Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Carey, Professor, Director of the Centre for Remote Health, Flinders University

In any year, one in five Australians will experience symptoms of a mental illness.

While drug treatments are widely used and can be effective, they sometimes come with troubling side-effects such as weight gain, headaches, and fatigue.

Talking therapies can be just as effective for a number of mental health conditions including anxiety and depression, or can be a good add-on therapy for those who are finding success with medications.

And they have the added benefit of tackling any underlying reasons why the problem arose in the first place.

So, what are the options for treatment and how do they work?

Read more: More Australians are diagnosed with depression and anxiety but it doesn’t mean mental illness is rising

First, find a psychologist you click with

One of the most important aspects of psychological treatment is having an engaging relationship with your psychologist.

If you don’t “click” within the first few sessions, treatment is unlikely to be effective.

This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you or your psychologist. It’s just that this particular relationship isn’t going to be useful – and you should seek out someone you can connect with.

It’s also important to find the method of therapy that suits you best.

Some people, for example, like to get clear instructions and advice, while others prefer to take time to discover their own solutions. Each of these people will connect with different types of therapy and different psychologists.

So what are the key types of therapy psychologists offer and who are they best suited to?

Cognitive behaviour therapy

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is one of the most widely used and well-known talking therapies.

CBT refers to a range of different structured approaches that are based on the assumption that the way a person feels is closely related to the way a person thinks and the way they behave.

The treatment then uses activities to target both the things people think (their cognitions) and the things they do (their behaviours).

To change a person’s feelings, a psychologist providing CBT will help that person engage in different activities that can help to change thinking and behaviour patterns.

A CBT psychologist might encourage a person to keep a diary, for example, of the kinds of things they think through the day. Thought diaries often follow an ABC format:

• A, the activating event – the thing that made the thought happen
• B, the belief – the actual thought itself
• C, the consequence – how thinking that thought made the person feel.

Sometimes D and E are added:

• D, some disputing the person could do – what could they think instead
• E, the end result – reflecting on how this alternative way of thinking makes the person feel.

Read more: Explainer: what is cognitive behaviour therapy?

Acceptance and commitment therapy

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is another popular treatment that can be effective across a wide range of situations and problems.

ACT specifically targets the person’s tendency to avoid things and helps them develop greater psychological flexibility so they can pursue areas of value and live meaningful lives.

While CBT tries to change thinking and behaviour, ACT introduces the intriguing idea of people not changing their thoughts and behaviours but, rather, achieving a state of mind where they’re able to notice the problematic thoughts, images, feelings, or behaviours but not be overwhelmed or consumed by them. That’s the “acceptance” part.

Read more: Everything dies and it’s best we learn to live with that

ACT also encourages people to identify values that are important to them and figure out ways their day-to-day life can reflect these values. That’s the commitment part.

ACT psychologists have a range of novel and engaging activities at their disposal. An ACT psychologist might help a person visualise placing their thoughts on leaves floating down a stream. They can then watch their thoughts float by and disappear down the stream.

Behavioural activation

Behavioural activation was initially developed for the treatment of depression but has since been used more widely. It involves identifying and scheduling activities that promote enjoyment or reduce stress.

Behavioural activation helps people identify things in their environment that are contributing to the problem, and the things that could really help, along with the behaviours that are associated with each of those things.

Read more: ‘What is wrong with me? I’m never happy and I hate school’

The focus of behavioural activation is on helping people develop specific goals and achievable plans that activate rewarding behaviours.

Behavioural activation can involve similar activities to CBT, with more of an emphasis on the behaviours than the thoughts. Someone engaging with a behavioural activation psychologist, for example, might spend time monitoring the activities they do throughout the day and rating each in terms of the impact it has on their mood.

Method of levels

Method of levels is a newer and less well-known treatment but is gaining increasing interest. It focuses on the control that a person has in their life, how it was interrupted, and how it can be restored.

Method of levels has similarities with each of the other therapies but uses the conversation that develops in therapy, based on the indivdual’s perspective of their problems, as the main “technique”.

This type of therapy responds to how a person is functioning “right now” in the session as they’re talking to the psychologist.

The topic of any session is determined by the person with the problem. The psychologist focuses on the distress associated with any particular pattern of symptoms rather than the symptoms themselves.

If a person reported, for example, being highly anxious in social situations and constantly worrying about what other people were thinking of them, the psychologist would be interested in exploring what bothered the person about feeling that way, what it was interfering with, and what it was stopping them from doing.

Through these conversations, the psychologist helps people generate their own solutions to their problems rather than providing advice and guidance from their perspective.

Method of levels recognises the variability in how long it takes for people to resolve psychological and social problems and that psychological change often follows a nonlinear, unpredictable course, so it uses a patient-led approach to appointment scheduling rather than neat schedules.

What if it’s not working?

There are many more treatments available than those listed above, and many psychologists will be skilled in more than one treatment or may even combine different treatment types.

If you can find someone you relate to, who is interested in monitoring your progress on a regular basis, and who can work flexibly and responsively with you about the things you’re troubled by, it’s likely you’ll find the relief you are looking for.

But there are no guarantees. A treatment is simply a resource which people can use to help make sense of things that previously seemed senseless and to restore contentment, satisfaction, and feeling that you’re living a valued life. It’s the people who make treatments work.

If you don’t seem to be getting the results you want, it could be time to consider seeing someone else or trying a different type of therapy.

Read more: Talking therapies can harm too – here’s what to look out for

– ref. Thinking of seeing a psychologist? Here’s how to choose the therapy best for you – http://theconversation.com/thinking-of-seeing-a-psychologist-heres-how-to-choose-the-therapy-best-for-you-114294

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Freeman, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Newcastle

Play is an important way for children to learn about the world around them.

Through play, they learn cultural norms, socialisation guidelines and experiment with different ways to interact with their environment.

But play between a father and their child or children can offer a different type of play. It’s often boisterous, physical and competitive, and this all has an equally important role to play in a child’s development.

Read more: Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop

The rough-and-tumble play

Dads tend to engage in more active, physical play activities with their young children – rough-and-tumble play.

Dads often engage in activities such as play wrestling and throwing their child into the air.

This type of play is full of excitement and challenge, and if it weren’t for the clear enjoyment of both parties, it might sometimes seem a little aggressive to an outsider.

But this play isn’t just fun. Research has shown it’s also important for healthy child development.

Of course, rough-and-tumble play doesn’t have to be exclusive to dads. Mums can also engage in such play with their kids and, although that’s not been the subject of research to date, there’s no reason the results can’t be just the same.

Rough-and-tumble play improves social skills

In one study we looked at the quality of father-child rough-and-tumble play, and children’s emotional and behavioural problems.

High-quality rough-and-tumble play was defined as being warm and sensitive, dominance-sharing and playful in nature.

We found high-quality play was related to higher levels of what’s termed prosocial behaviour. Prosocial behaviour includes things like being considerate of other people’s feelings and sharing well with others.

In other words, high-quality rough-and-tumble play is linked to nice children who are probably going to have an easier time making friends with their peers.

Rough-and-tumble play improves emotion regulation

Play that’s active, physical and competitive has also been linked to better emotion regulation.

Dads have a tendency to push their kids to the limit, to set goals that are just a bit beyond their reach, and to rough-and-tumble play in a way that gets the kids worked up.

Good rough-and-tumble play is play where the kids don’t just get worked up and potentially frustrated, but where the child learns how to handle these emotions – how to regulate them.

This is important as better emotion regulation allows children to understand and manage their own behaviour and reactions.

Rough-and-tumble play reduces injury risk

Now this one might seem a bit counter-intuitive.

In one of the studies we conducted, we looked at the relationship between father-child rough-and-tumble play and childhood injury rates in 46 families.

What we found was the more dads engaged in rough-and-tumble play with their kids, the fewer injuries those kids sustained.

We think the rough-and-tumble play is teaching kids about their limits – how far they can physically push themselves.

Winners and losers

One of the important lessons from any rough-and-tumble play, though, is about the balance between winning and losing. It’s important parents don’t dominate.

One of my favourite rough-and-tumble games is the sock wrestle. Each player puts on just one sock. The aim of the game is to get your opponent’s sock off their foot. Give it a try. It’s simple, but a lot of fun!

When you’re playing this with your kid (or kids if you want an extra challenge!), make sure you share the winning and losing.

It’s important for your child to both win and lose, as without the losing and the frustration that comes with that, you’re not helping to teach them how to regulate their emotions.

So it seems as though the rough-and-tumble play with kids isn’t just enjoyable, it’s also an important part of a child’s development.

Read more: Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop

It’s teaching children how to regulate their emotions, how to safely push and extend their limits, how to assess risky situations, and how to get along well with others.

Not only that, but physical activity has multiple health benefits too. Rough-and-tumble play is the sort of thing we should be encouraging parents to do regularly.

– ref. Kids learn valuable life skills through rough-and-tumble play with their dads – http://theconversation.com/kids-learn-valuable-life-skills-through-rough-and-tumble-play-with-their-dads-119241

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warwick Potter, Lecturer in Conducting, The University of Queensland

Conductors are a relatively new breed of musician. Only as compositions became more complex circa 1810 (blame Beethoven!) did the actual need for a conductor become more relevant. Conductors were in demand pre-Beethoven, but to a far lesser degree.

As the noted author and music critic Norman Lebrecht has alluded to in his book The Maestro Myth, there remains considerable mystique surrounding conductors, despite the fact that thousands of performance recordings showing conductors “face-on” are now available online. One such example is Sir Simon Rattle conducting Gustav Mahler’s 2nd symphony.

As with all branches of music performance, a conductor’s job is communication, not only musically, but beyond the music.

Pre-performance

A conductor’s communication with an audience begins from the first step onto the concert platform. During the walk to the podium, he or she must not only negotiate safe passage through an often crowded performance space, but also smile, engage with both audience and performers and complete the pre-concert rituals. (The latter include acknowledging audience and orchestra, shaking hands with the Concertmaster, and bowing.)

All this while also concentrating on how the opening few bars of the repertoire needs to be conducted technically and musically.

A conductor will usually be professionally proficient on at least one instrument. He or she must, however, have a strong working knowledge and understanding of all instruments and voices being conducted. The score is fully absorbed prior to the rehearsal stage and is very rarely sight-read on the podium itself.

The choice of concert attire can effectively communicate with audience members during “the walk”. Although formal concert dress for mainstream subscription concerts is still in vogue, other concert portfolios offer more interesting dress options: the sight of Darth Vader, for example, conducting is not unusual!

I use a pair of trusted red stripy shoes to make impact with audiences, a fact noted by reviewers who have compared me to the Bishop of Rome.

In the 21st century, conductors are increasingly required to introduce the performance. But eventually, the conductor will turn his/her back on the audience (with the exception of those sitting in choir stalls) and the music will commence.

What about those arm movements?

Intense eye contact with the ensemble members is pivotal to the success of most performances. Now comes the almost fabled waving of arms.

This is part mathematical, part artistic. The mathematical refers to the precise time keeping of rhythm, which in turn allows the ensemble to have the greatest chance of performing together.

Many conductors use a baton to help pinpoint this use of time, although some do not. Such an individual choice can vary with the size and style of the repertoire being performed. The beating arm is usually on the individual’s strongest side: I am right-handed, for example.

A major part of the conductor’s role is to accurately show the length of each bar according to the interpretation and theoretical structure of it. A bar is a mathematical tool that helps to visually organise the music for the performers concerned.

An avid audience member will notice that most bars have beating patterns that conductors utilise. The beating pattern is dictated by the number of beats in the bar (the usual number of beats would be between two and four). It is defined by a combination of vertical and horizontal beats (the conductor will indicate these by moving their arm up or down or side to side).

The more beats there are, the more complex the pattern becomes. The type of beat pattern is usually dictated by and reflects the rhythmic structure of each bar.

Nearly all bars have first and last beats, respectively known as the downbeat and upbeat (it is rarer for bars to have only one beat). Downbeats move from north to south, and upbeats do the opposite: imagine drawing an imaginary line in the air from 12:00 to 6:00 (downbeat) on a clock, and vice versa (upbeat).

Both downbeats and upbeats act as a visual aid to performers to check respective points within the bars and scores being played. Upbeats and downbeats visualise bar lines, which in turn mathematically aide the music.

While most bars in music are of similar lengths, this is not always the case, as online recordings of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring will prove. This notorious work has multiple and often changing bar lengths, all of which require high levels of technique and musicality from a conductor.

Emphasising Volume

The beating arm does not only communicate time: it also has the potential to influence degrees of volume. In general terms, the louder the music is, the larger the size of physical gesture used.

A conductor’s whole body helps to communicate the artistic message to an ensemble, and, consequently, to audiences. From head to toe, it can musically influence the performance, via such things as player cues, dynamic control (volume), ensemble balance, and artistic shape.

Communication, whether verbal or otherwise, is a conductor’s business. Without successful communication from the podium, the enjoyment of music making for all concerned, including the audience, is lessened.

– ref. Explainer: what exactly do musical conductors do? – http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-exactly-do-musical-conductors-do-82889

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

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has paved the way for increased public preparedness to defend Australia’s sovereignty against foreign interference, outgoing ASIO head Duncan Lewis has said.

In an address to the Lowy Institute, Lewis repeated his earlier warning about this interference. “The current scale and scope of foreign intelligence activity against Australian interests is unprecedented,” he said.

While the threat was not just from any one particular country, Lewis noted the scale and sophistication of threats varied greatly.

He did not mention China by name, but the government considers China poses by far the largest threat in terms of interference on a range of fronts.

Some years ago Lewis warned the major political parties of this attempted influence through political donations. In the current NSW ICAC inquiry attention has been centred on an alleged $100,000 donation to Labor in 2015 by Chinese property developer Huang Xiangmo, a banned donor. Huang later was prohibited from re-entering Australia, on ASIO advice that he had links with the Chinese Communist Party.

Lewis warned that “unlike the immediacy of terrorism incidents, the harm from acts of espionage may not present for years, even decades, after the activity has occurred. These sorts of activities are typically quiet and insidious, with a long ‘tail’”.

“There has been a great deal of coverage recently in the Australian media regarding espionage and foreign interference, ascribing blame and describing vectors of attack and influence.

“It is not proper for me to dive into the detail of this coverage for a number of reasons.

“Suffice it to say I am satisfied that ASIO is following the ball closely and has seeded what is now a public consciousness and awareness of the matter and I hope in short-order there will come an increased public preparedness to better defend our country and its sovereignty,” Lewis said.

Read more: New ASIO head, Mike Burgess, is moving from one security agency to another

On terrorism, he said the global threat from violent Islamist extremism was not eliminated by ISIL’s declining fortunes and loss of terititory.

“Increasingly, disillusioned ISIL supporters are turning to more egregious and desperate measures in and beyond the Middle-East.”

On the “complex” issue of returning foreign fighters, “we have worked to develop and implement effective and appropriate management strategies. We will be paying a lot of attention on a case by case basis to the security implications of any returnees with a range of responses”.

These varied, “depending on whether the returnee is an active foreign fighter, where a successful brief would see them in jail, or whether the case is of an infant who clearly would be approached in a completely different way,” Lewis said.

“At the other end of the spectrum, right wing or ethno-supremacist extremism is not being ignored by ASIO.

“Recent history around the world is peppered by acts of extreme right wing motivated attack”, including the horrific Christchurch massacre, Lewis said.

The new chief of ASIO is Mike Burgess, former head the Australian Signals Directorate.

– ref. Outgoing ASIO head hopes for greater public preparedness to defend Australian sovereignty – http://theconversation.com/outgoing-asio-head-hopes-for-greater-public-preparedness-to-defend-australian-sovereignty-122969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin., Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The Australian economy is tepid, with consumer spending the weakest in ten years, business investment shrinking, and economic growth too weak to cover population growth.

Were it not for very strong growth in export income and the biggest surge in government spending in 15 years, the economy would have shrunk.

The treasury believes the Australian economy is capable of growing at a sustained annual pace of 2.75%. The growth rate in the past finacial of 1.4% reported on Wednesday is only half that.

Not since September 2009 has the gap between what the Australian economy is capable of and what it has been delivering been so wide. 2009 was the year of the global financial crisis.

Real GDP growth

Economic growth has rarely been as low as 1.4% outside of a recession.

When account is taken of population growth, income and production per citizen went backwards. The last time that happened was during financial crisis. The last time before that was during the early 1990s recession.

Household spending, which accounts for more than half of total spending, also failed to keep pace with population growth. The inflation-adjusted growth rate of 1.4% was also the lowest since the financial crisis.

Growth in household consumption

Other figures released on Tuesday show retail spending dipped a further 0.1% in July.

Hardest hit was spending in the 2018-19 financial year was spending on cars. Updated figures released at the same time as the national accounts show sales of new cars down 10% over the year to August.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said he preferred to think that households were delaying rather than abandoning purchases of cars, waiting until the economic outlook was clearer.

Growth in consumption by category

Weighing on consumers is an extended period of unusually low wage growth that the national accounts show has brought the share of national income paid out as wages down to just about its lowest point since 1964.

Although the wage and superannuation bill increased, climbing 5% over the year as employment grew, the share of national income paid out as wages and super fell to 52% – the lowest since the global financial crisis, and before that the lowest since the Beatles toured Australia and Donald Horne published The Lucky Country.

Also weighing on consumers has been housing. Investment in housing (including alterations and additions) was down 9.1% over the year. Business investment fell 10%.

Company profits grew 12.8%, but leaving aside mining companies, whose profits grew strongly on the back of higher prices and export volumes, other profits grew only weakly, climbing 1.8%.

Mining income pushed up nominal GDP (the raw dollars unadjusted for prices that drive nominal incomes) up a healthy 5.4%, probably delivering the government a budget surplus one year earlier than promised, in 2018-19. Frydenberg said he already knew the result and would unveil it in a fortnight. His smiles suggested it’s one he likes.

Nominal GDP growth

Mining income also pushed up what the Reserve Bank regards as the best measure of actual living standards, which (perhaps surprisingly) is not GDP per capita, which is going backwards, but a lesser known and purpose-designed measure known as “real net disposable income per capita”. It grew a healthy 2.65% over the year and a very healthy 1% over the quarter.

It is true that much of it was paid out in mining profits, but it is also true that it isn’t necessarily right to latch on to the cruder measure of GDP per capita and say that living standards are going backwards.

Helping maintain living standards was a very healthy growth in government spending, the highest for some time – not government infrastructure spending, that actually fell over the year as some state projects wound up, but day to day spending on things such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Oddly, because of the way the national accounts work, economic growth was also helped by a slump in imports, down 2.8% over the year due largely to a slump in imports of consumer goods.

The economy is in a bad way. Aside from mining and government spending, the only real bright spot is employment growth, and as the Reserve Bank often points out, employment growth doesn’t tell us much about what’s going to happen.

It tends to lag everything else in the economy, by up to nine months. By the time it turns down, other things already have.

Few clear ways out

Frydenberg doesn’t seem too worried. For now he is banking on the tax cuts and the interest rate cuts in June and July to lift investment and spending.

The treasurer has two Plan B’s. One is an aggressive investment allowance for business. He spoke about introducing one last week, but on Wednesday he indicated that he wasn’t planning to do so until next year’s May budget. If needed, he could bring the date forward.

The other is another Reserve Bank rate cut, most likely at the board’s meeting on Melbourne Cup Day, by which time it will have before it an updated set of inflation figures.

Read more: ‘Back yourself’ Treasurer Frydenberg tells business. But it’s not that simple

Frydenberg revealed on Wednesday that he is taking a close look at the government’s contract with the Reserve Bank, a formal written agreement which is renewed after each election.

He has asked the treasury to look at it to see whether it needs to be tightened to make the bank more responsive to the state of the economy.

– ref. Why we’ve the weakest economy since the global financial crisis, with few clear ways out – http://theconversation.com/why-weve-the-weakest-economy-since-the-global-financial-crisis-with-few-clear-ways-out-122942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danny Eckert, Director, Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, Professor, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Flinders University

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.

Why are some people affected by sleep paralysis? – Tess, age 13.

Falling asleep is a bit like flicking off a light switch. One moment we are awake, but then the switch is flicked and we fall asleep.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. But sometimes, the switch gets a bit “sticky” and the light flickers between being awake and asleep. This is what happens with sleep paralysis – when you wake up but feel like you can’t move.

To answer your question, you’re more likely to experience sleep paralysis if:

Many people experience sleep paralysis at some stage, and it’s usually first noticed in teenagers. It can affect men or women.

Overall, though, there’s still a lot scientists don’t know about sleep paralysis and why some people are more prone to it than others.

Here’s a bit about what we do know.

Read more: Curious Kids: Where do dreams come from?

Our brain is half asleep

In the olden days, some people called sleep paralysis the “Night Hag” and said it felt like a spooky witch or demon was sitting on your chest. Now we know it is quite a common sleep problem or what doctors call a parasomnia, caused by a little brain hiccup. And thankfully, it usually doesn’t last very long.

With sleep paralysis, some parts of your brain are awake and still active but other parts are fast asleep.

The sleeping part is the section of the brain that tells the muscles to relax while we sleep so we don’t act out our dreams. Evolution probably gave us that trick because acting out dreams can be harmful to yourself or others (although this trick doesn’t always work and some people do act out their dreams).

Sleep paralysis can feel pretty strange and scary, at least until you realise what is happening.

Sleep paralysis often doesn’t need treatment

If you are unable to move or speak for a few seconds or minutes when falling asleep or waking up, then it is likely that you have what doctors call “isolated recurrent sleep paralysis”.

If you sometimes experience sleep paralysis, here are some things you can try at home:

• make sure you get enough sleep
• try to reduce stress in your life, especially just before bedtime
• try a different sleeping position (especially if you sleep on your back)

See your doctor if sleep paralysis continually prevents you from getting a good night’s sleep.

Your doctor may ask about how you’re feeling, your health history and if your family has had sleep problems. They may tell you to go to a specialist sleep doctor who can investigate further.

Read more: Curious Kids: What happens in our bodies when we sleep?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: why are some people affected by sleep paralysis? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-are-some-people-affected-by-sleep-paralysis-121125

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Dominey-Howes, Professor of Hazards and Disaster Risk Sciences, University of Sydney

At least seven people have died in the wake of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, although that figure is expected to rise as rescue work continues.

Dorian began life as a small tropical depression southeast of the Lesser Antilles on August 24, 2019, and grew to be a Category 5 hurricane as it devastated the Bahamas.

Read more: Damage estimates for hurricanes like Dorian don’t capture the full cost of climate change-fueled disasters

At the time of writing, Dorian has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm and is currently tracking northward parallel to the US coast.

Where Dorian decides to travel next is still hard to forecast. It does not look like Dorian will make landfall in the United States, but the US National Hurricane Center currently expects it to turn northwards by Wednesday evening, followed by a turn towards the north-northeast on Thursday morning local time.

On this track, the core of Hurricane Dorian will move dangerously close to the Florida east coast and the Georgia coast. The centre of Dorian is forecast to move near or over the coast of South Carolina and North Carolina on Thursday through Friday morning.

Dorian is the second most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, packing sustained winds of more than 270km per hour, with peak gusts approaching 350km/h. At its peak the storm system was more than 700km in diameter, causing massive rainfall and a huge storm surge peaking at more than 7 metres above sea level – both contributing to substantial flooding.

As a Category 2 storm, it still has 177km/h winds and tremendous destructive capacity.

Path of devastation

As Dorian passed over the Bahamas absolutely the worst scenario occurred: it more or less stopped dead in its tracks.

Slow-moving hurricanes do immense amounts of damage. Rather than moving on quickly, high winds, heavy rainfall and large storm surges all combine to hammer the landscape and of course, people, buildings and crucial infrastructure. Dorian sat over the Bahamas for more than 20 hours, maximising the amount of damage.

The official death toll is currently seven, but Prime Minister Hubert Minnis and national and international emergency management agencies expect that number to rise sharply as response and recovery teams start to gain access to heavily damaged areas.

Aerial footage is emerging of extensive damage across wide areas, with total devastation of built structures and massive impact on the natural environment.

Is Dorian linked to climate change?

Many people are understandably asking if there is a direct connection between human-induced climate change and Hurricane Dorian. The short answer is it’s hard to say.

Here’s what we know. By adding greenhouse warming gases to the atmosphere, more heat is trapped in the atmosphere and oceans. Increasing heat equals increasing energy in the atmosphere-ocean system, and increased heat fuels extreme events such as hurricanes, heatwaves, storms, and floods. A new science called “attribution” investigates the statistical probability that a particular event such as Hurricane Dorian is more likely in a human-warmed climate. Work is now under way to gather the data necessary to determine mathematically whether Dorian was likely connected to a warming world.

Read more: Extreme weather news may not change climate change skeptics’ minds

Regardless, previous work shows Atlantic hurricanes have been getting larger and more intense, and significantly more destructive.

What are the lessons?

Australia, like many parts of the world, is regularly affected by hurricanes, although we refer to them as tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean or typhoons in the western Pacific.

Continued investment in detection, monitoring and forecasting are vital. Linked to this is the need for ongoing effects to improve community education about the dangers and how to prepare at the start of hurricane or cyclone seasons.

More research is needed to understand future changes in tropical cyclone frequency and intensity as well as their complex behaviour so experts can provide more reliable forecasts and path track estimates. This is really important because current forecasts show that in some parts of the world, the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones will increase and in other parts, decrease. This has important implications for disaster preparedness and response.

Read more: Why the Indian Ocean is spawning strong and deadly tropical cyclones

Crucially, Dorian shows we cannot be complacent about the dangers of large-scale weather events, and the ongoing effects of climate change.

– ref. Hurricane Dorian: where it hit, where it’s headed, and why it’s so destructive – http://theconversation.com/hurricane-dorian-where-it-hit-where-its-headed-and-why-its-so-destructive-122937

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Jones, Lecturer in Musical Theatre, Griffith University

In a 2004 original musical about creating an original musical – cheekily titled [title of show] – one writer asks, “So movies make good musicals?” His writing partner responds: “Well, they make musicals.”

This year, Australian theatre audiences have seen stage adaptations of the films School of Rock, Billy Elliot, Saturday Night Fever and Muriel’s Wedding. Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s adaptation of Bring It On, based on the 2000 cheerleading movie, has already played in Melbourne and Perth and opened in Sydney last week.

In 2020, productions of Frozen, Waitress, Moulin Rouge and Shrek will be performed across Australia.

Some original imports like Come From Away and The Book of Mormon are being seen on Australian stages and Hamilton will open here next year, but the emphasis on movie adaptation seems to have a limiting effect on original Australian creation.

Recent announcements by the Queensland Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company and Belvoir St Theatre do not include plans to premiere new Australian musicals in 2020.

From novel to screen to stage

Musical theatre has always been a genre that favours adaptation. In 1927, Show Boat was an adaptation of Edna Ferber’s novel. Oklahoma was based on the play Green Grow The Lilacs by Lynn Riggs. Musicals were adapted from novels, plays, short stories (South Pacific, Guys and Dolls), comics (Annie, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown) and even the Bible (Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar).

When Oscar Hammerstein II mentored Stephen Sondheim as a composer and lyricist, he set him the task to write four musicals, including three adaptations.

As cinema increased in popularity, musicals were increasingly based on movies. These ranged from arthouse films such as Fellini’s 8 ½ (adapted as Maury Yeston’s Nine) and Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of A Summer Night (Stephen Sondheim’s inspiration for A Little Night Music) to blockbusters such as Sister Act.

Of course, this process can also be reversed with movie musicals like the upcoming Cats starting life onstage. The cycle completes itself when a production like Hairspray goes from screen to stage and is then filmed as a movie musical.

Adapting popular films for the stage became common practice in the 21st century as producers sought to draw new audiences into theatres to see shows with familiar titles. The most recent Broadway season included adaptations of Pretty Woman, Tootsie and Beetlejuice.

Many ways to stage

The most straightforward adaptation approach is to use songs from the soundtrack of an original movie to create a jukebox-style experience. Moulin Rouge is an example of this style of adaptation, along with Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Although the music rarely propels the plot, the songs provide spectacular entertainment.

Other adaptations, such as School of Rock, Kinky Boots and Pretty Woman take an existing plot and insert original songs, usually by one composer (Andrew Lloyd Webber for School of Rock, Cyndi Lauper for Kinky Boots and Bryan Adams for Pretty Woman). Songs are used to create memorable production numbers, but also take the place of dialogue or provide a reflective solo number.

One difficulty with this style of adaptation, though, is that audiences are not familiar with the new songs and often expect to hear music from the original movie. The Roy Orbison song Oh Pretty Woman was not originally included in the Broadway production of Pretty Woman but was later added to the finale for this reason.

Disney’s stage adaptations (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) tend to be a hybrid of these two approaches, incorporating the well-loved songs from the movie and adding new songs by the same composer.

Bring on originality

Some of the most successful film adaptations bring new elements to create a stage version with enough familiarity to appeal to the audience while also updating the setting or altering the plot to spark new moments of engagement.

Muriel’s Wedding still tells the familiar story of awkward Muriel Heslop but contemporises the original film by incorporating the pressures of social media in the song Shared, Viral, Linked, Liked.

Bring It On maintains the thrilling cheerleading elements of the movie, but incorporates issues of self-esteem, socio-economics and the LGBTQ community.

Australian musicals such as Hot Shoe Shuffle (1992), The Boy From Oz (1998) and Keating! The Musical (2005) have proved successful in the past. Since 2017, Muriel’s Wedding has toured nationally and Barbara and the Camp Dogs trimphed at the Helpmann Awards.

But other than a revival of Bran Nu Dae our stages will be bereft of original Australian musicals next year. This may reflect an influx of international productions and low risk scheduling.

Adaptation is an important element of musical theatre, which can harness the power of a well-known property for the stage and draw new audiences to the theatre. While film adaptations are sometimes critiqued as shameless attempts to play on nostalgia to chase dollars, they can also produce satisfying theatrical pieces that develop the artform.

Hopefully, those new audiences will eventually encourage Australian producers to develop original works as well.

– ref. Hollywood onstage: why are so many musicals adapted from movies? – http://theconversation.com/hollywood-onstage-why-are-so-many-musicals-adapted-from-movies-122329

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Wynn, Senior Economic Advisor, CSIRO

Growing interest in healthy and sustainable lifestyles could be worth about A$25 billion and make up about 10% of the value of Australia’s food and agribusiness sector by the end of next decade.

These projections are made by Australia’s industrial research agency, CSIRO, in an economic analysis published today.

The high rate of growth in demand for healthy and sustainable products could make the food and agribusiness sector more valuable than mining. The sector currently contributes about A$138 billion to the Australian economy, or about 7.6% of GDP, compared with 8% from mining.

Domestic demand will comprise about $15 billion. Exports of $10 billion will be underpinned by rising demand throughout Asia, where Australian produce already has a reputation for quality, safety and value.

Growth opportunities

In health and wellness products, our report examines four high-growth opportunities:

• fortified and functional foods, which contain added ingredients intended to aid health
• free-from and natural products, including gluten-free and certified organic
• vitamins and supplements
• personalised nutrition.

In sustainable solutions, we identify three growth areas:

• alternative protein sources, any food eaten as an alternative to meat and seafood
• organic waste conversion, generating useful products from waste
• sustainable packaging, such as bioplastics and biodegradable packaging.

Read more: Beyond meat? The market for meat substitutes is way overdone

As well as these areas relating to health and sustainability, we also look at three areas of “premium interactions” – products and services that attract premium prices due to quality, convenience, luxury or novel attributes, ranging from rock lobsters to gourmet cheeses and winery visits.

Estimating potential

This new economic analysis builds on CSIRO’s 2017 Food & Agribusiness roadmap. It considers factors such as trends in consumer preferences, competitive advantages, potential competitors and substitutes, and broader macroeconomic forces such as population and income growth.

Because industry outlooks and projections are subject to high degrees of uncertainty, we have consciously included data sources, assumptions and methodology in the report. We welcome discussion of our assumptions and estimates.

The following figure shows the expected growth rate and potential size of the various market segments in 2030.

The biggest opportunity is in fortified and functional foods. Examples include probiotics and omega-3 oils added to yoghurt and milk, and antioxidant-rich breads, cereals and beverages.

Although this is a mature industry, CSIRO’s analysis suggests its value will increase from $6.7 billion in 2018 to $9.7 billion in 2030.

The second-biggest market potential is in alternative proteins. These include plant proteins such as soy and pea, and emerging products such as insect-based ingredients.

The market for alternative proteins is expected to grow at about 5% a year, more than double the rate of 2.4% for the whole food and agribusiness sector.

As well as domestic and export sales valued at $6.6 billion in 2030, we estimate alternative protein sources may be worth $5.4 billion in carbon emission and water savings. This estimate is based on first calculating the emissions and water saved by consuming alternatives to animal protein, and then calculating the value of those using market prices for carbon and water.

Read more: What’s your beef? How ‘carbon labels’ can steer us towards environmentally friendly food choices

We also see significant environmental savings from sustainable packaging ($1.7 billion) and organic waste conversion ($600 million).

Capturing market share depends, of course, on being able to compete with overseas suppliers. There is a risk, without investment in research, development and innovation, that Australia will not capture these opportunities. On the other hand, if we capitalise on our opportunities, the rewards could be even greater.

– ref. Health and sustainability market could be worth $25 billion to Australian producers by 2030 – http://theconversation.com/health-and-sustainability-market-could-be-worth-25-billion-to-australian-producers-by-2030-122856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Gothard, Adjunct Associate Professor, Murdoch University

Being born in Australia does not make you an Australian citizen. The Tamil family with two Australian-born daughters on Christmas Island awaiting a decision on their future knows this only too well.

In some countries, such as the United States, children born there automatically become citizens of that country.

But in Australia, this isn’t the case. In Australia, the automatic birthright to citizenship ended on August 19, 1986, under section 12 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007. Children born in Australia from August 20 1986 are only Australian citizens by birth if, at the time of their birth, at least one of their parents was an Australian citizen or permanent resident. If they meet this criterion, they can obtain a passport.

Read more: Most migrants on bridging visas aren’t ‘scammers’, they’re well within their rights

But while the rules on who has a birthright to Australian citizenship are clear, the rules on how a child can prove this birthright are anything but.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), which issues Australian passports, says: “only Australian citizens can be issued with Australian passports”, but the Department of Home Affairs sometimes has other ideas.

This has had a negative impact on children who might fall into the gap between the passport and citizenship requirements of these two government departments.

Most of the time, acquiring an Australian passport at birth, based on providing standard evidence of identity like birth certificates, means citizenship for life.

In some instances, though, Home Affairs has the power to request, arbitrarily and with no explanation, that further evidence be provided to justify a child’s citizenship, even DNA testing.

DNA testing to prove citizenship

In one recent case our firm has dealt with, the foreign mother of an Australian child who had an Australian passport was told she needed to produce evidence of citizenship for her son, even though he was born in Australia and his father had always held Australian citizenship.

The family birth certificates and passports she had provided when successfully obtaining her child’s passport were “not deemed sufficient evidence” of citizenship.

She was required to obtain a “certificate of citizenship” from Home Affairs. And to get this, DNA testing was requested to prove the Australian citizen was indeed the biological father of the child in question.

Read more: Should I get my DNA tested? We asked five experts

But the mother’s relationship with the child’s father had broken down irreparably at the time of the child’s birth, and the father refused the DNA test.

DNA testing was not compulsory, Home Affairs advised. Other methods could be used to prove the relationship between the father and son was biological.

But the alternative social evidence recommended by Home Affairs and supplied by the mother included exhaustive personal, hospital, social work and government records. They detailed the mother and child’s contact with the father and grandparents before and after the birth. This was still deemed “not sufficient”.

In effect, this shows DNA has become the only acceptable evidence, despite Home Affairs’ claims. The outcome, Home Affairs advised, is that the child’s passport will be cancelled and the child will lose his status as an Australian citizen.

In another example, the father of a child in care, an Australian passport holder, was asked to do a DNA test as part of the process of obtaining a certificate of citizenship for the child.

He was estranged from the child and the mother, and so he refused. Home Affairs made its assessment of paternity based on that refusal, and the child’s passport and citizenship were cancelled.

Losing citizenship from ‘insufficient’ evidence

Citizenship can be revoked and a passport consequently cancelled in limited circumstances – mostly relating to criminal or security issues.

There is no provision in the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 for the cancellation of citizenship held by a child under 16 who became a citizen at birth. Yet it is happening.

Our firm has recently seen an increase in cases where the citizenship status of a child passport holder has been challenged if the child’s mother is a temporary resident.

While investigating a mother’s circumstances, Home Affairs delegates have required children – Australian passport holders with citizenship acquired through their father – to verify their citizenship by obtaining “certificates of citizenship”.

In these recent cases, the evidence usually required to obtain such a certificate – relevant birth certificates linking the child to the father, and evidence of citizenship or permanent residence of the father at the time of birth – has been rejected as insufficient.

The common thread is the absence of the father, where family relationships have broken down. The child is consequently caught in a bureaucratic tangle: their birth certificate identifying their father remains valid, but Home Affairs refuses to accept this.

Evidence of paternity can’t always be provided when families break down

For Home Affairs, sometimes the standard evidence of identity isn’t enough to justify a child’s citizenship. And where a relationship has broken down, or if a father has moved on physically or emotionally from the child, there may be no way of providing biological proof of that paternity.

The onus of proof in this case is on the child or its mother, with Home Affairs providing no explanation why such evidence may be necessary or relevant.

A child’s birth certificate signed at the time of birth by an Australian citizen father, or social evidence of a paternal relationship, can count for nothing here.

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

What’s disconcerting is the apparently unfettered right of Home Affairs to request additional evidence of citizenship from children who already hold Australian passports, granted following the normal protocols, without any need for Home Affairs to explain on what basis such information is sought.

This is at odds with the practice under the Migration Act 1958, which acknowledges principles of “natural justice”. Cancelling children’s passports and withholding citizenship, effectively a consequence of their absent father and their parents’ inability to maintain a harmonious relationship, seems clearly unjust.

Refusing to accept certificates issued by state Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and overturning the capacity of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to issue passports based on its own sets of rules, is yet another indicator of the enormous and – despite its denials – unchecked power of Home Affairs.

If birth certificates no longer suffice as evidence of paternity, perhaps we’ll all be looking at DNA testing in the future.

The author wishes to thank Alice Graziotti of Estrin Saul Lawyers for her contributions to this article.

– ref. Yes, you can hold an Australian passport but not be a citizen – here’s how – http://theconversation.com/yes-you-can-hold-an-australian-passport-but-not-be-a-citizen-heres-how-122632

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alessandro Palci, Research Associate in Evolutionary Biology, Flinders University

Only fish have gills, right? Wrong. Meet Hydrophis cyanocinctus, a snake that can breathe through the top of its own head.

The 3m species, which is native to Australian and Asian coastal waters, can draw in oxygen with the help of a unique set of blood vessels below the skin in its snout and forehead.

The network of blood vessels works very similarly to a fish’s gills, and represents a newly discovered addition to the extraordinary range of adaptations that sea snakes use to thrive below the waves.

Read more: There are dozens of sea snake species in the Indian and Pacific oceans, but none in the Atlantic or Caribbean. Why?

In evolutionary terms, sea snakes are relative newcomers to aquatic life, having evolved from land-based snakes only about 16 million years ago. This is much more recent than marine mammals such as whales and dugongs, which arose around 50 million years ago.

The roughly 60 known species of sea snakes have nevertheless developed an impressive array of adaptations to marine life. These include salt glands under the tongue, nostrils that face upwards and can be sealed by valves, paddle-like tails to facilitate swimming, and the ability to absorb oxygen and eliminate carbon dioxide through their skin.

Some sea snakes have even evolved light sensors on the tips of their tails, possibly as a way to avoid having them nibbled off by predators when partially hidden in crevices.

A mysterious hole in the skull

Just when we thought we had uncovered all the strange things sea snakes do, we discovered something new. As we report today in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the annulated sea snake Hydrophis cyanocinctus effectively has a set of gills on its forehead.

The first sign of something unusual was an odd hole (in anatomical terms, a “foramen”, the Latin word for “hole”) in the roof of this species’ skull.

This hole is reminiscent of the “pineal foramen” found in several lizard species, which contains a tiny light-sensitive organ called the pineal eye. Could sea snakes also have a pineal eye?

No trace of such a foramen has ever been found in a modern snake. In fact, snakes are thought to have lost the pineal foramen at least 100 million years ago, which is the age of the oldest reasonably complete fossil snakes.

However, because some sea snakes have light-sensitive organs in their tails, we couldn’t rule out the possibility of a light-sensitive organ reappearing in its ancestral position in the skull – snakes did evolve from lizards, after all.

Not an eye, but a lung

We decided to investigate this unexpected foramen in H. cyanocinctus more closely. We obtained some live specimens from Vietnam, where sea snakes are commonly sold as food in fish markets, and generated images of the soft tissues around the foramen using a combination of traditional and computer-assisted methods.

These images revealed that this snake does not have a pineal eye. What actually goes through the mysterious hole in its skull is a large blood vessel (sometimes paired). This blood vessel then travels forward and branches into a complex network of veins and sinuses immediately under the skin of the forehead and snout.

We then examined other snakes, both terrestrial and marine, using the same methods, and realised that this network of blood vessels in H. cyanocinctus is unique.

Read more: Did snakes evolve from ancient sea serpents?

While a network of blood vessels is expected to be present under the skin of all snakes, what is special about H. cyanocinctus is the greatly exaggerated size of the blood vessels and the fact that they converge towards a single large vein that goes into the brain.

Gills on top of the head

This strange network of blood vessels makes sense when we consider that sea snakes can breathe through their skin. This happens thanks to arteries containing much lower oxygen concentrations than the surrounding seawater, which allows oxygen to diffuse through the skin and into the blood.

However, these low oxygen levels in arterial blood can cause problems, because the brain may not get the oxygen it needs. The dense network of veins on the forehead and snout of these sea snakes helps solve this problem by picking up oxygen from seawater and redistributing it to the brain while swimming underwater.

If you think that sounds similar to what fish do with their gills, you’re absolutely right. H. cyanocinctus has managed to evolve a respiratory system that works in much the same way as gills, despite the vast evolutionary distance between these two groups of species. Truly, these snakes are indeed creatures of the sea.

– ref. Deep breath: this sea snake gathers oxygen through its forehead – http://theconversation.com/deep-breath-this-sea-snake-gathers-oxygen-through-its-forehead-122784

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dave Swain, Professor of Agriculture, CQUniversity Australia

Climate change and the global population boom continue to put pressure on the agriculture industry.

However, new technologies could enable a fairer distribution of resources to help cattle farmers adapt to these challenges. Virtual fencing is an example of this and could allow a system of land sharing that delivers sustainability and productivity.

It involves the removal of fences across large tracts of land, creating opportunity for cattle with multiple owners to be run as a single herd. Cattle would follow available grass and land owners would be paid by cattle owners for the amount of time their animals spend grazing on the property.

Garret Hardin’s popular 1968 article in Science titled “The Tragedy of the Commons” explores how economic imperatives inevitably led to the exploitation of shared resources such as land. Hardin provides an important reference point for critical thinking about the fair implementation of shared resource systems.

He uses livestock’s access to land as an example of how common resources can be exploited. This is what technologies such as virtual fencing aim to avoid.

Cattle on the digital cloud

The Internet of Things (IoT) could create a new paradigm in resource management. Virtual fencing is an example of a trusted IoT application, one which integrates sensors, devices, connectivity, data processing and a user interface.

The large scale deployment of sensors in devices today makes it possible to monitor an array of natural resources. CISCO estimates by 2022 there will be about 15 billion global machine to machine connections driving the uptake of the IoT.

The “Tragedy of the Commons” was a tragedy based on trust, with the tragedy occurring as a result of individual short-term gain at the expense of shared long-term benefit. The IoT shines a light on individual resource use. It creates a framework where sensors will facilitate transparent transactions, not only for agricultural systems but any resource where shared access is based on trust.

New paths to graze

Virtual fencing could be used to remotely muster and move cattle and direct them towards abundant feed. Collars fitted to cattle could allow us to track and manage herds, removing the need for fences.

Sensors on the collars would be combined with automated algorithms. These could use details of each animal’s behaviour to create alerts, such as warning sounds, and direct them across the landscape. Remote automated collars have the potential for the widespread removal of fences.

Read more: From Australia to Africa, fences are stopping Earth’s great animal migrations

In extensive grazing systems typical of savanna environments, balancing grazing pressure occurs against a backdrop of feast, famine, drought and flood. Fences on grazing land currently prevent cattle from doing what wildebeest in the Serengeti do, which is move in large, densely packed herds following available food.

Fences can also indicate ownership and control. The emergence of digital maps and GPS tracking means such markers of ownership may no longer be required. Instead, the combination of location tracking and electronic identification could trace cattle movement and ownership.

Cattle could also be remotely managed and separated by fenced-off watering points where they would access drinking troughs along lanes with automated gates. Sensors at watering points would record the identification, weight and growth of individual cattle. This information could be linked to gates which automatically separate cattle that are ready for market.

Moreover, continuously monitoring and matching cattle numbers to feed resources could enable farmers to either sell or move their cattle before impending drought. The dawning of sensor based systems could open a new door for cattle producers, and removing fences may create a new kind of sustainable resource sharing.

Erecting the first fences

In his 1968 article, Hardin used the analogy of livestock farmers who have access to shared common land. The collective group decides how many animals each farmer can graze on the land. The long-term goal is to ensure the grazing resource is protected for all, but the individual farmer is best served by adding more of his own animals.

Similarly, the demise of commons can be seen in the history of agriculture. Centuries ago, landlords in Europe recognised the importance of a good supply of food to keep people happy. Villagers had access to shared land where they could graze livestock and grow crops.

Read more: Guardian dogs, fencing, and ‘fladry’ protect livestock from carnivores

The emergence of an economic framework saw the control of capital that accessed free labour (freedom to choose where to work), particularly with the growth of textiles. This resulted in landlords taking greater control of parcels of land that were fenced-off. Food increasingly had to be purchased, labour was managed through wages and fenced land resulted in further control of capital.

The fence has become a symbol for the demise of the commons. However, a digitally-driven agenda may open opportunities for a commons that is moral and potentially more productive for the cattle industry. The emergence of technological solutions could sow the seeds for a new age of cattle grazing, leading us to a future with a not so tragic commons

– ref. Virtual fences and cattle: how new tech could allow effective, sustainable land sharing – http://theconversation.com/virtual-fences-and-cattle-how-new-tech-could-allow-effective-sustainable-land-sharing-119398

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Diane Gibson, Distinguished Professor (health and ageing), University of Canberra

When the media discusses ageing, it commonly focuses on people older than 65. But generally, a 65-year-old and a 95-year-old have about as much in common as a 65-year-old and a 35-year-old.

Our population has been ageing for more than a century, picking up momentum in the 1970s. Attention has typically been on the baby boomers, who have started to reach age 65 and beyond.

But the “greatest generation”, those born in the 1920s and aged in their 90s today, have quietly become the fastest growing group of older people in Australia. The rate of people living to their 90s – “nonagenarians” – has grown by 67% in the past decade, much higher than any other ten-year age group over 60.

Read more: How can we prevent financial abuse of the elderly?

And the rate shows no sign of slowing. For every 100 baby boys born in Australia in 1920, only 12 survived to age 90. For every 100 boys born in 1935, 22 can expect to live to age 90. And for boys born in 1950, demographers estimate that one in three will live to age ninety, with a further average life expectancy of 4.8 years.

Among girls born in 1950, we can expect half to survive to age 90, with an average life expectancy of a further 5.7 years.

With so many people now living to their 90s – and so many more projected to in future – health and social policy need to evolve with their changing needs, from more inclusive built environments to more health expenditure.

Why is there such a large increase in nonagenarians?

A larger birth cohort and immigration are partly responsible, but mainly, it’s a result of better survival.

And this is largely due to the dramatic decline in death rates from heart disease that began in the late 1960s and continued to decline in the decades after.

This generation was the first to really benefit from declining death rates from heart disease when they were aged in their 40s and early 50s, and from further improvements again in the 1970s and again in the 1980s.

Read more: Why do I grunt when I bend over?

Back in my day…

Those born in the early 1920s would have entered the workforce during the Great Depression of the 1930s, after leaving school at about 13. In 1932, unemployment in Australia was 32%.

Many men served in the armed forces from 1939 during the second world war, giving women unusual opportunities for employment at the time, such as in factories and shipyards.

Those born in the late 1920s left school during the war, and were well placed to take advantage of the economic boom that followed the war years.

As adults, nonagenarians experienced a number of significant technological breakthroughs. Refrigerators and automatic washing machines became common household items, and the average couple likely purchased their first car when they were in their late 30s or early 40s. Television also became part of their lives around the same time.

Read more: Better design could make mobile devices easier for seniors to use

When they had families of their own, they had, on average, three children, who became the baby boomers.

90-somethings today

In 2016 in Australia, 56,058 men and 117,690 women were aged in their 90s. While women outnumber men by about two to one, the number of male nonagenarians is increasing much faster than the number of women (a rate of 99% compared to 55% in the past decade).

This means that as more men survive, there are more intact married couples, but also more men (whether widowed, divorced or never married) living alone or in residential aged care than has previously been the case.

What’s more, a small proportion of nonagenarians in the census said they were providing care to others (8% of men and 3% of women) or engaged in volunteer work (5% of men and 4% of women).

People in their nineties also have diverse cultural backgrounds. Approximately one-third were born overseas, and around two-thirds of those have come to Australia from countries where English was not the dominant language.

They also have diverse educational backgrounds. Over a third had left school by or before Year 8, and only around one in five had completed Year 12.

More than a quarter of men held some kind of trade qualification. Eight per cent of men and 3% of women held university qualifications.

What it means for policy and society

While nonagenarians birthed the first baby boomers, today’s octogenarians had even higher birth rates. Higher survival rates also mean more intact social networks as friends and neighbours survive into old age.

This means the experience of advanced old age could be less lonely and less isolating than was previously the case.

Read more: More and more older Australians will be homeless unless we act now

And the changing gender ratio will mean more men live in residential care and need to use community care services.

Most nonagenarians will be living in the community, and as well as greater community care, they’ll need affordable housing.

It’s also important to plan for improved local transport to shopping centres, clubs, churches and mosques and cultural events, not just to the all-too-common focus in the media about getting to medical appointments.

We will need age-friendly built environments (seating, curbs, footpaths, parks, community gardens) and service environments (banks, government services, clothing stores, furniture stores), not just the common focus on ramps and other home modifications.

Read more: Older people can feel left behind by new technology – so we built a device especially for them

And the potential homelessness in older populations should be taken into account, programs to help develop or strengthen digital literacy for those who use technology, and ways of providing alternatives for those who do not.

So what does it mean for health services, and particularly for health expenditure?

We would argue the changes will be surprisingly limited. In fact, the fastest increases in expenditure per person for admissions to hospital were not in the 90 and over age group – where the increase was 15% from 2004 to 2013. The highest increase was in the 35-64 age group with an increase of 34%.

– ref. Meet the nonagenarians: people in their 90s are Australia’s fastest growing senior age group – http://theconversation.com/meet-the-nonagenarians-people-in-their-90s-are-australias-fastest-growing-senior-age-group-120898

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide

Per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent organic pollutants found most commonly in firefighting foam.

Every now and again, concerns around the possible health effects of exposure to PFAS pop up in the news. These chemicals don’t readily break down, and can accumulate in the environment.

PFAS contamination of water and fish was recently reported in Mackay and Darwin Harbour. Even my local free weekly paper in Adelaide had “PFAS food fright” plastered across the front page not long ago, arising from groundwater contamination near the local fire station.

Yes, PFAS might have been picked up in a few new places. But the latest evidence suggests the levels at which we’re exposed are very unlikely to affect our health.

Read more: The chemicals in firefighting foam aren’t the new asbestos

What are PFAS?

PFAS (also known as perfluoroalkyl acids, or PFAAs) are long chains of carbon atoms studded with fluorine molecules. They include compounds such as perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS).

PFAS are inert, water repellent and heat resistant. This makes them ideal for applications ranging from stain-resistant fabrics, to non-stick cookware, to firefighting foams.

Their chemical properties mean they’re very resistant to breakdown and persist in the environment for many years. Even though these PFAS started to be phased out in 2000, they still linger in some places where firefighting foams were used extensively, such as fire stations and airports.

Where do PFAS come from?

In an Australian context, the most important sources of PFAS originate in their use for firefighting. The firefighting foam enters the soil around the site where a fire has occurred, or gets into storm-water drains. From there, it ends up in either the groundwater or streams, and ultimately the ocean.

Drinking water is not a major source of PFAS in Australia, as we typically don’t use groundwater for drinking. But in some places, groundwater contaminated with PFAS is used to irrigate food plants, and can enter the food chain through plants retaining PFAS from the water. This is the basis of the headline in my local paper, as many local residents use bore water for their fruit and vegetable gardens.

Read more: Companies should take charge of the potential toxins in common products

In a food chain, small amounts of PFAS can be concentrated as you move up the chain from plants to insects to fish. That is, insects may feed on affected plants, and fish may eat affected insects. So fish in rivers or bays contaminated with PFAS runoff can be a substantial source of PFAS. This is the issue in Mackay and Darwin.

Notably, the exposure people might face from eating affected fish or crops is below the levels people exposed to PFAS in an industrial sense, like firefighters, would encounter.

PFAS and health: the experts respond

PFAS take a long time to break down in organisms. For example, in humans, it takes around five years for half an ingested dose of PFOA to pass through the system.

The build-up of a chemical that’s hard to remove from our bodies is always of concern. I wrote in an earlier article in 2017 that despite this, the potential health risks appeared to be low.

Since then, the Australian Expert Health Panel for PFAS looked in detail at the evidence, publishing its findings last year.

If anything, there appears to be even less risk from PFAS than we thought.

How do we study these potential health effects?

We can do studies on animals; these are indicative but can be misleading. For example, the effects of PFAS on what’s called peroxisome proliferation receptors that regulate fats have been measured in rodents.

The effects occur at concentrations typically 1,000 times higher than average human blood concentrations, and around 100 times the blood concentrations in contaminated workers. The human system is less sensitive than the mouse system, so mouse and rat studies may overestimate toxicity to humans.

We can do longitudinal studies where we follow PFAS exposure and health outcomes in humans over time. But a lack of good exposure monitoring and the difficulty in accounting for other environmental influences makes it hard to reach clear conclusions.

Studies of industrial workers exposed to high environmental levels of PFAS give an idea of what exposure to high levels can do, but are less helpful for low levels.

But synthesising all this data, as done by the expert panel, helps overcome these limitations.

Read more: How microplastics make their way up the ocean food chain into fish

The most pressing concern on people’s minds is cancer, but there’s no consistent evidence PFAS is associated with cancer. One study even found exposure to PFOA decreased the incidence of bowel cancer.

The expert health panel report concluded “there is no current evidence that suggests an increase in overall cancer risk”.

The other major concern is heart disease risk. But studies of people who have been chronically exposed to significant levels of PFOA have not shown statistically significant increases in heart disease.

Similarly, no consistent findings have linked PFAS to any other health concerns previously expressed, which have included reduced kidney function, altered immune response, and earlier menopause.

What’s the take home message?

The panel concluded there is mostly limited or no evidence for PFAS having any link with human disease.

Though they noted even though the evidence for PFAS exposure and links to health effects is very weak and inconsistent, health effects for people exposed to PFAS cannot be ruled out based on the current evidence.

But the take home message is don’t panic. Most people will be getting less than the tolerable daily intake of these chemicals from their food and water (that is, below a threshold that would cause any potential adverse health effects).

To err on the side of caution, it’s sensible to minimise exposure by not consuming fish from affected areas or limiting bore water use for irrigating suburban gardens near contamination sites.

Read more: Is your health at risk from fish and frying pans?

– ref. We should be cautious, but not concerned: there’s little evidence PFAS exposure harms our health – http://theconversation.com/we-should-be-cautious-but-not-concerned-theres-little-evidence-pfas-exposure-harms-our-health-122044

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Leuzinger, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology

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

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

I read somewhere that 1,000 square metres of grass absorbs the same amount of carbon dioxide that one person produces. I then think about my small 10ha property. Does that mean that I am covering 100 peoples’ CO₂ emissions every day? What about those large 1,000ha properties then? Do they absorb thousands of tonnes of carbon every year?

In New Zealand, your average carbon footprint will be around four tonnes of carbon, emitted per year (based on the carbon contained in 16.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annual per-capita emissions). A 1,000-square-metre area of grass will take up around one tonne of carbon per year. So if you didn’t fly much, lived in a well insulated home, cycled to work etc, you might bring your overall footprint down to around one tonne of carbon per year, the equivalent of what a backyard lawn may take up per year. So far so good.

The big problem (causing tremendous confusion even among scientists) begins right here. In the above, we talk about fluxes, not pools. Using your bank account as an analogy, fluxes are transfers, pools are balances.

Read more: Climate change is hitting hard across New Zealand, official report finds

With your own carbon emissions, regardless whether they are one or four tonnes per year, you pay into the atmosphere’s account every year. This means that there is more and more carbon in the atmosphere.

That carbon comes from fossil fuels – an entirely different “account”. Regardless of whether you have 1,000 or 100,000 square metres, this is what grass is doing in this analogy: it takes carbon from the atmosphere every year, but that carbon is going straight back to where it was taken from when you mow the lawn and the biomass is broken down and returned to the atmosphere. In other words, your carbon footprint is a flux that leads to a permanent change in a pool (the atmosphere). This is a bit like a weekly salary. You don’t have to pay it back. What your lawn is doing however, is making payments that are returned a few weeks or months later (when you mow the lawn, a cow eats the grass, or when natural turnover takes place).

The bottom line is that short-term fluxes (as large as they might be) don’t matter if they are reciprocated by an equivalent but opposite flux. If you want, let’s do the experiment. You pay $1,000 onto my account ever odd week, and I pay $1,000 onto yours every even week. None of us will care – as little as the atmosphere will worry about the carbon that your grass patch briefly locks away from it.

So your grass won’t lock away carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the long run. Neither will any grassland in New Zealand.

Read more: Climate explained: why plants don’t simply grow faster with more carbon dioxide in air

If you wait long enough, things can become a bit more complicated, namely if my payments back to you start to become a little less or a little more, causing dollars or carbon to accumulate on one account rather than the other. While this is the case in some ecosystems, such as a growing forest, New Zealand grassland is unlikely one of them. So your backyard isn’t helping, there is no way around reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

– ref. Climate explained: why your backyard lawn doesn’t help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – http://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-your-backyard-lawn-doesnt-help-reduce-carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-122312

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Baxter, Fellow – Melbourne Law School; Senior Researcher – Climate Council; Associate – Australian-German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne

The latest report card on Australia’s greenhouse gas production is the same old news: emissions are up again. We’ve heard it before, but the news should never stop being confronting.

It’s 2019. The first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which outlined the serious consequences of unmitigated climate change, was released the better part of 30 years ago. But Australia is still going backwards.

Emissions from one of the sunniest and windiest countries on the planet, blessed with every possible advantage when it comes to emissions reduction potential, are still rising. How do you justify that?

Read more: Want to beat climate change? Protect our natural forests

Energy and Emission Reduction Minister Angus Taylor tried to justify it by blaming gas. He said if you ignore the greenhouse gases released when producing gas for export, Australia is doing well because emissions in the March quarter fell by 0.3%.

It’s a bit like suggesting that if you ignore the cancer, smoking is completely fine. It’s untrue, and ignores the bigger part of the problem.

How does producing gas for export release fossil fuel emissions?

A mammoth share of the coal and gas that Australia produces goes to the international market.

The combustion of these fuels is not counted in Australia’s ledger, though. This is because the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change counts emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in the country where they are burned.

But climate change is unconcerned with our accounting rules. And Australia is the fifth largest contributor to climate change in terms of fossil fuels extracted.

But the extraction process itself also releases fossil fuels in Australia’s backyard, both through the energy used in the extraction and through leaks. These emissions are included on Australia’s ledger.

Gas is principally made up of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30-80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. When it leaks, it has an outsized impact on the climate – and these emissions are growing fast.

Putting our gas emissions in perspective

It is disingenuous to use the production of gas exports to explain away Australia’s poor performance on emissions reduction.

In the 2018 financial year, around one in seven tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted from Australia was released in the process of making even more greenhouse gas, from both gas and coal extraction.

That means that six in every seven tonnes of greenhouse gas Australia emits can largely be attributed to the the total absence of a national climate policy.

This policy failure has big implications. Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement says the world must reach net-zero emissions over the entire period from 2050 to 2100. (And the IPCC says emissions must come down even faster than that if planetary warming is to stay below the critical 1.5℃ threshold).

Even if, disregarding export gas production, Australia cut emissions by 0.3% a year, at that rate net-zero emissions won’t be reached for another 333 years.

So while fossil fuel extraction is making things worse, our emissions elsewhere are hardly able to reach the net zero goal in the Paris agreement.

Read more: Australia should explore nuclear waste before we try domestic nuclear power

Gas is not the silver bullet for any other nation

The minister and his department also made much of the idea that our gas is reducing emissions overseas. The quarterly report even contained a “special topic” talking up the benefits of Australia’s gas exports.

The logic is that by exporting gas, which is allegedly cleaner than coal, we are replacing a high emitting source with a relatively low emitting source. That logic does not hold and is not scientifically robust.

First, and most obviously, Australia exports massive amounts of coal as well as gas. We are responsible for one-fifth of the world’s thermal coal exports and more than one-half of the world’s metallurgical coal exports. It is talking out both sides of your mouth to suggest that we are reducing worldwide emissions because we are responsible for almost a quarter of the world’s exported gas, while we simultaneously export a massive amount of coal.

Second, the department and Mr Taylor relied heavily on a study by the CSIRO’s Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA) to talk up the relative benefits of our gas exports. That study, a life-cycle assessment of the emissions from Curtis Island’s liquified natural gas processing facilities, expressly avoided testing the assumption that our gas is in fact replacing coal overseas.

We may not know the whole story, but we do know it is not true in one of the largest purchasers of Australian gas, Japan. Since the Fukushima accident in 2011 took much of Japan’s zero-emissions nuclear energy out of the mix, it has been replaced by Australian gas, which is far worse for the climate.

Third, even if our gas is substituting coal, the benefits are very small. The same GISERA study indicated that “climate benefits of natural gas replacing coal are lost where fugitive emissions [leaking gas] … are greater than 3%”.

Readers might remember this apparent example of fugitive emissions in Australia. The video shows former New South Wales Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham setting fire to the Condamine River in 2016.

It burned because of methane bubbling up through it, purportedly from nearby unconventional gas extraction. These emissions, the result of leaks through natural fractures in the Earth, are difficult to predict and model. They are not accurately measured in Australia, and may make gas far worse for the climate than even coal.

Even if the results of all this uncertainty come out in favour of gas, limiting global warming requires that we urgently stop burning both coal and gas. While there are substantial proven reserves around the world, much of this will have to remain unburned if we hope to avoid the worst of climate change.

The evidence of climate change is increasingly clear, yet Australia’s emissions continue to increase. Our political leaders are spinning the data and failing to act, putting our children’s future, our economy and the natural environment at risk.

– ref. Nice try Mr Taylor, but Australia’s gas exports don’t help solve climate change – http://theconversation.com/nice-try-mr-taylor-but-australias-gas-exports-dont-help-solve-climate-change-122715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cris Brack, Associate professor, Australian National University

Nature. Some see it as beautiful and some as red “in tooth and claw”. Of course nature is dynamic, it changes between both the beautiful and the dangerous as in Blake’s famous words:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

With the support of the South Australian Museum, this year’s Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition attracted hundreds of photographers who have attempted to frame the symmetry of nature’s danger and the beauty – both in landscape and living things.

The finalists no doubt have mastered the photographers’ tools of trade – metering and focus; composition and colour; balance and visual weight. Experts have critiqued the work, announced winners, and awarded their grand prize. But does this exhibition capture the multiple dimensions of nature? Well, yes.

Nature is based on ecology and ecology is about dynamics and flows. Energy and material cycle through a balanced natural system where everything is used and nothing is lost. Sometimes, though, the balance is disrupted and cycles may be broken or forced to reform in novel ways.

The physical dimensions (length, breadth, depth) and the dangerous beauty inherent in a creature like an echidna leap out in a photograph titled “Under the Spikes” by Isaac Wilson. It captures both the fearsome spikes of an echidna and the beauty of shape and form within.

Likewise, in the “Clash of the Crabs”, the photographer Samuel Horton has captured the spiky drama of the daily dance of solder crabs as they fight for their future.

Others see the ecology at wildly different scales, which look alien yet beautiful to our eyes. “New Life in a Far-off World” by Wade Hughes shows what appears, at first, to be destruction by an other-worldly volcano. It turns out to be a sponge’s way of spreading its desire for life as spores across the seas.

And in “Small but Mighty”, Richard Smith captures a steadfast soldier defending his crustacean family despite being small enough to live inside a sea squirt.

The image “Surge” by Reed Plummer returns to human scale, but shows us the awesome, daily power of nature. A breaking wave drops tons of water even as it pulls tons of sand from the sea bed.

“Barron Falls” by Neil Pritchard almost lets you hear the tumultuous violence of flood waters heading to the coast. Yet within this drama, the picture draws your eye to a single, small island of green that has found its space within the natural cycle of flooding noise and peace.

Tim Wrate’s “Above” at first looks like an Aboriginal painting. But, as you draw nearer, the image resolves into a complex maze of mangroves and salt in emerald waterways. You can feel the dynamics of the system and the interplay between life and water.

The jigsaw of cracked clay in “The Watering Hole” by Melissa Williams-Brown again draws the viewer into pattern. But as you follow the cracks out, a single kangaroo carcass reminds us of the cycles of water, with extreme droughts and floods. We disrupt or misinterpret this cycle at everyone’s peril.

In nature, death can be beautiful. In “The Ghost of the Forest” (Marcia Riederer) an elusive mushroom, feeding on dead material, illuminates the green with its bioluminescence. Without such decomposers feeding on dead things, the cycling of essential materials would cease – no beauty, no death and no life.

Some people hike for days to experience the beauty of these natural bio-lights, others avoid them for fear that the lights are the souls of the departed. In ecological terms, the luminescence attracts insects, which help disperse the mushroom spore and thus the future of this life form.

Other photographers have focused their lenses on points where the ecological cycles are disrupted. The disruption might be relatively small, like the Flying Fox new parent who almost drowns her own child while getting a drink in “Just Hanging On” (Neil Edwards).

Did you know Flying Foxes drink by dipping into water and then licking their wet fur? “Foxes on the Wing” by Paul Huntley catches them doing it just right.

Larger disruptions

In Richard Smith’s “In the Can”, tiny fish, peering out of discarded packaging hint at much larger disruptions caused by human efficiency in taking raw materials. Is there a deliberate irony here that humans efficiently take raw resources but neglect to recycle those that now litter the otherwise barren ocean floor?

Other tiny eyes peer from within a roof cavity in “A Possum’s Lookout” (Gary Meredith). These small mammals may be taking advantage of a new preferred habitat created by humans, or they may have been forced out of their usual habitats by other animals or disruptions.

Meanwhile, a Satin Bowerbird proudly surrounded by beautiful blue bottle tops adds a new symmetry in “Trash or Treasure” by Matt Wright.

In this show, each photographer has brought a different perspective on nature. Each of these can enhance your worldview – allowing you to see the dynamics and resilience; the power and quiet; the destruction and rebirth inherent in it.

Next time you step out of your front door and see a tree in the street, really look at it.

See in it the young seedling of the past, its efforts to survive to the present, and the old senescent trunk full of decomposers of the future.

See in it the life of other organisms and how they use even the dead and ugly. See in it the beauty and power of nature “burning bright”.

The Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition is produced by the South Australian Museum. It can be seen at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney in partnership with the Australian Museum until 20 October and at the South Australian Museum until 10 November.

– ref. Framing the fearful symmetry of nature: the year’s best photos of landscapes and living things – http://theconversation.com/framing-the-fearful-symmetry-of-nature-the-years-best-photos-of-landscapes-and-living-things-122468

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin., Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australia has been in a current account deficit – paying more money out to the rest of the world than it took in – for 44 straight years, since September 1975.

Until today. The update from the Bureau of Statistics released on Tuesday shows that in the three months to June Australia actually took in more from the rest of the world than it paid out: A$5.9 billion more, after what for most Australians (most are under the age of 40) was a lifetime of paying out more.

Why has it happened, and how did we get away with doing the opposite for so long?

First, the long-term story. It couldn’t happen to an individual. No one person can get away with taking more in from the rest of the world than they pay out for long.

It was the idea that a nation is like an individual that allowed the then treasurer Paul Keating to spend a good deal of the 1980s arguing that Australia was living beyond its means.

As the drumbeat of a steadily growing current account deficit grew louder and it approached 5-6% of GDP, on May 14, 1986, he infamously told radio presenter John Laws that Australia was in danger of becoming a banana republic:

I get the very clear feeling that we must let Australians know truthfully, honestly, earnestly, just what sort of international hole Australia is in. It’s the prices of our commodities — they are as bad in real terms (as) since the Depression.

If this government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again, and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically done for. We will just end up being a third-rate economy … a banana republic.

To get spending down, and thus reduce the current account deficit, he tightened the budget and encouraged the Reserve Bank to push interest rates to stratospheric levels. The cash rate hit 18% before helping push Australia into recession .

And for what? The current account deficit continued. It averaged 4% of GDP throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But life went on. The economy recovered, the Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing monthly current account figures (moving to quarterly), the figures became little watched and the pundits and politicians turned their attention elsewhere.

Read more: Cabinet papers 1990-91: lessons from the recession we didn’t have to have

With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the deficits weren’t because of any deficiency on the part of Australians. Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle explained last week that Australians weren’t spending an unusual amount compared to what they earned. They were “about on par with many other advanced economies”.

The current account deficits were largely the result of money flowing out as returns on investments in Australia. Australia had “a lot of profitable investment opportunities”. Foreigners either lent to Australian businesses or invested in Australian businesses and returns flowed out each month, as they should have.

It came to be known as the “consenting adults” theory of international finance. It’s practical message was: “nothing to see here, move along”.

So what’s changed?

In 2017 and 2018 the current account deficit shrank to around 2% of GDP. We now know that in the three months to June this year it moved into surplus.

Much of it is because we’ve been earning more from mining exports. We’re both exporting more tonnes and getting paid more for each one.

And just lately mining has helped in another way. The so-called mining investment boom is winding up. We are no longer importing enormously expensive machines to build gas terminals and the like.

And it’s more than mining. Export income from services such as education and tourism now accounts for 21% of all exports, up from 17% in the 1980s. Purists will complain that education and tourism aren’t actually exported, but as far as the national accounts are concerned, they are. Even though the teaching and hospitality takes place in Australia, it is paid for in foreign dollars that bring more money into the country relative to what is going out.

And there’s something else.

We are becoming like the US

As popular as Australia remains as a destination for foreign investment, since 2013 Australians have been investing even more in foreign businesses than foreigners have been investing in Australian businesses.

It is superannuation that’s done it: a record A$2.9 trillion worth.

Debelle put it this way:

This largely reflects the significant allocation to foreign equity by the Australian superannuation industry together with the fact that the superannuation sector is relatively large as a share of the Australian economy.

Australia has become a net foreign investor rather than a net recipient of foreign investment, almost certainly for the first time ever.

Debelle says it has made Australia come to resemble the United States. We receive more in dividends from overseas than we pay out in dividends to overseas share holders.

We’re still a magnet for foreign dollars

We are still a huge destination for foreign lending, increasingly in the form of lending to the Australian government rather than to Australian companies, as safety-conscious foreigners push locals out of the way to buy more and more Australian government bonds.

Foreign ownership of Australian government bonds has climbed from around 40% to 60% since the early 2000s.

The interest rate foreigners are prepared to accept in order to hold Australian 10 year bonds has fallen below 1% (which in its own way assists in keeping the current account deficit low).

Read more: Revisiting the banana republic and other familiar destinations

How long the current account surplus lasts will depend on the investment policies of our super funds (the better the prospects are overseas, the higher the surplus will be), the strength of our economy (the weaker is consumer spending, the higher our current account surplus will be) and export prices and volumes (which are mainly beyond our control).

Yes, we’ve current account surplus. It would have once been a cause for celebration. Now that we’ve got it, it’s not looking that special.

– ref. After 44 years of deficits, we’ve a current account surplus. What went so right? – http://theconversation.com/after-44-years-of-deficits-weve-a-current-account-surplus-what-went-so-right-122858

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

As the federal court prepares to deal with the last ditch effort in the Sri Lankan Tamil family’s fight against deportation, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton are finding “border control” politics a lot more difficult than usual.

They may well boot out the family of four, that includes two small girls born here. But volleys of protest from some noisy and many (usually) quiet Australians mean while the PM and his minister might be on the high ground legally – multiple court decisions, including from the High Court, have found the family not to be refugees – they can’t avoid looking threadbare in terms of humanity.

If you’re Morrison, to have Alan Jones abusing you relentlessly, and citizens from a regional Queensland town disputing your case vociferously is, well, awkward.

Morrison and Dutton came to this argument well practiced in aggressive techniques. Dismiss and demonise your critics. Dip into history and attribute any blame you can to the Labor party. Drop to the Australian newspaper “on water” details about the latest boat arrival to suggest that allowing the family to stay would trigger an armada from Sri Lanka.

But unfortunately for Morrison and Dutton, Jones has a master’s degree in head kicking (which frequently gets him into trouble) and when townspeople of Biloela, where the family lived, appear on TV to press their cause it is hard to dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as the usual suspects – advocates, lefties, greenies, Callithumpians. And that’s not to mention the support the family has got from former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and the federal MP for the Biloela area Nationals Ken O’Dowd.

Moreover, the government has opened itself to maximum criticism by the way it has handled the family, including a dawn raid and distressing night flights, one of which took them to Christmas Island, where they are the only detainees.

Read more: The regions can take more migrants and refugees, with a little help

To put it bluntly, this looked like thuggish behaviour.

Jones went for the jugular in his Tuesday Daily Telegraph column, accusing the government of “heartlessness, inconsistency and hypocrisy”. His barbs couldn’t have been more pointed.

“Are Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton parents?” he asked rhetorically. and urged the family be given “ a bit of ‘au pair’ treatment” – a reference to Dutton’s controversial interventions to prevent the deportations of a couple of au pairs.

Jones said the Tamil mother had witnessed her fiance burned alive with several other men in her village who were identified as Tamil Tigers. “If your fiance, Prime Minister and Peter Dutton, was burnt alive, would you worry too much how you got out of the joint?”

And Jones has no compunction in marshalling religion to the cause (despite some commentators saying Morrison’s faith should be off limits). “In an ostensibly Christian society, it might be time for a bit of practical Christianity,” Jones wrote.

In notable contrast to Jones, fellow 2GB shock jock Ray Hadley is raging on the other side of the argument.

In this age of social media, issues can easily catch fire, but even taking that into account, the Tamil family has stirred an extraordinary level of emotion. Leaving aside a huge petition appealing for a favourable decision and demonstrations in various parts of the country, it is notable that people in their town of Biloela continue to speak out so strongly, even though the family was removed from there early last year. They obviously left much more than just a passing positive impression. They had become part of the town.

One local told the ABC, “at the core, they’re our sort of people … Out here in the rural area we value workers … who roll up their sleeves and pitch in”.

Read more: Sri Lanka ten years after the war: the Tamil struggle for justice continues

Wednesday’s court action is about whether the younger child needs to be assessed individually by the minister for refugee status. There are mixed views on how it will go, but even if it succeeded, it would only be the start of another round in the saga. The matter would go to Immigration Minister David Coleman. He would refuse the girl’s claim. That refusal would then be appealable to the federal court (but only on the grounds of the minister erring in law, not on substance grounds). The government could be in for a lot more pain, because the appeal could take a whilgo on for quite a while.

It is indisputable that the issue of the Tamil family has raised legitimate arguments on both sides – the special circumstances of a particular family who have become valued members of a community versus the implications of setting a precedent for many other asylum seekers whose claims fail but have spent years living here.

It is equally indisputable that the government’s making an example of this family – because that is the bottom line of what it is doing – looks very distasteful, whether viewed from at home or abroad.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison and Dutton block their ears and grit their teeth over Tamil family – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-and-dutton-block-their-ears-and-grit-their-teeth-over-tamil-family-122866

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martha Hickey, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Melbourne

Menopause is a normal life stage for women at around 51 years. Most women don’t need treatment for their symptoms, but around 13% of Australian women aged 50-69 take menopausal hormone therapy (sometimes called “hormone replacement therapy”).

This medication contains hormones that are normally low or absent after menopause, and reduces symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats, which can be troublesome and persistent for some women.

But growing evidence over recent years has pointed to an increased risk of breast cancer associated with menopausal hormone therapy. This has already led some women to stop or avoid the treatment.

Now a new study, published in leading medical journal The Lancet, strengthens the existing evidence, and suggests the risks are greater than we previously thought.

Read more: Here’s what you need to know about menopausal hormone therapy and cancer risk

This study only measured the risk of breast cancer, not potential benefits such as improved symptoms, sleep and quality of life.

However, it provides important information to help women decide whether to take menopausal hormone therapy and how long for.

What the study found

This paper combined data from 58 international studies conducted between 1992 and 2018 to measure the association between menopausal hormone therapy and breast cancer. Cumulatively, the studies included more than 100,000 women with breast cancer and 400,000 women without breast cancer.

The authors found women taking any type of menopausal hormone therapy, except topical (vaginal) oestrogen, had a higher risk of breast cancer compared with women of a similar age who did not take menopausal hormone therapy, taking into account other known risk factors for breast cancer.

The increased risk of breast cancer was apparent after only one year on menopausal hormone therapy, and increased steadily with longer duration of use.

Menopausal hormone therapy contains oestrogen to treat the symptoms of menopause, plus progesterone (or a progestogen which acts like progesterone), to prevent endometrial (uterine) cancer. This is called combined menopausal hormone therapy.

Given that progestogen is added to oestrogen to prevent uterine cancer, it’s somewhat ironic that it may increase the risk of breast cancer.

A previous large randomised controlled trial showed more than five years of combined menopausal hormone therapy increased the risk of breast cancer. New data from this study suggest oestrogen alone also increases breast cancer risk, although much less than combined menopausal hormone therapy.

The authors estimated for every 50-70 women taking combined (oestrogen and progestogen) menopausal hormone therapy, there would be one additional case of breast cancer. For oestrogen alone, they predicted one additional case for every 200 women taking menopausal hormone therapy.

The study also found taking progestogen every day in menopausal hormone therapy (called “continuous combined”) may increase breast cancer risk more than taking progestogen on an intermittent, or “cyclical” basis. Cyclical regimens are less popular in Australia because they are more likely to cause bleeding. This study may change practice towards using cyclical rather than daily progestogen.

Read more: Science or Snake Oil: do meds like Remifemin ease hot flushes and night sweats in menopausal women?

The studies included in this review are observational, so while they demonstrate a correlation, they cannot prove menopausal hormone therapy causes breast cancer. However, the associations are strong, there is no other apparent reason for the observed association – and the link is biologically plausible.

Most breast cancers are sensitive to oestrogen and progesterone. We know postmenopausal women with higher circulating levels of oestrogen are at higher risk of breast cancer, and that blocking oestrogen reduces breast cancer risk.

Taking menopausal hormone therapy increases the levels of oestrogen and taking progesterone increases exposure to a hormone not normally produced after menopause.

Length of use

Previously it was thought that up to five years of menopausal hormone therapy did not increase breast cancer risk. This study challenges that assumption by showing risk increased after one year of use. The longer women took menopausal hormone therapy, the greater the risk.

The estimated risk of breast cancer was 6.3% in postmenopausal women who did not take menopausal hormone therapy compared to 8.3% for five years of combined menopausal hormone therapy. This is an absolute increase of 2%, or one extra breast cancer case for every 50 users. That’s approximately twice as high as indicated in earlier studies.

This new information raises questions about international guidelines, which suggest healthy women around the average age of menopause can safety take menopausal hormone therapy for up to ten years.

Another important finding was the persistent increased risk of breast cancer for up to ten years after stopping menopausal hormone therapy. This is considerably longer than was previously thought.

Read more: Chemical messengers: how hormones change through menopause

Follow-up from another large observational study of over one million women published in the same edition of The Lancet showed menopausal hormone therapy also increases the risk of dying from breast cancer.

In postmenopausal women who had never taken menopausal hormone therapy, one in 135 died from breast cancer, compared with one in 120 women taking oestrogen alone for five years or more, and one in 95 women taking combined menopausal hormone therapy for five years or more.

Together, these findings suggest taking menopausal hormone therapy for more than five years may increase the number of women diagnosed with and dying from breast cancer. Natural or “biodentical” preparations contain similar hormones, and are likely to carry the same risk.

Not the only treatment

While menopausal hormone therapy may be an effective treatment for menopausal symptoms, it’s not the only one. There’s growing evidence drug free and non-hormonal therapies are also effective for hot flushes and night sweats.

For genitourinary symptoms, such as vaginal dryness, topical oestrogen is effective and has shown no increase in breast cancer risk.

Read more: What causes breast cancer in women? What we know, don’t know and suspect

Unfortunately, advice and information about the risks and benefits of menopausal hormone therapy have been inconsistent in Australia to date. This makes it more difficult to translate new evidence into safer prescribing and practice, and to guide doctors and patients in deciding whether menopausal hormone therapy is the right choice.

For women going through menopause at the average age, menopausal hormone therapy should only be used to treat troublesome menopausal symptoms, not for the prevention or treatment of other conditions.

Women with troublesome symptoms need high quality information to weigh up the risks and benefits of hormonal therapy.

We urgently need national consensus guidelines, incorporating the most up-to-date evidence, to better support women and their health-care providers to make informed decisions about safe and effective ways to manage menopausal symptoms.

– ref. We don’t know menopausal hormone therapy causes breast cancer, but the evidence continues to suggest a link – http://theconversation.com/we-dont-know-menopausal-hormone-therapy-causes-breast-cancer-but-the-evidence-continues-to-suggest-a-link-122721

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Belgrave, Professor History, Massey University

When TJ Perenara took the field for the All Blacks against Australia, in the critical final match of the Bledisloe Cup series last month, he wore a band around his wrist with the word Ihumātao. Perenara is one of a growing number of people drawn to support the protest against a housing development of the Ōtuataua Stonefields on the Manukau Harbour, near Auckland’s international airport.

The protest was applauded rather than condemned. His coach accepted it, in contrast to the way that similar sporting protests have been treated recently in the United States.

Led by young and media-savvy women under the banner SOUL (Save our Unique Landscape), Ihumātao has attracted wide public support. It has created a coalition of Māori and heritage activists seeking to preserve one of the last largely unchanged landscapes that records the very earliest human occupation of New Zealand.

So far, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declined calls to visit the site. Her caution is well founded, because the conflict has the potential to undermine the long-term settlement of historical grievances.

From protest to treaty settlements

Ihumātau brings together those demanding greater recognition of the site’s sad history. The people from this land were invaded, their homes looted and destroyed and some of their lands confiscated in the 1860s, on a pretext of rebellion. They suffered indignity upon indignity as the pressure of an urbanising Auckland increased.

Read more: Local Māori urge government to address long-running dispute over rare cultural heritage landscape

The events at Ihumātao are reviving forms of protest common in the 1970s, including highly contentious, but ultimately successful occupations of nearby Bastion Point and the Raglan Golf Course. Now, these protests are greatly enhanced by new media.

This demonstration of the power of direct action stands in contrast to the slow investigations of the Waitangi Tribunal and the settlements under the Treaty of Waitangi that have followed.

In capturing the imaginations of younger generations, like Perenara, unborn when the Waitangi Tribunal began hearing its historical claims, Ihumātao has the potential to destabilise the investigation and settlement of historical grievances. It could also challenge the painfully constructed post-settlement organisations which represent iwi (Māori tribes) with both central and local government.

Historic grievances

Treaty settlements acknowledge historical claims and the payment of some compensation has enhanced iwi commercial and cultural development throughout the country, including for Waikato Tainui. But for iwi of the Manukau, it has done little to resolve their long-held grievances.

The Waitangi Tribunal came to Makaurau marae (meeting place) at Ihumātao in 1984, eight years before Perenara was born. At the time, it had no jurisdiction to look at claims prior to 1975, when the tribunal had been established. But in its investigation of what happened to Ihumātao, and those neighbouring Māori communities, it could not avoid the sorry history of warfare, confiscation and the desecration of sacred sites, while focusing on the increasing impact of pollution and development on the iwi’s land and marine resources.

The investigation of the Manukau claims provided one of the most persuasive arguments that the tribunal’s powers needed to be expanded back to 1840, the year the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, to include a review of New Zealand’s entire history of colonisation. But 35 years later, the Ihumātua claims remain unsettled and the tribunal has never returned.

Treaty settlements and Ihimātao

In 1995, the Tainui Raupatu settlement began an era of treaty settlements. The settlement provided financial redress for confiscation claims, including those of South Auckland iwi. It also aimed to be full and final, to prevent Māori from raising these issues again in seeking further redress.

In return, treaty settlements provided for the establishment of new Māori authorities. These would represent claimants in the future, and would form the basis for a new relationship with the Crown, beginning what the Crown has claimed would be genuine treaty-based partnerships.

While many of the iwi of South Auckland were and remain strongly associated with Waikato Tainui and the Kīngitanga, the Māori King movement, they have also been negotiating subsequent settlements. Some, like Te Kawerau ā Maki and Ngāti Tamaoho, have been completed, but others, including Te Akitai Waiohua, are still somewhere in the queue.

Read more: The kīngitanga movement: 160 years of Māori monarchy

The whole settlement process relies on a policy established in the early 1990s, when Perenara was but a toddler. The policy is locked into the assumptions about Māori and the Crown and the role of the state that dominated the period of state restructuring from 1984 to 1993.

The government established a cap of NZ$1 billion for all treaty settlements. Each iwi negotiates a package of financial and cultural redress, but the financial redress is driven by a set of relativities established at the time. This determined that Tainui as a whole got NZ$170 million for raupatu (confiscation) claims and Te Akitai Waiohua Agreement in Principle entitles them to NZ$9 million for the settlement of their remaining claims, including Ihumātao.

Treaty settlements today rest on once highly unpopular policies, determined by largely forgotten politicians a generation ago. Innovations such as recognising the legal personality of Te Urewera and the Whanganui River have been welcomed by many Māori. However, there is also disquiet over the impact of treaty settlements on iwi.

Read more: Three rivers are now legally people – but that’s just the start of looking after them

Todays’s protests, yesterday’s treaty settlements

The Ihumātao protest began in 2016, but only gained momentum in the popular imagination after all legal remedies were exhausted and the police were called in. If a new generation, long separate from those who led the claims in the 1980s, choose direct action and successfully bring the Crown to the negotiating table, then the message is clear. Protest works because patiently sitting in line does not.

It is possible that this whole protest can be separated from historic treaty claims, without reopening existing settlements or upsetting relativities between settlements. SOUL are very careful to limit the protest to the stonefields and to halting a housing development.

Extracting Ihumātao from broader grievances would still be difficult, as the Waitangi Tribunal found in 1984. If the protest can be contained as limited to preserving historic landscapes for future generations, Māori and non-Māori, an agreement could be reached that remains technically outside of Treaty of Waitangi claims and settlements.

To use Crown money to purchase private land, to resolve a treaty grievance, would have flow-on effects throughout the country. One solution already suggested, for the Crown to provide Tainui Waikato the funding to purchase the land in the name of King Tuheitia, would provide an effective solution, outside of the treaty settlement process and through a recognised iwi entity.

Challenging times for Māori and Crown

It is not just the Crown who needs to tread carefully. If the Crown was to negotiate with SOUL, come to a settlement which involved public expenditure to purchase land from its current owners, Fletcher Building, then it would give legitimacy to any Māori group attempting to undermine and reverse the decisions of Crown recognised tribal authorities.

Even in negotiating with SOUL, the Crown would be seen as ignoring an agreement between Fletcher Building and one of its Crown recognised treaty settlement entities, the Te Kawerau ā Maki Trust, even though Te Kawerau ā Maki’s relationship with Ihimatāo is more recent and personal than based on customary interests.

All of this is occurring at a time when Crown/Māori relationships appear to be in crisis. Major questions are being asked about the ministry for children Oranga Tamariki, the justice system’s treatment of Māori prisoners, Māori mental health and the treatment of Māori children in care in the past.

Read more: Racism alleged as Indigenous children taken from families – even though state care often fails them

In all of this, leading Māori authorities created out of treaty settlements have the capacity to provide kaupapa Māori (by Māori for Māori) services in the interests of hapū (sub-tribes) and whānau (family). There is a significant risk that if government is not seen to be acting responsibly and quickly, not only to resolve Ihumātoa but also these broader issues of disadvantage, the structures created by treaty settlements could be under threat.

However much treaty settlements can pretend to be full and final, to put history behind us, this objective has been a notable failure almost everywhere in this country’s past. New generations demand their own way of confronting and reimagining the past and in negotiating in the present. They will not be bound by those before them.

– ref. Land occupation at Ihumātao: why the New Zealand government needs to act cautiously but quickly – http://theconversation.com/land-occupation-at-ihumatao-why-the-new-zealand-government-needs-to-act-cautiously-but-quickly-122548

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Review: Avalanche: A Love Story, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, Sydney Theatre Company

Maxine Peake’s character needs to find “another way to be happy”, but she can’t.

In Julia Leigh’s play Avalanche: A Love Story, based on her 2016 memoir detailing the raw anguish of her six unsuccessful attempts at IVF, these words, though they are kindly intended by her sister (a mother of two), precipitate an angry crisis.

Peake’s character – called “Woman” – cannot make her dream of a baby real and cannot give it up either. In a fury, she kicks a chair across the stage.

Like Leigh, Peake has spoken candidly about her own struggle with IVF in real life. Her solo performance is astonishing for the way it brings warmth and a kind of likeability to the pain, raw bitterness and terrifying resentment that has been carefully written into the part she plays.

In Avalanche, Peake’s character starts her clinical journey at 37. Her partner is seeking to have a vasectomy reversed. If all goes well, the doctor tells her, you should be able to conceive naturally. “But I don’t want to see you here in two years’ time.”

Woman doesn’t conceive. And then she’s back at the clinic in two, three and five years. Sex becomes a chore, under pressure of conflicting needs and work interests, the marriage disintegrates. After her divorce, she makes the tough decision to pursue her dream alone as a single parent.

The naming of this character as Woman is perhaps a gesture towards Simone de Beauvoir’s famous opening line, “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman”. That is, a category – a social construct.

So too, Woman calls her longed for baby a “childling”. Not just because the baby has no reality, except in her own mind, but also because her baby seems to be half magical – a creature made of longing and yearning.

There is something deeply wrong lurking beneath the surface of the action in Avalanche. It’s not the just the money grasping doctors who trade in hope and prey upon an ageing woman’s despair (though entrepreneurial medicine is very much a focus of the play’s critique). Or the callous or sensible and loving male partners, or the supportive sisters or uncomprehending mothers. It’s also us – the audience – who are looking at this picture in an uncomfortable way.

It seems it is far easier for us to understand women who do not want children, or women who want careers, or women who do have children and occasionally wish that they didn’t.

But there is still an extraordinary stigma – seldom spoken about, seldom discussed – that attaches itself to a woman who wants to be a mother but can’t.

Scorn at the ‘failed’ mother

There is a peculiar kind of scorn that is heaped upon a “failed” mother. It’s a sting that Peake’s character undoubtedly feels, and that drives more of the action than the character would like. And, of course, men are rarely questioned about their lifestyle choices in quite the same way.

Childlessness is experienced by Peake’s Woman in a deeply, profoundly personal way – as grief, and loss. She attempts grief counselling at the beginning of the play, but cannot explain that the “someone” for whom she’s grieving has no existence in reality. So she tells the group she’s lost her mother.

But this problem has a social and cultural dimension. In cinemas and on television, in books and on the internet, being a mother is constantly evoked as a synonym for being loved, for being happy, and for being accepted.

The “happy ever after” of motherhood is offered as the plotline for every story but also posited as a “cure” for all the larger, existential worries that afflict us.

Every now and then a space opens within the play, in which the audience is invited to ask why does Woman yearn to be a mother so much? Her ex-husband believes she is too selfish. Her mother thinks she is too consumed with her work. Peake’s character says the thought of the child gives her a “reason for being”.

Her performance is driven on by detailed descriptions of invasive medical procedures. The fluorescent lighting. The disposable gowns. The trolley tables. The ultrasounds. The serial injections – every night at ten o’clock. The costs of treatment, $11,000, $2,800, $265. And the demand for evidence.

The doctors assure Woman that the chances of conception are 40%. But the statistics are deceptive. By the end of the play, she finds out that the chances for women as a group may be 40%, but for a woman of her age – at this clinic – the reality is less than 3%.

The character in this play is compelling because she is never innocent. Neither agent, nor a victim. There is a strong sense of knowingness – and a tremendous bitterness that is almost painful to watch.

Is she the beneficiary of decades of scientific innovation or is she the unwitting victim of a kind of predatory, medico-corporate greed? One of the doctors drives a Bentley, which Woman notices in the car park.

Suicidal thoughts aren’t far away. At one moment the character stands on a cliff top – distracted, on a precipice – only to be called back to reality by a passing jogger. (One UK study found that 42% of women undergoing fertility treatment experienced suicidal feelings as a result of their fertility problems.)

At the beginning of the play, Woman’s world is small, shrunken, tightly enclosed in the white space of the clinic. As her thoughts fracture, the stage walls lift to reveal the eerie landscape of a life beyond – ashen snow, a cold, dark aftermath, but endowed with a redemptive, even magical quality. The landscape glows, darkly.

There’s a sense, at the very end, that this character has found a different way to love and belong and feel accepted. A different path, as the character says, from “I” to “We”.

Avalanche: A Love Story, is at the Sydney Theatre Company until September 14.

– ref. Maxine Peake brings warmth and likeability to raw, bitter pain in a candid tale of IVF failure – http://theconversation.com/maxine-peake-brings-warmth-and-likeability-to-raw-bitter-pain-in-a-candid-tale-of-ivf-failure-122849

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Walvisch, Lecturer, Monash University

Few categories of offender invoke as strong a response as sex offenders. There is a public desire to “do something” about sex offenders, which is taken seriously by politicians of all persuasions.

One way governments have responded is by increasing the length of time sex offenders spend behind bars. For example, most Australian states and territories now allow for “dangerous sex offenders” – such as Edward Latimer, who committed numerous offences against adult victims – to be kept in custody after their sentences have ended.

Read more: Sex offender registries don’t prevent re-offending (and vigilante justice is real)

But it’s not feasible to keep all convicted sex offenders in prison forever, and there comes a time when even offenders like Latimer must be released. This, understandably, creates public anxiety and raises questions about what steps should be taken to ensure public safety.

In response to cases such as these, many countries have introduced laws that apply to sex offenders after they complete their sentences. These include requiring the community to be notified about their release from prison, placing restrictions on where they can live and maintaining sex offender registers.

Since 2003, every Australian jurisdiction has passed laws that specifically target sex offenders. All states and territories have sex offender registers, which require certain sex offenders to inform the police of their location and other personal details for a specified period.

Since 2016, most states and territories have changed their laws multiple times. Our analysis demonstrates these recent reforms have generally expanded the current system.

Rather than trying something different, the reforms have simply captured more offenders within the scheme, managed them for longer, imposed greater restrictions on their liberty and increased the consequences of breaching their obligations. Even where the system has been entirely overhauled, this has not aimed to implement anything new, but strengthen the existing approach.

Read more: Helping to rehabilitate sex offenders is controversial – but it can prevent more abuse

While these types of reform may make sense to governments that want to be seen to be “doing something”, there is little evidence that simply doing more of the same will make the community safer.

In fact, evaluations of some more innovative approaches suggest measures that may be more effective.

Circles of support and accountability

The best-established of these measures are “circles of support and accountability”(CoSA)). These involve groups of trained community volunteers who support sex offenders after their release from prison.

CoSA aim to reduce social isolation among offenders, which can help prevent future offending. The programs are based on the idea that providing offenders with a circle of community volunteers who offer practical assistance and accountability will help them not to re-offend once they have are released.

Read more: The folly of writing legislation in response to sensational crimes

CoSA were first introduced in Canada in 1994. They have since been established in the United Kingdom, as well as parts of the United States and Western Europe. In 2015, a small CoSA pilot program was developed in South Australia.

And CoSA can improve aspects of offenders’ lives that are, in turn, linked to reduced re-offending, such as their relationships, employment and education. What’s more, it may even save costs.

Community volunteers who have worked with sex offenders in CoSA have reported positive outcomes from the experience, such as an increased sense of community and self-worth, developing emotional bonds with others, and feeling the program made the community safer.

Chaperone programs

A second innovative approach is the use of chaperone programs. These programs are currently only available in parts of the United States.

Chaperone programs involve identifying and training offenders’ appropriate family members or significant others, who agree to accompany the offender during public outings on a voluntary basis. Chaperones also undertake training to help them identify the signs of relapse and intervene if necessary. This includes reporting breaches to authorities.

Read more: Leniency for lower level sex offenders won’t help protect children – more police funding could

Offenders seeking to participate in a chaperone program must acknowledge their responsibility for the offending and pass a polygraph test. They must also take part in testing to identify their sexual interest and arousal patterns, not use alcohol or drugs, and agree to safety plans for any event they wish to attend.

Unfortunately, very little has been documented about chaperone programs.

However, the one study conducted (but inaccessible online) provides promising evidence about their effectiveness. It suggests offenders who receive such support are “less likely to take part in the behaviours that originally contributed to their imprisonment”.

Support and awareness groups

A third approach, which has been trialled by Corrections Victoria, is the use of support and awareness groups” (SAAGs).

This approach uses the offender’s existing support network to foster pro-social support and promote effective reintegration after prison. SAAGs aim to assist offenders to implement and achieve healthy lifestyle goals and manage their risk factors in the community.

Members of a SAAG are identified by the offender during treatment and may include spouses, other family members, colleagues, friends, neighbours or respected community members. Those without appropriate support people are helped to build connections with professionals, such as community or faith-based organisations.

SAAG members work with the offender and their treatment provider to identify strategies to manage the offender’s risk and support them to reintegrate into the community. While similar to CoSA, the support provided by SAAGs is provided on a less structured basis.

Read more: Women also sexually abuse children, but their reasons often differ from men’s

There is no published research on the effectiveness of this model. But its underlying premise is consistent with CoSA and chaperone programs.

The way forward?

The public is justified in feeling concerned about the release of sex offenders, and governments should be doing everything they can to reduce their risk of re-offending.

But if governments are truly committed to the goal of enhancing community safety, they need to do more than simply expand the current system. They should adopt measures that have been proven to be effective or at least show promise, such as CoSA, chaperone programs and SAAGS.

Read more: New data shows sex offenders in Victoria are going to prison for longer

These innovative approaches seem a better target for public investment than just doing more of the same. And by involving the community in promoting offenders’ reintegration, they may minimise underlying fears and insecurities about sex offenders.

– ref. 3 ways to help sex offenders safely reintegrate back into the community – http://theconversation.com/3-ways-to-help-sex-offenders-safely-reintegrate-back-into-the-community-121977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Fabian, Lecturer, Australian National University

We are forever being told that we work long hours, many of them not formally paid. And we do. Nearly a quarter of working Australians say they work more than 50 hours per week. Around half of them say they would like to work less.

We are told long hours are bad for mental health, bad for families, and bad for the environment. But if they are really so bad, why do we work them?

One explanation is that we have no choice – many of us are trapped in jobs that require excessive hours from which we can’t escape.

Trapped?

But in Australia, these claims have been rarely tested.

We’ve done so in a new paper which makes use of the HILDA Household Labour and Income Dynamics in Australia survey, and found them wanting.

Overall job satisfaction among overworkers is quite high, at an average of 7.1 out of 10. This is less than the level of satisfaction of workers in similar or identical jobs, who are working as many hours as they would like. Their overall satisfaction averages 7.9 out of 10. But nonetheless, overworkers like their jobs.

HILDA includes useful questions about the components of job satisfaction, including satisfaction with hours, pay, flexibility, security, and work itself.

Overworkers have relatively low satisfaction with hours and flexibility, at 5.1 and 6.1, respectively, compared with 7.9 and 7.8 for matched workers.

Read more: Go home on time! Working long hours increases your chance of having a stroke

But overworkers are compensated for these unwelcome hours with higher pay, better job security, and more interesting work. Their levels of satisfaction on these metrics are on par with those of matched workers or even exceed them in the case of satisfaction with the work itself.

The findings align with our findings about who is most likely to overwork. Managers are 10% more likely to work long hours than average workers, and professionals 5% more likely.

It gets better

HILDA follows the same people year after year, allowing us to track changes in work patterns over time. We use this remarkable feature to track dissatisfied overworkers (those reporting less than 5 on the satisfaction scale) to see whether they are are indeed “trapped” in unhappy jobs.

Every year, 28% of dissatisfied overworkers change jobs. On average their situation improves. Their wages are typically A$6 per hour higher and they work 11 hours per week fewer than dissatisfied overworkers who stay.

Those overworkers who don’t change jobs also typically see improvements.

Hours shrink over time

Over time, usually within two years, their hours fall back to the point at which they are no longer dissatisfied. We cannot see why in the data, but we can speculate that they are able to negotiate with their employers for fewer work hours or better pay or conditions.

What about those overworkers who remain dissatisfied after two years, don’t enjoy improvements in their conditions, and don’t change jobs – the ones who are trapped.

They are extremely rare.

Across the 15 years of HILDA data we examined, we found 13,069 cases of overwork and 1,929 cases of dissatisfied overwork. Only 139 did not change jobs within 24 months.

The number of cases is so small that we have to be be cautious when speculating about why they seem to be trapped.

We have identified two associations that deserve further investigation.

Very few have nowhere to go

First, 14% were hospitality, retail, or service managers; 10% were farm managers or agricultural workers; 8% were road and rail drivers. Each of these industries is characterised by rigid and often long work hours.

Second, very few of the trapped overworkers were educated to a university level. That makes them reliant on experience to command high wages. It means that changing jobs or industries to get fewer hours can cost them a lot in wages because they lose their job-specific and industry-specific experience.

Overall, becoming trapped in overwork is uncommon in Australia, meaning in this respect Australia’s labour market works well.

Incidentally, this is even more true for underwork.

Read more: Are you burnt out at work? Ask yourself these 4 questions

Workers who say they want to increase their working hours can usually do it within 12 months.

Part-time work is important for parents and others trying to juggle caring responsibilities and employment. It will also become increasingly important for older Australians who might want to stay employed but work fewer hours as they near retirement. It is wrong to see part-time work as a problem.

Indeed, a fixation on restoring the 38- or 40-hour week might be linked to traditional, patriarchal views of men working full-time and women staying at home. It would impede new and creative ways of sharing caring and employment.

Read more: It’s time to put the 15-hour work week back on the agenda

Intervening in labour markets to support the traditional working week would have large (negative) economic effects. People typically resolve concerns about working hours by themselves, usually to their satisfaction.

If we remain concerned about overwork – notwithstanding that most of those doing it don’t see it as a problem for long – it would be wisest to tackle it by tackling our culture (things such as the protestant work-ethic) rather than by doing anything to impede the workings of labour market.

– ref. Most of us who work long hours like the jobs we are in. Those who don’t, change jobs quickly – http://theconversation.com/most-of-us-who-work-long-hours-like-the-jobs-we-are-in-those-who-dont-change-jobs-quickly-122633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe University

Conservative former congressman Joe Walsh recently announced he would challenge Donald Trump for the Republican Party’s 2020 Presidential nomination.

Challenging an incumbent president is not new: both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter faced very significant challenges when they sought a further term. But Trump’s hold on Republicans suggests that no challenge is likely to succeed.

For the Democrats, however, the race to oppose Trump is now wide open and bitter.

The American political system allows participation through primary elections in ways unknown in our tightly controlled party system.

Read more: Two dozen candidates, one big target: in a crowded Democratic field, who can beat Trump?

Millions of voters take part in choosing the candidate of their party. This can have strange consequences; some of Bernie Sanders’ supporters were so disaffected by the nomination of Hillary Clinton that perhaps 10% of them voted for Trump.

Candidates must damage their opponents without providing ammunition that can be used against their party in the November elections.

Presidential primaries stretch across the first half of 2020. These include several key contests determined by caucuses, which involve actual attendance for several hours to register one’s choice. Because Iowa traditionally leads off, huge attention is paid to the results there.

Iowa is a state with a population of just over 3 million, and is far whiter than the United States. Its caucuses are followed by three other small states: New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, which between them start to look like the country as a whole.

Every Democratic candidate is spending time and resources in the early states, with teams of volunteers criss-crossing the small towns of Iowa and New Hampshire and wooing minority communities in Nevada (Hispanic) and South Carolina (African-American).

By the end of February, expect the field to have shrunk from the current dozen or so serious contenders to about half that number. On March 3 comes a slew of votes across 16 states, including California and Texas. The results that day will either produce a clear front runner or a dogged three-way fight lasting three more months.

One of the oddities of the Democratic race so far is that the two leading candidates and the incumbent president are all white men in their seventies, well past the accepted American retirement age.

The two best known Democratic contenders are Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, who cover the ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party: Sanders on the left and Biden on the right. Both entered the race with considerable money and name recognition, and both have started slipping in the polls as younger candidates have gained attention.

Some current polls now place Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as equalling their support. Warren shares some of Sanders’ radical positions on health care and taxation, but she is careful to not define herself as a socialist, and she has the same grasp of policy as did Hillary Clinton.

Trump would undoubtedly campaign against Warren as another effete east coast liberal, invoking the failure of two previous candidates from Boston, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry.

Democrat voters looking for someone younger and different may swing behind Senator Kamala Harris from California, a former Attorney-General who is positioning herself as someone who transcends both racial and gender prejudices.

Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show Harris and Pete Buttigieg as the only other candidates who consistently poll over 10%. Buttigieg is the unexpected dark horse: gay, young, ex-military and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, which is smaller than Geelong. He far outpolls more experienced candidates – one of them, Kirsten Gillibrand, has already withdrawn.

Read more: US Democratic presidential primaries: Biden leading, followed by Sanders, Warren, Harris; and will Trump be beaten?

The candidates are united in their dislike of Donald Trump, but this is a battle of egos and ideologies. Do the Democrats seek to win over Trump supporters in key states by appealing to a mythical “centre”? Do they try to win over Republicans, particularly educated women who made up some of the base for their victories in last year’s House of Representatives election? Or do they concentrate on their potential supporters among the young and minority communities who are less likely to vote?

In a country where fewer than 60% of those eligible bother to vote, the last option would seem the most viable, but that requires candidates who can speak to the disinterested and the disenfranchised.

Both racism and sexism played a role in Trump’s victory, and Biden’s current lead in the polls suggests many Democrats feel an older white man is their safest choice. But if the Democrats are to galvanise young and minority voters to turn out they need a candidate who is clearly very different to Trump.

The electoral college system means that winning the popular vote, as Clinton did, does not guarantee victory. In key mid-western industrial states the vote may well be determined by the consequences of Trump’s current economic policies.

Much can change before Democratic supporters start declaring their choice in six months. Several of the also-rans may surprise us; maybe one of the front-runners will drop out.

Were Bernie Sanders to withdraw and throw his support to Elizabeth Warren, she would become the front-runner; it’s less clear where Biden’s supporters would go, but if he polls poorly in February, he is likely to fade away.

At this point in 2015, pundits were predicting a presidential race between Clinton and Jeb Bush, with Clinton favoured to win. Nothing in politics is predictable.

– ref. In the Democrats’ bitter race to find a candidate to beat Trump, might Elizabeth Warren hold the key? – http://theconversation.com/in-the-democrats-bitter-race-to-find-a-candidate-to-beat-trump-might-elizabeth-warren-hold-the-key-122461

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Halliday, Professor Public Health Genetics, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Around one in 25 Australian children are now conceived through use of assisted reproductive treatments such as IVF.

These reproductive technologies appear to leave a biological “signature” on several genes that can be measured at birth.

This may explain why assisted conception increases the chance of early delivery, low birth weight and congenital abnormalities – and the question has remained about why this might be so.

But the good news, according to our research published today in the journal Nature Communications, is these “epigenetic” changes largely disappear by adulthood.

In fact, people born via IVF are as healthy as their naturally conceived peers.

Read more: Considering using IVF to have a baby? Here’s what you need to know

First, a quick lesson on epigenetics

Epigenetics is the process by which an organism interacts with the environment, switching genes on and off. This process controls which proteins the genes make and the type of cells they become, whether muscle, brain, skin, or something else.

The time around conception is associated with widespread epigenetic remodelling of the embryo, switching genes on and off, and producing the different types of cells needed to establish life.

Environmental influences such as diet around the time of conception and in pregnancy can influence the health of the offspring for many years. The biological processes associated with this remain largely unclear, but epigenetic changes are suspected.

It’s possible that conception by assisted reproductive technology disrupts the epigenetic process, resulting in a greater liklihood of congenital abnormalities caused by epigenetic changes.

Our studies

As part of a world first study, our team measured the epigenetic profile of 158 people conceived with assisted reproductive therapies and 75 people conceived without.

We studied two types of assisted reproductive therapies: in vitro fertilisation (IVF), where fertilisation occurs in a lab, and gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), where fertilisation occurs in the woman’s fallopian tube.

Both techniques require ovarian stimulation – medication to stimulate the ovaries to release multiple eggs.

With our participants’ permission, we compared their newborn heel prick blood spot, which had been routinely collected at birth, with their blood sample collected as adults, when they were aged 22 to 35 years.

What we found

We recently published an analysis of clinical assessments on these same adults, which showed no adverse health outcomes related to their growth, their risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke or respiratory problems, and their psychological and social status.

In other words, their results were similar to the group conceived without assisted reproductive technologies.

Read more: Epigenetics: what impact does it have on our psychology?

In this latest research, we found clear epigenetic changes in the blood samples of babies born via assisted reproductive treatments, including in several previously studied genes.

Reassuringly, however, the majority of this epigenetic variation was not detectable by adulthood. This suggests these differences resolve over time.

We also found some of these changes in newborn samples collected in a completely independent group of babies conceived via assisted reproductive technologies in America. This was done to provide confidence that the changes were real.

Interestingly, the changes occurred in those conceived via both IVF (in a lab) and GIFT (in the fallopian tube).

So it appeared that ovarian stimulation – or infertility itself – seemed to be the main driver of change in epigenetic profile, rather than the process of growing the embryo in the lab.

What does it mean?

This is the first study internationally to examine the epigenetic profile of people born via assisted reproductive therapies from birth through to adulthood.

The results suggest being conceived via assisted reproduction is not likely to influence gene activity over a person’s lifetime – any such changes associated with assisted reproduction appear to disappear over time.

But further studies are needed to work out when the changes begin to disappear and when they are no longer present.

It will also be important to understand how specific assisted reproductive technology processes, such as ovarian stimulation, impact the developing epigenetic profile.

Read more: Fertility miracle or fake news? Understanding which IVF ‘add-ons’ really work

– ref. IVF changes babies’ genes but these differences disappear by adulthood – http://theconversation.com/ivf-changes-babies-genes-but-these-differences-disappear-by-adulthood-122625

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Nolan, Associate, Grattan Institute

Depending on who you ask, our teachers are either some of the best paid in the world, or they’re underpaid.

Here are the facts: Australian teachers get a very decent starting salary, but their pay quickly falls behind that of other professionals.

Getting teacher pay right is crucial to attracting the best and brightest to the classroom, so it’s important to debunk a few myths.

Read more: Better pay and more challenge: here’s how to get our top students to become teachers

How to measure a teacher’s pay

We should not fall into the trap of comparing Australia’s teacher salaries to other countries using dollar amounts, even after taking account of the cost of living. Australia is a rich country. Our incomes are relatively high, and our education system is competing with other industries to attract the best talent.

Chart 1 compares teachers’ pay with the pay of similar-aged professionals in Australia. Chart 2 shows how those numbers compare to other countries.

But average pay is not the only factor, so Chart 3 looks at what opportunity there is for Australian teachers to earn a very high income.

Young teachers are paid well, but expertise is not rewarded

The starting full-time salary for a classroom teacher in most Australian states is between $65,000 and $70,000, based on every enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) we examined.

That’s reasonably competitive with the starting salary of a graduate with an engineering, commerce, or law degree, and has been improving over the past 15 years.

The trouble is that teacher pay doesn’t rise much with age or expertise. The pay scale for a classroom teacher stops rising after about nine years, while the incomes of their university educated peers in other professions keep rising well into their 30s and 40s.

It’s not like this in every country. Other countries reward teacher expertise with higher pay relative to other professionals. So while Australia’s pay for young secondary teachers is in the top half of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Australia’s pay for older secondary teachers is in the bottom half.

Any high-income Australian teachers?

People with a teaching degree in Australia have almost no chance of earning a very high income.

More than a third of engineering or commerce graduates in their 40s working full-time earn more than $3,000 a week ($156,000 a year).

But for graduates with a teaching degree, that figure is only 2.3%. As Chart 3 shows, if you want to earn a really high income in Australia, you’re often better off having no degree than having a bachelor degree in teaching.

Teacher pay matters. Most young people who did well at school are interested in becoming a teacher – but most of them are turned off by the big financial sacrifices teaching involves.

A Grattan Institute survey of almost 1,000 young high achievers (aged 18-25 and with an ATAR of 80 or higher) found about 70% said they would be willing to give teaching a go.

But university enrolment data show that only about 3% of high achievers actually choose teaching for their undergraduate studies.

Read more: How to make good arguments at school (and everywhere else)

Our new report, Attracting high achievers to teaching, proposes a $1.6 billion-a-year reform package for government schools to double the number of high-achieving young people who choose to become teachers within a decade.

The package includes $10,000-a-year scholarships for high achievers who take up teaching, and new career paths for expert teachers with pay of up to $180,000 a year. That’s about $80,000 more than the current highest standard pay rate for teachers in Australia.

If governments were to implement our blueprint, it would send a strong message to Australia’s best and brightest – if you want a challenging career where expertise is celebrated and paid accordingly, choose teaching.

– ref. Three charts on teachers’ pay in Australia: it starts out OK, but goes downhill pretty quickly – http://theconversation.com/three-charts-on-teachers-pay-in-australia-it-starts-out-ok-but-goes-downhill-pretty-quickly-122782

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Davina Jackson, Honorary Academic, School of Architecture, University of Kent

Bali’s Green School recently celebrated its first decade of educating toddlers through teenagers (and their digital nomad parents) about eco-ethical design and cooperative living. Set in a village near Ubud, this tropical jungle campus of quirky bamboo pavilions has become a globally influential exhibition of one of this century’s significant architectural trends.

There is a major renaissance in correctly growing, cutting, treating, drying and laminating bamboo so it can be used with confidence for substantial and near-permanent structures. Much of the inspiration for this has come from Green School founders John and Cynthia Hardy and their daughter Elora. Their TED talks and YouTube videos have been widely watched.

Read more: Bamboo could turn the world’s construction trade on its head

Bamboo always has been a basic construction material in tropical latitudes. But generally it has been used for inexpensive shacks, stalls, fences, scaffolding and sunscreens. If not treated, bamboo is highly susceptible to fire and naturally degrades within two or three years, because insects and fungi rapidly devour the sugar-and-starch-rich sap inside the canes.

In Bali during the 1990s, Irish-Australian designer Linda Garland pioneered contemporary uses of bamboo. She worked with University of Hamburg scientist Walter Liese to treat bamboo against the ravages of powderpost beetles and turn it into a commercially viable building material.

One essential preparation technique is to drill through the centres of the canes with long steel rods, then apply repellent and fire-resistant chemicals. Often this involves a soaking solution that includes borax salt powder. The bamboo is then dried out for several days to weeks.

Technology helps transform practices

Ancient practices in China and Japan remain the gold standard for durable bamboo buildings.

Traditional Japanese rectilinear designs had gable roofs and rooms matching the dimensions of tatami mats.

Some Chinese bridges date back as far as the 10th century AD. Floating villages (bamboo platforms with clusters of huts) supported dozens of families as recently as the 17th century.

In Ecuador, archaeologists found a bamboo funeral chamber carbon-dated to 7500 BC. Ecuadorian bamboo, known as caña de Guayaquil (or Guaya), is exported to Peru, Colombia and other Latin American countries. Here bamboo buildings tend to be weatherproofed by thick coatings of mud. (David Witte has written a thesis on historical and contemporary bamboo buildings in South America.)

Today, Bali’s Green School and several associated enterprises, are prominent in a third millennium movement to build geometrically irregular, often sinuous, structures.

These outré styles obviously have been influenced by the trans-millennial technology revolution in digital modelling and manufacturing. Extremely asymmetrical architecture can now be fabricated precisely with metal, glass and masonry components.

However, the Hardys and their international team of bamboo building experts craft small-scale physical models of their designs. The artisans then copy these models on site at full scale. This manual system need not stop designers from sketching initial concepts on their screens.

Read more: Cheap, tough and green: why aren’t more buildings made of rammed earth?

What happens at the school?

The Green School educates more than 500 students from pre-kindergarten to Year 12. It complements standard curriculum subjects with various practical tasks and projects that build healthy and ecological skills and habits. Teachers, and parents co-opted as project leaders and mentors, encourage pupils to design and build specific structures that provide useful amenities for the campus.

One recent middle-school project produced a series of tiny shelters as quiet retreats. Each one is to be occupied by only one child at a time. A campus guide notes that Sir Richard Branson recently climbed into one of these cubby houses, a tiny netted bamboo platform hanging from a tree branch, without upsetting the apparently fragile enclosure.

Elora Hardy’s team at architecture, interior and landscape design company Ibuku designed and made most of the school’s buildings. They also have created yoga and cooking school pavilions, hotels, houses, restaurant interiors and permaculture gardens around Bali and in some Asian cities.

An affiliated venture also operates Green Camp residential courses for children and their parents visiting for one to 11 days. Their meals are cooked with vegetables grown at the Hardys’ Kul Kul permaculture farm.

Another family venture, Bamboo U, led by Orin Hardy, provides hands-on training for potential builders. The courses cover bamboo selection (different uses of seven preferred Balinese species), treatment, building design, modelling and on-site fabrication, including professionals from Ibuku as teachers.

A global embracing of bamboo

During the Green School’s first decade, a new generation of studios led by young Asian architects gained prominence and international awards for their creativity with bamboo. They include: Vo Trong Nghia (VTNA) and H&P Architects in Vietnam; Nattapon Klinsuwan (NKWD), Chiangmai Life Architects and Bambooroo in Thailand; Abin Design Studio and Mansaram Architects in India; Bambu Art in Bali; Atelier Sacha Cotture in the Philippines; HWCD, Penda (Chris Precht) and Li Xiaodong in China; and William Lim (CL3) in Hong Kong.

And some long-established, internationally renowned architecture firms have completed projects with significant uses of bamboo. They include Japanese architects Kengo Kuma, Arata Isozaki and Shigeru Ban, London-based Foster + Partners and Italy’s Renzo Piano.

Read more: Surviving climate change means transforming both economics and design

Many bamboo buildings today include timber or concrete slab floors because these can be laid consistently flat. But researchers at Empa, the Swiss materials research academy, have developed highly durable and temperature-inert floor and deck boards made with a composite of bamboo fibres and resin. These prototype boards are being tested in one of the Vision Wood student apartment modules slotted into Empa’s NEST testing facility at Dübendorf.

Meanwhile, the Green School is expanding from Bali. An associate campus opens next year on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island – where bamboo is not naturally grown or legally used as an architectural material. Instead the Taranaki school will build aerial classrooms – pods on poles – using various local species of pine.

– ref. Bamboo architecture: Bali’s Green School inspires a global renaissance – http://theconversation.com/bamboo-architecture-balis-green-school-inspires-a-global-renaissance-121248

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Fabian, Lecturer, Australian National University

No biggie. Most of us who overwork like the jobs we are in. Those who don’t change jobs fairly quickly

Overwork? Most of us who work long hours like our jobs. Those who don’t, move on

We are forever being told that we work long hours, many of them not formally paid. And we do. Nearly a quarter of working Australians say they work more than 50 hours per week. Around half of them say they would like to work less.

We are told long hours are bad for mental health, bad for families, and bad for the environment. But if they are really so bad, why do we work them?

One explanation is that we have no choice – many of us are trapped in jobs that require excessive hours from which we can’t escape.

Trapped?

But in Australia, these claims have been rarely tested.

We’ve done so in a new paper which makes use of the HILDA Household Labour and Income Dynamics in Australia survey, and found them wanting.

Overall job satisfaction among overworkers is quite high, at an average of 7.1 out of 10. This is less than the level of satisfaction of workers in similar or identical jobs, who are working as many hours as they would like. Their overall satisfaction averages 7.9 out of 10. But nonetheless, overworkers like their jobs.

HILDA includes useful questions about the components of job satisfaction, including satisfaction with hours, pay, flexibility, security, and work itself.

Overworkers have relatively low satisfaction with hours and flexibility, at 5.1 and 6.1, respectively, compared with 7.9 and 7.8 for matched workers.

Read more: Go home on time! Working long hours increases your chance of having a stroke

But overworkers are compensated for these unwelcome hours with higher pay, better job security, and more interesting work. Their levels of satisfaction on these metrics are on par with those of matched workers or even exceed them in the case of satisfaction with the work itself.

The findings align with our findings about who is most likely to overwork. Managers are 10% more likely to work long hours than average workers, and professionals 5% more likely.

It gets better

HILDA follows the same people year after year, allowing us to track changes in work patterns over time. We use this remarkable feature to track dissatisfied overworkers (those reporting less than 5 on the satisfaction scale) to see whether they are are indeed “trapped” in unhappy jobs.

Every year, 28% of dissatisfied overworkers change jobs. On average their situation improves. Their wages are typically A$6 per hour higher and they work 11 hours per week fewer than dissatisfied overworkers who stay.

Those overworkers who don’t change jobs also typically see improvements.

Hours shrink over time

Over time, usually within two years, their hours fall back to the point at which they are no longer dissatisfied. We cannot see why in the data, but we can speculate that they are able to negotiate with their employers for fewer work hours or better pay or conditions.

What about those overworkers who remain dissatisfied after two years, don’t enjoy improvements in their conditions, and don’t change jobs – the ones who are trapped.

They are extremely rare.

Across the 15 years of HILDA data we examined, we found 13,069 cases of overwork and 1,929 cases of dissatisfied overwork. Only 139 did not change jobs within 24 months.

The number of cases is so small that we have to be be cautious when speculating about why they seem to be trapped.

We have identified two associations that deserve further investigation.

Very few have nowhere to go

First, 14% were hospitality, retail, or service managers; 10% were farm managers or agricultural workers; 8% were road and rail drivers. Each of these industries is characterised by rigid and often long work hours.

Second, very few of the trapped overworkers were educated to a university level. That makes them reliant on experience to command high wages. It means that changing jobs or industries to get fewer hours can cost them a lot in wages because they lose their job-specific and industry-specific experience.

Overall, becoming trapped in overwork is uncommon in Australia, meaning in this respect Australia’s labour market works well.

Incidentally, this is even more true for underwork.

Read more: Are you burnt out at work? Ask yourself these 4 questions

Workers who say they want to increase their working hours can usually do it within 12 months.

Part-time work is important for parents and others trying to juggle caring responsibilities and employment. It will also become increasingly important for older Australians who might want to stay employed but work fewer hours as they near retirement. It is wrong to see part-time work as a problem.

Indeed, a fixation on restoring the 38- or 40-hour week might be linked to traditional, patriarchal views of men working full-time and women staying at home. It would impede new and creative ways of sharing caring and employment.

Read more: It’s time to put the 15-hour work week back on the agenda

Intervening in labour markets to support the traditional working week would have large (negative) economic effects. People typically resolve concerns about working hours by themselves, usually to their satisfaction.

If we remain concerned about overwork – notwithstanding that most of those doing it don’t see it as a problem for long – it would be wisest to tackle it by tackling our culture (things such as the protestant work-ethic) rather than by doing anything to impede the workings of labour market.

– ref. Not so bad. Most of us who work long hours like the jobs we are in. Those who don’t, change jobs quickly – http://theconversation.com/not-so-bad-most-of-us-who-work-long-hours-like-the-jobs-we-are-in-those-who-dont-change-jobs-quickly-122633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Revti Raman Sharma, Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington

In an increasingly globally integrated business world, it is now widely accepted that cultural intelligence (CQ) is as essential as general and emotional intelligence.

But do organisations fully appreciate what cultural intelligence entails? Our study of Indian senior managers conducting business with New Zealand may help them do so.

Thinking outside cultural boundaries

Cultural intelligence has been defined as a specific form of intelligence “focused on capabilities to grasp, reason and behave effectively” in culturally diverse situations. It allows us to think outside our narrow cultural boundaries and decode complex cross-cultural interactions.

Read more: How universities can make graduates employable with connections to industry

When business partners are from other cultures, institutional differences may create challenges in communication and agreeing on mutually accepted managerial approaches. Cultural intelligence helps address such issues. It allows us to manage anxiety and uncertainty in unfamiliar environments.

Global managers with high cultural intelligence are non-judgemental, inquisitive, tolerant of ambiguity, cosmopolitan and inclusive. They understand the impact of their own culture in their dealings with others. They pause and verify their cultural assumptions before reaching conclusions. They are likely to develop trust with culturally different people and less likely to engage in exclusionary reactions.

Those with low cultural intelligence engage in stereotyping, which results in conflicts and failures.

Cultural intelligence and leadership

In a 2011 study of Swiss military officers with leadership responsibilities, cultural intelligence was found to be a stronger predictor of cross-border leadership effectiveness than both general and emotional intelligence. The study also found that people who are effective in domestic contexts may not be effective in cross-border settings.

Our new study surveyed 186 managers. We explored the interaction between four dimensions of cultural intelligence – cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and behavioural – and the quality of the managers’ relationships and institutional success. This included their ability to manage differences in rule enforcement, cultural values and ethical business practices.

People with high cognitive cultural intelligence are more likely to have broader knowledge of foreign politics and cultural and economic systems. But this on its own may result in negative outcomes because of “sophisticated stereotyping”. This reduces a complex culture to a shorthand description and applies it to all people in that culture.

Metacognitive cultural intelligence dampens this negative effect. People who have this skill are more likely to actively check stereotyping. They suspend judgement in intercultural contexts. They are consciously aware of other people’s cultural preferences, question cultural assumptions and can adjust their ways of thinking.

People who score high on motivational cultural intelligence have an intrinsic interest in being effective in culturally diverse situations. Behavioural cultural intelligence is about actively demonstrating culturally appropriate behaviour.

The theory is that these four dimensions of CQ help people gain legitimacy in a foreign environment because of their enhanced understanding of that environment, and conformity to norms and expectations.

Read more: Our culture affects the way we look after ourselves. It should shape the health care we receive, too

Cultural intelligence in practice

We expected to find that cognitive CQ would be most effective and that, combined with metacognitive CQ, it would improve relationship quality and institutional success. This proved only partly so.

Cognitive CQ and metacognitive CQ combined do have a significant positive effect on relationships but only a non-significant positive effect on institutional success. If metacognitive CQ is low, the effect of cognitive CQ on relationship quality is actually negative.

As expected, motivational CQ has a significant direct positive effect on both relationship quality and institutional success.

Contrary to our expectation, our study showed behavioural CQ to have a significant negative effect for organisational success and non-significant negative effect for relationships. This anomaly requires further investigation.

The study demonstrates that cognitive and metacognitive CQ have to interact to ensure quality relationships with business partners and successful management of cultural differences. Given these findings, and previous evidence of the positive effect of CQ on global leadership, managers need to strengthen weaker aspects through training and practice.

Cultural exposure has been shown to enhance CQ. It allows people to learn from experiences of diverse cultures. This opens their mind and increases cultural empathy, emotional stability and flexibility.

Our study also highlights the importance of relationship quality. Investing in sustaining quality relationships with business partners is critical for managing cultural differences.

– ref. What it takes to navigate cultural differences in a global business world – http://theconversation.com/what-it-takes-to-navigate-cultural-differences-in-a-global-business-world-119975

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By DJ Huppatz, Associate professor, Architecture and Design, Swinburne University of Technology

No other architectural style elicits emotional reactions like Brutalism. Think monolithic concrete buildings composed of blunt rectangular forms, devoid of colour, decoration or symbolism, with cavernous interiors that complement the exterior’s hulking, inhuman scale.

Frequently described as dehumanising, depressing and oppressive, Brutalist buildings feature prominently in “world’s ugliest buildings lists”.

Despite this unpopularity, architects, preservationists and historians in Britain, the United States and Australia have embarked on numerous campaigns over the past decade to save Brutalist buildings from demolition.

How could anyone love such concrete beasts?

An honest material

Brutalism sounds intimidating (as in brutal), but its origins lie in a modernist penchant for béton brut (raw concrete). In the 1920s, famed French architect Le Corbusier popularised an architecture comprising simple cubic forms of raw concrete as the epitome of modernism.

Read more: The problem with reinforced concrete

For modernists, concrete was a futuristic material that could fulfil their utopian dreams of mass housing and urban renewal. It was flexible yet solid, malleable yet permanent. Unrefined concrete was an honest expression of their intentions, while plain forms and exposed structures were similarly sincere.

And concrete has its own qualities. No two concrete surfaces look or feel the same. Textured with impressions of the wooden form-work or sandblasted to expose its gravel aggregate, concrete walls have a subtle beauty.

But Brutalist buildings (like all buildings) require regular maintenance, and concrete deteriorates. Brown stains leak from joints due to metal reinforcements rusting from within. Public buildings particularly suffer from neglect.

After the second world war, with the advent of metal reinforcing, concrete came into its own with greater expanses and stronger structures and Brutalism become a global phenomenon. From Soviet Bloc housing complexes to Western European welfare state projects, Brutalism became a modern, efficient and cheap solution for mass public housing.

It also became a favoured style for public institutions, particularly government buildings, cultural complexes, schools, universities and hospitals.

An ethical approach

In a 1957 edition of Architectural Design, architects Alison and Peter Smithson argued that it was more than just a style:

Brutalism tries to face up to a mass-production society, and drag a rough poetry out of the confused and powerful forces which are at work. Up to now Brutalism has been discussed stylistically, whereas its essence is ethical.

The Smithsons’ best-known project and exemplar of British Brutalism was the Robin Hood Gardens, a high-rise public housing scheme in London completed in 1972. Its ethical dimension was a new approach to mass housing with generously-sized flats and two-metre-wide “streets in the air” running the length of the blocks every third floor. (But the flats were neglected for years and demolition of them began in 2017.)

In the 1960s and 1970s, Brutalism became a global style, with few concessions to local climate or conditions and concrete monoliths were built in as diverse places as Singapore and Sao Paolo. Brutalism in the postcolonial world was functional, economical, and it made new nations appear progressive.

In Australia, prominent architect and critic Robin Boyd wrote sympathetically about Brutalism in The Australian Ugliness as it spread here in the 1960s.

Canberra’s High Court Building and National Gallery of Australia, public service buildings such as the Cameron Offices, Sydney’s UTS Tower and Brisbane’s Cultural Precinct are prominent local examples. Perth’s Art Gallery of WA is celebrating its 40th anniversary with the exhibition Perth Brutal: Dreaming in Concrete.

Controversy over the fate of Sydney’s Sirius building in the Rocks raised the issue of Brutalist conservation in Australia.

Read more: In praise of the Sirius building, a ruined remnant of idealistic times

Meanwhile, in Victoria, the intimidating Footscray Psychiatric Centre, was quietly recommended for Heritage listing recently by Heritage Victoria. Completed in 1976, this four-storey, windowless concrete block seems an unlikely Heritage contender, but it is certainly an exemplary Brutalist building.

Stuck with beasts

Beyond their architectural function, Brutalist buildings serve other uses. Skateboarders, graffiti artists and parkour practitioners, for example, have all used Brutalism’s concrete surfaces in innovative ways.

Brutalist architecture has also featured regularly in dystopian sci-fi films – from A Clockwork Orange to Blade Runner 2049 – and enthusiasts share moody, black and white photographs on Instagram’s Brut Group and the global activist database SOS Brutalism.

Whether we see Brutalist buildings as concrete monstrosities blighting our cities or heroic, modern sculptures from a pre-digital age is really a question of taste. But it is worth considering Brutalism’s ethics and politics further.

Firstly, Brutalism evokes an era of optimism and belief in the permanence of public institutions – government as well as public housing, educational and health facilities. Secondly, while demolishing Brutalist buildings often proves politically popular, they are typically replaced by private development.

Aesthetics provides a cover for this move, especially in inner cities where Brutalist institutions sit on valuable land. But restoration and renovation, rather than demolition and rebuilding, are often more sustainable solutions.

So before we call for the wrecking ball, we could look again at our concrete beasts. Below that rough skin, we might see a little brutish charm.

Perth Brutal: Dreaming in Concrete will be at the Art Gallery of Western Australia from 21 September 2019 – 3 February 2020.

– ref. Brutalism: how to love a concrete beast – http://theconversation.com/brutalism-how-to-love-a-concrete-beast-122469

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

There has long been a vigorous debate about the many and varied reasons why electricity prices in Australia are so high. An ACCC review found retail electricity markets mostly do not work in the interests of the customer – but this is only part of the story.

Another commonly accepted theory assumes that long-term customers of an electricity retailer pay a “loyalty tax” while those who switch every year save money.

Read more: If you need a PhD to read your power bill, buying wisely is all but impossible

But our research has found that Victorians who switch their energy providers typically save less than A$50 a year. This challenges the common understanding of how these markets work.

Questioning common wisdom

Working from the assumption that seeking better deals can save households significant amounts, governments throughout Australia have encouraged customers to switch retailers often. Switching rates in Australia are actually very high, especially so in Victoria.

To test how well the theory matches reality, the Victorian government provided my colleagues and I with 50,000 real electricity bills uploaded by Victorian households to the government’s price comparison website in late 2018. (These households agreed their bills could be used for research purposes and bill uploads were voluntary.)

Our sample is reasonably representative of the population, although we think these customers may be a little more engaged with the energy market than typical Victorians.

What we found challenges the commonly accepted theory of how the retail market works. As it turns out, for most customers, switching retailers does not greatly reduce the amount of money they leave on the table (the difference between their annual bills and the market’s best offers).

The typical customer that has not switched energy retailers in the last year could have saved A$281 per year (about 20% of their bill) if they had signed up to the best possible deal.

Read more: Australia’s energy woes will not be solved by reinforcing a monopoly

But in reality, customers that did switch retailers in the last year saved only A$45 a year, or about 3% of their annual bill. This suggests that customers are not switching to the best possible deals. A A$45 saving is not a great reward for the time and effort they would have spent searching and then switching.

The first reaction of many economists to our finding would be that the retail market is working: the competitive pressures from switchers shows profits have been competed away and there is now little to be gained from switching.

From this perspective, those who did not switch could rest easy that the market was working for them. This is, after all, how many markets work. I am often amazed at the quality of many things I buy, and their prices that fall without me having to do anything to bring it about.

However, this does not seem to be the full picture in the electricity market. All customers, switchers and remainers, are typically paying some 20% more than the cheapest available option.

And it’s not that there are just one or two fantastic deals that customers are missing – there is a good number of much cheaper deals that they are not finding.

We also cannot assume customers are looking for other qualities, like customer service, instead of lower prices: saving money is by far the main reason customers switch.

Why is this happening?

Our finding begs an explanation. We suggest it starts with the observation that while electricity is extremely valuable, it’s just a utility. While people get pleasure from buying many things, electricity is certainly not one of them. Quite understandably, most customers want to spend as little time as possible engaging in electricity markets.

Many offers are also eye-wateringly complex. Large businesses fare far better than households in the energy market, through the simple but costly method of hiring professional consultants to find the best deals.

So, we have a complex product that requires skill to buy well but customers are, quite rationally in most cases, reluctant to spend the time acquiring those skills. It is understandable why most people do not do well when they navigate the market on their own.

But when customers seek advice from price comparison websites and similar advisors – as around half seem to do – they are often not getting good advice.

Perhaps this is to be expected in a market in which advisors are almost always paid by the sellers, and customers have little ability to assess the quality of the advice they get.

There are no easy solutions. Governments face the often mutually inconsistent objectives of stimulating choice and making choice simpler. The task is difficult at the best of times, and governments are seldom good at engaging with dynamic, fast-moving markets.

Some might argue that cheaper retailers simply have to convince customers of their merits, relative to the more expensive offers from the other retailers that most customers select. But electricity must already be one of the most advertised products in Victoria.

About 110 years ago, economist Alfred Marshall suggested that a government could print a good edition of Shakespeare’s works, but it could not have got them written. While the carcass of municipal electric works belongs to the officials, he said, the genius belongs to free enterprise.

Read more: New regulations expose energy price gouging through ‘free’ comparison sites

The creation of a retail electricity market in Victoria 17 years ago sought to bring the “genius” of free enterprise to the sale of electricity to small customers. Taken in the round, the results so far are not entirely encouraging.

– ref. Victorians who switched energy retailers only save $45 a year – leaving hundreds on the table – http://theconversation.com/victorians-who-switched-energy-retailers-only-save-45-a-year-leaving-hundreds-on-the-table-122786