Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University

The final report of the Independent Review of the Australian Public Service is much more substantial than its interim report. That is hardly a high hurdle, but its 18-page bibliography suggests considerable reflection beyond the (mostly disappointing) submissions and commissioned papers.

However, the report still has an excessive amount of rhetoric and is not an easy read.

Broadly, its themes are:

• a united service

• partnerships beyond the APS

• embracing new technology

• investing in people and capability

• a more dynamic and responsive operational model

• improved leadership and governance.

There are many sensible recommendations, but detail is often missing and analysis weak. Some recommendations reveal a surprising lack of understanding of the public sector.

The central theme of a “united” service is overdone, notwithstanding the case for greater coordination today. The APS does not need “an inspiring purpose and vision” – the first objective set out in the Public Service Act 1999 is clear. It is:

to establish an apolitical public service that is efficient and effective in serving the Government, the Parliament and the Australian public.

The APS Values also define the role of the APS as an institution. The review might have made more of the High Court’s references to these in confirming the constitutional standing of the APS.

Read more: View from The Hill: Morrison won’t have a bar of public service intrusions on government’s power

The review is right to press for a better coordinated service today, retreating from the late 1990s devolution under the new public management model. That Australia went too far is very clear (particularly on pay and conditions). Public expectations in light of modern technology are also demanding much greater connectivity today.

But the review goes too far the other way. The APS performs a wide range of functions, each requiring specialist expertise.

The Secretaries Board is not like a private sector board. Cabinet and ministers are the primary decision-makers under the Constitution, and secretaries’ first responsibilities are within their portfolios, serving and advising their ministers and delivering services and implementing government policies. At the centre it will always be primarily the responsibility of the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) to do the administrative coordination, though necessarily in close consultation with secretaries and other agency heads.

Perhaps the most valuable contribution of the report relates to the application of new technology. It makes a convincing case for very substantial new capital investments over many years and for increasing allocations for minor capital investment. These, and the associated building of skills, are necessary for more citizen-centred services and a more digitally enabled administration.

The report is also on the right track with several other themes:

• invest in people and strengthen capability

• reduce hierarchy and promote more dynamic teamwork across the service

• improve governance and leadership, including by firmer merit-based approaches to appointments.

But the report pulls its punches about the causes of the problems. It could have been clearer about what needs to be fixed.

Why has strategic policy advising capacity declined and other expertise been lost? Why has evaluation activity and skills dropped away? Why has the APS become more risk-averse and hierarchical?

Thankfully, the Thodey Report does include recommendations aimed at strengthening the standing of the APS and clarifying relations with the government and the parliament. These include:

• the accountability and integrity of ministerial staff

• secretary and other agency head appointments and terminations, the respective roles of the APSC and secretary of PM&C, and the appointment of the APS commissioner.

Even if I disagree with some aspects, the report at least puts these things firmly on the table (see also my recent Parliamentary Library lecture).

On several other matters there is a disappointing lack of detail, despite the report often pointing in the right direction. These include:

• The discussion of the APS Values ends up proposing some new statement of “principles” to supplement the values. What is needed is to recast the values to reflect more directly the APS’s unique institutional role (and return “merit” to the list).

• The important discussion of place-management fails to set out the architecture required at community and regional levels, and how it might link with state government service delivery.

• The discussion on budgeting rightly highlights the importance of adequate capital investment, but overlooks the equally important issue of how running costs should be financed (without crude efficiency dividends).

The government’s response

Michelle Grattan correctly summarised the response as solidifying the power of the prime minister and rejecting any recommendations that would strengthen the standing and independence of the APS.

Sadly, the result will be that many of the recommendations ostensibly “agreed” by the government will not succeed because the drivers behind the reduced capability of the APS (and its risk-averse and hierarchical culture) will remain and will probably grow stronger.

The repeated references in the response to “consistent with the Secretaries Board’s advice” when a recommendation was not agreed is both odd and worrying. If the advice was as claimed, I can only surmise that it demonstrates to the rest of the APS the leadership’s lack of frank and fearless advice. Surely the Secretaries Board supports a more uniform pay and conditions framework, and a more robust process for their own appointments and terminations?

On a positive note, the government agrees with the majority of the recommendations, particularly those relating to digital technology. Most of the responsibility for proceeding will lie with the APS itself. Whether the government will eventually sign up to the capital funding the head of the review, David Thodey, believes will be needed (initially at least A$100 million a year after the audit is complete) is uncertain.

The government has so far agreed only to A$15 million over two years to start work on all the agreed recommendations.

Machinery of government

Aspects of the prime minister’s earlier announcement about machinery-of-government changes have merit. They include:

• reducing the separation of policy and administration by replacing DHS with an executive agency within the DSS portfolio

• re-establishing strong links between education, employment and training

• separating energy from the environment, recognising that the tensions between these major functions should be settled in cabinet.

But the failure to recognise such changes only work if aligned to ministry arrangements is extraordinary. The 1987 introduction of mega-departments was only partly to do with economies of scale. Mostly it was about streamlining cabinet: allowing cabinet to be small and manageable while still having every (portfolio) department represented, and allowing portfolio ministers to exercise, with their assistant ministers, more responsibility including over resource allocation.

Read more: Morrison cuts a swathe through the public service, with five departmental heads gone

The prime minister’s claim that his restructuring will ensure “congestion busting” and a much improved “line of sight” is contrived and almost certainly illusory. It cannot be achieved without “line of sight” between ministers and the public service. The new infrastructure department will have eight ministers, four in cabinet, several with responsibilities in other portfolios, and around 80 ministerial staff. This is hardly a recipe for a stronger focus on serving the public.

We do not know what, if any, advice the APS provided about these changes. My fear is that APS expertise in such matters has deteriorated greatly in recent years.

Apart from this misalignment between the ministry and the machinery of government, some of the details of these changes are wanting. In particular, there remains a serious problem about the separation of Medicare Australia from health policy.

Where to from here?

The Morrison government’s pronouncements over the past fortnight confirm its lack of real interest in the public service as an institution. Sadly, it seems much of the conservative side of politics has lost the sort of support of our institutions that Menzies and other traditionalists exemplified.

Equally, it would be wrong to rely on the other side of politics to pursue the directions in the Thodey Report that the Morrison government has ruled out. Not only would this ignore Labor’s contribution over the years to the current sorry state of affairs, but it would set up for partisan debate the appropriate governance and degree of independence of the APS, something inimical to what fundamentally must be non-partisan.

Instead, we need the parliament to intervene, if not in the immediate light of the Thodey Report and the government’s response, then before or shortly after the next election. A Senate select committee might be asked to undertake an inquiry into the relationship between the APS, the government and the parliament. It should examine:

• the constitutional role of the APS and how this is reflected in the Public Service Act

• the distinctive values of the APS in line with its constitutional role

• the corresponding distinctive values of other components of the Commonwealth, including within the executive, the legislature and the judiciary

• the processes for appointing and terminating secretaries and other APS agency heads

• the respective roles of the APS commissioner and secretary of PM&C

• the roles and responsibilities of secretaries, senior executives and the Secretaries Board

• the Members of Parliament Staffing Act and associated accountability arrangements.

This inquiry should consider Thodey’s recommendations and other options, and be asked to come up with its own concrete recommendations.

– ref. Report on public service overhaul a good start, but parliamentary inquiry is needed – http://theconversation.com/report-on-public-service-overhaul-a-good-start-but-parliamentary-inquiry-is-needed-127602

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katinka van de Ven, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Rural Criminology, HASSE, University of New England & Visiting Fellow, Drug Policy Modelling Program, SPRC, University of New South Wales, University of New England

Rural Australians are more likely than their city counterparts to drink alcohol at harmful levels. They’re also higher consumers of cannabis, ice and the prescription opioids oxycodone and fentanyl.

Drug-related deaths are also rising more rapidly in rural Australia, up 41% since 2008, compared with a 16% increase in major cities over the same period.

Several reports have also shown that the burden of alcohol and other drug use increases with remoteness.

Read more: ‘If you don’t have a beer you’re not a man’ – rural workplaces made more dangerous by drugs and alcohol

Our review of the international literature on rural opioid-related harms, published today, shows it’s not just the higher rates of drug use causing greater harms in rural and remote areas.

It also comes down to specific features of rural communities including poorer access to treatment and harm-reduction programs, and more conditions that promote alcohol and other drug use, such as economic hardship.

Our research focused on opioids, but the findings hold for other types of illicit drug use and alcohol abuse.

Why rural people suffer greater harms

Living in rural and remote areas shapes the risk of harm from opioids through four key influences:

1. economic conditions – many rural areas have experienced economic decline through the loss of manufacturing and other industries. This causes high levels of economic distress among some residents, particularly due to job losses

2. physical conditions – rural areas often lack infrastructure and public transport. Those who need alcohol and other drug services often have to travel greater distances for treatment. There are also fewer recreational activities, especially for young people

3. social conditions – the use of drugs as a recreational activity was linked with particular sub-cultures in rural areas. In small towns, a lack of anonymity and stigmatisation of people who use opioids can lead to people avoid seeking treatment. People in rural areas may also lack knowledge about treatment options or even what constitutes risky behaviour

4. policy conditions – rural areas often have limited coverage and availability of harm-reduction schemes such as needle and syringe programs, and residential and outpatient rehabilitation programs.

While a number of the above factors also apply to urban areas, rural environments have distinct, and often overlapping, physical, social, policy and economic features.

Invest in treatment facilities to reduce overdoses

Access to treatment and harm-reduction services are crucial to preventing drug-related harms, and in particular, overdose deaths.

One study found overdose rates tended to be higher in rural and remote areas where there was limited access to alcohol and other drug treatment services.

Read more: You don’t have to go off the grid to get treatment for drug dependence

Where rural treatment facilities and harm-reduction services operate, they tend to employ less qualified and experienced staff and have greater difficulties retaining specialised and high-quality staff.

The challenge of finding suitable treatment in rural and remote areas is magnified by poor infrastructure and costly and limited public transport options in these areas.

We’ve known for several decades that demand for alcohol and other drug support and treatment services is high and increasing in rural communities. But these services are still under‐resourced.

We need urgent government action, including sufficient funds, to improve service delivery.

Video services also have a role

While distance makes service delivery difficult, tele-health and tele-counselling may also help overcome some of these barriers.

Tele-health is where health services are delivered via live video-conferencing, while tele-counselling is a mental health service performed via phone or a secure video.

Technology can also help deal with concerns surrounding confidentiality in tight-knit communities. It allows people to receive drug and alcohol services from any location, including their home, as opposed to physically entering a drug treatment facility. This avoids the risk of being recognised by others and stigmatised as a person who uses drugs.

However, in some cases, tele-health will not replace physical services. Clean needles and syringes, for example, or drugs to prevent overdose (naloxone), require adequate funding and people on the ground to deliver them.

Read more: Weekly Dose: Naloxone, how to save a life from opioid overdose

Policymakers must also attend to the economic, physical, social and policy conditions which are shaping the risk of alcohol and other drug use in in rural communities. This might include:

• supporting more economic opportunities and recreational activities for young people

• investing in public transport

• providing adequate funding to attract and retain high-quality drug and alcohol workers.

These measures would help reduce some of the burden of drug and alcohol-related harm being borne by our rural communities.

Read more: Investing in rural health brings dollar returns to local economies (and improves health)

– ref. As drug deaths rise in rural Australia, we must do more to prevent overdoses – http://theconversation.com/as-drug-deaths-rise-in-rural-australia-we-must-do-more-to-prevent-overdoses-128229

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurien Beane, Course Coordinator, Queensland Undergraduate Early Childhood, Australian Catholic University

Friendship is critical to a young person’s development. Recent research showed teenagers with just one close friend were better able to bounce back from stress than teenagers without one.

But we also know about the high prevalence of bullying in schools and may have, ourselves, had a negative early friendship that has affected us well into adulthood.

So, if you suspect your child – whether they are in early childhood education and care, primary or secondary school – has a questionable friend, here are some tips on how to deal with it.

Early Childhood (birth to five years)

Early childhood education and care centres enrol children from birth to five years old. One of the learning outcomes of the governing Early Years Learning Framework is to teach and assess if children can “learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect”.

Educators work to ensure interactions with your child, and the other child, meet the learning outcomes.

Educators in childcare centres are legally required to take regular written observations to record, interpret, analyse and plan the next steps in children’s learning journeys.

These written records are of interactions between individual children, and in small and large groups of children. These should be available for viewing and consultation by parents and caregivers.

You can request educators to keep you updated on interactions your child has with friends. This includes positive, neutral and negative interactions as they are all part of your child’s social development.

Read more: Childhood shyness: when is it normal and when is it cause for concern?

When children are young, they may not yet have the communication skills to explain their feelings. Instead, they may bite or hit another child. Some young children will never go through this stage, and others may take a little while to develop the skills to use their words for positive communication.

If your child comes home with bite marks, or you are regularly receiving incident reports about these types of interactions with the same child, this might signal an undesirable friendship.

You could make an appointment with the centre director to collaborate on possible changes. They may be able to provide support staff in the room at certain times.

The centre may also help you to make a plan to relocate to another room in the centre. Usually this means moving up to the next room with a slightly older age group, when there is a space. – Laurien Beane

Primary school

Peers play a key role in a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development at primary school. These influences can be both positive and negative.

Unhealthy friendships involve a breach of trust or damage to someone’s well-being. Some signs your primary-aged child may be dealing with a challenging friend is if:

• the person lies to your child on a regular basis

• they change best friend status depending on their mood for the day

• they control who your child can play with, which clothes they can wear or which interests they can have

• they bully your child through social exclusion, verbal put downs, rumour-spreading and/or physical intimidation

• they encourage or pressure your child to participate in antisocial or risky behaviours

• you have noticed a decline in your child’s self-esteem and overall well-being

• you have noticed an increase in withdrawn or aggressive behaviour in your child.

Research shows children are less likely to display antisocial or risky behaviour when their parents are aware of their friendship network. Parental monitoring and supervision can also decrease socialisation with these unhealthy peers.

But overly intrusive parenting can undermine a child’s autonomy. This could make the child more aggressive or rebellious and increase their socialising with unhealthy peers.

Young people are more likely to disclose peer issues to their parents if you:

• respond with empathetic advice based on lessons you learnt in your own life (“I understand how you might be feeling. When I was your age something similar happened to me […] I realised a true friend wouldn’t want me to hurt myself just because they thought it was funny. So I decided to make some new friends”)

• involve them in the problem-solving process by asking them to consider the options and potential consequences (“What do you think might happen if you stay friends with Sally and she keeps daring you to do XYZ? How could this hurt you or other people? What are some things you could do to protect yourself?”). Allow them to make their own decision.

If open discussion and collaboration in solving the problem doesn’t work, or it doesn’t have a positive result, it may be necessary for parents to intervene.

Subtle intervention could involve limiting your child’s availability by filling in weekends and afternoons with activities like visiting relatives. Eventually, this distance may enable the friendship to fade or run its course in a less confronting way.

Read more: Making friends in primary school can be tricky. Here’s how parents and teachers can help

Direct intervention may involve banning contact with the friend, even if this means relocating to a different school or area. This may seem drastic but it may be a necessary course to protect your child’s well-being.

Research shows associations with unhealthy or bullying peers as a child can have serious long-term effects like lowering academic self-esteem while increasing the chance of poor physical and mental health and risky behaviours (including substance abuse and unprotected sex into adulthood.

Counselling may also be required to help the child work through grief, rebuild self-esteem and seek healthier friendships. – Natasha Wardman

Read more: Making friends in primary school can be tricky. Here’s how parents and teachers can help

High school

Friendships influence a young person’s development. Happy and healthy relationships between young people can make the transition from primary to secondary school more successful and help shape future trajectories beyond school, even future economic success.

If you are worried your teenager is struggling with a challenging friendship, there are some ways you can help.

Research shows expressions of love and care, even if they are received with repulsion, will likely enhance your teen’s self-esteem and capacity for dealing with difficult friendships.

Saying “I love you” on a regular basis and showing physical affection can be a good habit to establish.

Read more: Teens with at least one close friend can better cope with stress than those without

Research also shows parents remain the most significant influence through the teenage years. Parents might consider talking with their kids about what the family values and whether those values might align with the behaviours and actions of friends.

For example, if you are concerned about what your child’s friend said about someone on social media, you might ask your child questions such as:

• “Is that what you would say on social media about others?”

• “Do those words reflect the person you want to be?”

• “Is this friendship going to bring out the best in you?”

Parents should also be wary of the dangers of overprotective parenting.

Usually, excessive supervision or intrusion in teenagers’ lives does not give them the chance to handle difficult situations competently.

It is usually a good idea to give teenagers some freedom in their decision-making and responsibilities.

You may wish to:

• encourage positive friendships. If you know friends who are a good influence on your teenager, try to make opportunities for those friendships to develop

• talk about the pros and cons of different friendships. Sometimes parents might use their own friendships as examples. Let your teenager know how you manage and support your friendships and why you manage them in different ways

• talk about the real consequences of friendships. Positive friendships can result in anything between good fun and deep development. Harmful friendships have the potential to result in sadness, confusion and stress, with the possibility of life-changing unwanted consequences.

A calm, adult-like dialogue and modelling good behaviours are more likely to elicit an adult-like response from your teenager than forcing them to do something against their will. This is especially true for the choices they make in forming friendships. – Michael Chambers

– ref. From childcare to high school – what to do if you don’t like your kid’s friend – http://theconversation.com/from-childcare-to-high-school-what-to-do-if-you-dont-like-your-kids-friend-126193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Levinson, Professor of Transport, University of Sydney

You are walking east on a footpath and come to an unmarked intersection without traffic signals. A vehicle is driving north, across your path. Who has right of way in Australia?

Should you step into the road expecting the vehicle to slow down or stop if necessary? Is the driver legally obliged to do so?

And does the driver see you? How fast is the vehicle going? Can it stop?

Now imagine you are the driver. What will the person on foot do next?

So the answer to the question of “giving way” is complicated. It depends on the speed of the car, how fast the person is walking, how quickly the driver reacts to apply the brakes, the vehicle itself, road conditions and how far the car and walker are from each other. Ideally, both the driver and walker can assess these things in a fraction of a second, but human perception and real-time calculation skills are imperfect. At higher speeds, both pedestrians and drivers underestimate vehicle speed.

Soon we will have to seriously consider autonomous vehicles, which can assess distance and speed almost perfectly, but there is still that ambiguity.

Read more: Driverless vehicles and pedestrians don’t mix. So how do we re-arrange our cities?

What does the law say?

Road rules legislate how drivers should behave. But it turns out most people do not know right-of-way rules.

In Australia, the National Transport Commission recommends model rules, which each state adopts and lightly modifies. For instance, New South Wales Road Rules 72, 73 and 353 cover pedestrians crossing a road.

Rule 353 says:

If a driver who is turning from a road at an intersection is required to give way to a pedestrian who is crossing the road that the driver is entering, the driver is only required to give way to the pedestrian if the pedestrian’s line of travel in crossing the road is essentially perpendicular to the edges of the road the driver is entering – the driver is not required to give way to a pedestrian who is crossing the road the driver is leaving.

Because of the legal principle of duty of care, drivers must still try to avoid colliding with pedestrians. They have a legal obligation to not be negligent. Thus, they must stop if they can for pedestrians who are already there, but not those on the side of the road wanting to cross.

However, this element of the NSW Road Transport Act is not made explicit in the NSW Road Rules. There is no statutory requirement in the road rules or elsewhere to give way to pedestrians other than as set out specifically in the road rules.

In contrast, NSW Road Rules 230 and 236 explicitly require pedestrians to avoid behaving dangerously around cars.

The published advice in NSW is:

Drivers must always give way to pedestrians if there is danger of colliding with them, however pedestrians should not rely on this and should take great care when crossing any road.

This statement is not supported by any road rule or other law.

Does the law as written mean a slow-moving person can never cross the street because of the risk of being hit? Only because duty-of-care logic indicates both the driver and pedestrian should yield to the other to avoid a collision is it possible for this person to cross without depending on the kindness of strangers. But the law gives the benefit of doubt to the driver of the multi-ton machine. Existing road rules permit drivers to voluntarily give way, or not.

Keep in mind the asymmetry of this situation. A person walking into the side of the car is silly. A car being driven into the side of a person, as happens 1,500 times a year in NSW, is life-threatening.

Read more: Pedestrian safety needs to catch up to technology and put people before cars

What do we recommend?

The UK Manual for Streets presents a street user hierarchy that puts pedestrians at the top. That is, their needs and safety should be considered first.

Walking has multiple benefits. More people on foot lowers infrastructure costs, improves health and reduces the number in cars, in turn reducing crashes, pollution and congestion. However, the road rules are not designed with this logic.

The putative aim of road rules is safety, but in practice the rules trade off between safety and convenience. The more rules are biased toward the convenience of drivers, the more drivers there will be.

Read more: How traffic signals favour cars and discourage walking

Yet public policy aims to promote walking. To do so, pedestrians should be given freer rein to walk: alert, but not afraid.

Like many things in this world, intersection interactions are negotiated, tacitly, by road users and their subtle and not-so-subtle cues. Pedestrians should have legal priority behind them in this negotiation.

The road rules need to be amended to require drivers to give way to pedestrians at all intersections. We favour a rule requiring drivers to look out for pedestrians and give way to them on any road or road-related area. In the case of collisions, the onus would be on drivers to show they could not in the circumstances give way to the pedestrian.

We believe all intersections without signals – whether marked, courtesy, or unmarked – be legally treated as marked pedestrian crossings. (It might help to mark them to remind drivers of this.) We should think of these intersections as spaces where vehicles cross an implicit continuous footpath, rather than as places where people cross a vehicular lane.

This change in perspective will require significant road user re-education. Users will have to be reminded every intersection is a crosswalk and that pedestrians both in the road and showing intent to cross should be yielded to, whether the vehicle is entering or exiting the road. We believe this change will increase safety and willingness to walk, because of the safety-in-numbers phenomenon, and improve quality of life.

Drivers should assume more responsibility for safety

People should continue to behave in a way that does not harm themselves or others. People on foot should not jump out in front of cars, expecting drivers to slam on their brakes, because drivers cannot always stop in time.

Read more: Nothing to fear? How humans (and other intelligent animals) might ruin the autonomous vehicle utopia

Similarly, drivers should be ready to slow or stop when a person crosses the street, at a crosswalk or not. But the law should be refactored to give priority to pedestrians at unmarked crossings. This will reduce ambiguity and make drivers more alert and ready to slow down.

In tomorrow’s world of driverless and passengerless vehicles, the convenience of drivers becomes even less essential. If someone is crossing the road, most of us probably believe a driverless vehicle should give way to ensure it doesn’t hit that person for two reasons: legally, to avoid being negligent; and morally, because hitting people is bad, as identified in many examples of the Trolley Problem.

Further, we should think more like the Netherlands, where vehicle-pedestrian collisions are presumed to be the driver’s fault, unless it can be clearly proven otherwise.

Read more: The everyday ethical challenges of self-driving cars

This article examined a few of 353 distinct road rules. Many others affect pedestrians and should also be re-examined.

This article was extensively edited by Janet Wahlquist of WalkSydney and extends some ideas developed as part of Betty Yang’s undergraduate thesis, but the text is the sole responsibility of the author.

– ref. Why Australian road rules should be rewritten to put walking first – http://theconversation.com/why-australian-road-rules-should-be-rewritten-to-put-walking-first-127789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Grimmer, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania

For many of us, our first experience with “gambling” was the lucky dip at the local school fete. We handed over our pocket money and hoped the plain packet we selected would contain something worth our 50 cents.

Now the lucky dip has been reinvented and become ubiquitous in the form of the blind bag toy.

Blind bags (also referred to as surprise packs or surprise toys) involve small and collectible toys hidden inside opaque packaging. There are now hundreds of different blind bag lines, from old favourites such as My Little Pony, Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to new fads like Tokidoki, Zomlings and the hugely popular L.O.L. Surprise! dolls.

Though no statistics for global blind bag toy sales are available, data from the United States give an indication of their phenomenal growth in recent years. Between 2017 and 2018, market analyst NPD estimates the blind bag market in the US grew by about 60% even while total toy sales fell 2%.

Not surprisingly the US Toy Association declared “The Big Reveal” its top trend for 2018, with “the act of removing a surprise toy from a blind bag” being “just as exciting as the toy itself”.

Read more: The power of rewards and why we seek them out

There’s no reason to think 2019 will be any different in the US or around the world. Indeed, if toy aisles in stores are anything to go by, buyers’ appetite for blind bags appears to be ballooning.

The factors driving this sales growth include social media – in which “unboxing” has become an entertainment in itself – and the growing adult market for toys.

But the three most potent elements are the combination of price, the appeal of collecting and the psychological lure of surprise. It’s these three things that make blind bag toys so ethically problematic.

Collect them all!

Compared with other options, blind bag and surprise toys seem cheap. In Australia, prices range from about A$1.60 to A$15. This makes them attractive to children and adults alike, particularly as stocking stuffers at Christmas.

But the problem is that one is never enough.

Almost all blind bag toys are marketed as collections – with “collecting them all” emphasised in packaging and advertising. There may be dozens to collect. Ooshie maker Head Start International, for example, has released four series of Marvel Ooshies with a total of 164 toys to collect.

So despite not being very costly to buy once, the costs add up.

As we’ve noted before in discussing the Ooshies phenomenon, collecting is attractive to children. While an estimated 30% of adults collect something, more than 90% of children do so. Collecting appeals to children’s natural curiosity and is also a way of understanding the world through gathering and categorising.

Read more: Ooshies – a cautionary toy story about cashing in on childhood innocence

The blind bag business model weaponises this collecting impulse through the gamble of the lucky dip. It combines the pleasure of reward with the element of surprise, which is both compelling and addictive. It taps into the same psychological mechanism that results in gambling addiction – namely intermittent reinforcement.

Intermittent reinforcement

The seductive, manipulative power of intermittent reinforcement (also known as variable ratio reinforcement) was famously shown in experiments with pigeons in the 1950s led by the noted American psychologist B.F. Skinner.

His team trained pigeons to peck a small lever that led to a food reward. When rewarded every time, the pigeons pecked the lever only when they were hungry. But when rewarded intermittently, they became compulsive peckers.

Th effects of intermittent reinforcement have also been demonstrated in clinical tests with children.

This helps explain the phenomenal growth and profitability of blind bags for toy companies. With the outcome being uncertain and the reward intermittent, the dopamine rush of opening each new bag is maintained.

Loot boxes

A virtual form of blind bag is proving even more profitable for video game companies. They’re known as loot boxes, which players can buy with real money in the hope of scoring “equipment” or “skins” to enhance their game avatar. More often than not they don’t contain anything the player wants. Which is why players keep buying.

A study this year estimated loot boxes could be worth US$30 billion a year to the video game industry.

Concern about loot boxes effectively exposing children to gambling has led to calls in many countries for greater regulation. Belgium has banned them. In Britain, the government is considering making companies that make money using loot boxes hold a gambling licence. In Australia, the federal government says more research is needed before it will regulate.

Read more: Gaming or gambling: study shows almost half of loot boxes in video games constitute gambling

How different is a blind bag toy?

Maybe you are always assured a toy, but the relative scarcity of different toys in a series means some are worth much more than others, and the desire for those will drive further purchases. It’s a business model that still fundamentally works on the same principles that make poker machines, scratchies and other forms of gambling so addictive.

So while blind bag toys can be fun, the use of “blind” packaging and intermittent reinforcement to drive sales must be considered ethically problematic, especially given they are targeted at children.

As in all things, awareness and moderation are key.

– ref. Blind bags: how toy makers are making a fortune with child gambling – http://theconversation.com/blind-bags-how-toy-makers-are-making-a-fortune-with-child-gambling-127229

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stefanie Johnstone, PhD Candiate, University of Technology Sydney

How many Star Wars films did George Lucas plan? According to Dan Golding in his recent book Star Wars After Lucas, this depends on when Lucas was asked.

The often-quoted number is nine, but it might wind up being as many as 12. How ever many he planned, we know he planned them in threes.

Today’s release of The Rise of Skywalker, directed by J.J. Abrams, marks the end of the third trilogy in the franchise.

But where does the trilogy story form come from?

Changing the world

Trilogy is a very old form. The earliest known example is Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which tells a story of revenge and change in law following Agamemnon’s return home from the Trojan war. It was first performed in Athens 2500 years ago.

In the first play, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra as revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter. In the second play, their son Orestes murders his mother, to avenge his father’s death.

In the final play of the trilogy – with no more family members remaining to avenge Clytemnestra’s death – Orestes is put on trial in front of an Athenian jury. Also the first ever courtroom drama, Aeschylus used this third play to twist the story world set up in the first two plays.

A hallmark of the trilogy genre is the shift in the final part, with a revolution (as in The Hunger Games) or a restoration (as in Isaac Asimov’sFoundation). In linking three individual texts, there is a fourth, monumental, overarching story.

Read more: How JJ Abrams ruined Star Trek and what that means for Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In the first two Star Wars trilogies, we followed Luke Skywalker’s journey to becoming a Jedi (Episodes IV-VI) and Anakin Skywalker’s journey to the Dark Side (Episodes I-III).

The current trilogy (Episodes VII-IX), so far, has expanded this overarching narrative even further: a hero’s journey in Rey, mimicking Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi; and an anti-hero’s journey as Kylo Ren following the same path as Anakin.

Planned and unplanned

Trilogies can be “planned” or “unplanned”: did the creator have a trilogy in mind all along, or was it conceived on a sequel-by-sequel basis?

There is a crucial difference in viewing the trilogy from a creative point of view, and an industrial?? one. Even if results might not be what you would expect.

Christopher Nolan talks about The Dark Knight Trilogy as unplanned: devised as they went, sequel by sequel. Over the three films, Nolan was able to craft a unifying story about Bruce Wayne becoming Batman and then learning to give up the mantel.

The Wachowski’s The Matrix was always planned as a trilogy – but the first film was released well before the sequels were funded. Although this trilogy was planned, the sequels failed to replicate the success of the first: an unsatisfactory ending which didn’t stand up to the promise of the first film.

The danger of an unplanned trilogy is once a film is released its story cannot be changed, and so the filmmakers are not always able to find the balance between the three single stories and the overarching story. A frequent trap is that the first film can fully stand alone, but the second and third films feel like a single, two-part film.

What makes a good film trilogy is sometimes difficult to determine or predict. But each film in a trilogy must stand on its own – yet the three must work together as a whole.

It all ends

The original Star Wars trilogy concluded with the fall of The Galactic Empire and restoration of the Jedi Order. In Episodes I-III, the Old Republic and Jedi Order faced revolution, replaced with The Empire and The Sith.

The latest films have subverted expectations of a Star Wars trilogy. Old favourites have passed, a Jedi’s faith has been disturbed, Rey’s parents are still unknown.

If we follow trilogy lore, and especially Star Wars trilogies, we can expect a world order to fall. Will it be the First Order or The Resistance? Or will balance finally be restored to the force?

No matter how it concludes, perhaps the most crucial question is: can J.J. Abrams pull off a satisfying end to the current Star Wars trilogy?

Will the third film in the third trilogy make it third time’s a charm?

– ref. The Rise of Skywalker ends a third Star Wars trilogy. Here’s why stories work so well in threes – http://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-skywalker-ends-a-third-star-wars-trilogy-heres-why-stories-work-so-well-in-threes-127997

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

The New Zealand government today officially pardoned Māori leader Rua Kēnana Hepetipa, who was convicted for “moral resistance to arrest” more than a century ago.

Descendents of the Pacifist leader gathered to watch the final reading of the pardon bill which clears Rua Kēnana’s name and acknowledges that his wrongful treatment caused lasting damage to his people.

Rua Kēnana was arrested when armed police invaded Maungapōhatu in 1916. His son and another family member were killed in the illegal raid, and both sides suffered injuries during a gun fight.

The Governor General will travel to Maungapōhatu on Saturday to sign the bill in an historic first.

But while the pardon restores the reputation of Rua Kēnana and his descendants, it does not go far enough. It acknowledges that Rua Kēnana did nothing wrong, but it fails to recognise that the Crown committed a grievous miscarriage of justice.

The power of the law

At the turn of the 20th century, Rua Kēnana was an obscure rural wage labourer. He lived in an area ravaged by war, government confiscations of land, disease and lack of economic development. Against this tide of deprivation, he emerged as a religious leader with a quiet compassion for those suffering, and he set up a community at Maungapōhatu, on land of the Tūhoe tribe.

But his popularity brought him into conflict with the government, which responded with the introduction of the 1907 Tohunga Suppression Act, intended to stop people using traditional Māori healing practices with a spiritual element.

After this first brush with the power of the state, Rua Kēnana took on positions of more conventional responsibility within existing local authorities. He was strongly in favour of one law for all people.

In the early years of his teachings, he was against alcohol. But alcohol was widely available, and his position moved from prohibition to regulation. He thought he could control its impact on his community by gaining a liquor licence. This was a difficult goal as New Zealand was moving towards increased restrictions and the law was clearly discriminatory, giving Māori significantly less liberty than non-Māori.

In 1910, police found unlicensed alcohol in Rua Kēnana’s community and he was prosecuted for five breaches of liquor laws. He was convicted on all five counts and fined on four. And he was ordered to come back for sentencing for the fifth charge, but was never summoned.

Read more: Five key values of strong Māori leadership

Intolerance against dissent

Between 1912 and 1915, New Zealand underwent a fundamental change of direction. This was driven by then prime minister William Massey, attorney general Alexander Herdman and police commissioner John Cullen. The three men, armed with powerful laws and a police force used for partisan purposes, led New Zealand through turbulent times of social unrest and violent clashes with organised labour.

The same men were at the helm when New Zealand joined the first world war.

In May 1915, further evidence emerged that others in Rua Kēnana’s community were again selling alcohol illegally. Five new charges were added. When he was brought to court the second time, the same judge who convicted him in 1910 sentenced him to three months in jail for the fifth charge that had been left hanging in 1910.

Shortly after his release, Rua Kēnana was summoned for sentencing on the new charges for his 1915 convictions. By this time, he had become outspoken on Pacifist ideas and saw no need for Tūhoe people to volunteer for WWI – a stance that sparked a media and public backlash against him.

When the police came to arrest Rua Kēnana for the second tranche of alcohol charges, he refused to go. He indicated he wanted to talk to senior government officials as he believed he was being charged for the same offence twice. He allegedly said he thought the Allies could lose the war – and the serious charge of sedition was added.

The police left, but sent the police commissioner and attorney general – the two men who had been at the forefront of breaking up unions in 1912 and 1913 – to talk to him. Rua Kēnana refused to come out.

Read more: How NZ’s colonial government misused laws to crush non-violent dissent at Parihaka

An illegal raid turns fatal

The situation escalated the following year. On 2 April 1916, 70 armed police and a media contingent arrived with an arrest warrant. This raid was illegal as it was carried out on the one day (a Sunday) the warrant did not cover. Worse still, the it turned into a violent confrontation and a firefight broke out.

Four police officers were wounded and two Māori killed, including Kēnana’s son Toko and another family member, Te Maipi Te Whiu. They were buried without an inquest.

The Crown tried to blame Rua Kēnana for what had happened, but failed to prove that the wounding of the police officers was unlawful or that he was guilty of sedition or the counselling of others towards murder or bodily harm. The only thing he was found guilty of was “moral resistance” to the second tranche of alcohol charges.

These words of “moral resistance” were a novelty, as the law that covered resistance to arrest was focused primarily on obstruction, or physical resistance.

Rua Kēnana was sentenced to one year’s hard labour, followed by 18 months of “reformative purposes”. The judge considered him and his people to be “still in tutelage” and that Māori should learn from this trial that:

In every corner of the great Empire to which we belong, the King’s law can reach anyone that offends him.

Eight of the 12 jury members were so outraged by the judge’s interpretation of their mention of “moral resistance” they wrote an open letter to the newspapers. They explained they felt Rua Kēnana had been unjustly persecuted. They wanted a proper investigation of the entire operation and, in particular, the deaths of the two Māori.

They explained they only used “moral resistance” because ten of the jury wanted an outright acquittal, and they agreed to these words to satisfy the other two. They had not expected their words would be used to sentence Rua Kēnana. The same group created a petition to parliament, alleging a grave miscarriage of justice and calling for a full investigation into the events.

Rua Kēnana was released after eight months, having struck a deal to speak in favour of the war effort. He went home to an economically and socially depleted community. Undeterred, he continued to work for the betterment of his people.

He welcomed the establishment of a new Presbyterian mission and worked closely with medical authorities during the influenza epidemic in 1918. In 1921, he urged his tribe to part with a quarter of its remaining territory as advance payment for roads to help develop the region economically.

When Rua Kēnana died in 1937, no roads had been built. Nor had there been an investigation into the miscarriage of justice in his trial. Even today, despite the welcome pardon, an acknowledgement of a miscarriage of justice is missing.

– ref. Why a pardon for 20th-century Māori leader Rua Kēnana doesn’t go far enough – http://theconversation.com/why-a-pardon-for-20th-century-maori-leader-rua-kenana-doesnt-go-far-enough-126920

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

Last week, Michelle Grattan and Peter Martin (economics editor at The Conversation)were in Sydney to launch the 2019 Conversation Yearbook. The event was held at Glebebooks and presented an opportunity for readers to hear Michelle and Peter’s discussion about the year that was, and ask questions.

This podcast is aa edited recording of that event.

New to podcasts?

Podcasts are often best enjoyed using a podcast app. All iPhones come with the Apple Podcasts app already installed, or you may want to listen and subscribe on another app such as Pocket Casts (click here to listen to Politics with Michelle Grattan on Pocket Casts).

You can also hear it on Stitcher, Spotify or any of the apps below. Just pick a service from one of those listed below and click on the icon to find Politics with Michelle Grattan.

Additional audio

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

Image:

The Conversation

Audio:

Special thanks to Glebebooks for recording this event.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Grattan and Martin on the year that was, in politics and economics – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-grattan-and-martin-on-the-year-that-was-in-politics-and-economics-129062

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sue Green, Deputy Co-ordinator, Journalism Program, Swinburne University of Technology

Review: A Boy’s Own Story at the Johnston Collection, East Melbourne

Johnston Collection director and curator Louis Le Vaillant was weary of hearing that men could not knit or sew. After all, he can and so could antiques and decorative arts dealer William Johnston, whose estate comprises the East Melbourne house museum.

So Le Vaillant planned a summer exhibition to challenge audiences used to seeing the work of skilled craftswomen.

A Boy’s Own Story features the work of 17 male artists, asked by Le Vaillant to respond to items in the collection with new works. When Le Vaillant put the men only idea to the collection trustees they responded positively:

They said, bring it on. They were open to challenging the boundaries of art and craft in an exhibition house. We thought we would see what would happen. I thought, ‘the challenge is out there’.

The statistics do suggest an imbalance. Since the collection began its “inspired by” shows in the early 2000s there have been 3754 women participants and three men.

Nonetheless, it is questionable whether, in a #metoo climate pushing for women’s voices to be heard, an all-male exhibition is appropriate.

Helping men?

Artist Kate Just, head of graduate coursework at the Victorian College of the Arts, has created art with knitting for almost 20 years. Her new work is a year of knitting Anonymous Was a woman. She’d reached 41 panels from 730,825 stitches by early December.

Key to the project is Just’s exploration of reports on the under-representation of women in art. She cites global figures showing there are no women in the top 0.03% of the Western art auction market, where 41% of the profit is concentrated.

The income gap between men and women is wider in the arts than the average gap across all industries in Australia. Research shows that artists earn a little more than a third of their income from their creative efforts, with women making an average of $15,400 from their art while men earn $22,100 from theirs.

Australian gender representation in the contemporary arts is monitored by the Countess Report, which most recently analysed the work of 13,000 exhibiting artists, outcomes of Australia Council grants, and staff and board members of arts organisations. It found signs of a turnaround in 2018 compared with 2016, with women equally represented in art prizes, fairs, commercial galleries (52% up from 30%) and organisations.

However there was still an imbalance in taxpayer-funded state galleries, with the representation of women falling (37 to 34%) since 2016.

Le Vaillant had prepared himself for criticism and trolling in response to the men-only exhibition, having received outraged emails and social media criticism in the past (that time over yarn bombing and some decorative street art with cake icing).

“It is not happening,” he says. “It is an extraordinary irony of contemporary life that it is not happening. It’s an extremely benign exhibition.”

Is there a gender-based double standard at play? Le Vaillant concedes this: “Maybe it’s because men have done these works in the show.” Are men allowed to push the boundaries, while women are pigeonholed?

Lace and statements

Some of the work in the exhibition is traditional – the superb handmade lace and embroideries by three generations of Collyer men, the basic knitting by Tristan Brumby Rendell and Luke Hockley’s handmade shirts.

Other pieces are more pointed in their intent. Audiences are warned of the confronting nature of textile artist Douglas McManus’s sculptural gallows chandelier.

Inspired by a Green Room chandelier in the Johnston house and a portrait of Edward Lord Montagu, a founder of the Guy Fawkes night observance, it includes bleeding limbs and a hanging man – a commentary on the damage to men’s souls from society’s expectations.

Young quilter Lucas Grogan also creates work on such themes. A Dawn Quilt, with printed pillowcases reading “FIGHT” and “FLIGHT”, is elaborate and skilled, showcasing quilting, smocking and embroidery skills.

It’s important to note the quality of this and most – but not all – the work, displayed with collection items. The five women in my tour group (visits are by booking) agreed that most works warranted exhibiting but some did not.

Le Vaillant accepts this assessment. “I thought it would be a very simple exhibition to do but … it took a lot of encouragement in terms of some of them putting their work in a public space,” he says.

While this appears to contradict his assertion that numerous men undertake these traditionally gendered crafts, it tallies with my own research in which I found male knitters who would not knit in public because they feared homophobic attacks.

They also experienced “overpraising”, particularly from women knitters, attracting unsought attention.

Artist Jude Skeers told me in an interview for my research that the novelty of being a male knitter helped publicise his art knitting, especially given the devaluing of knitting as women’s work.

The craft that men do is more highly prized than the craft dominated by women – working with glass, ceramics and in particular wood. It’s seen as a higher craft than any textiles. This is not just true of textiles.

A Boy’s Own Story, although challenging and with significant creative merit, feeds into this long-standing gender inequity. In seeking to rebalance the scales it leans too far in the other direction, excluding women completely.

A Boy’s Own Story is on at The Johnston Collection until 4 February 2020.

– ref. Men craft too – but do they need support to raise their artistic profile? – http://theconversation.com/men-craft-too-but-do-they-need-support-to-raise-their-artistic-profile-126595

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

’Tis the season to be jolly. We all enjoy the sentiments of this well-known carol during the festive season. There’s little doubt public merriment is in abundance at this time of year, with alcohol generally reducing inhibitions.

But at what point does good-natured inebriation become criminally-tinged intoxication? And what about those full of merriment who are in the streets late at night?

Let’s see what the law says.

In court the morning after

Public intoxication is illegal in every jurisdiction in Australia, but there are differences from place to place, depending on the way the offence is created, enforced and responded to.

Read more: Street drinking, fly-tipping and nuisance neighbours: who experiences anti-social behaviour?

The law, generally speaking, empowers police to apprehend anyone (including a person under 18 years of age) who is drunk in a public place.

They used to be taken to a police station, but since the mid-1980s, there has been a realisation (in all jurisdictions except Queensland and Victoria) this wasn’t the best place for an intoxicated person.

In fact, the South Australian Public Intoxication Act 1984 states:

Persons or bodies involved in the administration of this Act are to be guided by the following principles: (a) primary concern is to be given to the health and well-being of a person apprehended under this Act; and (b) a person detained under this Act should, where practicable, be detained in a place other than a police station.

This was a remarkably insightful reform. It was designed to stop the farcical spectacle of dozens of men and women who had been arrested for being drunk being paraded through magistrates courts the following morning, racking up hundreds of convictions and thousands of dollars in fines they were never going to be able to pay, and wasting thousands of hours of court time each year in the process.

Now, when a person is apprehended for public intoxication, they usually end up back at home, or at a shelter, often with simply an on-the-spot fine.

Abolishing the laws after deaths in custody

There has recently been a dramatic development in Victoria, one of the recalcitrant states, following the case of Tanya Day. The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman died after falling and hitting her head in the cells of the Castlemaine police station in December, 2017.

Read more: Aboriginal woman Tanya Day died in custody. Now an inquest is investigating if systemic racism played a role

She had been taken to the station, arrested for not paying a train fare, and was charged with public drunkenness. She was then put the watch house cells for four hours to “sober up”, but when she hit her head she sustained a brain haemorrhage that led to her death in hospital 17 days later.

In August this year, Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy advised she planned to write to the Victorian coroner to say the Labor government had committed, in principle, to abolishing the crime of public drunkenness. She said:

Public drunkenness requires a public health response, not a criminal justice one, and now is the right time to take this important reform forward.

We must also remember that 27 of the Aboriginal Australians whose deaths were examined by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (beginning in 1988) were in police cells because they had been arrested while drunk.

Recommendation 79 of the Royal Commission report urged:

in jurisdictions where drunkenness has not been decriminalised, governments should legislate to abolish the offence of public drunkenness.

But that has not happened universally, despite repeated urging from reform advocates and the successes of night patrols in remote and regional communities.

Where can you drink this Christmas?

Today, by-laws are the key to determining what you can and cannot do with alcoholic beverages in public.

Questions about where it’s okay to have a beer, or whether a bottle must be in a bag or with the top firmly secured can only be answered by reference to council regulations where the public drinking occurs.

Hundreds of public places – including beaches, parks, shopping precincts and recreation grounds in Australian “dry zones” – have been legislated, and each carries its own rules. This means it’s important to review the area you plan to drink in, because you could be committing an offence without realising it.

Read more: How night club bouncers police the social order – from Berlin to Johannesburg

And before leaving this topic, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the various liquor licensing laws of every jurisdiction.

A person in South Australia, for example, commits an offence if they fail to leave licensed premises when the licensee asks because they are drunk, or fighting, threatening, abusive or insulting.

Typically, licensees in these situations have delegated their authority to crowd controllers (“bouncers”).

It’s also worth noting these security officers are considered far better trained and monitored now after the death of cricketer David Hookes in 2004, when a hotel staff member chased him into the street and punched him to the ground. The tragedy gave rise in 2005 to Standards Australia releasing a draft voluntary code on the desirable qualities of people who are employed as bouncers.

One sure way for public planners and policy-makers to rid festive events of unacceptable drunken behaviour is simply to stop the festival in its tracks. But in any case, you can only hope that with a little bit of peer pressure, a clear message might start to sink in – the days of public drunken revelry are numbered.

– ref. Be careful where you drink your beer this summer. Here’s what the law says about public drunkenness – http://theconversation.com/be-careful-where-you-drink-your-beer-this-summer-heres-what-the-law-says-about-public-drunkenness-128922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peggy Kern, Associate professor, University of Melbourne

Imagine yourself graduating from high school, with the world before you.

But now you must decide what career you want to pursue. You hope for a job that will pay the bills, but also one you will enjoy. After all, you will spend a large portion of your waking hours at work.

But how can you make a reliable choice – beyond what your parents might be pushing for, or what your final year results will get you direct entry into.

Our study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found different professions attract people with very different psychological characteristics.

When looking for a new career, you might visit a career adviser and answer a set of questions to identify your interests and strengths. These results are used to match you with a set of potential occupations.

However, this method relies on long surveys, and doesn’t account for the fact that many occupations are changing or disappearing as technology transforms the employment landscape.

21st century job search

We wondered if we could develop a data-driven approach to matching a person with a suitable profession, based on psychological traces they reveal online.

Studies have shown people leave traces of themselves through the language they post online and their online behaviours.

Could we analyse this to find out the extent to which people doing the same job shared the same personality traits?

Read more: Employment services aren’t working for older jobseekers, jobactive staff or employers

In our research, we identified more than 100,000 Twitter users, each of whom included one of 3,513 job titles in their user profile.

Then, using a tool available through IBM’s cloud-based artificial intelligence engine Watson, and its Personality Insights service, we gave each profile a score across ten personality-related characteristics, based on the language in their posts.

We used a variety of data analytics and machine learning techniques to explore the personality of each of the occupations.

For example, to create the “vocation compass map” we used an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to cluster occupational personality data into twenty distinct clusters, grouping the occupations that were most similar in terms of personality.

An occupational map

Work has long been thought to be more fulfilling if it fits who we are as a person, in terms of our personality, values, and interests.

Our results confirmed this, and we found that different occupations tended to have very different personality profiles.

For instance, software programmers and scientists were generally more open to experiencing a variety of new activities, were intellectually curious, tended to think in symbols and abstractions, and found repetition boring. On the other hand, elite tennis players tended to be more conscientious, organised and agreeable.

Our findings point to the possibility of using data shared on social media to match an individual to a suitable job.

We used machine learning to cluster more than one thousand roles based on the inferred personality traits of people in those roles.

Read more: Inspire children with good careers advice and they do better at school

We found many similar jobs could be grouped together.

For example, one cluster included different technology jobs such as software programming, web development, and computer science. Another group included gym management, logistic coordination, and concert promotions.

You can explore more with this interactive online map we made.

However, while many of the combinations aligned with existing occupation classifiers (current formal groupings that governments and other organisations use to group jobs together), some clusters included roles not traditionally grouped together.

For instance, cartographers, grain farmers and geologists ended up grouped together and shared similar personality traits to many of the technology professionals.

A data-driven vocation compass

With our results, we explored the idea of building a data-driven vocation compass: a recommendation system that could find the best career fit for someone’s personality.

We built a system that could recommend an occupation aligned to people’s personality traits with over 70% accuracy.

Even when our system was wrong, it wasn’t far off, and pointed to professions with very similar skill sets. For instance, it might suggest a poet becomes a fictional writer.

Professions are quickly changing due to automation and technological breakthroughs. And in our connected, digital world, we leave behind traces of ourselves. Our work has offered one approach to using these traces in a productive way.

Read more: Artificial intelligence may take your job, so political leaders need to start doing theirs

This approach may one day be used to help people find their dream career, or at the very least, better our understanding of the hidden personality dimensions of different roles.

– ref. Robot career advisor: AI may soon be able to analyse your tweets to match you to a job – http://theconversation.com/robot-career-advisor-ai-may-soon-be-able-to-analyse-your-tweets-to-match-you-to-a-job-128777

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

’Tis the season to be jolly. We all enjoy the sentiments of this well-known carol during the festive season. There’s little doubt public merriment is in abundance at this time of year, with alcohol generally reducing inhibitions.

But at what point does good-natured inebriation become criminally-tinged intoxication? And what about those full of merriment who are in the streets late at night?

Let’s see what the law says.

In court the morning after

Public intoxication is illegal in every jurisdiction in Australia, but there are differences from place to place, depending on the way the offence is created, enforced and responded to.

Read more: Street drinking, fly-tipping and nuisance neighbours: who experiences anti-social behaviour?

The law, generally speaking, empowers police to apprehend anyone (including a person under 18 years of age) who is drunk in a public place.

They used to be taken to a police station, but since the mid-1980s, there has been a realisation (in all jurisdictions except Queensland and Victoria) this wasn’t the best place for an intoxicated person.

In fact, the South Australian Public Intoxication Act 1984 states:

Persons or bodies involved in the administration of this Act are to be guided by the following principles: (a) primary concern is to be given to the health and well-being of a person apprehended under this Act; and (b) a person detained under this Act should, where practicable, be detained in a place other than a police station.

This was a remarkably insightful reform. It was designed to stop the farcical spectacle of dozens of men and women who had been arrested for being drunk being paraded through magistrates courts the following morning, racking up hundreds of convictions and thousands of dollars in fines they were never going to be able to pay, and wasting thousands of hours of court time each year in the process.

Now, when a person is apprehended for public intoxication, they usually end up back at home, or at a shelter, often with simply an on-the-spot fine.

Abolishing the laws after deaths in custody

There has recently been a dramatic development in Victoria, one of the recalcitrant states, following the case of Tanya Day. The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman died after falling and hitting her head in the cells of the Castlemaine police station in December, 2017.

Read more: Aboriginal woman Tanya Day died in custody. Now an inquest is investigating if systemic racism played a role

She had been taken to the station, arrested for not paying a train fare, and was charged with public drunkenness. She was then put the watch house cells for four hours to “sober up”, but when she hit her head she sustained a brain haemorrhage that led to her death in hospital 17 days later.

In August this year, Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy advised she planned to write to the Victorian coroner to say the Labor government had committed, in principle, to abolishing the crime of public drunkenness. She said:

Public drunkenness requires a public health response, not a criminal justice one, and now is the right time to take this important reform forward.

We must also remember that 27 of the Aboriginal Australians whose deaths were examined by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (beginning in 1988) were in police cells because they had been arrested while drunk.

Recommendation 79 of the Royal Commission report urged:

in jurisdictions where drunkenness has not been decriminalised, governments should legislate to abolish the offence of public drunkenness.

But that has not happened universally, despite repeated urging from reform advocates and the successes of night patrols in remote and regional communities.

Where can you drink this Christmas?

Today, by-laws are the key to determining what you can and cannot do with alcoholic beverages in public.

Questions about where it’s okay to have a beer, or whether a bottle must be in a bag or with the top firmly secured can only be answered by reference to council regulations where the public drinking occurs.

Hundreds of public places – including beaches, parks, shopping precincts and recreation grounds in Australian “dry zones” – have been legislated, and each carries its own rules. This means it’s important to review the area you plan to drink in, because you could be committing an offence without realising it.

Read more: How night club bouncers police the social order – from Berlin to Johannesburg

And before leaving this topic, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the various liquor licensing laws of every jurisdiction.

A person in South Australia, for example, commits an offence if they fail to leave licensed premises when the licensee asks because they are drunk, or fighting, threatening, abusive or insulting.

Typically, licensees in these situations have delegated their authority to crowd controllers (“bouncers”).

It’s also worth noting these security officers are considered far better trained and monitored now after the death of cricketer David Hookes in 2004, when a hotel staff member chased him into the street and punched him to the ground. The tragedy gave rise in 2005 to Standards Australia releasing a draft voluntary code on the desirable qualities of people who are employed as bouncers.

One sure way for public planners and policy-makers to rid festive events of unacceptable drunken behaviour is simply to stop the festival in its tracks. But in any case, you can only hope that with a little bit of peer pressure, a clear message might start to sink in – the days of public drunken revelry are numbered.

– ref. The summer heat calls for a cold beer, but be careful where you drink it. Being drunk in public is a crime – http://theconversation.com/the-summer-heat-calls-for-a-cold-beer-but-be-careful-where-you-drink-it-being-drunk-in-public-is-a-crime-128922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Stone, General practitioner; Clinical Associate Professor, ANU Medical School, Australian National University

Around 70% of people who sought treatment for their mental health in Australia in 2015-16 saw a general practitioner. This amounts to 18 million dedicated mental health consultations.

GPs are often the first point of contact for people concerned about their mental health. Mostly, though, mental health care occurs within consultations initiated for other reasons. This could be when someone sees a doctor for a physical health concern, a general check up, or to get a prescription.

Whatever the reason, GPs see 88% of the Australian population every year, putting us in a unique position in the health system to work with people with mental health concerns.

When you visit your GP with a mental health concern, you should be able to expect compassionate care alongside practical advice to help you navigate the treatment you need.

Read more: Depression: it’s a word we use a lot, but what exactly is it?

Why see a GP for your mental health needs?

People can see us without a referral, and we get to know our patients over time, which can make it easier to discuss difficult issues.

We see patients during important transitions, for example after giving birth, after a major illness, or during a relationship crisis.

We also see people at higher risk of mental illness than the overall population, such as refugees, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, LGBTI people, and those experiencing poverty and homelessness. Many of our patients are survivors of childhood abuse, domestic violence, or other forms of trauma.

We understand certain physical illnesses and medications can predispose people to mental illness. We also understand people with serious mental illnesses are likely to die from physical diseases up to 20 years earlier than the general population. So we can focus on physical and mental health together.

We are trained in diagnosis, but we understand mental health is complex. Not everyone with depression has the same illness experience. It’s critical we help people understand what their illness means, not just what it “is”.

It’s then our responsibility to help our patients understand their options, by communicating the evidence behind different treatments, and helping them navigate the mosaic of services available.

Read more: Stroke, cancer and other chronic diseases more likely for those with poor mental health

Finding the right clinic and the right doctor

The billings we generate in the consulting room fund our clinics and our staff. The longer the consultation, the lower the patient’s Medicare subsidy per minute. In other words, shorter consultations earn much more money for the clinic.

Some bulk-billing clinics use this incentive to drive what’s become known as “six-minute medicine”: where the majority of consultations are very quick and therefore lucrative. These business models don’t enable complex care, like the sort of care needed to deal with a mental health issue, to occur easily.

Further, individual GPs have certain areas of practice that interest them. Some GPs are more interested in and comfortable with physical health than mental health care.

Consumers have reported disappointing encounters with some GPs, describing, for example, poor communication skills and a perceived lack of competence in mental health care.

It’s important to take the time to find a clinic and a GP right for you.

Navigating a fraught system

The mental health sector is complex and fragmented with overlaps, inefficiencies, duplication and poor coordination of services. GPs spend a significant amount of time assisting patients to navigate multiple mental health systems (state services, Commonwealth services, non-government services, and private services).

We often have few accessible resources at our disposal to help our patients recover. Psychologists and other allied health practitioners are frequently unaffordable or inaccessible. There’s a shortage of psychiatrists in Australia. Acute psychiatric beds, particularly for young people or patients with eating disorders, are in short supply.

Read more: To really fix Victoria’s mental health system, we’ll need to bridge the state/Commonwealth divide

Meanwhile, disadvantaged communities have higher rates of mental illness, but lower access to services.

Unfortunately, none of these problems will be solved within a GP’s consulting room – but we do our best to navigate them case by case.

10 tips for patients

We believe the core of mental health care is a consistent, empathic therapeutic relationship to support consumers in their journey towards recovery.

Every consumer has the right to find a GP who can partner in that recovery. These tips will help you get the most out of your GP mental health consultation:

1. if you can, make a longer appointment. Mental health consultations take time
2. choose a GP carefully. You need to feel comfortable with them
3. consider taking a supportive friend or relative with you
4. if waiting rooms are stressful for you, consider timing your appointment at the beginning or end of the day
5. have a list of medications and therapies you’ve tried, and whether you found them helpful
6. if you have any reports from previous doctors, bring them with you
7. your GP will want to know your family history, including physical and mental health disorders, so find out what you can
8. be as honest and open as you can. Your GP can help you more effectively if they know what’s going on. This includes drug and alcohol issues which commonly accompany mental illness
9. if you need an interpreter, let the practice know in advance
10. be patient. It may take a few consultations for your GP to really understand what you need.

Read more: When it’s easier to get meds than therapy: how poverty makes it hard to escape mental illness

– ref. Your first point of contact and your partner in recovery: the GP’s role in mental health care – http://theconversation.com/your-first-point-of-contact-and-your-partner-in-recovery-the-gps-role-in-mental-health-care-124083

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

If you live near a public playground it can be a convenient outdoor destination for short excursions and a life-saving source of pressure relief when the kids are too surly to bear inside the house. But in research, published in the Journal of Urban Landscape and Planning, we found having a playground nearby can also add value to your property.

The presence of a playground added about A$20,000 (4.6%) to the average property price of A$439,000.

Read more: Do ‘screaming children’ in playgrounds ruin neighbourhood parks?

Importantly, we can reject the idea that a playground has no effect or a negative effect on property prices.

That’s something residents should consider if they fear a new playground to be built in their neighbourhood could lower property prices, as they did at Mount Eliza, Victoria, last year.

What planners need to know

Local councils need to know the costs and benefits of building a playground when making decisions about investment in local infrastructure. If playgrounds are undesirable, they might avoid them altogether or place them far from where people live.

We wanted to know what value local residents might place on playgrounds using data from Moreland City Council in the north Melbourne metropolitan area.

One way to assess the value of playgrounds is simply to ask people. But we didn’t do that. We know people often over- or understate the value or cost of things in surveys because there is no real cost to pay.

We used ten years of every property price transaction in Moreland to try to measure the value people place on playgrounds. Property prices reflect the value people place on the attributes of a place they are buying.

These attributes include location (location, location) and things about the property such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Prices also include the value people place on local amenities such as shops nearby or a train station within walking distance.

Read more: Rail works lift property prices, pointing to value capture’s potential to fund city infrastructure

So how could we possibly work out the little bit of all that that’s about the distance to a playground?

Let’s build a model

First, we estimate a very detailed model of the determinants of property prices. This includes the type of dwelling, size, bedrooms, bathrooms, the presence of 19 different features such as balconies or spas, year and quarter of sale, and suburb.

We control for distance to a wide range of amenities including shops, schools and golf courses. Finally, we control for the distance to 14 different types of open space, including shared trails and community horticulture.

Moreland City Council provided us with the data on amenities and open spaces. With this model, we are able to explain about 70% of the variation in house prices.

With the help of Melbourne Water, we identified two empty green spaces (in Coburg North and Pascoe Vale) that were suitable for building a small local playground. These are the smallest of the five categories of playgrounds in Moreland City Council. They generally consist of a swing set, a slippery dip (slide) and small rocking animals. They are targeted at young children, ages three to six.

The second step is to match properties that are near the empty green spaces with properties that are similarly close to a playground.

After matching properties in this way and accounting for all of the determinants of property price in our model, we attribute any unexplained difference in the prices of the matched properties to the presence of the playground.

We found a consistently positive effect of local playgrounds on property prices. The benefit of a playground is larger when properties are closer, as the effect falls with distance from the playground.

For example, the presence of a playground within 300 metres adds about A$20,000 (4.6%) to the average property price. But our estimate is somewhat imprecise with the calculations showing it could be as low as A$10,000 or as high as A$30,000.

If we look at houses only the increase is A$32,000 (6.4% of the median house price of A$499,000), but again within a plausible range of A$8,000 to A$46,000.

A note of caution

Given the potential variation, are these price increase effects realistic?

My personal feeling is that A$20,000 seems on the large side. We may be picking up other unpriced attributes of properties that differ in the matched samples.

Read more: Australian cities pay the price for blocking council input to projects that shape them

But we are dealing with a very rich set of characteristics and property attributes. We took several walks around the area to see whether anything was affecting our results. We could not identify anything.

Councils should see the need to consider the value of playgrounds in property prices as an important input into any cost-benefit analysis of investing in playground infrastructure.

Likewise, homeowners should not be worried (and object) to the construction of new playgrounds as they do not lower housing prices, rather they add to home value.

– ref. That public playground is good for your kids and your wallet – http://theconversation.com/that-public-playground-is-good-for-your-kids-and-your-wallet-127910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neal Hughes, Senior Economist, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

The current drought across much of eastern Australia has demonstrated the dramatic effects climate variability can have on farm businesses and households.

The drought has also renewed longstanding discussions around the emerging effects of climate change on agriculture, and how governments can best help farmers to manage drought risk.

A new study released this morning by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences offers fresh insight on these issues by quantifying the impacts of recent climate variability on the profits of Australian broadacre farms.

Read more: Droughts, extreme weather and empowered consumers mean tough choices for farmers

The results show that changes in temperature and rainfall over the past 20 years have had a negative effect on average farm profits while also increasing risk.

The findings demonstrate the importance of adaptation, innovation and adjustment to the agriculture sector, and the need for policy responses which promote – and don’t unnecessarily inhibit – such progress.

Measuring the effects of climate on farms

Measuring the effects of climate on farms is difficult given the many other factors that also influence farm performance, including commodity prices.

Further, the effects of rainfall and temperature on farm production and profit can be complex and highly location and farm specific.

To address this complexity, ABARES has developed a model based on more than 30 years of historical farm and climate data—farmpredict — which can identify effects of climate variability, input and output prices, and other factors on different types of farms.

Cropping farms most exposed

The model finds that cropping farms generally face greater climate risk than beef farms, but also generate higher average returns.

Cropping farm revenue and profits are lower in dry years, with large reductions in crop yields and only small savings in input costs.

Effect of climate variability on rate of return

In contrast, drought has a smaller immediate effect on beef farm revenue, because in dry years farmers can increase the quantity of livestock sold.

However, drought also lowers herd numbers, which lowers farm profit when herd value is accounted for.

Higher temperatures, lower winter rainfall

Australian average temperatures have increased by about 1°C since 1950.

Recent decades have also seen a trend towards lower average winter rainfall in the southwest and southeast.

This drying trend has been linked to atmospheric changes associated with global warming.

However, while global climate models generally predict a decline in winter season rainfall across southern Australia and more time spent in drought, there is still much uncertainty about what will happen in the long term, particularly to rainfall.

Climate shifts have cut farm profits

ABARES has assessed the effect of climate variability on farm profits over the period 1950 to 2019, holding all other factors constant including commodity prices and farm management practices.

We find that the shift in climate conditions since 2000 (from conditions in the period 1950-1999 to conditions in the period 2000-2019) has had a negative effect on the profits of both cropping and livestock farms.

Effect of 2000 – 2019 climate conditions on average farm profit

We estimate that the shift in climate has cut average annual broadacre farm profits by around 22%, which is an average of $18,600 per farm per year, controlling for all other factors.

The effects have been most pronounced in the cropping sector, reducing average profits by 35%, or $70,900 a year for a typical cropping farm.

At a national level this amounts to an average loss in production of broadacre crops of around $1.1 billion a year.

Although beef farms have been less affected than cropping farms overall, some beef farming regions have been affected more than others, especially south-western Queensland.

Read more: Drought is inevitable, Mr Joyce

Like previous ABARES research this study finds evidence of adaptation, with farmers reducing their sensitivity to dry conditions over time.

Our results suggest that without this adaptation the effects of the post-2000 climate shift would have been considerably larger, particularly for cropping farms.

Effect of post-2000 climate on average annual farm profits

Risk and income volatility have also increased

The changed climate conditions since 2000 have also increased risk and income volatility.

This is particularly so for cropping farms, where we find the chance of low-profit years has more than doubled as a result of the change in climate conditions.

Effect of climate variability on typical cropping farm

Handle with care – the drought policy dilemma

Drought policy faces an almost unavoidable dilemma, that providing relief to farm businesses and households in times of drought risks slowing industry structural adjustment and innovation.

Adjustment, change and innovation are fundamental to improving agricultural productivity; maintaining Australia’s competitiveness in world markets; and providing attractive and financially sustainable opportunities for farm households.

Read more: Helping farmers in distress doesn’t help them be the best: the drought relief dilemma

For these reasons, the strategic intent of drought policy has shifted away from seeking to protect and insulate farmers towards the promotion of drought preparedness and self‑reliance.

The best options for reconciling the drought policy dilemma focus on boosting the resilience of farm businesses and households to future droughts and climate variability, including through action and investment when farmers are not in drought.

The government’s Future Drought Fund, which will support research and innovation, is a good example of this approach.

Developing new insurance options is one worthwhile avenue of research which could provide farmers a way to self-manage risk. It would require investments in data and knowledge to support viable weather insurance markets: where farmers pay premiums sufficient to cover costs over time.

Read more: Better data would help crack the drought insurance problem

Supporting farm households experiencing hardship is legitimate and important, but for the long term health of the farm sector this needs to be done in ways that promote resilience and improved productivity and allow for long term adjustment to change.

– ref. New study: changes in climate since 2000 have cut Australian farm profits 22% – http://theconversation.com/new-study-changes-in-climate-since-2000-have-cut-australian-farm-profits-22-128860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathalie Collins, Academic Director (National Programs), Edith Cowan University

Now the high of Game of Thrones has faded, another pop culture token has arrived. It takes the form of a green alien baby from the Star Wars television series The Mandalorian – a key offering from Disney+ when it launched last month.

In “Baby Yoda” (he is officially called The Child), we are introduced to a new version of someone we already love. The tiny, revered elder of the films has been further miniaturised and transformed. No longer a wizened oracle, he is presented as a vulnerable infant.

Imbued with traits we are biologically driven to find appealing – a large, symmetrical head, large eyes, a small mouth and a small nose – viewers have taken to this precious bundle and given him the online status he deserves: the internet meme.

There are online gifs, images and videos of Baby Yoda sipping soup, sharing a 50th birthday with celebrities, embodying extreme cuteness and – most importantly – inspiring Disney+ subscriptions.

Baby Yoda is shrouded in the mystery of uncharted territory. Unlike our first encounter with Yoda in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, this time we get to journey with him, as he and The Mandalorian explore a universe after the fall of the Empire.

The unlikely caretaker – one of the few remaining Mandalorian bounty hunters, who also made their debut in The Empire Strikes Back – discovers “the kid” towards the end of the first episode. The audience looks on with delight as the Mandalorian creates the unlikely kinship we all wish we could have with our own Baby Yoda.

Although recent Star Wars instalments didn’t hit home as strongly, we forgive all when we stare into those dark, pleading eyes.

The power of nostalgia

Disney has always marketed to the whole family, with a deep understanding of how nostalgia brands work.

Generations hand their cultural icons down with more effectiveness than any material heirloom. And yet companies need to constantly reinvent the nostalgia brand to keep it current without compromising its essential elements.

To the generation who grew up with Star Wars, Older Yoda represents an elder. His key quotes from the series are repeated, referenced, and revered. He’s a voice we’ve trusted since we were as tall as he supposedly is.

Yoda was designed by George Lucas in keeping with religious and cultural traditions, with ties to Buddhist principles of mindfulness, the universal life force of Taoism, and the Christian parables of Jesus. He was designed to inspire trust – and has now been designed again to inspire wonder and affection.

For viewers without access to their own elders, Older Yoda was the grandfather we always wanted: there to guide and tell us, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Do life-long fans become life-long subscribers?

Disney is not in the movie business, nor in the cartoon business. It is in the “cultural icon” business – perhaps better described as the “clout” business.

Clout is an academic term for the power a brand or a product has to shape markets. Getting clout is challenging. Maintaining it just as challenging, if not harder.

Real clout doesn’t just sell us stuff. It redefines how we think through authentically tapping into who we are, what we believe, how we consume and – most ambitiously – how we feel. And how markets form and reform.

This is what Disney is after through Baby Yoda: in inspiring love and attachment that will capture share of heart, and then share of wallet. Baby Yoda is the perfect figure to convince customers Disney+ is not just another video streaming service: it is the streaming service you have to have.

Gathering around the water cooler for a chat doesn’t happen much these days. Work teams are often virtual and families are dispersed in all directions. The ideological chasms that divide us seem to be getting wider and deeper.

But Baby Yoda is something we can all relate to, co-creating messages and sharing a laugh – no matter where we are. Here, or in a galaxy far, far away.

– ref. Baby Yoda: the meme child making it a very Disney+ Christmas – http://theconversation.com/baby-yoda-the-meme-child-making-it-a-very-disney-christmas-128779

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Casswell, Professor of public health policy, Massey University

Earlier this month, the New Zealand government released draft legislation for how cannabis could be bought, grown and sold. It is a first glimpse at what New Zealanders will be voting on in next year’s cannabis referendum.

Justice minister Andrew Little said the primary objective of the draft bill was to reduce overall use and protect young people from access.

The bill proposes a minimum purchase and use age of 20 and restrictions on marketing and advertising of cannabis products. It says harm minimisation messages are to be included, consumption prohibited in public places and sales limited to specifically licensed physical stores. The cultivation and supply chain would be licensed and controlled by the government.

A clear public health orientation is to be applauded but once cannabis is made legal, I suggest the chances of increased use are high. This is not necessarily an argument against legalisation but we need much clearer thinking about the parameters of the legal cannabis market than is obvious in the current debate.

Read more: Most Australians support decriminalising cannabis, but our laws lag behind

An expanding cannabis market

Despite claims of high levels of use in New Zealand, the best data suggests only 15% of adults used cannabis in 2018/19, compared with 80% drinking alcohol.

In the US, where states have legalised medicinal cannabis and more recently recreational use, there has been an increase in cannabis use disorders among adults, prenatal and unintentional childhood exposure, use in adults and cannabis-related emergency room visits and fatal vehicle crashes.

We must expect more health harm from legal cannabis and, if legalisation is to go ahead, the government is right to draft law that protects us, and particularly the most vulnerable. But we may need to go beyond what the government is currently planning.

The level of harm from cannabis use depends on the amounts consumed, and there are many factors that drive use. These include levels of disadvantage, a sense hopelessness, familial history or personal and family crises, but one of the important drivers of heavy use is the way the products are supplied and marketed. This draft bill attempts to grapple with this.

Regulation beyond national level

The cannabis referendum provides both an opportunity and an imperative to question the proposed policy response. Our consumption is now strongly influenced by large and powerful transnational corporations, several of which produce alcohol products and will be the producers of the cannabis we smoke, vape, eat and drink.

Already alcohol companies are part owners of cannabis production overseas. The resources and influence these transnational alcohol corporates wield in the political arena weaken and prevent good legislation being passed throughout the world. The alcohol transnationals (aided by the advertising industry) have succeeded in fighting off meaningful regulation to control their marketing.

The draft New Zealand cannabis law proposes advertising regulations similar to those of the Smokefree legislation. These regulations, relevant when they were introduced in 1990, include no reference to marketing via social media platforms, where most alcohol marketing now takes place. Big data is used to target potential heavy drinkers and send messages the recipient they may not even recognise as marketing.

Read more: Children’s health hit for six as industry fails to regulate alcohol ads

Preventing industry influence on policy

Despite some voluntary restrictions on social media platforms, cannabis is being marketed with the help of influencers.

Cannabis corporates will work to weaken restrictions on marketing. Already in New Zealand, in response to the current proposals, Paul Manning, the chief executive of New Zealand cannabis producer Helius commented:

You could argue the ban on advertising is a bit tough given alcohol corporations are still allowed to advertise … .

We should expect a push from corporates around the world to bring cannabis regulation (in all its aspects) into line with very weak controls on alcohol. Countries around the world are looking at cannabis regulation and will learn from each other as the research on the impact of legalisation mounts. But the global corporations are already active and have resources to influence the policy processes.

Tobacco control has benefited greatly from an international and legally binding treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This specifically excludes corporate influence from the policy process. As a signatory to this treaty, New Zealand agreed to prevent tobacco industry influence on policy. There is no recognition of a similar intention in the draft cannabis bill (or in alcohol legislation).

Alcohol is the only drug not subject to an international health treaty and this is urgently needed.

The UN conventions on illicit drugs are not relevant when cannabis is legalised.

It is time to complement national policy on both alcohol and cannabis with a global framework that prevents industry influence on policy. This would help reduce harm by recognising the conflict of interest in maximising profits from selling addictive and intoxicating products.

– ref. Why NZ’s cannabis bill needs to stop industry from influencing policy – http://theconversation.com/why-nzs-cannabis-bill-needs-to-stop-industry-from-influencing-policy-128530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peggy Kern, Associate professor, University of Melbourne

Imagine yourself graduating from high school, with the world before you.

But now you must decide what career you want to pursue. You hope for a job that will pay the bills, but also one you will enjoy. After all, you will spend a large portion of your waking hours at work.

But how can you make a reliable choice – beyond what your parents might be pushing for, or what your final year results will get you direct entry into.

Our study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found different professions attract people with very different psychological characteristics.

When looking for a new career, you might visit a career adviser and answer a set of questions to identify your interests and strengths. These results are used to match you with a set of potential occupations.

However, this method relies on long surveys, and doesn’t account for the fact that many occupations are changing or disappearing as technology transforms the employment landscape.

21st century job search

We wondered if we could develop a data-driven approach to matching a person with a suitable profession, based on psychological traces they reveal online.

Studies have shown people leave traces of themselves through the language they post online and their online behaviours.

Could we analyse this to find out the extent to which people doing the same job shared the same personality traits?

Read more: Employment services aren’t working for older jobseekers, jobactive staff or employers

In our research, we identified more than 100,000 Twitter users, each of whom included one of 3,513 job titles in their user profile.

Then, using a tool available through IBM’s cloud-based artificial intelligence engine Watson, and its Personality Insights service, we gave each profile a score across ten personality-related characteristics, based on the language in their posts.

We used a variety of data analytics and machine learning techniques to explore the personality of each of the occupations.

For example, to create the “vocation compass map” we used an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to cluster occupational personality data into twenty distinct clusters, grouping the occupations that were most similar in terms of personality.

An occupational map

Work has long been thought to be more fulfilling if it fits who we are as a person, in terms of our personality, values, and interests.

Our results confirmed this, and we found that different occupations tended to have very different personality profiles.

For instance, software programmers and scientists were generally more open to experiencing a variety of new activities, were intellectually curious, tended to think in symbols and abstractions, and found repetition boring. On the other hand, elite tennis players tended to be more conscientious, organised and agreeable.

Our findings point to the possibility of using data shared on social media to match an individual to a suitable job.

We used machine learning to cluster more than one thousand roles based on the inferred personality traits of people in those roles.

Read more: Inspire children with good careers advice and they do better at school

We found many similar jobs could be grouped together.

For example, one cluster included different technology jobs such as software programming, web development, and computer science. Another group included gym management, logistic coordination, and concert promotions.

You can explore more with this interactive online map we made.

However, while many of the combinations aligned with existing occupation classifiers (current formal groupings that governments and other organisations use to group jobs together), some clusters included roles not traditionally grouped together.

For instance, cartographers, grain farmers and geologists ended up grouped together and shared similar personality traits to many of the technology professionals.

A data-driven vocation compass

With our results, we explored the idea of building a data-driven vocation compass: a recommendation system that could find the best career fit for someone’s personality.

We built a system that could recommend an occupation aligned to people’s personality traits with over 70% accuracy.

Even when our system was wrong, it wasn’t far off, and pointed to professions with very similar skill sets. For instance, it might suggest a poet becomes a fictional writer.

Professions are quickly changing due to automation and technological breakthroughs. And in our connected, digital world, we leave behind traces of ourselves. Our work has offered one approach to using these traces in a productive way.

Read more: Artificial intelligence may take your job, so political leaders need to start doing theirs

This approach may one day be used to help people find their dream career, or at the very least, better our understanding of the hidden personality dimensions of different roles.

– ref. Robot career guidance: AI may soon be able to analyse your tweets to match you to a job – http://theconversation.com/robot-career-guidance-ai-may-soon-be-able-to-analyse-your-tweets-to-match-you-to-a-job-128777

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oli Moraes, Research Officer, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

The only Australian achievement on display at last week’s COP25 conference was “blue carbon”, paraded in three minor side events on including carbon stored in coastal ecosystems in national carbon reporting.

Blue carbon, which is the storage of organic carbon in mangroves, seagrasses and tidal salt marshes, is irrefutably important. But it is not a panacea for climate change. Australia has been using it as a smokescreen for inaction and a tool to bully our Pacific island neighbours.

Read more: Mapping the world’s ‘blue carbon’ hot spots in coastal mangrove forests

How much longer can the Coalition government defend inadequate climate commitments dependent on insufficient carbon conservation measures?

What is blue carbon?

Ecosystems like mangroves, seagrasses and tidal salt marshes are very good at storing carbon. They pull it out of oceans and atmosphere and store it in their roots and mud. It can remain there for thousands of years.

Beyond carbon storage, these landscapes provide habitat, spawning grounds and nurseries for fish, invertebrates and turtle species. They also provide protection for coastal communities from extreme weather events and rising sea level.

Shrimp farming, coastal development and agricultural expansion are a global threat to coastal ecosystems. These areas are also susceptible to heat waves, cyclones and storms, which climate change is intensifying.

When mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes are cut down, cleared or degraded, the carbon that was safely stored in mud is released back into the ocean and atmosphere as blue carbon emissions, further contributing to global warming.

So, conserving blue carbon ecosystems is critical to avoid a potential blue carbon bomb. Coastal areas in small island states, like those in the Pacific, are particularly vulnerable.

How is Australia responding?

During 2017’s COP23 climate summit presided over by Fiji, the then Australian minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop, announced Australia would invest A$6 million in protecting and managing Pacific blue carbon ecosystems.

This pledge has been cited often over the past two years to demonstrate Australia’s commitment to action on climate change; most recently by the government’s inexperienced COP25 delegation led by Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor.

Not the caring neighbour we pretend to be

While it is undeniably important to protect blue carbon ecosystems, there are major problems with the Coalition’s approach that must be scrutinised.

Throwing money at blue carbon projects generates carbon credits, which nominally offset Australia’s emissions. Meanwhile, Australia remains one of the world’s largest polluters per capita and the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels.

Yet our government claims the moral high ground through modest blue carbon conservation efforts.

Most wickedly, the government’s own emissions data show Australia’s pollution continues to rise. It looks increasingly like we won’t reach our own inadequate targets of 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030. The issue of Australia using carbon credits already earned under the Kyoto Protocol, which has been derided as exploiting a loophole, has been postponed until next year.

This is totally at odds with what regional leaders called for during the Pacific Island Forum in August. Earlier this month, former prime minister of Tuvalu Enele Sopoaga said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison “denies climate change is happening in the Pacific”.

It is completely disingenuous for our leaders to use blue carbon as an example of Australia’s support of our Pacific neighbours in the climate crisis.

The Paris Agreement will not force Australia to undertake ambitious climate mitigation until the late 2020s. We will then be forced to buy expensive international carbon credits through schemes like blue carbon conservation and restoration.

Rather than curbing our emissions now, Australia is sinking more research dollars into cheaper carbon credits to meet these future commitments. It’s clear Australia is bullying the Pacific into bailing us out on our failure to act.

Blue carbon is not a silver bullet

A UN oceans report released earlier this year highlights problems with countries depending on blue carbon as their main form of climate change mitigation.

The report says blue carbon would offset only about 2% of current global emissions and would not be an effective replacement for the “very rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions” required to avoid catastrophic climate change.

While recent studies in Australia found sea-level rise could improve coastal ecosystems’ ability to sequester more carbon, the UN report states: “[…] under high emission scenarios, sea level rise and warming are expected to reduce carbon sequestration by vegetated coastal ecosystems”.

If emissions keep rising, the speed and scale of climate change will overwhelm blue carbon ecosystems’ ability to adapt. This problem will be compounded by “coastal squeeze” as rising seas butt up against human infrastructure, leaving coastal plants with shrinking habitats.

This demonstrates the perverse reality Pacific islands now face.

Australia is essentially telling our Pacific neighbours, who are on the front line of climate change: “We will protect your coastal carbon sinks in the short term for international credit, while continuing to burn and export coal, oil and gas.”

In the long term, Pacific islands will be devastated and even destroyed by cyclones and storms. Because those mangroves won’t be able to adapt in time to the hot, acidic and rising seas.

Read more: Acid oceans are shrinking plankton, fuelling faster climate change

– ref. Blue carbon is not the silver bullet the Coalition wants it to be – http://theconversation.com/blue-carbon-is-not-the-silver-bullet-the-coalition-wants-it-to-be-128925

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica McLean, Senior Lecturer in Geography, Macquarie University

Digital technologies are often put forward as a solution to environmental dilemmas.

The spread of the internet came with claims of a huge reduction in printing, and by replacing paper with bytes, we thought we’d reduce our negative environmental impact

But this early promise of solving environmental problems may not be delivering because digital devices, like most technologies, also have environmental impacts.

Devices are powered by electricity – often produced in coal-fired plants – and are manufactured from materials such as metals, glass and plastics. These materials also have to be mined, made or recycled.

So, while digital technologies can facilitate environmental benefits, we shouldn’t assume they always do. My research published this year shows much more needs to be done to debunk such myths.

Measuring digital eco-footprints

It’s difficult to measure the environmental impacts of our digital lives, partly because the digital ecosystems that facilitate the internet are complex.

Read more: Sustainable Shopping: the eco-friendly guide to online Christmas shopping

The United Nations Environment Assembly defines a digital ecosystem as “a complex distributed network or interconnected socio-technological system”.

Simply, digital ecosystems are the result of humans, digital infrastructure and devices interacting with one another. They rely on energy consumption at multiple scales.

The term “digital ecosystem” relates to ecological thinking, specifically in terms of how human-technological systems work.

However, there’s nothing inherently environmentally sustainable about digital ecosystems.

It’s worthwhile considering digital ecosystems’ environmental impacts as they grow.

In 2017, it was reported in Nature that internet traffic (to and from data centres) was increasing at an exponential rate. At that stage, it had reached 1.1 zettabytes (a zettabyte equals one trillion gigabytes).

As our digital use continues, so do our carbon emissions.

Dangers of data centres

Data centres majorly contribute to the carbon emissions of digital ecosystems. They are basically factories that store, backup and recover our data.

In April last year, it was estimated data centres around the world used more than 2% of the world’s electricity, and generated the same amount of carbon emissions as the global airline industry (in terms of fuel use).

Read more: Sustainable shopping: is it possible to fly sustainably?

While there is debate about the impact of flying on climate change, we’re less likely to evaluate our digital lives the same way.

According to British Open University Professor John Naughton, data centres make up about 50% of all energy consumed by digital ecosystems. Personal devices use another 34%, and the industries responsible for manufacturing them use 16%.

Tech giants such as Apple and Google have committed to 100% renewable targets, but they’re just one part of our giant digital ecosystem.

Also, on many occasions, they rely on carbon offsets to achieve this. Offsets involve people and organisations investing in environmental projects to balance their carbon emissions from other activities. For instance, people can buy carbon offsets when booking flights.

Offsets have been critiqued for not effectively reducing the carbon footprints of wealthy people, while absolving guilt from continued consumption.

A carbon-filled road ahead

With more digital technologies emerging, the environmental impacts of digital ecosystems are probably going to increase.

Apart from the obvious social and economic impacts, artificial intelligence’s (AI) environmental implications should be seriously considered.

A paper published in June by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers revealed training a large AI machine could produce five times as much carbon as what one car (including fuel) emits over a person’s lifetime, on average.

Also, this figure only relates to training a large AI machine. There are various other ways these machines suck energy.

Similarly, bitcoin mining (an application of blockchain) continues to consume large amounts of energy, and is increasing on a global scale. According to the International Energy Agency, bitcoin mining uses more energy than some countries, including Austria and Colombia.

Putting the ‘eco’ back in digital ecosystem

The digital ecosystem that supports our devices includes storage systems and networks that aren’t in our homes or workplaces, such as “the cloud”. But we should still take responsibility for the impact of such systems.

Satellites are in space. Wires run beneath footpaths, roads and oceans.

All the while, the Internet of Things is creeping into old technologies and transforming how we use them. These underground and distant aspects of digital ecosystems may partly explain why the growing environmental impacts of digital are sidelined.

There are some ways people can find out more about responsible tech options. A 2017 guide by Greenpeace rated digital tech companies on their green credentials. It assessed a range of corporations, including some managing digital platforms, and others hosting data centres.

But while the guide is useful, it’s also limited by a lack of transparency, because corporations aren’t obliged to share information on how much energy is needed or supplied for their data centres.

Read more: High-tech consumerism, a global catastrophe happening on our watch

Holding big tech accountable

The responsibility to make our digital lives more sustainable shouldn’t lie solely with individuals.

Governments should provide a regulatory environment that demands greater transparency on how digital corporations use energy. And holding these corporations accountable should include reporting on whether they are improving the sustainability of their practices.

One immediate step could be for corporations that produce digital devices to move away from planned obsolescence. One example of this is when companies including Apple and Samsung manufacture smartphones that are not designed to last.

Digital sustainability is a useful way to frame how digital technologies affect our environmental world.

We need to acknowledge that technology isn’t just a source of environmental solutions, but also has the potential for negative environmental impact.

Only then can we start to effectively transition to a more sustainable future that also includes digital technologies.

– ref. For a greener future, we must accept there’s nothing inherently sustainable about going digital – http://theconversation.com/for-a-greener-future-we-must-accept-theres-nothing-inherently-sustainable-about-going-digital-128125

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Wade, Honorary Lecturer, Australian National University

In a year that began with floods and will finish with fire, emergency fundraisers have grown rapidly, increasing by 35% during 2019. Many farmers seeking relief from extended drought conditions have been compelled to turn to crowdfunding.

As for the wreckage wrought by the current bushfires, GoFundMe reported that by the end of November, more than 700 campaigns were launched in response.

Australia is now ranked third globally in donations per capita, with one in ten contributing to a GoFundMe campaign this year. Regional towns are the most generous donors, with Wagga Wagga, Mackay, and Launceston ranking highest.

What’s more, GoFundMe fundraisers specifically highlighting climate change increased by more than 65% in 2019.

And globally, on GoFundMe alone, crowdfunding campaigns have raised over US$9 billion from 120 million donations.

Between bushfires, devastating floods, and a drought with no end in sight, crowdfunding campaigns reflect a weary resolve amid the perceived inadequacy of government responses to natural disasters.

Read more: Crowdfunded campaigns are conserving the Earth’s environment

Crowdfunding previously played only a relatively minor role in Australian life. But several recent campaigns illustrate the increasing influence crowdfunding might serve in forms of advocacy and activism.

Volunteer firefighting crews, stretched to their limits after weeks on the frontlines, have attempted to crowdfund equipment and supplies.

In fact, the most successful Australian GoFundMe campaign ever – raising $2 million from more than 45,000 donors – is for the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, treating koalas injured during the fires.

But some close observers within charitable and philanthropic groups still advise donors to consider directing their contributions through registered charities.

One local brigade’s efforts to fundraise better protective masks were met with warnings from the rural fire service against establishing campaigns “without the appropriate authority”.

Not just advocacy, political activism too

Other campaigns in GoFundMe’s top ten most successful this year reveal that, at their best, such causes can simultaneously serve as direct advocacy for marginalized people and wider activism to address underlying injustice.

An immensely praiseworthy example – and the third most successful campaign this year – is “FreeHer”.

This campaign raises funds for Indigenous women in Western Australia imprisoned for inability to pay fines (such as Ms Dhu, who died in police custody after being held for unpaid fines).

Read more: Ms Dhu coronial findings show importance of teaching doctors and nurses about unconscious bias

The FreeHer campaign achieved immediate impact and sent a resounding message that such practices are wholly intolerable. The WA government subsequently repealed the laws.

Beyond this, there are now wider calls to address incarceration rates, particularly for Indigenous Australians, whom Aboriginal activist, academic and community leader Noel Pearson argued are “the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth”.

Other notable campaigns this year were even more directly political, something previously uncommon in Australia.

Among them were Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s defamation case against David Leyonhjelm, the counter-campaign to “Fight the Greens”, and a few wholly unsuccessful efforts to re-elect hard right nationalist Fraser Anning.

In contrast, Anning’s arch-nemesis “Egg Boy” (Will Connolly) was far more successful – the eighth-highest fundraiser this year – with well-wishers raising substantial funds for Connolly’s legal fees.

When his expenses were covered pro bono Connolly donated the funds to victims of the Christchurch mosque shooting.

However, concerns have been raised that crowdfunding election campaigns could harm electoral integrity, largely due to the difficulty of tracing the source of donations.

Who gets a soapbox?

Conspicuously absent from GoFundMe’s list of most successful campaigns was one that might have otherwise finished on top.

Israel Folau’s campaign against his contract termination by Rugby Australia was undeniably contentious, raising debates around theological perspectives, employment law implications, or the contested functions of charitable institutions.

The campaign’s de-listing from GoFundMe – and rejection from the Australia-based MyCause platform – fed into narratives of Christians feeling “bullied”.

Why? Well, GoFundMe and MyCause are private companies, but to many they also represent the public square, presumably open to all. Such companies can act as gatekeepers, barring campaigns they believe may harm their reputation.

Perhaps the most infamous example was between 2014 and 2016, when GoFundMe banned campaigns directly raising money for an abortion. GoFundMe later relented, and have recently partnered with the ACLU and Planned Parenthood in support of reproductive rights.

Read more: Explainer: could the Australian Christian Lobby be investigated for its Israel Folau fundraiser?

The enthusiasm of the Australian Christian Lobby to host Folau’s campaign after it was de-listed – raising over A$2 million in two days – could also foretell a more ideologically-driven array of crowdfunding platforms. The furore may have even given the Morrison government an easier task in selling the Religious Discrimination Act.

Competing for attention in markets of sympathy

Crowdfunding can achieve wondrous outcomes, but less heartening is how often it’s needed to correct failures of the state, or suffering caused by private interests.

An obvious example is medical expenses, which easily comprises the most common type of campaign, despite the very low chances of success and threat of further harm.

Read more: As patients turn to medical crowdfunding, concerns emerge about privacy

It’s these heart-wrenching campaigns many pointed to when criticising Folau’s claim he was in “the fight of my life”.

Social crowdfunding platforms are effectively markets for sympathy, where “the crowd” weigh claims to moral worthiness. Such mechanisms create few winners and many losers. And suffering can be compounded in witnessing how much one’s life is worth in the eyes of others.

Crowdfunding is a popular tool of recognition and redistribution, promising new ways to govern ourselves and determine what values we hold.

But we must ensure it doesn’t become an altar of “sacrificial citizenship”, where good people falling on hard times must prove they are uniquely deserving above all others.

Platforms of public appeal cannot be a substitute for good governance and institutional protections.

– ref. Crowdfunding: when the government fails to act, the public wearily steps up – http://theconversation.com/crowdfunding-when-the-government-fails-to-act-the-public-wearily-steps-up-128924

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yasmine Probst, Associate professor, University of Wollongong

Weight gain can creep up on us. Over the winter months we enjoy foods that create a feeling of comfort and warmth. Many of these foods tend to be higher in calories, usually from fat or added sugars.

As we enter the summer months, some of us start to think about getting in shape – and how we’re going to look in a bathing costume.

These concerns might be met with the temptation to seek a “quick fix” to weight loss. But this sort of approach is likely to mean finding yourself back in the same position this time next year.

Looking past the quick fix and fad diets to longer-term solutions will improve your chance of keeping the weight off and staying healthy all year round.

Read more: Health Check: why do we crave comfort food in winter?

Losing weight shouldn’t be a short-term solution

Extra body fat is a risk factor for developing chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. With two in three Australians carrying too much body fat, many of us may be well-intentioned, but not making the best choices when it comes to what we eat.

Weight loss is largely a balance of choosing the right foods and being physically active in order to tip our internal energy balance scales in the right direction.

For the most part, quick-fix diets are based on calorie restriction as a means of weight loss. They focus on different strategies to get you to eat fewer calories without having to actively think about it.

Fad diets tend to share similar characteristics, such as eating fewer varieties of foods, fasting, and replacing meals.

Read more: Five food mistakes to avoid if you’re trying to lose weight

But weight loss isn’t just about swapping one or two foods for a month or two; it’s about establishing patterns to teach our bodies new habits that can be maintained into the future.

Fad diets and quick fix options can be limited in several respects. For example, they can be difficult to stick to, or people on them can regain weight quickly after stopping the diet. In some cases, there is insufficient research around their health effects in the longer term.

Let’s take a look at the way some of these characteristics feature in three popular diets.

Juicing/detoxification

Juicing or detoxification diets usually last two to 21 days and require a person to attempt a juice-focused form of fasting, often in combination with vitamin or mineral supplements in place of all meals.

People on this diet lose weight rapidly because of the extremely low calorie intake. But this is a severely restricted type of diet and particularly difficult to follow long term without a risk of nutrient deficiency.

Also, while it might hold appeal as a marketing buzzword, detoxification is not a process the body needs to go though. Our livers are efficient at detoxifying with very little help.

Read more: Trust Me, I’m An Expert: what science says about how to lose weight and whether you really need to

Intermittent fasting

An intermittent fasting diet involves a combination of fasting days and usual eating days. The fasting strategies include complete fasting (no food or drinks are consumed on fasting days) and modified fasting (20-25% of calories is consumed on fasting days).

This diet leads to weight loss due to an overall decrease in calorie intake. But it’s hard to stick with the fasting pattern as it results in intense hunger. Similarly, this diet can lead to binge eating on usual eating days.

But even though people are allowed to eat what they want on non-fasting days, research shows most do not over-eat.

Read more: Blood type, Pioppi, gluten-free and Mediterranean – which popular diets are fads?

Overall, for people who are able to stick with intermittent fasting, we don’t have enough evidence on the benefits and harms of the diet over time.

Long term energy restriction without fasting may result in the same weight outcomes and may be a better approach to continued weight management.

The paleo diet

The palaeolithic (paleo) diet was designed to reflect the foods consumed by our Stone Age ancestors before the agricultural revolution.

The paleo diet excludes processed foods and sugars. This recommendation lines up with the current evidence-based dietary recommendations. However, the paleo diet also excludes two major food groups – grain and dairy foods.

While short-term weight loss might be achieved, there’s no conclusive proof of benefit for weight loss and nutritional balance in the long term. People who follow the paleo diet might be at risk of nutritional deficiencies if they’re not getting any grains or dairy.

So it’s worth taking cues from the paleo diet in terms of limiting processed foods and sugars. But if you’re thinking of adopting the diet in its entirety, it would be important to seek support from a health professional to ensure you’re not missing out on essential nutrients.

Things to look out for

So how can you tell if a diet is likely to lead to long term weight loss success? Here are some questions to ask:

1. does it incorporate foods from across the five food groups?

2. is it flexible and practical?

3. can the foods be easily bought at the supermarket?

If the answer to these three questions is “yes”, you’re likely on to a good one. But if you’re getting at least one “no”, you might want to think carefully about whether the diet is the right choice for sustained weight loss.

Read more: Four simple food choices that help you lose weight and stay healthy

Of course, seeing results from a diet also depends on your level of commitment. While it may be easier to stay committed in the shorter term, if you want to keep the weight off year round, it’s important to make checking in with your food choices part of your ongoing routine.

– ref. Hoping to get in shape for summer? Ditch the fads in favour of a diet more likely to stick – http://theconversation.com/hoping-to-get-in-shape-for-summer-ditch-the-fads-in-favour-of-a-diet-more-likely-to-stick-122648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Tanyag, Lecturer, International Relations, Australian National University

The COP25 climate meeting in Madrid concluded over the weekend. As in past meetings, the talks failed to make much progress on international climate action. And again, the views and needs of women were largely ignored.

Among the aims of the COP, or conference of parties to the Paris Agreement, was working towards “ambitious and gender-inclusive climate action”. That is, recognising the need to integrate gender considerations into national and international climate action.

The first step to achieving this aim would be gender parity at international climate conferences such as the Madrid COP. While we don’t yet know how many of the 13,000 registered governmental delegates were women, based on past numbers they are unlikely to make up more than a quarter.

Read more: Worldwide, climate change is worse news for women

This is not the only forum where the experiences of women are ignored. Our research, spanning Kenya, Cambodia and Vanuatu, has found women are working collectively to strengthen their communities in the face of climate change. But their knowledge about climate risk is dismissed by scientists and political leaders.

Bridging climate awareness

When women are excluded from local and national-level governance, the absence of their voices at regional and global levels, such as COP meetings, is virtually assured.

Our work across Africa, Asia and the Pacific found scientists – generally male – lack awareness of the knowledge women hold about the local consequences of climate change. At the same time, those women had little access to scientific research.

In places where the labour is divided by gender, women and men learn different things about the environment.

Though the women in our research generally did not know about government policies or programs on climate change and disaster risk reduction, they were very aware of environmental change. In Kenya, the pastoralist women we spoke to are acutely aware of the link between their physical insecurity and extreme drought.

As droughts become more intense, pastoral communities who depend on livestock and grazing land are severely impacted. The loss of livestock can trigger communal conflicts and displacements as violence is used in retaliation for cattle rustling.

Moreover, given the prevailing practice of “bride prices” among pastoral households, early marriages for young women and girls are a way to secure cattle. Despite laws against female genital mutilation in Kenya, it is practised to secure higher bride prices, due to beliefs that the practice makes girls more valuable.

Read more: Paris climate summit: why more women need seats at the table

This everyday knowledge is crucial for identifying the full risk posed by climate change. However, women told us their knowledge was not always recognised within their communities – let alone at the national level. They blamed this on discrimination against women taking up decision-making roles, poverty and gender-based violence which dissuades women and girls from participating.

Valuing women

Even when countries have policies for gender equality in climate change responses, that doesn’t mean women are actually given an equal voice. According to female community leaders and women working in government and non-government organisations in Cambodia, Kenya and Vanuatu, gender equality issues in climate change policies tend to be confined to “women-only programs”.

Gender inclusion is primarily addressed in social welfare programs, rather than ministries responsible for energy, meteorology, land and natural resources.

To address these gaps, we need to to take women’s varied expertise seriously. This begins with supporting their leadership within communities and villages.

Women’s access to education and careers in climate-relevant sciences is also crucial. Ideally, this will progressively bring in broader groups of women and girls to participate in climate change decision-making.

Climate change action

Our research found programs for mitigating climate change are also perfect opportunities to support peace, community development and women’s rights.

In Kenya, for example, one member of a women’s network responding to drought and conflict told us: “[W]e support each other. We want a collective voice because then we have more power.”

These networks help women with female-specific issues, such as natural disasters that make women extremely vulnerable to abuse from men.

But even in day-to-day life, these forums are valuable for women who would otherwise be barred from political activism. In areas where authoritarian rule or discriminatory customs limit democratic spaces, women’s networks for climate response are a rare opportunity for public deliberation on policy-making.

Global evidence now shows environmental projects are more effective when gender considerations are taken into account. Our research adds to this knowledge base by documenting how women’s networks mobilise in response to climate change.

For example, the Women I Tok Tok Tugeta (Women Talk Together) network in Vanuatu has created a Women’s Weather Watch that provides early warning of disasters.

It also makes clear that relying on scientific knowledge or technological solutions alone will be insufficient in these complex environments, where climate change, gender discrimination and conflict all come together.

Read more: Climate change and migration in Bangladesh – one woman’s perspective

When we look at COP25, we can’t help but mourn the lack of women’s knowledge from the countries most affected by climate change. By supporting women at all levels, from the village to the global stage, this vital perspective can inform the creation of robust, sustainable and effective solutions to our climate crisis.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Melissa Bungcaras and Michelle Higelin, and ActionAid Australia.

– ref. Climate conferences are male, pale and stale – it’s time to bring in women – http://theconversation.com/climate-conferences-are-male-pale-and-stale-its-time-to-bring-in-women-128060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Roberts, Associate professor (Curriculum Inquiry / Rural Education), University of Canberra

More students from advantaged backgrounds study subjects that will get them a higher ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank) in New South Wales, while students from lower socioeconomic families are over-represented in subjects that contribute less to the score.

Our new study showed subjects such as advanced English are studied by students with an average higher socio-economic status than students studying standard English.

Advanced English is weighted around 13 marks higher than standard English by the Universities Admissions Centre, which uses these points to calculate the ATAR. Students with a higher ATAR are more likely to get into a university course of their choice.

We examined who studies which subjects, and the benefits of studying some subjects over others in the NSW year 12 curriculum, or the Higher School Certificate (HSC).

We also calculated most advanced English students were likely in the top 20% of their year in reading in NAPLAN in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. But most standard English students were likely in the bottom 20% for each of their NAPLAN years.

We saw similar patterns across many subjects, including between mathematics and general mathematics, between physics, chemistry and senior science, and between economic and business studies.

We also found more advantaged students took vocational education and training (VET) subjects at a much lower rate than their less advantaged counterparts. This included VET subjects that contribute to an ATAR, and other VET subjects done in year 12.

If some subjects are more likely to get you into university, and these are not being accessed equally, we have an unequal system. This means the NSW curriculum and the system it operates in legitimises social status and later opportunity based on student family background.

What we did

We looked at 73,371 non-identifiable student records, analysing the subjects students took and their grades in the HSC. We developed a scale for student socio-economic status using information on parents’ occupation and education level, as well as the students’ gender and school location.

To determine the weight of subjects, we referred to the HSC scaled mean used by the Universities Admission Centre to calculate a student’s ATAR.

Read more: What actually is an ATAR? First of all it’s a rank, not a score

There are options within subject areas, each having greater or less weight towards an ATAR. For instance, mathematics has a mean 12 points higher than standard mathematics; physics and chemistry are 12 points higher than senior science; and economics is eight points higher than business studies.

We have used the ATAR as a proxy for measuring student outcomes. This is because ATAR is the basis on which places in university courses are determined, and because it is often the focus of conversations to summarise how a student went in the HSC.

An unequal curriculum

The socio-economic status of a student’s parent(s), school location and student gender continue to exercise significant influence on completing the HSC, the subjects a student studies in the HSC, and ultimately their results.

The options weighted higher, and which therefore contributed more to an ATAR, were overwhelmingly studied by students from higher socio-economic families, and by students in the city.

Prior achievement also played a role in determining the subjects students took. Our calculations show most physics and chemistry students were likely in the top 20% of numeracy in NAPLAN when they were in years 3, 5, 7 and 9; but most senior science students were likely in the bottom 20%.

Most mathematics students were likely in the top 20% of numeracy in NAPLAN when they were in years 5, 7 and 9; but most standard mathematics students were in the bottom 40%. And economics students had higher NAPLAN grades than those in business studies.

There was also a gender divide.

A much higher proportion of females studied advanced English than males. And city students took the subject at nearly twice the rate of outer regional students.

This was also the case for physics, chemistry and economics when compared to senior science and business studies.

Mathematics was studied more by males but general mathematics studied about equally by males and females. However only a small proportion of outer regional students studied mathematics compared to major cities.

Read more: The majority of music students drop out before the end of high school – is the ATAR to blame?

Similar patterns could be seen in languages and within vocational education subjects. Students can study one VET subject from a limited range and sit an optional exam to have it contribute to their ATAR or study approved VET courses towards the HSC (and not the ATAR).

Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds took digital technology VET subjects. But students from less advantaged families took more retail, metal, engineering and hospitality subjects.

VET subjects were also studied at about three times the rate in outer regional and remote areas than in major cities, and twice as much in less advantaged areas than more advantaged ones.

Why this matters

Previous studies have shown a similar hierarchy of subjects in Victoria.

It is now generally accepted teachers have the biggest influence on student learning outside the family and home. Our focus to date has been on the quality of teachers, not what teachers are teaching.

This research shows family and home is highly related to what students do at school, overwhelmingly sorting students into subject pathways that reinforce their current place on the social ladder.

The higher your ATAR, the more likely you are to get into a more prestigious university course, which will give you more job options.

We need to look at the way subjects are arranged in the school curriculum, and ensure all students have genuine access to subjects that enhance their post-school options.

– ref. Poorer NSW students study subjects less likely to get them into uni – http://theconversation.com/poorer-nsw-students-study-subjects-less-likely-to-get-them-into-uni-127985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Harris, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, UNSW

National, state and city governments aspire to increase prosperity through globally competitive and more liveable cities. Through “world class” infrastructure, buildings and public spaces they aim to increase a city’s competitive advantage in attracting investment and talent. Research shows city governments, not states, nearly always deliver these projects overseas. The controversies in the Australian examples are largely the result of excluding local government.

Globally, mixed-use megaprojects have increasingly been seen as vehicles to make cities competitive as well as responding to local transport and housing issues. My research for a forthcoming book, Mixed-Use Megaprojects and the Competition for Capital, examines such projects on government land in Sydney, Melbourne, New York and Copenhagen.

Read more: All the signs point to our big cities’ need for democratic, metro-scale governance

What do Australian cities do differently?

The research examined projects in terms of governance, narrative, urban form, connectivity and public benefit. The findings underscore the argument that state governments lack the structural capacity or nimbleness to manage the subtle interplay of various place-based programs necessary to coordinate enablers of modern competitiveness.

Compared to developments overseas, the Australian examples have several things in common:

• more property industry influence
• less strategic coordination with other land assets and transport projects
• less public benefit outcomes
• less commitment to legislated planning frameworks
• less engagement with local knowledge.

The Barangaroo development in Sydney is perhaps the archetype of these patterns.

Despite much controversy over Barangaroo, one thing can be agreed. The poor relationship between the city and state governments has contributed to a loss of trust in planning.

Read more: Barangaroo: the loss of trust?

Excluding the city is not good policy

Firstly, this is a skills mistake. The city council has sophisticated capabilities and consistent place-based planning, design and approvals processes. These have been developed over decades.

The city also has established consultation processes and deep experience dealing with a range of stakeholders involved in inner-city development.

When the state intervenes to deliver a project and excludes the city, these processes and their advantages disappear.

Secondly, this is a political mistake. A sophisticated enemy is created that has working relationships with local stakeholders and constituents. With decades of planning work and expert knowledge disregarded, city governments are compelled to scrutinise the process and criticise the state from the sideline.

The City of Sydney appears to be winning the political, if not material, battle of Barangaroo. The lord mayor has outlasted seven state premiers in the project’s lifetime along with numerous measures intended to reduce lord mayoral efficacy.

But the battle is the problem and it’s sure to continue under current patterns of (non)rules. Consider the following examples.

The minister for planning is free to make major changes to the plan without reference to any process. This includes approving the hotel-in-the-harbour proposal even though it contravened state planning policy.

Read more: Barangaroo: Development interests counter the public interest

This ministerial power makes projects highly sensitive to political fluctuations. Longer-term planning objectives can be destabilised as a result.

The unsolicited proposal process has been another trust-breaker. Traditionally, government established the need for infrastructure within a metropolitan plan. It would call for tenders from the private sector, then evaluated those tenders in a competitive process. Now private sector participants are encouraged to approach government with development “ideas”.

A prime example involves the Crown Casino complex at Barangaroo. This proposal required major changes to the approved plan. It more than doubled the allowable floor space of the previous hotel-in-the-harbour proposal it had been encouraged to replace to restore trust in planning.

Read more: Market-led infrastructure may sound good but not if it short-changes the public

What might city involvement look like?

The Copenhagen City & Port Development Corporation is an arm’s length delivery authority, owned 95% by Copenhagen municipality and 5% by the state. It is responsible for delivering a number of mixed-use megaprojects.

As with all city areas, Copenhagen municipality develops the “Lokalplan” for precincts under standard processes and approves individual buildings and public spaces. North Harbour has been delivered as adopted in 2009.

In New York, a private developer has delivered the Hudson Yards project above state railyards under the city’s standard planning process (ULURP). The state’s involvement is limited to the air rights lease.

This did not protect the Hudson Yards project from criticism. Nevertheless, it went through the lengthy standard consultative process and has been delivered according to the rezoning since 2005.

As an aside, the city governments of both European and US cases have adopted mandatory affordable housing laws. They are now delivering 25% in their megaprojects.

As an indulgence, let’s say we were in Copenhagen or New York. The casino complex, hotel-in-the-harbour, or doubling of the site’s floorspace would require revisiting the city’s Lokalplan or ULURP. This process would include public review and approvals by multiple city government agencies. In Sydney, one person, the state minister, decides on major changes to the plan.

This research shows the approaches needed to improve city competitiveness and fairness tend to be done better by city governments than by state governments. Yet in Australia the state has absolute control of these complex, city-based projects. Whether as part of a new metropolitan sphere of governance or not, it is time to empower local city governments in the transformation of our cities.

Read more: Metropolitan governance is the missing link in Australia’s reform agenda

– ref. Australian cities pay the price for blocking council input to projects that shape them – http://theconversation.com/australian-cities-pay-the-price-for-blocking-council-input-to-projects-that-shape-them-127017

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University

Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, the old saying goes. And The Republic (c. 375 BCE), featuring Plato’s teacher Socrates in dialogue with several friends, is unquestionably central to Plato’s thought.

There are few subjects that Plato’s masterpiece does not touch or play on: political theory, education, myth, psychology, ethics, epistemology, cultural criticism, drama and comedy.

Little surprise then, that The Republic continues to be claimed by people with the most diverse convictions and agendas.

The Nazis pointed to the text’s seeming advocacy of eugenics. Yet Martin Luther King Jr nominated The Republic as the one book he would have taken to a deserted island, alongside the Bible.

Karl Popper famously accused The Republic of being a blueprint for illiberal, closed societies. Yet today, we can hear its echoes in the dazzling hyper-libertarian utopias envisaged by the Silicon Valley set.

The Republic’s famous allegory of the cave, which suggests that people’s ordinary sense of reality may be illusory, continues to shape our cultural imagination. It has been revisited again and again in literature, as well as in classic sci-fi films like The Matrix.

So, how can we make sense of this extraordinary text today?

Read more: The Matrix 20 years on: how a sci-fi film tackled big philosophical questions

Utopia

Divided into ten “books”, the Republic is mostly taught as a text championing a series of radical prescriptions concerning the best city (polis) or regime (politeia).

At a certain point, Plato’s Socrates tells his young friends that the best city will be one in which the population is divided into three castes. On top will be a ruling caste of (yes) philosopher-guardians.

The second class will be “auxiliaries” or soldiers who will share everything in common, including wives and children. Indeed, Socrates depicts men and women as absolutely equal in all decisive senses. The third class are craftspeople and traders more recognisable to us today.

This is all very pie-in-the-sky stuff. When Socrates suggests that justice is only possible if philosophers become kings, or kings philosophers, his young companion Glaucon jokes that most people on hearing this will probably reach for their weapons.

Less amusing is the proposed power of Socrates’ enlightened guardians to “breed” men and women as breeders selectively mate horses, dogs or fighting birds. The best warriors will get to sleep with the most beautiful women. There will be rigged “lotteries” so that the lesser-credentialed think it is just bad luck that they cannot “hook up” with the alphas.

Babies will be taken from their mothers by the rulers to a kind of state crèche. More ominously, children born with defects will be “hidden away” (katakrypsousin).

Everything is to be arranged so everyone can say “mine” about the same things. Each person will not know who their immediate biological family is. So, they will consider all their fellow-citizens as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.

Read more: Where to start reading philosophy?

Dystopia

We can understand at this point why Nazi educationalists looked to The Republic as a precedent for some of their programs. Contemporary dreamers of a “dark enlightenment” wherein techy people “with high IQs” can “opt out” of wider society are also finding their way back to the future as depicted in The Republic Book V.

Why many other defenders of political liberty admire Plato’s text is less clear. But, as mentioned, there are many other things the book discusses than Socrates’ seemingly ideal “city in speech”.

The Republic’s principal concern is the question of what justice is. Does being just benefit the just persons themselves, or those whom they aid, or both? Is it good for a person to live a just life?

To answer, The Republic sets up a connection between types and parts of the human psyche (mind, soul) and different political systems. For some systems and people, honour and its pursuit is considered the highest good. In other societies, like our own, the pursuit of money as the means to pleasure, power, and satisfying desires is predominant.

Socrates plausibly suggests that it would seem to be best that our political leaders are people who desire wisdom. For such people will be least moved by the desires for status and riches that produce civil dissension.

But then, it is almost impossible to imagine how such a ruling elite could ever be created without great injustices. How everybody else could be “persuaded” to accept their claims to rule is also unclear – as is grasping just how Plato’s guardians could get ordinary citizens to give up their kids to the state for the greater good.

The cycle of regimes

Given these problems with the utopian interpretation of The Republic, some modern commentators take seriously Socrates’ repeated hints that we should consider what he is saying with a grain of salt.

In the wider context of the dialogue, Socrates presents the image of the three-caste city in order to provide his friends with an image of what a just individual soul would be like. Such a soul would be one in which wisdom rules over the desires for honour and pleasures. “Justice” would apparently be something like the inner harmony of the soul’s parts.

The famous “best city”, which has produced such divided reactions from commentators, is therefore a methodological model. If we can glimpse justice in something as big as a city, Socrates suggests, we might know what to look for in a person.

Small wonder that Socrates warns his friend: “you should know, Glaucon, that in my opinion, we will never get a precise answer using our present methods of argument”.

If there is a political message in The Republic at all, it is not about creating a recipe for the ideal city.

The true meaning of the Republic instead lies in how it stages the inescapable difficulties of political life, given what Isaiah Berlin called the crooked timber of human nature.

In fact, not just Socrates’ kallipolis (beautiful city), but each of the political regimes that he examines in The Republic prove flawed and unstable.

Regimes led by honour-loving nobles (timocracies) can only survive based on elites’ harshness towards inferiors, sowing grapes of wrath. Such elites tend over time to become scornful of public duties, and as they age, to turn from matters of war to finance:

finding ways of spending money for themselves, then they stretch the laws relating to money-making, then they and their wives disobey the laws altogether.

This vision sounds oddly prophetic after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8. Oligarchies hollow out the middle classes. By lending money at interest, they create “a considerable amount of drones and beggars in the city”. At a certain point, these “have-nots” rightly revolt. Democracies follow.

But Plato is no simple friend of democracies, either. Socrates asserts that the democratic citizens’ love of freedom tends to undermine traditional authorities. Teachers become afraid of students and parents of their children. As the generations mix, “the old stoop to play … and pleasantry, imitating the young for fear of appearing disagreeable and authoritarian …”

These passages have appeared prescient to many conservatives since the 60s.

A moral vacuum ensues in which demagogues can arise, promising to make the city great again. At this point, Socrates warns, democracies can devolve into tyrannies.

In these deeply unjust regimes, a single man can play out his hubris and pathologies on entire peoples, after removing his foes by force or fraud.

For some commentators, these passages have seemed most prophetic after 2016.

Read more: Will Trump be a tyrant, and how will we tell? Some classical pointers

Justice, philosophy, and the cave

What, then, does The Republic say positively about justice?

An iconic exchange in The Republic pits Socrates against the sophist Thrasymachus. The latter argues that “might” (boldness, strength and cunning) “makes right”.

Socrates’ claim that justice involves harming no one, and cultivating the knowledge to benefit others and oneself, sounds to the “beast-like” Thrasymachus as naive as it still sounds to “realists” today.

Glaucon and Adeimantus, amongst Socrates’ other companions, also wonder whether treating others justly is not a recipe for individual unhappiness. Anticipating Mr Tolkein, Glaucon puts Socrates’ view to the test by imagining a magic ring conferring invisibility. Wouldn’t even Socrates take advantage of this power to feather his own nest on the quiet?

Unbelievably, Socrates replies “no”.

The argumentative arc of The Republic in fact closes in book IX, at the end of the account of a tyrant’s life. Here, we are made to see that the tyrant’s amoral pursuit of egoistic appetites, which people often imagine as the best of all possible lives, is a recipe for misery and paranoia.

In one of the mathematical plays that dot the text, Socrates tells us that such a monomaniac will be exactly 729 times less happy than a wise person. For the author of The Republic, grinning with irony, it is exponentially better to be just than to live unjustly.

Only when we see this can we grasp why Plato spills so much ink in The Republic on how to educate a lover of wisdom, turning them away from the lures of money, fame, flattery and power. The famous images of the divided line, the cave, and the Good beyond being are each produced in the course of describing such an ideal education.

In the cave allegory mentioned above, Socrates depicts ordinary people in a cave, seated for their whole lives watching images projected on the walls by “hidden persuaders” (sophists, probably, and politicians). Not knowing any better, they assume that the images they see are real things. Plato’s image itself seems an uncanny anticipation of modern culture industries and today’s ubiquitous screen technologies.

The philosopher is s/he who has turned around and climbed out of the cave to see reality for themselves.

Justice for such a person is voluntarily “going back down” into the cave to help others likewise turn their souls around. It is surely no mere chance that the first word of the Republic is Socrates telling us that “I went down yesterday to the Piraeus …”

The Socratic task is not easy. Socrates himself paid a heavy price for pursuing it. So the philosopher must be trained to “run the gauntlet of all tests”:

striving to examine everything by essential reality and not by opinion, holding on his way through all this without tripping in his reasoning …

The Republic itself can be read as as a masterclass in this kind of training. For this reason, it rightly remains a classic text, and a timeless challenge to readers of all persuasions.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Plato’s Republic – http://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-platos-republic-127724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roberto Musotto, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Postdoctoral Fellow, Edith Cowan University

Facebook is planning end-to-end encryption on all its messaging services to increase privacy levels.

The tech giant started experimenting with this earlier this year. Soon, end-to-end encryption will be standard for every Facebook message.

But Australian, British and United States governments and law makers aren’t happy about it. They fear it will make it impossible to recover criminal conversations from Facebook’s platforms, thus offering impunity to offenders.

For instance, this was a major concern following the 2017 London terror attacks. Attackers used WhatsApp (Facebook’s end-to-end encrypted platform), and this frustrated police investigations.

But does Facebook’s initiative place the company between a political rock and an ethical hard place?

What is end-to-end encryption?

End-to-end encryption is a method of communicating more securely, compared to non-encrypted communications.

It involves using encryption (via cryptographic keys) that excludes third parties from accessing content shared between communicating users.

When the sender wants to communicate with the receiver, they share a unique algorithmic key to decrypt the message. No one else can access it, not even the service provider.

Read more: Social media and crime: the good, the bad and the ugly

The real incentive

Facebook’s plan to enact this change is paradoxical, considering the company has a history of harvesting user data and selling it to third parties.

Now, it supposedly wants to protect the privacy of the same users.

One possible reason Facebook is pushing for this development is because it will solve many of its legal woes.

With end-to-end encryption, the company will no longer have backdoor access to users’ messages.

Thus, it won’t be forced to comply with requests from law enforcement agencies to access data. And even if police were able to get hold of the data, they would still need the key required to read the messages.

Only users would have the ability to share the key (or messages) with law enforcement.

Points in favour

Implementing end-to-end encryption will positively impact Facebook users’ privacy, as their messages will be protected from eavesdropping.

This means Facebook, law enforcement agencies and hackers will find it harder to intercept any communication done through the platform.

And although end-to-end encryption is arguably not necessary for most everyday conversations, it does have advantages, including:

1) protecting users’ personal and financial information, such as transactions on Facebook Marketplace

2) increasing trust and cooperation between users

3) preventing criminals eavesdropping on individuals to harvest their information, which can render them victim to stalking, scamming and romance frauds

4) allowing those with sensitive medical, political or sexual information to be able to share it with others online

5) enabling journalists and intelligence agencies to communicate privately with sources.

Not foolproof

However, even though end-to-end encryption will increase users’ privacy in certain situations, it may still not be enough to make conversations completely safe.

Read more: End-to-end encryption isn’t enough security for ‘real people’

This is because the biggest threat to eavesdropping is the very act of using a device.

End-to-end encryption doesn’t guarantee the people we are talking to online are who they say they are.

Also, while cryptographic algorithms are hard to crack, third parties can still obtain the key to open the message. For example, this can be done by using apps to take screenshots of a conversation, and sending them to third parties.

A benefit for criminals

When Facebook messages become end-to-end encrypted, it will be harder to detect criminals, including people who use the platform to commit scams and launch malware.

Others use Facebook for human or sex trafficking, as well as child grooming and exploitation.

Facebook Messenger can also help criminals organise themselves, as well as plan and carry out crimes, including terror attacks and cyber-enabled fraud extortion hacks.

The unfortunate trade-off in increasing user privacy is reducing the capacity for surveillance and national security efforts.

Read more: Can photos on social media lead to mistaken identity in court cases?

End-to-end encryption on Facebook would also increase criminals’ feeling of security.

However, although tech companies can’t deny the risk of having their technologies exploited for illegal purposes – they also don’t have a complete duty to keep a particular country’s cyberspace safe.

What to do?

A potential solution to the dilemma can be found in various critiques of the UK 2016 Investigatory Powers Act.

They propose that, on certain occasions, a communications service provider may be asked to remove encryption (where possible).

However, this power must come from an authority that can be held accountable in court for its actions – and this should be used as a last resort.

In doing so, encryption will increase user privacy without allowing total privacy, which carries harmful consequences.

So far, several governments have pushed back against Facebook’s encryption plans, fearing it will place the company and its users beyond their reach, making it more difficult to catch criminals.

End-to-end encryption is perceived as a bulwark for surveillance by third parties and governments, despite other ways of potentially intercepting communications.

Many agree surveillance is not only invasive, but also prone to abuse by governments and third parties.

Freedom from invasive surveillance also facilitates freedom of expression, opinion and privacy, as observed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In a world where debate is polarised by social media, Facebook and similar platforms are caught amid the politics of security.

It’s hard to say how a perfect balance can be achieved in such a multifactorial dilemma.

Either way, the decision is a political one, and governments – as opposed to tech companies – should ultimately be responsible for such decisions.

– ref. Facebook’s push for end-to-end encryption is good news for user privacy, as well as terrorists and paedophiles – http://theconversation.com/facebooks-push-for-end-to-end-encryption-is-good-news-for-user-privacy-as-well-as-terrorists-and-paedophiles-128782

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

As we come to the end of 2019, you’d be forgiven for being confused about the health of the economy.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg regularly points out that jobs growth is strong, the budget is heading back to surplus, and Australia’s GDP growth is high by international standards.

The opposition points to sluggish wages growth, weak consumer spending and weak business investment.

Monday’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) provides an opportunity for a pre-Christmas stock-take of treasury’s thinking.

1. Low wage growth is the new normal

Rightly grabbing the headlines is yet another downgrade to wage growth.

In the April budget, wages were forecast to grow this financial year by 2.75%. In MYEFO, the figure has been cut to 2.5%.

Three years ago, when Scott Morrison was treasurer, the forecast for this year was 3.5%.

Each time wages forecasts missed, treasury assumed future growth would be even higher, to restore the long-term trend.

Today’s MYEFO is a long-overdue admission from treasury that labour market dynamics have shifted – in other words, lower wage growth is the “new normal”.

Even by 2022-23, wages are projected to grow at only 3% (and even that would still be a substantial turnaround compared to today).

Read more: Surplus before spending. Frydenberg’s risky MYEFO strategy

Of course, wages are still rising in real terms (that is, faster than inflation), a fact Finance Minister Mathias Cormann is keen to emphasise.

But Australians will have to adjust to a world of only modest growth in their living standards for the next few years.

2. Economic growth is underwhelming, especially per person

Economic growth forecasts have received a pre-Christmas trim.

Treasury now expects the economy to grow by 2.25% this financial year, down from the 2.75% it expected in April.

Particularly striking is the sluggishness of the private economy, with consumer spending expected to grow by just 1.75%, despite interest rate and tax cuts, and business investment idling at growth of 1.5%, down from the 5% forecast in April.

Read more: Lower growth, tiny surplus in MYEFO budget update

The longer term picture looks somewhat better, with growth forecast to rise to 2.75% in 2020-21 and 3% in 2021-22, although treasury acknowledges there are significant downside risks, particularly from the global economy.

The government has made much of the fact our economy is strong compared to many other developed nations. But much more relevant to people’s living standards is per-person growth. Australia’s international podium finish looks less impressive once you account for the fact Australia’s population is growing at 1.7%.

As one perceptive commentator has noted, while Australia is forecast to be the fastest growing of the 12 largest advanced economies next year, it is expected to be the slowest in per-person terms.

3. The government is at odds with the Reserve Bank

You can imagine the government’s collective sigh of relief that it is still on track to deliver a surplus in 2019-20, albeit a skinny A$5 billion instead of the the $7 billion previously forecast.

Given the treasurer declared victory early by announcing the budget was “back in the black” in April, missing would have been awkward, to say the least.

And another three years of slim surpluses are forecast ($6 billion, $8 billion and $4 billion respectively).

The real issue for the treasurer is how to deal with the growing calls for more economic stimulus, including from the Reserve Bank.

Read more: We asked 13 economists how to fix things. All back the RBA governor over the treasurer

Depending on what happens to growth and unemployment in the first half of 2020, he will come under increased pressure to jettison the future surpluses to support jobs and living standards.

4. High commodity prices are a gift for the bottom line

High commodity prices are the gift that keeps on giving for the Australian budget.

Iron ore prices in excess of US$85 per tonne, well above the US$55 per tonne budgeted for, have helped to keep company tax receipts buoyant.

Treasury is maintaining the conservative approach it has taken in recent years by continuing to assume US$55 per tonne.

This provides some potential upside should prices stay high – Treasury estimates a US$10 per tonne increase would boost the underlying cash balance by about A$1.2 billion in 2019-20 and about A$3.7 billion in 2020-21.

Read more: Vital Signs: Australia’s wafer-thin surplus rests on a mine disaster in Brazil

The budget bottom line remains tied to the whims of international commodity markets for the near future.

5. The surplus depends on running a (very) tight ship

The forecast surpluses over the next four years are premised on an extraordinary degree of spending restraint.

This government is expecting to do something no government has done since the late-1980s: cut spending in real per-person terms over four consecutive years.

The budget dynamics are helping. Budget surpluses and low interest rates reduce debt payments, and low inflation and wage growth reduce the costs of payments such as the pension and Newstart.

But the government is also expecting to keep growth low in other areas of spending, in almost every area other than defence and the expanding national disability insurance scheme.

As the Parliamentary Budget Office points out, it is hard to keep holding down spending as the budget improves.

It is even more true while long term spending squeezes on things such as Newstart and aged care are hurting vulnerable Australians.

Where does it leave us?

The real lesson from MYEFO is that Australians are right to be confused: there is a disconnect between the health of the budget and the health of the economy.

MYEFO suggests both that the government is on track to deliver a good-news budget surplus underpinned by high commodity prices and jobs growth, and that the economy is in the doldrums with low wage growth in place for a long time.

Top of Frydenberg’s 2020 to do list: how to reconcile the two.

– ref. 5 things MYEFO tells us about the economy and the nation’s finances – http://theconversation.com/5-things-myefo-tells-us-about-the-economy-and-the-nations-finances-128843

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University

Feral horse numbers have more than doubled in the past five years in the Australian Alps, according to results just released from the Australian Alps Feral Horse Aerial Survey. In one of the three survey blocks, North Kosciuszko, feral horse numbers have risen from an estimated 3,255 in 2014 to 15,687 in 2019, a near five-fold increase.

Scientists warned the government that very high numbers of horses would be the inevitable consequence of its inaction over horse management.

With no horses removed in 2017 or 2018, and only 99 removed this year, the population has been allowed to grow at about 23% per year, close to the maximum of about 25% known for feral horses.

More than just allowing numbers to increase, the NSW parliament legislated to protect feral horses within Kosciuszko National Park, effectively prioritising the preservation of horse populations over native alpine species and environmental values, where they are in conflict.

This was despite the strong advice from scientists, and amid substantial controversy around the origins and timing of the bill.

A potentially fatal feral horse problem

High feral horse numbers forced the closure of the popular Blue Waterholes campground in November, after substantial risks and several injuries to visitors were reported. Freedom of information requests were needed to bring to light crashes between cars and feral horses in Kosciuszko.

Despite the NSW government trying to keep this information from reaching the public, several incidents of feral horses being struck by vehicles have now been reported.

The community group Reclaim Kosci has warned it is only a matter of time before someone is killed in a collision with a feral horse unless numbers are drastically and rapidly reduced.

Besides impacts on people, the lack of effective feral horse policy in NSW has now set the stage for another mass animal welfare disaster.

With an estimated 25,318 feral horses distributed across the surveyed area (more than 7,400 square kilometres) of the Australian Alps, many thousands of horses will face starvation when the region next burns. This is predictable, inevitable and tragically also completely avoidable had effective feral horse control been implemented.

The prolonged drought hitting Australia has worsened the impacts of horses in the high country. Plants already struggling to survive are being trampled and grazed, and areas around standing water resemble feedlots.

These impacts will worsen over summer, both for the national park and the horses themselves, with herds suffering in the heat and struggling to survive. Horses starved to death along the snowy river in Kosciuszko in 2018.

Now many more animals are at risk of this fate because scientifically-supported solutions have been dismissed by NSW deputy premier John Barilaro.

Natural wildlife threatened

Evidence presented at the Kosciuszko Science Conference and research published earlier this year showed how a broad range of Alpine species and ecosystems were being affected by feral horses. These effects will now be more intense and occur across more of Australia’s ecologically sensitive and biodiverse alpine environments.

For example, the native broad toothed rat depends on dense vegetation along watercourses. With feral horses eating out or trampling plants along streams, these delightful, rotund fur-balls may lose their homes, and hence be more exposed to the elements and predators.

Right now, feral horses are reducing the habitat for these animals, causing already threatened populations to become smaller and more fragmented. As these small populations blink into extinction we can expect widespread losses across the national park.

Corroboree frogs will now be under enormous pressure. We already know feral horses destroy the wetlands these iconic yellow-striped black frogs depend on for breeding. This destruction will likely now impact many more swamps, reducing breeding success and reducing options for reintroduction of this critically endangered frog.

Another species, the Stocky Galaxias, teeters on the brink of extinction. This small native fish now only lives in a 3km stretch of stream in Kosciuszko National Park. Feral horses trample the river banks and rip out vegetation that causes silt to accumulate in the stream.

This is disastrous for the fish, which breed beneath boulders in the stream. If silt fills up the gaps beneath boulders, there is no place for the fish to lay eggs.

The high numbers of feral horses in Kosciuszko mean this process of stream destruction will likely worsen, potentially hastening the demise of this species unique to Kosciuszko National Park.

New management plan needed

Hope for change now rests with the new feral horse management plan being developed by the recently established Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Community Advisory Panel and the Wild Horse Scientific Advisory Panel. The community panel has expressed interest in working with the scientific panel, and such collaboration will be essential for making progress.

Read more: Australia’s threatened birds declined by 59% over the past 30 years

These committees will need to consider all options for resolving this human safety, animal welfare, and ecological crisis. Although trapping is crueller and many times more expensive than aerial culling, if the trapping effort is substantially ramped up across the park, it could potentially limit population growth and reduce horse numbers.

Aerial culling, despite being the most cost-effective and humane method to lower the horse population size and reduce impacts, is misrepresented by the pro-brumby lobby and sections of the media as cruel, and hence has been deemed unacceptable. These costs, and animal welfare and political trade-offs, must be carefully considered by the committees.

The scientific committee said the draft plan for action will be open for comment in February 2020 to meet NSW environment minister Matt Kean’s deadline for a final plan by May 1, 2020. This rapid timeframe is absolutely essential, as the increase of feral horses in the Alpine National Park will not abate any time soon without urgent and substantial control measures.

– ref. Double trouble as feral horse numbers gallop past 25,000 in the Australian Alps – http://theconversation.com/double-trouble-as-feral-horse-numbers-gallop-past-25-000-in-the-australian-alps-128852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, University of South Australia

In the aftermath of the tragedy at Whakaari/White Island on December 9, many are analysing the risks of adventure tourism, particularly volcano tourism, and asking pointed questions.

It is a sensitive time, with 15 people now confirmed dead, many hospitalised in critical condition, and two bodies yet to be retrieved from the disaster zone.

We question whether the tourists caught up in the events actually knew the risks they faced, and whether other tourist groups may be unaware of the potential risks that their travel decisions may carry.

Read more: Why were tourists allowed on White Island?

Risk assessment and visitor safety

The websites for White Island Tours and the promotion pages on the Bay of Plenty website are currently not viewable. But the Trip Advisor site for Whakaari calls it “New Zealand’s most active volcano”. It mentions the need for gas masks and hard hats and describes conditions of a still active volcano, including steam vents and sulphurous fumes.

But it is doubtful that cruise ship passengers, such as those from the Ovation of the Seas, would have done such research. Cruises offer a variety of shore excursions when in port, ranging from passive sightseeing to adventure activities.

Many tourists will assume endorsed excursions have been properly vetted by their cruise company and assume there is negligible risk to personal safety. But this may not be the case.

Major cruise lines such as Royal Caribbean visit multiple destinations with very different regulatory environments. The assumption that shore excursions will be safe may be misplaced, both by the cruise line and the visitors they book on such excursions. This is now clear from the events at Whakaari but also in previous incidents, such as last year’s fatal bus crash in Mexico.

Adventure capital

New Zealand is known as an adventure tourism destination, but its regulatory systems have undergone recent change. After 37 deaths over four years, then prime minister John Key ordered an urgent safety audit in 2009.

This resulted in a shift, from 2013, from a voluntary system under Outdoors New Zealand and the regulatory system under Worksafe NZ to the New Zealand adventure activity certification scheme. Some tour operators have found this audit system too onerous. Striking the right balance between risk management while allowing the adventure tourism sector to thrive has proved difficult.

But the case of Whakaari/White Island is unique in many ways. The island is privately owned. GeoNet monitors volcanic activity and rates the threat level. The tour companies then assess the risk and determine if visits can proceed or should be temporarily suspended.

Three companies have operated tours to Whakaari/White Island, including the Māori-owned White Island Tours (owned by Ngāti Awa). The other two are helicopter companies Kahu and Volcanic Air Safaris. White Island Tours was accredited under AdventureMark, which is a Worksafe NZ approved certification body.

We must await the Worksafe investigation to know whether it was reasonable to allow the tours to go ahead when volcanic risk rating had risen from level 1 to level 2. We also still await the full human toll, knowing that recovery for survivors may take years. It is also clear that the impact on Ngāti Awa and the Whakatāne community has been profound.

Inherent risk in active environments

In laying out these complexities in which small private tour companies and large internationally owned cruise ships took thousands of visitors to Whakaari each year, we underscore how difficult an assessment of risk might be for some visitors.

Adventure tourists typically make an assessment weighing up risks against the thrills they seek to achieve. New Zealand’s reputation for adventure tourism is built in part on well developed policy settings and regulatory regimes, and an expectation among visitors of high adventure safety standards.

Risk – both perceived and actual – is carefully managed to ensure that perceived risk is high but actual risk is as low as humanly possible. The reputation of the sector and, indeed, the interests of the wider New Zealand tourism industry hinge on high safety standards. For example, bungy jumping appears to be very high risk, but its commercial viability comes from the highly controlled operation, which means actual risk is in fact very low.

Set against this are longstanding activities that take visitors into spectacular settings to experience firsthand the wonders of nature. Such environments do present inherent risk even if many decades may pass between natural events.

The Pink and White Terraces – the largest silica sinter deposit on earth – were a spectacular visitor attraction in the mid-19th century, and the centrepiece of Māori tourism development. That was until they were completely destroyed by the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886.

New Zealand’s most stunning natural vistas – Aoraki/Mount Cook, the fjords of Te Wahipounamu world heritage area, towering glaciers and raging rivers – are the result of millions of years of seismic activity on the Pacific and Australian tectonic plate boundary. These environments are dynamic and, at times, very destructive.

These settings contrast adventure tourism activities. Risk may be perceived as low or non-existent given that these environments may be largely inactive for years.

Read more: Why White Island erupted and why there was no warning

Informed consent

In a complex international environment, the ultimate decision to participate in activities in dynamic and potentially destructive environments rests with the visitors.

Ultimately, visitor welfare depends on informed visitor choice. This case highlights the need for consent forms to be signed in many more cases, beyond those already used in adventure tourism and medical tourism.

Such documents should make clear the nature of the possible risks. Elevated risk levels on the day of the visit as well as changing risk levels in the days prior to the scheduled visit should be clearly communicated. Participation should only proceed after informed consent is secured.

Such an approach does not obviate the need for accreditation, audits, regulations and strict oversight by relevant authorities. But it does ensure that tourists play their part in deciding what risks are worth taking on their holidays.

We cannot undo the events that unfolded at Whakaari/ White Island, but we can honour lives lost by making absolutely sure that we learn from this tragedy.

– ref. Call for clearer risk information for tourists following Whakaari/White Island tragedy – http://theconversation.com/call-for-clearer-risk-information-for-tourists-following-whakaari-white-island-tragedy-128772

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

Today’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) continues to promise a small budget surplus in 2019-20 and each of the following three years.

But the surpluses are very small, roughly half the size of those promised at the time of the April budget, and highly uncertain.

The forecasts for economic growth and wages growth have been adjusted down, but are still optimistic, subject to downside risks, especially if international economic conditions deteriorate.

The lower wage growth forecast is an acknowledgement of the new reality that wage growth is not climbing and remains low.

Uncertainties abound

One key variable is iron ore prices: these affect both economic growth (gross domestic product) and company tax collections.

Recent high prices due in part to mining disasters in Brazil will not continue indefinitely.

Iron ore prices peaked in July at US$120 per tonne but are forecast to fall back to US$55 per tonne by the June quarter 2020.

The key determinant will be demand from China. Its steel mills might require more, or less, than expected.

MYEFO has a sensitivity analysis showing 2019-20 tax receipts could be lower than expected by A$0.8 billion or higher than expected by A$0.5 billion (and lower by $1.1b or higher by $1.3b in 2020-21) depending on how quickly prices fall.

Housing versus households

Another expected source of increased revenue is a recovery in capital city housing markets.

While this won’t have as large an impact on the Commonwealth as it will on the states which are reliant on stamp duties (see for example the recent NSW budget update) the Commonwealth still benefits.

The assumption on households

that some of the recent weakness in consumption reflects timing factors and that the household saving ratio will fall as households increase their consumption in response to higher after-tax income

seems optimistic.

However the treasury acknowledges

there is a risk that consumers remain cautious and the fall in the household saving ratio is slower than expected.

It is possible that households will remain nervous about the future and save rather than spend; or that we are seeing deeper shifts in preferences away from consumer spending.

Surplus before spending

MYEFO includes previously-announced new spending on infrastructure projects, drought and aged care, but there were no major additional announcements.

This is in line with the government’s determination to have a surplus this year, even if smaller than expected at budget time.

The underlying cash surplus of $5.0 billion forecast for 2019-20 is indeed small – a fraction under 1% of the total receipts number, $502.5.

MYEFO graphs the confidence we can have in the surplus forecasts: there is considerable uncertainty.

Governments can always introduce either spending cuts or additional revenue raising measures in pursuit of a surplus.

The question is why. It is puzzling that having a surplus has become a sign of good economic management.

Surplus for the sake of surplus

Arguably what is more important is people’s real incomes, whether their chance of unemployment is rising or falling, whether they will be looked after in old age, have their health needs met, and be able to offer their children a good education.

There is a good argument against debt – government debt has to be paid off before the money spent servicing it can be spend on other needs, and excessive debt exposes a country to risk.

Read more: Lower growth, tiny surplus in MYEFO budget update

Within reasonable bounds though, neither ratings agencies nor international financial markets care if a budget is $5b in surplus or $5b in deficit – these are for all intents and purposes the same number in terms of the government’s impact on the economy.

The government is no longer projecting net debt will fall to zero by 2029-30 – instead, it will fall to 1.8% of GDP (still much lower than the 2019-20 net debt of $392.3 billion or 19.5% of GDP).

This is however a heroic projection, based on estimates of the structural budget position that are unlikely to be be realised.

The structural estimates (estimates of where the budget would be were it not for whatever was happening in the economy at the time) have surpluses growing every year up to 2029-30; an unlikely scenario in the face of an ageing population together with other pressures on government spending.

The impact of ageing will be analysed in more depth in the next Intergenerational Report to be produced by Treasury.

Read more: Vital Signs: Australia’s wafer-thin surplus rests on a mine disaster in Brazil

This may explain why the Treasurer today announced the next five-yearly Intergenerational Report will not be published in March next year as scheduled, but held over until July, after the budget and after the report of the government’s retirement incomes inquiry.

Likely costs left out

There are several gaps in the estimates of spending.

There is no provision for additional spending on the new services delivery model, Services Australia, previously known as the department of human services, which runs Centrelink. Modelled on Services NSW, which offers a better customer experience, it will be expensive.

Services NSW meets its costs by charging other government agencies, spreading costs across government. There is less scope for this in the Commonwealth, and therefore a potentially higher direct call on the budget.

Read more: The dirty secret at the heart of the projected budget surplus: much higher tax bills

Although the announced funding for aged care is included, most observers of the work of the aged care royal commission expect this is only a first instalment.

Other pressures on the budget are not included for technical reasons. For example, possible future disasters are not included in the forward estimates because they are unpredictable.

Should climate change make Australia more prone to frequent and costly disasters, future budgets will face additional pressure.

There are thus numerous uncertainties around MYEFO – among them the growth path of the Chinese economy and its impact on iron ore prices, consumer demand, wages, spending pressures.

The projections might be achieved if all goes well – but there are considerable risks all will not.

– ref. Surplus before spending. Frydenberg’s risky MYEFO strategy – http://theconversation.com/surplus-before-spending-frydenbergs-risky-myefo-strategy-128092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

New draft alcohol guidelines, released today, recommend healthy Australian women and men drink no more than ten standard drinks a week and no more than four on any one day to reduce their risk of health problems.

This is a change from the previous guidelines, released in 2009, that recommended no more than two standard drinks a day (equating to up to 14 a week).

(If you’re unsure what a standard drink looks like, use this handy reference.)

The guidelines also note that for some people – including teens and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding – not drinking is the safest option.

Read more: Drink, drank, drunk: what happens when we drink alcohol in four short videos

What are the new recommendations based on?

The National Health and Medical Research Council looked at the latest research and did some mathematical modelling to come to these recommendations.

It found the risk of dying from an alcohol-related disease or injury is about one in 100 if you drink no more than ten standard drinks a week and no more than four on any one day.

So, for every 100 people who stay under these limits, one will die from an alcohol-related disease or injury.

This is considered an “acceptable risk”, given drinking alcohol is common and it’s unlikely people will stop drinking altogether. The draft guidelines take into account that, on average, Australian adults have a drink three times a week.

Why did the guidelines need updating?

Recent research has shown there is a clear link between drinking alcohol and a number of health conditions. These include at least seven cancers (liver, oral cavity, pharyngeal, laryngeal, oesophageal, colorectal, liver and breast cancer in women); diabetes; liver disease; brain impairment; mental health problems; and being overweight or obese.

Some previous research suggested low levels of alcohol might be good for you, but we now know these studies were flawed. Better quality studies have found alcohol does not offer health benefits.

Read more: Health check: is moderate drinking good for me?

The new guidelines are easier to follow than the previous guidelines, which gave recommendations to reduce both short-term harms and longer-term health problems. But some people found these confusing.

Although most Australians drink within the previously recommended limits, one study found one in five adults drank more than the guidelines suggested and almost half could not correctly identify recommended limits.

Although women tend to be more affected by alcohol than men, at the rates of consumption recommended in the guidelines, there is little difference in long term health effects so the guidelines apply to both men and women.

The recommended limits are aimed at healthy men and women, because some people are at higher risks of problems at lower levels of consumption. These include older people, young people, those with a family history of alcohol problems, people who use other drugs at the same time (including illicit drugs and prescribed medication), and those with physical or mental health problems.

The guidelines are currently in draft form, with a public consultation running until February 24.

After that, there will be an expert review of the guidelines and the final guidelines will be released later in 2020. There may be changes to the way the information is presented but the recommended limits are unlikely to change substantially, given they’re based on very careful and detailed analysis of the evidence.

What’s the risk for people under 18?

The draft guidelines recommend children and young people under 18 years drink no alcohol, to reduce the risk of injury and other health harms.

The good news is most teenagers don’t drink alcohol. Among 12 to 17 year olds, only 20% have had a drink in the past year and 1.4% drink weekly. The number of teenagers who have never had a drink has increased significantly in the last decade, and young people are having their first drink later.

Read more: Three ways to help your teenage kids develop a healthier relationship with alcohol

However, we know teenagers are more affected by alcohol than adults. This includes effects on their developing brain. We also know the earlier someone starts drinking, the more likely they will experience problems, including dependence.

The idea that if you give teenagers small sips of alcohol it will reduce risk of problems later has now been debunked. Teens that have been given even small amounts of alcohol early are more likely to have problems later.

What’s the risk for pregnant and breastfeeding women?

The guidelines recommend women who are pregnant, thinking about becoming pregnant or breastfeeding not drink any alcohol, for the safety of their baby.

Read more: Health Check: what are the risks of drinking before you know you’re pregnant?

We now have a much clearer understanding of the impacts of alcohol on the developing foetus. Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a direct result of foetal exposure to alcohol in the womb. Around one in 67 women who drink while pregnant will deliver a baby with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder is characterised by a range of physical, mental, behavioural, and learning disabilities ranging from mild to severe – and is incurable.

Worried about your own or someone else’s drinking?

If you enjoy a drink, stick within these recommended maximums to limit the health risks of alcohol.

If you have trouble sticking to these limits, or you are worried about your own or someone else’s drinking, call the National Alcohol and other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015 to talk through options or check out these resources online.

Read more: Did you look forward to last night’s bottle of wine a bit too much? Ladies, you’re not alone

– ref. Cap your alcohol at 10 drinks a week: new draft guidelines – http://theconversation.com/cap-your-alcohol-at-10-drinks-a-week-new-draft-guidelines-128856

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

The government has shaved its forecasts for both economic growth and the projected surplus for this financial year in its budget update released on Monday.

The Australian economy is now expected to grow by only 2.25% in 2019-20, compared with the 2.75% forecast in the April budget.

The projected surplus has been revised down from A$7.1 billion at budget time to $5 billion for this financial year.

By 2022-23 the surplus is projected to be tiny A$4 billion, less than half the $9.2 billion projected in April.

The revenue estimates have also been slashed, down from the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook (PEFO) by about $3 billion in 2019-20 and $32.6 billion over the forward estimates.

The official documents sought to put as positive a spin as possible on the worse economic figures:

Australia’s economy continues to show resilience in the face of weak momentum in the global economy, as well as domestic challenges such as the devastating effects of drought and bushfires.

While economic activity has continued to expand, these factors have resulted in slower growth than had been expected at PEFO.

The revised figures forecast growth will be 2.75% next financial year.

The impact of the drought is reflected in the fact farm GDP is expected to fall to the lowest level seen since 2007-08 in the millenium drought.

The downgrades will fuel calls already being made by the opposition and some stakeholders and commentators for economic stimulus.

But the government, which since the budget has brought forward some infrastructure and announced spending on aged care and drought assistance, is continuing to resist pressure for stimulus now, wishing to hold out until budget time.

The budget update – formally called the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) – contains more bad news for workers’ wages.

Wages are forecast to rise in 2019-20 by 2.5%, compared with the forecast of 2.75% in the budget.

Employment growth remains at the earlier forecast level of 1.75% for this financial year, but the unemployment rate is slightly up in the latest forecast, from 5% at budget time to 5.25% in the update.

In its bring forward of new projects, the government is putting an extra $4.2 billion over the foreword estimates into new transport infrastructure projects.

Its extra spending on aged care will be almost $624 million over four years, in its initial response to the royal commission. This is somewhat higher than the $537 million announced by Scott Morrison in November.

While the projected surplus has been squeezed, the government continues to highlight the priority it gives it, saying that despite the revenue write downs, it expects cumulative surpluses over $23.5 billion over forward estimates.

Spending growth is estimated to be 1.3% annual average in real terms over the forward estimates. Payments as a share of GDP is estimated at 24.5% this financial year, reducing to 24.4% by 2022-23, which is below the 30 year average.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the update showed “the government is living within its means, and paying down Labor’s debt”.

he said “the surplus is never been an end in itself, but a means to an end. An end which is to reduce interest payments to free up money to be spent elsewhere across the economy.”

The government’s economic plan was “delivering continued economic growth and a stronger budget position.

“MYEFO demonstrates that we have the capacity and the flexibility to invest in the areas that the public need most.”

– ref. Lower growth, tiny surplus in MYEFO budget update – http://theconversation.com/lower-growth-tiny-surplus-in-myefo-budget-update-128920