Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Sinclair, Research Fellow, NICM Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University

Endometriosis is a chronic, inflammatory condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus is found outside of the womb. It affects around one in ten women of reproductive age, causing pain, infertility and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Women often report difficulty getting their pain and other symptoms under control, despite medication or even surgery.

Our research, published today, found one in ten Australian women with endometriosis reported using cannabis to manage their pain and other symptoms.

Read more: I have painful periods, could it be endometriosis?

What did our study find?

We surveyed 484 women with surgically diagnosed endometriosis about the self-management strategies they used.

Of the respondents, who were aged 18 to 45, 76% reported using self-management techniques in the past six months. This included the use of heat packs (70%), dietary changes (44%), exercise (42%), yoga or pilates (35%) and cannabis (13%).

Out of all of the self-management techniques, cannabis was rated as the most effective for managing pain.

Women who reported higher levels of pain were more likely to use cannabis than those with milder symptoms. This may be because they couldn’t get relief through other measures.

Respondents who used cannabis also reported improvements in other symptoms including gastrointestinal problems, nausea, anxiety, depression and sleep.

One in ten cannabis users reported side effects, which included anxiety, drowsiness and tachycardia (fast heart rate). This is consistent with other research.

How could cannabis help treat endometriosis symptoms?

The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is a complex regulatory system comprised of various receptors, chemicals that bind with these receptors, and enzymes. It helps maintain balance (homeostasis) in our bodies and is important for a wide range of actions, including metabolism, inflammation and immune function.

The ECS is distributed throughout most organs in the human body, but is more abundant in the central nervous, immune and female reproductive systems.

Chemicals from cannabis, including the cannabinoids tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), can interact with the ECS and other receptor types. This suggests a mechanism for how cannabis may alleviate pelvic pain in women with endometriosis.

Read more: Marijuana is a lot more than just THC – a pharmacologist looks at the untapped healing compounds

Emerging research shows medicinal cannabis can help manage a number of conditions, including chronic pain in adults, the spasticity of multiple sclerosis, intractable epilepsy (where seizures can’t be controlled with medication) and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

Research is still in its infancy in women with pelvic pain, but one study found women with pelvic pain may benefit from using medicinal cannabis. It may also allow them to reduce their opioid pain-killer intake.

Is it legal?

Medical practitioners in Australia can legally prescribe medicinal cannabis through regulated pathways such as the Special Access Scheme Category B and the Authorised Prescriber Scheme. These pathways are typically used by doctors for unapproved medicines.

According to discussions with prescribing doctors and patients, approvals for medicinal cannabis for pain associated with endometriosis have been successful through these regulated, legal channels.

However, at the time our survey was administered, in late 2017, it’s likely most women who were using cannabis accessed it illicitly. No Special Access Scheme approvals had been granted for endometriosis at the time. Further, most women we surveyed reported smoking cannabis, which is very rarely prescribed by doctors in Australia.

Despite the perception that “natural” equals safe, cannabis use does come with risks. These should be discussed with and monitored by medical professionals.

Why do women resort to cannabis and self care?

Both surgical and pharmaceutical treatments are commonly used for endometriosis.

Surgery can reduce pain, at least in the short to medium term.

Recent reviews have found hormonal treatment options can be effective at managing pain but these are often discontinued or avoided due to significant side effects, such as headaches, mood swings and depression.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen don’t seem to be effective at alleviating pain from endometriosis.

Read more: Endometriosis costs women and society $30,000 a year for every sufferer

In the US, opioids (oxycodone and codeine) are commonly prescribed for endometriosis. Rates of opioid prescription are much lower in Australia but it’s still relatively common among women. This puts women at risk of dependence and potential overdose.

Women with endometriosis report wide-ranging negative impacts on their daily lives, from having to reduce their social activities to problems going to work or studying. It can also cause poor mental and emotional health and affect their sexual and romantic relationships.

So what needs to happen next?

Our survey data shows Australian women are already using cannabis for endometriosis-associated pain, regardless of legality, and with few reported side effects.

However, these survey responses are self-reported so there may be issues such as recall bias. This can lead to over or underestimation of either benefits or harms.

Given women with endometriosis are often suffering without adequate pain control, well designed clinical trials are urgently needed to determine how effective and safe quality-controlled medicinal cannabis might be in treating the symptoms of endometriosis.

Read more: CBD: Rising star or popular fad?

– ref. 1 in 10 women with endometriosis report using cannabis to ease their pain – http://theconversation.com/1-in-10-women-with-endometriosis-report-using-cannabis-to-ease-their-pain-126516

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katina Zammit, Deputy Dean, School of Education, Western Sydney University

When I was younger I decided to learn Greek. I learnt the letter-sound correspondences and could say the words – the sounds, that is. But although I could and still can decode these words, I can’t actually read Greek because I don’t know what the words mean.

Being able to make the connection between the letters, their combinations and the sounds that make up the words wasn’t all I needed to be able to read. It was an easy way to learn but it didn’t provide me with the whole picture.

As we read, and understand what we are reading, we don’t just use our knowledge of the letter-sound correspondences, which you may know as phonics or phonemic awareness, we also use other cues. These include our knowledge of the topic, the meaning of words in the context of the topic, and the flow and sequence of the words in a sentence.

Good readers use a full repertoire of skills, each dependent on the other. And a whole language approach to teaching reading is about arming new readers with this repertoire.

What is the whole language approach?

A whole language approach to teaching reading was introduced into primary schools in the late 1970s. There have been many developments in this area since, so the approach has been adapted and today looks quite different from 40 years ago.

To begin with, let’s dispel some myths about a whole language approach to teaching reading. It is not learning to read individual words by sight. Nor is it learning a list of vocabulary only.

A whole language approach to teaching reading is not opposed to teaching the correspondence of a letter or letters to sounds to help sound out unfamiliar words. Nor is it opposed to learning how to blend sounds together to decode a word by using the first letter/s of a word, the end of the word and the letter/s in the middle.

Read more: Reading progress is falling between year 5 and 7, especially for advantaged students: 5 charts

But just knowing sounds is not the same as knowing how to read. In 2000, the US National Reading Panel’s analysis of scientific literature on teaching children to read found systematic phonics instruction (teaching sounds and blending them together) should be integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced reading program.

The panel determined that phonics instruction should not be a total reading program, nor should it be a dominant component.

In 2011, the UK introduced a mandatory phonics screening check, for year 1 students, to address the decline in literacy achievement in the middle years of school. Children were prepared for the test using a government-approved synthetic phonics program. But in 2019 around 25% of year 6 students failed to reach the minimum requirements in reading.

Read more: The Coalition’s $10 million for Year 1 phonics checks would be wasted money

Australia’s own national inquiry into teaching literacy noted the same conclusions as the US national reading panel.

This view aligns with the whole language approach in the 21st century, which advocates a balanced way of teaching reading in the early years. This includes:

• explicit teaching of decoding skills (how to break up a word to work out how it is pronounced)
• connecting the decoding of word/s to their meaning
• learning to read frequently used words that can’t be sounded out or broken up into different sounds (the, were)
• learning the meaning of new words from the context they are in (looking at the words before and after and at what the sentence is about)
• understanding what the text being read is about (literally and interpretively)
• building a wide vocabulary
• understanding how images and words work together
• promoting a love of the English language and an interest in reading.

Let’s not put kids off reading

The whole language approach provides children learning to read with more than one way to work out unfamiliar words. They can begin with decoding – breaking the word into its parts and trying to sound them out and then blend them together. This may or may not work.

They can also look at where the word is in the sentence and consider what word most likely would come next based on what they have read so far. They can look beyond the word to see if the rest of the sentence can assist to decode the word and pronounce it.

We do not read texts one word at a time. We make best guesses as we read and learn to read. We learn from our errors. Sometimes these errors are not that significant – does it matter if I read Sydenham as “SID-EN-HAM” or “SID-N-AM”? Perhaps not.

Does it matter that I can decode the word “wind” but don’t pronounce the two differently in “the wind was too strong to wind the sail”? Yes, it probably does.

Teaching children to read or to see reading with a focus on phonics and phonemic awareness gives them the illusion “proper” reading is mere decoding and blending. In fact, it has been argued this can put children off reading when entering school. While some gain may occur in the first years, over time achievement deteriorates for children in high-performing and low-performing schools.

Read more: Enjoyment of reading, not mechanics of reading, can improve literacy for boys

A whole language approach doesn’t argue against the importance of phonemic awareness. But it acknowledges it is not all that should be included in reading instruction.

It is important to assess children’s reading from the beginning of schooling and continually determine how they are progressing. Teachers can then select specific strategies to improve individual children’s reading competence and increase their skills to build fluent and confident readers.

A whole language approach to teaching reading advocates for teaching phonics and phonemic awareness in the context of real texts – that use the richness of the English language – not artificial, highly constructed texts. However, it also acknowledges this is not sufficient. Being able to decode the written word is essential, but it isn’t enough to set up a child to be a competent reader and to be successful during and after school.

Read the accompanying article on teaching to read using explicit phonics instruction here.

– ref. Reading is more than sounding out words and decoding. That’s why we use the whole language approach to teaching it – http://theconversation.com/reading-is-more-than-sounding-out-words-and-decoding-thats-why-we-use-the-whole-language-approach-to-teaching-it-126606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pamela Snow, Professor and Head, Rural Health School, La Trobe University

Being able to read means being able to make meaning from printed words. At a functional level, we read to get the message – such as how many times per day to take our medication – but in a literate society reading provides much more. A successful reader is someone who can access the thoughts, opinions, memories, theories, desires, experiences and feelings of others.

Reading is a transformative experience. But it is also a “biologically unnatural” process humans have been doing for only a brief time in evolutionary terms. Unlike acquiring spoken language, children need to be taught how the English writing system works and how to master the code for both reading and spelling.

The written English code

Written English is considered a code because letters and letter combinations (graphemes) represent spoken speech sounds (phonemes). The English alphabet has 26 letters, which represent 44 speech sounds. This means some letter combinations (graphemes) comprise more than one letter. For example, in the first sound of “ship” two letters, “s” and “h”, make one grapheme that represents the phoneme “sh”.

For beginning readers, being able to connect graphemes to their corresponding phonemes is not an intuitive, natural process.

Learning the complex code is best done through explicit and systematic phonics instruction. This involves directly teaching children to associate graphemes with their corresponding phonemes.

Instruction starts using a clearly defined (systematic) sequence of letters, starting with only a few correspondences reflecting simple code (such as single letters) and progressively moving to complex code, such as “ng” and “ough”, once mastery is achieved at each level.

Once children have learnt a few grapheme-phoneme correspondences, they will be explicitly shown how to segment words (containing only known correspondences) into their constituent parts and blend them together to decode and read the word. At this point, children will be able to read short decodable books.

Read more: Explainer: what’s the difference between decodable and predictable books, and when should they be used?

All children must learn to decode. Without decoding skills, children could not read made-up words such as Harry Potter’s “quidditch”. Nor could they read unfamiliar names (of places such as Oodnadatta) or medication names (such as azithromycin) as these have no other cues to guide the reader to pronunciation.

Why phonics works

Synthetic phonics instruction aligns with the two strongest and most well-regarded theoretical frameworks in contemporary reading science.

The first is the simple view of reading developed in 1986, which has more recently (2018) been reformulated as the cognitive foundations of learning to read. This holds that reading comprehension is made up of two mutually dependent and essential processes: being able to decode words and being able to understand what connected text means.

The simple view theory had provided valuable insights into the cognitive processes necessary for reading comprehension. Evidence also shows the model to be a valid means of sub-classifying children as “able readers”, “poor decoders” and/or “poor comprehenders”.

The second framework is dual route theory (developed in 2012). This refers to the fact some words readers encounter are already stored as recognisable letter strings in their long-term memory. We instantly recognise these words when we see them, through the lexical route.

But unfamiliar words need to be decoded, via a phonological (sound-based) route, using knowledge of how letters and letter combinations (graphemes) map onto speech (phonemes). As we become more skilled as readers, we access more words automatically.

Dual route theory aligns with cognitive load theory. This is the idea that there is only so much information a human brain can hold at any one time unless there is a dedicated and structured opportunity to practise and rehearse it.

In line with this, the workings of the English writing system are best taught explicitly and systematically, so beginning readers are not put into the unfortunate and unnecessary situation of being cognitively overloaded. The risk of cognitive overload is high when the code is shown to children in an unsystematic, unstructured way or, even more worryingly, if it is assumed children will intuitively understand the code simply by exposure to written text.

Read more: Explainer: what is explicit instruction and how does it help children learn?

Instruction should also include an emphasis on morphology (word building, such as happy, unhappy, unhappily) and etymology (study of word origins), so students recognise patterns and relationships between words.

Although knowing how to decode words is fundamental to becoming a reader, teaching children to crack the code should also be done alongside instructional practices that ensure rapidly expanding vocabularies and world knowledge, so children can bring language skills and background knowledge to the task of comprehending what they read.

Covering all bases

A significant proportion, close to 40%, of children manage to learn to read without explicit and systematic phonics instruction (or with phonics instruction of variable impact) due to a confluence of biological and environmental advantages. These children may receive less structured initial reading instruction that encourages them to use a variety of strategies, such as picture and context cues, before attending to the graphemes within a word.

Read more: Reading progress is falling between year 5 and 7, especially for advantaged students: 5 charts

The remaining 60% of children taught in this way are highly vulnerable to falling behind as readers. And the proportion of vulnerability increases with the level of disadvantage.

No teacher of children in their first year of school can reliably identify, in the first term, which children will struggle with reading and which will get there seamlessly. To wait until a year (or more) has passed and then try to back-fill and close this gap shows a poor understanding of the importance of making every day count in children’s early learning.

We should be teaching 95% of children to read successfully, so need to be using high-impact teaching approaches from the outset, with all children.

If not explicit and systematic phonics instruction, what is the teacher’s time being spent on? Teaching words from flash cards for children to learn as wholes without any analysis of what is happening within the word? Or promoting inefficient strategies (ironically those used by weak readers) such as trying to work out what “kind” of word might work?

Even more bizarrely (and unhelpfully), children might be encouraged to “get their mouths ready” to read an unfamiliar word. It is not a child’s mouth that needs to be ready for learning to read, but her brain.

We must provide and promote reading instruction approaches that ensure the overwhelming majorly of children learn to read in the early years of school, regardless of their starting point.

Read the accompanying article on the the whole language approach to teaching reading here.

– ref. Why every child needs explicit phonics instruction to learn to read – http://theconversation.com/why-every-child-needs-explicit-phonics-instruction-to-learn-to-read-125065

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thijs Dhollander, Post-doctoral neuroscientist, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

While looking at the MRI brain scan of a 29-year-old woman that had been taken for a different study, researchers in Israel recently stumbled upon a scientific mystery. The woman appears to have no olfactory bulbs.

People like me and most of you have two of these bulbs: they sit right above your nasal cavities, snuggled up against the bottom of your brain. They’re small but important little processing boxes: the nerves in your nose that pick up scents around you feed into these bulbs.

The far end of each bulb has a “cable” sticking out (the olfactory tract) that sends processed information deeper into the almighty computer of the brain. The brain then makes further sense of things.

All of these delicate components work together, granting you the sense of smell! Some brains do have damaged olfactory bulbs or none at all: this is sometimes seen in people with anosmia, an inability to smell.

But back to our 29-year-old woman who appears to lack olfactory bulbs. It turns out her sense of smell is perfectly fine. So what’s going on here?

The researchers – a team led by Professor Noam Sobel from the Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science – asked me (all the way across the world at the Florey Institute in Australia!) to help them study the mystery, and the results have just been published in the journal Neuron.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do we smell?

Discovering new mysteries

As a scientist, the second best thing is to solve great mysteries. But the absolute best experience is to discover new mysteries. Solving a mystery is an achievement; discovering a new mystery is the start of an adventure.

I still remember vividly when Tali Weiss and Timna Soroka, the lead authors of the work about the missing olfactory bulbs, approached me at a scientific conference in Paris, and told me about their odd finding. It took me at least half an hour to understand what they were exactly describing, because I’m an engineer, not a neurobiologist.

But it turned out an engineer like me was just what they needed: I’m an expert who invents new ways to analyse certain types of MRI brain scans. Though I work in neuroscience, I have a background in computer science, not biology or medicine. This is multidisciplinary science in action.

When they told me about missing olfactory bulbs, I first couldn’t believe it. To me, it sounded like they were saying the wiring from the nose to the brain was “cut”. But then they explained me what’s currently thought to be the function of the olfactory bulb, and that their images showed these little processing boxes were apparently “missing” along the cable from nose to brain. Aha! Ok, still weird though. And so I got dragged into this mystery.

As the 29-year-old woman was also left-handed, they started scanning other left-handed and similarly aged women. It only took nine such scans to discover another person without apparent olfactory bulbs, but a good sense of smell. The plot thickens!

Among the experiments, a massive open data set of very high quality was also checked: of 1,113 people (606 women), three others were found without apparent olfactory bulbs, but with the sense of smell. None were men. One was left-handed.

So what did we learn? Well, likely that we need to go back to the drawing board regarding our understanding of the sense of smell, and the role of the olfactory bulb in it.

But we’re also asking questions about the extent to which we can see and identify things on some of these images. This is the kind of research that provides us many more new questions than answers. Exciting!

Read more: Mapping the brain: scientists define 180 distinct regions, but what now?

Fancy brain images

As I said earlier, I’m an engineer. Projects like these only succeed when scientists collaborate across disciplines, combining all their individual skills towards a joint effort. I’ve helped the other researchers in this work to process and understand one of the kinds of data they collected, diffusion MRI data, using new methods I developed over here in Australia.

We also use these methods to help plan brain tumour surgeries, and they allow for some pretty impressive visualisations of the brain’s internal wiring!

– ref. Some women seem to lack a key brain structure for smell — but their sense of smell is fine – http://theconversation.com/some-women-seem-to-lack-a-key-brain-structure-for-smell-but-their-sense-of-smell-is-fine-126496

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Holland, Senior Lecturer in Australian History, Macquarie University

When the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, recently announced a co-design process for creating an Indigenous “voice to government”, it was characterised as a shift in rhetoric.

Yet, on closer inspection, it was less a shift than a consolidation of the Liberal Party’s rhetoric on Indigenous affairs over the past two years.

In fact, Morrison was talking about a co-design model to improve local and regional Indigenous decision-making and options for constitutional recognition in the lead-up to the federal election this year. His government has also emphasised collaborating with Indigenous people to improve Closing the Gap targets.

Given the 15-year absence of such collaboration since the disbanding of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), Morrison’s talk of “empowering partnerships” has been welcomed in some quarters. He has also used the language of accountability.

However, there are two issues here: Morrison has initiated significant changes in Indigenous affairs without consultation with Indigenous groups, and, as this suggests, there is a serious gap between rhetoric and practice.

Read more: Ken Wyatt’s proposed ‘voice to government’ marks another failure to hear Indigenous voices

A new approach to Indigenous policy-making

When Wyatt ruled out an enshrined Indigenous advisory body in the constitution, disappointed Indigenous leaders accused the government of “wheeling back” the consultative process after a decade-long public process.

Indigenous Labor Senator Pat Dodson suggested that, for things to change, Morrison needed an epiphany.

According to the Liberal Party, he has had one. In fact, the Morrison government claims to have turned a new page when it comes to Indigenous affairs.

Morrison unveiled this new approach in his 2019 Closing the Gap report. Rejecting a top-down model as unworkable, he said the government would rely on partnerships to drive sustainable, systemic change.

Read more: The government is committed to an Indigenous voice. We should give it a chance to work

To this end, he has been building an infrastructure of his own. Last December, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) announced a new partnership with a group of 40 Indigenous representative bodies called the Coalition of Peaks to refresh the Closing the Gap process.

This was hailed as a historic development, despite the fact there’s been a long history of inter-governmental partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In addition, within a month of the Coalition’s election victory this year, Morrison established the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Since then, $5.2 billion in funding allocated for the controversial Indigenous Advancement Strategy has been transferred to the new agency.

The former vice-chief of the defence forces, Vice Admiral Ray Griggs, a non-Indigenous Australian, also came out of retirement to head it. With a team of 1,200, he is now responsible for coordinating Indigenous policy development, advising Morrison and Wyatt on the priorities of Indigenous people and promoting reconciliation.

Around the same time, the former Indigenous peak body, the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, was left to crumble due to lack of government funding.

Top-down and selective

Is this systemic change? Though the government emphasises partnerships, accountability and evidence-based policies, Morrison is actually taking a selective and top-down approach. He is also ignoring key Indigenous advice and evidence.

For instance, Morrison has sidelined the work and achievements of the Referendum Council by mischaracterising its call for a Voice to Parliament as a “third chamber”.

His party has also used the rhetoric of failure in describing the the Uluru Statement – the council’s extensive, deliberative response to the question of constitutional recognition.

In addition, instead of empowering Indigenous communities, he and Wyatt are dividing them. Wyatt has said, for instance, he is interested in hearing from all Indigenous people on the co-design process toward an Indigenous voice, not just the leaders, or “influencers”.

At the same time, he has handpicked a senior advisory group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous members to lead the co-design effort – an apparent contradiction of this “bottom-up” approach.

Many Indigenous communities have also already developed models for engaging with state governments. Some worry these efforts could now be overtaken by Wyatt’s co-design process. It was hardly surprising that one Indigenous leader in NSW said:

Given the yards we’ve made and the buy-in we’ve got in the communities, it would be awesome if the Commonwealth just said, ‘You know what? It’s already there, we’re just going to come in and build on that’.

Evidence points to failures of government policies

The Morrison government also says it is committed to acknowledging the historical experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and taking an evidence-based approach to Indigenous policy-making.

But there is ample historical evidence showing that governmental policies have been a leading cause of Indigenous disadvantage, poor health and disempowerment.

Read more: A new inquiry into Indigenous policy must address the root causes of failure

If Morrison is serious about addressing the extremely high rates of Indigenous suicide, he would know that disempowerment, lack of self-esteem and identity, loss of community control and even loss of their own leaders are key drivers of this crisis.

If he took the high rates of Indigenous domestic violence seriously, his government would not have defunded shelters for victims in the Northern Territory.

He would also know what the Lowitja Institute advised to the Closing the Gap steering committee this year – that the principle of self-determination must apply in all Indigenous policy.

In contrast to the noisy reverberations of the Uluru Statement, Morrison has been making quiet changes in the Indigenous policy landscape. And Wyatt is travelling a well-mapped road with a predetermined destination.

The volumes of data on Closing the Gap targets obscure the important fact that a government-led approach does not constitute a new page in Indigenous affairs.

Indigenous people know what drives success in Indigenous policy-making – not a co-design process with governments, but the ability to design and implement their own solutions. Indigenous people must lead and governments must support.

– ref. The government’s ‘new page’ on Indigenous policy is actually just more of the same – http://theconversation.com/the-governments-new-page-on-indigenous-policy-is-actually-just-more-of-the-same-126179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Zadro, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Patients might not be getting the best advice about which treatments do or don’t work, according to our study published today. We found professional societies are more likely to call out other health professionals for providing low-value treatments rather than look in their own backyard.

Our study in BMC Health Services Research looked into recommendations under the global Choosing Wisely public health campaign. We found professional societies are reluctant to publish recommendations against treatments and procedures that generate income for their members.

But they are much more comfortable at recommending against treatments that generate income for members of other professional societies.

Read more: Less is the new more: choosing medical tests and treatments wisely

How does the Choosing Wisely campaign work?

Choosing Wisely aims to reduce the use of medical tests, treatments and procedures that provide little-to-no benefit, or in some cases can harm.

It then recommends patients question their doctors about whether these so-called low-value tests, treatments or procedures are necessary.

To take part in the Choosing Wisely campaign, professional societies publish recommendations relevant to their members.

For example, a surgical society could list a surgical procedure of questionable effectiveness. A physiotherapy society could also list a poorly justified physiotherapy treatment. This ensures recommendations raise awareness of low-value care among the practitioners most likely to provide this care.

However, an ongoing concern is whether professional societies focus on low-value care provided by their members or whether they tend to make recommendations for care provided by others, outside their own society.

Many low-value tests, treatments and procedures also generate substantial income for the practitioner who provides them. So societies might be reluctant to recommend against or “call out” these examples of low-value care because of fear of affecting their members’ bottom line.

What did we do?

To investigate these concerns, we evaluated all Choosing Wisely recommendations worldwide since the campaign began in 2012.

We reviewed 1,293 recommendations from eight countries, including Australia, to investigate the proportion of recommendations that target income-generating treatments. We also investigated whether recommendations on income-generating treatments were more likely to come from societies involved, or not involved, in providing this care.

Read more: Needless treatments: spinal fusion surgery for lower back pain is costly and there’s little evidence it’ll work

Treatments or procedures that attract a fee-for-service and are performed outside a routine encounter with a practitioner were considered income-generating for the practitioner performing the treatment. Examples included arthroscopic surgery of the knee and shoulder, cesarean section, removing a breast lump and radiotherapy.

We then examined each recommendation and determined whether the society making the recommendation was targeting a treatment routinely provided by members of their society or members of another society.

There were over 230 professional societies with Choosing Wisely recommendations across medicine, surgery, diagnostic testing and allied health. Examples of professional societies from Australia included the: Royal Australian College of General Practitioners; Royal Australasian College of Surgeons; Australian Physiotherapy Association; and Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia.

Here’s what we found

Overall, we found only 20% of Choosing Wisely recommendations target income-generating treatments. But more importantly, of these recommendations, most target treatments provided by practitioners that are not members of the society making the recommendation.

For example, the Australian Rheumatology Association recommends against arthroscopy for knee osteoarthritis, a surgical intervention that rheumatologists don’t perform (this is generally carried out by orthopaedic surgeons):

Do not perform arthroscopy with lavage and/or debridement or partial meniscectomy for patients with symptomatic osteoarthritis of the knee and/or degenerate meniscal tear.

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, whose members perform arthroscopy, doesn’t recommend against the procedure. Instead, it points the finger at clinicians who routinely provide insoles:

Don’t use lateral wedge insoles to treat patients with symptomatic medial compartment osteoarthritis of the knee.

Why does it matter?

Choosing Wisely aims to reduce waste in health care. But when societies mainly look for waste in fields other than their own, their recommendations are likely to have less impact.

To illustrate this, eight societies of orthopaedic surgeons have collectively published 48 Choosing Wisely recommendations. But only nine of these recommendations target low-value surgery routinely performed by orthopaedic surgeons. Most of these are from the Netherlands Orthopaedic Association (five out of nine recommendations).

Read more: Antibiotics for colds, x-rays for bronchitis, internal exams with pap tests – the latest list of tests to question

By shying away from publishing recommendations that target ineffective and expensive interventions performed by their own members, professional societies are not acting in line with the spirit of the campaign.

Choosing Wisely could have a large impact on redirecting health-care spending from low-value care to recommended care, thereby improving the lives of millions. But for the campaign to realise its potential, ensuring future recommendations focus on the care provided by members of the society making the recommendation is a good place to start.

Dr John Farey, a surgical registrar affiliated with the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health and the Sydney Local Health District, co-authored this article.

– ref. Dodgy treatment: it’s not us, it’s the other lot, say the experts. So who do we believe? – http://theconversation.com/dodgy-treatment-its-not-us-its-the-other-lot-say-the-experts-so-who-do-we-believe-124638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Abou-Nemeh, Lecturer in Early Modern History, Victoria University of Wellington

This week New Zealand’s parliamentarians will vote on the third reading of the End of Life Choice Bill.

Much public discussion on the merits of euthanasia has centred around the role of the medical practitioner as healer. Some doctors and conscientious objectors worry that physician-assisted suicide will alter the relationship between doctors and their patients. They argue it is unethical, often invoking the Hippocratic oath.

The oldest code of medical ethics, the oath dates to around the fourth century BC and is still sworn by doctors today. It specifically forbids physicians from administering lethal drugs, among its other precepts.

Some critics of the bill present religious and moral objections against euthanasia, while proponents have focused on the trauma and pain of terminally ill patients and their families. All these arguments have a long history.

Read more: In places where it’s legal, how many people are ending their lives using euthanasia?

The art of dying well

Like the Hippocratic oath, euthanasia (in its literal meaning of “good death” in ancient Greek) first appeared around the fourth and third century BC. Ancient Roman emperors, at death’s door, were known to consume wine, drugs and other palliatives to ease their dying. Good emperors were believed to deserve a dignified death, and often staged them.

In pre-modern Europe, experiencing a good death and intentionally shortening the agony of dying were separate matters. From 1400 on, there was a thriving trade in advice books on the art of dying. These instructed readers on how to prepare their souls for a “good death” and the Christian afterlife.

Prayers, rituals and information about what to expect offered practical guidance for attaining salvation. Christian theologians saw euthanasia as “a blessed and peaceful death of the faithful”.

Whether and how people sought to hasten or ameliorate death is less clear. Scholars only began considering the doctor’s role in enabling euthanasia in the late 16th century.

Early ideas about assisted dying

In 1605, English lawyer, statesman and natural philosopher Francis Bacon wrote that the physician’s office extends to matters of health as well as dying. In his words, a physician ought “not only to restore health, but to mitigate dolours, and torments of Diseases”. If there was no hope of the patient’s recovery, everything should be done “to make a fair and easie passage out of life”.

Bacon called this “fair and easie passage” euthanasia. Importantly, he distinguished between “outward” euthanasia and the soul’s peaceful transition to the afterlife. While the latter remained the purview of the spiritual realm, Bacon placed the former within medicine’s province.

Until recently, historians believed active euthanasia did not exist in pre-modern Europe, but historian of medicine Michael Stolberg has challenged this notion.

A physician in 1660s Antwerp, Michiel Boudewijns, wondered whether doctors could help their terminal patients die. While moved by patients in agony, Boudewijns urged Christian doctors to observe the fifth commandment and the Hippocratic rule of “do no harm”. He cautioned his colleagues against undertaking risky procedures and acting on compassion to expedite death in hopeless cases.

Read more: How hypothetical designs can help us think through our conversations about euthanasia

A matter of trust

Physicians also feared patients would lose trust in them if they knew they shortened dying patients’ lives. It was not until the late 17th century that facilitating dying sparked public debate among scholars. In 1678, Caspar Questel, a Silesian lawyer active in Saxony, wrote about assisted dying in the homes of ordinary people.

Methods to accelerate dying ranged from acts of faith and folklore to illegal actions. Questel had discovered that family members, nurses, nuns and other carers removed the pillow from under the head of the dying person. It was a widespread custom that was believed to quicken death.

Other forms of assistance included opening a window so the soul of the dying person would be encouraged to leave the body and meet God, placing lit candles around the gravely sick and placing the dying on the ground or putting them outdoors. More fatal actions involved suffocating the dying with a pillow or cutting their veins. Exercising empathy for the suffering of the dying was weighed against the risk of being charged for their premature deaths.

In present-day New Zealand, if this week’s vote is in favour of euthanasia, the option for assisted dying will still need to be ratified in a referendum next year.

Clearly, cultural customs, prevailing medical ethics and beliefs about death and the afterlife have evolved over time. Today discussions about euthanasia involve a wider range of participants than in pre-modern Europe. The distance between learned professionals and everyone else has narrowed. Civil rights, legal precedents and protections have given us a new language and ethics through which to understand fraught issues concerning our health, body and death.

– ref. As NZ votes on euthanasia bill, here is a historical perspective on a ‘good death’ – http://theconversation.com/as-nz-votes-on-euthanasia-bill-here-is-a-historical-perspective-on-a-good-death-126580

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cris Brack, Associate Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

Trees die. You don’t have to like it, but they do. And this comes as a surprise to some. A senior public servant once told one of us (Brack): “Trees don’t die; people kill them.”

Of course sometimes we kill trees, especially in urban areas where trees are regularly removed for reasons of safety or urban development.

Read more: Our cities need more trees, but that means being prepared to cut some down

But more concerning than the death of a tree is how we waste them afterwards. In municipalities around the world, the trees are chipped into mulch. Not just the leaves and skinny branches and bark, but the whole tree.

It’s the least valuable, indeed least respectful, thing you can do with a tree.

In contrast, the wood can be rescued and used to craft furniture and other unique objects that honour the trees and their legacy of timber.

For those more poetically inclined, trees are literally made of our breath. By chipping them, we are wasting the breath of our past and making it harder to breathe in the future.

Read more: Trees are made of human breath

Chipping trees means releasing carbon to the atmosphere as the mulch breaks down. It’s also a waste of high-quality timbers such as oak, ash, elm and cedar, which, ironically, Australia imports by the shipload.

When made into furniture, for example, the tree is transformed, the carbon stays bound and we have something both functional and beautiful.

Urban forests can keep on giving

Salvaging quality timber is such an obvious win-win, you’d think everyone would do it. Sadly, there are many obstacles, including the difficulties of coordinating multiple public and private stakeholders and agencies.

To better understand the challenges and opportunities for urban timber rescue in Australia, we hosted a symposium at Australian National University in September 2019. Forestry researchers, public officials, craftspeople, teachers, students, conservation activists and city parks employees attended. They identified key values and concerns critical to reclaiming and distributing urban timber.

The symposium included a demonstration of how a portable (Lucas) mill could be quickly set up near a tree to cut it into useful timber. Operators can minimise waste by using bespoke cutting patterns to get the most valuable timber from each tree.

Participants from California described the Sacramento Tree Foundation’s Urban Wood Rescue program. Arborists, residents and the city work together to intercept logs from the waste stream. The timber is then made available to the public.

This program benefits from public trust that stems from decades of active tree planting across the city and genuine concern for the health of the urban forest. Recognising that the recovered wood is too good to waste is a natural extension of residents’ respect for their living trees.

Craftspeople and teachers from Canberra and other Australian cities discussed how providing quality timber to school students supports their love of making and develops their skills. One participant spoke of high school students being thrilled to work with such beautiful timber. They normally make do with cheap construction pine or broken-down pallets.

Rescuing and transforming the timber can bring people together to teach, learn and create. The object then captures not just carbon but a sense of the history of the tree and the place where it lived.

This is what the Witness Tree Project in Canberra, spearheaded by Eriksmoen, set out to do. Wood was rescued from just six of hundreds of trees scheduled for removal. The timber was distributed to six local woodworking artisans and furniture makers.

Their task was to creatively reconstruct a narrative of each tree and its neighbourhood. They transformed the trees into unique objects that delivered anecdotes and collective memories of local history and culture, culminating in a public exhibition.

Katalin Sallai created the Witness Tree Bench of Kingston from a Himalayan cedar. The circular planter, containing a sapling of the same species, is the diameter of this tree when it was felled in 2013. The unfurling spiral arc of the bench seat describes the potential diameter of Himalayan cedar in ideal natural conditions.

Many references to Kingston, one of Canberra’s oldest suburbs, are embedded and engraved in the surface, including coins commemorating the queen’s 1954 visit. The bench is both an educational tool, describing the differences between a city tree and a rural tree, and a celebration of its own tree’s life and provenance as a witness to local history.

Read more: Loving emails show there’s more to trees than ecosystem services

The recent symposium was also told of the positive effects of having living trees in our surroundings, including improved mental health, reductions in crime and better air quality. But this isn’t lost when the trees die. Recent research has shown wooden furniture and fittings in offices or homes can benefit mental health and reduce stress and sick days.

Seeing urban trees given a second life can also help ease eco-anxiety. Every tree removal can add to the sense of helplessness, but putting those trees to good use may create feelings of empowerment.

Four steps you can take

So don’t despair or whine when a tree is removed. Instead, make sure the wood isn’t squandered. Otherwise you are wasting your breath – twice!

Here’s what you can do:

• raise awareness: tell people trees do die naturally, and city trees have shorter lives than their rural kin

• demand action: tell your local representative that community trees are squandered on woodchips

• buy local: buy products made from locally salvaged wood, not imported timber

• get radical: if you’re the protesting type, chain yourself to a log to stop it being chipped.

Read more: Where the old things are: Australia’s most ancient trees

– ref. When a tree dies, don’t waste your breath. Rescue the wood to honour its memory – http://theconversation.com/when-a-tree-dies-dont-waste-your-breath-rescue-the-wood-to-honour-its-memory-125137

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elaine Stratford, Professor, University of Tasmania

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

We are all touched by relationships with animals — as domestic and working companions, wild inspirations, threats, or pests.

Some of us may know about the enduring worth of organisations such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Fewer of us may know about the 19th century foundations for animal advocacy among ordinary women beginning, more often, to find their voice in the public sphere.

The life of Frances Deborah Levvy (14 November 1831–29 November 1924) is worth revisiting because her ethical, political, and journalistic contributions speak to our current concerns for the more-than-human world.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Flos Greig, Australia’s first female lawyer and early innovator

A mainstay of the New South Wales’ branch of the Women’s Society for the Protection of Animals, Frances, with her sister Emma Clarke, founded Australia’s first Bands of Mercy. Membership of the Bands required pledging on entry:

I promise to protect all animals from ill-treatment with all my power. When I am compelled to take the life of any creature, I will spare all needless pain.

The Bands of Mercy were based on the Bands of Hope, formed in the United Kingdom to support the temperance movement and, like them, were formal voluntary organisations in communities. Founded in 1875, they helped young people learn about and model the humane treatment of animals, coming under the RSPCA from 1882, the same year they were introduced into the United States. It was Levvy who then introduced Bands of Mercy in Australia in the mid-1880s, growing the membership from 15 to over 20,000 people over her life.

Born in Penrith, Frances was one of four children of Barnett and Sarah Levey, the former a watch-maker and theatre director, both from London. When Levey died in 1837, his widow converted from Judaism to Christianity, which appears to have shaped Frances’s moral and religious outlook. On their mother’s death Frances and her sister Emma adopted the surname Levvy. After moving to Newtown in Sydney in 1874 with her sister, Frances later went to Waverley where she lived – single and focused on her mission – until her death in 1924.

Clues to what motivated Levvy’s lifelong dedication to the humane movement are found in The Daily Telegraph of Tuesday 30 January 1906. There, the reporter describes Levvy in ways that map onto ideas emergent at the time that women’s apparently natural propensity to nurture in the private sphere could spill into the public arena and contribute to social progress.

Levvy is painted as having:

a gentle, persuasive manner … intensely in earnest in her whole-hearted and disinterested wish to save our dumb [sic] friends from ill-treatment … the right woman in the right place. It is so eminently a woman’s work which she has undertaken, to inculcate gentleness and kindness in the hearts of the children of our city …

When asked by the reporter if she thought animals have souls, Levvy replied:

It seems to me that it is not at all improbable. There is an evident wish to believe it.

‘Loving friend of dumb animals’

Over several decades, Levvy effectively harnessed the printed word’s power to influence how animals were treated. She developed and edited a monthly periodical, The Band of Mercy and Humane Journal (1887–1923), which inspired offshoots such as The Band of Mercy Advocate (1887–1891).

Levvy was equally adept at building community networks, and coalitions and defying moral strictures regarding the public conduct expected of “ladies”. As one report on her work (replete with deeply gendered and class-based assumptions) noted:

The draymen and vanmen at the wharves and the drivers at the cab stands are regularly visited by this loving friend of dumb animals, from whom they receive copies of the Band of Mercy journal. This paves the way for a little general conversation on the subject of kindness to animals, and then some particular instance is … [introduced]; a horse has gone lame or has a sore shoulder, which should be dressed with a decoction of tannin — or the flies are stinging and worrying, and it is suggested that … pennyroyal added to a pint of olive oil should be passed lightly over the horses to secure their immunity from this pest.

It has been suggested that Levvy’s “greatest capacity was for writing” and my own research shows that an astute use of the periodical press ensured her work was known and supported. The editors of Boston’s The Woman’s Journal, wrote glowingly of her work in 1888, noting her journal provided “a place of record for the good deeds done”. In 1906, it described the journal as having “the distinction of being the first newspaper of the kind in Australia”.

The power of the press is worth stressing here, because it underpinned growing freedoms of speech and capacities to challenge the status quo that Levvy tapped into. Debates in the press around animal protection touched on fashion (and its relationship to prescriptive forms of femininity and consumerism) and sport (with its association with betting).

Seeing young people as agents of change

In her writing and activism, Levvy often turned to children and, through them, to women — whose power she thought should extend from private to public spheres.

The 1906 report in The Daily Telegraph also describes how she gave lessons on animal protection at schools. She educated boys about the most humane method of transit of stock by rail, or training a colt to harness and saddle. And she set the following essay topics for mixed sex, upper level classes:

Does civilisation in any way depend on possession of animals? Give reasons, state requirements, and value of poultry-keeping, incubator, food, incidental diseases. Is it suitable work for women and girls? Bee-keeping: Requirements and value. Hives, honey-producing flowers, food in winter, etc. Is it suitable work for women and girls? Is the exhibition of wild animals in travelling menageries consistent with humanity? Give your reasons.

Levvy, herself, reflected in 1906 (in relation to her work on equine welfare):

The difference between now and twenty years ago … is most marked. It is hardly ever now that one sees a sore-backed, lame, miserable-looking horse in the streets. Look at the cab horses and cart horses, what fine, well-kept animals they are.

After Levvy’s death on 24 November 1924, the former NSW Minister for Education, Joseph Carruthers, paid tribute to her and announced a school essay competition in her name. Internationally, the Bands of Mercy began to lose momentum between the world wars, and languished after 1945. Although Peter Chen has provided a detailed time-line of developments in animal welfare in Australia, he does not record a date for when they ceased here.

Levvy was of her time. She was, for example, deeply immersed in the progressive, democratising, and evangelical impulses that marked the 19th century.

But she was, I think, also ahead of her time, being among those women who understood and used the power of the press for socially transformative ends, and who recognised that young people are not citizens in waiting but active and influential agents for change.

At a time when the treatment of both animals and children was often questionable, and often based on narrow ideas of them as property, her actions and ideas were quietly radical and highly effective.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Frances Levvy, Australia’s quietly radical early animal rights campaigner – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-frances-levvy-australias-quietly-radical-early-animal-rights-campaigner-125940

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

In the wake of systemic corporate misconduct scandals such as those brought to light in the banking royal commission, and issues such as income inequality and climate change, there are growing public demands for increased corporate accountability and less emphasis on shareholder returns.

Corporate governance reform has become a hot button political issue and big business is feeling nervous.

“Social licence to operate” and “trust” are now popular buzzwords in board land.

While company annual general meetings (AGMs) have long been the forum for individual vocal and activist shareholders to embarrass boards, large shareholders are increasingly being criticised for not pressuring company boards enough to be more socially environmentally responsible.

But relying on shareholders to make corporations more accountable and socially responsible is misguided. There are far more direct and systemically effective measures available to do that.

What are institutional investors?

Large shareholders can be wealthy individuals and other corporations, but so-called institutional investors are now by far the most dominant shareholders in terms of total funds under management, and in most cases, voting power at corporate AGMs.

Institutional investors are a mix of commercial, state and not-for-profit entities such as investment banks, unit trusts, insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, and charitable organisations that invest on behalf of, or for the benefit of others.

Because they’re intermediaries it’s argued institutional investors are morally responsible where they invest and how they vote at corporate AGMs. Because they invest widely, a whole advisory industry has grown to guide institutional investors. Stock exchange corporate governance codes encourage boards and senior executives to “engage” and have a “meaningful dialogue” with institutional investors because of their perceived expertise and knowledge.

In this context institutional investors are seen as pivotal actors to influence corporate boards. Shareholder activism by institutional investors is seen as the way to improve corporate accountability.

That’s why institutional investors are being pressured by high profile shareholder activists, others in the wider community and politicians to be more active and exercise their voice to pressure boards on an increasingly diverse range of issues. This includes things like executive pay, carbon intensive investments and social issues.

Some institutional investors, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, do have a growing record of advocacy on important issues such as climate change. This activism, while laudable, is not a systemically effective solution.

Shareholder activism won’t work

Aside from the fact most shareholder resolutions are non-binding, the interests of institutional investors are not always the same. As well-intentioned US and Canadian pension funds discovered in their campaign to stop Google using tax havens, fellow institutional investors sided with Google’s founders to vote down their shareholder proposal.

Institutional investors are large, sometimes foreign entities, often with their own shareholders. It’s not always clear whose interests an institutional investor is representing when it meets with CEOs and boards.

Most shareholders, including institutional investors, remain largely uninterested unless they are being hurt financially. This is exemplified in the pattern of voting at Australian bank AGMs.

In the decade preceding the Banking Royal Commission, few institutional investors questioned why Australian banks were consistently among the most profitable in the world. Shareholders have only cared about runaway CEO salaries when things aren’t going their way.

And unfortunately, giving shareholders more voice will create perverse problems.

First, the mechanisms allowing well-intentioned institutional investors more influence over boards will also allow other large investors greater say. For example Gina Rinehart’s controversial foray into newspaper publishing may well have succeeded in a more shareholder activist-friendly environment.

Second, allowing greater shareholder voice will undermine the responsibilities and duties public companies and their directors already have. For example, the public interest duties of directors include ensuring corporations do not trade while insolvent.

What has to happen instead

Institutional shareholder activism is not likely to systemically improve governance and accountability because they’re primarily concerned with returns. And there’s no evidence they will consistently work together in ways that promote the wider community interest.

Instead what we really need is real corporate governance reform, better leadership from government, and regulatory oversight.

We already know from GFC research that well designed corporate governance including two-tiered boards and worker/union representation on boards improves accountability. Stricter lobbying prohibitions can prevent corporations undermining attempts to tackle issues like climate change.

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

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is already re-emphaising directors’ duties in mitigating climate change risk. These duties should be strengthened rather than being undermined by unaccountable and un-elected institutional investors trying to exert greater influence which may or may not coincide with the public interest.

Greater oversight by key public agencies to improve corporate accountability is also important.

Finally, better regulation designed to directly address issues such as climate change, wage theft and inequality and more intense enforcement of those regulations will be much more effective than the theatre created by encouraging shareholder activism.

– ref. Shareholder activism might sound good, but it’s delusional to think it will change anything much – http://theconversation.com/shareholder-activism-might-sound-good-but-its-delusional-to-think-it-will-change-anything-much-125807

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Lecturer in Digital Journalism & Professional Communication, Queensland University of Technology

We can’t all be at city council meetings or down at parliament house directly engaging with the issues that affect us. But through photography and video, we’re able to orient ourselves to the rest of the world.

After observing hundreds of hours of interactions between journalists and those they photograph and interviewing more than 40 people featured in the news, I learned about the expectations people have of those who document them.

The events I studied included cultural festivals, religious holiday observances, ceremonies, ground-breakings, parades and performances.

Read more: Friday essay: worth a thousand words – how photos shape attitudes to refugees

For some who had been in the news before, being documented was a mundane experience. For others, it was new and exciting. And for others still, they weren’t even aware they’d been documented until I approached them later for an interview. One person I interviewed said:

There wasn’t any direct contact between me and the photographer. I didn’t know until today when you emailed me. The photographer must have gotten my name from the brochure but I did see her talking to other people taking their names and all. I cannot tell for sure.

Behaviour over looks

Those who had been shown at newsworthy events, such as dedication ceremonies, business anniversary celebrations and commemoration events, wanted the photographers and videographers covering them to blend into the background, to have a conversation with those they chose to visually highlight, to be respectful and accurately render the scene, and to ask permission of those they document before doing so.

Read more: Ten photos that changed how we see human rights

Interestingly, not everyone in my research wanted to know they were being documented as it made some more self-conscious and reactive.

Only one person interviewed expected the journalists to produce aesthetically pleasing photos or videos. This is important because it shows people are more concerned about the behaviour of journalists rather than the artistic value of the depictions they produce.

People had mixed experiences after being in front of a journalist’s lens. On the positive side, people liked the publicity of being featured if the journalists were friendly, set clear ground rules, and worked unobtrusively and efficiently.

On the other hand, people were frustrated by caption errors (misspellings of names and misidentifications), who the journalist chose to feature, when the journalist and their equipment were distracting, and when the coverage lacked context.

Importantly, about half of the experiences I observed included no or minimal journalist-subject interaction.

Showing life as it is

Being in front of a journalist’s lens is a different experience from being snapped more casually. When people take photos in everyday circumstances, their subjects often pose, smile and look directly at the camera, reacting to the camera and its presence.

Read more: When the media cover mass shootings, would depicting the carnage make a difference?

Journalists, on the other hand, try to show life as it is, not as people necessarily want us to see it.

So interaction does depend on the situation and the subject. For example, for those in a traumatic scenario, such as in the aftermath of a disaster that may be in the public interest to share, such interaction might not be appropriate, at least not initially. As one of my participants noted:

In those events people are already stressed and then they become aware or conscious that they’ve been photographed in their most vulnerable state. It might affect them more.

Giving coverage depth and nuance

Generally, when journalists do not interact with their subjects, they risk getting facts wrong, including when they misidentify subjects or introduce factual errors.

They also risk relying on existing narratives and experiences to inform their coverage, which can result in overly broad, generalised, and stereotypical coverage, such as when people link skin colour with criminality.

Interaction can make coverage altogether better, giving a representation depth and nuance, such as uncovering why a person is attending an event, what it means to them and how they became involved.

However, to have such interaction requires a social and economic environment where journalists are provided the time and resources to accomplish such goals. This is a challenge in freelancer-heavy markets.

Read more: Can one terrible image change the direction of a humanitarian crisis?

What’s more, while almost everyone can create and edit visual media now through their phones, the circumstances of that process are so diverse it can be difficult to always trust the visuals produced.

A big difference between these everyday images and photojournalism is ethics. Journalists should be driven by their commitment to the truth, and that means being more invested in creating nuanced coverage.

– ref. Photojournalists are telling an important story and they should interact with their subjects – http://theconversation.com/photojournalists-are-telling-an-important-story-and-they-should-interact-with-their-subjects-124882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Bradstock, Professor, Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, University of Wollongong

Last week saw an unprecedented outbreak of large, intense fires stretching from the mid-north coast of New South Wales into central Queensland.

The most tragic losses are concentrated in northern NSW, where 970,000 hectares have been burned, three people have died, and at least 150 homes have been destroyed.

A catastrophic fire warning for Tuesday has been issued for the Greater Sydney, Greater Hunter, Shoalhaven and Illawarra areas. It is the first time Sydney has received a catastrophic rating since the rating system was developed in 2009.

No relief is in sight from this extremely hot, dry and windy weather, and the extraordinary magnitude of these fires is likely to increase in the coming week. Alarmingly, as Australians increasingly seek a sea-change or tree-change, more people are living in the path of these destructive fires.

Read more: It’s only October, so what’s with all these bushfires? New research explains it

Unprecedented state of emergency

Large fires have happened before in northern NSW and southern Queensland during spring and early summer (for example in 1994, 1997, 2000, 2002, and 2018 in northern NSW). But this latest extraordinary situation raises many questions.

It is as if many of the major fires in the past are now being rerun concurrently. What is unprecedented is the size and number of fires rather than the seasonal timing.

The potential for large, intense fires is determined by four fundamental ingredients: a continuous expanse of fuel; extensive and continuous dryness of that fuel; weather conditions conducive to the rapid spread of fire; and ignitions, either human or lightning. These act as a set of switches, in series: all must be “on” for major fires to occur.

The NSW north coast and tablelands, along with much of the southern coastal regions of Queensland are famous for their diverse range of eucalypt forest, heathlands and rainforests, which flourish in the warm temperate to subtropical climate.

Read more: Climate change is bringing a new world of bushfires

These forests and shrublands can rapidly accumulate bushfire fuels such as leaf litter, twigs and grasses. The unprecedented drought across much of Australia has created exceptional dryness, including high-altitude areas and places like gullies, water courses, swamps and steep south-facing slopes that are normally too wet to burn.

These typically wet parts of the landscape have literally evaporated, allowing fire to spread unimpeded. The drought has been particularly acute in northern NSW where record low rainfall has led to widespread defoliation and tree death. It is no coincidence current fires correspond directly with hotspots of record low rainfall and above-average temperatures.

Thus, the North Coast and northern ranges of NSW as well as much of southern and central Queensland have been primed for major fires. A continuous swathe of critically dry fuels across these diverse landscapes existed well before last week, as shown by damaging fires in September and October.

High temperatures and wind speeds, low humidity, and a wave of new ignitions on top of pre-existing fires has created an unprecedented situation of multiple large, intense fires stretching from the coast to the tablelands and parts of the interior.

More people in harm’s way

Many parts of the NSW north coast, southern Queensland and adjacent hinterlands have seen population growth around major towns and cities, as people look for pleasant coastal and rural homes away from the capital cities.

The extraordinary number and ferocity of these fires, plus the increased exposure of people and property, have contributed to the tragic results of the past few days.

Read more: How a bushfire can destroy a home

Communities flanked by forests along the coast and ranges are highly vulnerable because of the way fires spread under the influence of strong westerly winds. Coastal communities wedged between highly flammable forests and heathlands and the sea, are particularly at risk.

As a full picture of the extent and location of losses and damage becomes available, we will see the extent to which planning, building regulations, and fire preparation has mitigated losses and damage.

These unprecedented fires are an indication that a much-feared future under climate change may have arrived earlier than predicted. The week ahead will present high-stakes new challenges.

The most heavily populated region of the nation is now at critically dry levels of fuel moisture, below those at the time of the disastrous Christmas fires of 2001 and 2013. Climate change has been predicted to strongly increase the chance of large fires across this region. The conditions for Tuesday are a real and more extreme manifestation of these longstanding predictions.

Read more: Where to take refuge in your home during a bushfire

Whatever the successes and failures in this crisis, it is likely that we will have to rethink the way we plan and prepare for wildfires in a hotter, drier and more flammable world.

– ref. Drought and climate change were the kindling, and now the east coast is ablaze – http://theconversation.com/drought-and-climate-change-were-the-kindling-and-now-the-east-coast-is-ablaze-126750

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Thorburn, co-Group Leader, Brain & Mitochondrial Research, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Mitochondrial donation is an assisted reproductive technology sometimes described as “three-parent IVF”. It’s designed for women at high risk of passing on faulty mitochondrial DNA and having a child with severe mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondrial diseases comprise at least 300 different genetic conditions which affect the energy-producing structures within human cells, impacting organ function.

Mitochondrial donation involves combining the 20,000 or so unique nuclear genes from the mother with the same number from the father – but replacing the mother’s 37 unique mitochondrial DNA genes with mitochondria from a donor egg.

In terms of genetic contribution (physical and personality traits), it would be more accurate to call mitochondrial donation “2.002-parent IVF”.

Read more: Meet mama, papa and mama: how three-parent IVF works

Mitochondrial donation was legalised in the UK in 2015. Now, Australia is considering introducing it.

Couples would be able to access the procedure if the mother has a family history of mitochondrial DNA disease, which may apply to about 60 births in Australia each year.

Mitochondrial disease

Mitochondria are small structures within our cells that regulate many aspects of metabolism. In particular, they convert sugars, fats and proteins into a form of energy our cells can use.

At least one in 5,000 babies will be affected by a severe mitochondrial disease during their lifetime. Problems in mitochondrial energy generation can present at any age and affect any organ system, alone or in combination.

We don’t have effective therapies so, tragically, most affected children die before age five from respiratory failure, heart failure, liver failure or other causes.

More than half of patients don’t develop symptoms until adulthood. But they can suffer debilitating symptoms such as muscle weakness, diabetes, deafness, blindness, strokes, seizures, heart failure, kidney disease and early death.

Read more: Viewpoints: the promise and perils of three-parent IVF

In about half of patients with mitochondrial disorders, the cause is a problem in one of the 20,000 nuclear genes we inherit from each parent. This is the case with other inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis and thalassaemia.

In the other half it’s due to a problem in one of the 37 genes in the circular chromosome of mitochondrial DNA that lies outside the nucleus and is inherited only from the mother’s mitochondria. This is where mitochondrial donation can help.

While couples with a family history of conditions like muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis can use IVF technologies to have a child who will not be affected, these options are generally unreliable for the prevention of mitochondrial DNA disease.

This procedure would offer Australian couples with a family history of mitochondrial DNA disease access to a reproductive technology to facilitate conception of a healthy child genetically related to both parents.

Safety and effectiveness

Mitochondrial donation can be performed either prior to or shortly after fertilisation. In both cases, this is before the fertilized egg becomes an embryo.

However, a small number of maternal mitochondria are carried over, leaving the potential for reversion to mutant mitochondrial DNA.

It’s also possible the donor mitochondrial DNA will be incompatible with the parents’ nuclear genes, potentially causing disease.

Girls born following mitochondrial donation will pass on the donor mitochondrial DNA to any descendants. If any mutant mitochondrial DNA was carried over, it could potentially cause disease in her descendants.

For this reason a review in the United States recommended the procedure should be restricted to implanting male embryos only.

Read more: Explainer: what are mitochondria and how did we come to have them?

A number of scientists have suggested the proposed safety issues may be less relevant to clinical practice because they were based on, for example, inbred mouse models or human embryonic stem cells cultured in the lab.

Some reassurance may also be found in studies describing macaque monkeys born following mitochondrial donation. Meanwhile, human studies have reported apparently healthy children being born following mitochondrial donation or what’s called ooplasmic transfer of a small proportion of mitochondria from a donor egg.

But those human studies avoided regulatory scrutiny and are limited by poor scientific design, while the macaque studies have not been followed through to adulthood yet. So some uncertainty remains about the safety and effectiveness of mitochondrial donation.

Lessons from the UK

The approval process in the UK included four separate scientific reviews. A panel of embryologists and geneticists considered data on human embryos, mice and monkeys that had undergone mitochondrial donation. They concluded the likely risks were low and it was safe to proceed cautiously.

Mitochondrial donation in the UK is regulated to ensure the procedure is only used for prevention of severe mitochondrial DNA disease, where the benefit to risk ratio is strong. It specifically excludes experimenting with the procedure to treat fertility, which has been proposed by some IVF groups. The benefits versus risks in this case are less clear.

Many international experts on mitochondrial biology and disease supported the approach taken in the UK. We recommend Australia take a similar path.

Read more: Safety in numbers: how three parents can beat genetic diseases

Following an Australian Senate Inquiry in 2018, the government tasked the National Health and Medical Research Council with providing expert input on legal, regulatory, scientific and ethical issues, as well as conducting public engagement.

Research suggests many Australians are likely to support this approach, but further public input is important to guide legislative change. This includes consideration of ethical issues such as the rights and interests of the egg donor.

We encourage interested parties to engage with the public consultation process before submissions close on November 29.

– ref. 3-parent IVF could prevent illness in many children (but it’s really more like 2.002-parent IVF) – http://theconversation.com/3-parent-ivf-could-prevent-illness-in-many-children-but-its-really-more-like-2-002-parent-ivf-126591

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

Media companies around the world are in an existential funk. The tech giants – Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon – have built a better mousetrap for profiting from consumers’ attention than the traditional media can offer. To add insult to injury, they use the media companies’ journalism as bait but don’t want to pay for it.

Big Tech firms also don’t see themselves as publishers and operate untroubled by demands for responsibility that come with being one.

No wonder that, according to a new international survey, media companies are increasingly unhappy with their lot.

In this episode of Media Files, Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodd talk with the survey’s author, Robert Whitehead.

Whitehead, a former editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald in the days when the masthead still made millions for what was then called Fairfax Media, shares his thoughts on what media companies could do and whether their calls for regulatory change will succeed.

Additional credits

Recording and production: Gavin Nebauer and Andy Hazel.

Theme music: Susie Wilkins.

Image

Shutterstock

– ref. Media Files: Media companies are mad as hell at tech giants and don’t want to take it anymore. But what choice do they have? – http://theconversation.com/media-files-media-companies-are-mad-as-hell-at-tech-giants-and-dont-want-to-take-it-anymore-but-what-choice-do-they-have-126352

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Forsyth, Professor of Workplace Law, RMIT University

Is Australia’s award system so complex major corporations capable of handling millions of customers and billions of dollars can’t manage to pay employees properly?

That’s the spin flowing freely in the wake of Australian supermarket behemoth Woolworths admitting it had underpaid about 5,700 staff by up to A$300 million.

Woolies joins a conga line of companies this year admitting to shortchanging employees, from household brands Qantas, Commonwealth Bank, Bunnings and the ABC to the fine-dining empires of celebrity chefs Neil Perry and George Calombaris.

Read more: Shocking yet not surprising: wage theft has become a culturally accepted part of business

The head of the Business Council of Australia has suggested these “inadvertent payroll mistakes” are due to an overly complex industrial relations system, with “122 awards, multiple agreements, multiple clauses”.

The head of the Australian Retailers Association agrees there’s a need to “simplify the system”. Woolworths’ chief executive, Brad Banducci, has chimed in with his desire “to come back and talk about the lack of flexibility in awards when interpreted literally”.

Here’s why this blame-shifting is wrong.

The system is not as complex as employers claim

Australia’s workplace relations system has already been significantly simplified in the past 15 years.

We used to have an interlocking web of federal and state industrial relations laws and tribunals. The system had evolved without much logic over a century, from the creation of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in 1904. For a national company, it meant workers in some states might be covered by state awards and others by federal awards, with differing pay rates and conditions.

In 2005, however, the Coalition government of John Howard tackled this problem with its Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act. The Work Choices “flexibility” agenda was bad news for workers, but it did implement a national workplace relations system.

The benefit of this was recognised when the Labor government of Kevin Rudd repealed Work Choices but kept the national system with the Fair Work Act in 2009.

The national system covers companies around the country. State industrial relations laws now mostly cover state public-sector workers. Several thousand federal and state awards have been reduced to just 122 federal awards applying to specific industries and occupations.

Businesses have made things more complex for themselves

The real problem highlighted by a lot of these cases isn’t that there are so many awards with different allowances that it’s hard for someone in the payroll office to keep track. Rather it’s a problem of employers’ own making: the use of annualised salary arrangements.

Annualised salaries roll up the overtime and penalty rates workers are entitled to under an award into an annual sum. This is often done for convenience. It’s lawful only if employees are paid the same or more than their award entitlements. So it requires regular checking and monitoring.

Read more: Myths about penalty rates and those who rely on them

It is now clear many businesses caught underpaying employers were not doing this.

In the case of Woolworths, the 5,700 underpaid staff were mostly department managers placed on annualised salaries (of about A$73,000). Their salaries were supposed to cover their ordinary working hours, overtime and any other payments they were entitled to under the General Retail Industry Award. But when the actual hours being worked were calculated, it turned out the salaries amounted to less, not more, than the award.

Paying workers properly not a top priority

The central problem is that, despite all the talk of how much “we pride ourselves on putting our team first”, the need to ensure staff are paid what they are owed apparently just didn’t rate highly enough.

I’m not saying the system is devoid of intricacies. But there are many other “complex” dimensions to running a large business. Woolworths, for example, encompasses a thousand supermarkets and about 30 million customer transactions a week. The logistics of procurement, distribution and storage are immense. Imagine what it takes to keep track of use-by dates to comply with food safety regulations.

If Woolworths can do that, it’s hard to believe, with all the lawyers, accountants and professional advisers at its disposal, it couldn’t ensure it complied with industrial relations laws.

Read more: How to stop businesses stealing from their employees

The fact the federal attorney general, Christian Porter, hasn’t shied away from describing these underpayments as wage theft indicates how flimsy he thinks the case is for blaming underpayments on award complexity.

Accusing corporate Australia of being “asleep at the wheel”, he has suggested directors of companies that underpay workers might be disqualified from sitting on boards. His department has also released a discussion paper about criminal penalties for the most egregious forms of underpayment.

Clearly there is an insufficient level of deterrence. Too many businesses think they can underpay with impunity.

When a chief executive complains about having to interpret awards (which are legal documents) “literally”, it’s clear we also need a major shift in corporate culture.

– ref. No, a ‘complex’ system is not to blame for corporate wage theft – http://theconversation.com/no-a-complex-system-is-not-to-blame-for-corporate-wage-theft-126279

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roberto Musotto, Research Fellow in Cyber Security and Law, Edith Cowan University

In recent weeks, Johannesburg’s computer network was held for ransom by a hacker group called Shadow Kill Hackers. This was the second time in three months a ransomware attack has hit South Africa’s largest city. This time, however, hackers didn’t pose the usual threat.

Rather than denying the city access to its data, the standard blackmail in a ransomware attack, they threatened to publish it online. This style of attack, known as leakware, allows hackers to target more victims in a single attack – in this case the city’s citizens.

Read more: What is ransomware and how to protect your precious files from it

The latest Johannesburg attack was the second leakware attack of this type ever recorded, and a similar attack could hit Australia soon. And although our current cyberattack defences are more advanced than many countries, we could be taken by surprise because of the unique way leakware operates.

A new plan of attack

During the Johannesburg attack, city employees received a computer message saying hackers had “compromised all passwords and sensitive data such as finance and personal population information”. In exchange for not uploading the stolen data online, destroying it and revealing how they executed the breach, the hackers demanded four bitcoins (worth about A$52,663) – “a small amount of money” for a vast city council, they said.

In this case, access to data was not denied. But the threat of releasing data online can put enormous pressure on authorities to comply, or they risk releasing citizens’ sensitive information, and in doing so, betraying their trust.

The city of Johannesburg decided not to pay the ransom and to restore systems on its own. Yet we don’t know whether the data has been released online or not. The attack suggests cybercriminals will continue to experiment and innovate in a bid to defeat current prevention and defence measures against leakware attacks.

Another notable leakware attack happened a decade ago against the US state of Virginia. Hackers stole prescription drug information from the state and tried obtaining a ransom by threatening to either release it online, or sell it to the highest bidder.

When to trust the word of a cybercriminal?

Ransomware attack victims face two options: pay, or don’t pay. If they choose the latter, they need to try other methods to recover the data being kept from them.

If a ransom is paid, criminals will often decrypt the data as promised. They do this to encourage compliance in future victims. That said, paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee the release or decryption of data.

The type of attack experienced in Johannesburg poses a new incentive for criminals. Once the attackers have stolen the data, and have been paid the ransom, the data still has extractive value to them. This gives them duelling incentives about whether to publish the data or not, as publishing it would mean they could continue to extort value from the city by targeting citizens directly.

Read more: Ransomware attacks on cities are rising – authorities must stop paying out

In cases where victims decide not to pay, the solution so far has been to have strong, separate and updated data backups, or use one of the passkeys available online. Passkeys are decryption tools that help regain access to files once they’ve been held at ransom, by applying a repository of keys to unlock the most common types of ransomware.

But these solutions don’t address the negative outcomes of leakware attacks, because the “hostage” data is not meant to be released to the victim, but to the public. In this way, criminals manage to innovate their way out of being defeated by backups and decryption keys.

The traditional ransomware attack

Historically, ransomware attacks denied users access to their data, systems or services by locking them out of their computers, files or servers. This is done through obtaining passwords and login details and changing them fraudulently through the process of phishing.

It can also be done by encrypting the data and converting it to a format that makes it inaccessible to the original user. In such cases, criminals contact the victim and pressure them into paying a ransom in exchange for their data. The criminal’s success depends on both the value the data holds for the victim, and the victim’s inability to retrieve the data from elsewhere.

Some cybercriminal groups have even developed complex online “customer support” assistance channels, to help victims buy cryptocurrency or otherwise assist in the process of paying ransoms.

Trouble close to home

Facing the risk of losing sensitive information, companies and governments often pay ransoms. This is especially true in Australia. Last year, 81% of Australian companies that experienced a cyberattack were held at ransom, and 51% of these paid.

Generally, paying tends to increase the likelihood of future attacks, extending vulnerability to more targets. This is why ransomware is a rising global threat.

Read more: When it comes to ransomware, it’s sometimes best to pay up

In the first quarter of 2019, ransomware attacks went up by 118%. They also became more targeted towards governments, and the healthcare and legal sectors. Attacks on these sectors are now more lucrative than ever.

The threat of leakware attacks is increasing. And as they become more advanced, Australian city councils and organisations should adapt their defences to brace for a new wave of sophisticated onslaught.

As history has taught us, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

– ref. Hackers are now targeting councils and governments, threatening to leak citizen data – http://theconversation.com/hackers-are-now-targeting-councils-and-governments-threatening-to-leak-citizen-data-126190

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emmett Stinson, Lecturer in Writing and Literature, Deakin University

There has been no shortage of bad news for Australia’s literary and publishing sector in the last year. Major literary journals Island and Overland have been defunded. Only 2.7% of Australia Council funding went to books and writing. The Chair in Australian Literature at University of Sydney is not being renewed.

Two major projects by literary academics were recommended for funding by the Australian Research Council’s peer-review process in 2018, but were rejected by ministerial discretion. Melbourne University Publishing’s CEO, Louise Adler, resigned after the university asked for a change in editorial direction.

And now University of Western Australia has announced dramatic changes to its highly-decorated press, University of Western Australia Publishing. These changes involve not renewing the contract of Director Terri-ann White, deemed “surplus to requirements”, and an end to current publishing activities.

It would be hard to blame writers and literary academics for feeling paranoid. Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

A decline in literary publishing

In 2006, Mark Davis published The Decline of the Literary Paradigm in Australian Publishing.

He argued that between WWII and the 1990s, Australian publishers embraced their role in shaping national culture by subsidising unprofitable literary works with profits from more commercial titles. But by the 2000s, publishers had become neoliberal organisations that sought to maximise profits rather than support literary culture.

We are now seeing this same logic applied by universities.

Universities are increasingly focused on metrics driving enrolments, international rankings and research excellence. This, in turn, supports government funding and research grant income. Universities increasingly prioritise these metrics over cultural contributions that are harder to quantify.

Read more: Why Australia needs a new model for universities

A statement released by UWA claims the changes will help “to guarantee modern university publishing into the future”, foreshadowing “a mix of print, greater digitisation and open access publishing.”

This statement might appear to mirror recent events at Melbourne University Press last year, but these situations are very different.

A leading literary publisher

Academics had long questioned Melbourne University Press’ publication of works with commercial and political appeal but no clear scholarly or cultural value.

Professor Ronan McDonald summed up this view earlier this year when he wrote that Melbourne University Press was “a trade press irritatingly obliged to publish a few academic titles”.

Melbourne University reaffirmed its commitment to the Press by hiring a respected scholarly publisher, founding director of Monash University Publishing Nathan Hollier, with a track record of producing scholarly titles alongside prize-winning works for a general readership.

UWA Publishing, on the other hand, is one of our leading literary publishers, cultivating authors and significant titles often overlooked by commercial publishers.

It published Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions, which won the Miles Franklin Award in 2017; is one of Australia’s foremost publishers of poetry; and has published scholarly works by leading Australian humanities academics, such as John Frow, Ross Gibson, and Ken Gelder. It has also published a series of traditional Noongar stories retold by the award-winning author Kim Scott

It has always balanced commitments to scholarly publishing with a significant literary list.

Open access university presses: a failed experiment

The notion that a respected publishing house can be replaced by open access publishing is disproved by examining other Australian university presses, such as the now-closed University of Adelaide Press, founded in 2009 with a mission to be an open access publisher.

Read more: Grief, loss, and a glimmer of hope: Josephine Wilson wins the 2017 Miles Franklin prize for Extinctions

While the press generated many interesting titles, it failed to have a cultural impact. Open access enables free and easy dissemination of work, but this does not meant that it engages with literary culture. Scholars can access works freely, but titles are isolated from bookshops, reviews, and cultural conversations.

Sydney University Press, which was relaunched in 2003 after closing in 1987, has employed a “hybrid approach” to open access. It is now returning to a more standard university publishing model, establishing a research series with dedicated editorial boards of academics, and even publishing a novel, Joshua Lobb’s The Flight of Birds, shortlisted for the Readings New Fiction Prize in 2019.

Open access has an important role to play in academic publishing, but it is laughable to claim UWA Publishing’s cultural impact can simply be replaced through open access.

Can it be saved?

There is a campaign underway to save UWA Publishing, including a petition with over 6,000 signatures.

It is hard to know at this stage if it will have any effect. It may be the publishing house is the victim of larger financial pressures currently affecting University of Western Australia.

This, of course, is the problem for the literary sector more generally: when cuts are needed, literature is always first on the chopping block.

– ref. The open access shift at UWA Publishing is an experiment doomed to fail – http://theconversation.com/the-open-access-shift-at-uwa-publishing-is-an-experiment-doomed-to-fail-126684

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcia Langton, Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies, University of Melbourne

Over the past decades, Indigenous Australians have fought to have our voices heard. Too often, decision-makers across the country have failed to hear us and work genuinely with us. They’ve failed to commit to having decisions driven by those best-placed to inform and influence the outcomes needed to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

That’s why the announcement by Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. The minister has essentially said it’s time to hit pause and rework how we approach Indigenous policy-making in Australia.

He’s asked us to help guide this process, and we have welcomed the opportunity because we genuinely feel this is a once-in-a-generation chance to recast how decisions are made, how governments engage, and most importantly, how governments can listen to what’s really needed in Indigenous communities and affairs.

Read more: Proposed Indigenous ‘voice’ will be to government rather than to parliament

For this process to work, we all need to accept that what has come before hasn’t represented a silver bullet. And the design of this process acknowledges there isn’t necessarily one out there.

Moving forward from the Uluru Statement

When the Uluru Statement from the Heart was presented in 2017, it was a significant moment – a collective of Indigenous Australians saying the status quo had failed them and there was a need for their voices to be better heard and represented. These sentiments complemented the consultations and formation of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples in 2010.

We remain committed to the intention of the Uluru Statement, but we must acknowledge the process failed to define what a voice would look like, which is why more work must be done. The Referendum Council report also made a number of recommendations and acknowledged that more consultation would be needed to develop an appropriate model for a voice.

Both these processes introduced a number of new ideas for government to consider. While many of us have been talking about them for years, we must also acknowledge that no government – Coalition or Labor – was ever going to adopt and implement all recommendations overnight.

Appropriately, the Coalition government established a parliamentary joint select committee, led by Labor’s Pat Dodson and the Liberals’ Julian Leeser, to examine the recommendations and advise on the way forward.

The Coalition government elected to adopt a policy of co-design to develop an Indigenous voice. In other words, implementing a process that is a genuine partnership between government and Indigenous Australians and implementing the first recommendation of the joint-select committee’s report.

Read more: Albanese says Voice must be in the Constitution

What we are doing now is what government took to the election. This was the process outlined in the report, which is why there should be no surprises on the path forward.

On the question of constitutional enshrinement, many are right to be upset that this government has ruled out putting the voice in the constitution. But this is the political reality of today. It doesn’t diminish the opportunity that we have before us to make long-lasting substantial and enduring change.

How the process will work

There are two stages to the co-design process that will unfold over the next year.

The senior advisory group, which we will co-chair, will oversee two separate processes.

First, a local/regional co-design group will look at what local and regional structures are currently in place across Australia. It will examine what’s working and where we can find improvement, and importantly, how we can better harmonise these models to ensure we have the best forms of engagement possible.

As part of this, Minister Wyatt has made it clear there won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. Every community has different needs, so there will be different answers to the question of how we can help. We also know states and territories have existing processes in place. Their integrity will not be undermined.

At the same time, a national co-design group will look at models for an Indigenous voice to government.

This process should be welcomed. The minister has not ruled anything in or out. And we are committed to presenting him with a range of models to give our people a voice to address the needs of Indigenous Australians in relation to employment, education, health, housing, culture and land rights, to name just a few.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Ken Wyatt juggles identity and politics

Following this first phase, models and options will be put to the Australian people for consultation and feedback.

Everyone will have the opportunity to assess a range of models that have been developed by Indigenous Australians from across Australia.

Focusing on common ground

We don’t know what a voice, or voices, will look like yet.

But for the first time, we have a government that is acknowledging the need for an Indigenous voice and is committed to working in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to give them that voice, through a process of genuine co-design.

The critics who are deriding this process haven’t even given it an opportunity to work. This is their opportunity to work constructively with those of us who have toiled for decades to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.

If we don’t collectively grasp this opportunity, it may not come around again for a long time.

So let’s focus on the common ground – the need to finally work together and put behind us decades of underachievement in Indigenous policy-making.

The opportunity for a voice is now.

We’re prepared to lend ours to this process – and encourage everyone to join with theirs. We can be united together for all Australians and a better future for the generations of Indigenous Australians to come.

Marcia Langton and Tom Calma are the co-chairs of the Voice Co-Design Senior Advisory Group.

– ref. The government is committed to an Indigenous voice. We should give it a chance to work – http://theconversation.com/the-government-is-committed-to-an-indigenous-voice-we-should-give-it-a-chance-to-work-126683

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bart Ziino, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University

Historians have long been engaged in a fractious, sometimes spiteful, debate about the legacies of the first world war. This is especially so because the politics of the war continue to resonate in our own discussions of national identity and purpose.

We debate the extent to which the Anzac tradition reflects our understanding of what makes a good Australian, and how important our cultural affinities are with Britain. Did the war curtail a progressive spirit, and entrench political conservatism, or did it encourage a new confidence in ourselves?

These evaluations were already present the moment the war ended in November 1918. Australians had endured a terrible trauma. Sixty thousand of them were dead from a population of not quite 5 million. Another 150,000 returned sick or wounded, physically and mentally.

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

Those at home were quick to draw attention to their own sufferings, too. They had known the war not only in its military dimensions, but as an ordeal of waiting and worrying, of constantly fearing the worst. The Victorian parliamentarian John Percy Jones simply declared the war

has kept me in a condition of mental agony. I am hardly able to realise even yet that the fearful times through which we have been passing are now over.

What, then, should we make of that sacrifice? Some called the nation to unity around the experience of the war, and in doing so elevated the Anzacs to the peak of Australian virtue.

In the federal parliament, Senator Edward Millen declared:

this war, amongst other things, has made Australia a nation in a sense that it was not before. It has given us a new conception of national life.

A divided nation

But it was also clear the war had driven apart Australians in the demands it made on the people. Calls to unity faltered, as intense debates over recruiting for the army crystallised in two failed attempts to endorse compulsory military service by plebiscite.

The conscription campaigns divided Australians bitterly. Those who voted against the principle found their loyalty to nation and empire questioned. Those in favour faced accusations they betrayed Australia’s future by sending its young men to die.

Australians voted against conscription in October 1916 and again in December 1917, but the effect was still to polarise Australian politics and society. The Labor Party split over the issue. Prime Minister Billy Hughes walked out and formed government with his erstwhile opponents.

The party’s now unequivocal anti-conscription sentiments found it tarred with the brush of disloyalty and ensured a conservative ascendancy in federal politics until 1929.

Even in private life, those political divisions were deep and abiding. One woman wrote to her soldier husband at the front that she had broken off friendships over the issue:

they don’t come here now since conscription I told them what I thought of them.

Returned soldiers as ‘most deserving’

It is small wonder that those on the political left – many historians included – should feel uncomfortable about the effects of the first world war on Australian society and culture.

The tendency of the war had been to draw Australia more closely into the British Empire’s embrace. The German threat provoked deep expressions of cultural unity with Britain from Australians, and further encouraged them to see their future security in terms of even closer defence and economic ties with the empire.

The Anzac tradition itself embodied those difficult politics, as it promoted the Empire-loyal “digger” as the embodiment of the Australian national character.

Read more: 100 years since the WW1 Armistice, Remembrance Day remains a powerful reminder of the cost of war

In Anzac’s rhetoric, Australian soldiers had proved themselves the exemplars of a series of desirable qualities such as courage, initiative, and loyalty to mates. But they had not so much achieved independence for Australia as raised Australia to equality within a British brotherhood.

For those on the political left, the veneration of the digger displaced all other potential contributions to the making of Australian nationhood, including the contributions of women, pacifists and political radicals.

It reorganised hierarchies of citizenship, so returned soldiers assumed the position of the most deserving, whether in terms of government largesse or in cultural terms as the embodiment of national character.

But conservative historians have naturally been much more comfortable with that interpretation of the war’s effects than their counterparts.

It speaks to a sense that Australians held close to their British descent and traditions, while also recognising the economic and security value of continued close ties. And it gave Australians a figure whose characteristics were not only to be admired, but emulated in civic life and subsequent conflicts.

Read more: How the Great War shaped the foundations of Australia’s future

A century on from the national trauma of 1914-18, the politics of that event remain present. The kind of Australia we prefer to see depends on whether we regret or embrace the effects of the first world war on Australian politics and culture.

As we gather again on the anniversary of the end of the “war to end all wars”, we might observe that the conclusion of the war only started the long and continuing effort to come to terms with its meaning.

– ref. Why Australia is still grappling with the legacy of the first world war – http://theconversation.com/why-australia-is-still-grappling-with-the-legacy-of-the-first-world-war-126517

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neera Bhatia, Associate Professor in Law, Deakin University

This is one of our occasional Essays on Health. It’s a long read. Enjoy!

The idea of growing babies outside the body has inspired novels and movies for decades.

Now, research groups around the world are exploring the possibility of artificial gestation. For instance, one group successfully grew a lamb in an artificial womb for four weeks. Australian researchers have also experimented with artificial gestation for lambs and sharks.

And in recent weeks, researchers in The Netherlands have received €2.9m (A$4.66m) to develop a prototype for gestating premature babies.

So it’s important to consider some of the ethical issues this technology might bring.

Read more: From frozen ovaries to lab-grown babies: the future of childbirth

What is an artificial womb?

Growing a baby outside the womb is known as ectogenesis (or exogenesis). And we’re already using a form of it. When premature infants are transferred to humidicribs to continue their development in a neonatal unit, that’s partial ectogenesis.

But an artificial womb could extend the period a fetus could be gestated outside the body. Eventually we might be able to do away with human wombs altogether.

This may sound far-fetched, but many scientists working in reproductive biotechnology believe that with the necessary scientific and legal support, full ectogenesis is a real possibility for the future.

What would an artificial womb contain?

An artificial womb would need an outer shell or chamber. That’s somewhere to implant the embryo and protect it as it grows. So far, animal experiments have used acrylic tanks, plastics bags and uterine tissues removed from an organism and artificially kept alive.

An artificial womb would also need a synthetic replacement for amniotic fluid, a shock absorber in the womb during natural pregnancy.

Finally, there would have to be a way to exchange oxygen and nutrients (so oxygen and nutrients in and carbon dioxide and waste products out). In other words, researchers would have to build an artificial placenta.

Animal experiments have used complex catheter and pump systems. But there are plans to use a mini version of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a technique that allows blood to be oxygenated outside the body.

Read more: The business of IVF: how human eggs went from simple cells to a valuable commodity

Once these are in place, artificial gestation could one day become as common as IVF is today, a technique considered revolutionary a few decades ago.

And just as in the case of IVF, there are many who are concerned about what this new realm of reproductive medicine might mean for the future of creating a family.

So what are some of the ethical considerations?

Artificial wombs could help premature babies

The main discussion about artificial wombs has focused on their potential benefit in increasing the survival rate of extremely premature babies.

Currently, those born earlier than 22 weeks gestation have little-to-no hope of survival. And those born at 23 weeks are likely to suffer a range of disabilities.

Using a sealed “biobag”, which mimics the maternal womb might help extremely premature babies survive and improve their quality of life.

A biobag provides oxygen, a type of substitute amniotic fluid, umbilical cord access and all necessary water and nutrients (and medicine, if required). This could potentially allow the gestational period to be prolonged outside the womb until the baby has developed sufficiently to live independently and with good health prospects.

An artificial womb might provide an optimum environment for the fetus to grow, providing it with the appropriate balance of hormones and nutrients. It would also avoid exposing the growing fetus to external harms such as infectious diseases.

The technology might also make it easier to perform surgery on the fetus if needed.

And it could see the end of long-term hospital stays for premature infants, saving health care dollars in the process. This is particularly noteworthy considering some of the largest private insurance payments​ are currently for neonatal intensive care unit expenses.

Artificial wombs could help with infertility and fertility

This emerging reproductive technology may allow women who are infertile, either due to physiological or social reasons, ​with the chance of having a child. It may also offer opportunities for transgender women and other women born without a uterus, or those who have lost their uterus due to cancer, injury or medical conditions, to have children.

Similarly, it could allow single men and gay male couples to become parents without needing a surrogate.

Will this lead to a broader discussion about gender roles and equality in reproduction? Will it remove potential risks and expectations of pregnancy and childbirth currently only affecting women? Will this eliminate commercial surrogacy?

Equally, artificial wombs could help fertile women who for health or personal reasons choose not to be pregnant. It would allow those whose career choices, medication or lifestyle might otherwise expose a developing fetus to malformation or abnormality.

Artificial wombs may harm women, reinforce inequality and lead to discrimination

The prospect of artificial wombs might offer hope for many, but it also highlights a number of potential hazards.

For some women, using an artificial womb for gestation to continue might seem like a welcome alternative to terminating a pregnancy. But there are fears that other women thinking about an abortion might be compelled to use an artificial womb to continue gestation.

Whether artificial wombs should be allowed to influence a woman’s right to choose is already under debate.

Read more: What’s Mother’s Day if you’ve been born in a machine and raised by robots?

Artificial wombs might also further increase the gap between rich and poor. Wealthy prospective parents may opt to pay for artificial wombs, while poorer people will rely on women’s bodies to gestate their babies. Existing disparities in nutrition and exposure to pathogens between pregnancies across socio-economic divides could also be exacerbated.

This raises issues of distribution of access. Will artificial wombs receive government funding? If it does, who should decide who gets subsidised access? Will there be a threshold to meet?

Other issues concern potential discrimination individuals born via an artificial womb may face. How do we prevent discrimination or invasive publicity and ensure individuals’ origin stories are not subject to negative public curiosity or ridicule?

Others might consider artificial wombs to be deeply repugnant and fundamentally against the natural reproductive order.

Preparing for future wombs

Currently, there is no prototype of an artificial womb for humans. And the technology is very much in its infancy. Yet we do need to consider ethical and legal issues before rushing headlong into this reproductive technology.

Not only do we need to ensure the technology is safe and works, we need to consider whether it’s the right path to take for different circumstances.

It might be easier to defend using artificial wombs in emergency situations, such as saving the lives of extremely premature neonates. However, using them in other circumstances might need broader social and policy considerations.

Read more: We must develop ‘techno-wisdom’ to prevent technology from consuming us

Without first establishing clear regulatory and ethico-legal frameworks, the development and release of artificial wombs could be problematic. We need to clearly outline pregnancy termination rights, parenthood and guardianship issues, limitations to experimentation, and other issues before the technology is fully realised and available. We need to do this soon rather than allowing the law to lag behind the science.

We recommend:

• approved protocols for testing artificial wombs that gradually extend the gestation period

• funding that prevents discrimination on socio-economic grounds. This might be in the form of government funding to ensue a wide range of groups have access to the technology

• clear legal guidelines for the status of ectogenetic embryos and fetuses, including what happens if prospective parents die, divorce or disagree on how to proceed

• guidelines for access that calm public fears about misuse of emerging reproductive technologies.

It is easy to get carried away with visions of utopian or dystopian societies. As radical and futuristic as artificial wombs might sound, it is important to pause and reflect on the present.

While this technology may solve some existing problems concerning inequality in reproduction, there are many other issues that demand our immediate attention.

Improving maternal health services, equal opportunity in the workplace, and reducing the impact of poor social determinants of health on fetal outcomes are all pressing concerns we must address now before we can consider what the future of reproductive biotechnology might hold.

Read more: Where we come from determines how we fare – the fetal origins of adult disease

– ref. We may one day grow babies outside the womb, but there are many things to consider first – http://theconversation.com/we-may-one-day-grow-babies-outside-the-womb-but-there-are-many-things-to-consider-first-125709

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Thornton, Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

A meeting on Friday between state and federal environment ministers to discuss Australia’s recycling and waste crisis has been disappointingly inconclusive.

Some targets were set for banning the export of various used materials: glass exports will be banned by July 2020 and mixed plastics by July 2021. New focus was put on managing other waste, such as batteries and tyres.

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

Other actions agreed upon include:

• an 80% recovery rate of material across all waste streams,
• significant increases to government procurement of recycled materials, and
• halving the amount of organic waste sent to landfill.

So, not all doom and gloom.

But it was reasonable to expect this meeting to deliver more concrete strategies. We have known since 2013 China would stop accepting low-quality rubbish imports; the time has well and truly come for real action.

Inquiry upon inquiry upon…

In 2018 the commonwealth, state and local governments came together to agree to a National Waste Policy.

Providing 14 strategies, it was expected specific detail on actual targets and implementation schedules would follow.

Moving forward, at a December 2018 meeting of environment ministers another set of actions was agreed upon, again with an understanding that detail on implementation and targets would be developed.

Read more: How recycling is actually sorted, and why Australia is quite bad at it

Following another COAG meeting in August 2019 Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the export of recyclables would be banned as “soon as possible”. In Tuvalu for the Pacific Islands Forum later that month, Morrison made a commitment to “attack waste in the South Pacific”.

And in October this year the commonwealth government announced an inquiry into Australia’s waste management and recycling industries.

The states and councils are acting

So are we really any closer to solving the waste and recycling problem?

There has been some commendable efforts by state and local governments. Victoria currently has a number of inquiries, reviews and reports underway into improving recycling and waste management.

Read more: The ‘recycling crisis’ may be here to stay

South Australia had a task force to advise the government on legislation to phase out single-use plastics. Queensland has similarly released a plastic pollution reduction plan.

In addition, councils are looking at a variety of schemes to better manage waste. Yarra Council is providing an extra bin for glass, for example, and Ballarat has banned it from the household recycling stream.

While each plan has been well thought out by the councils, the main issue is the lack of consistency. When someone is visiting or moves across council lines, they may inadvertently contaminate recycling streams by simply doing what they would when at their own home.

Better options do exist

A recent draft report from Infrastructure Victoria provided a range of options for improving waste and recycling management. These options were provided to (among other reasons) promote discussion as to what could be the preferred options.

This draft report covered the many areas that could be improved – such as the processing sector, use of recycled materials, waste to energy, organics management and so on. Yet the one proposal that received media attention was the suggestion that households have six bins for sorting waste and recyclables.

Read more: Recycling plastic bottles is good, but reusing them is better

After all these inquiries, meetings and recommended actions by the various levels of government, where are we at? Recyclables are still going to landfill, many in the community are still confused as to how to correctly sort waste and recyclables, and the issue of contamination has not been resolved.

It was hoped this November meeting would finally result in specific actions and detailed solutions.

Where are the commitments to waste avoidance and reduction initiatives? What about community education to reduce contamination? Or a way to ensure consistency within and across the states and territories?

Education is vital for reducing the inappropriate mixing of recycled materials. Yet very little has been done, excluding some sterling efforts by local councils. This is an easy and relatively cheap action. It is very difficult to understand why we don’t, for example, see national TV ads indicating correct recycling.

There is also compelling evidence container deposit schemes are effective and can significantly reduce ocean plastic.

Finally, as the industry peak body has said, the ultimate issue is the lack of sophisticated reprocessing and manufacturing facilities in Australia to handle paper and plastic recyclables domestically.

Read more: Deposit schemes reduce drink containers in the ocean by 40%

So now we await the next environment ministers meeting, scheduled for early 2020, for more detail on schedules and implementation.

Perhaps we should just settle back, take a deep breath, and keep doing what we’re doing. More band-aid solutions may only create greater confusion, and ultimately fail to reduce waste or increase proper recycling.

– ref. Another COAG meeting, another limp swing at the waste problem – http://theconversation.com/another-coag-meeting-another-limp-swing-at-the-waste-problem-126686

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

There is a hidden problem with reading in Australian schools. Ten years’ worth of NAPLAN data show improvements in years 3, 5 and 9. But reading progress has slowed dramatically between years 5 and 7.

And, somewhat surprisingly, the downward trend is strongest for the most advantaged students.

Years 5-7 typically include the transition from primary to secondary school. Yet the reading slowdown can’t just be blamed on this transition, because numeracy progress between the years has improved. So, what is going wrong with reading?

Reading base camp is higher each year

Progress in reading is like climbing a mountain. The better your reading skills, the higher you are. The higher you are, the further you can see. And the further you can see, the more sense you can make of the world.

Like a real mountain, the reading mountain must be tackled in stages. NAPLAN – the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy – provides insight into those stages, by measuring reading skills at years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

The good news is that the average level of reading skills of year 3 students – reading base camp – is getting higher.

To make the results easier to interpret, I’ve converted the NAPLAN data into the equivalent year level of reading achievement. For instance, in 2010, children in year 3 were reading at equivalent year level 2.6 when they sat NAPLAN. This means they were four-and-a-half months behind a benchmark set at the long-run average for metropolitan non-Indigenous students.

By 2019, the mean reading achievement among all year 3 children was equivalent to year 3.0, meeting this benchmark.

Over ten years, the improvement has been worth about five months of extra learning.

Reading progress improved in years 7-9

There is more good news in secondary school. Recent cohorts have made better progress between years 7 and 9 than earlier cohorts. My best estimate is that learning progress has increased by almost three months of learning over this two-year stage of schooling.

Students in years 3-5 haven’t made the same gains. But (if anything) they are heading in the right direction.

But progress in years 5-7 has fallen

Something is going wrong between year 5 and 7. Students are making six months less progress than they used to. It’s not that they are getting worse at reading; they just aren’t climbing as fast as previous cohorts.

This drop in reading progress can’t simply be attributed to the transition from primary to secondary. Among other things, numeracy progress during this stage of schooling has increased by about six months since 2010.

It’s as if students have started skipping a term in each of their final two years of primary school, but only in English, not in maths. And not all groups of students are affected equally.

Advantaged students are affected the most

Reading progress has slowed the most for students from advantaged backgrounds. For instance, students whose parents are senior managers make ten months less progress from year 5 to 7 than earlier cohorts.

Interestingly, the student groups with the biggest slowdown in years 5-7 have also shown the most improvement in year 5 reading.

This pattern – big gains in year 5 that evaporate by year 7 – rules out poor early reading instruction as a cause. This reading problem isn’t about phonics, but a failure to stretch students in upper primary school.

My analysis also shows:

• the years 5-7 reading slump is happening in every state and territory
• Queensland and Western Australia had big drops in years 5-7 reading progress in 2015, the year those two states moved year 7 from primary to secondary
• students from English-speaking backgrounds are affected more than those who don’t speak English at home
• neither gender nor Indigenous status affects the strength of the slowdown.

So, what is going on?

Maybe some primary school teachers focus more on helping students reach a good minimum standard of reading, and not on how far they go. This fits with the trend in year 5; no need to push hard if students are already doing well.

But it doesn’t explain the large drop in progress in Queensland and WA the year they shifted year 7 to secondary school.

Maybe schools push hard on literacy and numeracy until students have done their last NAPLAN test in that school. This would help explain the 2015 drop in reading progress for Queensland and WA, but not the divergent picture for reading and numeracy progress, including in the Queensland/WA change-over year.

Maybe students are reading less as technology becomes ubiquitous. This could explain the difference between reading and numeracy. But why would it reduce progress between years 5 and 7 but not between years 3 and 5 or 7 and 9?

Increased use of technology also fails to explain the sudden slump in Queensland and WA in 2015.

Other potential explanations need to explain the complex pattern of outcomes, including the fact the reading slowdown is so widespread even while numeracy progress is going the other way.

My best guess is that some advantaged primary schools focus on literacy and numeracy until the year 5 NAPLAN tests are done, but then switch to project-based learning, leadership or year 6 graduation projects. These “gap year” activities don’t displace maths hour (which drives numeracy progress) but may disrupt reading hour or other activities that build reading skills.

Meanwhile, disadvantaged primary schools are very aware of the need to keep building their students’ reading levels to set them up for success in secondary school.

This story is speculative, but it fits the data.

What next?

Education system leaders need to figure out what is happening in reading between years 5 and 7, and quickly. They should look closely at upper primary years, as well as the transition to secondary school. This is much more subtle than a traditional back-to-basics narrative.

In the meantime, teachers in years 5, 6 and 7 should be aware their students are making less progress than previous cohorts, and focus on extending reading capabilities for students who are already doing well. All students deserve to climb higher on their reading mountain.

– ref. Reading progress is falling between year 5 and 7, especially for advantaged students: 5 charts – http://theconversation.com/reading-progress-is-falling-between-year-5-and-7-especially-for-advantaged-students-5-charts-124634

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hussein Dia, Professor of Future Urban Mobility, Swinburne University of Technology

The new transport projects governments are constantly announcing are expensive. In the recent New South Wales and Victorian elections, the returned state governments’ transport infrastructure promises added up to A$165 billion. What’s mostly missing from the promised transport solutions is smart technology that provides higher benefits at a fraction of the cost – when retrofitting existing roads in particular. The benefit-to-cost ratio can be more than a dozen times greater than for a new road.

Clearly, infrastructure spending helps to drive the economy. These projects also deliver benefits to the community, including increased road safety, shorter travel times and fewer delays.

The economic merit of these projects is usually captured using a benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR). For example, the BCR of the A$15.8 billion North East Link road project in Melbourne is estimated to be 1.25 – for every A$1 invested, A$1.25 is returned in benefits to the economy and community. For the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel, a best-case BCR of 3.3 has been reported.

But are we getting good value for money? Could cheaper alternatives deliver more benefits?

Technology offers smarter, cheaper solutions

Technology offers transport solutions that provide higher benefits at a fraction of the cost of building new infrastructure. Collectively known as intelligent transport systems, these are widely recognised today as better answers for smart transport outcomes.

When comparing different “congestion-busting” options, “building more roads” provides, on average, a BCR of 3.0. This is dwarfed by the much higher BCR values of tech solutions.

Read more: Our new PM wants to ‘bust congestion’ – here are four ways he could do that

Adaptive traffic signal control allows traffic signals to change based on actual traffic demand. This yields, on average, a BCR of 40.

Traffic signals along a route can be coordinated to create “green waves” for platoons of vehicles to travel without stopping. These solutions are effective for congested cities that experience rapid traffic growth and changing traffic patterns.

Corridor management systems use technology to control networks of motorways and urban roads. The average BCR is 24.

On managed motorways, ramp signals, variable speed limit signs and traveller information systems are proven tools to respond in real time to changing traffic conditions. In one case, a managed motorway reduced travel times by 42% and accidents by 30%.

Traffic incident management, which has a BCR of 21, includes technologies that aid quick detection and removal of crashes. They also detect other incidents such as broken-down vehicles or spilled loads that reduce road capacity. The systems rely on smart software that analyses sensor data in real time.

Benefits include a 40% reduction in time to detect incidents. The technology also reduces incident duration by 23% and road crashes by 35%.

Combining tech solutions magnifies benefits

When solutions are combined, benefits are amplified. The Florida Department of Transportation implements a transport technology program on its networks. The solutions include incident management, ramp signalling, traveller information and express lanes. Reduced incident duration and traffic delays are among the key benefits.

In 2018, the benefits of this program totalled almost US$3.1 billion (A$4.5 billion). The costs were US$70.3 million (A$102 million). That’s a BCR of 43.7.

In the UK, the cost of implementing technology solutions on the M42 motorway was US$150 million (A$218 million) and took two years to complete. Widening the road to produce the same outcome would have taken 10 years and cost US$800 million (A$1.16 billion).

A shift in priorities is needed

Considerable investment in transport infrastructure is still required. It should be guided by strong business cases and aligned with community values and expectations.

Read more: A closer look at business cases raises questions about ‘priority’ national infrastructure projects

However, technology is getting to the point where it’s making a serious difference in tackling the mega challenges facing our cities. Its role must be prioritised.

The benefits are compelling. Intelligent technology systems improve the use of existing assets and increase their operational life. They enhance traveller experience and reduce reliance on building new roads. And they deliver superior value for money.

But widespread deployment of these technologies is still limited. To spur change and unlock value, we must move beyond a project-by-project approach.

Learn from the best

Governments can be guided by leading nations in this field such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore. Their citizens experience the benefits every day. Smart transport solutions improve their quality of life through easier travel, less congestion and more reliable services.

The recurring policy themes in these countries include a national vision of smart infrastructure and commitment to funding. They prioritise investment in research and trials, standards development and partnerships with industry. These are key factors in the success of their tech-driven transport solutions.

These are the policies and investments Australia should prioritise. They will modernise our transport systems in innovative ways that lift our economy and living standards.

– ref. Smart tech systems cut congestion for a fraction of what new roads cost – http://theconversation.com/smart-tech-systems-cut-congestion-for-a-fraction-of-what-new-roads-cost-125718

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Johnson, Lecturer (Casual) in Creative Writing, University of Tasmania

In a large storage room in the basement of the former Musée d’Histoires Naturelles in Lyon, France, stands a rare relic of the colonial era: a full-body plaster cast of an 18-year-old Badtjala man from K’gari (Fraser Island), Queensland.

While the history of Europe’s “human zoos” is well documented from a European perspective, the research behind my novel Paris Savages builds on knowledge of Australia’s little-known connection to this confronting past; a past with lasting and damaging legacies.

Boni, l’australien

The man from whom the cast was made, Bonangera (Benanyora, Bonny or Boni) stands naked and holds a boomerang over his head. The plaster has been painted a dark brown. His eyes have been coloured red. Rows of horizontal cicatrices, or tribal markings, are visible as scars on his chest. Also discovered in storage were casts of the man’s hands and feet.

The collection began to draw attention in 2009 when researchers at the museum, since relocated and now known as the Musée des Confluences, linked it to the European visit of an Aboriginal trio from Fraser Island.

From the inscription on the base of the plaster foot, “Boni, l’australien”, it is likely this was the same “Bonny” famous physician and anatomist Rudolf Virchow examined in 1883.

Also studied were two other Badtjala people: Jurano/Jurono/Durono (aged 22), known in Europe as Alfred, and Dorondera/Borondera (15), known as Susanne. German man Louis Müller took the group to Germany in 1882 to perform in ethnographic exhibitions.

Cast in plaster

During our document research in Germany, Birgit Scheps of Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig and I discovered a missing cast of Jurano was in fact a death mask, establishing that at least one of the troupe sadly died in Europe.

From the Lyon full-body cast, Bonangera appears proud and serious. It is likely he was concealing pain, for the gypsum plaster was often contaminated with lime and burnt the skin. But it is impossible to know how he truly felt.

Indeed, there are few first-hand accounts of any of the 35,000 performers from around the globe who French researchers estimate toured the West between 1810 and the mid-20th century.

Throughout Germany, France and Switzerland, Bonangera threw boomerangs and spears, participated in mock fights with Jurano, and climbed tall poles vaguely reminiscent of the giant satinay and hoop pine trees that grew out of sand on Fraser Island. He danced and sang in a voice described in the German newspaper Illustrirte Zeitung as reminiscent of “the monotone negro melodies of America”.

In storage

In the Lyon basement, remnants of other “ethnic shows” include a canoe used by “Laplanders”, Sami people.

Inside a compactus are masks and shields. Bonangera stares straight ahead, his expression unchanged for, what would now be, 136 years. In an era aspiring towards postcolonialism, the cast is chilling.

Daniel Browning’s heavily researched documentary on the discovery of the cast, Cast Among Strangers, features an interview with acclaimed Badtjala artist and academic Fiona Foley, who travelled with Browning to Europe.

Disturbed by the silences in the history, I contacted Dr Foley about drawing on this episode as the basis for a novel. She informed others in her community and fact-checked aspects of the work.

Browning’s research establishes that members of the Badtjala group toured cities including Hamburg, Leipzig, Berlin, Dresden, Basel and Lyon. It is now known that Bonangera also visited Geneva. Groups were commonly shown at mass exhibition sites such as Paris’s Jardin d’Acclimatation.

The Dresden casts of Bonangera and “Susanne” were made at the Berlin Panoptikum, where my research with Hilke Thode-Arora and Scheps confirmed the group performed. Also in the Dresden storage space were casts of Aboriginal performers from Queensland’s Hinchenbrook and Palm islands who, Roslyn Poignant writes in Professional Savages, were taken by self-confessed “man-hunter” R. A. Cunningham to Europe and America, where they performed in P.T. Barnum’s shows.

While the Sami negotiated contracts, even going on strike if conditions were not met, an 1882 account in the German journal Das Ausland has Dorondera turning her back on the audience. Was she asserting her agency over conditions she was unhappy with?

Without trace

After performances throughout Germany, according to the Berlin Panoptikum archives, one of the Badtjala men (likely Jurano) was admitted to Berlin’s Charité hospital in 1883. Dorondera disappears from the records without trace.

On August 23 1883, the French newspaper Le Progrès covered Bonangera’s Lyon performances with a “Samoyed” troupe (indigenous people from the Russian arctic) and their reindeer. It is an incredible image to imagine.

His last recorded sighting was reported in Salut Public on September 3 1883. Bonangera performed in Lyon throwing a boomerang, the racist account marvelling that people “little more than monkeys” could accomplish something by “playing” that Europeans could not do. We can only wonder what Bonangera made of his audience.

The last “human zoo” to close featured people from the Congo who were exhibited at the Brussels World’s Fair. The year was 1958.

– ref. Frozen in time, the casts of Indigenous Australians who performed in ‘human zoos’ are chilling – http://theconversation.com/frozen-in-time-the-casts-of-indigenous-australians-who-performed-in-human-zoos-are-chilling-124982

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

The much-awaited NSW coroner’s report into music festival deaths was released today.

In the report, Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame recommends pill testing, a ban on sniffer dogs and a reduction in the number of strip searches, among other measures to prevent deaths.

These evidence-based strategies for harm reduction are to be applauded. But it remains to be seen if the NSW government will change its stance on drug use and harm reduction to implement the coroner’s recommendations.

Read more: How does MDMA kill?

The inquest examined the deaths of six young people who died during or just after attending music festivals in NSW between December 2017 and January 2019.

All died as a result of taking MDMA or ecstasy. Five of the six also had other drugs in their system.

In the report, Grahame said:

It can be hard for the community to grapple with some of the underlying issues when drug use is illegal and drug users are stigmatised. It is difficult to properly explain the potential risks to young people if our only permissible message is “just say no”. While we continue to hide the true extent of drug use, it remains inherently more dangerous.

However, Grahame noted the NSW government had already put in place, since these deaths, a range of measures including more formalised emergency medical responses at festivals and clinical guidelines on how to manage drug incidents before the person reaches hospital.

She also noted festival organisers had implemented strategies that improved safety since these deaths.

What did the coroner recommend?

Drug checking

The coroner recommended the government introduce drug checking, which includes a range of approaches designed to test the content of illicit drugs and alert people to dangerous substances. She said the evidence for it was “compelling”.

Read more: Testing festival goers’ pills isn’t the only way to reduce overdoses. Here’s what else works

These approaches include mobile facilities at festivals to test drugs brought by festival goers with direct feedback to them, sometimes referred to as “pill testing”.

Grahame recommended a mobile unit at festivals and other events to test drugs acquired by police.

She also recommended a fixed site facility. This is a permanent site, outside the festival, where people could bring drugs to be tested and receive harm-reduction advice.

These recommendations are a significant step forward and would place NSW in line with international best practice.

No more sniffer dogs and fewer strip searches

Grahame recommended stopping the use of drug sniffer dogs at festivals because of the harm it causes.

This includes festival goers taking drugs before the festival (pre-loading), taking double the dose, or panicking and taking drugs quickly to avoid detection.

Read more: It’s time to change our drug dog policies to catch dealers, not low-level users at public events

She also recommended strip searches should be used only in extreme circumstance.

She said:

Risky ingestion and secretion, trauma especially when coupled with strip search and the destruction of trust between young people and police are all serious concerns.

She said the NSW police commissioner should issue operational guidelines to direct how police should exercise their discretion with illicit drug use and possession at festivals. She encouraged police to engage more positively and not to take punitive approaches with festival goers.

Read more: Unlawful strip searches are on the rise in NSW and police aren’t being held accountable

Other recommendations included:

• the NSW government facilitate a meeting with a range of stakeholders, including the health department, festival health services, festival promoters and other experts, to ensure mandatory minimum standards for policing, medical services and harm reduction at music festivals

• the redefining of drug use as a health rather than law-enforcement issue

• a drug summit to develop evidence-based drug policy. She recommended the summit include consideration of guidelines for drug-checking services, drug education, decriminalisation of personal use drugs and regulation of some currently illicit drugs.

These recommendations are key because it’s important stakeholders work together with the best interest of young people at heart. Our best approach, as the coroner has indicated, is to keep young people as safe as possible in the short period in which they experiment with illicit drugs.

She also recommended improved drug education for young people and their parents.

What happens next?

Policy on alcohol and other drugs is largely the responsibility of the states and territories. So, it will be up to the NSW government to implement most of these recommendations.

However, the government has already shown strong opposition to what we know works to reduce harms (like drug checking) and escalated what we know increases harms (like drug dogs and strip searches). We need to wait and see whether it can find a way to re-adjust its position on drug use and harm reduction and follow the coroner’s recommendations.

If this happens, NSW will be among the most innovative and evidence-based states in Australia on drug policy, and among leaders globally.

– ref. When the coroner looked at how to cut drug deaths at music festivals, the evidence won. But what happens next? – http://theconversation.com/when-the-coroner-looked-at-how-to-cut-drug-deaths-at-music-festivals-the-evidence-won-but-what-happens-next-126669

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Moscova, Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, UNSW

New research reported in the media says the clitoris plays an important role in fertility and reproduction, making it more than an organ that exists purely for sexual pleasure.

But some media headlines were misleading, including:

The truth about the clitoris: why it’s not just built for pleasure

and

New clue reveals how a woman can conceive, and it all comes down to the clitoris

The reports were based on a controversial review by retired UK scientist Dr Roy Levin published this week in the journal Clinical Anatomy.

He brings together evidence to support a new theory that the clitoris is equally important for reproduction as it is for sexual pleasure, which he first proposed in 2018.

This is controversial as the clitoris has not previously been given a direct role in reproduction. Levin says this is because other researchers have been so fixated on its role in sexual pleasure they have completely overlooked its other role.

Read more: Why the clitoris doesn’t get the attention it deserves – and why this matters

How the clitoris has courted controversy

Levin’s review is the latest development in a long history of controversy about the clitoris. Over the centuries, anatomists have debated its function, a discussion often dominated by men.

As early as 1559, Matteo Realdo Colombo, an anatomist at the University of Padua in Italy, termed the clitoris:

the seat of a woman’s delight.

However, his contemporary Andreas Vesalius, known as the “father of modern anatomy”, dismissed the proposition. He said the clitoris was an anomaly and simply does not exist in normal healthy women.

Others saw the clitoris as a liability.

In the 1820s, English surgeon and president of the Society of British Medicine Isaac Baker Brown thought the clitoris was a source of “hysteria” and epilepsy. And he said it should be removed to cure hysteria and other forms of “female madness”.

And as late as 1905, Sigmund Freud considered clitoral orgasm to be a sign of a woman’s psychological immaturity.

Read more: Health Check: clash of the orgasms, clitoral vs vaginal

Where are we today?

Today, most scientists agree the main function of the clitoris is for sexual pleasure. But how did we come to have such an organ and why would we need one?

Researchers just last month proposed the clitoral orgasm is a remnant of our evolutionary past that once served to induce ovulation during intercourse.

Read more: ‘Is it normal for girls to masturbate?’

Another view of the clitoris argues it allows women to discriminate between sexual partners based on who can help them reach orgasm with the right type of stimulation.

A third common view is clitoral orgasms lead to stronger bonding between sexual partners preparing them for childbearing and parenting.

So how does this fit with the latest claim?

This latest paper argues stimulation of the clitoris activates parts of the brain, leading to multiple physiological changes in the vaginal tract.

These changes lead to vaginal lubrication, an increase in vaginal oxygen, an increase in temperature and decrease in acidity, so facilitating reproduction by creating the right environment for the sperm.

While it’s not unusual for organs to have two functions, Levin’s view needs further investigation.

Some of the physiological changes he describes occur when a woman is sexually aroused, before her clitoris is stimulated.

For example, women can experience vaginal lubrication and engorgement of erectile tissues while watching erotic movies, without clitoris stimulation.

Read more: Health Check: does the ‘G-spot’ exist?

He also discusses how female genital mutilation reduces a woman’s fertility, implying this is a result of circumcision of the clitoris. However, he does not cite any evidence for this.

While there is some evidence for a decline in fertility after female genital mutilation it varies between studies. The link seems to be strongest where not only the clitoris, but parts of the labia are also removed and stitched together during the procedure, narrowing the opening into the vagina.

In these cases, infertility may also be caused by the difficulty in sexual intercourse due to the narrowing of the vaginal opening, infections or other complications of the procedure.

Read more: The rise and fall of FGM in Victorian London

With this equivocal evidence, Levin’s conclusion that “the reappraisal of the functions of the clitoris as both reproductive as well as recreative are of equal importance is clearly now unavoidable”, could be disputed.

The conclusion is not quite that definite.

However, this does not mean Levin’s theory is incorrect; it just requires further investigation and discussion.

Read more: What’s the point of sex? It’s good for your physical, social and mental health

His review highlights that often the science around the clitoris has been heavily influenced by the cultural context — from feminism, through to religion and simply the morals of the time. While cultural context is important, this has diverted attention away from objectively examining scientific evidence.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this review is it may trigger a discussion on the functions of the clitoris and bring that discussion back to science.

As Levin highlights, the two proposed functions of the clitoris as an organ of both “procreation” and “recreation” are not mutually exclusive and can be of equal importance, a proposition worth examining.

– ref. Oh, oh, oh! The clitoris certainly gives pleasure. But does it also help women conceive? – http://theconversation.com/oh-oh-oh-the-clitoris-certainly-gives-pleasure-but-does-it-also-help-women-conceive-126593

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel Howard, Doctoral Candidate, University of South Australia

This week, the royal commission into disability heard horrifying stories of children’s experiences in the education system. It is no wonder children with disabilities are over-represented among the tens of thousands of Australians who leave school before finishing year 12.

Many early school leavers are bored or disengaged; some are escaping bullying, while others do so due to poor mental health. Some who exit say they simply didn’t fit in the mainstream system.

Read more: Excluded and refused enrolment: report shows illegal practices against students with disabilities in Australian schools

Early school leavers are more likely to be involved in the justice system and suffer from worsening mental health. They also enter adulthood without skills or qualifications they may need to gain employment.

One way governments have addressed this issue is to provide flexible learning options, which cater for the unique needs of students. The aim is to help them stay connected to learning, but so far, evidence of their value has only been largely anecdotal.

These schools or programs come in the form of community spaces, school annexes, stand-alone spaces and a growing number of independent schools. They have many names, including flexi schools, alternative education and flexible learning programs.

These programs are usually on the edge of the education system, which is one of the difficulties in tracking the outcomes for the disparate range of programs. Our research was conducted in South Australia, where the programs are more embedded into the state’s education system. But even here, the actual figures of early school leavers involved in these programs has been hard to come by.

What we did find, however, is a lack of significant benefit – in terms of school retention and later employment – to the programs’ participants. Despite the good intentions, it seems the flexible learning options are simply acting as a convenient safety valve for students who the mainstream has abandoned.

It seems positive…

Every state has flexible learning options. More than 70,000 Australian students of high school age were enrolled in flexible learning programs in 2019. This is up from 30,000 only five years ago.

South Australia was the first Australian state to establish flexible learning options, in 2007. This was done as a way to support and offer case management for those at risk of leaving school early. At the time, flexible learning options was hailed as a way to support social inclusion.

Our research was an analysis of several sources including government reports, records and parliamentary speechess; and relevant academic literature and news articles.

We found students with disabilities represent 8.5% of the mainstream school cohort in SA but 19% of students in flexible learning programs. Figures for Indigenous students are 5.6% and but 14% respectively.

Read more: Tens of thousands of students in alternative education

SA’s flexible learning options have a common set of positive features. They usually have a higher number of staff per student than mainstream schools. The composition of staff is different too – it includes youth and social workers as well as teachers.

Flexible learning options emphasise case management for specific needs, with attention to personalised learning programs and remediation. The removal of structures such as uniforms, age-graded lessons and strict discipline codes are a positive alternative for students disengaged from mainstream schools.

… but the outcomes are uncertain

Students and adult workers report high levels of satisfaction with flexible learning programs but the reality of low educational attainment and lack of meaningful pathways puts the efficacy of these programs in doubt.

Take the ICAN program. It has a total of more than 40,000 enrolments since its beginning in 2017, at a total cost of more than $300 million dollars – averaging around A$8,500 per year per student.

Completion of the year 12 certification or its VET equivalent is under 5%, compared to a rate of 52% for SA government schools.

One of the SA governments’ stated aims for introducing flexible learning programs was to provide qualifications so students entered adulthood with a fighting chance of employment.

We have seen reports evaluating flexible learning options, conducted for the SA education department by private consulting firm ARTD, which have since been removed from the internet. They noted there was a lack of information about the destination of students exiting flexible learning program but a destination survey estimated that only 3% secured employment of any kind.

So, what should we do with disengaged young people?

What to do with young people who leave education early is not a challenge unique to Australia. Canada, the US and UK have all taken concerted actions to deal with the issue of students dropping out, with varying success. In the UKm a system of studio schools, and university vocational colleges, were established to cater for students outside of the mainstream, with limited success.

Some of the charter schools the USA hide the issue of high-school dropouts by enrolling students who would otherwise fail.

Read more: Mainstream schools need to take back responsibility for educating disengaged students

Students will continue to experience difficulties in mainstream schools, but flexible learning options seem to be a convenient way for these schools to shirk responsibility for managing these difficulties.

Schools need to be responsive to the most disadvantaged students and not seek to exclude them to a lesser form of education. Mainstream schools should reassert their purpose of being for all students and examine how they can offer more engaging and inclusive schooling practices that enable more hopeful futures.

– ref. Are flexible learning options giving schools a convenient way out of taking responsibility for ‘difficult’ students? – http://theconversation.com/are-flexible-learning-options-giving-schools-a-convenient-way-out-of-taking-responsibility-for-difficult-students-125876

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

In its quarterly statement on monetary policy, released today, the Reserve Bank of Australia declared its preparedness to “ease monetary policy further if needed”.

This suggests the bank still thinks monetary policy – in this case lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy – could help “support sustainable growth in the economy, full employment and the achievement of the medium-term inflation target”.

But in the wake of the bank last month lowering the official interest rate to a record low and the current somewhat sad state of the Australian economy, many commentators have speculated that monetary policy doesn’t work any more.

Read more: We asked 13 economists how to fix things. All back the RBA governor over the treasurer

Is that right?

There are a number of variants of the “monetary policy doesn’t work” argument. The most basic is that the Reserve Bank has this year cut rates from 1.50% to 0.75% without any improvement to the Australian economy.

This is a textbook example of one of the classic logic fallacies known as “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (from the Latin, meaning “after this, therefore because of this”). Put simply, it assumes the rate cuts have had no effect and doesn’t account for the possibility things might have been worse had there been no cuts.

Things might have been even worse. We’ll never know.

It also ignores what might have happened if the RBA had cut sooner. Again, we can’t know for sure. It is possible, though, to make an educated guess.

When to cut rates

Had the Reserve Bank acted, say, 18 months earlier to cut rates, it would have signalled that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth was indeed lower than desired, the sustainable rate of unemployment was more like 4.5% than 5%, and most importantly that it understood the need to act decisively.

That would have sent a powerful signal.

It would also have ameliorated the huge decline in housing credit that pushed down housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne by double digits. That, in turn, would have prevented some of the weakening in the balance sheets of the big four banks that has occurred (witness this annual general meeting season).

All of this would have pumped more liquidity into the economy and put households in a much stronger position, likely leading to stronger consumer spending than we have seen.

Bank pass through

One gripe both the Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe and federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg have had with the banks is their failure to fully pass through the RBA cuts.

Read more: Our leaders ought to know better: failing to pass on the full rate cut needn’t mean banks are profiteering

It is true there is a problem with banks not being able to cut deposit rates below zero, and as a result having less scope to cut mortgage rates, which are majority funded from deposits.

But there are, of course, other ways monetary policy can work. The leading example is quantitative easing (QE). This is where the central bank pushes down long-term interest rates by buying bonds. At the same time this expands the money supply, thereby adding some upward inflationary pressure.

There is little reason to believe such measures won’t work.

The power of free money

Perhaps paradoxically, the closer interest rates get to zero the more powerful those rates may end up being.

To put it bluntly, if someone shoves a pile of money into your hand and asks almost nothing in return, you’re likely to use it. In fact, you would be pretty silly not to.

Suppose your mortgage rate really goes to zero – as has happened in Europe.

You might decide to redraw that and spend the money on a home renovation or some other productive purpose. Or you might decide to buy a more expensive house.

Such spending provides an economic boost. The effect is all the more pronounced if people expect interest rates to be low for a long period of time. Aggressive cutting coupled with quantitative easing – which lowers long-term rates – signal just that.

But not only monetary policy

Just because monetary policy still has some effect at near-zero rates doesn’t mean we should pin all of our economic hopes to it.

A near consensus of economists have argued repeatedly for the use of more aggressive fiscal policy – including more infrastructure spending and more tax cuts.

Read more: We asked 13 economists how to fix things. All back the RBA governor over the treasurer

Indeed, Philip Lowe has raised eyebrows by speaking so forthrightly on this issue. That doesn’t make him wrong, though.

There is little doubt the Reserve Bank should have acted much earlier to cut official interest rates. There is also a very good chance it will need to begin to use other measures such as quantitative easing in the relatively near future.

All of that says the Australian economy, like most advanced economies around the world, is in bad shape.

But it doesn’t mean monetary policy has completely run out of puff.

– ref. Vital Signs: does monetary policy work any more? – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-does-monetary-policy-work-any-more-126579

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lord, Zero Carbon Researcher, University of Melbourne

Australia could create tens of thousands of new jobs and generate many billions of dollars in export revenues if it turned more to manufacturing metals rather than exporting ore to other countries.

That’s a finding of our report, From Mining to Making, released by the Energy Transition Hub.

As international climate action accelerates, there is a need to produce goods without the carbon emissions. The report describes opportunities for Australia to use its exceptional wind and solar resources to make zero-emissions metals.

Read more: Australia’s hidden opportunity to cut carbon emissions, and make money in the process

The need for metal

Demand for metals is set to grow, not least because of their importance in nearly all renewable energy technologies. Wind turbines are made from steel, copper and rarer metals such as cobalt and neodymium. Solar panels and batteries use metals including silicon, lithium, manganese, nickel and titanium.

As the global economy tries to reduce carbon emissions we must change the way metals are made. Metal production is energy intensive and accounts for around 9% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Herein lies Australia’s opportunity.

Australia is already a major source of the world’s metal. It is among the top three exporters of iron ore, bauxite, lithium, manganese and rare earth metals.

A small proportion of these metals are refined domestically, but most are shipped overseas in their raw mineral form. For example, we found Australia converts less than 1% of its iron ore into steel.

By exporting raw ores, Australia is selling non-renewable resources at the lowest point of the value chain. Processed metal is worth much more than ore.

Metal needs energy

Many metals are made through electrically-driven processes so we can reduce carbon emissions by switching to cheaper renewable electricity.

One example for this approach is Sun Metals, near Townsville in Queensland. The company built a 125MW solar farm to supply a third of the energy required by its zinc refinery. It is now considering adding wind power and battery storage.

Similar opportunities exist with the production of other metals such as manganese, copper, nickel and rare earths.

Another angle for Australia is to make specialised metal products with higher profit margins. Element 25, in Western Australia, plans to produce high-value manganese metal using an energy-efficient process developed with CSIRO. The company says a 90% renewable energy mix could lower production costs and help it compete with Chinese producers.

Renewable energy could even relieve Australia’s ailing aluminium industry. The owners of three of Australia’s existing aluminium smelters said they were “not sustainable” with current electricity prices. Could cheap wind and solar energy provide a lifeline?

The usual objection is that aluminium smelters need a steady power input, not variable solar and wind energy. But, new technologies enable more flexible operation, allowing smelters to react to market conditions, while relieving pressure on the grid during peaks in demand.

Steel production presents a different kind of problem. It uses so much coal that it accounts for 7% of global emissions. But new steel can be made without coal.

Many steelmakers around the world use an alternative process, called direct reduction, fuelled by natural gas. This technique reduces emissions by about 40% and can be modified to run on pure renewable hydrogen, enabling production of near-zero emissions steel.

At least five companies in Europe are actively pursuing hydrogen-based steel production as part of their efforts to eliminate emissions. So far there are no similar plans in Australia despite this country’s unrivalled wealth of iron ore and renewable resources.

The jobs boom

Zero-emissions metals could become a major export industry. Our report explores a scenario in which Australia could double the value of its iron and steel exports to A$150 billion by converting just 18% of currently mined iron ore into steel using renewable hydrogen.

This would be a welcome boost for the national balance of trade, counteracting any reduction in coal exports due to climate and energy policies among Australia’s trading partners.

Making this amount of zero-emissions steel requires a huge amount of renewable electricity – almost double the total electricity generated in Australia in 2018.

But this demand for renewable energy is part of the point – Australia can do this, most of our competitors cannot due to their greater energy demand relative to land suitable for generating renewable energy.

A successful zero emissions metal industry would bring many thousands of steady jobs, often in regional areas with higher unemployment. It could also support towns such as Portland, in Victoria, and Gladstone, in Queensland, where metal producers are already the chief employer.

The market for zero-emissions metals is likely to be enormous. Until recently, emissions embodied in materials have been neglected. But this is changing, as hundreds of the world’s largest companies commit to reducing the emissions of their supply chains.

For example, car makers Volkswagen and Toyota are aiming for zero-carbon production.

In September the World Green Building Council challenged the global construction sector to ensure all new buildings have net-zero embodied carbon by 2050. Such public commitments are a strong signal to manufacturers everywhere.

Make it happen

Zero-emissions metals could be one of Australia’s most significant new industries of the 21st century.

Read more: Australia has plenty of gas, but our bills are ridiculous. The market is broken

To make it happen, our report recommends governments acknowledge this opportunity by creating a National Zero-Emissions Metals strategy, committing serious resources to ensure it succeeds. This strategy should identify and evaluate Australia’s best opportunities within the metals sector.

If we don’t do something then, as South Australian Senator Rex Patrick put it, we’ll just continue to “export rocks” and let others reap the benefits from developing technologies to process them.

– ref. Want more jobs in Australia? Cut our ore exports and make more metals at home – http://theconversation.com/want-more-jobs-in-australia-cut-our-ore-exports-and-make-more-metals-at-home-124592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney

Cinema has always been a medium in crisis. After the so-called golden age of Hollywood came television: why go to the movies when you can sit in the comfort of your home, watching recycled movies in letterbox format? Yet cinemas adapted and survived.

This week, major cinema chains said they would not run Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film The Irishman because Netflix – who partially funded production and own distribution rights – were restricting its theatre run to four weeks before it hit small screens.

The news signals a looming threat to cinema as we know it.

Big screen blues

Television made movies a commodity audiences could consume on their own terms. Yet cinema survived. In fact, it became a global mass cultural medium in the late 1970s and in the multiplexes of the 1980s.

Even the turbulent digital turn that brought cinema to a second crisis point in the early 2000s was navigated by the major Hollywood studios with the rebirth of the blockbuster in pristine form: Avatar (2009) in stereoscopic 3-D, the high-tech Marvel cinematic universe.

This is all to say that cinema, for the time being, is alive and well.

But shrinking diversity in cinema offerings – Scorsese is no Marvel fan – has forced even big name directors to seek funding from alternative sources. This is especially necessary when their movie costs US$159 million (A$230 million) to make. Enter television streaming giant Netflix.

Are you talking to me?

The Irishman, Scorsese’s eagerly anticipated gangster epic, opened this week in a number of independent Australian cinemas.

Scorsese is perhaps America’s greatest living auteur, the director of films including Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), and Casino (1995).

But what makes The Irishman unlike any other Scorsese film is that it is being distributed by Netflix. After its short theatre run it will be distributed to our homes, where it will do its major business.

In February, the tension between Netflix and theatrical distributors escalated with the nomination of Alfonso Cuarón’s Netflix-distributed Roma for a Best Picture Oscar. Director Steven Spielberg subsequently declared a Netflix film might “deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar”.

A Netflix production – whether David Fincher’s monumental longform series, Mindhunter, or Scorsese’s The Irishman – was television and therefore not cinema.

Goodfellas or bad guys?

Netflix represents a very real threat to theatrically screened cinema and its distribution apparatus, which is why several large cinema chains in the US (and, indeed, Australia) are boycotting The Irishman.

While Netflix has consistently produced high quality content either through internal production or by acquiring and distributing titles, its assimilation of an auteur picture – a Scorsese gangster epic, no less – signals an aggressive move into the once sacrosanct domain of cinema entertainment.

One wonders: if Scorsese capitulates to the economic strictures of the contemporary studio system, what will independent filmmakers do? How will low budget features be funded in an era in which Netflix colonises the large and small-scale productions alike?

Netflix is not cinema, but neither is it television. Directors such as Spielberg struggle to understand that the new media entertainment regime is far removed from the projection (theatre) or broadcast (television) media environment of a predigital era.

Instead of declaring a Netflix production unworthy of an Oscar, we could invert this measure: perhaps it is the Oscar that is increasingly outmoded as an artistic and cultural mark of value.

‘The End’, roll credits

The digital economic currents that carry Netflix intuitively seek expansion into proximate markets, and cinema is a natural fit. Netflix’s move into cinema distribution – with Scorsese at the helm – is therefore a smart negotiation. Even if Scorsese is an unwilling participant, it sets a clear precedent.

It seems unlikely that cinema will end in any formal sense, at least within the next few decades.

But a Netflix-distributed Scorsese film gives us cause to lament the ailing cinema experience. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017) exemplified cinema’s ability to assault us with big screen images and jolt our bodies with a powerful soundscape. Only a grand technological scale can provide this kind of visceral experience.

And yet, like Scorsese, I’m tired of Marvel. I’m tired of the rigidity of formulaic narrative and image structures intrinsic to the contemporary studio system. I’m disappointed at Hollywood’s capitulation to an instrumental economic model. Could a studio have produced The Irishman? They had a chance, and they turned it down.

Hollywood – and media entertainment structures more generally – will need to find a way for the big and small screen distributors to get along in order to keep the dynasty alive.

– ref. Pass the popcorn – Scorsese cinema boycott will shape the future of movies – http://theconversation.com/pass-the-popcorn-scorsese-cinema-boycott-will-shape-the-future-of-movies-126598

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

This week, Māori in the Taranaki region remembered the “day of plunder” – the 1881 government invasion of Parihaka, the small settlement that had come to symbolise peaceful resistance to the confiscation of Māori land.

It was one of the most brutal events in New Zealand’s past. Government troops marched into Parihaka and took control of the settlement. They systematically destroyed the community’s ability to sustain itself, suspending the ordinary course of law and imprisoning people without trial for participating in what was a justified act of non-violent resistance.

Almost 140 years later, New Zealand is beginning to make amends for this low point of civil liberties, biculturalism and tolerance in the history of the nation. The Crown has formalised its apology with the signing of the Te Pire Haeata ki Parihaka/Parihaka Reconciliation Act last week. A succession of recent governments acknowledged and apologised for “unconscionable actions at Parihaka” and a NZ$9 million reconciliation agreement was signed last year “to heal the relationship between Parihaka and the Crown”.

While it is important that we apologise and reconcile, it is equally important that we learn from the experience so it is never repeated. This is why I have looked back at how law has been wrongfully applied as an instrument of power to crush non-violent dissent.

Read more: Learning the Land: Walking the talk of Indigenous Land acknowledgements

Justifiable non-violent action

This story began in 1866 when Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi established a settlement at Parihaka on land confiscated by the government in the 1860s as a penalty against “rebels” in the Taranaki wars. Te Whiti and Tohu began to develop a community which adopted non-violent measures to resist further land loss. It quickly grew to more than 2,000 inhabitants.

Matters started to come to a head when Governor Grey’s government began opening the area for European settlement in 1878. Te Whiti resisted, rightly claiming that Māori land reserves promised in 1865 within the confiscations process had not been set aside.

Accordingly, after surveyors failed to mark out reserves promised to Māori in southern Taranaki, in March 1879 Te Whiti ordered the surveyors to be peacefully evicted. In May of the same year, followers of Te Whiti and Tohu began to plough land across the disputed areas, as an assertion of their rights to it. By the end of July, 182 ploughmen had been arrested.

Worst land laws in NZ’s history

The government responded in early August with the Māori Prisoner Trials Acts. This enabled their continued imprisonment “for offences against public order” until a date was set for their trial.

The crime of removing survey pegs or ploughing was liable for a penalty of up to two years in jail. The date for trial was continually postponed and the numbers continued to build up. Between July and September 1880, 223 more Māori were arrested for placing fences across the road in an attempt to protect their cultivations.

Only 59 fencers received a trial, but all were sent hundreds of kilometres away to prisons in the South Island. In late July, a new Māori Prisoners Act of 1880 deemed it lawful to hold people in custody. To avoid any confusion (or questioning of what was going on), a text was added that said:

All the said Natives so committed for and waiting trial … shall be deemed and taken to have been lawfully arrested and to be in lawful custody, and may be lawfully detained.

The West Coast Settlement Act 1880 allowed any armed constable to arrest without warrant anyone interfering with surveys, engaged in unlawful ploughing or fencing, or obstructing a road.

In 1881, a commission set up to examine the matter concluded that the Crown had failed to fulfil promises about Māori reserves. It recommended some be granted. The government started creating new reserves by late September 1881, but these were not returned to Māori outright and instead placed under the administration of a public trustee. Many were sold or leased in perpetuity by European farmers.

The new law did not resolve the situation. People in Parihaka continued to erect fences around traditional cultivation sites. The government decided to use direct action.

Fearing that the non-violent resistance was a prelude to armed conflict, the government called up 31 units of the volunteer militia and five companies of the armed constabulary and a naval brigade (655 troops and nearly 1,000 settler volunteers). They entered the site on November 5 1881.

Read more: Why it’s time for New Zealanders to learn more about their own country’s history

Passive, peaceful resistance

The troops found the road blocked by 200 children singing songs. The troops carried groups of older girls off the road and finally met residents sitting in the centre of the marae (meeting area). After reading out the Riot Act and telling those gathered to disperse, some 1,600 Parihaka inhabitants were expelled and dispersed throughout Taranaki without food or shelter.

The remaining 600 residents were issued with government passes to control their movement. Soldiers then destroyed most of the buildings at Parihaka. The government issued an indemnity order for all of those acting on behalf of the Crown at Parihaka.

Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested and charged with sedition for saying that “the land belongs to me”. They were held without trial for 16 months. With the West Coast Peace Preservation Act of 1882, the Crown decided not to prosecute the case, but the governor was given the right to retain them in custody, or free them with, or without, conditions if deemed necessary.

Local Māori were also prohibited from gathering in groups of more than 50. Anyone threatening to breach the peace could be jailed for 12 months.

A few months later the government gave itself the authority to proclaim amnesties for “offences … more or less of a political character … during the insurrections … committed by Māoris”, but Te Whiti and Tohu were not covered by this. Not until 1883 was a truly general political amnesty issued for all Māori in this matter – as if it was them who were at fault.

– ref. How NZ’s colonial government misused laws to crush non-violent dissent at Parihaka – http://theconversation.com/how-nzs-colonial-government-misused-laws-to-crush-non-violent-dissent-at-parihaka-126495

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

The media have been itching for a report that blamed Labor’s defeat on a dud leader. But the Review of Labor’s 2019 Federal Election Campaign, chaired by former Rudd and Gillard government minister Craig Emerson and former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill, is proportionate in the blame it sends Bill Shorten’s way. Shorten’s unpopularity contributed to Labor’s defeat, but there were wider problems that cannot be put down to leadership alone.

The review is a nuanced account of why Labor lost. Its brief explanation for that loss – a combination “of a weak strategy that could not adapt to the change in Liberal leadership, a cluttered policy agenda that looked risky and an unpopular leader” – belies the sophistication of the report as whole.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Labor’s post-mortem leaves the hard work still to be done

The document does better than most post-election analysis that has so far come from within the party. Some of this has been so tendentious and self-serving that its value in either explaining what went wrong or in pointing a way forward has been close to nil.

The review suggests that central to the party’s failure was that it did not reassess its approach adequately when Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull. Rhetoric that might have made sense when the Liberal Party was being led by “Mr Harbourside Mansion”, as well as proposing business tax cuts, made rather less sense once the “daggy suburban dad” in the baseball cap was in charge.

Labor made too little of the chaos in the Coalition. Instead, the ALP made itself the issue at the election, a kind of government-in-waiting with a target on its back.

University-educated voters in the southern states, when they tuned in to Morrison, might have heard a sound something like the air escaping from a whoopee cushion. And such voters swung to the Labor Party in the election.

But voters in the suburbs and the regions, especially in Queensland, liked what they saw. So did professing Christians, who liked it even more when they saw photos of the devout believer at prayer, right arm pointing to heaven.

On the other hand, many voters saw a danger to their already insecure lives in Labor’s multitude of expensive promises – and the taxation changes proposed to pay for them. They believed Morrison when he warned them of the risks of voting Labor.

Then there was coal. The authors of the report do seem to struggle with Adani. Like just about everyone else, they know it’s a financial and environmental mess. But in terms of electoral politics, Adani is radioactive.

Labor suffered in Queensland and the Hunter Valley as a result of its ambiguity, but the authors are silent on what the party could have done differently. If it had been less ambiguous about Adani, it would have needed to take a stand. But what should that stand have been?

The report is insistent that Labor should not alienate progressive and well-educated voters for whom climate change matters a lot and Adani is toxic. But how can it avoid their alienation while also pleasing economically insecure voters in Queensland? Is this simply a matter of finessing one’s language, or do the problems run deeper?

This is perhaps the report’s weakness. It is good at setting out the kinds of dilemmas Labor faces, which the party failed to grapple with at the 2019 election. It bemoans the party’s tendency to become the vehicle for various interests with diverse grievances, at the expense of serving the needs of economically insecure working-class voters. The habit of trying to serve too many masters multiplies policies and increases the complexity of campaign messaging, while undermining the party’s ability to craft a coherent story based on the party’s “core values”.

Yet the report has little to say on what such a narrative would look like or what those core values actually are. We are told the latter include:

improving the job opportunities, security and conditions of working Australians, fairness, non-discrimination on the basis of race, religion and gender, and care for the environment.

But there is nothing much here that would prompt an undecided voter to look to Labor rather than the Coalition, especially if they like the look of the Coalition’s leader better than Labor’s – as most did in 2019.

And then, when the review tries to set out what a “persuasive growth story” might look like, we are treated to the usual history lesson on the Hawke and Keating governments, whose “whole economic strategy” was about promoting “growth, and through it, jobs” (otherwise known as “jobs and growth”). For the Labor Party, it seems, it’s always 1983. We just need to find the winged keel to get us home.

Rather as the Hawke and Keating governments did, the review pushes any idea of redistribution, or of reducing inequality, to the very margins of Labor philosophy and policy. Indeed, the hosing down of such aspirations – modest as they were at the 2019 election – may well help to explain one of the strangest silences in the report: its failure to deal with the role of the Murdoch press.

The Murdoch media didn’t merely favour the government over the opposition. It campaigned vigorously for the return of the Coalition. And it is a vast empire, with a monopoly through much of regional Queensland, for instance. It is hard not to see in the review’s silence on this matter a clearing of the way for a future kissing of the ring of the familiar kind.

Still, there is much that is valuable in the review. There is its frank criticism of the deficiencies in the Labor Party’s strategising and the incoherence of its campaign organisation. There is the news that the party’s own internal data pointed to the possibility of the catastrophe that ultimately occurred – polling outside the party prompted a misreading of the readily available evidence.

Read more: Why the 2019 election was more like 2004 than 1993 – and Labor has some reason to hope

The review is also particularly good on the damaging effects of Clive Palmer’s massive advertising splurge. And it makes a fair attempt to relate the Labor Party’s problems to wider international trends, such as the decline of trust, the insecurity of working life for many, the crisis of social democracy, and the search for convenient scapegoats – all of which have undermined the position of parties of reform.

Best of all, the review spares us a lot of rubbish about moving the party to the centre, or the right. It does make much of the need for Labor to reinvigorate its appeal to those groups who seem to have been most alienated at the 2019 election.

It recognises – correctly in my view – that Labor’s position on Adani performed unfortunate symbolic work, suggesting to people especially in parts of Queensland “that Labor did not value them or the work they do”.

But when your primary vote in Queensland is tracking at about 25% and you hold fewer than a quarter of the lower-house seats in that state and Western Australia combined, you probably don’t need a review to tell you something has to change.

– ref. Nuance and nostalgia: Labor’s election review provides useful insights and inevitable harking back to Hawke – http://theconversation.com/nuance-and-nostalgia-labors-election-review-provides-useful-insights-and-inevitable-harking-back-to-hawke-126584

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoe Rathus, Senior Lecturer in Law, Griffith University

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s unfounded claim women that lie about domestic abuse to deny fathers access to their children is what’s driving the latest parliamentary inquiry into the family law system.

But this isn’t a new idea. Hanson’s claim stems from a history of discrediting women in the family court, with gendered expressions “parental alienation” and “parental alienation syndrome” emerging in the 1980s. They’re expressions you can expect to hear as the inquiry unfolds across the country over the next year.

Read more: We don’t need another inquiry into family law – we need action

Parental alienation is hard to define because of its contested nature. But it is generally understood as the actions of one parent to prevent a child from having an ongoing relationship with the other parent.

Of course, there are cases where parents engage in despicable and irrational conduct towards each other after separation – and involve their children. Both mothers and fathers are capable of this.

But many parents accused of alienation are mothers alleging family violence or child sexual abuse.

And the consequences can be serious and detrimental to children if the court requires them to visit or live with an abusive parent.

While the theory of parental alienation syndrome was exposed as junk science, parental alienation is wielded by fathers’ rights groups and continues to have credibility in the family law system.

Parental alienation in Australian courts

Recent Australian research into family law cases shows parental alienation continues to be raised by fathers as a “defence” to child sexual abuse allegations.

When parental alienation is raised, mothers can experience intimidation from many angles – fathers, family report writers, judges and lawyers – all painting them as “hysterical, vindictive and manipulative women”.

This research is reflected in harrowing stories such as those Jess Hill and other journalists have gathered from women and children caught up in alienation claims in our family courts.

These problems still occur in Australia partly because the legislation regulating family law in Australia promotes a philosophy of “sharing children” after parents separate, in terms of decision-making and time.

While the term “parental alienation” is not in the family law act, a mother who is reluctant to send her children to their father may be perceived as obstructive in the face of this “sharing children” aspect of the law.

It’s a short distance from being seen as obstructive to being labelled alienating.

Read more: Forceful and dominant: men with sexist ideas of masculinity are more likely to abuse women

When an alienation accusation finds support from an expert witness or a judge, the children may be sent to live with the father and the mother’s access may be severely reduced or totally denied.

Although such an outcome does not always follow, orders transferring the residence of children to an allegedly abusive father are sometimes made, often against the strong and clear views of the children.

A debunked, outdated theory

The term parental alienation syndrome first appeared in Australia in 1989 in a widely read family law journal. The author, Kenneth Byrne, reported on this new concept called “parental alienation syndrome”, which had been coined by USA child psychiatrist Dr Richard Gardner a few years earlier.

Unfortunately, and incorrectly, Byrne informed his readers that although “some” claims of child abuse

are legitimate; many more are manifestations of [parental alienation syndrome] embedded in charges of abuse.

In 1995, the term parental alienation syndrome first appeared in a published case from the Australian Family Court.

It’s no coincidence this was when the first set of legislation amendments aimed at shared parenting were under consideration. Mothers who did not willingly send their children to their fathers came under scrutiny for their “hostile” attitude.

Read more: When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become ‘forgotten’ victims. It’s time they were given a voice

Research after those mid-1990s amendments found women were often disbelieved in their claims of family violence and child sexual abuse and such claims were often responded to with allegations of alienation.

Mothers even reported that their lawyers advised them not to raise violence for fear of being accused of being an alienator and potentially losing their children.

But research suggests deliberately false allegations are rare and Gardner’s clinical theory has since been debunked.

Despite this, parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome continue to be alleged in parenting cases. And research continues to be conducted both by scholars who see parental alienation as valid concept and by those, such as myself, who are concerned that the term is easily misused and is dangerous.

Unsafe arrangements for children

American researchers recently conducted a large study of cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations.

They found where the father claimed parental alienation, courts were more than twice as likely to disbelieve any claims of abuse by mothers, and almost four times more likely to disbelieve allegations of child sexual abuse.

Read more: The family court does need reform, but not the way Pauline Hanson thinks

In Australia, the most recent inquiries about the family law system recommend repealing some of the sections of the Family Law Act that strongly promote shared parenting because of concerns that they sometimes silenced violence and created unsafe arrangements for children. But none of the recommendations from the recent inquiries have yet been implemented.

The new inquiry is an unsubtle attempt to push these concerns away – until the next child is abused or dies while visiting a parent against their wishes – and a new inquiry is called into how to deal better with family violence in family law.

– ref. ‘Parental alienation’: the debunked theory that women lie about violence is still used in court – http://theconversation.com/parental-alienation-the-debunked-theory-that-women-lie-about-violence-is-still-used-in-court-125823

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lin Fritschi, Professor of Epidemiology, Curtin University

The National Dust Disease Taskforce is preparing to read submissions next week on how best to handle the resurgence of the fatal lung disease silicosis. This can develop after breathing in silica dust when cutting artificial stone — also known as engineered, composite or manufactured stone — the type used for kitchen benchtops.

But this is not the first time we’ve been alerted to the long-term effects of exposure to hazardous dust. Think asbestos.

So what lessons can Australia learn from tackling asbestos to manage this latest preventable occupational hazard?

Read more: Explainer: what is silicosis and why is this old lung disease making a comeback?

We’ve known about hazardous dust at work for centuries

Centuries ago, we recognised dust in mines badly damaged workers’ lungs. In 1713, Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini wrote how miners’ bodies:

[…] are badly affected, the lungs especially since they take in with the air mineral spirits.

More evidence led to a 1930 conference in South Africa agreeing the lung disease silicosis was caused by silica dust. A few years later, the International Labour Organisation included silicosis in a list of diseases workers could be compensated for.

Read more: Black lung’s back? How we became complacent with coal miners’ pneumoconiosis

Control measures to reduce the risk of silicosis were well-recognised even in the mid-1930s; lawsuits were filed against the Union Carbide company for not protecting construction workers.

At that time, breathing protection was fairly basic. But in the decades since then, we established that any activity generating silica dust (such as cutting, blasting or grinding concrete or rock) needed water spray systems, extraction fans and respirators.

The dangers of cutting engineered stone

So how, in a country like Australia, do we suddenly see young workers dying of this completely preventable disease?

The cases seem to be arising from cutting artificial stone. This can contain up to 95% silica, compared with less than 40% silica in natural stone.

Cutting artificial stone has emerged as a major hazard. The ABC reports there have been 260 cases of silicosis in Australia, mostly in Queensland.

And there are likely to be more cases developing. Regulators’ responses — proactively inspecting workplaces to see if they comply with safe work practices and issuing prohibition notices and fines to individual workplaces if not — are very welcome.

But these responses come too late for those hundreds of young workers who have lost their health, some of whom may die without a lung transplant.

What can we learn from asbestos?

We have been here before. Asbestos mining and manufacturing and the importation of asbestos products into Australia started in the 1880s. Over the next century, it developed into a major industry, peaking in the decades after the second world war.

Over the same time, medical knowledge about the diseases caused by asbestos was growing. The first recorded case of asbestosis (a progressive lung disease) was described in London in 1906 (although, reports of ill health in asbestos workers had been reported from as early as 1899).

In 1928 the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial on asbestosis. And, in Australia from 1945, standards for exposure to asbestos were introduced as controlling dust levels was thought the best way to prevent disease.

If Australia had stopped the use of asbestos in 1928, the ill health and death associated with asbestos would not be at levels we’ve seen since.

Read more: Health harms of asbestos won’t be known for decades

Instead, Australia only stopped using blue asbestos (the most carcinogenic form) in the late 1960s, brown asbestos (the next most carcinogenic) in the 1980s, and all asbestos in 2003.

By 2020, there will have been an estimated 18,000 cases of mesothelioma, 108,000 cases of lung cancer and an unknown but substantial number of cases of asbestosis in Australia.

How best to protect workers?

The standard response to the silicosis epidemic is that workers should use control measures and personal protection. However, there is increasing evidence dust control measures do not reduce the levels of silica to non-hazardous levels.

Many companies also use a mixture of dry and wet cutting, particularly when installing the products. As with asbestos, there simply is no way to safely use this material.

Read more: Dying for work: the changing face of work-related injuries

We need to go back to the basics of occupational health — the hierarchy of control. This means, if there is a hazard, we first see if we can eliminate it by banning the dangerous product.

This basic principle, taught to all occupational health and safety professionals, seems to have been forgotten for silica. For example, SafeWork Australia does not mention elimination in its online information on controlling silica, although it does mention substitution with products containing lower levels of silica.

The Breathe Freely Australia public health campaign, notes elimination:

[…] is the preferred method of control as it completely eliminates the hazard, but unfortunately it is not often feasible.

Yes, a ban is feasible

We argue it is feasible to ban artificial stone, which is not made in Australia but imported. There are many alternatives, such as natural stone, or Betta Stone made from recycled glass.

The National Dust Disease Taskforce is taking submissions until November 11, 2019.

We suggest:

• a total ban on importing, making and using engineered stone with a crystalline silica content of more than 80%

• immediate regulation (in every jurisdiction) banning dry cutting, grinding or polishing of all artificial stone

• a reduction of the workplace exposure standard for respiratory crystalline silica to half current levels by January 2020 (from 0.10mg/m³ to 0.05mg/m³). Disappointingly, a recent SafeWork Australia meeting rejected the opportunity to reduce the level to 0.02mg/m³.

It took 70 years for Australia to ban all forms of asbestos. We need to learn from that disaster and immediately ban artificial stone. We just can’t continue to let young Australian workers die just so we can have cheap, fashionable kitchens.

– ref. Engineered stone benchtops are killing our tradies. Here’s why a ban’s the only answer – http://theconversation.com/engineered-stone-benchtops-are-killing-our-tradies-heres-why-a-bans-the-only-answer-126489

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Altman, Emeritus professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU, Australian National University

Land titling in Australia has undergone a revolutionary shift over the past four decades. The return of diverse forms of title to Indigenous Australians has produced some semblance of land justice. About half the continent is now held under some form of Indigenous title.

Forms of title range from inalienable freehold title to non-exclusive (or shared) native title. Much of this estate is in northern Australia, as this recent map shows.

Another map from 2014 shows over 1,000 discrete Indigenous communities and the division between north and south.

What’s different about these lands?

These lands and their populations have some unusual features.

First, the lands are extremely remote and relatively undeveloped in a capitalist “extractive” sense. These are the largest relatively intact savannah landscapes in Australia — and possibly the world.

Much of this estate is included in the National Reserve System as Indigenous Protected Areas because of its high environmental and cultural values, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) criteria.

These areas still face threats from invasive animal and plant species, bushfires and increasingly extreme heat. These threats will lead to further species extinctions.

Indigenous Protected Area management plans address these threats to ensure biodiversity and cultural values are at best restored or maintained, at worst not eroded.

Read more: Churches have legal rights in Australia. Why not sacred trees?

Second, parts of these lands in the wet-dry tropics are valuable as sources of emissions avoidance and carbon storage.

Many groups are paid through offset markets and voluntary agreements to reduce overall emissions. There are emerging options for payment for long-term carbon storage – between 25 and 100 years.

These lands have some of the world’s highest solar irradiance. Multi-billion-dollar solar and wind/solar/green hydrogen facilities are being developed.

Third, the Indigenous owners and majority inhabitants are among the poorest Australians. Only 35% of Aboriginal adults in very remote Australia are formally employed. Over 50% of Indigenous people in these areas live below the poverty line.

Such poverty is explained partly by past colonisation and associated social exclusion and neglect, geographic isolation from market capitalism and labour markets, and different priorities.

Having legally proven continuity of customs, traditions and connection to reclaimed ancestral lands, landowners generally look to care for their country. They use its natural resources for domestic non-commercial purposes as allowed by law.

But Indigenous people continually struggle to inhabit these lands. Their dispersed small settlements range from townships to homelands. Government support is minimal and policy intentionally discouraging.

Read more: Building in ways that meet the needs of Australia’s remote regions

The problem with official development models

Since federation, many government policy proposals to “develop the north” have sought to replicate the economic growth trajectory of the temperate south. Such plans are based on state-sanctioned, often environmentally damaging, market capitalism.

The latest version is the 2015 Our North, Our Future white paper, released after a parliamentary inquiry. In submission 136, Francis Markham and I asked, “developing whose north for whom and in what way?” We pointed out 48% of the north’s 3 million square kilometres was under Indigenous title at that time, and Indigenous ideas about the land are often very different from those of the government and corporate, mainly extractive, interests.

Read more: The keys to unlock Northern Australia have already been cut

Four years on, a Senate select inquiry is examining how the Our North, Our Future agenda is progressing. A specific reference to First Nations people has been added. In submission 13, we highlighted four fundamental changes over the past five years.

1. the Indigenous land share of northern Australia has grown to 60%

2. Indigenous people are living in deeper poverty partly due to punitive changes to income-support arrangements

3. growing scientific consensus that global warming will have escalating negative impacts on northern Australia

4. slowing population growth suggests the white paper’s goal of a population of 4–5 million by 2060 (from just over 1 million now) lacks realism.

Read more: You can’t boost Australia’s north to 5 million people without a proper plan

We are at a critical crossroads in policy thinking about northern Australia.

The dominant approach sees it as ripe for capitalist development, extraction and associated economic growth, irrespective of environmental consequences. Corporate pressure to undertake risky fracking for oil and gas and to develop industrial-scale agriculture and aquaculture projects epitomises such thinking.

The zero-emissions alternative

The holistic focus of ecological economics informs an alternative approach. It’s based on the tenet that everything connects to everything else: the economy is embedded in society and society is embedded in the environment, the natural order.

This line of reasoning resonates with the focus of many Indigenous landowners on the need to nurture kin, ancestral country and living, natural resources.

Ecological economics distinguishes between economic growth that depletes non-renewable resources irrespective of environmental harm, and forms of development that focus on human well-being, cultural and environmental values.

Read more: What is ‘ecological economics’ and why do we need to talk about it?

Development in the north might take many transformational forms as we strive for a zero-emissions economy.

Indigenous-titled and peopled lands are well positioned to drive this in three proven ways:

1. by intensifying projects that reduce emissions and sequester carbon
2. by increasing efforts to conserve biodiversity by managing and potentially reversing impacts of invasive species
3. by becoming key players in the renewables sector through massive projects for domestic energy use and export.

The same landscapes can be used for sustainable wildlife harvesting for food and diverse forms of cultural production for income. These uses accord with Indigenous tradition and leave minimal environmental footprints.

Policy and practice must be informed by the environmental perspectives of Indigenous landowners, which are highly compatible with the core concepts of ecological economics.

In these ways, the North could emerge as a powerhouse region beyond current imaginaries. The climate crisis makes this transformation essential.

As ecological economies, remote Indigenous lands could deliver sustainable livelihoods to Indigenous people and contribute significantly to a zero-emissions economy of critical benefit to national and global communities.

– ref. Remote Indigenous Australia’s ecological economies give us something to build on – http://theconversation.com/remote-indigenous-australias-ecological-economies-give-us-something-to-build-on-123917