After months of delays and uncertainty, Afghanistan is set to hold its presidential election on Saturday. This election, the third since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, has critical implications for the political stability and security of the country.
Most importantly, it will test the resilience of the country’s fragile democratic process and shape the conditions under which the now-defunct negotiations between the United States and the Taliban can be resumed with more meaningful participation from Kabul.
And if the vote produces a broadly acceptable and functioning government – which is not a guarantee after the last presidential election in 2014 and parliamentary elections in 2018 – it will have profound repercussions for the Afghan people.
Nearly two decades after the US-led coalition invaded the country and ousted the Taliban, Afghanistan is still in a downward spiral. In June, the country replaced Syria as the world’s least peaceful country in the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index report. The BBC tracked the violence in the country in August and found that on average, 74 Afghan men, women and children died each day across the country.
Further, the number of Afghans below the poverty line increased from 33.5% in 2011 to nearly 55% in 2017.
And in another bleak assessment of where things are at the moment, Afghan respondents in a recent Gallup survey rated their lives worse than anyone else on the planet. A record-high 85% of respondents categorised their lives as “suffering”, while the number of people who said they were “thriving” was zero.
Tests of democracy in Afghanistan
Despite the major challenges posed by insecurity and risks of electoral fraud, Afghanistan’s recent elections have been serious contests between the country’s various political elites.
Ordinary voters take extraordinary risks to participate in the polls. Thanks to a dynamic media sector, these contests involve spirited debates about policy-making and the visions of the candidates. This is particularly true when it comes to presidential elections, as the country’s 2004 Constitution concentrated much of the political and executive power in the office of the president.
There have been serious tests of Afghanistan’s nascent democracy before, however. The 2014 election was tainted by allegations of widespread fraud, pushing the country to the brink of a civil war.
The political crisis was averted by the formation of the national unity government, in which Ashraf Ghani became president and his main challenger in the election, Abdullah Abdullah, took the position of chief executive officer, with powers similar to a prime minister.
Abdullah Abdullah is again the main challenger for President Ashraf Ghani, similar to the 2014 vote.Jalil Rezayee/EPA
Negotiations with the Taliban
Since the withdrawal of most of the US and NATO forces from Afghanistan in 2014, the Taliban has considerably expanded the areas under its influence. Nonetheless, the insurgent group has been unable to score any strategic military victories by gaining control of provincial or population centres.
In 2016, President Donald Trump came to the White House with the promise of ending the war in Afghanistan. However, after a meticulous assessment of the risks associated with a complete troop withdrawal, he backed away from that pledge.
Trump instead called the 2014 departure of most US troops a “hasty withdrawal” and declared a new strategy that included an increase in the number of US forces in Afghanistan.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (centre) has adopted a populist style in his re-election campaign to connect better with voters.Ghulamullah Habibi/EPA
The deployment of additional troops significantly escalated the military campaign against the Taliban but failed to decisively change the security dynamics in the country.
Then, in 2018, the Trump administration formally began engaging the Taliban in a series of direct negotiations in Qatar. The process was called off by Trump earlier this month when it was reportedly at the threshold of an agreement.
Critics noted, however, the many flaws of this approach and the haste with which the negotiations were conducted by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special representative for Afghan reconciliation.
Ironically, at the insistence of the Taliban, the process excluded the government of Afghanistan, which the Taliban refuses to recognise as the legitimate authority in the country. This led to phased negotiations, whereby a deal between the US and the Taliban was expected to be followed by an intra-Afghan dialogue and eventually a ceasefire.
A successful presidential election that produces a broadly acceptable outcome can significantly strengthen the position of the new government in negotiating and implementing a peace process with the Taliban. This is one reason why Ghani does not want to be sidelined from the negotiations.
Challenges for the upcoming vote
The election involves a significant number of political players and coalitions, but is essentially a replay of the 2014 poll between Ghani and Abdullah. While none of the other 13 candidates have a realistic chance of winning, they can split the votes to prevent one of the leaders from claiming victory in the first round. A run-off was required in the last two presidential elections in 2009 and 2014.
Another factor is the threat of violence from the Taliban. The group has already vowed to violently disrupt the election. In recent weeks, it has claimed responsibility for deadly attacks on election rallies, including a devastating attack on the campaign office of Amrullah Saleh, the first vice-president on Ghani’s ticket.
Supporters of incumbent President Ashraf Ghani at a rally in Jalalabad this month.Ghulamullah Habibi/EPA
Insecurity will also likely prevent significant numbers of people from participating in the process. The number of polling stations has significantly dropped to less than 5,000 this year compared to 7,000 in 2014, highlighting the deteriorating security conditions.
There are also fears that more polling stations will be closed on election day, both for security reasons and political reasons (the latter in areas that are likely to vote for opposition candidates).
This election is unlikely to be a game changer in the face of the magnitude and complexity of the challenges facing Afghanistan and its people.
Nonetheless, the election presents a rare opportunity for the country’s people to exercise their rights to choose who governs the country.
And if the supporters of the leading candidates stay committed to a transparent process, even a reasonably credible outcome can go a long way in restoring confidence in the country’s shaky institutions and strengthening the position of the government in any future peace negotiations with the Taliban.
How can I control the excessive oil secretions on my face that leads to acne? Anonymous
Pimples are the worst! They hurt, pop up overnight and can be impossible to hide.
You’re right that oily skin is believed to be the most critical factor for causing acne.
But rest assured, there are a few things you can do to keep your oil at bay and control the likelihood of a break out.
Why am I so oily… all the time!
Before we start talking about how to avoid acne, let’s chat about why oily skin causes acne.
Oily skin is caused by the overproduction of sebum by an overactive oil gland (also known as the pilosebaceous unit, which is just a fancy term for a hair follicle and its oil gland).
There are a few reasons we get acne, one being the pore of the oil gland can be blocked – this can be made worse by using certain types of makeup.
Some of our hormones during puberty drive sebum overproduction, hence acne-overload. Fun fact: anabolic steroids, typically used by bodybuilders, can trigger acne too.
Acne bacteria lives on the skin and its overgrowth around your oil glands can worsen inflammation and pus formation. This is what causes acne to hurt sometimes.
If there’s a strong history of acne in your family, there’s a good chance you might get it too.
Trust me on this, a proper skin routine is everything
As a dermatologist, I recommend cleaning your face every morning and evening. If you wear make up, ALWAYS wipe it off before going to bed – no excuses!
Using pore-clogging oil-based make up can worsen or cause acne. This can become worse if make up is not thoroughly removed!
If you want to hide your acne with make up, just be sure to use brands that contain good ingredients (I talk a bit more about this below).
A few tips to help keep your skin clear ?
Diet: Eat a healthy balanced diet containing low glycaemic index food groups with complex carbohydrates and omega-3 fatty acids. There might be a role for oral zinc supplements. It is best to avoid sugary, processed and refined food.
Make up and hair products: If you choose to wear make up, opt for mineral-based foundations, eg. La Roche Posay, Bare Minerals, Nude by Nature, Jane Iredale, Youngblood and Ultraceuticals. Wash your hair regularly with shampoo, especially if you’re using hair products and if you have oily hair or scalp. Avoid using oil-based products on your face and beware of oil-based pomades and hair wax, especially near your forehead.
Regular use of a good quality broad spectrum SPF 30 and above ultralight sunscreen lotion: This reduces early onset wrinkles, pigmentation issues and in the long-term reduces your risk of developing sunspots and dangerous skin cancers.
I recommend using a blotting paper or oil-control film when this happens. They aren’t too expensive – Target sells packs of 100 for A$5 – and can be bought at supermarkets and pharmacies.
You can also apply a thin layer of mattifying gel or a mineral-based loose powder foundation to reduce and absorb excess oil.
Some final words of advice
Use oil-free and non-comedogenic cleansers, moisturisers and make up. When picking a foundation opt for “oil free” liquid silicone (dimethicone or cyclomethicone) matte foundations over oil foundations
remember to thoroughly remove your make up with a make up remover
avoid touching, picking or scratching your pimples
if you feel your acne is particularly bad, make sure you see your GP or get a referral to see a dermatologist. It’s always best to get on top of your acne and reduce risk of acne scarring.
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Most of the 24 million annual visitors to Queensland don’t notice the series of seemingly innocuous yellow buoys at many popular beaches. Beneath the waves lies a series of baited drumlines and mesh nets that aim to make Queensland beaches safe from the ominous threat of sharks.
Earlier this week the Queensland government lost a legal challenge in the Federal Court to continue its shark culling program in protected areas of the Great Barrier Reef, and Fisheries Minister Mark Furner has written to the federal government to request legal changes to keep the program operating.
While proponents of the program argue the absence of human deaths at beaches with shark control gear is proof of the program’s success, leading shark experts are not so sure.
Can shark control programs control sharks?
Large sharks roam across very large swathes of the ocean.Photo courtesy of Juan Oliphant, Author provided
Through a series of baited drumlines and mesh nets, shark control programs aim to reduce local populations of large sharks, thereby reducing the number of times humans and shark meet along our coastline.
Scientists believe that resident sharks may learn that nets and drumlines placed in their local areas represent an obstacle and actively avoid them. This in itself deters and reduces the local population of large sharks in that particular area.
There are two problems with this logic. First, large apex sharks are not local to individual beaches – satellite tracking data indicates they are highly mobile, moving thousands of kilometres across coasts, reefs and open oceans every year. Sharks tagged in the Whitsundays and Cairns have travelled thousands of kilometres throughout the Great Barrier Reef and beyond.
Second, there’s no clear evidence that sharks avoid drumlines. In fact, baited drumlines and nets actively attract, not deter, large sharks. Similar programs in Hawaii were stopped after an expert review concluded their effectiveness had been overstated.
Do shark control programs make our beaches safer?
Nets do not place an impenetrable barrier between swimmers and sharks. It is true only one death has occurred at beaches with nets and drumlines, but over the same period there were 26 unprovoked non-fatal incidents.
While a reduction in fatalities is often attributed to the success of the shark control program, it could also be that reduced response times and better medical interventions are more successful at saving lives in recent decades.
Culls, nets and baited drumlines are a blunt tool, unable to completely remove the threat of people and sharks meeting on our beaches. Advances in technology and improved education of swimmers may be a more effective way to create safer beaches in Queensland with less ecological cost.
Smart technology
Modern technology allows us to help people avoid sharks, by modifying our behaviour at beaches. Shark-detecting drones are being trialled on New South Wales beaches as part of that state’s A$16 million shark management strategy, allowing for real-time monitoring of popular coastal areas.
Technology like drones and smart buoys are increasingly good at spotting sharks.Matt Pritchard/Wikimedia Commons
Underwater “clever buoys” installed at NSW beaches in place of baited drumlines allow for real-time detection of sharks using sonar technology, instantly notifying lifeguards of the location, size and direction of sharks. Solar-powered, beach-based shark warning systems operate on remote beaches in Western Australia, cutting the response time between shark sightings and authorities alerting beachgoers from nearly an hour to a matter of minutes.
Education about shark behaviour can also help. Sharks are more active in certain places, like river mouths, and at certain times, such as at dawn and dusk.
In fact, the Queensland government is prioritising research into shark and human behaviours. This research could support education that mitigates the risk of shark interactions, without causing ecological harm.
Earlier this year the Queensland government committed to a A$1 million annual funding boost towards trialling alternative technologies. Adoption of modern innovations and better education for the general public would improve beach safety while avoiding the expensive and ineffective methods of culls, baited drumlines, and nets.
The cost of shark control programs
While we will never have an exact idea of how many sharks used to roam the eastern coastline, historical estimates from shark control programs suggest that the number of large sharks has declined by 72-97% in Queensland and by as much as 82% in NSW since the middle of the 20th century.
Shark nets, culls and baitlines are expensive and ineffective.Nicole McLachlan, Author provided
NSW and Queensland shark controlprograms combined have removed more than 1,445 white sharks from the eastern Australian coastline since the middle of the 20th century. To put this in context, current estimates indicate that the eastern population of white sharks sits at around 5,460 individuals in total.
The idea that sharks numbers have boomed in recent years represents a classic example of shifting baseline syndrome. The number of sharks on our beaches may seem to have grown since the late 1990s, but it is a fraction compared with a 1960s baseline, and long-term trends indicate that declines are ongoing.
The number-one priority at our beaches is keeping swimmers safe. At the same time, we have a responsibility to protect threatened and endangered species. There are smarter ways to manage both humans and sharks that will make our beaches safer and help protect sharks.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Director and CEO of the Australia India Institute; Professor of Development Geography, University of Melbourne
India released a Draft National Education Policy (DNEP) in June 2019. It’s the first comprehensive policy proposal on education in the country since 1986 and a major, game changing statement.
Australia has a moral duty to engage with the global challenge of providing quality education to hundreds of millions of Indian youth. And by engaging with India as it rolls out this policy, Australian universities stand to gain knowledge and research capacity, among many other things.
What’s the new policy trying to achieve?
India’s National Policy on Education was framed in 1986 and modified in 1992. Clearly a lot has change in the country since then.
The proposed new policy is remarkable for two main reasons.
First, it takes a cold-eyed look at the existing educational structures and processes in India. The document reflects honestly and in depth on state-level universities and colleges where the majority of students study. In these institutions, the facilities, teaching, and governance are usually poor.
A second remarkable element to the draft is the scale and boldness of the vision. The policy aims to make changes across all levels of education – from early childhood to university.
The draft policy, which is currently in the consultation phase, recommends doubling funding for public education from the present figure of roughly 3% of GDP to 6%.
It aims to change the structure of school education so children begin their schooling at three years old, with three preschool years incorporated into the formal structure.
India’s draft education policy aims to restructure the system so children start school from three years old.JAIPAL SINGH/EPA
The draft policy also calls for an overhaul of teacher training which will now occur in universities rather than specialist colleges, which are often of low quality.
In tertiary education (though the draft is weak on the issue of vocational education), the policy sets a target of 50% of youth being enrolled in universities by 2035 (in 2016, the figure was 24.5%).
The DNEP recommends dismantling the current system of universities and private and public colleges to develop between 10,000-15,000 multi-disciplinary universities, which would be funded in part through the increased government investment in higher education.
The document notes the current system is made up of more than 850 universities and about 40,000 colleges, with 20% of those colleges offering just a single program of study, and 20% having under 100 students.
The main thrust of this policy regarding higher education is the ending of the fragmentation of higher education by moving higher education into large multidisciplinary universities and colleges, each of which will aim to have upwards of 5,000 or more students.
The new institutions are envisioned to promote education in the arts and social sciences. The focus on “liberal arts” will encourage critical thinking and appreciation of the value of education beyond just preparing the population for employment.
The DNEP emphasises the importance of developing a research culture across most universities in India and stresses the value of internationalisation by “preparing our students to participate in world affairs through providing them with learning experiences that cut across countries and cultures”.
It also aims to to “attract students from other countries to participate in our higher education programmes”.
Why Australia should care
The poor quality of school and university described in the DNEP is a critical global challenge. As it stands, large parts of India, especially northern India, are unlikely to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4, which calls for accessible, quality education for everyone.
Australia should partner with India to address the needs of the hundreds of millions of young people demanding a better education.
Australia has a lot to gain from engaging with India on its new education policy.MICK TSIKAS/AAP
By interacting with top Indian researchers and students, Australia can also improve its own research and knowledge capacity. Australia can make commercial gains from working with India in the redevelopment of its education system.
Australian universities can act in five areas in particular:
1. Build research capacity in India and across the Australia-India boundary
Australia already has a research partnership with India, the Australia India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF). This should be extended, through a joint new research fund with India’s already established new National Research Foundation.
India faces a major challenge in creating a body of excellent researchers capable of occupying positions in its proposed new universities. It is therefore crucial that research partnership also involves building this capacity, especially by creating new PhD training and post-doctoral positions.
2. Partner with India in open and distance learning (ODL)
The DNEP’s goal of increasing the number of students in university in India to 50% can’t occur through bricks and mortar expansion. India has a lot of experience on ODLs but Australia and India could usefully partner in the development of better quality technology platforms.
3. Help train Indian school teachers
Australia has major strength in teacher education. India is looking to other countries to assist in training the staff in universities who will be responsible for training teachers in the new system. Australian action in this area would greatly help Indian education into its next phase.
4. Provide expertise on internationalisation
Australia has been very successful since the 1990s in internationalising its education. Education is now one of Australia’s largest exports. Australian universities and peak bodies such as the Group of Eight Universities could be partners in India’s efforts to internationalise.
5. Building campuses in each other’s countries
The DNEP recommends overturning regulation that prevents foreign universities from establishing campuses in India. It invites the world’s top 200 universities to develop a physical presence in the subcontinent. It also encourages Indian institutions to consider opening campuses abroad.
Australian universities could approach Indian institutions to discuss the development of a physical presence in each other’s countries, such as laboratory spaces, research centres or campuses.
The DNEP is remarkable on many levels: a bold effort to rethink education from first principles in a country containing one fifth of the world’s youth. Australia should make it a priority to engage.
Greater Tokyo took a major hit earlier this month from Typhoon Faxai, which stopped regional transport and knocked out power in the eastern prefecture of Chiba.
Japan’s choices are often simplistically represented as either denser cities or regional dispersal. The former is portrayed as coldly technocratic spatial planning and the latter as the road to an idyllic, sustainable, community-friendly utopia.
But there is a middle option: cities that are both spatially compact and better networked through people, infrastructure and smart technology.
Artificial intelligence to the rescue
There have been numerous studies on Japan’s dilemmas. One of the most innovative was a 2017 artificial intelligence (AI) experiment by researchers at the Hitachi Kyoto University Laboratory.
To compare the merits of urban concentration versus regional dispersal, the researchers looked at 149 indicators of population growth, health, employment, happiness and so on. With these variables they generated 20,000 future scenarios covering the period 2018 to 2052.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
Their results identified regional dispersal as the best way to ensure healthy ageing, inter-regional equity and environmental sustainability.
But the researchers also warned policymakers they had until roughly 2027 to decide on either urban centralisation or regional decentralisation. The AI simulation predicted a lock-in effect that would make it difficult to revert or change course after that time.
Extreme weather events hit back
Yet the scale of Typhoon Faxai’s devastation has revealed Japan’s vulnerability in the face of disasters.
Chiba is only 40 kilometres east of Tokyo. Even so, the typhoon’s landfall took out a large part of the electricity grid, destroying or damaging an estimated 2,000 utility poles.
Japan’s Disaster Management Bureau said peak service interruptions saw 934,900 of Chiba’s households left in the dark and more than 139,700 without water.
Typhoon Faxai’s costs are still being calculated. They seem unlikely to reach the A$22.1 billion (¥15 trillion Japanese Yen) toll of Typhoon Jebi, which hit Japan’s densely-populated Kansai area last September.
This latest typhoon also hit less than a year before Tokyo hosts the 2020 Olympics.
Commuters are stranded at Kawaguchi station in Kawaguchi after Typhoon Faxai landed near Tokyo.EPA/JIJI PRESS JAPAN
Japan’s major policy crossroad arrives early
At first glance, Typhoon Faxai’s devastation might seem to confirm the argument for regional decentralisation versus urban density.
But this disaster is drawing attention to the middle ground between these polarised scenarios. For example, an article in Japan’s financial daily news Nikkei argued that a combination of disasters, population decline and ageing infrastructure may require a strategic retreat into compact and networked cities.
A similar argument was outlined in much greater detail in a report three years earlier from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Endorsing Japan’s 2015 National Spatial Strategy, the OECD highlighted the goal of promoting a compact and networked settlement pattern. The OECD pointed out that striking a balance between centralisation and decentralisation would help bolster cities without writing off the regions.
Under this strategy, three city-regions (Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya) are seen as vital to national prosperity. Communities outside these metropolitan areas are encouraged to network with them to share health, waterworks, power and other essential services.
Rebuilding for resilience
There are already indications Typhoon Faxai is accelerating the policies to realise compact and networked cities.
But more action is needed to alleviate the dangerous over-concentration of functions, such as government and business, in the Tokyo area. Typhoons are hardly the only hazard.
For example, forecasts indicate Tokyo is likely to be hit by a major earthquake within the next 30 years. The current effort to move functions out of Tokyo should be expanded.
Japan’s compact and smart cities also use eco-systems to mitigate disaster risk. For example, forests and green space are robust against storm and tsunami threats. This year, Japanese policymakers reached agreement on the need to emphasise disaster-resilient green infrastructure.
In contrast to Anglo-American climate denial, Japanese pragmatists respond to extreme weather events with measures that achieve both climate change adaptation and mitigation. Chiba’s reconstruction seems a good opportunity to ramp up this approach.
It’s often remarked that Japan’s multiplicity of challenges make it a place where the world should be learning how to use smart policy and natural assets to build resilience. Typhoon Faxai has revealed some of the policy-making terrain we ought to be looking at.
Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, had to walk a series of fine lines in his official visit to the United States this week.
He had to appear supportive of US president Donald Trump without looking like a sycophant. He had to emphasise Australia’s deep bond with the United States without aggravating China.
There are, of course, important matters of international relations and geopolitics involved in how Australia positions itself regarding the interactions between China and the United States.
In that report – launched, incidentally, by then treasurer Scott Morrison – we highlighted that though China is Australia’s largest trading partner, the US is our largest economic partner more broadly.
Our indispensable investment partner
Australia has always been a capital-thirsty country, and our largest provider of foreign capital now and historically is the United States.
The cumulative value of two-way investment between the US and Australia is about A$1.5 trillion. US investment in Australia, totalling more than A$900 billion, comprises more than a quarter of all foreign investment. It is close to double the investment from second-placed Britain and roughly 10 times that from China.
US ownership of companies operating in Australia is also double that any other other country. US foreign direct investment (defined as owning 10% or more of a business) is responsible for more than 330,000 high-paying jobs (US-affiliated companies pay employees an average of more than A$115,000) and more than A$1 billion a year in research and development spending.
The US has more foreign direct investment into Australia than in all of South America, Africa or the Middle East.
Australians are heavily invested in the US, too. Australian companies from CSL to Atlassian see the US as both a large market and a springboard to the world. As our report highlighted:
The United States has been the largest destination of Australian investment for many years. Making up more than 28% of all Australian overseas investment, total Australian investment in the United States is valued at A$617 billion, more than seven times the A$87 billion that Australia has invested in China.
Our indispensable trading partner
That said, China is a crucial trading partner for Australia.
One-quarter of Australia’s exports go to China, which is an important source of high-quality low-cost goods for Australian consumers. Imports and exports both represent about 20% of Gross Domestic Product, and China is a key nation for both.
Furthermore, we might have just scratched the surface in terms of export potential. As the Chinese economy grows, there are big opportunities in agricultural products like Wagyu beef and services like education (already our third-largest export market).
China’s per capita GDP has grown rapidly in the past 30 years but still stands at A$9,600, compared with A$56,000 for Australia. There is a lot more room for growth. As China does so, its middle class will become an even more attractive market. For a relatively low-growth Australian economy, it’s a bright opportunity.
Maintaining both relationships
It will take some skilled diplomacy to keep both China and the US happy – particularly at a time when they are not particularly happy with each other. Among other things, it means not taking sides in their trade and currency disputes. There are no winners from that – and kudos to trade minister Simon Birmingham for having said so.
We can also continue to avoid taking a stance on contentious issues like the status of Taiwan.
None of this is easy, but it is terribly important.
Perhaps the ultimate question, to paraphrase a classic 1975 pop song, is: “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”
Perhaps we can be friends with both China and the United States. It would certainly be in our national interest to do so. Perhaps both the US and China can see benefits in our respective bilateral relationships.
On the other hand, the band that had a hit with that 1975 classic was called War. Let’s hope that’s not an omen.
In the market parlance of boom and bust cycles, the Australian art market has long been leaning towards the latter. Over the past decade, it has performed very poorly. According to Australian Art Sales Digest, the combined volume of secondary market sales through Australian auction houses was $107 million in 2018. This amount has remained essentially unchanged for the last ten years and is 39% lower than its apex in 2007. Prices for Australian artwork in the secondary market have followed a very similar pattern.
Commercial art galleries, traditional representatives of artists’ new work, are struggling to counteract declining foot traffic. There are fewer now than there were ten years ago, with several new closures, such as the landmark Watters Gallery in Sydney, announced in recent years.
Struggling artists
This decline in demand has of course resulted in a disheartening reduction in the incomes of many of Australia’s visual artists. Lowensteins Arts Management, accountants to more than 4,000 Australian artists across all creative disciplines, has calculated incomes for “established” visual artists decreased by 15% between 2010 and 2017.
The Australian art market has stagnated over the last decade.www.shutterstock.com
Incomes for “mid-career” artists fell by 4% over the same period. Interestingly, “emerging” artists benefited from a gain of 109% in their incomes – but these incomes were very low to start with.
Media commentators and industry operators commonly blame this underperformance on the economic disruptions brought about by the global financial crisis. Certainly, the immediate drop in auction sales experienced in 2008 can be attributed to the loss of wealth and confidence that was endemic across the globe at that time.
However, the recently released The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2019 shows that art market sales in the United States, the epicentre of the GFC, have increased by 38% in the decade since 2008, with global art market sales increasing by 9% over the same period.
Given Australia’s experience of the GFC was less severe than most other industrialised countries, it’s time to start identifying and dealing with the specific factors responsible for declining demand in the local art market and the consequent impact on visual artists’ livelihoods and careers.
Unintended consequences
Prior to 2011 in Australia, collectable and personal use assets, such as artworks, were cost effective for self managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) to own because they could be leased to the fund’s members, stored in their private residence and insured under their house and contents insurance.
Concern SMSF members might be tempted to gain a benefit from these assets before their retirement by displaying them, as opposed to simply storing them, led to the prohibition of this practice in July 2011.
Despite politicians from both sides promising these legislative changes would “not act as a disincentive for SMSFs to invest in Australian art”, the new requirements for collectable assets to be stored offsite and independently insured resulted in a substantial increase in the cost of owning artwork through a SMSF.
The following chart illustrates the impact on SMSF demand for collectable assets. While SMSF balances have increased from A$395 billion in June 2011 to $715 billion in March 2019, SMSF investments in the collectable asset class have fallen from $713 million to $371 million over the same period.
Author provided (No reuse)
Before the 2011 changes, SMSFs represented an important component of the demand for local artwork with anecdotal accounts reported in 2010 suggesting SMSFs represented between 15% and 25% of all sales in the local art market. This makes sense because SMSFs have a very distinctive member profile: 75% of SMSF members are older than 50 years and 60% have funds in excess of $500,000.
Art patronage studies and recent research into the profile of art consumers show this is almost exactly the same demographic who are the traditional buyers of artwork produced by “established” artists. Essentially, the compulsory and tax-efficient nature of the Australian superannuation system has gathered a large portion of the discretionary savings of high-net-worth Australians into SMSFs and then discouraged them from buying art.
Surely the recognised importance of the visual arts sector, both in financial and non-financial terms, justifies “investment grade artwork” having a dedicated ATO asset class rather than being lumped together with other collectable and personal use assets. The usage of mint condition coins, antique furniture or recreational boats would clearly detract from the benefit they could provide SMSF members in retirement. The financial value of artwork, to the contrary, is enhanced rather than diminished when it is displayed and circulated.
Reigniting investment
Portrait of Aboriginal Elder Daisy Tjuparntarri Ward by artist David Darcy, winner of the 2019 Archibald People’s Choice award.Bianca De Marchi/AAP
The creation of a separate asset class would allow for targeted rules relating to definitions, valuations, maximum portfolio exposure and compliance, that should alleviate government concerns about the administration of SMSF investment in art. Given the scale of SMSF balances versus the size of the Australian art market, a simple reversal of the 2011 amendments for “investment grade artwork”, would almost certainly see a dramatic improvement in the demand for Australian art.
If these amendments had never been implemented and the 0.18% SMSF allocation toward collectables in June 2011 had been maintained over the subsequent eight years, it’s likely we would’ve seen SMSF investment in artwork double instead of the substantial divestment that has actually occurred.
If the government went further and allowed “investment grade artwork” to be displayed in the private residences of SMSF members, the boost to demand would likely be much greater. This would of course raise reasonable questions in relation to the social equity of the superannuation system.
We could ask why wealthy Australians should be given an additional benefit from an already generous superannuation system? The fact is exceptions to the prohibition of pre-retirement benefits already exist in the current system. For example, a company owned by a SMSF member is permitted to lease a property owned by the member’s SMSF at commercial rates.
A public policy shift in either of these directions would have zero cost implications for government. Indeed, additional sales growth in the arts economy would generate GST, income tax and likely reduce welfare payments to struggling artists. There were no winners from demanding artwork be stored in offsite facilities, but the arts economy is certainly the loser under the current rules.
We can’t blame the GFC for the decline in Australian art value.www.shutterstock.com
Pros and cons of the Resale Royalties Scheme
Two years before the SMSF rules were amended in 2011, the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Act 2009 was passed in Federal parliament and the associated Retail Royalties Scheme commenced in June 2010. Under the scheme all commercial sales of artwork exceeding a threshold of $1,000 are now subject to a 5% resale royalty on the sale price of the artwork inclusive of GST, which is payable to the originating artist or their estate for a period of 70 years from the artist’s death.
The objective of this legislation was to nurture Australian visual art culture by enhancing the moral rights of artists and ensuring they financially benefited from future sales of their artworks. As at March 2019 the scheme has generated $7 million in royalties for more than 1,800 artists. The average payment has been in the order of $370 and 63% of the artists receiving payments have been Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islanders.
A post-implementation review of the scheme was conducted in 2013, which received 74 submissions from interested parties, predominantly art market professionals. Despite many of the submissions criticising the administrative burden created by the scheme, and some identifying concerning market behaviours, the results of the review were never made public and no amendments to the scheme have been made.
Clarice Beckett’s Beach Scene.CBUS Collection of Australia Art as Advised by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE
The importance of resale royalties, both in their objective to enhance artist’s incomes and potential to disrupt art market sales, warrants further investigation to ensure the terms of the scheme are set at optimal levels. Unfortunately, the close proximity of the changes to the SMSF rules in relation to collectables and the introduction of resale royalties make it difficult to measure the specific impact of the Resale Royalties Scheme on art market sales.
However, anecdotal feedback supports many of the submissions to the 2013 review that claimed the low level of the threshold amount creates a disproportionate administrative burden compared to the final resale royalty paid to an artist. On a $1,000 sale, an artist would only receive $42 after the administrators of the scheme, Copyright Agency Limited, deducts their mandatory 15% fee. The risk for emerging artists is that commercial galleries and auction houses may be incentivised to avoid low value transactions as a way to minimise the administrative burden of the scheme.
Other industry participants complained the royalty rate was too high relative to similar international schemes. One of the recommendations made by the Australia Council for the Arts in their submission to the 2013 review was to consider replicating similar thresholds and rates applied by equivalent schemes operated in the United Kingdom and European Union.
The latter scheme allows for a royalty that is calculated on a sliding scale from 4% to 0.25% and is capped at 12,500 euros (A$20,330) per transaction. The royalty for the Australian scheme remains uncapped and this potentially invites undesirable market behaviours, such as high value transactions being conducted in foreign tax jurisdictions or cash sales occurring between private parties.
Another Australia Council for the Arts recommendation was to charge the royalty on the sale price of the artwork before GST is added to avoid the royalty acting as a tax on a tax. At the moment the Resale Royalty Scheme rate in Australia is effectively 5.5%.
Amendments to the scheme could remove obvious loopholes, make the scheme less burdensome and improve market efficiency.
Provenance and authenticity
As well as systemic economic impediments, the Australian art market also has broader cultural issues that need to be addressed. To date, the art market has opted to be self-regulating. However, as evidenced by recent art market scandals, the opaque transactional environment endemic to the art market globally is undermining confidence in the market.
A close inspection of the painting Wanjina (1971) by Charlie Numbulmoore.Julian Smith/AAP
These issues are not exclusive to Australia. Globally, collectors and authenticating bodies are discovering that legal frameworks are deficient for an industry of high value but low regulation. Indeed, many foundations that administer the legacy of an artist have closed down due to the financial pressures of legal action taken by frustrated and aggravated collectors. Evidence of art experts declining to provide professional opinions for fear of litigious reprisal is also concerning.
A key element of the provenance issue is a reliable track record of ownership of an artwork, from its moment of production to its current point of ownership. Ideally, an open access database of artworks could provide collectors with an easily accessible reference point. The data collected by Copyright Agency Limited for the Resale Royalties Scheme purposes ostensibly appears to be a good vehicle for this; however, the nature of the data collected, along with inherent issues with the system itself, has not yielded any comfort for collectors.
Recently, a plethora of start-ups have been making substantial claims for blockchain technology to provide solutions for a myriad of art market issues. However, they are yet to demonstrate any evidence or practical impact on the market. The market has to be a willing participant, and the technology needs to be motivated by a greater good than simply profit for its creators, to have any meaningful impact on the broader art world. Again, this implies a role for government or an industry agency.
Raising our global profile
The historically insular nature of the Australian art market presents another impediment to growth. Collector demand for Australian art could be greatly expanded by increasing the international profile of Australian artists and their artworks.
It is critical to encourage programs, both commercial and non-commercial, that allow for Australian artworks to be continuously seen alongside their international peers to drive interest, familiarity and confidence with international collectors.
Australia needs to raise its profile on the global arts scene.www.shutterstock.com
The recent exhibition of ten contemporary Australian Indigenous artists at the Gagosian Madison Avenue gallery in New York provides a topical example of how much collector and media attention can be gained through international exposure. Most of the paintings in this exhibition are owned by Hollywood actor Steve Martin, who acknowledged in a recent interview the potential for greater international demand once Australian Indigenous artwork was better understood and marketed in the company of other high profile contemporary artwork.
In this regard, the growth potential of online sales must surely be seen as a promising opportunity for the Australian art industry to reach a global audience of art collectors given the challenges presented by its geographic isolation.
Blaming the GFC for the continued underperformance of the Australian art market and its failure to generate satisfactory income growth for artists only diverts attention away from the real issues that continue to undermine sales growth and confidence. There needs to be a greater focus on addressing the structural issues evident across all sectors of the Australian art market ecosystem.
Scott Morrison has a good deal riding on Donald Trump winning re-election next year. During his week in the United States, the Prime Minister tied himself to the President to a remarkable degree.
Morrison will want the trip’s enduring images to be the White House welcome and the state dinner in the Rose Garden under the stars. And they are the markers that underlined the depth of the Australian-American alliance.
But the startling image was of Morrison and Trump on stage together at billionaire Anthony Pratt’s paper factory in Wapakoneta, Ohio.
No, that wasn’t a rally, the PM’s office insists. But Trump certainly made it look like one.
For a self-respecting Australian leader, this was beyond awkward diplomatically, and may be problematic at home. This year’s Lowy poll showed only 25% of Australians have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs.
The crowd at the opening of billionaire Anthony Pratt’s paper factory, which the PM’s office insists wasn’t a rally.Mick Tsikas/AAP
That was, perhaps, something of a turning point in the visit. The Washington days were better than Morrison’s later appearances, which saw him open the China debate and having to defend Australia’s mediocre performance on climate change.
In sum, this has been a trip that will be rated a success but carry some costs. Notably, while reaffirming the alliance and bonding with Trump, Morrison has further annoyed our biggest trading partner.
The alliance was in fine repair already but there’s nothing like some face time in the Oval Office and formal-dress glamour to shout out its closeness.
While there may not be any specific requests on foot, there’s more credit in the bank for when either partner wants to ask a favour (as the US did recently in relation to the Middle East freedom of navigation operation, and Malcolm Turnbull did a while ago on steel and aluminium tariffs).
Getting close to Trump personally is something most leaders find difficult, and some mightn’t even attempt.
A conservative who won an unexpected election victory, the knockabout Morrison ticks the boxes for Trump. He’s appropriately and voluably grateful for presidential attention; he’s not a man whose charisma threatens to steal the limelight at a joint appearance.
Morrison was fully focused on Trump and the Republicans. Asked, after the Ohio appearance, if he’d felt he had been at a Trump rally and whether he’d reached out to the other side of politics during his trip, he said, “Well, I have been here to see the President – that was the intention”.
We’ve yet to see the longer term implications of the Morrison remarks on China, delivered in his major foreign policy speech in Chicago (where he was avoiding the New York United Nations leaders summit on climate).
His declaration that China has reached the stage of a developed economy and should therefore accept the responsibilities of that status in trade and its environmental obligations, rather than enjoying the concessions of a developing one, was basically an elaboration of what he’d argued earlier at home.
But place and context are pivotal in foreign policy. Said in the US, with a posse of the Australian media in tow, and with Trump’s anti-China rhetoric at full force, Morrison’s words were amplified to high volume.
China has quickly cast Morrison as articulating the Trump position, hitting back in a statement from its embassy in Canberra. “The assertion of China being a ‘newly developed economy’ by the Australian side doesn’t hold much water. It is both one-sided and unfair. And it is basically an echo of what the US has claimed.
“It is true that China, through its own efforts, has made remarkable achievements in economic and social development over the past decades and become the world’s second largest economy. However, there is still a big gap between China and the developed countries in terms of overall development level. China still has a long way to go to achieve full modernisation.
“In a comprehensive analysis, China is still a developing country, which is widely acknowledged by the international community,” the statement said.
China already has Australia in the so-called deep freeze. Morrison would like to visit – there has not been a prime ministerial trip to Beijing since 2016. But as the PM has pointed out, he can’t go without an invitation. His analysis won’t help with that. Morrison’s assertion that a meeting between Foreign Minister Marise Payne and her Chinese counterpart on the sidelines at the United Nations showed “that relationship continues to be in good shape” didn’t cut it.
Climate was always set to be difficult for Morrison on the trip, because the UN leaders’ summit on the issue fell between his commitments in Washington and his speech to the UN General Assembly. But he didn’t want to be there.
The government tried to justify his absence on the grounds that only countries announcing new plans received a speaking spot. But that wasn’t an adequate excuse for Morrison not turning up, sending Payne instead. His no-show simply reinforced the criticism of Australia, which has seen rising emissions over the past several years, after the carbon price was scrapped.
Morrison used his address to the General Assembly to defend the government’s actions, declaring “Australia is doing our bit on climate change and we reject any suggestion to the contrary”.
He talked a good deal about Australia’s efforts on plastics waste, including “plastic pollution choking our oceans”. Embarrassingly, his speech coincided with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releasing a report about the urgent need for action to contain rising ocean levels.
Morrison insists Australia is ‘doing our bit’ to tackle climate change, and talked a good deal about efforts on plastic waste in his speech to the UN General Assembly.Mick Tsikas/AAP
As Morrison’s foreign policy continues to emerge, this trip has highlighted his priorities and approach.
Specifically, that he operates on an America-first basis and he has translated that to a Trump-first one. Never mind the unpredictability and idiosyncrasy of the President (and now the attempt to impeach him), what’s needed is connection. Turnbull, who also sought to get close to Trump personally, pitched to him as one businessman to another. Morrison, having been picked by Trump as a favourite, has struck a mutually useful easy familiarity with the unlikely leader who mobilised the quiet Americans.
When Morrison gave his big trade speech in June, the line from the government was that it was not choosing sides between the US and China (though it did seem to be and it always appeared inevitable it would). After his American trip both the US and China are in no doubt which side Australia is on.
The UK Supreme Court’s finding that Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament (or prorogation) was unlawful has raised the question of whether similar judicial action could be taken to challenge a controversial prorogation in Australia.
There have been several occasions in the past when prorogation has been used in Australia to achieve political aims.
The Keneally government in NSW and the Rann government in South Australia both prorogued parliament for long periods prior to elections. The moves prompted allegations they were intended to shut down embarrassing inquiries, but no one sought to challenge them in court.
In light of the UK legal challenge to Johnson’s prorogation that impeded parliamentary action prior to the Brexit date of October 31, will similar court challenges to these types of suspensions be more likely in the future? And would Australian courts consider hearing such challenges?
What the UK Supreme Court ruled
The UK case potentially has relevance for Australia because it neatly side-stepped the more contentious question of whether the prime minister’s advice to the Queen could be the subject of judicial review on the ground it was given for an improper purpose.
Instead, the Supreme Court focused on its judicial power to determine the existence and extent of the executive’s “prerogative” powers.
These are the traditional powers of the monarch that have been passed down over centuries rather than being conferred by law. Australian and UK courts have long recognised that it is up to the courts, through applying the common law, to determine the scope of these powers.
In doing so, the UK court looked to fundamental constitutional principles, such as parliamentary sovereignty and responsible government, as imposing limits on the executive’s power to prorogue.
It recognised that parliamentary sovereignty would be undermined if the executive could prevent parliament from exercising its legislative authority for as long as it pleased.
It also expressed concern that responsible government would be undermined and replaced by “unaccountable government” if parliament were prevented by the executive from scrutinising its actions.
The Supreme Court held that advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament, and any decision based upon that advice, will be
unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive.
Whether or not the prorogation has this effect is a question of fact which falls well within the jurisdiction of the courts to determine.
‘Reasonable justification’ to suspend parliament
More controversial is the assessment of what is a “reasonable justification” to suspend parliament.
The Supreme Court pointed out that a short period of prorogation for the purpose of ending a session of parliament and starting a new one would not require further justification.
The court would only need to consider additional justification in “unusual circumstances”. In doing so, it would need to be sensitive to the responsibilities and experience of the prime minister.
In this particular case of the prorogation of the UK parliament for five weeks, the court deemed the circumstances to be not only “unusual”, but “exceptional”.
This was because a “fundamental change” in the Constitution of the United Kingdom is to occur on October 31 when the country is due to leave the European Union. In addition, the House of Commons had already demonstrated that it does not support the government on Brexit, and the prorogation would prevent parliament from carrying out its constitutional role for a significant period before that date.
The Supreme Court was also not offered a reasonable justification by the UK government for the length of the prorogation. It was merely told that a new session of parliament was desired so the government’s agenda could be set out in the Queen’s Speech.
Moreover, there was no consideration by the government of how much time was needed to scrutinise and enact legislation prior to the October 31 deadline, or the competing merits of adjourning or proroguing parliament.
The court pointed to the prime minister’s constitutional responsibility to take into account all relevant interests, including those of parliament, when advising the Queen. In an unusually pointed observation, it noted there was “no hint” of Johnson exercising that responsibility.
Based on this evidence, the court ruled it was impossible to conclude there was “any reason, let alone a good reason” to prorogue parliament for five weeks.
This meant that not only was the advice to prorogue parliament unlawful, but also that parliament would be able to continue in session.
Boris Johnson sought the Queen’s approval to prorogue parliament for five weeks. The Supreme Court ruled there was no reason for him to do so.Victoria Jones/EPA
Will the UK ruling set a precedent in Australia?
Would the same kind of challenge occur if a government prorogued parliament in Australia?
Proroguing parliament for a short time to ensure it sits to exercise its functions, as was done by the Turnbull Government in 2016, would clearly be acceptable.
Proroguing parliament for a long period would be much more vulnerable to challenge if it prevented parliamentary inquiries from continuing, for example, or delayed the tabling of embarrassing documents.
The government would have to be prepared to provide evidence to the courts showing “reasonable justification” for the period of prorogation, if it were challenged.
Would Australian courts be prepared to follow the UK Supreme Court precedent?
They would certainly give serious consideration to it, as this is the only precedent on the prorogation of parliament in a Westminster-style system of government, and the unanimous judgement of a significant court.
Moreover, the UK court’s reasoning is very similar to existing Australian cases in which courts have ruled that the common law must be interpreted in a manner that is consistent with constitutional principles.
This means that Australian governments should, in the future, be quite careful when proroguing parliament. They will need to ensure they do not do so for unnecessarily long periods of time and to prevent parliament from fulfilling its legislative and scrutiny functions, especially during periods of political controversy.
If their action is challenged in the courts, they will also need to be prepared to provide evidence of a reasonable justification for doing so.
The Australian Capital Territory took the next step towards regulation of the illicit drug market yesterday with new legislation passing through parliament.
The legislation, which won’t come into effect until January 31, 2020, allows cultivation and possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use for anyone over 18 years.
However, the sale or supply of cannabis is still a criminal offence.
The ACT has historically been one of the more liberal jurisdictions when it comes to cannabis.
The territory removed criminal penalties for possessing small quantities of cannabis in 1992 and broadened this in 2013. Currently, anyone found in possession of less than 50g of dried cannabis receives a “simple cannabis offence notice”, essentially a fine.
What changes next year?
The new legislation allows adults to grow cannabis plants at home, with limits of two plants per person and four per household, or to possess 50g of dried cannabis.
Cannabis plants can only be cultivated in parts of someone’s home not generally accessible by the public, and only by people who usually live there.
There is a 150g limit for fresh (or “wet”) cannabis to account for cannabis that has been harvested but not yet dried.
The law allows adults to possess cannabis within these limits without the need for a cannabis offence notice to be issued.
What safeguards are in place?
The legislation states cannabis must be kept securely when not in someone’s possession to restrict access by children and young people. Smoking cannabis near children is also an offence.
To protect the interests of children and young people, the simple cannabis offence notice still applies for people under 18. This puts it in line with the way possession of tobacco and alcohol by people under the age of 18 is dealt with.
There are still questions about how this law interacts with stricter Commonwealth laws governing banned drugs, with some MPs warning about possible conflicts.
How does this compare with similar regulation overseas?
Cannabis regulation comes in many forms internationally. The most common model allows the legal sale or supply of cannabis to adults, with further allowances for home grown plants.
The ACT’s allowance of four plants per household is on par with what other jurisdictions allow internationally. However, the ACT’s allowable weight of possessed cannabis is on the lower scale.
Some jurisdictions in Europe allow “cannabis social clubs”, which are a version of a “home grown” model. These are not-for-profit collectives where cannabis is grown and used. Cannabis is not sold. The clubs are only open to members, who own their own plants, and limits to the number of plants per person apply.
How will it affect people’s interactions with health services?
Criminalisation of use and possession of drugs reinforces the stigmatisation of people who use them, a major barrier to accessing health services.
The further we move away from the war on drugs, the more illicit drug use becomes a health and human rights issue, potentially reducing stigma.
This law is unlikely to have a big impact on the health system. Most people who use cannabis do so irregularly and acute harms (such as overdoses or severe reactions) are rare.
Medical cannabis is treated under a completely separate law, in line with other pharmaceutical products. So, the change in recreational cannabis laws do not effect medical cannabis prescribing in the ACT.
However, it is possible that under the new laws people will self-medicate rather than go through medical channels. So they may not have the appropriate medical monitoring of their condition.
Will other jurisdictions follow?
Each state and territory determines its own drug laws. Currently there is significant variation in both legal frameworks and implementation of laws in each jurisdiction. So, it is hard to tell whether other jurisdictions will follow.
Some Victorian politicians have been advocating for cannabis legalisation, but this may be some way off. Reason Party leader Fiona Patten has successfully campaigned for a parliamentary inquiry into cannabis to investigate the matter further.
Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains is one of the world’s most important archaeological sites. It is famous for preserving evidence of three early human groups: Neanderthals, early Homo sapiens, and a third group known as the Denisovans.
Fossil bones, stone tools and ancient DNA gathered from the cave have told a story that is extremely significant for understanding the early chapters of human evolution in Asia, going back 300,000 years.
But our new analysis of the cave’s dirt floor reveals that it was also frequented by hyenas, wolves, and even bears for much of its history.
Our research, carried out with Russian colleagues and published today in Scientific Reports, takes the story of the cave’s occupation down to the microscopic level – examining the dirt from the cave to piece together new evidence that is invisible to the naked eye.
We found that the sediments contain abundant fossil droppings, but surprisingly scant evidence of human activity such as fires.
The foothills of the Altai Mountains in the area of Denisova Cave.
Digging deeper
The Denisova Cave fossils have already told us some remarkable tales about the cave’s past, and the now-extinct cousins of our own species that sought shelter there. DNA analysis of one bone fragment showed that it belonged to the teenage daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.
But by looking more closely at the very fabric of the cave, we can learn even more. Dirt – or sediment, to archaeologists – is the material that links all archaeological sites. And it can preserve evidence that would otherwise have little chance of surviving the ravages of time.
Block of sediment (dirt) extracted from the site for laboratory analysis.
By using a technique called micromorphology to study archaeological deposits at microscopic scales, we can spot particular features and arrangements of sediment particles that reveal clues about what was happening at the time those sediments were deposited.
This method can potentially identify miniscule traces of detritus left behind by humans living in the cave. These can include the products of burning, such as ash and charcoal, which indicate that humans lit fires there.
Caves are also attractive shelters for other animals, and fossil droppings can indicate the presence of both human and non-human cave dwellers.
Carnivores’ cave
The sediment in Denisova Cave contains evidence for its long-term use by humans and other animals, including hyenas, bears and wolves, that inhabited the wider landscape. We indeed found microscopic traces of both human and animal occupation, judging by the dropping fragments we identified.
But curiously, despite the cave having been occupied by humans for hundreds of thousands of years, as evidenced by the many fossils and stone tools already found there, its sediments contain scant evidence for the use of fire.
Microscope images of fossil hyena dropping (coprolite) with evidence of a meal (bone fragment) contained inside (left), and small charcoal fragments associated with burning by ancient human cave-dwellers (right)
This is intriguing, as archaeological evidence for fire-use in caves is usually commonplace, even if the sediments have been disturbed by processes such as animal burrowing, erosion by wind or water, or chemical changes to the sediment.
One possibility is that these traces were washed away by percolating water or weathered away by increased acidity.
But what the sediments do clearly tell us is that large carnivores were common visitors to the cave. As humans and large carnivores would not have happily cohabited the cave, this tells us that what we see in the sediments is a compression in time, with animal and human evidence overlain on top of one another.
We also recorded the presence of ice in some of the sediments, indicating periods when it was both colder and wetter than at present.
Our findings show just how much we can learn by putting dirt under the microscope. It is likely this “microarchaeological” approach will continue to surprise us with finds that are invisible to the naked eye.
Two weeks after the September 12 Democratic presidential debate, Joe Biden continues to lead with 29.0% in the RealClearPolitics Democratic national average, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 21.4%, Bernie Sanders at 17.3%, Pete Buttigieg at 5.8% and Kamala Harris at 5.0%.
No other Democrat candidates have more than 3% support. And the last three polls average to a tie between Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.
Since the debate, there have been gains for Biden, Warren and Buttigieg, and a continued slump for Harris. After the first debate on June 26 to 27, Harris surged from about 7% to 15%. Now, she has lost all that support and can no longer be considered a top-tier candidate.
The contests that will select the Democratic presidential candidate will be held between February and June 2020, with four states permitted to hold contests in February.
Iowa (February 3) and New Hampshire (February 11) are the first two states, so doing well in one of them is important. To win any delegates, candidates need at least 15% in a particular state or congressional district.
Elizabeth Warren is surging into the Iowa lead with 23.0%, followed by Joe Biden.Justin Lane/EPA
There have been three Iowa polls conducted since the debate, including one by the highly regarded Selzer poll. The RealClearPolitics average shows Warren surging into the Iowa lead with 23.0%, followed by Biden at 20.3%, Sanders 12.0%, Buttigieg 11.3% and Harris 5.3%. The one post-debate poll in New Hampshire also has Warren leading with 27%, followed by Biden at 25%, Sanders 12% and Buttigieg 10%.
Biden is disadvantaged in Iowa and New Hampshire because these states’ populations are almost all white. CNN analyst Harry Enten says Biden’s strongest support comes from black voters.
In South Carolina, where black voters made up 61% of the 2016 Democratic primary electorate according to exit polls, Biden leads by over 20 points, though none of those polls were taken since the debate. South Carolina votes on February 29.
The next Democratic debate will be on October 14, with the same rules for participation as in the September debate. At least two more candidates will qualify, and this will mean a two-night debate with the 12 candidates split over these nights. The participation threshold has been increased for November and further debates.
Trump’s ratings rise, likely due to the economy
In the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregate, Donald Trump’s ratings are currently 42.9% approve, 52.8% disapprove (that equates to a net -9.9%) with all polls.
With polls of registered or likely voters, his ratings are 43.8% approve, 52.1% disapprove (net -8.3%). Trump’s approval has not been higher since November 2018. But since my September 5 article on the polls, Trump’s net approval has risen about three points.
In August, there were prominent predictions of a recession, and the Dow Jones tanked. In September, there has been far less recession talk, and the Dow recovered its August losses. The economy likely explains the recovery in Trump’s ratings.
Will Trump’s ratings take damage from the impeachment controversy?
On September 24, Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry over allegations Trump attempted to get incriminating material on Biden from the Ukraine, including by threatening to withhold funds.
The next day, a White House memo of Trump’s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy showed Trump asked for “a favour”, and for Zelenskiy to “look into” Biden.
I do not believe this affair will do lasting or serious damage to Trump’s ratings: the better-educated voters already detest him, and the lower-educated will be far more concerned with the economy.
Removing a president from office requires a majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Democrats control the House, but Republicans have a 53-47 Senate majority. So there is very little chance of Trump being removed before the November 2018 election.
Impeachment may not do lasting or serious damage to Trump’s ratings.AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
In RealClearPolitics averages, Trump trails Biden by 7.7 points (9.9 points in my September 5 article). He trails Warren by 4.0 (4.1 previously) and Sanders by 4.8 (6.0).
Biden’s electability argument is enhanced by these figures. The pro-Trump Rasmussen polling company showed Trump leading Biden by four, but did not poll other match-ups. Without this Rasmussen poll, Biden would be placed 10.0 points ahead.
Why is Biden doing much better against Trump than other Democrats?
I think a key reason is he sometimes says things that are not politically correct, which the media construe as gaffes.
But those with a lower level of education are very dubious about the values of the “inner city elites”. Saying things the elite disagree with probably makes some Trump 2016 voters more comfortable supporting Biden than Warren.
There have been four major upsets in the US, UK and Australia in the last three years: the June 2016 Brexit referendum, Trump’s November 2016 victory, the UK Labour surge that produced the current hung parliament in June 2017, and the Australian Coalition’s triumph in May 2019.
My theory is the Remain campaign, Hillary Clinton and Australian Labor performed worse than expected because they were all seen as too close to the “inner city elites”.
In contrast, UK Labour adopted a pro-Brexit position before the 2017 election, and this assisted them as they were not seen as serving elite opinion.
To win elections, perhaps the left needs to break free of elite opinion in ways that do not compromise its core agenda.
The UK’s Brexit referendum is among four major upsets in recents years that may show the left need to break free of elite opinion to win elections.Jessica Taylor/EPA
UK Supreme Court rules prorogation unlawful
On September 24, the UK Supreme Court – the highest UK court – ruled the prorogation of parliament was illegal. The House of Commons resumed sitting the next day. Had parliament still been prorogued, the Commons would not have sat until October 14.
With both parliament and the courts hostile to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, it is unlikely he can deliver Brexit by October 31 as he has promised.
As I wrote for The Poll Bludger in mid-September, parliament bears a large portion of responsibility for the Brexit shambles as it can only agree to procrastinate. It cannot agree to any method to resolve Brexit.
Israel, Austria, Portugal, Poland and Canada elections
I recently wrote for The Poll Bludger about the September 17 Israeli election results and said it is unlikely anyone can form a government. I also wrote about upcoming elections in Austria (September 29), Portugal (October 6), Poland (October 13) and Canada (October 21). All these countries except Canada use proportional representation, while Canada uses first-past-the-post after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wimped on electoral reform after winning the October 2015 election.
Australian Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition
In the last Newspoll, conducted September 5-8 from a sample of 1,660, the Coalition led by 51-49, unchanged since mid-August.
Primary votes were 43% Coalition (up one), 35% Labor (up one), 12% Greens (up one and their best in Newspoll since March 2016) and 5% One Nation (up one).
Scott Morrison’s net approval was +10, up four points, while Anthony Albanese slumped into negative net approval at -5, down 12 points. Morrison led as better PM by 48-28 (48-30 previously). Figures from The Poll Bludger.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Ferrie, Senior Lecturer, UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research and ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Technology Sydney
A quantum computer may have solved a problem in minutes that would take the fastest conventional supercomputer more than 10,000 years. A draft of a paper by Google researchers laying out the achievement leaked in recent days, setting off an avalanche of news coverage and speculation.
While the research has not yet been peer-reviewed – the final version of the paper is expected to appear soon – if it all checks out it would represent “the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor”.
That sounds impressive, but what does it mean?
Quantum computing: the basics
To understand why quantum computers are a big deal, we need to go back to conventional, or digital, computers.
A computer is a device that takes an input, carries out a sequence of instructions, and produces an output. In a digital computer, these inputs, instructions and outputs are all sequences of 1s and 0s (individually called bits).
A quantum computer does the same thing, but it uses quantum bits, or qubits. Where a bit takes on only one of two values (1 or 0), a qubit uses the complex mathematics of quantum mechanics, providing a richer set of possibilities.
Building quantum computers takes phenomenal engineering. They must be isolated to ensure nothing interferes with the delicate quantum states of the qubits. This is why they are kept in vacuum chambers containing fewer particles than outer space, or in refrigerators colder than anything in the universe.
But at the same time, you need a way to interact with the qubits to carry out instructions on them. The difficulty of this balancing act means that the size of quantum computers has grown slowly.
However, as the number of qubits connected together in a quantum computer grows, it becomes exponentially more complicated to imitate its behaviour with a digital computer. Adding a single qubit to your quantum computer could double the amount of time it would take a digital computer to carry out equivalent calculations.
By the time you get up to 53 qubits – that’s how many are in the Sycamore chip used by the Google researchers – the quantum computer can quickly perform calculations that would take our biggest digital computers (supercomputing clusters) thousands of years.
What is quantum supremacy?
Quantum computers won’t be faster than digital computers for everything. We know they will be good at factorising large numbers (which is bad news for online security) and simulating some physical systems like complex molecules (which is good news for medical research). But in many cases they will have no advantage, and researchers are still working out exactly what kinds of calculations they can speed up and by how much.
Quantum supremacy was the name given to the hypothetical point at which a quantum computer could perform a calculation no conceivable digital computer could perform in a reasonable amount of time.
The Google researchers now appear to have performed such a calculation, although the calculation itself is at first sight uninspiring.
The task is to execute a sequence of random instructions on the quantum computer, then output the result of looking at its qubits. For a big enough number of instructions, this becomes very hard to mimic with a digital computer.
Useful quantum computers still not in sight
The idea of quantum supremacy is popular because it is a graspable milestone – a valuable currency in the highly competitive area of quantum computing research.
Google’s achievement is technically impressive because it required full programmability on the 53-qubit chip. But the task performed was designed specifically to demonstrate quantum supremacy, and nothing more. It is not known whether such a device can perform any other calculations that a digital computer cannot also do. In other words, this does not signal the arrival of quantum computing.
A usable general-purpose quantum computer will need to be much larger. Instead of 53 qubits, it will require millions. (Strictly speaking, it will require thousands of nearly error-free qubits, but producing those will involve millions of noisy qubits like those in the Google device.)
Ubiquitous quantum computing is still far enough away that attempting to predict when it will occur and what useful tasks it will eventually be used for is a recipe for embarrassment because history teaches us that unforeseen applications will blossom as access to new tools becomes available.
A new tool for science
From a scientific point of view, the future of quantum computation is now much more exciting.
On one hand, quantum computation is confronting. In the same way the outputs of early digital computers could be verified by hand calculations, the outputs of quantum computers have until now been verifiable by digital computers.
This is no longer the case. But that is good, because now these new devices give us new scientific tools. Just running these devices produces exotic physics that we have never encountered in nature. Simulating quantum physics in this new regime could provide new insights into all areas of science, all the way from more detailed understandings of biological processes to probing the possible effects quantum physics has on spacetime.
Quantum computation represents a fundamental shift that is now under way. What is most exciting is not what we can do with with a quantum computer today, but the undiscovered truths it will reveal tomorrow.
A landmark scientific report has confirmed that climate change is altering the world’s seas and ice at an unprecedented rate. Australia depends on the ocean that surrounds us for our health and prosperity. So what does this mean for us, and life on Earth?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings were launched in Monaco on Wednesday night. They provide the most definitive scientific evidence yet of warmer, more acidic and less productive seas. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting, causing sea level to rise at an accelerating rate.
The implications for Australia are serious. Extreme sea level events that used to hit once a century will occur once a year in many of the world’s coastal places by 2050. This situation is inevitable, even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically curbed.
The findings, titled the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, strengthen the already compelling case for countries to meet their emission reduction goals under the 2015 Paris agreement.
Beachgoers cool off in the water at Bondi Beach in Sydney, February 2019. Australia’s coast dwellers must adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.Joel Carrett/AAP
A rapid and dramatic cut in greenhouse gas emissions would prevent the most catastrophic damage to the ocean and cryosphere (frozen polar and mountain regions). This would help protect the ecosystems and people that rely on them.
The report entailed two years of work by 104 authors and review editors from 36 countries, who assessed nearly 7,000 scientific papers and responded to more than 30,000 review comments.
The picture is worse than we thought
Mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets are shrinking and, together with expansion of the warming ocean, are contributing to an increasing rate of sea level rise.
During the last century, global sea levels rose about 15cm. Seas are now rising more than twice as fast – 3.6mm per year – and accelerating, the report shows.
The IPCC’s projections are more dire than in its 2014 oceans report. It has revised upwards by 10% the effect of the melting Antarctic ice sheet on sea level rise by 2100. Antarctica appears to be changing more rapidly than was thought possible even five years ago, and further work is needed to understand just how quickly ice will be lost from Antarctica in future.
Key components and changes of the ocean and cryosphere, and their linkages in the Earth system.IPCC, 2019
If you live near the Australian coast, change is coming
By 2050, more than one billion of the world’s people will live on coastal land less than 10 metres above sea level. They will be exposed to combinations of sea level rise, extreme winds, waves, storm surges and flooding from intensified storms and tropical cyclones.
Many of Australia’s coastal cities and communities can expect to experience what was previously a once-in-a-century extreme coastal flooding event at least once every year by the middle of this century.
Our island neighbours in Indonesia and the Pacific will also be hit hard. The report warns that some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable – although the extent of this is hard to assess accurately.
Some change is inevitable and we will have to adapt. But the report also delivered a strong message about the choices that still remain. In the case of extreme sea level events around Australia, we believe a marked global reduction in greenhouse as emissions would buy us more than 10 years of extra time, in some places, to protect our coastal communities and infrastructure from the rising ocean.
Indonesian residents wade through flood water in Jakarta. The northwestern part of Jakarta is rapidly sinking.MAST IRHAM/EPA
More frequent extreme events are often occurring at the same time or in quick succession. Tasmania’s summer of 2015-16 is a good example. The state experienced record-breaking drought which worsened the fire threat in the highlands. An unprecedented marine heatwave along the east coast damaged kelp forests and caused disease and death of shellfish, and the state’s northeast suffered severe flooding.
This string of events stretched emergency services, energy supplies and the aquaculture and manufacturing industries. The total economic cost to the state government was an estimated A$445 million. The impacts on the food, energy and manufacturing sectors cut Tasmania’s anticipated economic growth by about half.
Reefs and fish stocks are suffering
The ocean has taken a huge hit from climate change – taking up heat, absorbing carbon dioxide that makes the water more acidic, and losing oxygen. It will bring ocean conditions unlike anything we have seen before.
Marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world are under pressure from this barrage of stressors. Overall, the fisheries potential around Australia’s coasts is expected to decline during this century.
Heat build-up in the surface ocean has already triggered a marked rise in the intensity, frequency and duration of marine heatwaves. Ocean heatwaves are expected to become between four and ten times more common this century, depending on how rapidly global warming continues.
The report said coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef, are already at very high risk from climate change and are expected to suffer significant losses and local extinctions. This would occur even if global warming is limited to 1.5℃ – a threshold the world is set to overshoot by a wide margin.
This report reinforces the findings of earlier reports on the importance of limiting global warming warming to 1.5℃ if we are to avoid major impacts on the land, the ocean and frozen areas.
Even if we act now to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some damage is already locked in and our ocean and frozen regions will continue to change for decades to centuries to come.
Mertz Glacier in east Antarctica. IPCC scientists say the expected effect of melting Antarctic ice on sea level rise is worse than projected five years ago.Australian Antarctic Division
In Australia, we will need to adapt our coastal cities and communities to unavoidable sea level rise. There are a range of possible options, from building barriers to planned relocation, to protecting the coral reefs and mangroves that provide natural coastal defences.
But if we want to give adaptation the best chance of working, the clear message of this new report is that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.
A landmark scientific report has confirmed that climate change is altering the world’s seas and ice at an unprecedented rate. Australia depends on the ocean that surrounds us for our health and prosperity. So what does this mean for us, and life on Earth?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings were launched in Monaco on Wednesday night. They provide the most definitive scientific evidence yet of warmer, more acidic and less productive seas. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting, causing sea level to rise at an accelerating rate.
The implications for Australia are serious. Extreme sea level events that used to hit once a century will occur once a year in many of the world’s coastal places by 2050. This situation is inevitable, even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically curbed.
The findings, titled the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, strengthen the already compelling case for countries to meet their emission reduction goals under the 2015 Paris agreement.
Beachgoers cool off in the water at Bondi Beach in Sydney, February 2019. Australia’s coast dwellers must adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.Joel Carrett/AAP
A rapid and dramatic cut in greenhouse gas emissions would prevent the most catastrophic damage to the ocean and cryosphere (frozen polar and mountain regions). This would help protect the ecosystems and people that rely on them.
The report entailed two years of work by 104 authors and review editors from 36 countries, who assessed nearly 7,000 scientific papers and responded to more than 30,000 review comments.
The picture is worse than we thought
Mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets are shrinking and, together with expansion of the warming ocean, are contributing to an increasing rate of sea level rise.
During the last century, global sea levels rose about 15cm. Seas are now rising more than twice as fast – 3.6mm per year – and accelerating, the report shows.
The IPCC’s projections are more dire than in its 2014 oceans report. It has revised upwards by 10% the effect of the melting Antarctic ice sheet on sea level rise by 2100. Antarctica appears to be changing more rapidly than was thought possible even five years ago, and further work is needed to understand just how quickly ice will be lost from Antarctica in future.
Key components and changes of the ocean and cryosphere, and their linkages in the Earth system.IPCC, 2019
If you live near the Australian coast, change is coming
By 2050, more than one billion of the world’s people will live on coastal land less than 10 metres above sea level. They will be exposed to combinations of sea level rise, extreme winds, waves, storm surges and flooding from intensified storms and tropical cyclones.
Many of Australia’s coastal cities and communities can expect to experience what was previously a once-in-a-century extreme coastal flooding event at least once every year by the middle of this century.
Our island neighbours in Indonesia and the Pacific will also be hit hard. The report warns that some island nations are likely to become uninhabitable – although the extent of this is hard to assess accurately.
Some change is inevitable and we will have to adapt. But the report also delivered a strong message about the choices that still remain. In the case of extreme sea level events around Australia, we believe a marked global reduction in greenhouse as emissions would buy us more than 10 years of extra time, in some places, to protect our coastal communities and infrastructure from the rising ocean.
Indonesian residents wade through flood water in Jakarta. The northwestern part of Jakarta is rapidly sinking.MAST IRHAM/EPA
More frequent extreme events are often occurring at the same time or in quick succession. Tasmania’s summer of 2015-16 is a good example. The state experienced record-breaking drought which worsened the fire threat in the highlands. An unprecedented marine heatwave along the east coast damaged kelp forests and caused disease and death of shellfish, and the state’s northeast suffered severe flooding.
This string of events stretched emergency services, energy supplies and the aquaculture and manufacturing industries. The total economic cost to the state government was an estimated A$445 million. The impacts on the food, energy and manufacturing sectors cut Tasmania’s anticipated economic growth by about half.
Reefs and fish stocks are suffering
The ocean has taken a huge hit from climate change – taking up heat, absorbing carbon dioxide that makes the water more acidic, and losing oxygen. It will bring ocean conditions unlike anything we have seen before.
Marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world are under pressure from this barrage of stressors. Overall, the fisheries potential around Australia’s coasts is expected to decline during this century.
Heat build-up in the surface ocean has already triggered a marked rise in the intensity, frequency and duration of marine heatwaves. Ocean heatwaves are expected to become between four and ten times more common this century, depending on how rapidly global warming continues.
The report said coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef, are already at very high risk from climate change and are expected to suffer significant losses and local extinctions. This would occur even if global warming is limited to 1.5℃ – a threshold the world is set to overshoot by a wide margin.
This report reinforces the findings of earlier reports on the importance of limiting global warming warming to 1.5℃ if we are to avoid major impacts on the land, the ocean and frozen areas.
Even if we act now to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some damage is already locked in and our ocean and frozen regions will continue to change for decades to centuries to come.
Mertz Glacier in east Antarctica. IPCC scientists say the expected effect of melting Antarctic ice on sea level rise is worse than projected five years ago.Australian Antarctic Division
In Australia, we will need to adapt our coastal cities and communities to unavoidable sea level rise. There are a range of possible options, from building barriers to planned relocation, to protecting the coral reefs and mangroves that provide natural coastal defences.
But if we want to give adaptation the best chance of working, the clear message of this new report is that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.
Scott Morrison has used his address to the United Nations to strongly defend the government’s performance on climate change, declaring defiantly Australia was “doing our bit” and “we reject any suggestion to the contrary”.
In a speech concentrating on Australia’s response to “the great global environmental challenges” Morrison emphasised dealing with plastic waste.
“To protect our oceans, Australia is committed to leading urgent action to combat plastic pollution choking our oceans, tackle over-exploitation of our fisheries, prevent ocean habitat destruction and take action on climate change,” he said.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on Wednesday, calls for urgent climate change action “to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere”.
The IPCC says that with the increase in temperature that has already occurred “the ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe”.
With much international attention on the Great Barrier Reef, Morrison declared the reef was “vibrant and resilient and protected under the world’s most comprehensive reef management plan”.
He said that on climate change Australia was “taking real action … and getting results”, and attacked critics.
“We are successfully balancing our global responsibilities with sensible and practical policies to secure our environmental and economic future.
“Australia’s internal and global critics on climate change willingly overlook or ignore our achievements, as the facts simply don’t fit the narrative they wish to project about our contribution.”
Morrison’s speech came in the wake of considerable criticism of his failing to attend the UN leaders summit on climate at the start of the week.
Reeling off facts and figures on Australia’s performance, the Prime Minister told the General Assembly, “this is a credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action. It represents a halving of emissions per person in Australia, or a two thirds reduction in emissions per unit of GDP”.
Australia had the world’s highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies, he said, and one in five households had rooftop solar systems.
Referring to the Australian government’s decision not to put more money into the Global Green Climate Fund, Morrison said it preferred to invest directly, targeting Pacific island countries.
In sum, Australia was taking “significant and comprehensive action … in response to the world’s greatest environmental challenges”.
On the push by young people on climate issues – highlighted last week by the school strikes and this week by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s much publicised address to the summit – Morrison said that like other leaders he received many letters from children about their future.
“I deeply respect their concerns and indeed I welcome their passion, especially when it comes to the environment.
“My impulse is always to seek to respond positively and to encourage them. To provide context, perspective and particularly to generate hope.
“To focus their minds and direct their energies to practical solutions and positive behaviour that will deliver enduring results for them.
“To encourage them to learn more about science, technology, engineering and maths – because it’s through research, innovation and enterprise that the practical work of successfully managing our very real environmental challenges is achieved.”
The passion and aspiration of the young must be respected and harnessed, he said. At the same time “we must guard against others who would seek to compound or, worse, facelessly exploit their anxiety for their own agendas. We must similarly not allow their concerns to be dismissed or diminished as this can also increase their anxiety.
“Our children have a right not just to their future but to their optimism.
“Above all, we should let our children be children, let our kids be kids, let our teenagers be teenagers – while we work positively together to deliver the practical solutions for them and their future.”
Before delivering his speech Morrison visited an Australian company’s recycling facility in New York.
At a press conference there, he told reporters his talks had reinforced the fact “that we’ve just got to keep working hard to get our energy costs down” so they could compete globally.
“I keep coming back to this issue of gas and looking at all the alternatives on the table.” he said.
There was more work to be done on dealing with electricity prices.
“It’s a constant challenge”, he said, while shifting a lot of the weight to the state governments.
The federal government wasn’t the primary government with the impact on electricity prices, he said.
“We all know that it’s the state governments who basically are in charge of the assets and resources access that principally determines these costs and the cost of the system and the utilities.
“They also determine whether you can get gas out from under people’s feet. Now the reason electricity prices are as low as they are in the United States, and particularly down south, is because of access to gas. We’ve got heaps of gas and it’s being kept under people’s feet. So that’s something we’ve got to change,” he said. The states needed to change the rules.
Scott Morrison has used his address to the United Nations to strongly defend the government’s performance on climate change, declaring defiantly Australia was “doing our bit” and “we reject any suggestion to the contrary”.
In a speech concentrating on Australia’s response to “the great global environmental challenges” Morrison emphasised dealing with plastic waste.
“To protect our oceans, Australia is committed to leading urgent action to combat plastic pollution choking our oceans, tackle over-exploitation of our fisheries, prevent ocean habitat destruction and take action on climate change,” he said.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on Wednesday, calls for urgent climate change action “to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere”.
The IPCC says that with the increase in temperature that has already occurred “the ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe”.
With much international attention on the Great Barrier Reef, Morrison declared the reef was “vibrant and resilient and protected under the world’s most comprehensive reef management plan”.
He said that on climate change Australia was “taking real action … and getting results”, and attacked critics.
“We are successfully balancing our global responsibilities with sensible and practical policies to secure our environmental and economic future.
“Australia’s internal and global critics on climate change willingly overlook or ignore our achievements, as the facts simply don’t fit the narrative they wish to project about our contribution.”
Morrison’s speech came in the wake of considerable criticism of his failing to attend the UN leaders summit on climate at the start of the week.
Reeling off facts and figures on Australia’s performance, the Prime Minister told the General Assembly, “this is a credible, fair, responsible and achievable contribution to global climate change action. It represents a halving of emissions per person in Australia, or a two thirds reduction in emissions per unit of GDP”.
Australia had the world’s highest per capita investment in clean energy technologies, he said, and one in five households had rooftop solar systems.
Referring to the Australian government’s decision not to put more money into the Global Green Climate Fund, Morrison said it preferred to invest directly, targeting Pacific island countries.
In sum, Australia was taking “significant and comprehensive action … in response to the world’s greatest environmental challenges”.
On the push by young people on climate issues – highlighted last week by the school strikes and this week by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s much publicised address to the summit – Morrison said that like other leaders he received many letters from children about their future.
“I deeply respect their concerns and indeed I welcome their passion, especially when it comes to the environment.
“My impulse is always to seek to respond positively and to encourage them. To provide context, perspective and particularly to generate hope.
“To focus their minds and direct their energies to practical solutions and positive behaviour that will deliver enduring results for them.
“To encourage them to learn more about science, technology, engineering and maths – because it’s through research, innovation and enterprise that the practical work of successfully managing our very real environmental challenges is achieved.”
The passion and aspiration of the young must be respected and harnessed, he said. At the same time “we must guard against others who would seek to compound or, worse, facelessly exploit their anxiety for their own agendas. We must similarly not allow their concerns to be dismissed or diminished as this can also increase their anxiety.
“Our children have a right not just to their future but to their optimism.
“Above all, we should let our children be children, let our kids be kids, let our teenagers be teenagers – while we work positively together to deliver the practical solutions for them and their future.”
Before delivering his speech Morrison visited an Australian company’s recycling facility in New York.
At a press conference there, he told reporters his talks had reinforced the fact “that we’ve just got to keep working hard to get our energy costs down” so they could compete globally.
“I keep coming back to this issue of gas and looking at all the alternatives on the table.” he said.
There was more work to be done on dealing with electricity prices.
“It’s a constant challenge”, he said, while shifting a lot of the weight to the state governments.
The federal government wasn’t the primary government with the impact on electricity prices, he said.
“We all know that it’s the state governments who basically are in charge of the assets and resources access that principally determines these costs and the cost of the system and the utilities.
“They also determine whether you can get gas out from under people’s feet. Now the reason electricity prices are as low as they are in the United States, and particularly down south, is because of access to gas. We’ve got heaps of gas and it’s being kept under people’s feet. So that’s something we’ve got to change,” he said. The states needed to change the rules.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced the Democrats have begun a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump over allegations he tried to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate a Democratic political rival.
And now the transcript of the phone call has been released, Democrats have said the evidence was even more incriminating than they expected.
According to the transcript Trump said:
There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.
Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it […] It sounds horrible to me.
Impeaching Trump is still fraught with risk for the Democrats. Taking down a sitting president is the equivalent of the nuclear option in American politics.
Alexander Hamilton weighed the gravity and means of impeachment in his Federalist papers (no. 65-66) of 1787-88.
A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective.
Whether successful or not – and most impeachments are not – the fallout will be deep and enduring. The impediments, even if Trump did commit a high crime in his diplomatic dealings with Ukraine, are considerable.
Here are eight risks for the Democrats:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.JIM LO SCALZO/EPA
1) It won’t succeed
Before we get into the details of Trump’s alleged crime, ponder how likely it is impeachment would fail – even if his misdeeds are true.
There are enough Democrats in the House of Representatives to vote for his impeachment. Only a bare majority (of 218) is needed to initiate impeachment proceedings and there are 225 Democrats in the 435-seat House.
But there are not enough Democrats in the Senate to find him guilty there. Two-thirds of the 100 senators (or 67, what is known as a “super majority”) would have to vote guilty to remove him from office – and only 46 are Democrats.
Even allowing for some Republicans joining them, Trump is likely to have the maths on his side.
The biggest challenge facing Democrats is whether Hamilton’s vision of a judicially impartial Senate is capable of acting without regard to partisan advantage. There is little in either the contemporary context or in American history to suggest that it can.
Trump commits so many small transgressions that no big one ever sticks to him. He has become adept at dodging criminal charges and simultaneously claiming they are part of a Democratic witch-hunt.
The huge investment of time and energy that was the Mueller investigation failed to turn up a crime that Pelosi was confident would pass constitutional muster.
The Ukrainian episode may indeed mark a tipping point, but no former transgression has thus far led to impeachment.
3) This is not (yet) an obviously impeachable offence
This is what constitutes an impeachable offence, according to the US Constitution:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors (Article II, section 4).
Trump’s lawyers will challenge every effort to paint his “diplomacy” with Ukraine’s leader as reaching the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors”.
4) It will remake Trump
If the Democrats’ impeachment effort leads to an acquittal in the Senate, the outcome for Pelosi’s party won’t be a weakened president but, most perversely, an emboldened one.
When the Republicans impeached President Bill Clinton in 1998, he was subsequently found not guilty in the Senate. His last two years in office, despite the shame of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, were among his most impressive.
He liberated Kosovo from the Serbs and took credit for an economic boom. He left office one of the most popular presidents in US history. Impeachment became his foil. It would also be for Trump.
US President Donald Trump waits to address the UN General Assembly.MICK TSIKAS/AAP
5) Think Brexit
The United Kingdom is presently convulsed because, fundamentally, the democratic will of a majority of voters is being denied by a political establishment that did not like how they voted.
The transposition of this to the US is not hard to imagine: if the Washington political elite successfully removes from office a legitimately elected US president, it will catalyse an already polarised nation into something approaching cultural war.
Democrats will be better served by working out how to beat him at the ballot box in 2020.
If he leaves office by this normal route, his supporters will not be able to posture that he was removed by politico-judicial means but by the ordinary processes of constitutional democracy.
6) Democrats need to get their own electoral strategy in order
Instead of waging an impeachment battle, the Democrats should address the issues that gave rise to Trump in the first place.
He is a symptom, not the cause, of a cultural disaffection of mostly white, blue-collar Americans who have felt themselves abandoned by the Democrats. Impeachment compounds that elision. Trump will powerfully claim his persecution is proof the Democratic Party has lost its bearings and is no longer be relevant to these blue-collar voters.
7) Impeachment is not popular
There is not yet a strong consensus in the country that impeachment is the right thing to do. This may change now Americans have been presented with the transcript of what Trump’s Ukrainian machinations consisted of.
But until Congress is sure such a national consensus exists, it needs to keep its powder dry.
8) Trump loves a street fight
He prospers by the enemies he can goad. And he will continue to enjoy the benefits of the US presidency even as the impeachment net closes around him. He will set the agenda and play the victim. He is a master at this.
Democrats, even armed with morality and law, may find themselves not up to this task.
Impeachment is what Trump wants the Democrats to do. It will provide his often chaotic and inchoate administration with a focus and purpose.
And here are three reasons why the Democrats should pursue impeachment.
1) It is the right thing to do morally
In the phone call, Trump seemed to blur a line between the national interest and his own electoral advantage. Asking a foreign leader for dirt on his political rival might be deserving of censure and possibly impeachment.
Even if we did not win, possibly, if there were not impeachment, I think history would smile upon us for standing up for the Constitution.
3) It makes sense politically
Even if Trump is not removed by impeachment, the process will mire Trump for the rest of his term. He will not be able to pursue policies Democrats have long regarded as anathema.
As an electoral strategy, therefore, impeachment may be of some benefit for Democrats. By November 2020, voters may be so tired of the whole affair they will vote for a change – and carry some Republicans with them.
It will also energise the Democratic base and give it and their leaders a focus so they can avoid wounding each other.
But this is a war-of-attrition approach. It will leave many battlefield casualties and the reputation of Washington will sink even lower.
Since 2013, Australia’s policy response to climate change has been the Emissions Reduction Fund, which awards government contracts to projects that reduce carbon emissions by planting trees, flaring landfill gas, improving energy efficiency, and other methods. It is supported by a “safeguard mechanism” that imposes a cap on the largest emitters.
Under the Emissions Reduction Fund, the government has contracted 192 million tonnes of emissions reductions from 433 projects, at an average price of about A$12. There are mixed views about whether these projects will be delivered and if they will effectively reduce emissions.
The Emissions Reduction Fund has been criticised for its high transaction costs and administrative complexity. It also limits the development of a secondary market, whereby people would be able to trade carbon credits among themselves rather than directly under contract to the government.
Despite these criticisms, earlier this year the fund was extended and rebranded as the Climate Solutions Fund.
This policy is set for the foreseeable future, but may eventually be replaced with a more open market mechanism. It is important to consider how to improve the current system and lay foundations for future developments.
Blockchain is an emerging technology that promises to transform how individuals, industry, and government operate. The current Australian carbon market is ripe for such a technical transformation.
How does blockchain work?
Blockchain is a record of transactions, also known as a ledger. It is the design and process of blockchain that distinguishes it from other established ledgers.
Blockchain uses online networks to conduct, validate, and record transactions. These can range from simple transactions to more complex smart contracts that only execute when defined conditions are met.
Network members can access the distributed ledger and independently verify transactions. Once the network is satisfied that a collection of transactions (known as a “block”) is legitimate, they are added (or “chained”) to the ledger, creating a permanent record.
Our research explored how blockchain could be applied to the Australian carbon market. We used a structured design process to consider each technical component of a carbon market blockchain.
The key element of our design was a partially decentralised blockchain, featuring smart contracts of the type described above. A regulator would have particular powers to issue and verify carbon credits, and administer decentralised transactions. This decentralisation would be backed by smart contracts that would automate transactions if certain conditions were met.
Suppose a company has a government contract to provide a certain amount of emissions reductions by planting trees. Once these reductions were achieved, the blockchain would verify that the activity was complete. The company might then be able to plant more trees, and potentially sell further carbon credits to a non-government client. This could be a company that needed to offset its own emissions that had gone above the levels set in the safeguard mechanism, for example.
In this case, the blockchain would allow all parties to transparently see the verified reductions and ensure that no credits were double-counted.
How can this help the Australian carbon market?
Currently the Clean Energy Regulator is intimately involved in every aspect of project monitoring, reporting, and verification. But there is a smarter way.
Smart contracts could be programmed according to a project’s particular emissions reduction method (tree planting, improving energy effiency, and so on). Market rules could then be designed to automate the regulator’s functions.
As a project met conditions specified in its smart contract – meeting a certain amount of emissions reductions, for instance – it would be verified and issued with the carbon credits it has earned. For projects currently contracted to the Emissions Reduction Fund, an extension could be added to automatically award the credits.
Using smart contracts could create a more independent regulator. The regulator would be able to demonstrate transparency and consistency in credit issuing and purchasing. This would remove the uncomfortable conflict of interest that currently exists, whereby the regulator is currently in charge of both issuing and buying the credits.
Smart contracts would also create a more effective regulator, with access to real-time information about the performance of projects, rather than having to wait months or years for reporting. This would enable the regulator to more quickly identify non-compliance or suspicious activity in projects.
Smart contracts would also speed up processing times for project reporting and encourage more frequent reporting. This would benefit projects by cutting transaction costs and allowing credits to be issued more quickly, thereby improving cash flow.
At the scheme level, lower administrative burdens and improved project cash flow would reduce overall project costs. This would in turn lead to more projects, promote more competition in Emissions Reduction Fund auctions, and thus allow the government to save money when buying emissions reductions.
Smart contracts would let the government monitor its portfolio of contract projects more closely. This would allow faster reallocation of funds from poorly performing projects.
The Australian government often declares its commitment to free markets. But the current system puts all the responsibility for the carbon market squarely on the government’s shoulders. This must be uncomfortable, and an alternative approach would surely be attractive.
Introducing a blockchain technology to the market’s processes would boost transparency, security, efficiency, and integrity. It would also reduce costs, increase competitiveness, and improve equity for participants in the market.
An Australian carbon market blockchain is an attractive potential solution to some of the problems with the current approach to emissions reductions, and a promising foundation for a more open Australian carbon market in the future.
This article and the research it describes were co-authored by Sam Hartmann, who led the work as a graduate researcher at the University of Melbourne.
Women are also faced with denials gender inequality still exists in 2019. Some people presume anti-discrimination legislation, equal pay, and ensuring motherhood is not a barrier to workforce participation are all that’s needed to achieve gender equality.
But sexism pervades society in many more subtle ways – and its impacts are not always so tangible. This discrimination is committed not just in the workplace and on the streets, but in social settings and in our own homes, sometimes by the people who love us.
It can also start young, like when parents enlist daughters to serve guests at a family gathering, and sons are free to relax with their male relatives.
Everyday sexism might not be noticed by perpetrators or bystanders, but it can wear women down and is linked to poorer physical and mental health.
Researchers have examined experiences of everyday sexism using a daily diary method. In series of studies from the United States, researchers asked 107 women and 43 men to record in a diary any sexist incidents they encountered over a period of two weeks.
One type of sexism the participants encountered was the endorsement of traditional gender role prejudices and stereotypes. One participant, for example, reported being told not to “worry her pretty little head about these complex insurance issues”.
Another type of everyday sexism participants encountered was demeaning or derogatory treatment, such as sexist jokes and language.
A third type of sexism was sexual objectification, such as street harassment and unwanted touching. For example, one participant reported having a stranger at a party squeeze her waist while he was walking past.
In some contexts, women may not experience any formal barriers to participation, but may still be faced with cultural norms that disadvantage them.
This negative stereotyping may include being underestimated and assigned easier tasks. Women might also experience social exclusion and isolation, such as not being invited to out-of-hours catch-ups.
Rules and laws against gender discrimination don’t prevent people with sexist attitudes from treating others unfairly in everyday interactions. This is particularly true when it is perpetrated unconsciously, in ways that aren’t detectable to everybody.
Discrimination gets under your skin
While individual instances of this unfair treatment might seem so minor as to be harmless, they can be frequent and ubiquitous. Everyday sexism is often present at a constant low-level in the background of our lives, adding an extra layer of stress.
Unsurprisingly, these subtle forms of everyday sexism have been linked to poorer mental health.
The daily diary study described above found more frequent reports of everyday sexism predicted poorer psychological well-being.
Earlier research showed that experiences of sexism were linked to poorer mental and physical health, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), binge drinking and smoking.
More recently, a study found experiences of gender discrimination in the workplace accounted, in part, for poorer health outcomes in women compared to men.
There are, however, factors that moderate the relationship between discrimination and health outcomes. Women with higher self-esteem, for example, don’t seem to suffer the ill-effcts of discrimination as much.
Given the pervasiveness of gender discrimination, research on its impact on mental health is still disproportionately low. But the existing research findings are corroborated by studies of the mental health impacts of discrimination based on race and sexual orientation.
Everyday sexism might be difficult to recognise by those who don’t experience it. Research shows men are less likely to accept evidence of gender discrimination than women. This is likely due to perceptions and everyday observations being limited by our own experiences and our biases.
Anecdotal evidence alone is insufficient to demonstrate the full reality of everyday sexism and its impacts. Scientific research reveals far more than our intuitions do about the nature of these phenomena, with greater accuracy.
Sexism is a health issue
Given this link to well-being, it’s reasonable to consider sexism a public health issue.
Doing so widens the circle of those considered responsible for protecting the well-being of those affected. Governments are obliged to reduce this health disparity, just as they invest in reducing other public health concerns, such as smoking and obesity.
One such intervention simulates an experience of discrimination by randomly assigning one group of participants to experience “small and seemingly innocuous advantages” in a game.
Direct experience of discrimination, and critical reflection on it, increases recognition of the harm it causes and increases the intention to overcome it.
Creating a fairer society requires some antidote for the health impacts caused by sexism. But as we know, prevention is better than cure.
There are many reasons for Australia’s absence from the podium of the the United Nations Climate Action Summit this week. No doubt it would send a poor message if emission reduction laggards such as Australia had taken centre stage.
The emissions produced from the fossil fuels extracted by Australia’s major gas, coal and oil producing companies – our “carbon majors” – such as BHP, Glencore and Yancoal, are now larger than all Australia’s domestic emissions.
While these companies, and Australia itself, have no legal responsibility for these “exported” emissions, morally it is comparable to selling uranium to a failed state or dumping medical waste unsafely. We understand the harm our exports cause, and are therefore at least partially culpable for the harms they cause.
We think in nations, not companies
Why aren’t Australian carbon majors considered to be responsible for addressing their emissions and their consequences? One reason is when we think about reducing emissions, we typically focus on the role of nations.
After all, it is nations that negotiate climate agreements, and their policies are substantially responsible for the contribution their citizens make to the problem of climate change.
But the impact of carbon majors is now so large, we must make the case for holding them responsible for the consequences.
In 2018 alone, BHP’s global fossil fuel production led to the emissions of the equivalent of 596 megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂-equivalent . Over the last 15 years BHP’s Australian coal operations have produced 1,863Mt of CO₂-e.
These figures would be significantly higher still if we included the remainder of the emissions since 1990, when the first major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed the risks of climate change and the consequences of emissions.
To put that in perspective, in 2018 BHP’s emissions from its global fossil fuel operations alone were more than the whole of Australia’s domestic emissions (534Mt CO₂-e) for 2018. If BHP were a country, the products it produces would cause emissions greater than those emitted by 25 million Australians.
As well as their current levels of production, many of the carbon majors hold vast reserves to be extracted in the future as well as new fossil fuel projects. Glencore, the largest coal mining company in Australia, reported in 2018 that they have 6,765Mt of measured metallurgic coal resources, and 1,565Mt of thermal coal in proved marketable reserves. Together, that’s the equivalent of 18,202Mt of CO₂, more than 34 times Australia’s 2018 carbon emissions.
Moral responsibility
But why should we hold the companies themselves responsible for these emissions? After all, except for the emissions created during the extraction process, they don’t themselves directly produce these emissions. For the most part, carbon majors contribute by being producers and suppliers of fossil fuels.
Like nations, carbon majors are seen as having responsibility only for emissions they have produced directly in operating a mine or transporting their commodities to port. This is the “territorial” model of emissions attribution.
Yet the responsibility of carbon majors is much greater than this territorial model suggests. To see how this might be the case, it is useful to draw on some basic moral and legal theory.
For example, a murderer or thief is directly responsible for the harm they cause their victim. They pulled a trigger or absconded with the money, and no-one else shares that direct blame.
But in the case where a person intends to shoot another person and I announce that I will sell them a gun — knowing full well what it will be used for — the responsibility for the murder no longer falls solely on the person who pulls the trigger. Given I sold the gun knowing that someone would be harmed, I am now an accomplice to the crime and should share at least some of the blame.
In this case, there is a relationship between my actions and the murder that ought to make me at least partially responsible.
In the case of carbon majors, by producing and selling fossil fuels which are, in turn, consumed in another country, they are complicit in the harm directly caused by their customer: the releasing of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by consuming the fuel.
Australia’s carbon majors are accessories to the wrongful harm of climate change.
Shared blame
These companies of course point out they are not wholly responsible – other companies and people actually use the fossil fuels overseas, where the emissions count towards another country’s tally. But accepting even some fault for the effect of their exports is a huge increase in a company’s moral responsibility over what they currently admit.
What does this mean in practice? First of all, it means that they have a strong moral reason to stop contributing to the harm by appropriately cutting their fossil fuel operations in line with IPCC timeframes and take a fair share of their climate-related liabilities. They should also stop seeking support for fossil fuels through lobbyists, politicians, “think tanks” and industry groups.
It will be argued that such actions will be costly to the carbon majors. But unless we are willing to concede that it is acceptable to harm others without sanction or an end it sight, this is not a convincing response.
However as citizens, we also need to move beyond reducing our domestic emissions. As voters, investors and consumers, we share a responsibility for our exported emissions. Ending state and institutional support for carbon majors should now be a major focus of climate action.
In recent months, one of Victoria’s oldest Catholic girls’ schools, Presentation College, announced it was closing down, citing falling enrolments. Other Catholic schools have decided to merge together, some also pointing to dwindling enrolments.
Meanwhile, Australia is in the midst of a population boom with new schools being built and overall enrolment numbers on the rise. So, are enrolments in Catholic schools going down across the country, and if so, why?
Enrolment numbers over the last decade
School enrolments across Australia are, overall, trending upwards. Our calculations show enrolments increased by nearly 12% from 2009-2018, representing around 409,000 extra students across all schools. If the current trend continues, four million students will be studying in Australian schools by 2022.
The trends show government and independent schools are becoming more popular than Catholic schools.
As the graph below shows, government primary school enrolments steadily increased until 2014. There was a fall in 2015, but then the numbers kept climbing. Government secondary school enrolments showed no similar lull, steadily increasing over the last four years.
The trend for independent schools was similar to that of government schools. The only difference is that independent schools generally have higher enrolments in secondary schools than in primary, as parents are more likely to make the choice to transition to an independent school in the secondary years.
Catholic primary school enrolments increased until 2014, then dropped slightly in 2015, like the government and independent school enrolments. However, Catholic primary enrolments didn’t recover and have remained reasonably stagnant since 2015.
Catholic secondary schools have been on a slight downward trajectory from 2016, with a loss of 1,798 students in the last two years.
The difference in primary and secondary student enrolments from 2014-2015, in part, reflects changing definitions of primary and secondary students in Western Australia and Queensland. The trend is mirrored in secondary schools where enrolments went up between the two years.
Enrolments increasing, but slower for Catholic schools
Government schools saw enrolments grow by 11% between 2009 and 2018 – an increase of around 260,000 students. Independent school enrolments grew by around 17% (84,600 new students) while Catholic school enrolments grew by only 8%, which accounted for around 61,000 new students.
As a share of the total enrolment growth, government schools accounted for around 64%, Catholic schools for 15% and independent schools 21%.
Government schools experienced significant growth from 2011. There was a decrease in extra student numbers between 2017 and 18, but the overall trend is up. Independent schools have maintained similar enrolment levels with a noticeable increase in enrolments over the last two years. But Catholic school enrolment growth steadily decreased each year since 2013.
In 2017 and 2018, Australian Catholic schools had a net decrease of 180 and 1,135 students respectively. Victoria and Queensland are the only jurisdictions that have experienced increases over the same period, with 839 and 1,153 additional enrolments respectively.
Why is this happening?
So, what’s driving the overall downturn in Catholic school enrolments? There has been some speculation, such as from the NSW Teachers Federation, it may be due to fallout from the Royal Commission into child sex abuse (which ran from 2013 until the final report’s release in December, 2017).
But the data also indicate enrolment patterns may be driven by broader demographic and social trends. New migrants may be partly responsible. Over the last ten years Australia has experienced a net overseas migration of more than two million people.
Analysis of census data shows students who arrive in Australia in the three years before the census date are most likely to go to a government school. In 2016, 77% of these students attended a government school.
Fewer of these students attend Catholic schools, with enrolments dropping from 12% in 2011, to 9% in 2016 among migrant groups. Migrant enrolments in independent schools have remained steady over those five years.
For many parents, the decision about which school their children will attend can be complex and dependent on many factors. Most of the research on school choice shows families typically exercise this choice at the secondary school level.
The key factors influencing parents when choosing a particular government primary school is the convenience of its location and whether other family members are at the school.
Research on school choice shows parents of children attending an independent school most frequently referred to academic results as the motivating factor behind their decision to send their child there. For Catholic schools, it was the religious values.
More Australian families are identifying as having “no religion”. Since 2006, students in the “no religion” category have increased, and those with a Catholic affiliation have decreased, from 30% to 27% respectively.
Of course, many families choose schools based on financial considerations. Recent analysis by the ANZ shows mid-tier private schools (which charge between A$10,000 and A$20,000 a year in tuition fees) saw a drop in enrolments in 2017 and 2018.
These families may be opting for so-called “magnet schools” which are high performing government schools where parents move to the catchment area to increase their chances of admission. This shows parents make strategic choices within school sectors as well as between them.
Note: Data was sourced from the ABS and ACARA and may not correspond with annual data released by school system authorities. However the overall trends are the same.
But a study we at Vienna University carried out for a European postal service found parcel delivery vehicles made up only a fraction (0.8%) of a city’s traffic flow. Tradespeople and other services were more than seven times more likely to be making up the business traffic.
Yet the claim that parcel delivery plays a significant part in urban road traffic is used regularly in reports. Hopefully our study can help to change the attitude.
The unfair focus on parcel delivery neglects other commercial sectors using vehicles on a city’s roads for transport and parking. In fact, there is a lack of studies investigating specifically to what extent parcel delivery impacts and contributes to urban road traffic in major cities worldwide.
To examine the true impact of parcel delivery – technically known as CEP for courier, express and parcel deliveries – our team at the Vienna University of Economics in Business was commissioned by the Austrian postal organisation to study the traffic composition in Vienna, Austria, between March and June 2019.
The goal of the study was to identify the share of parcel delivery and other specific categories of light commercial vehicles used in the city.
The city’s traffic was videoed and manually counted at key times over a 15 week period on main and secondary roads. In addition, we used secondary data from the city of Vienna for validation.
The results showed passenger cars accounted for 86.5% of urban road traffic. The remaining share of light and heavy commercial vehicles comprised 13.5% of traffic.
Of that, we found parcel delivery vehicles accounted for only 0.8% of the traffic. This clearly contradicts the often-heard and reported claim that they are a main contributor to urban congestion and delays.
Other light commercial vehicles played a much more significant part in urban road traffic.
Tradesmen and technicians had the largest share among light commercial vehicles with 6.0% of traffic. This is more than seven times higher than the share of parcel delivery.
Any transport policies that aim to deal with traffic reduction should consider all vehicle categories and the respective industry specific logistics.
Some may argue that European cities differ from Australian cities, but we believe our findings are also relevant to cities here and in other industrialised counties.
For example, Vienna is not that different to Brisbane, in Queensland. Vienna is a city with almost 2 million people – similar to Brisbane (depending on how you define the area).
Moreover, Vienna’s traffic is – like Brisbane’s – impacted by a significant share of commuters travelling in and out of the city every business day.
Both cities have similar congestion rates – Brisbane 27% and Vienna 25% – and are served by all major local and global parcel delivery companies.
One area of growth in Australia is also the number of light commercial vehicles on our streets, up from 39.3 billion kilometres travelled in 2008 to 54 billion kilometres in 2018. That means potentially more such vehicles in our cities.
When it comes to looking at who needs to do more to try to cut congestion, you need to consider more than just the parcel delivery companies.
Studies show that further consolidation efforts within the parcel delivery industry would only lead to a maximum saving of a further 10% of delivery vans, that’s 9 instead of 10 delivery vans on the street. Given they only have a share of 0.8% of total traffic, that would only lead to reduction in traffic of less than 0.1%.
But for tradespeople and technicians, for example, with a share of 6.0% in city traffic, developing better logistics could lead to a greater reduction in the overall traffic in cities.
They had not taken home a premiership for more than three decades.
As is often the case when things are this low, the club looked to change the leadership. Coach Damien Hardwick narrowly escaped dismissal — which turned out to be an extremely fortunate decision for the Tigers.
In 2017 they won the premiership; and they look set to do it again in 2019.
This dramatic turnaround left everyone wondering: how did things go from awful to sensational so fast?
Luckily, psychology can help us understand exactly what went wrong, what went right, and how we can apply these lessons in our own lives.
What went wrong?
In 2016, Hardwick was focused on winning. He had been coach of the Tigers since 2010, and had taken the team to the finals for the previous three years – without a win.
Hardwick was experienced, skilled, and determined. So were his players. Shouldn’t this be a recipe for success?
It often isn’t. Winning is an external reward: an outcome contingent on performance. Being motivated by external rewards worsens performance and, ironically, makes success less likely.
A dejected Tiger.Joe Castro/AAP
External rewards also have other negative impacts: focusing on reward alone sucks out the joy. Hardwick was angry and unhappy about events in both his personal and professional life.
Reflecting on this time, Hardwick says he was forced to take a long, hard look at himself at the end of 2016.
He looked for when he was at his best. “It was when I was coaching my daughter’s under 13 basketball side.”
“There was no fear of outcome,” he said.
There was just the love of the game.
What went right?
Connecting with Hardwick’s intrinsic love of football and the Tigers was key.
In football, this is the difference between playing for love of the game and playing to win. The irony is, we are more likely to win when we play for love of the game.
People do better in environments that foster intrinsic motivation: when we get joy or satisfaction from the activity in itself. Children are intrinsically motivated when they play, by having fun. Adults are also intrinsically motivated by activities they find meaning in: this could be as big as parenting, or as small as baking a cake.
The benefits of intrinsic motivation are broad. Child mental health and school performance outcomes are better. Students are more confident and learn more deeply. Patients eat better and exercise more. Athletes are more likely to stay engaged and succeed at their sport. And employees perform better, leading to better business outcomes.
Unfortunately, a focus on external rewards remains pervasive. We encourage our children to get good grades and praise them when they do. In academia, our currency is publications and citation counts. Many people work to get paid. To some extent, these types of rewards are a necessary evil. Grades help measure student learning – and I do not want my employer to stop paying me.
But like Hardwick and his team, there are things we can do to encourage ourselves and others – our children, our students, and our employees – to connect with love of the game.
In 2017, they loved – and won.Julian Smith/AAP
What can we do?
Focus on the joys of the activity itself, not what comes out of it. Mindfulness — focusing your attention on the present moment — is an empirically supported strategy for connecting with what is happening right now. You can embrace mindfulness by taking a moment to notice each of your senses: notice what you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Parents can help children by asking what they enjoyed or found satisfying about an activity. For example, a parent might say, “I noticed that you were smiling when you were reading that book. What was it that made you smile?”
Connect with your values. Values are the things that are most important to us, like kindness, integrity, or personal growth. Our intrinsic motivation is strongest when we put our values into action. For students and academics, this might mean connecting with a value of curiosity or continued learning, and pushing grades and publications out of mind.
Maximise freedom of choice. Part of the problem with external rewards is that they make us feel controlled. Humans have a basic psychological need for autonomy, or self-determination. Hardwick brings out the best in Dustin Martin by supporting his autonomy on the field. For managers, this is a reminder that delegation means trusting your team to find their own solutions.
When you need to give someone direction, give clear reasons. Understanding why doing something a certain way is important because it helps people connect with the intrinsic value of a task. Your child might try to avoid helping out with chores, whining “Why can’t you do it?”. Talking with your child about how your family is a team that supports one another will help them develop intrinsic pride in their contribution.
It’s about the game itself
If we want people and teams to thrive, we need to shift focus away from outcomes and take Hardwick’s advice:
For us as a team, [the approach is] staying totally focused in the moment and not being distracted by anything else.
It is believing in your strengths as an individual, and our strengths as a team. It is also about enjoying what we do and more importantly, who we are. It is about playing the game, and that’s what we do best.
Scott Morrison doesn’t shy away from talking about his family, so it was perhaps unsurprising he told reporters he discussed climate change with his daughters, aged 10 and 12.
“We don’t have deep conversations about emissions reduction targets and what’s happening with the Kyoto Protocol and Paris,” he said. “But we talk about fossil fuels and we talk about what they learn at school.
“And I encourage them to have a passionate, independent view about how they see the world, but I also give them a lot of context. I don’t allow them to be basically contorted into one particular view, I like them to make up their own mind. But I also like to give them reassurance, because the worst thing I would impose on any child, is needless anxiety.”
What Morrison didn’t share, unfortunately, were the girls’ views on the subject.
Even more interesting will be what Lily and Abbey might have to say to their parents, when Scott and Jenny get home, about 16 year old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, founder of the school strike movement, whose passionate speech to the United Nations leaders summit on climate has fired up a sub-battle of the climate wars.
Morrison bypassed the climate summit, so he won’t be able to give his daughters a first hand description. But they may have opinions.
As school students have mobilised in strikes all over the world, kids have become a centre of debate on a couple of fronts.
Activists argue denialists represent a predatory threat to children because they are destroying the planet that future generations will inherit.
Sceptics declare activists are indoctrinating, alarming and exploiting vulnerable children, recruiting them for their cause.
While it is wrong for parents, teachers or anyone else to irresponsibly fan fears in children, some of whom are reportedly displaying high anxiety about the climate threat, it is denying reality for critics to try to dismiss the students’ protest as just the product of manipulation.
This generation of youth has made climate change its issue – as previous generations mobilised against the Vietnam war, and the threat of nuclear war.
The “students” in earlier times were mostly older, in university. But these days young people do most things sooner (except leave home).
And while some may be along for the ride in the marches, or encouraged or pressured to take part, many have strong and well-formed views.
It’s also inaccurate denigration to disparage their protest on the grounds they are too young to know what they’re doing. Some are. But 16 and 17 year olds are on the brink of adulthood. In a number of countries they can vote. In Australia there has been debate about whether they should be given the right to do so. And many younger than that have done as much thinking as a lot of their elders.
For all the railing from critics about the attention paid to this girl with a challenging personal history (including being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome) who lectures world leaders in a most confronting way – a way someone older and more inhibited wouldn’t do – Greta Thunberg has become a symbol of the push for greater action on climate change.
Her youth and fire have the power to shock. Her performance – celebrity advocacy – was galvanising at the climate summit. Outside that forum it was immediately divisive – as has been her activism previously – but it grabbed the attention of millions around the world.
Donald Trump’s attempt to put her down with a tweet – “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see! – would likely just attract more supporters to her. She immediately turned it back on him by appropriating his line.
It would be naïve in the extreme to think Thunberg’s presence at the summit has made it easier to force more extensive and faster action on climate change. But her extraordinary crusading is part of the wider international pressure on governments.
The significance of her appearance at the summit was that she waved a big flag. Her audience was less the leaders than those young people who will be encouraged to join her already mass following.
The spare, white-walled Australian Tapestry Workshop gallery is very much of its place, a wall of windows fronting the South Melbourne street. Cars, trams and shoppers are just metres away, the occasional pedestrian observing the observer. It’s a stark space ill-suited to introspection, but perhaps apposite given that the eight artists showing here are examining their own place and the intersection of their heritage with life in present-day Australia.
Five are migrant women drawing on textile traditions in exploration of their identity in a contemporary Australian context, although little information is provided to illuminate those traditions. Two or three paragraphs in the free program’s four pages of notes are devoted to each artist and, for all except two, this information is duplicated on a wall plaque. More about the artists, their works and the techniques used might have enabled a more nuanced appreciation.
Paula do Prado, El Grito, 2018, cotton, wool, hemp, linen, raffia, Bobbiny cotton rope, twine, paper covered wire, wire, glass seed beads, wooden beads, açai seed beads. 110 x 60 x 5cm.Photo: Document Photography
The woven tapestry style associated with the Australian Tapestry Workshop features in some work. Karen migrant Mu Naw Poe learned weaving from her mother and continued it in a refugee camp for 20 years. Once in Australia she undertook an Australian Tapestry Workshop program. Her Night Sky 2018 and Global Warming 2014 are bold, multicoloured geometrics; Faces 2016 is more abstract. The three woven strips of Here We Are Sisters 2018 by noted textile artist Kay Lawrence record the names of participants in a Women’s Wealth Project in traditional European storytelling style.
For Ema Shin, of Japanese and Korean descent, such techniques are the starting point for two densely woven, three-dimensional works, Soft Alchemy (My Pelvic Bone) 2018 and Soft Alchemy (Fertile Heart) 2019. Referencing her pregnancy and including tufted Korean floral symbols of fertility, she adds padding and wrapped wire to produce an alarming profusion of veins.
Lisa Waup’s works also have a 3D quality. A Gunditjmara and Torres Strait woman, her small, woven vessels combine thread, feathers, found objects, even false hair. Her three-part 2019 series It’s in my DNA symbolises passing her DNA to her children, while the other, Past, Present, Future 2019 references living family and ancestors.
Indigenous Australian Bronwyn Razem (Gunditjmara/Kirrae Whurrong), a Master Weaver, is keeping alive weaving skills used to create a traditional eel trap and the weaving’s cultural importance. Eel Trap 2018, is precisely that – a metre-long raffia trap, as used by her people in Victoria’s Western District. The program notes she has played a vital role in this trap’s revival but this information is tantalisingly brief.
Somali weaver Muhubo Suleiman’s Raar 2018 hangs in the window with no identifier, the program revealing who made it and her use of traditional Somalian finger weaving, once essential in nomadic communities, now evoking home in her new country.
Muhubo Suleiman with Raar (2018)Photo: Marie-Luise Skibbe
Three striking beaded works by Uruguayan migrant Paula Do Prado, one of which, El Grito 2018, is on the program cover, are described as using traditional and non-traditional craft techniques and materials. Open shapes are made from beaded wire and blanket-stitched rope. The work is described as “highly personal and autobiographical”, but just how so remains elusive. So, too, Yunuen Perez’s weaving, which draws on Mexican Indigenous stories and traditional textile techniques.
Artist Yunuen Pérez with Ketzal (2016) and Colibries (Hummingbirds) (2019). Photo: Marie-Luise Skibbe.Photo: Marie-Luise Skibbe
This is a small but important exhibition, showcasing textile work by women of extraordinary patience, dexterity and expertise. Traditional techniques are given new life, record reflections, keep history alive and salve divided loyalties by weaving links between home and home. Rich histories, personal and cultural, are embedded in these works but the audience is denied access to these histories given the paucity of information available about them.
Place Makers can be viewed at the Australian Tapestry Workshop until December 6. A community workshop will be held on Saturday 16 November
Yesterday, climate activist Greta Thunberg joined 15 other children from around the world to submit a complaint – or “communication” – to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. They targeted Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey.
Ranging from nine to 17 years old, and from twelve different nations, the group includes a young Sami reindeer herder, a member of the Indigenous Yupiaq tribe, and teenagers from the Marshall Islands who fear their island home will vanish under rising sea levels.
Their communication argues these countries are violating the standards set in the Convention of the Rights of the Child – which is run and monitored by the committee.
recklessly causing and perpetuating life-threatening climate change [and] have failed to take necessary preventive and precautionary measures to respect, protect, and fulfill the petitioners’ rights.
In particular, the communication alleges the petitioners’ rights to life, health, and culture have been violated.
But whether or not the petitioners are successful, the mere act of filing the complaint has already brought the matter into the public eye.
Greta Thunberg gives a searing speech to world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit.
So what role does the committee play? And can their claim actually change international climate policy?
Standing up for the rights of the child
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an international human rights treaty that concerns the right to protection and the economic, social, cultural and political development of all children.
And it’s the job of the Committee on the Rights of the Child – a group of 18 independent experts – to monitor the worldwide implementation of the convention’s standards.
The convention came into force in 1990 and is “the most rapidly and widely ratified human rights treaty in history”. All the countries of the world bar one – the United States – have ratified the treaty.
The CRC establishes global standards with respect to human rights as they apply to children. In particular, article 3 of the CRC requires:
in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
How the CRC works
The CRC committee has two functions. First, it oversees the implementation of the convention by receiving reports every five years from participating countries outlining the steps taken to fulfil their obligations.
Information is also gathered from NGOs and other sources to identify areas of concern. For example, Australia’s last report to the committee was submitted in January 2018. It addressed issues such as the offshore detention of child refugees.
The Australian government appeared before the committee on September 9 and 10, and the committee’s recommendations will be received by the end of this week.
But the second, relatively new, function of the committee permits an individual, or group of individuals, submit a communication arguing their rights have been violated. This “Optional Protocol” – adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2011 – is what Greta Thunberg and the 15 other children are using.
Communications may only be made in respect of countries that have ratified the Optional Protocol and, to date, only 45 out of the 196 state parties have done so. Australia, the United States, Great Britain and China are among those countries that have not signed or ratified.
Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey have ratified the Optional Protocol and have also ratified the substantive international legal obligations relating to climate change. As Greta recently tweeted, this is why these particular five countries were selected.
What next?
There are a number of procedural legal hurdles that must be cleared before the committee can address the substance of the issue.
First, it must be determined if the communication is actually admissible, which includes whether the petitioners have exhausted the legal options in their home countries for addressing their concerns.
But while Thunberg and her co-petitioners have not brought any actions in state or federal courts it may be the committee allows the matter to proceed anyway, since taking such action may have been “unreasonably prolonged or unlikely to bring effective relief”.
Second, the committee must rule on jurisdiction, as the obligations of the CRC only apply to each child within a country’s jurisdiction.
The views and recommendations of the committee are strong advocacy tools.Justin Lane/EPA
Some of the petitioners meet this requirement by virtue of their nationality or residence, but the communication makes a broader claim: any child is within the jurisdiction of a country when its polluting activity impacts the rights of children, within or outside that country’s territory.
This is a very significant claim: essentially, that carbon pollution leading to climate change violates the rights of children worldwide.
Only once these hurdles are cleared will the committee investigate the substance of the complaints, proceed to a hearing, and make recommendations to any country responsible for violation.
Are they likely to succeed?
The success of the claims may seem a foregone conclusion, as the committee is one of five UN human rights treaty bodies to recently issue a joint declaration stating: “climate change poses significant risks to the enjoyment” of human rights. And that climate change is “a children’s rights crisis” seems an inevitable conclusion.
Still, the communication must clear all the legal hurdles set out above.
But even should the committee agree with Thunberg, the options for redress are limited. After the committee transmits its views and recommendations, they’ll follow up six months later to see if its recommendations have been implemented.
If they haven’t, there’s not much the committee can do to compel a country to take action.
But the committee’s conclusions are not without impact. Its views and recommendations are strong advocacy tools.
Alongside the school strikes, the communication is part of a broad campaign designed to focus political attention on the issue of urgent action on climate change.
Since the mass production of plastic began, almost six billion tonnes of it – approximately 91% – has remained in our air, land and water. Plastic production and use is embedded in the global economy, and in our natural environment. This culture of waste is clearly perilous and unsustainable.
Our paper, published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, argues that only a global, market-driven intervention can stop the plastic tide.
It is backed by a commitment by the Minderoo Foundation, chaired by the lead author, of up to US$300 million (A$443 million) to help establish the scheme and ensure its integrity.
The paper argues that the intervention – a voluntary financial contribution paid by global manufacturers of fossil fuel-based plastic – would drive a system-wide transition to recycled plastic. Our modelling shows that this would lead to a dramatic slowdown in the production of new plastic – creating huge benefits for marine life and human health.
We must turn off the tap
Plastic takes so long to break down that every piece produced since its inception in 1856 still exists today, except the small share we’ve burned into poisonous gases.
Many strategies to address the plastic problem have been proposed to date, and efforts have been commendable. But we are bailing out a bathtub with a thimble – while the tap is running.
We have identified a simple solution: a voluntary industry contribution for new fossil fuel-based plastic production.
We believe this technical and financial initiative would level the playing field by making recycled plastic more competitively priced, establishing the right market conditions for a circular plastics economy.
We know from our discussions with industry that this would release technology, in particular chemical or ‘polymer-to-polymer’ recycling, that is proven today but cannot yet compete economically with new fossil fuel-derived plastic. Increased demand from recyclers would transform plastic waste into a commodity, driving plastic recovery and creating incentives for industry to invest and transition. This is already true for materials like aluminium cans, which are highly recycled because the metal has an inherent value.
Ascension Island is thousands of miles from land, yet even there oceanic wildlife can’t escape plastic waste.University of Western Australia – Marine Futures Lab / Ascension Island Government
By mobilising new technology to increase recycling rates, plastic flows to the ocean and the broader environment would slow, and hopefully cease altogether. A circular plastics economy would also significantly reduce carbon emissions created through new plastic production.
The vast majority of plastics produced to date are derived from fossil fuels. Plastics are made from polymers – long molecular chains comprising smaller carbon-based molecules. Oil and gas are the cheapest materials from which to produce raw polymer resin. This resin is then made into plastic by adding dyes, plasticizers and other chemicals.
Fossil fuel-based plastic has countless uses and is produced very cheaply. Plastic recycling has largely been overlooked because, in the developed world at least, our waste is carted away from our homes and often shipped overseas. This leaves little incentive to tackle our plastic addiction.
But our “out of sight, out of mind” mentality cannot persist.
In 2017, China banned imports of 24 types of solid waste, mainly plastics. This revealed the extent to which developed countries had been sending their waste problem elsewhere. In Australia this led to recyclables being stockpiled, landfilled or sent to countries ill-equipped to handle them.
This is an abhorrent market failure, which conservatively costs US$ 2.2 trillion (A$3.25 trillion) each year in environmental and socioeconomic damages not taken into account by business or the consumer.
A turtle with a plastic bag fragment in its mouth. Plastic waste in the world’s oceans is devastating some marine life.Melbourne Zoo
The Sea The Future initiative
We propose an initiative led by global manufacturers in which they make a voluntary financial contribution for each unit of new fossil fuel-based plastic produced. We have dubbed the initiative “Sea The Future”.
Placing a value on plastic both drives its collection and diverts new production away from fossil fuels. The contribution, estimated in our paper as averaging US$500 (A$738) per tonne, would be key to encouraging the small number of global resin producers to choose recycled plastic over fossil fuel as their raw material.
The cost would be passed onto consumers via trillions of individual plastic items. The impact would be negligible – say, a few cents on a cup of coffee – and so is likely to gain broad public acceptance.
Anticipating the concerns of regulators that such a move could be perceived as anti-competitive, the lead author has engaged with global law firms to ensure that the initiative is compatible with free market competition law in countries across the world.
The contribution turns plastic waste into a cashable commodity, feeding the circular economy.
The estimated US$20 billion (A$29.5 billion) per year raised through the initiative would be used to help establish recycling infrastructure, aid industry transition and remediate the environment. Increased demand and a higher price for recycled material also promises to significantly improve the livelihoods of waste pickers – hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people who currently carve meagre earnings from collecting plastic.
The funds would be administered by a self-regulated global industry body, independently audited to ensure performance, accountability and transparency. To address concerns over governance costs, the Minderoo Foundation has committed to underwrite up to five years’ worth of audit fees totalling US$260 million (A$384 million), plus cover US$40 million (A$59 million) in start-up costs, subject to appropriate conditions.
The future is circular
Public pressure is mounting for action on plastics – and what is bad for the planet is ultimately bad for business. The alternatives to an industry-led approach are less appealing. Plastic bans deny us a useful product upon which our economies rely; taxes typically go directly to general revenue and are unlikely to be applied to plastic waste management. So, tax-derived funds are seldom transferred between nations, ignoring the transboundary nature of plastic pollution.
Our global discussions with companies throughout the plastics supply chain have revealed that the vast majority recognise the need to move away from a linear plastics economy. They also understand that a global, market-based mechanism is the only path to achieving the system-wide transformation required.
Society discards over 250 million tonnes of valuable polymer, worth at least a US$ 1,000 per tonne recycled, in plastic waste each year. Soon, if we do nothing, that could grow to 500 million tonnes per annum. What industry would allow half a trillion US dollars of waste each year? Recovering it is simply good business for the environment.
At least 32 people have been killed and scores more injured in Papua amid fresh protests against racism and police persecution, reports Al Jazeera.
In the regional capital of Wamena, 28 people, including 16 non-Papuans were reportedly killed when protestors torched buildings and damaged property in response to claims that a school teacher used racial slurs against a student.
Police have called the claims – which spread rapidly thought SMS messenger – a “hoax”.
While reports have been mixed as to the cause of the deaths, the Indonesian military have said that people had died while trapped in burning buildings or “hacked to death.”
However, both Al Jazeera and RNZ Pacific have reported that police opened fire on the demonstrators, with one source telling Al Jazeera that his friend had been shot in the chest.
– Partner –
Most of the 700 people brought it for police question have been released.
The reports come after a relative quiet period following the violent unrest that gripped the region in late August.
Meanwhile, at least four people have died in the provincial capital of Jayapura, after police attempted to move a student solidity demonstration at Cendrawasih University.
According to The Jakarta Post, the students were taking refuge in the university auditorium when police and military personnel “besieged it” and ordered the students to leave in an orderly manner
The BBC reports that when moved outside, the students began attacking military personal who opened fire in response.
Three Papuans and one solider were killed in the fray.
According the RNZ Pacific, many of the students had recently returned from other parts of Indonesia amid safety concerns following the August unrest, which was also in response to racism and abuse.
Police and military have continued to levy blame at pro-independence groups and leaders such as Benny Wenda for stirring these recent protests, which they claim are inflamed by the spreading of fake news or “hoaxes”.
Instagram recently announced posts promoting diet products and cosmetic procedures will no longer be visible to users under the age of 18. While the initiative is being led by Instagram, the policy will also be in place on Facebook.
Under the policy, posts that feature an incentive to buy a product, such as a discount code, or include a price, will be restricted to users over 18.
Meanwhile, posts that make “miraculous claims” about diets or weight loss products and are linked to a commercial offer will be removed completely from the app. So for example, if an influencer posts a picture of themselves drinking diet tea, telling their followers they managed to lose 20 kilos solely thanks to the tea, and promoting a discount code, this post will be removed.
As well as individual posts, it appears entire Instagram accounts have already been taken down. And while the onus falls on Instagram to enforce the policy, users can also report posts that violate the guidelines.
An Instagram user under 18 would now see this when they visit an the page of a brand like ‘fattummyco’.Screenshot
On a broad scale, it’s great to see an influential tech giant like Instagram taking action to prevent the proliferation of health claims that have no scientific basis.
For young people in particular, this new policy will ensure they’re not marketed treatments they don’t need, or that could even harm their health.
Why is this a good thing?
This latest policy follows Instagram’s stance against online bullying, and their move to hide the number of “likes” from posts. These recent actions recognise the growing body of evidence pointing to the effects of social media on young people’s mental health and self–esteem.
Adolescence is a time of heightened body image concerns. A large Australian survey found 22.8% of adolescent girls described themselves as “very concerned” about their body image, and 18.7% described themselves as “extremely concerned”. Of boys, 9.4% described themselves as “very concerned” and 6% described themselves as “extremely concerned”.
High levels of social media use by adolescents is associated with poorer mental health, and, in particular, increased body image concerns.
This is especially the case when it comes to engagement with highly visual social media, like Instagram, and involvement in photo-based activities such as taking “selfies” and digitally altering images.
Some popular types of social media posts have been shown to have a particularly negative influence on body image. These are ones specifically promoting being thin – “thinspiration” (or “thinspo”), and those promoting fitness and muscle tone – “fitspiration” (or “fitspo”).
Greater social media use increases a teen’s belief in the importance of achieving the thin body ideal for girls and the lean, muscular ideal for boys. This can lead them to judge their own bodies against the highly selected images presented by celebrities and peers on social media.
Research has shown viewing images of females with cosmetic enhancements influences young women’s desire for cosmetic surgery.
So in pursuit of what’s seen as the ideal body type, young people may be vulnerable to the marketing of diet products and cosmetic surgery. Especially when promoted by someone they admire, they could be easily seduced into believing these offerings will provide the solution to their problems – regardless of their actual appearance.
These products can cause harm
From detox teas, to diet pills, to “appetite-supressing” lollipops, the list goes on. Diet products often promote a “quick-fix” solution for weight or fat loss which is tempting to believe. However, there’s rarely reliable evidence to support these claims.
Marketing these products as foods means they bypass the usual controls to determine if a product is effective and safe to use.
Many products are potentially unhealthy. For example, detox teas act as a laxative and can cause dehydration. For other products, the risks associated with their use are unknown.
Use of diet products and self-directed dieting may also lead to other health problems. Once engaged in dieting behaviour, young people are more likely to use more extreme measures including laxatives and diet pills.
They may also begin patterns of restrained food intake or binge eating, increasing their risk of developing clinical eating disorders.
With these issues in mind, it’s encouraging to see Instagram and Facebook taking this socially responsible step.
But why stop at diet and cosmetic procedure products? Adolescent boys seeking to achieve “ideal” muscle tone are highly vulnerable to exploitative marketing of muscle-building dietary supplements.
These products are seldom effective and may also be harmful, having been linked to severe health issues in children and adolescents, including liver failure. Further, regular use of muscle-building supplements can be a gateway to anabolic steroid use.
Although enjoyed by millions, social media has a dark side, and it’s impossible to provide a safe environment for all. It’s essential teens are equipped with skills to understand and negotiate their social media environment and the images they see.
But it’s also valuable to have the support of social media providers in managing the commercial and advertising aspects of social media in this way. The challenge now for Instagram will be ensuring this new policy is enforced consistently.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dempster, Director, Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research; Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW
In the wake of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, the Australian government announced on Sunday a commitment of A$150million “into our local businesses and new technologies that will support NASA on its inspirational campaign to return to the Moon and travel to Mars”.
It is unclear at this point where the government intends to spend this money, but there’s no harm in some reflective speculation.
The funding allocation should also not include the money already committed to space projects by CSIRO under its Space Technology Future Science Platforms initiative.
Where should it be spent?
In thinking about where the money can be spent, it’s worth noting the brief is explicitly to “support NASA”. So, where could Australia help?
NASA’s Orion spacecraft, centrepiece of the Artemis mission, will need lots of technical support.NASA
NASA’s two main lunar initiatives are the Lunar Gateway and Project Artemis, both of which have been mentioned in relation to Australia’s funding pledge. Mars may be the long-term destination, but the Moon is where it’s at right now.
The Lunar Gateway is infrastructure: a spacecraft placed in a halo orbit (always in view of Earth) that is sometimes as close as 3,000km to the Moon’s surface. It will be used as a hub for astronauts, equipment and communications, and a staging post for lunar landings and returns.
Artemis aims to use NASA’s large new rocket, the Space Launch System, to deliver astronauts, including the first woman to walk on the Moon, to the lunar surface by 2024. It will develop a host of new technologies and is openly collaborative.
One contribution that cannot be ignored in this context is the technology emerging from Australia’s dominant mining industry. The strength in robotics, automation and remote operations has led to the above-mentioned robotics centre being slated for WA. What’s more, the Australian Remote Operations in Space and on Earth institute, a wide-ranging industry collaboration launched in July, is also likely to be headquartered in WA.
Another area where Australia is developing interesting technology is in optical communications with spacecraft, being driven by research at the Australian National University. At a recent CSIRO workshop to develop “flagship” missions for Australia, the idea of using lasers to beam communications rapidly to the Moon and back was highly rated.
Putting ideas out there
Of the nine possible flagships considered, seven are potentially relevant to the new funding. These include a space weather satellite, an asteroid detection system, a cubesat to Mars, a radiotelescope on the Moon, and a solar sail that could power spacecraft to the Moon. There are plenty of good Australian ideas around.
However, the flagship most closely related to the content of the announcement was a project proposal (disclosure: it’s mine!) that would place an orbiter around the Moon and design a lander/rover to establish our ability to extract water from permanent ice. Water can be used for many things in a settlement, and when split into hydrogen and oxygen it can be used as rocket fuel to move things around, including to Mars.
All of our research in this area has focused on how this can be done in a commercial way, very much in line with the philosophy of “Space 2.0”. We are putting together a significant team of academics, companies (not just mining and space ones), and agencies to pursue these missions seriously.
There has never been a better time to be working in the space sector in Australia. I and all of my colleagues in the field hope the latest announcement is the next step in establishing the vibrant, sustainable space industry so many in Australia now see as achievable.
The National Party, Queensland farming lobby group AgForce, and MP Bob Katter have banded together to propose an “independent science quality assurance agency”.
To justify their position, Liberal-National MP George Christensen and AgForce’s Michael Guerin specifically invoked the “replication crisis” in science, in which researchers in various fields have found it difficult or impossible to reproduce and validate original research findings. Their proposal, however, is not a good solution to the problem.
The more important context is that these politicians and lobbyists are opposed to new laws to curb agricultural runoff onto the Great Barrier Reef that are underpinned by research finding evidence of harm from poor water quality. Christensen suggests that many scientific papers behind such regulation “have never been tested and their conclusions may be wrong”. But Christensen seems to be targeting specific results he doesn’t like, rather than trying to improve scientific practice in a systematic way.
In various scientific areas, including psychology and preclinical medicine, large-scale replication projects have failed to reproduce the findings of many original studies. The rates of success differ between fields, but on average only halforfewer of published studies were successfully replicated. Clearly there is a problem.
Much of the problem is due to hyper-competitiveness in science, funding shortfalls, publication practices, and the use of performance metrics that privilege quantity over quality.
Scientists themselves have documented the poor practices that underlie this crisis, such as the misuse of statistics, often unwittingly, in ways that bias findings towards attention-grabbing conclusions. These practices distort the evidence available to policy-makers and other researchers.
Establishing an agency with a mission to adjudicate on hand-picked scientific results would make things worse.
At best, such an agency will be one more review panel. At worst, it will be a bureaucratic front for the political agenda of the day. Either way, it will make scientists even more cautious, and delay the flow of information to policy-makers.
Exploiting scientific uncertainty has long been a classic tactic of industry lobbyists. It has been used to justify inaction on everything from tobacco to climate change. Local politicians and lobby groups seem to be copying moves from a well-worn overseas playbook in their misuse of the replication crisis.
Scientists can never make pronouncements with the certainty of a politician. But if, as a society, we want to benefit fully from science, we need to accept the idea of scientific uncertainty. The existence of uncertainties does not justify rejection of the best available evidence.
To defend science we need to improve it
It is tempting to respond to politically motivated attacks on science by simply pointing to the excellent track record of scientific knowledge, or the good intentions of the vast majority of scientists.
But there is a better reason: scientists themselves have been improving science. As advocates of reform, we have been told that pointing out problems helps the anti-science movement. We disagree: being open about our work to improve science is essential for building public trust.
Science is something that humans do. It is self-correcting when, and only when, scientists correct it. Research is hard work, and we can’t expect scientists never to make errors or to provide complete certainty. But we can expect scientists to create a culture that values detecting and correcting errors.
Admitting errors in one’s own work, finding them in others’ work, reporting them, retracting results when necessary, and correcting the record are activities that should be the most highly regarded of scientific practices. We need to shift the balance of rewards away from rewarding only groundbreaking discoveries, and towards the painstaking work of confirmation.
There are sensible policies to support the open science initiatives that will reduce error production and increase error detection in scientific work. Different fields need different approaches, but here are two ideas.
First, improve funding allocation procedures. Reward self-correcting activities such as replication studies. Don’t require every piece of funded research to be groundbreaking. Don’t rely on flawed metrics. Enforce best-practice data management and open data practices whenever feasible. This can all be done without establishing an inefficient agency whose likely effect is to delay action.
Second, establish a national independent office of research integrity to allow errors in the scientific literature, whether deliberate or accidental, to be corrected in a fair, efficient, and systematic way. Unlike the politicians’ proposal, this would improve the process for all researchers, not just act as a handbrake on research findings that lobbyists don’t like.
The ban on live sheep exports was only ever intended to be temporary. The Australian government enacted the ban earlier this year to prevent sheep from being shipped to the Middle East from the beginning of June through to September 22 – the highest heat stress risk period.
During this time, sheep are adapted to the cooler temperatures of a southern Australian winter. And for this reason they find it difficult to cope with the sudden increase in temperature and humidity as the transport vessels undertake the two week journey to the Persian Gulf region.
This ban affected any voyages where the vessel would travel through waters in the Arabian Sea north of latitude 11°N at any time – effectively stopping the Middle East sheep trade as the entrance to the Gulf of Aden is at 12°N.
Why are Australian sheep shipped to the Middle East?
It seems outwardly strange to ship live animals (and their feed) across an ocean just for them to be slaughtered for meat shortly after arrival.
But there is a demand for live Australian sheep in the Middle East, which means it’s economically viable for exporters to ship animals from southern Australia, particularly out of Fremantle, but also from ports including Portland and Adelaide.
Western Australian farmers received an average price of A$117 for each exported sheep during 2018, so the price of each sheep at the other end must be substantively greater.
There are significant animal welfare challenges in successfully live exporting sheep. Part of the problem has been that the location of the greatest concern for animal welfare is the Australian public. But the Australian public have no consumer power, they’re not the ones buying the sheep.
So, the Australian government has been required to “push” animal welfare requirements down the industry supply pipeline, rather than having these requirements being “pulled” through by market demand.
What we do not know is how the economics would change and whether additional market lines would open up for boxed meat – rather than live sheep – if the live trade were to be stopped.
Why was the ban put in place for the first time in 2019?
The ban was one of the consequences for the live sheep trade after disturbing video footage was revealed in April 2018. The graphic video showed sheep suffering and dying due to apparent heat stress on voyages from Australia to the Middle East.
The government immediately commissioned a review into the conditions for the export of sheep to the Middle East during the northern hemisphere summer.
That review made a number of recommendations, which were then implemented by the government, including increases in space allowance for sheep on board and independent auditing of ship ventilation systems. Government-appointed observers were also included on voyages, and the notifiable mortality threshold reduced from 2% to 1% of animals during a voyage.
Since government-appointed observers were included on voyages the notifiable mortality threshold on voyages reduced from 2% to 1% of animals.Trevor Collens/AAP
A key recommendation was that the regulatory framework should change from minimising mortality from heat stress to, instead, safeguarding animal welfare.
The government then commissioned further reviews to determine how to implement this recommendation, including an independent technical reference group.
This report was released on September 20, and the government has stated it will be used along with other information to determine the regulations for how (or if) live sheep shipments occur during the northern summer of 2020.
Are the changes sufficient?
The live export industry argues they have succeeded in making substantial changes to how it operates since the original footage was revealed in 2018.
Whether these will be sufficient to prevent further revelations of heat stress incidents or other adverse animal welfare outcomes remains to be seen.
Including independent observers on voyages to keep an eye on animal welfare should increase the transparency of what happens to sheep during live export shipments. Although, there has been criticism of the delay in reporting from this initiative.
The new arrangements in place since 2018 and the temporary ban from June to September are unlikely to satisfy animal welfare advocates who are against live exports. On the other hand, the live export industry argues the sector is important for Australian livelihoods, including supporting sheep farmers.
What’s more, the current coalition government has repeatedly stated its commitment to maintaining a live export industry. Interestingly, the 2019 federal election was the first time there was a clear policy difference on the issue between the major parties, with the ALP committed to a phase-out of the live export sheep trade.
It will be interesting to watch whether this policy difference will remain after the ALP’s review of its 2019 election policies.
But in terms of what more needs to be done, it’s likely impossible for policy-makers to satisfy all parties in the live export debate.
New overarching standards for the export of livestock from Australia are scheduled to be introduced soon, covering more than just heat stress risk.
However, those who are against the trade in live animals are unlikely to be persuaded to desist in their efforts. A repeated history of damaging incidents and revelations serves as a reminder of what may happen again in the future if the industry does not get to grips with its animal welfare responsibilities.
Most of us would hope the policies governments introduce are based on the best available evidence. However, our study published today suggests that may not be the case.
We found former politicians, staffers and public servants who go on to work for the industries they once regulated have a major influence on the current policy environment. They’re paid to advocate what’s best for their client, not for the Australian public.
Of the 560 people on the Australian government Register of Lobbyists in 2017, 197 stated they had previously been a government representative. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as most “lobbyists” are directly employed by the companies they lobby for and are therefore not recorded on the register.
In interviews with former politicians and advisers, we found the policymaking process could be corrupted by using knowledge gained in service of the community to advocate for industry.
Lessons from tobacco lobbying
Just like tobacco lobbyists have done over the past 50 years, profit-driven industries such as alcohol, junk food and gambling seek to deter, delay and water down effective public health polices that could restrict the availability of their harmful products.
These strategies have been described as “water dripping on stone”. They rely on persistence, rather than force, to persuade.
Another key tactic is to employ political representatives and public servants into industries they have recently been tasked with governing.
Our research
We obtained basic data about this last tactic from three soures: the Australian Government Register of Lobbyists, LinkedIn, and lobbyist business websites.
We have analysed the results from the Register of Lobbyists previously in 2014 and 2015. We found the registers did not meet the stated objective of making lobbying activity transparent to the Australian public.
In that study, we concluded the processes were in urgent need of reform in order to keep accurate records on lobbying, allow free and real-time access to the public, and ensure the records were adequately archived.
The policymaking process is corrupted when knowledge gained in service of the community is used to advocate for industry.Shutterstock
For this latest study, we looked at the job history of 122 lobbyists. Of those, most had held influential positions: 18% had been a member of parliament or senator and 47% had been a senior advisor or chief of staff.
The majority had spent more than ten years in government prior to their roles as lobbyists.
We also interviewed 28 key informants, including current and former Australian politicians, journalists, former political staffers, current civil servants and lobbyists.
These interviewees reported on several examples of people working at senior levels of government going on to work directly for alcohol, food or gambling industries, often in areas directly related to their previous government role.
This so-called “revolving door” between government and the food, alcohol and gambling industries can potentially favour industry interests by enhancing insider knowledge and providing access to policymakers through personal ties.
Allowing these industries privileged access to government threatens unbiased policymaking and creates an imbalance between the influence of industry and evidence-based public health advocacy.
One example of industry influence undermining evidence-based policy is the continued delays in implementing alcohol warning labels. The alcohol industry successfully delayed the mandatory implementation of alcohol warning labels about drinking when pregnant for more than six years after a parliamentary committee called for them in 2012.
Other warning labels about the links between alcohol use and cancer remain off the agenda completely.
Participants also spoke about the importance of the networks and relationships established through the revolving door.
One politician told us:
So someone retires from politics and then they have a ready-made set of relationships nurtured over many years of being colleagues with other Members of Parliament that they can then go and leverage on behalf of a commercial partner.
Another former politician reported:
You see former politicians popping up in these lobbying organisations, and the only reason they’re employed is because they can wield influence.
We urgently need to rethink how we regulate this process.
We need tighter and more robustly enforced regulations around “cooling-off periods” between government employment and lobbying roles. Although rules prevent federal ministers and parliamentary secretaries from lobbying in related areas for 18 months, these rules are poorly enforced.
Other countries have considerably longer cooling-off periods, with both the United States and Canada adopting a five-year ban on administration officials working in lobbying roles. Australia should follow the Canadian example as best practice.
Our research adds even more weight to existing calls for a federal anti-corruption body to provide oversight and transparency.
Government’s continued failure to adequately regulate the behaviour of former politicians, political staffers and public servants isn’t just an issue for public health policy. It also represents a fundamental corruption of our democracy.
Depression is a serious disorder marked by disturbances in mood, cognition, physiology and social functioning.
People can experience deep sadness and feelings of hopelessness, sorrow, emptiness and despair. These core features of depression have expanded to include an inability to experience pleasure, sluggish movements, changes in sleep and eating behaviour, difficulty concentrating and suicidal thoughts.
The first diagnostic criteria were introduced in the 1980s. Now we have an expanded set of concepts for describing depression, from mild to severe, major depressive disorder, chronic depression and seasonal affective disorder.
How we describe and classify mental disorders is a fundamental step towards explaining and treating them. When carrying out research on people with depression, diagnostic categories such as major depressive disorder (MDD) shape our explanations. But if the descriptions are wrong, our explanations will suffer as a consequence.
The problem is that classification and explanation are not completely independent tasks. How we classify disorders directly impacts how we explain them, and these explanations in turn impact our classifications. In this way, psychiatry is stuck in a circular trap.
The danger – for depression and for other mental disorders – is that we tailor our explanations to fit the classifications available and that the classifications are inadequate.
Traditionally, research has focused on understanding mental disorders as classified in manuals such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Most of these disorders are what we call “psychiatric syndromes” – clusters of symptoms that hang together in some meaningful way and are assumed to share a common cause.
But many of these syndromes are poorly defined because disorders can manifest in different ways in different people. This is known as “disorder heterogeneity”. For example, there are 227 different symptom combinations that meet the criteria for major depressive disorder.
The other problem is that diagnostic criteria often overlap across multiple disorders. Symptoms of restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability and sleep disturbance can be common for people experiencing generalised anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder.
This makes studying disorders like depression difficult. While we may think we are all explaining the same thing, we are actually trying to explain completely different variations of the disorder, or in some cases a completely different disorder.
A significant challenge is how to advance classification systems without abandoning their descriptive value and the decades of research they have produced. So what are our options?
A categorical approach, which sees disorders as discrete categories, has been the most prominent model of classification. But many researchers argue disorders such as depression are better seen as dimensional. For example, people who suffer from severe depression are just further along a spectrum of “depressed mood”, rather than being qualitatively different from the normal population.
Novel classification approaches such as the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology and research domain criteria have been put forward. While these better accommodate the dimensional nature of disorders and are less complex to use, they are conceptually limited.
The former relies on current diagnostic categories and all the problems that come with that. The latter relies on neuro-centrism, which means mental disorders are viewed as disorders of the brain and biological explanations are used in preference to social and cultural explanations.
A new approach called the symptom network model offers a departure from the emphasis on psychiatric syndromes. It sees mental disorders not as diseases but as the result of interactions between symptoms.
In depression, an adverse life event such as loss of a partner may activate a depressed mood. This in turn may cause neighbouring symptoms, such as insomnia and fatigue. But this model is only descriptive and offers no explanation of the processes that cause the symptoms themselves.
A simple way forward
We suggest that one way of advancing understanding of mental disorders is to move our focus from psychiatric syndromes to clinical phenomena.
Phenomena are stable and general features. Examples in clinical psychology include low self-esteem, aggression, low mood and ruminative thoughts. The difference between symptom and phenomena is that the latter are inferred from multiple information sources such as behavioural observation, self-report and psychological test scores.
For example, understanding the central processes that underpin the clinical phenomenon of the inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia) will provide greater insight for cases that are dominated by this symptom.
In this way we can begin to tailor our explanations for individual cases rather than using general explanations of the broad syndrome “major depressive disorder”.
The other advantage is that the central processes that make up these phenomena are also more likely to form reliable clusters or categories. Of course, achieving this understanding will require greater specification of clinical phenomena we want to explain. It is not enough to conclude that a research finding (such as low levels of dopamine) is associated with the syndrome depression, as the features of depression may vary significantly between individuals.
We need to be more specific about exactly what people with depression in our research are experiencing.
Building descriptions of clinical phenomena will help us to better understand links between signs, symptoms and causes of mental disorder. It will put us in a better position to identify and treat depression.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Stocks, Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University
In Australia, renewable energy is growing at a per capita rate ten times faster than the world average. Between 2018 and 2020, Australia will install more than 16 gigawatts of wind and solar, an average rate of 220 watts per person per year.
This is nearly three times faster than the next fastest country, Germany. Australia is demonstrating to the world how rapidly an industrialised country with a fossil-fuel-dominated electricity system can transition towards low-carbon, renewable power generation.
Renewable energy capacity installations per capita.International capacity data for 2018 from the International Renewable Energy Agency. Australian data from the Clean Energy Regulator., Author provided
We have analysed data from the regulator which tracks large- and small-scale renewable energy generation (including credible future projects), and found the record-high installation rates of 2018 will continue through 2019 and 2020.
Record renewable energy installation rates
While other analyses have pointed out that investment dollars in renewable energy fell in 2019, actual generation capacity has risen. Reductions in building costs may be contributing, as less investment will buy you the more capacity.
Last was a record year for renewable energy installations, with 5.1 gigawatts (GW) accredited in 2018, far exceeding the previous record of 2.2GW in 2017.
The increase was driven by the dramatic rise of large-scale solar farms, which comprised half of the new-build capacity accredited in 2018. There was a tenfold increase in solar farm construction from 2017.
We have projected the remaining builds for 2019 and those for 2020, based on data from the Clean Energy Regulator for public firm announcements for projects.
A project is considered firm if it has a power purchase agreement (PPA, a contract to sell the energy generated), has reached financial close, or is under construction. We assume six months for financial close and start of construction after a long-term supply contract is signed, and 12 or 18 months for solar farm or wind farm construction, respectively.
This year is on track to be another record year, with 6.5GW projected to be complete by the end of 2019.
The increase is largely attributable to a significant increase in the number of wind farms approaching completion. Rooftop solar has also increased, with current installation rates putting Australia on track for 1.9GW in 2019, also a new record.
This is attributed to the continued cost reductions in rooftop solar, with less than A$1,000 per kilowatt now considered routine and payback periods of the order of two to seven years.
Current (solid) and forecast (hashed) installations of renewable electricity capacity in Australia.Author provided
Looking ahead to 2020, almost 6GW of large-scale projects are expected to be completed, comprising 2.5GW of solar farms and 3.5GW of wind. Around the end of 2020, this additional generation would deliver the old Renewable Energy Target of 41,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) per annum. That target was legislated in 2009 by the Rudd Labor government but reduced to 33,000GWh by the Abbott Coalition government in 2015.
Maintaining the pipeline
There are strong prospects for continued high installation rates of renewables. Currently available renewable energy energy contracts are routinely offering less than A$50 per MWh. Long-term contracts for future energy supply have an average price of more than A$58 per MWh. This is a very reasonable profit margin, suggesting a strong economic case for continued installations. Wind and solar prices are likely to decline further throughout the 2020s.
State governments programs are also supporting renewable electricity growth. The ACT has completed contracts for 100% renewable electricity. Victoria and Queensland both have renewable energy targets of 50% renewable electricity by 2030. South Australia is expecting to reach 100% by 2025.
The main impediment to continued renewables growth is transmission. Transmission constraints have resulted in bottlenecks in moving electricity from some wind and solar farms to cities.
Tasmania’s strong wind resource requires a new connection to the mainland to unlock more projects. The limitations of current planning frameworks for this transition were recognised in Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s review of the National Electricity Market, with strong recommendations to overcome these problems and, in particular, to strengthen the role of the Australian Energy Market Operator.
Now we need state and federal governments to unlock or directly support transmission expansion. For example, the Queensland government has committed to supporting new transmission to unlock solar and wind projects in the far north, including the Genex/Kidston 250MW pumped hydro storage system. The New South Wales government will expedite planning approval for an interconnector between that state and South Australia, defining it as “critical infrastructure”.
These investments are key to Australia maintaining its renewable energy leadership into the next decade.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will J Grant, Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University
Call it lies, fake news, or just plain old bullshit – misinformation seems to flutter wilfully around the modern world. The truth, meanwhile, can take tedious decades to establish.
In Australia in recent days, a pro-coal Facebook group claimed Sydney’s Hyde Park was trashed by those who attended Friday’s climate strike. But the photo, shared thousands of times, was actually taken in London, months ago, at an unrelated event.
And this week Labor called for an investigation into whether social media giants are damaging the democratic process, claiming that during the May election Facebook refused to take down fake news about the party’s “death tax”.
A screen shot of a since-deleted tweet by The Australian Youth Coal Coalition which falsely claimed climate strike attendees left rubbish behind.Twitter
As the saying goes, a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. But while this saying clearly resonates in our current age of misinformation, the idea itself dates back at least 300 years.
Some claim the idea of the fast travelling lie was crafted by Winston Churchill in the mid-20th century; others by author Mark Twain at the end of the 19th. Yet the saying, or at least the sentiment underpinning it, is probably much older.
A statue of Winston Churchill in London. Some say Churchill coined the truth/lies adage.FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/EPA
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a Baptist preacher of Victorian London, cited a version of it in 1855, describing it as an “old proverb”. Author Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal fame, is said to have written in 1710 that “falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it”.
So the recognition that lies disseminate far more quickly than the truth appears to be several centuries old. This matters because while social media may have ramped up the problem of misinformation, the root causes remain the same – our cognitive and social biases.
It’s us!
There are huge bodies of research on what motivates us to not only believe, but seek outinformation that isn’t true. But often the simplest explanations are the best.
We tend to do and believe things that people we like, admire or identify with do and believe. It reinforces the bonds among our families and friends, our communities and countries, and is often referred to as the consensus heuristic. You see it in action, and use it yourself, every day.
So-called ‘fake news’ proliferates on social media, prompting calls for a crackdown on digital giants such as Facebook and Twitter.Harish Tyagi/EPA
Every time you uncritically accept the opinion of someone you like, you are applying consensus thinking – the consensus as you perceive it to be among “your” people.
What they say may well be entirely fact-based. But if it doesn’t correspond with facts, that won’t matter. You’ll buy it regardless because you are motivated to reinforce your connections with groups and ideas that are significant to you. We all do it, and there’s no shame in that.
Building on this, we regularly accept false, dodgy and downright incorrect information because it makes us happy, or at least minimises discomfort. It means we don’t have to change, confront flaws in our personal world view or stop doing something we like.
Smokers don’t keep smoking because they don’t think it’s harmful, but they might believe at some level it won’t be harmful to them. And they can always find “evidence” this is true: “my Uncle Chuck lived to 89 and he smoked two packs a day”.
As for contributing to climate change, a person might think: “I only drive my petrol-guzzling car a short distance work and back, I’m barely contributing to climate breakdown”. Or they might tell themsleves: “changing my behaviour wouldn’t even register, it’s the big companies and the government that need to do something about emissions reduction”.
With this way of thinking, any “facts” that support my kind of thinking are right, and those that don’t are wrong.
People are more likely to uncritically accept the opinion of someone they like, a phenomenon known as consensus heuristic.Kaymar Adl/Flickr
But “fixing” scientific misinformation will not, on its own, solve these problems. Inspiring mass action requires more than just ensuring the “right” information exists in the library of human knowledge.
If we’re to motivate people to change, we have to understand the values that underpin their assertions and actions and work in ways that resonate with them.
This might mean pressuring elected officials to provide large-scale, realistic, and well mapped-out transition plans for workers and communities that depend on coal for their livelihood. Coal miners, like all of us, are pretty damned keen on being able to earn a living. That is a value we can all relate to.
As a rule, change is not something that comes easily to most people – especially if it’s forced upon us. But when we agree on why it’s necessary and have a clear way to handle it, it’s possible to move forward.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce is reportedly Australia’s highest-earning chief executive. He’s also a firm believer in corporate activism.
His pay packet is estimated to have been A$23 million last year – though it’s apparently dropped a little since.
Joyce thinks he should use his position to push social causes he believes in. Under his watch, Qantas strongly backed the 2017 campaign for same-sex marriage, much to the chagrin of politicians with a different view.
Senior government minister Peter Dutton told business leaders at the time of the same-sex debate to “stick to their knitting”. Similar sentiments have been expressed recently by Ben Morton, the point man of prime minister Scott Morrison.
Corporate leaders should mind their own business and focus on maximising shareholder value, Morton told the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Joyce responded. “That’s democracy and companies are part of democracy, we represent individuals, passengers, employees, shareholders,” he said “We should have a voice on that, and it shouldn’t get to a stage if you don’t agree, don’t speak up, because I think that’s bad for democracy.”
It seems like it has the makings of heavyweight stoush. But really it’s a phoney war.
All this twisted debate in which chief executives talk about democracy and politicians about business management shows are the limits of corporate activism.
The whole thing is simply a distraction from the need for a real debate about the fact already huge CEO salaries continue to grow while average wages stagnate.
Moral postures
Morton, who is assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, unleashed his critique in the wake of reports companies were giving employees time off to attend climate change rallies on September 20.
“Too often I see corporate Australia succumb or pander to similar pressures from noisy, highly orchestrated campaigns of elites typified by groups such as GetUp or activist shareholders,” Morton said.
“Too often big businesses have been in the front line on social issues, but missing in action when arguing for policies which would grow jobs and the economy.”
This could well have been interpreted as criticising the likes of Joyce – and Joyce certainly appeared to jab back when he addressed the National Press Club a few days later.
He listed advocating for company tax cut and its industrial relations reforms as evidence he and other chief executives talked about major economic issues.
But businesses that ignored social issues, he said, hurt their bottom line: “You have to do both – and good companies will do both.”
Whatever Joyce’s social justice instincts on other issues, he is clearly not the person to talk about about inequality. But it’s not just that he’s silent on this issue. Instead of retreating to his counting house, he came out swinging in defence of his earning almost 300 times the average Aussie income.
“My salary was determined by our shareholders,” he said. “That’s because our market capital went from just over $2 billion to $10 billion. And our shareholders did exceptionally well out of it”.
So much for the quiet Australians
Morton said he had “an old-fashioned view” that businesses should “maximise return to their shareholders”.
The case of Alan Joyce shows profit maximisation is not at all incompatible with corporate activism. Nor is support for a limited range of progressive social causes incompatible with defending the inequality epitomised by super-size executive salaries.
Morton described himself as standing up for the “quiet Australians”. So it might be considered an irony that his complaints about CEOs pandering to a left elite helped distract attention from the issue of inequality.
Joyce meanwhile insisted he would continue to do what is “morally right” for society.
But declaring unelected corporate executives have a responsibility to use their privileged position in the economic pecking order to push business-friendly political causes is, at best, controversial. At worst, his belief he has the right as a chief executive to represent people who haven’t chosen his as a political representative is downright anti-democratic.
All this quibbling narrows the political and economic agenda to a sterile debate between “good ethics is good business” activism and good old-fashioned capitalism.
Whichever one you pick, the fair distribution of economic prosperity among working Australians has been left off the democratic table. Such are the limits of CEO activism.
