Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Murray Bennett, PhD candidate, University of Newcastle

Despite the pandemic, Australia is in the midst of a hugely competitive auction market. Sydney, in particular, is experiencing dizzying auction clearance rates and the Reserve Bank’s decision this week to keep interest rates extraordinarily low will no doubt keep auctioneers busy.

If you’ve ever taken part in an auction, you’ll know emotions can run high, and sometimes drive us to bid more than originally intended.

Our paper, published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, found the way auctions are designed and run can vastly increase competitive arousal in bidders.

That’s obviously valuable information for sellers. But if you’re a buyer, the good news is there’s a lot you can do to ensure your competitive spirit doesn’t leave you with a bad case of buyer’s remorse.

To see just how far people were willing to go to win, we studied people’s behaviour in one of the most competitive bidding environments possible: a Dutch auction.

What is a Dutch auction?

Dutch auctions are a special auction format where the price starts unrealistically high and then comes down in increments and the first person to bid wins.

Originating in the Netherlands for the rapid sale of perishable goods such as flowers, these auctions are fast, exciting and ultra-competitive. Bidders put everything on the line with the timing of a single bid.

Bidders must trade-off between certainty and price: bid early to secure the item and you pay top dollar; bid later at a lower price and you risk losing to another bidder.

Dutch auctions run this way are not common in the Australian property market, but by studying how people behave in them we can learn a bit about how competitive spirit influences decision-making in other settings.

A strong sense of competitive spirit may be a human trait honed by years of evolution, but in a heightened competitive environment you may become more willing to take risks you otherwise would not.

You might find your focus drifting toward a different (and possibly dangerous) form of motivation — the desire to win at all costs.

Burning through the budget

Our recent study looked at people’s bidding behaviours during a series of simulated Dutch auctions where we asked participants to imagine being managers of a warehouse.

They were asked to bid against their competitors to buy goods and fill up their warehouse, while staying within their allocated budget.

By bidding early, they stood a better chance of filling up their warehouse quickly but risked paying too much for the goods and running out of money before the warehouse was full. Wait too long and they risked losing the chance to buy stock at all, and watching it go into their competitors’ rapidly-filling warehouses.

In this tense environment, we found people were willing to sacrifice a better long term financial outcome for the sake of simply beating their competitors. In other words, they often burned through their budget too quickly just to “win”.

People initially made well placed and reasonably priced bids early in the auction series.

As the auctions continued, however, we watched participants place bids that unnecessarily, and perhaps irrationally, drained their budget for the sake of a short term victory.

Three ways to win without losing in the long term

Our study helps shed light on bidder behaviour in lots of markets, whether it is property, eBay, auction houses or any setting where the competitive spirit can take hold.

If you’re attending an auction, and don’t want to be a winner who loses in the long term, here are three ways to avoid falling victim to your own competitive spirit:

1. be aware that your decisions when in “competition mode” can push you past your budget. Separating the emotion from the decision can help minimise your risk of overspending.

2. set your spending limit before you start and know when to stop. Our findings suggest that competition can easily drag us past that point. While winning is nice, it can also be a curse.

3. give a friend your budget and have them bid for you. Beware their sporting nature, though; they might also be tempted by the thrill of victory.

– ref. Why the competitive spirit can take over in auctions — and how you can stay in control – https://theconversation.com/why-the-competitive-spirit-can-take-over-in-auctions-and-how-you-can-stay-in-control-156371

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Banki, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney

Social media has given us valuable access to the actions of both the military and anti-coup protesters in Myanmar, but a communication blackout may be coming.

The country’s military seized control of the government on February 1, after the National League for Democracy (NLD) won the general election in a landslide.

The opposition-backed army has since detained hundreds of NLD members, including party leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Thousands have taken to the streets in protest, relying heavily on open communication channels to broadcast military abuses from inside and receive support from outside. And activists likely haven’t seen the last of the military’s attempts to shut these down.

Broadcasting human rights abuses

After just one month, there is an astonishing internet archive documenting both the harms done by the military since the coup, as well as countless acts of protest.

There are shocking videos of military personnel showing off their guns, drone footage of people being detained in monasteries, and snapshots into ongoing acts of violence.

At the same time, demonstrators are using social media to find creative ways to keep morale high, such as by staging candle-lit vigils.

In response to the massive civil disobedience movement, the military has partially stopped communications to the outside world. For the past 17 days, internet access in Myanmar has been blocked at night.

In doing so the army is demonstrating it can control internet access without, for now, completely cutting off Myanmar off from the rest of the world.

Parts of the country had already had internet cut off since June 2019, in what has been dubbed the “world’s longest internet shutdown” by the Human Rights Watch.

Days after the coup began, Facebook was blocked nationwide and remains blocked by most internet service providers. Adding to this, a new cybersecurity law has been drafted which would give the army sweeping powers to censor citizens online and violate their privacy.

So far these efforts have only been partially successful.

Read more: COVID coup: how Myanmar’s military used the pandemic to justify and enable its power grab

Watching the cat and mouse game online

Myanmar’s internet-savvy younger generation began sharing information on how to avoid a communication blackout almost as quickly as restrictions were imposed.

When Facebook was blocked, they shifted to Twitter. They’ve been using virtual private networks (VPNs), which mask internet protocol (IP) addresses so a user’s internet activity can’t be traced.

They’ve migrated to platforms offering extra privacy through end-to-end-encryption, such as WhatsApp and Signal. To communicate protest times and locations, they’ve turned to older technologies such as landlines.

And at the same time, they’ve created local networks using newer Bluetooth messaging apps that work over short distances. With these small, decentralised clusters of communication they can avoid cell tower transmission.

But despite activits’ ingenuity, in this cat and mouse game the Myanmar military is ultimately stronger and equipped with far greater resources. As violence escalates, the military will be increasingly eager to limit the flow of information to and from the country’s citizens.

If the proposed cybersecurity bill becomes law, using VPNs will become illegal. The tweets, images and videos that have kept the outside world informed could come to an abrupt stop, or slow down significantly.

Cutting off internet access entirely in Myanmar would lead to huge economic disruption, too — even more than has already been felt. But the military may still see this as preferable to being derided across the globe, including by its own United Nations ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun.

The ambassador was close to tears before the UN General Assembly as he called on the international community to help restore Myanmar’s democratically elected government.

For the rest of us, a full blackout would mean an absence of critical information that advocates and policymakers rely on to create petitions, lobby governments and corporations, and impose sanctions. But for people inside Myanmar, it would mean much, much worse.

Putting on the pressure online

For now, online tools remain salient for those wanting to put pressure on Myanmar’s military.

One online petition (now closed) urged Telenor, a Norwegian telecommunications company working in Myanmar, to push back on the proposed cybersecurity law. And the company did.

Similarly, Facebook took down all accounts linked to Myanmar’s military, blocking their use on Facebook and Instagram and thus stemming one of the military’s primary means of communication. There is still a push to get Facebook to completely ban the military from promoting its services and products.

There are also online pages that serve as clearinghouses for those who want to offer support. The coup brought Myanmar’s economy to its knees. Activists and the wider public will quickly feel the financial loss spurred by business shutdowns, the protest movement and economic sanctions imposed by foreign states (even where these are carefully targeted).

Initiatives to support them — largely channelled through groups in the United States and Australia — are taking donations to help pay for protesters’ activities and topping up their phone credits. Some onlookers may choose to support local journalists broadcasting from inside, by subscribing to English newspapers such as The Irrawaddy and Frontier.

Finally, there are border groups that combine their online presence with on-the-ground work in ethnic minority areas. For example, the Karen ethnic minority group on the border of Thailand and Myanmar posted information about recent defections of military personnel in favour of the movement.

In Bangladesh, Rohingya refugees have protested against the military coup.

Even if a total blackout befalls Myanmar, activists can use porous borders to cross into nearby countries, especially Thailand and Bangladesh, where infrastructures for activism already exist.

By collecting information from inside the conflict zone, crossing borders and broadcasting it, these groups have the potential to short-circuit internet bans. And with them, online efforts can carry on.

Read more: Internet blackouts in Myanmar allow the military to retain control

– ref. Thanks to the internet, we know what’s happening in Myanmar. But a communication blackout may be near – https://theconversation.com/thanks-to-the-internet-we-know-whats-happening-in-myanmar-but-a-communication-blackout-may-be-near-156127

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie University

Australian women have been most effective, politically, when they have harnessed their collective rage and turned it into action. They need to do it again now.

Like many Australians, I was delighted when activist Grace Tame was named the 2021 Australian of the Year. Tame is a powerful advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse, drawing on her own experience of being groomed and abused by a paedophile when she was just 15.

Tame’s #LetHerSpeak campaign, which she created with journalist Nina Funnell and Marque lawyers, has overhauled gag laws that silenced victims of sexual abuse. Tame turned her anger into action and made change.

Accepting her award, Tame declared she was:

using my voice, amongst a growing chorus of voices that will not be silenced. Let’s make some noise, Australia.

Tame’s bravery inspired former political staffer Brittany Higgins to make some noise of her own. The revelation of her alleged sexual assault in a ministerial office and subsequent treatment by her employers has appalled observers.

Most recently, it has been alleged a man who is now a federal cabinet minister (revealed on Wednesday to be Attorney-General Christian Porter) raped a 16-year-old girl in 1988. The response that best reveals the prevailing political culture was when Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was sent a letter outlining the allegation, airily admitted he hadn’t read it. He added that because the minister has “vigorously denied” the allegation, there were “no matters” that required his attention.

In a defiant press conference on Wednesday, Porter denied the allegations. He refused to call for an inquiry or stand aside from his role, saying

if I stand down from my position as Attorney-General because of an allegation about something that simply did not happen, then any person in Australia can lose their career, their job, their life’s work based on nothing more than an accusation that appears in print.

Read more: View from The Hill: No satisfactory way to resolve historical rape allegation against minister

To say Australian women are angry about the events of the past few weeks is an understatement. In a powerhouse address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Tame stressed the importance of turning that rage into action:

One voice, your voice, and our collective voices can make a difference. We are on the precipice of a revolution whose call to action needs to be heard loud and clear.

Australian women’s collective rage is not without precedent.

The women’s movement of the 1970s was born, in part, out of anger. Women were angry that they couldn’t always control their fertility, or parent their own children. They were angry they were paid less than men for the same jobs. They were angry childcare was hard to access. And, frankly, they were angry at men. Activist Kate Jennings articulated this rage in a speech at an anti-war rally in 1970:

There are a lot of people who feel strongly about the Vietnam war. But how many of you, who can see so clearly the suffering and misery in Vietnam […] how many of you would get off your fat piggy asses and protest against the killing and victimisation of women in your own country.

The women’s movement drew strength from talking. Sharing their experiences in consciousness-raising groups, they realised their problems were not personal but structural, demanding structural solutions.

It didn’t take long for the movement to articulate its core demands: free abortion and childcare, equal pay, equal job opportunities, and an end to media sexism. While they did not limit themselves to activism on these issues, they focused and shaped their work.

By early 1972, the Women’s Electoral Lobby, the movement’s moderate wing, ingeniously placed women’s issues on the political agenda by inaugurating their candidate survey. WEL members in every Australian electorate interviewed all political candidates. Not only did the survey train women in political lobbying, it laid bare the views of the (mostly) male candidates on women’s issues. It also gave women a political voice.

When the Whitlam government was elected, in part because of WEL’s advocacy, the women’s movement used their new leverage to achieve reforms on equal pay and contraception, and later made important gains in childcare, the funding of women’s refuges, and family law.

Whitlam appointed to his staff a women’s affairs adviser, Elizabeth Reid, who worked to make government more responsive to women’s needs. She, and subsequent feminists working inside the state, could not have exerted the influence they did without an active women’s movement agitating for change.

Surprisingly, violence against women was not initially a primary focus of the women’s movement. It emerged through consciousness-raising and so too did feminist methods of addressing it: rape crisis centres and women’s refuges.

Activism around sexual violence moved to centre stage: women marched against male sexual violence in Reclaim the Night Marches from 1978, and in the early 1980s feminists marched on Anzac Day “in memory of all women raped in all wars”.

Today, feminists are still campaigning against male violence against women. Over the past few years, we have mourned hundreds of women who have died due to family violence. We have witnessed royal commissions into family violence and into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. We have admired the courage of survivors like Rosie Batty. We gasped as serial sexual predators were exposed under the banner of #MeToo. But too little has actually changed.

Read more: Yes, the culture in Parliament House is appalling. But there are systemic problems that also need urgent reform

Women are angry and they are tired. Tired of mansplainers and misogynists, and those who bleat #NotAllMen instead of asking #WhySoManyMen? Tired of women who have benefited from feminism yet refuse the label of “feminist”. And tired of having to once again fight the battles that women in the 1970s and 1980s thought they had won.

Rage is politically potent, and useful. You only need to look at the ways Donald Trump fuelled his army of supporters to understand that. But if the lessons of second wave feminism are any guide, women not only need to get angry, they need to get organised.

The women’s movement was energised by its collective nature and common goals. Today’s female rage is fierce, but it is not yet harnessed to a clear agenda for action. Women need to create this agenda together, and then work out how best to achieve it.

We know so much more about women’s oppression today than women did in the 1970s, especially the ways in which different types of discrimination overlap and combine. We are perhaps more sceptical of the ability of institutions to effect change. And we are painfully aware that neo-liberalism has shrunk the state and limited the possibilities for activism.

But our scepticism, and our lack of attention, has extracted a cost. In the 1980s, government policy was routinely audited for its impact on women. But in the 1990s, feminist policy “machinery” was steadily dismantled.

Today’s Office for Women has a tiny staff and a low profile. It was not consulted on any of the major COVID-related policy shifts, like JobKeeper or changes to superannuation.

If our parliament is full of men who ignore, belittle and disrespect women, and women who enable these men, it is because we, the voters, have put them there. But we can also vote them out.

A women’s candidate survey, ready to roll out at the next federal election, is just one strategy from the women’s movement of the 1970s that might be worth reviving today. Women need to maintain their rage, but they need to turn it into political action, too.

– ref. Women are (rightly) angry. Now they need a plan – https://theconversation.com/women-are-rightly-angry-now-they-need-a-plan-156286

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erica Millar, Lecturer, La Trobe University

South Australia this week became the final Australian jurisdiction to partially decriminalise abortion.

The Termination of Pregnancy Bill passed the state’s upper house on Tuesday, meaning abortion will be moved out of the criminal code and instead regulated under health law.

This change paves the way for improved access to abortion, especially for rural women. Abortions can now be provided beyond selected hospitals, and women no longer need to have been South Australian residents for two months or more to access an abortion.

While this is a positive step, important legal hurdles to abortion access remain in South Australia and around the country.

Gestational limits

With the exception of the Northern Territory, where abortion remains a medical practitioner’s decision regardless of the gestation, and the ACT, where no gestational limits apply, Australian jurisdictions now permit abortion on request up to varying points in a pregnancy.

The gestational limit for an “on request” abortion in South Australia is now 22 weeks and six days. Other states range from 16 to 24 weeks.

Abortions after specified gestational limits generally require two doctors to approve on psychological, physical or, in most instances, social grounds (for example, the inability to afford another child, or intimate partner violence).

But some states are more restrictive than others. In Western Australia, after 20 weeks, two doctors from a panel of six must determine the abortion is necessary because “the mother, or the unborn child, has a severe medical condition”.

In the NT, abortions after 23 weeks are prohibited, except if it’s deemed necessary to save the pregnant person’s life.

Read more: Here’s why there should be no gestational limits for abortion

Gestational limits restrict reproductive autonomy. The Victorian Law Reform Commission has noted gestational limits mean that, in the later stages of pregnancy, abortion becomes an “exception to a woman’s general right to determine what medical procedures she will undergo and what relationships she will enter”. They force some pregnant people to “rush into a decision”, and create “more hoops for women to jump through”.

By adopting a model of law reform that regulates abortion differently after gestational limits, governments have failed to prioritise expanded abortion access. Experts in this space in Victoria have reported access to later-term abortions has worsened since abortion was decriminalised in the state in 2008.

But in WA, access to later abortions is so restrictive that one reproductive health service directs pregnant people to Victorian services.

Over-regulation

The bills to decriminalise abortion in each jurisdiction enacted criminal laws that prevent unqualified people from performing abortions, with punishment ranging from five to ten years’ imprisonment.

This represents over-regulation, where laws seek to regulate practices that no longer exist (namely “backyard abortions”). It unnecessarily singles abortion out for special regulation, preventing its full integration into health law (which already ensures only qualified people perform medical procedures).

It would be more pertinent to focus on broadening the scope of who can perform abortions in Australia.

The World Health Organization advises all properly trained health-care providers can safely provide abortion.

Abortion care provided at the primary-care level […] minimises costs while maximising the convenience and timeliness of care for the woman.

But Australian law only permits medical doctors to perform abortions, with the exception of South Australia and the NT. In those jurisdictions, trained health professionals, such as nurse practitioners and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers, are allowed to provide medical abortions (in the NT under the direction of a doctor).

However, Therapeutic Goods Administration regulations currently only permit doctors to prescribe medical abortion, overriding extant legislation.

Other instances of over-regulation and abortion exceptionalism include provisions for informed consent in New South Wales and WA, which require doctors to inform patients of the benefits and possible risks of abortion.

The Australian Medical Association has called this an “unnecessary and insulting” extra hurdle, given doctors are already required to seek informed consent for medical procedures.

States and territories differ in many aspects of abortion laws

When medical practitioners refuse to refer pregnant people to termination services, most jurisdictions require them to provide the patient with information, or refer them to a health service or provider without a conscientious objection.

But in the ACT and WA, doctors aren’t required to provide this information or referral. This is an exception to their responsibilities under professional codes of conduct that prohibit doctors from allowing their “moral or religious views to deny patients access to care”.

Read more: It’s time to lift the restrictions on medical abortion in Australia

The new laws enacted in NSW and South Australia include provisions condemning and, in SA, prohibiting “sex-selective” abortions.

But there’s no evidence sex-selective abortion is a significant issue in Australia, so this too may be over-regulation. Possible consequences here include racial profiling, whereby some doctors may question a person’s motives for seeking abortion on the basis of their background.

Meanwhile, the abortion decriminalisation laws in WA, South Australia and NSW require doctors to provide information about counselling services (in NSW, this only becomes mandatory after 22 weeks’ gestation).

The South Australian Law Reform Institute has said this measure “undermines the autonomy of women” and creates “unnecessary delays and burdens”. Provisions relating to counselling presume women are uncertain about their decision, and establish abortion as a problematic and potentially harmful choice.

Further, WA is now the only Australian jurisdiction that doesn’t have safe access zone legislation, which protects the safety, well-being, privacy and dignity of people accessing abortion services.

Read more: One in six Australian women in their 30s have had an abortion – and we’re starting to understand why

Abortion access across Australia is uneven, concentrated in large cities. And, with the exception of South Australia and NT where abortions are provided under the public health system — they are costly.

Important legal obstacles remain, largely due to the actions of a handful of anti-abortion politicians who are out of step with the Australian community, which is broadly supportive of a pregnant person’s choice.

Access can be broadened within the parameters of the existing legal infrastructure. The 2019 federal Labor election pledge to require public hospitals to provide abortion care is a great example of the type of leadership we need to achieve local, timely and affordable abortion care in Australia.

– ref. Abortion is no longer a crime in Australia. But legal hurdles to access remain – https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-no-longer-a-crime-in-australia-but-legal-hurdles-to-access-remain-156215

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Zaphir, Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

The narratives that define our culture are subtle sometimes. We all like the shared belief that hard work has good outcomes. For instance, you go to school to get a job. If you work hard in your job, you’ll have a good life, live in your own house and achieve your dreams.

We teach these ideas to children in the hopes they’ll be hard working and entrepreneurial.

But there are a couple of myths underneath these values. Firstly, there’s an implication those who succeed deserve it. And this implies those who don’t have high paying jobs only have themselves to blame.

Next we have the narrative it’s good to have a job, but we should also be more ambitious and strive for something better. Again, if we don’t get it, we have ourselves to blame.

We can see these two narratives in the way some politicians talk. Remember, for instance, when in 2015, then Treasurer Joe Hockey said people looking to buy a house just had to “get a good job”.

We can use philosophical tools to see how both these narratives are myths.

Myth 1: personal success comes from effort

This myth is based in meritocracy. It’s a common feature of neoliberal discourse and in theory it’s an admirable belief, and aspirational — anyone can succeed and be their best selves. Your achievement depends on how hard you try.

But there’s a dark side to this view. When a person doesn’t succeed, we often blame the person for not working hard enough.

There is often a mistaken judgement those who do not measure up have been lazy, stupid or lacking initiative. This is known in philosophy as a modus tollens fallacy. It goes like this:

• A causes B

• B did not occur

• Therefore A did not occur.

Or, in our example:

• Effort causes success

• Success did not occur

• Therefore the person did not put in effort.

Many politicians and community leaders intuitively believe many young people are not in work due to laziness, poor work ethic, or some kind of personal indulgence.

And yet, people may have lost their job, due to the pandemic, for instance. It’s demonstrably false to say to most people on JobSeeker are the lazy dole bludgers of neoliberal legend, given twice as many people received payments in 2020 than in 2019.

Or people on JobSeeker never had the opportunity to succeed in the first place due to systemic racism, gender inequality, natural disasters and poorly designed economic policies. They may be suffering mental health issues that prevent them from being their best selves.

Read more: Graduate employment is up, but finding a job can still take a while

There are many factors in play when it comes to financial success. But one of the greatest predictors is family wealth. Two children, from different families, putting in the same amount of effort may experience completely different outcomes because of the wealth of their parents.

Education, nutrition, parental attention and culture are factors in success too — but nothing quite matches the raw advantage of coming from a wealthy family.

If we’re willing to say work success can be disrupted by COVID-19, let’s just admit there might be other causes too.

Myth 2: You should feel ashamed if your job isn’t ambitious enough

It’s a common trope in political statements, and society more generally, that people need jobs. Jobs are good. And implicitly, if you have a job, it’s good enough.

But this is often not the case due to what’s known as a conformity bias.

This is when we adopt the beliefs and behaviours of others from their social cues, rather than using our own judgement or reasoning. Humans are social creatures and we aim to fit in with one another — conformity bias is part of that.

That’s why we see certain jobs as more prestigious than others and value people’s contribution more or less as a result.

And we often value the money in a job more highly than any other quality in a job.

This social attitude creates a bias in our thinking that higher pay means your job is more valuable. The high salaries of some CEOs feature in the news as implicitly positive examples.

The flip side of this bias though, is the undervaluing of the low earners.

Nurses serve a vital role in society as members of frontline medical staff but get paid little compared to the doctors they work alongside. Teachers performed an enormous task last year, shifting huge swaths of educational content to an online format (as well as needing to cater to the emotional needs of millions of children) and their pay is similarly low.

Read more: What’s the point of education? It’s no longer just about getting a job

It gets worse for casual jobs, unskilled jobs and jobs that lack managerial authority. These all have low occupational prestige, despite being characterised as essential.

We are biased against retail workers and cleaners due to their low wages. We could make the argument serving others makes their job seem inferior, but this doesn’t check out as pilots, doctors and lawyers serve others too.

The amount of training and investment in the career undoubtedly plays a role in the development of the bias. Artists and creatives are not highly salaried and yet still work long hours but this matters little to those who prize high earnings above all other qualities.

And yet, having a job society sees as prestigious isn’t what will make you satisfied in life.

Studies have shown job security, autonomy in a role, and work-life balance are crucial factors to job satisfaction.

When we talk to our children (and ourselves) about what a good job is to us, we need to talk less in terms of wages and earnings.

We need to be talking about how meaningful it is, how much autonomy we have in it, and whether it allows for a meaningful balance with the rest of our time.

– ref. No, people aren’t unemployed because they’re lazy. We should stop teaching children myths about work – https://theconversation.com/no-people-arent-unemployed-because-theyre-lazy-we-should-stop-teaching-children-myths-about-work-153643

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonja Pedell, Associate Professor and Director, Future Self and Design Living Lab, Swinburne University of Technology

Senior citizens need help and encouragement to remain active as they age in their own communities. Given the choice, that’s what most would prefer. The smart city can provide the digital infrastructure for them to find and tailor the local neighbourhood information they need to achieve this.

Australia has a growing population of older adults, the majority living in cities. The challenge, then, is to ensure city environments meet their needs and personal goals.

Our research shows senior citizens want to pursue active ageing as a positive experience. This depends on them being able to stay healthy, participate in their community and feel secure.

Read more: ‘Ageing in neighbourhood’: what seniors want instead of retirement villages and how to achieve it

Most city planning efforts to encourage active ageing are siloed and fragmented. Older people are too often shut away in retirement villages or nursing homes rather than living in the community. Current approaches are often based on traditional deficit models of focusing on older people’s declining health.

Another issue is that senior citizens are treated as receivers of solutions instead of creators. To achieve real benefits it’s essential to involve them in developing the solutions.

Working towards age-friendly cities

To counter a rise in urban ageism, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been promoting age-friendly cities for nearly 15 years. Its age-friendly framework includes these goals:

• equity

• an accessible physical environment

• an inclusive social environment.

Cities and towns around the world, including local councils in Australia, have begun working towards this.

We need to recognise the diverse demands of living in cities, where most seniors live, particularly as we age.

Read more: Retire the retirement village – the wall and what’s behind it is so 2020

Smart city approaches can make urban neighbourhoods more age-friendly. One way technology and better design do this is to improve access to the sort of information older Australians need – on the walkability of neighbourhoods, for example.

Our research has considered three factors in ensuring smart city solutions involve older Australians and work for them.

Replace ageism with agency

Government efforts have focused on increasing life expectancy rather than improving quality of life and independence. Ignoring quality of life leads to the perception of an ageing population as a burden to be looked after.

It would be better to bring about changes that improve older people’s health so they can participate in neighbourhood activities. Social interaction is a source of meaning and identity.

Read more: For Australians to have the choice of growing old at home, here is what needs to change

Active participation by older adults using digital devices can give them agency in their lives and reduce the risk of isolation. Bloomberg reports older adults have become empowered using technology to overcome social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Connect to smart city data

Cities are about infrastructure. Senior citizens need to have access to information about this infrastructure to be motivated to spend time in their neighbourhood and reduce their risk of isolation.

Growing numbers of active ageing seniors are “connected” every day using mobile phones to interact with smart city services. Many have wearable devices like smart watches that help monitor and manage their health and physical activity.

These personal devices can also be used to better connect older adults to public data about urban environments. For example, imagine an age-friendly smart city “layer” linked to a smart watch, to highlight facilities such as public toilets, water fountains and shaded rest stops along exercise routes.

Access Map Seattle is an example of an age-friendly, interactive, smart city map that shows the steepness of pedestrian footpaths and raised kerbs. The National Public Toilet Map, created by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing, and Barcelona’s smartappcity are among other mobile apps integrating city services and urban plans.

The rise of “urban observatories” has increased the gathering and analysing of complex city-related data. These data make it possible to build a digital city layer.

This information then helps us understand and improve the liveability of neighbourhoods for older adults. The data can be used for more proactive policy and city planning.

Read more: Aged care isn’t working, but we can create neighbourhoods to support healthy ageing in place

Include co-design in planning

Co-design processes that involve older adults, giving them agency in smart city planning, lead to greater participation and inclusion.

We need to start asking senior citizens questions like “How would you like to access this data?” and “What would you like the digital layer to tell you?” Their goals and needs must drive the information provided.

It’s not just a matter of deciding what specific data older adults want to get via their devices. They should also be able to contribute directly to the data. For example, using a mobile app they could audit their neighbourhood to identify features that help or hinder walkability.

Read more: Contested spaces: we need to see public space through older eyes too

To create truly age-friendly smart cities, it is important for older people to be co-designers of the digital layer. The co-design includes deciding both the types of data available and how the data can be usefully presented. We also need to understand what mobile apps could use the data.

If we know what information within the digital city layer motivates older adults to participate more actively in their neighbourhoods, we can plan more age-friendly cities.

Through connecting infrastructures and citizen-led approaches, we can achieve social participation and inclusion of citizens regardless of their age and recognising diversity and equity. We will create places where they feel capable and safe across a range of activities. Redesigning age-friendly and smart communities directly and collaboratively with those affected can enable them to achieve the quality of life they desire.

– ref. This is how we create the age-friendly smart city – https://theconversation.com/this-is-how-we-create-the-age-friendly-smart-city-152973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, recently announced his company had bought US$1.5 billion (almost A$2 billion) of Bitcoin. The announcement led to a flurry of enthusiasm and a quick surge in price for the controversial cryptocurrency.

This price bump has been good news for Musk in the short term. At one point, Tesla’s Bitcoin investment had gained more than US$1 billion in value. But can the enthusiasm be sustained? I think there is a good chance that over the next year the price of Bitcoin will drop towards its fundamental value, which is nothing.

If Bitcoin were to lose half its present value — which is not unlikely, given its extremely volatile past behaviour — Tesla will lose around A$1 billion. As Elon Musk owns about a fifth of Tesla, he would then be down A$200 million. In contrast, I own no Bitcoin so I will lose nothing, which means I will have done A$200 million better than Musk.

Why Musk’s decision is a bad thing

Musk is not doing Tesla’s shareholders any favours. If they wanted to be exposed to the rise and fall of Bitcoin they could just buy some themselves. Now they have no choice; if they want to invest in Tesla electric vehicles, they are also vulnerable to the vagaries of Bitcoin.

The usual justification for making investments more diverse is that it can reduce risk. But buying the extremely volatile Bitcoin will make Tesla’s earnings even more uncertain.

Nor is Musk doing his fans any favours. As a “rock star CEO” with more than 40 million followers on Twitter, his musings are widely reported in other media.

By publicly endorsing Bitcoin, Musk may lead some of his fans to invest in this highly risky speculative asset. They may not be as well placed as a multibillionaire to absorb any losses on their investment. (To be fair, Musk has warned them not to invest their life savings.)

Nor is he doing the inhabitants of this planet any favours. The generation of Bitcoins (known as “mining”) uses vast amounts of energy to power specialised computers solving complex but useless mathematical problems.

Estimates vary as to how much energy they waste. Some studies suggest Bitcoin production uses more electricity than the whole of Argentina, Poland, Norway, or Switzerland. But even the lower estimates are that it results in more carbon emissions than Estonia. And if Bitcoin becomes more popular this will only increase.

What will the Bitcoin price do?

How likely is it that Bitcoin could lose half its value within a year? Well, it has form. After it peaked at A$24,000 in December 2017, it dropped to A$10,000 by February 2018. After recovering to A$16,000 in July 2019, it dropped to A$8,000 by March 2020.

Bitcoin may be the purest ever example of a speculative bubble. It follows in the footsteps of famous bubbles such as the South Sea bubble, the Dutch tulip mania, gold around 1980, the dotcom boom of 2000, and the US housing market before the global financial crisis of 2008.

Read more: 300 years since the South Sea Bubble: the real story behind the iconic financial crash

But past bubbles have had more going for them. Houses provide shelter. Gold has industrial uses and jewellery can be made from it. The South Sea Company and millennial tech stocks at least promised streams of future dividends. Even tulips can be admired for their beauty.

Bitcoin offers no return at all unless you can resell it to a “greater fool”. It is a Seinfeld asset — a speculation based on nothing.

The limits of Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s backers often say its value stems from the fact that supply is limited. This is complicated by the fact dissident users have created “forks” in the past, leading to schismatic bitcoins such as Bitcoin Cash.

But even if we accept the limit at face value, there is no limit on the creation of other cryptocurrencies. There are literally thousands of them already, such as Litecoin, Tether and Dogecoin. In any case, just because something is in limited supply, that does not inherently make it valuable.

Another argument for Bitcoin says it could be an alternative to traditional currency for making payments. The first purchase made with Bitcoin was more than a decade ago: two pizzas, paid for with 10,000 bitcoins. (I hope the buyer enjoyed the pizzas, because the coins would now be worth US$500 million.)

Despite the hype, very few vendors accept Bitcoin and hardly anyone pays with it. A Sydney art gallery that accepts Bitcoin has never had anyone buy anything with it, while a bar that accepts it reports no customers using it for years. Even some crypto conferences refuse to accept Bitcoin. You can buy an “I accept Bitcoin” t-shirt on Amazon but you cannot pay for it using Bitcoin.

This is unlikely to change materially. Tesla has hinted it may accept Bitcoin in future, but so far does not.

There are inherent limits to the ability of Bitcoin to provide payment services. The Bitcoin network can only handle 10 transactions per second, compared with the 1,000 per second allowed by Australia’s Fast Settlement Service. Transactions may be stuck in a queue for hours. If any electronic currency becomes a significant payment medium, it is likely to be a central bank digital currency which would be legal tender and able to be used for very large numbers of transactions.

Musk has plans to colonise Mars, so maybe he will declare Bitcoin the legal tender there. But until then it would be better for all of us if he kept it off Tesla’s balance sheet.

– ref. Bitcoin: this year I stand to make $200 million more than Elon Musk – https://theconversation.com/bitcoin-this-year-i-stand-to-make-200-million-more-than-elon-musk-155469

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland

Review: More Than Words: The Making of the Macquarie Dictionary by Pat Manser (Pan Macmillan)

In 1973 Pat Manser answered an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald seeking a research assistant to work on phonetic transcriptions for a dictionary of Australian English.

Now, nearly 50 years later, she has published her monumental account of the making of this dictionary, which in the words of Thomas Keneally, “paid the Antipodean tongue the great compliment of taking it seriously”.

If you’re a word aficionado, you’ll love this book. I could not put it down until I had read through to the end of the final section, which contains the wonderful launch presentation speeches for all eight editions of the Macquarie Dictionary.

Read more: Gogglebox and what it tells us about English in Australia

The beginnings

John Bernard, a chemist who was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of English and Linguistics at Macquarie University in 1966, had published a paper in Southerly in June 1962 about the need for a dictionary of Australian English. He argued that we need

a dictionary of our own because our idiom, usage, invention and especially pronunciation are sufficiently different from those of other Englishes.

In December 1969, Brian Clouston, who had founded Jacaranda Press in Brisbane, agreed to fund a dictionary that would be

aggressively Australian, not to be encyclopedic, not to be illustrated, to be in one volume, and to be ready in two years.

Bernard’s colleague at the university, Professor Arthur Delbridge, was appointed chair of the editorial committee to compile the book. He argued for a “people’s dictionary” that would “hold up a mirror directly to contemporary Australian speech and writing”.

The critical decision at the outset was whether to describe how people use the language or prescribe how people should use the language.

The father of English lexicography, Samuel Johnson, whose prescriptivist A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755, felt “the duty of the lexicographer was to correct or proscribe”. The Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1928, had also been prescriptive.

However, the Macquarie editorial committee was “adamant that its dictionary was to be descriptive”, a move now standard in English language dictionaries. The committee wanted as comprehensive a dictionary as possible, so spoken as well as written words were included.

Johnson’s dictionary took seven years to compile. The Oxford dictionary took 70 years. Rather than two, Macquarie’s dictionary took 11 years.

The Macquarie lexicographers had started work in 1970; the first edition was published in 1981. The 8th edition, published in 2020, and its thesaurus contain more than 300,000 Australian words and definitions.

It is no surprise there were controversies to contend with in the years it took to compile the first edition.

Read more: Togs or swimmers? Why Australians use different words to describe the same things

Controversies

The test for inclusion of words and expressions is currency. How often do you hear people say, “I’ll see youse later”? That particular Australianism is included in the dictionary because, as an entry explains:

English you does not distinguish singular from plural. The form youse does provide a plural, contrasting with singular you, but there is strong resistance to it, in spoken as well as written language, and it remains non-standard.

Other tests include whether a word is accepted by the language community, whether it’s used extensively, or whether it’s too individual or specialised. Is it likely to stand the test of time? Is the entry well supported by citations?

Language is forever changing, so the challenge for a dictionary is its capacity to remain up to date. Manser amusingly illustrates the growing acceptance of “literally” to be understood as “figuratively” with a quote from Amanda Vanstone:

But I can assure you that we are literally bending over backwards to take into account the concerns raised by colleagues.

As the recipient of elocution lessons in my early education I was fascinated to learn about the dictionary’s engagement with spoken English pronunciation. Then there is the fraught question of the description of iconic foods. Should Lamingtons be dipped only in thin chocolate icing and coconut? Not necessarily. There are pink jelly lamingtons and, more recently, Tokyo lamingtons, which have apparently landed with flavours of matcha and black sesame.

Manser’s least favourite word is mansplain, Word of the year in 2014. She hoped it would be ephemeral … but it was recently just nudged out by “fake news” for word of the decade.

Read more: The horror and pleasure of misused words: from mispronunciation to malapropisms

A cocktail

The dictionary was launched on 21 September 1981 as The Macquarie Dictionary because it would “add prestige to the dictionary to be associated with a university”, as the Oxford one was.

A special cocktail, the Macquarie, was created to mark the occasion: “Champagne, mango juice, Bitters, Grand Marnier, and a whole strawberry to float on the top”.

The reviews were glowing, except for one condescending and scathing review by the editor of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Robert Burchfield, a New Zealander, accused the committee of a “charming unawareness of the standards of reputable lexicography outside Australia”.

The new dictionary sold very well: 50,000 copies in its first year and another 50,000 copies over the next 18 months. Within ten years there were 23 spin off editions.

Currently, there are more than 150 spin offs. There was even a Macquarie Bedtime Story Book for Children. There are, of course, other dictionaries of Australian English, such as Oxford University Press’s Australian National Dictionary, a dictionary of Australianisms first published in 1988. There was also an Australian version of the Collins British English Dictionary, which the Macquarie staff regarded as essentially British.

In 1976, the Macquarie offices moved to a former market gardener’s cottage on the campus of Macquarie University. Called “the cottage”, it sounds reminiscent of James Murray’s scriptorium in Oxford, where he oversaw the creation of The Oxford English Dictionary. In 1980, Macquarie Library Pty Ltd became the publisher and has held the copyright ever since, though Macmillan bought the dictionary in 2001.

Macquarie embraced Indigenous Australian issues with Macquarie Aboriginal Words in 1994 and the Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia in 2005. As Ernie Dingo put it at the time: “This book is a White step in the Black direction”.

Manser, who went on to become a high-level public servant, has done painstakingly detailed research for this book, with great support from former colleagues. It is well written in short chapters. I would have liked to see an index and a time-line, but I hesitate to quibble in the face of such a splendid historical document.

– ref. Youse wouldn’t believe it: a new book charts the 11-year making of a ‘people’s dictionary’ for Australia – https://theconversation.com/youse-wouldnt-believe-it-a-new-book-charts-the-11-year-making-of-a-peoples-dictionary-for-australia-155366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

There’s one graph that sums up both the good and not-yet-as-good detailed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at Wednesday’s national accounts press conference.

It’s a graph of the level of Australia’s gross domestic product – how much is produced and earned each three months in Australia – adjusted for inflation.

Australian quarterly gross domestic product

It shows Australia’s economy getting bigger and bigger over almost all the past 80 years with only two readily-apparent slowdowns; one in the early 1980s recession, and one in the early 1990s recession.

Until COVID. Last year’s recession wasn’t a slowdown like the other two – it was a collapse, so big you could see it on any scale, even one that went back to when modern records began.

And it was V-shaped.

As soon as the economy collapsed – by 7% in the three months to June, the most since the Great Depression – it bounced back 3.4% in the three months that followed and (we now know) a further 3.1% in the three months that followed that.

It’s actually more like the beginning of a V

But, as I suggested last time (and as the graph shows) the gain of 3.1% and the gain of 3.4% don’t anything like offset the dive of 7% because a percentage increase in a small number does less than a percentage dive in a bigger number.

It’s reasonable to think that population-fuelled GDP is irrelevant to our lives, that what matters is GDP per head – the amount earned per person.

It shows much the same pattern: a V so clear you can see it on the widest possible scale, which is the one I have presented:

Per capita quarterly GDP

The economy is 1.1% smaller than it was at the start of last year and 3.3% smaller than it would have been had economic growth continued, an extraordinarily good outcome given what Frydenberg described as the “economic abyss” forecast just five months ago in the October 2020 budget.

Government support has turned into private spending

Driving the recovery has been a continuing rebound in consumer spending. It dived 12.3% in the June quarter, climbed 7.9% in the September quarter and in the three months to December when Victorians became freer to spend, a further 4.3%.

We’ve funded it in part by cutting what had been an extraordinarily high household saving ratio.

Household saving has slid from a record high 20% of net-of-tax income in the June quarter to a more welcome 12% in the December quarter.

Household saving ratio

Unable to spend much on travel, we are spending on the things we can. In the three months to December our spending on motor vehicles jumped a dizzying 31.8%, putting it up 22.2% over the year.

Our spending in hotels, cafes and restaurants rebounded 17.5% in the months to December, although with overseas and much interstate travel restricted, it was still down 29.8% over the year.

With the help of low interest rates and incentives, housing investment climbed 4.1% in the quarter (Homebuilder) and business investment in plant and equipment climbed 8.9% (instant asset write-off).

There are no guarantees

Farm production soared an astounding 26.8% in the quarter – the biggest jump since 2008 – on the back of the second-best winter crop on record.

If the economy continues to recover at this pace and the “V” turns into an upward tick we will make big inroads into unemployment and the coronavirus recession will look like a blip, an aberration.

But there are no guarantees. The JobKeeper employment subsidy ends on March 28 and the sharp upticks in business investment and farm production are unlikely to continue.

Read more: Josh Frydenberg has the opportunity to transform Australia, permanently lowering unemployment

Much will depend on the May budget, which comes out before the next update.

Among the budget decisions that will matter are how it will deal with the funding requirements of the aged care royal commission, whether and how it proceeds with the legislated increases in compulsory superannuation, and how quickly and to what extent it withdraws support from the economy.

There’s a case for keeping support high in order to extend the rebound in GDP and make big inroads into unemployment right up until the point we return to meaningful inflation. There’s a case for going for growth.

– ref. GDP is V-shaped, but not yet good. These three graphs tell the story – https://theconversation.com/gdp-is-v-shaped-but-not-yet-good-these-three-graphs-tell-the-story-156372

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

Christian Porter’s denial of the historical rape allegation is unequivocal, but it won’t draw a line under the issue for him or for the Morrison government.

Porter declares he’s determined to stay in his job, saying to quit would mean anyone could lose their career “based on nothing more than an accusation that appears in print”.

It’s true there is little natural justice in this situation. But in politics, there are often many competing factors.

Porter is right that it’s difficult to recall circumstances like this present crisis, with its passion and fevered coverage, and frenzied abuse via social media. And the worst of it is, there’s no way of definitively finding out what did or did not occur, and so where “justice” lies.

A woman who is now dead claimed she was raped by Porter when they were both teenagers. From what she told people and wrote, she had no doubt it happened. Porter says he has no doubt it did not happen.

The police can’t determine the truth, because the woman is deceased, and an independent inquiry wouldn’t be able to do so either.

The claim and counter claim will be fought out in the court of public opinion and it will be an ugly contest.

Porter is not just any minister: his role as attorney-general sets him apart. He is the country’s first law officer – which means he must be above any suspicion. It’s the old “Caesar’s wife” test and – properly – the bar is high.

However unfair it might be, Porter will now never be above suspicion, at least in the minds of many.

Before he was a politician, Porter was a crown prosecutor. He has been around court rooms, and so used to tense situations.

Of course his news conference was not a court room and things are different when you are defending yourself, but it was notable how rattled he was.

He wanted to avoid the details of that January 1988 time when the four teenagers were in Sydney as part of a debating team (which raises the idle question, where are the other two team members now and what do they think?). When pushed by journalists, some of his answers were fumbling.

What state he will be in after a period of leave remains to be seen, because it is likely the pressure on him will increase rather than ease.

Then there’s the question of the impact on the whole government. It is extraordinary what a toll the Brittany Higgins’ affair and the allegation against Porter are taking. It amounts to an enormous distraction for Morrison.

All this at a time when the government is struggling with the early days of the vaccine rollout.

And of course, the positive news has been put in the shade – Wednesday’s economic growth of 3.1% for the December quarter, which is a seriously good performance by any international standards.

Morrison is loyal to his ministers – or at least he understands that to put political blood in the water by cutting a minister loose is never without consequences.

When it is the attorney-general, that would be a huge step.

But asked this week whether he believed Porter’s denial, Morrison would not commit himself. “That is a matter for the police,” he said.

Significantly, Morrison didn’t send the woman’s statement to Porter after he received it in the letter from her friends on Friday. Porter said he still hasn’t seen it.

Porter’s spokesman said on Wednesday night that to have received the statement or documents when he was the subject of them, and they were matters for law enforcement agencies, would have been “inappropriate”. This seems a stretch.

Porter says he has Morrison’s support. The question is whether he will retain it in the days to come.

There is this hiatus, while Porter is on stress leave, during which Morrison can assess the situation.

He must decide whether he will remain dug in behind his embattled minister or encourage him to conclude that, despite what he said in his statement, his position is untenable.

– ref. View from The Hill: Despite his denial, Christian Porter will struggle with the ‘Caesar’s wife’ test – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-despite-his-denial-christian-porter-will-struggle-with-the-caesars-wife-test-156412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

There’s one graph that sums up both the good and not-yet-as-good detailed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at Wednesday’s national accounts press conference.

It’s a graph of the level of Australia’s gross domestic product – how much is produced and earned each three months in Australia – adjusted for inflation.

Australian quarterly gross domestic product

It shows Australia’s economy getting bigger and bigger over almost all the past 80 years with only two readily-apparent slowdowns; one in the early 1980s recession, and one in the early 1990s recession.

Until COVID. Last year’s recession wasn’t a slowdown like the other two – it was a collapse, so big you could see it on any scale, even one that went back to when modern records began.

And it was V-shaped.

As soon as the economy collapsed – by 7% in the three months to June, the most since the Great Depression – it bounced back 3.4% in the three months that followed and (we now know) a further 3.1% in the three months that followed that.

It’s actually more like the beginning of a V

But, as I suggested last time (and as the graph shows) the gain of 3.1% and the gain of 3.4% don’t anything like offset the dive of 7% because a percentage increase in a small number does less than a percentage dive in a bigger number.

It’s reasonable to think that population-fuelled GDP is irrelevant to our lives, that what matters is GDP per head – the amount earned per person.

It shows much the same pattern: a V so clear you can see it on the widest possible scale, which is the one I have presented:

Per capita quarterly GDP

The economy is 1.1% smaller than it was at the start of last year and 3.3% smaller than it would have been had economic growth continued, an extraordinarily good outcome given what Frydenberg described as the “economic abyss” forecast just five months ago in the October 2020 budget.

Government support has turned into private spending

Driving the recovery has been a continuing rebound in consumer spending. It dived 12.3% in the June quarter, climbed 7.9% in the September quarter and in the three months to December when Victorians became freer to spend, a further 4.3%.

We’ve funded it in part by cutting what had been an extraordinarily high household saving ratio.

Household saving has slid from a record high 20% of net-of-tax income in the June quarter to a more welcome 12% in the December quarter.

Household saving ratio

Unable to spend much on travel, we are spending on the things we can. In the three months to December our spending on motor vehicles jumped a dizzying 31.8%, putting it up 22.2% over the year.

Our spending in hotels, cafes and restaurants rebounded 17.5% in the months to December, although with overseas and much interstate travel restricted, it was still down 29.8% over the year.

With the help of low interest rates and incentives, housing investment climbed 4.1% in the quarter (Homebuilder) and business investment in plant and equipment climbed 8.9% (instant asset write-off).

There are no guarantees

Farm production soared an astounding 26.8% in the quarter – the biggest jump since 2008 – on the back of the second-best winter crop on record.

If the economy continues to recover at this pace and the “V” turns into an upward tick we will make big inroads into unemployment and the coronavirus recession will look like a blip, an aberration.

But there are no guarantees. The JobKeeper employment subsidy ends on March 28 and the sharp upticks in business investment and farm production are unlikely to continue.

Read more: Josh Frydenberg has the opportunity to transform Australia, permanently lowering unemployment

Much will depend on the May budget, which comes out before the next update.

Among the budget decisions that will matter are how it will deal with the funding requirements of the aged care royal commission, whether and how it proceeds with the legislated increases in compulsory superannuation, and how quickly and to what extent it withdraws support from the economy.

There’s a case for keeping support high in order to extend the rebound in GDP and make big inroads into unemployment right up until the point we return to meaningful inflation. There’s a case for going for growth.

– ref. GDP is V-shaped, but not yet good. These three graphs show us how – https://theconversation.com/gdp-is-v-shaped-but-not-yet-good-these-three-graphs-show-us-how-156372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

There’s one graph that sums up both the good and not-as-good detailed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at Wednesday’s national accounts press conference.

It’s a graph of the level of Australia’s gross domestic product – how much is produced and earned each three months in Australia – adjusted for inflation.

Australian quarterly gross domestic product

It shows Australia’s economy getting bigger and bigger over almost all the past 80 years with only two readily-apparent slowdowns; one in the early 1980s recession, and one in the early 1990s recession.

Until COVID. Last year’s recession wasn’t a slowdown like the other two – it was a collapse, so big you could see it on any scale, even one that went back to when modern records began.

And it was V-shaped.

As soon as the economy collapsed – by 7% in the three months to June, the most since the Great Depression – it bounced back 3.4% in the three months that followed and (we now know) a further 3.1% in the three months that followed that.

It’s actually more like the beginning of a V

But, as I suggested last time (and as the graph shows) the gain of 3.1% and the gain of 3.4% don’t anything like offset the dive of 7% because a percentage increase in a small number does less than a percentage dive in a bigger number.

It’s reasonable to think that population-fuelled GDP is irrelevant to our lives, that what matters is GDP per head – the amount earned per person.

It shows much the same pattern: a V so clear you can see it on the widest possible scale, which is the one I have presented:

Per capita quarterly GDP

The economy is 1.1% smaller than it was at the start of last year and 3.3% smaller than it would have been had economic growth continued, an extraordinarily good outcome given what Frydenberg described as the “economic abyss” forecast just five months ago in the October 2020 budget.

Government support has turned into private spending

Driving the recovery has been a continuing rebound in consumer spending. It dived 12.3% in the June quarter, climbed 7.9% in the September quarter and in the three months to December when Victorians became freer to spend, a further 4.3%.

We’ve funded it in part by cutting what had been an extraordinarily high household saving ratio.

Household saving has slid from a record high 20% of net-of-tax income in the June quarter to a more welcome 12% in the December quarter.

Household saving ratio

Unable to spend much on travel, we are spending on the things we can. In the three months to December our spending on motor vehicles jumped a dizzying 31.8%, putting it up 22.2% over the year.

Our spending in hotels, cafes and restaurants rebounded 17.5% in the months to December, although with overseas and much interstate travel restricted, it was still down 29.8% over the year.

With the help of low interest rates and incentives, housing investment climbed 4.1% in the quarter (Homebuilder) and business investment in plant and equipment climbed 8.9% (instant asset write-off).

There are no guarantees

Farm production soared an astounding 26.8% in the quarter – the biggest jump since 2008 – on the back of the second-best winter crop on record.

If the economy continues to recover at this pace and the “V” turns into an upward tick we will make big inroads into unemployment and the coronavirus recession will look like a blip, an aberration.

But there are no guarantees. The JobKeeper employment subsidy ends on March 28 and the sharp upticks in business investment and farm production are unlikely to continue.

Read more: Josh Frydenberg has the opportunity to transform Australia, permanently lowering unemployment

Much will depend on the May budget, which comes out before the next update.

Among the budget decisions that will matter are how it will deal with the funding requirements of the aged care royal commission, whether and how it proceeds with the legislated increases in compulsory superannuation, and how quickly and to what extent it withdraws support from the economy.

There’s a case for keeping support high in order to extend the rebound in GDP and make big inroads into unemployment right up until the point we return to meaningful inflation. There’s a case for going for growth.

– ref. GDP is V-shaped, but not yet good. These three graphs tell us how – https://theconversation.com/gdp-is-v-shaped-but-not-yet-good-these-three-graphs-tell-us-how-156372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

Aside from his strenuous denials of the rape allegation against him, the central point made by Attorney-General Christian Porter at his media conference was that he had been the victim of “trial by media”.

He warned if the media’s publication of allegations in these circumstances resulted in a public figure being forced from office, it would represent a new and unacceptable standard for public figures generally.

He also said no one in the media had confronted him with the allegation. And he said that when Prime Minister Scott Morrison discussed the matter with him last week, the document containing the allegation had already been sent to the Australian Federal Police, so he had not seen it on that occasion either.

These are important questions deserving of some scrutiny.

What constitutes a ‘trial by media’?

“Trial by media” is one of those phrases that trips off the tongue in cases where the media apply intense pressure on a person or organisation at the centre of an issue.

Trial by media occurs when either of two things happen. The first is where media coverage prejudices the outcome of legal processes, such as police investigations or trials in court. The second is when the media initiate an issue and then proceed to play prosecutor, judge and jury.

Neither applies in the Porter case.

As far as is known, there are no police investigations or legal proceedings on foot and there has been little prospect there would be, given the woman who made the allegations is now dead. The South Australian police are preparing a report for the coroner, an investigation that by definition is confined to the circumstances of the person’s death.

Read more: Attorney-General Christian Porter declares alleged rape ‘did not happen’ – and he won’t stand down

The New South Wales police investigation was suspended after the woman took her life in June last year, and this week, Commissioner Mick Fuller said the case was closed.

The South Australian police commissioner discussed the matter with the NSW and AFP commissioners this week, as well, but has made no comment on whether his force would pursue an investigation. The AFP has no jurisdiction.

So much for the first test of trial by media.

The media also did not initiate the allegation. That was done in a 31-page letter sent anonymously to politicians on both sides of federal parliament, including Morrison and the Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong.

The ABC obtained a copy of this document and reported the allegation without naming Porter, saying only that it referred to a senior cabinet minister. The rest of the media then reported the story, also without naming Porter.

It would have been legally perilous and ethically unconscionable for the media to do so without putting the allegation to him.

How should the media have handled the allegation?

This raises the question: should the media have put it to Porter?

In principle, as a matter of fairness, yes. As a practical matter, however, it is a very difficult proposition.

No doubt the ABC and other media would have obtained pre-publication legal advice about this.

The first difficulty the media face in these circumstances is the accused person might not give an answer but make a threat to sue for defamation. Given the weakness of defences in defamation law in Australia, it would be a very risky business to publish in the face of such a threat.

Read more: Media companies can now be held responsible for your dodgy comments on social media

Even publishing what is called a “denial story” is risky because of the damage to reputation inherent in the question. If the media publish a story saying Porter denied a rape allegation, this leaves open the question of whether he is to be believed.

A story based on a voluntary public statement of the kind he made this week, however, is an altogether different situation.

The second difficulty is there is always the chance the accused person will obtain an injunction restraining publication. In a case like this, there is a good chance the court would also issue a “super injunction” banning the reporting of the fact that an injunction had been granted.

This would have tied up the matter in the courts, probably for weeks.

A political matter, not one for the media

Clearly, the media decided to treat this as a political story and watch it play out in the political process.

Of course, the media are part of the political process. The part they play is that of watchdog and commentator, and in this case, virtually all of the scrutiny was on Morrison’s response.

He was already under pressure for the way he and his government handled the rape allegation made by former staffer Brittany Higgins. A new allegation against a member of his cabinet intensified that pressure enormously.

When did he know? What did he know? How did he know? What did he do? What does he intend to do?

These are all legitimate questions and have nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the allegation itself. They have everything to do with how the prime minister handles another alleged incident of sexual misconduct involving someone in his government.

Porter’s outing himself took the political process a step further. As he himself said at his media conference, where it goes from here is for others to decide.

Should there be an inquiry like the one instigated by the High Court concerning the conduct of the former justice Dyson Heydon? Again, the media spotlight returns to the prime minister for answers.

Read more: Social media and defamation law pose threats to free speech, and it’s time for reform

– ref. Has Christian Porter been subjected to a ‘trial by media’? No, the media did its job of being a watchdog – https://theconversation.com/has-christian-porter-been-subjected-to-a-trial-by-media-no-the-media-did-its-job-of-being-a-watchdog-156390

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

Aside from his strenuous denials of the rape allegation against him, the central point made by Attorney-General Christian Porter at his media conference was that he had been the victim of “trial by media”.

He warned if the media’s publication of allegations in these circumstances resulted in a public figure being forced from office, it would represent a new and unacceptable standard for public figures generally.

He also said no one in the media had confronted him with the allegation. And he said that when Prime Minister Scott Morrison discussed the matter with him last week, the document containing the allegation had already been sent to the Australian Federal Police, so he had not seen it on that occasion either.

These are important questions deserving of some scrutiny.

What constitutes a ‘trial by media’?

“Trial by media” is one of those phrases that trips off the tongue in cases where the media apply intense pressure on a person or organisation at the centre of an issue.

Trial by media occurs when either of two things happen. The first is where media coverage prejudices the outcome of legal processes, such as police investigations or trials in court. The second is when the media initiate an issue and then proceed to play prosecutor, judge and jury.

Neither applies in the Porter case.

As far as is known, there are no police investigations or legal proceedings on foot and there has been little prospect there would be, given the woman who made the allegations is now dead. The South Australian police are preparing a report for the coroner, an investigation that by definition is confined to the circumstances of the person’s death.

Read more: Attorney-General Christian Porter declares alleged rape ‘did not happen’ – and he won’t stand down

The New South Wales police investigation was suspended after the woman took her life in June last year, and this week, Commissioner Mick Fuller said the case was closed.

The South Australian police commissioner discussed the matter with the NSW and AFP commissioners this week, as well, but has made no comment on whether his force would pursue an investigation. The AFP has no jurisdiction.

So much for the first test of trial by media.

The media also did not initiate the allegation. That was done in a 31-page letter sent anonymously to politicians on both sides of federal parliament, including Morrison and the Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong.

The ABC obtained a copy of this document and reported the allegation without naming Porter, saying only that it referred to a senior cabinet minister. The rest of the media then reported the story, also without naming Porter.

It would have been legally perilous and ethically unconscionable for the media to do so without putting the allegation to him.

How should the media have handled the allegation?

This raises the question: should the media have put it to Porter?

In principle, as a matter of fairness, yes. As a practical matter, however, it is a very difficult proposition.

No doubt the ABC and other media would have obtained pre-publication legal advice about this.

The first difficulty the media face in these circumstances is the accused person might not give an answer but make a threat to sue for defamation. Given the weakness of defences in defamation law in Australia, it would be a very risky business to publish in the face of such a threat.

Read more: Media companies can now be held responsible for your dodgy comments on social media

Even publishing what is called a “denial story” is risky because of the damage to reputation inherent in the question. If the media publish a story saying Porter denied a rape allegation, this leaves open the question of whether he is to be believed.

A story based on a voluntary public statement of the kind he made this week, however, is an altogether different situation.

The second difficulty is there is always the chance the accused person will obtain an injunction restraining publication. In a case like this, there is a good chance the court would also issue a “super injunction” banning the reporting of the fact that an injunction had been granted.

This would have tied up the matter in the courts, probably for weeks.

A political matter, not one for the media

Clearly, the media decided to treat this as a political story and watch it play out in the political process.

Of course, the media are part of the political process. The part they play is that of watchdog and commentator, and in this case, virtually all of the scrutiny was on Morrison’s response.

He was already under pressure for the way he and his government handled the rape allegation made by former staffer Brittany Higgins. A new allegation against a member of his cabinet intensified that pressure enormously.

When did he know? What did he know? How did he know? What did he do? What does he intend to do?

These are all legitimate questions and have nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the allegation itself. They have everything to do with how the prime minister handles another alleged incident of sexual misconduct involving someone in his government.

Porter’s outing himself took the political process a step further. As he himself said at his media conference, where it goes from here is for others to decide.

Should there be an inquiry like the one instigated by the High Court concerning the conduct of the former justice Dyson Heydon? Again, the media spotlight returns to the prime minister for answers.

Read more: Social media and defamation law pose threats to free speech, and it’s time for reform

– ref. Has Christian Porter been subjected to a ‘trial by media’? No, the media did its job responsibly – https://theconversation.com/has-christian-porter-been-subjected-to-a-trial-by-media-no-the-media-did-its-job-responsibly-156390

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

There’s one graph that sums up both the good and not-as-good detailed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at Wednesday’s national accounts press conference.

It’s a graph of the level of Australia’s gross domestic product – how much is produced and earned each three months in Australia – adjusted for inflation.

Australian quarterly gross domestic product

It shows Australia’s economy getting bigger and bigger over almost all the past 80 years with only two readily-apparent slowdowns; one in the early 1980s recession, and one in the early 1990s recession.

Until COVID. Last year’s recession wasn’t a slowdown like the other two – it was a collapse, so big you could see it on any scale, even one that went back to when modern records began.

And it was V-shaped.

As soon as the economy collapsed – by 7% in the three months to June, the most since the Great Depression – it bounced back 3.4% in the three months that followed and (we now know) a further 3.1% in the three months that followed that.

It’s actually more like the beginning of a V

But, as I suggested last time (and as the graph shows) the gain of 3.1% and the gain of 3.4% don’t anything like offset the dive of 7% because a percentage increase in a small number does less than a percentage dive in a bigger number.

It’s reasonable to think that population-fuelled GDP is irrelevant to our lives, that what matters is GDP per head – the amount earned per person.

It shows much the same pattern: a V so clear you can see it on the widest possible scale, which is the one I have presented:

Per capita quarterly GDP

The economy is 1.1% smaller than it was at the start of last year and 3.3% smaller than it would have been had economic growth continued, an extraordinarily good outcome given what Frydenberg described as the “economic abyss” forecast just five months ago in the October 2020 budget.

Government support has turned into private spending

Driving the recovery has been a continuing rebound in consumer spending. It dived 12.3% in the June quarter, climbed 7.9% in the September quarter and in the three months to December when Victorians became freer to spend, a further 4.3%.

We’ve funded it in part by cutting what had been an extraordinarily high household saving ratio.

Household saving has slid from a record high 20% of net-of-tax income in the June quarter to a more welcome 12% in the December quarter.

Household saving ratio

Unable to spend much on travel, we are spending on the things we can. In the three months to December our spending on motor vehicles jumped a dizzying 31.8%, putting it up 22.2% over the year.

Our spending in hotels, cafes and restaurants rebounded 17.5% in the months to December, although with overseas and much interstate travel restricted, it was still down 29.8% over the year.

With the help of low interest rates and incentives, housing investment climbed 4.1% in the quarter (Homebuilder) and business investment in plant and equipment climbed 8.9% (instant asset write-off).

There are no guarantees

Farm production soared an astounding 26.8% in the quarter – the biggest jump since 2008 – on the back of the second-best winter crop on record.

If the economy continues to recover at this pace and the “V” turns into an upward tick we will make big inroads into unemployment and the coronavirus recession will look like a blip, an aberration.

But there are no guarantees. The JobKeeper employment subsidy ends on March 28 and the sharp upticks in business investment and farm production are unlikely to continue.

Read more: Josh Frydenberg has the opportunity to transform Australia, permanently lowering unemployment

Much will depend on the May budget, which comes out before the next update.

Among the budget decisions that will matter are how it will deal with the funding requirements of the aged care royal commission, whether and how it proceeds with the legislated increases in compulsory superannuation, and how quickly and to what extent it withdraws support from the economy.

There’s a case for keeping support high in order to extend the rebound in GDP and make big inroads into unemployment right up until the point we return to meaningful inflation. There’s a case for going for growth.

– ref. Australia’s recovery is V-shaped, but the GDP shows we’ve more to do – https://theconversation.com/australias-recovery-is-v-shaped-but-the-gdp-shows-weve-more-to-do-156372

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

Attorney-General Christian Porter has identified himself as the minister accused of historical rape but declared categorically that the 1988 claimed assault “simply did not happen”.

A highly emotional Porter told a Perth he had not slept with the then 16-year-old who made the allegation more than three decades later. “We didn’t have anything of that nature happen between us,” he said.

Porter declared he was not standing down from his position as first law officer.

“If I stand down from my position as Attorney-General because of an allegation about something that simply did not happen, then any person in Australia can lose their career, their job, their life’s work based on nothing more than an accusation that appears in print.

“If I were to resign and that set a new standard, there wouldn’t be much need for an attorney-general anyway because there would be no rule of law left to protect in this country.”

Porter will take two weeks leave to “assess and hopefully improve my own mental health”.

“I think I will be able to return from that and do my job.”

He said he has been asked by colleagues “Are you OK?”. His answer was “I really don’t know. I am not ashamed to say that I am going to seek some professional assessment and assistance on answering that question over the next few weeks.”

Porter said he had been subject to “the most wild, intense and unrestrained series of accusations I can remember in modern Australian politics.”

He said he had never had the allegations put to him in any substantive form. “No-one put anything in any detail to me seeking a response.” He had never seen the woman’s statement, although a statement from her was included with the letter sent to Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week. The ABC published the rape allegation late on Friday.

On the incident itself, Porter said when he was 17 and she was 16 they were both on the Australian schools debating team for a competition in Sydney. He remembered her as an “intelligent, bright, happy, person.”

He was noticeably reluctant to go into detail. Under questioning, he conceded he might have been in her room, but he didn’t think he was ever alone with her.

He recalled a memory, sparked by what he had read of the material – “I don’t think any of us had ever ironed a shirt, and I recall, she showed us how to do it, I remember that.”

It was a team of four, including three boys and “we did what normal teenagers would do”.

“I remember two evenings that week. One was a night at one of the colleges with bowls of prawns, which sticks in my mind. I do remember a formal dinner and going out dancing sounds about right.”

He said he was not in contact with the woman – who took her own life last year – in subsequent decades.

Porter began his news conference by referring to the woman’s parents, saying he hoped they would understand that in denying the allegation “I do not mean to impose anything more upon your grief”.

He rejected the volley of calls into an independent inquiry into the allegation.

“What would that inquiry ask me to do? To disapprove something that didn’t happen 33 years ago.”

“I honestly don’t know what I would say to that inquiry. Of course I can’t.”

Porter said he had spoken to Scott Morrison and had his full backing.

He said he was deeply sorry for the fallout the issue has had for his colleagues.

“My colleagues have become the target of allegation and speculation, themselves. My colleagues are my friends. And I’m deeply sorry to each of them for that.”

The issue exploded last week when friends of the woman wrote to Morrison and several other parliamentarians demanding an inquiry into her allegation. The letter included a statement the woman had made, detailing her alleged experience.

The woman went to the police a year ago but had not made a formal complaint.

The allegation has derailed the government for a week, when it was already struggling to contain the fallout from former staffer Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped by a colleague in the office of the then Defence Industry Minister Linda Reynolds in 2019.

On Monday, Morrison said the woman’s allegation was a matter for the police. The federal police referred it to the NSW police. The NSW police said on Tuesday that, “based on information provided to NSW Police, there is insufficient admissible evidence to proceed.

“As such, NSW Police Force has determined the matter is now closed.”

Porter denied the allegation to Morrison on Wednesday of last week.

The ABC’s Four Corners was pursuing the woman’s story last year, but in the end was not in a position to include it in its November program “Inside the Canberra Bubble”. That program reported sexist comments made by Porter as a young man.

Porter entered federal parliament in 2013 after a high profile career in Western Australian politics, where he served as attorney-general and treasurer.

Federally, he was social services minister in 2015-2017, before becoming attorney-general. After the 2019 election, industrial relations was added to his responsibilities.

Australian of the Year Grace Tame, answering questions at the National Press Club, criticised Morrison over invoking his wife Jenny’s counsel that he should think of the Higgins’ situation as a father. “It shouldn’t take having children to have a conscience,” Tame said.

– ref. Attorney-General Christian Porter declares alleged rape ‘did not happen’ – and he won’t stand down – https://theconversation.com/attorney-general-christian-porter-declares-alleged-rape-did-not-happen-and-he-wont-stand-down-156381

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Davina Porock, Professor of Nursing, Director of Centre for Research in Aged Care, Edith Cowan University

Death is inevitable, and in a civilised society everyone deserves a good one. It would therefore be logical to expect aged-care homes would provide superior end-of-life care. But sadly, palliative care options are often better for those living outside residential aged care than those in it.

More than a quarter of a million older Australians live in residential aged care, but few choose to be there, few consider it their “home”, and most will die there after living there for an average 2.6 years. These are vulnerable older people who have been placed in residential aged care when they can no longer be cared for at home.

The royal commission has made a forceful and sustained criticism of the quality of aged care. Its final report, released this week, and the interim report last year variously described the sector as “cruel”, “uncaring”, “harmful”, “woefully inadequate” and in need of major reform.

Quality end-of-life care, including access to specialist palliative care, is a significant part of the inadequacy highlighted by the report’s damning findings. This ranked alongside dementia, challenging behaviours and mental health as the most crucial issues facing the sector.

Longstanding problem

In truth, we have already known about the palliative care problem for years. In 2017 the Productivity Commission reported that end-of-life care in residential aged care needs to be better resourced and delivered by skilled staff, to match the quality of care available to other Australians.

This inequality and evident discrimination against aged-care residents is all the more disappointing when we consider these residents are among those Australians most likely to find themselves in need of quality end-of-life care.

The royal commission’s final report acknowledges these inadequacies and addresses them in 12 of its 148 recommendations. Among them are recommendations to:

• enshrine the right of older people to access equitable palliative and end-of-life care

• include palliative care as one of a range of integrated supports available to residents

• introduce multidiscpliniary outreach services including palliative care from local hospitals

• require specific training for all direct care staff in palliative and end-of-life care skills.

What is good palliative care?

Palliative care is provided to someone with an active, progressive, advanced disease, who has little or no prospect of cure and who is expected to die. Its primary goal is to optimise the quality of life for that person and their family.

End-of-life care is provided by palliative care services in the final few weeks of life, in which a patient with a life-limiting illness is rapidly approaching death. This also extends to bereavement care for family and loved ones.

Unlike in other sectors of Australian society, where palliative care services are growing in line with overall population ageing, palliative care services in residential aged care have been declining.

Funding restrictions in Australian aged-care homes means palliative care is typically only recommended to residents during the final few weeks or even days of their life.

Read more: What is palliative care? A patient’s journey through the system

Some 70% of Australians say they would prefer to die at home, surrounded by loved ones, with symptoms managed and comfort the only goal. So if residential aged care is truly a resident’s home, then extensive palliative and end-of-life care should be available, and not limited just to the very end.

Fortunately, the royal commission has heard the clarion call for attention to ensuring older Australians have as good a death as possible, as shown by the fact that a full dozen of the recommendations reflect the need for quality end-of-life care.

Moreover, the very first recommendation — which calls for a new Aged Care Act — will hopefully spur the drafting of legislation that endorses high-quality palliative care rather than maintaining the taboo around explicitly mentioning death.

Let’s talk about death

Of course, without a clear understanding of how close death is, and open conversation, planning for the final months of life cannot even begin. So providing good-quality care also means we need to get better at calculating prognosis and learn better ways to convey this information in a way that leads to being able to make a plan for comfort and support, both for the individual and their loved ones.

Advanced care planning makes a significant difference in the quality of end-of-life care by understanding and supporting individual choices through open conversation. This gives the individual the care they want, and lessens the emotional toll on family. It is simply the case that failing to plan is planning to fail.

We need to break down the discomfort around telling people they’re dying. The unpredictability of disease progression, particularly in conditions that involve frailty or dementia, makes it hard for health professionals to determine when exactly palliative care will be needed and how to talk about it with different cultural groups.

Read more: Passed away, kicked the bucket, pushing up daisies – the many ways we don’t talk about death

These conversations need to be held through the aged-care sector to overcome policy and regulation issues, funding shortfalls and workforce knowledge and expertise.

We need a broader vision for how we care for vulnerable Australians coming to the end of a long life. It is not just an issue for health professionals and residential care providers, but for the whole of society. Hopefully the royal commission’s recommendations will breathe life into end-of-life care into aged care in Australia.

– ref. We all hope for a ‘good death’. But many aged-care residents are denied proper end-of-life care – https://theconversation.com/we-all-hope-for-a-good-death-but-many-aged-care-residents-are-denied-proper-end-of-life-care-156105

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristin Diemer, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

A woman’s decision to leave a violent and abusive relationship is a complex process. She first needs to consider the risks to her and her children. Paradoxically, taking that step towards safety is also the time of greatest danger of homicide, sexual assault and increased violence.

Pets and service animals are also a part of the lives of many families. This means they are an important part of the decision-making process when women consider leaving a violent situation.

The pets may be a critical source of therapeutic support, but they may also be at risk of harm and used to exert control over people (“you leave and you won’t see those animals again”). Animals’ central role in family life means many victim-survivors of family violence are reluctant to leave because they fear their pets will be harmed.

To combat this, a family violence motion has been presented in the Victorian parliament that seeks to recognise animal abuse as a form of family violence. If all elements were adopted, it would increase the safety of women and children.

The motion advocates several policy and legislative options. These include:

• financial assistance to victim-survivors of family violence, including for the care of animals

• a review of the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 to recognise that companion animals are affected by family violence and require protection

• companion animals are placed in the care of either the victim-survivor or other appropriate carers to protect them.

These measures would be an important step towards improving support and so the safety of victim-survivors when animals are also caught up in family violence.

If this motion is passed, Victoria will be the second state after New South Wales to acknowledge the importance of the protection of animals for women’s safety. By comparison, more than two-thirds of US states have enacted legislation that includes provisions for pets in domestic violence protection orders.

Growing research evidence points unequivocally to the link between animal abuse and family violence. It shows animal cruelty occurs more frequently where family violence is also occurring.

Some studies suggest animal abuse is an indicator of more severe family violence and domestic homicide. If the animals are not safe, then neither are the humans, and vice versa.

Read more: Abuse and abandonment: why pets are at risk during this pandemic

Recognition of the need for intervention orders to include animal protection is not the only aspect of policy in need of review. Currently, if the companion animal is registered to the violent partner as the owner, a woman can be charged with theft for taking the animal with her, even when he is threatening the animal. The provision in the motion for need and protection to override ownership is therefore important.

Other concerns arise with microchips: the owner of the animal can trace the animal and locate a woman who is in hiding if she does not put a notice on the microchip database not to disclose her address. Some organisations (including veterinary clinics) are now bringing this to the attention of women using their services.

Unsurprisingly, the need for financial support is high on the motion’s agenda. In particular, there are housing and refuge options to consider.

Currently, women leaving violent situations have few options to take their animals with them. Women with disabilities who have service or therapeutic animals are at a distinct disadvantage when trying to leave and find suitable accommodation.

Bringing an animal into a refuge or emergency accommodation can be disruptive for other residents, especially if they have a fear of animals or allergies. Keeping animals with women and children is therefore not always the best option in a crisis. Dedicated animal shelters allowing for up to two months of care need to be made available.

In some regions, there are limited networks of animal shelters and veterinarians that have developed these resources to shelter dogs and cats for short periods. Beyond household companion animals, there is also a great need for support for large animals such as horses and goats, particularly in rural communities.

The changes the motion is calling for are timely. They are not radical, but would be an important further step in the response to family violence, backed by current research.

Advances in multi-agency risk-assessment tools and innovations within the refuge and specialist family violence sector are highlighting animal abuse as an important consideration in responding to family violence.

Read more: It’s time ‘coercive control’ was made illegal in Australia

– ref. In Victoria, animal abuse may soon be considered a form of family violence. Here’s why that matters – https://theconversation.com/in-victoria-animal-abuse-may-soon-be-considered-a-form-of-family-violence-heres-why-that-matters-156284

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Lake, Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University

Former senator David Leyonhjelm today lost his appeal against a defamation ruling and must pay A$120,000 compensation to Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young for his comments that she should “stop shagging men”.

“It is hard and difficult to do,” said Senator Hanson-Young of the proceedings. “But by supporting the women who dare to speak up, we are supporting the rights of women and girls to be respected, everywhere.”

Women have long fought to silence rumours told about them, and to exercise agency over their own narratives and experiences.

Depending on cultural and historical context, the law has worked — and continues to work — to either hinder or help this process.

The 2021 Young Australian of the Year Grace Tame, 26, who appeared before the National Press Club today, and the #LetHerSpeak campaign worked to overturn laws that prohibited the identification of sex assault victims. These changes allow survivors to speak out and reduce stigma and shame. In recent weeks there has been discussion over who has the right to tell Brittany Higgins’ story of her alleged rape.

Defamation law also regulates stories of sexual misconduct and abuse. The minister at the centre of historic rape allegations is set to identify himself with a defamation lawyer by his side. Actions have been brought by high-profile men such as Geoffrey Rush and Craig McLachlan.

Intricate defamation rules — varying across jurisdictions and time periods — are not simply neutral or objective legal requirements. They reflect norms of morality, politics, sexuality, and gender.

While women today are fighting to tell their own stories and men are bringing legal action to clear their names, 19th-century women in the Australian colonies and other common law countries (such as the United States, Britain and New Zealand) fought for the ability to silence slurs of sexual immorality against them. They brought cases after being insulted and labelled “whores”, “bad women”, “unchaste” or “dirty”.

Read more: Madonna or whore; frigid or a slut: why women are still bearing the brunt of sexual slurs

‘Special damages’

In 1826, Hariett Spencer, a young governess, sued Robert Jeffrey, Captain of the ship Tower Castle, for slander. She sought 1000 pounds in damages for statements he made about her having relations with a sailor on board and acting inappropriately. The cost of such rumours was high. Spencer faced losing her employment in the fledgling colony and being tarred as a “whore”.

At first instance she won, Chief Justice Stephen declaring: “to a civilized female, in any part of the globe, a fair reputation is an inestimable possession”. However, the defendant successfully appealed on the basis that she had not proved any “special damage”.

This technical point of law was the focus of defamation reforms in the 1800s, culminating in nearly all common law jurisdictions passing legislation titled collectively The Slander of Women.

Under old English common law, defamation was categorised as either libel (printed material) or slander (spoken words) and these categories were treated very differently. A claim for slander could only be brought in the civil courts if it concerned imputations of serious criminality, an infectious disease, or injured the plaintiff in their trade or profession.

If it related to matters of sexual morality — such as unchastity, adultery, fornication, prostitution — a person would need to show the slander caused them economic loss, known as “special damage”.

The traditional doctrine of slander imagined a male plaintiff, who might be injured if labelled a corrupt carpenter or incompetent physician, but for whom allegations of sexual morality were trifling matters.

But it was different for women. Sexual slurs and insults could destroy their lives and livelihoods. From the 17th century onwards, women began to bring sexual slander cases in great numbers. They sought vindication of their reputations, and compensation for pain and suffering they experienced.

However, as in Hariett Spencer’s case, the civil courts in Britain, United States, Australia and New Zealand had their hands tied by precedent. Unless a woman could show specific economic loss, their actions were thrown out of court and their names remained tarnished.

Read more: From the 16th-century to men’s rights activists, why ‘cuckold’ is the worst thing you can call a man

Pounds, shillings and sense

In 1862, young Elizabeth Bell, a housemaid at the Adelaide Hotel, brought an action for slander against the son of the hotel proprietor, Joseph Allen. Bell testified that Allen had attempted on numerous occasions to “take liberties with her”, which she resisted and as a consequence he said he would take revenge. This he did, telling Bell’s fiancé and others, “with gross and obscene words”, that Bell was “unchaste”. Bell lost her action on the basis she could not sufficiently prove “special damage”.

In 1886, in a high-profile case, Elizabeth Albrecht, a publican, sued Annie Marks Patterson in the Supreme Court of Victoria for stating she had given birth to an illegitimate child, was a “kept woman” and had an affair with the defendant’s husband George Patterson.

Albrecht testified that as a result she had lost business and been shunned by friends and acquaintances. Albrecht’s trial and appeals were plagued with the problem of proving sufficient “special damage”. When Justice Williams finally knocked down her damages, he stated:

The plaintiff [is] obliged to prove special damages, and this must be measured in pounds, shillings and pence. A man [is] not hampered by such a condition. It [is] outrageous that in our present state of civilisation such a barbarous law should exist. It was a relic of the old feudal times, when every woman on an estate was regarded by the baron as his serf, and might be used by him as he pleased, being treated as a mere chattel.

There [is] a total disregard to the rights of women, and I trust that some member of the Legislature would make it his duty to frame a law to amend such a monstrous state of things.

Due to Albrecht’s action, the Victorian Parliament, scrapping the necessity for women to prove “special damage” when bringing cases to silence insults and allegations of sexual immorality.

As a result of the actions of Bell and other women, South Australia scrapped the need to prove financial loss in 1865, Tasmania in 1895 and WA in 1900. These legislative interventions came later than the United States, which began in North Carolina in 1808, but earlier than that UK and NZ, which did not enact Slander of Women Acts until 1891 and 1898 respectively.

Read more: #MeToo in 2021: Global activists continue to build on the movement against sexual violence

‘Slut shaming’ today

In 2005, with the Uniform Defamation Acts, all jurisdictions in Australia abolished the distinction between libel and slander, and therefore the issue of “special damage” fell away.

However, women have continued to bring defamation cases after being “slut shamed”, such as Hanson Young’s action against Leyonhjelm and Emma Husar’s defamation action against Buzzfeed, which was settled out of court.

Now women are fighting again, not just to silence sexual slurs against them, but to tell their own stories of sexual misconduct and abuse without fear of being sued for defamation by their alleged abusers.

Last year, partly in response to defamation law’s chilling effect on #metoo reporting, all Australian states agreed to new defamation reforms, including a defence of “public interest”. It is likely that this defence will make it easier for media organisations to publish stories of sexual misconduct and abuse, particularly when conducted by public figures, if those organisations act “responsibly”.

At the National Press Club today, Grace Tame reaffirmed her commitment to making sure such changes protect and support women in controlling and telling their own stories, saying:

One voice, your voice, and our collective voices can make a difference. We are on the precipice of a revolution whose call to action needs to be heard loud and clear.

Read more: To fix the culture in Canberra, we need to take a sledgehammer to male privilege

– ref. Senator Hanson-Young’s defamation win reminds us how the law can silence sexual slurs and raise survivors’ voices – https://theconversation.com/senator-hanson-youngs-defamation-win-reminds-us-how-the-law-can-silence-sexual-slurs-and-raise-survivors-voices-155134

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Peters, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders University

Review: Guttered, directed by Michelle Ryan. Restless Dance Theatre for Adelaide Festival.

We are greeted at the entrance of Kingpin Norwood. Seasoned bowlers make a beeline for shoe hire while teens flock to the clanging siren call of arcade games. The line between real and theatrical is joyfully blurred as the interactive and immersive performance of Guttered begins.

Upon entering, we are required to show our palms for inspection as a small light dances across our hands. We are assessed: “You look like you’re good at supporting people. You can be on the cheer squad.”

Picked for our respective teams, we are directed towards couches at the end of each lane or a row of chairs towards the back of the room. These opening moments conjure a sense of conversation between audience and dancers.

Questions of who we are

Brightly printed score cards invite us to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 “How often do you feel like a winner?”. These are later perused by a dancer who reviews each score, assessing with a smile and a shrug before moving on to the next.

Glowing bowling bags emit recorded stories and are danced towards the audience, who are invited to lean in and listen. Lean in to the stories of triumph at the bowling alley. Lean in to the reflections of these dancers who face assumptions and judgements about their abilities as artists. Lean in to stories rejecting the stereotype of always being happy, or always being shy. One recording boldly proclaims: “I’m not shy, I’m wild!”

Two dancers rest their chins on a bench and their heads become bowling balls in a syncopated moment of movement. From another angle, their bodies are projected shadows on the wall and the joyful moment is re-framed as a tender tussle between bodies. This duality is the first hint of the challenge director Michelle Ryan creates for the audience, inviting us to consider the possibilities of perspective.
Perhaps what we assume about an action might not be the case?

Two dancers are caressed and held. What begins as affection slowly morphs into control and possession. Hands are repeatedly drawn over faces and arms are continuously wrapped around bodies. The dancers can no longer move of their own free will.

When is well meaning helpfulness not helpful? When it denies someone the dignity of risk and opportunities to fail.

A poignant moment begins as a ramp is placed at the top of a lane. The bowler doesn’t want the ramp. The worker insists. The bowler is emphatic, they do not want the ramp, get it out of my way. The worker insists. The ensuing repetition and tussle is squirm inducing. Can’t the worker see she doesn’t want the ramp? Can’t they see this is insulting? Can’t they see? Then the reflection hits square and centre — when have I not seen?

Ryan has created the perfect embodiment of the suffocation of “support”, subverting assumptions about helpfulness in the process.

Bowling ally as performer

It is a delight to see the architecture of the bowling alley used for performance. Sweeping sequences shared by the entire ensemble use the separated lanes to represent individuality and finding your own path, and later provide a grid like structure for unified movement.

Dancers bodies lie in the gutters, backs arch over ball chutes, shoes slide along the highly oiled wood. The familiar features of the bowling alley are transformed into theatrical co-performers.

This is no doubt a testament to the seamless design by Meg Wilson, evocative music soundscape by Jason Sweeney and nuanced lighting design by Geoff Cobham, working together to direct and guide the audiences’ eyes throughout the performance. It is hard to fight the urge to jump up and join in. Luckily, we don’t have to resist: members of the audience are periodically invited up for (COVID-safe) participation.

The ensuing cheers as balls crash into gutters and strikes are bowled create a thrilling sense of celebration.

Juxtaposing the energetic playfulness of the ensemble are a series of solos and duets. These moments punctuate the performance, offering up stories of love, self-determination and triumph.

In one such moment, a solo dancer tenderly removes a glowing bowling ball from a bag and places it on the floor. In a moment of pure delightful the ball begins to move, seemingly of its own volition. The dancer follows the path of the ball dutifully and, when it occasionally dips into the gutter, gently retrieves it, comforts it in an embrace, and returns it to the floor so it can continue its journey.

It is deceptively simple, and entirely compelling.

Guttered plays until March 14.

– ref. Guttered: a joyful immersion and subversion of expectations between the bowling lanes – https://theconversation.com/guttered-a-joyful-immersion-and-subversion-of-expectations-between-the-bowling-lanes-156204

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Rich, Senior lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University

The Biden administration hasn’t wasted time in making a significant shift in US policy toward the Middle East.

Over the past week, the US has launched reprisal strikes against Iranian targets in Syria and released damning intelligence overtly linking the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Both decisions represent an important departure from the Trump administration, which acted recklessly in its actions toward Iran and enabled the worst impulses of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy.

Perhaps less obvious, though, are how Biden’s actions differ from those of his former boss, Barack Obama. Biden is already adopting a bolder approach to dealing with troublesome states than Obama was ever willing to.

A disciplined approach towards Iran

Biden’s decision to launch strikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria showcases what has been described by the US political scientist Joseph Nye as “smart power”. This is when hard power is employed alongside soft power in a carefully calculated way to affect a diplomatic outcome.

In this case, the US worked collaboratively with the Iraqi government and intelligence officials to develop and execute the planned strikes in Syria.

Read more: From ‘America first’ to ‘America together’: who is Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for secretary of state?

The strikes themselves, which hit militia logistical and staging targets in Syria, were designed to signal US resolve to stand up to Tehran’s provocations. At the same time, they were calibrated in a way that would de-escalate tensions, avoiding a more direct attack on Iran that could provoke its leadership further.

Washington clearly telegraphed its actions as a direct response to attacks by Iranian-backed militias against US targets in Iraq in mid-February.

Within the context of the wider negotiations around Iran’s nuclear program, Biden is clearly communicating that certain behaviours will not be tolerated and Iran cannot affect the negotiations through destabilising behaviour.

Compared to Trump’s bullying behaviour

Contrast this with a similar action undertaken by the Trump administration in early 2020 — the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.

Here, the US acted unilaterally and provided no forewarning to Baghdad. It also violated its ally’s sovereignty in a manner that damaged its domestic credibility and stoked Iraqi outrage.

The attack was deliberately provocative, brazenly killing an Iranian national hero in a manner that challenged the domestic legitimacy of the regime in Tehran. This forced a rapid Iranian response that could have easily spiralled out of control if not for pure luck.

The strike itself also lacked a clear reasoning beyond the Trump administration’s ambiguous campaign of applying “maximum pressure” against Iran. Indeed, Trump officials made several contradictory justifications for the action, none of which were convincing. Combined with Trump’s personal gloating over the killing, this led to a widespread perception of illegality on the part of the United States.

And coming at a time when the Trump administration was trying to push Iran back to the negotiating table over its nuclear program, the strike had little meaningful effect. It only served to undermine US credibility by showcasing Washington as a shortsighted bully.

Put simply, Biden’s recent air strike was a wrap on the knuckles, designed to urge Iran towards a more constructive path of engagement with the US.

By contrast, Trump’s action was a wild slap in the face, designed to hurt and insult, but offering little credible way forward in the US-Iran relationship.

Read more: Political assassinations were once unthinkable. Why the US killing of Soleimani sets a worrying precedent

Acting to restrain Saudi Arabia

Biden has also diverged sharply from Trump in his handling so far of Saudi Arabia.

By releasing US intelligence linking Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Khashoggi’s killing, Washington made it clear that its days of running interference for Saudi Araba’s own provocative actions were drawing to a close.

Similarly, Biden has also indicated that while he remains committed to Saudi national defence, he expects the kingdom to wind down its ruinous six-year war in Yemen and embrace a more progressive position on universal human rights.

Biden’s commitment to these ideals, combined with the increasingly anti-Saudi sentiment across the other branches of the US government, suggest the president will have an extensive array of tools to punish the Saudis for their intransigence, should it come to that.

Obama’s more cautious approach

Biden’s divergences with the Obama administration in its Middle East policy are more subtle, yet just as important.

Generally speaking, Biden is considered to be the spiritual successor to Obama, his former commander-in-chief. But his own style, approach and worldview differ in significant ways.

In the case of Iran, Biden has shown that unlike Obama, he is willing to use force within the wider context of multilateral negotiations, and is less dovish about the threats posed by potential Iranian reprisals.

Indeed, Obama was strongly adverse to employing a “smart power” approach when it came to Tehran, worrying that any use of force would jeopardise diplomatic wrangling around the Iran nuclear agreement.

Such reticence was reflected in a number of major policy decisions by Obama in response to the norm-breaking activities of other states. This included his infamous walking back from the “red line” over Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own people and his lack of response to Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

This inaction generated a perception of US passivity and risk adversity that emboldened its rivals and undermined the confidence of its allies.

While Obama was willing to rhetorically protest against Saudi provocations and human rights abuses, there was little serious effort on the part of the administration to materially curtail them.

Indeed, Obama oversaw what was at the time the largest-ever US arms sales to the kingdom and supported its war in Yemen, even after numerous high-profile atrocities came to light.

In contrast to Obama’s hypocrisy on Saudi Arabia, Biden appears to be gearing up to walk the talk. Not only is he using the bully pulpit of the presidency to call out bad behaviour, he has enacted specific policies to discourage such activities.

Read more: Arab Spring: when the US needed to step up, it stood back – now, all eyes are on Biden

A difference in styles

The key difference in the characters of the two presidents is boldness.

While deeply thoughtful and reflective, Obama was known at times for timidity and paralysis-by-analysis in foreign affairs. (This was in stark contrast to his decisive actions against terrorist and insurgent groups).

This left his administration with a track record of missed foreign policy opportunities, as he mulled the pros and cons.

Biden, by contrast, has a longstanding political history for calculated risk-taking. While he has not always been correct in his decisions, he is willing to back up his words with actions.

Biden fundamentally believes in the liberal international order and is willing to employ smart power to defend and reinforce it where he feels necessary. He will also not likely baulk from the hard realities and choices such an approach will inevitably bring.

This is what both the Saudis and the Iranians are now discovering.

– ref. Biden is already carving out a different Middle East policy from Trump — and even Obama – https://theconversation.com/biden-is-already-carving-out-a-different-middle-east-policy-from-trump-and-even-obama-156206

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

New Zealand’s COVID-19 response might be the envy of the world, but that hasn’t stopped New Zealanders themselves getting angry about it this week.

In short, there appeared to have been breaches of isolation orders by people linked to the Papatoetoe cluster that sent Auckland into level 3 alert last weekend.

It subsequently emerged that confused messaging and contradictory advice might have been responsible. The official Unite against COVID-19 website appeared to contradict the prime minister’s claims that a KFC worker had broken the rules and failed to isolate.

Public health and political considerations collided and 1.5 million Aucklanders were left wondering precisely what happened that caused them to be locked down again.

Clear laws, unclear communication

This latest controversy is part of a wider fraying of trust as a few push back against the rules, including an Australian woman in managed isolation refusing a COVID-19 test and ongoing problems with mask wearing and tracer app scanning.

Between May and September last year, with the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act in force, some 1,000 people were charged with breaches of the law, with 159 convictions.

Read more: Before we introduce vaccine passports we need to know how they’ll be used

As well as that piece of law, the Health Act, the Epidemic Preparedness Act and the Civil Defence and Emergency Act are all relevant to New Zealand’s pandemic response. Even the Crimes Act could be used in cases of criminal nuisance or when people knowingly endanger the lives, safety or health of the public or an individual.

Simply put, there is no shortage of law. There may, however, be a shortage of order. The government needs to accept responsibility for this, as it has made two mistakes.

‘Calling out’ rule-breakers is not enough

Firstly, New Zealanders have been urged to call out rule-breakers without this being an explicit instruction to tell the authorities.

If there is no shared bridge of reason and respect, this kind of message from those in power can backfire. Situations involving individuals and crowds, armed with a sense of self-importance or a belief they should enforce the rules, can become dangerous.

At a time when tension is already elevated in the community, what might start with the best of intentions can end up with undesirable and disproportionate outcomes. From confrontations over mask wearing to social media pile-ons over what someone may or may not have said or done, the risks are high.

Read more: Widespread testing in Auckland now key to ruling out possible undetected COVID-19 outbreak

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has consistently emphasised the importance of kindness and would not condone anything dangerous or distasteful. But simultaneously encouraging the public to confront rule-breakers while not requiring them to involve the authorities is problematic.

To safely harness public sentiment to ensure compliance with the rules, any such messages must be tethered to encouraging people to contact the correct authorities and to work through specific channels.

This largely occurred during the main level 4 lockdown last year. A website was even set up to report price-gouging.

Increasing the awareness, utilisation and resourcing of the existing and specific COVID-19 compliance portal would go a long way in harnessing the knowledge and concerns of the public — and help unclog the 105 non-emergency line the police use.

Who makes the decision to prosecute?

The second mistake the government made lies in the notion that decisions about prosecution might rest with Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield.

His stated reluctance to refer self-isolation breaches to the police is a problem, even if legally correct. While his reasoning is sound — this could deter people from coming forward in the first place — the opposite could also be argued: if people think there are no consequences for wrongful behaviour, they will not behave.

The problem here is not which side of that debate is right or wrong. It is about who makes that decision. If the law has been broken, it should be the police, the judiciary and the legal system that deal with those questions.

A director-general of health should not be making decisions about law and order — any more than a police commissioner should be making decisions about vaccines.

If there is evidence that laws have been broken, especially when public health and safety are concerned, there should be no discretion over whether that information is handed to the correct authorities for them to deal with.

Read more: A year on from the arrival of COVID-19 in NZ: 5 lessons for 2021 and beyond

Trust the existing system

There are two reasons this is important. First, the mechanisms around law and order are designed to be independent from political processes. Second, they have been built over hundreds of years of legal precedent and are robust.

The police operate in accordance with strict principles that govern their mandate. Similarly, the prosecution services operate within sets of guidelines and rules, taking into account the chances of conviction and the public interest.

If necessary, in certain circumstances, even the attorney-general can step in and direct a stay of proceedings.

If and when sentencing takes place, considerations of purpose and principle must be taken into account to ensure justice is done — for both society and the person who broke the law.

We should beware of employing untethered public anger or suspicion as a compliance tool. The existing system, anchored within our free democracy, works very well. We should empower it and let the correct authorities do their jobs.

– ref. Lots of law, not enough order — the government must be clearer about dealing with COVID rule-breakers – https://theconversation.com/lots-of-law-not-enough-order-the-government-must-be-clearer-about-dealing-with-covid-rule-breakers-156370

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University

Review: The Cherry Orchard, directed by Clare Watson. Black Swan State Theatre Company for the Perth Festival.

Stories get told over and over, each version sitting atop every other in a never-ending palimpsest. Extracting and extending the metaphors of Anton Chekhov’s classic 1904 play The Cherry Orchard, this production adapted by Adriane Daff and Katherine Tonkin and directed by Clare Watson is as much about its staging at a former hospital as it is about the story and characters.

Reimagined in 1980s Western Australia, the parallels to Chekhov’s treatise on class and land work well: the mining boom, the influx of property developers, Australia (specifically WA) winning the America’s Cup, the Black Tuesday stock market crash, the gross short-sightedness of the Bicentennial celebrating only “200 years of Australian history”.

Set in Manjimup, 300 kilometres south of Perth, known for its annual cherry festival and familiar to all West Australians as the name on the cherry boxes they buy for Christmas, act one begins in the old hospital’s hall.

A mishmash of what was there and what set designer Zoë Atkinson has added, the hall represents a dilapidated home on a country estate. The act seems to be performed under the natural light gradually receding as twilight approaches.

With the audience seated around the edges, our views vary between extreme close-up or way-down-the-other-end. This shifting perspective reinforces the sense nobody in this story ever has the full picture. Wireless microphones strike a disconcerting, disembodied note.

Characters out of time

For act two, we amble down a grassy slope on the bank of the Swan River to sit on fold-up chairs or picnic blankets. The characters gather around a barbecue, wandering in and out of the scene while the sun slowly disappears.

The adaptation has to work the hardest against this site. The strong evening breeze and pace of the setting sun don’t always sync with the script.

Such disconnect, plus the inclusion of original Russian character names in an otherwise “Aussie-fied” script and the disembodied amplified voices, give the piece a televisual quality, like images from some long-forgotten Australian TV show, swarming with fuzzy memories of big hair, Laura Ashley dresses and Casio keyboards.

Peppered throughout are montages of leisurely set-ups and drunken parties to a soundtrack of 80s pop classics. These montages slow the show down, but there is a payoff in this playing with time. Watching these people go about the ordinary business of their lives, it is as if we are hanging out with them.

It also echoes Chekhov’s use of time: his characters act as if they have all the time in the world, until it suddenly catches up with them.

Act three, outside against a festoon-lit verandah, brings us to the tail end of yet another party as the characters, resplendent in fancy-dress costumes, wait for news of the orchard’s sale.

For Lopakhin (Ben Mortley), the “cashed-up bogan” neighbour, it is the culmination of his class-war tightrope walk. Emboldened by his purchase of the property, he cuts sick to Talking Heads’ Burning Down the House. A cross between David Byrne and a drunken used-car salesman, it is a splendidly gauche one-man celebration of his lifelong ambition for status and belonging.

Finally, we return to the hall. Sold, the house has been stripped of furniture and light, and reverberates with the sound of cherry trees being chopped down outside in the long-gone twilight.

Stories out of place

Many of the characters are disconnected from their sense of place.

The matriarch and landowner Ranyevskaya, played with a sexual weariness and fierce fragility by Hayley McElhinney, is a Marilyn-Monroe-little-girl-lost superimposed over Madonna’s Material Girl. In the action to save her home she is pulled taut between inertia and grotesque desperation.

Sam Longley’s long legs, improvisational skills and comedy chops are put to great use as Yepikhodov, the family’s accountant. From his squeaky-shoed entrance to the image of him in fancy dress as a pickle eating a pickle he is an ugly cry waiting to happen.

These dislocated characters make you think about the rite-of-passage exodus from country towns to the big smoke, or from Perth to the east coast. But the play also addresses bigger pictures of displacement: Varya, Ranyevskaya’s adopted daughter, is played by Asian-Australian actor Grace Chow, and Trofimov, the perpetual uni student is played Mark Nannup, a Yamatji Nyoongar man.

Trofimov moves between the philosophical (“Real progress is possible, but you have to give something up”) and the realistic (“Maybe you shouldn’t buy another boat”), and most directly addresses the play’s questions about land “ownership”.

That much of the adaptation’s gravitas is put into the mouth of the only First Nations character makes absolute sense, but it sometimes seems like a burden he carries alone.

Even so, Daff and Tonkin’s adaptation brilliantly occupies the land created by Chekhov and it serves them well.

WA in the 80s is the perfect time and place to tease out the themes of Chekhov’s play. Pining for St Kilda in lieu of Moscow reeks of the requisite cultural shame.

Wrestling with our cultural inheritance should be a core part of the business of our state theatre company. In sewing together these elements of personal, regional and national identity, this production’s conversation with Chekhov’s classic has done just that.

The Cherry Orchard plays until March 20.

– ref. Pining for St Kilda instead of Moscow: The Cherry Orchard grapples with our cultural inheritance – https://theconversation.com/pining-for-st-kilda-instead-of-moscow-the-cherry-orchard-grapples-with-our-cultural-inheritance-153198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Drum, Lecturer Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame Australia

Time is running out for the Western Australian Liberal Party. Polling points to a massive Labor landslide at the upcoming state election on March 13.

Following last month’s Newspoll, which put Labor in front by 68-32, two-party-preferred, Liberal opposition leader Zak Kirkup abandoned any public pretence he might actually win the election.

“I accept it’s not my time,” he told The West Australian newspaper last week.

Not following the election script

While not entirely unprecedented (then Labor leader Geoff Gallop said the Court government would be “returned comfortably” three days before the 1996 WA election), it is nonetheless an extraordinary admission from Kirkup. It departs from established practice where political leaders try to preserve hope amongst their faithful, even in the face of extreme adversity.

Some voters may applaud Kirkup — who only took up the Liberal leadership last November — for his honesty. This was certainly the editorial view of The West Australian. It is also a definitive way of capturing the “underdog” status going into election day and emphasising the importance of checks and balances in our political system, while highlighting the importance of the upper house race as well.

But there are significant risks to this approach. One is that voters may feel its disrespectful to the vast majority of people who are yet to vote. Another is, why would voters take any notice of Liberal party policy announcements, if they won’t be in government to deliver on any of them?

Under the circumstances, the Liberal Party could be forgiven for pitching their policy settings firmly towards their own base. Curiously, their one signature policy involves shutting WA’s coal-fired power plants by 2025, backing in renewable energy generation, and achieving net zero carbon emissions in the state electricity system by 2030.

It has certainly attracted the ire of federal colleagues, with Liberal MP Andrew Hastie describing it as a “lemon”. For their part, the McGowan government has borrowed lines from the federal Coalition’s playbook, arguing the policy would see,

many, many billions of extra debt, a huge increase in family power bills, rolling blackouts across the state and huge job losses.

More at stake than forming government

While the headline result of the election looks like a foregone conclusion, there are plenty of reasons for the Liberals to continue to fight hard for every vote.

The first is to try to stop Labor from winning control of the Legislative Council (upper house). While the Coalition almost always win control of the upper house when in government in WA, this is extremely rare for Labor.

A Labor majority (or a Labor-Greens majority) could pave the way for electoral reform to remove undemocratic malapportionment in WA. In the upper house, one regional six-member electorate has fewer than 70,000 voters, while three six-member metropolitan ones have more than 400,000 each.

Read more: Whopping lead for Labor ahead of WA election, but federal Newspoll deadlocked at 50-50

However, this malapportionment is so extreme, it means even a Labor landslide doesn’t guarantee an upper house majority in its own right. The Labor party currently has just 14 seats in the 36 seat chamber, despite winning 41 of the 59 seats in the lower house in 2017.

To win 19 seats they need to pick up additional seats in five of the six upper house regions. They already hold three seats in both the east metropolitan and south metropolitan regions and the quota for four is a whopping 57.14% of the primary vote. This provides us with some sense of magnitude of the victory required to achieve a basic majority.

Being able to be an effective opposition

A second critical reason for the Liberal party to chase every vote is to avoid a wipe out that is so bad it makes them ineffective as an opposition.

The Liberal Party currently has just 13 seats in the 59 seat Legislative Assembly, which is the legacy of a very poor performance at the last election. While they look very likely to sink further, they would be desperate to avoid the most catastrophic outcome — a return of fewer seats in the lower house than the Nationals and the loss of official opposition status.

There is also the possibility their numbers could be so low as to deny them the resources normally allotted to parliamentary leaders and whips as set out by the Salaries and Allowances Act.

This means they would have very few staff and minimal funds to hold the government to account. It also means their capacity to probe during question time and ask useful Questions on Notice would be limited. They would also have a very thin presence on parliamentary committees.

Thinking ahead to 2025

There is also a third, compelling reason for Kirkup and the Liberals to avoid electoral oblivion.

While the modern electorate is a volatile one, if they win just a handful of seats in 2021, the task of winning in 2025 would also become much more difficult — the Liberals may face at least three terms in opposition.

Read more: Labor wins WA in a landslide as One Nation fails to land a blow

An electoral wipe-out could ruin the careers of future leadership aspirants and ensure that the next Liberal premier is yet to enter parliament.

– ref. The Liberals face electoral wipeout in WA, but have 3 good reasons to keep campaigning – https://theconversation.com/the-liberals-face-electoral-wipeout-in-wa-but-have-3-good-reasons-to-keep-campaigning-156123

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

A substantial minority of Chinese-Australians have experienced a backlash from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 deterioration in bilateral relations, according to a survey from the Lowy Institute.

In the poll, 37% said they had been treated differently or less favourably in the past year because of their heritage and 31% had been called offensive names.

Nearly one in five (18%) said they had been physically threatened or attacked.

When those who’d had bad experiences were asked what they thought caused or contributed to that (COVID, Australia-China relations, other factors) 66% said COVID and 52% nominated the bilateral relationship, while 13% said other factors. Of the latter, 28% said racism.

On the positive side, 40% said someone had expressed support for them because of their heritage.

The Lowy report, Being Chinese in Australia, is based on a poll of 1040 who self-identify as of Chinese heritage. Australia has more than 1.2 million people of Chinese heritage. The poll, which received funding from the federal Department of Home Affairs, was done in November, in English and Mandarin.

It found some significant differences in attitudes and on policy issues between the Chinese-Australians and the general population.

While most Chinese-Australians feel a sense of belonging in Australia (71%), they “also feel a sense of belonging to China, and that affects how they view that country,” according to the report authored by Natasha Kassam and Jennifer Hsu.

The poll found 68% had a sense of belonging to the Chinese people, while 65% had a sense of belonging to China. This was stronger among recent migrants (those coming between 2010 and 2019) of whom more than eight in ten had a sense of belonging to China.

“Levels of trust in China are much higher in Chinese-Australian communities than in the broader Australian population,” the poll found.

“Chinese-Australians are more likely than other Australians to see China as an economic partner rather than as a security threat to Australia.

“They are divided in their views on China’s authoritarian system of government in light of COVID-19, and only a third say democracy is preferable to any other kind of government. In comparison, 71% of the broader Australian population express a preference for democracy. But Chinese-Australians’ perspectives on systems of government do not extend to all aspects of the Chinese system: many are critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“For example, the majority of Chinese-Australians support sanctions on Chinese officials associated with human rights abuses, and want Australia to reduce its economic dependence on China.”

Less than half (46%) of the Chinese-Australians were concerned about China’s influence in Australian politics, while in a parallel national poll, 82% of the general population expressed concern about Chinese influence in Australia’s political processes.

The vast majority (84%) have almost no contact with the Chinese embassy or consulate and 75% say they have limited or no contact with Chinese community organisations.

Reflecting the “dual ties” Chinese-Australians feel, 74% trust Australia to act responsibly in the world – and 72% trust China to do so. In contrast, the 2020 Lowy poll found only 23% of the general population trust China to act responsibly in the world.

“The majority of Chinese-Australians see China as a benign presence in the region, on a par with Japan , India and the United States.”

The divergence in views between the Chinese-Australians and the general community is particularly notable in relation to systems of government.

“A third of Chinese-Australians (36%) say ‘democracy is preferable to any other kind of government’, a far smaller proportion than the 71% of the broader Australian population expressing that view in the parallel survey.

“Four in ten Chinese-Australians (41%) say ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’ and 22% say ‘for someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have’.

“These findings align with academic research indicating that migrants leaving authoritarian regimes to settle in a stable democracy do not see democracy as the only game in town’.”

Kassam says that “While the Chinese communist party seeks to collapse the diversity of Chinese-Australian communities into a unified whole, these poll results show the opposite.

“Depending on waves of migration, country of origin, visa status and age, Chinese-Australian have different perspectives on issues from foreign interference to China’s human rights record.”

– ref. Chinese-Australians have a sense of dual ‘belonging’: Lowy poll – https://theconversation.com/chinese-australians-have-a-sense-of-dual-belonging-lowy-poll-156317

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neeraja Sanmuhanathan, Senior Sexual Assault Counsellor, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Lecturer in Counselling, University of Notre Dame Australia

As a senior sexual assault counsellor working with Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, I often sit across from people on the worst day of their life.

The trauma of being sexually assaulted is an experience filled with violence. It transforms a person’s sense of safety, their worldview and their relationships with others.

When survivors come forward to disclose a sexual assault, they are frequently met with more questions than support in our communities. As a result, silence can be a form of survival.

Victim-blaming is one reason for this. Victim-blaming is a part of rape culture which reinforces the idea a woman is solely responsible for her own safety. One in eight Australians believe if a woman is raped while she is affected by alcohol or other drugs, she is at least partly responsible.

Empathy for the perpetrator contributes to victim-blaming. Victim-blaming can also occur when we try to distance ourselves from the horrific nature of the crime. We can’t imagine this happening to us, therefore it must have happened to someone who is inherently different to us. It can be hard to accept these violations take place in our very own backyard.

Last month, former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins publicly disclosed she was sexually assaulted, allegedly by a male colleague at Parliament House.

Higgins’s brave disclosure is in spite of the social factors that exist to silence survivors.

It’s impossible to be ‘the model victim’

In Australian society, we often expect sexual assault survivors to show just enough emotion for us to believe them, but not so much they seem hysterical or attention-seeking.

The timing of the disclosure should be just right or we question why they didn’t come forward soon enough. They should be “model citizens” or we question their credibility. If they were intoxicated at the time of the assault, we question their memory. And if sober, we question their choices.

The Goldilocks dilemma of being the perfect victim or survivor is extraordinarily difficult to navigate. It’s little wonder many victims wait decades to come forward, or decide not to report a sexual assault at all.

With public attention focused on recent allegations of sexual assault, it’s the right time to be asking why survivors don’t always come forward straight away.

When a disclosure is met with negative responses, it can lead to feelings of shame for survivors. Negative responses to a disclosure have been labelled as the “second rape” incident, a phenomenon known as secondary victimisation. Survivors who experience negative social reactions after coming forward are more likely to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In Australia, sexual assault cases have low conviction rates and the judicial process can be lengthy. Data from criminal courts in 2017-18, published by the Australia Bureau of Statistics, found it took an average of 40 weeks to secure a conviction for a sexual assault. The low rates of conviction, combined with the prolonged and complex judicial process, result in reduced reporting.

Indigenous, culturally and linguistically diverse, and LGBTIQA+ women may face further reporting barriers. These can include greater stigma in their communities, reduced access to services, and previous negative experience with the judicial system.

We need to build a culture of acceptance

In my role as a sexual assault counsellor in community health, I practise “trauma-informed care”. This is a survivor-oriented approach and is underpinned by principles of safety, empowerment, choice, collaboration, and understanding of culture. It places the survivor as the expert on their own life.

It is important for sexual assault survivors to be heard, to be believed, and to be told what happened is not their fault.

Many women feel angry at themselves they’d frozen rather than fighting back during an assault. However, the act of freezing is the most protective response we have to avoid further injury when in danger.

During the counselling session, we talk about the option to collect evidence, disclose to the police, and how to safely tell loved ones if that’s what a survivor wants to do.

Maximising choices for survivors in every decision allows them to feel empowered and gain back control.

Statistics may shock us, but stories provide a face to suffering. Every survivor who shares a story of sexual assault indirectly speaks to another survivor and gently reminds them they are not alone.

However, every negative response also speaks to a survivor. There is no perfect victim or survivor, and no perfect trauma response. As a society, we have a collective responsibility to create safe spaces that help build a culture of acceptance rather than a culture of shame.

A survivor’s choice to disclose should be solely based on their readiness to share their story.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, please call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. I’m a sexual assault counsellor. Here’s why it’s so hard for survivors to come forward, and what happens when they do – https://theconversation.com/im-a-sexual-assault-counsellor-heres-why-its-so-hard-for-survivors-to-come-forward-and-what-happens-when-they-do-156038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monique Retamal, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

We all know it’s wrong to toss your rubbish into the ocean or another natural place. But it might surprise you to learn some plastic waste ends up in the environment, even when we thought it was being recycled.

Our study, published today, investigated how the global plastic waste trade contributes to marine pollution.

We found plastic waste most commonly leaks into the environment at the country to which it’s shipped. Plastics which are of low value to recyclers, such as lids and polystyrene foam containers, are most likely to end up polluting the environment.

The export of unsorted plastic waste from Australia is being phased out – and this will help address the problem. But there’s a long way to go before our plastic is recycled in a way that does not harm nature.

Know your plastics

Plastic waste collected for recycling is often sold for reprocessing in Asia. There, the plastics are sorted, washed, chopped, melted and turned into flakes or pellets. These can be sold to manufacturers to create new products.

The global recycled plastics market is dominated by two major plastic types:

• polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which in 2017 comprised 55% of the recyclable plastics market. It’s used in beverage bottles and takeaway food containers and features a “1” on the packaging

• high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which comprises about 33% of the recyclable plastics market. HDPE is used to create pipes and packaging such as milk and shampoo bottles, and is identified by a “2”.

The next two most commonly traded types of plastics, each with 4% of the market, are:

• polypropylene or “5”, used in containers for yoghurt and spreads

• low-density polyethylene known as “4”, used in clear plastic films on packaging.

The remaining plastic types comprise polyvinyl chloride (3), polystyrene (6), other mixed plastics (7), unmarked plastics and “composites”. Composite plastic packaging is made from several materials not easily separated, such as long-life milk containers with layers of foil, plastic and paper.

This final group of plastics is not generally sought after as a raw material in manufacturing, so has little value to recyclers.

Read more: China’s recycling ‘ban’ throws Australia into a very messy waste crisis

Shifting plastic tides

China banned the import of plastic waste in January 2018 to prevent the receipt of low-value plastics and to stimulate the domestic recycling industry.

Following the bans, the global plastic waste trade shifted towards Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The largest exporters of waste plastics in 2019 were Europe, Japan and the US. Australia exported plastics primarily to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Australia’s waste export ban recently became law. From July this year, only plastics sorted into single resin types can be exported; mixed plastic bales cannot. From July next year, plastics must be sorted, cleaned and turned into flakes or pellets to be exported.

This may help address the problem of recyclables becoming marine pollution. But it will require a significant expansion of Australian plastic reprocessing capacity.

What we found

Our study was funded by the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. It involved interviews with trade experts, consultants, academics, NGOs and recyclers (in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand) and an extensive review of existing research.

We found when it comes to the international plastic trade, plastics most often leak into the environment at the destination country, rather than at the country of origin or in transit. Low-value or “residual” plastics – those left over after more valuable plastic is recovered for recycling – are most likely to end up as pollution. So how does this happen?

In Southeast Asia, often only registered recyclers are allowed to import plastic waste. But due to high volumes, registered recyclers typically on-sell plastic bales to informal processors.

Interviewees said when plastic types were considered low value, informal processors frequently dumped them at uncontrolled landfills or into waterways. Sometimes the waste is burned.

Plastics stockpiled outdoors can be blown into the environment, including the ocean. Burning the plastic releases toxic smoke, causing harm to human health and the environment.

Interviewees also said when informal processing facilities wash plastics, small pieces end up in wastewater, which is discharged directly into waterways, and ultimately, the ocean.

However, interviewees from Southeast Asia said their own domestic waste management was a greater source of ocean pollution.

A market failure

The price of many recycled plastics has crashed in recent years due to oversupply, import restrictions and falling oil prices, (amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic). However clean bales of PET and HDPE are still in demand.

In Australia, material recovery facilities currently sort PET and HDPE into separate bales. But small contaminants of other materials (such as caps and plastic labels) remain, making it harder to recycle into high quality new products.

Before the price of many recycled plastics dropped, Australia baled and traded all other resin types together as “mixed plastics”. But the price for mixed plastics has fallen to zero and they’re now largely stockpiled or landfilled in Australia.

Several Australian facilities are, however, investing in technology to sort polypropylene so it can be recovered for recycling.

Doing plastics differently

Exporting countries can help reduce the flow of plastics to the ocean by better managing trade practices. This might include:

• improving collection and sorting in export countries

• checking destination processing and monitoring

• checking plastic shipments at export and import

• improving accountability for shipments.

But this won’t be enough. The complexities involved in the global recycling trade mean we must rethink packaging design. That means using fewer low-value plastic and composites, or better yet, replacing single-use plastic packaging with reusable options.

The authors would like to acknowledge research contributions from Asia Pacific Waste Consultants (APWC) – Dr Amardeep Wander, Jack Whelan and Anne Prince, as well as Phil Manners at CIE.

Read more: Here’s what happens to our plastic recycling when it goes offshore

– ref. Think all your plastic is being recycled? New research shows it can end up in the ocean – https://theconversation.com/think-all-your-plastic-is-being-recycled-new-research-shows-it-can-end-up-in-the-ocean-155208

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cody Reynolds, Researcher & Educator, University of Newcastle

“She’s more crazy than she is female.”

So declared a senior student in a furious critique of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. The classroom was entirely male, myself included. As the teacher, I mediated discussion but had come to expect opposition to conversations about gender in the all-boys’ Sydney private school.

My research into the presumptive biases of single-sex education has affirmed a culture of resistance to talking about gender in all-male schools. Comments like this one can’t be dismissed or excused as teenage bravado. They’re part of an enduring ethos that continues to protect male privilege in the private school system.

Single-sex schools across Sydney are reckoning with sexual violence disclosures in response to a heartbreaking petition from more than 3,000 women. Hundreds have shared their testimony in a document created by a former Kambala schoolgirl Chanel Contos demanding better education on sexual consent.

Contos also calls for a change to the pervasive misogyny of single-sex male schools. And here, we need to recognise the biases that infuse all aspects of school life, including classroom teaching.

My research has found the learning differences assumed by teachers and school leaders in gender-segregated schools impact both programming and practice. In an all-male context, this can marginalise women and galvanise destructive gender stereotypes.

Male schools favour male texts

Neuroscientific research has shown any disparities between male and female ways of thinking are irrelevant to the psychology of learning. In spite of this, studies demonstrate how assumptions about gender guide the type of content selected for study.

A report from the University of Melbourne recognises the enduring misconception among teachers and school leaders that

male – rather than female – authors and creators are more equipped to write about and imagine major social, political and cultural issues.

For the English classroom, where my work is focused, the most visible indicator of this belief is the choice of texts to study. In a single-sex male context there is a tendency to favour fiction deemed appropriately masculine, and literature written by male authors. The result is that gender becomes both invisible and irrelevant to classroom criticism.

This is contrasted in co-educational and single-sex female school settings, where text choice is less likely to be guided by “the inevitable privileges of being a boy”. In these contexts gender remains visible and valuable to classroom discussion, but does not directly inform content selection or curriculum programming.

Read more: Friday essay: the literary canon is exhilarating and disturbing and we need to read it

In 2015 and 2016 I surveyed more than 130 English teachers and curriculum leaders across public and independent schools. I wanted to investigate whether teaching practices beyond content selection were influenced by gender assumptions in all-male environments.

The interviews were striking in their expectations of gender and student success. There was a near unanimous assumption by teachers I spoke to across all school systems that male students should be steered away from overtly gendered literary experiences.

The teachers I spoke to believed male students were more likely to be successful in assessments if they avoided analyses of gender, including their own. While there is no quantifiable data to support this claim, it is almost impossible to measure student achievement separate from the acknowledged biases of practice.

Many teachers speculated that students in all-male schools seldom had cause to recognise or reflect on gender entitlement. As such, they were likely to be limited in their capacity for literary discussion on this aspect of identity.

Female literature and male bias

The issue might suggest a simple solution. By including more literature by female authors and about female experiences, we could seemingly break the silence of gender in male single-sex schools. Unfortunately, the problem is more profound.

The teachers I interviewed from all-male schools spoke about gender being sidelined, even in female-focused texts. They noted in these lessons, discussion shifted to favour other textual concerns, or to prioritise a male perspective of the central female experience.

These observations again differ from research in all-girls schools and in co-educational schools. Here all students appear to benefit from the presence of female students and the lived female experience to which they are able to give voice.

My research has affirmed these outcomes in Australian classroom practice. As a case study, the HSC English Advanced syllabus prescribes a comparative analysis of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and Ted Hughes’s Birthday Letters. Responses I collected from all-male schools showed they were inclined to marginalise Plath’s womanhood, and favour Hughes’s account of their violent marriage.

Read more: Elite boys’ schools like St Kevin’s were set up to breed hyper-masculinity, which can easily turn toxic

In contrast, responses from all-female and co-educational schools more often presented extensive discussion of Plath’s feminist identity, even when those responses were composed by male students.

More disturbingly, several female teachers I interviewed said they felt intimidated when asked to discuss constructions of gender in all-male school environments. They said a small but vocal portion of older adolescents would become aggressively oppositional, and assert such content was only included as “tokenism” towards a “feminist agenda”.

One senior English teacher based in Sydney’s east recalled a close study of Ophelia’s suicide in Hamlet. The discussion centred on the possibility Ophelia’s death was the ultimate act of passivity. As a woman, the responsibly that burdens Ophelia is too great, and suicide is her only escape. In the all-male class, a student argued he would only write about the sexual connotations of this reading if the teacher could promise his essay would be marked by a male member of staff.

It matters

These accounts are troubling. Dangerous learning assumptions indicate the need for reform across curriculum programming and teaching practice. But their innate influence also hints at a clear path for improvement.

Compelling scholarship shows fiction affects students’ social empathy. The English classroom can foster inclusion and develop appreciation for gender equity.

The need for our private school system to denounce the most conspicuous elements of misogyny is urgent, but we must also contend with the quietly profound role classroom learning plays in affirming or challenging an institutional culture of oppression.

Read more: Not as simple as ‘no means no’: what young people need to know about consent

– ref. We can see the gender bias of all-boys’ schools by the books they study in English – https://theconversation.com/we-can-see-the-gender-bias-of-all-boys-schools-by-the-books-they-study-in-english-156119