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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has issued a timetable for the government’s dealing with the recommendations from the royal commission into banking, superannuation and financial services, which aims to have all measures needing legislation introduced by the end of next year.

The opposition has accused the government of dragging its feet on putting into effect the results of the inquiry, which delivered its final report early this year.

“The need for change is undeniable, and the community expects that the government response to the royal commission will be implemented swiftly,” Frydenberg said in a statement on the timetable.

Fydenberg said that in his final report Commissioner Kenneth Hayne made 76 recommendations – 54 directed to the federal government (more than 40 of them needing legislation), 12 to the regulators, and 10 to the industry. Beyond the 76 recommendations, the government had announced another 18 commitments to address issues in the report.

The government had implemented 15 of the commitments it outlined in responding to the report, Frydenberg said. This included eight out of the 54 recommendations, and seven of the 18 additional commitments the government made. “Significant progress” had been made on another five recommendations, with draft legislation in parliament or out for comment or consultation papers produced.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: How ‘guaranteed’ is a rise in the superannuation guarantee?

Frydenberg said that, excluding the reviews to be conducted in 2022, his timetable was:

• by the end of 2019, more than 20 commitments (about a third of the government’s commitments) would have been implemented or have legislation in parliament

• by mid 2020, more than 50 commitments would have been implemented or be before parliament

• by the end of 2020, the rest of the commission’s recommendations needing legislation would have been introduced.

When the Hayne report was released early this year, the government agreed to act on all the recommendations.

But one recommendation it has notably not signed up to was on mortgage brokers.

Hayne found that mortgage brokers should be paid by borrowers, not lenders, and recommended commissions paid by lenders be phased out over two to three years.

Read more: Wealth inequality shows superannuation changes are overdue

The government at first accepted most of this recommendation, announcing the payment of ongoing so-called “trailing commissions” would be banned on new loans from July 2020. Upfront commissions would be the subject to a separate review. Four weeks later in March Frydenberg announced the government wouldn’t be banning trailing commissions after all. Instead, it would review their operation in three years.

Releasing the timetable, Frydenberg said the reform program was the “biggest shake up of the financial sector in three decades” and the speed of implementation “is unprecedented”.

“It will be done in a way that enhances consumer outcomes with more accountability, transparency and protections without compromising the flow of credit and competition,” he said.

He undertook to ensure the opposition was briefed on each piece of legislation before it came into parliament.

“This will begin with the offer of a briefing by Treasury on the implementation plan. Given both the government and opposition agreed to act on the commission’s recommendations, we expect to achieve passage of relevant legislation without undue delays,” he said.

He said the industry was “on notice. The public’s tolerance has been exhausted. They expect and we will ensure that the reforms are delivered and the behaviour of those in the sector reflects community expectations.”

– ref. Frydenberg outlines financial sector reform timetable – http://theconversation.com/frydenberg-outlines-financial-sector-reform-timetable-122024

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

Each new generation of Australians since Federation has enjoyed a better standard of living than the one that came before it. Until now. Today’s young Australians are in danger of falling behind.

A new Grattan Institute report, Generation gap: ensuring a fair go for younger Australians, reveals that younger generations are not making the same economic gains as their predecessors.

Economic growth has been slow for a decade, Australia’s population is ageing, and climate change looms. The burden of these changes mainly falls on the young. The pressures have emerged partly because of economic and demographic changes, but also because of the policy choices we’ve made as a nation.

Older generations are richer than before, younger ones are not

For much of the past century, strong economic growth has produced growing wealth and incomes. Older Australians today have substantially greater wealth, income and expenditure compared with Australians of the same age decades earlier.

But, as can be seen from the yellow lines on this graph, younger Australians have not made the same progress.

The graph shows that the wealth of households headed by someone under 35 has barely moved since 2004.

It’s not young people’s spending habits that are the problem – this is not a story of too many avocado lattes (and yes, they are a thing).

In fact, as the graph below shows, while every age group is spending more on essentials such as housing, young people are cutting back on non-essentials: among them alcohol, clothing, furnishings and recreation.

Wage stagnation since the global financial crisis and climbing underemployment have hit young people particularly hard. Older people tend to be better cushioned because they have already established their careers and are more likely to have other sources of income.

If low wage growth and fewer working hours becomes the “new normal”, we are likely to see a generation emerge into adulthood with lower incomes than the one before it.

It has already happened in the United States and United Kingdom.

Our generational bargain is at breaking point

Budget pressures will exacerbate these challenges.

Australia’s tax and welfare system supports an implicit generational bargain. Working-age Australians, as a group, are net contributors to the budget, helping to support older generations in their retirement.

They’ve come to expect that future generations in turn will support them.

But Australia’s population is ageing – which increases the need for government spending on health, aged care and pensions at the same time as there are relatively fewer working age people to pay for it.

Demographic bad luck is one thing (some generations will always be larger than others) but policy changes are making the burden worse.

Read more: Expect a budget that breaks the intergenerational bargain, like the one before it, and before that

A series of tax policy decisions over the past three decades – in particular, tax-free superannuation income in retirement, refundable franking credits, and special tax offsets for seniors – mean we now ask older Australians to pay a lot less income tax than we once did.

Disturbingly, these and other changes mean older households now pay much less tax than younger households on the same income.

Added to this have been substantial increases in average pension and health payments for households over 65.

It has meant that net transfers – government benefits minus taxes – have dramatically increased for older households but not for younger ones.

The overall effect has been to make current working Australians increasingly underwrite the living standards of retirees.

A typical 40-year-old today contributes much more towards the retirement of others through taxes than did his or her baby boomer predecessors.

As it happens, it is also more than the typical 40-year-old is contributing to his or her own retirement through compulsory super.

This can’t be what Australians want

Most Australians want to leave the world a better place for those that come after them.

It’s time to make sure we do it.

Lots of older Australians are doing their best, individually, supporting their children via the “Bank of Mum and Dad”, caring for grandchildren, and scrimping through retirement to leave their kids a good inheritance.

These private transfers help a lucky few, but they don’t solve the broader problem. In fact, inheritances exacerbate inequality because they largely go to the already wealthy.

We need policy changes.

Reducing or eliminating tax breaks for “comfortably off” older Australians would be a start.

Read more: Migration helps balance our ageing population – we don’t need a moratorium

Boosting economic growth and improving the structural budget position would help all Australians, especially younger Australians. It would also put Australia in a better position to tackle other challenges that are top of mind for young people, such as climate change.

Changes to planning rules to encourage higher-density living in established city suburbs would help by making housing more affordable.

Just as a series of government decisions have contributed to the challenges facing young people today, a series of government decisions will be needed to help redress them.

Every generation faces its own unique challenges, but letting this generation fall behind the others is surely a legacy none of us would be proud of.

It’s time to share the burden, and perhaps an avocado latte while we’re at it.

– ref. For the first time in centuries, were setting up a generation to be worse off than the one before it – http://theconversation.com/for-the-first-time-in-centuries-were-setting-up-a-generation-to-be-worse-off-than-the-one-before-it-121983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael O’Keefe, Head of Department, Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University

The Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tuvalu this week has ended in open division over climate change. Australia ensured its official communique watered down commitments to respond to climate change, gaining a hollow victory.

Traditionally, communiques capture the consensus reached at the meeting. In this case, the division on display between Australia and the Pacific meant the only commitment is to commission yet another report into what action needs to be taken.

The cost of Australia’s victory is likely to be great, as it questions the sincerity of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s commitment to “step up” engagement in the Pacific.

Read more: Can Scott Morrison deliver on climate change in Tuvalu – or is his Pacific ‘step up’ doomed?

Australia’s stance on climate change has become untenable in the Pacific. The inability to meet Pacific Island expectations will erode Australia’s influence and leadership credentials in the region, and provide opportunities for other countries to grow influence in the region.

An unprecedented show of dissent

When Morrison arrived in Tuvalu, he was met with an uncompromising mood. In fact, the text of an official communique was only finished after 12 hours of pointed negotiations.

While the “need for urgent, immediate actions on the threats and challenges of climate change”, is acknowledged, the Pacific was looking for action, not words.

What’s more, the document reaffirmed that “strong political leadership to advance climate change action” was needed, but leadership from Australia was sorely missing. It led Tuvaluan Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga to note:

I think we can say we should’ve done more work for our people.

Presumably, he would have hoped Australia could be convinced to take more climate action.

In an unprecedented show of dissent, smaller Pacific Island countries produced the alternative Kainaki II Declaration. It captures the mood of the Pacific in relation to the existential threat posed by climate change, and the need to act decisively now to ensure their survival.

And it details the commitments needed to effectively address the threat of climate change. It’s clear nothing short of transformational change is needed to ensure their survival, and there is rising frustration in Australia’s repeated delays to take effective action.

Australia hasn’t endorsed the alternative declaration and Canberra has signalled once and for all that compromise on climate change is not possible. This is not what Pacific leaders hoped for and will come at a diplomatic cost to Australia.

Read more: Response to rumours of a Chinese military base in Vanuatu speaks volumes about Australian foreign policy

Canberra can’t buy off the Pacific

Conflict had already begun brewing in the lead up to the Pacific Islands Forum. The Pacific Islands Development Forum – the brainchild of the Fijian government, which sought a forum to engage with Pacific Island Nations without the influence of Australia and New Zealand – released the the Nadi Bay Declaration in July this year.

This declaration called on coal producing countries like Australia to cease all production within a decade.

But it’s clear Canberra believes compromise of this sort on climate change would undermine Australia’s economic growth and this is the key stumbling block to Australia answering its Pacific critics with action.

As Sopoaga said to Morrison:

You are concerned about saving your economy in Australia […] I am concerned about saving my people in Tuvalu.

And a day before the meeting, Canberra announced half a billion dollars to tackle climate change in the region. But it received a lukewarm reception from the Pacific.

The message is clear: Canberra cannot buy off the Pacific. In part, this is because Pacific Island countries have new options, especially from China, which has offered Pacific island countries concessional loans.

Read more: As Australia’s soft power in the Pacific fades, China’s voice gets louder

China is becoming an attractive alternate partner

As tension built at the Pacific Island Forum meeting, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters argued there was a double standard with respect to the treatment of China on climate change.

China is the world’s largest emitter of climate change gasses, but if there is a double standard it’s of Australia’s making.

Australia purports to be part of the Pacific family that can speak and act to protect the interests of Pacific Island countries in the face of China’s “insidious” attempts to gain influence through “debt trap” diplomacy. This is where unsustainable loans are offered with the aim of gaining political advantage.

But countering Chinese influence in the Pacific is Australia’s prime security interest, and is a secondary issue for the Pacific.

But unlike Australia, China has never claimed the moral high ground and provides an attractive alternative partner, so it will likely gain ground in the battle for influence in the Pacific.

For the Pacific Island Forum itself, open dissent is a very un-Pacific outcome. Open dissent highlights the strains in the region’s premier intergovernmental organisation.

Australia and (to a lesser extent) New Zealand’s dominance has often been a source of criticism, but growing confidence among Pacific leaders has changed diplomatic dynamics forever.

Read more: Climate change forced these Fijian communities to move – and with 80 more at risk, here’s what they learned

This new pacific diplomacy has led Pacific leaders to more steadfastly identify their security interests. And for them, the need to respond to climate change is non-negotiable.

If winning the geopolitical contest with China in Pacific is Canberra’s priority, then far greater creativity will be needed as meeting the Pacific half way on climate change is a prerequisite for success.

– ref. Pacific Island nations will no longer stand for Australia’s inaction on climate change – http://theconversation.com/pacific-island-nations-will-no-longer-stand-for-australias-inaction-on-climate-change-121976

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of Newcastle

Even in death, the voice of Carl Williams is louder than that of his victims. Intimate prison letters written by the convicted murderer and drug trafficker to his ex-wife, Roberta – herself arrested this month on kidnap and threats to kill charges, allegedly made against a documentary producer – were published this month.

The explosion of true crime in podcasts, streaming series, and books has fuelled our interest in violent and dangerous perpetrators, and has increasingly meant the victims continue to be overlooked.

Indeed, Ivan Milat, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are household names. Yet Deborah Everist, Caryn Campbell, or Tony Hughes – victims of these violent killers, have been largely forgotten.

Deadly charms

My students and I often watch true crime documentaries as stimuli for discussion about criminal causation, or victim selection. Recently, a student in one such tutorial expressed admiration for notorious US serial killer Ted Bundy, even going as far as to say she was attracted to him – or at least Hollywood heartthrob Zac Efron’s portrayal of him.

Bundy killed at least 30 women, assaulted many more, and escaped prison twice. He was perhaps active from the late 1960s until 1978. Bundy was the subject of a recent four-part Netflix series entitled Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, billed as “present-day interviews, archival footage and audio recordings made on death row”.

The series premiered in January, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Bundy’s execution. Netflix followed this factual account of Bundy’s crimes with a film about the case called Extremely Wicked and Shockingly Evil and Vile, starring Efron.

I found my student’s affection for him confronting. She was willing to overlook the appalling violence because Efron – and this was also true of Bundy – was a charismatic and attractive person.

I was left wondering if the glamorisation of offenders through true crime was making people desensitised to the plight of victims. And, if this was the case, the affect this had on surviving victims and their families.

Some victims are speaking out.

A recent article focused on on Bill Thomas, whose sister Cathy’s 1986 murder in Colonial Parkway, Virginia, remains unsolved. Bill is at the first day of CrimCon, an annual true crime festival, to draw attention to his sister’s murder and put pressure on the FBI to investigate it further. To do that, he has to rub shoulders with people wearing clothes emblazoned with serial killers’ faces.

We are particularly fascinated by cold cases. Even if we don’t know who the offender is, the salacious details of the crimes overshadow the pain and suffering of victims.

I became painfully aware of this recently while writing a book about cold cases, with the goal to maintain a focus on the victims – each case is included with the hopes of learning something new. A new forensic technique that might progress it, another victim that may be part of the sequence and whose case remains unsolved. Victims’ identities are perversely subsumed into that of the person who offended against them, and I wanted to try to undo some of that.

Focus is shifting

Narcissistic killers like Ivan Milat and Daniel Holdom (who violently murdered Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and her 2-year-old daughter Khandalyce Pearce in 2010) maintain their notoriety by writing letters from prison. Milat’s letters to his nephew, Alistair Shipsey, were published in 2016. Holdom’s letters were turned into a podcast by the Daily Telegraph.

But recent events have seen a shift in focus.

Victimology (the study of victims) is growing as a criminological discipline and academics and victims’ advocates have been saying for some time that the centre needs to shift from the offenders to the victims. But we have largely been shouting into a black hole.

The Christchurch mosque shootings on 15 March 2019, gave voice to a redirection in attention when New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern refused to name the perpetrator – a 28-year-old Australian man who had live-streamed the atrocity and released a manifesto outlining white genocide conspiracy theories. Instead, she urged the public to speak the names of the victims. This was a powerful message that the perpetrator would not be given the attention he sought.

New Zealand went further, making it a criminal offence to copy, distribute, or exhibit the video of the live shootings, with potential penalties of up to 14 years in prison for an individual, or up to $100,000 in fines for a corporation. One man was sentenced to nearly two years in prison for sharing the video that he embellished to look like a video game, including cross hairs and a body count.

This week, 24-year-old woman Michaela Dunn was identified as the victim of a Sydney knife attack after she was allegedly killed in a CBD apartment by Mert Ney, 20, before he took his knife to the streets and was overpowered by members of the public. Tributes flowed for the victim, described by her mother as a “beautiful, loving woman who had studied at university and travelled widely”.

Fame can breed copycats

Publicising violent crime and its offenders can lead to further harm in the form of copycat attacks.

Nine days after the Christchurch shootings, there was an arson attack against a mosque in California, followed by a shooting. The offender praised the Christchurch shooter.

Still, my hope is that if Ardern’s ethos is applied to future events, our interest in violent offenders will lessen and our sensitivity to the effect of their crimes will be revived.

We can always learn from true crime events, but we must be careful to move away from glamorisation of perpetrators and pay due respect to the victims and their families.

– ref. Glamorising violent offenders with ‘true crime’ shows and podcasts needs to stop – http://theconversation.com/glamorising-violent-offenders-with-true-crime-shows-and-podcasts-needs-to-stop-121806

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brianna Chesser, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Justice, RMIT University

In September 2018, a prominent Melbourne surgeon and academic was charged with rape and sexual assault for alleged offences committed a year earlier against a male doctor.

The surgeon and doctor had gone out for dinner and returned to the doctor’s home and had intercourse. Despite assuring the doctor he would use a condom, the surgeon is alleged to have removed it without consent, a practice known as “stealthing”. The doctor later made a complaint to police and the surgeon was charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of rape.

In late July, a committal proceeding took place in the Magistrates Court of Victoria to determine whether there was enough evidence to require the surgeon to stand trial. The surgeon was committed to stand trial next year.

Read more: Women’s reproductive lives are being interfered with on a large scale – new study

This week, an appeal from the Medical Board of Australia was dismissed and the surgeon was permitted to continue treating patients while the criminal case makes its way through the courts. Justice Richard Niall said that immediate action against the surgeon was not in the public’s interest.

From a legal standpoint, the case brings up an important question about how this offence should be classified under the law. At the moment, no criminal law in Australia explicitly identifies stealthing as a sexual offence.

What is stealthing?

Sexual violence is becoming increasingly prevalent in Australian society, with nearly one in five women (18%) and one in 20 men (4.7%) experiencing sexual assault and/or threats in their lifetime.

Stealthing, an emerging area within criminal law, is believed to happen even more frequently. According to a recent joint study between the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre and Monash University, one in three women and nearly one in five men in Australia have reported being stealthed.

The study found that most women who had been stealthed met the perpetrators through friends (29%) or sex work (23%). Male victims of stealthing, meanwhile, tended to meet their partners (also mostly male) through dating apps or online.

Read more: Victorian rape law needs reform to protect sex workers

Unfortunately, the statistics for reporting stealthing mirror reporting rates for sexual offences more generally, with the study finding that only 1% of respondents indicated they had reported stealthing incidents to police.

Stealthing poses a multitude of risks to both physical and psychological health, including the transmission of sexually transmitted infections and HIV, as well as unplanned pregnancies, depression, anxiety, and in some cases post-traumatic stress disorder.

Current approach to stealthing under criminal law

Despite the decades of extensive reform of laws governing sexual offences in Australia, significant gaps remain in the legislative provisions governing consensual intercourse.

Definitions of rape in Victoria and sexual assault in other states mandate an assessment of whether or not an individual understands the sexual nature of the act and whether or not full consent has been given prior to engaging in intercourse. Under current laws, this consent cannot be granted without “free agreement”.

The real issue with the laws as they stand is that stealthing just doesn’t fit into the current definition of rape. The current definition is simply about whether or not the victim, in this case the doctor, understands that the act that they have consented to is sexual in nature, not whether any other conditions, such as condom usage, have been met.

Read more: Everyday rape: let’s turn the spotlight on known perpetrators

Situations where those conditions have changed – such as when a condom has been removed – should require “fresh consent” from both partners. As Lina Howlett, a NSW sex crimes squad commander, explains,

sex turns into assault when consent is not given or [is] withdrawn, e.g. they are having consensual sex and one party becomes aware that the condom was removed and tells the partner to stop and the partner continues.

The problem is, there is no legal precedent for such a case in Australia.

Other cases around the world

Switzerland is out in front on this issue globally, with courts there upholding a 12-month suspended sentence for a man convicted of stealthing. The Swiss case is believed to be the first to specifically deem the removal of a condom without a partner’s consent to be a criminal act. The could provide some preliminary insight into how the courts in Australia will view this sexual crime.

There is no current call by legislators in Australia to update the laws against sexual assault to include stealthing. However, there is some movement in other jurisdictions around the world. In the US, Wisconsin and California have both attempted to change the laws with bills in recent years.

A judgement in the case against the surgeon accused of stealthing in Victoria should provide some legal clarity on the issue, hopefully providing impetus for a move to change the laws here.

– ref. Case in Victoria could set new legal precedent for stealthing, or removing condom during sex – http://theconversation.com/case-in-victoria-could-set-new-legal-precedent-for-stealthing-or-removing-condom-during-sex-118343

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Dearnaley, Associate Professor, University of Southern Queensland

The blotched butterfly orchid (Sarcochilus weinthalii) looks fairly unremarkable when it’s not flowering, generally resembling the far more common orange blossom orchid. But when it flowers, it is exquisite. Dark purple blotches stand out on cream petals, resembling a flock of butterflies come to rest on rainforest trees.

Like the most of its genus, the blotched butterfly orchid is epiphytic, or an air plant: without roots, they absorb water from the air. The leaves are leathery and curved, and appear in groups of three to seven. They usually grow on the horizontal branches of tree hosts in dry rainforests in southern Queensland and northern NSW.

Read more: Warty hammer orchids are sexual deceivers

Australia has 18 unique butterfly orchids, a number of which are under threat. As they are easily grown by orchid fanciers, they are often removed from natural locations and are becoming harder to see in their natural habitat, high up on rainforest trees in hilly terrain.

The genus Sarcochilus was named by Robert Brown, the naturalist on board the Flinders expedition documenting the east coast of Australia in the early 19th century. The name refers to the fleshy labellum, the showy front petal of the flowers.

The blotched butterfly orchid, Sarcochilus weinthalii was first collected by Ferdinand Weinthal, a notable early Australian orchid collector and grower near Toowoomba in southern Queensland in 1903.

My colleagues and I have been trying to learn more about the biology of these beautiful orchids, to help improve conservation efforts. We are studying populations sizes, life cycles, host trees and similar species in an effort to learn more about how and where they grow – and what might be pollinating them.

The total number of plants at our study locations is less than 200 individuals which is concerning. More troubling is now the complete absence of plants from several regular sites for the orchid. The presence of juvenile plants at the study locations suggests the remaining populations could still be viable, albeit with the spectre of inbreeding depression hovering over the smaller groups.

The orchid was quite adaptable to different tree hosts although there was preference for native hydrangea (Cuttsia viburnea) at one site. Plants grew on the southerly (shaded) side of their hosts, at heights varying from more than 4 metres above the forest floor to less than one metre above soil level. These latter plants were growing on a basalt boulder – something never recorded before.

Fungus friends

As part of our research we sampled the roots of the orchid and isolated a symbiotic fungus, identified by DNA analysis. Analysis of the fungal DNA showed something quite striking. Every orchid, from every location, had exactly the same fungus growing in its roots.

When orchid seed was combined with the fungus in the laboratory, plants grew considerably faster than controls. This suggests that both life stages of the plant require the fungus to provide nutrients.

This fungus will be integral for conservation efforts for the species. Strong growth of seedlings in labs and greenhouse will require the fungus to be present. Restoration efforts will need to check for the presence of the fungus to ensure transplanted populations thrive, and to support new seedling growth in re-established orchid populations.

We observed a number of insects visiting flowers of the blotched butterfly orchid, but most of these were small and unlikely to be capable of pollinating the species. Previous research suggests Sarcochilus orchids are pollinated by native bees.

What is the future for the blotched butterfly orchid?

In another species of Sarcochilus we have studied, S. hartmannii, we saw hover flies regularly visiting (and possibly pollinating) these orchids. So it’s feasible these insects are pollinating the blotched butterfly orchid as well – but we need more research to be sure.

Our work also found the orchids are vulnerable to land clearing, an issue that threatens many native Australian plants. Clearing not only destroys individual plants or populations, but provides conduits for the entry of aggressive exotic plant species like cat’s claw and climbing asparagus into fragile ecosystems.

Read more: Leek orchids are beautiful, endangered and we have no idea how to grow them

And unfortunately, the blotched butterfly orchid grows outside national parks (as well as inside them), which makes them hard to protect from orchid collectors. Perhaps weightier fines are necessary to change the minds of recalcitrants who still believe collecting native plant species from the wild is acceptable!

– ref. The exquisite blotched butterfly orchid is an airy jewel of the Australian landscape – http://theconversation.com/the-exquisite-blotched-butterfly-orchid-is-an-airy-jewel-of-the-australian-landscape-121702

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Cropper, Senior Lecturer, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne

Almost every person throughout the existence of humankind has looked up at the night sky and seen more than just a random scattering of light. Constellations of stars have helped us shape our own ongoing narratives and cultures – creating meaning in the sky above that guides us in our life on the ground below.

Of course, we don’t all see exactly the same night sky – there are subtle differences depending on where we are on the planet, what season it is, and the time of night, all of which are imbued into the meaning we construct about the stars.

But around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them.

Read more: Kindred skies: ancient Greeks and Aboriginal Australians saw constellations in common

For example, the constellation Orion is described by the Ancient Greeks as a man pursuing the seven sisters of the Pleiades star cluster.

This same constellation is Baiame in Wiradjuri traditions: a man pursuing the Mulayndynang (Pleiades star cluster).

In the traditions of the Great Victoria Desert, Orion is Nyeeruna, a man chasing the seven Yugarilya sisters.

These and other common patterns, as well as the remarkably complex narratives describing them, link the cultures of early Aboriginal Australians and the ancient Greeks, despite them being separated by thousands of years and miles.

Similarly, many cultures in the southern hemisphere identify constellations that are actually made of the dark spaces between the stars, highlighting absence rather than presence. These feature predominantly in the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way.

Across cultures, these again show remarkable consistency. The celestial emu, which is found in Aboriginal traditions across Australia, shares nearly identical views and traditions with the Tupi people of Brazil and Bolivia, who see it as a celestial rhea, another large flightless bird.

Significant differences too

There are also significant differences seen between cultures, although the fundamental roots remain.

The Big Dipper is identified across many northern hemisphere traditions, but for the Alaskan Gwich’in this is merely the tail of the whole-sky constellation Yahdii (The Tailed Man), who “walks” from east to west overnight.

Although we share a fascination with the stars, we have little documented knowledge of how particular constellations were identified by certain cultures. Why and how do we see the same patterns?

Our upcoming research explores the genesis of these different names and different groupings, and the idea that many came about mainly as a result of cultural variations in the perception of natural scenes. Thus an individual’s view of a phenomenon can become the generalised view of a group or culture.

These differences may have endured due to the necessity of communicating these groupings across generations through complex oral traditions.

These oral traditions are often mistakenly compared to the children’s game of Telephone, in which a message is whispered down a line of people, resulting in errors as the information is passed on. In reality, they are far more organised and rigorous, enabling information to be passed on for thousands of years without degradation.

British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett realised in the early 20th century that these errors typically reflect a person’s beliefs about missing or uncertain information filtering into the original message. The information passed from one person to another accumulates and ultimately informs an individual’s beliefs about the nature of the world.

In oral cultures – like those of Indigenous Australia – the focus of transmission is on ease of communication and recall.

The outstanding difference is that Aboriginal oral traditions constructed narratives and memory spaces in such a way as to keep the critical information intact through hundreds of generations.

Search for meaning

How this came about and how a thread of meaning endures across individuals, space and time are fascinating questions.

In collaboration with Museums Victoria, our team is exploring how cultural differences in our traditions and stories can come about as a result of very small variations in the nature of perception and understanding in different people, and how this is influenced by both personal belief and geographical location.

Investigating how meaning in the stars is developed and passed on emphasises the fundamental aspects of humanity that we share across cultural bounds, despite differing beliefs, geographical isolation, and location.

Read more: The stories behind Aboriginal star names now recognised by the world’s astronomical body

As part of National Science Week, more than 200 people submitted their own constellation and story in response to a star field projected onto the ceiling of Victoria’s Parliament House; the preliminary data-collection phase in this study.

Humanity’s ongoing fascination with the stars has only recently been fuelled by our ability to dream about leaving the planet and visiting them. More fundamentally, they are a reflection and a framework for our life on this planet.

The meaning we find in the night sky seems, ironically, to ground us in the changing world in which we find ourselves. This is as important now as it was 65,000 years ago when people migrated to Australia using the stars.

This article was co-published with Pursuit.

– ref. Why do different cultures see such similar meanings in the constellations? – http://theconversation.com/why-do-different-cultures-see-such-similar-meanings-in-the-constellations-121981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Desbrow, Associate Professor, Nutrition and Dietetics, Griffith University

A recent study published in the journal Depression and Anxiety has attracted widespread media attention. Media reports said eating chocolate, in particular, dark chocolate, was linked to reduced symptoms of depression.

Unfortunately, we cannot use this type of evidence to promote eating chocolate as a safeguard against depression, a serious, common and sometimes debilitating mental health condition.

This is because this study looked at an association between diet and depression in the general population. It did not gauge causation. In other words, it was not designed to say whether eating dark chocolate caused a reduction in depressive symptoms.

Read more: What causes depression? What we know, don’t know and suspect

What did the researchers do?

The authors explored data from the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This shows how common health, nutrition and other factors are among a representative sample of the population.

People in the study reported what they had eaten in the previous 24 hours in two ways. First, they recalled in person, to a trained dietary interviewer using a standard questionnaire. The second time they recalled what they had eaten over the phone, several days after the first recall.

The researchers then calculated how much chocolate participants had eaten using the average of these two recalls.

Dark chocolate needed to contain at least 45% cocoa solids for it to count as “dark”.

Read more: Explainer: what is memory?

The researchers excluded from their analysis people who ate an implausibly large amount of chocolate, people who were underweight and/or had diabetes.

The remaining data (from 13,626 people) was then divided in two ways. One was by categories of chocolate consumption (no chocolate, chocolate but no dark chocolate, and any dark chocolate). The other way was by the amount of chocolate (no chocolate, and then in groups, from the lowest to highest chocolate consumption).

Read more: Monday’s medical myth: chocolate is an aphrodisiac

The researchers assessed people’s depressive symptoms by having participants complete a short questionnaire asking about the frequency of these symptoms over the past two weeks.

The researchers controlled for other factors that might influence any relationship between chocolate and depression, such as weight, gender, socioeconomic factors, smoking, sugar intake and exercise.

What did the researchers find?

Of the entire sample, 1,332 (11%) of people said they had eaten chocolate in their two 24 hour dietary recalls, with only 148 (1.1%) reporting eating dark chocolate.

A total of 1,009 (7.4%) people reported depressive symptoms. But after adjusting for other factors, the researchers found no association between any chocolate consumption and depressive symptoms.

However, people who ate dark chocolate had a 70% lower chance of reporting clinically relevant depressive symptoms than those who did not report eating chocolate.

When investigating the amount of chocolate consumed, people who ate the most chocolate were more likely to have fewer depressive symptoms.

What are the study’s limitations?

While the size of the dataset is impressive, there are major limitations to the investigation and its conclusions.

First, assessing chocolate intake is challenging. People may eat different amounts (and types) depending on the day. And asking what people ate over the past 24 hours (twice) is not the most accurate way of telling what people usually eat.

Then there’s whether people report what they actually eat. For instance, if you ate a whole block of chocolate yesterday, would you tell an interviewer? What about if you were also depressed?

This could be why so few people reported eating chocolate in this study, compared with what retail figures tell us people eat.

Read more: These 5 foods are claimed to improve our health. But the amount we’d need to consume to benefit is… a lot

Finally, the authors’ results are mathematically accurate, but misleading.

Only 1.1% of people in the analysis ate dark chocolate. And when they did, the amount was very small (about 12g a day). And only two people reported clinical symptoms of depression and ate any dark chocolate.

The authors conclude the small numbers and low consumption “attests to the strength of this finding”. I would suggest the opposite.

Finally, people who ate the most chocolate (104-454g a day) had an almost 60% lower chance of having depressive symptoms. But those who ate 100g a day had about a 30% chance. Who’d have thought four or so more grams of chocolate could be so important?

This study and the media coverage that followed are perfect examples of the pitfalls of translating population-based nutrition research to public recommendations for health.

My general advice is, if you enjoy chocolate, go for darker varieties, with fruit or nuts added, and eat it mindfully. — Ben Desbrow

Blind peer review

Chocolate manufacturers have been a good source of funding for much of the research into chocolate products.

While the authors of this new study declare no conflict of interest, any whisper of good news about chocolate attracts publicity. I agree with the author’s scepticism of the study.

For dark chocolate, just 1.1% of people in the study consumed dark chocolate (at least 45% cocoa solids) at an average 11.7g a day. There was a wide variation in reported clinically relevant depressive symptoms in this group. So, it is not valid to draw any real conclusion from the data collected.

For total chocolate consumption, the authors accurately report no statistically significant association with clinically relevant depressive symptoms.

However, they then claim eating more chocolate is of benefit, based on fewer symptoms among those who ate the most.

In fact, depressive symptoms were most common in the third-highest quartile (who ate 100g chocolate a day), followed by the first (4-35g a day), then the second (37-95g a day) and finally the lowest level (104-454g a day). Risks in sub-sets of data such as quartiles are only valid if they lie on the same slope.

The basic problems come from measurements and the many confounding factors. This study can’t validly be used as justification for eating more chocolate of any kind. — Rosemary Stanton

Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.

– ref. No, eating chocolate won’t cure depression – http://theconversation.com/no-eating-chocolate-wont-cure-depression-121504

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Crosby, Professor, Monash University

Since President Trump tweeted about imposing new tariffs on China, global equity markets have gone into a tailspin.

Trump’s more recent announcement that the new tariffs would be delayed has not calmed the markets, with recent days seeing very large falls in most major stock markets.

Another factor particularly spooking the markets in recent days has been the “inversion of the yield curve” in the United States.

The yield curve is a graph showing the relationship between interest rates earned on lending money for different durations.

Normally, someone who lent to the government or a corporation for one year (by buying a one-year government or corporate bond) would expect to get a lower interest rate than someone who lent for five or ten years, making the yield curve upward-sloping.

An inverted curve slopes down

A simple way to get an idea of the slope of the yield curve is to compare a short-duration government interest rate for a two- or three-year government bond with the rate on a ten-year government bond.

In Australia the ten-year government bond rate has just fallen to a record low 0.891%, only slightly above the three-year rate at around 0.7%.

In the US in recent days the ten-year bond rate has fallen to the point at which the ten-year rate is below the two-year rate – so the yield curve is inverted.

What has made the markets so nervous is that there has been a yield curve inversion before each of the past seven recessions.

The graph below plots the difference between the US ten-year government bond rate and the US two-year government bond right back to the 1970s.

When the difference is negative (when the ten-year bond rate slips below the two-year bond rate), the line moves below zero.

It has done it just before each of the US recessions, which are also marked.

Sometimes the recession follows soon after the line slips below zero, and sometimes there is a delay. Interestingly, in the case of the most recent recession the yield curve inversion was quite small, and began some time before the global financial crisis.

So does correlation imply causation? Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle said on Thursday that this time is different.

We should certainly hope so.

There are good reasons to think that this time it will be different.

No recession this time?

One reason is that although central bank controlled rates are near record lows, most central banks have also announced words to the effect of “doing what it takes” to support the economy. With the markets expecting further rate cuts, long-term rates might simply reflect this rather than expectations of a recession.

Of course, it could be that markets see central banks’ cuts as a sign that they see a recession coming. It’s hard to tell.

Another reason to think it might be different this time is that President Trump pressured the Federal Reserve to cut rates. Many economists think the latest rate cut took place for that reason rather than because of economic fundamentals.

The simple point here is that a lot of things are different this time.

Many economists, like myself, view recent moves by central banks to cut rates as unproductive.

Read more: Vital Signs: Amid talk of recessions, our progress on wages and unemployment is almost non-existent

The gist of these arguments is that the Australian economy has reasonably strong fundamentals, and any weakness can be better dealt with by measures other than rate cuts. Among them would be measures to boost productivity.

In the US, by contrast, there are indeed reasons to be concerned about a recession.

The trade war with China has already been very destructive, and the political uncertainty of Trump, high debt levels and other structural weaknesses are creating problems.

A US-only recession?

The last time the US entered recession was September 2008. During that quarter global trade fell off a cliff, but in the year that followed Australia’s economy grew by a solid 4%.

Supporting Australia’s economy was a very large Chinese stimulus package that led to very strong demand for Australian resources.

A recession in the US in the next year or two would again lead China to consider all options. Traditionally those options have included much more funding for resource intensive infrastructure.

While that is the most likely path that China would take, it probably has less financial room to supercharge infrastructure than in 2008. That’s enough of a reason for Australians to very concerned if the US goes into recession.

In the end though it is well to remember that Australia’s economy is still in a reasonably strong position compared to others. Unemployment is low, wages growth is higher than it was at 3.1%, public debt is low and other fundamentals are reasonably sound.

Read more: Their biggest challenge? Avoiding a recession

But predicting recessions is notoriously difficult.

There are some who have successfully predicted nine of the last two recessions in Australia, and those pundits are very pessimistic now!

I tend to be more of the view that the probability of a recession in Australia in the next year or so is higher than it has been since 2008, but a recession is far from the sure thing that yield curve readers might suggest.

Read more: Buckle up. 2019-20 survey finds the economy weak and heading down, and that’s ahead of surprises

– ref. What is an inverted yield curve? Why is it panicking markets, and why is there talk of recession? – http://theconversation.com/what-is-an-inverted-yield-curve-why-is-it-panicking-markets-and-why-is-there-talk-of-recession-121975

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jock Collins, Professor of Social Economics, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

The federal government wants to boost the number of migrants moving to regional areas in Australia to fill job vacancies and reduce the pressure on our cities.

That’s why the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, David Coleman, this week asked the Joint Standing Committee on Migration to look into and report on migration in regional Australia.

He’s called on anyone to make a submission by September 20 and the Committee intends to hit the road for a series of public hearings.

Read more: Dog whistles, regional visas and wage theft – immigration policy is again an election issue

The government says only about one in five people who came to Australia between 2006 and 2011 settled in regional areas. So what are the challenges to encourage more migrants to settle in regional Australia?

Bush vs city

Australia is one of the most urbanised nations in the world with 67% of the population living in capital cities, with migrants more urban than non-migrants.

The two key issues for encouraging more migrants to regional areas are attraction and retention.

For skilled migrants this means new visa pathways to regional settlement. Two were announced earlier this year, the Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa and the Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa, both with a pathway to permanent residency at the end of three years. This is a big incentive, since permanent residency is the main goal of most temporary migrants.

Staying in the regions

The key factors that impact on retention of migrants who settle in regional and rural Australia are employment, children’s education, lifestyle, availability of services and the warmth of the welcome from locals.

Findings from a national survey of 915 skilled migrants who settled in regional and rural Australia in 2008 found about two thirds liked their jobs.

About two in three said the community had made them feel very welcome. The reputation of the Australian bush being populated with red necks who don’t like migrant newcomers is myth rather than reality.

Most skilled migrants were satisfied with medical services, schools and entertainment available in their regional and rural community. Telecommunication services were rated less highly while transport services were a source of great dissatisfaction.

Regional refugee success

For refugees, their primary settlement location is decided by the Australian government. Regional cities such as Toowoomba and Logan in Queensland, Wagga Wagga, Wollongong and Coffs Harbour in New South Wales and Shepperton in Victoria have settled many refugees.

What does the research tell us about refugee migration to regional Australia? The classic success story is that of the Karen people from Myanmar who settled in Nhill in western Victoria, many of whom find employment at the Luv a Duck factory.

Research was done in 2018 with 111 newly-arrived adult refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who settled in Queensland regional cities of Toowoomba and Logan. It found most like living there, feel safe, feel the locals were very friendly towards them and that their children had a good future in Australia.

Most refugees who flee their homeland to begin the risky and dangerous journey to Australia do so in order to provide a safe place for them and their family. They hope to settle in a good place to bring up their children.

Read more: Refugees are integrating just fine in regional Australia

The research found the migrants feel their neighbourhoods in Brisbane, Toowoomba and Logan were good places to bring up children.

Nearly all adult refugees – and their children – feel very safe in regional and metropolitan Queensland. Incredibly all of those refugee adults living in Toowoomba feel it is a safe place to live.

Getting a job

Employment is the real challenge for any attempt to redirect more refugees and skilled migrants to regional Australia. The critical issue for keeping refugees in regional cities such as Toowoomba and Logan is getting a job.

At first glance the research doesn’t seem too positive in this regard.

Only 13.8% of refugees in Logan and 13.2% in Toowoomba had been able to find a job in 2018. But most of these refugees had settled in the previous 12 months so most were still learning English and had not yet began looking work.

But these refugee families were also surveyed in 2019 and the improved employment results seem encouraging for refugee retention.

Overall the research supports the push for increasing skilled and humanitarian migration to regional Australia, with the proviso that more needs to be done on the employment front to encourage retention.

One policy that should be explored in this regard relates to migrant and refugee entrepreneurship. Many refugees have experience in running their own business prior to settling in Australia.

Read more: How refugees overcome the odds to become entrepreneurs

Supporting them to establish a business in regional Australia by introducing proven programs such as Settlement Services International’s Ignite Small Business Start-ups refugee program would assist them to create their own jobs and employment for others as well as revitalising the economy of the regional cities.

The biggest threat to increasing temporary migration to regional Australia is wage-theft and exploitative employment experiences. A recent intervention by Fair Work Australia found that of 1,300 regional businesses visited by inspectors, one-in-five (22%) were found to be stealing wages from their workers.

– ref. The regions can take more migrants and refugees, with a little help – http://theconversation.com/the-regions-can-take-more-migrants-and-refugees-with-a-little-help-121942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Associate Professor, Criminology and Justice Studies, RMIT University

There can be no doubt violence against women is a national crisis. On average in Australia, one woman every week is killed. A 2016 survey found one in four women experienced violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15, and one in five women experienced sexual violence by the same age.

Recently, the Council of Australian Governments endorsed the Fourth Action Plan under the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022.

The Fourth Action Plan is among a series of four-year plans that build on each other to make up the National Plan.

Read more: The long history of gender violence in Australia, and why it matters today

But several criticisms of the Fourth Action Plan have begun to emerge. In particular, women’s support services, perpetrator programs, and specialist prevention programs remain under-resourced. And controversially, A$10 million has been allocated to couples and faith-based counselling.

It may not be perfect, but the Fourth Action Plan represents a substantial, increased investment in responding to violence against women, as well as a bilateral government commitment to prevention.

Expanding response services

The majority of women’s experiences of violence are perpetrated by men known to them, and largely occur in private spaces such as the home.

Though Australian men too experience violence, it is overwhelmingly at the hands of other men – most often by a stranger and in a public place.

What this means in day-to-day life is that men are much less likely than women to be repeatedly victimised by a partner or ex-partner, from whom they need protection, escape and/or other supports.

Read more: 1 in 5 Australians is a victim of ‘revenge porn’, despite new laws to prevent it

This is why investing in services to respond to violence against women – safe housing options, crisis services, perpetrator programs and justice responses – are so important.

In March this year, the federal government announced a funding package of A$328 million towards women’s safety. This includes additional funding for the 1800 RESPECT helpline, emergency accommodation, training for health workers responding to domestic violence victims, and consistent national standards for sexual assault response services.

It’s a welcome increase in investment from the previous A$100 million in funding attached to the Third Action Plan in 2016, and A$100 million for the federal Women’s Safety Package in 2015.

It’s also worth remembering that this federal funding adds to state and territory investment into crisis responses and the criminal justice system.

For example, in 2016, the Victorian Government launched its own 10 Year Plan to prevent and respond to family violence. This includes an initial A$572 million investment in initiatives such as Support and Safety Hubs (The Orange Door), workforce development for family violence response services, and a further A$218 million into social housing support.

What is primary prevention?

Australian and international governments increasingly recognise that it’s not enough to respond to violence after it has happened. If we want to boost the safety of women, we need to change the factors that place women at greater risk of violence.

This is “primary prevention” – the population-wide effort to change the underlying attitudes, behaviours and structures that drive violence against women.

And the Fourth Action Plan makes prevention a strong priority, with prevention work receiving around 20% of the total federal funding.

This includes A$20.9 million in funding for Our Watch to set up a “national prevention hub”, as well as other key initiatives such as social marketing campaigns and workforce development.

International and local research shows the main causes of violence against women are gender inequality, sexist and discriminatory attitudes, and associating masculinity with dominance and aggression (or so-called “toxic masculinity”).

Read more: Australian study reveals the dangers of ‘toxic masculinity’ to men and those around them

When women, on average, have fewer financial resources than men, they’re less independent and so can’t easily leave an abusive relationship. When women are viewed as less capable and less worthy of respect than men, people are more likely to make excuses for perpetrator behaviour and blame victims rather than offer help or intervene.

And when men hold attitudes that justify violence, and view women as unequal to men, the research repeatedly shows these men are more likely to perpetrate violence against women.

If we don’t invest in community-wide prevention work – changing these attitudes and behaviours in schools, universities, workplaces, sports settings, and in the media – then the violence will continue, generation after generation.

We’ve seen other policy efforts succeed in reducing the harms of smoking or drink driving. Changing population-wide attitudes and behaviours is complex and takes time, but only by achieving change at this scale can we stop the violence.

The Fourth Action Plan might not provide all of the answers, but it’s surely a sign of positive progress.

Read more: Domestic abuse or genuine relationship? Our welfare system can’t tell

The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

– ref. The latest action plan to tackle violence against women isn’t perfect, but it takes a much-needed holistic approach – http://theconversation.com/the-latest-action-plan-to-tackle-violence-against-women-isnt-perfect-but-it-takes-a-much-needed-holistic-approach-121870

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colleen Murrell, Associate Professor, Journalism, Swinburne University of Technology

When news of the stabbings in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon came through, one of the first tweets about the incident came from Sky News reporter Laura Jayes.

Immediately it got retweeted and sent around the world, and I might have retweeted it myself, but for the voice whispering in my ear from my former BBC training, “two agencies and a correspondent.” This was the news editor’s mantra for having multiple sources for reporting breaking news back in the day.

But who would wait for that verification process to go through its paces today? If an eyewitness has seen or heard something, and it is reported by a reputable news organisation, isn’t that already two sources? As expected, it was the Wild West on Twitter that day, and news was updating constantly. On a breaking news story with video clips rolling in, people rush to retweet and they rush to judgement.

A storm then erupted on Twitter, with angry voices accusing Jayes of being variously “Islamophobic” or “unhelpful” and Sky News of being guilty of “stupid journalism”.

But was Jayes not correct to report what she had heard? One of her sources was her sister, who was at the scene at the time. Might a sister not trump a news agency or a correspondent in terms of verification? When news breaks, journalists search for the five Ws: “who, what, why, when, and where” plus how. It’s a journalist’s job to make sense of what is happening and to provide some answers. Video clips that flooded in from the street appeared to show Mert Ney indeed calling out “Allahu Akhbar”.

Of course, simply saying this doesn’t mean he is a terrorist, in the formal meaning of that term, linking his actions to a defined organisation. As Bernard Lane noted in The Australian a day later,

parroting a single Arabic phrase can’t be enough to make a sworn jihadi, and yesterday police knew of nothing to link Ney to terrorist organisations.

Exclusive footage later broadcast on Twitter by Channel 7, shot through the window of a police vehicle, again showed Ney repeating calls to Allah, saying he would protect him.

So, what do we have here? A man with known mental health issues, on the run after an alleged “domestic violence” incident in which he is reported to have attacked one of his sisters. Is this therefore about mental health, misogyny, religious conviction, terrorism or shades of all four? We cannot know this for certain now – in fact we may never know this. What we do know is that people with mental health issues have sometimes loudly proclaimed religious affiliations while carrying out violence.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

Back in March, on the day of the Christchurch mosque killings, I wrote a piece for The Conversation, calling on people not to share the live video of the murders or the extreme right-wing manifesto of the killer.

I outlined why I thought this was a bad idea – namely, that it perpetrated and reproduced the hatred, might incite copycat killers and could cause problems for the prosecution (in finding jury members who had not seen the video). The platforms and media that had posted the video later took it down.

On day three of this particular Sydney drama, the NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller has not changed what he said on Tuesday night: that the attack was not being treated as a terrorist attack and that the perpetrator acted alone.

After coming under attack, Laura Jayes defended herself, saying:

While one can argue that journalists bring along their own baggage and slant to their stories, what she asserts is essentially correct. A good journalist should aspire to report the facts, as verified and known. As I have written before, conspiracies can fester when people feel the media is self-censoring and they are not being told the truth.

Read more: Media watchdog’s report into Christchurch shootings goes soft on showing violent footage

The argument here is not about republishing hate manifestos or showing people being killed. Rather, this is a clear case of a journalist publishing what she believes to be the case as recounted to her by someone whom she trusted. And I think she should. Once you have a trusted source, and a video to back it up, why wouldn’t you report what was said? People with sinister motives may go on to twist this information to their ends in further tweets, but the reporter simply reported what was said.

As we all become more sophisticated in reading the nuances in these sorts of stories, we can understand that just because somebody with a mental health condition shouts out an invocation to god, it doesn’t mean they have terrorist connections. They could in fact be scaremongering to try and provoke what is commonly called “suicide by cop”.

Reporters cannot hide obvious facts, as evidenced by video. Instead, adding information, background and context to stories, as they become available, is the best approach. And Laura Jayes did this,

Personally, I have no problem with Jayes’ reporting of this incident, but others might have different thresholds of what they think is appropriate disclosure. In this age of social media filming of breaking news, a video of somebody shouting and brandishing a weapon won’t get taken down, unless it shows the actual crime. Some media, on the other hand, may choose not to go there, which is their choice. Let’s keep the channels of discussion open.

– ref. Sydney stabbing shows reporters should not censor what they report on Twitter – as long as it’s verified – http://theconversation.com/sydney-stabbing-shows-reporters-should-not-censor-what-they-report-on-twitter-as-long-as-its-verified-121950

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amber Marshall, Research fellow, Queensland University of Technology

Farming families and communities in Queensland’s remote north are being left behind by the digital economy, putting them at significant social and economic disadvantage.

Our report, launched in Cairns today, details the impacts of low levels of “digital inclusion” among farmers in Far North Queensland (FNQ), for whom reliable internet connection is not a given.

Read more: Australia’s digital divide is not going away

People in rural and remote areas – including Indigenous communities – score much lower than urban Australians on the Australian Digital Inclusion Index. This index – which measures access to technology, affordability of connections, and digital ability – shows that North West Queensland (which includes FNQ grazing lands) is one of the least digitally included regions in Australia.

The index also shows that farmers have lower digital inclusion scores than others in similar socioeconomic circumstances. Farmers’ experiences of digital exclusion are therefore worthy of investigation.

While some Australian farmers are getting online and adopting various forms of agricultural technology such as drones, sensors and automated vehicles, many are being left behind. Given that a 2018 federal government report on Australia’s tech future predicted that agriculture will be transformed by digital technologies, it is important to understand how best to help farmers in remote areas get on board.

Our research revealed a range of findings about the impacts of low levels of digital inclusion for FNQ farmers. Here are four of the main insights from the report.

Farmers pay more for less

Challenges with unreliable services, network congestion, slow internet speeds, and data caps in rural and regional Australia are well documented. In rural FNQ, mobile, internet and landline connections are often intermittent or drop out altogether. Therefore, many farmers “layer up” on service plans and devices.

For example, a FNQ farming family may have several mobile phones and plans with different providers, a satellite phone and plan, a home landline, and a wireless or satellite connection to the National Broadband Network (NBN). An urban family, meanwhile, may have just one provider that guarantees access and unlimited data to all devices in the household. Farmers pay more for less.

Data is scarce in remote households

Data scarcity is also an issue for farming families, particularly in remote households with only satellite internet connection. Unlike the unlimited fixed-line NBN plans available in urban areas, plans using NBN’s Sky Muster satellite are capped, and often more than half of the data is only available in off-peak times, such as between midnight and 7am.

Read more: Internet in space: nbn’s plan to bring broadband to rural Australia

This affects how remote families live, and limits people’s access to digital opportunities. Farming women in particular have to monitor the data consumption of adults, kids, workers, and visitors – often there is not enough to go around.

Deciding what digital activities (banking, homework, job-seeking, video-calling) to prioritise – and who misses out – can be stressful and contentious.

Farmers need to be online to comply with the law

To meet their accreditation requirements, FNQ cattle producers must complete online modules on various topics including biosecurity, transport methods, and animal welfare. Complying with vegetation clearing laws also involves accessing maps that are only readily available online. Many farmers struggle to gain access to the internet, log in on a suitable device, navigate the online platforms, and complete the mandatory training. Many therefore risk noncompliance.

For similar reasons, some graziers are resisting digitisation of the National Livestock Identification System, which is used to track the movement of cattle nationally. This system is essential for biosecurity, meat safety, product integrity, and market access. Breaches to the system could have catastrophic consequences for the beef industry, for instance in the event of a freeze on the wider movement of cattle.

The network is essential

FNQ farmers rely on mobile and internet coverage across properties and between townships for all sorts of activities, from coordinating the everyday school run to responding to an emergency such as a bushfire. Although two-way radios still play an important role in emergency response, people can only respond if they are in range.

In many instances, FNQ farmers can only access reliable phone or internet from their house or the nearest township. While the national Mobile Black Spot Program is helping to bridge gaps in mobile phone service along major road routes, affordable solutions are needed to beam wifi signals substantial distances from the house.

Read more: Getting remote Indigenous communities online

What can we do to help?

There are several things government and industry could do to help improve digital inclusion in FNQ agricultural communities:

• Improve mainstream telecommunications and internet infrastructure, and embrace alternative hardware solutions in communities and on properties. For example, Wi-Sky, which began as a rural cooperative, has built its own towers to offer alternative internet plans to locals in several remote sites in Queensland and New South Wales.

• Redefine affordability to take account of the “layering up” phenomenon when developing telecommunications policy at all levels. Current methods to determine affordability do not accurately reflect the true cost and value for money of digital connectivity in rural areas. Telecommunications companies could revise their plans to give their rural customers better value for money, for instance by offering tailored mobile plans for intermittently heavy data users who are out of range for long periods.

• Boost farmers’ digital ability to help them do business in the digital economy. Targeted digital ability programs could foster specific skills that farmers want and need, such as using the livestock identification system. These programs could be delivered in partnership with industry organisations such as AgForce that already have people on the ground in rural and remote areas.

• Finally, give farmers a voice. Our policy-focused report was accompanied by two other reports focusing on participants and particular case studies. Farmers are telling us what they need to take part in the digital economy. It’s up to government and industry to listen, and to work with communities to devise solutions for improved access, affordability and digital ability.

– ref. Logged out: farmers in Far North Queensland are being left behind by the digital economy – http://theconversation.com/logged-out-farmers-in-far-north-queensland-are-being-left-behind-by-the-digital-economy-121743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Cameron, Associate professor, and Associate Director of the Global Obesity Centre, Deakin University

Half-price chips, “two for one” chocolates, “buy one get one free” soft drinks: Australian supermarkets make it very easy for us to fill our trolleys with junk food.

Add in the bonus of an Ooshie or a Little Shop collectable and you’re likely going home with a pile of products that will fill out both your pantry and your waistline.

We looked at supermarket specials over a year to see how healthy they were. The results of our research, published today, show junk foods are discounted, on average, twice as often as healthy foods.

Read more: How we get sucked in by junk food specials in supermarkets

Australians buy about two-thirds of their food and drink at the supermarket, and 40% of their foods on special. We know environments dominated by heavily promoted junk foods are a key driver of unhealthy diets.

Where unhealthy diets are one of the leading contributors to poor health in Australia, the way supermarkets apply discounts needs to change. We all love a bargain, but we may be paying the real price with our health.

Junks foods attract more specials, and bigger discounts

In our research, junk foods included chocolate, chips, confectionery, ice cream and high-sugar breakfast cereals. We found these sorts of products were on special twice as often as healthy foods – 29% versus 15% of the time.

We also looked at how discounts varied according to the healthiness of the products. We assessed the “healthiness” of foods using the Health Star Rating system – an Australian government-endorsed scheme that gives each product a score out of five.

We found the more stars a food product had, the less often it was on special, and the smaller the discount when it was. Discounts applied to junk foods were, on average, almost twice as large as discounts on healthier options (26% off versus 15% off).

A similar recent study of drink specials in supermarkets over a year found almost half of all drink specials were for sugar-sweetened beverages (soft drinks, sports and energy drinks, and cordials). Within drink categories, twice as many sugar-sweetened beverages were on special compared to specials for milk and water (34% versus 15% of the time).

Read more: Big supermarkets, big on junk food: how to make healthier food environments

How do supermarkets decide what to discount?

The way supermarkets choose what products are on special each week is complex.

Food manufacturers pay large premiums to have their products featured in supermarket catalogues, at end-of-aisle displays or near the checkout. The arrangements between food manufacturers and supermarkets are often governed by contracts that specify the way products are to be promoted.

Food manufacturers and supermarkets know unhealthy food is often bought on impulse, making price discounts a great way to entice customers to make those impulse choices.

Despite their claims to be healthy places to shop, supermarkets are major culprits in pushing junk food upon us.

Does it have to be this way?

If Australia is serious about addressing its obesity crisis, the way junk food is promoted in our supermarkets needs serious review. There’s a real opportunity for both supermarkets and food manufacturers to take the lead in helping to encourage healthier eating.

Big supermarket chains stock more than 30,000 products. Most large food manufacturers have a wide variety of products, ranging from more healthy to less healthy. Supermarkets and food manufacturers could work together to put healthier options on special more often.

Read more: Fat nation: the rise and fall of obesity on the political agenda

Government regulation may play a role, too. Governments around the world are starting to recognise the role of price discounts in driving unhealthy diets. There are current proposals in the UK and Scotland to use government regulations to restrict price discounts for unhealthy products.

There are several ways governments in Australia could step in to limit the impact of unhealthy discounting, including:

• restricting the proportion of unhealthy food allowed to be discounted
• restricting multi-buy specials (such as “buy one get one free”) on unhealthy products
• reducing the size of discounts on unhealthy food
• restricting the advertising of price discounts (for example, through signage).

Supermarkets of the future

Imagine what it would be like to shop at a supermarket where healthier food was on special more often, and with bigger discounts. Where customers were enticed by discounted fruit and vegetables instead of half price chips, chocolate and soft drinks.

Australian supermarkets have already taken some positive steps to make their stores healthier, including an increased focus on fresh food. Extending this to improving the healthiness of their discounts could have a real benefit on the health of generations to come.

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

– ref. Supermarkets put junk food on special twice as often as healthy food, and that’s a problem – http://theconversation.com/supermarkets-put-junk-food-on-special-twice-as-often-as-healthy-food-and-thats-a-problem-121808

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Trethowan, Director, IA Watson Research Centre, Narrabri Plant Breeding Institute, University of Sydney

A UN report released last week found a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions come from the food chain, particularly meat farming. This has prompted calls to sharply reduce emissions from agriculture and to feed the world on plant protein.

Read more: UN climate change report: land clearing and farming contribute a third of the world’s greenhouse gases

Can we feed a growing global population without increasing the amount of farmland? It’s tough, but certainly possible.

There might still be a place for meat animals in the many parts of the world unsuitable for growing crops. But governments around the world must turn away from heavily subsided but protein-poor cereals, and aggressively pursue legume production.

How much land do we have to work with?

In 1960, there was one-third of a hectare of farmland per person on the planet. By 2050 that will have fallen to 0.14 hectares, according to research at Michigan State University. This trend is a consequence of increasing population and urban encroachment. Most cities were established on arable land close to water supplies, and urban expansion continues to consume significant productive land.

About one-third of cereals produced globally now are fed to animals (mainly in Europe and North America, although this is changing across the developing world as incomes rise and demand for meat increases).

Read more: Vegan food’s sustainability claims need to give the full picture

Converting these areas to food production would significantly improve the amount of plant protein available to people. Research has estimated some 16% of edible crops are diverted to biofuel production, and redistribution of these proteins and calories to people would also help immensely. However, biofuels are renewable and less polluting than fossil fuels, and therefore have potential to offset carbon emissions.

Nevertheless, we cannot completely discount animal protein. Around half the world’s land surface is rangelands, covering arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid climates. These areas are unsuitable for cropping, and many cattle and sheep are raised there.

They have traditionally been used for extensive pastoralism, and the meat produced there is more expensive than meat from feedlots, because of slower growth rates and higher transport costs. However, people are increasingly concerned with the provenance of their food, and may well be willing to pay more for single-origin food produced sustainably.

Beans, glorious beans

Next we must consider what crops we grow on this land. Continuing to grow maize and other low-protein cereal crops on land formerly used to provide feed or biofuel is unlikely to provide enough plant-based protein for an expanding population.

There must be an increase in the production of leguminous crops, such as peas and beans, that fix their own nitrogen and that provide nutritious grains high in protein. The grain of legumes is 20-30% protein, compared with 10% in maize, which is the most extensively grown cereal crop used for animal feed.

However, lifting the yield of legumes is a significant challenge as expenditure on the genetic improvement of these crops (except possibly soybeans) has been dwarfed by that spent on the major cereals. It is essential this component of the future global farming system becomes more productive and sustainable.

In rotation with cereals, legumes enhance the productivity of the entire farming system. According to research from Pulse Breeding Australia, legumes should make up 25% of global crops. We are far from achieving this target, with just 10% of cropping dedicated to legumes.

Unlike cereals, legumes are harder to grow and require more skilled management. Legumes are generally more susceptible to diseases, including viruses and insect pests, and are significantly impacted by temperature extremes and drought. As global warming increases, the difficulties associated with producing legumes are likely also to rise. More resources, therefore, will have to be invested in researching legume cultivation.

We can’t see the future

There are plenty of knock-on consequences of any major changes to our food chain. Phasing out feedlots for animal farming, for example, will reduce the effluent that often contaminates waterways and causes nutrient toxicity in nearby fields. This will increase the price of grass-fed meat.

The lower yields of legume crops, combined with government support for cereals in many countries, currently strangle their production. To increase crops, farmers will need incentives until increased demand can support higher prices. We must be prepared to pay more for vegetable protein, and vegan options may no longer be among the less expensive options on restaurant menus.

The current move to meat-like vegetable protein products is also unlikely to gain much traction in the longer term as the cost of processing these materials will reduce their appeal.

The transition to a world fed on vegetable protein will be made against a dwindling amount of land per person and an increasingly hostile farming environment in many areas.

Increasing temperatures will change disease patterns and traditional crops may no longer be viable in some regions. Governments will also need to reassess policies that favour the production of higher-yielding but protein-poor crops.

Read more: Australia urgently needs real sustainable agriculture policy

Feeding the world on plant-based protein is an incredibly complex proposition, with many variables we cannot accurately predict. But this should not stop us trying; it is certain that whatever the difficulties, they will be greatly magnified in a signficantly warmer world.

There is much complexity around the notion that we can feed the world on plant-based proteins and many variables we cannot yet accurately predict. However, this should not stop use from trying to achieve this outcome in whole or in part.

– ref. It’ll be hard, but we can feed the world with plant protein – http://theconversation.com/itll-be-hard-but-we-can-feed-the-world-with-plant-protein-121816

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Petrova, Section Editor: Education

Whether schools should mandate a uniform is a controversial issue. Some believe wearing the same clothes smooths out inequality. Others see uniforms as authoritarian; believing them a symbol of repression, stifling freedom of thought and individuality.

We asked five experts from various fields whether school uniforms should be compulsory. Rather surprisingly, among the experts at least, there was little division.

Four out of five experts said no

Here are their detailed responses:

If you have a “yes or no” education question you’d like posed to Five Experts, email your suggestion to: sasha.petrova@theconversation.edu.au

Disclosures: Renae Barker is the Diocesan Advocate of the Anglian Diocese of Bunbury and advises the Bishop, Bishop in Council, Trustees and Synod on matters of Church law.

– ref. Should school uniforms be compulsory? We asked five experts – http://theconversation.com/should-school-uniforms-be-compulsory-we-asked-five-experts-121935

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

The years between the gay liberation movement at the beginning of the 1970s and the onset of AIDS a decade later are viewed in a certain strand of gay nostalgia as “the golden age”.

It’s hardly surprising that those who lived through the period might see it this way; in retrospect all youth is golden. What is surprising is the extent to which men not then adult — perhaps not yet born — have accepted the idea and are slightly disappointed when I try to disillusion them.

For me the entry to New York’s so-called golden age came one day in November 1977 when I had brunch with Michael Denneny, Edmund White, Doug Ireland and Chuck Ortleb.

Between them the four men represented an extraordinary agglomeration of gay cultural power: Denneny, the slightly acerbic editor who turned St Martin’s Press into a crucible for queer writing; Ireland, the cherubic faced, smart leftist journalist who knew everyone and would die of diabetes and stroke in 2013; White, then a fresh faced and largely unknown novelist; Ortleb, editor of Christopher Street Magazine, the most prominent queer literary magazine to date.

Three years later Ortleb and Denneny would found The New York Native, the cutting edge of gay journalism until it collapsed in a frenzy of denialism that HIV was the cause of AIDS.

Looking back what strikes me is the immediate intimacy of gay literary and political New York. The radicals of the early 1970s were gradually winning respect in a broader world, but there were still few enough people who were open about their sexuality for it to establish a common bond. It seemed possible, then, to know everyone; my diary mentions meeting the German film director, Rosa von Praunheim and the Argentinian writer Manuel Puig.

I have no memory of Praunheim, whose film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives was an important influence on the German gay movement. I desperately wanted to meet Puig, because he had footnoted me several times in his novel Kiss of the Spider Woman, an unusual device for a novel.

I met a small, depressed man in a downtown apartment, described by Suzanne Levine in her excellent book about Puig as “replicating the monkish austerity of his room in Buenos Aires”.

The overwhelming attraction of the New York gay literati world was sufficient for me to resign my lectureship at Sydney University and move to New York in 1981. The ten years at Sydney had been exciting, marked by bitter disputes within Philosophy and Economics, which led to a student strike and both departments splitting between traditionalists and radicals.

But the prospect of 30 more years in the same institution was stultifying: I wanted to live out the fantasy of becoming a real writer.

My New York in the first term of Reagan’s Presidency was defined by two extraordinary groups, the gay literati clustered around Christopher Street and the New York Native, and the hothouse intellectual world of New York University’s Institute for the Humanities, presided over by the sociologist Richard Sennett.

The Violet Quill

The link between the two was Edmund White, a man of southern charm and northern ambition, ruthless in his pursuit of celebrity and celebrities, and capable of both great generosity and sudden barbs of wickedness. Edmund was one of group of gay writers who made up what became known as the Violet Quill.

Urged on by Doug Ireland who was then an editor at the Soho News, a spunkier version of the Village Voice, I wrote a piece called “a movable brunch — the fag lit mafia”, of which Christopher Bram later wrote: “This bitchery was the first bit of fame for the group.”

But gay writing was beginning to encroach on high culture. There was excitement when the New Yorker published what was thought to be its first overtly gay short story (David Leavitt’s Territory) in 1981 — and some chagrin amongst other New York writers. Now the New Yorker publishes gay cartoons and stories without comment.

Edmund was a central figure at the Institute for the Humanities, which I once described as the New York Review of Books at lunch, perhaps because of memories of seminars dominated by the presence of Susan Sontag, her legs sprawled across the table as she munched sandwiches and repartee with equal ferocity.

I barely knew Sontag when in a moment of rashness I agreed to speak about “dandyism” in a small seminar. Naively I had forgotten that Sontag wrote of dandyism in her iconic Notes on Camp, and I suspect she was angered by my too easy equation of dandies with homosexuality. Susan turned her well-rehearsed wrath on me for what was self-evident fatuousness; I retired hurt; and Edmund took me to dinner, having seen others who had experienced Susan’s barbs.

Looking back, I realise this was a rite of passage; some months later Susan and I went to dinner together, my main memory of which is a Lower East Side Chinese restaurant which specialised in offal, and a discussion which touched for a time on opera.

Ferocious determination

What I glimpsed that evening was something of the ferocious determination with which she was constructing herself as a cultural icon, a ferocity that seemed shared by so many of the people I came across in New York, where every transaction, even at the bank or post office, demanded concentrated ambition.

Occasionally I went to evenings at Sennett’s house, where men gathered around the piano, in an arch approximation of a Proustian salon, and Sennett spoke of his developing friendship with Michel Foucault.

There are echoes of those moments in both Sennett’s novel The Frog Who Dared to Croak (1982) and White’s Caracole (1985), the latter of which caused a celebrated split between him and Sontag, who recognised herself and her son, David Rieff, in the novel.

Many famous people passed through the Institute. I met Nadine Gordimer while I was trying to decide whether to return to Australia, and leave New York, self-evidently the centre of the gay literary world. “But there are no centres anymore,” said Gordimer, a great comfort to me when a year later I decided to return to Australia.

My first year in New York was taken up with the final edits and publication of the book that would become The Homosexualization of America; “Better” Vito Russo, whose book The Celluloid Closet remains a staple of queer film criticism, had said to me one day “To call it The Americanization of the Homosexual”, and in retrospect he was right. I worked on the book with Michael Denneny, the toughest and most demanding editor I’ve encountered. Of all the books I’ve written this one involved the most intense collaboration with an editor, Michael being even more determined than I that homosexuals were changing the shape of American culture.

The path to breaking down the massive silences around homosexuality, which viewed it as a crime or a pathology, was already far advanced before the hiatus of the AIDS epidemic.

That this was happening as mainstream politics moved to the right, symbolised by Reagan’s election in 1980, and the rise of the Moral Majority, reminds us that politics rarely move in a straight line. The references in Homosexualization to marriage seem to assume it is a dying institution, indeed claimed we were better off without it:

The absence of gay marriage means that it is easier for homosexuals to develop other ways of living than in conventional coupledom; there has been considerable discussion, in the new gay writings, of the advantages and disadvantages of a whole range of possible living and social arrangements.

That discussion has now largely disappeared as same sex marriage has become a barometer of acceptance of sexual diversity. Even those of us who are sceptical of winning the blessings of the state and the church for our relationships felt the need to campaign for marriage equality when it became the subject of an unnecessary and expensive postal ballot two years ago.

It is easy to lament the apparent shift to conservatism of the queer movement, but this is an inevitable result of it now embracing far more people than it did 40 years ago. Nostalgia for a radical past too easily overlooks the range of ideas and identities that now exist, in a very different world to that of the early 1980s.

The marriage vote was significant, marking as it did a further step in acceptance of sexual diversity. On November 15 2017 thousands of us gathered outside the State Library to hear the results of the postal vote. The live feed from Canberra almost collapsed, but the figures came across clearly: over 60% of the 12 million people who responded had voted yes. There were cheers, speeches, rainbow flags, jubilation; a group of us went for coffee and prosecco to the Library café, where the staff were flirting their relief. Did I think, someone asked, that this was a moment when the zeitgeist shifted?

There have been many moments in my life when social attitudes towards homosexuality have shifted, and times when people have mobilised to create change: this was true of moves for decriminalisation in NSW and Tasmania, painfully real during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The marriage vote felt like a major milestone, but I don’t think that the zeitgeist shifted, rather that several decades of slow shifts towards greater acceptance came together, and most Australians recognised this. Let’s hope the current government remembers this.

This is an edited extract from Unrequited Love: Diary of an Accidental Activist (Monash University Press)

– ref. Friday essay: my brush with Susan Sontag and other tales from the gay ‘golden age’ – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-my-brush-with-susan-sontag-and-other-tales-from-the-gay-golden-age-121506

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

Soon after the election Treasurer Frydenberg flagged there would be an inquiry into retirement incomes. Since then, no details have emerged.

But there is gossip around Canberra there might be some action in the next couple of weeks on a review that would report before the end of 2020.

This issue, with compulsory superannuation its pointy end, and that of industrial relations, on which minister Christian Porter is doing a stocktake, have common threads in political terms.

They will test the clout of powerful interests outside the parliament, and of backbench activists within the Coalition. Meaning, they will test the Prime Minister.

In another life, Peter Collins was a NSW Liberal treasurer and opposition leader. These days, he’s deputy chair of Industry Super Australia, which he previously chaired for six years.

Collins told a Rice Warner summit on superannuation in Canberra on Monday that Scott Morrison had the opportunity to “reset the relationship” with industry and public sector superannuation funds, after the negativity of the Turnbull government – which was preoccupied with trying to curb union power in the industry funds. (It was less than pleased when the industry funds emerged from a Productivity Commission inquiry a good deal shinier than the retail funds.)

Collins also recounted how a few weeks ago, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had invited IFM Investors, the infrastructure investment vehicle for many industry funds (and overseas pension funds of a similar nature), to join the US Investment Advisory Council. This is described as “established by the Secretary of Commerce to solicit private sector advice on the promotion and retention of foreign direct investment” to the US.

Read more: There is a problem with retirement incomes, but it isn’t the super guarantee

It seemed the US administration had a rather more positive attitude to industry and public sector funds than the Coalition government.

Collins also points to the scope, under a “reset relationship” for these funds to do more on the infrastructure front in Australia. “There is no other pot of gold” for infrastructure, he says.

Not surprisingly, these funds are hanging out for the terms of reference for the retirement inquiry, in particular how they impact on the legislated rise due to start from mid-2021, to take the superannuation guarantee gradually from the current 9.5% to 12% by 2025.

The Productivity Commission saw the need for “an independent public inquiry into the role of compulsory superannuation in the broader retirement incomes system”. Others question the case for an inquiry when the various policy settings appear to be in place.

The PC has reported on necessary administrative reforms. Changes have already been made to the tax treatment of superannuation. Overhaul of the aged pension system doesn’t seem on the radar.

And, crucially, the rise in the super guarantee is baked into law – and, Morrison says, into Coalition policy.

But some are suspicious (and others hopeful) the retirement inquiry could pave the way for the government to seek to defer the July 2021 rise, and then put to the 2022 election the proposition that workers should be able to get the money through wage increases rather than having it locked away.

This would also set up a convenient issue for wedging Labor, which would be committed to the guarantee increasing. It’s easy to see the line – it could be portrayed as another case of the ALP wanting to “increase taxes” rather than giving employees their money.

Read more: Voluntary super: a good way to increase women’s dependence on men

If it all sounds too Machiavellian, it is worth remembering the Coalition has form on the issue.

The Howard government proposed workers should be able to “opt out” of the compulsory scheme and receive wage increases instead, although this didn’t go ahead. The Abbott government deferred rises until 2021.

New Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, who addressed Monday’s conference (although he avoided the guarantee issue for political reasons) is one of a number of Coalition backbenchers who oppose the rise to 12%. They are looking to the inquiry to leverage change.

They have an ally in the Grattan Institute, which argues the increase to 12% should be abandoned, maintaining “it would effectively compel most people to save for a higher living standard in retirement than they enjoy during their working lives”.

The temptation for scrapping the rise, or having some “opt out” system, becomes stronger when wages are flat – a problem reinforced by the latest figures this week.

But there is a strong counter case that such a course would be bad in practical and policy terms.

There’s no certainty workers would actually get the extra money, or all of it, in wage increases. Attempting to compel that would be complex and fraught.

More importantly, failure to strengthen further the compulsory system would disadvantage many individual retirees in the future and be an added burden on a later generation of taxpayers, as more people would be pushed onto full aged pensions.

Read more: Vital Signs. Amid talk of recessions, our progress on wages and unemployment is almost non-existent

While many Liberals don’t like the compulsory aspect of the super guarantee, it’s the history of the scheme (one of Paul Keating’s legacies) and most particularly the unions’ role – and the flow-on power that gives unions – that really rile them.

One would think, however, that much about compulsory superannuation fits with Liberal philosophy, which emphasises self reliance.

Admittedly the argument for workers having immediate access to their money, at a time of life when they face their most severe cost-of-living pressures, is seductive. But it short term thinking, from the points of view of both individuals and governments.

Much of the debate is being conducted around modelling, stretching out decades, calculating the competing financial implications for low income workers. But modelling, with its assumptions, carries a degree of false precision. It also represents one-dimensional thinking.

People on low incomes are naturally going to spend any extra money rather than save it. Yet for these people savings are what they need for the long term. This applies especially for women, for whom more, not fewer, ways should be found to augment their superannuation.

Forced saving might be unpleasant in the moment, but valued at the time of a more comfortable and secure retirement. Promises of the money being used for wage increases carry political appeal for a government now, but future governments would benefit if the aged pension burden is contained by a healthily growing compulsory super scheme.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: How ‘guaranteed’ is a rise in the superannuation guarantee? – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-how-guaranteed-is-a-rise-in-the-superannuation-guarantee-121956

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Ni, China researcher, Department of Security Studies and Criminology, Macquarie University

Since the start of mass demonstrations in Hong Kong in early June, there has been a significant escalation of Beijing’s rhetoric and tactics. Instead of addressing the root causes of the public anger, Beijing has demonised the protesters and threatened to suppress them with its military.

Beijing’s shrill rhetoric, misinformation campaigns, and blatant threats have galvanised resistance in what has fast become a volatile situation. The crisis doesn’t appear to be dissipating. And things are going to come to a head very soon.

The mass protests started in response to a controversial extradition bill that was widely seen as another step in the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy. The demonstrations quickly escalated due to public anger over police violence and an unresponsive Hong Kong government.

But deeper down at the heart of this crisis is a conflict over the longer-term vision for the city – over its soul.

Read more: The Hong Kong protesters have turned militant and more strategic – and this unnerves Beijing

Beijing’s goal is to gradually tighten its grip on Hong Kong. It aims to assimilate the city into China’s authoritarian political system, and rule over its people in the same way it does in rest of the country. Many Hong Kongers, meanwhile, are desperate to resist any further encroachment by Beijing on their freedoms and way of life. These goals are fundamentally incompatible.

In many ways, this is a problem of Beijing’s own making. It created the conditions for the current crisis by systematically undermining the “one country, two systems” framework.

Beijing has effectively torn up its promises, made before the British handover, to keep Hong Kong’s political system intact until 2047. In recent years, it has undermined the “one country, two systems” framework through political interference, the changing of electoral and other laws, and the penetration of Hong Kong’s social institutions.

In doing so, it has provoked local resentment, a stronger Hong Kong identity, and a culture of resistance. According to a recent poll, the percentage of Hong Kongers identifying as Chinese is now at its lowest point since the handover in 1997.

For the ruling Chinese Communist Party, this is worrisome. And the longer the protests continue, the more it sees its authority challenged. Such resistance, in Beijing’s view, cannot be tolerated.

Beijing’s multi-pronged strategy

In the early days of the protests, Beijing adopted a low-profile approach that focused on censoring news of the demonstrations from filtering into mainland China. This approach, however, changed quickly when the Chinese government realised the protests would likely continue and it needed to mobilise public opinion.

What is Beijing’s aim now? In the short-term, it wants to end the unrest by shutting down the protests completely. It has repeatedly signalled its willingness to use force if necessary.

Read more: Hong Kong fears losing its rule of law; the rest of the world should worry too

Beyond that, given what has transpired over the last ten weeks of demonstrations, Beijing will seek to tighten its political control over Hong Kong even further to check continued resistance.

In order to achieve its immediate and long-term goals in Hong Kong, Beijing has put in place a multi-pronged strategy. A full picture of this strategy has emerged in recent weeks:

1) First, Beijing is firmly backing the embattled Hong Kong authorities. Chinese officials have repeatedly urged the Hong Kong police to adopt tougher tactics against protesters who they see as criminals.

And in the last week, we have seen an alarming escalation in police violence, with tear gas and rubber bullets being used with increasing frequency.

2) Beijing is also ramping up its influence operations in Hong Kong to solidify support among pro-establishment elites, businesses, and other “patriotic forces”.

Last week, the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong held a consultation forum with about 500 pro-establishment figures in Shenzhen, just across the border.

The key message was that the Chinese government was fully behind them and that their fate was tied to Beijing. This has had an immediate impact on the ground in Hong Kong, with the city’s billionaires “breaking their silence” this week and calling for the protesters to stand down.

Not with a small degree of irony, Beijing and its proxies in Hong Kong have a close relationship with the city’s organised crime groups. On several occasions in the last two months, these groups have assaulted protesters on Beijing’s behalf in an attempt to instill fear in the local population.

3) Beijing has stepped up its propaganda and misinformation efforts against the protesters in an attempt to cast them as villains in the unfolding drama. Criminal elements are also working with nefarious foreign agents to foment turmoil and undermine China, the official line goes.

Within mainland China, such blatant twists of truth are widely believed. And because Beijing has successfully mobilised public opinion there, that makes it harder for the government to back down and make compromises (not that we are seeing signs of that).

In any case, Beijing’s relentless war for hearts and minds continues.

4) Beijing is using punitive measures to cut off support for the protesters. For instance, the Chinese government ordered the Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific to block staffers who took part in the protests from working on flights to the mainland.

It did this to deliver an unequivocal message: support the protesters and we will hit your bottom line. Beijing will likely continue to target Hong Kong and international companies that it sees as being on the wrong side of the political crisis.

5) Beijing is trying to deter escalating protests by signalling its strong determination to intervene with force if necessary.

The Chinese government has repeatedly threatened the use of armed forces as a backstop measure if the unrest spins out of control. Indeed, it may at some point make the judgement the situation warrants military intervention, regardless of the high cost involved.

Beijing’s posturing is intended to send a deterrent message and is part of a wider psychological campaign against the protesters. But we are not at the point of imminent military intervention yet.

6) Despite the unrest, Beijing will likely accelerate its efforts to integrate Hong Kong into the mainland economically and through infrastructure projects. High-speed trains, new bridges, and economic cooperation are all part of this long-term effort. We are also likely to see a further tightening of control over the city’s political institutions, judicial system, and media.

A festering long-term problem

For Chinese leaders, the protest movement has reinforced an important lesson: insufficient government power, civil liberties, and perceived weakness leads to the loss of control, resistance, and social instability.

This will only serve to strengthen Beijing’s resolve to assert its control over Hong Kong more forcefully, which will, in turn, provoke further resentment and resistance from locals.

Read more: Hong Kong: how a more assertive British government can uphold the ‘one country, two systems’ formula

To be sure, Beijing has a long-term Hong Kong challenge on its hands. If it wants to resolve the current impasse, hardline tactics are not sufficient. As unpalatable as it is to both sides, Beijing and the protesters must compromise. But there is little prospect of that in the current environment of escalating violence, inflamed passions, frayed nerves, and hardening attitudes on both sides.

But Beijing must recognise that its actions are sowing the seeds of future conflict, just as its past broken promises led directly to what we are witnessing today. As Hong Kong gallops towards tragedy, it is both mesmerising and heartbreaking to watch.

– ref. Beijing is moving to stamp out the Hong Kong protests – but it may have already lost the city for good – http://theconversation.com/beijing-is-moving-to-stamp-out-the-hong-kong-protests-but-it-may-have-already-lost-the-city-for-good-121815

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

Legend has it that, when asked by US President Richard Nixon in 1972 what he thought about the impact of the French Revolution, Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai replied: “it’s too early to say”.

Waiting for progress on wages and unemployment in Australia may not be a multi-century enterprise (the French Revolution was in 1789) but Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe’s testimony to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics on Friday was reminiscent of Zhou’s caution:

In the central scenario that I have sketched today, inflation will be below the target band for some time to come and the unemployment rate will remain above the level we estimate to be consistent with full employment.

While this remains the case, the possibility of lower interest rates will remain on the table. The board is prepared to ease monetary policy further if there is additional accumulation of evidence that this is needed to achieve our goals of full employment and inflation consistent with the target. Time will tell.

That was a week ago, but since then “old man time” has given us two less than completely encouraging pieces of information.

Wage growth isn’t really climbing

On Wednesday the Bureau of Statistics released the June quarter Wage Price Index which showed wages rising 0.6% for the quarter and 2.3% on the year.

It provides two things to worry about.

First, wage growth isn’t rising. Annual growth has remained unchanged for three quarters.

Second, the growth that is there is driven more by the public sector (0.8% over the quarter) than the private sector (0.5%).

As the Bureau’s chief economist Bruce Hockman puts it

Wage growth continues at a steady rate in the Australian economy on the back of strong public sector growth over the quarter. The most significant contribution to wage growth this quarter came from the public sector component of the health care and social assistance industry, where a number of large increases were recorded in Victoria under a plan to ensure wage parity with other states.

Things might improve when and if the Reserve Bank interest rate cuts of June 5 and July 2 start changing the way consumers and employers think.

But the Reserve Bank cash rate has been at a record low of 1.5% since September 2016. All through those three years Governor Lowe has told us to be patient, that soon wage growth will climb and unemployment will fall.

We’ve had little progress on wages, and since January none on unemployment.

Unemployment isn’t really falling

On Thursday the bureau followed up with the latest unemployment figures.

Although job creation was strong in July – 24,600 jobs were added to the economy, 15,100 of which were full-time – the trend unemployment rate ticked up to 5.3%, from 5.2%.

The “trend” is a smoothed out extension of the way the way the Bureau of Statistics algorithm thinks the rate is going.

In part it is going up because more people not previously regarded as unemployed are looking for work (and not finding it).

It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is also exactly what would be expected when wage growth was sluggish. Households are doing what they can to assemble more income.

The world economy is in trouble

Global economic conditions are concerning. This week Eurpoe’s second-biggest economy Germany announced that its economy shrank by 0.1% in the second quarter of 2019, putting it on track to meet what some people call the technical definition of a recession.

Figures out of China regarding industrial production were also worrying, with factory output climbing more slowly than at any time in the last 17 years.

The US stock market climbed 1.5% on Tuesday after the Trump administration announced it would delay some of its new tariffs on China, but slid twice that amount the next day on the news from Germany and China.

Read more: Are Trump’s tariffs legal under the WTO? It seems not, and they are overturning 70 years of global leadership

The fall in stocks led to a flight to the relative safety of government bonds. This caused the yield on 10 year US government bonds to fall below that of the 2 year bonds, a so-called “inverted yield curve” of the kind usually seen before a recession. The last time the US yield curve inverted was before the US Great Recession of 2008.

None of this is good for Australia. With roughly 20% of our economy powered by exports, we need the countries we export to to be doing well.

As Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle put it in a speech on Thursday

Australia also has significant exports to China in both tourism and education. To date, these have been broadly unaffected by the slowdown in the Chinese economy. But a further significant slowing in the Chinese economy and household incomes would clearly pose a risk.

There’s no telling how low rates will go

There have been plenty of competing views about the state of the Australian economy over the past few years.

Not long ago most economists who thought interest rates would move thought they would rise. The Reserve Bank governor suggested the same.

But its increasingly clear that secular stagnation is gripping advanced economies around the world. In response, the US Federal Reserve has recommenced cutting rates and markets predict it will cut another full percentage point by this time next year.

Markets also expect the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and the Reserve Bank to cut rates significantly.

Read more: Vital Signs. If we fall into a recession (and we might) we’ll have ourselves to blame

The Bank’s “house position” on unemployment is that we can go down to 4.5% before worrying about triggering inflation (not that there’s much sign of that happening).

Another way to say that is that unemployment has to reverse course and get down to a barely-precedented 4.5% before there’s much hope of the Reserve Bank meeting the inflation target it is meant to be aiming for.

Perhaps the most important question facing the Australian economy is how aggressively the bank will act to attempt to get it there and to keep the economy afloat. Time will tell.

Read more: RBA update: Governor Lowe points to even lower rates

– ref. Vital Signs. Amid talk of recessions, our progress on wages and unemployment is almost non-existent – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-amid-talk-of-recessions-our-progress-on-wages-and-unemployment-is-almost-non-existent-121813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodie Ward, Director, Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research; Forensic DNA Identification Specialist, NSW Health Pathology; Associate Professor, Centre for Forensic Science, University of Technology Sydney

The recent case of a surgical implant found inside a Queensland crocodile has highlighted the challenges forensic scientists face when trying to identify human remains without much evidence to go on.

Did the crocodile eat a human with a surgical implant? If so, could the implant — a metal plate and some screws — be used to identify the victim? Or did the implant come from a dog?

Death by crocodile is reasonably rare. In the past decade, there have been about 67 crocodile attacks in Australia, a quarter of which were fatal.

Victim identification can be impossible in these cases, unless a body part with a unique characteristic is recovered, such as a medical device with a serial number. It’s just one of a range of potential techniques to put names and faces to hundreds of unidentified human remains in Australia.

Read more: Australia has 2,000 missing persons and 500 unidentified human remains – a dedicated lab could find matches

Forensic examination of human remains is crucial to establish the person’s identity, and cause and manner of death. This way they can have a proper burial, families can get answers, death certificates can be issued and justice can be served.

It is essential for identifying missing persons, disaster victims and casualties of war.

The big three: fingerprints, teeth, DNA

When human remains are recovered, three primary scientific methods are traditionally used to identify who they belong to:

• fingerprint analysis, which looks at the skin patterns on the tips of fingers
• dental analysis, which looks at the teeth and any dental work, such as crowns and fillings
• DNA analysis, which looks at DNA profiles recovered from soft or hard body tissues.

This information can then be compared to a database of fingerprint, dental or DNA records.

Implants and x-rays can also be useful

The discovery of medical implants during an autopsy can also be informative.

These include prosthetic joints, breast implants, pacemakers or dental implants. Investigators may be able to link these to patient records via their unique markings, including a trade mark, date of manufacture and serial number.

In Australia, the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry and Australian Breast Device Registry collect and store information that can allow people who have had joint or breast surgery to be identified.

But there are no national registers of heart or dental implants. Such mandatory records would allow implants to be easily traced back to recipients or surgeons.

Forensic scientists can also compare medical images, such as x-rays or CT scans, taken before and after death.

For head images, unique features such as the sinuses or the arrangement and condition of the teeth can be compared.

Body scans can also be used to look for rarer skeletal features, such as fractures, amputations or cancer lesions.

These scientific techniques, either individually or in combination, have been successfully used to identify large numbers of missing persons or disaster victims.

Computerisation, digitisation and miniaturisation of forensic technologies have further improved the identification process. Now, fingerprints, teeth, DNA and medical images can be quickly and easily collected and searched in real time using portable instruments at the scenes of mass disasters.

Read more: How dental records will help identify bodies from MH17

But there are limits

These methods are only as good as the information we have from when the person was alive. So if someone doesn’t have their fingerprints on file and hasn’t visited a dentist recently, or if close living relatives aren’t available to provide a DNA reference sample or they’ve never had a CT scan, these methods are likely to be useless.

And if a surgical implant doesn’t have unique markings (as in the case of the Queensland crocodile), it makes the task extremely difficult.

So forensic scientists need to explore other methods.

Clues from tattoos and bones

Distinctive physical features like scars, birthmarks and body modifications such as tattoos and piercings, could help identify someone.

Custom tattoos helped identify the victim of the famous 1935 “shark arm case” and decomposing bodies following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

A forensic anthropologist can also study a set of skeletal remains to reveal a lot about that person when they were living — including their sex, ancestry, stature, age, disease and any fatal injuries.

Radiocarbon dating of teeth and bone could tell us when that person was born and died. And the sample’s chemical signature could indicate the region where they were born, lived for long periods or recently travelled. It can even identify what they ate.

Scientists can also reconstruct a 3D image of someone’s face if a skull is found.

New DNA intelligence tools

Beyond routine DNA testing to determine someone’s sex or relatives, more novel DNA methods are showing promise for piecing together an image of a missing person.

DNA can now be used to predict someone’s ancestry and hair, eye and skin colour. But using DNA to accurately estimate age and facial features is still some way off.

Forensic genetic genealogy is also growing in popularity for identifying Jane Does (unidentified females). This is where investigators search a public DNA database of ancestry.com results, looking for genetic links to the DNA from the remains.

Other countries may consider adopting this technique for their cases, as long as the database owners allow law enforcement agencies to keep using the data to identify people.

Read more: Is your genome really your own? The public and forensic value of DNA

The value of ‘body farms’

Human taphonomic facilities, such as the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research, study the science of how bodies decompose. These facilities, often called “body farms”, are important for developing new forensic identification techniques. The techniques can be tested on donated human bodies before being used in forensic cases.

Read more: ‘This is going to affect how we determine time since death’: how studying body donors in the bush is changing forensic science

The best and most efficient way to identify the remains of unknown and missing Australians involves combining expertise from a number of different branches of forensic science and coordinating these efforts nationally.

So for cases where fragments of human remains are found in the stomachs of crocodiles, sharks or some other human predator, investigators now have a toolkit of forensic techniques to choose from to identify the victim.

However, in this most recent case, the recovery of only an orthopaedic device has left forensic scientists with more questions than answers.

– ref. How do we identify human remains? – http://theconversation.com/how-do-we-identify-human-remains-121315

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Spring, Research Fellow, School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne

More than A$400 million of government funding is being invested in the latest round of the fire ant program in the hope of eradicating the invasive pests by 2027.

But recent reports on the ABC suggest the invasion is spreading beyond containment lines in south-east Queensland, and there are delays in responding to public reports of new ant infestations.

The claims are denied by Graeme Dudgeon, the new general manager of Queensland Government’s National Red Imported Fire Ant Eradication Program.

Read more: Koala-detecting dogs sniff out flaws in Australia’s threatened species protection

Fire ants are native to South America but nests were first discovered in Brisbane in 2001. It’s thought they arrived via shipping at the Port of Brisbane.

They’re regarded as one of the world’s worst invasive species and have a painful bite which is why the Queensland Government has been trying to wipe them out here.

Is eradication possible?

An independent review in 2016 found the fire ants were confined to a region of south east Queensland and said there was an opportunity to eradicate the pests.

But the latest debate raises the question of whether eradication is the best plan, or would further containing the spread of the fire ants be a more practicable solution?

To achieve its aim of eradicating the fire ant problem, the program needs to progressively shrink the invasion.

If the invasion is shrinking too slowly (or is expanding), eradication won’t be achieved by 2027. Without ongoing monitoring of the invasion’s size, the program might be failing without the general public knowing.

But knowing the fire ant invasion’s size isn’t easy because there isn’t enough funding to survey all locations that might have them.

Estimates of the invasion

Using records of past fire ant detections, we have demonstrated how to estimate the invasion’s size when only part of the managed area is surveyed.

If this approach to estimating the invasion boundary is applied each year during the current program, we could estimate whether the invasion is shrinking fast enough to be gone by 2027.

The importance of this issue demands a rigorous scientific analysis using transparent data and methods. Without this, anecdotal evidence that the current invasion is spreading is all we have to indicate whether eradication efforts are failing.

The size of the fire ant invasion should not only be measured in terms of the total area within its estimated boundary but also the density of nests within this area.

Eradication won’t be achieved if both the invasion boundary and the density within it are increasing. This straightforward test to determine whether the program is failing has not yet been applied.

But such a test could be done if updated records of the fire ant invasion are regularly made available to allow for periodic estimation of updated maps of the invasion.

Never give up

Even if eradication by 2027 is unlikely, this does not mean we should give up, provided future control efforts can contain the invasion at an affordable cost.

If the current program fails to eradicate the fire ants, it may still set the stage for effective long-term containment of the invasion.

A poor outcome will result if current management efforts are spread thinly over the infested area, reducing the density of nests but not eradicating them from any suburbs.

A better outcome would involve shrinking the infested area, that is, eradicating the ants from many or most suburbs, so that subsequent containment efforts can focus resources on a smaller area.

Is it still early enough in Australia to shrink the fire ant invasion to a manageably small area and thereby protect most homes and most of the environment for a long time? The required information to answer this question is not yet available.

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

But if Queensland’s eradication program has substantially slowed the spread so far, this provides confidence that continuing the program could effectively suppress the invasion. If so, we need to estimate what it will cost to keep out fire ants from most homes and most of the environment for a long time.

It’s often claimed that removing the last 1% of invaders costs as much as removing the previous 99%. If the current program removes all ants from most areas by 2027, this may provide large benefits without the extra cost of finding the last few ants in all infested areas.

Even if we do eradicate fire ants this time, it’s almost certain they will be back because they can readily hitchhike rides on ships.

So if governments can keep fire ant numbers down through ongoing containment, a lot of people and a lot of native species will benefit.

– ref. How to know if we’re winning the war on Australia’s fire ant invasion, and what to do if we aren’t – http://theconversation.com/how-to-know-if-were-winning-the-war-on-australias-fire-ant-invasion-and-what-to-do-if-we-arent-121367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Davis Barnett, Academic in French, The University of Queensland

The unicorn is an enduring image in contemporary society: a symbol of cuteness, magic, and children’s birthday parties.

But while you might dismiss this one-horned creature as just a product for Instagram celebrities and five-year-old girls, we can trace the lineage of the unicorn from the 4th century BCE. It evolved from a bloodthirsty monster, to a tranquil animal bringing peace and serenity (which can only be captured by virgins), to a symbol of God and Christ.

These days the term unicorn can refer to a privately held start-up company valued at over US$1 billion, a single female interested in meeting other couples, or the characters in My Little Pony.

Over the centuries, the meaning and imagery of the unicorn has shifted and persisted. But how did we get here?

Ferocious beasts and where to create them

The earliest written account of the unicorn comes from the text Indica (398 BCE), by Greek physician Ctesias, where he described beasts in India as large as horses with one horn on the forehead.

Ctesias was most likely describing the Indian Rhinoceros. The unicorn horn, he wrote, was a panacea for those who drink from it regularly.

In the first-century CE, claiming to quote Ctesias, the Roman naturalist Pliny (Natural History, 77 CE), wrote that the unicorn was the fiercest animal in India, with the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a single horn projecting from the forehead.

Pliny also embellished the animal’s description by adding a trait that became extremely significant to society in the Middle Ages: it was impossible to capture the animal alive.

Just over a century later, the second-century CE Roman scholar Aelian compiled a book about animals based on Pliny. In his On the Nature of Animals, Aelian wrote that the unicorn grows gentle towards the chosen female during mating season.

The unicorn’s tender disposition when near the female became a highly symbolic trait for authors and artists of the Middle Ages, who believed it could only be captured by a virgin.

Despite the authoritative texts of the Greeks and Romans, the unicorn remained mostly unknown in the centuries leading up to the Middle Ages. For the public to become familiar with it, the creature had to come out of the library and develop a role in everyday events and popular culture: ie a role in Christianity.

Lost in translation

It was in the third-century BCE that the unicorn entered religious texts – although only by accident.

Between 300 and 200 BCE, a group of 70 scholars gathered together to create the first translation of the Hebrew Old Testament in Koine Greek. Although the Hebrew term for unicorn is Had-Keren (one horn), in the text commonly known as Septuagint (seventy) the scholars made an error when translating the Hebrew term Re’_em (ox), from Psalms as monokeros. In effect, they changed the word “ox” to “unicorn.”

The unicorn’s inclusion in a text of such magnitude laid the foundation for an obsession with the creature that thrived in both literary and visual arts from the earliest dates of the Middle Ages and continues to the modern day.

By the 12th century, the one-horned animal came to be associated with the allegory provided in the Physiologus, a collection of moralised beast tales on which many medieval bestiaries are based. One of the most widely read books in the Middle Ages, the Physiologus often identifies Christ with the unicorn.

The illustrations that accompany textual references to the unicorn in the Bible and medieval bestiaries often showed the allegorical representation rather than the literal.

So instead of images depicting Christ as a man, the artists drew horses and goats with one large horn protruding from its head. In this medieval legend, the fanciful myth of the one-horned animal became the foundation of the unicorn image that circulated throughout Europe.

Contemporary images of the unicorn have changed very little since the medieval era. The creature in The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in the Cluny museum in Paris, symbolising various overlapping meanings including chastity and heraldic animals, looks a lot like the My Little Pony characters Rarity and Princess Celestia.

Read more: Explainer: the symbolism of The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry cycle

Imagery of the unicorn persisted sporadically in literature, film and television through the 20th century, but the 2010s saw interest boom.

The modern Instagram star

Social media helped lure the magical creature into quotidian life – the one-horned horse looks great as a Facebook emoji and surrounded by rainbows on Instagram. National Unicorn Day (April 9) was first observed in 2015.

Searches for “unicorns” reached an all-time high in April 2017, the same month Starbucks introduced the colour and taste-changing Unicorn Frappuccino, sparking a trend in adding glitter and rainbow colours to any food or beverage.

Now, the unicorn is marketed to children and adults alike on coffee mugs, keychains, stuffed animals, t-shirts. In secular contemporary culture it has become an LGBTI+ icon: a symbol of hope, something “uncatchable.”

The contemporary unicorn is a far cry from Ctesias’ beasts. Social media platforms like Instagram encourage us to project an idealised version of our life: the unicorn is a perfect symbol for this ideal.

If the last decade is anything to go by, its intrigue will only continue to grow.

– ref. Explainer: from bloodthirsty beast to saccharine symbol – the history and origins of the unicorn – http://theconversation.com/explainer-from-bloodthirsty-beast-to-saccharine-symbol-the-history-and-origins-of-the-unicorn-120760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hadeel Al-Alosi, Lecturer, School of Law, Western Sydney University

Yesterday, Victorian Parliament finally debated a bill on whether religious ministers should be forced to disclose child abuse admitted in confidence to a priest.

The Victorian Children Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 follows the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2017, which revealed the many failures of churches to report allegations of child abuse.

Read more: Should priests be made to report child abuse revealed in confession?

But the proposed law reform has sparked strong opposition from some religious ministers. Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he would rather go to jail than report a person who confessed committing child sexual abuse. He said:

I will speak to the person there and then about how they will need to, one, go to the police about this […] and two, I’d be asking at the end of the confession to then repeat what they said outside of the seal so that I can then act.

And Child Protection Minister Luke Donnellan told the ABC this morning that even the Melbourne Archbishop, the state’s most senior Catholic, is not above the law. He said:

If people break the law they would be prosecuted.

Several Australian state governments, including New South Wales and South Australia, have already passed laws legally obliging religious leaders to report confessions of child sexual abuse. Victoria will be following their lead if the law passes through both houses.

The bill proposes several changes to strengthen the protection of children, on top of the proposed amendment of making it mandatory for religious ministries to report child abuse to protection authorities.

Read more: The causes of paedophilia and child sexual abuse are more complex than the public believes

This includes limiting the right of appeal of those whose Working With Children Check application has been rejected if they have been charged with, or convicted of, certain criminal offences. But unlike the amendment for religious ministries, some of these changes are unlikely to attract opposition.

What are Victoria’s mandatory reporting laws?

Mandatory reporting refers to the legal requirement for selected professionals to report suspected child abuse to protection authorities.

Under Victorian law, mandated reporters must report child abuse if, in the course of practising their profession, they hold a reasonable belief a child has been harmed, or is of significant risk of harm. The harm may be physical or sexual abuse.

Read more: Royal commission recommends sweeping reforms for Catholic Church to end child abuse

Mandatory reporters must disclose their suspicion as soon as possible after forming the belief. If they fail to report, then the penalty is currently 10 penalty units, which adds up to a maximum fine of A$1652.20.

Failure to report can also be a criminal offence. Under the Victorian Crimes Act 1958, a person who doesn’t disclose a sexual offence committed against a child under 16 can be imprisoned for up to three years.

Under the Children, Youth and Families Act (Vic), the main group of professionals listed are doctors, midwives, nurses, police officers, principals, early childhood workers, teachers, youth justice workers, and registered psychologists.

Read more: Media Files: Investigative reporter Louise Milligan on Cardinal Pell and redactions in the Royal Commission’s report

A notable profession missing from this list are members religious ministries, but that might soon change if the Children Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 is passed.

The new bill is controversial because it effectively breaks the so-called “confessional seal”.

What is the confessional seal?

The confessional seal is fundamental to Christian religions. It’s where a person can ask a priest, in confidence, to forgive them for their sins.

The sacrament is believed to wash sinners clean from their sins and reconcile with their Lord and the Church.

Breaking the seal is forbidden under canon law – the special rules governing the Catholic Church. And a priest who discloses a confession faces punishment, such as ex-communication.

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

Religious liberty vs child protection

Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli is just one of many priests who said they are “willing to go to jail” rather than break the seal.

Others, however, have shown support for the law. Child Protection Minister Luke Donnellan said:

It’s pretty simple: if you think a child is being abused, you have to report it. And we’re committed to driving this cultural change to make Victoria safer for our children.

But the response from some priests has shown that reporting confessions is not that simple. Some refuse to break the seal, seeing the law as an attack on religious freedom.

Read more: Women priests could help the Catholic Church restore its integrity. It’s time to embrace them

Attorney General Jill Hennessy has rejected the “religious liberty” argument, claiming:

I don’t think in contemporary and mainstream times, knowing what we know now, that we can do anything other than say the rights of children trump anyone’s religious views.

Chrissie Foster, an advocate for anti-abuse, actively has publicly welcomed the proposed law. Her two children were sexually abused by a Catholic priest, and she has described the proposed law as a “breakthrough” and says politicians backing the law should be “congratulated”.

Arguably, if priests had not been exempted from mandatory reporting laws, many sexual abuses could have been prevented.

Read more: The Catholic Church is headed for another sex abuse scandal as #NunsToo speak up

For instance, consider the case of Michael McArdle, who confessed to 30 priests he had sexually abused children up to 1,500 times.

Complying with the confessional seal, the priests did not report the abuses and instead allegedly advised McArdle to “pray more”.

Only time will tell

Far too many children have suffered sexual abuse while in the “care” of religious institutions and change is necessary. The Labor government claimed these new laws will “better protect Victoria’s children”.

But how can such a law protect children in the future if religious minsters choose to ignore it?

Read more: After Pell, the Catholic Church must undergo genuine reform

With the Catholic Church accounting for 61.8% of sexual abuse allegations investigated by the Royal Commission, the proposed legislation seems pointless without the Catholic Church’s support.

For now, the future of the proposed law and its effectiveness remains uncertain. The bill is expected to pass both houses of Victorian Parliament because it has bipartisan support. But only time will tell whether the proposed law passes and whether it will achieve its purpose.

Only one thing remains certain: the victims and survivors of child abuse will remain in our prayers and thoughts.

– ref. The Melbourne archbishop said he’d rather go to jail than break confession confidentiality. A new bill could send him there – http://theconversation.com/the-melbourne-archbishop-said-hed-rather-go-to-jail-than-break-confession-confidentiality-a-new-bill-could-send-him-there-121869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Loukas Koungoulos, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

This is the story of how a parasitic, skin-chewing insect came to conquer the world.

For more than a century, scientists have been puzzled as to how an obscure louse native to Australia came to be found on dogs across the world. Heterodoxus spiniger evolved to live in the fur of the agile wallaby.

Despite little evidence to back the idea, many researchers believed it was linked to people from Asia bringing the dingo to Australia in ancient times. Perhaps people later took dingoes infested with this parasite back home, where it spread to local dogs, and onwards from there.

Read more: Dingoes do bark: why most dingo facts you think you know are wrong

But when we approached the question again using the most up-to-date information, my colleague Peter Contos and I came up with a completely different explanation – one that better fits what we know of ancient migration and trade in the Asia-Pacific region.

As we report in the journal Environmental Archaeology, this louse probably originated not in Australia but in New Guinea, an island with a long history of intimate connection with seafaring Asian cultures.

Louse on the loose

H. spiniger is a tiny louse that lives on mammals around the world, mostly dogs. Using its clawed legs to hang on, it bites and chews at the skin and hair of its hosts to draw the blood on which it feeds.

As all its closest relatives are specialised parasites of marsupials, mostly other wallabies, logic suggested that H. spiniger must have evolved within Australia. It also seemed logical it would have spread first to the dingo, Australia’s native dog.

Our first task was to figure out just how far away from Australia it had spread; this would inform the likely pathways by which it could have travelled to the wider world.

We looked at museum collections, entomological surveys, and veterinary research reports to generate a map of its worldwide distribution.

The specimens we found, collected from the late 19th century to the present day, showed that this species is found on every continent except Europe and Antarctica.

But in Australia, we couldn’t find a single verifiable instance of the parasite living on dingoes. The only cases were from agile wallabies and domestic dogs.

That meant the prevailing wisdom had been wrong, and we had to look elsewhere for the origins of H. spiniger.

Where did it really come from?

Although marsupials are best known from Australia, they are also found in other parts of the surrounding region. The agile wallaby is also native to the island of New Guinea, which was once joined with Australia.

Dogs have also been in New Guinea for at least as long as the dingo has been in Australia. Traditionally, dogs were kept in Papuan villages, and were used to hunt game, including wallabies.

It came as little surprise, then, that we found H. spiniger on both agile wallabies and native dogs in New Guinea – and only a few decades after the first ever identification of the species.

So here was a more likely place in which the first transfer from wallaby to dog took place. But who took them out of New Guinea and into the wider world?

Austronesian voyagers

New Guinea was first colonised by humans around the same time as Australia. But since that time, compared with Australia it has had notably stronger connections with the outside world, reaching back millennia before European colonisation of Australia in 1788.

Around 4,000 years ago, agriculturalists known as Austronesians sailed out of Taiwan to settle several archipelagos in Oceania. With them they brought domestic species of plants and animals, including dogs.

By 3,000 years ago, at the latest, they reached New Guinea. We suggest this was the crucial moment when dogs first picked up H. spiniger.

In the ensuing centuries, Austronesians went on to settle much of Indonesia, the Philippines, Melanesia and Polynesia, and coastal sections of mainland Southeast Asia.

They even settled as far as Madagascar, suggesting their voyages probably took them around the rim of the Indian Ocean, along the margins of India and the Middle East.

Dogs accompanying the migrants probably helped spread the louse, which is found almost everywhere they went.

This spans an enormous distance – from Hawaii to Madagascar – a testament to the ancient Austronesians’ supreme seafaring skills.

New directions

Our research suggests how the parasite first got around the world, but not precisely when. Its journey probably progressed at different times in different places.

The Austronesian diaspora established trade routes between the places they settled, some of which spanned impressive distances across several island groups.

Read more: How to get to Australia … more than 50,000 years ago

Later, foreign traders connected these communities with greater Asia and Africa. And in modern times, dogs continue to be transported as desirable goods themselves.

Trade and contact has probably led to further, possibly ongoing, dispersal of H. spiniger.

Unfortunately there are no archaeological examples that could demonstrate the louse’s early presence outside New Guinea, because this species prefers hot, humid environments.

A genetic approach is a better way forward. A start would be testing specimens from different parts of the world, to see when different regional populations – if they exist – branched off from one another.

This is particularly important in tracking its spread to the Americas, which likely occurred in recent centuries alongside European colonisation.

This research will help us further understand how migration, contact and trade unfolded in the prehistoric Asia-Pacific region, and how it affected the animal species – including the humblest of parasites – we see there today.

This paper would not have been possible without the contributions of Peter Contos, the work of volunteers on the Natural History Museum’s Boopidae of Australasia digitisation project, and the contributions of the public to Wikipedia Creative Commons, for which we are grateful.

– ref. How ancient seafarers and their dogs helped a humble louse conquer the world – http://theconversation.com/how-ancient-seafarers-and-their-dogs-helped-a-humble-louse-conquer-the-world-117183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of The Policy Lab, University of Melbourne

Multitasking has traditionally been perceived as a woman’s domain. A woman, particularly one with children, will routinely be juggling a job and running a household – in itself a frantic mix of kids’ lunch boxes, housework, and organising appointments and social arrangements.

But a new study, published today in PLOS One, shows women are actually no better at multitasking than men.

The study tested whether women were better at switching between tasks and juggling multiple tasks at the same time. The results showed women’s brains are no more efficient at either of these activities than men’s.

Using robust data to challenge these sorts of myths is important, especially given women continue to be bombarded with work, family and household tasks.

Read more: Health Check: can people actually multitask?

No one is good at multitasking

Multitasking is the act of performing several independent tasks within a short time. It requires rapidly and frequently switching attention from one task to another, increasing the cognitive demand, compared to completing single tasks in sequence.

This study builds on an existing body of research showing human brains cannot manage multiple activities at once. Particularly when two tasks are similar, they compete to use the same part of the brain, which makes multitasking very difficult.

But human brains are good at switching between activities quickly, which makes people feel like they’re multitasking. The brain, however, is working on one project at a time.

Read more: Multitasking between devices is associated with poorer attention and memory — expert explains why

In this new study, German researchers compared the abilities of 48 men and 48 women in how well they identified letters and numbers. In some experiments, participants were required to pay attention to two tasks at once (called concurrent multitasking), while in others they needed to switch attention between tasks (called sequential multitasking).

The researchers measured reaction time and accuracy for the multitasking experiments against a control condition (performing one task only). They found multitasking substantially affected the speed and accuracy of completing the tasks for both men and women. There was no difference between the groups.

Domestic duties

My colleagues and I recently busted another relevant myth – that women are better at seeing mess than men. We found men and women equally rated a space as messy. The reason men do less cleaning than women may lie in the fact that women are held to higher standards of cleanliness than men, rather than men’s “dirt blindness”.

Recent data shows Australian men are spending more time doing domestic work than they used to, but women still do the vast majority of housework.

Working Australian women have seen their total time across work and family activities increase over time, with bread-winning mothers spending four hours more across these activities per week than bread-winning fathers.

This means working mums are balancing planning birthday parties, childcare drop offs and ballet lessons all on top of their regular jobs, commutes and careers.

Consequences of the myth

If women’s brains are equally strained by multitasking, why do we keep asking women to do this work? And, more importantly, what are the consequences?

Our recent study shows mothers are more time pressed and report poorer mental health than fathers. We found the birth of a child increases parents’ reports of feeling rushed or pressed for time, but the effect is twice the size for mothers than it is for fathers. Second children double mothers’ time pressure again and, as a consequence, lead to a deterioration in their mental health.

Read more: Men do see the mess – they just aren’t judged for it the way women are

Women are also more likely to drop out of paid work when children are born or family demands intensify. They carry a larger mental load tied to organising the needs of the family – who has clean socks, who needs to be picked up from school, whether there is enough Vegemite for lunch. All of this labour is at the expense of time planning for the next day’s work, the next promotion, and so on.

Women are also asked to multitask family demands at night. Children are more likely to interrupt their mother’s than their father’s sleep.

Although gender roles are changing and men are assuming a larger share of the housework and childcare than in the past, gender gaps remain in many important domains of work and family life. These include the allocation of childcare, the division of housework, the wage gap, and the concentration of women in top positions.

So, the multitasking myth means mothers are expected to “do it all”. But this obligation can affect women’s mental health, as well as their capacity to excel at work.

Challenging misconceptions

Public opinion persists that women have a biological edge as super-efficient multitaskers. But, as this study shows, this myth is not supported by evidence.

This means the extra family work women perform is just that – extra work. And we need to see it as such.

Within the family, this work needs to be catalogued, discussed and then equally divided. More men today are invested in gender equality, equal sharing and co-parenting than ever before.

Read more: We can we reduce gender inequality in housework – here’s how

As well as in the home, we need to dismantle these myths in the workplace. The assumption women are better multitaskers can influence the allocation of administrative tasks. Tasks like taking minutes and organising meetings should not be allocated based on gender.

Finally, governments need to dismantle these myths within their policies. Children add work that cannot be easily multitasked. Women need affordable, high-quality, and widely available childcare.

Men also need access to flexible work, parental leave and childcare to share in this labour, and protections to ensure they aren’t penalised for taking time to share in the care.

Debunking these myths that expect women to be superheroes is a good thing, but we need to go further and create policy environments where gender equality can thrive.

– ref. Women aren’t better multitaskers than men – they’re just doing more work – http://theconversation.com/women-arent-better-multitaskers-than-men-theyre-just-doing-more-work-121620

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Parkinson, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

Young adults not only struggle to buy a home, many struggle to secure any kind of independent housing. This contributes to a cycle of living in precarious and informal housing and to a growing gap between their current situation and their short and longer-term housing aspirations.

A report released today by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) adds nuance to debates about generational change and housing by examining how housing aspirations differ among emerging adults (18-24 years) and in early adulthood (25-34 years). For example, emerging adults are more likely than the older cohort to prefer living in an apartment.

By early adulthood, the housing aspirations gap is greatest for individuals in the private rental sector, particularly those on higher incomes, and narrowest for home owners. Home buyers on low to moderate incomes are most happy with their housing.

Read more: Moving on from home ownership for ‘Generation Rent’

While long-held values around the ideal of home ownership prevail, these are not as persistent as for past generations. The ideal differs according to age, education and the quality and security of current living arrangements. But having somewhere safe and secure to call home was the top priority across all young adults.

Aspirations change with stage of life

An extended phase of dependence to semi-dependence shapes the housing aspirations of young adults. This involves either remaining in the family home or sharing with others.

In 2015-16, the ABS Survey of Income and Housing revealed that only one in six (17%) young adults (18-24 years) lived independently. Two-thirds (66%) lived with parents. Around a third of young adults (25-34 years) are also opting to remain or move back with parents or live in shared housing.

Read more: Over 50% of young Australian adults still live with their parents – and the numbers are climbing faster for women

While these living arrangements reflect concerns about housing affordability, they are also used as a strategy to pursue other aspirations, such as education.

What do young adults want in their housing?

The AHURI research includes a nationally representative survey of more than 2,400 Australians aged 18-34 years. It was supported by focus groups and in-depth interviews, including with Indigenous Australians, in Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.

Home ownership was the ideal tenure for 60% of emerging adults (18-24). By early adulthood (25-34) the proportion had climbed to 70%. The ideal of home ownership was lower (61%) for those still living in the family home by early adulthood compared with higher-income couples living independently (80%).

By early adulthood, educational status becomes a key marker of whether home ownership is considered possible. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of households with a tertiary-educated member believed they could buy a house within five years. This compares with just over a third of those with an education to year 12 (36%) and less than a quarter (23%) of those with an education to year 11 or below.

The preference for apartment living falls with age. About a third (34%) of emerging adults reported this as their ideal, compared with 21% of early adults.

Young adults also want more space. The largest share of both emerging (32%) and early adults (43%) indicated that a four-bedroom house is ideal. This compares to just 20% of those over 55 years of age who wanted four or more bedrooms.

Read more: What sort of housing do older Australians want and where do they want to live?

How large is the housing aspirations gap?

For emerging adults (18-24), living in a group household typically met short-term (82%) but not longer-term (25%) aspirations. Similarly, living with parents mostly met short-term (76%) but not longer-term (30%) aspirations.

By early adulthood (25-34) the housing aspirations gap is greatest for individuals in the private rental sector, particularly those on higher incomes. For higher-income groups, their current private rental housing met the short-term aspirations of just over three-quarters (76%) but only 20% for longer-term aspirations.

The aspirations gap is narrowest for home owners. Home buyers on low to moderate incomes were most happy with their housing in the short-term (92%) and longer-term (60%).

What can be done to close the aspirations gap?

Very few people are actively planning for their housing futures. Affordability and the deposit gap, insufficient income, employment insecurity and “waiting for the market to settle down” all impact on achieving longer-term aspirations. In the short-term, not being in a preferred location, high mobility and insecurity matter most.

Housing policy needs to become more realistic about the housing futures of young Australians. Achieving both short- and longer-term aspirations requires new policy frameworks that can enable young people to move towards attaining “secure independence”.

Public debate about the housing aspirations of young adults gained prominence during the federal election with promises of a targeted scheme to help first home buyers. Proposed first home owner deposit schemes are an important step in meeting aspirations, particularly among private renters with higher and secure incomes.

Read more: Small, but well-formed. The new home deposit scheme will help, and it’s unlikely to push up prices

But before young people even contemplate home ownership they need greater support in making key life transitions, such as from education to work, via more continuous and integrated packages of housing assistance.

We also need continued reforms to ensure a fairer and more secure private rental sector with short and longer-term leasing options close to employment and training, and with stable rents.

There needs to be diversity and real choice in dwelling types, size and locations and scaling up of more sustainable and niche models of co-housing.

Read more: We need more flexible housing for 21st-century lives

As for young people locked out of home ownership in the long-term, they need a way to build an investment nest egg and to access quality social and public rental housing.

– ref. First home buyer schemes aren’t enough to meet young adults’ housing aspirations – http://theconversation.com/first-home-buyer-schemes-arent-enough-to-meet-young-adults-housing-aspirations-121431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Lowry, PhD candidate, Victoria University of Wellington

Scientists have long been concerned about the potential collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to global sea level rise. Much of West Antarctica’s ice lies below sea level, and warming ocean temperatures may lead to runaway ice sheet retreat.

This process, called marine ice sheet instability, has already been observed along parts of the Amundsen Sea region, where warming of the ocean has led to melting underneath the floating ice shelves that fringe the continent. As these ice shelves thin, the ice grounded on land flows more rapidly into the ocean and raises the sea level.

Although the Amundsen Sea region has shown the most rapid changes to date, more ice actually drains from West Antarctica via the Ross Ice Shelf than any other area. How this ice sheet responds to climate change in the Ross Sea region is therefore a key factor in Antarctica’s contribution to global sea level rise in the future.

Periods of past ice sheet retreat can give us insights into how sensitive the Ross Sea region is to changes in ocean and air temperatures. Our research, published today, argues that ocean warming was a key driver of glacial retreat since the last ice age in the Ross Sea. This suggests that the Ross Ice Shelf is highly sensitive to changes in the ocean.

Read more: Ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica predicted to bring more frequent extreme weather

History of the Ross Sea

Since the last ice age, the ice sheet retreated more than 1,000km in the Ross Sea region – more than any other region on the continent. But there is little consensus among the scientific community about how much climate and the ocean have contributed to this retreat.

Much of what we know about the past ice sheet retreat in the Ross Sea comes from rock samples found in the Transantarctic Mountains. Dating techniques allow scientists to determine when these rocks were exposed to the surface as the ice around them retreated. These rock samples, which were collected far from where the initial ice retreat took place, have generally led to interpretations in which the ice sheet retreat happened much later than, and independently of, the rise in air and ocean temperatures following the last ice age.

But radiocarbon ages from sediments in the Ross Sea suggest an earlier retreat, more in line with when climate began to warm from the last ice age.

Using models to understand the past

To investigate how sensitive this region was to past changes, we developed a regional model of the Antarctic ice sheet. The model works by simulating the physics of the ice sheet and its response to changes in ocean and air temperatures. The simulations are then compared to geological records to check accuracy.

Our main findings are that warming of the ocean and atmosphere were the main causes of the major glacial retreat that took place in the Ross Sea region since the last ice age. But the dominance of these two controls in influencing the ice sheet evolved through time. Although air temperatures influenced the timing of the initial ice sheet retreat, ocean warming became the main driver due to melting of the Ross Ice Shelf from below, similar to what is currently observed in the Amundsen Sea.

The model also identifies key areas of uncertainty of past ice sheet behaviour. Obtaining sediment and rock samples and oceanographic data would help to improve modelling capabilities. The Siple Coast region of the Ross Ice Shelf is especially sensitive to changes in melt rates at the base of the ice shelf, and is therefore a critical region to sample.

Read more: Climate scientists explore hidden ocean beneath Antarctica’s largest ice shelf

Implications for the future

Understanding processes that were important in the past allows us to improve and validate our model, which in turn gives us confidence in our future projections. Through its history, the ice sheet in the Ross Sea has been sensitive to changes in ocean and air temperatures. Currently, ocean warming underneath the Ross Ice Shelf is the main concern, given its potential to cause melting from below.

Challenges remain in determining exactly how ocean temperatures will change underneath the Ross Ice Shelf in the coming decades. This will depend on changes to patterns of ocean circulation, with complex interactions and feedback between sea ice, surface winds and melt water from the ice sheet.

Given the sensitivity of ice shelves to ocean warming, we need an integrated modelling approach that can accurately reproduce both the ocean circulation and dynamics of the ice sheet. But the computational cost is high.

Ultimately, these integrated projections of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic ice sheet will help policymakers and communities to develop meaningful adaptation strategies for cities and coastal infrastructure exposed to the risk of rising seas.

– ref. New research shows that Antarctica’s largest floating ice shelf is highly sensitive to warming of the ocean – http://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-that-antarcticas-largest-floating-ice-shelf-is-highly-sensitive-to-warming-of-the-ocean-121864

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University

Fossilised flies that lived 54 million years ago have revealed a surprising twist to the tale of how insects’ eyes evolved. These craneflies, unveiled in Nature today, show that insect eyes trap light the same way as human eyes, using the pigment melanin – yet another example of evolution finding similar solutions to similar problems.

Read more: Eye to the past: vision may be older than previously thought

Evolutionary biologists have always been fascinated by eyes. Charles Darwin, anticipating the sceptics, devoted a long explanation of how random mutation followed by natural selection could readily fashion such “organs of extreme perfection”. It is not surprising that these useful adaptations have evolved repeatedly across the animal kingdom – octopuses and squids, for instance, have independently acquired eyes uncannily similar to ours.

Vision is so vital that most animals today have photoreceptors of some kind. Notable exceptions include creatures that live in total darkness, such as in caves or the deep ocean.

Yet the fossil record of eyes is very poor. The rock record generally preserves hard parts such as bones and shells. Eyes and other soft tissues, such as nerves, veins and intestines, are preserved only under exceptional circumstances.

Exceptionally preserved insect fossils

Because eyes are icons of evolution yet rarely fossilised, the discovery of perfectly preserved eyes from 54 million-year-old insects is noteworthy. In their new study, researchers led by Johan Lindgren of Lund University in Sweden collected and analysed eyes from 23 craneflies – long-legged relatives of pesky houseflies.

The fossils were exquisitely preserved in sediments containing high levels of fine-grained volcanic ash. They were unearthed in what is now chilly Denmark, but back then was a tropical paradise with abundant insect life.

The fossilised eyes were surprisingly similar to our own eyes in one important way. The back of our eyeball, called the choroid, is dark and opaque; this protects against ultraviolet radiation and also stops stray light bouncing around and interfering with vision. In human eyes, this anti-reflective layer contains high levels of the pigment melanin, the same molecule involved in skin pigmentation (hence terms such as “melanoma”).

Insects, too, have dark anti-reflective layers in their eyes, but this was long thought to consist entirely of a different molecule, ommochrome. Given that insect eyes arose independently from our own and have an entirely different structure, it seems reasonable that their molecular machinery would also be different.

Eyes like our own?

However, detailed chemical analysis of the fossil cranefly eyes revealed that they contained human-like melanin. When the researchers had another look at the eyes of living craneflies, they were surprised to confirm the presence of melanin (as well as lots of ommochrome). It took fossils to alert us that the eyes of humans and insects both use the same shielding pigments (melanin) – yet another example of convergent evolution.

Intriguingly, the outer layers of the fossilised eyes were full of calcite, the mineral that makes up most of limestone. Not only that, but crystals in the calcite were aligned to transmit light efficiently into the eye. Yet this apparent fine engineering (a mineralised outer eye layer optimised to transmit light) was almost certainly caused by the fossilisation process, as the eyes of living craneflies are not mineralised.

While the fossil record can reveal, it can also mislead, if not interpreted carefully. Trilobites, the hard-shelled crab-like creatures that are among the most abundant and diverse animal fossils, are frequently found with mineralised, light-transmitting outer eye layers. These have usually been assumed to faithfully reflect their life condition: predation in ancient oceans was so intense that trilobites even armoured their eyeballs.

Lindgren and colleagues warn against this interpretation: perhaps the trilobite’s “protective goggles” only appeared after fossilisation, just as in the craneflies. However, this interpretation will likely be debated. Trilobite eyes seem to have been unusually rigid and resilient in real life, as they are preserved in three dimensions much more often than eyes of other animals. They also have certain optical properties that make more sense when the rigid outer layer is accepted as real.

Read more: The eyes have it: how vision may have driven fishes onto land

A disagreement between a few palaeontologists might seem a bit arcane, but these debates can have real-world relevance. Most famously, the concept of nuclear winter was directly inspired by discussion of how the dinosaurs went extinct, when a meteorite impact enveloped the world in a cloud of dust, deep-freezing the entire biosphere.

Granted, the debate over how insect and trilobite eyes functioned is unlikely to influence world peace, but it might still have useful applications. For example, the way trilobite lenses (apparently) provide constant acuity while being totally rigid has inspired bioengineers to fashion high-performance optical devices with uses spanning microscopy to laser physics.

– ref. Eye-opening discovery: 54 million year old fossil flies yield new insight into the evolution of sight – http://theconversation.com/eye-opening-discovery-54-million-year-old-fossil-flies-yield-new-insight-into-the-evolution-of-sight-121867

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Kilby, PhD student in Education, researching Philosophy for Children, Monash University

In a recent TED talk titled No Philosophy, No Humanity, author Roger Sutcliffe asked the audience whether a flagpole was a place. Around half the audience said yes, the other said no.

He went on to describe the response a nine-year-old gave him to that question:

to me a flagpole is not a place, but to an ant it is.

This creative perspective shows what children can do when given space to perform philosophical thinking.

Critical thinking skills are highly valued in society, and are beginning to be valued more in education. A Critical and Creative Thinking capability was introduced into the Australian and Victorian Curriculum in 2017.

The Australian Curriculum notes:

Responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century – with its complex environmental, social and economic pressures – requires young people to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use critical and creative thinking purposefully.

This capability isn’t meant to be taught as a standalone subject, but through other learning areas. One content descriptor states students should be able to consider when analogies might be used in expressing a point of view.

This is exactly what philosophy teaches children. And this can be done through a program specifically tailored to primary school aged children, known as Philosophy for Children, or P4C.

Programs in Philosophy for Children have shown significant benefits for students around the world. These benefits include improvement in academic results, as well as less measurable outcomes such as helping children make sense of their place in the world.

What is Philosophy for Children?

The idea of doing philosophy with children began in the 70s when Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp developed the first P4C program in primary schools.

In the last 50 years, Philosophy for Children has spread to more than 60 countries. It has gone on to influence university level philosophy, the business world and has also been used in prisons.

In these programs, children discuss issues around ethics or questions of personal identity. These are fundamental to understanding ourselves, especially during the formative years of school where young people are developing their identities.

For instance, students in Years 1 and 2 can analyse the ethics of truth-telling and explore whether it matters if the lie produces a positive outcome, or whether the intention of the liar matters, or whether it matters if it was an insignificant little white lie.

Read more: What’s the point of education? It’s no longer just about getting a job

Students in Years 5 and 6 can discuss their interpretation of how gender identity is formed. This can generate questions such as: is gender tied to sex, does gender happen at birth or do you develop a gender, and can people identify as a particular gender?

In Australia, Philosophy for Children is still largely unfunded and relies on volunteer-based institutions such as the Victorian Association of Philosophy in Schools (VAPS).

Schools such as Brunswick East Primary and Lloyd Street Primary have run successful Philosophy for Children programs for many years. But, with little outside support available, school staff must develop the program and embed it into their own curriculum.

Ireland has embraced Philosophy for Children and given philosophy a core place in the Irish education system. President Michael D. Higgins introduced the program by saying

an exposure to philosophy – as method and revelation, as rational exercise and imaginative journey – is […] vital if we truly want our young people to acquire the capacities they need in preparing for their journey into the world.

The UK has also funded research worth more than A$2 million to evaluate outcomes of Philosophy for Children programs at primary school level (scheduled for completion in 2021).

How do we know it’s effective?

A long-term study that began in Spain in 2002 followed more than 400 students in a P4C group and another 300 who weren’t involved in the programs in philosophy. It showed children in the P4C group gained an extra seven IQ points and were prone to more social behaviour over the 12-year project.

One of the largest UK studies involved more than 3,000 students in Years 4 and 5 in a randomised trial. This study concluded students engaged in the P4C program gained an extra two months progress in maths and reading compared to those who didn’t over the course of a year.

Read more: Want to improve NAPLAN scores? Teach children philosophy

Philosophy is a broad subject. It helps develop skills that can be transferred to other academic areas. This partly explains how philosophy programs improve test scores in reading, writing and mathematics without children having to actually do any reading, writing or mathematics.

These skills range from clarity and coherence in speaking and listening to providing reasons for arguments, constructing counter-examples, and using analogical reasoning.

In the US, students who major in philosophy have some of the highest test scores when applying for graduate school. In 2014, philosophy majors had the highest average score in the LSAT (law school test) and the GRE – a standardised test used to assess applicants for graduate school in most disciplines. Philosophy majors came fourth out of 31 majors in the GMAT (business school test).

Read more: Bertrand Russell and the case for ‘Philosophy for Everyone’

It’s about more than test scores

The benefits of philosophy stretch far beyond its measurable effects.

Most P4C practitioners find something inherently valuable in facilitating philosophical dialogues with groups of young people – something we consider more valuable than the improved test scores that might impress educational administrators.

Philosophy is about life. It’s about being engaged with life. It’s about being in the world. Asking ethical questions allows us to reflect on how our actions affect the world. The value to these young people goes far beyond their test scores, their use of critical thinking skills or their future employment options.

They are engaged members of a thinking community. They deliberate, negotiate, and contemplate with respectful and thoughtful dialogue. Philosophy for Children can help improve academic results, but the reason it should be used in schools is because it allows children a space to make sense of the world and meaning in their lives.

– ref. Who am I? Why am I here? Why children should be taught philosophy (beyond better test scores) – http://theconversation.com/who-am-i-why-am-i-here-why-children-should-be-taught-philosophy-beyond-better-test-scores-120160

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Carah, Senior Lecturer in Communication, The University of Queensland

This is the fourth in a series of articles discussing a recently released comprehensive evaluation of the Queensland government’s 2016 policy reforms to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence and the implications for liquor regulation and the night-time economy in Queensland and Australia. A summary report is also available.

The effect on live music of changes to trading conditions in nightlife precincts generates heated debate. That’s because live music matters. It is a unique and important part of the late-night rhythm and culture of the city.

In both Melbourne and Sydney, we’ve seen sustained debate about how urban development and regulation of licensed venues affect opportunities for live performance.

Contrary to some of the claims made in these debates, our evaluation of the Queensland government’s tightening of liquor licensing restrictions in 2016 suggests no change to the number of venues or impact on the overall trend of an increase in live music performances.

Read more: Lessons from Queensland on alcohol, violence and the night-time economy

But staging smaller shows by emerging artists has become more difficult because of the costs of new security requirements. The viability of the venues depends on selling alcohol. As a result, many venues depend on alcohol sales in late-night trade when they convert to being a bar or club with DJs.

What happened in Fortitude Valley?

In July 2016, the Queensland government changed laws affecting designated safe night precincts like Fortitude Valley in Brisbane. This included serving last drinks at 3am and mandatory ID scanning in venues trading after midnight.

We monitored what impact these changes to trading conditions might have on live music in Fortitude Valley.

The Valley is unique in Australia for its concentration of live music venues in one small neighbourhood and the early development of policy to protect and foster live music in the area.

Read more: A live music scene needs a live music policy

The Valley has two overlapping precincts. The special entertainment precinct was created in 2006 to provide regulatory certainty for live music venues. The safe night precinct is the area subject to the 2016 Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence legislation.

Live music venues in the Valley compete with large clubs and pubs for space. They are subject to the regulatory and compliance frameworks introduced to contain harms in the precinct. As a result, they are having to rethink how they maintain their distinctive music scenes in rapidly changing neighbourhoods.

Have live music venue numbers changed?

Despite its cultural and economic importance of original live music venues, their numbers and performances are not systematically and independently monitored in Australia. Music industry bodies could work with performers and venues to publish independent and reliable information about the number and type of venues and gigs over time.

Music rights licensing organisation APRA/AMCOS asks live music performers to submit performance returns that document all their live performances. Our analysis of this data shows live music performances in The Valley have been trending upward since 2001. Our evaluation suggests the Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence policy measures had no impact on this trend.

This APRA/AMCOS performance data, however, cover everything from cover bands, DJs and ambient music in restaurants and bars to original live music performances in small venues through to stadium rock shows.

We also used a combination of precinct walk-throughs (where we observed original live music venues trading on Saturday nights), street press and social media. We found the number of original live music venues in the Valley has not changed since last drinks and ID scanner regulations were introduced in 2016. While original live music venues come and go, change owners and change names, the overall number in the area has been stable for much of the past 15 years.

Live music is dependent on late-night trade

While the trading pattern of venues on Saturday nights has not changed, in interviews we conducted venue owners and managers reported various ways they subsidised or supplemented the income from live music.

Nearly all original live music venues only generate income from bar sales. Proceeds from tickets and the door go to production costs and the musicians. The viability of the venues depends on selling alcohol before, during and after performances.

Read more: Queenslanders are among our heaviest drinkers on nights out, and changing that culture is a challenge

Some venues used profit generated on large weekend shows to subsidise smaller local weeknight shows. These shows matter because they provide opportunities for emerging artists to hone their craft and are part of the distinctive cultural fabric of the city.

However, venue owners indicated that staging these smaller shows has become more difficult because of the prohibitive cost of employing security to operate the mandatory ID scanners. This illustrates how, according to venue owners, efforts to contain harm in the nightlife economy can have unintended damaging effects on cultural scenes.

The majority of venues that support original live music in the precinct are less than ten years old. Many seem well adapted to the commercialised late-night precinct because they combine live music with late-night trade. They put on a show early in the evening and then by midnight convert to a late-night bar or club with DJs.

Some of these venues claimed they would not be commercially viable if they only put on original live music before midnight and then closed. Others indicated live music enabled them to generate revenue earlier in the evening – before a clubbing crowd comes in.

A policy dilemma

This kind of adaptation is what you’d expect to see in a market as it reacts to changes in both consumer culture and policy. But it raises thorny questions for cultural and public health policy.

From a public health perspective we might be concerned about original live music becoming dependent on late-night trade and mass alcohol consumption in nightlife precincts. From a cultural policy perspective the ingenuity of venues using the earlier hours of an evening to stage original live music is something to encourage.

The Valley has a unique concentration of live music venues, and cultural policy has played a role in fostering and sustaining this vibrant cultural scene. In one sense that’s a success story the city should celebrate and look to capitalise on alongside the effort to reduce harms in nightlife precincts. But, in another sense, a critical issue is that the effort to both maintain cultural vibrancy and reduce harms is potentially thwarted by venues shifting to a homogenous late-night clubbing model.

– ref. Tighter alcohol licensing hasn’t killed live music, but it’s harder for emerging artists – http://theconversation.com/tighter-alcohol-licensing-hasnt-killed-live-music-but-its-harder-for-emerging-artists-121117