years, from predominantly white to a more diverse population – people of African American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American descent have been recruited.

Read more: Research Check: will a coffee a day really keep heart attacks at bay?

High quality data

Framingham is known for a very high rate of keeping people involved in the study. This is due to the constant follow up by the staff.

There are examination visits every two to six years, with staff members travelling to participants if they are unable to come to the measurement centres. There are follow up questionnaires and telephone calls between examinations, not only for local residents but also for participants who live in other parts of the United States or the world. Keeping participants in the study ensures that the quality of the data and research outcomes are maintained at a high level.

While Framingham originally focused on cardiovascular disease, it has now also examined diabetes, stroke, dementia, cancer, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

A cohort study like Framingham follows individuals over time to investigate the causes of disease, record disease outcomes (such as illness and death) and establish links with disease risk factors. But such a study is also analytical: comparisons can be made between the general population and the cohort.

Cohort studies provide high quality evidence on the risk factors and causes of disease. Cohort studies can also describe the incidence of diseases – the number of new cases of a disease that occur in a specific timeframe.

However, these types of studies are observational: that is, they do not include a specific intervention or treatment to address a particular disease.

Read more: The curious case of the missing workplace teaspoons

Forward and back

The Framingham study design is “prospective” – it was planned in advance and the studies carried out moving forwards over a period of time. Other cohort studies are “retrospective” – looking at data that already exists.

In addition to Framingham, other cohort studies have provided a significant amount of information about:

Read more: Research Check: can you cut your cancer risk by eating organic?

Cohort studies are particularly important for examining diseases that take a long time to develop, and for exploring the effect of social and environmental factors on health. They are not useful for looking at rare, or sudden disease outbreaks. They are expensive and can take a long time to produce results.

But they have provided some of the most significant information on some of today’s biggest health problems.

The open access research paper for this analysis is Cohort Profile: The Framingham Heart Study (FHS): overview of milestones in cardiovascular epidemiology.

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

Australia can thank an erratic Donald Trump for the opportunity to “reset” its relationship with China after a chill engendered by what was interpreted as criticism from the then prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and foreign minister, Julie Bishop.

Turnbull had caused offence with his criticism of Chinese interference in Australian politics via Beijing’s front organisations. And in March 2017, Bishop had questioned China’s political model in a speech in Singapore.

A reset was already in the works before Turnbull was felled in August in a palace coup. The two countries had been reassessing shared interests in light of the wrecking ball US President Trump has taken to an international rules-based system.

Read more: Morrison and Shorten reveal their positions on key foreign policy questions

Former treasurer and new Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s elevation of Marise Payne to replace Bishop provided a pretext for an important diplomatic engagement in Beijing in the lead-up to what is being called the “summit season”.

This interaction may well have happened anyway, but a changing of the guard in Canberra helped get over any “face issues” that might have lingered after fairly trenchant criticism of Australia in Chinese official mouthpiece publications.

Payne’s arrival in the Chinese capital ahead of an East Asia Summit in Singapore, an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Port Moresby, and a G20 summit in Buenos Aires this month is not a coincidence.

Her presence in Beijing for the fifth Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue is the first visit by an Australian foreign minister in nearly three years.

After putting Australia in the freezer, Beijing has enabled a thaw ahead of these important events at which America’s behaviour will be under scrutiny, if not censure.

Beijing’s emollient words at a meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Payne could have hardly contrasted more sharply with criticism expressed over the past several years as debate about foreign interference disrupted the relationship.

This is what Wang had to say about a reset:

We are ready to step up our strategic dialogue and deepen strategic cooperation … in particular, rebuild and cement our political mutual trust.

These are Chinese diplomatic buzzwords, with an emphasis on “mutual trust”.

Payne described her two hours of talks – which ran overtime – as a “full and candid discussion”. Australia and China had agreed on a “respectful relationship”.

Pointedly, Wang had referred to a “new government” in Canberra, as if to say that a change of management had enabled a thaw.

Read more: The risks of a new Cold War between the US and China are real: here’s why

China’s conduct of its foreign policy, in which it alternately rewards and penalises those who fall out of favour, in some ways resembles a Beijing opera.

Melodrama is intrinsic to this Chinese art form.

China’s invitation to Payne for a long-delayed strategic dialogue is a calculated diplomatic move. It’s one that also suits Australia, anxious to gets its diplomatic relationship with China back on track.

It is in neither country’s interests – certainly not Australia’s – for an estrangement to persist at a time when uncertainty prevails due to an unpredictable American presidency.

Concerns in Beijing and Canberra about preserving open markets when American protectionism is threatening a liberalising trading environment have prompted this reset and determined its timing.

Beyond that, Canberra appears to have resolved that Australia’s interests are not well served by allowing an Australian security establishment possessed of a certain anti-China mindset to tilt policy in directions that do not serve the national interest.

It is one thing to exhibit scepticism about China’s behaviour and motivations. It is quite another to allow a “reds under the bed” mentality to drive policy.

No-one with more than passing knowledge believes China is a benign power. But nor is it the enemy. Its rise is a fact of life, whether Australian policymakers in thrall to a security establishment like it or not.

Interestingly, China sought to allay Australia’s concerns about its push into the southwest Pacific by offering “trilateral cooperation” in assisting Pacific island states build their infrastructure.

How this would work practically is not clear. But Wang appeared to be suggesting that Australia’s newly announced infrastructure fund for the Pacific could participate in joint projects with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Australia and China are not competitors, not rivals but cooperation partners, and we have agreed to combine and capitalise on our respective strengths to carry out trilateral cooperation involving Pacific Island states.

Significantly, Australia’s announcement on the eve of the Wang-Payne meeting that Canberra was blocking the takeover of the APA Group by Hong Kong’s CK Group on competition grounds was not an impediment to improving ties.

Pragmatism prevailed. “We hope a single case won’t affect Australia’s attitude to investment,” Wang said.

Payne’s visit took place against the background of overtures to China begun by Turnbull and Bishop in their efforts to restore certainty to the relationship.

A speech by Morrison to the Asia Society last week, in which he spoke of the importance of the Australia-China relationship, provided further impetus for a reset, propelled to a certain extent by Washington.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Randa Abdel Fattah, DECRA Research Fellow, Macquarie University

The war on terror has resulted in the gradual erosion of basic civil and human rights in the name of security. The latest casualty in Australia is Mohamed Kamer Nizamdeen, a 25-year-old PhD student, who was locked up in solitary confinement in a high-security prison for four weeks on the flimsiest of evidence.

Nizamdeen has now returned home to Sri Lanka, where he told a press conference that his life has been “shattered” and his future “clearly ruined”.

Nizamdeen was charged with making a document connected to the preparation of a terrorist act. The sole piece of evidence was a notebook found in his workplace desk at the University of New South Wales. Despite denying the handwriting in the notebook was his, and the fact Nizamdeen had not used the office space for a month, he was arrested, deprived of access to a lawyer for six days and denied communication with his family for a month.

He was also classified as an “AA extreme high risk restricted” inmate, the highest classification under NSW’s corrective services system.

Mick Sheehy, NSW police’s detective acting superintendent, told the media that Nizamdeen had “affiliated” with ISIS, but less than two months later, the charges were dropped.

How ‘extremist identities’ become motive

Nizamdeen was not released because he was proven innocent. He was released because the system could not prove him guilty. This is the logic of how counter-terrorism policing and the law works against Muslims and people of colour who are policed as suspect communities.

Under the law, one of the criteria of a terrorist act is:

it intends to coerce or influence the public or any government by intimidation to advance a political, religious or ideological cause.

In her book Traces of Terror, Victoria Sentas, a counter-terrorism law expert, argues that:

the requirement for an accused to advance a political, religious or ideological cause formally introduces a motive element to terrorism offences.

A person can also be convicted of preparing to carry out a terrorist act even without proof that he or she intended to commit such an offence. The prosecution only needs to prove motive – and in the context of the war on terror, proof of a Muslim “extremist identity” becomes evidence of motive.

This is why Nizamdeen’s belongings, such as his computer, mobile phone and residence were searched for evidence of extremist ideology. (None was found.)

Far-right extremists not treated the same

Those who have followed Australia’s unprecedented expansion of counter-terrorism laws, preventative detention and control orders, and intelligence, security and law enforcement powers will not be surprised by the travesty of justice suffered by Nizamdeen.

It has always been the case that the biggest casualties of counter-terrorism laws and policing practices are racialised minorities. Years of law reform, policy frameworks, political rhetoric and community partnerships have normalised the perception that Muslims and “ethnic” people, particularly young people, are part of a suspect community.

Despite the mainstreaming of white nationalist voices and the normalisation of far-right extremist rhetoric in recent years, Muslims and people of colour are still considered the preeminent threat to national security in the war on terror.

Read more: New laws make loss of citizenship a counter-terrorism tool

The 2014 case of convicted firebomber Daniel Fing is a case in point. Fing was caught with more than a notebook in an office desk – he had a stockpile of explosive materials and maps of targets in Sydney and Newcastle.

Police believed he was plotting a mass attack on the two cities. But not only was Fing not charged with any terrorism-related offences, NSW police “strongly reassured” the public that the plot had “absolutely no links to terrorism”. Then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott also remarked:

There are all sorts of people who do all sorts of weird and, at times, pretty dangerous things. But I haven’t been advised of any potential terrorist threat in respect of this particular issue.

A normalisation of racialised policies

The construction of Muslims and people of colour as “suspect communities” relies on a system that considers them the natural objects of counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism work. This normalises and justifies enhanced social controls and state power over minorities in the name of national security.

As such, a person like Nizamdeen becomes justified collateral damage in the “greater fight against terror”. Policymakers have also used this rationale to justify the curtailing of personal freedoms.

This is what led to the extension of control orders to children as young as 14 and the imprisonment of Junaid Thorne with an AA classification in Goulburn’s high-security facility for the crime of booking airline tickets under the fake name of Prince Bhopal.

We have seen arrests based on spurious evidence (Muhamed Haneef) and police misconduct (Izhar ul-Haque). Our televisions and social media feeds feature sensationalised home raids in Sydney neighbourhoods reported to be “incubators of terrorism”, where police seize “weapons” that are later discovered to be plastic swords and home-made fly swatters.

If Nizamdeen had been a Smith or Jones, it is highly likely he would have met a different fate. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the rhetoric of the war on terror has turned the term “terrorist” into an everyday codeword for Muslims and ethnic minorities.

This is the world in which the police, politicians, media and public have come to expect the potential terrorist to exist. This is why new grants and policies aimed at countering violent extremism (CVE) are announced on the steps of mosques and CVE operations target geographic areas and populations deemed “at risk”.

It also explains why Islamophobic attacks are condemned by politicians and the police because they might undermine relationships of “cooperation” between intelligence and law enforcement and the Muslim community.

Read more: How the Australian government is failing on countering violent extremism

Even the government’s Living Safe Together website, a community-based grants program introduced by Abbott’s government to counter violent extremism, reinforces the centrality of Muslims and ethnic minorities to its agenda.

In this context, a suspicious notebook in an office desk codes differently when it is connected with a young Muslim man.

Nizamdeen is the latest in a long line of ethnic minorities who have become victims of a miscarriage of justice in a racialised counter-terrorism regime. While whiteness seems to be a mitigating factor in terrorist offences, being Muslim or a person of colour appears to be evidence of motive.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc Stears, Professor and Director, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

Deepening economic inequality is a scourge across most of the world’s democracies. For decades now, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has been widening. This has very real and very dangerous consequences for people’s mental and physical health and for the cohesion of our communities. So why isn’t anything serious being done about it?

Reversing this trend, or at least ameliorating it, would not be difficult. Economists around the world have spent the last few years laying out some fairly straightforward policy solutions. These range from reform of the rules governing how pay is set in the big corporations to sustained investment in the foundational social services that everyone but the very richest relies upon, including public education, health and housing.

Despite this clarity, very few of these initiatives are being pursued in any of the developed democracies. Instead, political action remains focused on tax cuts that favour the wealthy or big business, on immigration restrictions that can hinder economic growth, and on public subsidies for a handful of old industries, even where there are environmental reasons to be transitioning away from them.

Read more: The fair go is a fading dream, but don’t write it off

Why the inaction on inequality?

The question that matters more than almost any other when it comes to inequality right now, then, is not whether it is a problem or how to resolve it, but what is it that’s holding us back from doing what we need to do?

The answer to this question cannot lie in an absence of practice, knowledge or understanding. Most countries successfully initiated inequality-tackling reforms in previous generations. And they often did so in far more pressing political and economic circumstances, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s or the immediate aftermath of the second world war.

Even where there is not previous experience to draw upon, politicians and their advisers can draw upon a host of more recent studies of the causes, consequences and potential responses to the rise of inequality. This includes the work of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize recipient, Joseph Stiglitz. There is no shortage of expertise for a new generation of egalitarian reformers to draw upon.

Nor does the answer lie in entrenched public unwillingness to tackle the problem. It is true that in the 1980s and 1990s, electorates the world over were often skittish about interventionist economic policy proposals. They favoured tax reductions over public service investment and were anxious about government’s efforts to “pick winners” in the economy.

But such anxiety has greatly lessened right now. Indeed, polling consistently suggests that even in countries without a sustained tradition of government action against inequality, a large public appetite now exists for measures to tackle it. Such measures, stretching from sharp increases in minimum wages to the nationalisation of major public utilities, enjoy majority support in many democracies.

We have also witnessed electorates across the world take bold and risky decisions in their voting behaviour. This includes support for extremist political movements motivated partly by a desire fundamentally to shift away from the status quo.

The problem lies with our politics

If the problem does not lie in knowledge or public support, it must lie somewhere that does not currently get enough attention: in our processes of policymaking – in short, our politics.

Political life in the developed democracies has been radically transformed in the last few decades. Usually this is told in a storybook version, with an endless rise of openness and inclusivity.

In the early decades of the 20th century, this narrative goes, women and the poorest won the vote. In the middle of the century, trade unions and civil society organisations exerted increasing influence on national political decision-making. And as the century aged, other groups including LGBTQI action groups, minority and indigenous populations began to find some long-denied political influence.

But there is another, far darker story to tell. The last few decades have witnessed the rise of another way of doing politics. The anthropologist Janine Wedel brilliantly describes that way in Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security (2014).

It is the world of the professional lobbyist, of the revolving door between global corporations and the highest levels of government, of uneasy relationships between public decision-making and private profit, and of the capture of elite thinking by norms and expectations that owe too much to the practices of the financial services sector.

All of this has happened at the same time, of course, as a sharp decline in the organisations that used to do much to hold these tendencies back. Union membership has fallen rapidly in the advanced democracies, for instance. And formal mechanisms that guaranteed that governments had to explain their policy decisions to multiple stakeholders have been eroded across the world.

Read more: To tackle inequality, we must start in the labour market

As a result, the salience of issues such as “what the public thinks” and “what the public needs” when it comes to the economy have been significantly eroded as well.

What all of this means is that economic decision-making increasingly responds to a narrower and narrower section of society. In such circumstances, it is no wonder that almost no concerted action has been taken to halt the rise of inequality.

Fight for the fair go is political first

What it also means, though, is that the action we need to restore the fair go cannot begin with the economy. It must instead begin with policymaking and politics.

We need to make sure the voices of those affected by inequality are genuinely heard and heeded. This commitment should run through everything we do: from supporting our local trade union to opening up scholarly resources to those people in need, from demanding action to rein in corporate lobbying and special access to generating exciting and innovative ideas for using new technologies to accentuate the voice of those without access to formal power.

These ideas are where our energy needs to be. If we want to see greater equality, we need to spend time working out precisely how our political life can become truly responsive. And then we must campaign to make those changes real.

Read more: Why are unions so unhappy? An economic explanation of the Change the Rules campaign

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Borsellino, Lecturer in Corporate Law and Governance, Western Sydney University

Until recently, the idea of waiting a day or two for a bank transfer to reach your account was normal, however consumers are starting to demand immediate and seamless payment alternatives. With upcoming developments in the Australian financial services sector, we should start to see these demands met – if not by banks, then by FinTech firms aiming to transform the financial services industry.

Twelve months after the government announced the introduction of a Consumer Data Right (CDR) in Australia, Data61 has released a working draft of the standards that will underpin it.

The CDR will offer Australians control over the data held about them by service providers, and the right to share it with a third party provider – including competitors to the service that compiled it. The CDR will first be implemented in the financial services sector under the Open Banking framework from July 2019.

ACCC Chairman Rod Sims expects the framework to:

…encourage competition between service providers, leading not only to better prices for customers but also more innovation of products and services.

We’re already seeing new services emerge in this space, such as the ability to pay at checkouts via your mobile phone, but real disruption will take time to occur as FinTech firms are provided with access to consumer data to create products we haven’t yet heard of.

Read more: What we can do once the banks give us back our data

FinTech in Australia is growing

FinTech is a term used to describe the use of technology in financial services. FinTech firms are often startup businesses that use new business models to disrupt existing financial systems. They create financial tools for everyday people, serious investors and the banks themselves.

Their customer focus caters to the growing millennial and Gen Z population who have large digital appetites. The Australian startup Zip Money offers a cloud-based digital platform that allows retailers to offer a “buy now, pay later” service to customers for their products. In 2016, the company acquired Pocketbook, which syncs transaction data from bank accounts to help users track their spending and manage their money.

Services like these aren’t a replacement for traditional banking. Rather, they use your banking data to create new services to deliver a better experience for users.

FinTech is rapidly growing, both in Australia and internationally. According to a recent survey, Australian FinTech companies have seen a 200% increase in median revenue since 2016.

Open banking will lead to further innovation and growth in the industry. We may even see banks shifting into the backdrop as these businesses become the shopfronts of financial services, using customer data held by banks.

How Open Banking will work

The CDR is only useful to consumers if the data is available in a format that is machine readable. FinTechs in Australia are currently using a manual “screen scraping” approach to gaining access to data held by banks.

For example, the Pocketbook app, with your permission, periodically pulls your bank transactions into the app to help you manage your finances. The technology is read-only, so you can’t use the app to actually process transactions.

Read more: Restructuring alone won’t clean up the banks’ act

Open banking will force the four major banks to make data about their customer’s card, deposit and transaction accounts available to different services by 1 July 2019. Mortgage data will follow by 1 February 2020. But this data will only be made available to other services with the permission of customers, and that permission can be revoked at any time.

Under this framework, FinTechs will be able to access customer banking data using APIs.

APIs will transform the industry

An Application Program Interface (API) is like a universal power socket for the digital world, allowing multiple systems to work together and speak to each other.

APIs will revolutionise the efficiency and speed at which payments are made by giving FinTechs easier and cleaner access to user accounts, with real-time updates and the ability to process transactions.

PayPal, for example, uses a REST API. REST APIs enable merchants and developers to create applications that manage payments, payment pre-approvals and refunds.

Open Banking will allow businesses, such as Amazon or Whatsapp, to offer financial services and products directly through their platforms, rather than through banking sites. This already happens in China via the social networking platform WeChat.

Consumer data standards

Sharing data, especially confidential financial data, does give rise to important security issues. Data61 has been appointed by the government to develop standards that will underpin Open Banking and the CDR, a draft of which was recently released.

The standards are guided by a series of outcome principles stipulating that APIs will be secure, use open standards, provide a good customer experience and provide a good developer experience. Technical principles include that APIs will be RESTful, simple, consistent and backwards compatible. Data61 is currently seeking feedback on the draft rules.

Read more: Fintech firms freed to compete with banks, but disruption yet to come

It is no secret that millennials tend to trust the digital world more than they trust their banks. And, as a result of the banking inquiry, Australian banks are having their cultures questioned and their unethical business practices exposed. New waves of products offered by FinTechs are likely to spur banks to compete in a space where they have been slow to innovate.

The introduction of open APIs will help Australia keep up with global trends in the growing digital economy. Whether that means we’ll soon be seeing an Australian version of WeChat’s comprehensive payment system remains to be seen.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Adjunct Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

As we commemorate the centenary of the Armistice, it is appropriate that we pay tribute to the thousands of largely forgotten people who formed a significant social and political coalition at the time of the first world war: those who fought against conscription, and against the war, including a significant number of conscientious objectors.

Military registration and training for all Australian men aged 18 to 60 was compulsory from 1911. But there was no provision in Australian law that required men to enlist for active service overseas. Signing up for such service was voluntary, and with the promise of a short war, there was no difficulty for recruitment officers finding their men.

Read more: World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)

However, as news of the horrendous losses at Gallipoli from April to December 1915 and the slaughter on the Western Front from mid-1916 filtered back to Australia, enthusiasm for overseas duties began to wane.

Australia was not meeting its recruitment target. Only about a third of eligible men were volunteering.

Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes determined that the only way to increase enlistment numbers was to impose conscription. He decided to hold a plebiscite (sometimes referred to as the “conscription referendum”) to carry out what he saw as his obligation to the Empire, and to do so with the consent of the Australian people.

But there were many vociferous voices from the trade union movement, the Labor Party and an active women’s coalition campaigning for a “no” vote. Religious adherents, too, found themselves well represented in the “no” campaign, with many Catholics, Quakers, Christadelphians, Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the forefront of the pacifist movement.

Archbishop Daniel Mannix was a leader in the Catholic Church in Melbourne. He took a strong stand against conscription, adding that the war was “just an ordinary trade war” driven by trade jealousy. Conscription, he maintained, would simply reinforce “class versus class” social injustices.

Remember, too, that the British had, in April 1916, put down with force the Easter Rising in Ireland. Almost 2,000 Irish were sent to internment camps. Most of the leaders of the Rising were executed in May 1916. Mannix was Irish-born.

Margaret Thorp, a Quaker, was another strong voice in opposition to the war, and critical of the support for the war by the mainstream churches. A member of the Anti-Military Service League, she later joined others to inaugurate a branch of the Women’s Peace Army in Australia and, later, a branch of the Sisterhood of International Peace that supported the international No-Conscription Fellowship.

On October 28, 1916, Prime Minister Hughes put the conscription ballot to the vote. It was defeated by a margin of 3%.

The following year, Britain sought a sixth Australian division for active service. Australia had to provide 7,000 men per month to meet this request. But voluntary recruitment continued to lag behind requirements. On December 20, 1917, Hughes put a second conscription ballot to the people. It, too, was defeated, this time by a larger margin (7%). The war continued to the Armistice with volunteers only.

By the end of the war, over 215,000 Australians had been killed, wounded or gassed. Only one out of every three Australian men who were sent abroad arrived home physically unscathed.

During the 20th century, Australian law developed a variety of positions on conscientious objection. Such status today relies on an applicant meeting the requirements of the Defence Act 1903 as amended in 1939. Conscientious objectors need not have deeply held religious beliefs. But they must be able to ground their objection in moral beliefs, and be able to articulate them.

People who were not able to be officially recognised as conscientious objectors in Australia during the first world war were prosecuted when they failed to register. While historical records are impossible to collate accurately on this subject, some 27,749 prosecutions had been launched across the country by June 30, 1915. Stories of the tragic social consequences for these men, and for conscientious objectors, are legion. Objectors particularly were often maligned as cowards and self-seekers. But the historical records illustrate that theirs was not an easy path. They did not lack courage. In many respects, the choices made by conscientious objectors required a greater determination and certainty of belief than was needed by the men who enlisted voluntarily.

Read more: Only the conscription referendums made Australia’s Great War experience different

There is a permanent memorial for conscientious objectors in Tavistock Square, London, and one is planned for Edinburgh, Scotland. There is a tribute at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City for the pacifists Joseph and Michael Hofer, who died in Leavenworth Prison in 1918 while incarcerated for refusing military service.

It is regrettable that Australia has no public memorial to our forebears who campaigned against compulsory military service, and the war itself, for reasons of conscience and faith. As we commemorate the centenary of the Armistice, there is no better time to remedy that oversight.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Romain Fathi, Lecturer, History, Flinders University

One hundred years ago – on November 11 1918, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – millions of men laid down their guns.

This was Armistice Day, the end of the first world war.

Germany, the last belligerent standing among the Central Powers, had collapsed militarily, economically and politically.

Armistice Day – later known as Remembrance Day – has since been commemorated every year.

Read more: World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)

Ending the war

On November 11 1918, aboard Marshall Ferdinand Foch’s train carriage, a few plenipotentiaries of Germany and the main Allied nations signed a short document that ordered a ceasefire, effective from 11am. In doing so, they put an end to the global carnage that had started in August 1914 and had killed more than 10 million combatants and 6 million civilians.

Notably, though this document stopped combat, it did not formally end the war. Indeed, Germany had sought an armistice in order to negotiate a formal peace treaty. This peace was secured eight months later, on June 28 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference.

The Armistice also didn’t resolve localised conflicts resulting from the war. These raged on in parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East through to the early 1920s.

But for most nations involved in the first world war, the armistice of November 11 was the day the fighting finally stopped, which is why it has become a major commemorative event across the globe.

The first Armistice Day

On the first Armistice Day, November 11 1918, crowds cheered on the streets of Allied countries such as Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, France and Belgium. People rejoiced at the ending of a period of total mobilisation that had affected every aspect of their lives, inflicting unprecedented hardship on soldiers and civilians alike.

But for those who had lost the war, the news of the armistice came as a shock. While some were relieved the conflict had ended, the sudden collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires provided a breeding ground for revolutionary movements and further internal conflicts. For them, Armistice Day was a moment of anguish and bitterness.

The second Armistice Day (1919)

After its first iteration, Armistice Day became a more formal and sombre commemoration, and was often held at war memorials. People were encouraged to remember the dead with respect and solemnity.

A dedicated time for silence became part of the ceremony and has been central to Remembrance Day commemorations ever since. In Britain, King George V requested a two-minute silence, which was observed from 1919 onward across the Commonwealth. In France, the minute de silence was instituted in 1922.

Silence meant time for contemplation, reflection, introspection and, above all, respect. In multifaith empires where atheism was progressing, the gesture could conveniently replace a prayer.

Remembrance Day was deemed a civic duty for many, and the veterans would often take a lead role in its commemoration.

From then on, Armistice Day increasingly became known as Remembrance Day. The focus was no longer on the armistice and the end of the war: it became a day to remember, grieve and honour those who had died.

The notion of sacrifice became central to Remembrance Day, as those still alive tried to give meaning to, and cope with, the deaths of their loved ones. The language of memory honoured the deceased, acknowledging that they had not sacrificed themselves in vain but for institutions and values such as country, king, God, freedom and so on. However, as time passed, this language came to be increasingly contested.

Remembrance Day: the inter-wars and the second world war

Remembrance Day was also used to protest against war in general. Some mourners and veterans refused to attend official commemorations. In doing so, they showcased their anger at the state-sanctioned carnage that the first world war had been. In France and Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s, for instance, large pacifist movements used Remembrance Day and some war memorials to stress the futility of war and nationalism.

Such Remembrance Day protests were of openly political nature, and historical contexts altered the meaning of these demonstrations. Across Nazi-occupied Europe, clandestine Remembrance Day ceremonies were used as a sign of protest against German occupation during the second world war, and to remind them they had been defeated in the previous war.

Remembrance Day now

Today, the commemoration of the November 11 armistice is marked in many countries across the globe (mostly those on the “winning” side of the war) under various names: Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, 11 Novembre, National Independence Day or Veterans Day. For some, the day is a public holiday.

Every state celebrating Remembrance Day grants different meanings to its commemoration. Speeches in France deplore the loss of lives and insist on the value of peace during official ceremonies. In Poland, however, the day marks the rebirth of the nation and a time to celebrate.

In the US, the commemoration is centred on the veterans of all wars, while in Australia few people attend Remembrance Day. The crowds prefer attending Anzac Day on April 25 – a more patriotic service and a public holiday.

As the first world war fades further away in time, one way to keep remembering those who died in this conflict has been to progressively include the commemoration of the dead of more recent conflicts in Remembrance Day ceremonies, as is the case in the US, the UK and France. The commemoration therefore remains relevant to a larger population but also prevents the multiplication of special days for official state commemorations.

Today, as in the past, protests continue to be a component of Remembrance Day. Recently, a man was fined £50 in the UK for burning a poppy on Remembrance Day to protest against current deployment of British forces. The commemoration has also been mobilised by different far-right movements across Europe to advance their agendas.

A centenary of remembrance

A hundred years after the event, Remembrance Day and first world war memorials still provide a time and place to remember those who fought and fell in the conflict. For the most senior citizens among us, this is their parents’ generation; a past they still live with.

On November 11 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, you may choose to attend a Remembrance Day service. You may choose not to, or not even notice that it is Remembrance Day.

During the minute of silence, you may reflect on the meaning of war and its long-lasting impacts, its futility or its glory, think about a family member, or the weather. This degree of versatility partly explains the endurance of Remembrance Day. An official and public event, but also a personal gesture that everyone can embed with their own meaning.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Associate Professor, Public Service Research Group, UNSW

If you have seen science fiction television series such as Humans or Westworld, you might be imagining a near future where intelligent, humanoid robots play an important role in meeting the needs of people, including caring for children or older relatives.

The reality is that current technologies in this sector are not yet very humanoid, but nonetheless, a range of robots are being used in our care services including disability, aged care, education, and health.

Our new research, published today by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, finds that governments need to carefully plan for the inevitable expansion of these technologies to safeguard vulnerable people.

Care crisis and the rise of robots

Australia, like a number of other advanced liberal democracies, is anticipating a future with an older population, with a more complex mix of chronic illness and disease. A number of care organisations already operate under tight fiscal constraints and report challenges recruiting enough qualified staff.

Read more: Robots in health care could lead to a doctorless hospital

In the future, fewer numbers in the working-age population and increased numbers of retirees will compound this problem. If we then add to this equation the fact consumer expectations are increasing, it starts to look like future care services are facing a somewhat perfect storm.

Robots are increasingly becoming a feature of our care services, capable of fulfilling a number of roles from manual tasks through to social interaction. Their wider use has been heralded as an important tool in dealing with our impending care crisis. Countries such as Japan see robots playing a key role in filling their workforce gaps in care services.

A number of Australian residential aged care facilities are using Paro, a therapeutic robot that looks and sounds like a baby harp seal. Paro interacts by moving its head, heavily-lashed wide eyes and flippers, making sounds and responding to particular forms of touch on its furry coat.

Paro has been used extensively in aged care in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, typically among people living with dementia.

Nao is an interactive companion robot developed in a humanoid form but standing just 58cm tall in height.

Nao has gone through a number of different iterations and has been used for a variety of different applications worldwide, including to help children engaged in paediatric rehabilitation and in various educational and research institutes.

Read more: Robots can help young patients engage in rehab

The double-edged sword of technology

Robots are capable of enhancing productivity and improving quality and safety. But there is a potential for misuse or unintended consequences.

Concerns have been expressed about the use of robots potentially reducing privacy, exposing people to data hacking, or even inflicting physical harm.

We also lack evidence about the potential long-term implications of human-machine interactions.

Read more: We need robots that can improvise, but it’s not easy to teach them right from wrong

Our research explored the roles robots should and, even more critically, should not play in care delivery. We also investigated the role of government as a steward in shaping this framework through interviews with 35 policy, health care and academic experts from across Australia and New Zealand.

We found that despite these technologies already being in use in aged care facilities, schools and hospitals, government agencies don’t typically think strategically about their use and often aren’t aware of the risks and potential unintended consequences.

This means the sector is largely being driven by the interests of technology suppliers. Providers in some cases are purchasing these technologies to differentiate them in the market, but are also not always engaging in critical analysis.

Our study participants identified that robots were “leveraged” as something new and attractive to keep young people interested in learning, or as “a conversation starter” with prospective families exploring aged care providers.

But there are significant risks as the technologies become more developed. Drawing on research in other emerging technologies, our participants raised concerns about addiction and reliance on the robot. What would happen if the robot broke or became obsolete, and who would be responsible if a robot caused harm?

As artificial intelligence develops, robots will develop different levels of capabilities for “knowing” the human they are caring for. This raises concerns about potential hacking and security issues. On the flip side, it raises questions of inequity if different levels of care available at different price points.

Participants were also concerned about the unintended consequences of robot relationships on human relationships. Families may feel that the robot proxy is sufficient companionship, for instance, and leave their aged relative socially isolated.

What should governments do?

Government has an important role to play by regulating the rapidly developing market.

We suggest a responsive regulatory approach, which relies on the sector to self- and peer-regulate, and to escalate issues as they arise for subsequent regulation. Such engagement will require education, behaviour change, and a variety of regulatory measures that go beyond formal rules.

Read more: Asimov’s Laws won’t stop robots harming humans so we’ve developed a better solution

Government has an important role in helping providers understand the different technologies available and their evidence base. Care providers often struggle to access good evidence about technologies and their effectiveness. As such, they’re largely being informed by the market, rather than high quality evidence.

Many of the stakeholders we spoke to for our research also see a role for government in helping generate an evidence base that’s accessible to providers. This is particularly important where technologies may have been tested, but in a different national context.

Many respondents called for establishment of industry standards to protect against data and privacy threats, and the loss of jobs.

Finally, governments have a responsibility to ensure vulnerable people aren’t exploited or harmed by technologies. And they must also ensure robots don’t replace human care and lead to greater social isolation.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle H Lim, Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology

One in four Australians are lonely, our new report has found, and it’s not just a problem among older Australians – it affects both genders and almost all age groups.

The Australian Loneliness Report, released today by my colleagues and I at the Australian Psychological Society and Swinburne University, found one in two (50.5%) Australians feel lonely for at least one day in a week, while more than one in four (27.6%) feel lonely for three or more days.

Our results come from a survey of 1,678 Australians from across the nation. We used a comprehensive measure of loneliness to assess how it relates to mental health and physical health outcomes.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Andrew Giles on the growing issue of loneliness

We found nearly 55% of the population feel they lack companionship at least sometime. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Australians who are married or in a de facto relationship are the least lonely, compared to those who are single, separated or divorced.

While Australians are reasonably connected to their friends and families, they don’t have the same relationships with their neighbours. Almost half of Australians (47%) reported not having neighbours to call on for help, which suggests many of us feel disengaged in our neighbourhoods.

Impact on mental and physical health

Lonely Australians, when compared with their less lonely counterparts, reported higher social anxiety and depression, poorer psychological health and quality of life, and fewer meaningful relationships and social interactions.

Loneliness increases a person’s likelihood of experiencing depression by 15.2% and the likelihood of social anxiety increases by 13.1%. Those who are lonelier also report being more socially anxious during social interactions.

This fits with previous research, including a study of more than 1,000 Americans which found lonelier people reported more severe social anxiety, depression, and paranoia when followed up after three months.

Interestingly, Australians over 65 were less lonely, less socially anxious, and less depressed than younger Australians.

This is consistent with previous studies that show older people fare better on particular mental health and well-being indicators.

(Though it’s unclear whether this is the case for adults over 75, as few participants in our study were aged in the late 70s and over).

Younger adults, on the other hand, reported significantly more social anxiety than older Australians.

The evidence outlining the negative effects of loneliness on physical health is also growing. Past research has found loneliness increases the likelihood of an earlier death by 26% and has negative consequences on the health of your heart, your sleep, and levels of inflammation.

Read more: Loneliness is a health issue, and needs targeted solutions

Our study adds to this body of research, finding people with higher rates of loneliness are more likely to have more headaches, stomach problems, and physical pain. This is not surprising as loneliness is associated with increased inflammatory responses.

What can we do about it?

Researchers are just beginning to understand the detrimental effects of loneliness on our health, social lives and communities but many people – including service providers – are unaware. There are no guidelines or training for service providers.

So, even caring and highly trained staff at emergency departments may trivialise the needs of lonely people presenting repeatedly and direct them to resources that aren’t right.

Increasing awareness, formalised training, and policies are all steps in the right direction to reduce this poor care.

For some people, simple solutions such as joining shared interest groups (such as book clubs) or shared experienced groups (such as bereavement or carers groups) may help alleviate their loneliness.

But for others, there are more barriers to overcome, such as stigma, discrimination, and poverty.

Many community programs and social services focus on improving well-being and quality of life for lonely people. By tackling loneliness, they may also improve the health of Australians. But without rigorous evaluation of these health outcomes, it’s difficult to determine their impact.

We know predictors of loneliness can include genetics, brain functioning, mental health, physical health, community, work, and social factors. And we know predictors can differ between groups – for example, young versus old.

But we need to better measure and understand these different predictors and how they influence each other over time. Only with Australian data can we predict who is at risk and develop effective solutions.

Read more: The deadly truth about loneliness

There are some things we can do in the meantime.

We need a campaign to end loneliness for all Australians. Campaigns can raise awareness, reduce stigma, and empower not just the lonely person but also those around them.

Loneliness campaigns have been successfully piloted in the United Kingdom and Denmark. These campaigns don’t just raise awareness of loneliness; they also empower lonely and un-lonely people to change their social behaviours.

A great example of action arising from increased awareness comes from the Royal College of General Practitioners, which developed action plans to assist lonely patients presenting in primary care. The college encouraged GPs to tackle loneliness with more than just medicine; it prompted them to ask what matters to the lonely person rather than what is the matter with the lonely person.

Australia lags behind other countries but loneliness is on the agenda. Multiple Australian organisations have come together after identifying a need to generate Australian-specific data, increase advocacy, and develop an awareness campaign. But only significant, sustained government investment and bipartisan support will ensure this promising work results in better outcomes for lonely Australians.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Agustin Chevez, Adjunct Research Fellow, Centre For Design Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology

In October a researcher at the remote Bellingshausen Station in Antarctica allegedly stabbed a colleague. Some reports attributed the incident to the victim giving away the endings of books the attacker was reading.

Other reports identify the cabin fever effect as a possible contributing factor. During extended periods in isolation and confined conditions, such as at a station in Antarctica, people can become restlessness, bored and irritated.

These effects, however, are not limited to the small number of scientists living in cabin-like environments in remote locations. Isolation can just as easily affect people on the move, such as the drivers of the 3.5 million freight vehicles registered in Australia. Studies cite social isolation as a recurring theme and a cause of mental health problems and dysfunctional family relationships for truck drivers.

Interestingly, knowledge workers are also increasingly prone to suffering from isolation. This is because the ability to work “anywhere, anytime” has led to the development of new organisational structures that have increased the effects of isolation by increasing the social distance within a distributed workforce.

Depression, stress, lack of motivation and eventually burnout are all possible consequences of isolation. Other effects include experiencing fears of missing out on crucial events or decisions being made by others elsewhere – colloquially known as the feeling of out of sight, out of mind.

The impact of isolation in health has been compared to the reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day. If the sit-to-stand desk was the response to the “sitting is the new smoking” motto, co-working is the response to isolation.

The growth of the gig economy brought concerns of increased likelihood of people working in isolation beyond that of teleworkers already discussed above. In this regard, the proliferation of co-working environments should not be surprising. To a large extent it’s due to their ability to provide a social environment for sole practitioners who would otherwise be working in isolation.

In pursuit of solitude

Isolation is an interpretation of one’s sense of aloneness. It is a feeling independent of the condition of being alone. While aloneness is the objective state of not having anyone around, isolation can be experienced in the middle of a crowd – if, for example, you have nothing in common with them, or do not share a common language.

Isolation is the negative side of aloneness, which leads to loneliness.

On the other hand, solitude is the positive manifestation of aloneness. An important factor in converting aloneness into solitude is that it is voluntary, instead of imposed. As such, artists, writers and scientists have described solitude as their most creative and productive state.

The differences between loneliness and solitude can be subtle. One study has identified that our understanding of these nuances develops with age.

Aloneness as a thinking tool

I have a particular interest in aloneness, both as an academic and architect. I specialise in the study of work and the environments that contain it. Specifically, I am interested in aloneness as a mechanism to increase the diversity of ideas.

This might seem at odds with the thinking of times when the value of collaborative work in Australia has been estimated at A$46 billion per year. However, the message of “the more, the merrier” when it comes to collaboration is increasingly being qualified and the downside of collaboration overload discussed.

Inspired by the development of diversity in species attributed to isolation (see iguanas at the Galapagos Islands), I walked alone from Melbourne to Sydney in the hope that I could incubate an idea for the duration of the 42-day journey. I was incubating the idea of a new sense of purpose in a post-artificially intelligent world.

I carried two backpacks weighting up to 20kg, depending on the amount of food and water I needed, or if my tent got wet. I camped, or stayed in pubs, Airbnbs and roadside motels from a bygone era.

Most people asked “why?” and what charity I was walking for (I wasn’t). What I learned is more complicated. But, yes, I did find that walking in solitude can be a great thinking tool. It is necessary, however, to be able to go past boredom – and that is not easy.

I mostly enjoyed my solitude, but I did experience loneliness during my trek. Interestingly, the literature suggests that isolation can also lead to lack of “social barometers”, making it difficult for people to determine how they should behave in work settings. I experienced a version of this as soon as I shared my first meal back in “civilisation” and realised how much I had relaxed my eating etiquette.

The nature of a specific job, like a scientist in Antarctica or a truck driver, might impose aloneness, or else it might be a side effect of mobile technologies or the emergence of the gig economy and other modern working styles. In such cases, the consequences of isolation must be managed.

At the same time, however, we should create opportunities for solitude in work settings, by the design of the space or of our jobs. In doing so, we might increase the diversity of ideas and ultimately our chances to innovate.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dallas Rogers, Program Director, Master of Urbanism, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney

This is a podcast discussing topics raised in our series, Australian Cities in the Asian Century. These articles draw on research, just published in a special issue of Geographical Research, into how Australian cities are being influenced by the rise of China and associated flows of people, ideas and capital between China and Australia.

Migration and population growth are hot-button issues in Australian politics at the moment. State and federal election campaigns have and will focus on them for probably years to come, and it’s not just a local phenomenon: by 2030 it’s estimated 60% of the world’s population will live in cities.

Most of the time discussions about the impacts are focused on external pressures – things like road congestion and infrastructure investment – but as more and more people are living in high-density housing, issues of cultural diversity and how we live together in such close proximity are just as important.

How do we make sure we can live comfortably and respect each other? And how could policy change the sense of ownership we have over ever smaller personal spaces?

Dallas Rogers speaks with Christina Ho and Edgar Liu about the changing ways we’re living in Australian cities, and how little attention has been given to what’s happening inside the apartment buildings of our cities.

Music

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Hill, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney

Australia’s declaration of renewed interest in its Pacific Island neighbours, announced by Scott Morrison yesterday, needs to be expressed in more ways than building consulates, training military or funding grand infrastructure projects in telecommunications, transport and water.

Just as much priority should be given to investing in child care and elder care.

Why? Because just four months ago the Australian government introduced the Pacific Labour Scheme as a cornerstone of its foreign policy agenda to build stronger economic partnerships with Pacific nations.

The scheme currently allows 2,000 workers from Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu to work temporarily in Australia. That number may grow. It builds on the Seasonal Worker Programme, introduced in 2012, that allows in roughly the same number to work in agriculture and some areas of hospitality.

It is meant to be win-win. On the one hand, it helps meet demand for workers in rural and regional Australia. On the other, it provides jobs, skills and income for Pacific island workers. Theoretically it can promote economic development in workers’ home countries and deepen friendships between those nations and Australia.

But only if we heed the bitter lessons from other parts of the world about the high human cost of temporary labour migration schemes done badly.

Though organisations such as the World Bank and many academics advocate the benefits of labour mobility, careful attention should be paid to the families and communities temporary workers leave behind.

Caring for those left behind

The schemes that led to the Pacific Labour Scheme were primarily focused on providing jobs for seasonal farm workers.

This new scheme is meant to promote gender equality in Australia’s development program by also meeting demand for workers in non-seasonal, highly feminised sectors – such as aged, disability and child care, hospitality and tourism. It is open to workers aged between 21 and 45.

It is therefore likely that many of the migrant workers will be mothers and primary caregivers to young children.

Although there is no single model of good parenting, and many migrant workers find ways to maintain ties with their children, parental absence can affect the physical and emotional care for children, disrupt education and even contribute to familial breakdown.

There is extensive international evidence of the social and emotional implications for children who remain at home when their parents migrate for work.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Australia in 1990, commits governments to consider the best interests of children directly or indirectly affected by government policies and actions.

The International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Agenda makes specific recommendations for member countries, such as Australia, about workers’ familial rights. It argues the potential social costs of fractured families and communities from labour migration “are without a doubt at least as significant as those related to the more measurable economic costs. The effects are almost never gender-neutral.”

A policy blank slate

Australia has no significant history of temporary or “guest” worker programs. This means it effectively has a policy “blank slate”. We can learn from the well-documented pitfalls of programs elsewhere and develop a temporary labour migration program that is global best practice.

Read more: Why yet another visa for farm work makes no sense

The optimal policy solution is to permit families to accompany temporary workers. This would be consistent with Australia’s other labour migration visas.

Where separation does occur, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges governments to design workplace policies that limit the impact of family separation. These could include travel allowances for annual and emergency visits, carers leave and workplace support for regular communication with children and family.

Developing home communities

Temporary labour migration schemes should contribute to the development of migrant workers and their home countries.

The Australian government touts the Pacific Labour Scheme as a means to transfer skills to Pacific Island countries. But there is also potential for both “brain drain” and “care drain”.

Australia can address this by investing in child and elder care in Pacific countries.

Support for local care sectors would give relief to alternative caregivers (grandmothers, aunts, older siblings) when parents are away. It would mean jobs for returning migrants. It would be the basis for transferring skills to other workers. It would make more local workers ready to work in Australia.

If Australia wants to be a good neighbour it should seize this opportunity to develop a sustainable temporary labour migration scheme.

Putting Pacific Islander workers, their children, families and communities first will show Scott Morrison is serious about opening “a new chapter in relations with our Pacific family”.

This piece draws on research published in The Pacific Labour Scheme and Transnational Family Life: Policy Brief, by Elizabeth Hill, Matt Withers and Rasika Jayasuriya.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW

Officially, Australia’s rate of inflation is 1.9%.

It’s the lowest it has been on a sustained basis since the 1950s and early 1960s.

But try to tell that to anyone and they will laugh at you, or worse.

The Bureau of Statistics is careful to say that the consumer price index isn’t a measure of living costs.

It creates that slightly differently, producing a collection of less-reported indexes that were updated this week.

On these measures, over the past year living costs have climbed 2% for households headed by an employee, 2.2% for households headed by Australians on most types of benefits, 2.3% for households headed by age pensioners, and also 2.3% for households headed by self-funded retirees.

The main difference between the consumer price index and the living cost indexes is that “living costs” include interest paid on mortgages whereas “consumer prices” do not.

Regardless, most of us would be pretty certain that even on these measures, what’s reported is too low.

We’re irrational

In part, this is because we are not rational. As Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler has pointed out, we often engage in “mental accounting”.

In general this means we notice losses more than gains. In this context, it means we focus more on the things that have gone up in price than on those that have gone down or remained unchanged.

Also, our mental basket of goods is generally not the same as the basket of goods the bureau measures, even though it should be.

It’s not our basket

Four times a year in multiple locations throughout each capital city the bureau attempts to collect information about the prices of the thousands of goods (and some services) that make the “basket” it thinks represent they typical household’s purchases.

The basket is divided into about 100 subgroups; things such as bread, milk, eggs, fruit, men’s footwear, women’s footwear, men’s clothes, women’s clothes, restaurant meals, electricity and so on.

Because it can’t price everything, it zeros in on a few representative items within each category.

For meat and fish the ABS includes beef sausages (1kg) and pink salmon (210g can). For processed fruit and vegetables it includes sliced pineapple (450g can) and frozen peas (500g pkt).

If you buy something different, the exact changes in the prices you pay won’t be fed into either the consumer price index or your living cost index, but the indexes are likely to move in line with your living costs in any case.

Things get left out

Many things are missing from the index, among them recreational drugs, gambling and prostitution.

Being bean counters, rather than priests, the bureau says it excludes these sorts of items on practical rather than moral grounds.

Gambling is excluded as it is difficult to establish the service or utility that households derive from gambling, and thus to determine an appropriate price measure. Recreational drugs and prostitution are both excluded as it is very difficult and indeed dangerous to obtain estimates of prices and expenditures, or to measure quality change.

Other things are excluded because their prices are deemed to be too volatile. The price of bank deposits and loans was removed from the main index a few years back.

And goods keep getting better

Where our views about prices are most likely to differ from the bureau’s is where goods get better.

The bureau factors quality improvements into the measures prices it reports. If, for instance, your next mobile phone costs as much as your last one but includes extra features such as more memory or an improved camera, the ABS will report that it has fallen in price.

Read more: Moore’s Law is 50 years old but will it continue?

This sort of adjustment for quality makes sense when adjusting down the price of a can of baked beans because it has been replaced by one slightly bigger, but is a grey area when it comes to improved features.

If the speed of the chip on your next laptop doubles, does that really mean the laptop is twice as good as the old one and should be said to have halved in price? Or should its price be recorded as having fallen by a lesser amount, or not at all seeing as the price hasn’t changed and it remains a standard laptop?

Often older models with lesser features are often no longer available. It’s impossible to buy a cheaper replacement.

The CPI is infrequent

The Reserve Bank is worried about the frequency of the index. It comes out only once a quarter, and up to a month after the quarter has finished.

Every developed country other than Australia and New Zealand releases its index monthly.

Given that the bank considers changing interest rates once every month, and given that the consumer price index is one of the two key measures it uses to guide its decisions (the other is the unemployment rate), a quarterly index leaves it somewhat in the dark and (when things are changing fast) potentially dangerously misled.

The bureau responds that it is prepared to release its index monthly, if it is paid to do it.

The ABS is persuaded there would be a significant benefit from more timely and responsive economic management if a CPI of equivalent quality to the current quarterly index were available monthly. Additional funding will be required to meet the costs involved in compiling a monthly index.

It’s just what we need – bureaucratic blackmail.

But it’s improving

On the positive side, new technologies have allowed more accurate price collection to make the index more precise. A key innovation is the rise of so-called “scanner data”, tracking expenditures at checkouts based on the prices people actually pay.

Scanner data has been used since 2014 and is now responsible for about one quarter of the prices reported. Field officers compile much of the rest using hand-held devices to type in prices they read off supermarket shelves.

The move to scanner data was spearheaded by the work of my UNSW School of Economics colleague Professor Kevin Fox.

Read more: A cashless society and the five forms of mobile payment that will get us there

There is a prospect of it becoming more widespread as more and more purchases are made with debit and credit cards and with point-of-sale software on devices such as tablets at coffee shops.

And important

Whether or not we like what it says, the consumer price index is important and lies behind much of what we do.

A whole range of government payments and duties are indexed to it – these change when the consumer price index changes. Benefits such as Newstart and family payments are indexed as are excise duties such as those on petrol and beer.

Even the private sector relies on the consumer price index to adjust payments under contracts such as rental agreements or construction charges.

Read more: Joe Hockey’s user pays plan for the ABS doesn’t add up

Collecting it is an enormous and painstaking exercise.

Governments of both stripes would do well to remember that when next they think of cutting the bureau’s budget.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Hutchison, Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic University

War is often seen as a death knell for the arts, but during the first world war the Australian government mobilised some of the country’s most renowned expatriate artists to paint the conflict. Hired essentially as eyewitnesses to war, these men were stationed at the front and tasked with creating art on the battlefield.

The idea of using art to interpret and commemorate the war was first raised by Will Dyson, an Australian expatriate cartoonist working in Britain, who went to the Western Front as Australia’s first official war artist in late 1916. Dyson drew candid studies of Australian soldiers. In images such as Coming Out on the Somme (1916) he deftly captures the glazed detachment and vacant stares of the men who had just returned from, as he described it, “gazing on strange and terrible lands”.

Perhaps sensitive to the public at home, most Australian official artists avoided sketching the graphic violence of the war. But there were some exceptions. Will Longstaff’s sketchbook, for instance, contains an image of a dismembered leg, bone protruding from a mess of flesh and cloth. His composition shows the severed limb in the centre of the sketch with a grassy field of poppies in the background, an arrangement at odds with the human evidence of the impact of war.

By 11 November 1918, the Australian art collection consisted of an eclectic array of images of the battlefield. But it represented a very narrow view of the Australian war experience. Most official artists had been sent to France and Belgium. The eyewitness role of artists – a position they did not challenge – meant they painted only what they observed at the front. As a result, the collection was dominated by paintings of the soldiers and battlefields in Europe. Other theatres of war, such as the Middle East where only George Lambert had been stationed, were represented by much fewer images.

The focus on the Western Front meant the army was privileged over other services, such as the Navy and Flying Corps. The absence of the Navy was particularly criticised by members of the Australian press at the time, who complained that while Britain and Canada had employed their best artists to paint naval pictures, the Australian Government had done nothing.

The Canadian and British art schemes also made concerted efforts to include the home front in their collections. And they employed women artists, albeit to paint women’s wartime labour, such as workers in factories. Additionally, the Canadian art scheme hired painters from a range of Allied countries, embracing diverse styles and interpretations of the conflict.

The Australian collection was more nationalistic in tone, employing only Australian artists. While some of the nation’s most eminent artists of the day painted for it, lesser known artists, many of whom had served in the Australian Imperial Force, were also commissioned.

Often images that less skilfully portrayed the war were included because of their eyewitness value, such as works by Ellis Silas, who had served as a signaller on Gallipoli in 1915.

The Australian collection also stood alone in its neglect of the war experience at home and of women artists. Missing from the collection were images of the preparations for conflict, the training camps, the embarkation of troops, women’s wartime efforts and experience, (including their roles as nurses and volunteers in the warzone and as paid or unofficial workers at home), and of the bitter political disputes that divided Australia during the war.

These lacunae in the collection were addressed to some extent in the decades after the war. But even then, the focus remained largely on a battlefield narrative – more narrowly defining “war experience” than either the British or Canadian art.

Artistic liberties

George Lambert’s iconic painting of the Australians climbing the cliffs on Gallipoli at dawn on 25 April 1915 is a fascinating example of post-war mythologising. Despite travelling to the peninsula in early 1919 to study the battlefields and create as accurate a representation as possible, he took some artistic liberties with this canvas.

Veterans complained that the soldiers should be depicted in the peaked cap of the early uniform they had actually worn in 1915. But Lambert painted all the men wearing the slouch hat, which had become synonymous with the Australian soldier, consolidating the painting’s distinctly Australian character.

Other images also show an emerging national mythology. Dyson’s cartoons and sketches, many of which were a powerful indictment of the conduct of the war, represent ideas about an Australian type.

He portrayed the humour associated with the larrikin soldier in images such as Small Talk (1920). Depicting two soldiers in conversation in a bomb crater, he captures their droll joking: “No Brig., I says send me back to the boys – the transport’s no good to me I never joined the war to be a mule’s batman!”

Arthur Streeton painted the battlefields where Australian soldiers fought. He saw in soldiering life a deeper and more meaningful example of the development of a particularly Australian masculinity: “It[̓s] extremely novel and exciting over here and it’s the only way in which to form any idea of Australian manhood.”

Many official artists drew on the devastated landscape of the battlefield as an allegory for the destruction wrought by war. Taming the Australian bush, a trope popular with Australian audiences before the war, became survival on the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East.

George Lambert was the only official artist stationed in the Middle East during the war. He interpreted this theatre in terms of his experience painting the Australian landscape. The light and colours of Australia permeated much of his wartime work, framing the experience of the soldiers and their environment in familiar imagery that made the conflict appear more immediate for audiences at home.

Australia did not employ any women as official painters during the war, but female artists created numerous images of their wartime experience, and their images show what the collection might have gained had they been commissioned. Australian born artist Iso Rae’s painting of the military camps in France was later acquired for the collection.

Australia’s first world war art collection has been revised and reshaped across the last century and now represents a broader experience of the conflict from a more diverse range of artists. But the works created during and immediately after the war fed into a national mythology that privileged a narrative of the Australian soldier on the battlefield, coming at the expense of a more nuanced story of Australia in the war.

The Australian war art collection is held at The Australian War Memorial.

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

Malcolm Turnbull has delivered a hefty blow to the struggling Morrison government by refocusing attention on the one question it has desperately tried to smother.

That is: why was he sacked?

When he appeared on Thursday’s Q&A special, Turnbull was on a dual mission. His neat blue jacket told the story. There would be no reversion to the pre-prime ministerial free-wheeler dressed in leather.

He was there to hold his executioners to account, to ensure they have no escape, from him or from the public. And he was primed to defend his record, to write the history of his three years in office as a story of accomplishment and success. He wants to be defined by what he did, rather than by how badly things ended.

Essentially he presented himself simultaneously as the victim and the victor.

The opening question was predictable but central: “Why aren’t you still prime minister?”

Turnbull’s reply was rehearsed and targeted personally as well as generally.

This was “the question I can’t answer,” he said. “The only people that can answer that are the people that engineered the coup – people like Peter Dutton and TonyAbbott and Greg Hunt and Mathias Cormann – the people who voted for the spill.

“So, there are 45 of them…. They have to answer that question.”

He rammed home the message. People had to be “adults and be accountable”. Members of parliament “have to stand up and be prepared to say why they do things”.

So those who chose “to blow up the government, to bring my prime ministership to an end … they need to really explain why they did it. And none of them have.”

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Now Malcolm Turnbull is the sniper at the window

So much for Scott Morrison arguing the public have gone beyond the “Muppet show”, or defence industry minister Steve Ciobo claiming Australians didn’t care about what had happened.

Labor has kept pressing on the “why” question, even when commentators doubted the tactic, and now Turnbull has given the opposition a load of fresh ammunition.

This makes it harder for ministers to shrug off Labor’s harking back to the coup. To do so drags them into criticism of Turnbull, which is counterproductive.

Once again Bill Shorten is the beneficiary of his opponents’ self-destruction.

Turnbull saw a “fair prospect” of the issue resonating in next year’s election campaign because “Australians are entitled to know the answer”.

In wishing Morrison “all the best in the election”, Turnbull emphasised that he personally was out of parliament and he’d had little to say since he’d left – he’d wanted to give his successor “clear air”.

But there’s an ambivalence in Turnbull’s behaviour towards Morrison. When his own leadership was doomed he helped Morrison beat Dutton. But his intervention is now hurting his successor.

Of course Turnbull’s assertion he’s “out of politics” is disingenuous, or at least premature. What could be more political than Thursday night’s performance?

Apart from injecting new vigor into the issue of his sacking, his critique of the Liberal party’s move to the right was powerful and damaging, encapsulated in his observation about Liberal-minded voters installing like-minded crossbenchers.

He pointed to Mayo, Indi and Wentworth, seats previously solid Liberal. “They are now occupied by three Independents who are all women, who are all small-l liberals, and all of whom, in one way or another, have been involved in the Liberal Party in the past,” he said.

By electing these independents the voters were saying “we are concerned that the Liberal Party is not speaking for small-l liberal values”, he said.

This brings to mind the speculation about a possible high-profile independent emerging in Warringah who could give Tony Abbott a run for his money.

There was much else in the Turnbull hour that was challenging for the government, including his belief the Liberals would have held Wentworth but for the campaign’s “messy” final week, and his criticism of the “blokey” culture of parliament.

Turnbull talked up an extensive legacy for himself, highlighting the achievement of same-sex marriage (though some would give the praise to certain pesky backbenchers). Typically, he wouldn’t cede ground over standing back from the battle in his old seat.

As always with Turnbull, Thursday’s appearance will polarise Liberals, making it uncertain whether it will help or harm his reputation. Enemies will see it as being all about Malcolm. His comments will start another round of divisive debate in the ranks.

But his arguments were potent reminders of the stupidity of what happened in August and the present poor state and situation of the Liberal party.

Morrison this week had to deal with an early manifestation of the hung parliament he now must manage.

Crossbencher Bob Katter saw the opportunity to make some gains for his north Queensland electorate of Kennedy during Morrison’s tour of the state, so the maverick MP suggested he might consider supporting the referral of Liberal MP Chris Crewther to the High Court over a possible section 44 problem.

By Thursday Morrison had met Katter, and extracted a pledge of “ongoing support of the government”. Katter had extracted dollops of money for water projects.

Their respective performances this week emphasised the chalk-and-cheese contrast between the former and current prime ministers, a difference being accentuated by Morrison as he seeks to portray himself as a man of the people.

Read more: View from The Hill: Katter waves Section 44 stick in a ‘notice North Queensland’ moment

Turnbull was critical of the hard right wing media; Morrison in the past few days has done an interview with Alan Jones and a Sky people’s forum in Townsville hosted by Paul Murray.

Turnbull might have had a penchant for trams and trains with selfies but not the faux bus tour with cheesy videos.

But as Turnbull said of the man who’s inherited the fallout of the August “madness”: “He has dealt himself a very tough hand of cards, and now he has to play them … he has to get on with it.”

With Morrison it is not so matter of getting on with it – he’s hyperactive – but of precisely what it is that he’s getting on with.