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

When Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told his departmental secretary Mike Pezzullo he shouldn’t go ringing up senators to set them straight, it was a rebuke laced with empathy, a message delivered from one hard man to another in a sympathetic manner.

After last week’s police raid on News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst’s home (a day before the raid on the ABC), Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick issued a statement declaring that Dutton and Pezzullo “clearly hate media scrutiny”.

He said the police actions “are very clearly intended to have a chilling effect on journalistic inquiry”. There would be questions to be answered when the Senate sat, the senator warned.

Pezzullo, a veteran of sparring with Senate committees and never one to take a backward step, decided to get in first, with some direct answers to his critic.

He’s been angry ever since publication of the Smethurst article, which revealed bureaucratic discussions about widening the remit of the Australian Signals Directorate, an agency that carries out electronic spying. Elements of the story were denied at the time, as misconstruing what was being discussed.

Pezzullo contacted Patrick. According to Patrick, Pezzullo told him he considered his remarks slanderous, although quickly making it clear he wouldn’t be pursuing that element. He said it was unfair for Patrick, holding a high office, to criticise him when he had no way to publicly rebut the criticism.

Patrick said Pezzullo was polite – he wasn’t aggressive or offensive. Pezzullo told him the Smethurst article had been inaccurate and referred back to evidence he had given to a Senate committee on it.

Patrick said it wasn’t the content of the call but its intent that concerned him, when he reflected on what it had been about.

He concluded Pezzullo was trying to stop him criticising the Home Affairs department. But, he added, as a former submariner “I’ve lived in an environment of sharks – much bigger sharks than Mr Pezzullo”.

Pezzullo has rejected the construction Patrick put on the call. He told the ABC: “My sole request […] was to ask that he reflect on his adverse references to my purported view of media scrutiny.

“His comments were unfounded and not able to be responded to by me in the media as quite properly I lack the public platform that he has, and uses.

“I was grateful that he took my call and appreciative of the fact that he undertook to consider my representations, which of course he was under no obligation to do.”

Asked whether he had any concerns at Patrick saying he felt Pezzullo was trying to intimidate him, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters: “I do find those things concerning”.

He and Dutton had discussed the matter, he said, and Dutton “has had an appropriate conversation with the secretary”.

That “appropriate conversation” was not a harsh one. The statement later issued by Dutton included both a sharp negative character reference on Patrick and an understanding of where Pezzullo was coming from.

“Secretary Pezzullo and I discussed the matter this morning. Like me he is disgusted at some of the outrageous lies and slander he and I are regularly subject to, but nonetheless I advised the secretary it was inappropriate to contact Senator Patrick even if just to point out the inaccuracies in the senator’s press release,” Dutton said.

“Further I advised it was counter productive because I have always found Senator Patrick to be a person of the sort of character who would seek to misrepresent the secretary’s words, and the secretary agreed the contact was not appropriate and that is where the matter ends.”

Patrick – who has foreshadowed a private member’s bill for a referendum to write press freedom into the constitution – said as far as he was concerned also “that’s the end of the matter. I’m relatively confident [Pezzullo] won’t do something like that again”.

But more generally, the issues of the raids and press freedom are far from at an end. There is consideration of a Senate inquiry, or a review of some other kind. Senate leader Mathias Cormann has indicated more will be said later in the week.

In deciding its reaction, the government is trying to gauge how much the press freedom issue is a matter of public concern – as distinct from the concern of the media itself.

ABC chair Ita Buttrose met Morrison on Tuesday. The meeting was arranged before the raid on the ABC and covered other matters, but Buttrose made it clear she would take a strong line in the talks on media freedom. She said afterwards that Morrison had “taken on board” what she had said.

Asked whether he would support a parliamentary inquiry into press freedom, Morrison said on Tuesday, “What I’m going to do on this issue is listen carefully. I think we have to keep these matters in perspective”.

He pointed to stronger legal protections for journalists that had been enacted.

He said it was important to honour two principles – that no one was above the law and that press freedoms were central to our democracy.

“And if there is a suggestion, or evidence, or any analysis, that reveals that there is a need for further improvement of those laws, well the government is always open to that. […] I intend to proceed calmly, and soberly, and consultatively.”

Asked whether better protections were needed for whistleblowers in the public service, Morrison said: “This is something that is regularly looked at”, suggesting it would be a topic in any review. “But it is also important that we balance the issues of national security, the primacy of our laws, and that no one stands above them, whether they’re politicians, or journalists, or editors, or anyone else.

“And that the rule of law applies to everybody in this country.”

– ref. View from The Hill: A soft reprimand from one hard man to another – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-a-soft-reprimand-from-one-hard-man-to-another-118619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

If you’re a red meat-eater, there’s a good chance you’re eating more of it than you should. At last count, Australians ate an average of 81 grams of red meat per day.

The planetary health diet was developed by researchers to meet the nutritional needs of people around the world, while reducing food production’s environmental impact. It recommends reducing our red meat intake to around 14g a day. That’s around 100g of red meat a week.

Read more: How to feed a growing population healthy food without ruining the planet

Australia’s dietary guidelines are more conservative and recommend limiting red meat intake to a maximum of 455g a week, or 65g a day, to reduce the additional cancer risk that comes from eating large quantities of red meat.

So, what should you eat instead? And how can you ensure you’re getting enough protein, iron, zinc and vitamin B12?

Protein

Animal sources of protein provide essential amino acids, which the body uses to make muscle, tissue, hormones, neurotransmitters and the different cells and antibodies in our immune system.

The planetary health diet offers a good blueprint for gaining enough protein from a variety of other animal sources. It recommends eating, on average:

• 25g of chicken per day
• 28g of fish per day day
• 1.5 eggs per week
• 200g of milk per day day
• 50g of cheese per day.

In addition to the 14g of red meat in the planetary health diet, these foods would provide a total of 45g of protein per day, which is around 80% of our daily protein needs from animal sources.

The remaining protein required (11g) is easily met with plant foods, including nuts, legumes, beans and wholegrains.

Iron

Iron is essential for many of the body’s functions, including transporting oxygen to the blood.

Iron deficiency can lead to anaemia, a condition in which you feel tired and lethargic.

Read more: Why iron is such an important part of your diet

Pre-menopausal women need around 18 milligrams a day, while men only need 8mg. Pre-menopausal women need more iron because of the blood they lose during menstruation.

So, how can you get enough iron?

Beef, of course, is a rich source of iron, containing 3.3mg for every 100g.

The same amount of chicken breast contains 0.4mg, while the chicken thigh (the darker meat) contains slightly higher levels, at 0.9mg.

Pork is similarly low in iron at 0.7mg.

But kangaroo will provide you with 4.1mg of iron for every 100g. Yes, kangaroo is a red meat but it produces lower methane emissions and has one-third the levels of saturated fat than beef, making it a healthier and more environmentally friendly alternative.

Plant protein sources are also high in iron: cooked kidney beans have 1.7mg and brown lentils have 2.37mg per 100g.

If you wanted to cut your red meat intake from the 81g average to the recommended 14g per day while still getting the same amount of iron, you would need to consume the equivalent of either 50g of kangaroo, 100g of brown lentils or 150g of red kidney beans per day.

Zinc

Zinc is an essential mineral that helps the body function optimally. It affects everything from our ability to fight bugs, to our sense of smell and taste.

Zinc requirements are higher for men (14mg a day) than women (8mg a day) due to zinc’s role in the production and development of sperm.

Of all meat sources, beef provides the most zinc, at 8.2mg per 100g.

Chicken breast provides just 0.68mg, while the chicken thigh has 2mg.

In kangaroo meat, the levels of zinc are lower than beef, at 3.05mg.

The richest source of zinc is oysters (48.3mg).

Beans such lentils, red kidney beans and chickpeas all provide about 1.0mg per 100g.

To meet the shortfall of zinc from reducing your red meat intake, you could eat 12 oysters a day, which is unlikely. Or you could eat a combination of foods such as 150g of red kidney beans, one serve (30g) of zinc-supplemented cereals like Weet-bix, three slices of wholegrain bread, and a handful of mixed nuts (30g).

Vitamin B12

Vitamin B12 is important for healthy blood and nerve function. It’s the nutrient of most concern for people cutting out meat products as it’s only found in animal sources.

Requirements of vitamin B12 are the same for both women and men at 2.4 micrograms (mcg) a day.

Beef and kangaroo provide 2.5mcg per 100g serve, while chicken and turkey provide about 0.6mcg.

Dairy products also contain vitamin B12. One glass of milk would give you half your daily requirement requirement (1.24mcg) and one slice of cheese (20g) would provide one-fifth (0.4mcg).

Vitamin B12 can be found in trace amounts in spinach and fermented foods, but these levels aren’t high enough to meet your nutritional needs. Mushrooms, however, have consistently higher levels, with shiitake mushrooms containing 5mcg per 100g.

To meet the shortfall of vitamin B12 from reducing red meat intake, you would need to eat 75g kangaroo per day or have a glass of milk (200ml) plus a slice of cheese (20g). Alternatively, a handful of dried shiitake mushrooms in your salad or stir-fry would fulfil your requirements.

Don’t forget about fibre

A recent study found fibre intakes of around 25 to 29g a day were linked to lower rates of many chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and bowel cancer.

Yet most Australian adults currently have low dietary fibre levels of around 20g a day.

By making some of the changes above and increasing your intake of meat alternatives such as legumes, you’ll also be boosting your levels of dietary fibre. Substituting 100g of lentils will give you an extra 5g of fibre per day.

With some forward planning, it’s easy to swap red meat for other animal products and non-meat alternatives that are healthier and more environmentally sustainable.

– ref. How to get the nutrients you need without eating as much red meat – http://theconversation.com/how-to-get-the-nutrients-you-need-without-eating-as-much-red-meat-110274

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders University

Review: Bigger and Blacker, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Sun 9 Jun

Nothing beats the Adelaide winter blues quite like a superb, well-crafted cabaret show in a warm, cosy, intimate space. And few theatre spaces are more suited to cabaret than the Famous Spiegelent, which returns for the 2019 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, now under the leadership of Artistic Director Julia Zemiro.

Among the opening weekend highlights was the world premiere of self-described “faboriginal” Steven Oliver’s autobiographical Bigger and Blacker, a series of poignant, and hard-hitting stories told through song, prose, and spoken word poetry. Many will know Oliver from his brilliant character sketches on the ABC series, Black Comedy.

Working with musical director and cabaret stalwart Michael Griffiths, Oliver, a gay Aboriginal man, presents stories of “being lost and found again”. The journey touches on his recent success, one that suddenly made him if not famous, at least “gaymous”.

It takes us through his setbacks in finding love, the pain of confronting racism in the online world and his struggle with depression to his offer to open up cultural space for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to meaningfully engage with one another.

Oliver brilliantly and relentlessly plays with words from a position of his double-marginalisation as “a minority within a minority”. As we travel with him, we are guided through unlikely spaces, including the back room of a gay bar where, as he observes, Aboriginal men “won’t be hard to find because we’re the only blacks”.

In a smart, black suit and bow tie, Oliver commands the stage with his presence and his stories. His spoken word poetry alternates with his original songs: both possess a confessional, soulful quality.

Words pour out of his body and heart, sometimes erupting like a geyser, then a raging river, winding down into a narrow stream, a patter, punctuated by a pause. He is at times a conjurer, using language like a preacher, taking it into the realm of incantation. It is as if by saying it, he makes it so.

Read more: Black Comedy: the ABC makes a bold foray into race relations

Throughout, his hands and body only briefly come to a full stop, and then only for dramatic effect.

Oliver is a beautiful mover, swaying and rocking, at one point launching into a jaunty tap routine while engaged with a bit of playful banter with the ever-dapper Griffiths, seated at the piano. But his hands are his most expressive physical tool. They accentuate and underline words, flittering, exploding and twirling at speeds that sometimes appear to be faster than light.

Oliver’s rhyming is clever, at times brilliant, as he lets the movement of the words guide him into storytelling, rapping, and then transitioning into song. Griffiths adeptly supports him, leading from spoken word to song with musical phrases that appear as if out of the air.

Griffiths also provides back-up vocals and harmonies for Oliver, while never overpowering him. It is a musical collaboration marked by generosity, restraint, and mutual respect.

At times, Oliver gives us more naughty than nice, causing jaws to drop a bit, as when, early in show, while speaking of the therapeutic value of dance, he says, “When you shake your ass, you shake off a lot of shit”. Taking a beat, he adds, “ohhhh, that came out wrong”, requiring another beat, ending with an audible audience groan.

Oliver shows himself to be a master at drawing the audience into the material, an essential feature of cabaret. Many of his musical numbers caused spectators to involuntarily tap their feet on the wooden floor of the Spiegeltent, physically connecting us to one another.

Though intensely personal, Oliver’s words and songs are consistently interwoven into the larger social fabric of being Indigenous in Australia. Speaking of trolling on Facebook on social media, he observes trenchantly, “The thing about racism is that it teaches you how to behave”. When he later recounts his struggle with depression, he connects it to a story about a boy bullied for being effeminate, calling for a world where such a boy would “not just dance to sadness, but just dance”.

Bringing the personal and the political together, Oliver ended the evening with another urgent spoken word piece. “I’m a blackfella”, he asserts, observing that learning to engage starts “by talking to me”.

With Bigger and Blacker, Oliver jump-starts such a conversation by bringing us along for a ride that is thrilling, exhilarating, and at times, equal parts naughty and challenging.

Adelaide Cabaret Festival is on until June 22.

– ref. ‘Faboriginal’ Steven Oliver jump-starts a conversation about race in a thrilling new show – http://theconversation.com/faboriginal-steven-oliver-jump-starts-a-conversation-about-race-in-a-thrilling-new-show-118582

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

Former Wallabies rugby star Israel Folau is the latest in a series of Australian employees to lose their jobs because of social media posts in recent years.

Through a combination of common law rules and broadly expressed codes of conduct, employers have increasingly been able to control their workers’ private activities, including on social media.

But what makes Folau’s case different is that it sets up a clash between employment contract law and legal protections against discrimination on the basis of religion.

This could set an important employment law precedent for future cases like this, which is especially contentious at a time when religious freedom is being so fiercely debated in Australia.

What claim has Folau brought?

Rugby Australia terminated Folau’s employment contract last month after a tribunal determined his actions had breached the organisation’s code of conduct. The offending behaviour was an Instagram post by Folau in April, warning homosexuals (among others): “Hell Awaits You. Repent! Only Jesus Saves.”

Read more: Egging the question: can your employer sack you for what you say or do in your own time?

Folau has now brought a claim under Section 772 of the Fair Work Act alleging the termination was because of his religion and, therefore, unlawful.

The application argues that as a manifestation of his Christian religion, including regular church attendance and preaching, Folau is:

…compelled to communicate the word of God and the message contained within the Bible.

According to media outlets, he is claiming around A$5 million in lost salary and an additional A$5 million in compensation for other missed opportunities, including sponsorships.

What the Fair Work Act says in cases like this

Rugby Australia maintains that Folau was dismissed not because of his religious beliefs, but because he breached the player code of conduct.

The code is typical of that of many businesses. It requires players to treat everyone equally and with dignity, regardless of their sexual orientation; not to use social media to breach expected standards of behaviour; and not to make public comments or otherwise act contrary to the best interests of the game.

What makes Folau’s claim unique is that it depends on the court’s view of whether he was dismissed for reasons that included his religion, as specified under Section 772 of the Fair Work Act.

Read more: The ‘gay wedding cake’ dilemma: when religious freedom and LGBTI rights intersect

This claim could be easier for Folau to prove than another part of the Fair Work Act commonly relied upon in discrimination cases, Section 351.

Case law tells us that Section 351 requires the employee to prove an employer was motivated to discriminate against him or her because of religion. So, if an employer can point to an employee’s breach of their employment obligations as the reason for dismissal – instead of a discriminatory motive – then the employee’s claim fails.

In contrast, under Section 772, Folau only has to show that his religion was merely among the reasons for the dismissal.

However, in order to make his case, he will also need to demonstrate that his Instagram post constituted an exercise of his religion.

There are some big questions to be resolved here: how far does a person’s right of religious expression extend? Does being a Christian necessarily mean you can express the views of your faith in any public forum?

And does it allow Folau to express his views in the way that he did (noting that he says he was simply quoting from the Bible)?

Are there any precedents in case law?

Discrimination law doesn’t help us out much here.

Various state and territory laws protect a person from being discriminated against due to religious “belief”, “conviction” or “activity.” However, the case law shows that only certain characteristics of those who observe a particular religion fall within these protections, for example, a Hindu who practices fasting, or a Sikh wearing a turban. Previous cases haven’t dealt with the question of speech associated with a person’s religion.

For further guidance, we can turn to cases involving an employee’s right to express political opinions. But here, too, we find a bit of a mixed bag.

Academics seemingly have more latitude to express political opinions because their free speech rights are backed up by “intellectual freedom” clauses found in most university enterprise agreements.

Read more: Explainer: does Rugby Australia have legal grounds to sack Israel Folau for anti-gay social media posts?

This enabled former James Cook University physics professor Peter Ridd to successfully contest his dismissal for public comments critical of climate science. Academic freedom was also behind the claim mooted by La Trobe University’s Roz Ward, who was suspended in 2016 for social media comments criticising the “racist Australian flag,” before the university eventually backed down.

By comparison, federal public servants are subject to very restrictive policies curtailing their free speech rights.

However, the case of former Department of Immigration official Michaela Banerji shows that public service employees may be able to rely on the implied constitutional freedom of political communication. She won a workers’ compensation case on the basis that her dismissal for anonymous tweets criticising government policies breached her constitutional rights. The federal government is now contesting that ruling in the High Court.

New territory for employment law

Outside the academic and public sector contexts, we don’t yet have a definitive ruling on the apparent conflict between an employer’s right to control employees’ social media comments and the protections of religious or political freedom found in discrimination law.

Many of these cases settle out of court, such as Angela Williamson’s claim against Cricket Australia for unfair termination following tweets she sent that were critical of Tasmanian government policy on access to abortion.

It’s highly likely that a settlement will be reached in the Folau case, as well. But if it does go to trial, I think the employer’s contractual right to impose standards of behaviour will trump the rugby star’s right to express his religious views.

Court rulings have tended to favour employers seeking to enforce their behavioural policies and codes, including the regulation of employees’ private activities. The Folau case is an important opportunity to see whether the right to express religious views can halt the steady march of employer control in the era of social media.

– ref. Why the Israel Folau case could set an important precedent for employment law and religious freedom – http://theconversation.com/why-the-israel-folau-case-could-set-an-important-precedent-for-employment-law-and-religious-freedom-118455

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barry Hart, Emeritus Professor Water Science, Monash University

The health of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s largest and most complex river system, is in rapid decline, and faces major challenges over the next 30 years as the climate changes.

In our view, there are still major problems with the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. These must be addressed to make sure the system is resilient enough to have a reasonable chance of bouncing back from future shocks to the river’s ecosystems, particularly due to climate change.

Read more: Damning royal commission report leaves no doubt that we all lose if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails

Here are five ways the government can clean up the Murray-Darling Basin Plan so the river system has a chance of surviving in the long term.

1. Allow the rivers to spill into the floodplain

There are restrictions in all states on deliberately using environmental water (water set aside to keep the rivers healthy) to go over the river bank and inundate the floodplain. When this happens, it’s known as “overbank flow”, and is restricted to areas and times of year when it’s permitted.

Overbank flow is the connection between rivers and their floodplain, and is essential for two reasons.

The first is to ensure floodplain wetlands and forests are resilient. For example, without additional water, the current red gum forests along the River Murray are likely to die and be replaced with black box trees, which need less water.

The second is for the exchange of nutrients and organic matter between rivers and floodplains. Without these inputs from the floodplain, the river system would only be able to support a much smaller number of fish.

Governments have been reluctant to work towards increased overbank flows, largely because of a potential backlash from landholders who don’t want their floodplain land to be flooded.

Read more: Aboriginal voices are missing from the Murray-Darling Basin crisis

But in several regions, such as the Edward-Wakool system in New South Wales, landowners and government officials are working through the issues that infrequent flooding has on riverside agricultural land, such as stock being unable to graze flooded areas, crops being innundated by floodwaters, and loss of access to parts of their property through road flooding.

We hope their discussions will lead to a balance, where overbank flows can still occur with minimum impact on landholders.

Still, without changes to state policies on overbank flows, parts of the Basin’s floodplain systems are unlikely to have sufficient resilience to absorb future stresses.

2. Better management of the rivers

The Commonwealth and states now have almost 3 trillion litres (3 gigalitres) of dedicated environmental water, purchased from irrigators, many of whom have made significant water savings by upgrading their irrigation equipment.

This is called “held” environmental water. Currently, there is around 3 trillion litres of held environmental water, and 13.7 trillion litres of water allocated to irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Management of this environmental water is relatively new, compared with the management of water for irrigators, which has been occurring for the better part of 80 years in rivers such as the Murray, Goulburn and Murrumbidgee.

There is a major difference in when environmental and irrigation water is needed through the year. Farmers have their highest water demand for irrigation in late spring and summer, while the major environmental water demand is often highest in late winter and early spring. This is when high natural inflows would have filled river channels and spilled into floodplain forests and wetlands.

The use of the river channels to deliver irrigation water has lead to large flows in the summer when naturally the river flows would have been low. This has resulted in environmental problems, such as bank erosion and the wrong triggers for fish breeding.

3. A greater focus on river refuges

During periods of low or no flow, many of the Basin’s rivers exist as networks of waterholes. In such dry periods, these waterholes are vital habitats, or “refuges”, for fish, frogs, waterbugs, and other species that need permanent water.

Changes in land use, flow regimes and the condition of riverbank vegetation all threaten the ability for these waterholes to act as refuges for these species. These waterhole refuges also need a full set of structural habitats, such as snags and riverbank vegetation.

Read more: A good plan to help Darling River fish recover exists, so let’s get on with it

Maintaining a “mosaic” of refuges with different levels of connection is required for the full suite of species to be able to survive droughts.

4. Better protection of planned environmental water

Runoff – rainwater that drains from the land and into the rivers – will be seriously affected by climate change.

A predicted 20% reduction in rainfall is expected in the southern Basin by 2050. This would translate to a 40-50% reduction in runoff, and would impact on all water in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Disturbingly, the current policy in the Basin Plan safeguards the entitlements to irrigation water and held environmental water, but not the rest of the flow – which is largely also “environmental” water. Currently, this makes up around half of the total flow (32.5 trillion litres per year) in the Murray-Darling Basin a very large volume.

The effect varies over the basin, but by 2030, overall losses are predicted to be two to three times greater for water that is outside of these entitlements, compared with irrigation water and held environmental water.

Unless this policy is changed, climate change will have an excessive impact on the river’s health. Entitlement-holders will continue to take the same amount of water while the overall river flow drops dramatically. This deficiency must be addressed when the Basin Plan is reviewed by 2026.

5. Linking water and other natural resource management

The Basin’s water resources do not exist in isolation from other “natural capital”, such as riverbank habitats, floodplain land, and the surrounding catchments.

Before the Basin Plan, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission had in place an integrated natural resource management strategy, but this has now been discontinued.

River scientists know “the catchment rules the river”. But the water and catchments are now managed separately, despite many calls over the years for better integration.

Poor agricultural practices result in sediment, nutrients and salt entering the rivers in runoff. This reduces water quality and harms the Basin’s ability to provide essential “ecosystem services”, such as water quality improvement and the effective functioning of the ecosystem.

Read more: It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin

We believe a more coordinated management of all natural resources in the Basin, and attention to other complementary measures, should be addressed when the current Basin Plan is reviewed in 2026.

We submit that continuing with the existing Basin Plan, it’s unlikely the Murray-Darling Basin will be resilient enough to withstand future climate impacts, and we will see major detrimental changes to the basin’s ecosystems.

At the very least, we must properly implement the current Basin Plan by addressing the first three issues above, and also make the necessary policy change to ensure the other two issues – protection of planned environmental water and better links with other natural resources – are addressed in the next Basin Plan in 2026.

– ref. 5 ways the government can clean up the Murray-Darling Basin Plan – http://theconversation.com/5-ways-the-government-can-clean-up-the-murray-darling-basin-plan-116265

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Collins, Professor of Geology, University of Adelaide

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Where do rocks come from? – Claire, age 5, Perth, WA.

Wow, Claire, what a great question. Sitting in a university, I rarely get asked such brilliant questions. So, thank you.

As strange as it sounds, rocks are made from stardust; dust blasted out and made from exploding stars.

In fact, our corner of space has many rocks floating around in it. From really fine dust, to pebbles, boulders and house-sized rocks that can burn up in the night sky to make meteors or “shooting stars”.

The Moon and our local planets – Mars, Venus and Mercury – are just the largest rocks floating around our part of space. These are all made from space dust stuck together over billions of years.

Read more: Curious Kids: how was the Earth made?

The ‘light’ rocks are on the Earth’s surface

Planet Earth is a rock too, but so much has happened since it was formed from dust and small rocks that smashed and stuck together 4.543 billion years ago.

As the space dust hit each other to make the earth, it got super hot and melted. The Earth was, at that time, a spinning ball of red-hot lava flying through space.

In this melted lava planet, heavy bits of the earth sank and the light frothy bits gathered on the surface.

Have you ever looked closely at a glass of milky coffee at a cafe? The dark heavy coffee is at the bottom, whereas the light, frothy milk sits on the top. Well, our planet was a bit like that coffee billions of years ago.

We don’t see the really heavy rocks these days because they sank deep in the planet very early on. The rocks we see on the surface are like the frothy milk! They were light and rose to the top. Then, as time moved on, the planet cooled and froze to become the solid earth we have now.

I know most rocks are heavy. But in fact some rocks – even really big ones like Uluru – are actually much lighter than the rocks found in the deep Earth.

Lava and plates

Those rocks on the Earth’s surface actually move around. Large chunks the size of continents (called “plates”) jostle each other and this can cause earthquakes. Some of them get forced under other plates and heat up and eventually melt. This forms more lava. The lava erupts from volcanoes, then cools and forms new rocks.

Here are some pictures of lava in the melted state and then after it has cooled down:

Read more: Curious Kids: how do mountains form?

Mountains and gems are also rocks

Mountains form where two plates smash into each other. The rocks that get caught between two of the Earth’s plates get squashed under huge pressures and heat up. These can form really beautiful rocks. Sometimes gems form in these rocks and people try to find them to make jewellery.

Rain and ice break up the rocks in mountains. These form sand and mud that get washed out to form beaches, rivers and swamps. This sand and mud can get buried, squashed and heated, which eventually turns them into rocks.

Rocks contain a record of the history of our planet; what is has been through and what is capable of. We are only just learning how to read it.

So, next time you see a rock, just think what an incredible story it contains.

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

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: where do rocks come from? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-where-do-rocks-come-from-116429

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa de Zwart, Professor, Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide

In a sign the Australian Space Agency is already opening up new doors for Australian industry, NASA says it will be launching rockets from Arnhem Space Centre, in Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory, in 2020.

Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews has also indicated she will encourage space tourism from Australia. She wants passengers to experience zero-gravity from the convenience of a domestic airport.

Read more: Five ethical questions for how we choose to use the Moon

But who gets to decide what can be launched into space? That depends on where the launch takes place, and in the case of Australia those rules are currently under review.

International treaty

The authority for who approves, supervises and grants permission for launch of space objects is based on UN treaties that provide a framework for international space law. The most important is the Outer Space Treaty (OST), which entered into force in 1967.

Article VI of the OST provides that nation states (that is, countries) bear “international responsibility” for “national activities” undertaken in outer space by government and commercial users alike.

States remain responsible for activities undertaken by commercial entities – for example, companies such as SpaceX – and are obliged to undertake ongoing supervision of such activities.

How individual countries choose to conduct such supervision is left entirely up to them, but in most cases it is done by way of domestic space law.

Another international treaty, the Liability Convention provides that the liability of the state extends to all launches that are made from that state’s territory. For example, the US is legally responsible for all launches that take place from that country as well as for launches elsewhere that it procures.

This imposes a significant burden on the state to ensure that international requirements are complied with.

Domestic space law regulates matters such as the granting of launch permits, and insurance and indemnity requirements. In Australia, this is achieved through the Space Activities (Launches and Returns) Act 2018. In New Zealand, the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017, applies.

The Starlink network

In the US, it’s the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that gave Elon Musk’s SpaceX permission to launch thousands of Starlink satellites as part of a plan to create a low-orbit internet network.

The licence is for one constellation of 4,409 satellites and a second constellation of 7,518 satellites. The FCC requires launch of half of the total number planned within six years.

The first 60 satellites were launched into orbit last month, and have already given rise to a number of concerns.

Read more: Lights in the sky from Elon Musk’s new satellite network have stargazers worried

Scientists and astronomers are worried such a large constellation of satellites will be visible to the naked eye in the night sky. In response, Musk has already agreed to make the next batch less shiny.

Penalties apply

As well as granting launch licences, the FCC can also issue fines for any unlicensed launch by US operators.

Swarm Technologies launched four SpaceBee satellites from India in January 2018, after having been denied a licence from the FCC. The FCC was concerned the satellites were too small to be effectively tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network.

FCC subsequently fined Swarm US$900,000, partly as a way to spread the word that licensing of launching is a serious business but because the company had also performed other activities that required FCC authorisation.

In addition to presenting issues for tracking, new satellites also presented a hazard in terms of their potential to create large debris fields.

Notably, there are no binding international laws with respect to the creation of space debris. There are non-binding Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines issued by the UN Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee. But these are only guidelines and are frequently overlooked in the interests of commercial expediency.

The 2018 Australian Act does require the applicant for various Australian licences (such as a launch permit) to include “a strategy for debris mitigation”. This may include, for example, a plan to de-orbit the satellite after a certain number of years.

Launches from Australia

Australia’s first claim to fame as a space-faring nation was the launch of WRESAT (the Weapons Research Establishment Satellite) from Woomera, South Australia, in 1967.

But the launch platforms on nearby Lake Hart were dismantled following the departure to French Guiana in 1971 of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) – whose name ELDO still graces the sole hotel in Woomera, in outback South Australia.

From this time until the late 1990s there was little interest in space launches from Australia.

Read more: Lost in space: Australia dwindled from space leader to also-ran in 50 years

The Space Activities Act 1998 was enacted in response to a brief interest in US company Kistler Aerospace developing a spaceport at Woomera, SA.

But no spaceport was constructed nor any launches conducted. A review of the Space Activities Act and of the Australian space industry in 2016-2017 led to the new Space Activities (Launches and Returns) Act in 2018.

This Act envisions a broader role for domestic space industries, including but not limited to, launch.

The rules which flesh out the details of the application of that licensing regime are currently open for public review and comment. The deadline for making a submission closes at the end of this week.

– ref. NASA and space tourists might be in our future but first we need to decide who can launch from Australia – http://theconversation.com/nasa-and-space-tourists-might-be-in-our-future-but-first-we-need-to-decide-who-can-launch-from-australia-117912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francisco Perales, Senior Research Fellow (Institute for Social Science Research & Life Course Centre) and ARC DECRA Fellow, The University of Queensland

Almost two years after the heated discussions accompanying the 2017 marriage equality postal survey, LGB Australians remain at the centre of public debates. For example, there are ongoing issues around religious freedoms, and homosexuality was at the centre of Israel Folau’s controversial statements.

But one aspect about the Australian LGB populations that is often ignored is who, and how many, belong to them.

In fact, there is a large degree of uncertainty internationally about the share of the non-heterosexual population. The accuracy of early US studies by Alfred Kinsey has been largely discredited. More recent work by demographer Gary Gates provided more robust information, but left many questions unanswered.

Read more: Marriage equality was momentous, but there is still much to do to progress LGBTI+ rights in Australia

In Australia, there is comparatively less information – notwithstanding recent research efforts. Understanding the prevalence of non-heterosexuality — as well as how this varies according to who, what and when we ask — is an important endeavour.

It can contribute to more inclusive social policies and services. It also allows us to reflect critically on traditional narratives about sexual orientation and their applicability to current debates within Australian society.

Here, we collate and discuss estimates of the prevalence of sexual-minority status in contemporary Australia, leveraging recent information from several major social and health surveys.

Dimensions of sexual orientation: what you ask

Academic scholarship usually distinguishes between three dimensions of sexual orientation: behaviour, attraction, and identity. These lead to different definitions of non-heterosexuality:

• engaging in same-sex sexual behaviour;

• feeling some degree of sexual attraction towards people of the same sex; and

• self-identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or other smaller sexual-orientation groups (for example, asexual, pansexual, demisexual).

Few Australian studies collect information on the three domains of sexual orientation from the same sample. But those that do provide an interesting picture: the prevalence of non-heterosexuality varies drastically depending on the domain asked about.

Take, for example, the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, a long-running health survey tracking several cohorts of women over time. Its youngest cohort, comprising roughly 17,000 women, was asked about sexual orientation at ages 22-28 years in 2017. When sexual-minority status was defined on the basis of identity, 38% of these young women fell into a category other than “exclusively heterosexual” (that is, “mostly heterosexual”, “bisexual”, “mostly lesbian” or “lesbian”).

However, the “mostly heterosexual” category accounted for the bulk of this figure, and some might question whether these women should be counted as non-heterosexual. Excluding the “mostly heterosexual” category, the share of sexual-minority women falls to about one in eight (12.4%).

If sexual-minority status was defined using same-sex sexual behaviour (having had sex with other women at some point of their lives), about a third (32.9%) of the young women in the study would fall into this group. Yet only 3.7% of them reported that their sexual experiences with women were at least as frequent as those with men.

Finally, 43.5% of women in this sample acknowledged feeling some sexual attraction to other women. But again, a more conservative measure — feeling as intense a sexual attraction for women as for men — reduces this statistic to 1 in 10 (9.9%).

Interestingly, the degree of overlap between measures is not as large as could be expected. While 52.9% of the young women reported some non-heterosexuality on at least one dimension (identity, attraction or behaviour), only 23.4% did on all three dimensions.

Gender differences: who you ask

Some surveys ask sexual-orientation questions of both men and women, which allows comparisons by gender.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, for example, asked a sexual-identity question of approximately 16,000 men and women aged 15 years or older in 2016. A greater share of women (1 in 25, or 3.9%) than men (1 in 33, or 2.9%) identified as gay/lesbian or bisexual.

However, these figures are likely to be underestimated, as 6.1% of women and 4.8% of men chose uninformative response options – “other”, “don’t know”, and “prefer not to say” — which suggests that many of them may not be heterosexual.

Estimates of non-heterosexuality from the 2014 General Social Survey for the Australian population aged 18 years and older are slightly lower, at 2.5% for women and 2.4% for men.

The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children asked a sexual-attraction question to a sample of about 3,500 boys and girls aged 14-15 years in 2014. In this youth sample, 1.2% of girls reported feeling sexually attracted to other girls exclusively, 4.4% feeling attracted to both boys and girls, and 4.4% being “unsure” about their attractions.

Among boys, 0.4% reported feeling sexually attracted only to other boys and 2% to both boys and girls, while 1.7% were “unsure”. Therefore, as for the adult population, more adolescent girls than boys fell into the combined sexual-minority category — 1 in 18 (5.6%) compared with 1 in 42 (2.4%), excluding the “unsure” group.

The higher propensity for women (and girls) compared to men (and boys) to fall into the sexual-minority group has also been observed in other countries, such as the US, and attributed to lower acceptance of male than female homosexuality and greater erotic plasticity and sexual fluidity among women.

Sexual fluidity: when you ask

This phenomenon of sexual fluidity gives rise to other fascinating statistical patterns surrounding the prevalence of non-heterosexuality. For example, our recent research demonstrates that women’s sexual orientation should not be assumed to be static.

Rather, some women experience shifts in their sexual orientation over time, responding to changes in their personal and social circumstances. Thus, the prevalence of non-heterosexuality also varies as a function of age and life-course stage.

We used Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health data to track a cohort of women born between 1973 and 1978 from ages 22 to 27 years in 2000 to ages 34 to 39 in 2012. Approximately one in eight (12.5%) changed their response to the sexual-identity question on at least one occasion. The most common changes involved movements from “exclusively heterosexual” to “mainly heterosexual”, and vice versa.

However, the results were very different when we repeated this exercise using data from a younger cohort of women, born between 1989 and 1995 and followed from ages 18 to 23 years in 2013 to ages 22 to 28 years in 2017. Approximately one in three (32.8%) of these young women changed their response to the sexual-identity question at least once. The most common changes involved moving away from the “exclusively heterosexual” and “mainly heterosexual” categories.

Societal change

Less is known about change over the time in the number and share of Australians who are non-heterosexual. This is because most data collections only began asking about sexual orientation in recent years.

Estimates based on the 2001/2002 and 2012/2013 instalments of the Australian Study of Health and Relationships (each canvassing about 20,000 men and women age 16-59), suggest an increase in the prevalence of non-heterosexuality across different measures.

The share of men identifying as homosexual or bisexual went up from 2.5% to 3.2%. The share of women identifying as lesbian or bisexual also rose, from 2.2% to 3.8%. While the share of men expressing some same-sex sexual attraction increased slightly (6.8% and 7.4%), this increased more markedly for women (12.9% and 16%). Similarly, the prevalence of lifetime same-sex sexual experience increased for both sexes, with the increment being more pronounced among women (8.5% to 14.7%) than men (6% to 6.6%).

Similarly, Australian Census data suggest a marked increase in the number of same-sex couples — from about 10,000 in 1996 to about 47,000 in 2016. The 2016 figure means that, on that year, approximately one in 100 Australian couples was a same-sex couple.

What does it all mean?

The variability in estimates of sexual-minority status according to who, what or when you ask might come as a surprise to many. It also casts doubts over traditional “us and them” narratives about sexual orientation.

Using certain definitions, Australian sexual minorities appear in fact pretty “major”. While only one in 25 Australians identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, feeling some attraction to members of the same sex or seeing oneself as “mainly heterosexual” is fairly common—especially among women.

Read more: Australia has finally achieved marriage equality, but there’s a lot more to be done on LGBTI rights

Which of these indicators of sexual orientation is a better predictor of life outcomes in contemporary Australia? How does structural stigma affect these different groups? Which domains of sexual orientation should we ask about in official statistics? How should we ask these questions to elicit accurate and unbiased responses?

More broadly, the nuances here serve as an important remainder of the complexity of human sexuality. Large-scale quantitative studies have only scratched the surface. More information on, for example, less socially salient but clearly emerging sexual-orientation and gender-identity groups (for example, asexual, pansexual, demisexual, transcurious, and bigender) is needed to fully map gender and sexuality in our society.

Then we can better understand how these personal traits contribute to shaping the lives of everyday Australians.

– ref. How many Australians are not heterosexual? It depends on who, what and when you ask – http://theconversation.com/how-many-australians-are-not-heterosexual-it-depends-on-who-what-and-when-you-ask-118256

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher M Fisher, Associate Profressor in Young Peoples Sexual Health & Sex Education, La Trobe University

Just under half of year 10 to 12 students have had sex, according to research released today.

They know more about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than you might think and are using a variety of sources for their sexual health information.

But there’s room to improve condom use and STI testing for sexually active teens. Only 13% of all those surveyed thought they were likely to get an STI.

Read more: Good sex ed doesn’t lead to teen pregnancy, it prevents it

In 2018, we surveyed 6,327 secondary students in years 10 to 12 from across Australia in all kinds of schools, for the Sixth National Survey of Secondary Students and Sexual Health.

We asked them a range of questions about their sexual health. These included where they turned to for information about sexual health, and how often. We asked if they liked their sex education. And yes, we asked about their sexual activity, or lack of it.

All up, 47% of students told us they had sex – defined as vaginal and/or anal intercourse regardless of the gender of the partner.

That might sound a lot. But rest assured, it was age-dependent. Year 10s were much less likely to have had sex yet (34% had ever had sex) compared to year 11s (46%) and 12s (56%).

Read more: ‘Do I need to shave my pubic hair before having sex?’

Recent US reports suggest teens are having less sex than they used to. The US Centers for Disease Control found between 1991 and 2017 the percentage of students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54% to 40%.

In Australia since 2012, the rate has dropped 3% from 50%, which is within the margin of error, meaning there might be no actual decline.

The average age at which students had begun engaging in various sexual activities ranged from 13 for masturbation to 15 for mutual touching and oral sex.

The average age for the 47% who had experienced sexual intercourse in our survey was about 16 years old. This is slightly lower than other researchers have found. But our survey results may not represent Australian teens as a whole.

Of those who were sexually active, most (76%) were having sex in their homes, in a relationship (65%) or with a partner about the same age as them (86%).

They largely reported responsible behaviours. These included discussing having sex (81%) beforehand and protecting their health (77%). They used condoms (56%) and/or the pill (41%).

In short, teens in Australia are doing pretty well in relation to sex. And this isn’t new: the findings echo what has been seen in previous versions of the same survey over the past 25 years.

How about unwanted sex?

We also continue to find about a quarter (28%) reported some kind of unwanted sex at some point in their lives.

“Unwanted” means very different experiences for different people. A quarter (23%) of those reporting unwanted experiences wrote in comments. Many suggested it was a sense of “meh” or “just wasn’t really into it at the time”. But they provided no indication of regret.

While the survey did not ask about rape or sexual assault, slightly less than 1% of all participants did write explicitly about such experiences.

Despite this, we found 93% wanted their last sexual encounter. Overall, 85% indicated they felt extremely good and happy about their last experience and fewer (less than 20%) reported feeling upset, worried or guilty.

Shifts in school-based sex education to include a greater emphasis on relationships and skills in communication might, in part, explain the good sex teens are reporting.

How about smartphones and sexting?

Some things have changed, like using the internet to find sexual health information. That’s almost double what was reported in 2013 (44% then, 79% now). This isn’t surprising, given the pervasiveness of the internet today – 88% did the survey on an internet-enabled mobile device.

Rates of sexting seemed to have gone down by about 3% across each of the specific behaviours asked about. Overall about a third of students had engaged in some form of sexting. For those who were sexting, it was mostly with a partner or friend and only a few times in the previous two months.

Good marks, but room for improvement

So when it comes to sex and sexual health, Australia’s students are receiving pretty good marks. But there is room to continue improving.

The levels of reported unwanted sex, and the complexity of it, suggest a more nuanced approach may be warranted. Talking to teens about unwanted sex could expand beyond rape, sexual assault and issues of consent to cover communicating about desires and pleasure in a relationship leading to hopefully less “meh”.

Rates of STIs among young people suggest there is room to improve condom use and testing among sexually active teens. Only 13% thought they were likely to get an STI.

Luckily, Australian teens are having healthy conversations with partners, part of realising a happy, healthy and pleasurable sex life.

Read more: How to make your next sexual health check less, erm … awkward

– ref. Around half of 17-year-olds have had sex and they’re more responsible than you think – http://theconversation.com/around-half-of-17-year-olds-have-had-sex-and-theyre-more-responsible-than-you-think-118337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong

The Melbourne-Sydney air corridor is now the second-busiest in the world. That’s true for either the number of passenger planes flying between the two airports or by counting actual passenger numbers, now over 9 million passengers a year. That’s an increase of 28% since 2009.

On an average day, some 12,330 people get on a plane in Sydney to fly to Melbourne. A similar number make the reverse journey.

Most passengers will have taken some time to get the airport and waited well over half an hour at the airport just to get on the plane. Once on board, the cramped conditions in economy once prompted comedian Jean Kittson to observe that even battery hens feel sorry for the passengers.

Read more: Let’s get moving with the affordable medium-speed alternatives to the old dream of high-speed rail

Contrast this with getting on a high-speed rail (HSR) train that can travel at speeds of 250km/h or more from city centre to city centre on selected routes. Starting with Japan in 1964, these trains now operate in 12 countries in Asia, Europe, the UK, and now Morocco.

Australia’s high-speed rail investigations since 1984 have cost an estimated A$125 million in today’s terms. However, not even one kilometre of corridor has been reserved. High-speed rail has often been promised, often before elections (including a Melbourne-Geelong service in the latest one) – as The Chaser observed in 2016 – only to vanish afterwards.

How does this compare to other countries?

Japan’s network has been slowly but surely extended, from the initial Tokyo-Osaka 515km Shinkansen in 1964 to more than 2,750km of lines on new dedicated track. More lines are under construction. To date, there have been more than 10 billion passenger movements with no loss of life from collision or derailment.

China has had a rapid rollout of trains moving up to 350km/h. Starting in 2008 with Beijing to Tianjin taking 30 minutes to cover 120km, China’s high-speed rail network now extends over 20,000km. This includes Beijing-Shanghai (opened in 2011 with a fatal collision that year) and Beijing-Guangzhou (the longest HSR route in the world). In 2018, the short Guangzhou-Hong Kong section opened.

Germany’s high-speed rail is of interest to Australia, with a mixture of new track construction (Neubaustrecken) one section at a time and upgrading of existing track. This progressively improves rail capacity and reduces travel times.

Many other countries have medium-speed rail, with trains moving at speeds of 160-240km/h. In Uzbekistan, for example, Talgo tilt trains take about 2 hours to move between Tashkent and Samarkand. This is a distance similar to Sydney to Canberra, which is currently a train journey of over four hours.

So what’s stopping Australia?

High-speed rail has been studied repeatedly since 1984 in Australia. The Howard government raised expectations before the 1998 election with a Sydney-Canberra Speedrail proposal. John Howard said this “nation-building project” would deliver “ourselves – and our children – a visionary new transport system of which we can all be proud”.

The proposal was to use existing track from Sydney’s Central Station to near Campbelltown, then new track to Canberra airport. The train would take just 84 minutes to complete the trip. The cost was then about A$4.5 billion, with the private sector to finance all but about A$1 billion.

The Howard government withdrew support for the project in December 2000. Instead, it commissioned yet another study and shut down high-speed rail for another decade.

The Gillard government commissioned more studies. In 2013 the cost of a new Sydney-Canberra high-speed rail sector was estimated at A$23 billion with an east coast network to cost A$114 billion.

In its 2017 budget, the Turnbull government moved the focus to medium-speed rail or “faster rail”. The National Faster Rail Agency will come into being on July 1.

What are the prospects for faster rail?

There is a good case for pursuing “faster rail”, given the difficulties of making progress on high-speed rail. Australia could follow the lead of Germany and other countries in building isolated new sections of track to high-speed standards, one at a time. These sections can link with existing mainlines, to allow for new trains to run faster than cars.

This has worked well in Victoria since 2006 with the introduction of regional fast rail on four corridors. These trains run at up to 160km/h on upgraded tracks. Further track upgrading is under way in Victoria.

Queensland and Western Australia also have trains that can move at 160km/h on good tracks.

However, in New South Wales, the preponderance of mainline track with “steam age” alignment with many tight curves means intercity train speeds are too slow. The NSW government, along with ordering new intercity trains, has retained an overseas expert, Professor Andrew MacNaughton, to advise on high-speed rail versus faster rail and track upgrades to speed up trains. This is for the four main lines from Sydney to each of Newcastle, Orange, Canberra, and Wollongong.

These lines offer good potential to speed up trains by rebuilding old sections of track. In fact, between Sydney and Junee, there is scope to reduce the point-to-point distance by 60km to speed up freight trains plus reduce fuel use and emissions.

This track upgrade, along with tilt trains, would also allow the 11-hour Sydney-Melbourne XPT travel time to be cut to about six hours or less.

– ref. We can halve train travel times between our cities by moving to faster rail – http://theconversation.com/we-can-halve-train-travel-times-between-our-cities-by-moving-to-faster-rail-116512

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dorothy Ann Lee, Stewart Rearch Professor of New Testament, Trinity College, University of Divinity

In the wake of the royal commission into child sexual abuse, Christian churches in this country need not only radical reform of their principles and practices, but also ways of recovering their integrity. For the Catholic Church, with its patriarchal structures, ordaining women to the priesthood is one way to achieve this.

In 2016, Pope Francis appointed a commission to report on women in the early church, asking the question of whether women could be ordained as deacons. (Deacons are the first level of ordination in the Catholic Church before priesthood.)

Now the pope has said the commission was divided on the issue. The commission agreed there were women deacons in the early church, but disagreed on whether they had any power. The pope has handed the report to a gathering of the heads of female religious orders, and may call the commissioners back for further input.

Note that, in all this, the Catholic Church has not even begun to debate the question of whether women can be priests (the second and more powerful level of ordination in the church). Yet if we look closely at the Bible and the history of the church, there are very good reasons why women should hold these positions of high authority.

As the mother and grandmother of Catholic children, it pains me that women cannot be ordained in the Catholic Church. I can tell my grandson that he might think about becoming a Catholic priest when he grows up, but I cannot say the same to my granddaughters.

As an Anglican priest, I have seen ordained women of extraordinary capacity working in the Anglican Church and exercising authority. I know women deacons, women priests and women bishops, and can testify to the marvellous work of ministry they are doing.

I also know scores of Catholic women who would make truly remarkable priests. They are loving, self-giving, intelligent and responsible, with spiritual depth and wisdom. They would do much to restore the church’s integrity.

Idolatry of maleness

The main argument used in the Catholic hierarchy to exclude women from priesthood is that, to represent Christ at the altar in Mass, the priest must be male. The priest stands in for Jesus and therefore has to have a “natural resemblance” to him, and that resemblance is his maleness.

Opponents to women priests also claim that, at the Last Supper, Jesus ordained the 12 male apostles and no women. In subsequent church tradition, they say, women were never priests and to ordain them now would make the church contradict its own tradition.

Yet there are a number of arguments, from within the church’s own theological framework, that strongly support the ordaining of women as priests. At the most basic level, the church baptises (christens) females as well as males; there is no gender barrier around baptism. This has enormous implications.

In baptism, a person takes on something of the identity of the Risen Christ. He or she now belongs to Christ in a unique way. Not only are they committed to living a Christlike life of love and justice, they are also able to represent Christ in loving service to others. Yet supposedly only at the altar are they unable to represent Christ!

Jesus was not only male but also Jewish. Priests in the Catholic Church are not required to be Jews, but can represent Christ from widely divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Maleness, in other words, is given a significant weighting over all other social and cultural differences, including femaleness. In this sense, this belief represents an idolatry of maleness – an exalting of male over female, despite the inclusive impetus of baptism and despite the fact that, in creation, women as well as men are made equally in God’s image. The “natural resemblance” to Christ that is needed is not maleness but rather humanness.

Biblical scholars, moreover, have argued that Jesus ordained no-one in his lifetime: neither at the Last Supper nor anywhere else. It is even possible that women were present at this event.

There is compelling evidence that women, in the ministry of Jesus and the early church, held positions of leadership and authority. Mary Magdalene was the first to meet the risen Christ and the first to proclaim its message to the other disciples; the later church called her the “apostle of the apostles”.

Read more: Friday essay: who was Mary Magdalene? Debunking the myth of the penitent prostitute

We find references in the New Testament to a female deacon (Phoebe), to a female apostle (Junia) and to a host of women who were leaders in ministry. The same is true for the early centuries where there is evidence of women deacons and priests, and even of a female bishop.

The exclusion of women from leadership in the church came at a later date (possibly in the fourth century and later in some places) when it lost something of its radical beginnings, inherited from Jesus. Here the argument from tradition – that women never were ordained or held positions of leadership – simply does not hold.

Change is necessary

The Catholic Church believes that tradition is dynamic: unfolding and developing throughout history (this was most famously articulated by John Henry Cardinal Newman in 1845). New perspectives and understandings can and do come in new contexts. The ordination of women belongs arguably in this category of new and emerging truths.

In a number of Anglican churches, particularly in places where terrible abuse occurred in the past, the appointment of senior, ordained women has had a vital role to play in reforming and transforming the church.

Women’s ordination is necessary in the current climate of the Catholic Church. There is no better time for it to happen than now. It will confirm, in ways beyond mere words, the church’s determination to move beyond the sins of the past. It will mean a significant move beyond the old structures where only men made decisions and a protective boys’ club existed within leadership.

This is not a call coming only from outside the Catholic Church. Many of the faithful within believe the same thing, and Catholic women in places such as Ireland and Germany are becoming more vocal and organised in their fight for women’s ordination.

In Australia, too, there are Catholic women working to be heard on the issue, supported by both laity and priests. Now is the time for something new to emerge from the ashes of the past.

– ref. Women priests could help the Catholic Church restore its integrity. It’s time to embrace them – http://theconversation.com/women-priests-could-help-the-catholic-church-restore-its-integrity-its-time-to-embrace-them-118115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Englefield, PhD Student. Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney

There are few checks done to see how well injured or orphaned Australian animals survive after they’ve been released into the wild, we found in our new research published today.

That’s a worry for the more than 50,000 native animals that are released in Australia each year. It’s especially worrying for any orphans who’ve never experienced life in the wild.

But we found the rules governing the return of wildlife are not always in the animal’s best interest.

Read more: Not just activists, 9 out of 10 people are concerned about animal welfare in Australian farming

Our review of Australian animal welfare legislation, regulations, codes of practice and policies found a complex regulatory system that varies between states and territories. It’s a system that is fragmented, contradictory and inconsistent.

This makes it difficult for the many thousands of volunteers and others who try to rescue and rehabilitate native animals.

Australia lags in animal welfare

We believe Australia lags behind the developed world in animal welfare and animal law. This situation evolved haphazardly and is hampered by policies that rely on assumptions based largely on neither scientific nor factual evidence.

Current policy mandates that rehabilitated rescued animals must be placed into the wild. The survival of these animals after release depends on their behavioural and physical attributes, yet some could be ill-equipped to survive.

From our reading of current regulations, any such assessment of an animal’s suitability for release is either negligible or questionable.

There is also no reliable method of identifying animals after release. Indeed, most jurisdictions forbid it and, perhaps as a direct result, there is minimal monitoring to show what happens to released animals.

Return to where?

In general, all Australian jurisdictions require rehabilitated animals to be returned to the wild. But rather than using a more general definition of rehabilitation we should think of returning the animal to its natural habitat or state.

The distinction between these two possible destinations is far from semantic. It can be argued the natural habitat (or state) of a hand-reared orphan animal, is one of captivity.

Many wildlife carers releasing an animal and seeing it disappear into the wild may equate this with success, but this may be an unfortunate convenient illusion.

The released animal may not be the happy state that carers may prefer to assume. Vague assumptions that naturalness in releasing animals to the wild is reliably associated with better well-being are largely unfounded.

But wildlife carers have no choice in the matter. They are required to consign the animals, to which they have devoted hours of care, to an uncertain fate for which they may be very poorly prepared.

And they must do so even if their knowledge, experience and pragmatism directs their thinking to more favourable alternative solutions. These include allowing some native animals to be kept in large-scale facilities such as private fenced enclosures, national parks, islands and other fenced options.

Concern for orphans in the wild

The regulations make no distinction between animals that are injured, rehabilitated and released, and those that are rescued as orphans. These are often physically unharmed but require milk substitute feeding from a bottle and nurturing by – and possible inadvertently bonding with – humans prior to release to the wild.

Adult and juvenile native animals raised in the wild usually have all their innate and learned behaviour instincts intact when they are injured and rescued.

Unless they remain in captivity for a prolonged period, or are subjected to inappropriate housing and handling, their instincts generally persist and kick-in once they have been released. They have an opportunity to survive.

In contrast, the chances for orphans to survive after release seems remote.

Orphans that needed hand-rearing generally become habituated to the smells, sounds and sights of human presence and the captive environment.

The requirement to return orphans to the wild, with no account taken of their mental state, may be difficult to defend on conservation, ethical, moral and practical grounds.

Think of the carers

The physical and mental protection of Australian injured or orphaned native wildlife should be recognised as an important animal welfare issue. The physical and mental well-being of the wildlife carers who rehabilitate them is just as important as a human welfare issue.

Read more: Man’s stressed friend: how your mental health can affect your dog

In the absence of criteria that take into account the mental well-being of the animals and their carers, the current policy of releasing all hand-reared wildlife to the wild must be reviewed.

Using a One Welfare approach – that considers the the animals, the humans and the environment – would see a regulatory framework that balances the needs of rescued wildlife, wildlife carers and conservation.

The public and Australia’s extraordinary wildlife carers deserve to be confident that regulation is consistent among jurisdictions and reflective of best practice for the rescued wildlife and the environment.

– ref. Simply returning rescued wildlife back to the wild may not be in their best interest – http://theconversation.com/simply-returning-rescued-wildlife-back-to-the-wild-may-not-be-in-their-best-interest-118521

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Cain, Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Arts Education, Australian Catholic University

Schools are set up for students who can see. But around 3,000 school-aged children in Australia have a vision impairment – 300 of these have a severe vision impairment or are blind. These children are generally educated in mainstream schools, sometimes with little support for their needs.

We interviewed 15 students aged 7-14 with a vision impairment attending state, Catholic, and independent schools. We also interviewed their parents and teachers.

We are both mothers of children born blind and are aware of the diverse range of schooling experiences for such students. We wanted to investigate why the disparity occurs and how students with vision impairments can be helped.

Our interviewees taught us some new things about their experiences at school, including what they wish their peers and teachers knew about them. Here are the four key messages they wanted to communicate.

Read more: Inclusive education means all children are included in every way, not just in theory

1. Ask me what you need to know

Many teachers have never met a student who is blind. These teachers are concerned at their ability to meet the needs of students with a vision impairment.

It was clear from our interviews that students with vision impairments knew what they needed to enable them to participate in class. But they said teachers often provided the solution themselves instead of asking the students what worked best for them.

When we asked our interviewees why they didn’t offer up their own solutions, they said things like

to be honest I don’t really tell them, it’s only a hassle for them

only when it’s really important, I tell them

I have to teach them how to help me. I wish they would just ask.

One child said:

my teachers ask me – “is it better if I email you this image or worksheet, or would you like to access it the way everyone else accesses it through OneNote?” I like being given that choice.

With reference to their peers, one student told us:

it gets really awkward when a classmate doesn’t understand what my vision impairment is. If my peers knew what I could see, it would be really helpful.

From these responses, it is clear students want their teachers and classmates to have an understanding of their vision impairment and ask how to best to support them.

2. I don’t need as much protection as you think I do

Students with disabilities have the same basic needs as other students. But past research shows students with vision impairment tend to be given fewer opportunities in all areas of their life.

Although the students we interviewed felt their teachers treated them equally to others, their comments indicated they were given fewer opportunities.

One student told us:

I am not allowed to play on the monkey bars because it’s too dangerous.

Another said:

they tell me “you might hurt yourself” which pretty much means “get off” or “stop doing that”

I got told I wasn’t allowed to go down the water slide with everyone else. They were wrapping me up in cotton wool.

It’s important for teachers to have expectations of students that prepare them for the competitive job market, where people are judged equally. Students with vision impairment may need help, but they should not be excluded.

Our interviewees acknowledged they wanted to feel included but often felt like they were a burden. One student said:

I often hear [other students] say things like “why do we have to have this kid, because if we have him on our team then we have to use a special ball”.

3. Sometimes I don’t follow instructions because I can’t see them

Sometimes, teachers may assume students with a vision impairment aren’t engaging in work or following instructions. But research shows students with vision impairments often miss out on incidental information, such as non-verbal cues or instructions, that other students picked up.

Our conversations with students support this. One of our participants said when a video was being played on the whiteboard, she got “chatty because I can’t see and I get bored”.

Another student said how the teacher gave him direction to go “over there”. This student couldn’t see where the teacher was pointing, so he didn’t do as instructed.

Teachers could interpret both these responses as disrespectful behaviour. But in these instances, the students wanted to engage. They just weren’t able to access the non-verbal cues and weren’t consulted on what strategies worked best for them.

Read more: Standardised tests limit students with disability

Considering classroom activities with equitable engagement, such as videos with audio description and detailed verbal instructions, are simple ways to overcome such barriers.

4. There’s more to me than my disability

There are many variations of vision impairment which are as diverse as the individual students who have them. Research highlights the success of a student is determined by the student’s self-identity.

Our participants indicated they want teachers and friends to see them for the person they are and notice their unique interests and talents.

We asked students how they would describe themselves. Not once did they place their vision impairment as primary to their identity. They said things like:

I’m a good reader

I’m quite an active learner

I have high expectations

I am a sporty kid

I enjoy music and I play drums in the band

I’m not very good at math.

Our research shows that despite some barriers to education, students with vision impairment are being more included in mainstream classes than before. This is due, in part, to the increasing opportunities afforded by digital devices.

Strategies such as asking students how to best support them, understanding their individual needs, and encouraging social participation through an inclusive school culture can all help students with vision impairment access education on the same basis as their peers.

– ref. Four things students with vision impairment want you (their teachers and friends) to know – http://theconversation.com/four-things-students-with-vision-impairment-want-you-their-teachers-and-friends-to-know-115377

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Handley, Associate Professor in Volcanology and Geochemistry, Macquarie University

Mount Agung volcano in Bali, Indonesia, has been erupting intermittently since November 2017. The volcano erupted six times in the last month and resulted in the cancellation and delay of some flights in and out of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport.

Such continuous but sporadic volcanic activity is a challenge for local emergency management.

But it’s also an issue for planes.

Read more: Bali’s Agung – using ‘volcano forensics’ to map the past, and predict the future

Captain Mike Galvin, head of fleet operations at Qantas Australia, told us volcanic ash in the air is a concern for airlines.

“The primary issue of volcanic ash for aeroplanes is the melting of ash in the engine turbines and the blocking of sensors that measure air speed and altitude. This can result in differences in flight information displayed to each pilot,” Galvin said.

“Qantas pilots are trained in these procedures during simulator training.

“Additional problems arise from reduced visibility due to the opacity of windscreens, and contamination of air entering the cabin.”

Currently the airline industry adopts a “no fly” policy for any visible or discernible volcanic ash.

“Engine and aeroplane manufacturers will not certify any level of ash tolerance,” Galvin said.

Ash is a serious problem for planes

Mt Agung is just the latest example of volcanoes interrupting flights in Indonesia and other countries.

In April 2010, an eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland caused disruption to European air traffic for several days and cost the aviation industry an estimated US$250 million per day.

Volcanic ash is made up of volcanic glass, crystals and other rock fragments less than 2mm in size. Ash from explosive eruptions can reach into the stratosphere – 10-20km above the volcano, which is within the cruising altitude of commercial aircraft – and be dispersed by winds up to thousands of kilometres away.

The 1982 eruption of Mt Galunggung in Java, Indonesia, clearly demonstrated the potential impact of volcanic ash to aircraft.

Flight BA009 en route to Perth from Kuala Lumpur flew through ash from the eruption. This caused sulfurous fumes to enter the cabin and the failure of all four engines, which fortunately restarted after a dive to lower altitude.

Keeping watch on volcanic ash in the skies

Following several aviation encounters with volcanic ash in the 1980s, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), established nine volcanic ash advisory centres (VAACs), in Anchorage, Buenos Aires, Darwin, London, Montreal, Tokyo, Toulouse, Washington, and Wellington.

The role of the VAACs is to provide advice to the aviation industry about the location and movement of volcanic ash within their region. The VAACs gather information issued from local volcano observatories, satellite imagery and other available information such as volcano webcams, pilot reports, and online news.

VAACs perform detailed modelling for individual eruptions and issue images in the shape of a polygon (“ash polygon”) showing current ash-affected air, and where ash is predicted to move over the next few hours.

The Darwin VAAC covers the volcanically active regions of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the southern Philippines.

How airlines manage risk

Qantas’ Mike Galvin said he makes safety decisions based on information gathered by his team using all available sources.

With regards to Bali’s Mt Agung, Galvin said getting the timing right is an important aspect of the process.

“Here in Australia we might be 5-6 hours away from the ash in Indonesia so we need to make decisions several hours before the plane departs,” he said.

Galvin works closely with the Darwin and Tokyo VAACs.

“But we also have our own team of five meteorologists on constant shifts, who utilise information from other sources such as satellite images from the Japanese Himawari satellite,” he said.

“If a polygon of ash lies over the destination airport or on its approach or departure path, then we will not land.”

How science can help

Since the Icelandic eruption there has been increased research into volcanic ash impacts on aeroplane engines and how much ash they can tolerate.

While it is possible engines can tolerate low concentrations of ash, experts don’t yet know what the precise limit of ash that a particular engine can withstand. Further research is needed to determine this.

“Science can also assist the aviation industry though better assessment of the concentrations of ash at different altitudes such as at 20,000 and 30,000 feet,” Galvin said.

In the longer term, volcano science can help airlines understand more about volcanic ash hazards and risks to particular regions. For the Asia-Pacific region, average recurrence intervals have been calculated for each magnitude of volcanic eruption. This is measured by a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI).

To put VEI in context, the eruptions in the current phase of activity at Agung have been attributed a VEI of 3 on a logarithmic scale that runs from 0 to 8. It’s estimated we have 1.4 eruptions per year of this magnitude in the Asia-Pacific region.

The 1883 Krakatau eruption in Indonesia and 1991 Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines were significantly larger, VEI 6 eruptions, which have been estimated to recur every 111 years in the region.

This raises the question of how well prepared the aviation industry is, and countries as a whole, for the next even larger VEI 7 eruption, such as that at Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which erupted 175 cubic km of fragmented volcanic material in just 24 hours.

Recent scientific research on Agung suggests that the molten rock (magma) feeding Agung volcano below may also be connected to the neighbouring volcano, Batur. The connectivity of magma plumbing systems may explain the joint eruptions of both Agung and Batur in 1963 and may present an additional volcanic hazard to consider for Bali.

– ref. How Qantas and other airlines decide whether to fly near volcanoes – http://theconversation.com/how-qantas-and-other-airlines-decide-whether-to-fly-near-volcanoes-117899

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

The winner of the Women’s World Cup on July 7 will take home more than just a trophy – there’s also US$4 million in prize money at stake, more than double the amount the US women’s team won at the previous World Cup in 2015.

Compare this to what the winner of the men’s World Cup pocketed in 2018, however: the French team earned US$38 million for that victory.

As play gets under way at the Women’s World Cup, much attention is being focused on the enormous gender gap between the two tournaments. It’s not just the winners who are disproportionately underpaid – it’s all the teams and players, and even their professional clubs.

FIFA has set aside US$30 million in total prize money for this year’s women’s tournament, while the men’s pool totalled US$400 million in 2018. In addition, FIFA gives the men’s teams US$48 million in preparation costs and distributes another US$209 million to the clubs that release players for the tournament. The women get US$11.5 million for preparation costs and US$8.4 million in club compensation.

Read more: Growth of women’s football has been a 100-year revolution – it didn’t happen overnight

In April, the Australian women’s national team, the Matildas, threatened legal action to redress the pay imbalance, citing FIFA’s own statutes that have enshrined a commitment to “gender equality”. John Didulica, CEO of Professional Footballers Australia, the trade union that represents male and female pros at the ACTU, called the pay gap:

…an imbalance of proportions only FIFA could come up with a straight face.

Gender pay gap at all levels

FIFA defends the pay imbalance with the usual claim that it reflects the difference in revenue produced by the men’s and women’s tournaments. As FIFA President Gianni Infantino so inelegantly said last year:

Maybe one day women’s football will generate more than men’s football.

Critics, however, don’t buy this argument. Because FIFA refuses to open its books fully to the public, this claim is hard to substantiate. The PFA, for one, thinks the sizeable pay gap is:

…either couched in diplomacy or politicisation … or just looking at their balance sheet, it’s totally arbitrary, it’s got no reference to any economic KPIs.

FIFA, however, is not the only culprit when it comes to pay disparity in football (or other sports, for that matter). Women’s footballers also point to pay gaps at both the club and federation level in many countries.

In fact, the world’s best player, Norway’s Ada Hegerberg, won’t even be competing at this year’s World Cup in France over a dispute with her national federation over its overall investment in and treatment of women’s football. The Norwegian Federation pledged to achieve gender parity in pay two years ago, but Hegerberg, the first-ever women’s winner of the Ballon d’Or, says more needs to be done.

In Australia, the W-League receives considerably less revenue from Football Federation Australia, which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense considering that both the men’s and women’s leagues lose money.

And despite significant increases in women’s club salaries over the past few years, there are vast inequities here, too. In 2017, Forbes published a shocking comparison that showed the Brazilian striker Neymar earned more money (US$43.8 million per year) from his club, Paris Saint Germain, than the combined salaries of all the women competing in the seven top women’s leagues (D1 Féminine, Frauen Bundesliga, FA Women’s Super League, the National Women’s Soccer League, Damallsvenskan, the W-League, and the Liga MX Femenil).

There is a major pay gap between club salaries in Australia too. Former Socceroos star Tim Cahill, for instance, earned A$3.5 million to play for Melbourne City in 2016-17, which was more than all 181 women who competed in the W-League that year.

Read more: Change Agents: Susan Alberti and Debbie Lee on establishing a national women’s football league

What can be done to close the gap

In Ireland, Denmark, Australia and the United States, women have used industrial action to earn better pay and working conditions.

Strikes have proved effective, as well. In 2015, the Matildas refused to compete in a two-game series in the US to force the team to raise their base pay from A$21,000 per year. As midfielder Teresa Polias explained:

We’re not asking for millions of dollars. We’re asking for minimum wage, to sustain our lives off the pitch to do well on it.

Following that strike, the players successfully negotiated a pay increase, with star player Sam Kerr now earning a reported A$400,000 a year. The players’ action not only helped the Matildas earn more, but also all the women competing in the W-League.

While strikes have proved effective for some, others have turned to lawsuits. In March, the US women’s national team filed suit against the US Soccer Federation, alleging that its unequal pay for men’s and women’s footballers violated the US Equal Pay Act.

They have a strong case. In recent years, the women’s national team has outperformed the men on the field (winning three World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals) and attracted more fans to its games and generated more revenue. Yet the women can only earn a maximum of US$4,950 per friendly, while the men earn on average US$13,166 for the same type of match.

If the team wins its case, the federation might face steep fines or be forced to pay the women’s players retroactively.

Read more: Women’s World Cup: extra time to reflect on the broader injustices women and girls face

Wider gender inequality issues

The pay issue is just one of many injustices that women’s soccer players face. For instance, women routinely play in more difficult conditions than men. At the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada, players were forced to compete on artificial turf rather than grass, which many blamed for a range of injuries. At the World Cup, women also often play with fewer rest days between games, stay in less conformable accommodation, and travel in economy class.

Many women also note that FIFA and their national federations have not done enough to promote the women’s game around the world. One glaring example of this is the fact that FIFA scheduled the Women’s World Cup final this year on the same day as the finals for two other men’s tournaments – the Gold Cup and Copa America.

While many obstacles remain, the success that women’s footballers have had in challenging the status quo has inspired athletes in other sports to fight for their rights too. Earlier this year, 200 of the world best women’s ice hockey players vowed not to play in any professional leagues in North America this season until they are paid a living wage and provided with health insurance.

The Women’s World Cup in France provides one of the biggest stages for women’s soccer players to state their case for pay equity. In 2017, the Swedish women’s national team turned heads when they took their names off the back of their jerseys and replaced them with empowering messages for young girls. What might the US women’s team or the Matildas do when (and if) they get their time in the spotlight in the final in Paris?

– ref. The gender pay gap for the FIFA World Cup is US$370 million. It’s time for equity – http://theconversation.com/the-gender-pay-gap-for-the-fifa-world-cup-is-us-370-million-its-time-for-equity-118400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melinda Martin-Khan, Senior research fellow, The University of Queensland

In Australia, an average baby boy born in 2016 could expect to live to 80, while a baby girl born at the same time could expect to live until closer to 85. A similar gap in life expectancy between men and women is seen around the world.

As we better understand why people die, we’re learning how biological and behavioural factors may partly explain why women live longer than men.

Scientific advancements also impact the health of women and men differently.

Read more: Australian women outlive men then struggle with disadvantage

Biology and behaviour

While women may live longer than men, they report more illnesses, more doctor visits and more hospital stays than men. This is known as the morbidity-mortality paradox (that is, women are sicker but live longer).

One explanation is that women suffer from illnesses less likely to kill them. Examples of chronic non-fatal illnesses more common in women include migraines, arthritis and asthma. These conditions may lead to poorer health, but don’t increase a woman’s risk of premature or early death.

But men are more susceptible to health conditions that can kill them. For example, men tend to have more fat surrounding their organs (called visceral fat) and women tend to have more fat under their skin (called subcutaneous fat). Visceral fat is a risk factor for coronary heart disease, the leading underlying cause of death for Australian men.

Coronary heart disease, which results from a combination of biological factors and lifestyle habits, is a major reason for the difference in mortality between men and women.

Other biological factors may contribute to men ageing faster than women, but these remain to be fully understood. For example, testosterone in men contributes to their generally larger bodies and deeper voices. In turn, this may accelerate the age-related changes in their bodies compared to women.

On the flip side, women may have a slight advantage from protective factors connected with oestrogen. Coronary heart disease has been observed as three times lower in women than in men before menopause, but not after, indicating that endogenous oestrogens could have a protective effect in women.

Read more: Not just about sex: throughout our bodies, thousands of genes act differently in men and women

Some behaviours that can lead to an earlier death are more common in men. Accidental deaths, including those caused by assault, poisoning, transport accidents, falls and drownings, are particularly high among young males aged 15-24.

Men also have a greater tendency to smoke, eat poorly and avoid exercise. These habits lead to often fatal chronic illnesses, including stroke and type 2 diabetes, and are also risk factors for dementia.

Developments in science and public health

Many scientific discoveries have led to improved clinical practice or changes in government health policies that have benefited the lives of women.

For example, innovations in birth control have enabled greater choice and control over family size and timing. This has resulted in fewer pregnancies that may have led to dangerous births, and improved general physical and mental health for women. Improved clinical care has resulted in fewer women dying during childbirth.

Public health programs such as screening for breast cancer have had impacts on life expectancy over time. Similarly, vaccines to prevent cervical cancer have now been distributed in 130 countries.

Of course, there have been similar public health policies and clinical innovations that have benefited men too, like screening for bowel caner.

So although we may have some insights, we can’t conclusively answer why women continue to live longer than men.

Mind the gap

The gap between men and women decreases the longer they live. In 2016, at birth in Australia, the gap was 4.2 years, with a male expected to die at 80 on average. But as that male gets older, the gap decreases to 2.7 years at age 65, to one year at age 85 and to just 0.3 years at age 95.

This suggests men who live to an older age have been able to avoid certain health risks, giving them a greater prospect of a longer life.

Read more: Indigenous health leaders helped give us a plan to close the gap, and we must back it

Ultimately, none of us have control of when or how we’re going to die. But paying attention to factors that we can change (such as maintaining a healthy diet, doing exercise and avoiding smoking) can reduce the risk of dying earlier from a preventable chronic disease.

While women may always live longer than men, by a year or two, men can try to make some lifestyle changes to reduce this gap. That being said, women should work towards these goals for a long and healthy life, too.

– ref. Health Check: why do women live longer than men? – http://theconversation.com/health-check-why-do-women-live-longer-than-men-117750

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David MacKenzie, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, Social Work & Social Policy, University of South Australia

When the battered body of 25-year-old Courtney Herron was found in Royal Park in Melbourne on Saturday, May 25, it was not the first time a homeless person had been killed in Melbourne. But, as with the Jill Meagher murder in 2012, this particular case has shocked the community and, according to informed sources, rattled the Victorian government.

Courtney Herron had been couch-surfing and sleeping rough. She was experiencing mental health issues and trying to deal with drug addiction. Her shocking death, an act of violence against a young woman, reminds us of the vulnerability of rough sleeping, and the disturbing and continuing reality of youth homelessness.

Some advocates are calling for a renewed focus on rough sleeping and more crisis accommodation in the major cities where homeless people are most visible. Such advocacy is well-intentioned but deeply misguided.

Read more: Homelessness soars in our biggest cities, driven by rising inequality since 2001

We need sustained housing strategies, not quick fixes

Similar proposals have been raised before. In the early 1990s, there were calls for the empty 11-storey Prince Henry Hospital complex on St Kilda Road to be turned into a shelter for the homeless.

The spectre of a new generation of homelessness shelters haunted a city in which the dormitory shelters such as “The Gill” had only recently been decommissioned. Fortunately, experienced social workers came forward to advise Melbourne City Council not to bow to loud but misguided advocacy. The proposed Prince Henry Shelter complex did not happen and the hospital was demolished in 1994.

Of course, there needs to be an efficient and effective response to rough sleeping in the Melbourne CBD and in every other capital city. Only last year Victoria’s Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Plan was launched, backed by a A$9.8 million Towards Home package, “to provide housing and support to an increasing number of people sleeping rough across inner Melbourne”.

The fact is that the goal of housing rough sleepers has not been achieved, despite many attempts over the years. Could it be that a kneejerk symptomatic response from government, which so often falls short of strategic action, is part of the problem?

Developing more crisis accommodation seems to make common sense, which is probably why such proposals continue to be raised. Crisis accommodation supports people who are currently homeless. It has an immediate and short-term impact, but cannot reduce homelessness.

So what needs to be done?

If we are seriously to reduce homelessness in a sustained way, counterintuitive thinking and action are required, not simplistic “common sense”.

Pouring more public funds into crisis accommodation simply treats the symptoms of the problem. But it does not contribute to a reformed service system that can begin to make serious inroads into reducing the problem. According to the National Report Card on Youth Homelessness, issued in March 2019, two of the four key policy imperatives are:

1. to stem the flow of young people into homelessness or early intervention
2. to get young people out of homelessness as quickly as possible by providing rapid rehousing options and an accessible and affordable youth housing sector for young people who have become homeless and have nowhere to return to.

Read more: Youth homelessness efforts get a lowly 2 stars from national report card

The current service system is mostly a crisis response. Early intervention capacity is grossly underdeveloped and youth housing options are limited.

In general, we don’t need more crisis services, but we do need much greater early intervention and youth housing capacity.

While we don’t know the detailed circumstances of how Courtney Herron came to be sleeping rough, there would have been many opportunities to avert her descent into homelessness. But, even if that were not practicable, she should never have been left to sleep out in Royal Park. The sad, most likely scenario is that her death will not bring on strategic reform but only more short-term crisis responses and a push to get more homeless people off the streets quickly.

On the other hand, this tragic death could be a catalyst for real change. We need to do much more. More to the point, we could and should do so much better.

– ref. Look beyond crisis accommodation so people like Courtney Herron aren’t homeless in the first place – http://theconversation.com/look-beyond-crisis-accommodation-so-people-like-courtney-herron-arent-homeless-in-the-first-place-118182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leigh Boucher, Senior Lecturer – Modern History, Macquarie University

Queerdom, an exhibition showing at the Imperial Hotel in Erksineville, is an arresting and unsettling archive of queer and trans performances in Sydney.

A collaboration between photographer Jamie James and poet Quinn Eades, working here as James Eades, Queerdom presents a history of sexual and gender transgression that refuses containment and comfort. Instead, these works ask much more probing questions about the hard work of living and performing on the sexual and gender margins.

The exhibition aims to present what the artists term a “queertrans” history, from the 1990s until today – this term is a deliberate attempt by the artists to put these identities, practices and experiences into productive dialogue with each other.

Each work pairs a photograph of a queer or trans (or both) performance with poetry. In one sense this is an exhibition about live performances; stages and performers at the Imperial in Erskineville, Performance Space in Redfern, the Albury Hotel in Paddington, and Tap Gallery in Darlinghurst loom large.

Implicitly, the exhibition delineates a historical geography of queer performance – of dissidence moving westward, as queer alternatives have been pushed from Darlinghurst and Surry Hills to Redfern, Erskineville and Marrickville by rising rents and the cultural homogenisation that so often accompanies them. That this exhibition is taking place at the Imperial is a reminder of how important and vulnerable those spaces can be.

We see “Glitta Supernova” leaning back on stage at Fetish Ball in 1996, screaming in delight as she sprays orange liquid, Berocca we are assured, over her audience – and not from her mouth. “What’s so terrifying about piss”, we are asked. And what might happen if we just “let ourselves taste it … could we just acquiesce?”

Life on the margins

While this might be an exhibition about performance, words work in tandem and tension with these photographs to produce intimate accounts of life on the margins of the sexual and gender order more broadly. This exhibition has much to say about the emotional life of its subjects.

As any historian will tell you, archives are not simply repositories of data from the past – they are mediated representations of historical knowledge. This archive provokes and unsettles what we might expect to see in an exhibition about gender and sexuality, as we might well expect a queer project to do.

In one sense, Queerdom is a powerful riposte to the comforting narratives that abounded in the campaign for same-sex marriage and its aftermath. Leaders in this campaign, as well as the exhibitions shaped by its politics during the 2018 Mardi Gras, tended to mobilise a story in which sexual minorities were making the final steps towards love, happiness and acceptance.

The story works something like this: sexual minorities in the past were caught in the trap of socially imposed shame and loneliness, unable to express and manifest their sexual and gender identities in public. The hard work of activism since the 1970s, not least in projects that spoke the language of liberation and pride, has offered a route to happiness and love. Gay and lesbian life, we are so often told, is all about love and a happy, shining couple finally able to get married.

This intimate exhibition of exuberant and modest moments has more challenging and discomforting things to say.

We see Kimo and Teik-Kim Pok, backstage at Carriageworks during the performance series Quick and Dirty in 2009, looking tired and confused, one performer wrapped in a towel with furrowed brow, the other looking pensively into a mirror.

This is not the golden couple of marriage equality. These friends (or lovers, or maybe just performers):

turn to face each other / to catch a mirror’s silvered kiss / take steel into delicate throat / swallow a quiet sword or seven / say this is acceptance and not regret

Of course, some of the pieces here can be yoked to a story of pride and celebration. There is a heathy dose of queer fabulosity on display. Photographs abound of performances exploding with pleasure and the thrill of gender and sexual transgression, however the poetry works hard to force the viewer to think carefully about what they are seeing and the easy thrill they might get from the labour of others.

While some critics might suggest the inclusion of poetry alongside these photographs makes their meaning rigid, leaving less space for ambiguity, these words do precisely the opposite – they force you to stop, they ask you questions.

A photograph of the performance “Axis of Evil” at Carriageworks in 2009 captures the performers back stage, in the familiar setting of a mirror-filled and clothes-strewn dressing room. Sinewy arms protrude and make up runs down faces.

after crimson ribbons / five bodies bringing the house down / the thunk of twenty limbs on a juddering stage // now doubled in the dressing room / now grinning in the aftermath / now coming down in the detrius

Through the inclusion of moments offstage, Queerdom asks us to consider the emotional cost of living and performing in ways where the narrative destination might not be a happy couple with easily recognisable gender identities. These are moments on the edges of difference.

We see performers looking wrung out, collapsing into one and other while also looking uncertain about what these moments might mean.

Here, life looks exhilarating, but also exhausting. Living in ways that don’t conform to the stories we like to tell about gender, sexuality and intimacy isn’t just a struggle for recognition. It’s the struggle against the terms under which that recognition is proffered – the desperate work of trying to exist and thrive in ways that make others so very uncomfortable.

“You know they’re still saying we’re monsters”, James Eades points out in the poem “taking the coverings off”. Maybe a bit of unsettling monstrosity is what we should be working towards, even if it is sometimes terrifying and exhausting.

Queerdom is showing upstairs at the Imperial Hotel, Erskineville until June 30.

– ref. An intimate, arresting exhibition highlights the hard work of living queer – http://theconversation.com/an-intimate-arresting-exhibition-highlights-the-hard-work-of-living-queer-118176

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Apo Aporosa, Post-doctoral research fellow, University of Waikato

The Australian government is considering an increase in the amount of kava travellers can bring into the country. The consultation process includes a proposed pilot program to ease restrictions on kava importation for personal use from two to four kilograms per person.

Many Australian residents, especially those with Pacific Island heritage, will welcome this, but the proposal is based on fundamentally flawed evidence.

In submissions to Australia’s Office of Drug Control, the governments of Fiji and Vanuatu have argued that significantly higher amounts should be allowed.

Australia’s restrictions on kava are based on concerns about its misuse in remote communities. But the government’s policy is imperialistic and ignores evidence about kava use, side effects and cultural significance.

Read more: Words from Arnhem land: Aboriginal health messages need to be made with us rather than for us

Kava: the sociable drink

Kava (Piper methysticum) is widely cultivated by Pacific Island communities for its root, which is ground up and mixed with water to make a beverage for ceremonies and other cultural settings.

Kava contains kavalactones, psychoactive ingredients that create a relaxed yet clear-headed state in the drinker. Unlike alcohol, it does not cause marked euphoria or lead to emotional changes, such as disinhibition. It is also not addictive.

Many Pacific Island communities now produce a powdered form of the root, which is exported for medical and social purposes all over the world.

Australian regulations on kava date from 1997, when a 2kg limit was introduced on the amount of kava passengers could bring into Australian without a permit. In 2007, a complete ban on kava was introduced in the Northern Territory. The 2kg limit remains in other parts of Australia.

Controlling kava

The government’s move to regulate kava followed “concerns” about kava abuse within Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. Kava was originally introduced into these communities in the 1980s as part of a suite of measures aimed at reducing the harm caused by alcohol.

Opinion pieces published following kava’s introduction referred to all-night binges and illicit mixing of alcohol and kava. The government seized on this as grounds for introducing the Northern Territory ban, despite a lack of coherent evidence to support the reports, and praise for kava’s role in reducing alcohol-related violence.

This imperialistic policy has continued, with widespread negative consequences. Reports show that the inability to access kava has led to substance switching, with far more serious drugs being used instead.

This has affected the Aboriginal communities the restrictions were designed to protect as well as Pacific Island communities throughout Australia. For them, kava is more than a pleasant drink.

Read more: Ken Wyatt faces challenges – and opportunities – as minister for Indigenous Australians

Flawed consultation process

It is concerning that the flawed understanding that underpinned the introduction of Australia’s kava regulations persists in the current pilot program. This is evident in the information put forward for consultation and in the proposed changes.

The consultation is being couched as recognition of “the cultural and economic importance of kava to Pacific Islanders”, but health and social impacts of kava continue to be misrepresented. Examples include frequent references to kava having toxic health effects. Such claims of toxicity have been refuted recently and demonstrate an entrenched lack of understanding of alternative cultural perspectives.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has found, as recently as 2016, that both research and historical evidence show that:

It is possible for kava beverage to be consumed with an acceptably low level of health risk.

Similarly, the characterisation of the “dry and scaly skin” that can follow kava consumption as a “toxic effect” is misplaced. Kava dermopathy is a common and well understood side effect of prolonged kava use. It is known to be harmless and reversible. Some Pacific people see it as a positive demonstration of the individual’s engagement with their culture.

The unnecessary linking of kava dermopathy with toxicity shows that the attitudes and policy that underpin the consultation continue to be culturally skewed, based on outdated understanding of kava’s cultural significance.

Kava as culture, identity

This lack of understanding is most evident in the section dealing with “social impacts of kava use”. The first matter discussed refers to illicit markets for kava and their adverse community impacts. This maintains the negative connotations of kava.

Although kava’s ability to promote “fellowship and companionship” is mentioned, it is followed by a reference to “relationship distress” through kava use. A large body of research demonstrates that kava is not addictive and that its psychoactive properties are neither hallucinogenic nor stupefying.

If people choose to spend their time drinking kava, it is exactly that: a choice. Some people choose to spend time on other recreational activities, including gaming, watching television and playing on their phones, and these choices may cause “relationship distress” as well, but it doesn’t make these activities ripe for regulation.

What the consultation fails to understand is that the significance of kava drinking in Pacific Island communities, wherever they are located, goes far beyond its social aspects. Kava represents an ingestible manifestation of culture and identity, considered by many to be transferring spiritual power. Particularly for diasporic communities, kava circles provide a cultural classroom where respect, language and traditions are taught and reinforced.

Turning kava into a scapegoat through unnecessary regulation has ongoing adverse impacts for Pacific and Aboriginal communities throughout Australia.

– ref. Australia’s discussion of kava imports reflects lack of cultural understanding – http://theconversation.com/australias-discussion-of-kava-imports-reflects-lack-of-cultural-understanding-115662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, The University of Queensland

A few days ago, Waleed Aly asked a not-so-rhetorical question in The Sydney Morning Herald. He wondered how many Australians were worried about the fact that the Australian Federal Police had spent a good portion of this week raiding the offices and homes of journalists who’ve published stories clearly in the public interest.

His conclusion? Not many. He went on to argue that it is because we have developed a culture of accepting excessive state power, with no real thought about the consequences for civil liberties or the functioning of our democracy.

Sadly, I would have to agree with Aly, but as with so many surveys, the answer you get depends on the question you ask.

What if we asked, “Hands up who feels comfortable with relying on the Facebook posts and Twitter feeds of our politicians and departmental spokespeople for information about what our government is up to? Who thinks that is a good way to run a democracy?” Then, I bet you’d get a very different answer.

Read more: Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy

I agree that Australian media are hardly trusted by the public, but I am also convinced that most Australians recognise the need for some kind of independent watchdog keeping track of politicians and the government on our behalf. It might be imperfect and messy, but a free press has performed that role well enough to keep us broadly on track for much of our history.

Earlier this week, my colleague and fellow University of Queensland researcher Rebecca Ananian-Welsh laid out the intricate web of national security laws passed in recent years that collectively serve to straight-jacket journalists and threaten legitimate whistle-blowing.

In a number of research projects, we have been looking at both these laws and their impact on reporting, and while we still have a long way to go, the early results suggest something deeply troubling.

While they may have helped shore up national security, the laws have also led to a net loss of transparency and accountability. It has become harder for journalists to reach and protect sources and keep track of wrong-doing by government officials. It has also become harder for them to safely publish in the public interest without risking long years in prison or cripplingly expensive and traumatic court cases.

Read more: Five reasons terror laws wreck media freedom and democracy

An overhaul of Australia’s legal landscape

My organisation, the Alliance for Journalists Freedom, has published a white paper that offers a better way of balancing those two crucial elements of our democracy – national security and press freedom.

The most important of its seven recommendations is a Media Freedom Act. Australia has no legal or constitutional protection for press freedom. It isn’t even formally recognised in law; the High Court has merely inferred that we have a right to “political communication.”

That needs to change. The AJF is proposing a law that would write press freedom into the DNA of our legal system. It would both prevent our legislators from unnecessarily restricting journalists from doing their jobs and give judges a benchmark they can use whenever they are adjudicating cases that deal with media freedom issues.

That alone isn’t enough though. The second recommendation in the white paper calls for changes to the national security laws themselves.

Currently, many of the current laws that Ananian-Welsh laid out in her article include a “public interest” defence for journalists. But as we have seen in this week’s raids, that does nothing to stop the AFP from trawling through journalists’ documents for sources and forcing everyone into court.

Read more: Media raids raise questions about AFP’s power and weak protection for journalists and whistleblowers

Instead, there should be an exemption for journalists and their sources when reporting on matters of public interest.

That isn’t to suggest that journalists should be immune, though. Rather, the onus should be shifted to the authorities to show why the public interest defence should not apply. It is also important that the exemption include whistleblowers.

Beyond national security, there are a host of other laws that have contributed to a wide culture of secrecy at odds with the principles of open government.

Payouts under defamation laws now routinely run to millions, potentially destroying news organisations and chilling further investigative work. Shield laws that allow journalists to protect their sources in court are also inconsistent across states and need to be strengthened.

Suppression orders that judges use to smother reporting of certain court cases are being applied with alarming frequency and urgently need review. And whistleblower legislation needs to be strengthened to encourage and protect anybody speaking out about wrongdoing in government or elsewhere.

While the raids of the past week have been shocking, they have forced us all to think again about the role of the media in a democracy. If it leads to better legislation that both protects national security and media freedom, then some good might have come out of it after all.

– ref. To protect press freedom, we need more public outrage – and an overhaul of our laws – http://theconversation.com/to-protect-press-freedom-we-need-more-public-outrage-and-an-overhaul-of-our-laws-118457

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

Sign up to the Beating Around the Bush newsletter here, and suggest a plant we should cover at batb@theconversation.edu.au.

In Dr Seuss’s The Lorax, his titular character famously said:

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

In the midst of a global extinction crisis, the Lorax’s call to preserve what is precious couldn’t be more apt. The greatest threat to the survival of species globally continues to be habitat destruction and modification.

Read more: The ring trees of Victoria’s Watti Watti people are an extraordinary part of our heritage

A potential and local victim of this ongoing environmental catastrophe is a single tree, and a tree I have a deep personal connection with. The tree I refer to is Bulleen’s iconic 300-year-old river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis).

To me this tree has been a constant in my life. While everything else has changed around me, it has stood there, solid, just as solid as its red gum fibres are known to be.

As a child I fondly remember looking up at this tree in awe, as we’d often stop at the nearby service station on a hot summer’s day to buy a cold drink or ice-cream on the way to Saturday sport, the nearby Birrarung (Yarra River), or my grandmother’s house.

Bulleen’s majestic river red gum

It’s estimated to be approximately 20 metres in height with a canopy spread of 17 metres. And its trunk measures a whopping two metres across.

The tree is thought to be the oldest remnant of a once substantial red gum forest, and was saved by a local resident when the rest of the area was cleared for the construction of a service station.

It now faces destruction, as it is within the preferred path of construction for Victoria’s North East link.

Read more: How I discovered the Dalveen Blue Box, a rare eucalypt species with a sweet, fruity smell

While the measurements of this tree are impressive, the splendour and value for me is that it has survived for so long and, in more recent times, against tremendous odds.

Surviving against all odds

The Bulleen red gum stands beside one of Melbourne’s busiest roads and the immediate area is covered with concrete and bitumen. The tree’s roots and health have therefore been challenged for a long time, and yet this massive red gum stands, as if in defiance of the modern world and the development that has encircled it.

Since this tree has survived for so long, it undoubtedly holds a special connection with so many: the Wurundjeri-willam people of the Kulin Nation, members of Australia’s famed Heidelberg school of artists who lived and worked in the near vicinty, everyday commuters that have driven or walked by or stopped to admire it, or the war verteran Nevin Phillips who once apparently defended it with his rifle against it being chainsawed.

Further proof of the value of this tree to so many is that it was awarded The National Trust of Australia’s (Victoria) 2019 Victorian Tree of the Year.

Why we must speak for and save old trees

I grew up near this tree and, like the Lorax, I would like to speak for it.
Trees as old as the Bulleen river red gum are now increasingly rare in our world, and beyond their strong personal and cultural values, including in some places as Aboriginal birthing sites, they are tremendously important for other reasons as well.

Read more: Vic Stockwell’s Puzzle is an unlikely survivor from a different epoch

These trees provide shade and help keep our cities cooler, improve our mental health and wellbeing, and store considerable amounts of carbon aiding our fight against climate change.

Perhaps most importantly, under their bark and in their cracks and hollows, they provide homes for many of Australia’s precious but increasingly imperilled native wildlife, including bats, birds, possums and gliders, snakes and lizards, insects and spiders.

These homes are prime wildlife real estate, especially in our big cities, where such large old trees are vanishingly rare but where considerable wildlife, common and threatened, still persists. And yet more could survive with a helping hand from us.

As cities like Melbourne continue to grow around the world, there will be more and more cases where arguments of progress are used to justify the further destruction of what nature remains. But progress shouldn’t come at any cost, and in the case of preserving iconic and valuable trees such as Bulleen’s river red gum, it would seem there’s more than enough reasons to ensure this tree’s life and its many values continue.

Perhaps again the wise sage, the Lorax, says it best.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. This centuries-old river red gum is a local legend – here’s why it’s worth fighting for – http://theconversation.com/this-centuries-old-river-red-gum-is-a-local-legend-heres-why-its-worth-fighting-for-117666

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wilson, Associate professor, University of Wollongong

Buying the contraceptive pill from the pharmacy without a prescription, as is being considered by Australia’s drug regulator, might be convenient for women or even save the health system money. But it risks women’s health for a number of reasons.

After determining the most appropriate form of contraception with each woman, it’s important for a doctor to monitor potential side effects. In bypassing their GPs to get the pill directly from the pharmacy, women could lose out on reproductive health care and preventive health care more broadly.

Read more: How to choose the right contraceptive pill for you

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) classifies medicines into schedules that determine whether they’re available “over the counter”, or can only be dispensed with a prescription. Currently, the contraceptive pill is Schedule 4. Women need a new prescription for the pill each year.

The TGA recently held consultations about whether the contraceptive pill, among other medicines, should be made available over the counter (Schedule 3).

Pharmacists have suggested reclassifying the contraceptive pill to Schedule 3 would reduce the need for trips to the doctor, saving time and lowering costs.

But to continue to provide a high standard of reproductive health care, Australian doctors should still be required to prescribe the pill.

Contraceptive choice

There are many different contraceptive pills, with varying dosage of synthetic hormones. These hormones “switch off” ovulation, preventing pregnancy (although not 100% of the time).

A GP consultation to discuss the pill requires considerable time taking the patient’s history, measuring her blood pressure and weight, and discussing contraceptive options.

There may be a number of reasons a particular woman should not take the pill. A doctor will work with the patient to determine the choice of contraception that’s going to best meet her needs. The pill is only one of many modern contraceptive options.

If a woman chooses the pill, regular monitoring by her GP is important.

While the pill is usually well tolerated and safe, common side effects can include bloating, fluid retention, breast tenderness and nausea. Serious complications from the pill are rare, but can include blood clots or, more rarely, heart attack and stroke.

Although the risk of heart attack or stroke is small, it is heightened when the pill is prescribed without regular blood pressure monitoring.

One review of the results of 24 studies found the risk of high blood pressure increased by 13% for every five years a woman was on the pill.

An annual GP consultation offers an opportunity to discuss and monitor any pill side effects, as well as each woman’s individual contraceptive needs.

Continuity of care

When women visit the doctor to get a new prescription, it also offers an important opportunity to discuss reproductive health and general well-being.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners suggests a number of preventive activities should be provided for women of reproductive age, including blood pressure checks and discussions about weight and physical activity.

Read more: Making more drugs available ‘over the counter’ would be a win for the public and the health care system

GPs have also often developed a trusted therapeutic relationship with their patients over several years. This means they are well positioned to manage sensitive and interrelated issues, including relationships, mental health, sexual health, contraception, smoking, alcohol and drug use.

Annual consultations also offer an opportunity to provide education around women’s health issues such as cervical and breast cancer screening.

Health benefit versus risks in rescheduling the pill

The authors of a study published last month hypothesised that reclassifying the contraceptive pill from Schedule 4 to Schedule 3 might save the health system A$96 million a year and perhaps 22 lives over 35 years.

But they also acknowledged possible adverse health impacts from rescheduling the pill. These include 122 more cases of sexually transmitted infection, 97 more cases of depression, five more strokes and four more heart attacks each year.

Preventive health advice from the GP can have significant individual health benefits in the long term, which can also save the health system money.

For example, roughly 67% of Australians aged 18 and over are overweight or obese, including many women who take the pill.

Cost-effectiveness research on obesity has found interventions aimed at tackling obesity by improving diet and increasing physical activity through health education and counselling in primary care (that is, GP visits) are effective in improving health and longevity, and are more cost-effective than treating chronic diseases once they emerge.

Read more: Over-the-counter contraceptive pill could save the health system $96 million a year

Investment in women’s health has practical benefits across a range of areas, including nutrition, management of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, screening and management of cervical and breast cancer, gender-based violence prevention and response, and pre-pregnancy risk detection and management.

It is naive and potentially dangerous to attempt to separate the potential health and cost benefits derived from pharmacy access to the contraceptive pill from the health and cost benefit of comprehensive reproductive and broader health care provided for women in the primary care setting.

Doctors and pharmacists have a role

Australian pharmacists are not trained to conduct consultations regarding contraceptive options and reproductive health. These are more appropriately conducted in mainstream general practice, or in specialised women’s health clinics.

But pharmacists do know a great deal about the range of contraceptive medications that are prescribed by doctors, and have an important role in educating women about correct medication use and potential side effects.

Education by both GPs and pharmacists is vital for Australian women to understand the diverse range of contraceptive options available to them, and how their informed choice of contraceptive method can best fit into a healthy lifestyle during their reproductive years.

Read more: Freer sex and family planning: a short history of the contraceptive pill

– ref. Leave pill prescribing to GPs, not pharmacists, for the sake of women’s health – http://theconversation.com/leave-pill-prescribing-to-gps-not-pharmacists-for-the-sake-of-womens-health-118120

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

University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Geoff Crisp speaks with Michelle Grattan about the week in politics. They discuss Labor’s shadow cabinet, including Shorten’s new role in the area of the NDIS where he will be going up against Stewart Robert. They also talk about the Reserve Bank’s decision to cut interest rates to 1.25% and the two raids this week on journalists conducted by the Australian Federal Police.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Labor’s shadow cabinet – and the media raids – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-labors-shadow-cabinet-and-the-media-raids-118454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hall, Senior Researcher in Politics, Auckland University of Technology

When you’re in politics, words are a high-stakes game. Voters and journalists hold you to them and there is a risk in using words that are hard to live up to. This is particularly true for politicians whose reputation is founded on sincerity and authenticity.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saddled herself with the word “transformational”. She used it heavily in the heady days of the 2017 election campaign, although less so in the compromised reality of a coalition government. Still, it is the aspiration she is held to. The 2019 well-being budget is held to it by association.

But how do we know transformation when we see it?

Read more: The search for an alternative to GDP to measure a nation’s progress – the New Zealand experience

Beyond the status quo

Obviously, transformation must go beyond the status quo. But to be transformative, it must also go beyond mere reform.

A reform agenda recognises that trouble is brewing, that social, economic and environmental trends are on the wrong track. It accepts that major changes to policy and lifestyle may be required. As sustainable development research shows, it does “not locate the root of the problem in the nature of present society, but in imbalances and a lack of knowledge and information”.

It tends to reach for existing policy levers, and to hang its hopes on technical solutions. It reacts to the toughest choices by devising new frameworks for analysing them.

The well-being budget easily goes this far. Finance minister Grant Robertson is entitled to say, as he did in his budget speech, that this is a government “not satisfied with the status quo”.

Most important, New Zealand’s well-being approach de-centres GDP as the principal measure of national success, using instead the multi-dimensional living standards framework. In doing so, Ardern’s government has acted upon doubts that are as old as GDP itself, and gained traction in the years after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

As economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi argued in their influential analysis of what went wrong:

What we measure affects what we do; and if our measurements are flawed, decisions may be distorted.

By arguing for more nuanced national accounting that captures quality of life, they made a case for reform that Ardern’s government is putting into practice.

Beyond reform

A transformative agenda goes further. It sees problems as rooted in the present structure of society. It isn’t only about managing the flaws and oversights of the dominant system, but overturning the system itself. This involves an order of ambition that the well-being budget lacks.

Consider, for instance, its centrepiece investment: NZ$455 million (over four years) for a new frontline service for mental health. This is vital support for those in need, complemented by wider reforms recommended by He Ara Oranga, the report of the inquiry into mental health and addiction.

But its primary focus is to address existing suffering. It doesn’t aim for the socioeconomic or historical causes of many people’s misery and strain. Other aspects of government policy may do, such as the Provincial Growth Fund, by creating meaningful jobs in places where opportunities are low and shame or whakamā are high.

But whether you think this is adequate depends on how you answer the big questions about the structure of the economy, distribution of power and decolonisation. This is undoubtedly the territory of transformational politics, but the well-being budget only touches the edges.

Just transitions

There is another word for change that the prime minister sides with: not “transformation” but just transition. This is the idea that socioeconomic change should be guided by principles of justice, such as equity and inclusivity, to minimise the disruption that change can bring. The aim of a just transition is to achieve revolution without revolt.

The concept is prominent in climate change policy – and the well-being budget delivers projects to support these objectives, including a clean energy development centre in Taranaki, sustainable land-use funding to enable the shift to low-emissions landscapes, and an extended budget line for just transition planning.

Read more: NZ Budget 2019: support for lower-emission business, transport, land use

But Ardern obviously sees the idea of a just transition as more broadly relevant, contrasting it with the “rapid, uncaring change” of structural reforms in 1980s New Zealand. To my mind, this better captures the temper of this government – not transformational, but potentially transitional.

As the well-being approach is bedded in – not only with policy wonks but also business and community leaders, and the voting public – it will loosen GDP’s grip on the minds of decision makers. GDP will be repositioned as only one among many indicators that ought to inform political judgement. Then political leaders can be confidently ambitious, not only with their words, but also their actions.

– ref. NZ has dethroned GDP as a measure of success, but will Ardern’s government be transformational? – http://theconversation.com/nz-has-dethroned-gdp-as-a-measure-of-success-but-will-arderns-government-be-transformational-118262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heshani Edirisinghe, PhD student, Massey University

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Why don’t ladybirds have tails? – Lotte, aged 2.

Thank you, Lotte, for this great question.

Let’s start by thinking about animals that do have tails and what they have in common.

Dogs, elephants, cats, birds, monkeys, and fish – they all have tails and use them for many different things like balancing, swishing flies away, or hanging onto things. And what do all these animals have in common? A backbone!

That’s because a tail is actually an extension of a backbone. (Humans used to have tails! Our early ancestors did but then we changed over time and now only a little stump of a “tailbone” remains.)

So to answer your question, ladybirds do not have tails because they do not have a backbone.

They have something called an “exoskeleton” instead. I will explain what that word means.

Read more: Curious Kids: If an insect is flying in a car while it is moving, does the insect have to move at the same speed?

Insects have their skeletons on the outside

Exoskeleton means a skeleton that is on the outside. And ladybirds are a type of insect – just like beetles, bees, stick insects, and flies.

An insect’s exoskeleton is a hard outer shell that protects important stuff on the inside of their body (like its stomach, and special tubes that help it breathe).

Parts of the ladybird body

A ladybird’s body is divided into three sections: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.

The head has eyes, mouthparts, and antennae. Antennae help them sense what’s in front of them and how far away it is.

The thorax is where all the legs and wings are connected to the body. Ladybirds have six legs and two pairs of wings.

The tough pair of outer wings is tough is called the “elytra”. The second pair is hidden underneath and ladybirds stretch these wings out only when they need to fly.

Bright colour means ‘don’t touch!’

Ladybirds come in red, orange, yellow, blue, brown, and black. Most of them have black dots or patterns on them.

We think that ladybirds use their colours to warn other animals (like birds or spiders) to not to eat them. They’re using their bright colour to send a message that says “Hey! I taste bad, so don’t eat me!”

Their predators recognise what these colours mean and avoid eating them.

Ladybirds are beautiful and smart, aren’t they?

Read more: In red and black, the genetics of ladybug spots

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

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: why don’t ladybirds have tails? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-dont-ladybirds-have-tails-117749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Valentin Christiaens, Research Fellow in Astrophysics, Monash University

When Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first spotted four moons of Jupiter through a telescope, he realised that not everything goes around the Earth, as was the prevailing theory in 1610.

The presumed origin of the Galilean moons was in a swirling circumplanetary disc of gas and dust around the newborn Jupiter.

But evidence of a circumplanetary disc eluded astronomers, despite an intensive search. Until now.

Read more: How we found a white dwarf – a stellar corpse – by accident

We detected the first evidence for one of these discs in the form of an infrared glow around a baby planet called PDS 70 b, the details published in two papers this week.

It was not easy to find

The discovery required one of the largest telescopes on Earth (the creatively named Very Large Telescope in Chile), a sophisticated spectrograph (SINFONI) to acquire images at different wavelengths in the infrared, and new image-processing algorithms developed specifically for the dataset we gathered.

The newborn planet orbits a star called PDS 70, which is young and relatively close to us (a trifling 369 light years away) in what is known as the Upper Centaurus–Lupus star-forming region of the Milky Way.

The star is just a baby itself, less than 10 million years old. In stellar terms PDS 70 is barely out of nappies (our Sun is 4.6 billion years old).

Apart from its youth and proximity, the main reason we chose to study PDS 70 is that previous observations showed a large hole or gap in the disc of gas and dust surrounding the star.

This hole, covering an area almost the size of our Solar System, hints at the presence of planets orbiting the star, which are responsible for carving away the disc material.

The new images we gathered show that the gap is not entirely empty. They reveal an arc of gas, spirals and a bright blob, which had first been detected and interpreted as a baby planet in two studies published last year.

And it’s a whopper planet – about 10 times heavier than Jupiter.

In the infrared

What is new in our analysis is that we probed red light from the planet in more detail than previous studies. We were able to show for the first time that the planet’s infrared colours cannot be explained by its atmosphere alone.

Instead, this excess infrared excess suggests the presence of a circumplanetary disc, just like the one imagined as the birthplace of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons – Io, Europe, Ganymede and Callisto.

Decades ago, the same argument was used as evidence for the presence of protoplanetary discs, the dusty discs of gas around baby stars that are the birthplaces of planets themselves.

Now we can use the same techniques but on a smaller scale to see the birthplace of moons.

The tricky part is that spotting planets with a telescope is like staring into car headlights and trying to spot a firefly. We first had to model and subtract the bright glare of the star, to spot the feeble glow of the planet.

In our processed image (above) we carefully deleted the starlight (we show the location with an asterisk), revealing both the planet and faint structures in the disc surrounding the star.

Possible moons

The discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter four centuries ago gave astronomers a first hint that giant planets must form surrounded by a circumplanetary disc.

Plenty of work has been done since to try to understand their properties, but we finally have direct confirmation that they exist. It’s the culmination of a long search.

Read more: Observing the invisible: the long journey to the first image of a black hole

It’s also exciting. Our work shows that theoretical models of giant planet formation were not too far off. There is now the possibility that moons could be forming right now in the circumplanetary disc around PDS 70 b.

It’s hoped the new algorithm we developed can now be used to attempt to extract faint signals from other complex datasets of planets forming in other star systems.

It blows the mind to think we might see other planets and even moons in the process of formation, using the biggest telescope in the world. It’s just another reminder of how small and insignificant we really are.

– ref. A disc of dust and gas found around a newborn planet could be the birthplace of moons – http://theconversation.com/a-disc-of-dust-and-gas-found-around-a-newborn-planet-could-be-the-birthplace-of-moons-118260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By H. K. Colebatch, Visiting Professorial Fellow, UNSW

One thing we learned from the recent election campaign is that the political crisis over Section 44 of the Constitution has not gone away.

Many candidates in the election had their eligibility to stand for parliament questioned and some were even forced to withdraw from their races.

Despite all the attention given to this matter over the last couple of years, and the various procedures introduced to address it, Section 44 will only continue to be a problem until the parliament steps in to address it.

To do that, we first need to address seven myths about Section 44.

1. Everyone knows their citizenship, they just need to do their paperwork

Section 44 is about more than just citizenship – it covers a variety of restrictions on who can serve in parliament.

For instance, a GP who bulk-bills a patient could be considered to have a “pecuniary interest in an agreement with the Commonwealth.” And a postman or a nurse in a public hospital could be deemed to hold “an office of profit under the Crown.”

On citizenship, the section doesn’t just disqualify dual citizens, it also bars those “entitled” to citizenship elsewhere (even if they haven’t applied for it) and those “entitled to the rights and privileges” of citizenship (basically, the “right of abode”, or being entitled to enter a country and live there).

Such entitlements are not easy to discover and almost impossible to remove, because they’re embedded in foreign legislation.

Read more: How the Australian Constitution, and its custodians, ended up so wrong on dual citizenship

2. It doesn’t affect many people

On the contrary, the parliamentary committee investigating the matter estimated half the adult Australian population, or more, could be disqualified by law or impeded in practice from standing for parliament.

In the recent election, we saw one potential candidate withdraw because she was an Australia Post employee and another because she was entitled under Indian law to some privileges of Indian citizenship.

As a result, the Australian parliament becomes even less representative of the Australian people.

3. The constitution framers knew what they were doing

The original text agreed to at the constitutional convention in 1898 simply said anyone who had acquired foreign citizenship by their own act was disqualified from standing for parliament.

The text that eventually became Section 44 was inserted surreptitiously by one of the key architects of the constitution (and Australia’s first prime minister), Edmund Barton, as a drafting amendment. He introduced 400 amendments on the second-to-last day of the convention, but made no mention of this change, and expressly denied there had been any changes to Section 44 apart from a minor one to another subsection.

Read more: Could Section 44 exclude Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce from parliament?

4. The High Court has sorted it out

Far from it. Very few cases challenging Section 44 have made it that far, partly because the court has done everything possible to fend them off, including trashing the constitutional provision giving citizens the right to challenge the eligibility of parliamentarians. Politicians have also refused to refer cases to the court unless it’s advantageous to their party.

And when the court has heard a case, it has construed its task so narrowly as to give little guidance to future action on the section. In particular, it has said nothing about the disqualification of those MPs “entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship” in other countries.

In fact, when Senator Matthew Canavan’s eligibility was challenged because Italian laws had changed to permit citizenship to descendents of native Italians, the High Court noted that the law was fairly generous, but one had to apply. Canavan hadn’t applied, therefore couldn’t be an Italian citizen.

But if he had applied and then received Italian citizenship because he was eligible (as his brother had done), he would have been disqualified by Section 44.

This was all too much for the court to sort out. As a result, it offered no clarity on the large number of MPs whose eligibility hangs on what sorts of “entitlement” would disqualify them.

5. But there are administrative checks now, too

Well, yes, but nobody does anything about them. In 2017, all MPs were asked to fill out a form documenting their ancestry and citizenship, and the responses were then logged in a citizenship register. This showed some 15-20 MPs were entitled to foreign citizenship and a total of 59 had the “right of abode” in the UK, which the High Court has decided is the key to the “right and privilege” of citizenship.

But no action was taken on any of these cases. The register appears as a matter of record only.

Read more: Enough is enough on section 44: it’s time for reform

Similarly, although the Australian Electoral Commission is now requiring candidates to complete a similar form, it does not take action against those who refuse to submit it, or leave sections blank. One candidate was referred to the police, but this was clearly a pointless face-saving exercise.

6. We want our MPs to be unequivocally Australian

Having foreign ancestry does not make you un-Australian. Section 44 does nothing to establish the strength of identity or loyalty – it simply prevents an undefined, but potentially very large, slice of the population from standing for parliament.

One case illustrates the ludicrous reach of the present wording.

After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, it passed a citizenship law that gave people born outside the country to Lithuanian parents the right to citizenship. In 2016, this provision was expanded to cover those with Lithuanian grandparents. As a result, Senator Doug Cameron, whose Scottish burr we are used to hearing on news broadcasts, became eligible for Lithuanian citizenship.

While Cameron could (and did) renounce his British citizenship to qualify for election to the Australian parliament, he cannot renounce his entitlement to Lithuanian citizenship. And while some people have very strong views about Cameron, I have never heard it suggested he was working to a Lithuanian agenda rather than an Australian one.

7. It’s too hard to change the Constitution

The same thing was said about amending the Marriage Act to permit same-sex couples to marry. The public recognises there’s a problem with Section 44 and it expects the politicians to fix it.

The best shot came with the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which recommended adding the words “until the parliament otherwise provides” to Section 44. This would not change the law, just where the law is made.

Instead of disqualifications being defined by the laws in foreign countries, as the High Court has interpreted Section 44, they could be determined by the Australian parliament. This is how qualifications of senators and members are currently decided. It’s also how women got the vote in 1902.

If this proposal was strongly supported by all the parties and clearly explained to the electorate, it would likely pass in the next election.

So where does this leave us?

It all comes down to leadership. Up to now, both the Coalition and Labor have been primarily motivated by partisan advantage: how can we use Section 44 to score a political point?

The Joint Standing Committee showed that with a willingness to collaborate, there is a path forward to solving the problem. The best we can hope for is that after the trauma of the last few years, and the evidence of the continuing decline in support for the main parties, political leaders will see that acting constructively on Section 44 might actually be in the best interests of both parties.

– ref. The Section 44 soap opera: why more MPs could be in danger of being forced out – http://theconversation.com/the-section-44-soap-opera-why-more-mps-could-be-in-danger-of-being-forced-out-116955