Review: Farnace, composed by Vivaldi, Pinchgut Opera
When a performance of Farnace was cancelled at the theatre of Ferrara after the artistic failure of Vivaldi’s opera Siroe re di Persia in December 1738, Vivaldi’s chance to have his favourite opera performed in one of the top theatres in Europe evaporated.
He defended his operatic writing, blaming the harpsichordist for Siroe’s poor reception. It didn’t matter. Farnace was cancelled; and then largely forgotten.
Newly revived in Sydney, this ambitious undertaking of Pinchgut Opera artistic director Erin Helyard demonstrates that Farnace is a masterpiece of 17th century Venetian opera.
Antonio Lucchini’s libretto explores honour and love in the aftermath of war in Pontus, a kingdom on the threshold of Europe and Asia: a region currently experiencing unrest, bringing this story too close for comfort.
The defeat of Farnace (Christopher Lowrey), King of Pontus, presents impossible dilemmas for him and his family. Farnace asks his wife, Tamiri (Helen Sherman), to kill their son and then herself to save them from the dishonour and torture in the hands of their enemies.
Farnace asks his wife to kill their son, to save them from dishonour.Brett Boardman/Pinchgut Opera
Leading from the harpsichord, Helyard casts his magic spell over the orchestra, continuo players, and singers with depth and nuance. The spirited performance of Orchestra of the Antipodes is marked by brilliance of attack, rhythmic dynamism, and finesse of phrasing.
The audience is overwhelmed by excitement, astonishment and delight.
A triumph of a production
Vivaldi’s ingenuity lies in virtuosic melodic writing and instrumental colours. Horns, played by Doreé Dixon and Carla Blackwood, bring out the military elements of the narrative. Mikaela Oberg’s flute adorns Tamiri’s outpouring of love and loyalty in “Sol da te, mio dolce amore” (Only in you my sweet love).
Brought into the present and located in a prison vault, danger and death is palpable. Hanging corpses haunt the stage with eerie swaying. Mark Gaal’s direction brings rhythm to the narrative: punctuating slams of the upstage double door, and intensifying movement on stage during the repeat of the first section of the arias.
The presence of a child actor (Matthew Simon) and two teenage soldiers (Jack Curry and Joshua Hammond) makes the story even more true to present day guerrilla warfare.
Corpses hang above the stage.Brett Boardman/Pinchgut Opera
Unusually for opera, three strong women are central to this fable.
Love’s virtue and patience are embodied by Tamiri, sung with feeling by Sherman, although she needs to find a better connection with the character in the intricacies of the Italian prosody.
Courage and loyalty are represented by Farnace’s sister Selinda, given zest and allure by Taryn Fiebig – her rendition of the flute obbligato aria is a highlight.
Berenice is destructive in her rage, portrayed with macho histrionics and a steely high register by Jacqueline Dark, who achieves great contrast with unexpected vocal tenderness in Berenice’s surrender and forgiveness at the end of the opera.
Gilade is sung by Max Riebl with an exquisite countertenor tone and agility. Riebl sparkles in the arias, adorned with magnificent cadenzas.
Lowrey brings unprecedented intensity to his performance. His full-bodied countertenor voice is eloquent and heartbreakingly truthful in the plight of the noble king.
The symbiosis of sonic and visual expression of emotion came to a climax in the aria “Gelido in ogni vena” (Frosty in every vein). Lowrey stands in spotlight. Falling snowflakes reference the chilled chords from the Winter movement of the Four Seasons concerto.
‘Gelido in ogni vena’ (Frosty in every vein) is a highlight of sonic and visual expression.Brett Boardman/Pinchgut Opera
Lowrey uses vocal colour to achieve dramatic effect, expressing the profound grief of a father who ordered the death of his son. This is one of the most poignant opera scenes I have ever experienced.
Farnace is the best revival production by Pinchgut Opera yet, demonstrating high standards of historically informed practice, vibrancy and subtlety of staging. Vivaldi’s disappointment has been transformed into a triumph almost three centuries later, on the other side of the globe by an ensemble of baroque experts that prides itself on reviving forgotten operatic gems for a modern audience.
Farnace plays at City Recital Hall, Sydney, until December 10.
Westpac can expect a bumper turnout of shareholders at its annual general meeting in Sydney on Thursday, many of them angry at its alleged role in facilitating child exploitation in the Philippines, its 23 million alleged breaches of anti-money-laundering laws, and its initial ritualistic response to the allegations.
This included donating A$18 million to an anti sexual exploitation charity, followed by the departure of its chief executive and the foreshadowed departure of its chairman later in the year.
Some of those shareholders will be clutching the bank’s 154-page financial statement. They’ll need to understand it to ask questions about Westpac’s financial performance.
Back at the start of the 2000s, Westpac’s financial statement was only 35 pages
Much of what’s been added to statements such as Westpac’s has been in response to the threat of litigation. Companies making false or misleading disclosures risk class actions. It’s safer to include more rather than less, even if it makes the total hard to navigate.
Australia has just had its first class action judgement, after earlier cases that had been settled out of court. The United States has had many.
My own research with colleagues in the United States finds that caution in the face of the threat of litigation has made financial reports increasingly less readable over time.
How might litigation make reports harder to read?
Firms can be sued for making misleading disclosures. This happens most often where shareholders allege that the firm failed to disclose all relevant information, or where it has failed to meet projections.
After such class actions, firms can face increasing difficulties with customers, suppliers and lenders, being seen as less credible. Managers face pay cuts and termination.
One way to head off such class actions is to make disclosures more detailed.
Increasing detail enables firms to add caveats, footnotes and nuance, conveying uncertainty – the consequence of which is that their reports are less clear.
My coauthors and I examined 96,000 US annual reports issued between 1993 to 2013.
We also collected data on class actions in relation to reports for those years.
One of the best readability metrics is the so-called fog index, which measures the number of syllables per word and words per sentence in order to provide a measure of the number of years of education needed to read a statement.
It says this article needs the best part of 15 years.
We also used other indexes including the so-called bog index which scores documents on word choice and sentence structure.
We captured firms’ tendency to avoid declarative statements by calculating the proportion of words that were “uncertain”, and measured their tendency to address specific legal threats by calculating the proportion of words that were legal in nature, both of which were subjective exercises.
What we found
We found litigation risk encouraged firms to take steps that reduced the readability of their financial reports.
After firms had experienced a class action, their readability metrics worsened significantly. This was even the case several years after that class action, suggesting a long-lasting change.
We found if a chief executive had experienced a class action at one job, their reports were likely to be less readable in subsequent jobs, strongly suggesting that litigation drove hard to read reports rather than the other way round.
We also found:
litigation experience increased the size and volume of firms’ disclosures. While worsening readability, this at least had the virtue of increasing thoroughness
litigation experience was associated with using more complex words and more words per sentence. This implies firms add more detail and nuance to their disclosures, potentially increasing their accuracy
after litigation, firms used more uncertain words in their reports. This suggests they avoid declaratory statements in an attempt to better reflect the risk and uncertainty associated with projections
following litigation, firms use more legalistic terms. This implies they attempt to preempt legal action by specifically addressing potential legal issues.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has expressed concern over what it calls “sludge” in reports that covers bases but leaves readers uninformed.
It says over-reliance on disclosure “in some ways proved an enabler” of the poor conduct revealed by the banking royal commission.
Our work and the work of ASIC suggests much needs to happen to make reports both accurate and readable.
Growing up, no one ever gave me the rundown on how or what I should do to keep my penis clean […] I’ve never read any reliable answer beyond washing it with water. Do I use soap? Any soap? How normal is smegma? If my penis gets itchy from smegma should I go see a doctor? If so, my GP or a urologist? — Anonymous
Key points
clean under the foreskin, using soap, but not too much
smegma is normal
if you have any concerns, see your GP.
It’s a shame some people think talking about cleaning and caring for our genitals is embarrassing or taboo. We probably know more about hair care than penis care.
The penis is simply another part of our anatomy, so cleaning should be relatively straight forward.
If you’ve been circumcised, where your foreskin was removed soon after birth, your penis will look something like the one in the diagram (below, right), with the head (or glans) always exposed.
But if you have a foreskin (below left and centre), there are some extra things to think about when washing, which we’ll get to soon.
But first, some foreskin facts. From around the time you turn five, your foreskin separates from the head of your penis, bit by bit. This allows you to pull back your foreskin (retract it). In some boys, the foreskin can stay partially stuck to the head of the penis until puberty.
You should never forcibly pull back your foreskin. That’ll be painful, you could bleed, you could scar, or have other complications.
When it’s time to dry off, retract the foreskin again so you can dry the head of the penis with a towel. Then, you guessed it, pull the foreskin forward to its normal position.
It’s OK to clean with soap whether you have a foreskin or not. But generally, too much soap is worse than none at all. Excessive cleaning removes essential body oils that would normally keep our skin moist and reduce friction. If you have sensitive skin, you can use a soap-free wash from the chemist.
What about smegma?
Smegma is a thick, whitish discharge consisting of a build-up of dead skin cells, oil and other fluids under the foreskin. And it’s very useful. It protects and lubricates the penis.
Some people have oilier skin than others and tend to have more smegma. So some smegma is normal, but if you have too much or it becomes smelly, you may need to clean more.
Things to watch out for (and when to see your GP)
If the head of your penis becomes painful, red, itchy and has a discharge, you may have a treatable condition called balanitis.
It’s more common if you have a foreskin. And the bacteria and fungus that cause it like the warm and moist conditions under there.
Skin disorders, infection, poor hygiene, friction from sexual activity, and using too much soap all cause the condition.
You can clear a mild case with good hygiene and simple treatments, such as an antiseptic or antifungal cream. You can buy these from any pharmacy. In addition to the medication, the cream itself helps protect and moisturise the inflammed skin.
If you have balanitis you may need to be more careful than usual to avoid urine irritating your inflamed skin. Retract your foreskin when you urinate. Dry the head of the penis gently after you finish.
If your penis is still inflamed after a week of these simple measures it’s best to see your GP. They can then investigate other causes, such as psoriasis or an allergy.
I Need to Know is our series for teens in search of reliable, confidential advice about life’s tricky questions. Here are some questions we’ve already answered.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Kewley, Director, ARC Centre for Excellence in All-Sky Astrophysics in 3D, Australian National University
Australian astronomy punches well above its weight, in terms of the research it leads and the facilities it houses.
We have made remarkable discoveries in the past year alone. Our scientists have recently narrowed down the time frame for the first light in the universe. We have established that the black hole in the Milky Way had a massive explosion just 3.5 million years ago.
But to make the most of the next wave of stargazing technology, we will need true diversity in our astronomical community.
As I argue in a paper published this week in Nature Astronomy, Australia’s astronomers have made great strides in improving diversity in recent years – and the way we have achieved this offers lessons for other scientific communities.
Very soon, however, even more impressive stargazing hardware is due to start operating. The Australian segment of the Square Kilometre Array, and the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile will be part of a new generation of mega-telescopes.
These new super-tools will be capable of revealing the universe in unprecedented detail, and gathering data in unprecedented bulk. As a discipline, we must be prepared to extract maximum benefit from them.
Sifting maximum signal from this fresh collection of noise will not simply require more astronomical hands on deck. It will require different types of hands, and different ways of seeing.
There is ample evidence from other fields – particularly business – to show the benefits of diversity within organisations, at all levels. It results in higher productivity, more profits, and more robust outcomes.
And it’s not just in social work or education. Even in number-crunching science, personal history and lived experience influence decisions, how questions are framed, and how networks are built.
Gender equity and the Australian example
In recent years, Australian astronomy has made striking progress towards gender equity, in large part because of a system known as the Pleiades Awards operated by the Astronomical Society of Australia.
There are about 500 working astronomers in this country. The 2016-25 Australian Astronomy Decadal Plan, commissioned by the Australian Academy of Science, sets a target of 33% of positions at all levels to be filled by women within the next six years.
The Pleiades provide a structured approach to improving equity. Given the enthusiastic participation of almost all the 14 universities, two Centres of Excellence and three organisations that house Australia’s astronomical communities, I have little doubt that this marker will be achieved.
However, we need to broaden our thinking, and our ideas of what constitutes a fair and empathetic workplace, beyond simple questions of binary gender.
The next generation of telescopes will be huge international collaborations with intense competition between partner countries. To extract the maximum benefit from the extraordinary power of these telescopes, we need to look beyond traditionally conservative hiring practices.
We will need to draw on people from every possible background and experience, and inject new ideas. We need to draw from the academic talent and insight to be found among LGBTIQA+ astronomers, Indigenous astronomers, disabled astronomers, chronically ill astronomers, and astronomers who hail from non-Western cultures.
There are skilled and highly gifted scientists who fall within these categories, yet for some the prospect of a stable long-term career with steady support and funding seems faint. Science research organisations and institutions are as guilty as those in any other field of not building proper structures around understanding, inclusion and empathy.
As female astronomers not too many years ago would often testify, sometimes the welcome and support inside the Australian faculties and organisations could have been a bit warmer.
Thanks to the schemes such as the Pleiades, women in my field can reasonably expect to be recognised for their skills, and to be promoted according to their merits. The same cannot yet be said for people in other, more heterogeneous categories, and that must now start to change. Fairness demands it, but just as importantly the science requires it.
This article is the first in a series exploring gender and Christianity.
Jane* was a member of Australia’s evangelical Christian community, and throughout her marriage she heard many sermons on honouring a husband’s authority.
These sermons focused on a wife submitting to her husband’s authority in everything, from finances to where and when she worked. He was to be respected as head of the family, because this was “God’s plan”.
For three decades, Jane’s husband abused her under the guise of this notion of authority. He isolated her, denied her money and the use of a car. He yelled at her, kicked and punched her, told her she was mad and threatened to kill her.
Jane is a case study participant in my research, and she told me that when she went to her church leaders for support, they asked her what she was doing wrong. When she attempted to escape the abuse after the first decade of marriage, they told her to continue attending church with her husband.
Then, they told her to move back into the family home and resolve her marital issues, and that this would be the last time they gave her counselling on the matter.
Jane’s story is a familiar one – an ABC investigation last year showed how conservative Christian churches both enable and conceal domestic violence.
My ongoing research shows this is exacerbated by what’s taught in evangelical church communities, creating fertile ground for domestic violence, its justification and its concealment.
A literal reading of the Bible
Evangelical Christians believe biblical scripture is “truth” that “requires our unreserved submission in all areas of life”. They consider scripture to be “inspired by the Holy Spirit”, so “it is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks”.
The effect of evangelical Christianity on women’s vulnerability to domestic violence is yet to be measured through a comprehensive survey in Australia. But the extensive reporting on domestic violence in the evangelical Sydney Anglican Diocese challenges harmful and stubborn attitudes that place religious doctrine over the safety of women.
This resistance to cultural change is also shown by teachings on the permanence of the marriage covenant, another way women are potentially trapped in violent marriages.
The authority of men and the subordination of women are considered ‘permanently binding’ principles.Rod Long/Unsplash
A backlash against 1980s Christian feminism
In the 1980s, Christian feminists began to challenge the exclusivity of male leadership in the church, as well as aspects of theology, including the assumption God was masculine in nature.
The feminist movement that had been gaining momentum in wider society during the 1960s and 1970s underpinned this revolt against male privilege in the church.
In fervent response, evangelical factions of the Christian church began to double down on men’s authority over women.
This backlash resulted in a renewed call for women to stop any resistance to their husband’s authority, a call still echoing almost 40 years later.
Male authority in God’s plan
Traditional understandings about male headship, both in the family and the Church, were promoted as being ordained by God. This meant the authority of men and the subordination of women were considered to be “permanently binding” principles.
Conservative evangelical Christians enthusiastically embraced this as a form of resistance against the feminist movement, and still support these “permanently binding” principles today.
Sadly, there are no statistics on the prevalence of domestic violence in the Australian Christian community, but it’s addressed in international research. More Australian research is needed urgently.
In a survey of churchgoers in Cumbria, England, one in four respondents had experienced at least one of the nominated abusive behaviours – such as being kicked, punched, threatened with a weapon, isolated or sexually coerced – in their current relationship. And more than 40% of respondents had experienced at least one in a current or previous relationship.
The researchers noted evangelical churches were reluctant to participate in the survey, perhaps indicating the reluctance of these churches to address domestic violence in their own communities.
According to research carried out in North America, the rates of domestic violence in evangelical communities is considered to be at least as high as rates in other churches. But other US research conducted a few years later suggests the rate could be even higher in evangelical churches because they are more likely to create an environment endorsing gender inequality.
Considering gender inequality is a well-known driver of domestic violence and abuse, peddling women’s subordination as being ordained by God is placing the safety of conservative Christian women at risk.
Changing a toxic culture
The culture of male privilege in evangelical Christian communities can be changed with more women positioned as senior ministers. This move can disrupt notions that men have authority over women, and mean problems that affect women might no longer be overlooked.
These communities can also benefit from more education to understand that violence, with visible injuries, isn’t the only form of domestic abuse. If church leaders and their congregations can recognise abuse in all its forms, they can take more appropriate steps to offer support to victims.
Most importantly, congregations benefit from hearing sermons that admonish domestic violence and advise victims to seek support and prioritise their safety, rather than sermons demanding women obey their husbands even in abusive circumstances. This would help stop Christian perpetrators using the Bible as an excuse for their behaviour.
When perpetrators use their Christian beliefs to justify abuse, women like Jane are not only facing long-term physical and mental harm, but they are being denied a spiritual journey that can bring peace and friendship within a like-minded community.
Names have been changed to protect privacy.
The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.
If you’ve ever Googled the causes of a skin complaint or damaged hair, chances are someone on the internet has pointed the finger at SLS, or sodium lauryl (or laureth) sulfate, a common ingredient in beauty products, washes, toothpastes and even cleaning products.
So what does this ingredient do, why is it in everything, and what does the evidence say about how safe it is?
Why SLS?
When we use a wash or beauty product on our skin, it’s probably a liquid made of a water phase and an oily phase. As we know, oil and water don’t mix, so something is required to keep the ingredients together.
That something is called a surfactant. A surfactant allows the oil and water molecules to bind together – it’s what’s found in soaps and detergents so we can wash our oily faces or dishes with water and get the grime to disappear.
Sodium lauryl sulfate is a surfactant, and its efficacy, low cost, abundance and simplicity mean it’s used in a variety of cosmetic, dermatological and consumer products.
Your toothpaste, shampoo and body wash probably all contain SLS.from www.shutterstock.com
Our skin’s outermost layer is specially designed to keep harmful stuff out, and this is where a surfactant can cause problems. Using a chemical that weakens this defence mechanism can potentially cause our skin harm.
And some surfactants are more irritating to our skin than others. For something to be harmful, irritant or allergenic, it has to fulfil two criteria.
It has to have been found in studies to irritate human skin, and it has to have the ability to penetrate the skin. SLS ticks both of these boxes.
Researchers from Germany tested 1,600 patients for SLS irritancy and found 42% of the patients tested had an irritant reaction.
Another study, on seven volunteers over a three and a half month period, found regular contact caused irritation, and the irritation subsided once the skin was no longer exposed to SLS.
Another study found the warmer the water used with SLS, the more irritating it will be.
In fact, SLS is so known to cause irritation, it’s used as a positive control in dermatological testing. That is, new products being tested to see how irritating they might be to human skin are compared to SLS – something we know definitely to be irritating.
If a person is sensitive to SLS, they might find the area that has been in contact is red, dry, scaly, itchy or sore.
It’s also important to note there’s no scientific evidence SLS causes cancer, despite what you may read on the internet.
If you suspect you are sensitive to SLS, stop using the product and consult your GP or pharmacist.from www.shutterstock.com
So why is it allowed?
So if it’s known to be irritating to human skin, why don’t the regulatory authorities ban its use?
For SLS to be considered dangerous, it would have to be in contact with the skin for a long period of time. Generally, with consumer products such as washes that contain SLS, it’s assumed they won’t be on the skin for very long, meaning the chance of your skin being affected is pretty low. So authorities don’t ban its use, but instead cap the maximum percentage at which it can be used in products.
This cap varies based on how long the product is likely to be in contact with the skin. So products that will be on the skin for a prolonged time can contain no more than 0.05-2.5% SLS in most countries.
All consumer and cosmetic product manufacturers are required to conduct thorough testing and include any adverse findings in the form of warnings on their labels. So on products containing SLS, you should see something like “if this product causes any skin redness or irritation, discontinue use and consult a medical practitioner”.
People with a history of sensitive skin, hyperirritable skin and patients suffering from skin conditions such as atopic dermatitis (eczema), rosacea and psoriasis are best to avoid products containing SLS.
There are many safer alternatives available (look for fatty alcohol ethoxylate, alkyl phenol ethoxylate or fatty acid alkoxylate on the label). If you think it might be SLS causing a skin irritation, stop the use of the product and ask your pharmacist or GP for advice. Skin care products also have hotline numbers on the packaging that can be contacted to report adverse effects.
Household electricity bills in Australia have increased sharply in the past decade. But new official figures show they are projected to fall markedly – in some cases by 20%.
In-house modelling we conducted at the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) shows that a wave of new renewable energy entering the electricity grid is pushing down retail prices. The findings are contained in a report released today.
Retail electricity bills are projected to fall by 7.1% between 2019 and 2022, based on the national average. In southeast Queensland, household bills are expected to fall by 20% in that time – an average annual saving of A$278. Falls in other states are projected to be smaller.
An electricity tower on the Brisbane skyline. Retail electricity prices in Queensland are projected to fall by 20%.AAP
A quick history
The National Electricity Market (NEM) is one of the largest interconnected electricity systems in the world. It comprises about 40,000km of transmission lines and cables, supplying around 9 million customers in all Australian jurisdictions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
1955 to 1998, before the east coast’s National Electricity Market (NEM) was established. Prices fell due to economies-of-scale achieved by building large coal-fired power stations and transmission lines
1999 to 2009, the first ten years of the NEM, when prices declined due to the introduction of competition between generators, improved price transparency and pricing efficiency
2009 to 2019, when retail electricity prices doubled.
The increase between 2009 and 2019 was due to three factors: a significant and largely unnecessary rise in spending on network infrastructure (“poles and wires”); uncertainty about climate policy; and a large increase in wholesale prices.
The latter was triggered by both rising coal and gas prices and sudden exit of coal-fired power generators, and created a disorderly transition to firmed renewables.
What’s happening now
Electricity prices are determined by five main factors:
wholesale costs: the cost of generating electricity from coal, gas, hydro, wind and solar
transmission costs: the cost of transmitting electricity across the country
distribution costs: building and maintaining the poles and wires in our streets
environmental costs: government policies that drive new investment in renewable and low-emission generation
retail costs: the cost of billing, customer service and managing the financial risks of operating in the wholesale market.
Our modelling shows that additional electricity supply is now putting significant downward pressure on wholesale prices. Across the country, prices are expected to fall by 7.1% from 2019 to 2022.
This is due to a very large quantity of new renewable projects coming online, adding much-needed supply. In fact, at the time of our wholesale market modelling earlier this year, investors had committed to around 7,500 megawatts of new gas, wind, solar and hydro projects. For perspective, the largest coal-fired generator in the market today is around 2,000MW.
So what’s driving this new investment? The sudden closure of coal-fired power stations such as Hazelwood in Victoria took a lot of electricity from the system, leading to higher wholesale prices. This drove new investment in gas, wind and solar generation, which is projected to cause prices to fall.
Our modelling shows wholesale costs falling by 10-17% by 2022 across the NEM, which should flow on to the retail price paid by households.
An influx of new renewable energy, including solar power, is driving wholesale prices down.Lucas Coch
How much you could save
The below table shows the projected fall in electricity bills expected in each state and territory in the NEM. They range from a 20% fall in Queensland to 2% in South Australia.
The figures vary between states because of the other factors which determine retail prices. For example, network prices are expected to fall in Queensland but increase in Victoria.
Environmental costs are also expected to fall across the NEM as subsidies such as the Renewable Energy Target wind down.
The wholesale market operates according to real time electricity supply and demand, meaning prices are likely to change across the day. Increased solar generation has long been expected to reduce prices in the middle of the day when solar farms are at maximum production. This is now happening.
In the past few months, this has even led to negative pricing – generators paying customers to stay in the system.
As shown in the chart below for Queensland, price reductions from 2019 to 2022 are most pronounced in the middle of the day, and most limited in the evening when electricity demand peaks but solar output is zero.
So what next?
A lot of work is required to ensure these projections are realised in the longer term. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan outlines the need for investment in new transmission infrastructure to ensure new supply can feed into the system. National energy authorities must also keep improving the design of the market beyond 2025.
Electricity prices are not the only factor affecting the size of your bill; how much electricity you use is obviously also important. Policymakers must continue to enable customers to minimise their energy bills through measures that encourage energy efficiency, as well as lowering peak electricity demand.
Education news in Australia last week was dominated by Australia’s worst ever showing in the OECD’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests. The mathematical literacy of our students has fallen to the OECD average. It’s not good enough for a rich country like Australia.
Improving outcomes will need good policy, steady support for schools, and consistent hard work.
Economically illiterate arguments from our leaders don’t help. When the PISA results came out, federal education minister Dan Tehan said:
Our government is providing record funding of $310.3 billion to schools. Money is not the issue because Estonia was the top-performing country in reading and science and they spend half as much money per student as Australia.
In fact, Estonia spends virtually the same per student as Australia, once wage differences are taken into account.
It’s not ‘half as much money per student’
Estonia’s performance in PISA 2018 was impressive. Although they weren’t “the top performing country”, they were one of them and did significantly better than Australia. But what about their funding?
According to the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2019 report, Estonia spends the equivalent of US$6,900 per student per year for both primary and secondary students, while Australia spends US$10,000 per primary student and US$11,650 per secondary student.
Estonia’s spend per student is around 60 to 70% that of Australia’s.
Leaving aside the fact 60-70% is quite a long way from half, the real problem with Tehan’s claim is that wages are very different in the two countries.
The starting wage for a secondary school teacher in Estonia, for instance, is US$22,200. In Australia, it’s exactly double that. Here’s why that matters.
Wages are higher in richer countries
Generally speaking, high wages reflect high labour productivity. But workers in rich countries still tend to be paid more even if they are no more productive than those in poorer countries.
Cost comparisons must adjust for differences in wages. And teacher wages are much higher in Australia than Estonia, because all wages are higher.
As average wages in a country rise, so do teachers’ wages.
Like other service professions, labour productivity in teaching probably doesn’t rise much over time. The number of students a teacher can teach in an hour, with a given quality of instruction, is pretty stable.
Yet as wages in other sectors rise, reflecting productivity growth, teacher wages must also rise to stop teachers from chasing bigger bucks elsewhere.
Put bluntly, teachers get paid more in Australia than Estonia because Australian teachers have better-paid alternatives.
On this basis, Estonia spends the same on school education as Australia – 22% of GDP per capita for each student. Looking just at public spending, Australian governments spend 15% less than the Estonian government, and about 16% less than the average of other comparable OECD country governments.
Australian governments spend less than the Estonian government on schools.
Private funding of school education is higher in Australia than Estonia, but much of this goes to sports ovals and arts centres, not teaching.
But didn’t Australia massively increase school funding?
No. The nominal dollars spent each year on schools went up by A$21 billion in the decade to 2017, but mainly because wages and student numbers grew.
Over the decade to 2017, government schools got just 1% more money for teaching students – a miserly A$15.50 per student per year. Think sandwich and milkshake, not specialist teachers or more support for students with disability.
Government schools got just 1% more money for teaching students in ten years.
Our recent report, “Attracting High Achievers into Teaching” showed Australia could transform its teaching workforce for just A$620 per student per year. This is one-third of the increase government schools would receive if they got their full “Gonski” allocation.
Most of the extra money would be used to create a structured career pathway to give expert teachers more time to support their peers. This proposal – which builds on recommendation 16 in David Gonski’s 2018 report on how to achieve excellence in Australia’s schools – is what education ministers should be discussing when they meet this week in Alice Springs.
Of course money is never the only answer. But investing in great teachers would pay for itself many times over, because a better-educated population would mean a more productive and prosperous Australia. And it might just be the key to reversing Australia’s PISA woes.
This is the first article in a series to mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark Melbourne Transportation Plan.
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The 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan was perhaps the most influential planning policy in the city’s history. Every freeway and major arterial road built since then, as well as many current freeway and tollway projects and proposals, stem from this plan.
At the same time, technological changes transformed our way of life. New manufacturing opportunities provided jobs to support families and consumer goods to fill their lives with. The Australian dream of a family home on a quarter-acre block was reinforced in this era.
Cars shaped the post-war suburbs. Estates typified by free-standing dwellings with garages had become the norm by the 1960s. The opening in 1960 of Chadstone, Melbourne’s first modern shopping mall based on the US model, set the pattern for car-based planning.
Advertisement for the Holden FC, Australia’s Own Car, in the late 1950s.Linklater, B. R., lithographer
The 1954 Metropolitan Planning Scheme embraced these trends. It proposed low-density car-based suburban development and a freeway system to serve it. These policies were adopted across the English-speaking world, with the United States its primary advocate.
This pattern was followed in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, where trams were ripped out of every capital city except Melbourne.
The 1969 plan
This environment was the context for the 1969 plan, which US consultants supervised. Faith in the desirability of a car-based future obscured the flaws in the transport modelling assumptions.
The plan forecast a rise in car usage and laid out an extensive road network to support this. It did not discuss effects on urban form, merely characterising itself as supporting the 1954 Metropolitan Planning Scheme and existing development trends.
The plan proposed 307 miles (494 kilometres) of freeways. This accounted for 64% of the proposed spending. The network was to provide for the predicted 6 million daily car trips by the plan’s scheduled completion in 1985.
The recommended freeway system.1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan
A 323-mile (520km) highway and arterial road network – both new and widened roads – was to support the freeway network. Some 80 level-crossing removals would promote free-flowing traffic. Combined, these road proposals were costed at A$2.2 billion (in 1969 dollars) – 85% of the proposed budget.
In contrast to the rest of Australia, the plan proposed retaining and modernising Melbourne’s tram system. There were to be 910 new trams (the system today has about 475).
The plan also included rail improvements, notably the City Loop, electrification to outer areas, rail duplications or triplications, new radial lines to Doncaster and Monash, and suburban loop lines between Huntingdale and Ferntree Gully and between Dandenong and Frankston. Only 13.5% of the plan’s spending was to be on rail.
Proposed general railway development to 1985.1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan
The community responds
The plan triggered a backlash against freeways being built through urban neighbourhoods. Residents mobilised against demolitions and what they saw as the destruction of their neighbourhoods. Communities were already opposing the Victorian Housing Commission’s campaign of “slum reclamation” and high-rise tower construction.
The Eastern Freeway (F19) construction, begun in 1970, was fiercely opposed. Protests increased through the 1970s.
Public opposition was partly responsible for the plan’s scope being reduced in 1973.
The changed social context of the 1970s demanded a more responsive government. As attitudes and expectations change, so too must the plans for cities.
How might things have been different?
The 1969 plan laid out a freeway network as a blueprint for subsequent governments to follow. Much of this network has been built, but very few of the public transport projects were implemented.
The City Loop rail tunnels opened in stages from 1981 to 1985, but only the smallest of the rail extensions has been built. Some lines have closed since 1969. This has marginalised the rail system’s usefulness to most people except those travelling to and from the central city.
The effects on Melbourne have been profound and far more biased towards cars than even the plan intended, yet things could have been otherwise. Washington DC and Vancouver both proposed extensive freeway networks in the 1960s. In these cities, governments responded to community opposition by shifting the focus towards public transport, cycling and walking.
Rising transport emissions are the largest single contributor to global heating. Melbourne is at a tipping point, needing to embrace transport options that lower emissions and support sustainable urban development.
Current rail projects are largely playing catch up. If all of the lines proposed in the 1969 plan, along with its level-crossing removals, had been completed as planned by 1985, Melbourne would be quite different today, and for much less than the cost of all of the roads built or planned in the foreseeable future.
This is an immense challenge, but we should look back on 1969 to see the long-term impacts such a plan can have. Despite its name and breadth of content, it was a road plan rather than a comprehensive transport plan. Yet we need the type of long-term city-shaping thinking that underpinned that plan, but directed in ways that fit a genuinely sustainable, smart and fair 2019 vision for 2069 that we can all support.
A public event to mark the 50th anniversary of the Melbourne Transportation Plan will be held on December 12 2019, hosted by RMIT University, supported by Swinburne University, Monash University and the University of Melbourne – details here.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Backhouse, Research Fellow, Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN), University of Melbourne
Public libraries embody the values of democracy by offering free access to knowledge. But the role of contemporary public libraries extends far beyond access to books.
Libraries are places for learning and discovery, forums for debate, galleries for exhibitions and events, and spaces for work and pleasure. As cultural centres and community hubs, libraries bring people together.
Library staff are experts in knowledge systems and adept at seizing the possibilities presented by these changes. This ability to innovate ensures public libraries remain relevant and vital.
Such innovation is evident throughout Melbourne’s State Library Victoria which reopened this week to reveal the final phase of its Vision 2020 transformation. The transformation of Australia’s oldest – and now newest – library is cultural, social, economic and architectural.
State Library Victoria already holds a prominent place in Melbourne’s cultural and urban fabric. It is now ready for the future.
Less is more
Good civic architecture embodies the needs of the community it serves, amplifying and adapting to the activities and lived experiences in it.
The State Library Victoria, Australia’s first free public library, photographed in 1859.SLV
Today, the revitalised heritage reading rooms remain majestic symbols with their large lofty ceiling and voluminous spaces with natural light . People may wish to linger in these hushed traditional spaces and return.
This major redevelopment was entrusted to Australian design studio Architectus in partnership with Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects. Their work demonstrates great restraint and respect for the original building, coupled with the creation of new spaces, connections and opportunities relevant to libraries of now and the future with a thoughtful approach of less is more.
Fine design details skilfully juxtapose the old and the new. New stone covers the historic and slippery marble stairs that head up from the Swanston Street foyer, the original treads visible at each edge. Long admired murals above the stairs are conserved.
The old, slippery staircase is re-covered – but the original edges peek through.Patrick Rodriguez/SLV
Entering from Swanston Street, The Quad is the contemporary centerpiece, beyond the foyer of the library. It provides a welcome zone that invites people of all ages, interests and backgrounds to enjoy the wonder of learning. This invitation can be simple: a place to charge your phone, to talk with friends, to escape the weather. Simple activities that make you stop and pause, and want to venture further and find out more.
Ideas Quarter offers shared work space for budding entrepreneurs. Conversation Quarter is a tech-rich destination for sharing, connecting and broadcasting ideas. Create Quarter includes recording, mixing and editing facilities. Children’s Quarter is a playful multi-level realm for family exploration with age-specific areas and programs.
Entering through The Quad, visitors enter a space of conversation and collaboration.Patrick Rodriguez/SLV
In this sequence of spaces, knowledge is everywhere, yet books are few.
The Quad is not the hushed or book-filled library experience you might expect. But those calmer spaces are still there, undisturbed by all this new activity thanks to careful acoustic design: a balance between the traditional and the new.
In the beautiful Ian Potter Queen’s Hall, the visitor catches glimpses of decorative paintwork in the Classical Greek style, discovered under layers of paint during the restoration.
Curiosity thrives in libraries, and the curious will uncover more.
The curious will find many secrets uncovered by the restoration.Trevor Mein/SLV
Libraries are for people
In an increasingly digital age, what can public libraries offer that our smartphones and computers cannot?
They offer community.
Many Victorian voices informed the Vision 2020 project: community groups, library users, local residents, business, school students, parents. These voices inspired the enriched diversity of services and experiences. The Library Board, state government, benefactors, and community fundraising made the vision possible.
Public, school and university libraries have all evolved to embrace a broader understanding of lifelong learning including and beyond what can be learnt from books. Libraries bring people together.
Libraries today are about learning and connection, both with and without books.Trevor Mein/SLV
These institutions contribute to social capital by fostering new relationships, sustaining and advancing informed communities and offering equity to close the digital divide.
New library spaces can elevate the human experience, and State Library Victoria proves public libraries have an exciting future.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education Practice, School of Education, University of South Australia
Australian 15 year olds were around three and a half years behind their counterparts in China in maths, according to the OECD’s latest results for education systems around the world.
The four cities of China (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang) that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) topped the league tables in maths, science and reading.
These four cities don’t represent China as a whole, but their combined size is comparable to a typical OECD country. However, it’s important to mention China’s PISA results don’t reflect the huge number of students living outside the big cities.
Many Westerners believe Chinese students are superseding them because of their Confucian values which see students as hardworking, disciplined and therefore teachable.
But my research into middle-class parents in Shanghai shows they find traditional schools too rigid. They want their children to be globally-minded and adopt values those schools don’t focus on as much – like self-discovery and creativity.
The hybrid education model
My two-year research involved interviews with a group of 46 middle-class Chinese parents in Shanghai.
China’s rapid social and economic transformation means it’s fast becoming a middle-class nation with significant spending power. Only 4% of China was made up of middle-class urban households in 2000, but this is estimated to soar to 45% by 2022.
I chose to interview these parents because they represent the recent shift in the educational landscape in Chinese cities. The parents I interviewed are demanding a world-class education for their children. While academic achievement, such as that evidenced by PISA scores, is important to them, they all said the local Chinese school system was too rigid and exam-oriented.
These parents are more accepting of a Western-style education because they believe it will give their children an “edge” and grant them access to international opportunities.
They have enrolled their kids in what are called “hybrid” or “East-meets-West” schools. Here, Chinese students learn subjects such as maths, Chinese language and values education from local teachers. But they also study for the International Baccalaureate or the General Certificate of Education at Advanced-Level (the higher school certificate in the UK).
Subjects such as English, arts, music, physical education and philosophy within these curricula are taught by Western expatriate teachers and Chinese bilingual teachers.
The parents who send their children to such schools also value extra-curricular activities and overseas holiday study tours for their children. These extra curriculum activities aren’t just “cram school”. They include drama, dance, singing, sports, and learning one or two musical instruments.
What parents said
China’s one-child policy (which ended in 2015) means parents feel more pressure for their child’s success. The modern Chinese family has an inverted family structure, known as the “4-2-1” (four grandparents, two parents and one child).
The Shanghai middle-class parents in my study were mostly single children themselves. This partly explains why education, and the desire to ensure their child has good job prospects, is so vital for them, as they support their elderly parents alone, and their children are expected to also.
Still, the parents I interviewed placed more emphasis on developing their children’s global mindsets and intercultural competence than just having them attain good academic results.
Mrs Xuan told me her ten-year-old son’s school “exposed (him) to various Western teachers’ way of speaking and communicating […] They have taught him how to communicate better and think differently”.
She said:
I want to give my child different options that will allow him to see multiple perspectives and know how to find his own direction.
Another parent, Ms Ju, who owns a private business believes a “good” education involves giving her 11-year-old daughter an opportunity to experience being “under-pressure, but not just at school.
She told me:
I don’t want my child to just focus on doing well academically which is why […] she is playing piano competitively outside school so that she can learn how to manage her time and improve herself.
Professor Zheng, an engineering academic, talked about his experience of teaching an increasingly diverse university student cohort in his elite Chinese university.
He believes his role is to prepare his son (who was eight years of old when I interviewed him) for a world that is becoming a “global village”:
My son and his generation will see the world differently from my parents and me because of the technological and economic advancements that he is now experiencing. […] Through travelling, he understands what cultural diversity is and gets to learn how to live in a globalised world.
Other studies on Chinese parents who send their children to international schools have suggested they offer a haven for domestic students from the competitive and discriminatory features of the Chinese educational system.
Education is more complex than what we see on the PISA chart. Shanghai parents’ aspirations for their children show they are leaning towards the kind of educational system countries like Australia are known for.
More than a year ago, the world was shocked by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui’s attempt to use CRISPR technology to modify human embryos and make them resistant to HIV, which led to the birth of twins Lulu and Nana.
Now, crucial details have been revealed in a recent release of excerpts from the study, which have triggered a series of concerns about how Lulu and Nana’s genome was modified.
How CRISPR works
CRISPR is a technique that allows scientists to make precise edits to any DNA by altering its sequence.
When using CRISPR, you may be trying to “knock out” a gene by rendering it inactive, or trying to achieve specific modifications, such as introducing or removing a desired piece of DNA.
Gene editing with the CRISPR system relies on an association of two proteins. One of the proteins, called Cas9, is responsible for “cutting” the DNA. The other protein is a short RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule which works as a “guide” that brings Cas9 to the position where it is supposed to cut.
The system also needs help from the cells being edited. DNA damage is frequent, so cells regularly have to repair the DNA lesions. The associated repair mechanisms are what introduce the deletions, insertions or modifications when performing gene editing.
How the genomes of Lulu and Nana were modified
Jiankui and his colleagues were targeting a gene called CCR5, which is necessary for the HIV virus to enter into white blood cells (lymphocytes) and infect our body.
One variant of CCR5, called CCR5 Δ32, is missing a particular string of 32 “letters” of DNA code. This variant naturally occurs in the human population, and results in a high level of resistance to the most common type of HIV virus.
Jankui’s team wanted to recreate this mutation using CRISPR on human embryos, in a bid to render them resistant to HIV infection. But this did not go as planned, and there are several ways they may have failed.
First, despite claiming in the abstract of their unpublished article that they reproduced the human CCR5 mutation, in reality the team tried to modify CCR5 close to the Δ32 mutation.
As a result, they generated different mutations, of which the effects are unknown. It may or may not confer HIV resistance, and may or may not have other consequences.
Worryingly, they did not test any of this, and went ahead with implanting the embryos. This is unjustifiable.
The mosaic effect
A second source of errors could have been that the editing was not perfectly efficient. This means that not all cells in the embryos were necessarily edited.
When an organism has a mixture of edited and unedited cells, it is called a “mosaic”. While the available data are still limited, it seems that both Lulu and Nana are mosaic.
This makes it even less likely that the gene-edited babies would be resistant to HIV infection. The risk of mosaicism should have been another reason not to implant the embryos.
Moreover, editing can have unintended impacts elsewhere in the genome.
When designing a CRISPR experiment, you choose the “guide” RNA so that its sequence is unique to the gene you are targeting. However, “off-target” cuts can still happen elsewhere in the genome, at places that have a similar sequence.
Jiankui and his team tested cells from the edited embryos, and reported only one off-target modification. However, that testing required sampling the cells, which were therefore no longer part of the embryos – which continued developing.
Thus, the remaining cells in the embryos had not been tested, and may have had different off-target modifications.
This is not the team’s fault, as there will always be limitations in detecting off-target and mosaicism, and we can only get a partial picture.
However, that partial picture should have made them pause.
A bad idea to begin
Above, we have described several risks associated with the modifications made on the embryos, which could be passed on to future generations.
Embryo editing is only ethically justifiable in cases where the benefits clearly outweigh the risks.
Technical issues aside, Jiankui’s team did not even address an unmet medical need.
While the twins’ father was HIV-positive, there is already a well-established way to prevent an HIV-positive father from infecting embryos. This “sperm washing” method was actually used by the team.
The only benefit of the attempted gene modification, if proven, would have been a reduced risk of HIV infection for the twins later in life.
But there are safer existing ways to control the risk of infection, such as condoms and mandatory testing of blood donations.
In health, we are already seeing promising results with the editing of somatic cells (that is, non-heritable modifications of the patient’s own cells) in beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease.
However, we are just not ready for human embryo editing. Our techniques are not mature enough, and no case has been made for a widespread need that other techniques, such as preimplantation genetic testing, could not address.
There is also much work still needed on governance. There have been individual calls for a moratorium on embryo editing, and expert panels from the World Health Organisation to UNESCO.
Yet, no consensus has emerged.
It is important these discussions move in unison to a second phase, where other stakeholders, such as patient groups, are more broadly consulted (and informed). Engagement with the public is also crucial.
The decision to merge the Department of Communications and the Arts with Transport, Infrastructure and Regional development (dropping the “Arts” entirely) ends a year in which Australian politics has been deeply confused over its genre.
Tragedy or farce? Realism or escapism? Character study or soapie potboiler? One thing is sure: the problems looming on the national horizon – ecological, economic and cultural – are very different from their predecessors of a few years ago, when our actions and their consequences were not so tightly aligned.
A sluggish economy is framed by a fractious global polity, quieter here, full-volume in the US and the UK. So far, Australia has been lucky. No divisive issue of nuclear intensity or truth-proof populist has emerged to shake the country’s bones. But we are at a fragile moment and now is the moment to reclaim the sensible centre.
Without it, the arts – in name and support – will enter a death spiral. It is imperative the government and the sector take action to prevent this.
Bottom lines
Alison Croggon recently argued the political big picture affects, and is affected by, the smaller one of Australian arts and culture. Her description of the “desertification” of the sector is alarming, and the problems will only get worse for that pluralist oasis, the small-to-medium arts companies, when the next round of Australia Council four-year grant decisions is made.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced the arts will merge with departments that manage roads and rail.AAP
The arc of depletion is a long one. Research by Caroline Wake at the University of NSW, drawing on data from the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission, shows signs of a decline in net assets of many Council-funded “key” companies.
Over the last five years, many smaller cultural organisations have run down the reserves they worked hard to accumulate the previous decade. Any further reduction of federal support and the sector will lurch from crisis to catastrophe.
Cultural cringe
Two questions arise for cultural policy going forwards. First, what can be done about a dire situation; second, why should anybody care about it? The answers are linked, since the value of culture is defined by positive interactions with it.
When the arts withers, so do our interactions. We care less, because there is less to care about. A cycle of terminal decline is triggered, common in Australia’s past, when we were a dumping ground for low-grade cultural product made for overseas audiences.
Since 2016, cultural policy-making has all but stalled. It has lacked energy, purpose, direction and force. Above all it has lacked new programs, the tentpole initiatives around which to construct an inclusive conversation about the nature, role and benefits of Australian arts and culture.
The decision to do away with a department of arts exacerbates this state of affairs. There are many things the government could do to give practitioners heart when it seems to be turning its back on the arts. The imperative is to show positive leadership: develop a proper program of cultural priorities, and properly fund them.
For the sector, the issue is not so simple. The most disturbing words in Croggon’s article are:
[It’s] difficult to identify the initial conditions that spawned the current critical situation. By the time the effects became noticeable, the causes were lost in the confusion.
How is it possible for the sector to arrive at the mother-of-all-dead-ends with no idea of how it got there? What does it say about how it advocates and presents itself?
It has provided plenty of quantitative evidence of its economic impact.
In the last 18 months alone there has been Measuring the economic value of cultural and creative industries by the Statistics Working Group of the Meeting of Cultural Ministers, Australia’s Creative Industries: Valuation by SGS Economics and Planning, Born Global by the Australia Council (“calculates the value of the Australian music industry as an international export”), and the Ministry’s own report “shows a 30% increase in the value of cultural and creative activity, from $86 billion in 2008-09 to $111.7 billion in 2016-17”.
Telling our story
Plug in the search “economics and culture” to the Analysis and Policy Observatory website and you get close to 1,500 reports, articles and commentary. Perhaps it’s time to ask why all this data has only intermittent influence on policy-making.
Part of the challenge for the sector is moving beyond the language of general effects. It’s laudable that culture should supply benefits to the economy (or social cohesion or well-being or soft power or whatever other positive power for all). But it’s often difficult to work back from aggregate figures to see exactly how it delivers them. If you already know what the sector does, the jump from the general to the particular is a short one. If you don’t, it looks like a leap of faith.
The sector needs to say why these numbers are important, rather than pumping them into the public domain in the wan hope they will assume a meaning obvious to everyone.
The arts sector has already promoted its monetary value. It’s time to create a narrative.AAP Image/Joel Carrett
Policy narratives determine the interpretation of data, not the other way around. It is on the level of story, not just the level of numbers, that the battle for hearts and minds must be fought. You can only have evidence-based policy making if you have a policy narrative – a credible consensus of belief that makes action possible – to have evidence for.
There are signs of more nuance in whole-of-sector research, such as A New Approach’s recent report Transformative: Impacts of Culture and Creativity. In the past, there’s been talk about “the cultural ecology”. But behind the words are usually coded bids for funding without awareness of the systemic pressures all artists and organisations labour under.
It is easy to see why the cultural sector has neglected the task of explaining itself holistically to the outside world. If a tree fell in a forest and there was no one there to hear it, it would sound like a career in the Australian arts. Who’s got time to consider those who are, by definition if not by desire, one’s competitors? Let alone make a common cause with people whose work one does not actually like?
Yet that is exactly what needs to happen in 2020 if Australian cultural policy is to reverse out of the cul de sac it is currently stuck down.
Dr Julian Meyrick is incoming Professor of Creative Arts at Griffith University.
When you find dinosaur skeletons, how can you tell how old the dinosaur was? Like, if the skeleton is from a child dinosaur or an adult dinosaur? – Henry, aged 8.
Hi Henry, that’s a good but tricky question.
There are a couple of ways we can try to tell how old a dinosaur was when it died.
If you cut open a fossil dinosaur bone, you can see lines, just like if you were looking at rings in a tree. Trees rings happen when a tree grows slowly in a tough season like an icy cold winter. You can count the rings to see how many winters that tree has lived through. And because there is only one winter each year, then you know how many years old the tree is. Easy!
Animals, like dinosaurs, formed similar lines in their bones whenever they slowed down their growing. But there’s a catch: this might not happen once each year like in a tree.
Why would a dinosaur slow down its growing? A dinosaur might not grow very fast if there is not enough food to eat. This might happen if there hasn’t been much rain and so there are not as many plants around to eat. Or there might be loads of food around, but the dinosaur is using all its energy to fight other dinosaurs, rather than using it to grow.
There might be lots of times each year when the dinosaur stopped growing, and each time would make a growth line in its bones. So if you find a fossil with lots of growth lines, you might not be looking at the bones of a really old dinosaur, but a very busy, stressed-out dinosaur! So this is quite a complicated way to try and guess its age.
Use your head
Another way to try to guess the age of a dinosaur is to look at how its skull bones connect to each other. Lots of baby animals don’t have a solid skull. Instead, their skull is made up of different bits that gradually stick together into one piece as it grows.
We’re not sure whether baby dinosaurs had skulls that grew like this. Some scientists have tried to find out by looking at skulls from baby emus and alligators, both of which are a bit similar to dinosaurs. They discovered that emu chicks have skull bones that stick together as they grow, but baby alligators don’t! So that doesn’t really give us a clear answer either.
The growth of a dinosaur called Protoceratops, from newborn baby (on the left) to grown-up (on the right).Harry Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons
Sometimes it’s really easy to tell how old a dinosaur was. If you find a dinosaur egg, you can use something called X-rays to look inside it and see if there is a baby dinosaur fossil inside. If there is, you know that dinosaur was 0 years old!
Then, if you find a bigger fossil from the same kind of dinosaur nearby, there is a chance that dinosaur was the baby dinosaur’s grown-up parent.
If you find a baby and a grown-up together, you can learn lots more things by looking at the differences between the two. It might tell you how the dinosaur changes size and shape as it gets older.
You might find a dinosaur that looks like a mixture between the two. That might be a “big kid” dinosaur that is well on its way to becoming a grown-up.
It’s still hard to tell exactly how old each dinosaur was. But scientists are like detectives, and they have lots of clever ideas that are helping them get better at it all the time.
The initial version of the bill featured 102 “safeguards”, including the regulation of access, the request and assessment process, administration and management of the voluntary assisted dying substance, mandatory reporting, protections for health practitioners, and oversight mechanisms.
As outlined in the proposed legislation, to access voluntary assisted dying in WA a person would need to:
be aged 18 years or more, and
have lived in WA for at least 12 months, and be an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and
have the capacity to make decisions about voluntary assisted dying, and
be acting voluntarily and without coercion.
The person would also need to be diagnosed with a disease, illness, or medical condition that is:
advanced and progressive, and anticipated to cause death, and
anticipated to cause death within no more than six months, or no more than 12 months for those with a neurodegenerative diagnosis, and
causing suffering to the person that cannot be relieved in a way the person considers tolerable.
A person would not be eligible to access voluntary assisted dying only because they have a disability or are diagnosed with a mental illness.
Protections for health practitioners include provisions for “conscientious objection”. They would have the right to refuse to participate in the request and assessment process, and to participate in the prescription, supply, or administration of the voluntary assisted dying substance, including being present when it is administered.
In Western Australia, eligible patients are expected to be able to request voluntary assisted dying in about 18 months.from www.shutterstock.com
Most of the amendments passed by the upper house will not substantively change the eligibility criteria or process to access voluntary assisted dying from the model initially proposed.
In a special sitting next week, the WA lower house will vote on each of the amendments. Given support for the legislation in the lower house already, it is anticipated the amendments will be ratified.
If the bill passes as expected, it will be about 18 months until the law comes into effect in WA.
Following a similar process to Victoria, there will be an “implementation period”. This will allow time to develop resources for health services, health practitioners, and community members, and for training.
WA will also establish a Voluntary Assisted Dying Board, an independent statutory body to oversee voluntary assisted dying.
Overall, health services and health practitioners in WA, including those who choose not to participate, will need to prepare for the state’s introduction of voluntary assisted dying.
Kris Faafoi, Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media; Minister of
Commerce and Consumer Affairs;
Minister of Government Digital Services; Associate Minister for
Housing; MP for Mana.
Kris Faafoi, Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media; Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs; Minister of Government Digital Services; Associate Minister for Housing; MP for Mana.
The latest allegations of a corruption scandal involving a Cabinet minister suggests this government is far too loose when it comes to providing access to power for friends and associates.
Kris Faafoi is in trouble because of his alleged role in helping a mate with an immigration matter when he was the Associate Minister of Immigration. On the face of it, the evidence is bad for Faafoi, as it looks like he has breached the Cabinet Manual rules which prohibit helping mates out by doing them a personal favour.
The text messages between Faafoi and his musician friend Jason Kerrison show Kerrison lobbying the minister for help, and Faafoi promising the sort of assistance that no normal constituent would receive. The exchange looks corrupt.
Unlike many other controversies around donations and shortfalls in ethical standards, this one is easy for the public to comprehend. The Minister clearly states he’s going to contact officials to help “speed things up”, and tells Kerrison to “send me surname and immagration nz file number” of the family member seeking residency.
And later, he reassures Kerrison he’s sorted it out but has to be careful: “Bro it’s moving. I can’t put anything in writing.” Replying to his friend’s appreciation for the favour, he essentially explains that it’s the right thing to do, saying “Whānau whānau brother”.
The correspondence suggests Faafoi knows he’s in dodgy territory, saying “I’ve enlisted the help of an MP up your way. If I deal with it directly, I will have a conflict of interest.”
Being involved at all in the case is certainly a conflict of interest according to the Cabinet Manual. This states that “a conflict may arise if people close to a Minister, such as… whānau, or close associates, might derive, or be perceived as deriving… personal, financial, or other benefit from a decision or action by the Minister or the government.”
The Manual also gives an example of inappropriate participation in the official processes as being: “attempting to intercede” on the behalf of “family members, whānau, or close associates” on “some official matter”.
According to the Herald’s Audrey Young, the situation is serious for Faafoi: “Using one’s ministerial position to help a friend is not only a breach of the Cabinet manual, it is sackable offence and has claimed the job of a minister before. Nick Smith was forced to resign from the Cabinet in 2012 when it emerged that as ACC minister in the previous term, he had intervened on an ACC case for a friend” – see: Kris Faafoi is in trouble but just how much? (paywalled)
Young says that “Jacinda Ardern will be demanding answers”, and “the answers cannot just come Faafoi himself but from the Immigration Service.” She says there’s probably only one defence that Faafoi might make – that he didn’t actually do what he promised his friend: “Ironically the one thing that would save Faafoi is a lie. If Faafoi wasn’t actually helping his mate’s mother, but was only telling his mate he was helping, then he might get to keep his portfolios.”
Faafoi denied any wrongdoing yesterday, saying “I think he did have a case which is why I offered to speak to his local MP”. He’s now refusing to comment on the story.
Broadcaster Duncan Garner, who is a close friend of Faafoi, has come out in his defence this morning, arguing that in the end the Minister’s friend didn’t actually get the outcome from Immigration NZ that he was lobbying for: “Faafoi achieved nothing for Kerrison” – see: Kris Faafoi doesn’t deserve to be sacked, his country needs him.
Garner puts forward another reason Faafoi shouldn’t be sacked: “Labour’s Kris Faafoi has been the Government’s best performing Minister by a country mile. He’s decisive, a good communicator, doesn’t promise the world and has a sense of humour… I hope he stays in Cabinet – his party needs him and so does this country.”
And perhaps, this type of lobbying of Faafoi (and other ministers) isn’t that uncommon. Garner says: “Heck, I’ve even texted Faafoi about immigration cases that have been featured on this show – no Tova, you can’t look at my text messages. But spoiler alert, I’ve actually also asked him to his face on national television and radio. So, Faafoi? He’ll have to accept some public humiliation for 24 hours but Ardern doesn’t need to sack him nor does Faafoi need to be whacked with a sledgehammer.”
Labour’s Willie Jackson came out to bat for Faafoi on The AM Show today saying that, although the situation is “messy”, “I think we’ll be able to work our way through it because the reality is he didn’t make any decisions in terms of what was happening here. The thing with Kris is he’s a good man, he’s not just a good minister. He’s a great community man” – see Dan Satherley’s Kris Faafoi’s position ‘untenable’ if claims proven – Simon Bridges.
On the same show, National’s Paul Goldsmith said that Faafoi’s actions wouldn’t be acceptable in a National government: “If it was me under a National Prime Minister, I’d be toast. You’d be spreading your peanut butter on me right now.” He argued that, in contrast, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern “never disciplines anybody”, and pointed to various scandals involving Shane Jones.
Jackson responded that National is actually too punitive on these matters: “There’s no second chances with National – cut everyone’s throat, lock everyone up, throw the key away. Punitive, punitive, punitive. Goldie would kill ol’ Fafs off. It’s not right.”
National leader Simon Bridges is pushing the matter, appearing on various breakfast shows this morning to put the heat on Faafoi and Ardern, but as yet doesn’t appear to be calling for a resignation. On RNZ’s Morning Report, he just said the PM needed to sort it out, saying Ardern “needs to show leadership she needs to deal with this urgently. It wouldn’t be a difficult case to get to the bottom of very quickly. Faafoi should be asked what’s gone on and then deal with it” – see: PM must ‘deal with’ reports Kris Faafoi offered to help friend in immigration case – Simon Bridges.
Talking to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB, Bridges went further, “accusing the Government of showing favouritism to celebrities” – see the Herald’s ‘Celebrities get influence’: Bridges slams Labour over Faafoi case. He said: “Whether it’s Derek Handley, Carol Hirschfeld, Richie Hardcore or Jason Kerrison, it does start to look like, under this Government if you’re a celebrity you get influence that others don’t.”
So, how will Jacinda Ardern act on this issue? Matthew Hooton, speaking on Newstalk ZB this morning, said: “I know that the Prime Minister is taking it very, very seriously. She is investigating it thoroughly. They are going to be going through all of his communications – not just the ones that have been released, but all his communications with the relevant officials” – see: PM has one rule for Labour ministers and another for NZ First.
Hooton argues there are two scenarios, in terms of what has happened and what consequences will follow. The first: “It’s possible that he was just doing what a lot of politicians do – and John Key was probably the master of this – and all politicians do it, just saying to a mate ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll sort that out for you mate’, but then getting back to Wellington and not in fact doing anything at all. Now if that is the case, it’s still a bad look, and it’s still a violation of the Cabinet Manual. But given that this is one of the few competent ministers in her government, I think in that case Jacinda Ardern will give him a serious bollocking”.
He says a second possibility is this: “If, however, in a second scenario, it emerges from the Prime Minister’s investigations that there is any evidence that he in fact followed up on what he is promising his mate, and did in fact put pressure on immigration authorities, then it’s an entirely different matter. And I would think the Prime Minister would, unfortunately from her perspective, have to sack him immediately.”
Finally, who is the “good friend” of Kris Faafoi, who appears to have released their correspondence to the media? The singer is actually a wannabe-politician himself, and stood unsuccessfully in this year’s local government elections – for more on this, see Denise Piper’s Opshop singer Jason Kerrison throws hat into Northland council race.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gottfried Lechner, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, University of South Australia
Satellites are becoming increasingly important in our lives, as they help us meet a demand for more data, exchanged at higher speeds. This is why we are exploring new ways of improving satellite communication.
Satellite technology is used to navigate, forecast the weather, monitor Earth from space, receive TV signals from space, and connect to remote places through tools such as satellite phones and NBN’s Sky Muster satellites.
All these communications use radio waves. These are electromagnetic waves that propagate through space and, to a certain degree, through obstacles such as walls.
Each communication system uses a frequency band allocated for it, and each band makes up part of the electromagnetic spectrum – which is the name given to the range of all types of electromagnetic radiation.
But the electromagnetic spectrum we are able to use with current technology is a finite resource, and is now completely occupied. This means old services have to make room for new ones, or higher frequency bands have to be used.
While this poses technological challenges, one promising way forward is optical communication.
Communication with lasers
Instead of using radio waves to carry the information, we can use light from lasers as the carrier. While technically still part of the electromagnetic spectrum, optical frequencies are significantly higher, which means we can use them to transfer data at higher speeds.
However, one disadvantage is that a laser cannot propagate through walls, and can even be blocked by clouds. While this is problematic on Earth, and for communication between satellites and Earth, it’s no problem for communication between satellites.
On Earth, optical communication via fibre optic cables connects continents and provides enormous data exchanges. This is the technology that allows the cloud to exist, and online services to be provided.
Optical communication between satellites doesn’t use fibre optic cables, but involves light propagating through space. This is called “free space optical communication”, and can be used to not only deliver data from satellites to the ground, but also to connect satellites in space.
In other words, free space optical communication will provide the same massive connectivity in space we already have on Earth.
Some systems such as the European Data Relay System are already operational, and others like SpaceX’s Starlink continue to be developed.
But there are still many challenges to overcome, and we’re limited by current technology. My colleagues and I are working on making optical, as well as radio-frequency, data links even faster and more secure.
CubeSats
So far, a lot of effort has gone into the research and development of radio-frequency technology. This is how we know data rates are at their highest physical limit and can’t be further increased.
The first CubeSats were launched in 2003 on a Russian Rockot launch vehicle.Jared/Flickr, CC BY-NC
While a single radio-frequency link can provide data rates of 10Gbps with large antennas, an optical link can achieve rates 10 to 100 times higher, using antennas that are 10 to 100 times smaller.
These small antennas are in fact optical lenses, and their compact size allows them to be integrated into small satellites called CubeSats.
CubeSats are not larger than a shoebox or toaster, but can employ high speed data links to other satellites or the ground.
They are currently used for a wide range of tasks including earth observation, communications and scientific experiments in space. And while they’re not able to provide all services from space, they play an important role in current and future satellite systems.
Another advantage of optical communication is increased security. The light from a laser forms a narrow beam, which has to be pointed from a sender to a receiver. Since this beam is very narrow, the communication doesn’t interfere with other receivers and it’s very hard, if not impossible, to eavesdrop on the communication. This makes optical systems more secure than radio electromagnetic systems.
Optical communication can also be used for Quantum Key Distribution. This technology allows the absolute secure exchange of encryption keys for safe communications.
What can we expect from this?
While it’s exciting to develop systems for space, and to launch satellites, the real benefit of satellite systems is felt on Earth.
High speed communication provided by optical data links will improve connectivity for all of us. Notably, remote areas which currently have relatively slow connections will experience better access to remote health and remote learning.
Better data links will also let us deliver images and videos from space with less delay and higher resolution. This will improve the way we manage our resources, including water, agriculture and forestry.
Working in optical satellite communication is challenging, as it combines many different fields and research areas including telecommunication, photonics and manufacturing.
Currently, our technology is far from achieving what is theoretically possible, and there’s great room for improvement. This is why there’s a strong focus on collaboration.
In Australia, there are two major programs facilitating this – the Australian Space Agency run by the federal government, and the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), also supported by the federal government.
Through the SmartSat CRC program, my colleagues and I will spend the next seven years tackling a range of applied research problems in this area.
According to the latest figures, homicides in Australia are at historic lows and compare well against international trends.
So what do the trends tell us and why is the homicide rate in Australia declining?
Perceptions and realities
A search of the Factiva media database reveals that over the past five years, there have been about 14,000 media stories each year concerning murder or homicide in Australia. In reality, there were 229 homicide incidents with 235 victims in Australia between July 1 2015 and June 30 2016.
By comparison, there were 1,295 road fatalities in Australia for 2016. This means a person is almost six times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than be murdered in Australia.
In Australia for 2015-16 the homicide rate was 0.95 per 100,000, the lowest equal rate recorded since 1989–90. The UN 2019 Global study in homicide report indicated that the global homicide rate has been slowly decreasing for over two decades, from a peak of 7.4 per 100,000 in 1993 to 6.1 per 100,000 in 2017. Finding a simple answer to explain this is difficult due to wide variations in regional, sub-regional and even city-based trends.
Japan and Singapore had the lowest homicide rate for 2017 at 0.2 per 100,000, El Salvador had the worst homicide rate in the world for 2017 with a rate of 61.8 per 100,000.
Trends in Australia
In Australia, domestic homicides accounted for 45%, acquaintance homicides for 37% and stranger homicides 9% of the Australian total for 2015-16.
Of the victims, 65% were male and 35% female, and in 83% of the homicide incidents the victim knew their killer.
The data on perpetrators reveal a more striking gender disparity: 86% were male and 14% female. The youngest homicide offender was 11-years-old, while the oldest was 82.
More surprising may be that 45% of homicide offenders had no previous criminal history. In terms of motivation, arguments were the most common cause followed by jealousy, money, revenge, drugs and desertion in descending order.
What factors influence the homicide rate?
The UN study identified a number of contributors to acts of homicide. Drugs and alcohol are significant – these were present in 37% of homicide perpetrators in the global study.
In the AIC study, perpetrators were shown to having consumed alcohol in 20% of cases and drugs in 16%. This is a decrease from 2014-15, when alcohol was present 30% of homicide incidents and illicit drugs in 15% of incidents. Such lower rates of involvement match data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that show that Australians are drinking less over time.
A key factor in homicides is access to weapons. The UN study indicated that firearms were used in 54% of homicides globally in 2017. In the same year in the US, firearms accounted for 73% of all murders. In Australia, firearms accounted for only 19% of homicides in 2015-16.
In the US, 42% of people indicated they live in a household where a gun is present.
Other factors contributing to homicide include socioeconomic and environmental conditions. Socioeconomic disadvantage is one reason why Indigenous Australians are over-represented in homicide figures. Indigenous Australians make up 3% of the general population, but 16% of homicide victims in 2015-16.
The UN Global report identified the lack of good societal governance, stable government and effective rule of law as contributors to homicide. The Global Peace Index provides a snapshot of those issues. Countries that perform poorly in areas such as homicide, incarceration, political instability, access to weapons, internal conflicts and displaced people are rated as less peaceful.
According to the index, the most peaceful country was Iceland. The least peaceful were Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan and Yemen. Australia rated 13 out of 163 countries, the US rated at 128. In 2016 Australia was rated at 15 out of 163 countries.
Gender roles were seen as important in terms of contributors such as demographics and cultural stereotypes. An example of responding to such stereotypes is the adoption of national strategies and special legal provisions to reduce domestic violence-related deaths.
Australia has adopted the The National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children to address such issues. While there is still much to be done to fight the scourge of domestic violence, it is heartening to see that the intimate partner homicide rate reduced in 2015–16 to 0.26 per 100,000 population aged 18 years and older. This is the lowest rate recorded since 1989–90.
The future
Australia should be confident that it is on the right track with a historically low homicide rate. While understanding homicide is always complex, Australia has engaged in a positive manner to address such issues and reduce the known risks.
However, we must not become complacent. There is always room for improvement when it comes to saving lives.
Welcome to the next article in our Designing Hospitals series, where we explore how architecture and design shape our hospitals and medical centres. Today, we look at what Indigenous people tell us they need in hospital design.
Last year, New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard proposed segregated Indigenous waiting areas in the emergency departments of the state’s public hospitals.
The novel policy suggested a link between Indigenous participation in health care and the design of health-care spaces.
One response called the proposal “absurd” and “apartheid”. It questioned whether racially segregated rooms were the answer to Indigenous patients leaving the emergency department without receiving care.
What was the evidence that redesigning waiting rooms would benefit Indigenous patients and their carers?
Evidence-based design aims to use research and evidence to improve hospital architecture for patients, carers and staff.
Studying physical environments that reduce patient stress, for example, is one area that has led to design changes in waiting areas, in-patient rooms, and wayfinding (how people navigate through a building).
It has also led to increasing integration of landscaping in health-care facilities and an interest in the benefits of therapeutic gardens.
But this research has largely ignored Indigenous people, despite the persistent health gap and the fact that cross-cultural design principles are being used for other buildings such as housing and prisons.
Our research attempted to determine how design can improve the way Indigenous people experience hospitals. The team included architects, anthropologists and statisticians.
We used a survey to examine the preferences and experiences of 600 Indigenous people at two locations: a metropolitan city (Townsville) and an inland regional city (Mount Isa).
We then interviewed a further 55 Indigenous people, and held meetings with the Indigenous liaison team at the Townsville Hospital.
Here’s what we found
The results reinforced anecdotal evidence that many Indigenous people find hospitals uncomfortable, alienating, and stressful.
When you’ve got people looking you up and down, it makes you feel bad. All eyes on you, makes you shame always, like you shouldn’t be there.
Many of us find hospitals stressful. But a higher proportion of Indigenous people avoid hospital appointments or leave hospital against medical advice than non-Indigenous people.
Yes, culturally appropriate, high-quality care is of primary importance in the delivery of health services.
However, the survey results and stories confirmed hospital design matters to Indigenous patients and their families.
These preferences relate to Indigenous people’s cultural and social background, which is influenced by location and histories of colonisation.
Our study confirmed that Indigenous social networks, related to both kinship and community, affect hospital use.
Indigenous patients attract larger numbers of carers and visitors, whether in maternity wards, outpatient clinics, intensive care, or in palliative care. Interviews with hospital staff supported these observations.
The views from this patient room in the Sunshine Coast University Hospital create a connection to the outdoors that Indigenous patients highly value.Architectus, Author provided
For in-patients, the larger visitor groups often stay longer, which can also place burden on staff and resources.
The results of our study indicated that larger in-patient rooms, semi-private waiting rooms located in wards, and connection to outdoors would begin to offer comfort to Indigenous visitors and families who may feel unwelcome in larger numbers.
Our research found clinics or hospital waiting rooms are rarely private enough for Indigenous people. We also found Indigenous patients and visitors feel more comfortable if they can see who is coming and going.
This visual monitoring can help maintain social relationships, either avoiding individuals — a cultural requirement in close-knit communities — or embracing supportive kin.
The spatial solution might be a challenge — providing flexible seating arrangements that offer semi-private spaces with clear views of entries. Larger waiting rooms adjoining outdoor areas would be a good start.
Can landscapes and gardens help?
The results of our study confirmed that Indigenous patients and visitors strongly preferred outdoor spaces, not just for the benefits of more natural settings, or to escape the air-conditioning, but also for social contact.
This roof garden at the Queensland Children’s Hospital offers semi-private spaces for social interaction and is preferred by Indigenous patients and visitors.Conrad Gargett Lyons, Author provided
This can be to gather in private or to seek out familiar faces entering or leaving the hospital.
Although not often designed for such, outdoor areas are commonly used for grieving and cultural rituals around death. With this diversity of use, outdoor spaces deserve as much design attention as the interiors.
Evaluating how design works
Newer clinics and hospitals include design features, such as Indigenous art, which recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. But we need to make cross-cultural design more widespread and effective if we want Indigenous people to feel more comfortable in hospital.
Revised hospital design guidelines can raise awareness, but they may not capture the diversity of Indigenous people using different types of health facilities across a big continent.
This makes consultation with local Indigenous people essential if their needs and preferences are to be accommodated in new health-care buildings.
Evaluating the design of newly built hospitals also contributes to evidence about architecture, and what might work better for both patients and staff, including Indigenous people.
Governments are hyper-sensitive about criticism of new hospitals. However, evaluating their design identifies worthy and repeatable design, as well as failures.
The modest design changes needed to improve the experience of Indigenous patients are likely to benefit all people who use our public hospitals.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations in Townsville and Mount Isa were essential in reaching the survey participants. Professor Paul Memmott, Professor Michele Haynes, Dr Bernie Baffour, Sue York, Carys Chainey, Georgia Betros, Kali Marnane and Alex Bond contributed to the research mentioned in this article.
Read other articles in our Designing Hospitals series:
The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are bad news for Australian students, parents, employers and policymakers. Pretty much everyone.
Australian 15-year-olds are now below the OECD average in mathematics, and our results in reading and science have fallen badly.
Trends in performance in reading, mathematics and science: The blue line indicates the average mean performance across OECD countries with valid data in all PISA assessments. The red dotted line indicates mean performance in Australia. The black line represents a trend line for Australia. * indicates mean-performance estimates that are statistically significantly above or below PISA 2018 estimates for Australia.OECD, PISA 2018 Database
Reading has gone backwards by three-quarters of a school year since 2000, mathematics by more than one school year since 2003, and science by a school year since 2006.
The results have generated a firestorm of press coverage, and it’s true they are certainly alarming.
They underscore the need for a serious discussion about education reform in this country.
They also help explain our poor productivity growth in recent years, and are full of gloomy news for future employment prospects and income inequality.
Skills and productivity
While no test is perfect, PISA is pretty useful for understanding the skills young people are equipped with as they enter the workforce or embark on post-secondary education.
Unlike many tests and examinations, PISA does not assess students’ abilities to recall facts or basic literacy and numeracy skills. Instead, it assesses the ability to transfer and apply learning to new situations and unseen problems. This requires an understanding of fundamental concepts and principles, as well as the ability to think.
This week the Australian Bureau of Statistics published figures revealing a 0.2% fall in labour productivity for 2019, with a shocking 0.8% fall adjusting for the quality of work performed.
Many factors contribute to labour productivity, but what economist call “human capital” (essentially “skills”) are a key part. With the skills of Australia’s workforce and future workforce falling, is it any wonder that productivity is lagging?
That’s a big problem for wages growth. In the long run, one basically expects real living standards for workers to track productivity. There can be deviations for certain time periods, but as Nobel laureaute Paul Krugman famously put it in 1990:
Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.
Widening the gap
The PISA results also tell us we have also dropped relative to other countries. In a world where routine tasks are increasingly being automated and there is fairly strong international mobility of labour, that’s doubly concerning.
Our ability to compete in a globalised world of competitive international trade depends not only only our absolute level of skills but our relative level of skills.
Take mathematics. Our PISA scores are now comparable to those of Portugal, and behind Latvia and the Czech Republic. Estonia – with a GDP per capita that’s half ours – is miles ahead of us. We’re even getting beaten by New Zealand.
A final piece of depressing news is that we have fewer top performers and many more poor performers. In NSW, for instance, our number of poor performers has doubled since 2003 (from 10% to 20%). Our number of top performers has roughly halved over the same period.
As University of Chicago economics professor Michael Greenstone has emphasised, the fundamental fact of labour economics is that people get paid for their skills.
If the spread of skills between the best and worst students in Australia is getting wider, then we should expect income inequality to worsen. The tax and transfer system in Australia does a lot to mitigate that inequality, but there are limits.
What to do?
So how to improve Australia’s education system?
As I have pointed out previously, the international evidence on “what works” in education involves some things that cost real money and others that are basically free.
An excellent 2013 paper by economists Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer used data from New York City charter schools to calculate that five policies explained about 45% of the variation in school effectiveness. Those policies were:
frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time and high expectations.
Of course, people can argue about the “external validity” of causal effects in specific geographies or educational contexts. That’s why we need good evidence from randomised controlled trials in education in Australia.
It is only mid-November but we have to walk early to avoid the heat. A northerly wind picks up clouds of dust and pollen, sending dirty billows across the paddocks. The long limbs of the gum trees groan overhead. Leaves and twigs litter the road. We stop to pull a branch off to the side.
Not even summer yet and already we are facing our first catastrophic fire rating of the season. Normally, I don’t even worry much about fires until after Xmas. In the southern states, it is January and February that are the most dangerous.
We live in the Adelaide Hills and never schedule holidays away from home in those months, even though it is hot and unpleasant. Now I’m worried we will have to cancel our pre-Christmas holiday plans. Winter will be the only time we can leave.
We cross paths with a friend walking her dog. We share mutual exclamations about the weather and the risk and she reminds me about the neighbourhood fire group meeting. I should go. I know, better than most people, just how important and lifesaving they can be. But I just don’t want to.
On the weekend, my husband had made us start the fire pump. It’s good to make sure it is all working, but I harbour a vague, irrational resentment at having to be taught how to do it every year. I know why. Mike has all that mechanical knowledge embedded in his brain like a primary instinct, but the information trickles out of mine like water through sand. I cannot rely on remembering what to do in an emergency.
I know my limitations. I’ve attached a laminated, labelled diagram to the pump with numbered instructions on it. Leave nothing to chance. My daughters are running through the pump this year too – in case they find themselves home alone.
Fuel on, throttle on, choke on.
I worry that the pull cord will be too hard, but my youngest yanks at it with practised determination and the pump starts first go.
Choke off, throttle up, water on.
At the fire pump.Author provided
The sprinklers fire up a dull, thudding rhythm around the verandah, spraying a mist over the garden and the cat while Mike runs through the finer details of protecting the pump with a cover and sprinkler in the event of a fire.
I watch the garden soaking up the unexpected bounty and notice that some of the plants have gone a bit leggy. Their undergrowth is woody with age. I’ll have to cut that back, prune off the old growth. Some of them may have to go. Much as I love Australian plants and their waterwise habits, I can’t have many in the garden. Most of them are just too flammable.
Everything we do here, every decision we make, is shaped by fire risk: the garden, the house, our holidays, our movements, where we park the cars, our power and our water supply, even our telecommunications.
It is relentless. A friend of mine who went through Ash Wednesday said she was just tired, after 45 years, of the constant worry. She wanted to move somewhere safer. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the bush.
Perhaps it would be easier not to know the risk, to live in ignorance.
Though the worry is constant, many people can’t bring themselves to leave the bush.Author provided
‘Too busy’
My local fire brigade had an open day a few weeks ago. The volunteers were busy for days, cleaning the shed, preparing the sausage sizzle. Lots of new people have moved into the area, mostly from the city, and chances are they don’t appreciate the risks of living in a bushfire-prone area.
The brigade put up signs, distributed flyers and knocked on doors with invitations. On the open day, I wander over and ask how many people have turned up.
“Oh about half a dozen,” says the captain brightly, before adding, “Well, maybe four actually. And only two of those are new.”
Someone asks about a family who has moved into a property down the road, a younger couple with kids and a stay-at-home dad. Would he be interested in joining the fire brigade?
“Said he was too busy. Maybe later when the kids are older.”
There are more and more people moving into the high risk urban fringes of our major cities, where houses mingle with flammable vegetation. Fewer and fewer people have the time or inclination to join their local volunteer fire brigade.
Many of them commute for work. They think fire-fighting is what happens when you ring 000. They don’t seem to realise that outside of the city, it is every community for itself. We have to fight our own fires.
Increasing population in the urban interface.Author provided.
I’m watching the news filled with images of the fires in New South Wales. Traumatised householders stand in front of the twisted wreckage of their homes. Tumbled masses of brick and iron are all that remain of a house full of memories.
“We never expected….”
“I’ve never seen….”
“I never imagined….”
No matter how well prepared we are for fires, we always underestimate the scale of the loss – the photos, the family pets, the mementos and heirlooms, or simply the decades of work building a house, a property, a business.
Looking at the television screen, I can’t help but notice the blackened tree trunks next to the ruins of their homes. I worked for a while in community safety for the Country Fire Authority when we lived in Victoria, researching and writing reports, and later a book, on how people respond to bushfires.
I’m well versed in the risk factors – proximity to native vegetation, fuel loads, clearance around houses, house construction and maintenance and most importantly of all, human behaviour.
Leaving is not easy
I used to live in a forest too, with mature eucalypts surrounding my house. We always knew this was a risk. We cleared the undergrowth and removed any “ladders” of vegetation that could allow ground fires to climb the trees. We removed new saplings growing close to the house.
We did as much as we could to make our 1970s home fire safe: installing sprinklers, sealing the roof, covering all the timber fascias in metal cladding.
In an average fire, we probably would have been fine. But when the Kinglake fires approached from the north on Black Saturday, I was no longer sure we would survive. A last-minute wind change swept the fire away from our home.
Army personnel join Victoria Police in a search for bushfire victims in Kinglake area in 2009.Jo Dilorenzo/Department of Defence
Like many people, in and around the impact zone, the fires uprooted us and disconnected us. There were so many deaths, so many people and houses gone. And yet so many are still living in the same risky buildings, often rebuilt in the same risky locations. As if we never learn.
We no longer felt so attached to our home. When the opportunity to leave arose, we took it. When we moved to South Australia, we still wanted to live in the bush, despite the fire risk. But it seemed impossible to find a home that had been built for bushfire safety.
A real estate agent showed me an elevated timber home that looked out to the south-west across vast hectares of native forest. A death trap if ever there was one.
“Yes,” agreed the agent. “I’ll just have to find a buyer who doesn’t mind about that.”
Our new house is built of stone, steel and iron, with double-glazed windows and a simple roofline surrounded by sprinklers and hard paving. Every crack and crevice is sealed. And it sits in the middle of a cleared paddock surrounded by a low-flammability garden. We look out over the bushland from a safer distance.
When my children were small, I packed them up and took them into town on every or total fire ban day. It was the prevailing advice from fire authorities. I cannot recall anyone else who did so – it is too hard, too disruptive and too inconvenient. And what do you do with the pets and horses and sheep? Let alone farms and businesses whose assets are practically uninsurable.
Besides, there are so many total fire ban days and they are getting more and more frequent. We’d be leaving for all of summer soon and not everyone has somewhere safer to go.
My former colleagues at the CFA confirmed that few people take this advice to leave on total fire ban days. When the fire risk categories were upgraded to include “catastrophic”, people simply recalibrated their fire risk range to suit.
Now total fire ban days are everyday, ordinary events and people only talk about leaving if the risk is catastrophic or “code red”. And even then, few of them do.
That’s why fire agencies continue to put so much effort into teaching people how to stay and defend their homes – because that is where they are going to end up, no matter what they are told or what they say. After the shocking deaths on Black Saturday, urban politicians thundered in self-righteous fury.
Some of the groups in Victoria have continued for years, often meeting annually just before the fire season to run through their plans and discuss issues they might be having. They share advice on how to protect properties, what to do when things go wrong, whose house offers the safest refuge, who is leaving and who is staying. They establish phone trees to warn everyone of imminent dangers and to stay in touch.
I know these programs work. I surveyed many of the fireguard groups who survived Black Saturday and compared them to neighbours who weren’t in groups.
The active members of fireguard groups were more likely to defend their houses. Active members’ houses were also more likely to survive, even when they were not defended. A handful felt their training had not prepared them for the severity of the fires they faced. In truth, I don’t think anyone, not even the most experienced firefighter, expected the severity of those fires. But the vast majority were certain their training helped, and had saved their lives.
Burning off on private property.Author provided.
In every group, there are people who do the work and those who don’t. There are always neighbours who are too busy for the training and just ask for the notes, which they never read. They want to be on the phone tree, even though they have not prepared their property and have not thought about what they will do in an emergency. These “inactive” members do not seem to benefit from training. Their houses have the same loss rates as people who aren’t in fireguard groups.
No matter how much other members of the group support them and encourage them, it does not help. I’ve tried to help before, running a fireguard group, but I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want to hold myself responsible for other people’s fates. It is enough to take responsibility for myself and my family.
I remember the fireguard trainers who blamed themselves, who were blamed by others, when neighbourhoods they had worked with suffered deaths and house losses. They often targeted the riskiest locations, areas that were virtually indefensible. Their information was not always accepted.
Trainers, some of whom had lost friends, neighbours and houses in the fires themselves, felt criticised for advice that had not been given, and also for advice that had not been taken. You cannot defend yourself against such angry grief, particularly when you are carrying so much of your own. You just have to listen. A court of law, which looks only for someone to blame, is no place to resolve the complexities of bushfire tragedies.
I had originally thought, when I wrote my book about bushfires, that it would be a simple analysis of the lessons we had learnt. After the Black Saturday fires, I had to write a completely different book. I realised it wasn’t about lessons learnt (even though there are many), it was about our failure to learn from history, our astonishing capacity to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Harder and harder to protect people
“We never expected….”
“I’ve never seen….”
“I never imagined….”
The same things are said after every fire. Blaming a lack of prescribed burning in distant parks when we know that preparation within 100 metres of our own homes is far more important.
Waiting for an “official” warning, as an evil-looking, yellow-black cloud streams overhead and embers land sizzling in the pool beside you.
A bushfire north of Perth in 2018 sends smoke over the city.Sophie Moore/AAP
Politicians with slick, easy point-scoring ways that divert attention from their own policy obstruction.
The hopeful denial that bad things only happen to other people and won’t happen to us.
There is no avoiding the fact that for the next few decades, we face an increasingly dangerous environment. We have more people living in more dangerous areas, in a worsening climate. Our volunteer firefighters are ageing, and local brigades struggle to entice new members to join. It’s getting harder and harder to protect people.
It would be great if we had a cohesive suite of integrated bushfire policies across states, strong enough to survive from one generation to the next. They could include adequate building standards and access to materials, effective planning and development codes, integrated municipal, state and federal strategies incorporating education, health and safety campaigns. We could create a culture of fire-awareness, rather than panicked responses to disasters followed by a long, inevitable slide into apathy and ennui.
Perhaps one day we will. But in the meantime, our best protection lies in our own hands, safeguarding our own property and making carefully considered plans in advance as to how to save our own lives. It is not an easy path, and one none of us wants to take. But in the end, we are the only ones who can do it.
Scott Morrison said it with a straight face, and repetition for emphasis. “I’m very pleased, very pleased, with the performance of all of my ministers,” he declared on Thursday.
This ringing if unconvincing universal endorsement came as the unfortunate Angus Taylor wallowed more deeply in his mire, which this week took a bizarre turn.
Controversial American feminist writer Naomi Wolf, in an extended phone call (which she videoed) with a Taylor staffer, demanded an apology from the energy minister over his inaccurate claim they’d been corridor near-neighbours at Oxford in 1991 and for implying that she’d campaigned against Christmas.
This story went back to Taylor’s maiden speech. In that, he mentioned Wolf, then segued to students (without naming her) who opposed having a Christmas tree, against whom he and his “mainstream” friends successfully “pushed back”.
Wolf wasn’t living at Oxford then, says she enjoys Christmas, and, being Jewish, accuses Taylor of anti-Semitism.
In her video Wolf (who’s had her own problems with accuracy in her writings) was unrelenting, refusing to be deflected by the staffer who happened to pick up the office phone very late at night.
In parliament on Thursday Taylor insisted he’d met Wolf at Oxford and declared that, given his grandmother was Jewish, her accusation of anti-Semitism was “deeply offensive”.
Taylor also argues he didn’t say she was one of the anti-Christmas brigade. But he did leave that impression.
It appears another case of Taylor being sloppy with facts and refusing to clean up his mess quickly, or at all.
In a rational political world, Morrison would use the opportunity of the extensive restructure of the public service he announced on Thursday for a shake up of his ministry early next year, enabling him to move Taylor, who struggles in his portfolio as well as being permanently stuck to fly papers of his own creation.
But under questioning at his Thursday news conference Morrison indicated he had no reshuffle in mind.
It is a missed opportunity, however Morrison would rather live with a problem minister in a key post than give a scalp to Labor. That’s assuming the NSW police clear Taylor over the alleged “doctored” document he used to make false claims about City of Sydney councillors’ travel.
While the Taylor saga became messier, the government did manage to achieve its desire to end the parliamentary year with a significant legislative win, achieved by an unrelenting effort to persuade crossbencher Jacqui Lambie to vote for the repeal of medevac.
Morrison’s personal involvement in the Lambie negotiations was a mark of how important this was to him. His commitment to medevac’s demise was out of proportion to the issue’s significance. Medevac had been imposed on the government during that brief pre-election period of minority government, and the PM was determined to reverse the defeat.
What it took to secure Lambie’s vote neither she nor the government will reveal (the speculation is it involves a commitment to pursue the New Zealand resettlement option at some later point).
This secrecy is disgraceful. Morrison is reinforcing the image of a government contemptuous of transparency. Lambie’s hiding behind “national security” is unconvincing, as was her emotional performance in the chamber.
Given her tiny electoral base (she won the last Tasmanian Senate spot), she has immense and disproportionate power in this parliament. For her, that is the luck of the Senate voting system. Under any notion of accountability, she has a duty to disclose to the public the back stories behind her decisions.
Regardless of its consequences and what it says about various players, the medevac repeal will fade soon from the public mind. Wednesday’s national accounts are another story. They reinforce the message that the Australian economy is caught in sluggish growth, creating serious concern for the coming year.
Annual growth is currently at 1.7%. There’ll have to be a strong turn-up to reach the budget forecast of 2.75% for 2019-20.
Business is cautious about investment. People have saved much of their tax cuts. It’s their choice whether to spend or save them, the government says, but the closed wallets flatten the numbers.
On Monday week we will see the revised economic forecasts in the budget update, and the latest estimate of the surplus. Thanks to high commodity prices, low growth can co-exist with a good surplus (although the government has done some spending since the budget).
While so much of our political debate is superficial, dominated by “spin” and the exchange of abuse, this week brought sharp reminders of Australia’s urgent need to do better on the fundamentals.
The national accounts showed annual productivity growth is negative. On another front, Australia’s results in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) should be galvanising. Our school students are doing poorly on the basics and have gone backwards over recent years, despite substantially increased school funding.
Australia needs to lift its game in many areas, but our political debate is so dominated by point scoring, hyper-partisanship and the knee jerk reaction of interest groups that policy discussions have become like quicksand, as treasurer Josh Frydenberg found when he recently canvassed older people working longer.
The parliamentarians have departed Canberra exhausted from a year bifurcated by the election; they return to voters often contemptuous of them.
Morrison remains triumphant, although the final fortnight underlined the post victory reality.
Immediately after the election, the commentary said the Senate would be much easier for the government than last term, and that still holds. But Pauline Hanson is brittle and Lambie can be fickle.
Landing legislation with them will often involve a lot of palaver. After last week’s debacle when Hanson sank the ensuring integrity bill, industrial relations minister Christian Porter reintroduced it this week and the government pushed it though the lower house at top speed by stifling debate. Another attempt to have it passed in the senate is a task for the new year. Next time Lambie will be heavily courted.
Morrison had hoped to have the religious freedom legislation introduced by now, but that proved impossible, after arguments broke out on all sides. Delay won’t solve the problems.
And we are yet to see specifics of the PM’s stated desire to pursue environmentalists who urge boycotts of resource companies.
Despite the embarrassment around Taylor and other difficulties, especially the economic uncertainty, Morrison is comfortable at the end of the parliamentary year.
He will go into next year in his own bubble of personal confidence that does not admit error or allow for self doubt. That might fireproof him, or it might mean he gets burned. Whether he can learn to be a good prime minister is the big question for 2020.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Tomnay, Assoc. Professor / Director of Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health, University of Melbourne
Around one in six Australian women have had an abortion by their mid-30s. These women come from all age groups and demographics: some are mothers already, while others are child-free; some are partnered, others are single.
One option for women seeking a termination is to have an early medical abortion, as opposed to a surgical termination.
A medical abortion involves inducing a miscarriage using a combination of two oral medications – mifepristone and misoprostol – which can be used in pregnancies up to nine weeks.
Women can take the medications home, along with instructions of how the process works and possible complications to look out for, and a telephone number to call with any questions or concerns.
While these measures were hoped to improve access for women in rural and remote areas, medical and surgical abortion services remain concentrated in capital cities and major regional centres. So rural women must travel – often at great expense – to seek a medical or surgical abortion.
There are several barriers to early medical abortion in rural areas.
Some rural doctors have inconsistent knowledge about medical abortion, either not knowing what it entails or even, at times, that it’s an option. Others lack training in abortion. They may have missed out on it in their undergraduate studies and haven’t done any further training in the area.
Rural GPs sometimes lack support from the local hospital service to provide abortion care or if something goes wrong, which can deter them from performing medical abortions. Doctors in emergency departments may not have training about medical abortion and how it works, or may even object to abortion.
Rural communities also have higher numbers of overseas trained doctors who are more likely to have conscientious objection to abortion (65%) than doctors trained in Australia (15%).
In rural areas, it’s often difficult to access affordable and timely ultrasounds. An ultrasound is required before the medical abortion to determine the gestation (which must be less than 63 days) and to ensure the woman doesn’t have an ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo implants in the fallopian tubes rather than the uterus).
Time ticks away for these women if they realise they have an unplanned pregnancy at, say, six weeks. They often have to wait up to a week or two to see a GP, have an ultrasound and blood tests, and undergo counselling before having the abortion. If it takes a week or two to get an appointment for ultrasound after seeing the GP, there’s a risk the woman may pass the 63 day cut-off and will need to have a surgical termination instead.
Every step takes time, and this can push women over the 63 day cut-off.Bohbeh/Shutterstock
Some rural GPs therefore see the cost of providing abortion as unaffordable. Providing medical abortion takes GPs more time than a standard consultation to ensure all options for the woman are explored. Usually more than one consultation is required and the remuneration received through Medicare is minimal.
Another barrier women may face when seeking abortion in rural areas is community stigma. In rural communities, “everyone knows everyone” and women worry about their privacy and how people will judge them for choosing to have an abortion.
When you have fewer choices of health care professionals, you can also face institutional stigma if, for example, the closest hospital, pharmacist or sonographer (who performs the ultrasound) has ties to a specific religious group or clearly objects to abortion.
GPs are often the first point of call for women with an unplanned pregnancy in rural areas. They are well placed to provide early medical abortion.
But nurses can also play an important role. In recent years, a number of small Victorian towns have successfully integrated early medical abortion into their community health services. These clinics are predominantly led by nurses, working with a GP.
Nurse-led early abortion services are safe, affordable and welcomed by women. Our clinical audit and interviews with women found no unexpected complications. Women were grateful to have affordable access in their own community and relieved they didn’t have to go to Melbourne or Sydney.
Better access to early medical abortion also requires the creation of a specific Medicare item number so GPs and nurses can be adequately remunerated for providing the service.
Finally, we need to increase the number of GPs and practice nurses who can provide medical abortions by providing better training. Early medical abortion needs to be seen as part of women’s sexual and reproductive health and should be incorporated into nursing and medical education at both the graduate level and in post-graduate specialist training.
This article was co-authored by Catherine Orr, Gateway Community Health, Wodonga.
The Apostrophe Protection Society was set up in 2001 in the UK by retired journalist John Richards with the aim of “preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English Language”.
When I read that Richards had capitulated to the “ignorance and laziness” of those who wrongly used apostrophes, I toyed with the idea of resurrecting the society in Australia.
There may be no need. A six-fold increase in traffic to the website after the story broke caused the society’s webmaster to close the site down. He has promised to return the archive in the new year. Its survival is important. The apostrophe isn’t all that tricky to get your head around – and doing away with it won’t make language simpler.
British newspaper writer Harry Mount once wrote: “missing apostrophes is just ignorant and lazy”. He praised “the device that does so much with so little ink to point a sentence in the right direction”.
Richards’s desire to expel the intrusive greengrocer’s apostrophe (all those mango’s and tomato’s on special discount) mirrors that of Keith Waterhouse, the English columnist renowned as the author of classic comedy novel Billy Liar (1959) and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell – a 1989 play about the musings of a London journalist and alcoholic who is locked overnight in The Coach & Horses Soho pub.
Waterhouse was the self-appointed life president of the (fictional) Association for the Annihilation (also Abolition) of the Aberrant Apostrophe and claimed to have an apostrophe incinerator in his back garden for superfluous apostrophes. His attendant goal was to redistribute ill-placed apostrophes to their rightful location.
Closer to home, the ABC’s Tiger Webb has previously dismissed the apostrophe. And I have responded with an argument for its preservation (with many fine examples).
We need apostrophes in the right places in examples such as this: “She’d wed him in a shed if we’d agree to it” when letters are left out. And for possession: the “ant’s pants” or the “ants’ pants” and likewise the “bee’s knees” or the “bees’ knees”.
Writers’ rules for writers
Driving along William Street in the Brisbane CBD in 1990, I was horrified to notice painters putting the finishing touches to the signage for the about-to-be-opened Queensland Writers’ Centre. It was without an apostrophe. A phone call to the committee soon corrected that oversight and the apostrophe was used for a while, though the battle was lost in later years.
It’s now known as the Queensland Writers Centre and it hosts the Brisbane Writers Festival each year.
The writers’ festivals held in Byron Bay, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, and Wollongong are also sans apostrophe. Their respective management committees must have reached an agreement that the word “writers” is used in a descriptive or affiliative sense rather than as a possessive adjective. Thank goodness the committees of the writers’ festivals held in Sydney, Adelaide, the Northern Territory, and the Outback held out.
Possession in place names has caused controversy in the UK and here.
The UK’s National Land and Property Gazetteer, which registers street names, doesn’t require apostrophes in new names, but the rule doesn’t apply to existing signs. Devon and Birmingham unilaterally disposed of the possessive in in all street and road signs in 2009, though the Devon council backtracked shortly after.
In the UK, many places have done away with apostrophes on signs.Shutterstock
South Australia has removed all apostrophes in place names. The policy of the NSW Geographic Names Board is to have no apostrophe in place names with a final “s”.
The Australian government’s Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers lists guidelines for other states and the Northern Territory. It’s worth noting the last printed edition of this manual was produced in 2002. A new digital guide to government-endorsed grammar has been promised. At the time it was announced, the digital manual’s product manager imagined a time when:
Clear written communication would be valued and personal preference wouldn’t be an option because there’d be one credible ‘source of truth’ that stated the rules and provided the evidence for why.
Statements like this bode well for its future, though “rules” about language aren’t always black or white. The guide is now in its Beta version and set for release in 2020.
Don’t get it twisted
Within the ranks of those who do subscribe to the possessive apostrophe, I can count on Richard Nordquist for his authoritative guidance and The Chicago Manual of Style for support.
Perhaps the most contentious apostrophe point is how to make singular words ending in “s” possessive. Is it “Dickens’ novels” or “Dickens’s novels”?
The Chicago Manual of Style advocates the extra “s” alternative in all cases, as do I. Even in cases such as “Descartes’s dicta” and “Euripides’s tragedies”.
Only use the contraction ‘it’s’ if it can be replaced by ‘it is’ or ‘it has’.
It is heartening to read related news that, whether or not John Richards’s apostrophe work continues, he might consider a campaign to save the comma from a similar fate.
“The use of the comma is appalling,” he told the BBC. “When I read some newspaper websites they just don’t understand what it is used for.”
This man, a punctuation champion in his 90s, is indomitable.
Federal Labor this week commemorated a dubious anniversary – a decade of climate policy failure. And it pointed the finger of blame squarely at the Greens.
Labor claimed that had the Greens not voted against its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) in 2009, Australia’s carbon emissions would be more than 200 million tonnes lower and electricity would be more affordable.
Labor MP Pat Conroy said the Coalition and the Greens “bear a heavy responsibility for the fact that, a decade later, Australia still does not have an effective policy to tackle climate change by reducing emissions”.
But one moment in 2009 is not the root cause of ongoing parliamentary disagreement over climate action. And the Greens cannot be blamed for what came afterwards.
The main lesson from that time is that cynical parliamentary strategies and weak reforms from the major parties are at the heart of climate policy failure.
The Greens believed industries such as coal-fired power got off too lightly under the CPRS.DAVID CROSLING/AAP
A brief recap
To understand what played out in Parliament in 2009, it is useful to briefly refresh our memories on the couple of years that led up to it.
Labor’s proposed CPRS followed then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s famous call to act on the “great moral challenge” of climate change. The policy was a “cap and trade” emissions trading scheme (ETS) which in theory would have limited greenhouse gas pollution from industry.
Public concern about climate change at the time had peaked and Labor won the 2007 election partly on the strength of its climate policies.
The CPRS legislation followed the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Ross Garnaut, a prominent economist, proposed emissions targets that environmentalists considered inadequate. Meanwhile industry, which would have incurred costs under the scheme, was unhappy with the limited compensation proposed.
Kevin Rudd and then-climate change minister Penny Wong outlining the CPRS.Alan Porritt/AAP
During the Rudd Government’s first two years, Garnaut’s vision was severely weakened – not least due to proposed industry exemptions and compensation, and unlimited industry access to carbon offsetting.
It seemed likely the scheme would have created corporate windfalls at considerable public expense, without achieving much emissions reduction. It was opposed by the Greens, led by Bob Brown, along with many economists and most environmental groups.
The CPRS bill was twice rejected in the Senate, partly because the Greens voted against it both times.
Rather than call a double-dissolution election, Rudd announced in April 2010 the proposal would be shelved.
Cynical politics
The political failure of the CPRS reflects the deeper malaise in parliamentary responses to the climate crisis. In 2009, federal politicians were as they are now – extremely unwilling to develop reforms commensurate with the severity of the climate crisis.
As 2009 wore on, fissures opened in the Coalition over the CPRS as then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull clashed with Tony Abbott and the Nationals over the policy.
The Coalition’s Malcolm Turnbull clashed with Tony Abbott over whether to support Labor’s emissions policy.AAP
Labor sought to leverage the CPRS for short-term political gain. It strung out the parliamentary dispute and frequently reminded the Coalition of its internal tensions, rather than genuinely try to broker agreement for emissions reduction.
Labor was also said to be unwilling to cooperate with the Greens by engaging with their proposed amendments.
But does Labor have a point?
Labor’s view that we would be better off now if the CPRS had been instituted in 2009 seems reasonable on the surface.
It’s possible that an Abbott campaign to repeal the CPRS may not have taken off as it did later against the Gillard government’s carbon price. However it’s too much of a leap to assume better-timed legislation for one weak policy alone could have built consensus for real emissions reduction.
Had the CPRS been voted in, the Coalition would still have railed against it, likely preventing the future reform needed to achieve meaningful emissions reduction. The European Union experience shows that cap-and-trade schemes, once implemented, don’t neatly resolve the competing political demands of the fossil fuel industry and public concern about climate change.
By design, the CPRS had negligible impact on fossil fuel extraction, partly due to overly generous compensation arrangements for miners. So the CPRS would not have prevented the damaging internal debate in Labor over support for new coal and gas mines, which has curbed the ambition of its emissions reduction policies.
Rising electricity prices could not have been attenuated by a stable carbon price alone. And the effective Renewable Energy Target might not have been preserved had the CPRS endured.
The Greens were concerned that the CPRS gave too many concessions to coal.AAP
A new decade of ambition
Australia’s major parties have never proposed a climate and energy reform package that transforms how we work, live and relate to non-human nature.
Internationally, there is growing appetite for such policies. In the US for example, momentum is growing for a Green New Deal focused on industry policy and social reforms such as job guarantees and basic incomes.
Both Labor and the Greens are moving in this direction. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has emphasised opportunities to rebuild manufacturing through a green industrial revolution. The Greens are calling for the same kind of plan. They want a 2030 cut-off point for thermal coal exports and coal-fired power too.
Now, more than ever, we need bold, effective and fair climate policy that people can get behind. The Coalition continues with the opposite.
Labor and Greens have a responsibility shelve the CPRS blame game, and work together on something better.
Scott Morrison has announced a dramatic overhaul of the federal public service, cutting the number of departments and creating several new mega ones, while removing five secretaries.
The departments will be reduced from 18 to 14.
But Morrison said there were no changes to his ministry or to portfolio arrangements.
“I’m very pleased, very pleased, with the performance of all of my ministers and the work they’ve been doing,” he told a news conference.
He also said the public service shake up was not a savings measure.
This has been done as a structural issue to better align and bring together functions within the public service so they can all do their jobs more effectively and help more Australians
The new departments are
Education, skills and employment, created from the present department of education and department of employment, skills, small and family business
Agriculture, water and the environment, which consolidates the department of agriculture, and the environment functions from the current department of the environment and energy
Industry, science, energy and resources, which will bring together the present department of industry, innovation and science, the energy functions of the current department of the environment and energy, and the small business functions from the current department of employment, skills, small and family Business.
The department of infrastructure, transport, regional development and communications, consolidating the current department of infrastructure, transport, cities and regional development, and the department of communications and the arts.
Services Australia announced by Morrison after the election, will be established as a new executive agency within the social services department.
The secretaries who have been dispensed with are: Kerri Hartland (employment); Renée Leon (human services); Mike Mrdak (communications); Daryl Quinlivan (agriculture) and Heather Smith (industry).
It is not known which, if any, were voluntary departures.
Morrison immediately after the election installed his own man, Phil Gaetjens as head of the prime minister’s department, and flagged more changes later.
Morrison is bringing back to the public service Andrew Metcalfe who will head the new agriculture department. Metcalfe was sacked by prime minister Tony Abbott from agriculture.
Morrison said Metcalfe would “bring considerable public policy leadership experience” to the job.
David Fredericks, presently secretary of the environment and energy department becomes secretary of the new industry department.
Morrison said the shrinking of the number of departments was “to ensure the services that Australians rely on are delivered more efficiently and effectively”.
“Australians should be able to access simple and reliable services, designed around their needs. Having fewer departments will allow us to bust bureaucratic congestion, improve decision-making and ultimately deliver better services for the Australian people,” Morrison said.
“The new structure will drive greater collaboration on important policy challenges. For example, better integrating the government’s education and skills agenda and ensuring Australians living in regional areas can access the infrastructure and services they need.”
Andrew Podger, a former public service commissioner who headed several departments, said he was “particularly pleased” to see the department of human services disappear as a department and become an executive agency (Services Australia) in the social services portfolio, although it would have been better if Morrison had gone further and made it a statutory authority.
“But at least we will no longer have the administration of social security payments in a separate portfolio from social security policy,” he said.
“The other mergers make some sense, recreating the ‘mega-dapartment’ structures from the 1987 Hawke years, particularly the combination of education, employment and training, ” Podger said.
“But the main potential benefit of fewer and larger departments is to make cabinet work better, with a smaller cabinet, and with portfolio ministers given more latitude to make decisions (and allocate resources) drawing on their junior ministers.
“If this does not happen, and more departments have two cabinet ministers, that will cause more problems, not fewer ones, particularly for the secretaries giving advice.”
Morrison, asked who would be the senior minister in the new environment and agriculture department, defended having multiple ministers.
“The portfolio minister for the environment Sussan Ley is responsible for the environment and Bridget McKenzie, who is the minister for agriculture, will be responsible for agriculture policy, and David Littleproud is responsible for water policy, Morrison said.
It is not uncommon for departments to have multiple ministers. They have multiple ministers now. And so the officials that work in these departments respond to the minister that is responsible for those portfolio issues. So who’s the senior minister on environment? Well, it’s the minister for the environment. Who’s the senior minister on agriculture? It’s the minister for agriculture. It should be very plain.
Morrison flagged he would next week provide the government’s response to the still-unreleased Thodey review of the public service.
Mrdak said in a frank memo to staff: “I was told of the government’s decision to abolish the department late yesterday afternoon. We were not permitted any opportunity to provide advice on the machinery of government changes, nor were our views ever sought on any proposal to abolish the department or to changes to our structure and operations.”
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said the changes were about “centralising power”.
Departments and secretaries from February 1, 2020
Department of agriculture, water and the environment – Andrew Metcalfe
Attorney-general’s department – Chris Moraitis
Department of defence – Greg Moriarty
Department of education, skills and employment – Michelle Bruniges
Department of finance – Rosemary Huxtable
Department of foreign affairs and trade – Frances Adamson
Department of health – Glenys Beauchamp
Department of home affairs – Michael Pezzullo
Department of industry, science, energy and resources – David Fredericks
Department of infrastructure, transport, regional development and communications – Simon Atkinson
Department of the prime minister and cabinet – Philip Gaetjens
Ageing is an inevitability for all living organisms, and although we still don’t know exactly why our bodies gradually grow ever more decrepit, we are starting to grasp how it happens.
Our new research, published in Ecology Letters, pinpoints factors that influence one of the most important aspects of the ageing process, at the fundamental level of our DNA. It suggests how stress can cause the biochemical body clock built into our chromosomes to tick faster.
DNA – the genetic material in our cells – does not float freely in cells’ nuclei, but is organised into clumps called chromosomes. When a cell divides and produces a replica of itself, it has to make a copy of its DNA, and because of the way this process works, a tiny portion is always lost at one end of each DNA molecule.
To protect vital portions of DNA from being lost in the process, the ends of chromosomes are capped with special sequences called telomeres. These are gradually whittled away during successive cell divisions.
This gradual loss of telomeres acts like a cellular clock: with each replication they get shorter, and at a certain point they become too short, forcing the cell into a programmed death process. The key question is what this process, which plays out on a cellular level, actually means for our mortality. Does the fate of individual cells really matter so much? Does the ticking telomere clock really count down the remaining time our bodies have to live?
Cellular ageing is just one of many components of ageing – but it’s one of the most important. Gradual deterioration of our body’s tissues, and the irreversible death of our cells, are responsible for the most conspicuous effects of ageing such as loss of physical fitness, deterioration of connective tissues leading to skin wrinkles, or neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.
What makes us tick?
Another crucial question is: are there factors that speed up or slow down the loss of our ticking telomeres?
So far, our answers to this question have been incomplete. Studies have provided glimpses of possible mechanisms, suggesting that things like infections or even dedicating extra energy to reproduction might accelerate telomere shortening and speed up cellular ageing.
This evidence is piecemeal, but these factors all seem to have one thing in common: they cause “physiological stress”. Broadly speaking, our cells are stressed when their biochemical processes are disrupted, either by a lack of resources or for some other reason. If cells lose too much water, for example, we might say they are in “dehydration stress”.
More familiar types of stress also count. Tiredness and overwork put us under chronic stress, as does feeling anxious for prolonged periods. Lack of sleep or emotional stress can alter internal cellular pathways, including telomere functioning.
With this in mind, we asked ourselves one simple question. Can various types of stress experienced by an individual actually accelerate their rate of ageing?
Stress and strain
In our research, led by my colleague Marion Chatelain of the University of Warsaw (currently University of Innsbruck), we chose to look at this question as broadly as possible. Many studies have looked at this problem in specific species, such as mice, rats, and various fish and bird species (both wild and in the lab). We compiled the available evidence into a summary of the existing knowledge, across all vertebrate organisms studied so far.
The emerging picture clearly suggests that telomere loss is profoundly impacted by stress. All else being equal, stress does indeed hasten telomere loss and accelerate the internal cellular clock.
Importantly, the type of stress matters: by far the strongest negative impact is caused by pathogen infections, competition for resources, and intensive investment in reproduction.
Other stressors, such as poor diet, human disturbance or urban living, also hastened cellular ageing, although to a lesser extent.
Getting radical
A natural question arises: what makes stress exert such a powerful influence on cellular clocks? Is there a single mechanism, or many? Our analysis may have identified one possible candidate: “oxidative stress”.
When cells are stressed, this often manifests itself through an accumulation of oxidising molecules, such as free radicals. Residing at the exposed ends of our chromosomes, telomeres are perfect targets for attack by these chemically reactive molecules.
Our analysis suggests that, regardless of the type of stress experienced, this oxidative stress might be the actual biochemical process that links stress and telomere loss. As to whether this means that we should eat more antioxidants to guard our telomeres, this certainly requires more research.
I know what you’re wondering: does this mean we have discovered the secret of ageing? Can we use this knowledge to slow the ageing process or stop it in its tracks? The short answer is: no.
Ageing is too fundamental to our biology to get rid of it completely. But our study does underline an important truth: by reducing stress, we can do our bodies a big favour.
In the modern world, it is hard to escape stress completely, but we can make everyday decisions to reduce it. Get enough sleep, drink enough water, eat healthily and don’t push yourself too hard. It won’t buy you eternal life, but it should keep your cells ticking along nicely.
The author thanks his colleagues Marion Chatelain and Marta Szulkin for their contributions to this article and the research on which it is based.
The Department of Home Affairs has begun taking steps to outsource its visa processing to private service providers. This move has sparked an important national debate on transparency, accountability and profiteering in the immigration system.
The proposed changes will involve private service providers processing certain “low-risk” visas, rather than department staff.
Home Affairs claims privatisation will improve efficiency and reduce costs. But it also comes with major risks, some we’ve seen already play out in the privatisation of immigration control through commercialised immigration detention, such as on Christmas Island.
These risks include corruption, consumer protection issues and damage to the overall integrity the visa system.
Why privatise in the first place?
Today, migration is big business around the world, with private corporations, contracted by governments, increasingly organising and managing migration across different stages.
The US and Germany, for instance, privatise various functions, including administering visa applications, guarding borders, and organising transport and detention.
Australia first attempted to privatise immigration detention centres in 1996 as part of budget discussions, following an international trend towards arm’s-length management of public services. It was seen as a way to boost efficiency in detention services.
Much of the argument for visa privatisation today is based on similar claims of cost savings and efficiency.
In theory, this model promises greater accountability based on clear economic incentives. If performance falls below agreed standards, private firms risk losing their contracts.
But not only is accountability rarely enforced, several mitigating factors enable under performing companies to remain in business.
Preferential treatment
Close ties between private contractors and government decision makers have kept several detention contractors in business globally. This continues even after reported under-performance and human rights breaches.
A perimeter fence at Christmas Island. Outsourcing visa processing comes with risks we’ve seen already play out in the privatisation of immigration control.AAP Image/Lukas Coch
It’s also not clear what measures of oversight and surveillance will be applied to the private corporations. Home Affairs claims visa decision-making will still be centrally controlled, but so far the information released has been scarce.
For an estimated A$1 billion of investment into this visa privatisation project, it’s important the government makes this clear.
Big business risks corruption
So who will be accountable if something goes wrong?
In the case of immigration detention centres, privatisation has meant blame is too often shifted between the government and the private contractors.
And the Migration Institute of Australia has pointed to the possible misuse of a commercialised visa platform – private entities seek to generate multiple revenue streams through add-on and “premium” services, such as accommodation, transportation and deportation.
This, too, has happened with Australia’s commercialised immigration detention centres.
And when these services are run in the interests of profit, rather than border governance – dubbed the “immigration-industrial complex”“ – corrupt tactics can be used to benefit the providers’ bottom line.
Private entities in immigration are not just “economic actors”, but become critical players in agenda setting, negotiation, and enforcement.
This means networks and alliances of giant multinational corporations, such as the Australian Visa Processing Consortium, can influence regulatory frameworks through lobbying, providing technical expertise and consulting on policy.
Such a consolidation of companies monopolises the market and eliminates competition. This in turn makes governments overly dependent on private services.
What’s more, the corporate interests of private companies is to protect and expand their business.
For instance, companies involved in the goverment’s visa modernisation bid include Accenture and Oracle. Both have allegedly been involved in tax evasion activities globally. Yet, they continue to secure government contracts worth millions, because of the continued reliance on their services.
Such contracts also include “commercial-in-confidence”“ arrangements that conceal information on how taxpayer money is spent, the actual value for money to the public, and whether there are adequate protections against conflicts of interest.
The government also hasn’t been clear about the extent to which the privatisation partnership will be scrutinised under consumer protection provisions or government agencies such as the Ombudsman.
While various stakeholders have been involved in the privatisation consultation process, little attention has been paid to more rigorous governmental inquiry. This would involve, for instance, recommendations from the Productivity Commission or the Australian National Audit Office.
For so much investment, Home Affairs must provide sufficient information to the Australian public on their visa modernisation project, and address the many questions around risk mitigation.
What is it about reforming laws around money and politics that makes politicians so inclined to stuff it up and act undemocratically? From Helen Clark’s notorious Electoral Finance Act (2007) – which the party eventually voted to repeal, given it was so anti-democratic and unworkable – through to yesterday’s announcement of a so-called ban on foreign donations, politicians are inclined to act quickly, without proper consultation with the public and end up making bad law.
Partly it’s because it’s something of a populist issue – to hit the wealthy. And partly it’s because at the moment it has xenophobic elements – dealing with the foreigners who are said to be threatening our democracy. This means politicians want to move fast, with high moral certainty, and damn the complexities and democratic challenges involved. Of course, there is also usually a large dose of self-interest, which is always a bad motive when politicians are designing rules around how elections operate.
Yesterday, almost out of the blue, came the triumphant announcement from Justice Minister Andrew Little that he was going to pass a reform of party donations laws, under urgency. The so-called ban lowers the threshold of allowable foreign donations from $1500 to $50.
For more details, see Jason Walls’ The Government will ban most foreign donations to political parties and candidates. Here’s the key part: “The bill contains a minimal threshold of $50 [for disclosure of donations from foreign sources], to ensure that small-scale fundraising activities such as bucket donations and whip-rounds won’t be affected. But big donations will be gone. It also introduces a new requirement that party secretaries and candidates must take ‘reasonable steps’ to ensure that any donation is not from an overseas person.”
Consensus about the ineffectiveness of the new rules
The response was quick, and almost entirely condemning. It’s hard to find a positive evaluation of the announcement from anywhere across the political spectrum. The best analysis was put forward by Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva, who said that essentially the new law was “virtue signalling” because it pretends to get tough on donations but in reality it doesn’t do much at all. He says “there is less to the law than meets the eye”, and on “closer reading… the changes seem to create as many problems as they solve” – see: Govt’s foreign donation ‘ban’ leaves loopholes untouched.
The biggest problem, it seems, is that the new law essentially does nothing to deal with alleged and known loopholes that allow foreign sources to donate – especially those involving New Zealand trusts, businesses or foundations.
Sachdeva points to the most controversial example: “The $150,000 donation to National from the New Zealand-domiciled but entirely foreign-owned Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry Ltd, which Ardern pointedly described as being against the spirit of the law, would remain legal under the proposed changes. That loophole remains intact, along with the risk of overseas donations to third-party campaigners despite justice officials describing it as a ‘potential weakness’ in 2020”.
Another loophole that is retained by the new law, is that large anonymous donations will still be allowed, effectively also from foreigners. Sachdeva reports that officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Electoral Commission have already drawn the Government’s attention to the problem that comes from having a different threshold for anonymous disclosures ($1500) and foreign donations ($50).
This is a “glaring problem” in the rules according to Henry Cooke, who says: “This means that party secretaries will still be able to receive an envelope with $1499 of cash in it and bank it happily, as long as they don’t have any reason to believe the money came from a foreigner” – see: Andrew Little’s foreign donations ban is good politics, terrible lawmaking.
For these types of reasons, law professor Andrew Geddis has quoted independent MP Jami-Lee Ross saying: “The only way to effectively ban foreigners from influencing our politics is to restrict who can make donations to people that are entitled to vote.” Geddis concurs with the logic of this, agrees that the new bill is “pretty ineffectual”, but suggests that banning all donations from companies and trade unions would make state funding necessary – see: Less haste, more beef, please.
Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking also challenges how the new law would work: “the new rules solve nothing. And who is a foreigner? And whose money is it when it hits the party coffers? What about a company ultimately owned by a foreigner but domiciled here? What about a company partially owned by a foreigner? What about a new resident or new arrival on a business visa? What about a foreigner putting money through a resident? For every rule, you can dream up several scenarios to get around it. Like the tax, both legal and illegal” – see: Donation law is laudable bit ultimately pointless.
National’s spokesperson, Nick Smith, has been arguing that because of the way the new rules have been designed, they can easily be thwarted by foreign sources wanting to donate. He says “It’s very easy to set up a trust or a company or some other way to get around the new limit of $50 that’s proposed in this bill. So it’s not particularly robust” – see RNZ’s Foreign donations ban bill not robust – Nick Smith.
Smith says the new law needs to ensure that companies registered in this country and donating to politicians really are bona fide New Zealand companies: “A number of countries have different rules around whether it’s a trading company in New Zealand or what those different rules are around how they might be able to donate… For instance, you’ve got a company like Fletchers – a very New Zealand company, but actually has a majority of foreign investors. You need to resolve those sorts of details if you’re going to do this law robustly.”
According to researcher Pete McKenzie, “The distinction between protecting New Zealand from foreign interference and preventing corruption domestically is artificial”, and “the newly announced ban will do almost nothing to prevent foreign donations affecting New Zealand politics” – see his Guardian opinion piece, The foreign donation ban is a good thing – but it won’t protect NZ from political corruption.
He quotes the SIS director general, Rebecca Kitteridge, on foreign donations from earlier in the year: “We know that a foreign donation ban would not on its own be an effective way of mitigating the risks New Zealand candidates and MPs face… A foreign actor could easily use a proxy to work around such a ban. We know that foreign states are adept at understanding and working around regulatory regimes.”
McKenzie also challenges whether foreign donations being banned are even that significant: “Since 2011, foreign donations to New Zealand’s political parties have amounted to a mere $105,194… Total donations to parties over that same period amounted to more than $44m. Put simply, the foreign donations which New Zealand will soon ban are just 0.24% of the overall picture.
Anti-democratic abuse of urgency
The new “ban” on foreign donations law (or the “Electoral Amendment Bill No 2”) was passed this afternoon under parliamentary urgency. This is also being condemned across the board by commentators. For example, Andrew Geddis says this is “somewhat concerning” and that “Andrew Little is starting to betray a worrying habit” given that he has recently also pushed through the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill.
Writing yesterday, Geddis emphasises that “this morning was the first time the public (and the opposition) even saw this legislation” and “means that there was no opportunity for select committee scrutiny, and no chance for the public to submit their views on the Bill.”
The official justification for pushing the new law through Parliament was the convention that changes to election rules shouldn’t be made in the actual year of an election. The Government had been relying on the justice select committee to come up with some recommendations prior to now. And this had been stymied by what Henry Cooke calls a “mess” on the select committee, pointing out that “its inquiry into foreign interference in our election processes went through six separate chairpeople in less than four months.”
Regardless of such frustrations, Cooke wasn’t buying the Government’s justification for such extreme urgency, claiming that it “is an appalling way to make law. A bad select committee does not excuse running roughshod over Parliament.” Furthermore, he argues, “Andrew Little could slow down and pass this bill with a single week of select committee hearings without stopping his aim of getting it in place by next year.”
In the blogosphere, there was agreement with this. From the left, No Right Turn said the proposed change “seems like a move which needs serious select committee scrutiny. Otherwise, we’re either going to end up with a cosmetic PR move, or a f…-up. And the public deserves better than that” – see: This is bullshit, and our democracy deserves better.
From the right, David Farrar was outraged: “There is no reason it should bypass select committee scrutiny and shame on the Greens for supporting ramming it through under urgency. Some Government apologists have tried to claim it must be done under urgency tonight to stop a rush of mythical foreign donations flowing through before the law takes effect. But the apologists haven’t even read the bill. It doesn’t take effect until 1 January 2020 so passing it tonight under urgency still means you could have the imaginary flood of donations occur” – see: Government rushing electoral law changes through under urgency.
Explanations for the bad law
In his blog post, David Farrar offered an explanation for why the Government might be so keen to avoid the public and opposition proposing changes: “If the bill went to select committee an amendment could be considered that would extend the ban (over a certain level) to foundations established by political parties to fund them. But Labour and the Greens don’t want to do anything about any foreign donations to the NZ First Foundation, so they’re rushing it through under urgency. Shame.”
The best analysis for why the Government was so keen to push this through, comes from Heather du Plessis Allan, who says “It’s nothing more than an attempt to look like it’s being tough on donations, timed for exactly when New Zealand First is facing questions about donations” – see: Foreign donation ban is half-arsed and conveniently timed.
Du Plessis Allan points out that this issue has been around for years – especially with Australia banning foreign donations two years ago – and it’s suspicious that out of the blue it’s become urgent enough to be passed within a day. She elaborates: “Anyone else think the timing is just a little cute? You’ve got the minor coalition party in trouble over donations allegations, and suddenly the major coalition party wants to make it look like it’s taking a hard line on donations. Very clever – pity we can see right through it. The reason this strategy is so obvious is because this law is so half-arsed. It doesn’t actually doesn’t look like it’s going to change much.”
Similarly, Barry Soper argues today that the donation ban is all about producing a distraction to get the Government out of tight spot: “So what does a Government do when it’s on the ropes? It looks for something that’ll get traction. Banning foreign donations to political parties even though it would seem the largesse of cash-rich foreigners is around the same level as our contribution to world greenhouse emissions, 0.2 per cent of total donations at the last election” – see: Master class of what Government does when it’s on ropes.
Soper is also sceptical of the new rule directing political party secretaries to decline any donations that might not clearly be domestic in origin: “The party functionary will be expected to track down who’s actually behind the cash flow. But what if the money’s fed through a New Zealand company without a foreign name? Russian rubbles would of course be a dead giveaway but if it’s been converted into dollars and the party secretary’s still unsure, it’ll go into consolidated fund – yeah right.”
Finally, the Labour Party continues to face questions about the ethics of their own political fundraising which involves $1500-a-head functions for businesspeople to meet the Prime Minister and her colleagues. But Jacinda Ardern has justified the arrangements – see Henry Cooke’s Jacinda Ardern says in ‘perfect world’ political parties wouldn’t have to fundraise at all.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University
In October 2017, 37-year-old Jacinda Ardern became prime minister of New Zealand. The world looked longingly at a young and inspiring female leader who had unexpectedly catapulted the Labour Party into office.
Ardern promised that kindness, compassion and carbon-neutrality would bless the Antipodes. She then gave birth to a beautiful girl and took six weeks’ parental leave, after which dad took over as caregiver. And baby made a star appearance at the UN General Assembly. She was widely praised for her compassionate responses to the terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch on March 15.
Across the Pacific, Australians unhappy with their own conservative government may have been, and may continue to be, envious of New Zealand as a bastion of progressive, compassionate government.
But on closer inspection, it may not be as compassionate as it seems. US President Donald Trump, for example, envies New Zealand its tough, skills-based immigration policy. And it doesn’t need a wall to keep people out, thanks to the Pacific Ocean.
Despite all the lauding of the Ardern government, Kiwis who have left for life in another country – including the 600,000 in Australia – are not flocking home. It may have something to do with higher incomes and better weather.
Indeed, sometimes New Zealand likes to emulate Australia. Ardern sensibly copied John Howard’s post-Port Arthur firearms ban after the Christchurch attack. It’s genuinely tragic that New Zealand didn’t follow Australia’s example back in 1996. Lives would have been saved.
The Ardern you meet face to face is “as seen on TV” – a highly intelligent and empathetic person. There’s nothing fake about her. But the business of government is complex, grinding and (when you fail) unforgiving. And, in a democracy, it’s not about one person.
Due to proportional representation, to be prime minister of New Zealand, you have to build and maintain coalition relationships with other parties, some of whom you may share little in common.
Like a curmudgeonly uncle who spoils the youngsters’ Christmases, the veteran conservative populist Winston Peters has been propping up Ardern’s coalition government as deputy prime minister. And that deal came with a big price-tag, including a one-billion-dollar-per-annum provincial growth fund. It also gave Peters the power to block progressive policies, such as a tougher capital-gains tax.
Ardern over-promised on policy, especially on solving the housing crisis, and is now seen as struggling to deliver.
Auckland’s housing market remains one of the world’s least affordable – although not outdoing Sydney. Many Kiwis are still struggling with costs of living.
Ardern created an indefinable aura of promise – about a better and “kinder” politics – that resonated emotionally. In May 2018, Facebook called her the world’s “most loved” leader.
People often fall in love, but then they fall out of it. The beloved was supposed to make bad things go away. But the unspoken promise doesn’t materialise.
Disappointment
There is now disappointment that Ardern wouldn’t visit the land-claim protestors at Ihumātao, that she isn’t fixing the country’s electoral-finance laws, and that it took the Labour Party six months to investigate a serious sexual assault against a young female party volunteer – and even then they botched it.
Ardern readily accepts that there is still a lot to fix.
But the latest polls suggest that the next election, due in November 2020, may not go Labour’s way, and so she may not be around to fix stuff.
Ardern’s rise to power, domestically and globally, meant shouldering a burden of frustrated left-wing hopes and dreams, most of them needing radical reforms – too radical for Peters.
New Zealand’s three-year parliamentary term means that a new government has to face the electorate before it has had a chance to produce results.
In the May 2020 Budget we can expect big new capital expenditure to raise employment and incomes, and to fix some problems. But it remains to be seen whether Labour and the Greens can muster enough voters to overcome Kiwi conservatism.
The opinions of many Kiwis are sufficiently of the protectionist “New Zealand first” variety that, if a wave of refugees were to arrive, the reactions would be just as polarising as they have been in Australia.
In a large online survey in 2017, 55% agreed that the numbers of immigrants arriving were “too high”, nearly 53% believed new arrivals should be told “do things the Kiwi way”, and 72% said New Zealand should “strictly control foreign ownership of property”. The numbers of immigrants have not declined much since 2017.
New Zealand’s populist and decidedly less progressive politics are discernible, if you ask the right questions. It’s just not obvious at the moment to the outside observer.
So if you feel a twinge of Kiwi-envy, just remember it always pays to take a closer look.
If recent television shows are anything to go by, we’re a little concerned about the consequences of technological development. Dystopian narratives abound.
Black Mirror projects the negative consequences of social media, while artificial intelligence turns rogue in The 100 and Better Than Us. The potential extinction of the human race is up for grabs in Travellers, and Altered Carbon frets over the separation of human consciousness from the body. And Humans and Westworld see trouble ahead for human-android relations.
Narratives like these have a long lineage. Science fiction has been articulating our hopes and fears about technological disruption at least since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).
However, as the likes of driverless cars and robot therapists emerge, some previously fictional concerns are no longer imaginative speculation. Instead, they represent real and urgent problems.
Last year, Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel suggested that we in Australia should become “human custodians”. This would mean being leaders in technological development, ethics, and human rights.
Finkel isn’t alone in his concern. But it won’t be simple to address these issues in the development of new technology.
Many people in government, industry and universities now argue that including perspectives from the humanities and social sciences will be a key factor.
A recent report from the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) brought together experts from scientific and technical fields as well as the humanities, arts and social sciences to examine key issues arising from artificial intelligence.
According to the chair of the ACOLA board, Hugh Bradlow, the report aims to ensure that “the well-being of society” is placed “at the centre of any development.”
Human-centred AI
A similar vision drives Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. The institute brings together researchers from the humanities, education, law, medicine, business and STEM to study and develop “human-centred” AI technologies. The idea underpinning their work is that “AI should be collaborative, augmentative and enhancing to human productivity and quality of life”.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford similarly investigates “big-picture questions” to ensure “a long and flourishing future for humanity”.
There is a long-distance race on between humanity’s technological capability, which is like a stallion galloping across the fields, and humanity’s wisdom, which is more like a foal on unsteady legs.
The IT sector is also wrestling with the ethical issues raised by rapid technological advancement. Microsoft’s Brad Smith and Harry Shum wrote in their 2018 book The Future Computed that one of their “most important conclusions” was that the humanities and social sciences have a crucial role to play in confronting the challenges raised by AI:
Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.
Hiring practices in tech companies are already shifting. In a TED talk on “Why tech needs the humanities”, Eric Berridge – chief executive of the IBM-owned tech consulting firm Bluewolf – explains why his company increasingly hires humanities graduates.
While the sciences teach us how to build things, it’s the humanities that teach us what to build and why to build them.
Only 100 of Bluewolf’s 1,000 employees have degrees in computer science and engineering. Even the Chief Technology Officer is an English major.
Tech CEO Eric Berridge explains why his company hires humanities graduates.
Education for a brighter future
Similarly, Matt Reaney, the chief executive and founder of Big Cloud – a recruitment company that specialises in data science, machine learning and AI employment – has argued that technology needs more people with humanities training.
[The humanities] give context to the world we operate in day to day. Critical thinking skills, deeper understanding of the world around us, philosophy, ethics, communication, and creativity offer different approaches to problems posed by technology.
Reaney proposes a “more blended approach” to higher education, offering degrees that combine the arts and STEM.
Another advocate of the interdisciplinary approach is Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern University in Boston. He has argued that in the age of AI, higher education should be focusing on what he calls “humanics”, equipping graduates with three key literacies: technological literacy, data literacy and human literacy.
The time has come to answer the call for humanities graduates capable of crossing over into the world of technology so that our human future can be as bright as possible.
Without training in ethics, human rights and social justice, the people who develop the technologies that will shape our future could make poor decisions. And that future might turn out to be one of the calamities we have already seen on screen.
Welcome to the next article in our Designing Hospitals series, where we explore how architecture and design shape our hospitals and medical centres. Today, we look at how good design affects mental health and well-being, particularly in young people.
Every time you take your child to the emergency department or a loved one to a mental health outpatient appointment, the very building and spaces you encounter will have been designed, for a number of reasons.
Not only will these spaces be functional, their designs encourage patients to seek help or act to relieve stress. This type of design looks at how buildings and landscapes improve mental health.
Just as evidence-based medicine uses evidence to inform clinical practice, evidence-based design informs architects and other designers how to design our hospitals, surgeries and clinics to improve patient care.
So, how does this type of design influence how we plan and build spaces with mental health and well-being in mind?
It uses a wide range of measures to assess how someone’s psychological response to a built environment influences physiological, cognitive and functional outcomes.
The aim is to provide evidence for what works and what doesn’t to improve recovery from mental ill-health, by reducing hospital stays, distress, anxiety and aggression, while promoting staff performance and retention.
This interactive gaming screen at Monash Children’s Hospital reduces the anxiety of waiting for an appointment, while encouraging socialisation.Ouva
For instance, one key piece of research found people recovered faster after surgery, and used fewer painkillers, if their hospital bed overlooked a natural scene (like a garden) rather than a brick wall.
Over the same time as evidence-based design has grown in popularity, there has been a growing emphasis in mental health on providing user-friendly services and improving user and carer experiences.
In Australia, this has become particularly apparent in youth mental health.
According to the World Health Organisation’s guidelines, quality, youth-friendly health services need to be “accessible, acceptable and appropriate”, and offered in the right place, at the right time and price. They must also be in the “right style” for young people, their supporters and the broader community.
Here are two principles of how this works when designing for mental health and well-being.
1. Involve young people and their carers early in the design process
For most young people, their relationships with family members and other primary carers also play a key role in their mental health and recovery.
So, providing appropriately designed spaces for both young people and their carers is critical.
The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne: hospital or art gallery?Bates Smart
On a practical level, this might mean providing comfortable spaces for young people, their supporters and clinicians to meet; providing privacy so they can’t be overheard or seen; or designing waiting areas for small groups.
For instance, Melbourne’s Orygen youth mental health facility, which opened in 2018, consulted extensively with young people, family and carers throughout the design process.
When young people enter the facility, they are greeted by a trained concierge rather than a formal reception area, and provided with a range of seating options, both inside and out.
Meanwhile, family members can take a leisurely stroll along several landscaped walking tracks while their loved one has their appointment.
These principles have also been applied to other health facilities for children, not just those specialising in mental health.
For instance, Monash Children’s Hospital has a large interactive gaming screen, where children and parents can pass the time waiting for their appointment.
Some people find it stigmatising to access mental health care. But the physical setting can help people reframe their expectations about what their care might entail.
So, we move away from expectations of “control” or “incarceration” to expectations of comfort, well-being and care.
This shift helps people better engage with health-care professionals, improving their experiences of care and their well-being.
Look, meerkats! Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital has a permanent meerkat enclosure, much to the delight of children and their carers.Green and Dale Associates
So, the environment must be comfortable, familiar and de-institutional. It must reduce the visibility of security and safety features, while providing activities that support well-being and mindfulness, such as courtyards, communal gardens, natural environments, art-based activities and social opportunities.
These huge musical instruments are part of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital’s ‘lullaby factory’.Studio Weave
Reframing expectations is also critical when designing more general children’s facilities.
For instance, Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital has a meerkat enclosure, interactive gaming screen, sculptures, an aquarium, and a children-only activity room.
These types of features give the impression of the hospital, not as a frightening or intimidating place, but of an exciting hub of activity with things to do and friends to meet.
Likewise, London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children has been transformed into a “lullaby factory”. Here, giant musical phones and instruments weave their way between hospital buildings, playing music to captivated children and families.
What can we expect in the future?
Despite these encouraging efforts, there is still a long way to go before the influence of evidence-based design on mental health care is truly felt.
Despite its broad adoption, it is critiqued for being too rigid, using broad or ill-defined research terms, or for claiming connections between an isolated variable in the environment and a behaviour, when such straight-forward connections are not guaranteed.
So we need to commit more time, energy, resources, and transdisciplinary collaborations in this crucial area of mental health service delivery to address these concerns.
In positive news, the recent interim report from Victoria’s mental health royal commission recognises the importance of appropriately designed mental health-care facilities.
It recommends new acute mental health beds that are “contemporary, co-designed with people with lived experience”.
It’s important these new facilities and services thoughtfully respond to the mental health needs of children and young people, to ensure accessible and appropriate support when they need it most.
Read other articles in our Designing Hospitals series:
Are you planning a big garden clean-up this summer, or stocking up on fly spray to keep bugs at bay? Before you do, it’s worth considering the damage you might cause to the insects we share the planet with.
Australia’s insect populations are under pressure. The problem is better known in the Northern Hemisphere, where over the past few years scientific studies have reported alarming declines in insect numbers.
We don’t yet have a true understanding of what is happening in Australia. This week, scientists gathered in Brisbane at the Australian Entomological Society conference to discuss the extent of the problem. Evidence suggests several species and populations are under threat.
Some might see insects as small and insignificant, but they perform functions crucial to sustaining life on Earth. There are several simple steps you can take to address insect decline in your area, or even help scientists keep tabs on the problem.
A gold wasp. Australian insect declines have not been well documented.Oliver Niehuis/Australian Science Media Centre
We need to know more
In Australia, we know iconic species such as the bogong moth, green carpenter bee and Key’s matchstick grasshopper are in decline. There is documented evidence for the extinction of two Australian insect species, but this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
A research review published this year suggested more than 40% of insect species globally are threatened with extinction over the next few decades. However, this estimate was based on limited studies of a few iconic insect groups in western Europe and the US.
Such findings should be taken with caution. We do not have enough evidence to extrapolate to the whole planet.
Despite this, factors affecting insect populations overseas – such as habitat loss, climate change and insecticide use – most likely also apply in Australia. Bushfires and drought on this continent can also affect insect populations.
There are no published studies documenting insect decline in Australia, but anecdotal reports from entomologists suggest lower than average populations across a number of species. However, very few of our estimated 250,000 insect species are being formally monitored.
A Pelecorhynchid fly. Studies suggest insect populations are declining, but data in Australia is scarce.CSIRO Entomology
Why you should care
Insects pollinate plants, dispose of waste and control pests, among other functions. The planet would cease to support life without the services insects provide.
If insect populations are in decline, so are the populations of larger animals such as birds and lizards that feed on them.
In NSW, bogong moths are a staple food for mountain pygmy possums. A collapse in the moth population would lead to possums going hungry, which affects their breeding success.
Australia’s threatened species strategy prioritises action to protect 20 bird species – 14 of which feed partially or solely on insects.
Mountain pygmy possums feed on bogong moths.Tim Bawden
Six ways to help insects
Insects are small and can inhabit hidden places, so you may not realise how many exist around you. Here are a few ways to help prevent insect decline in your home and elsewhere:
Household insecticide use can damage local insect populations.Flickr
1. Entice insects to your garden: Lawn is a virtual desert for insects, so if you don’t really need it, cultivate insect-friendly native plants instead. Plan to have something flowering most of the year and aim for a variety of plant heights and structures, such as tall trees, thick shrubs and ground cover.
2. Put the fly spray away: Insecticides have become very efficient in recent years. They indiscriminately kill all insects, not just the ones you’re trying to get rid of. If you have to use insect spray, do so sparingly.
And whenever you can, choose food produced without lots of pesticides. These products are sold with labels such as organic, biodynamic, or chemical-free.
3. Turn off the lights: If you don’t need that outdoor light on all night, turn it off: the moths in your area will thank you. Many nocturnal insects can’t resist the light, but it disrupts their navigation system. This plays havoc with their ability to feed and reproduce.
4. Build them a home: Think about installing an insect hotel – a small structure of hollows for insects to rest and lay eggs in. Or simply leave dead wood or small areas of bare ground for insects to build nests in. If you don’t have a garden, join a local tree-planting group, or convince your council to plant more natives.
A flower fly. Scientists need help form the public to track insect numbers.Denis Anderson/CSIRO
5. Resist the urge to clean up: If there is a section of your garden, local park or nature strip that is unkempt, leave it that way. What looks untidy to you is a great place for insects to live.
A prestige apartment building in Sydney built by a well-known developer is undergoing a second replacement of a terrace waterproof membrane five years after replacement of the first one, which had leaked from completion. The second membrane almost certainly complied with the National Construction Code (NCC) and was certified as compliant; the first one might also have complied. Yet, for 15 years, owners and tenants living under the terraces have put up with mouldy walls, carpets and ceilings because the code does not adequately control waterproofing materials and methods.
A key assumption made by governments and regulators has been that confidence will return to the market if apartments are built to meet National Construction Code requirements. As the story above shows, complying with the code alone will not be enough to fix many common defects. Public confidence will still be lacking.
In 2017, the Building Ministers’ Forum, the group of federal, state and territory ministers responsible for building regulation in Australia, commissioned a report from Peter Shergold and Bronwyn Weir. Their report said there was “… diminishing public confidence that the building and construction industry can deliver compliant, safe buildings which will perform to the expected standards over the long term”.
The National Construction Code originated as a minimum standard to deliver structural integrity and fire safety. It was never intended to provide effective control over all the aspects of building work that make houses or apartments liveable and durable. This might come as a surprise to many people, including those in government, but it is inherent to the “minimum standard” approach that underpins the structure and objectives of the code.
The objectives on page 9 of volume 1 of the code, which covers apartments, are instructive:
1) ensure requirements have a rigorously tested rationale; and
2) effectively and proportionally address applicable issues; and
3) create benefits to society that outweigh costs; and
4) consider non-regulatory alternatives; and
5) consider the competitive effects of regulation; and
6) not be unnecessarily restrictive.
In attempting to consider “competitive effects”, avoid being “restrictive” and by encouraging “non-regulatory alternatives”, including self-certification and self-regulation, the code has opened the door to an “anything goes” mentality on many fronts.
Waterproofing requirements for houses and apartments under section F of the code are clearly ineffective, for a start.
The relevant Australian Standards, AS 4654.1 and AS 4654.2, were written with a lot of input from the building materials supply industry. The standards permit the use of unsuitable waterproofing membranes in many situations, particularly where ceramic tiles are directly bonded to an inappropriate liquid-applied membrane. As the example at the start of this article shows, this solution rarely lasts longer than four or five years and considerably less in some cases.
Rectification is expensive and inconvenient. It involves hacking up and replacing all the tiles.
In addition, every apartment building built without a step in the slab at the junction between walls and floors will probably develop leaks within a similar timeframe.
These practices are driven by the desire to save a few dollars in construction cost, not by a commitment to deliver a required standard of durability. Durability is not part of the code objectives.
We could improve the code in a number of simple ways:
Class 1 (houses) and class 2 (apartments) buildings should both be in volume 2, which would be dedicated to housing intended for sale. Houses and apartments should be required to be “fit for purpose” with a clearly stated objective to provide protection to the buyer. These should include a mandatory minimum statutory warranty of seven to ten years, backed by government.
The required durability of waterproofing membranes and details for all housing, and class 2 apartments in particular, must be clearly stated. Waterproofing should be required to last at least 25 years without significant maintenance, and perhaps 40 years for buildings where access to the waterproofing element requires demolition or is fundamentally difficult. Details that are not durable, including slabs without steps at wall junctions, or terrace and balcony tiles directly bonded to liquid-applied waterproof membranes, should be banned.
The structure of an apartment should be required to last with no substantial maintenance for at least 50 to 60 years. The minimum expectation for durability for any envelope component and associated finishes on buildings over three storeys should be 25 years, and perhaps 40 years for taller buildings.
The “performance requirements” of section F of the code, “Health and Amenity”, should be expanded to ensure apartments are comfortable, economical to maintain and sustainable.
Some developers are already delivering well-designed apartment buildings that are durable and fit for purpose. They are to be commended. The problem for buyers is identifying these amid a sea of dross.
For new houses and apartments, we need to ensure the National Construction Code matches community expectations on fitness for purpose and durability. This requires a return to more active and interventionist regulatory framework, including putting independent “eyes on the site” to inspect work during construction.
It was claimed Immanuel Kant’s routine was so predictable his neighbours could set their clocks by his daily walk.
Born in 1724 in the Prussian town of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), Kant had a strict education and traditional Protestant upbringing. At 16, he enrolled at university to study philosophy.
A painting of Kant by Gottlieb Doebler.Wikimedia Commons
During Kant’s lifetime, people believed God had created us to understand the world perfectly. But the rise of modern science challenged this view.
In Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant argued the way the world seems is not an accurate reflection of how it really is.
He said our minds create a picture of the world based on what we perceive through our senses. “Knowledge” is not simply a representation of external reality: it is a construction.
This was a new and controversial idea. It implied that, since we cannot experience God through the senses, we cannot know that God exists – we can only have faith in his existence.
Despite censorship, questioning of God remained central to Kant’s work.
In Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Kant asked how we know what we should do. Through faith in God, he said, we have access to a moral law that tells us how to act.
Kant and Friends at Table, by Emil Doerstling, captures the spirit of debate among Kant and his peers.Wikimedia Commons
At the centre of Kant’s ethical theory was the “categorical imperative”: we must always act in such a way that we believe would be just under a universal law.
Perhaps it is easiest to understand this as a version of the “golden rule”: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The sublime
Kant wanted to understand the natural world, but he was also curious about how it makes us feel. In Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant wondered why people found gardens and pastoral settings beautiful, while mountains and the night sky invoked a frightened awe he called “the sublime”.
Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog captures Kant’s idea of the sublime.Wikimedia Commons
Kant believed we experience terror in the face of nature when it reminds us of our own small and fleeting place on earth. Kant’s theory of the sublime inspired a generation of artists in awe of the mysterious powers of nature.
Kant believed that certain differences between people are innate. In On the Different Human Races (1775), he argued there is only one human species but people of different “races” have different inborn characteristics and abilities.
By considering European societies as the ideal model of human development, Kant argued that not all races were capable of achieving the same level of “civilization” as European ones. This aspect of Kant’s thinking reveals how racism has historically been deeply entangled with the concept of civilization.
The age of Enlightenment
Kant was a public intellectual who wrote for a broad audience. As more people became educated and literate, a public sphere emerged in which people engaged in reasoned debate: the age of Enlightenment.
Kant’s What is Enlightenment?Wikimedia Commons
The term “Enlightenment” was first used in 18th century France, but Kant gave us the classic definition. In An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784), Kant wrote that Enlightenment was about people thinking freely for themselves – rather than relying on authorities.
Although Kant believed in free speech, he was not a democrat. In the Enlightenment essay, he praised the institution of monarchy, and was quick to condemn the violence of revolutions.
Kant believed that political freedom would increase through gradual historical progress rather than through revolution. In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795), he imagined a future secured by an international federation of republics.
Influence and relevance
We are far from the future of “perpetual peace” Kant imagined, but his ideas are still relevant for thinking through modern challenges.
His theory of knowledge still broadly underpins modern science. When scientists create models, they understand that these are representations – not the real thing.
Kant’s theory of the sublime can help us to understand why climate change provokes such strong feelings in us: it makes us reflect on our own transience.
Many scholars and activists still appeal to Kant to understand the origins of some of our most faulty and deeply entrenched ideas about race.
Finally, in a time of tightening borders, Kant’s concepts of “world citizenship” and “universal hospitality” can provoke us to think critically about peace, migration, and international relations.
Australians saved rather than spent most of the budget tax cuts, almost doubling the proportion of household income saved, leaving spending languishing.
The September quarter national accounts show that in the first three months of the financial year real household spending grew by just 0.1%, the least since the global financial crisis.
Over the year to September, inflation-adjusted spending grew by a mere 1.2%, also the least since the financial crisis. Australia’s population grew by 1.6% in that time, meaning the volume of goods and services bought per person went backwards.
Separate figures released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries on Wednesday show November new car sales were down 9.8% on November 2018.
By the end of November the Tax Office had issued more than 8.8. million tax refunds totalling A$25 billion, 30% more than a year before.
Instead of being largely spent, they were mostly saved, pushing up the household saving ratio from 2.7% to 4.8%, its highest point in more than two years.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg put the best face on the result, saying whether they had been spent or saved, the cuts had put households in a stronger position.
The government’s goal has always been to put more money into the pockets of the Australian people, and it’s their choice as to whether they spend or save that money
Separately calculated retail figures show that in the three months to September the volume of goods and services bought fell 0.1%.
The disposable income households had available to spend grew an outsized 2.5%, driven by what the Bureau of Statistics said were the budget tax cuts.
Growth at GFC lows
The Australian economy grew just 0.4% in the three months to September, down from 0.6% in the June quarter, and 0.5% in the March quarter.
Over the year to September it grew 1.7%, well short of the budget forecasts, which in year average terms were 2.25% for 2018-19 and 2.75% for 2019-20.
After taking account of population growth, GDP per person grew not at all in the September quarter. Over the year to September it grew only 0.2%.
Gross domestic product per hour worked, which is a measure of productivity, fell 0.2% during the quarter and fell 0.2 over the year.
Company profits were up 2.2% in the quarter and 12.7% over the year. Wage and superannuation payments grew at about half those rates: 1.2% and 5.1%.
Housing investment was down 1.7% over the quarter and 9.6% over the year.
What household spending growth there was was concentrated on essentials, led by health and rent. So-called discretionary or non-essential expenditures fell, led down by spending on cars, dining out and tobacco.
Consumption growth by category, quarterly
Treasury definitions of discretionary and non discretionary spending.ABS, Commonwealth Treasury
The economy was kept afloat by a surge in government spending. It grew 0.9% in the quarter and 6% over the year. Growth in government spending and investment together accounted for 0.3 of the quarter’s 0.4 points of economic growth.
Government and mining to the rescue
Mining production grew 0.7% over the quarter and 7.4% over the year. A mining-fuelled surge in exports (which eclipsed imports for the first time since the 1970s) contributed almost as much to economic growth as government spending.
Drought-affected farm production fell 2.1% over the quarter and 6.1% over the year.
Business investment fell 4% in the quarter and 1.7% over the year, led down by a 7.8% fall in mining investment in the quarter and a 11.2% fall over the year, as liquefied natural gas projects came to completion. Non-mining investment fell 0.4%.
Asked whether the December budget update would contain tax measures designed to boost business investment, the treasurer said he was in discussions with business. The update is expected in the week before Christmas.
There’s little evidence in today’s figures of the “gentle turning point” spoken about hopefully by the Reserve Bank governor as recently as Tuesday.
If things don’t pick by the bank’s first board meeting for the year in February, it is a fair bet it will cut its cash rate again. By then it will know what the treasurer did (or didn’t) do in the budget update and whether we decided to spend over Christmas.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nalin Asanka Gamagedara Arachchilage, Senior Research Fellow in Cyber Security at La Trobe University, UNSW
Our electronic devices store a plethora of sensitive information. To protect this information, device operating systems such as Apple’s iOS and Android have locking mechanisms. These require user authentication before access is granted.
One of the most common mechanisms is fingerprint login, a form of biometric technology first introduced by Apple in 2013 as Touch ID.
Touch ID was introduced with the intuition that, if there was an easier and quicker way to log in, users would be encouraged to keep stronger passcodes and passwords without sacrificing ease of access. It was supposed to enhance both the usability and security of the device.
However, in application this hasn’t been the case. And most users remain unaware of this initial purpose.
Easy targets
When first unlocking an iPhone after starting it, users are asked to enter a strong six-digit passcode, instead of a simpler four-digit PIN. After that, Touch ID can be used to unlock the phone, to avoid having to re-enter the password multiple times.
The catch is, users can choose to ignore the direction and opt for an easy four-digit PIN, and they usually do.
Researchers found that among Touch ID users, the majority still used weak login codes, mainly four-digit PINs (which are easy to guess). This was also true among people who didn’t use Touch ID.
They also found more than 30% of participants weren’t aware they could use passwords with letters (which are stronger) instead of four-digit PINs.
Some participants indicated they used PINs for quicker access, compared to passwords. And most agreed that Touch ID offered usability benefits including convenience, speed and ease of use.
Interestingly, there was also a disconnect between how secure users thought their passcodes were, and how secure they actually were.
In fact, only 12% of participants correctly estimated their passcode’s strength
Knowledge is key
It’s important to understand how fingerprint login and other biometric systems work, before we use them.
A biometric is a unique biological characteristic which can be used to identify and verify a person’s identity. Apart from fingerprints, we see this in facial recognition scans, DNA tests, and less commonly in palm prints, and iris and retina recognition.
Biometrics are marketed as being a very secure solution, because the way biometric data is stored is different to the ways PINs and passwords are stored.
While passwords are stored on the cloud, data from your fingerprint is stored solely on your device. Servers and apps never have access to your fingerprint data, nor is it saved on the cloud.
However, although it’s incredibly hard for cybercriminals to get access to your actual fingerprint data – since it’s encrypted and stored on the device itself – biometric systems are still not completely secure.
Users who use Touch ID with a four-digit PIN backup are also at risk. They’re susceptible to “shoulder surfing” attacks, where attackers simply look over a victim’s shoulder to see them input their PIN.
Other types of attacks include password guessing and even thermal fingerprint scanning, which involves using a thermal device to figure out which areas on a screen were most recently pressed, thereby potentially revealing a passcode combination.
A permanent mark
The elephant in the room is that once biometric data such as a fingerprint is stolen, it’s stolen forever. Unlike a password, it can’t be changed.
Stolen biometric data can be used to identify users without their knowledge, especially if users are unaware of how their data is stored and collected.
That said, cybercriminals generally prefer to break into people’s devices through mind games, by luring victims into clicking on links or downloading attachments which eventually disclose their login credentials.
In public, a criminal might ask to borrow your phone for a call. In such situations, it’s often easy for them to steal your PIN simply through observation, rather than having to actually break into your device.
Touch ID technology was designed to enhance security and usability, and it would have, if people hailed its initial purpose and kept stronger passcodes.
But they don’t, because often they don’t understand the basis of the technology. With biometric technology, users experience a false sense of security. They remain unaware of the many ways in which their information could still be stolen.
This is why users should educate themselves on how the technologies they use function, and the purpose for which they were designed. Failing that, they risk leaving the back door wide open for cybercriminals.
Netflix’s The Two Popes may be best described, borrowing a turn of phrase from Fredric Jameson, as “nostalgia for the present”.
Biopic and historical dramas are traditionally reserved for people who are dead, so I felt suspicious about watching a movie about two popes who are alive. It feels premature and slightly reminiscent of Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into his presidency.
The Two Popes doesn’t seem to have an agenda to shape the present, but does gesture to a break in outlook of the papacy between Benedict XVI, whose papacy ended in February 2013, and Francis, our current pope.
The film’s director, Fernando Meirelles, is known for political films such as City of God and The Constant Gardener. Perhaps he was attracted to the subject given Francis’ reputation as a social justice warrior, who has long championed the plight of the poor and who as Pope has adopted enlightened positions on climate change, refugees, and even animal welfare.
The film’s script was penned by Anthony McCarten, known for his work on historical movies and biopics, most notably the Churchill drama Darkest Hour. McCarten adapted the screenplay from his own stage-play and the film is more than just a scenario with talking heads, utilising flashbacks and music to great effect. At one point we are treated to ABBA’s Dancing Queen being played during the papal enclave that resulted in Benedict being declared Pope in 2005.
The film predominately focuses on a conversation between Benedict and Francis before Benedict made the decision to retire in 2013, but also comprises flashbacks throughout Francis’ life. Structured around two distinctive personas, with Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce cast respectively as Benedict and Francis, it nevertheless lacks the dramatic pull of The King’s Speech or Darkest Hour.
We see that Benedict has made a mess of things, with mounting scandals, but we don’t see Francis actually setting right the problems of the Catholic Church’s finances or its horrifying issues of sexual abuse, partly because such endeavours are ongoing. In this respect, the film remains hostage to history, and narratively confined.
Vulnerability
Nevertheless, there are engaging elements to it. Francis and Benedict are both shown as popes who live their philosophies (though when the film is set, Francis is not yet Francis but Jorge Bergoglio.) For Benedict (born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger), God is the eternal truth but Bergoglio frames God as evolving.
Indeed, in an earlier scene, in the midst of Pope John Paul II’s death, Ratzinger is presented as imperious and rude toward Bergoglio. Bergoglio and Ratzinger were perceived rivals for the Papacy after John Paul II. Bergoglio laments Ratzinger’s hostility toward him, “No nice to see you ‘Jorge’.”
Hopkins plays Ratzinger with an icy coolness even before he becomes the Pope. On becoming Pope, his icy veneer begins to thaw, especially as we discover his inner torment and self-doubt.
Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes (2019)Netflix
When Benedict realises that he may not be the right figure to lead the church, he confides that he has trouble hearing God, “perhaps I need a spiritual hearing aide.” Such vulnerability engenders empathy and the silence of God has long been a theme of theological and existential contemplation. But it may also explain his perceived fanaticism.
Doubt and uncertainty produce a need to prove one’s faith, whereas Bergoglio’s confidence affords him the ability to take more moderate positions. In the end, they become friends and even share a pizza in a scene of viewer wish-fulfillment.
Crimes of the church
But historical adaptations are hard, especially when it comes to very recent history. The movie features Bergoglio expressing sadness, regret and guilt over his supposed complicity as head of the Jesuits when the military dictatorship in Argentina snatched two priests and tortured them.
Benedict, on the other hand, reminds him of his role rescuing, protecting and providing cover to those targeted by the regime. This framing allows Bergoglio to appear modest with Benedict counselling “you’re only human”. Yet in reality, Pope Francis has at times avoided scrutiny over questions of complicity.
Pope Francis presides the Holy Mass for the Congolese Catholic Community of Rome in the St. Peter’s Basilica this week.EPA/Fabio Frustaci
Another issue with viewing The Two Popes is precisely the theological themes involved. The crimes of the church are immense and Bergoglio is shown pleading for Benedict to remain Pope, arguing that his suffering must be harnessed to heal the wounds of the collective trauma of child abuse.
Seeing the human side of church leadership arguably misdirects the sympathies of viewers. This suspicion is furthered by Bergoglio’s dialogue where he likens the Pope to a martyr and urges him to “be the personification of the crucified Christ.” Reflecting on the harm done to so many, one may well prefer an Old Testament approach to the guilty among the church.
The church on film
There is much about the church that could be fertile ground for filmmakers. A relic in the modern world, how the church adapts or doesn’t, the way it (mis)manages PR, and the disjunct between the earthly machinations of power within it and its higher purpose, could make for interesting viewing.
Paolo Sorrentino’s series The Young Pope proved particularly adept at picking up these themes; and I imagine its sequel The New Pope will similarly provide satisfying explorations.
Other films have also explored issues of the Papal burden of responsibility, such as Nanni Moretti’s We Have A Pope (2011), which revolves around a Cardinal elected to be Pope who, in a state of depression, tries to refuse the papacy.
In comparison, The Two Popes is a mixed bag, but the movie is worth watching for the bravura performances from Pryce and Hopkins. As an analysis of theological themes, the movie makes admirable overtures, as a psychological study it is interesting, but as historical and political commentary it remains unsatisfying.
The Two Popes launches on Netflix on December 20 and in cinemas on December 5.
