Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

It has been more than two years since “clearance operations” by Myanmar’s security forces, the Tatmadaw, forced more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border to neighbouring Bangladesh.

During this time, the UN Security Council has remained silent on the plight of Rohingya, with China and Russia working to keep it off the council’s agenda.

Read more: Explainer: why the UN has found Myanmar’s military committed genocide against the Rohingya

But at the UN General Assembly last month, The Gambia announced it would take the Myanmar government to the International Court of Justice for the genocide of the Rohingya.

Vice-President Isatou Touray said The Gambia is:

a small country with a big voice on matters of human rights on the continent and beyond. […] The Gambia is ready to lead the concerted efforts for taking the Rohingya issue to the International Court of Justice on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and we are calling on all stakeholders to support this process.

Myanmar might finally be held accountable, but defending the Rohingya from genocide shouldn’t just be left to the global Islamic community. They need to be joined by countries with an interest in reducing the sexual and gender based violence at the core of the Tatmadaw’s genocidal campaign.

Otherwise, these important issues may not be sufficiently included in the case due to regional religious politics.

Sexual and gender violence

Last year, a Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission report detailed serious breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law by members of the Tatmadaw, including killing, rape, torture, arson and forced displacement.

The report also detailed how the Myanmar government, as a whole, was responsible for perpetrating these crimes, and should be held to account.

In an additional report released in August this year, the fact-finding mission found sexual and gender based violence was:

part of a deliberate, well-planned strategy to intimidate, terrorise and punish a civilian population.

The sheer volume of pregnant women in the refugee camps was one early indicator of the extent to which sexual violence was used against women and girls. But the mission also found it was used against men, boys and trans people.

In their view, acts of sexual and gender based violence were committed as genocide.

Read more: ‘They shot my two daughters in front of me’: Rohingya tell heartbreaking stories of loss and forced migration

In general, the UN Security Council has recognised the use of sexual violence as genocide, but they haven’t tied it to the crisis in Myanmar.

The council has passed nine resolutions on women, peace and security. Among other things, these resolutions call for the protection of women and girls, men and boys from conflict-related sexual violence, and urge countries to end to impunity for these crimes.

So, it is of the utmost importance that the sexual- and gender-based violence used in the genocide is accounted for in any International Court of Justice (ICJ) case.

How can the ICJ help?

The ICJ adjudicates between states, not individuals. Although individuals commit genocidal acts, under the Genocide Convention of 1948, states also have responsibility for preventing and punishing the crime of genocide.

Myanmar signed the UN’s Genocide Convention in 1957, which contains an article giving the ICJ jurisdiction if another state thinks they’ve breached their obligations.

This means once the case comes before the court, it can make rulings within a matter of days that would be binding on the government of Myanmar, the Security Council, or both. What’s more, it can begin almost immediately and can have immediate effect inside Myanmar.

Read more: Citizens of nowhere: one million Rohingya still without rights, status or justice

This could make a big difference for Rohingya still inside Myanmar who are experiencing the ongoing genocide.

An ICJ case could also serve as a way to recognise and remedy the collective harm of the sexual- and gender-based violence, not just the harm experienced by individuals.

International efforts

The Gambia has called on other countries to join it in taking a case against Myanmar to the ICJ. Canadian civil society and parliamentarians have been working to convince their government to bring such a case for more than a year. Importantly, a case from Canada against Myanmar would include sexual- and gender-based violence.

And there are a range of reasons why Canada would step forward in support of The Gambia’s case. Taking such action would align with Canada’s foreign policy objectives, such as those on human rights and women, peace and security.

Read more: World must act to end the violence against Rohingya in Myanmar

Canada is also campaigning for a seat on the UN Security Council, but they have stiff competition from Ireland and Norway.

Taking Myanmar to the ICJ would show Canada is a strong international actor, able to work for the good of global peace and security, navigating the full set of challenges posed by the permanent members of the Security Council.

But other countries can – and should – support The Gambia’s case and ensure the inclusion of sexual and gender-based violence in a range of ways.

ICJ cases are usually long and costly. Interested countries could offer financial assistance for The Gambia’s case. They can also join the case as co-applicants in support of The Gambia’s leadership.

Read more: Rohingya: killings should remind all nations of their responsibility to protect victims of mass atrocity crimes

Lastly, once the case is lodged, the court allows other countries to intervene. Countries unwilling to come forward as co-applicants could ensure gendered and sexual violence issues are included by making just such an intervention.

At the Security Council later this month, UN Member States will have the opportunity to participate in the annual open debate on women, peace and security.

By then, someone must surely be able to stand up and say:

we stand with The Gambia, we will take the government of Myanmar to the International Court of Justice, to hold them to account for the sexual and gender based violence they perpetrated as genocide against the Rohingya.

– ref. Myanmar might finally be held accountable for genocide, but the court case must recognise sexual violence – http://theconversation.com/myanmar-might-finally-be-held-accountable-for-genocide-but-the-court-case-must-recognise-sexual-violence-124693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sherene Idriss, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University

There is a long history of damaging stereotypes of Arab and Muslim men on screen. Because of this, audiences from culturally diverse migrant backgrounds understandably crave more positive representations of their ethnic and cultural communities.

Ramy isn’t exactly that.

In this loosely autobiographical coming-of-age story, stand-up comic Ramy Youssef isn’t trying to promote a positive ideal of Egyptian American-Muslims to mainstream audiences. Instead, he crafts a more complex view.

Ramy is proud to be Muslim but struggles with the pressure to conform to a template of Arab Muslim masculinity that others around him seemed to have already worked out.

He works at a failing start-up with vague goals to “make a difference.” His best friends, a surgeon and restaurant owner, are already married with children.

His insecurities about “failing” as an Arab Muslim man hover in every interaction.

In a scene that challenges the myth of a biological connection between ethnicity and male violence, Ramy gets caught up in a fight on the street and jumps on top of his car to escape copping any blows.

In his dating expeditions, we see Ramy unable to be the partner the women deserve. He gives himself a pass for premarital sex with non-Muslim partners but holds the young Muslim women in his life to higher standards. In attempts to “settle down” he goes on a blind date with a Muslim woman and comes up short when asked about his life goals.

“I’m not really a planner,” he says.

Protest masculinity

Much has been written about the stereotype of angry young Arab Muslim men.

The anger is a response to a range of issues.

He is navigating casual racism; institutional racial profiling; a media that grossly misrepresents his faith and parents’ homeland.

In his own community, he is trying to live up to parental expectations: a stable job, a house, a family – pressures explored in Ali’s Wedding.

In Arab Australian and Muslim men, some academics have called the masculinity that emerges from these interwoven pressures “protest masculinity”: displayed through physical dominance, specific stylistic choices, and sporting interests.

Australian films Cedar Boys and The Combination have depicted this Arab Australian protest masculinity, where young men release the pressure through physical violence.

In a post-Cronulla Riots age, telling these stories makes sense.

Read more: Islamophobia is still raising its ugly head in Australia

Those films show some of the difficulties of young adulthood for some boys whose agency is stripped of them, international crises are pinned on them, and the intensity of community pressure looms large.

But the way young people respond to these pressures are not all the same.

Disconnected from place

In my research with young men from migrant Arab-Australian families who have creative ambitions, I explored what it can mean to feel disconnected from the usual stereotypes of Arab Muslim young men living in Australia.

They told me they felt pride in their cultural backgrounds, but they were worried about their future. They were uncertain about their sense of belonging among peers who had different interests.

Some were desperate to escape what they saw as suffocating local working class ideas about masculinity and ethnicity. But in prestigious fine arts courses they found themselves out of place, branded too “ethnic” to fit in.

Some thought the macho sexism displayed by their Arab-Australian school peers was a product of their ethnicity or culture. And while there are specific kinds of gender issues in Arab Muslim communities, when they reached university, socialising outside their neighbourhood, these young men learned sexism and misogyny features across all social, class, and cultural backgrounds.

These conversations about contemporary millennial masculinities, ethnicity and identity are at the core of Ramy.

Ramy performs neither protest masculinity, nor the role of ambitious migrant son. He isn’t a hero. And the show doesn’t attempt to make him one.

Not all masculinities can be stereotyped

We see a similar story in the new Australian film Slam.

Politically outspoken Ameena (Danielle Horvat) goes missing after a night performing slam poetry. Her brother Tarek Nasser (Adam Bakri) comforts himself by believing that she ran away, rather than confront the possibility of racially and gender-motivated violence against her – a considerable fear for young Arab and Muslim women in Australia.

Tarek denies the reality of racism in contemporary Australia. For survival, he focused on passing as non-Muslim and “non-Leb”, and on getting out of Bankstown – a socio-economically disadvantaged area home to a large population of Arabs and Muslims.

Read more: What does a ‘Leb’ look like?

Now living comfortably in a middle class inner Sydney suburb, he runs a cafe with his Anglo-Australian wife. He goes by the name Ricky. He speaks in his native Arabic only with his mother.

He distances himself from the Arab Muslim community he grew up in, but is awkward in the non-Arab community he thought he had seamlessly settled into.

Like Ramy, he is not a stereotypical working class tough guy. He appears out of place alongside young men from his childhood neighbourhood, as we see when he goes to the boxing gym to find Ameena’s friends. He is similarly uneasy among his wealthy in-laws: equal parts distant and suspicious.

Tarek is a difficult character to like. He doesn’t even seem to like himself.

Like the participants in my research, Tarek has to reckon with the tensions of community and individual aspirations to “make it” in broader Australian society.

Both Ramy and Slam show representations of masculinity and how this relates to ethnicity, culture and the casual racism that confront some young Arab and Muslim men in everyday settings.

They also reveal the ways these young men are blind to the gender struggles of the women in their lives.

Rather than pin down these characters in absolutist ways – choosing to fulfil macho and pious patriarchal expectations or opting out altogether – Ramy and Tarek try to draw on positive elements of their upbringing and honestly negotiate the tensions in their identities.

Tarek and Ramy’s supposed “failures” as young men are refreshing to watch.

It may be tempting to dismiss Tarek and Ramy for not being positive role models. But many who struggle to be the perfect, upwardly mobile migrant child will be able to relate to their experiences and inner turmoil.

These men are are flawed, nuanced and contradictory: a kind of masculinity that is necessary to see on screen. Especially for Arab Muslim young men whose stories are still rarely told in nuanced ways.

Slam opens in Australian cinemas October 17. Ramy is available in Australia on Stan.

– ref. By rejecting stereotypes, Slam and Ramy show us authentic Arab Muslim men on screen – http://theconversation.com/by-rejecting-stereotypes-slam-and-ramy-show-us-authentic-arab-muslim-men-on-screen-124774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Md Arif Hasan, PhD candidate, Victoria University of Wellington

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

There is a lot of discussion on the benefits of electric cars versus fossil fuel cars in the context of lithium mining. Please can you tell me which one weighs in better on the environmental impact in terms of global warming and why?

Electric vehicles (EVs) seem very attractive at first sight. But when we look more closely, it becomes clear that they have a substantial carbon footprint and some downsides in terms of the extraction of lithium, cobalt and other metals. And they don’t relieve congestion in crowded cities.

In this response to the question, we touch briefly on the lithium issue, but focus mainly on the carbon footprint of electric cars.

The increasing use of lithium-ion batteries as a major power source in electronic devices, including mobile phones, laptops and electric cars has contributed to a 58% increase in lithium mining in the past decade worldwide. There seems little near-term risk of lithium being mined out, but there is an environmental downside.

The mining process requires extensive amounts of water, which can cause aquifer depletion and adversely affect ecosystems in the Atacama Salt Flat, in Chile, the world’s largest lithium extraction site. But researchers have developed methods to recover lithium from water.

Turning to climate change, it matters whether electric cars emit less carbon than conventional vehicles, and how much less.

Read more: Climate explained: why don’t we have electric aircraft?

Emissions reduction potential of EVs

The best comparison is based on a life cycle analysis which tries to consider all the emissions of carbon dioxide during vehicle manufacturing, use and recycling. Life cycle estimates are never entirely comprehensive, and emission estimates vary by country, as circumstances differ.

In New Zealand, 82% of energy for electricity generation came from renewable sources in 2017. With these high renewable electricity levels for electric car recharging, compared with say Australia or China, EVs are better suited to New Zealand. But this is only one part of the story. One should not assume that, overall, electric cars in New Zealand have a close-to-zero carbon footprint or are wholly sustainable.

A life cycle analysis of emissions considers three phases: the manufacturing phase (also known as cradle-to-gate), the use phase (well-to-wheel) and the recycling phase (grave-to-cradle).

The manufacturing phase

In this phase, the main processes are ore mining, material transformation, manufacturing of vehicle components and vehicle assembly. A recent study of car emissions in China estimates emissions for cars with internal combustion engines in this phase to be about 10.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO₂) per car, compared to emissions for an electric car of about 13 tonnes (including the electric car battery manufacturing).

Emissions from the manufacturing of a lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide battery alone were estimated to be 3.2 tonnes. If the vehicle life is assumed to be 150,000 kilometres, emissions from the manufacturing phase of an electric car are higher than for fossil-fuelled cars. But for complete life cycle emissions, the study shows that EV emissions are 18% lower than fossil-fuelled cars.

Read more: How electric cars can help save the grid

The use phase

In the use phase, emissions from an electric car are solely due to its upstream emissions, which depend on how much of the electricity comes from fossil or renewable sources. The emissions from a fossil-fuelled car are due to both upstream emissions and tailpipe emissions.

Upstream emissions of EVs essentially depend on the share of zero or low-carbon sources in the country’s electricity generation mix. To understand how the emissions of electric cars vary with a country’s renewable electricity share, consider Australia and New Zealand.

In 2018, Australia’s share of renewables in electricity generation was about 21% (similar to Greece’s at 22%). In contrast, the share of renewables in New Zealand’s electricity generation mix was about 84% (less than France’s at 90%). Using these data and estimates from a 2018 assessment, electric car upstream emissions (for a battery electric vehicle) in Australia can be estimated to be about 170g of CO₂ per km while upstream emissions in New Zealand are estimated at about 25g of CO₂ per km on average. This shows that using an electric car in New Zealand is likely to be about seven times better in terms of upstream carbon emissions than in Australia.

The above studies show that emissions during the use phase from a fossil-fuelled compact sedan car were about 251g of CO₂ per km. Therefore, the use phase emissions from such a car were about 81g of CO₂ per km higher than those from a grid-recharged EV in Australia, and much worse than the emissions from an electric car in New Zealand.

The recycling phase

The key processes in the recycling phase are vehicle dismantling, vehicle recycling, battery recycling and material recovery. The estimated emissions in this phase, based on a study in China, are about 1.8 tonnes for a fossil-fuelled car and 2.4 tonnes for an electric car (including battery recycling). This difference is mostly due to the emissions from battery recycling which is 0.7 tonnes.

This illustrates that electric cars are responsible for more emissions than their petrol counterparts in the recycling phase. But it’s important to note the recycled vehicle components can be used in the manufacturing of future vehicles, and batteries recycled through direct cathode recycling can be used in subsequent batteries. This could have significant emissions reduction benefits in the future.

So on the basis of recent studies, fossil-fuelled cars generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a life cycle. The total life cycle emissions from a fossil-fuelled car and an electric car in Australia were 333g of CO₂ per km and 273g of CO₂ per km, respectively. That is, using average grid electricity, EVs come out about 18% better in terms of their carbon footprint.

Likewise, electric cars in New Zealand work out a lot better than fossil-fuelled cars in terms of emissions, with life-cycle emissions at about 333 g of CO₂ per km for fossil-fuelled cars and 128g of CO₂ per km for electric cars. In New Zealand, EVs perform about 62% better than fossil cars in carbon footprint terms.

– ref. Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric versus fossil cars – http://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandie Shean, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University

Two-thirds of young people experience levels of exam stress that mental health organisation ReachOut describes as “worrying”.

Research shows high levels of exam stress can interfere with attention and reduce working memory, leading to lower performance. Early experiences of anxiety and stress can also set a precedent for mental-health problems in adulthood.

Read more: Study confirms HSC exams source of major stress to adolescents

But how we see stress can actually make a difference to the way it affects us. Research shows if we believe stress is a helpful response that will increase our performance in a challenging event, it can be a tool that works to our advantage.

From good stress to bad stress

Stress is a normal experience when we have a challenging event. We can experience stress when learning something new, starting a new job or being in a race.

Our experience of “stress” is actually our body getting us ready to take on the challenge. A stress response is helpful as it can increase oxygen to the brain and improve attention, focus, energy and determination.

The runner in a race needs to be “stressed” to compete successfully. The young person sitting in an exam room needs it too.

Studies show people who are clear about their feelings are more likely to thrive on anxiety and stress and possibly use these to achieve their goals and find satisfaction at work.

Stress and anxiety can work for you. But they become bad when we evaluate events as a threat rather than a challenge and when we believe we don’t have enough resources to cope.

Exams are often treated as a threat because there is potential harm or loss related to our self-worth, identity, and commitments, goals and dreams. If we fail, we think we are a failure and we may never get the future we had hoped for. Our whole life is at stake.

How do we make stress good?

To put it simply, stress can be good if we believe it’s good. It’ll work for us if we develop a mindset that stress helps our performance, health and well-being (rather than seeing it as debilitating).

In a study from the United States, one group of young people were given information about stress before sitting an exam. The reading material explained stress was not harmful, but that it had evolved to help us cope and perform better. Another group were told to just ignore stress and suppress their emotions.

Read more: Are we teaching children to be afraid of exams?

Researchers found the first group performed significantly better in the exam (average five marks improvement) than the group who used the ignore-and-relax approach.

In another study of exam stress, students who saw stress as an opportunity and used it for self-growth had increased performance and decreased emotional exhaustion. But students who saw stress as a threat showed decreased effort and performance.

These studies didn’t examine how to eliminate exam stress. Instead they examined a change in the way students responded to it. Here are some tips for you use stress to your advantage.

Four ways to make stress work for you

1. Read your body differently

Start to read your stress response as being there to help you prepare for the challenge. Instead of seeing it as a threat, try to see it as a coping tool. When you are experiencing stress, you can say to yourself:

I am feeling a little uncomfortable; my heart is beating faster, but my body is getting me ready to compete.

2. Reframe the meaning of the event

Rather than framing exams as a threat, try to frame them as a challenge. Part of the reason they are seen as a threat is because your whole future, identity and worth appear to be at stake. This is not true. Exams are one very small part of your life that does not decide your whole future.

There are always other options, different pathways and opportunities. Vera Wang failed to get into the Olympic ice-skating team and became a world famous dress designer. Sometimes the path we imagine looks a little different.

Not all journeys are straight, and the best ones can have diversions.

3. Accept stress and negative emotions

Some common ways people approach stress is to try to relax, ignore stress and try to reduce it. These approaches actually reinforce that stress is “bad” rather than accepting it as a natural and helpful response. These approaches also lead to poorer performance and emotional exhaustion.

Rather than ignoring the emotions, it’s better to feel them, accept them, and then try to use them to your advantage. You can say to yourself:

I feel this way because this goal is important to me, and my body is responding this way because it is getting me ready to perform.

4. Add to your resources

Clearly, changing your mindset is only helpful if you have the resources to cope. It would be like an athlete who is about to compete but has not trained. Put time into study, study in different ways (read, write ideas in your own words, talk about the ideas, draw them) and give yourself time to practise these ideas.

Read more: Studying for exams? Here’s how to make your memory work for you

When you have done this, your stress response then draws on these resources.

Stress will always be present in our lives as we take on new challenges and grow as a person. When we see low-level stress as a threat it becomes one. It becomes a red flag that we are not coping, that these feelings are wrong and we should retreat. This is not true.

However, if you are feeling severe stress and anxiety in different settings and for an extended period of time you should see your GP and get support.

Read more: How to overcome exam anxiety

– ref. Don’t calm down! Exam stress may not be fun but it can help you get better marks – http://theconversation.com/dont-calm-down-exam-stress-may-not-be-fun-but-it-can-help-you-get-better-marks-124517

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Beckett, Lecturer in Media and Communications, University of Melbourne

Reports of Facebook moderators’ appalling working conditions have been making headlines worldwide.

Workers say they are burning out as they moderate vast flows of violent content under pressure, with vague, ever-changing guidelines. They describe unclean, dangerous contractor workplaces. Moderators battle depression, addiction, and even post-traumatic stress disorder from the endless parade of horrors they consume.

Yet in leaked audio recently published by The Verge, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg can reportedly be heard telling his staff that some of these reports “are, I think, a little over-dramatic”.

Out of touch and dismissive

While Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook moderators need to be treated humanely, overall he comes across in the recording as a person who sees human suffering as “a math problem”, as The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel suggested on Twitter.

Zuckerberg’s response is troubling on several fronts, not least in minimising the impact of moderation on those who do it. It also works to discredit those who blow the whistle on poor working conditions.

In dismissing the real risks of poorly paid, relentless content moderation and implying that moderators who call out issues are “over-dramatic”, Zuckerberg risks compounding moderators’ trauma.

This is a result of what American psychologists Carly Smith and Jennifer Freyd call “institutional betrayal”, where the organisation we trust to support us, doesn’t. Worse still, this behaviour has also been shown to make people doubt their decision to report in the first place.

We also contacted Facebook about Zuckerberg’s comments and asked them to confirm or deny the working conditions of their moderators. They gave us the following statement:

We are committed to providing support for our content reviewers as we recognize that reviewing certain types of content can be hard. That is why everyone who reviews content for Facebook goes through an in-depth, multi-week training program on our Community Standards and has access to extensive support to ensure their well-being, which can include on-site support with trained practitioners, an on-call service, and healthcare benefits from the first day of employment. We are also employing technical solutions to limit exposure to graphic material as much as possible. This is an important issue, and we are committed to getting this right.

While Zuckerberg and Facebook acknowledge that moderators need access to psychological care, there are major structural issues that prevent many of them from getting it.

Bottom of the heap

If the internet has a class system, moderators sit at the bottom – they are modern day sin-eaters who absorb offensive and traumatic material so others don’t have to see it.

Most are subcontractors working on short-term or casual agreements with little chance of permanent employment and minimal agency or autonomy. As a result, they’re largely exiled from the shiny campuses of today’s big tech companies, even though many hold degrees from top-tier universities, as Sarah T. Roberts discusses in her book Behind The Screen.

As members of the precariat, they are reluctant to take time off work to seek care, or indicate they are unable to cope, in case they lose shifts or have contracts terminated. Cost of care is also a significant inhibitor. As Sarah Roberts writes, contract workers are oftenoften not covered by employee health insurance plans or able to afford their own private ccover.

This structural powerlessness has negative implications for workers’ mental health, even before they start moderating violent content.

Read more: Facebook is all for community, but what kind of community is it building?

Most platform moderators are hired through outsourcing firms that are woefully unqualified to understand the nuances of the job. One such company, Cognizant, reportedly allows moderators nine minutes each day of “wellness time” to “process” abhorrent content, with repercussions if the time is used instead for bathroom breaks or prayer.

Documentaries like The Moderators and The Cleaners reveal techno-colonialism in moderation centres in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. As a whole, moderators are vulnerable humans in a deadly loop – Morlocks subject to the whims of Silicon Valley Eloi.

Organising for change

Despite moderators’ dismal conditions and the dismissiveness of Zuckerberg and others at the top of the tech hierarchy, there are signs that things are beginning to change.

In Australia, online community managers – professionals who are hired to help organisations build communities or audiences across a range of platforms, including Facebook, and who set rules for governance and moderation – have recently teamed up with a union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, to negotiate labour protections.

This has been done through the Australian Community Managers network (ACM), which also provides access to training and peer support. ACM is also working with like-minded organisations around the world, including Bundesverband Community Management in Germany, Voorzitter Vereniging Community Management in the Netherlands, The Community Roundtable in the United States, and nascent groups in India and Vietnam.

Read more: After defamation ruling, it’s time Facebook provided better moderation tools

These groups are professional communities of practice and union-like surrogates who advocate for their people, and champion their insights and perspectives.

As this movement grows, it may challenge the tech industry’s reliance on cheap, unprotected labour – which extends beyond moderation to countless other areas, including contract game development and video production.

The YouTubers’ union and beyond

Workers in the gaming industry are also starting to push back against frameworks that exploit their time, talent and, invariably, well-being (as illuminated by Hasan Minaj on Patriot Act). In Australia Gaming Workers Unite is mobilising games workers around issues of precarious employment, harassment (online and off), exploitation and more.

And in Europe YouTubers are joining the country’s largest metalworkers’ union, IG Metall, to pressure YouTube for greater transparency around moderation and monetisation.

Although Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand the human challenges of internetworked creativity, or the labour that enables his machine to work, he may yet have to learn. His remarks compound the material violence experienced by moderators, dismiss the complexity of their work and – most crucially – dismiss their potential to organise.

Platform chief executives can expect a backlash from digital workers around the world. The physical and psychological effects of moderation are indeed dramatic; the changes they’re provoking in industrial relations are even more so.

– ref. Revenge of the moderators: Facebook’s online workers are sick of being treated like bots – http://theconversation.com/revenge-of-the-moderators-facebooks-online-workers-are-sick-of-being-treated-like-bots-125127

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Lycett, Senior Research Officer, Deakin University; Honorary Fellow, The University of Melbourne, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Three simple factors can predict whether a child is likely to be overweight or obese by the time they reach adolescence: the child’s body mass index (BMI), the mother’s BMI and the mother’s education level, according to our new research.

The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, found these three factors predicted whether children of all sizes either developed weight problems or resolved them by age 14-15, with around 70% accuracy.

One in four Australian adolescents is overweight or obese. This means they’re likely to be obese in adulthood, placing them at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Combining these three factors may help clinicians target care to those most at risk of becoming obese in adolescence.

Read more: More than one in four Aussie kids are overweight or obese: we’re failing them, and we need a plan

Targeting care to those who need it

GPs are well placed to both prevent and treat excess weight and obesity. But time constraints make it difficult. Few parents make appointments to address concerns about weight, so most counselling occurs in the context of a visit for something else.

It’s also difficult for GPs to know which children might need this counselling. GPs don’t want to offer treatment to the overweight or obese child who is going to grow out it. Nor do they want to raise the topic of excess weight to a child who is in the normal weight range, without good reason.

Targeting care, whether treatment or prevention, to those who really need it avoids wasting resources and harm from over-treating children who will grow out of their weight issues. But until now, we haven’t been able to predict on the spot who these children are.

Read more: Weighing kids at school has more pros than cons but the reasons may surprise you

Our study

We set out to determine whether simple factors, such as those available to GPs in a standard appointment, could accurately predict which normal-weight children were likely to become overweight or obese, and which heavy children were likely to resolve to a normal weight by adolescence.

By drawing on the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we considered this question in close to 7,000 children. Children were recruited in 2004 at 0-12 months or four to five years of age and followed up every two years, across six time points, to age 10-11 and 14-15 years respectively.

At each time point, interviewers measured children’s height and weight (except 0-12 months), and parents reported their height and weight, allowing us to calculate their BMI.

We also selected 23 other obesity-related factors clinicians could readily ask in a routine appointment. These included historical factors – such as the child’s birth weight, duration of breastfeeding, mode of delivery and the mother’s education levels – and questions about how often they ate high-fat foods and sugary drinks, their enjoyment of physical activity, and levels of disadvantage in their neighbourhood.

Other studies have tended to look at these factors in isolation or to examine predictive factors at a single time point. We were able to look at the combined effects of all the questions across all the time points throughout childhood.

What did we find?

Three consistent factors in both age groups predicted the development or resolution of weight problems by adolescence: the mother’s BMI, the child’s BMI and the mother’s level of education.

For every one unit increase in the child’s BMI at age six to seven, the odds of developing weight problems at 14-15 rose three-fold. It also halved the odds of the weight issues resolving.

Similarly, for every one unit increase of the mother’s BMI when the child was aged six to seven, the chance of the child developing weight problems by 14-15 increased by 5%. The odds of weight issues resolving decreased by 10%.

In addition, at two to five years of age, children whose mothers had a university degree had lower odds of being overweight or obese. For children who were already overweight or obese at two to five, those whose mothers had a university degree were more likely to have their weight issues resolved by adolescence.

Together, these three factors were around 70% accurate in predicting both the development and resolution of weight problems.

Only 13% of normal-weight six to seven year olds, with none of these three risk factors, became overweight or obese by age 14-15.

In contrast, 71% of those with all three risk factors became overweight or obese.

How could these findings improve care?

Unlike genetic information or blood tests, these three factors are available on the spot. And despite their apparent simplicity, they include a complex mix of genetic, environmental and lifestyle information about our health. This data is impossible to measure accurately in a brief – or even long – doctor’s appointment.

These three questions may help health practitioners target treatment to high-risk children.

Of course, even if we can accurately identify children at risk of becoming overweight or obese, we still lack effective prevention methods. Lifestyle interventions, such as counselling to improve the quality of their diet and increase physical activity, remain the first choices. However, the effectiveness of these interventions is limited. We urgently need more effective tools to prevent and manage excess weight and obesity in children.

If you’re concerned about your child’s weight, speak to a professional such as a dietitian, GP or paediatrician. They can also help manage other conditions that can accompany obesity, such as anxiety and high blood pressure.

Read more: Five things parents can do to improve their children’s eating patterns

– ref. These 3 factors predict a child’s chance of obesity in adolescence (and no, it’s not just their weight) – http://theconversation.com/these-3-factors-predict-a-childs-chance-of-obesity-in-adolescence-and-no-its-not-just-their-weight-124994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Kathryn White, PhD Candidate, Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne

There is a phrase in the novel East of Eden that springs to mind every time politicians speak of “drought-proofing” Australia:

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

While author John Steinbeck was referring to California’s Salinas Valley, the phrase is particularly pertinent to Australia where the El Niño-Southern Oscillation exerts a profound influence. Water availability varies greatly across the country, both in space and time. El Niño conditions bring droughts and devastating bushfires, while La Niña is accompanied by violent rainfall, floods and cyclones.

Read more: Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years

This variability is innate to the Australian environment. And now, climate change means that in some regions, the dry years are becoming drier and the wet years are becoming less frequent. Managing water resources under a changing climate and burgeoning population requires innovative and realistic solutions that are different to those that have worked in the past.

Drought-proofing is impossible

Planning for the dry years involves setting sustainable usage limits, using more than one source of water, efficiency improvements, managed aquifer recharge, water recycling and evaluation of the best usage of water resources. It does not involve misleading claims of drought-proofing that infer we can somehow tame the unruly nature of our arid environment instead of planning and preparing for reality.

Unlike managing for the wet and dry periods, drought-proofing seeks to negate dry periods through infrastructure schemes such as large dams (subject to huge evaporative losses) and dubious river diversions. It fails to acknowledge the intrinsic variability of water availability in Australia, and modify our behaviour accordingly.

The reality is that in many parts of the country, groundwater is the sole source of water and the climate is very dry. A cornerstone of the recently launched $100 million National Water Grid Authority is the construction of more dams. But dams need rain to fill them, because without rain, all we have is empty dams. And we have enough of those already.

A history of denial

Just because Dorothea Mackellar wrote of “droughts and flooding rains” over 100 years ago, it doesn’t mean water management should proceed in the same vein it always has.

Australia has always had a variable climate, which changes significantly from year to year and also decade to decade. This not the same as a long-term climatic trend, better known as climate change.

Read more: “Weather” and “climate” are used interchangeably. They shouldn’t be

Climate change is making parts of Australia even drier. Rainfall in the south-eastern part of Australia is projected to keep declining. We cannot rely on blind faith that rains will fill dams once more because they have in the past.

Yet inevitably, during the dry years, claims that Australia can be “drought-proofed” are renewed. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack recently praised the Bradfield scheme, an 80 year old infrastructure project intending to divert northern river flows inland. It has been so thoroughly debunked on all scales, it is better described as a pipe-dream than piping scheme. It has no place in reasonable water management discourse.

The concept of drought-proofing harks back to the days of European settlement. Early water management techniques were more appropriate for verdant English fields than the arid plains of Australia.

In the early twentieth century, water resources were vigorously developed, with government-sponsored irrigation schemes and large dams constructed. During this time, little thought was given to sustainability. Instead, the goal was to stimulate inland settlement, agriculture and industry. Development was pursued despite the cost and ill-advised nature of irrigation in particular areas.

Shifting long entrenched perceptions of water management

All this said, irrigation certainly has its place: it supports a quarter of Australia’s agricultural output. And there are substantial efforts underway to rebalance water usage between irrigation and the environment.

However, acknowledgement of the relative scarcity of water in certain parts of Australia has only really occurred in the last 30 years or so.

Widespread droughts in the late 1970s and early 1980s highlighted the importance of effective water management and shifted long-entrenched perceptions of irrigation and development. Water reforms were passed, mandating future water development be environmentally sustainable development, which meant, for the first time, water resource management sought a balance between economic, social and environmental needs.

Antiquated ideas about drought-proofing, pushed by politicians, promise much yet deliver little. They distract attention and siphon funds from realistic solutions, or actually re-evaluating where and how we use our limited water resources.

Read more: The air above Antarctica is suddenly getting warmer – here’s what it means for Australia

We need practical, effective and well-considered management such as water recycling, efficiency measures and source-divestment that accounts for both shorter term climatic variability and long term changes in temperature and rainfall due to climate change. A big part of this is managing expectations through education.

Attempting to drought-proof Australia is not “managing for the dry periods”, as advocates claim. It is sticking our heads in the dry, salty sand and pretending the land is cool and green and wet.

– ref. We can’t drought-proof Australia, and trying is a fool’s errand – http://theconversation.com/we-cant-drought-proof-australia-and-trying-is-a-fools-errand-124504

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Marshall, Lecturer, Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecology, University of Melbourne

You may mock the national anthem by singing “Our land abounds in nature strips” but what you might not know is how true that is. In Melbourne, for example, more than a third of all public green space is nature strips. (That figure includes roundabouts, medians and other green bits of the street.)

That’s a remarkable amount. The nature strip is everywhere. A million small patches combine into a giant park spanning the city, making it a significant player in our urban ecosystems.

Read more: Reinventing density: overcoming the suburban setback

A second remarkable thing is that the nature strip is public land that private citizens are required by law to maintain. Councils manage the trees, but we residents mow the lawn.

What are the rules on nature strips?

Many residents go further and plant a street tree or some garden plants – succulents, Agapanthus and Gazanias are the most common. But the chances are that, whatever the garden on the nature strip, it’s against the rules.

The rules on nature strips vary from council to council. Some councils don’t allow any plantings. Others restrict plantings by height or allow only plants indigenous to the local area. In some areas, nature strips can only be planted to prevent erosion on steep slopes.

Some councils disallow food plants, for fear of historic lead contamination from leaded petrol. Others insist on no plants within a metre of the kerb and two metres of the footpath.

Read more: Farming the suburbs – why can’t we grow food wherever we want?

These bylaws are inconsistent and illogical. For instance, councils that insist on indigenous species nevertheless plant exotic street trees. Councils that say plants must be less than 30cm high to ensure they don’t block drivers’ sight lines still allow vehicles to park on the street, blocking sight lines.

Bylaws deny us many benefits

To have council bylaws restrict or disallow gardening in the nature strip flies in the face of common sense. Street greenery, whether its trees, shrubs or lawn, provides many benefits. The science is in on this.

Urban wildlife uses street greenery for habitat and food and as green corridors for movement.

Even for those who mow, the lawns of nature strips are not just turf grass. They are home to over 150 species of plants, based on my yet-to-be-published survey data for nearly 50 neighbourhoods, confirming earlier studies. Many of these, like the clovers, provide important resources for pollinators.

One US study showed that changing from a weekly mow to every three weeks increased the number of flowers in a lawn by 250%. Less mowing is good news for bees and butterflies.

An unpublished recent survey by the author and colleagues found gardening in the nature strip adds native plants to the streetscape, increases biodiversity and add structural complexity (more layers of plants, more types of stuff), which is important for many species.

Street greenery helps water soak into the ground, filtering out pollutants, recharging aquifers and making rivers healthier. It cools streets and helps counter the urban heat island effect. It also promotes a sense of community, encourages walking and lowers the incidence of heart disease, diabetes, asthma and depression.

Read more: Increasing tree cover may be like a ‘superfood’ for community mental health

But councils tend to be risk-averse. They worry they will be sued if someone trips on groundcover or stubs their toe on an out-of-place garden gnome.

Fortunately, this risk aversion isn’t universal. For instance, the City of Vincent in Western Australia is so keen for residents to convert lawn to waterwise plantings that it will remove turf and provide native plants.

But, as climate change looms, stubbed toes are not the main risk we should be worrying about. Rather, we must urgently remake our cities and our culture for sustainability and resilience.

Read more: If planners understand it’s cool to green cities, what’s stopping them?

Gardening becomes a neighbourly act

One of the great things about gardening in the nature strip is that people are more likely to do it if their neighbours do it. It’s contagious, a positive-feedback loop creating a greener street.

Our recent survey found residents who garden in the nature strip have a greater sense of community than those who don’t.

Interestingly, the benefits nature strips provide are not equally distributed across the city. For instance, newer neighbourhoods have more nature strip than older neighbourhoods (though their trees are younger). People garden the nature strip more on minor roads than major roads, and in more socially advantaged neighbourhoods.

Almost a quarter of residential properties in Melbourne have some sort of nature strip gardening. If councils were to encourage this activity we might achieve more street greening with little cost to our cash-strapped councils. Such encouragement would also free many residents of their sense of frustration at being required to maintain the nature strip but forbidden to do anything more than mow.

Given that more than a third of our public green space is nature strip, the many small actions of residents can add up to substantial positive change.

– ref. Our land abounds in nature strips – surely we can do more than mow a third of urban green space – http://theconversation.com/our-land-abounds-in-nature-strips-surely-we-can-do-more-than-mow-a-third-of-urban-green-space-124781

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University

It’s unlikely Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team, realised he’d be sparking an international diplomatic incident when, on October 4, he tweeted the following Stand with Hong Kong logo.

The aftermath has seen retaliation from multiple layers of China’s political and corporate power structure. The furious response has sent a multibillion-dollar sports empire into crisis mode, with NBA officials running scared about losing revenue from the league’s most important foreign market.

The Chinese reaction tells a lot about China’s sensitivities. It’s also a lesson in the “realpolitik” the regime has learnt from its successful track record in bullying global sporting organisations to see things its way.

Read more: ‘We fear Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city’: an interview with Martin Lee, grandfather of democracy

But it might also yet prove to be a lesson in overreach for an emerging superpower still coming to terms with its new economic muscle and the extent to which it can throw its weight around – particular in an arena that is still America’s game.

Chinese backlash

Following Morey’s tweet, the Chinese Consulate in Houston lodged an official complaint. The Chinese Basketball Association suspended dealings with the Rockets. China’s state broadcaster, China Central Television, and digital network Tencent (which has the digital streaming rights for NBA in China) suspended broadcasting NBA pre-season games. All of the NBA’s official Chinese partners have suspended ties with the league.

All this despite statements from the Rockets’ owner and the NBA distancing themselves from Morey’s tweet (NBA commissioner Adam Silver called the tweet “regrettable”), with Morey himself also deleting the tweet and issuing a grovelling apology.

The Chinese government’s power over the NBA also explains its desire to send a message that no one repeat Morey’s “erroneous comments”.

Basketball, and the NBA in particular, are hugely popular in China – with the Houston Rockets one of the most popular teams in the country. The head of the Chinese Basketball Association, basketball legend Yao Ming, is a former Rockets player. In recognition of the team’s Chinese supporter base, the Rockets occasionally play in Chinese-inspired uniforms.

China is the NBA’s major growth market. The broadcast deal with Tencent alone is worth a reported US$1.5 billion (about A$2.2 billion) a year. NBA teams are now reportedly planning for the possibility that lost revenues from China will see the NBA reduce team salary caps by 10% to 15% – or up to about US$17 million a team.

Read more: China’s financial muscle makes its mark on the global sport industry

A sports-conscious regime

The Chinese reaction is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s long history of seeing sports in political terms. This goes back to Mao Zedong, who as early as 1917, even before he turned towards Marxism, wanted Chinese youth to become “sports-conscious” to rectify the nation’s fortunes, and to correct the humiliation inflicted on China by Western powers during the 19th century.

Since its foundation, the People’s Republic of China in 1949 has used sports to push political objectives. Its efforts to stop Taiwan competing as the “Republic of China” in international sporting events include boycotting the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

To appease China, Taiwan must now compete as Chinese Taipei in all international events, under the fiction it is a provisional or provincial body rather than an independent nation. Last year Taiwan accused China of bullying the East Asian Olympic Committee to revoke Taiwan’s permission to host the East Asian Youth Games.

Read more: Inside China’s vast influence network – how it works, and the extent of its reach in Australia

Playing an American game

On one score, China has flexed its muscle to get what it wants in this case. The reaction of the NBA and associated companies such as Nike, which pulled Rockets gear from its Chinese stores, shows American companies will kowtow to preserve access to the Chinese market.

But Beijing may have misjudged its heavy-handed approach to soft power this time. Arguably it has simply focused attention on the Hong Kong protest movement.

In the US, fans are turning up to NBA games with clothing and signs supporting the Hong Kong protests. Efforts by the NBA to discourage this by kicking them out has drawn more media attention. Politicians across the ideological spectrum, from conservative Republican Ted Cruz to Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren, have criticised the NBA.

The US knows how to play this game. During the long Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, hockey rinks, swimming pools, running tracks and basketball courts became theatres of proxy confrontation between the two superpowers – between capitalism and communism, freedom and tyranny, democracy and dictatorship.

In the face of rising tensions with the United States and China, they who’s they? might become the same. American companies may ideally wish to keep everybody onside, but if it comes to the crunch they’ll go with their biggest market over their second-biggest.

China might be part of the NBA’s future, but America is its heartland.

– ref. China has form as a sports bully, but its full-court press on the NBA may backfire – http://theconversation.com/china-has-form-as-a-sports-bully-but-its-full-court-press-on-the-nba-may-backfire-125141

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

The last PM shock jock Alan Jones slapped down was Jacinda Ardern. His language was particularly offensive, advertisers deserted his program and he apologised to New Zealand’s leader. But at least Ardern didn’t have to endure the excoriating on-air encounter Scott Morrison had on Tuesday.

Jones unleashed his well-known tactics of lecturing and insult as he accused Morrison of failing the immediate needs of drought-striken farmers.

As Jones hectored Morrison, their battle came down to the repeated, and, for the seething Jones, existential question, “How does that feed a cow?”

Morrison had done his preparation. After Jones sent him a clip of a caller from “back of Bourke”, Morrison rang the man, got the family’s back story, and “took him through all the things we were doing”.

But – like many earlier targets of Jones’ wrath – Morrison found himself on the back foot in the face of the broadcaster’s tirade, which was replete with groans and the exasperated sigh.

As the Prime Minister threw up figures, Jones just wanted to know, “How does that feed a cow?”

Morrison said he’d like to answer – and he was sure the listeners would like to know – where the government money had gone, including funds to deal with pests and weeds.

Jones wasn’t moving from the groove. “How does that feed a cow? How does that feed a cow?”

“Alan, if you’ve got pests and weeds which are running over your property …”

This triggered the ultimate putdown. “Oh PM, don’t talk to me. I’m a farmer’s son – you’re not.” (On the putdown front, the water resources minister was written off as “the global warming advocate Littleproud”.)

Read more: A national drought policy should be an easy, bipartisan fix. So why has it taken so long to enact a new one?

In an exchange about household financial help, Jones told Morrison, “You go and tell Jenny that she can live on 250 bucks a week”.

Morrison protested, “it’s not just $250 a week, Alan”. He tried to elaborate, but Jones was back to basics, “How does that feed a cow and to keep it alive?”

When Morrison said that at this week’s National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) dinner a number of farmers had come up and thanked him for what the government was doing, Jones was dismissive. “Well, I must be talking to none of them”.

Jones moved on to the government’s former coordinator-general for drought, Stephen Day.

“You’ve got this Stephen Day…”, he said as Morrison, still trying to finish a previous point, vainly protested, “Alan, if you stop talking over me then I could probably answer your question”.

Jones wanted to know – as have many others, including the opposition – why Day’s report hadn’t been released.

“It’s coming through cabinet at present”, Morrison said, adding that it had already informed much of what the government had done.

“Well why can’t we see it? Why can’t we see the report?” Jones demanded.

Morrison waffled without providing an explanation beyond saying “cabinet is finalising its final response”. Instead, he tried to bring Jones on board by saying, “We both want the same thing. We want the farmers and the communities to be able to get through this drought” but the situation couldn’t be totally solved by “a magic cash splash”.

“We gave Indonesia a billion bucks without any questions [after the tsunami],” Jones said. “We’re doing seven times that,” Morrison replied.

Read more: Just because both sides support drought relief, doesn’t mean it’s right

Eventually the marathon ended when Jones said, “I don’t know whether it suits either of us but we’re beaten by the bell”.

The verbal boxing match brought to mind the time another 2GB shock jock, Ray Hadley, challenged Morrison over his loyalty, after Malcolm Turnbull’s coup against Tony Abbott, insisting he swear on a bible (that Morrison couldn’t find in the studio).

Morrison grabbed the issue of drought as a priority as soon as he became PM; since then, there has been a flurry of announcements and promises. Large funds have been allocated, although smoke and mirrors mean the $7 billion total is not quite what it seems.

There’s been tooing and froing between the government and the NFF, and argument about whether what the government has done amounts to a “drought policy”.

The opposition homed in on drought at Tuesday’s question time; earlier, David Littleproud gave the Coalition party room a presentation of the three parts of the government’s approach, which Morrison also outlined at the NFF dinner: immediate help to farming families, assistance for local communities, and measures for long term resilience.

Some 11 MPs spoke in the party room, where one subject was the need for those in metropolitan areas to understand more fully what the government is doing to help. As Victorian Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent told parliament last month: “We who live on the coastal lands actually care about what’s happening to people in drought-affected areas.” They felt that if there was more to be done, it should be, he said.

– ref. View from The Hill: Alan Jones V Scott Morrison on the question of how you feed a cow – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-alan-jones-v-scott-morrison-on-the-question-of-how-you-feed-a-cow-125303

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Cowie, Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Viral Hepatitis, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

Around one-third of Australians living with hepatitis C have been cured in the last four years.

Hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. Hepatitis C is one of five varieties of viral hepatitis (A-E), and alongside hepatitis B, is responsible for the majority of illness caused by hepatitis.

Australia’s response to hepatitis C is seen as a leading example around the world, and the elimination of the disease as a major public health threat is looking like an increasingly achievable goal.

Read more: Australia leads the world in hepatitis C treatment – what’s behind its success?

But the situation is much less promising for Australians living with hepatitis B, which is now the most common blood-borne viral infection in Australia. It affects more people than hepatitis C and HIV combined.

In our research published today, we show Australia is falling short of its targets to reduce the burden of hepatitis B. Looking to the way we’ve responded to hepatitis C may set us on a better path.

Hepatitis C treatment

There were an estimated 182,144 people living with chronic hepatitis C in Australia at the end of 2017.

A number of important drugs were listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) from 2016, making curative treatments available to nearly all Australians living with hepatitis C.

The number of treatments being initiated has fallen significantly since the early peak, and significant differences exist in who has accessed the treatments across Australia. Nonetheless, Australia’s response to hepatitis C is highly regarded as an example of how to rapidly scale up hepatitis C treatment in a population, including among people who inject drugs.

Recent data from New South Wales demonstrate access to hepatitis C cures has led to a drop in the number of people with hepatitis C dying from liver cancer, with the bend in the curve coinciding with listing of these new treatments on the PBS in 2016.

Read more: Explainer: the A, B, C, D and E of hepatitis

Hepatitis B treatment

There were an estimated 221,420 people living with chronic hepatitis B in Australia in 2017. Along the trajectory of the disease, those who have liver disease or are at risk of developing liver disease require treatment.

Unlike hepatitis C, hepatitis B cannot be cured with current treatments, so ongoing antiviral therapy is required. This is similar to the treatment received by someone with HIV.

Although not a cure, the available treatments are effective. Current hepatitis B treatments have been associated with reducing the risk of liver cancer by around 50% in the first five years of treatment.

Scaling up such treatment and care will be a critical element in reversing the increasing tide of liver cancer deaths in Australia.

Targets

By 2030, the World Health Organisation has set out that 90% of people with hepatitis B should be diagnosed, 80% of those who meet criteria for treatment should be treated, and deaths due to hepatitis B should be reduced by 65% relative to 2015 globally.

In Australia, our Third National Hepatitis B Strategy sets targets to be achieved by 2022, including diagnosing 80% of people, engaging 50% of people in care, treating 20% of people, and reducing deaths due to hepatitis B by 30%.

Read more: Three charts on: cancer rates in Australia, where liver cancer is on the rise while other types fall

Measuring progress towards these targets is complicated and requires consideration of a range of demographic and other factors. Considering most people living with hepatitis B in Australia were born overseas or are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples, up-to-date estimates of Indigenous status and migration flows into and out of Australia are essential. Estimates of the prevalence of hepatitis B in different groups and detailed information about the natural history of hepatitis B in individuals over time is also important.

Our research

Taking these complexities into account, we’ve constructed a mathematical model simulating the burden of hepatitis B in the Australian population from 1951 to 2030. We wanted to see how Australia is faring in terms of meeting national and international targets.

By 2022, if current trends continue, the proportion of people diagnosed will reach 71% (short of the 80% goal). Some 11.2% of Australians living with hepatitis B will be on treatment (short of the 20% target). But we estimate the proportion who actually need treatment is around 30%, so we have a long way to go.

In related work mapping the burden of hepatitis B and estimating differences in treatment and care nationally we estimate only 20% of people living with hepatitis B are engaged in care (either being appropriately monitored or receiving treatment). Again, this is well short of the 50% target.

So why aren’t we meeting these targets?

Broader inequities in health access and outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse groups and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play a substantial role. Together they represent over two-thirds of Australians living with hepatitis B.

Current delivery of treatment and care differs across the country. The experience and strategies used in those areas with higher levels of treatment and care should be examined and shared to address the inequities observed across Australia.

Read more: Eliminating hepatitis C – an ambitious but achievable goal

Like hepatitis C, Australia’s response to the needs of people living with HIV is viewed as being of a high standard. Two elements central to our responses to hepatitis C and HIV are currently missing for hepatitis B.

The first is strong, ongoing community engagement and leadership of the response by those affected. While organisations representing people living with HIV have existed since the 1980s and for hepatitis C since the 1990s, engagement with people living with hepatitis B has lagged well behind.

The second is treatment and care primarily being delivered in the community by primary care clinicians (especially GPs) – rather than in hospitals and by specialists, as is the case for most people living with hepatitis B. Many patients prefer seeing GPs and find this more convenient than waiting for hospital appointments and seeing specialists. This can be especially true for people living far from major hospitals, reflected in the fact hepatitis B treatment uptake is much lower than average in regional and rural areas of Australia.

Making it happen

Although both factors are priorities for action in the National Hepatitis B Strategy, progress will require ongoing funding and coordinated efforts by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, primary health networks, and other partners.

The impact will be measured, not just in modelled estimates, but in real lives saved. While we’re not yet on track to meet our targets for hepatitis B in Australia, our modelling suggests even with the relatively low current uptake of treatment and care, 2,300 Australian lives were saved between 2000 and 2017, which otherwise would have been lost to liver cancer and liver failure caused by hepatitis B.

If we can translate what has been learned in our HIV and hepatitis C responses to increase access to essential care for Australians living with hepatitis B, thousands more lives can be saved in the next decade and beyond.

Read more: Dr G. Yunupingu’s legacy: it’s time to get rid of chronic hepatitis B in Indigenous Australia

– ref. In contrast to Australia’s success with hepatitis C, our response to hepatitis B is lagging – http://theconversation.com/in-contrast-to-australias-success-with-hepatitis-c-our-response-to-hepatitis-b-is-lagging-122547

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Austin, Professor UNSW Canberra Cyber, UNSW

This is part of a new series looking at the national security challenges facing Australia, how our leaders are responding to them and how these measures are impacting society. Read other stories in the series here.

Australia’s social scientists and the intelligence agencies have a new joint role in protecting the country, but may need a more tech-savvy workforce to get there.

There are historical precedents for this kind of cooperation. In September 1939, just as war broke out in Europe, the Cambridge University scholar Alan Turing arrived at Bletchley Park to take up a position helping the UK government break the German codes and cipher machines.

Australia’s current geopolitical situation is obviously not as dire. But we are facing the same institutional problem. The country has not been able to develop an intelligence workforce that can keep up with the speed of advancing technologies today and their intensifying threat to our national security.

Read more: Explainer: how the Australian intelligence community works

New technological threats

In 2012, Nick Warner, then-director general of the Australia Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), first advocated the need for greater attention to the threat posed by advanced cyber technologies.

Seven years later, as the new director-general of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), Warner again publicly asserted that accelerating technological change is

not only changing the business of intelligence; it’s changing the entire world.

Warner specifically mentioned recent innovations in nanotechnology, quantum computing, synthetic biology and facial recognition technology as among the most critical for our intelligence agencies to better understand.

As it stands, there are gaping holes in our capability to grasp both the threats posed by these new technologies, as well as the opportunities for our intelligence agents to use them in their missions.

Read more: The ethics of ‘securitising’ Australian cyberspace

On the threat side, one area where Australia and most other countries are weak is the need to have advanced, 24-hour monitoring and immediate remediation of cyber-intrusions for nationally connected systems.

This can only be done through the development of artificial intelligence applications unique to the country, its cyber-infrastructure, and the threat profile of potential adversaries. An algorithm for Australia’s system, for instance, will not work for the United States.

But how many Australians are qualified in this area? This shortfall in the number of candidates with high-tech qualifications to help remake our intelligence workforce is probably the main reason why leaders like Warner are going public with their concerns.

Enter the scholars

Around the time Warner made his speech this April, the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) asked the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) to advise it on how scholars could assist the agencies in doing their job better, including in the area of addressing new, advanced technologies.

ONI was following the lead of the chief intelligence agency in the United States, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ONDI), which had asked the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to do the same thing.

Their report was released in March 2019 after two years of work, 100 working papers and a cost of A$15 million.

The American scholars’ report revealed how the richest, most technologically advanced country in the world was struggling to maintain confidence in its intelligence capabilities at a time of emerging, often invisible or untraceable threats in cyberspace.

The most surprising conclusion of the American scholars was that the solutions would be found in areas of social policy and workforce development.

The report gave prominence to the emerging concept of social cyber-security. The focus, they said, had to be in forecasting the changes in human behaviour that have been caused by new cyber-technologies.

Developing a future high-tech workforce

Building off the US report, the Australian scholars’ most important recommendation was that our country needs a strategic plan for workforce development in the intelligence community that can deal with emerging cyber-threats.

They want to see a commitment to developing a bigger pipeline of more diverse and capable intelligence analysts, schooled as deeply in the social and political aspects of cyber-space as in the technical dimensions.

As I argued in a 2017 discussion paper on this topic – and as many others have also argued – Australia is not even close to a national workforce plan for a high-tech future.

Read more: Australia’s quest for national security is undermining the courts and could lead to secretive trials

The Coalition government, like the opposition, is happy to leave the universities to set the pace in terms of educating a future high-tech workforce. Only token amounts of money have been invested in new cyber-education programs by the government. That investment has come without any corresponding strategy at the federal level.

In spite of some small successes, the universities are not delivering. We need to know why. Are traditional universities even the appropriate venue for advanced cyber-social research and education?

We certainly need a greater sense of urgency. In May, the US declared a national “cyber emergency”, the third time it’s done so in the past four years. At the same time, it released a new cyber workforce strategy as a primary plank of its emergency response plan.

Australia should adopt this urgency to create a new workforce capable of countering the high-tech threats of the future.

– ref. Australia is facing a looming cyber emergency, and we don’t have the high-tech workforce to counter it – http://theconversation.com/australia-is-facing-a-looming-cyber-emergency-and-we-dont-have-the-high-tech-workforce-to-counter-it-124776

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

In the four years since the Paris climate agreement was adopted, countries have debated the fine print of how emissions reduction should be tracked and reported. One critical detail is proving particularly hard to work out – and a weak result would threaten the environmental integrity of the entire deal.

The sticking point is rules for carbon markets: specifically, how to prevent double counting of emissions reductions by both the country selling and buying carbon credits.

These rules are proving a major barrier to reaching consensus. In December, the negotiations move to Chile for this year’s major climate talks, known as COP25. The double counting issue needs to be resolved. It will not be an easy job, and the outcome matters to many countries, including Australia.

Read more: The good, the bad and the ugly: the nations leading and failing on climate action

The Morrison government says Australia will meet the Paris emissions targets by 2030 without international trading – partly by counting old carbon credits towards its Paris efforts. But in future Australia may adopt a stronger target in line with global climate goals. This may entail government and businesses buying carbon credits from overseas.

In an article just published in the journal Science, we and our co-authors* explain why double counting could undermine the Paris goals, and how a robust outcome could be achieved.

What’s the problem here?

International carbon trading allows two or more countries to achieve their emissions targets more cheaply than if going it alone. Countries where cutting emissions is relatively cheap do more than is required by their targets. They then sell the additional emissions reductions, in the form of credits, to countries that find it harder to achieve their targets.

Carbon credits could be produced through activity such as replacing fossil fuels with zero-emissions energy, greater energy efficiency and electrification in transport and buildings, new technologies in industry and better practices in agriculture and forestry.

Rules for carbon trading are defined under Article 6 of the Paris agreement. Trading under the deal could be big: almost half the parties to the agreement have signalled they want to use carbon markets. Airlines might also become major buyers of emissions credits, under rules requiring them to offset increases in carbon emissions from international flights above 2020 levels.

The cost savings from using carbon markets could make it easier for countries to adopt more ambitious targets – ultimately resulting in greater emissions reductions.

Read more: There are three types of climate change denier, and most of us are at least one

But if trading rules are not watertight then the use of carbon markets could lead to greater emissions, undermining the agreement.

One fundamental risk is double counting: a country selling a carbon credit might claim the underlying emissions reduction for itself, while at the same time the country buying the credit also claims the same emissions reduction.

Obviously any international transfer of emission reductions should not lead to higher total emissions than if participating countries had met their targets individually. This could be ensured through a form of double-entry bookkeeping, wherein the country selling carbon credits adjusts its emissions upwards, and the country acquiring the carbon credits adjusts, by the same amount, downwards.

But the devil lies in the detail – and in the self interest of the parties involved.

The bones of contention

Countries are wrangling over what double counting is, how it should be avoided and whether it should sometimes be allowed.

Some countries hoping to sell emissions credits, notably Brazil, propose rules under which emissions reductions sold to another country could effectively also be claimed by the selling country. Such rules existed under the Kyoto Protocol, which came before the Paris agreement. However under Kyoto developing countries did not have emission targets. All major countries have emissions targets under Paris, making the method unsuitable now.

Read more: Feeling flight shame? Try quitting air travel and catch a sail boat

Another potential pitfall lies in the potential purchase by international airlines of large amounts of credits to offset increases in their emissions. Aviation emissions are not counted in national emissions inventories. So it would be logical to adjust the selling country’s inventory for any emissions reduction sold to airlines.

But some countries, notably Saudi Arabia, argue that this should not be done because the airline industry is governed by a separate international treaty. This approach would allow emissions reductions to be included in both agreements and counted twice.

In a separate point of debate some countries – including Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United States – oppose the idea of a single international body overseeing carbon trading under the Paris agreement, arguing for more national sovereignty and flexibility between nations buying and selling.

Making things even more complex, the Paris agreement allows each country to determine how to frame their emissions target. Some countries frame them as absolute emissions, others as a reduction relative to business-as-usual, or as a ratio of emissions to gross domestic product. Some countries’ targets are simply unclear.

Letting each country determine its own ambitions and approach was key in making the Paris agreement a reality. But it makes accounting for carbon markets more complex.

There are also questions over whether a portion of carbon trading revenue should be allocated to help pay for climate change resilience in developing countries, and whether old credits from a trading scheme under the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism, should be tradable in the new scheme.

The way forward in Chile

The solutions to all these issues will be nuanced, but will require that governments agree on some fundamentals.

The first is that a single set of common international accounting rules should apply, irrespective of which carbon market mechanism is used by countries or groups of countries.

The second is to ensure robust emissions accounting, regardless of how mitigation targets are expressed.

The third is that over time, all countries should move toward economy-wide emissions targets, as the Paris Agreement foresees.

The need to reach a political deal in Chile must not result in loopholes for international carbon markets. The rules must ensure environmental integrity and avoid double counting. If this is achieved, emissions reductions can be made more cheaply and global ambition can be more readily raised. If not, then the accord could be seriously undermined.

The article in the journal Science “Double counting and the Paris Agreement rulebook” is authored by Lambert Schneider, Maosheng Duan, Robert Stavins, Kelley Kizzier, Derik Broekhoff, Frank Jotzo, Harald Winkler, Michael Lazarus, Andrew Howard, Christina Hood. See here for the full manuscript.

– ref. Double counting of emissions cuts may undermine Paris climate deal – http://theconversation.com/double-counting-of-emissions-cuts-may-undermine-paris-climate-deal-125019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriela D’Souza, Affiliate, Monash department of business statistics and econometrics, Monash University

For most people the second week in October probably doesn’t hold much promise.

Longer days for some, perhaps. But for those is us in the economics profession, come the second week of October we’re furiously compiling lists and discussing odds – about who is likely to win the coveted Nobel prize in Economics.

More formally known as the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”, the prize has been awarded since 1969 for outstanding contributions to the field of economics.

The puzzle of who receives the novel prize is in itself a bit like an equation.

It often depends on who else is in the running and the chosen field is cyclical. It’s highly unusual for the prize to be awarded to theorists from the same field several times in a row.

Read more: Economics Nobel 2019: why Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer won

Age plays a factor too, both because the prize cannot be awarded posthumously and because the younger you are, the less likely you are to be in contention because you’ve got years more in which to make a contribution.

Which makes this years’ winners remarkable.

At 46 (ten days shy of 47) Esther Duflo is the youngest recipient of the award in its 51 year history and only the second female.

This year’s trio of winners – Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer received the Nobel for “their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.

By designing experiments at a small level, they were able to provide real world answers about what works in alleviating poverty.

What works matters

In doing it they sought to actually understand the lives of the people they were trying to help.

Notably, Kremer’s first experiment – providing textbooks at schools – failed.

He found that the impact on test scores from the textbooks (and the induced enrolment of students) was zero.

Duflo and Banerjee spell out what works and explain how small interventions can create lasting change in their important book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.

Along the way they’ve created a movement.

Their work with the Abdul Lateef Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) inspired a new generation of economists to see, and search for, impact in their research.

During my own time in economics, I have lost count of the number of students who said they wanted to work in development economics in part because of J-PAL.

Some took to Twitter to say it was the only reason they took up development economics.

And women matter

Beyond that the prize is going to inspire a generation of female economists who have long been sidelined in university economics departments, both as students as academics.

It is well known that the often harsh and abrasive way academic economists treat each other and confront each other in seminars is unhelpful to the image of the profession. And it is likely that we are seeing this reflected in the low take-up of economics by women.

The pipeline of female economists is leaky at all stages – graduate studies, assistant professorships, tenure and beyond. As a result, not many women make it to the top of their professions, and even fewer are recognised.

It’s is not only an American problem.

Analysis I have conducted of economics departments across Australia finds very low proportions of women on academic staffs.

Read more: Why women in economics have little to celebrate

At one major university only one in 16 professors was female – a mere 6.25%. The ratio improved further down the promotion ladder.

If you were to Google economists in Australia, the images that would come up would be mainly men, even more so than in economics departments themselves.

The Australian economics profession could learn a lot from those overseas where there is growing recognition that the combative nature of the field puts off minorities (including women) who could make valuable contributions. This does economists, and the entire field of economics, a huge disservice.

– ref. Why the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics matter for me – http://theconversation.com/why-the-winners-of-this-years-nobel-prize-for-economics-matter-for-me-125288

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

It’s not uncommon for science and religion to be framed as two opposing forces.

The Catholic church has famously struggled to accommodate scientific research in its past, but recently there has been evidence of a healthier relationship developing.

In many ways, Pope Francis has embraced science as a way of learning about the world. Notably, his encyclical has urged people to care more for the environment and climate change.

His message moves away from the concept of having dominion over the earth, and instead encourages stewardship of it. This stance has resonated with Catholics and other religious people world over.

By aligning the papal agenda more closely with what science tells us, what impact does Pope Francis have on how people of faith engage with and appreciate science?

Catholics accepting science

There are a few potential motivators behind Pope Francis and the modern church’s dedication to the discussion of scientific issues.

First, it becomes harder all the time to refute basic scientific findings. Thus, it makes sense to accommodate new findings rather than isolate yourself from them.

Read more: God, why do scientists have such a hang-up with religion?

Apart from the pardoning of Galileo for the heresy of believing in the heliocentric solar system, an interesting example of this comes in the form of Vatican Observatory director Guy Consolmagno saying he would happily baptise an alien.

Another factor is that some scientific findings and advances are so significant that they present urgent moral issues. It is here, in the ethical implications of developing science, that the church finds traction.

In 1936, Pope Pius XI started the Pontifical Academy for Life to advise the church on scientific matters.

Today, the academy explores solutions to ethical issues in topics such as artificial intelligence, bioethics, human genome editing, and robo-ethics.

Furthermore, it’s possible the church has a genuine interest in promoting and contributing to science through its own research initiatives, of which the most famous is the Vatican observatory.

The observatory was originally created because of the need to precisely moderate the religious calendar. For centuries it has contributed significantly to modern astronomical research.

Faith and facts are not always at war

Catholics as a group seem quite amenable to the idea that science is compatible with the theory that God created the Universe.

In 2017, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that Catholics, compared with other religious groups, were more accepting of scientific world views.

As an example of this relative ease with science, the Church has allowed serious discussion around evolution since at least 1950, when Pope Pius XII said evolution could coexist with Catholic doctrine (even though the following paragraph of his statement mentions the Biblical Adam as a real person).

Read more: How can scientists believe evolution is compatible with religion?

This engagement with evolution was strengthened by John Paul II, who said evolution was much more than a hypothesis. He also won a lot of scientists over by formally acquitting Galileo of heresy.

Today, Pope Francis is quite open about his belief in evolution, albeit as a means by which God created humankind.

Perhaps because of this series of developments, American Catholics are ahead of their evangelical counterparts in accepting that life has evolved, rather than being created in its current form.

Of science, faith, or both?

There’s an old adage that science is about discovering empirical facts about the world and religion is about the meanings we find in it, but this is a shallow conception of both.

Religious teachings are often grounded in simple and immediate acts of living, and science gives us powerful narratives that help us understand our place in the Universe.

Many great scientists were Catholics, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Gregor Mendel, and Louis Pasteur. One could argue this was the result of cultural and philosophical norms at the time.

Read more: Yes, there is a war between science and religion

Of course, many modern scientists are people of faith, but the percentage of scientists who profess no faith is much higher than among the general public.

Even so, The Pontifical Academy for Life includes some of the world’s leading academics and scientists. While they may not be Catholics themselves, their willingness to engage with the church and advise them on critical issues is noteworthy.

This would not happen if the church and Pope Francis himself were not seen to value scientific expertise.

Leading the way ahead

The Catholic church is not a scientific institution, and it would be foolish to suggest it is.

Its religious purpose may be compatible with many aspects of science but, unlike science, its core tenants are not open to revision, even though these core tenants have seemed somewhat malleable over the centuries.

Despite this, the relationship between science and the church looks better now than ever before. The development of this relationship will have a significant impact on the public’s understanding of and engagement with science.

Considering the crucial role science and technology play in our prosperity as a species, we can only hope future popes continue to respect and act on the best scientific advice possible.

I would be happy to take that imperative as an article of faith.

– ref. Pope Francis and the Catholic church continue to look towards science, and that can only be a good thing – http://theconversation.com/pope-francis-and-the-catholic-church-continue-to-look-towards-science-and-that-can-only-be-a-good-thing-123640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Wilson, Associate Professor of Politics and Religion, University of Groningen

The Coalition government’s proposed religious discrimination bill has been criticised for the potential problems it poses for women, the LGBTQI+ community, people with disabilities and people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Yet, there is another group who may also be adversely affected if the bill becomes law – religious people themselves, especially minorities.

In a recent submission to the attorney-general’s office, I highlighted a key problem of the bill and one that could impact religious minorities in particular – that it does not explain what is meant by the terms “religion” and “religious”.

What is religion?

Though “religion” is not defined in the bill, “religious belief or activity” is. It is characterised in one of four ways:

• holding a religious belief

• engaging in lawful religious activity

• not holding religious belief

• not engaging in, or refusing to engage in, lawful religious activity.

Underlying the bill is the implicit assumption that “religion” has a clear definition – everyone knows what it is.

But this assumption is flawed. Scholars of religion have long debated this question, with no agreement. Many conclude that, in fact, it is impossible to have a clear, universal definition of religion.

Attempts to carve out a definition encounter a wide variety of exceptions:

• Is “religion” defined by “belief in God”? If so, does that mean Buddhism is not a religion?

• Is “religion” a set of precepts and guidelines for how to live a moral life? If so, does that make veganism a religion?

• Is “religion” an institution or community brought together around shared belief in something greater than oneself? If so, couldn’t communism or nationalism be considered a religion?

• Does “religion” require a group of people meeting in a church or other place of worship? Does that mean that ancestor or nature worship, or Indigenous spirituality do not count as religion?

Because of complexities like this, the Australian Human Rights Commission has noted that the concepts of “belief” and “religion” should be interpreted broadly in Australian law.

And using a specific concept of religion as the basis for making new laws can have serious repercussions.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Father Frank Brennan on Israel Folau and religious freedom

Even people within the same religion can have very different values and belief systems. Two people who identify as Christian, for example, may hold opposing views on abortion,climate change, gender equality, marriage equality, to name a few. The same is true for people who identify as Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and every other tradition.

Two cases from the European Court of Human Rights highlight this problem. In one case, the court ruled that a Swiss Muslim teacher could not wear her headscarf while teaching because it was an “active” religious symbol that violated the principle of neutrality in the classroom.

In another case brought by an atheist parent, the court ruled that a crucifix on the wall of an Italian state-run school was a “passive” religious symbol and did not violate the principle of classroom neutrality.

Two cases involving religious symbols, two people claiming violation of their religious rights, two very different outcomes.

Australia’s Christian past

What makes this ambiguity particularly troubling in European and post-colonial societies such as Australia is that understandings of “religion” are broadly informed by Christian historical experiences and influences.

Thus, what counts as “religious belief or activity” is often determined according to models inherited from Christianity, which may not align with belief structures and practices in other traditions.

And because of the lack of clarity over what is or isn’t considered “religious” in the Coalition’s bill, it may be left to the discretion of individual judges – relying on their personal views of “religion” – to determine whether discrimination has indeed occurred.

Read more: Why Australia needs a Religious Discrimination Act

There are two important contextual factors that further aggravate this concern.

First, the impetus for the bill came from two key events that have galvanised Christians: the Religious Freedom Review, undertaken following the marriage equality plebiscite, and the sacking of Israel Folau by Rugby Australia over his anti-gay social media posts.

Second, contemporary Australian politics and society are characterised by heightened suspicion of non-Christian religions, especially Islam.

This raises important questions about how the bill’s implementation could affect religious minorities.

What counts as “discrimination”?

The definition of “religion” is not the only problem. Another difficulty concerns how the bill determines whether or not “discrimination” has occurred.

For example, statements of religious belief would not be protected by the bill if they are deemed “malicious” to another person.

Yet, as the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils noted in its submission to the attorney-general’s office, the bill does not clearly define what kind of speech constitutes a “malicious” statement. There is, however, a suggestion that this may be determined on the basis of whether a statement will cause “harm”.

Research on free speech and religious discrimination notes there is often a line that can be drawn between “offensive” and “harmful” speech. But where and how do you draw that line?

Read more: In long-awaited response to Ruddock review, the government pushes hard on religious freedom

Let’s take Folau’s comments as an example. Under the bill, it could be argued that Folau’s comments about LGBTQI people (amongst others) were merely offensive, not “malicious” or likely to cause “harm”.

Yet LGBTQI people have experienced intense stigma, abuse and exclusion throughout Australia’s history. This context matters. It makes it more likely that statements like Folau’s could be harmful, inciting abuse against the community or causing psychological harm to those who were offended.

Could the law work in practice?

One way to address these concerns would be to provide accompanying advice to judges and lawyers who are interpreting the religious discrimination law in future cases.

Consider a case in which a Muslim woman is denied employment at a Muslim school because she refuses to wear a headscarf. How should such a case be decided? Is the Muslim woman experiencing religious discrimination because she is denied employment based on her choice to not wear a headscarf? Or would forcing the Muslim school to hire a woman who chooses not to veil constitute religious discrimination?

In such a case, lawyers could consult with Muslim religious leaders and scholars from a wide variety of traditions and perspectives as expert witnesses. These experts could examine the context of the case and offer advice regarding who is or isn’t experiencing religious discrimination.

Yet because the challenge of deciding what counts as “religion” in a just and equitable way is so fraught, there is a case to be made for not implementing the legislation at all.

Instead, existing legislation protecting freedom of speechand freedom of thought and conscience could be revised and strengthened, paying particular attention to the views and experiences of marginalised religious groups and minority traditions.

– ref. The biggest hurdle for the Coalition’s religious discrimination bill: how to define ‘religion’ – http://theconversation.com/the-biggest-hurdle-for-the-coalitions-religious-discrimination-bill-how-to-define-religion-125214

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cat Pausé, Senior Lecturer in Human Development, Massey University

The British Psychological Society is calling for changes for how we talk about fatness, suggesting we should no longer use the phrase “obese people”, but instead, “people with obesity” or “people living with obesity”.

These changes are being proposed to recognise that fatness is not about personal choice and that fat shaming and fat stigma are harmful.

But this suggested language change is based on the idea obesity is a disease to be cured and fat people are not a natural part of the world. This serves to reinforce stigma, rather than prevent it.

Read more: Discrimination against fat people is so endemic, most of us don’t even realise it’s happening

How does stigma and shame affect fat people?

Fat stigma can harm people’s physical health, mental health, and relationships.

Independent of body mass index (BMI), fat stigma increases blood pressure, inflammation, and levels of cortisol in the body, due to the activation of the fight or flight response.

Fat stigma reduces self-esteem and increases depression. It isolates fat people, making them less likely to engage with the world. It also impacts on fat people’s relationships with family, colleagues, and friends.

People around the world, and of all ages, hold negative attitudes about fatness and fat people. In a study in the United States, for example, more than one-third of the participants reported:

one of the worst things that could happen to a person would be for [them] to become obese.

How terminology reinforces stigma

While many people are uncomfortable with the term fat, fat activists prefer the term. They see it as both as an act of rebellion – to adopt a word that has been wielded against them – but also because they argue it’s the most appropriate word to describe their bodies.

To be overweight implies there is a natural weight to be; that within human diversity, we should all be the same proportion of height and weight.

Obesity is a medical term that has pathologised the fat body. The British Psychological Society’s acknowledgement that rather than saying “obese people”, we should call them “people with obesity” reinforces that obesity is a disease; a chronic illness people suffer from.

Read more: What does fat discrimination look like?

The British Psychological Society’s desire to shift to person-first language is understandable. Person-first, or people-first, language is an attempt to not define people primarily by their disease, or disability, or other deviating factor.

Person-first language recognises people as individuals with rights to dignity and care, and puts the person, rather than their “condition”, first.

But others have argued person-first language attempts to erase, deny, or ignore the aspect of the person that isn’t “normal”, and reinforces that there is something shameful or dehumanising about their disability or disease.

They promote identity-first language, which allows people to take pride in who they are, rather than separating a person from that aspect of themself.

The problem with person-first language, they argue, is that those identities are stigmatised. But without the stigma, there would be no concern with calling someone a disabled person, for instance, rather than a person with disabilities.

So what should we do?

The best approach, especially for health-care professionals, is to ask people what they prefer their designation to be.

And for the rest of us, to acknowledge that what an individual wants to be called or how they want to talk about their experiences is up to them, not us. If a fat person wants to call themselves fat, it is not up to non-fat people to correct them.

Shifting the language we use to talk about fatness and fat people can reduce fat stigma. But continuing to frame fatness as a disease is not a helpful contribution.

Read more: Study finds obesity stigma erodes will to exercise, socialise

– ref. Changing the terminology to ‘people with obesity’ won’t reduce stigma against fat people – http://theconversation.com/changing-the-terminology-to-people-with-obesity-wont-reduce-stigma-against-fat-people-124266

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

The federal government’s much-vaunted Snowy Hydro expansion is supposed to smooth out the bumps in electricity supply as Australia transitions to renewables. But not only is the project a bad deal for taxpayers, our analysis suggests it will deliver a fraction of the energy benefits promised.

Fossil-fuel power generators store coal or gas at the point of production. This means electricity can mostly be created on demand when homes and businesses need it. Renewable energy cannot do this. If wind or sun is not abundant, solar panels and wind turbines may not produce enough electricity to meet demand. At other times they might produce more than required.

The Snowy 2.0 project is supposed to provide a solution to this problem – storing renewable energy for when it is needed.

The project’s cost and time estimates have blown out massively. It would now be surprising if Snowy 2.0, including the transmission upgrades it relies on, comes in at less than A$10 billion or is finished before 2027.

But there is another serious problem. Our analysis has revealed that of the extra pumped hydro capacity promised by the project, less than half can be delivered. There is now overwhelming evidence the project should be put on hold.

The problems we know about: cost and time blowouts

The list of possible alternatives to Snowy 2.0 is long. Aside from other pumped hydro projects, it includes chemical batteries, encouraging demand to follow supply, gas or diesel generators, and re-orienting renewable generators to capture the wind or sun when it is less plentiful.

But despite this plethora of options, the federal government announced the Snowy 2.0 project without a market assessment, cost-benefit analysis or indeed even a feasibility study.

Read more: The government’s electricity shortlist rightly features pumped hydro (and wrongly includes coal)

When former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the expansion project in March 2017 he said it would cost A$2 billion and be commissioned by 2021. This was revised upwards several times and in April this year, a A$5.1 billion contract for partial construction was awarded. This excludes the costs of transmission and other considerable expenses.

The main contractor says the project will take eight years to build – bringing us to 2027 before the full scheme is completed. We will happily wager that more delays and cost increases will be announced.

Snowy Hydro has not costed the transmission upgrades upon which the project depends. TransGrid, owner of the grid in New South Wales, has identified options including extensions to Sydney with indicative costs up to A$1.9 billion. Massive extensions south to Melbourne will also be required.

Snowy Hydro contends it should not pay for the new transmission lines because the benefits would flow to the entire grid, not just its venture. In other words Snowy Hydro argues, conveniently, that we should count the benefits but ignore the costs when thinking about their project.

The numbers simply do not add up

The Snowy 2.0 project grandly claims it could generate at its full 2,000 megawatt capacity for 175 hours – or about a week. This capacity can also be expressed as 350 gigawatt hours (GWh).

Energy Minister Angus Taylor has talked up the project’s superiority to smaller-capacity alternatives such as batteries.

But the maximum additional pumped hydro capacity Snowy 2.0 can create, in theory, is less than half this. The reasons are technical, but worth taking the time to understand.

The figure below outlines the main physical features that define Snowy 2.0. It includes four dams: Tantangara, Talbingo, Jounama and Blowering. For simplicity, we have numbered these from 1-4 in the following explanation.

When Snowy 2.0 generates electricity, water will be released from Dam 1 at the top of the system. It will flow through a long tunnel to the smaller Dam 2. The flow of water drives turbines which generate energy. When the turbines are reversed, the water is pumped back to the top to continue the cycle.

For Snowy 2.0 to produce the 350 GWh of electricity claimed, the top dam must be full and all that water released through the system. But replenishing the top dam after this event would take many months of pumping water from elsewhere in the system, and use up 40% more electricity than was originally generated. So the 350 GWh would never be achieved because it is extremely inefficient and inflexible.

In reality, the pumped hydro capacity of Snowy 2.0 is defined by the amount of water that the smaller Dam 2 can hold. If the scheme was a closed system, with no other water flowing in or out, it could produce around 230 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity.

But the system does not exist in isolation. Part of the existing Snowy Hydro scheme, known as Tumut 3, also uses Dam 2. It creates pumped hydro electricity by cycling water between that dam and the even smaller Dam 3 below it.

For Snowy 2.0 to operate at full cyclical capacity, Dam 2 must be empty to receive the water. That would entail emptying Dam 2 into the smaller Dam 3 and from there to Dam 4 at the bottom of the system. This water could not be used again to generate electricity. This “lost” water would have generated 60 GWh worth of electricity in the Tumut 3 scheme.

This means that as a cyclical pumped hydro system, Snowy 2.0 does not add 230 GWh of capacity. When you subtract the 60 GWh from the 230 GWh, Snowy 2.0 adds just 170 GWh of recyclable pumped hydro. This is less than half the claimed storage capacity.

And this is the maximum cyclical capacity in theory only. Snowy 2.0 would never produce continuously for the time needed to generate and then pump 230 GWh because it would never be economically viable to run it this way.

In practice if Snowy 2.0’s lower dam is operated in future as it is now – almost always close to full – the cycling capacity of Snowy 2.0 may be as low as 40 GWh – around one tenth of the promised number.

What does all this mean?

These facts put Snowy 2.0 in a completely different light. There are many competing alternatives that can provide storage far more flexibly for a fraction of Snowy 2.0’s price tag. These alternatives would also have far fewer environmental impacts or development risks, in most cases none of the transmission costs and could be built much more quickly.

It is always difficult to press the pause button on a major project once it has begun. But the evidence for doing this is overwhelming. In pursuit of the public interest, the federal government should put the project on hold and ask a reputable investment bank to publicly advise, perhaps through the Productivity Commission, what Snowy 2.0 would be worth if built.

A credible independent valuation would establish with some confidence how deeply Snowy Hydro will have its hands in the public’s pockets. A panel of independent experts should then be asked to publicly advise whether taxpayer money is needed to meet the demands of a renewables-dominated power system, and if so, the best way it should be spent.

– ref. Snowy 2.0 will not produce nearly as much electricity as claimed. We must hit the pause button – http://theconversation.com/snowy-2-0-will-not-produce-nearly-as-much-electricity-as-claimed-we-must-hit-the-pause-button-125017

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chyi Lin Lee, Associate Professor of Property, UNSW

Value capture has been advocated as an innovative way to fund infrastructure, including by the Australian government. However, its effectiveness in Australia has been questioned. Our research, based on railway level crossing removals in Victoria, suggests infrastructure projects do lead to higher property values, which could be captured to contribute towards project funding.

At sites close to where level crossings were removed, property values increased by as much as a quarter. This highlights the opportunity to use a value capture model.

Read more: Explainer: what is ‘value capture’ and what does it mean for cities?

What’s the idea of value capture?

Infrastructure investment improves connectivity, leading to higher land or property values in areas that benefit from this. Value capture taps into this increased value – usually using some form of taxation – to help finance the infrastructure responsible for the increase.

Value capture has been widely used overseas. In the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, it has proved to be an effective way to fund major infrastructure.

This approach is not common in Australia, where most infrastructure projects are government-funded. Gold Coast Light Rail was developed with the aid of a levy on ratepayers.

However, a lack of funding means many large-scale infrastructure projects are not being funded at the same time. This highlights the need to find innovative ways to fund infrastructure, which includes exploring the potential benefits of value capture.

Read more: Why Gold Coast light rail was worth it (it’s about more than patronage)

Financing infrastructure by value capture has been widely discussed and was considered by a parliamentary inquiry. The concept features prominently in the federal government’s Smart Cities Plan and would complement the Smart Cities vision for 30-minute cities.

Would it work in our low-density cities?

But there is a debate over how well this model would work in Australia. It’s argued the low-density nature of Australian cities would result in a lower level of value creation to be captured. Nevertheless, little empirical evidence is available on value creation in Australia.

Despite clear policy interest in how much land values increase following a new rail investment, and to what extent this can be attributed to the investment, much remains to be explained.

Read more: Value capture: a good idea to fund infrastructure but not easy in practice

Our research based on the level-crossing removal project in Victoria found property values near each site could be enhanced significantly. The state government began the project in 2015. It aims to eliminate 75 dangerous and congested level crossings to improve traffic flows across metropolitan Melbourne. Our yet-to-be-published research is to be presented at the Pacific Rim Real Estate Society annual conference.

Importantly, this is one of the largest rail infrastructure projects in the state’s history. As of December 2017, the estimated budget for removing 50 level crossing sites was A$8.3 billion. The ultimate cost is likely to be greater as another 25 sites were added to the project in 2018 and 2019.

The work has caused inconvenience to local residents during construction and has limited capacity to ease traffic congestion. The pace of progress and budget blowouts “present risks to achieving value for money”, the state auditor-general reported.

Despite the temporary inconvenience during the construction phase, transport connectivity will be enhanced once the project is complete.

Read more: The ‘sky rail’ saga: can big new transport projects ever run smoothly?

House values have risen, but variably

To offer some empirical evidence on the benefits created by level crossing removal projects enhancing housing value, we considered four sites in Bayswater, Mitcham, Glen Iris and St Albans.

We found the completion of a level crossing removal leads to an increase of 9% in house value, on average, within the area surrounding the site. This positive impact diminishes as the distance from the site increases. It vanishes beyond 1,400 metres.

We also found the impact of level crossing removals varies from site to site. House values in surrounding affected areas increased by 8.81% in Bayswater, 28.6% in Glen Iris, and 10.5% in St Albans, but by only 2.1% in Mitcham.

Comparable evidence is found for units in these areas: prices increased by 2.35% in Bayswater, 7.3% in Glen Iris and 6.53% in St Albans, but there was no significant increase for Mitcham.

Read more: Paying for infrastructure means using ‘land value capture’, but does it also mean more tax?

Key takeouts

There are three takeouts from our research.

1) The level crossing removal project in Victoria did lead, in general, to higher property values. This highlights the need for a comprehensive plan aimed at maximising value capture opportunities.

2) Value capture is potentially a feasible model despite the low-density nature of Australian cities. However, its likely effectiveness varies considerably with location. This reinforces the importance of a comprehensive plan.

3) Given infrastructure is critical for urban development, governments should consider using value capture to fund infrastructure in a way that helps meet urban development needs and reduces the shortfall of dwellings in Australia.

– ref. Rail works lift property prices, pointing to value capture’s potential to fund city infrastructure – http://theconversation.com/rail-works-lift-property-prices-pointing-to-value-captures-potential-to-fund-city-infrastructure-123757

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By María Yanotti, Lecturer of Economics and Finance Tasmanian School of Business & Economics, University of Tasmania

The housing market is moving again. In the past month, national prices have climbed 0.9%.

What matters most to buyers (and especially to investors), along with price and value, is location.

The cliché suggests that in the long run that’s all that matters.

So it would be unfortunate if investors were getting it wrong. Our examination of proprietary data from a major bank covering 1.15 million residential mortgage applications over the six years between 2003 and 2009 suggests they might be.

Published this month in the Pacific-Basin Finance Journal under the title Home advantage: the preference for local residential real estate investment, it finds that more than two in every three Australians buying an investment property pick one close to where they live.

This means that someone who lives in Manly is far more likely to invest in Manly over anywhere else in Sydney or in Australia and so on.

Read more: Three charts on: who is the typical investor in the Australian property market?

There are several good reasons for this. First, the time, effort and travel costs are typically lower when investing in your local area than investing further away.

Second, property investors sometimes plan to self-manage without an agent, making proximity an advantage. The Real Estate Institute of Australia believes 1 in 5 investors self-manage.

And property investors might believe that they have a “home advantage” in knowing their location better than non-locals.

Home bias means eggs in one basket

Home bias is well-documented in other markets. For example, investors in the stock market are more likely to hold shares in Australian rather than international companies.

This is even the case for superannuation funds, who set aside a sizeable portion of their assets for investment in Australian stocks – far more than the Australian stock market would represent in a global stock portfolio.

It brings with it problems alongside the advantages of convenience and local knowledge.

Most investors hold only one investment property alongside their place of residence, making it one of the few chances they have to diversify away from the risk embodied in that suburb.

Instead, most double down on that investment.

Read more: The Game of Homes: how the vested interests lie about negative gearing

If you are wondering whether this is unwise, or unwise enough to outweigh the advantages of local knowledge, consider this question: How likely is it that the location you happen to live in will always outperform every other location?

Interestingly we find that “sophisticated” investors are more likely to invest outside of the suburb where they live than less sophisticated investors.

Investing non-locally is more likely among investors who own shares, already receive rental income, and work as professionals or in management positions.

And a more fragile financial system

The risks that doubling down on locations impose on unsophisticated investors extend to the financial system itself.

Higher geographical concentration of property investments increase the risk of defaults and foreclosures in a market downturn, amplifying economic cycles.

Australians have a lot of wealth tied up in property, and the property market in turn is highly connected to the financial system through bank lending.

Our study suggests there is an opportunity to strengthen Australia’s financial system by educating potential investors about risk. It could make them, and the Australian economy, better able to withstand downturns.

– ref. Location, location, location: why up to two-thirds of property investors may get it wrong – http://theconversation.com/location-location-location-why-up-to-two-thirds-of-property-investors-may-get-it-wrong-121735

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne

It seems appropriate that a painting titled Feng Shui dominates the new exhibition of Guan Wei’s work at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). He is the master of working and living between two cultures: the China of his birth and Australia, his home for most of the last three decades.

A rhythmically moving ocean where creatures great and small leisurely swim in tranquillity between continents: this is Guan’s vision of a world in harmony.

Clouds of good fortune blow to encourage the swimmers on their journeys; a fleet of sailing ships join their voyage. Taking up two adjoining walls of the gallery, the work takes on a three-dimensional appearance as swimmers and fish advance towards the viewer.

Guan has a long fascination with both antique maps and mythical creatures. At the core of this work is a giant map: patterns in shades of blue echo isobars and weather maps. The grid of the 120 individually painted panels appear to define latitude and longitude.

Feng shui is central to the Taoist belief of balance and harmony of nature. The words translate literally into “wind” (feng) and “water” (shui): the painting becomes both an illustration of its underlying concept, and a visual pun.

Read more: Our oceans are out of balance – can we learn some tips from feng shui?

From China to Australia

Guan is from that remarkable generation of Chinese artists who, in the 1980s, began to exhibit in private homes because the work they made was not acceptable to the state. In this scene, Guan befriended a young Nicholas Jose, who would later become Australia’s cultural counsellor in Beijing.

In 1988, an exhibition of Australian art at the embassy in Beijing led to invitations from touring curators for Chinese artists to visit Australia. At the invitation of Geoff Parr, the director of the Tasmanian School of Art, Guan spent the early months of 1989 as artists-in-residence in Hobart.

Guan returned to China before the climax of the events at Tiananmen Square, but through the support of Parr and the Australian arts community, several Chinese artists were able to emigrate to Australia.

Australia in the 1990s was especially open to contemporary Chinese artists. The MCA exhibited Mao Goes Pop shortly after opening; in 1993, the Queensland Art Gallery started its ground-breaking series of Asia Pacific Triennials.

Guan, with his wife and daughter, settled first in a small apartment in Enmore in inner Sydney, before relocating to a large house in Glenmore Park in the western suburbs. It was here, in the cavernous space of the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, he painted Feng Shui.

Strength and endurance

In 1992, the MCA became the first public gallery to collect his work. The 48 postcard-size paintings, Two Finger Exercises (1989), were painted in Beijing, and in the current exhibition they are framed by a mural of an angel, a demon, and red flags – a reference to the conflict at the time of their making.

The blob-like figures in various poses and relationships all hold up two fingers. Some appear defiant, others hectoring; one is upside down. The two-fingered sign was popular with the student radicals as they stared down the might of the bureaucracy in the occupation of Tiananmen Square.

The two fingered symbol can mean a “V for Victory” and also a defiant “up yours” gesture to authority. There is also another, specifically Chinese meaning. Ancient masters of Qigong, the meditative movement now popular with fitness classes, were supposed to be able to concentrate their Qi (life-force energy) with such strength they could balance on two fingers. In this, Guan’s paintings are a reminder of strength and endurance.

Shortly after he arrived in Australia, Guan made a series of collage works, Certificate (1990), using stamps, symbols and red ink as commentary on China’s officious bureaucracy, and family photos manipulated to define, confine and sometimes eliminate particular figures.

Guan’s family were direct descendents of Qing dynasty courtiers, and so were eliminated from public life in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. He has a particularly intimate experience of the whims of bureaucracy.

Read more: Why China still can’t make sense of the Cultural Revolution

The question of how an artist living today may react to both the events of the present and the beauty of traditional art and nature is addressed in Paper War (2003), where a facsimile of a 17th century scroll painting by the Nanjing master Gong Xian has been overlaid by silhouettes showing military invasion and death by an unnamed enemy.

In 2014, Guan reworked Paper War as a video, which intersperses the scroll with animated figures of fighter planes and soldiers parachuting in to create destruction. There is no land so beautiful it can’t be despoiled by war.

Finding feng shui in migration

In 2016 Guan entered the Archibald Prize with Plastic Surgery, a wry comment on the nature of immigration and acceptance.

A series of faces transition from the heavily regulated persona demanded by Chinese officialdom in the 1980s to the compromises made by immigrants to fit in with a new culture.

Guan’s art suggests it is far better for those moving between cultures to adopt another path – to find harmonious connections, to seek humorous twists in even difficult circumstances – and be guided always by the equilibrium of feng shui.

Guan Wei: MCA Collection is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, until 9 February 2020

– ref. Guan Wei review: feng shui for a vision of a world in harmony – http://theconversation.com/guan-wei-review-feng-shui-for-a-vision-of-a-world-in-harmony-125064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Matthews, Lecturer in Digital Media and Popular Culture Researcher, Auckland University of Technology

According to a recent study, the sixth leading cause of death for young men in the United States is the warranted and unwarranted use of police force.

With the US president himself frequently alluding to America’s military prowess and right-wing media hosts suggesting the US embrace a police state after each mass shooting, it is not surprising journalists are invoking the image of Judge Dredd, a character in the science fiction comic 2000AD.

The parallels between Judge Dredd and contemporary society appear uncanny. They symbolise the demise of democracy and freedom in favour of an authoritarian regime.

Read more: Why Australia should be wary of the rise of the warrior cop, with tools to match

Psycho cop with no feelings

The character of Judge Dredd was first introduced in the 1977 second issue of the comic 2000AD. His creators envisioned the character as a no-nonsense cop – as writer John Wagner put it, “a psycho character with no feelings”.

From the outset, the Dredd comics were designed to be satirical. They depicted “the ultimate draconian cop”, who acts as judge, jury and executioner and polices the streets of Mega-City One, itself a hyper-constructed metropolis riddled with criminal activity.

The aesthetic of the character is reminiscent of the iconography of fascist Spain and with 70s punk-style overtones. It further established that Dredd was to be received as extreme. It is interesting to note that today the riot uniforms of police, with their padding, shields and knee pads, put even Dredd’s uniform to shame.

The world of Dredd was to be an exaggerated depiction of Western society. A radical population spike coupled with a lack of liveable land (because it was all radioactive), sets the scene for a dystopian comic. In this world, the only course of action to maintain order and overcome lawlessness is through instant justice.

When popular culture becomes reality

Drawing on the cultural capital of Dredd is a shortcut to justify his particular brand as a solution to rampant crime. It can also be invoked as a warning to avoid the dilution of civilian freedoms and ideals. But it seems that Dredd is increasingly becoming prophetic rather than fiction.

In Western society, a perceived prevalence of shoot-to-kill responses, the militarising of the police, the invasive surveillance of people and the urbanisation in response to over-population mimics the fictive universe of Judge Dredd comics.

For instance, in 2005, a top ranking British police officer, metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair, was accused of embracing the Judge Dredd ideology when he suggested that police officers should have more autonomy. He believed they should be able to confiscate licenses and vehicles, and issue infractions for anti-social behaviour, circumventing the rules of law and moving towards a process of instant justice.

The world of Dredd emphasises authoritarianism in relation to the police and government. The comics include harsher penalties and laws against outsiders, walls that encase cities and a system of rule that is so restrictive it denies people basic human rights. It also takes no responsibility for the brutality and injustice felt by those who have become collateral damage.

It’s unsurprising then, that media use the symbol of Dredd in discussions of countries where similar trends are becoming apparent. This includes the continued debate about a wall between the US and Mexico and tighter immigration policies in the US, France, post-Brexit Britain and Australia.

Read more: UK’s new post-Brexit immigration plan is surreal and cynical

The Dredd comics become a cautionary tale suggesting that, if we continue down the authoritarian path proposed in the comics, it may have real-world consequences for global citizens.

The boiling frog syndrome

A recent study explored if increased militarisation of law enforcement agencies leads to an increase in violent behaviour among officers. It found that when law enforcement is supplied with military materials, it inevitably becomes more militarised and affects the relationship between police and citizens.

Writing about their study, the researchers argued that adopting a more militarised approach to police practice and procedures could lead to more citizens killed by the police force. To support their point, they say when a county goes from receiving no military hardware to a large quantity (more than US$2.5 million to one agency) the number of civilians killed within a county is likely to double.

When social systems, such as the police force, are under pressure to respond to increased population density, criminal activity and acts of terrorism, it’s not surprising society is seeing the devolution of police powers towards Dredd-like mechanisms of control. But what is the cost?

If society were to continue paralleling the Dredd universe, police may no longer be considered civic guardians that maintain community values or upholders of moral authority. Citizens could be forced to forfeit freedoms in favour of perceived protection, and an authoritarian regime could reign supreme.

For the moment, Dredd remains a fictitious world, but there is a deep and inherent trust that underlines the process of civilian policing. Devolving this fragile balance even a little bit may well be the difference between living in a policed state versus a police state.

– ref. Who is Judge Dredd and why it matters that media invoke the cartoon character – http://theconversation.com/who-is-judge-dredd-and-why-it-matters-that-media-invoke-the-cartoon-character-124412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission conducted an inquiry into mortgage pricing as recently as last year.

Now Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has asked it to do another, broader one, in order to ensure the banks’ pricing practices are “better understood”, and perhaps also to concentrate their minds on the wisdom of fully passing on the next collection of rate cuts.

There’s a lot to better understand.

The last inquiry found that the banks used “opaque pricing” that “stifled price competition” and made it hard for borrowers to shop around, both when looking for a new mortgage and when considering switching when they already had one.

Seven in ten of the borrowers surveyed for the inquiry said they had obtained only one quote before taking out their residential mortgage.

The inquiry concluded the big four “profit from the suppression of borrower incentives to shop around.”

So, what else is there to find out?

I reckon there are four big questions the inquiry ought to be asking, the most important of which is whether the big four are making unreasonable profits.

Question 1: Are bank profits super-profits?

The inquiry isn’t specifically asked to examine banks’ profits, but the question of whether their profits are unreasonably large (so-called super-profits) lies behind questions about whether they are charging more than they should.

It turns out that the big four banks’ profit ratios have not shot up egregiously over the past few years. Their returns on equity are high, much higher than those of banks in other developed countries, but have not been increasing.

While data for the most recent year is not yet available, it looks as if banks have not been dramatically ramping up their profit seeking behavior and may have suffered declines.

Return on equity, the big four

But these totals tell only part of the story.

They don’t tell us which services are profitable or where banks’ profits come from.

It might, for instance, be useful to know whether residential mortgages are especially profitable, and whether those profits have been climbing.

Question 2: How do the banks set rates?

The inquiry has been asked how banks set mortgage rates and why they often do not “pass on” official cash rate cuts.

It’ll be useful information. Banks function as intermediaries. They can be thought of as obtaining money from various sources, including depositors to whom they pay interest.

Their profits come come from the interest margin, which is the difference between how much they pay for the money and how much they get when they lend it out.

The borrowing rate can vary between customers, in the same way that the rate airlines charge for seats varies between customers.

This interest margin is not unearned. Banks provide services to borrowers and depositors. Further, they take on risk by giving depositors immediate access to the money while knowing they will only receive it back gradually in a process that itsn’t guaranteed.

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

As the ACCC found last time, the margin is opaque. While we have access to statistics on average margins, we haven’t had access to the margins for specific products.

The overall net interest margin appears to be declining, and it might explain why the big four have become reluctant to pass on the latest Reserve Bank rate cuts.

To maintain the margin they had, they would have to cut deposit rates by as much as are cutting borrowing rates and with deposit rates. With deposit rates close to zero, that’s becoming harder.

Net interest margins, the big four

Question 3: Why do they charge different rates?

The inquiry has been asked to examine differences in rates, of the kind airlines have become extraordinarily good at imposing.

There are four kinds.

New vs old customers: Banks sometimes offer lower rates to new customers than to existing customers. But how common this actually is is open to question. Banks’ have an incentive to poach new customers by offering low rates, but they also have an incentive to keep the customers they have by keeping their rates low enough to deter them from leaving. At the moment we don’t know much at all about how new and existing customers’ rates differ. What we find out will tell us how much banks take their customers for granted.

Headline reference rates vs actual rates: Some banks quote reference rates which they discount for particular customers. Other banks appear to just quote their lowest rate. Often it is not clear how, or why, banks offer these discounts. Anecdotally, it appears to relates to whether the customer is low risk and how big the loan is.

Variance in rates across banks: The inquiry will, at least indirectly, shed some light on why rates differ between banks. The big variance, even across the big four, is difficult to explain. It isn’t clear how they are tied to different cost structures or even whether the big four have different cost structures.

Cash rate cuts: Banks often don’t pass on full official cash rate cuts. As mentioned, there might be good reasons for this. Banks can only maintain their existing margin if they adjust both deposit and loan rates, and cutting deposit rates further is almost impossible. However, it isn’t clear how banks decide how much of each cut to pass on and why different banks do it differently. While there is no evidence of collusion, the ACCC would probably like to find out how each bank influences the other.

Question 4: Is switching easy?

The inquiry has been asked to investigate how easy it is to switch, but even this isn’t straightforward..

Switching involves more than transferring data between banks. To switch, people must lodge an application. This involves proving income and satisfying credit checks. Customers have to approach banks – or a mortgage broker – to do it. They are often charged for it, although often not directly. Transferring property titles and the right to right to receive interest payments isn’t costless.

The government itself imposes barriers. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority requires banks to lend responsibly and to ensure borrowers are credit-worthy. They are hard barriers to streamline.

Read more: Below zero is ‘reverse’. How the Reserve Bank would make quantitative easing work

The inquiry might focus on other barriers. These could include whether banks themselves make it unnecessarily onerous to leave. This might include administrative fees, which opens up the question of fees generally, something that is likely to become increasingly more important as banks look for ways to cut effective deposit rates as they approach zero.

The Commission says it will produce a preliminary report by the end of March, and a final report by September 2020.

– ref. Four questions about mortgages the ACCC inquiry should put to the big four banks – http://theconversation.com/four-questions-about-mortgages-the-accc-inquiry-should-put-to-the-big-four-banks-125224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Skrzypiec, Senior Lecturer, Flinders University

Many Australian students don’t know the difference between banter and bullying, with some saying they joke about wishing their friend would “drown” or “die in a car crash”.

More than 800 Australian students aged 11-16 took part in a survey asking about experiences of peer aggression. Almost half (48%) said they had been harmed, very harmed or extremely harmed by an act of peer aggression.

Bullying is a subset of peer aggression. For an act of peer aggression to be defined as bullying it must be repeated, deliberately harmful and involve a power imbalance in which the victim feels powerless. If any of these criteria is missing, it is not defined as bullying.

Read more: If you want to cut bullying in schools, look at the ‘invisible violence’ in our society

But that doesn’t mean the experience isn’t harmful. In a lot of research on bullying, young people are simply provided with the definition of bullying and then asked questions about it. Because most people have their own idea about what bullying is, they are not likely to change their mind in one instant after they have read the definition in a questionnaire (if they read it at all).

Our survey asked about specific experiences of peer aggression. Around 30% of students thought their experience – such as being teased, laughed at, picked on, being called names, being hit, kicked, or treated meanly – was not harmful or was just “banter”.

How the survey worked

In 2017, 843 students from South Australia and the Northern Territory completed a questionnaire on peer aggression. One of the authors developed the questionnaire to distinguish harmful peer aggression from bullying and harmless banter.

Rather than being asked directly “were you bullied?”, the questions consisted of 20 items about experiences of victimisation (“Another person(s) spread rumours (false stories) about me”) and perpetration of aggression (“I told false stories or spread rumours about another person(s)”).

Students answered whether they had experienced or perpetrated the aggression in the last school term.

If they said they had experienced aggression, they were then asked to indicate:

• the level of harm experienced: “How harmful was it to you/them?”
• the intent: “Did they/you deliberately intend to do this?”
• the frequency: “How often did they/you do this?”
• the power imbalance: “How powerful (important, liked, strong) are you compared to the person(s) concerned?”

The questionnaire allowed experiences of aggression to be classified along a spectrum. These ranged from no involvement and harmless participation, to harming with no intention to harm others and bullying others.

We then classified experiences that were repeated, intentionally harmful and involved a power imbalance as bullying.

In our results, we found:

• 17% had no experience of peer aggression in the last school term
• 30.1% experienced peer aggression but saw it as fun, joking around or banter (didn’t consider it harmful)
• 2.9% were involved (as either perpetrators or victims) in harmful joking but didn’t repeatedly intend to harm others
• 32.5% were victims of harmful peer aggression (and were sometimes bullied, under the three criteria) and also had no intention of harming others
• 9.6% were victims of peer aggression and also harmed others – some of these were bullies or had been bullied (but not both)
• 4.8% had perpetrated aggression and deliberately sought to harm, but were not victims themselves – some in this group were bullies under the three criteria
• 3% were bullied and also bullied others.

So, overall, around 48% of students were harmed by peer aggression. The proportion of victims (those who did not cause harm themselves) was almost one in three. Of the remainder, 12.6% said they were harmed and also harmed others, while 4.8% harmed others and were unharmed themselves.

‘I wish you would die’

The questionnaire also asked students an open-ended question about student interaction in their schools. Some students were adamant not all aggression was harmful. One Year 11 boy: “most of the time it’s a joke, calm down”.

Some students provided drawings to illustrate their point. One Year 10 girl drew a picture titled “Banter with friends”. It contained the following text:

“Bullying never that scary”

Person 1: “You’re a faggot”

Person 2: “I sure am”

and

“Sounds horrible but it’s funny”

Person 1: “I wish you’d drown”; “I wish you’d die in a car crash”

Person 2: “I wish you’d die”; “I wish you were murdered”

While students may believe such comments aren’t harmful, it is difficult to determine where the joke ends and the abuse begins.

Respondents were, on average, around 14 years old. Around half of the sample (50.6%) were males, and three-quarters (76.4%) were 14 years old or younger.

We saw differences across the age groups. Victimisation decreased and harmless participation increased with age.

We also collected data with the same questionnaire in 11 other countries – Italy, Spain, Poland, Indonesia, the Philippines, Greece, Israel, Taiwan, mainland China, South Korea and India.

Harmful peer aggression was greatest in India (91.0%) and lowest in Taiwan (12.8%). Mainland China (47.0%) and Poland (41.7%) had figures similar to Australia.

Harmless “banter” was evident in other countries such as Italy (40.2%), Poland (35.0%) and mainland China (31.4%).

Student well-being

We also assessed respondents’ social, emotional and psychological well-being. Questions included: “How often did you feel happy?” and “How often did you feel that you had experiences that challenged you to grow and become a better person?”

We assessed whether the student was languishing (exhibiting low satisfaction both with general life and with their productivity and function in society), had moderate mental health, or was flourishing.

Read more: Not every school’s anti-bullying program works – some may actually make bullying worse

Student well-being appeared to be worsening in Australia. More than 10% of students were “languishing”. Girls were languishing more and flourishing less than their male counterparts. Girls also scored lower on how often they felt good about themselves.

Schools need more assistance and support if bullying is to be seriously dealt with. Evidence-based anti-bullying programs should continue to be evaluated, improved and implemented in schools.

– ref. ‘I wish you were murdered’: some students don’t know the difference between bullying and banter – http://theconversation.com/i-wish-you-were-murdered-some-students-dont-know-the-difference-between-bullying-and-banter-124272

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Churchill, Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Melbourne

There’s an old maxim: not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

But there are some things we should count, and gender and sexual diversity are among them.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has abandoned preparations to ask questions about sexual orientation and more detailed questions about gender identity during its upcoming census test later this month.

This follows a consultation process in which many public submissions from researchers, advocacy and community groups and individuals strongly pushed for the bureau to include more detailed questions about gender identity and sexual orientation.

Read more: Mum, dad and two kids no longer the norm in the changing Australian family

The forthcoming census test will, however, ask respondents whether they identify as male, female or non-binary. This does not mean this question will eventually make it onto the questionnaire for census night in 2021. It also does not mean questions about sexual orientation or more detailed questions about gender identity will be excluded.

So there is still time to consider the inclusion of questions that will better reflect Australia’s diverse demography.

Why including gender and sexuality matters

Simply and perhaps most importantly, including questions in the census that adequately capture gender and sexual diversity is an important act of recognition of LGBTIQ people and their lives. Those who do not identify as male or female or heterosexual often feel invisible to the wider community.

The 2016 census tried to be more inclusive by making changes to the way it collected information about sex. This allowed respondents to select “other”, with the option of providing more detail. But in order to answer “other”, respondents needed to request this option. The rationale was that there was some apprehension about how the public would respond to an “other” category.

There were 1,260 people gave a valid response to this question. The ABS acknowledges this figure under-reports the actual numbers of people in Australia who do not identify as male or female.

But “other” is not very inclusive and compounds feelings of invisibility. An individual submission to the Review of the 2021 Census Topics noted:

I am a trans-woman and the last census effectively rendered me invisible along with the rest of my community by making a non-binary gender response difficult to enter.

While the test for the 2021 census will include a response category for non-binary, which is a significant improvement on many fronts, the lack of questions or response categories that recognise respondents who are intersex, transgender or gender-queer and so on means these groups are not counted. This in turn means they remain invisible from a census perspective.

This is true for sexually diverse groups as well. While Australia has come a long way with the recent legal recognition of same-sex marriage, including these questions in the census will be another step towards greater recognition of sexually diverse people.

Other countries are counting these populations

Other countries are moving towards including questions about gender identity and sexual orientation in their censuses. The UK, for example, has recently passed a bill allowing trans people to choose their gender in the 2021 census.

Closer to home, researchers are doing their best to capture this information themselves. For example, the Scrolling Beyond Binaries project, which seeks to understand how young (aged 16-35) LGBTIQ+ people in Australia use digital social media, asked respondents about their gender identity, the gender assigned at birth, sexual orientation and their intersex status.

But research such as this is limited in its ability to make population-level findings about LGBTIQ+ people because it’s unable to derive a representative sample. Only the census could collect these data in a reliable way.

Why the numbers count

The ABS already collects some data on these populations. The 2014 General Social Survey captured some information about sexual orientation, but not about gender diversity. Some information about same-sex couples can be derived from the census using data about relationships within households.

We know the proportion of same-sex couples has been growing steadily over the past 20 years. We also know around 25% of female same-sex couples and 4.5% of male same-sex couples have children.

Read more: Six months after marriage equality there’s much to celebrate – and still much to do

But our picture of same-sex families is incomplete because the census can only tell us about families that live together in the same household. We do not know how many gay or lesbian lone-parent households there are because the census does not collect information about sexual orientation. Moreover, not all lesbian and gay people are in relationships and, even if they were, not all of them reside in the same household.

Australians who identify as lesbian or gay have higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation than their heterosexual counterparts. Transgender and sexually diverse people fare even worse.

These facts are well documented among state and federal government policies, programs and strategies, but knowing how much of the general population this affects, where these groups reside and the communities they belong to using census data will mean governments can begin to address these issues more adequately.

Census night in 2021 is still a long way off. It is imperative these questions about gender and sexual diversity are included if we are to recognise LGBTIQ Australians and address the issues and challenges that affect them the most.

– ref. We need to count LGBTI communities in the next census – here’s why – http://theconversation.com/we-need-to-count-lgbti-communities-in-the-next-census-heres-why-124769

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Pollock, Climatologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Northern Australia is likely to see fewer cyclones than usual this season, but hot, dry weather will increase the risk of fire and heatwaves across eastern and southern Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology today released its forecast for the tropical cyclone season, which officially runs from November 1 to April 30.

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

Also published today is the October to April Severe Weather Outlook, which examines the risk of other weather extremes like flooding, heatwaves and bushfires.

Warmer oceans means more cyclones

On average, 11 tropical cyclones form each season in the Australian region. Around four of those cross the coast. The total number each season is roughly related to how much cooler or warmer than average the tropical oceans near Australia are during the cyclone season.

One of the biggest drivers of change in ocean temperatures is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. During La Niña phases of ENSO, the warmest waters in the equatorial Pacific build up in the western Pacific and to the north of Australia. That region then becomes the focus for more cloud, rainfall and tropical cyclones.

But during El Niño, the warmest water shifts towards the central Pacific and away from northern Australia. This decreases the likelihood of cyclones in our region.

Read more: Explainer: El Niño and La Niña

And when ENSO is neutral, there is little push towards above or below average numbers of cyclones.

Temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean have been ENSO-neutral since April and are likely to stay neutral until at least February 2020. However, some tropical patterns are El Niño-like, including higher-than-average air pressure at Darwin. This may be related to the current record-strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole – another of Australia’s major climate drivers – and the cooler waters surrounding northern Australia.

The neutral ENSO phase alongside higher-than-average air pressure over northern Australia means we expect fewer-than-average tropical cyclones in the Australian region this season. The bureau’s Tropical Cyclone Season Outlook model predicts a 65% chance of fewer-than-average cyclones.

At least one tropical cyclone has crossed the Australian coast every season since reliable records began in the 1970s, so people across northern Australia need to be prepared every year. In ENSO-neutral cyclone seasons, this first cyclone crossing typically occurs in late December.

Read more: El Niño has rapidly become stronger and stranger, according to coral records

Other severe weather

While cyclones are one of the key concerns during the coming months, the summer months also bring the threat of several other forms of severe weather, including bushfires, heatwaves and flooding rain.

With dry soils inland, and hence little moisture available to cool the air, and a forecast for clear skies and warmer days, there is an increased chance that heat will build up over central Australia during the spring and summer months. This increases the chance of heatwaves across eastern and southern Australia when that hot air is drawn towards the coast by passing weather systems.

Likewise, the dry landscape and the chance of extreme heat also raise the risk of more bushfires throughout similar parts of Australia, especially on windy days. And with fewer natural firebreaks such as full rivers and streams, even greater care is needed in some areas.

Widespread floods are less likely this season. This is because of forecast below-average rainfall and also because dry soils mean the first rains will soak into the ground rather than run across the landscape.

However, as we saw in northern Queensland in January and February this year, when up to 2 metres of rainfall fell in less than 10 days, localised flooding can occur in any wet season if a tropical low parks itself in one location for any length of time.

Read more: Catastrophic Queensland floods killed 600,000 cattle and devastated native species

Most of all, it’s always important to follow advice from emergency services on what to do before, during and after severe weather. Know your weather, know your risk and be prepared. You can stay up to date with the latest forecast and warnings on the bureau’s website and subscribe to receive climate information emails.

– ref. Australia could see fewer cyclones, but more heat and fire risk in coming months – http://theconversation.com/australia-could-see-fewer-cyclones-but-more-heat-and-fire-risk-in-coming-months-125139

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Regina Jefferies, Affiliate, Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW

In the past five years, more than 95,000 people who arrived by plane have lodged a claim for asylum in Australia, new statistics show.

Labor’s Immigration Spokesperson, Senator Kristina Keneally, has labelled this a “crisis”, stating:

Peter Dutton’s incompetence and recklessness has allowed people smugglers to run riot and traffic record-breaking numbers of people by aeroplane to Australia.

But the “crisis” is not that visa-holding travellers are flying to Australia, then later lodging a claim for asylum. It’s not unprecedented for tourists or students to later lodge a claim for asylum due to circumstances beyond their control.

Read more: Peter Dutton is whipping up fear on the medevac law, but it defies logic and compassion

In 1989, for example, after events in Tiananmen Square, Australia provided refuge to thousands of Chinese students who had entered Australia with visas.

Instead, the “crisis” is the Australian government’s failure to properly manage the refugee-processing system. It gutted the ranks of experienced decision-makers and made organisational changes that undermine the quality of decisions, contributing to long processing delays and backlogs.

These organisational failures may have contributed to the increase in asylum applications over the last five years.

High staff turn-over

Protection visa decisions are highly complex. They must examine a variety of factors, including country-specific conditions and individual circumstances.

Yet, as the Australian National Audit Office noted in 2018, the Home Affairs department experienced a significant loss of “corporate memory” due to staff turn-over, “with almost half of SES officers present in July 2015 no longer in the department at July 2017”.

In a Senate Estimates hearing last year, Home Affairs officials said the average processing time for permanent protection visas, from lodgement to primary decision (not including appeals), was 257 days, or 8.5 months.

And the department’s training deficiencies are well-documented. The most recent Australian Public Service Employee Census put the department’s organisational management problems into stark relief: only 35% of employees said the department inspired them to do their best work, while two-thirds of respondents said they did not consider department senior executives to be of “high quality”.

These publicised problems raise important questions about the quality of decision-making at the primary level.

Stacking the AAT with political allies

Poor decision-making at the primary level can lead to higher numbers of appeals. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) from people who arrived by plane are also experiencing significant blowouts.

The number of active refugee cases to the AAT has ballooned from 8,370 two years ago, to 23,063 in 2019.

Read more: Cruel, and no deterrent: why Australia’s policy on asylum seekers must change

This results in a backlog. In 2017, the tribunal made 5,153 decisions on refugee claims, and this year only 815 refugee claims have been concluded.

In part, these worrying figures are due to the federal government appointing people with Liberal Party ties to the AAT over the last couple of years.

The Attorney-General recognised these problems in the 2019 Report on the Statutory Review of the Tribunal, which pointed to “competencies of members” as a key contributor to complications in the operation of the tribunal.

Stacking the AAT with political allies, many of whom are not lawyers and who are not appointed on merit, has removed independent expertise from the tribunal, risking errors and further delays.

Read more: How the Biloela Tamil family deportation case highlights the failures of our refugee system

And with more errors come further appeals in the courts. This not only places a heavy burden on the resources of the Federal Circuit Court and Federal Court, but also leads to more delays and backlogs in the AAT, where the court sends matters which were unlawfully decided for re-determination.

Address organisational failures

The solution is in proper organisational management. Instead of blaming refugees for fleeing persecution by safe means, the government must address the failures of its refugee processing system.

To this end, an urgent review of the Department of Home Affairs policies and organisational failures is needed. A review could find out whether there’s a management culture stopping Home Affairs from attracting and retaining staff who can make reasoned and well-supported decisions in an environment they can be proud of.

Read more: ‘Stop playing politics’: refugees stuck in Indonesia rally against UNHCR for chronic waiting

Similarly, there must be a transparent and independent system for appointing AAT members that prioritises skills and experience over politics – exactly what was recommended by the Attorney-General’s recent review.

If people seeking asylum can have their claims assessed quickly and fairly, then those who are not refugees can be sent home, while those needing safety could receive it.

Without the chance to remain in Australia for years while their claims are assessed, there would be no loophole for traffickers and others to exploit.

In turn, the number of non-genuine claims will go down, allowing decision-makers to focus on those who are actually fearing persecution.

Read more: Yes, Peter Dutton has a lot of power, but a strong Home Affairs is actually a good thing for Australia

We should be supporting refugees to access safety by air. If people fleeing persecution can access a flight to Australia, they won’t risk a dangerous journey by boat to find safety.

This is not an airport border “crisis”, it’s a management failure that can be fixed with more staffing, better resourcing, and transparent and meritorious appointments of decision makers.

– ref. There’s no airport border ‘crisis’, only management failure of the Home Affairs department – http://theconversation.com/theres-no-airport-border-crisis-only-management-failure-of-the-home-affairs-department-125068

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Waller, PhD candidate, University of Sydney

Organs from potential donors once rejected as being unsafe to transplant may not be as risky as once thought, new Australian research shows.

Our study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, suggests organs from injecting drug users or men who have sex with men, for instance, could safely open up the pool of available organs. That’s so long as donors test negative for blood-borne infections, such as HIV, and hepatitis B and C.

Currently, organs from this and other groups considered high risk are often rejected outright, for fear of transmitting hidden infections to the recipient.

If transplant criteria were based on viral status rather than belonging to a particular group, we estimate this could mean up to 30 more people could receive a transplant a year in NSW alone.

Read more: Why are only some viruses transmissible by blood and how are they actually spread?

Which high-risk groups are usually rejected as donors?

Many infections can potentially be transmitted as a result of an organ transplant. But this happens very rarely due to strict governance, involving careful screening and selection of donors.

Blood-borne viruses, such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV, are a particular concern, because historically these had the most potential to have devastating consequences for the organ recipient.

Some potential organ donors have behaviours that put them at increased risk of infection. National and international guidelines perceive high-risk groups for these viruses to include:

• people who inject illicit drugs

• men who have sex with men

• sex workers

• people who have recently been in jail

• sexual partners of any of these groups, or of people with a blood-borne virus.

People from these groups are often declined as organ donors, even when tests for blood-borne viruses are negative, and sometimes without even being tested.

That’s because of the worry about the risk of the donor being recently infected but that infection not yet showing up in blood tests. This is know as the “window period”. If a window-period infection occurred, people could unwittingly transmit the virus.

When we used Australian data, here’s what we found

So how big a risk are we talking about?

Until recently, Australian guidelines have relied on US estimates of risk, although there are important differences in the prevalence of blood borne viruses in the US and elsewhere compared with Australia.

We believed the risk of window-period infection in Australia was likely to be lower, possibly much lower, than was appreciated. So, we were concerned some potential donors might be turned away who could actually have donated safely.

So, we identified data from sources including journal articles, government reports and conference abstracts between Jan 1, 2000 and Feb 14, 2019 to see how common blood-borne viruses were in people with high-risk behaviours in Australia.

Read more: Charlie Sheen and ten million dollars worth of HIV stigma

We found, as expected, men who have sex with men have the highest risk of HIV in Australia. But for each person who tests negative for HIV, the risk of transmitting the virus was around one in 6,500. This is lower than the US estimate, which sits at one in 2,500. The difference was more pronounced for injecting drug users in Australia, where one in 50,000 would have a window period infection, compared to one in 2,000 in the US.

The window period risk was higher for hepatitis C. Among the riskiest groups, this was around one in 500, similar to overseas studies. There were no studies overseas to compare to for hepatitis B. We found the risk of a window period infection was at most one in 200 from the riskiest group (although we may being cautious and over-estimating this risk).

Read more: Explainer: the A, B, C, D and E of hepatitis

What does this mean?

First, we suggest all potential organ donors with high-risk behaviours be assessed with the test that gives the shortest window period, to minimise the chance of missing a recent infection.

This means testing for the presence of the virus itself (via DNA or RNA testing) rather than relying on tests that look for markers of infection (serological testing).

For potential donors who test negative, our data can be used to help clinicians put the small risks of infection transmission in context for organ recipients.

What’s the alternative?

For most people, an organ transplant is the best treatment for organ failure and can be life-saving.

For people with kidney failure, the alternative is dialysis. But this gives shorter survival, poorer quality of life, and incurs higher costs to the health system than treatment with a kidney transplant. For the heart, liver and lungs, there are no other long-term options; without a transplant, people whose organs fail will eventually die.

But there are not enough organ donors to go round. Around 1,500 Australians are waiting for a transplant.

Even so, the option of receiving a donor organ with even a very small risk of transmitting infection may not seem immediately appealing. But this needs to be balanced against the considerable health consequences of foregoing a transplant and remaining on the waiting list.

In 2018 in Australia there were 554 deceased donors who donated organs to 1,543 transplant recipients. Over the same period, 39 people died while waiting for a transplant, and a further 236 were removed from the waiting list due to ill health.

Even with our newly calculated low risk of transmission, there are ways of minimising the risks further, or with new treatments, curing the viral infections if they are transmitted.

For instance, with HIV, medications could be provided to recipients, to further reduce the risk of transmission. If the recipient develops hepatitis C, there are now drugs that can cure it completely. And, for hepatitis B, many people are now vaccinated, which prevents transmission.

Read more: Three ethical ways to increase organ donation in Australia

What’s happening internationally?

Donors at increased risk of blood-borne viruses are used internationally.

In the US, over 25% of organ donors now fit these criteria, mainly due to the opioid epidemic and associated increased deaths from overdose.

This strategy has led to an increase in hepatitis C transmissions from donors to recipients. But hepatitis C can be cured with an eight-week course of treatment, even among transplant recipients.

Researchers have also shown an increase in survival for patients who accepted kidneys from people at increased risk of viral infection compared to those who opted to remain on the waiting list.

Does this mean more people could have transplants?

So could our work make a tangible impact on the number of Australians receiving transplants?

Our preliminary work suggests there could have been up to a 5% increase in donors in NSW alone between 2010-2015, if we had accepted donors with risk behaviours but negative test results. There could have been five more donors a year, who can each donate to up to six recipients (so up to 30 additional recipients a year).

Our early results on the risk of infection were recently incorporated into national guidelines produced by the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand for organ transplantation.

In Victoria, people waiting for a kidney transplant can now consent to receiving organs with these risks when they are put on the waiting list.

We hope our research sparks discussion among patients and doctors to consider what risks are important to patients, and where their values and preferences lie. Better evidence for decision-making should certainly help.

– ref. Organs ‘too risky’ to donate may be safer than we think. We crunched the numbers and here’s what we found – http://theconversation.com/organs-too-risky-to-donate-may-be-safer-than-we-think-we-crunched-the-numbers-and-heres-what-we-found-124993

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merrilyn Delporte, PhD Candidate, Queensland University of Technology

Australia’s refugee policy has led to a two-track education system. Those processed offshore, and deemed refugees by the time they have arrived in Australia, are entitled to fee support for university. But the almost 30,000 boat arrivals, considered illegal entrants, can only access temporary visas. This means a degree has to be paid in full, making it the impossible dream for most.

Policies limiting education follow a political narrative that labels boat arrivals “illegal”. This narrative is difficult to change without widespread community support.

Groups like the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre are training members of the public in how to talk about people who escape harm, rather than debating the legalities of seeking asylum (“It’s not illegal to seek asylum”). These efforts require a range of community leaders, not just stereotypical activists, to rewrite the narrative.

My PhD research on advocacy communications indicated many academics are unsure of how to support people seeking asylum. Advocacy is often seen as an activity for seasoned activists. But like the campaign to get kids off Nauru, led by Australian doctors, academics can play an important role as thought leaders who can influence the hearts and minds of a younger generation.

The right to education

Education is often interrupted for children in conflict situations and when escaping harm such as war or ethnic persecution.

Children who have arrived by boat and sought asylum in Australia will have experienced even longer periods of education disruption in detention centres. In terms of education, these are suitable only as transitory environments, as they lack adequate teaching staff or resources for longer-term schooling.

Australia has no law specifying how long children may be kept in detention. One report estimated this was an average of eight months in 2014, though it can be as long as two to three years.

The Research Council of Australia commissioned research in 2015 to capture the human cost of disrupted and limited education for these children. One Iraqi teen said:

I lost my dad, I lost my brother and I couldn’t stay anymore. I came to be safe here. I came here in 2012. I’m not allowed to work, there are no funds for me to study. When I arrived I was 17. Imagine if you are 17 and you are not allowed to go to school. There are not funds for you to go to school. Now I’m almost 20 […] When can I go to school? When can I go to college? When can I have an education?

An estimated 4,000 children recognised as asylum seekers were in Australian schools in 2015. Under current legislation, they would be denied fee support for university.

Asylum seekers are only entitled to temporary three-to-five-year visas, which require them to pay A$30,000 on average for a degree. This is because Commonwealth-supported degrees are given to citizens or permanent visa holders only.

Read more: How people seeking asylum in Australia access higher education, and the enormous barriers they face

Improving access to higher education can improve social inclusion and resilience, and help people seeking asylum make a positive contribution to society.

Working migrants are thought to balance an ageing Australian population and shrinking tax base. This is particularly true for recent arrivals from Africa and the Middle East with a high number of children, or second-generation refugees, who will be schooled in Australia.

One study found 80% of these children would be employed in white-collar professions if they earned a bachelor degree or higher. They would also be twice as likely to be employed than if they had only a diploma.

Academics can be activists

Several Australian universities clearly support people seeking asylum. For example, there are 21 full-fee-paying scholarships available to asylum seekers to offset the otherwise impossible costs of a university education.

Other initiatives include Academics for Refugees, with representatives from a number of universities, who want to add their voice to campaign issues. Many academics are using research and teaching to question assumptions and influence students as well as decision-makers.

Academics may not feel confident being advocates, but the potential of a professional voice is clear. #KidsOffNauru was initiated by a group of doctors with access to children in detention. They called on the government to release children on the grounds that long periods of detention were detrimental to their health.

Medics may be unlikely lobbyists, but they added a credible voice on childrens’ physical and mental safety. Advocacy groups credited the campaign with the release of more than 100 children from detention in 2018, though the Australian government claimed it had already been reducing these numbers.

Read more: Here’s another reason kids don’t belong in detention: trauma changes growing brains

Universities have championed significant improvements for migrants in the past through narratives that challenged dominant political discourse. For example, the 1960s DREAMers movement led to the tabling of the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act. This would have granted legal status to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children and went to school there.

These teens had grown up in the US without permanency. They told stories about their American dream and initiated sit-ins and pray-ins across college campuses. The DREAMers campaign transformed the immigration debate in the US, keeping the plight of undocumented migrant youth on the radar.

There are clear parallels between the Australian and US debates around who deserves a permanent visa, with the education rights that come with it. However, an Australian narrative around the ethics of education access is yet to emerge.

Australian academics can help write this narrative through coordinated advocacy and existing research networks, or creative campus initiatives that give a voice to students impacted by immigration policy.

Academics are well placed to shine a spotlight on the human and economic costs of limiting higher education pathways for people seeking asylum.

– ref. Asylum seekers have a right to higher education and academics can be powerful advocates – http://theconversation.com/asylum-seekers-have-a-right-to-higher-education-and-academics-can-be-powerful-advocates-121753