Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Chin, Director, Asia Institute Tasmania, University of Tasmania

The corruption trial of Najib Tun Razak, the former prime minister of Malaysia, has finally begun following two postponements and an attempt on the opening day of the trial for a third. Many Malaysians were starting to wonder if Najib would ever get his day in court.

Najib’s lawyers have used every legal manoeuvre at their disposal to try to delay the trial as long as possible. These tactics verged on the ridiculous a month ago when Najib’s main lawyer claimed his pet dog had injured his wrist. The move worked – the former PM was granted another reprieve.

The trial over Najib’s role in a financial scam involving Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund will certainly not proceed smoothly, and the defence is sure to file new objections to higher courts to try to stop it again.

The reason Najib wants the trial delayed is simple: if he is found guilty, it will have a major impact on other upcoming trials.

Read more: What’s next for Najib Razak, Malaysia’s disgraced former prime minister?

His wife is also charged with money-laundering in connection with the scandal. (She’s accused of splurging on designer clothes and handbags during million-dollar shopping trips.) If Najib is found guilty, this would undoubtedly strengthen the case against her. Several ministers who served under Najib have also been charged with corruption.

Najib himself also faces several other trials related to the 1MDB scandal. For the government, the current trial is by far the simplest and easiest to prosecute. It involves 42 million Malaysian ringgit (A$14.5 million) that made its way from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB, to Najib’s personal account. All these transactions occurred in Malaysia, unlike the other cases, which involve international transactions and multiple jurisdictions. The paper trial for this trial is straightforward.

Najib has pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed the money in his accounts did not come from SRC International.

If Najib is found guilty, he will automatically lose his seat in parliament and face possible jail time. Being an MP gives him the platform to influence politics and say anything he likes against the current government, led by his political rival, Mahathir bin Mohamad.

Najib is already working on his political comeback – part of the strategy is to maintain a high profile as an MP through social media.

Najib tried to bolster his image with video of him singing a Malay version of The Manhattans’ 1970s song, ‘Kiss and Say Goodbye’

How Malaysians are viewing the trial

Many Malaysians want the trial to proceed without any more interruptions, because it would show the accountability process is finally working in Malaysia. Najib and his government were ousted from power in last year’s election because voters wanted the PM (and his wife) to face trial over the corruption allegations. Previously, it was understood that if you held a high political office, you were likely to get away with corruption.

If Najib isn’t convicted, many will likely wonder if there was any point to the change in power. The new government knows this and must deliver a credible trial. There is no other political option.

If Najib and his expensive lawyers are able to continue delaying the trial, Malaysians may start to lose faith with the new administration. Mahathir has publicly pledged to jail Najib for corruption before he hands over power next year to party leader Anwar Ibrahim, and if he cannot deliver on this, it will damage his successor’s political capital.

Read more: Now that Malaysia has a new government, the real work begins reforming the country

Najib may even try to delay his trials until after the next election, due in 2023, so he can continue to mount his political comeback.

Far more important for Malaysia, however, is the issue of political immunity. No previous leader has ever been charged with corruption and it is vitally important the rule of law is applied here for future generations.

This has regional implications, as well. Many activists in countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand see the Najib trial as a benchmark for tackling corruption in their own countries.

In many Southeast Asian countries, a culture of impunity persists at the highest levels of government. There is a belief among many political leaders that once they leave office, the sins they committed while in power will not lead to jail. It is as if this is one of the benefits of being elected to office.

In the coming days, expect more delay tactics by Najib’s defence team. The case might even be halted again due to a legal challenge on a point of law.

But given the stakes involved, I have no doubt the new Malaysian Attorney-General, Tommy Thomas, will make sure Najib’s trial goes ahead. Malaysia as a nation cannot have closure over the 1MDB affair until he is called to answer for his alleged crimes.

– ref. What Najib Razak’s corruption trial means for Malaysia – and the region – http://theconversation.com/what-najib-razaks-corruption-trial-means-for-malaysia-and-the-region-114828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Charlotte Reynolds, Lecturer in Nutrition, UNSW

The Fast Track to Health study is a year-long dietary trial in adolescents with obesity. Since it started in Sydney and Melbourne at the end of 2018, it has been criticised for increasing the risk of eating disorders in people who may be especially vulnerable to these conditions.

Sydney-based clinical psychologist Louise Adams started up an online petition to stop the trial. She also complained to the ethics committee that approved the research.

Several Australian eating disorder organisations followed, raising concerns about the safety of the teens in the trial.

Fast Track’s investigators responded with a statement noting the health and mental well-being of participants was their first priority, and pledging to liaise with these groups to work through their concerns.

The Fast Track to Health trial is trying help Australian teenagers with obesity to lose weight, partly by going on a strict “intermittent fasting” diet for a year. Any weight loss could improve physical and mental health.

But the trial could also cause harm if the dietary restriction results in disordered eating behaviours or an eating disorder.

So the participants, researchers and others expressing concerns about the trial need to weigh up the potential benefits and risks.

What exactly does the Fast Track trial involve?

About 180 children aged 13 to 17 years and with a body mass index (BMI) that labels them with moderate or severe obesity follow one of two restrictive diets for a year.

The first diet is a type of intermittent fasting diet, called modified alternate-day fasting. This is where a very low-energy diet is followed for three days per week. On the remaining four days, a standard healthy diet is eaten.

On each of the three fasting days, about 2,500-3,000 kilojoules (600-700 calories) are consumed. This is about one-quarter of a child’s normal daily energy needs, although it aims to ensure their nutritional needs are being met. The calories are eaten or drunk in the form of three to four meal replacements (Optifast shakes, soups or bars) and then a small, low-carbohydrate meal.

The second diet is a reduced-calorie diet, which is low in energy with higher fibre foods. However, all children follow the alternate-day fasting diet for the first month.

Read more: How to manage weight issues with your teenager when you’re not meant to talk about weight

The trial’s investigators include paediatricians, dietitians, and an eating disorder researcher. Each child has 10-13 appointments with trial staff over the year, with regular additional support via text message, email, phone and, optionally, Facebook.

Various aspects of physical and psychological health are monitored, including BMI, blood pressure, diet, physical activity, quality of life, self-esteem, and eating behaviours.

Potential benefits of the Fast Track research

Nearly one-quarter of children and adolescents are overweight or obese, conditions that increase the likelihood of developing a range of chronic diseases and early death.

Prevalence of overweight and obesity is higher in children in lower socioeconomic areas, including those around the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where Sydney’s Fast Track research is taking place.

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

If a child lost weight during the trial, he or she would reduce the risk of being overweight or obese in adulthood, as well as lowering the current and future risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

At a lower body weight, he or she may also experience less stigma and depression, and a higher health-related quality of life.

Overweight and obesity, and disordered eating behaviours and eating disorders, share factors that may increase the risk of any of them occurring. Dieting and body image dissatisfaction, for example, may be shared risk factors.

People with obesity may have some of the same risk factors as those with eating disorders, such as poor body image. Dmytro Zinkevych

It follows that a teenager who is overweight or obese may have disordered eating behaviours or an eating disorder. One US study found 40% of overweight adolescent girls and 20% of overweight boys binge ate.

Another study reported 6.3% of adolescents seeking treatment for overweight or obesity had a binge-eating disorder, 23.8% had recently binged, and 15% had lost control of their eating in the past.

The Fast Track website specifies that adolescents with significant medical or psychiatric illness or current treatment for a clinical eating disorder are not eligible to take part in the trial.

But it’s unclear whether disordered eating causes excess body weight and obesity, or whether excess body weight and obesity result in disordered eating – or both.

Potential risks of the Fast Track research

All adolescents in the study will experience the intermittent fasting diet; some for one month, some for one year.

The evidence on intermittent fasting for weight loss has only been collected among adults; professionals have advised against its use in adolescents.

Read more: Health Check: what’s the best diet for weight loss?

In adults, intermittent fasting is usually found to be as effective for weight loss as other forms of dietary intervention, such as the continuous calorie restriction that occurs in the 11 months of the Fast Track reduced-calorie diet.

The Fast Track trial’s researchers agreed with Louise Adams that:

there is a risk for a young person to develop an eating disorder with exposure to restrictive diets, and in particular very restrictive diets.

But they note:

these risks can be justified by the likely benefits of the trial provided that the trial is adequately monitored with an appropriate risk management plan to minimise and communicate the risks associated with eating disorders.

Dieting is mostly reported to be a risk factor for eating disorders, but not always. The National Eating Disorders Collaboration states:

Not everyone who diets will develop an eating disorder but it would be hard to find a person with an eating disorder who has not been on a diet themselves. Dieting is one of the most common forms of disordered eating.

In one study of US adolescents, those who dieted were more likely to be overweight and to binge-eat and purge (such as by self-induced vomiting) after five years, compared with those who did not diet.

Dieting may result in food preoccupation, irritability and tiredness. However, most of the evidence on dieting is on self-directed dieting; which is is different to that done under medical supervision, such as in the Fast Track trial.

The implications of restrictive dieting after the end of the trial’s main intervention period of one year, however, may need more attention.

There are alternatives to the Fast Track trial for helping a teenager with obesity to lose weight that may not increase the risk of disordered eating or an eating disorder. Approaches include Health at Every Size, increasing self-compassion, and focusing more on promoting a healthy body image.

It’s important to focus on the psychological health of a teen with obesity, including body image, disordered eating behaviours and mood. If you are a teen with obesity or the parent of one, a good first step towards optimal health may be to find a clinician who adopts a Health at Every Size approach to nutrition and body weight.

– ref. Getting teens to follow strict diets in the Fast Track trial is risky, but so is obesity itself – http://theconversation.com/getting-teens-to-follow-strict-diets-in-the-fast-track-trial-is-risky-but-so-is-obesity-itself-114435

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig O’Neill, Director of the Macquarie Planetary Research Centre/Associate Professor in Geodynamics, Macquarie University

A catastrophic event occurred on Earth 66 million years ago. A huge meteorite struck our planet in what is now Mexico, triggering mass extinctions of the dinosaurs and most other living creatures.

A new paper shows the first recorded victims of this impact were fish and other marine animals, stranded by a wave that left them high and dry in an ancient river in North Dakota, at a site called Tanis.

For scientists unpacking the evidence around the event, a full picture of the cataclysm has involved looking into the details of planetary surface physics during giant impacts.

But beyond the first layer of fascinating results – little glass impact beads stuck in the gills of fish, for example – one really interesting aspect of this work is around how water behaves when it’s exposed to extreme forces.

If you’ve never heard of a form of wave called a seiche, this is your chance to catch up.

This is a seiche – a standing wave – in a swimming pool, during a large earthquake in Nepal.

Waves of damage

The Chicxulub meteorite crater in coastal Mexico is strongly associated with the mass extinction of the dinosaurs (and 75% of all species), 66 million years ago.

The first victims were right at the site. Any marine creatures close to the point of impact would have been instantly vaporised (sadly leaving no fossil record), along with much of the surrounding rock.

Around the periphery, the energy of the impact melted and ejected tonnes of molten rock, which together with condensing rock vapour, formed little glass beads (“impact spherules”) that can be found in a layer around the world at this time.

The shock wave itself pulverised the adjacent rock enough to metamorphise it, forming features like “shocked quartz” – fractured quartz indicative of enormous pressures. It carried the energy equivalent of a magnitude 11 earthquake – 1,000 times more energy than the 2004 Boxing Day quake which killed almost 230,000 people.

Vast inland sea now gone

North Dakota is more than 3,000km away from the Chicxulub crater, and was a similar distance at the time of the meteorite impact event.

Separating them back then, however, was a vast inland sea that covered much of midwest USA, from Texas up to the Dakotas. Feeding into that inland sea was a river system upon which the Tanis site in North Dakota was formed. This site has preserved the earliest recorded deaths of the Chicxulub impact.

Different views of the Tanis site. A: Tanis (starred) within a regional context (large map) and on a national map (inset). B: Photo and interpretive overlay of an oblique cross-section through Tanis. C: Simplified schematic depicting the general deposits at the site (not to scale). Most fish carcasses were found at point 3. Robert A DePalma and colleagues

The site itself is unusual. The deposition of sediments can tell us about the flow of water in the river.

Most ripples (or flame structures) indicate a southerly flow of the river before and after the Tanis deposit. However, these flow indicators point the wrong way during the time the Tanis unit formed. Water was flowing upstream, fast.

At the site are also found the fossilised remains of species, like sharks and rays, that occupied brackish water, rather than the freshwater of the stream. These had to be brought inland from the sea by something, and left to die, smothered in sediment, on a riverbank.

Stranded in Dakota

The obvious candidate is an impact tsunami. Perhaps the impact of the meteorite hitting the ocean generated a huge wave that carried fish from the inland sea, and against the flow of fresh water, to leave the creatures stranded in Dakota?

But there are problems with this hypothesis. The tiny impact spherules that formed in Chicxulub can be found throughout the deposit (many clogging the gills of fish), and pockmarks in the sedimentary layers means rocks were still raining down. This means the surge of water occurred within around 15 minutes to two hours of the impact itself.

For a tsunami to travel the 3,000km from the point of impact, to the Tanis site across the inland sea, would have taken almost 18 hours. Something else killed these creatures.

The seismic waves from the impact would have travelled through the Earth much faster than a tsunami travelled across water – and arrived near Tanis between 6-13 minutes later. The authors of the Tanis study suggest these seismic waves may have triggered an unusual type of wave in the inland sea, called a seiche.

Standing waves

Seiches are standing waves in bodies of water, and are often found in large lake systems during strong winds. The winds themselves cause waves and water displacement, which can have a harmonic effect, causing the water to slosh side to side like an overfull bathtub.

However, earthquakes are also known to cause seiches. Particularly dramatic seiches are often seen in swimming pools during large quakes. The interaction of the seismic wave’s period (the time between two waves) with the timescale of waves sloshing in a pool can amplify their effect.

But seiches can affect larger bodies of water too.

During the 2011 Tohuku earthquake in Japan, seiches over 1m high were observed in Norwegian fjords more than 8,000km away. With an energy more than 1,000 times greater, the Chicxulub event could quite conceivably have generated bigger than 10 metre swells in the North American inland sea – the scale implied by the deposition of the Tanis site.

These waves in Norwegian fjords were created by seismic waves from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan.

Given a seiche can be driven by seismic waves, it’s conceivable that one drove the surge that stranded marine creatures at Tanis, resulting in the short time between the impact debris and the surge deposit.

Still lots of questions

But a lot remains unclear regarding exactly what did happen 66 million years ago.

Could the fish stranding have been driven by the first seismic activity to appear at Tanis (the P and S waves in science parlance, which travel through the interior of the Earth, arriving at Tanis 6 and 10 minutes after impact, respectively), or the more destructive but slower surface waves at the top of the Earth’s crust, which arrived 13 minutes after impact?

How might seiche waves have interacted with global hurricane-strength wind storms caused by the impact?

Would the period of sloshing of a seiche be consistent with the scale of the inland sea? (The inland sea was much larger than most lakes seiches are traditionally observed in – and may or may not have been open to the ocean). Given so little is really known about the dimensions of the inland sea, this is hard to constrain.

The Tanis site has given us an incredible window into the first few hours of a mass-extinction. But it has also highlighted how little we have probed into the fatal surface physics of these extreme events.

– ref. A ‘seiche’ wave can outpace a tsunami, and both can be triggered by meteorites and earthquakes – http://theconversation.com/a-seiche-wave-can-outpace-a-tsunami-and-both-can-be-triggered-by-meteorites-and-earthquakes-114753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stan Karanasios, Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University

This week saw the closure of Google+, an attempt by the online giant to create a social media community to rival Facebook.

If the Australian usage of Google+ is anything to go by – just 45,000 users in March compared to Facebook’s 15 million – it never really caught on.

Google+ is no longer available to users. Google+/Screengrab

But the Google+ shutdown follows a string of organisations that have disabled or restricted community features such as reviews, user comments and message boards (forums).

Read more: Sexual subcultures are collateral damage in Tumblr’s ban on adult content

So are we witnessing the decline of online communities and user comments?

Turning off online communities and user generated content

One of the most well-known message boards – which existed on the popular movie website IMDb since 2001 – was shut down by owner Amazon in 2017 with just two weeks’ notice for its users.

This is not only confined to online communities but mirrors a trend among organisations to restrict or turn off their user-generated content. Last year the subscription video-on-demand website Netflix said it no longer allowed users to write reviews. It subsequently deleted all existing user-generated reviews.

Other popular websites have disabled their comments sections, including National Public Radio (NPR), The Atlantic, Popular Science and Reuters.

Why the closures?

Organisations have a range of motivations for taking such actions, ranging from low uptake, running costs, the challenges of managing moderation, as well as the problem around divisive comments, conflicts and lack of community cohesion.

In the case of Google+, low usage alongside data breaches appear to have sped up its decision.

NPR explained its motivation to remove user comments by highlighting how in one month its website NPR.org attracted 33 million unique users and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters; the number of commenters who posted in consecutive months was a fraction of that.

This led NPR’s managing editor for digital news, Scott Montgomery, to say:

We’ve reached the point where we’ve realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism.

He said audiences had also moved to engage with NPR more on Facebook and Twitter.

Likewise, The Atlantic explained that its comments sections had become “unhelpful, even destructive, conversations” and was exploring new ways to give users a voice.

In the case of IMDB closing its message boards in 2017, the reason given was:

[…] we have concluded that IMDb’s message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide.

The organisation also nudged users towards other forms of social media, such as its Facebook page and Twitter account @IMDB, as the “(…) primary place they (users) choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb’s editors and one another”.

User backlash

Unsurprisingly, such actions often lead to confusion, criticism and disengagement by user communities, and in some cases petitions to have the features reinstated (such as this one for Google+) and boycotts of the organisations.

But most organisations take these aspects into their decision-making.

The petition to save IMDB’s message boards. Change.org/Screengrab

For fans of such community features these trends point to some harsh realities. Even though communities may self-organise and thrive, and users are co-creators of value and content, the functionality and governance are typically beyond their control.

Community members are at the mercy of hosting organisations, some profit-driven, which may have conflicting motivations to those of the users. It’s those organisations that hold the power to change or shut down what can be considered by some to be critical sources of knowledge, engagement and community building.

In the aftermath of shutdowns, my research shows that communities that existed on an organisation’s message boards in particular may struggle to reform.

This can be due to a number of factors, such as high switching costs, and communities can become fragmented because of the range of other options (Reddit, Facebook and other message boards).

So it’s difficult for users to preserve and maintain their communities once their original home is disabled. In the case of Google+, even its Mass Migration Group – which aims to help people, organisations and groups find “new online homes” – may not be enough to hold its online communities together.

The trend towards the closure of online communities by organisations might represent a means to reduce their costs in light of declining usage and the availability of other online options.

It’s also a move away from dealing with the reputational issues related to their use and controlling the conversation that takes place within their user bases. Trolling, conflicts and divisive comments are common in online communities and user comments spaces.

Lost community knowledge

But within online groups there often exists social and network capital, as well as the stock of valuable knowledge that such community features create.

Read more: Zuckerberg’s ‘new rules’ for the internet must move from words to actions

Often these communities are made of communities of practice (people with a shared passion or concern) on topics ranging from movie theories to parenting.

They are go-to sources for users where meaningful interactions take place and bonds are created. User comments also allow people to engage with important events and debates, and can be cathartic.

Closing these spaces risks not only a loss of user community bases, but also a loss of this valuable community knowledge on a range of issues.

– ref. Goodbye Google+, but what happens when online communities close down? – http://theconversation.com/goodbye-google-but-what-happens-when-online-communities-close-down-114729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

Environmental news is rarely good. But even by those low standards, 2018 was especially bad. That is the main conclusion from Australia’s Environment in 2018, the latest in an annual series of environmental condition reports, released today.

Every year, we analyse vast amounts of measurements from satellites and on-ground stations using algorithms and prediction models on a supercomputer. These volumes of data are turned into regional summary accounts that can be explored on our Australian Environment Explorer website. We interpret these data, along with other information from national and international reports, to assess how our environment is tracking.

A bad year

Whereas 2017 was already quite bad, 2018 saw many indicators dip even further into the red.

Read more: Australia’s 2017 environment scorecard: like a broken record, high temperatures further stress our ecosystems

Temperatures went up again, rainfall declined further, and the destruction of vegetation and ecosystems by drought, fire and land clearing continued. Soil moisture, rivers and wetlands all declined, and vegetation growth was poor.

In short, our environment took a beating in 2018, and that was even before the oppressive heatwaves, bushfires and Darling River fish kills of January 2019.

Indicators of Australia’s environment in 2018 compared with the previous year. Similar to national economic indicators, they provide a summary but also hide regional variations, complex interactions and long-term context. source: http://www.ausenv.online/2018

The combined pressures from habitat destruction, climate change, and invasive pests and diseases are taking their toll on our unique plants and animals. Another 54 species were added to the official list of threatened species, which now stands at 1,775. That is 47% more than 18 years ago and puts Australia among the world’s worst performers in biodiversity protection. On the upside, the number of predator-proof islands or fenced-off reserves in Australia reached 188 in 2018, covering close to 2,500 square kilometres. They offer good prospects of saving at least 13 mammal species from extinction.

Globally, the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere accelerated again after slowing down in 2017. Global air and ocean temperatures remained high, sea levels increased further, and even the ozone hole grew again, after shrinking during the previous two years.

Sea surface temperatures around Australia did not increase in 2018, but they nevertheless were well above long-term averages. Surveys of the Great Barrier Reef showed further declining health across the entire reef. An exceptional heatwave in late 2018 in Far North Queensland raised fears for yet another bout of coral bleaching, but this was averted when sudden massive downpours cooled surface waters.

The hot conditions did cause much damage to wildlife and vegetation, however, with spectacled flying foxes dropping dead from trees and fire ravaging what was once a tropical rainforest.

While previous environmental scorecards showed a mixed bag of regional impacts, 2018 was a poor year in all states and territories. Particularly badly hit was New South Wales, where after a second year of very poor rainfall, ecosystems and communities reached crisis point. Least affected was southern Western Australia, which enjoyed relatively cool and wet conditions.

Environmental Condition Score in 2018 by state and territory, based on a combination of seven indicators. The large number is the score for 2017, the smaller number the change from the previous year. source: http://www.ausenv.online/2018

It was a poor year for nature and farmers alike, with growing conditions in grazing, irrigated agriculture and dryland cropping each declining by 17-20% at a national scale. The only upside was improved cropping conditions in WA, which mitigated the 34% decline elsewhere.

A bad start to 2019

Although it is too early for a full picture, the first months of 2019 continued as badly as 2018 ended. The 2018-19 summer broke heat records across the country by large margins, bushfires raged through Tasmania’s forests, and a sudden turn in the hot weather killed scores of fish in the Darling River. The monsoon in northern Australia did not come until late January, the latest in decades, but then dumped a huge amount of rain on northern Queensland, flooding vast swathes of land.

Read more: The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought

It would be comforting to believe that our environment merely waxes and wanes with rainfall, and is resilient to yearly variations. To some extent, this is true. The current year may still turn wet and improve conditions, although a developing El Niño makes this less likely.

However, while we are good at acknowledging rapid changes, we are terrible at recognising slow, long-term ones. Underlying the yearly variations in weather is an unmistakable pattern of environmental decline that threatens our future.

New South Wales was hit hard by drought in 2018. AAP Image/Perry Duffin

What can we do about it?

Global warming is already with us, and strong action is required to avoid an even more dire future of rolling heatwaves and year-round bushfires. But while global climate change requires global action, there is a lot we can and have to do ourselves.

Read more: Australia is not on track to reach 2030 Paris target (but the potential is there)

Australia is one of the world’s most wasteful societies, and there are many opportunities to clean up our act. Achieving progress is not hard, and despite shrill protests from vested interests and the ideologically blind, taking action will not take away our prosperity. Home solar systems and more efficient transport can in fact save money. Our country has huge opportunities for renewable energy, which can potentially create thousands of jobs. Together, we can indeed reduce emissions “in a canter” – all it takes is some clear national leadership.

The ongoing destruction of natural vegetation is as damaging as it is unnecessary, and stopping it will bring a raft of benefits. Our rivers and wetlands are more than just a source of cheap irrigation for big businesses. With more effort, we can save many species from extinction. Our farmers play a vital role in caring for our country, and we need to support them better in doing so.

Read more: To reduce fire risk and meet climate targets, over 300 scientists call for stronger land clearing laws

Our environment is our life support. It provides us our place to live, our food, health, livelihoods, culture and identity. To protect it is to protect ourselves.

This article was coauthored by Shoshana Rapley, an ANU honours student and research assistant in the Fenner School of Environment and Society.

– ref. Australia’s 2018 environmental scorecard: a dreadful year that demands action – http://theconversation.com/australias-2018-environmental-scorecard-a-dreadful-year-that-demands-action-114760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morgan Pratchett, Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

The severe and repeated bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef has not only damaged corals, it has reduced the reef’s ability to recover.

Our research, published today in Nature, found far fewer baby corals are being produced than are needed to replace the large number of adult corals that have died. The rate at which baby corals are settling on the Great Barrier Reef has fallen by nearly 90% since 2016.

While coral does not always die after bleaching, repeated bleaching has killed large numbers of coral. This new research has negative implications for the Reef’s capacity to recover from high ocean temperatures.

How coral recovers

Most corals reproduce by “spawning”: releasing thousands of tight, buoyant bundles with remarkable synchronisation. The bundles burst when they hit the ocean surface, releasing eggs and/or sperm. Fertilised eggs develop into larvae as they are moved about by ocean currents. The larvae settle in new places, forming entirely new coral colonies. This coral “recruitment” is essential to reef recovery.

Read more: Explainer: mass coral spawning, a wonder of the natural world

The research team, led by my colleague Terry Hughes from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, measured rates of coral recruitment by attaching small clay tiles to the reef just before the predicted mass spawning each year. These settlement panels represent a standardised habitat that allows for improved detection of the coral recruits, which are just 1-2mm in size.

Almost 1,000 tiles were deployed across 17 widely separated reefs after the recent mass bleaching, in late 2016 and 2017. After eight weeks they were collected and carefully inspected under a microscope to count the number of newly settled coral recruits. Resulting estimates of coral recruitment were compared to recruitment rates recorded over two decades prior to the recent bleaching.

Australian Academy of Science.

Rates of coral recruitment recorded in the aftermath of the recent coral bleaching were just 11% of levels recorded during the preceding decades. Whereas there were more than 40 coral recruits per tile before the bleaching, there was an average of just five coral recruits per tile in the past couple of years.

Read more: Tropical marine conservation needs to change as coral reefs decline

Reef resilience

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the world’s largest reef system. The large overall size and high number of distinct reefs provides a buffer against most major disturbances. Even if large tracts of the GBR are disturbed, there is a good chance at least some areas will have healthy stocks of adult corals, representing a source of new larvae to enable replenishment and recovery.

Larvae produced by spawning corals on one reef may settle on other nearby reefs to effectively replace corals lost to localised disturbances.

It is reassuring there is at least some new coral recruitment in the aftermath of severe bleaching and mass mortality of adult corals on the GBR. However, the substantial and widespread reduction of regrowth indicates the magnitude of the disturbance caused by recent heatwaves.

Reduction of coral regrowth shows the effects of recent heatwave disturbances. Bette Willis

Declines in rates of coral recruitment were greatest in the northern parts of the GBR. This is where bleaching was most pronounced in 2016 and 2017, and there was the greatest loss of adult corals. There were much more moderate declines in coral recruitment in the southern GBR, reflecting generally higher abundance of adults corals in these areas. However, prevailing southerly currents (and the large distances involved) make it very unlikely coral larvae from southern parts of the Reef will drift naturally to the hardest-hit northern areas.

It is hard to say how long it will take for coral assemblages to recover from the recent mass bleaching. What is certain is low levels of coral recruitment will constrain coral recovery and greatly increase the recovery time. Any further large-scale developments with also greatly reduce coral cover and impede recovery.

Read more: The 2016 Great Barrier Reef heatwave caused widespread changes to fish populations

Reducing carbon emissions

This study further highlights the vulnerability of coral reefs to sustained and ongoing global warming. Not only do adult corals bleach and die when exposed to elevated temperatures, this prevents new coral recruitment and undermines ecosystem resilience.

The only way to effectively redress global warming is to immediately and substantially reduce global carbon emissions. This requires that all countries, including Australia, renew and strengthen their commitments to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

While further management is required to minimise more direct human pressure on coral reefs – such as sediment run-off and pollution – all these efforts will be futile if we do not address global climate change.

– ref. Coral reproduction on the Great Barrier Reef falls 89% after repeated bleaching – http://theconversation.com/coral-reproduction-on-the-great-barrier-reef-falls-89-after-repeated-bleaching-114761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Tanton, Professor, Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

The Morrison government’s pre-election budget has not been the bonanza some predicted. It is a fairly modest affair.

But calculations by the the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, based at the University of Canberra, show the budget will widen the gap between rich and poor. This is because changes to the tax and welfare system most benefit those paying tax. Those who don’t earn enough income to pay tax benefit least.

Read more: Infographic: Budget 2019 at a glance

The centre has calculated the impact of the the federal budget’s tax and welfare transfer changes by families, age groups and Commonwealth Electoral Division.

The most significant tax changes are the two stages of tax cuts in 2022-23 and 2024-25. In 2022-23 the point at which the marginal tax rate increases from 19% to 32.5% will lift from A$41,000 to A$45,000. In 2024-25 the marginal tax rate on incomes between A$45,000 and A$200,000 will be reduced to 30%. The top tax rate of 45% (which now kicks in at A$180,000) will apply to any income above A$200,000.

The threshold on which no income tax is paid remains the same, at A$18,200.

Other tax changes involve increases to the Low Income Tax Offset (LITO) and the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset (LMITO). The LMITO (available for those earning more than A$48,000) will increase from A$530 to A$1,090 from this financial year, while the LITO will increase from A$645 to A$700 in 2022-23.

More income, more benefit

The benefit of the 2024/25 tax cuts on high-income families will be dramatic, as seen in Figure 1, which shows the effect of the changes over three years (2019-20, 2022-23 and 2024-25) by income.

Figure 1: Impact of 2019-20 tax and welfare system changes by income and year of impact. NATSEM, Author provided (No reuse)

The important point to note is that changes to marginal tax rates and the income tax offsets affect anyone paying tax. There is absolutely no benefit to anyone not paying tax. Which is why there is very little gain for those on incomes below $40,000 (the top of the second income quintile in Figure 1). The gain for those in the first income quintile (who mostly earn no private income) is even lower.

Demographic benefits

Figure 2 shows that the cohort that would gain the most in 2019-20 are those aged 26–35, by an average by A$245 a year for men and A$213 a year for women. This is mainly due to the change in the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset.

Figure 2: Impact of 2019-20 budget tax and welfare system changes by age group and year of impact.

By 2024-25, the cohort gaining most are men aged 46–55, by A$795 a year, and women aged 46-55, by A$759 a year. This is mainly because the tax changes in 2024-25 provide greatest advantage to high-income earners, as shown above.

Family benefits

Figure 3 breaks down the impact by family type and income quintile. Couples with children gain the most for all years. By 2024-25, couples with children in the highest-income quintile gain an extra A$4,573 a year, while those in the lowest quintile get just A$114.

Figure 3: Impact of 2019-20 budget tax and welfare system changes by family type and income quintile. NASTSEM, Author provided (No reuse)

The main reason for this is that couples with children commonly have both parents working and paying tax, therefore tax changes benefit these families more.

In the first year (2019-20), the Low Income Tax Offset and Low and Middle Income Tax Offset mean middle-income earners gain the most (although it is still Quintile 4 gaining the most in this first year). By 2022-23 the tax cuts benefit higher-income households more.

Geographic gains

When it comes to the impact by Commonwealth Electoral Division (Figure 4), we can see that by 2024-25 urban areas gain the most, and regional areas the least.

Figure 4: Impact of 2024-25 tax and welfare system changes by Commonwealth Electoral Division. NATSEM, Author provided (No reuse)

This is because households in urban areas tend to have higher incomes, and the tax cuts in 2024-25 mean electoral divisions with higher income households will benefit the most.

Effect on poverty rate

The budget’s effect on the poverty rate – the proportion of households living on less than 50% of median income – is to reduce it by 0.2 percentage points by 2024-25. This is a fairly small reduction. But due to the tax cuts in 2024-25 raising the net incomes for high-income households, this means income inequality will be higher.

Read more: Future budgets are going to have to spend more on welfare, which is fine. It’s spending on us

The 0.2 percentage point decrease compares to an 0.8% percentage point reduction that NATSEM’s modelling estimates would result from raising the Newstart allowance by A$75 a week from what it is now.

The message from this analysis is that the changes to the tax and welfare system in this budget benefits those with higher incomes and who are paying tax, with little to no gains in future years to some of those low income earners who aren’t paying tax.

– ref. NATSEM: federal budget will widen gap between rich and poor – http://theconversation.com/natsem-federal-budget-will-widen-gap-between-rich-and-poor-114728

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katinka van de Ven, Research Fellow, Drug Policy Modelling Program, SPRC, UNSW

Physical activity feels good and it’s great for your health. It can reduce your risk of developing chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, strengthen your bones, muscles and joints, and can even help with certain mental health conditions, such as depression.

While exercise has clear benefits, it can cause problems if your love of working out crosses over into an addiction.

If you constantly cancel activities with friends or family in favour of exercise – so you plan your life around your gym workouts – you might have a problem. If you exercise in spite of pain or injury, and feel obsessively guilty when you miss a session, it could be that you’re addicted to exercise.

And it’s likely our increasingly image-focused culture may be partly to blame.

Read more: Why some people can’t stop running, according to sport psychology

Exercise addiction is not a clinically recognised mental disorder, but researchers have developed a variety of questionnaires and other tools to get an idea of its prevalence and who might be at risk.

Around one in 200 people in the general population have an exercise addiction. But our new research shows among people who exercise regularly, factors including their attitudes towards exercise and perceptions of themselves mean more than one in ten could be at risk of becoming addicted.

Committed or addicted?

The concept of exercise addiction is fairly novel and still requires more evidence to define its specific characteristics.

Whether exercise becomes an addiction can be related to the amount and frequency of training, appropriate nutrition, and motivation for exercising.

Over time, researchers have proposed several diagnostic criteria for primary exercise addiction. These include:

• constant preoccupation with exercise, with significant withdrawal symptoms in the absence of exercise (mood swings, irritability and insomnia)

• this preoccupation causes clinically significant distress or impairment in one’s physical, social, occupational or other areas of functioning

• the above is not better accounted for by another mental disorder (such as a means of losing weight or controlling calorie intake as part of an eating disorder).

Secondary exercise addiction may come as part of another disorder, such as anorexia and/or bulimia nervosa.

How common is exercise addiction?

Estimates of prevalence vary according to the population studied, the type of physical activity, the level of competition (whether participants are professional, amateur or recreational athletes), and the tools used to measure exercise addiction.

For example, the prevalence of exercise addiction in the general population has been found to be around just 0.3–0.5% (3 to 5 per 1000 people).

But on the more extreme end of the scale, recent research among elite Australian athletes classified 34% as having an exercise addiction.

Read more: Health Check: is there an optimal time of day to work out?

Since exercise addiction is not an official mental health disorder and is not listed yet in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), it’s difficult to know exactly how common it is.

But even if we don’t know how many people are addicted to exercise, we know many people who exercise are at risk of becoming addicted. Our Keep Fit study, published today in PLOS One, looked at 1,711 gym users across Europe. We found 11.7% of the exercising population are at risk of exercise addiction.

To measure this, we used what’s called the Exercise Addiction Inventory, as well as Rosenberg’s Self-esteem Scale and the Appearance Anxiety Inventory to measure related disorders. Participants who scored above certain markers on these scales were classified as “at risk”.

#Fitspiration and social media

Millions of images posted every day on social media promote a visual representation of “perfect” bodies – pictures of muscular, “ripped” men and slim, toned women.

This “fitspirational” trend generates unrealistic expectations, often leaving the most vulnerable with a deep sense of personal dissatisfaction. This puts them at risk of adopting unhealthy strategies to reach their training goals.

People are influenced by images they see online of what ‘fit’ should look like. Arthur Edelman/Unsplash

Such an environment is a fertile breeding ground for the development of exercise addiction, alongside other appearance-related disorders. An example is body dysmorphic disorder, a psychological disorder where a person becomes obsessed with imaginary defects in their appearance.

In our study, those scoring highly on exercise addiction also reported increased image anxiety and low self-esteem. Some 38.5% of overall participants were found to be at risk of body dysmorphic disorder, especially females (47%).

Performance and image-enhancing substances

Our study also showed exercise addiction was a strong predictor for the use of performance and image-enhancing drugs, especially among men.

Some 39.8% of respondents claimed to use a range of fitness-enhancing products, and this cohort scored three times higher on the exercise addiction scale.

While sports supplements such as protein, vitamins and amino acids are considered relatively safe, the use of prescription drugs – without medical consultation in the vast majority of cases (96%) – is more concerning.

Our participants used steroids (5.9%), diuretics (4.9%), and growth hormones (1.8%). The use of sibutramine (1.1%), an appetite suppressant that has been withdrawn from most markets because it increases the risk of heart attack and stroke, was particularly alarming. Participants also used other illicit drugs, such as amphetamines (2.3%).

Read more: Women can build positive body image by controlling what they view on social media

Although more research is needed, it’s possible people perceive these enhancement substances as acceptable and necessary in the pursuit of body and fitness ideals.

At the same time, they’re likely to disregard the potential health harms associated with these products.

It’s good to be fit

Don’t panic if you go to the gym every day to stay fit. That alone doesn’t mean you’re addicted to exercise. There’s also nothing wrong with incorporating some #fitspiration into your daily decisions to be active.

But problems arise when the pursuit of these training goals starts taking over; when you start losing friends because you’re not engaging in social activities, or when you miss out on work opportunities.

Essentially, if your workout schedule dictates your life, you may have a problem and need to seek help.

For our part, further research, and discussions around officially classifying exercise addiction as a mental health disorder, will pave the way to better guide people who find themselves in this situation.

– ref. Do you plan your life around your fitness schedule? You could be addicted to exercise – http://theconversation.com/do-you-plan-your-life-around-your-fitness-schedule-you-could-be-addicted-to-exercise-112509

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Jackson, Education Policy Lead, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

One of the more elusive goals of education research is answering the question: what makes one school perform better than another? The evidence base is growing, but so far the answer is: it depends.

School success depends on context. What works for one group of students and teachers might not work for another. Teachers themselves may vary in their effectiveness depending on the students they teach.

Some schools improve their performance by attracting more affluent and/or high achieving students. This strategy may lift performance in one school, but risks “residualising” neighbouring schools, leaving them to cope with increasing concentrations of disadvantage.

The socio-economic status of students is a major factor in school performance. It is harder for a school to achieve high academic performance with large numbers of students facing risk factors such as low family income, or parents with limited education who may struggle to provide support for learning. Many disadvantaged schools across Australia achieve results more than one year behind the national average.

Read more: Back to school – understanding challenges faced by Indigenous children

But just because schools in poorer areas may achieve lower results, it doesn’t mean these schools are “unsuccessful”, and schools in wealthier suburbs with higher average scores are “successful”. Schools in poorer areas can make a significant impact on their students’ lives. And lifting outcomes for disadvantaged students can transform lives and communities, across generations.

There are three key ways that schools in disadvantaged contexts achieve success that other schools can learn from.

1. Success is more than test scores

The most effective schools aren’t necessarily the highest academic performers. They are schools that yield better-than-anticipated results, bringing the best out of every student regardless of background.

Measures of school performance, including MySchool, typically take into account the socio-economic profile of the student community for this reason. This draws on established research about schools’ value-add – their success in lifting student outcomes.

A successful school fosters broader dimensions of learning critical to students’ overall success. These include social and emotional development, creativity and innovation, positive attitudes to learning, and citizenship.

Read more: Should we change the way we measure student progress in schools?

Some Australian governments actually include measures of student well-being and sense of connectedness to school in assessments of school performance. Schools themselves often point to the value of their work in shaping student aspirations, behaviours, and values – not just academic achievement.

Disadvantaged schools may succeed in these areas, even more highly than schools whose focus is academic achievement.

2. Students need to learn how to learn

Effective teaching practice will have little impact if students are not equipped to learn. Students from advantaged backgrounds typically inherit knowledge about how to learn, and why. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds rely more heavily on schools to build their skills for learning, and to help them to see themselves as capable and motivated learners.

Students from more advantaged households typically inherit understanding about how to learn, and why, from their parents. from shutterstock.com

High-performing lower socio-economic status schools routinely provide targeted support for students within and outside the traditional school day. This may include small-group and individual tutoring, self-paced interventions using technology, one-on-one academic advising and coaching, homework support, and additional assessment time.

Evaluations of school reforms and intervention programs for schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students have revealed the importance of establishing a shared understanding around teaching and learning, and school goals.

For example, one school established playgroups and a parent café to work with parents as partners in the learning process. This meant more students came to school motivated and ready to learn, and teachers could do their jobs more effectively.

3. Extra funding matters and must be put to good use

Needs-based school funding – as recommended in the first Gonski review – goes some way towards combating the downward pressure student disadvantage places on school performance. Yet the effects of school funding on learning outcomes are mixed.

Achieving better outcomes requires changing the way you practise and using the extra money to enact the change. This is because learning outcomes are driven by a complexity of factors, especially in communities experiencing a number of challenges.

Read more: Does more money for schools improve educational outcomes?

A recent evaluation of the impact of additional school funding shows that a stable teaching and school leadership team is essential to enable schools to make good use of additional funding. One school, which had seen four principals come and go in five years, invested in building the executive leadership team, including mentoring and leadership training. Although gains in test scores remain a work-in-progress, the professional climate and teaching practice have notably improved.

Schools with many disadvantaged students can face other challenges besides a high turnover of staff. Addressing these challenges requires school leaders to examine the many facets of school performance, not only student achievement, to identify where the best opportunities are for improvement.

Additional funding is needed, but continuity, stability, and evidence-based planning are essential for it to have maximum effect.

Applying knowledge across contexts

Schools that achieve success for the most disadvantaged students have much to contribute to our knowledge of what makes a good school. They are at the frontline of engagement with the enduring equity gap in Australian education, and living proof it can be narrowed.

Their potential contribution is illustrated by the example of a school partnership in Victoria, involving a highly advantaged and highly disadvantaged school. The partnership was successful because knowledge flowed both ways.

While the advantaged school focused on high achievement, the disadvantaged school helped the more advantaged school understand the influence of home and family context on learning, and adopt tailored strategies so their least advantaged learners would not fall through the cracks.

This kind of understanding not only leads to successful schools: it is the foundation of a successful system.

– ref. What makes a school good? It’s about more than just test results – http://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-school-good-its-about-more-than-just-test-results-114372

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Townson, Senior Designer, Chair in Digital Economy, Queensland University of Technology

You’re smiling as your e-scooter whispers along the riverside path. Without the helmet, the wind can blow through your hair – and it looks good! You hear a shout, “Pull over!”, and turn to see police heading towards you with your helmet in hand.

Police conducted a blitz on safety breaches by eletric scooter riders in Brisbane over the weekend. And employees of operator Lime tell us safety issues have been persistent in Australia’s first trial of a shared e-scooter scheme.

How do we educate users about helmets and safe riding behaviour? And how can helmets be distributed cost-effectively?

Read more: Limes not lemons: lessons from Australia’s first e-scooter sharing trial

As with other disruptive tech companies with mass appeal, the safety and regulatory issues raised by e-scooters – including rider and pedestrian safety and being left in inappropriate places – are attracting attention. A closely related issue is helmets and their role in rider safety.

Scooter operators have come under pressure to encourage riders to wear helmets. The RACQ has called on Lime “to ensure every scooter put out has a helmet attached”.

A day in the life of a helmet

Ultimately, responsibility for public safety and compliance with civic cleanliness rests with the individual mobility provider. Lime accepts this and has announced it will distribute 250,000 helmets worldwide.

A scooter and helmet begin each day together, but many are soon parted. Albert Perez/AAP

Each day fully charged scooters, with helmets, are placed on footpaths. At the end of each day, the tally of scooters and helmets does not add up. This is known in the industry as helmet churn – the constant loss and replacement of helmets. Unlike the scooters themselves, which have smart tracking technology, helmets are kept cheap to minimise the cost of these losses.

Let’s try to unpack the issue of helmet churn.

It is agreed that not wearing a helmet plays a part in the problem. Some riders simply leave it behind. Aside from being unsafe, this separates the helmet from the scooter, so it becomes unavailable for the next scooter user.

Read more: Electric scooters on collision course with pedestrians and lawmakers

New insights are emerging as we begin to study this phenomenon. Reasons for helmet churn are linked to a reluctance to share them – we believe some riders worry about hygiene – and it being a disposable product. It seems there may even be feelings of ownership, with some perceiving the helmet to become their property through paying for the ride.

Assumed reasons for helmet churn. Peter Townson/QUT Chair in Digital Economy

Limits of deterrence

Two main compliance mechanisms are in place to discourage riders from contributing to helmet churn: police and Lime.

In Queensland, the fine for not wearing a helmet is A$130. In other states and territories fines range from as little as A$25 to as much as A$337.

Research into deviant consumer behaviour tells us this tactic of appealing to fear of punishment extends only to riders wearing helmets. It does not have an effect on the broader issues of vandalism and theft.

The penalty for not wearing a helmet in each state. Peter Townson/QUT Chair in Digital Economy

The research also suggests the “fear of punishment” approach makes two critical assumptions:

1. that people agree the behaviour is wrong (“yes, this is dangerous”)
2. riders think there is a real risk of being caught (“catch me if you can”).

Given this is not always the case, a risk-based approach to deterrence is limited.

Lime also plays a part in curbing helmet noncompliance. Its current strategy, aside from providing the helmets, is the Respect the Ride education program. It aims to foster a community and culture of safe mobility, underpinned by a personal pledge each rider is encouraged to make.

This approach is appropriate for trying to change the behaviour of not wearing a helmet. It does not target people who are taking advantage of publicly available helmets.

These measures still do not fully solve a pervasive problem.

You have a disruptive mobility company in the spotlight because of safety concerns. The company has a duty of care to supply helmets and ensure riders are safe. Riders are disregarding, disposing of, defacing and destroying helmets.

How do we solve this tough, intractable, social problem?

Read more: Can e-scooters solve the ‘last mile’ problem? They’ll need to avoid the fate of dockless bikes

A shift in thinking – ecosystem view

If helmet churn exists for Lime scooters, then it exists for all other ride-share operators in that area. If a helmet isn’t available, riders will often borrow from other services such as share bikes.

Helmets are sometimes considered “free for grabs” across different mobility providers. Should the duty of care that requires helmets be provided rest on each mobility service operator, when the noncompliance of one undermines them all?

While these personal transport providers are in competition with one another, they have an opportunity to relinquish their individual burden of helmet churn by working together on the problem.

A shift in thinking – personalised view

If the one constant across various mobility services is the rider, we should also consider a “bring your own helmet” approach. This approach possibly started in technology companies (“bring your own device”, allowing employees and customers to use their own devices to interact with an organisation) and has spread to other areas. For instance, environmentally conscious coffee lovers bring their own cups, while still having the option of using a paper cup.

Could a similar option work for helmets? Disposable helmets – made of cardboard – are being tested as a concept. And personalised helmets that look and feel like a beanie can be pre-purchased from a start-up created by QUT students.

Cyclists still carry their own helmets when they commute on their own bikes, so the acceptance of this BYO approach should be simple. The difference is users need only provide a helmet, without having to worry about finding safe parking and storage places for the day or overnight.

Adapting to disruption

The meaning of a helmet has shifted significantly from individual property to a shared utility, as has the meaning of many modes of transport, including bikes and scooters. There are two paths from here: ecosystem, with ubiquitous helmets available for everyone; and personalised, with riders bringing their own helmets.

Either of these is different from the world we know today. The bigger picture is a collaborative effort to achieve the goal of rider safety.

Read more: Banning ‘tiny vehicles’ would deny us smarter ways to get around our cities

– ref. Helmet churn adds to challenges of e-scooter disruption – http://theconversation.com/helmet-churn-adds-to-challenges-of-e-scooter-disruption-113754

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathomi Gatwiri, Lecturer, Southern Cross University

Review: Growing Up African in Australia, edited by Maxine Beneba Clarke, Magan Magan and Ahmed Yussuf

For many African-diaspora people in Australia, belonging means masking yourself. To fit in is to curate one’s Africanness and one’s blackness. You teach yourself to see-saw between the splitting identities of who Australia needs you to be, and who you really are. You just never simply are.

A new collection of writing curated by Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke explores this state of conditional belonging. This is the latest in a series of “Growing Up” anthologies published by Black Inc.

Clarke, with the assistance of Ahmed Yussuf and Magan Magan, has put together a nuanced collection that illustrates the diversity of Africanness and how it is experienced here.

A new collection explores the experiences of African-diaspora people in Australia. Black Inc

In her introduction, Clarke highlights the perverseness of the slave trade and the insidiousness of colonialism, upsetting the dominant perception that Africans only arrived in Australia recently. They did not. The first recorded African-diaspora settlers were convicts who landed with the First Fleet in 1788. They were 11 in number and quite involved in the colonial project of displacing Aboriginal people from their land. That’s where the conversation begins – as it should.

The phrase African-diaspora people is deliberately used instead of “Africans”, to include people of Afro descent who do not necessary “come from” Africa. From Brazil, to Guyana to Jamaica, Africa ceases to be a geographical space and becomes an embodied experience.

People of Afro-descent live everywhere across the globe and carry different histories, belief systems and ideological convictions. What often unites them in Australia, as the book establishes, is the singularity with which they are classed. “The Africans”.

Growing Up African is divided into six sections, but there are clear themes throughout: displacement, isolation, racism, resilience, survival, and the fight for the right – or privilege – to call Australia home.

Read more: Speaking with: Author Anita Heiss on Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia

In the first section, contributors explore their “roots” and their childhoods in Australian backyards and playgrounds. They share memories of establishing connection with the new country and the longing for the other home – the one they left behind.

Many reflect on the joy and gratitude they felt upon their arrival in Australia. Others explore the extent to which meaningless wars and conflict ripped their lives apart, forcing them to abandon homes, friends and families – and the resulting trauma, grief and loss. Nyadol Nyuon, an industrial lawyer in Melbourne, writes:

The shameless indifference of war means that families become strangers. War reduces the most intimate relationships to meaningless connections […] [it] not only separated me from my grandmother; I was also separated from my mother and knew little of my father. I grew up with fragments of who they are, the broken links of kinships.

Nyadol Nyuon writes about the impact of war in Growing Up African in Australia. Black Inc

Relationships with the new country are complicated not only by the shock of the newness of a different space, but also by Australia’s history. It is within this colonial context that the Afro-Blackness of African-diaspora Australians is made visible. Here they begin to feel, or are told, that their blackness is a marker of something – something less desirable.

The contours of racism

The book’s most dominant theme is racism – both overt and covert – and how it punctuates the lives of black people living in Australia. Historically, and still today, skin colour has been a marker of difference and a gauge of otherness here.

Heartbreaking stories detail how the African body is layered with suspicion of criminality, inferiority and inadequacy. In the white Australian space, the black African body struggles to be viewed as worthy or deserving. It is deviant.

Read more: Sudanese heritage youth in Australia are frequently maligned by fear-mongering and racism

Stories in this book amplify what Virginia Mapedzahama and Kwame na Kwansah-Aidoo argue elsewhere: that blackness is not only defined and constructed through the lens of whiteness, “it is also inferiorised by it”.

Jafri Katagar Alexander reflects on his experiences as a black African male living in Melbourne:

Some landlords and real estate agents are prejudiced, and they won’t rent or sell their houses to black people. […] When I go out to the shops to buy something, they look at me as if I am going to steal something […] When you are black, you are easily stopped and searched by some police officers […] I have many times been called a “black dog”, “black cat”, “nigger” and so on. I have also been told, “Go back to Africa” […] I have been attacked and pepper-sprayed by the police.

Racism as experienced by African-diaspora people in Australia is not just seen and heard, it is also felt. It is rampant and obvious for those who experience it, but silenced and denied by those who perpetrate it. It is being watched constantly with suspicion.

Manal Younus writes, “I’d hear, ‘you are too dark’, such simple words enough to spark a disdain for this blackness.” Eventually, due to the assault of racism on people’s sense of self, many learn to carry their blackness as a burden.

Read more: The politics of black hair: an Australian perspective

Where are you (really) from?

Belonging is not a given. It is constantly challenged. The question “where are you from?”, while seemingly innocent, symbolically deports African-diaspora people back to faraway places. This question particularly confronts those who have no other place to call home.

While Australians of African descent may live in Australia as law-abiding and productive citizens, the ongoing scrutiny, questioning and unending construction of foreigner status positions them as “perpetual strangers”. Nyuon articulates this in the book, writing about her younger siblings:

I wonder what it would feel like to feel Australian but happen to be black […] How do you hold on to a sense of belonging when it is so often assaulted by racism?

Belonging is further complicated by the process of racialisation – when a particular racial identity is imposed on an individual or a group, without their consent. Recognising the hyper-visibility of their skin colour, the authors reflect on the difficult and transcendental journeys of embracing their blackness, resenting it, or feeling separated from it.

Poet and author Maxine Beneba Clarke has curated this collection of stories about the experiences of African-diaspora Australians. Black Inc

This journey can be liberating, but it can also foster a deep sense of exclusion, knowing that to be fully human in Australia, and to exist with dignity, is to be white. Therefore to be non-white, particularly to be black, is occupy the space on the margin. It is to not belong. To this end, Nyuon asks:

Was home something you embraced or did it also have to embrace you back? Would I always be seen as a conditional citizen, to whom citizenship was not a right, but a gift that could only be kept by an impeccable character? […] Should I consider a back-up plan – go back to where I came from? Where was home?

But still like air … they rise

In the face of structural barriers to health care, education, housing and employment, the narratives in Growing Up African are tempered with stories of deep courage, hope, resilience and endurance.

Despite the ever-lingering knowledge of “their place” in Australia, African-diaspora peoples continue to make an enormous contribution to this place they now call home, in academia, finance, social work, health care, engineering, business, digital media, law, and politics.

One thing remains clear (but still unspoken) in this book. Marginalisation breeds resentment, mental illness, violence and a deep sense of internalised powerlessness. It chips away at people’s humanity.

African-diaspora Australians have much to contribute to the country that has so generously opened its doors to them, but they can only do so to the extent that they are “allowed” to belong. Belonging means thriving. It means home.

– ref. Growing Up African in Australia: racism, resilience and the right to belong – http://theconversation.com/growing-up-african-in-australia-racism-resilience-and-the-right-to-belong-113121

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

Shadow Finance minister Jim Chalmers said Labor was looking for ways to make things fairer for low-income earners who were “largely left behind” in the government’s budget.

He told The Conversation the measures “would be through the tax system and would most likely be around the low and middle income tax offset which the government introduced”.

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A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

Additional production assistance by Jenina Ibañez.

Image:

Dean Lewins(AAP)

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jim Chalmers on Labor’s budget reaction – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-jim-chalmers-on-labors-budget-reaction-114830

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tregear, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Melbourne

It says something about the place of the arts in Australian public life that a federal budget speech delivered on the eve of an election chooses not to mention them. Agriculture gets a mention. Culture, however, doesn’t.

If The Honourable Josh Frydenberg MP really meant what he declared towards the end of his budget speech, to wit that “a strong economy is not an end in itself. It’s what you do with it that counts”, then this was a missed opportunity.

In some respects maybe this was no bad thing. After all, as Conor King, Executive Director of Innovative Research Universities noted in relation to higher education, one good result of “the quietest budget for some years” was the announcement of no new cuts.

But it also suggests that the government is unwilling to offer strong leadership in this particular sphere of public policy. Battle weary, perhaps, by years of engagement in the so-called “culture wars”, and still reeling from the criticism it faced across the sector after the punitive measures it announced in 2014, maybe the government decided that the arts is an area best left alone at this end of the electoral cycle.

To be sure, however, there are some new initiatives to be found in this year’s budget if one cares to look. The most controversial is perhaps the $800,000 earmarked for Australia Day activities and to support a review of the National Australia Day Council’s programs.

A more substantial (in every sense) measure is the reconfirmation of a grant of $17.1 million to enable Free TV Australia to offer Australian television content to broadcasters in the south Pacific. This is a welcome recognition of the value of so-called “soft power” in the region notwithstanding the possibility, as the ABC has already wryly noted, of Married at First Sight being at the forefront of Australian cultural diplomacy.

Other new initiatives include $129 million to support cultural infrastructure in Adelaide, $85 million of this for a new Aboriginal Art and Cultures Gallery for the city. There is a partial rolling back of the savage cuts to the ABC announced in the 2017 budget, with an additional $43.7 million over three years available to support local and regional news and current affairs offerings. SBS also gets an extra $29.6 million to support its own TV, radio and online offerings.

Dan Sultan performs at a rally in support of live music in Sydney. The government has announced a package to support Australian music. Joel Carrett/AAP

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison had also a few days earlier announced $30.9 million to support Australia’s live music industry. Dubbed the “Australian Music Industry Package”, it included the provision of $22.5 million over four years for grants of $10,000 to small businesses to enable them to book musicians or to help them invest in equipment or infrastructure in order to establish or upgrade a live music venue. Other related initiatives include $2.1 million for a women in music mentor program and $2.7 million to establish a national development program for Indigenous musicians and bands.

While these no doubt reflect the government’s concern to appeal to inner-city, regional and ethnic minority voters in advance of the expected May election, they also reflect the current placement of the arts portfolio within The Department of Communications and the Arts.

The department’s stated mission is to work “with government and industry to provide an environment in which all Australians can access and benefit from communications services, creative experiences and culture.” It summarises its strategic direction under two broad aims:

• connectivity: enabling all Australians to connect to effective communications services and technologies, for inclusiveness and sustainable economic growth

• creativity and culture: supporting inclusiveness and growth in Australia’s creative sector, and protecting and promoting Australian content and culture.

Arts minister Mitch Fifield thus justifies such budget allocations ultimately because, “The Morrison government understands the enormous potential for growth in this dynamic sector and is delivering real world measures to strengthen the diversity and reach of our music industry.”

In contrast to what Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said, then, it seems the budget is ultimately all about the economy. Where is the nation-building cultural vision, the statement of cultural aspiration? Where is any recognition that the arts are one of the ways we ultimately make sense of our place in an increasingly confusing, and confused, world?

Is it too much to expect our governments, of whatever political persuasion, to want to support not just an arts economy but also the arts as a good in themselves?

Is it too much to expect them to help encourage and empower the wider Australian community to explore just what sorts of art and artistic practice can best befit our nation in the 21st century?

– ref. Missing in action: a vision for the arts in the 2019 budget – http://theconversation.com/missing-in-action-a-vision-for-the-arts-in-the-2019-budget-114816

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

The ABC board comes out badly from the report of the Senate inquiry into political interference in the ABC, which culminated last September in the sacking of the managing director, Michelle Guthrie, and the resignation of the chair, Justin Milne.

Referring to the long leap to this crisis, the committee says:

This catalogue of events may give rise to the perception that the ABC Board had not been sufficiently active in protecting either the ABC’s independence from political interference or its own integrity.

The committee says it was “astounded” that the board did not inquire into the causes of what it knew to be tensions between Milne and Guthrie.

Read more: Michelle Guthrie’s stint at ABC helm had a key weakness: she failed to back the journalists

It notes that allegations of political interference against Milne had been preceded by months of government complaints against the ABC.

During this time, ABC board members had been aware of the declining relationship between Milne and Guthrie. But they had not made further inquiries about it, even though it was clearly impacting on the corporation and jeopardising the independence of key personnel.

This was a reference to two journalists, chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici and political editor Andrew Probyn, whom Milne allegedly wanted sacked.

The committee says it was not until Guthrie’s now famous dossier about Milne’s alleged interference came out in the Fairfax press that the rest of the board woke up to what had been going on.

In the dossier, Guthrie alleged that Milne told her to “get rid of” Alberici and “shoot” Probyn because the government “hated” them, and Probyn’s continued presence was putting at risk half-a-billion dollars of funding for the ABC.

Milne has always denied there was any interference by the government. He has said the “interests of the ABC have always been utmost in my mind”.

The committee says that even after all this came to light and the cause of the breakdown between Milne and Guthrie had become clear, the board mishandled it.

A Senate inquiry has found the ABC board handled the deteriorating relationship between Justin Milne and Michelle Guthrie badly. AAP/Joel Carrett

Instead of starting an immediate investigation into the allegations of political interference by Milne, it had persisted with its planned sacking of Guthrie.

The committee says that had the allegations in Guthrie’s dossier not leaked to the media, the board might never have suggested Milne consider his position, a suggestion that led directly to his resignation.

In other words, had it not been for the public pressure caused by the leak of the dossier, the board might never have put pressure on Milne to resign, and his alleged undermining of the ABC’s editorial independence might have been swept under the carpet.

The committee finds that the government’s control over ABC funding featured prominently in Milne’s thoughts and actions.

It also finds that the Coalition government was complicit in the events of September 2018 by using funding as a lever to exert political influence on the ABC.

The committee makes six recommendations. One is that the board reviews these events and reports to the minister for communications on what steps it proposes to take to guard against a recurrence.

Its other recommendations are directed at making appointments to the ABC board more transparent, gathering a broader range of experience, including media experience, on the board, and achieving greater stability in funding for the ABC.

The committee says the problem of politicisation of appointments to the ABC board “runs deep and wide”, and that it is important to bring transparency and accountability to the processes.

It expresses “grave concern” that in the midst of the committee’s inquiry, Prime Minister Scott Morrison chose to make what it called a “captain’s pick” and appoint Ita Buttrose as the new chair.

More broadly, the committee says the formal process for board appointments needs to be tightened up.

It recommends:

• a formal process of consultation between the prime minister and opposition leader over the appointment of the chair, and a requirement that the prime minister make a statement to parliament about the extent and outcome of that consultation

• selection criteria for board appointments be broadened to encourage a wider range of backgrounds.

• inclusion on the board of at least two non-executive directors with substantial knowledge and experience of the media industry

• explicit selection criteria be established for the appointment of the nomination panel, whose job is to put forward names to the minister for board appointments, so its work will be more transparent.

Read more: Ita Buttrose’s appointment as new ABC chair a promising step in the right direction

The committee also recommends that governments commit to a stable funding cycle for the ABC. This is partly because it gives the ABC certainty and partly to reduce the scope for funding to be used as a lever of political influence.

There is a dissenting report by the two Coalition senators on the committee.

They reject all of this, saying the government has not interfered in the ABC and all the present procedures about board appointments and funding are fine.

What happens next will no doubt be influenced to some extent by the outcome of the forthcoming federal election.

However, much of the response is in the hands of Buttrose. She has the opportunity to assess the quality of the board she has inherited in the light of the committee’s findings, to lead the recommended review of last year’s events and to create a new boardroom culture.

– ref. ABC inquiry finds board knew of trouble between Milne and Guthrie, but did nothing – http://theconversation.com/abc-inquiry-finds-board-knew-of-trouble-between-milne-and-guthrie-but-did-nothing-114752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Courtney Hempton, PhD Candidate, Monash University

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) comes into effect on June 19, making Victoria the first state in Australia to allow “voluntary assisted dying”.

The legislation was passed in November 2017 following the recommendations of a state parliamentary inquiry into end of life choices, and a subsequent ministerial advisory panel on voluntary assisted dying.

While Victoria is not the first jurisdiction in the world to offer some form of assisted death, the state’s legislation is unique in the way voluntary assisted dying will be regulated.

Read more: FactCheck Q&A: do 80% of Australians and up to 70% of Catholics and Anglicans support euthanasia laws?

What is voluntary assisted dying?

Voluntary assisted dying refers to a doctor providing assistance to enable a patient to die. It may offer an additional “end of life” option for those considered eligible, allowing a person to choose to die sooner than otherwise anticipated.

A person may request voluntary assisted dying to avoid suffering that cannot be managed in a way they consider tolerable. It’s also a means to control the time and location of their death.

The Victorian regime primarily sets out a practice of “self-administration”, allowing a person to self-administer a prescribed lethal substance. A doctor doesn’t need to be present, though can be.

If a person is physically unable to self-administer, the legislation also provides for “practitioner administration”, allowing a medical practitioner to administer the substance in a way most appropriate for the patient.

Read more: Want to better understand Victoria’s assisted dying laws? These five articles will help

Who is eligible?

To be eligible to access voluntary assisted dying a person must:

• be aged 18 or over

• have lived in Victoria for at least one year before making a first request for voluntary assisted dying, and be an Australian citizen or permanent resident

• have decision-making capacity in relation to voluntary assisted dying, meaning they must be able to understand, retain, and weigh information about voluntary assisted dying, and communicate their decision.

There are several criteria a person must meet in order to qualify for voluntary assisted dying. From shutterstock.com

They must be diagnosed with a disease, illness, or medical condition that is assessed to be:

• incurable, advanced, and progressive

• causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a way considered tolerable by the person

• predicted to cause death within no more than six months, or no more than 12 months for those with a neurodegenerative diagnosis.

Victoria is not establishing a “right” to voluntary assisted dying. This means there will not be universal access, and people cannot demand voluntary assisted dying.

Rather, access to voluntary assisted dying will depend on the availability of participating health services and medical practitioners, and the approval of the state.

How does someone access voluntary assisted dying?

The legislation outlines a formal procedure for accessing voluntary assisted dying, with specific requirements for making a request, assessment of eligibility, and processes for applying for a voluntary assisted dying permit.

In brief, the first step is a request, made directly by the person to a medical practitioner. This is followed by an initial assessment to determine eligibility, conducted by a “coordinating medical practitioner”.

Next, another doctor, called a “consulting medical practitioner” will conduct a second assessment to confirm the person’s eligibility. The patient will also need to make a second request, in the form of a written declaration, signed in the presence of two witnesses and the coordinating medical practitioner.

Read more: From ‘right to die’ to ‘right to choose the way you die’ – the shifting euthanasia debate

The patient will then need to make a third and final request to the coordinating medical practitioner at least nine days after the first request (unless death is likely to occur before).

Lastly, the coordinating medical practitioner will conduct a final review to certify the request and assessment process. They will then apply for a permit, either for self-administration or practitioner administration.

Either or both the coordinating or consulting medical practitioner may refer the patient to another specialist to assess aspects of the eligibility criteria if needed.

Importantly, at any stage of the process, a person who has requested access to voluntary assisted dying may change their mind and decide not to proceed.

What safeguards are in place?

The ministerial advisory panel on voluntary assisted dying detail 68 “safeguards”, considering aspects of eligibility and access, medication management and storage, protections for practitioners, and reporting and oversight.

Safeguards for members of the community include the required “voluntariness” for accessing voluntary assisted dying.

A person requesting voluntary assisted dying must have decision-making capacity at the time of the request. It’s not possible to make a request for voluntary assisted dying in an advance care directive.

A discussion about voluntary assisted dying must be initiated by the person directly, and cannot be initiated by a health practitioner.

Read more: In places where it’s legal, how many people are ending their lives using euthanasia?

Safeguards for health practitioners include provisions for conscientious objection. This means doctors can refuse to participate in any processes related to voluntary assisted dying, including providing information, assessing eligibility, and prescribing or administering drugs.

Medical practitioners participating in voluntary assisted dying must hold certain registrations as relevant to their speciality, and must complete online or face-to-face training on voluntary assisted dying.

A Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board has been established to monitor and report on the operation of voluntary assisted dying.

Wider implications

The state’s introduction of voluntary assisted dying represents a historic transformation of health law in Victoria.

The task now for the state is to operationalise the legislation in health policy and clinical care. A Voluntary Assisted Dying Implementation Taskforce has been established to prepare for and oversee practical implementation of voluntary assisted dying.

Navigating the complex legislation will be a new challenge for health services, health practitioners, and patients. It remains to be seen how Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying regime will work in practice.

Read more: Voluntary assisted dying is not a black-and-white issue for Christians – they can, in good faith, support it

Whether or not one supports assisted death, Victoria’s approach to voluntary assisted dying raises a number of important questions; about the power of medicine and the role of medical practitioners, about medical treatment decision-making and end of life choices, and about dying and the value of death.

With other jurisdictions in Australia exploring the legalisation of some form of assisted death, the implementation of voluntary assisted dying in Victoria is under close scrutiny, both within the state and beyond.

– ref. Voluntary assisted dying will soon be legal in Victoria, and this is what you need to know – http://theconversation.com/voluntary-assisted-dying-will-soon-be-legal-in-victoria-and-this-is-what-you-need-to-know-111836

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Goss, School Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

In his first budget speech, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said education was the

first defence of the nation […] it is critical to our prosperity, harmony and advancement as a country.

Frydenberg said funding for government, independent and Catholic schools was at an “all-time high” when he announced a A$300 billion commitment to schools.

Read more: Infographic: Budget 2019 at a glance

He said the government would set up a $93.7 million scholarship program for over 1,000 students a year to study in a regional university or TAFE.

The government is also dedicating $525 million over five years to fund 80,000 new apprenticeships in areas of skills shortages – including bakers, bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers. The majority of this skills package would be funded from the existing Skilling Australia Fund (which began on July 1, 2018).

Other education announcements were:

• $67.5 million to trial ten new training hubs in regional areas, connecting schools, industry and young people
• $62 million boost to second chance literacy, numeracy and digital skills for at-risk workers, including four separate pilots for programs tailored to remote Indigenous communities
• $453 million over two years from 2019-20 to extend the provision of 15 hours of preschool through to 2021, including $1.4 million to develop strategies to increase preschool attendance among disadvantaged and Indigenous students
• $30.2 million in 2019-20 for a Local School Community Fund, with local schools to identify their own priorities
• $19.7 million over the next four years for schools for various arts and life education programs, including theatre, music, preventative health and the constitution.

Here’s what our education policy experts thought of tonight’s budget announcements.

Little change in policy, and the rest – window-dressing

Peter Goss, School Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

Tonight’s education announcements showed no substantial change in policy.

Yes, $300 billion is the biggest ever spend on recurrent school funding (a 63% increase, as Frydenberg said). But with rapidly growing student numbers and the cost of wages going up each year, that doesn’t mean much. And it appears to be exactly what is in the National School Reform Agreement, which was signed between the federal government and all states and territories at the end of 2018.

Read more: What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding

Another one year extension on funding for early childhood education should be taken at face value: the Coalition says it values early learning, but doesn’t yet have a long-term plan.

The remaining initiatives are window-dressing – they don’t change anything fundamental, but cost money that could have been used elsewhere.

Frydenberg said “no one knows the needs of a local school better than the school community itself”. This is true, but $30 million for libraries, classrooms and play equipment won’t go far. It will also create red tape and duplicate state initiatives, and is very much the type of funding the Commonwealth should stay away from.

One-off funding for infrastructure also has an opportunity cost: $30 million on better evaluation of existing initiatives would have made a real contribution to efforts to improve teaching and learning at the system level.

The remaining initiatives – including arts, life education, preventative health and the constitution – smack of the Commonwealth meddling in areas beyond its remit.

Given the Commonwealth doesn’t run schools, is there anything useful it what could it have announced in the budget? Here are two ideas. The government has promised a national evidence institute, but has not yet announced the dollars behind it.

And it could have chosen to invest in how best to assess the non-cognitive skills that are important for the workforce, but which are currently hard to measure.

More money, but otherwise more of the same

Steven Lewis, Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellow, Deakin University

Given Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s insistence that education is “critical to our prosperity, harmony and advancement as a country”, one might expect a roll-out of major policy reform to accompany such lofty rhetoric.

Despite efforts to focus our attention on the quantum of Commonwealth money earmarked for schools in the public, independent and Catholic sectors, there is precious little in the government’s budget to signal any new shifts in policy focus.

So, what can parents, teachers, students and the public expect from a re-elected Coalition government?

First, the government is targeting schools and their local communities by offering $30.2 million via a Local School Community Fund. This program is meant to empower local communities – those closest to schools, and thus most likely to understand their particular contexts and needs.

But, it remains to be seen precisely what long-term benefits to student learning can come from a one-off injection of federal funds, especially when this is to be split between the 9,000-plus schools throughout Australia.

Similarly, the announced attention on theatre, music, preventative health and the constitution appears unlikely to make substantive improvements to these critical, and often underfunded, areas. However, $20 million invested over four years to arts and life education appears superficial at best, especially when the overwhelming discourse from this government has been improving the “core skills” of literacy and numeracy.

We still haven’t got secure, ongoing funding for early childhood education. from shutterstock.com

Same old (not enough) in early childhood education

Susan Irvine, Associate Professor, Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, QUT

The announcement of $453 million to extend preschool provision is welcome, but it’s not enough. Currently the government funds 15 hours of preschool education for 3 ½ to 4 ½ years-old children, led by a degree qualified early childhood teacher in the year prior to school.

But when the commitment to the provision of early childhood education was announced by the previous Labor government, the expectation was that it would be sustained by secure, long-term funding. Tonight’s is another short-term agreement that provides funding security for children, families and service providers for only two years.

The benefits of preschool education are well documented. In fact many OECD countries are now investing in two years of preschool prior to school entry. We need a bipartisan agreement that preschool is the foundation to a modern education system, and, like school, requires a secure and ongoing source of funding.

We also urgently need a new national early years workforce strategy – the previous (and only) one expired in 2016. All our current quality reforms depend on the availability of qualified teachers and educators, but they are set against poor wages and conditions for many working in the sector.

– ref. Don’t be fooled, billions for schools in budget 2019 aren’t new. And what happened to the national evidence institute? – http://theconversation.com/dont-be-fooled-billions-for-schools-in-budget-2019-arent-new-and-what-happened-to-the-national-evidence-institute-114193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Mortimer, Associate Professor in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Queensland University of Technology

After weeks of speculation, Woolworths has confirmed it will close 30 of its Big W stores in Australia, as well as two distribution centres. This represents about 16% of its 183-strong network.

The obvious culprit, and the one identified by many analysts, is online shopping.

As one industry analyst explained: “The physical department store footprint is likely to continue to shrink as online sales penetration increases further.”

Online shopping is certainly a factor, but it is not the primary reason for Big W’s troubles.

Though online shopping in the department and variety stores category is growing fast (by 29.6% in 2018 according to the NAB Online Retail Sales Index, the total amount of money spent online by Australian shoppers – A$28.8 billion – is still only about about 9% of what is spent in traditional bricks-and-mortar stores.

Online retail sales growth by industry in the 12 months to December 2018, NAB Online Retail Sales Index

More important to Big W’s woes is the growth of the so-called category killers, which are disrupting the entire discount department store business model. It a threat to which Big W has failed to respond with the same agility of rival Kmart.

Departed departments

If you’re old enough you may remember getting your wall paint mixed in the Big W hardware department, or buying car accessories from its automotive department. There was also a large “sight and sound” department filled with televisions, sound systems, videos and CDs. Discount department stores truly lived up to the idea of a variety store.

‘You know the price is low, everyday’: A television advertisement for Big W in 1994.

But the profitability of all these market segments for department stores has been eroded by the growth of “category killers” – retailers specialising in the same product categories.

Examples include Office Works for office supplies, Rebel for sports equipment, JB Hi-Fi for audiovisual, Super Cheap Auto for car parts, and Bunnings for hardware. All have taken market share from the discounters. These stores compete on price and have superior range, and shoppers trust the expertise of staff working in a specialist shop.

Speed of change

The popularity of category killers explains in large part the stagnant sales and talk of store closures throughout the department store segment.

Harris Scarfe and Best and Less are reportedly struggling. The Reject Shop’s net profit for the first half fell from an expected A$17 million to less than A$11 million. David Jones’ half-year profit fell 39% to A$36 million. Myer reported a 2.8% drop in total sales for the same time frame.

Read more: What does the future hold for our traditional department stores?

Wesfarmers expects earnings from its department store brands Kmart and Target to fall about 8% this financial year. Eight Target stores closed during the first half of the financial year, with another six closures expected by the end of June.

Cutting losses

Kmart is considered Australia’s discount department store “darling”. A decade ago it was on life support. Under the direction of chief executive Guy Russo it doubled it profits by 2015.

A key to the turnaround was recognition it needed to quickly reduce or exit categories it could not compete in, such as hardware, automotive, fishing, consumer electronics and sporting goods. It has turned to homeware, soft furnishings, manchester and kitchenware.

There appears no such swiftness in Big W’s moves.

Big W’s chief executive from January to November 2016, Sally MacDonald, reportedly wanted to closes stores and make other major changes but was thwarted by the board of Woolworths Group, owner of Big W.

Such differences in strategic vision explain why MacDonald left the role within the year.

This process of “right-sizing” therefore seems long overdue. To what extent it makes Woolworths a sustainable business, however, will depend on future response to changing circumstances.

What is certain is that discount department stores aren’t what they used to be; and if they want to be around in future, they probably can’t be what they are now.

– ref. The trouble with Big W: don’t blame online for killing discount department stores – http://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-big-w-dont-blame-online-for-killing-discount-department-stores-114630

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Fellow, Grattan Institute

Another federal budget, and yet more tinkering to superannuation tax breaks. But the latest changes will only help older wealthier Australians. The losers are younger workers and taxpayers.

What’s the plan?

From July 1 2020, Australians aged 65 and 66 will be able to make voluntary pre- and post-tax superannuation contributions without having to pass the Work Test, under which they are required to work a minimum of 40 hours over a 30-day period.

About 55,000 Australians aged 65 and 66 will benefit from these changes at a cost of A$75 million over the next four years.

It’s another boost for tax planning

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the changes will help Australians save for their retirement.

But most 65- and 66-year-olds still working to top up their superannuation are already eligible to make voluntary super contributions, because they satisfy the Work Test. Working 40 hours over a 30-day period – or little more than one day each week – is hardly onerous.

For every dollar contributed to super that genuinely helps Australians save more for their retirement as a result of these changes, there will be many more dollars funnelled into super to make extra use of superannuation tax concessions.

The biggest winners will be wealthier retired 65- and 66-year-olds with other sources of income, such as from shares or property, which they will now be able to recycle through superannuation.

Read more: View from The Hill: budget tax-upmanship as we head towards polling day

They will be able to put up to $25,000 into super from their pre-tax income and then – because super withdrawals are tax-free – take the money back out immediately. Their contributions to super are taxed at only 15%, whereas ordinary dividends or bank interest is taxed at their marginal tax rate. The tax savings can be as high as $5,000 a year.

Such strategies aren’t costless: other taxpayers must pay more, or accept fewer services, to make up the difference.

It will mean larger inheritances

The government is also allowing 65- and 66-year-olds to make three years’ worth of post-tax super contributions, or up to $300,000, in a single year.

These changes will mainly boost inheritances.

Most people who make after-tax contributions already have large super balances and typically contribute from existing pools of savings to minimise their tax.

Grattan Institute’s 2016 report, A Better Super System, found that only about 1% of taxpayers have total super account balances of more than $1 million, yet this tiny cohort makes almost one-third of all post-tax contributions.

These changes will turbo-charge so-called “recontribution strategies” that minimise the tax paid on superannuation fund balances passed on as inheritances. When inherited, super fund balances originally funded by pre-tax contributions can be taxed at 17% (including the Medicare levy), depending on the age of the deceased and the beneficiary.

To avoid this tax on their estate, individuals can withdraw superannuation funds tax-free and contribute them back as a post-tax contribution, up to the annual post-tax contributions cap of $100,000 each year.

It fails the government’s own test

In 2016, the government tried – but failed – to define the purpose of superannuation as providing “income in retirement to supplement or substitute the Age Pension”.

The proposed objective rightly implied that super should not aim to provide limitless support for savings that increase retirement incomes.

The benefits of super changes should always be balanced against the costs of achieving them. The government’s latest changes fail that test.

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

– ref. The budget super change that helps the wealthy at the expense of the young – http://theconversation.com/the-budget-super-change-that-helps-the-wealthy-at-the-expense-of-the-young-114811

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

In a recent court case in Western Australia, Magistrate Michelle Ridley ruled that “in an era of twerking” and easy access to pornography, a police officer pinching a woman’s backside is not indecent assault.

Here’s what happened. In December 2017, 48-year-old police officer of 17 years, Andrew Ramsden, participated in a yearly wheelchair basketball charity event. After the game, the anonymous complainant asked if she could have a “serious photo” with other members of the police team.

Read more: Backlash and gender fatigue. Why progress on gender equality has slowed

But when posing for the photo, Ramsden thought it would be funny to startle her by pinching her buttocks, and she jumped forward in surprise when he did so. Ramsden reportedly then said to her either “I hope you take this the right way” or “don’t take this the wrong way”.

He was charged with “unlawfully and indecently assaulting another person” under section 323 of the Criminal Code (WA). And he was eventually found not guilty.

But twerking, grinding, and the easy availability of pornography should never be an excuse for sexual harassment. This argument effectively shifts the blame on victims and implies that the sexualisation of society means women consent to being sexually harassed, which is far from the truth.

And in the era of the #MeToo movement, where women are holding men to account for sexual harassment, it seems the court in the Ramsden case hasn’t caught up to this wider cultural shift.

What is considered ‘indecent’?

Determining if an act is “indecent” requires considering the intention of the accused.

Read more: #MeToo exposes legal failures, but ‘trial by Twitter’ isn’t one of them

The courts have stated for an assault to be indecent there

must be a sexual connotation to the activity. It must be an activity which offends community standards of propriety prevailing at the relevant time.

In Ramsden’s case, the magistrate held that the act was not indecent because it was not done for a sexual purpose. And the WA Supreme Court recently upheld the magistrate’s decision, and acquitted him.

The magistrate and the Supreme Court rejected the prosecution’s argument:

the prevailing standards of the community today are that any touching by a man of the buttocks of a woman is inherently indecent.

It has never been okay

Determining community standards is best left to a jury rather than a single judge or magistrate to help ensure “the application of the law is fair and consistent with community standards”. However, no jury was used in Ramsden’s case, so it was up to the magistrate alone to decide whether today’s community would regard pinching a person’s bottom as indecent.

Magistrate Ridley said in the 1970s and 1980s, “a pinch on the bottom was naughty and seen as overtly sexual and inappropriate for that time”. But added nowadays “the thought of a pinch on the bottom is almost a reference to a more genteel time”.

Ridley believed pinching a person’s backside lost its overtly sexual connotation “in an era of twerking and grinding, simulated sex and easy access to pornography”.

But it wasn’t okay to touch people inappropriately then, and it still isn’t now.

The worldwide #MeToo movement, which the prosecution referred to in the trial, is just one example showing the significant cultural shift in societal views of sexual harassment.

On appeal, the Supreme Court accepted the movement had led to an

increase in the number of complaints by women and to increase awareness of the unacceptability of such acts and conduct.

However, it held that no evidence was put forward to the magistrate

upon which a finding could be made that the effect of the movement itself had resulted in a change in community standards as to the ‘acts’ and ‘conduct’ that should, at law, be deemed ‘indecent’.

Cultural change takes time. The #MeToo movement is a positive step in changing how we respond to sexual assault. Unfortunately, using pornography and dancing as an excuse for sexual harassment is a step backwards.

University of Technology Sydney criminal law lecturer Dr Katherine Fallah criticised the Ramsden decision. In an interview on Triple J, Fallah made an excellent point, arguing:

The statement about twerking and about porn are offered in a fairly derisory way of talking about things that are very remote from the facts of the case – here we have a woman having a photo taken after … a wheelchair basketball charity event.

The bottom line

A person’s backside is an intimate part of one’s body and no one should have to tolerate unwanted contact of their private parts for someone else’s amusement.

The Ramsden case fails to reinforce this message because of the definition of “indecency”, which requires a sexual motive for the act.

Read more: Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment: what’s the difference?

Australian legislators need to step in and make it clear that deliberately pinching a person’s backside is a form of sexual harassment. Without consent, such conduct is unacceptable, regardless of whether it is done for a sexual purpose or in a poor attempt at humour.

The bottom line is that “bum pinching isn’t — and has never been OK”.

– ref. Is bottom-pinching still ‘indecent’ by today’s community standards? – http://theconversation.com/is-bottom-pinching-still-indecent-by-todays-community-standards-114429

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling

Are you an #auspol addict? Did you watch the budget speech for fun? Test yourself with our quiz, and catch all our analysis and coverage over here.

Quiz Maker – powered by Riddle

Read more: Budget 2019 has little new for schools and even less for early childhood: education experts respond

– ref. Were you paying attention on budget night? Test yourself with this quiz – http://theconversation.com/were-you-paying-attention-on-budget-night-test-yourself-with-this-quiz-114777

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melanie Laird, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Otago

For most animals, reproduction is straightforward: some species lay eggs, while others give birth to live babies.

But our recent research uncovered a fascinating mix between the two modes of reproduction. In an Australian skink, we observed the first example of both egg-laying and live-bearing within a single litter for any backboned animal.

This suggests some lizards can “hedge their bets” reproductively, taking a punt on both eggs and live-born babies to improve overall survival chances for offspring.

Read more: Ancient fossil fills a 75 million-year gap and rewrites lizard and snake history

Making reproductive leaps

Most vertebrate species (animals with a backbone) fall neatly into one of two distinctly different reproductive categories.

Oviparous species are egg-layers. These eggs may undergo external fertilisation – such as in spawning fish – or are fertilised and shelled internally, like those of reptiles and birds. Oviparous embryos rely on egg yolk as a source of nutrition to continue development until hatching.

In contrast, viviparous species are live bearers that carry their young to term. Some live-bearing species, including humans, support embryonic development internally via a placenta. Egg-laying is ancestral, meaning that modern live-bearers have descended from egg-laying ancestors.

Physiologically, the evolution of live birth from egg-laying is no mean feat. This transition requires a whole suite of changes, sometimes including the evolution of a placenta – an entirely new specialist organ – as well as loss of the hard outer eggshell, and keeping the embryo inside the body for a longer time.

The placenta is a highly complex organ. One of its jobs is to transfer nutrition to the developing baby. from www.shutterstock.com

Despite these complex steps, reptiles, particularly snakes and lizards, appear to be unusually predisposed to making the leap to live birth. This capacity has evolved in at least 115 groups of reptiles independently.

Read more: A hidden toll: Australia’s cats kill almost 650 million reptiles a year

Having it both ways

It’s easy to see why reptiles, as a group, are fascinating models for studying how live birth evolves from egg-laying.

Of particular interest are two Australian skinks that have both live-bearing and egg-laying individuals (known as being bimodally reproductive). These lizards are incredibly valuable to evolutionary biologists as they offer a snapshot into evolutionary processes in action.

The three-toed skink Saiphos equalis is one such species. Reproduction in S. equalis varies geographically: populations around Sydney lay eggs, while those further north give birth to live young.

Whether individuals are live-bearing or egg-laying seems to be genetically determined: when researchers swap their environmental conditions (by moving them from one site to another), the females retain their original reproductive strategy.

Read more: Lizards help us find out which came first: the baby or the egg?

Mothers know best

Our latest research shows this lizard is intriguing in another completely unexpected way.

We observed a live-bearing female that laid three eggs, and then gave birth to a living baby from the same litter weeks later. We incubated two of the eggs, one of which hatched to produce a healthy baby.

A live-bearing female S. equalis in our laboratory colony laid three eggs, one of which hatched to produce a healthy baby. Camilla Whittington

This finding is remarkable for two reasons. First, as far as we are aware, this is the first example of both egg-laying and live birth within a single litter for any vertebrate.

Second, in some cases, individuals may be capable of “switching” between reproductive modes. In other words, as laying eggs and giving birth each come with their own advantages and disadvantages, individuals may be able to “choose” which option best suits the current situation.

Closer look at eggshells

To better understand this reproductive phenomenon, we investigated the structure of the egg coverings of these unusual embryos in minute detail (using an advanced technology called scanning electron microscopy).

We found that in this litter, the egg-coverings were thinner than those of normal egg-laying skinks and had structural characteristics that overlapped with those of both egg-layers and live-bearers (which have thinner coverings that are greatly reduced).

Egg coverings of S. equalis consist of an outer crust (C) and an inner shell membrane (SM). We compared the structure and thicknesses of these layers of both egg-laying (A) and live-bearing (B) S. equalis to identify similarities with our ‘unusual’ embryos (C). Melanie Laird

How evolution works

We still don’t know the trigger that caused this female to lay eggs and give birth to a live baby from the same pregnancy.

However, our findings suggest that species “in transition” between egg-laying and live bearing may hedge their bets reproductively before a true transition to live birth evolves.

Being able to switch between reproductive modes may be advantageous, particularly in changing or uncertain environments.

The three-toed skink lives in eastern Australia. Doug Beckers / flickr, CC BY

For example, extreme cold, drought or the presence of predators can be risky for vulnerable eggs exposed to the environment, meaning that mothers that can carry offspring to term may have the upper hand.

In contrast, lengthy pregnancies can be taxing on the mother, so depositing offspring earlier as an egg may be beneficial in some situations.

We suggest that other species in which live birth has evolved from egg-laying relatively recently may also use flexible reproductive tactics.

Further research into this small Australian lizard, which seems to occupy the grey area between live birth and egg-laying, will help us determine how and why species make major reproductive leaps.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do hens still lay eggs when they don’t have a mate?

– ref. The first known case of eggs plus live birth from one pregnancy in a tiny lizard – http://theconversation.com/the-first-known-case-of-eggs-plus-live-birth-from-one-pregnancy-in-a-tiny-lizard-113460

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Wardle, Associate Professor of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney

Starting this week, private health insurers are prohibited from providing benefits for a number of natural therapies. This includes aromatherapy, Western herbalism, homeopathy, naturopathy, pilates, reflexology, Rolfing (soft tissue manipulation), Shiatsu, tai chi, yoga, and half a dozen others.

The goal of these changes is to stop taxpayers subsidising these therapies. But the way the changes have been legislated will have a lot of unintended consequences.

Why were some therapies removed?

The therapies were removed after a 2013 government review couldn’t find significant evidence for the clinical effectiveness for these therapies.

Based on the review, a ministerial committee concluded these therapies should no longer attract taxpayer subsidies as part of private health insurance.

Taxpayers subsidise natural therapies via the private health insurance rebate, which covers around 25% of the cost of premiums.

This rebate itself is controversial. It costs the government around $6bn a year and many experts have questioned whether it’s an effective use of taxpayer funds.

Read more: Private health insurance rebates don’t serve their purpose. Let’s talk about scrapping them

However, current government policy is to subsidise premiums. So ensuring taxpayer funds are focused on therapies that work is a worthy goal.

How does the legislation prohibit therapies?

Government subsidies for private health insurance premiums are governed by legislation, with practical considerations fleshed out in regulations. Exclusions from government subsidies would usually be incorporated into these mechanisms.

Instead, the change is contained within a separate set of rules which govern what insurers can offer. Three rules were amended:

Rule 3: The 16 natural therapies are defined in a list as “excluded natural therapy treatment”

Rule 8: “Excluded natural therapy treatment” is prohibited from coverage as hospital treatment

Rule 11: “Excluded natural therapy treatment” is prohibited from coverage as “general treatment” for a specific health condition.

Natural health practitioners draw on a variety of remedies not used by medical doctors. From shutterstock.com

So, what’s the problem?

The term “natural therapies” groups diverse treatments that have very little in common.

Therapies such as iridology (diagnosing health problems by looking at the iris of the eye) are not evidence-based, yet therapies such as yoga and tai chi have a reasonable (and growing) body of evidence. All three are on the list of prohibited therapies.

Read more: Yoga in the workplace can reduce back pain and sickness absence

Chinese medicine, chiropractic and massage therapy are not on the list, and can still attract private health insurance benefits.

The 2013 review noted evidence for some of the natural therapies on the list, but excluded them because it was limited to specific conditions or situations. Evidence for the breathing technique Buteyko, for instance, was limited to asthma.

This limitation may warrant restriction of direct benefits. However, the legislation requires any bundled package of care or management program for asthma that attracts benefits to specifically exclude Buteyko, even if the insurer is not paying for Buteyko directly.

Organisations can still technically offer these services if they are completely separated clinically and administratively from reimbursable items. But the reality is this creates an almost impossible barrier. Natural therapies on this list can no longer interact, interface or integrate with reimbursable services.

The Department of Health’s private health insurance advisor admitted as much, noting it would be almost impossible for insurers – or organisations accepting insurance – to overcome barriers and offer any natural therapy services.

Had the legislation been focused on removal of subsidies there would have been few issues. But the “prohibitive list” in the legislation is highly unusual.

If therapies work, won’t they be allowed back?

The changes have a number of structural problems.

There is no formal process for updating the list as evidence evolves. This means therapies remain prohibited until legislated otherwise and other therapies cannot be added easily.

By virtue of not being included in the list, reiki and crystal healing are eligible for benefits.

Shiatsu, a form of massage, is one of the treatments to have been cut from private health insurance. From shutterstock.com

Meanwhile, the review is already out of date. It examined systematic reviews published between 2008 and 2013, and did not review original research at all. Search criteria for the review were narrow and may not have reflected practice. The review excluded evidence for individual herbal medicines, for example, as it did not believe this evidence was relevant to the practice of herbalism.

Meta-analyses now show yoga to be effective in conditions such as diabetes and back pain. Yoga is now recommended as a first-line treatment for low back pain in the United Kingdom. And NATO recommends military health services use yoga for post-traumatic stress disorder and back pain.

This legislation makes similar programs almost impossible to replicate in Australia.

At the very least, the Department of Health should update the review to ensure the evidence on which they have based this decision is current.

We need an evidence-based approach to natural therapies. But these changes hamper access to therapies known to work, encourage therapies known not to work, and reduce researchers’ ability to investigate what does and doesn’t work.

Read more: Premiums up, rebates down, and a new tiered system – what the private health insurance changes mean

– ref. Going to the naturopath or a yoga class? Your private health won’t cover it – http://theconversation.com/going-to-the-naturopath-or-a-yoga-class-your-private-health-wont-cover-it-110699

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hussein Dia, Chair, Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

E-scooter mania is sweeping cities around the world. Fun, accessible and cheap to rent, shared electric scooters are one of the biggest technology stories this year.

Their main appeal is that they are so easy to ride. A flood of startups offer on-demand services. Simply download an app, scan the barcode, ride and drop at your destination.

Read more: Limes not lemons: lessons from Australia’s first e-scooter sharing trial

While this is a simple idea, it has caused a few problems.

When they reach their destinations, riders leave them and walk away. The scooters, like dockless share bikes before them, end up cluttering pavements, cause friction with pedestrians and provoke controversy and debate.

E-scooters are the future of city transport and will reduce private car use, say the enthusiasts. They will ease congestion and help cities achieve their environmental and road safety targets, according to the optimists.

But for every supporter of these e-boosted contraptions, a dissenting voice says they are annoying and dangerous. Critics argue that e-scooters litter our footpaths, menace pedestrians and cause crashes and injuries. One group in San Diego has even filed a law suit claiming that scooters discriminate against people with disabilities.

Some cities have banned e-scooters. In Australia, Brisbane City Council, while extending a trial of e-scooters operated by Lime, has warned safety must be improved before a permanent permit is granted.

Tiny vehicles, big impacts

The emergence of “tiny vehicles” includes not only e-scooters, but also e-bikes and other electric, low-speed, micromobility solutions.

If we take them seriously, these could be a huge deal for our cities. These emerging modes of transport can be quite effective for “first and last kilometre” travel (e.g. between home and your nearest train station). They can also help with short commuting distances less than 10 kilometres. An estimated 20% of trips from home to work in capital cities are 5-10km long.

E-scooters could be “disruptive” in that they would cut the number of short trips taken by private vehicles today.

In Sydney, around 67% of these short commuting trips (on average) involve private vehicles. The proportions are even higher in Melbourne (76%), Brisbane and Darwin (both 80%), Canberra and Perth (both 83%), and Adelaide and Hobart (both 84%). Across the nation, more than 85% of drivers who commute by private car don’t share with other commuters.

Shifting even a small percentage of these trips would help reduce reliance on cars, ease congestion and improve amenity.

Most commuters do not carry much on their journey to work – a purse, a backpack or similar. That makes tiny vehicles more appealing for the short commute because they do just the one thing: provide personal mobility from A to B. Leather seats and posh interiors are not an option!

E-scooters can help with first and last kilometre travel and short commuting trips. Volkswagen

Read more: Can e-scooters solve the ‘last mile’ problem? They’ll need to avoid the fate of dockless bikes

Clearly, we are nowhere near mass adoption. That would require more variety of tiny vehicles to suit all types of people, trips and weather conditions.

Nevertheless, there is no shortage of ideas to solve these challenges. Many solutions will undoubtedly be imagined. Some might actually work!

Startups are working on a variety of tiny vehicle solutions for different uses.

A regulatory sandbox approach

Regulation remains a major hurdle. Policymakers recognise that micromobility could be a driving force of change for our cities, but safety cannot be an afterthought. Instead of banning the emerging technology, many cities are adapting their approaches to handle it.

Rather than making up new rules without evidence, policymakers are using a regulatory sandbox approach. Borrowed from fintech regulation, this approach allows startups to test new technologies for a specified period.

Businesses can learn quickly and respond to problems as they arise. Regulators can collect data to make informed decisions and prioritise interventions.

We already have examples of these partnerships.

Companies are offering to pay cities a fee per scooter to build protected scooter and bike infrastructure. Others have committed to providing financial incentives to encourage riders to park scooters properly. One company is offering a free ride to customers who park their scooters well ten times in a row.

To keep footpaths safe, businesses are also working with local governments to test ideas such as retractable locks, solar-powered parking, designated on-street drop-off zones – even a “dock for dockless” solution!

Conceptual design of a vehicle parking bay as a designated drop-off zone for tiny vehicles. Lyft

Read more: Electric scooters on collision course with pedestrians and lawmakers

What’s next for the e-scooter market?

These products are not toys and investors know it. Venture capitalists are riding a wave of public acceptance and adoption.

E-scooter growth, in particular, has exceeded first-year adoption rates for similar services such as bike-sharing and ride-hailing. In Sacramento, where the same company offers both bike and car services, the use of shared e-bikes exceeded ride-hailing rentals by a 53-47% margin.

Businesses are betting that shared e-scooters will do to short-distance travel what ride-hailing did to the taxi industry. Globally, investors have poured more than US$5.7 billion into micromobility startups since 2015. New business models are emerging, with some companies considering annual memberships that include free ride time per day.

As with other fast-moving innovations, policymakers need to adapt their approaches. They also need to rethink bans and regulations that undermine the viability of e-scooters.

Tech companies need to prioritise rider safety over growth. They need to work with governments to preserve the sanctity of the footpath as a safe public space.

Without this, our cities will miss out on the potential of tiny vehicles and the opportunities they offer to reduce private car use.

– ref. Banning ‘tiny vehicles’ would deny us smarter ways to get around our cities – http://theconversation.com/banning-tiny-vehicles-would-deny-us-smarter-ways-to-get-around-our-cities-113111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Professor of History, University of Western Australia

On the 500th anniversary of his death, our series Leonardo da Vinci Revisited brings together scholars from different disciplines to re-examine his work, legacy and myth.

Leonardo worked for some of the top military and political leaders in the Italian Wars, a major conflict fought on the Italian peninsula that embroiled most of Western Europe. His patrons read like a roll-call of Europe’s leading familes: Sforza and Borgia dukes and French Valois kings.

Like many other artists and technicians, he negotiated the professional and financial opportunities (as well as dangers) that war presented.

As a brilliant designer, technician and artist, he knew how to appeal to the leaders of his day. A well-known 1482 letter to Ludovico Il Moro Sforza, Duke of Milan, one of Italy’s most powerful military leaders, was in essence a job application.

In it, Leonardo promised a raft of new technological possibilities in warfare, boasting he could create an infinite variety of machines for attack or defence:

I have methods for making very light and strong bridges, easily portable, and useful whether pursuing or evading the enemy; and others more solid, which cannot be destroyed by fire or assault …

If the place under siege cannot be reduced by bombardment, because of the height of its banks or the strength of its position, I have methods for destroying any fortress or redoubt even if it is founded upon solid rock …

I will make armoured cars, totally unassailable, which will penetrate the ranks of the enemy with their artillery, and there is no company of soldiers so great that it can withstand them…

Leonardo’s design for a giant crossbow, Codex Atlantico, fol 53v. Wikimedia Commons

His claims spoke powerfully of a dream of invincibility for the Duke. At times, Leonardo followed the armies of his leaders as they waged war across Italy, but he did not fight on the frontline as a soldier himself. His value to his patrons was not his body, but his mind.

Alongside his weapons of war, Leonardo also created magnificent spectacles of his patrons’ military achievements in festivities with advanced dramatic technologies. For instance, the festival Leonardo curated in France in May 1518 for his patron François I celebrated the king’s military achievement. He staged an elaborate, multi-sensory, re-enactment of the Battle of Marignano complete with siege and capture of a castle. The watching crowd were overwhelmed with emotion, as falconets fired missiles of paper and mortars shot out balloons.

Through these displays and performances, — textual, ceremonial, multimedia — Leonardo helped to curate an elite masculine identity for a man at war, shaped and defined by new technological advancements.

Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlantico, fol. 9r. Wikimedia Commons

Shock and awe

While Leonardo explored the power of the senses to channel emotional responses in ceremonial contexts, so too was much of his commentary on his weapons and design about shock and awe. His designs explicitly aimed to make men and horses afraid, causing maximum damage.

These interests in exploiting men’s emotional frailties in war are revealed in his 1482 letter to Ludovico:

I have certain types of cannons, extremely easy to carry, which fire out small stones, almost as if it were a hailstorm, and the smoke from these will cause great terror to the enemy, and they will bring great loss and confusion …

Leonardo, Figures fighting on horseback and on foot, c. 1504. Wikiart.org

Of his design for a steam-powered cannon made of copper, he wrote that “the sight of its fury and the sound of its roar will seem like a miracle”.

Leonardo’s weapons were thus not just about physical damage to men, animals and buildings, but exploited the emotional experiences of those fighting at the frontline. They offer the prospect of destroying the fortitude and morale of the men facing them, emphasising warfare’s psychological element.

A turbulent mind

Study of a Warrior’s Head for the Battle of Anghiari, c 1504-5. Red chalk on very pale pink prepared paper, Google Art Project. Wikimedia Commons

But Leonardo was also frustrated. In one manuscript, he discloses what seem to be ambitions as an author on war: “In order to preserve the main gift of nature, that is liberty, I will find a way to attack and defend, when being besieged by tyrannical ambition. And firstly I will speak of the positioning of walls and then how the people can maintain their good and just lords.”

This book project, if that is what it was, seems less about warfare and more a critique of the men he found himself working for. It seems to suggest his ambition to contribute to, or at least comment on, current events and ideas of good and bad government, which he witnessed at close range as the client of some of Europe’s most influential leaders.

Study for a Hoist and for a Cannon in an Ordnance Foundry, c 1487. Royal Library, Windsor. Wikimedia Commons

While Leonardo’s textual record attests to his ambitions, it also documents grievances that surrounded his experiences as a participant in war. Above a picture of a scattershot cannon, an unfinished half-sentence reads: “If the men of Milan would for once do something out of the ordinary …” Perhaps this was a throwaway comment meant only for himself, but it suggests some of his frustrations.

In thinking about Leonardo now, we recognise that among his many talents, he was someone who not only made a living from, but was perhaps uniquely gifted at creating, new forms of killing machines.

– ref. How Leonardo da Vinci made a living from killing machines – http://theconversation.com/how-leonardo-da-vinci-made-a-living-from-killing-machines-112402

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle O’Shea, Lecturer Sport Management, Western Sydney University

Women represent just 22% of board chairs and 13% of CEOs across more than 60 Australian sporting organisations.

Why is there such an imbalance? It may be because, in some sporting organisations, women do not get a fair go in progressing their careers in administration.

Read more: More money may be pouring into women’s sport, but there’s still a dearth of female coaches

My (Michelle) doctoral research involved in-depth interviews (conducted over 2012-2014, with follow up in 2015) about career experiences and gender policies with 48 female and male employees from four Australian national and state sport organisations.

The analysis identified a significant gender gap between:

• women’s experiences of inequity, and
• the implementation of policies designed to facilitate change, including for recruitment and selection, promotion and retention.

While policies championed the values of equality, fairness and merit, there were ambiguities and tensions relating to how managers interpreted what policies should do, and how gender inequity was viewed as a social, organisational or individual responsibility.

How will you cope managing older men?

The study findings highlight how managers’ hiring practices did not necessarily reflect policy intentions. Managers (both genders) genuinely believed they selected “the best person for the job”. They spoke of how old rules – like simply appointing former athletes to management roles – had been thrown “out the window” with a focus on merit.

However, women’s experiences of recruitment revealed some examples of bias.

Some women shared examples showing the recruitment process was not as “transparent” as it appeared to be within sport organisations. Men would be “given roles without interview”. One interviewee said:

It’s a pal or a mate. They do the whole independent thing [i.e. independent selection panels] but nine times out of ten they all know each other.

When women endeavoured to engage with men’s recruitment networks there were often personal and professional consequences. For one woman, damaging rumours circulated that she must have been sleeping with the married male manager who appointed her to the job.

Women discussed being “grilled” about their ability to balance work and family responsibilities, or asked about future family plans. Questions like this are unlawful.

Read more: The AFLW found instant success, but challenges remain for its long-term sustainability

Other women discussed being overlooked for roles because they were younger.

… he [the interviewer] actually asked me how old I was. He asked me how I would go being responsible for employees who were predominately male.

Across the organisations in the study women said “everyone knows how the system works”, with “nepotism” and “jobs for the boys”.

Despite acknowledging these norms, women were often fearful of reporting or challenging practices. Instead, many tried to minimise being subjected to discriminatory practices by concealing their marital status and family responsibilities, removing their wedding rings before interview and using their maiden names on resumes.

One woman dressed to conceal her pregnancy by wearing loose-fitting clothing, and she expressed ongoing concerns regarding her position and future career prospects.

He asked me what I was wearing

The research highlights how humour, informal socialising and informal work culture can differentially shape women’s and men’s workplace experiences.

For instance, women discussed how sexualised joking and banter made them feel uncomfortable:

I would do the teleconference at home. One … [male manager] said ‘what are you wearing’.

Others discussed how male colleagues used humour to mask inappropriate and unacceptable gender messages. Women discussed having to work harder than their male counterparts just to be recognised:

you [women] have to prove yourself, you have to push buttons … you have to poke and prod to get ahead.

In contrast, male managers often showcased the promotion of women to senior roles and discussed working toward a more “gender-balanced workforce” to support their claims that gender inequities in promotion were no longer a concern.

Read more: Women in sports: double standards a double fault

This thinking had the effect of reinforcing gender bias in promotion practices. For example, managers rationalised that the difficulties women experienced developing their careers were due to their “personal” choices. Through these claims, managers distanced themselves from being responsible for perpetuating or addressing inequities. Instead “generational change and time” would magically fix things.

The identified gaps between how managers interpreted policy intentions and women’s experiences of developing their sport management careers illustrate the ongoing challenge of making gender bias and sexism visible in order to do things differently. Policies alone do not create change.

In a very public way, sport organisations such as Cricket Australia and Football Federation Australia have had to address important questions of culture that relate to fundamental values of sport – integrity, inclusion, fair play – on and off the field.

To sustain effective change in Australian sport management we need to further commit to unearthing and challenging subtler forms of exclusion so sport workplaces live up to the values that they purport to uphold.

A new clear ambition

As mentioned above, this research was collected over 2012-2015 and there are now signs things may improve.

Since her appointment in late 2016 as Chief Executive Office of the Australian Sports Commission (Sport Australia), Kate Palmer has called for a greater focus on gender equity in the culture and leadership of Australian sport organisations. She said:

I have a clear ambition around increasing the number of female CEOs in national sporting organisations because we need more women in positions of influence and power.

As the first woman to lead the commission in its 31-year history, Palmer’s appointment to one of the most influential executive roles in Australian sport is an important step toward creating long term change.

Read more: Trust Me, I’m An Expert: What is sport worth?

Sport Australia has launched its 2019 Women Leaders in Sport Initiative. The partnership between Sport Australia and the Office for Women provides opportunities for women to develop leadership skills and networks, thus ensuring a recognisable talent pool that sport organisations can draw upon.

Other recent change initiatives have shifted the focus from gender equity as an issue for women to solve to engaging male leaders as “champions of change” in sport.

How power shapes careers

While these initiatives contribute to the change strategies that are needed to transform sport organisations, we need more research to better understand how gendered power relations shape women’s sport careers off the field.

More evidence is needed around how gender inequities are perpetuated and challenged, from overt sexism to more subtle forms of exclusion.

While many organisations grapple with these issues, the management of sport is historically grounded in assumptions about the “naturally superior” sporting performance of masculine bodies on and off the field. The growing professionalisation of sport is placing such gender based stereotypes under increasing scrutiny, with accompanying expectations that organisations demonstrate more progressive cultures, practices and policies.

– ref. ‘Jobs for the boys’: women don’t get a fair go in sports administration – http://theconversation.com/jobs-for-the-boys-women-dont-get-a-fair-go-in-sports-administration-111350

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marion Terrill, Transport and Cities Program Director, Grattan Institute

The budget just before an election seems to have a special quality: the transport infrastructure will surely be more plentiful than usual, and carefully chosen to shore up the electoral bulwarks. But don’t get too excited: this year the rhetoric may be big, but the scale of the numbers is nothing unusual. What is different is the pattern of spending over the budget’s four-year forward estimates.

The budget estimates a transport spend of A$7.4 billion for the coming year, 2019-20, and $33 billion over the forward estimates period. The 2019-20 expenditure estimate amounts to 0.37% of GDP – comparable to what we’ve seen in recent years. In fact, governments have spent between 0.26% and 0.53% of GDP under Treasurers Morrison, Hockey and Swan, and Treasurer Frydenberg is no different.

What’s particularly interesting about this budget, though, is that the treasurer is chancing his arm on the medium term.

Usually treasurers leave themselves some wriggle room in the outyears. They can always spend more if the cash is available, and invariably they do. Plus, it gets easier to estimate what will be spent as the time of spending draws closer.

Of course, these days much of the promised spending is further into the future than the forward estimates. The government is touting a $100 billion, ten-year Infrastructure Investment Pipeline. There’s money all over the country.

Where does the money go?

Victoria gets particularly big-ticket items in this budget, totalling $6.2 billion, and somewhat more of it within the next four years than other states. In New South Wales, the longer-term package totals $7.3 billion, including $3.5 billion for the Western Sydney north-south rail link as well as a $1.6 billion upgrade to the M1 Pacific Motorway extension to Raymond Terrace.

But if you look at what’s happening within the next four years, a notable larger item is a road safety package, totalling $400 million over four years. The longer-term goal is for this package to cost $2.2 billion.

Some of the other longer-term spending is squarely focused on rural and regional areas. This includes a billion to improve the Princes Highway in NSW, Victoria and SA.

If it all comes to pass, there’s something here for everyone.

– ref. Total transport spending is about par for the course, but the pattern is unusual – http://theconversation.com/total-transport-spending-is-about-par-for-the-course-but-the-pattern-is-unusual-114597

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Goss, School Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

In his first budget speech, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said education was the

first defence of the nation […] it is critical to our prosperity, harmony and advancement as a country.

Frydenberg said funding for government, independent and Catholic schools was at an “all-time high” when he announced a A$300 billion commitment to schools.

He said the government would set up a $93.7 million scholarship program for over 1,000 students a year to study in a regional university or TAFE.

The government is also dedicating $525 million over five years to fund 80,000 new apprenticeships in areas of skills shortages – including bakers, bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers. The majority of this skills package would be funded from the existing Skilling Australia Fund (which began on July 1, 2018).

Other education announcements were:

• $67.5 million to trial ten new training hubs in regional areas, connecting schools, industry and young people
• $62 million boost to second chance literacy, numeracy and digital skills for at-risk workers, including four separate pilots for programs tailored to remote Indigenous communities
• $453 million over two years from 2019-20 to extend the provision of 15 hours of preschool through to 2021, including $1.4 million to develop strategies to increase preschool attendance among disadvantaged and Indigenous students
• $30.2 million in 2019-20 for a Local School Community Fund, with local schools to identify their own priorities
• $19.7 million over the next four years for schools for various arts and life education programs, including theatre, music, preventative health and the constitution.

Here’s what our education policy experts thought of tonight’s budget announcements.

Little change in policy, and the rest – window-dressing

Peter Goss, School Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

Tonight’s education announcements showed no substantial change in policy.

Yes, $300 billion is the biggest ever spend on recurrent school funding (a 63% increase, as Frydenberg said). But with rapidly growing student numbers and the cost of wages going up each year, that doesn’t mean much. And it appears to be exactly what is in the National School Reform Agreement, which was signed between the federal government and all states and territories at the end of 2018.

Read more: What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding

Another one year extension on funding for early childhood education should be taken at face value: the Coalition says it values early learning but doesn’t yet have a long-term plan.

The remaining initiatives are window-dressing; and like most window-dressing, they don’t change anything fundamental but cost money that could have been used elsewhere.

Frydenberg said “no one knows the needs of a local school better than the school community itself”. This is true but $30 million for libraries, classrooms and play equipment won’t go far. It will also create red tape and duplicate state initiatives, and is very much the type of funding the Commonwealth should stay away from.

One-off funding for infrastructure also has an opportunity cost: $30 million on better evaluation of existing initiatives would have made a real contribution to efforts to improve teaching and learning at the system level.

The remaining initiatives – including arts, life education, preventative health and the constitution – smack of the Commonwealth meddling in areas beyond its remit.

Given the Commonwealth doesn’t run schools, is there anything useful it what could it have announced in the budget? Here are two ideas. The government has promised a national evidence institute, but has not yet announced the dollars behind it.

And it could have chosen to invest in how best to assess the non-cognitive skills that are important for the workforce, but which are currently hard to measure.

More money, but otherwise more of the same

Steven Lewis, Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellow, Deakin University

Given Treasurer Scott Frydenberg’s insistence that education is “critical to our prosperity, harmony and advancement as a country”, one might expect a roll-out of major policy reform to accompany such lofty rhetoric.

Despite efforts to focus our attention on the quantum of Commonwealth money earmarked for schools in the public, independent and Catholic sectors, there is precious little in the government’s budget to signal any new shifts in policy focus.

So, what can parents, teachers, students and the public expect from a re-elected Coalition government?

First, the government is targeting schools and their local communities by offering $30.2 million via a Local School Community Fund. This program is meant to empower local communities – those closest to schools and thus most likely to understand their particular contexts and needs.

But, it remains to be seen precisely what long-term benefits to student learning can come from a one-off injection of federal funds, especially when this is to be split between the 9,000-plus schools throughout Australia.

Similarly, the announced attention on theatre, music, preventative health and the constitution appears unlikely to make substantive improvements to these critical, and often underfunded, areas. However, $20 million invested over four years to arts and life education appears superficial at best, especially when the overwhelming discourse from this government has been improving the “core skills” of literacy and numeracy.

We still haven’t got secure, ongoing funding for early childhood education. from shutterstock.com

Same old (not enough) in early childhood education

Susan Irvine, Associate Professor, Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, QUT

The announcement of $453 million to extend preschool provision is welcome, but it’s not enough. Currently the government funds 15 hours of preschool education for 3 ½ to 4 ½ years-old children, led by a degree qualified early childhood teacher in the year prior to school.

But when the commitment to the provision of early childhood education was announced by the previous Labor government, the expectation was that it would be sustained by secure, long-term funding. Tonight’s is another short-term agreement that provides funding security for children, families and service providers for only two years.

The benefits of preschool education are well documented. In fact many OECD countries are now investing in two years of preschool prior to school entry. We need a bi-partisan agreement that preschool is the foundation to a modern education system, and, like school, requires a secure and ongoing source of funding.

We also urgently need a new national early years workforce strategy – the previous (and only) one expired in 2016. All our current quality reforms depend on the availability of qualified teachers and educators, but they are set against poor wages and conditions for many working in the sector.

– ref. Budget 2019 has little new for schools and even less for early childhood: education experts respond – http://theconversation.com/budget-2019-has-little-new-for-schools-and-even-less-for-early-childhood-education-experts-respond-114193

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

From inside the budget lockup, The Conversation’s Business and Economics editor Peter Martin and political and economic journalist Tim Colebatch from Inside Story shared their reactions to the pre-election budget.

Martin said the budget featured a substantial tax cut “that goes back in time” and that while the government was forecasting “good times around the corner,” there has been barely any sign of them.

He also said he thought while the budget gives Labor an advantage, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is unlikely to be embarrassed by it in the future.

Colebatch told The Conversation it “was a modest budget” and that the spending measures were “really fairly restrained”.

“It recognises that the debate has shifted and people are less likely to be bought by big spending and more likely to be bought by the impression of fiscal reticence and control and delivering a budget surplus,” he said.

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– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Peter Martin and Tim Colebatch on budget strategy and numbers – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-peter-martin-and-tim-colebatch-on-budget-strategy-and-numbers-114354

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

This year’s budget includes $448.5 to modernise Australia’s Medicare system, by encouraging people with diabetes to sign up to a GP clinic for their care. The clinic will receive a lump sum payment to care for the person over time, rather than a fee each time they see their GP.

As expected, the indexation freeze on all GP services on the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) will lift from July 1, 2019, at a cost of $187.2 million. The freeze will be lifted on various X-ray and ultrasound MBS rebates from July 1, 2020.

Read more: What is the Medicare rebate freeze and what does it mean for you?

The budget includes $461 million for youth mental health, including 30 new headspace centres, including in regional areas. But it does little to address the underlying structural reforms that make it difficult for Australians to access quality and timely care.

In aged care, the government will fund 10,000 new home care packages, at a cost of $282 million over five years, and will allocate $84 million for carer respite.

Other announcements include:

• $62.2 million over five yeas to train new rural GPs
• $309 million for diagnostic imaging services, including 23 new MRI licences
• $331 million over five years for new pharmaceuticals, including high-cost cancer treatments
• $107.8 million over seven years for hospitals and facilities including Redland Hospital Bowen Hospital, Bass Coast Health and Ronald McDonald House
• $70.8 million over seven years for regional cancer diagnosis, treatment and therapy centres
• $114.5 million from 2020-21 to trial eight mental health facilities for adults
• $43.9 million for mental health services for expectant and new parents
• $35.7 million from this year (for the next five years) for increased dementia and veterans’ home care supplements
• $320 million this year as a one-off increase to the basic subsidy for residential aged-care recipients.

A hesitant step forward for Medicare

Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

Medicare funding is slowly creeping into the 21st century. The 19th-century model of individual fees for individual services – suitable for an era when medicine was essentially dealing with episodic conditions – is being supplemented with a new fee to better manage the care of people with diabetes.

The budget announcement, as part of the Strengthening primary care package, is for a new annual payment for each person with diabetes who signs up with a specific GP. Funding is provided for about 100,000 people to sign up – about 10% of all people with diabetes in Australia.

Medicare funding reforms are long overdue. Dave Hunt/AAP

The new item number is consistent with the recent MBS review Report on General Practice, which recommended a move toward voluntary enrolment.

The precise details of the new fee – including the annual amount and any descriptors – have not yet been released. But it should encourage practices to move towards a more prevention-oriented approach to chronic disease management, including using practice nurses to call patients to check up on their condition, and using remote monitoring technology.

The budget announcement contained no evaluation strategy for the initiative. The government should produce such a strategy soon.

Support for aged and disability care

Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University, and Fellow, Health Program, Grattan Institute

The budget has short-term measures to address major issues in aged care and disability while we wait for the royal commissions to fix the long-term problems.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) is struggling with the huge task of putting the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in place.

There has been a major under-spend on the on the scheme. Price caps for services such as therapy and personal care are too low and nearly one-third of services are operating at a loss. The under-spend would have been more if there hadn’t been a last-minute budget decision to significantly increase service caps, at a cost of $850 million.

$528 million dollars has also been announced for a royal commission to look at violence, neglect and abuse of people with disabilities – the most expensive royal commission to date.

There is more funding for aged care. Currently, 130,000 older people are waiting for home care packages – often for a year or more. Nearly half of residential care services are losing money and there are major concerns about quality of care.

The short-term fix is to give residential care $320 million to try to prevent services going under. 10,000 additional home care packages have also been announced at a cost of $282 million – but that still leaves more than 100,000 people waiting.

There’s still a massive shortfall in home care places. eggeegg/Shutterstock

Little for prevention, Indigenous health and to address disparities

Lesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney

Prevention

Preventable diseases and conditions are a key factor in health inequalities and rising health-care costs. The two issues looming large are obesity and its consequences, and the health impacts of climate change.

There is $5.5 million for 2018-19 and 2019-20 for mental health services in areas affected by natural disasters, and $1.1 million over two years for the Health Star rating system – otherwise nothing for primary prevention.

Indigenous health

The Treasurer did not mention Closing the Gap in his Budget speech and there is little in the Budget for Indigenous health.

Just $5 million over four years is provided in the budget for suicide-prevention initiatives and the Lowitja Institute receives $10 million for health and medical research.

Some announcements in March contribute a little more:

Inequalities and disparities

Disadvantaged rural and remote communities will (ultimately) benefit from efforts to boost National Rural Generalist Training Pathway, with $62.2 million provided over four years. This was a 2016 election commitment.

The announcement of $200 million over three years to index Medicare payments for ultrasound and diagnostic radiology services (beginning from July 1, 2020) came with claims this will help reduce out-of-pocket costs. Given that these payments have not been indexed in 20 years, will the money go to providers or patients?

Hospitals and private health insurance

Peter Sivey, Associate Professor, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University

There are no major changes to public hospital funding arrangements in this year’s budget.

It’s business as usual for hospital funding, aside from funding injections for a handful of hospital sites. By VILevi

Funding for public hospitals is predicted to increase at between 3.7% and 5.6% over the forward estimates. However, these figures are contingent on the new COAG agreement on health funding between the Commonwealth and states, which is due to be finalised before the end of 2019.

The states will be hoping to wring some more dollars from the federal government given their soaring public hospital admissions and pressure on waiting times.

There is no change to the government’s private health insurance policy which has just come into force.

Read more: Premiums up, rebates down, and a new tiered system – what the private health insurance changes mean

Government spending on the private health insurance rebate is projected to increase more slowly than premiums at between 1.8% and 3.2% because of indexation arrangements which are gradually reducing the rebate over time.

Smaller targets for mental health

Ian Hickie, Co-Director, Brain and Mind Institute, University of Sydney

Numerous reports and accounts from within the community have noted the flaws in Australia’s mental health system: poor access to quality services, the uneven rollout of the NDIS, and the lack of accountability for reforming the system.

The next federal government faces major structural challenges in mental health and suicide prevention.

Not surprisingly, this pre-election budget does not directly address these issues. Instead, it focuses on less challenging but worthy targets such as:

• continued support for expansion of headspace services for young people ($263m over the next seven years) and additional support for early psychosis services ($110m over four years)
• support for workplace-based mental health programs ($15m)
• support for new residential care centres for eating disorders ($63m).

A more challenging experiment is the $114.5 committed to eight new walk-in community mental health centres, recognising that access to coordinated, high-quality care that delivers better outcomes remains a national challenge.

Despite the commitment of health minister Greg Hunt to enhanced mental health investments, the total increased spend on these initiatives ($736.6m) is dwarfed by the big new expenditures in Medicare ($6b), improved access to medicines ($40b), public hospitals ($5b) and aged care ($7b).

It will be interesting to see whether mental health reform now receives greater attention during the election campaign. At this stage, neither of the major parties has made it clear that it is ready to deal directly with the complex challenges in mental health and suicide prevention that are unresolved.

– ref. Budget 2019 boosts aged care and mental health, and modernises Medicare: health experts respond – http://theconversation.com/budget-2019-boosts-aged-care-and-mental-health-and-modernises-medicare-health-experts-respond-114194

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phillip O’Neill, Director, Centre for Western Sydney, Western Sydney University

Infrastructure spending is one of the central themes of Treasurer Frydenberg’s budget speech. His headline announcement was the promise to increase the ten-year federal infrastructure spend from the A$75 billion announced last year to a target of $100 billion.

Major projects previously announced – like the Melbourne Airport rail link, Western Sydney’s north-south airport rail link and Queensland’s Bruce Highway upgrade – are affirmed. A fast rail connection from Melbourne to Geelong is added. Also added are nation-wide packages of roadworks targeted at reducing congestion and improving regional freight corridors.

So the announcements continue the infrastructure program detailed in the 2018-19 budget, as promoted regularly in the government’s expensive “Building Our Future” advertising campaign that gives prominence to the government’s ten-year “Infrastructure Pipeline”.

Read more: Infographic: Budget 2019 at a glance

Lack of transparency is an issue

It needs saying that analysts have found it difficult to verify what last year’s $75 billion promise actually involved. The claim is the subject of a major investigative paper by the Australian Parliamentary Library, with its authors observing:

The Parliamentary Library has been unable to locate any public document which provides a transparent overview of [the federal government’s] total infrastructure commitments.

One suspects that scrutiny over coming weeks of the $100 billion infrastructure spending promises will be thwarted by a repetition of this lack of transparency.

Why are infrastructure needs so great?

The national population growth story is the key framework for assessing the Coalition’s infrastructure plan. Between 1901 and 1948, the nation grew steadily, but modestly, from a population of 3.8 million to 7.7 million. Then the population surged on the back of a post-war baby boom and an expansion of immigration. The population grew by between 2.0 and 2.5 million people each decade from the 1950s through to the 2000s.

But in the last decade, the nation has added nearly 6 million people, with the east coast cities overwhelmingly hosting the increase. Urban infrastructure planning and spending have lagged. Both quality of life and economic productivity have been affected adversely as a consequence.

The infrastructure spending in this budget responds to community concerns about these declines.

We now know we failed to properly plan for and fund the surge in urban growth that has carried congestion on its back. Instead, large federal government surpluses from the 1990s were steered into debt paybacks.

The Future Fund was also created to cover public service pension liabilities. That fund is now custodian of over $150 billion worth of assets.

Dissolving pension liabilities is wise economic management. Australia’s problem is that this resolution took place at the expense of national capital works spending. Around this time, the state-owned utilities that had taken responsibility for the roll-out of post-war infrastructure – with their regular, predictable annual capital works budgets and their vast in-house planning and delivery offices – were on their last legs.

The loss of committed funding and the erosion of the utilities stalled infrastructure delivery at a time in Australian history when it was most needed. The urban infrastructure projects for coping with the acceleration of urban growth are only now coming on stream.

New funding streams have had to be found, led by a new round of state-based asset sell-offs – in New South Wales especially – and new models of private sector delivery, ownership and operation. Pretty much all new urban infrastructure projects in Australia are now some sort of private public partnership.

But, as this budget confirms, private sector involvement in infrastructure spending and delivery needs to be leveraged on the back of public funding and protected from project risk by a raft of government measures. An important risk amelioration measure involves decision-making technologies.

Here, the growing expertise within the federal government’s Infrastructure Australia unit is increasingly important. Established by the Rudd Labor government a decade ago, IA struggled for legitimacy for many years. Now we can see Infrastructure Australia’s priority lists – based on its independent assessments – dominating government budget announcements. Indeed, the government’s ten-year Infrastructure Investment Pipeline is a very close reproduction of Infrastructure Australia’s national priority listing. Which is a good thing.

Why the focus on roads?

The problem, of course, is that rather than infrastructure steering urban growth, as would have been the case had the Howard Coalition government not dramatically lowered the level of national capital works spending, infrastructure spending now chases urban growth.

Not surprisingly, the Morrison government packages a bundle of roads spending as “urban congestion” measures, acknowledging that transport planning has been inadequate.

Read more: View from The Hill: budget tax-upmanship as we head towards polling day

The concentration on roads spending also acknowledges that the millennial growth surge in our cities has been geographically perverse. Greenfields residential projects are rarely aligned to public transport systems. And jobs growth has been a mix of CBD obsession and suburban scatter.

The result is congestion of antiquated CBD-centric public transport systems and suburban journey-to-work patterns that make retrofitting of public transport an impossible task.

No doubt there will be criticism of this budget’s apparent obsession with roads spending. The unfortunate reality is that large sections of our cities are stuck with the roads-based configuration that was instilled into their DNA from the get-go. Roads – not rail – are the thoroughfares that define transport options across our new suburban areas into the future.

Getting used to road spending and having constructive things to say about road use are a major challenge.

– ref. Congestion-busting infrastructure plays catch-up on long-neglected needs – http://theconversation.com/congestion-busting-infrastructure-plays-catch-up-on-long-neglected-needs-114598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling

Today’s federal budget, as predicted, was chock full of sweeteners designed to woo voters on the eve of what promises to be a bitterly fought election.

We’ve got loads of analysis and at-a-glance graphics over here but if you’re just looking for the short, sharp version – what was announced, who’s affected, what it all means as polling day approaches – you’re in the right place.

Today on Trust Me, I’m An Expert, we’re bringing you a special episode carried across from The Conversation’s Politics with Michelle Grattan podcast (you can subscribe to it over here).

Chief political correspondent Michelle Grattan, Business and Economics Editor Peter Martin and political and economic journalist Tim Colebatch have all just emerged from the budget lockup.

Here’s their take on all the news that’s just broken.

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Read more: Shorten to announce Labor’s ‘living wage’ plan but without an amount or timing

Additional audio and production

Today’s episode was recorded and edited by Eliza Berlage.

Theme beats: Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks

Image

Mick Tsikas(AAP)/The Conversation/Shutterstock

– ref. PODCAST: Michelle Grattan, Peter Martin and Tim Colebatch on the election-eve budget chock full of sweeteners – http://theconversation.com/podcast-michelle-grattan-peter-martin-and-tim-colebatch-on-the-election-eve-budget-chock-full-of-sweeteners-114595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emil Jeyaratnam, Data + Interactives Editor, The Conversation

The budget bottom line will surge to a surplus next financial year on the back of higher than expected revenues from commodities, strong corporate profits and low unemployment.

The estimated surplus of A$7.1 billion for 2019-20 will be the first time the budget has entered positive territory since 2007-08.

Read more: Iron ore dollars repurposed to keep the economy afloat in Budget 2019

How will the government spend this unexpected windfall of revenues?

Simplifying the tax system will cost the government $158 billion over the next ten years. The measures include:

• doubling the low and middle income tax offset from $530 to up to $1,080 for people earning up to $126,000, starting from the current 2018-19 financial year

• changing the 32.5% threshold to be $45,001 to $120,000 from 2022-23, with the 19% bracket covering incomes from the tax-free threshold up to $45,000

• reducing the 32.5% tax rate to 30% from 2024-25 onwards, and changing the income thresholds so that the 30% rate applies to all earners from $45,000 to $200,000

• removal of the 37% rate altogether from 2024-25.

Read more: View from The Hill: budget tax-upmanship as we head towards polling day

Other major cuts and spending items are listed below.

The Conversation/AAP

Despite the boost in revenue the government expects to reach its long-term target of surplus being 1% of gross domestic product later than estimated in the December budget update.

The government now expects surplus to exceed 1% of GDP in 2026-27.

This budget, like many before it, predicts wages to increase over the next four years. The government expects the wage price index to increase from its current 2.1 to 3.5 by 2022-23.

Net debt as a share of the economy is expected to peak in 2018-19 (19.2% of GDP), and will then commence a downward trend until fully eliminated in 2029-30.

Read more: Frydenberg’s budget looks toward zero net debt, but should this be our aim?

Government receipts are expected to climb from 24.2% of GDP in 2017-18 to 25% by 2022-23. Payments are expected to be 24.5% of GDP in 2022-23.

– ref. Infographic: Budget 2019 at a glance – http://theconversation.com/infographic-budget-2019-at-a-glance-114289

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

For the government this “election budget” is an exercise in juggling. On the one hand it is throwing out voter bait. On the other, it is running hard on the theme of economic responsibility.

For the second budget in a row there are highly generous tax cuts, amounting to A$158 billion over a decade. This is on top of the earlier $144 billion.

The government wants this election to be all about tax.

The tax cuts you will get, now and later. The “higher taxes” that Bill Shorten would impose – by cracking down on negative gearing and cash refunds for franking credits. And by claiming that Labor’s climate policy is a “carbon tax”.

Under the budget’s tax cuts, low and middle income earners would pocket up to $1080 within weeks of the election – for families with a dual income, this amounts to $2160.

The government points out that its tax cuts are the most generous since John Howard’s time. But two things might be noted about this comparison. The 2007 tax package has since been much criticised for being irresponsible – and Howard did not win the election of that year.

Despite earlier speculation, the Coalition won’t try to rush any of the tax package – which includes a reduction in the 32.5% rate to 30% from July 2024 – through parliament this week.

The government wants to set up as much of a contrast between itself and Labor on tax as possible. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told a news conference the tax bills were “a package,” covering the immediate tax relief and the rate change. The government was asking the public “who do you trust” to deliver lower taxes.

A theme in Frydenberg’s speech was that the government was taking its initiatives all “without increasing taxes”.

Finance minister Mathias Cormann said: “we are just not prepared to haggle with the Senate in the next 24 hours”. It was up to the Australian people to back the government in, he said.

But in a game of bluff and counter-bluff on tax Labor could simply match the immediate relief.

This would neutralise part of the tax argument, although the government can still highlight the contrast between its longer term tax regime and Labor’s “higher taxing” agenda.

On economic responsibility, the budget’s boast is for a $7.1 billion surplus next financial year – the first surplus in twelve years. “The budget is back in the black and Australia is back on track,” Frydenberg told parliament, as he outlined the growth of surpluses to a total of $45 billion over four years.

We can be sure that in the election campaign, Labor will match or even better the budget’s surplus figures.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen has learnt from the experience of the last election, when the Labor program came in with a slightly worse fiscal bottom line over the forward estimates than the government’s. The difference wasn’t huge but it was enough to be a political handicap.

The budget’s economic projections seem credible enough although there is the perennial question over its forecast for wages growth – 2.75% in 2019-20 and 3.25% in 2020-21.

The fact that early in the imminent election campaign the departments of Treasury and Finance produce a detailed economic outlook imposes a discipline on the pre-election budget. A government that tried to fiddle the forecasts would quickly get caught out.

Frydenberg’s speech was notably sombre about the outlook for the economy, despite saying the fundamentals were sound.

“There are genuine and clear risks emerging both at home and abroad” he warned, highlighting the cooling of the residential housing market and global trade tensions.

His words are a reminder of how quickly things can change – including the prospect of strong surpluses projected into the future. Good economic times suddenly turned bleak in the early days of the Rudd government, as a result of the global financial crisis.

The budget provided a nice reality check on the beat-up the government indulged in over the medevac bill. Remember all the hyperbole Scott Morrison sprouted, when he said he was going to have to spend more than $1 billion reopening Christmas Island?

The budget includes just $178.9 million to manage the transfer of people from Nauru and Papua New Guinea for medical treatment, $3.2 million to increase the police presence there and $3 million to reinforce the campaign to discourage people getting on boats.

The government says that if it is re-elected it will repeal the medevac bill and close the Christmas Island facility by July 1 – returning any people who have been transferred back offshore.

Questions to the office of Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton this week about whether anybody had been transferred under the new legislation received the response that no comment was being made.

Morrison told his party room on Tuesday, before the budget, that three dates were available for the May election – May 11, 18 or 25. The general expectation is that he will announce the poll quickly. The budget might look benign but the government does not want an extended period of Senate estimates next week which would facilitate picking up.

– ref. View from The Hill: budget tax-upmanship as we head towards polling day – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-budget-tax-upmanship-as-we-head-towards-polling-day-114183

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

In his budget speech tonight Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced that under a Coalition government we will see a decade of surpluses that will “continue to build toward 1% of GDP within a decade.”

He went on: “we climb the mountain and reach our goal of eliminating Commonwealth net debt by 2030 or sooner.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to paying off the debt.

As the budget papers point out, net debt as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is predicted in the budget to peak at 19.2%.

You might ask, then, how do we get from 19% to 0% debt/GDP in ten years if we’re generating a surplus of 1% per annum?

A small part of the answer is that with the economy forecast to grow at 3% a year, GDP is a fair bit bigger 10 years from now. And a 1% surplus of a bigger GDP number is a bigger dollar surplus. This has a larger impact on net debt.

That’s part of the story, but not much of it. If we make the most generous assumptions in favour of the treasurer and his surpluses (even if you believe them), they’re only paying down about two-thirds of the debt.

The case of the vanishing debt

So how does the treasurer get the rest of the debt to disappear?

The budget documents, voluminous though they are, don’t have the answers. But there are only a handful of logical possibilities.

First, let’s unpack what net debt is. Net debt is basically the gross debt issued by the government (for example, by issuing government bonds) minus the assets the government holds.

The surpluses Frydenberg announced help reduce gross debt. So, the debt-disappearing act has to involve some assets getting bigger.

The leading possibility concerns the Future Fund (Australia’s sovereign wealth fund). Simply put, if the Future Fund earns, say, 8% per annum then those assets are going to be growing a lot faster than GDP. This itself reduces debt to GDP quite apart from anything else.

Another way to think about it is that the Australian government is running a big hedge fund with a lucrative profit opportunity. If it can earn 8% per annum while the government is funding this with debt that costs less than 2% (as is the case currently, given yields on 10-year Australian government bonds) then that’s a great deal.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with that. But to the extent that debt reduction is coming from the Future Fund, it has nothing to do with fiscal rectitude.

An even more obscure possibility is that asset values are being hypothetically affected by assumptions about the interest rate the government will pay on its debt. Currently it is about 1.72% but the budget documents suggest a return to long-run historical levels of around 5%.

First, that seems very unlikely to happen in a post-GFC world. Second, it’s unclear that it’s of a sufficient magnitude to explain away the vanishing debt. And third, it’s an accounting artefact not a matter of economic substance. Again, whatever it is, it’s not fiscal rectitude.

The only other possibilities are even more remote. A massive increase in the value of the essentially defective National Broadband Network? A colossal spike in student loan repayments while future students pay their own way? Nope, and nope.

Should we be aiming for zero net debt?

Another thing altogether is whether it is a wise thing to reduce government debt to zero in the coming decade.

Fiscal discipline is good and avoiding structural budget deficits is important.

But as I’ve written before, we live in an age of “secular stagnation” where there is a glut of global savings chasing too few productive investment opportunities and where economic growth is permanently lower than in previous decades.

As former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has pointed out, in a secular-stagnation world it will likely take a lot more government spending to sustain full employment and reasonable wages growth without financial bubbles.

Or, to put it another way, if the Australian government can borrow at less than 2% then there are a lot of attractive public investments in physical and social infrastructure that should be made. The concept of “Social Return Accounting” which the UNSW Grand Challenge on Inequality launched last year, and I wrote about here offers a framework for thinking about this.

The live hand of Peter Costello

The treasurer presumably didn’t mean to be ironic when he said of the down-to-zero debt paydown: “Only one side of politics can do this…John Howard and Peter Costello paid off Labor’s debt.”

But it is ironic that Peter Costello’s Future Fund is doing a good deal of the heavy lifting in paying off Josh Frydenberg’s debt.

– ref. Frydenberg’s budget looks toward zero net debt, but should this be our aim? – http://theconversation.com/frydenbergs-budget-looks-toward-zero-net-debt-but-should-this-be-our-aim-114185