Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Halafoff, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Deakin University

Around 80% of secondary school students who had classes about diverse religions claim to have positive views of Muslims. This compares to around 70% who had not attended such classes.

Our national study of Australian Generation Z teens (those born around the mid-1990s to mid-2000s) showed teens who had been exposed to education about diverse religions and worldviews were more tolerant of religious minorities, including Muslims and Hindus, than those who hadn’t.

General religious education is distinct from religious instruction, which is taught by teachers or volunteers from religious communities. Religious instruction focuses on faith formation in a particular religion.

Teachers provide classes in diverse worldviews and religions, which include learning about major faith traditions and other worldviews, such as humanism and rationalism.

Such classes are often a distinct subject in Catholic and other religious schools in Australia. But government schools don’t typically provide opportunities to study diverse worldviews. They may provide limited content in some humanities subjects, such as history.

Teaching children about the diversity of cultures and viewpoints in their social environment may help counteract the religious prejudice seen in the media.

Religious and worldview education

Religion in schools, and particularly whether it should be taught in a secular context, is a controversial topic in Australia and internationally. Debates persist about how content on religion should be included in curricula and whether education about diverse worldviews can play a role in social cohesion and preventing violent extremism.

Read more: Religion should be taught secularly in our schools

In the mid-2000s Australia’s public secular schools had few opportunities to provide teaching about diverse worldviews and general religious education. Victoria prohibited teaching about religion until 2006 but allowed volunteers to deliver special religious instruction in school hours until 2015.

Schools in New South Wales, Western Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania still offer special religious instruction. NSW students can elect to do a secular ethics option instead of a religious one.

The national Australian Curriculum began to be developed in the 2000s. It now contains some limited content on diverse religions and worldviews.

Victoria’s 2015 iteration of the new curriculum included – for the first time – two dedicated sections on learning about worldviews and religions in humanities and ethical capability. The emphasis is on Australia’s major faith traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Judaism and secular humanism and rationalism.

The Generation Z study

The Generation Z study ran between 2016 and 2018. To inform education policy, it aimed to investigate how teens make sense of the world and religious issues. The study explored teens’ views on religious, spiritual, non-religious, cultural and sexual diversity in 21st-century Australia.

The study comprised 11 focus groups in three states with almost 100 students in Years 9 and 10 (ages 15-16). It also included a nationally representative phone survey of 1,200 people aged 13-18, and 30 in-depth follow-up interviews with survey participants.

We have already published the findings that Australian teens fall into six spiritually types, including a range of non-religious, spiritual and religious young Australians.

Read more: New research shows Australian teens have complex views on religion and spirituality

Our findings also showed Gen Z teens are open to and accepting of religious diversity. More than 90% agreed having many different faiths in Australia makes it a better place to live.

But views toward religious minorities were mixed. We found 74% hold positive attitudes towards Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism; 21% hold moderate to neutral views; and 5% hold negative views.

Around 85% of teens think people of different faiths experience discrimination or abuse because of their religion. In focus groups, some students of minority faiths raised concerns about anti-Semitism and a relative lack of understanding of Hinduism and Buddhism, compared to the Abrahamic faiths in Australian society.

Our pre-survey focus groups also revealed Australian teens have moderate levels of religious literacy. While their knowledge is quite broad, it is relatively shallow. Many students could easily recognise a number of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Yoga images, including of the Dalai Lama. But only one student from a state selective school knew what his actual title meant and why he was so significant to Tibetans.

In our survey, 56% of students attending government secondary schools and 42% of those attending independent private secondary schools said they hadn’t had any diverse religion education or instruction in religious traditions. By comparison, 81% of students in Catholic secondary schools had received both.

Our data suggest education about diverse religions is associated with reduced negative perceptions of religious minorities. Students who had received this type of education had the most positive views towards Australia’s religious minorities. Students who hadn’t were about twice as likely to hold negative or neutral views.

Read more: Religious classes in schools must adapt to fit a changing Australia

This still holds when controlling for factors such as age, gender, school type, socio-economic status and religious identity.

Gen Z teens who have had education about diverse religions overwhelmingly thought it helped them understand other people’s religions (93%), that it helped make them more tolerant of other people’s religions (86%), and that it was important to study these (82%).

Of those who hadn’t participated in such programs, 69% wanted to learn more about the world’s religions, and 67% wanted more lessons on non-religious worldviews.

We recommend the Australian Curriculum includes more education about diverse religious and non-religious worldviews in state, religious and independent schools. This would increase religious literacy and promote inter-religious understanding and respect among Australia’s diverse religious and non-religious population.

– ref. Want a safer world for your children? Teach them about diverse religions and worldviews – http://theconversation.com/want-a-safer-world-for-your-children-teach-them-about-diverse-religions-and-worldviews-113025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Riddle, PhD Candidate, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne

How well are we preparing the typical primary school kid for life when they graduate in 2032?

Current attitudes to education around cybersecurity and online safety skew towards caution at all costs. We often focus on schools’ duty of care rather than fostering skills and frameworks of digital ethics which empower students.

There is a danger we are letting kids down with a fear-driven mentality instead of engaging their challenges head on. Both parents and teachers can help kids in this capacity: let’s take a look at how (tips below).

Read more: Don’t fall for it: a parent’s guide to protecting your kids from online hoaxes

Fear can be a barrier

We educational technologists often have cybersecurity discussions with students, parents and teachers with digital fluency levels ranging from expert to little-to-no knowledge.

As parents and teachers we can understandably be fearful of the role of technology in kids’ lives, however this can sometimes be a barrier to student learning.

Around six years ago, Wooranna Park Primary School in Victoria, Australia introduced new technologies that had an immediate positive influence on student outcomes. Yet some drew negative feedback from parents, due mainly to misconceptions and fear of the unknown.

Read more: A guide for parents and teachers: what to do if your teenager watches violent footage

Communication is vital

Sandbox video game Minecraft  is a powerful tool for collaborative learning. It provides an infinite 3D space where students collaboratively learn just about anything you can think of: from numeracy and literacy, to 3D printing, coding, science, financial literacy and art.

Many schools use Minecraft now. Yet it was met with a lot of trepidation from parents when first introduced as a learning tool at the school. One parent had specific fears about Minecraft (“isn’t it about murdering babies or something?”), taking these directly to the principal, who took the time to share the benefits and provide detailed information. This particular parent now plays Minecraft with their children.

Likewise when YouTube was first allowed within the school, some parents and even staff were worried about it. However as a video sharing service where people can watch, like, share, comment and upload videos, it is now a core technology supporting self-directed learning. Today the school would feel like it was coming to a standstill without it.

Read more: Curious Kids: what makes an echo?

The pedagogic context is the key here — and it wasn’t until learning engagement data was communicated to the school community that overall negative opinion changed to a positive one. Now students aren’t just consuming content from YouTube, they are uploading their own work and sharing it with their parents.

Personal responsibility, healthy conversations

Minecraft and YouTube are examples of Web 2.0 technologies. We are now transitioning into the age of Web 3.0 – the decentralised web, where personal responsibility is paramount.

We’re at the cusp of the widespread adoption of a whole range of disruptive technologies that work less like curated gardens and more like ecosystems. These are based on new core technologies like blockchain and the distributed web (also known as Interplanetary File System, or IPFS).

These approaches effectively eschew the “platform”, and allow users to connect directly with each other to communicate, create and transact. These will benefit students in the long term, but will inevitably draw alarm due to misunderstanding in the short term.

The way we can get ahead of this as a community is by introducing a culture of having healthy conversations at home and in school much more often.

Start them young

It is almost never too early to start teaching kids about cybersecurity.
Students at Wooranna Park Primary School as young as five and six are learning about cutting edge technologies such as IPFS, cryptography, blockchain, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

The kids learn these topics within the context of active inquiry, giving them choices about the software and devices they use in order to empower them as technology-enhanced learners.

A recent study of 1:1 classroom projects by researcher Theresa Ashford found a strongly regulatory culture in education focused on “filtering and monitoring”. This failed to instil a critically important framework of digital ethics, with students quickly finding ways to navigate around barriers.

We can avoid this by not being fearful of technology use by children, but instead helping them navigate through the complexities.

Read more: Does the Suzuki method work for kids learning an instrument? Parental involvement is good, but other aspects less so

Tips on how to talk to your children about cybersecurity

• talk to them about what they are doing online, what websites they visit, and what apps and online services they are using

• sit with them while they use technology and observe, then discuss what they think about and how they feel

• ask whether they think what they see online is always true, and how they would know if something wasn’t real

• encourage critical thinking and credibility evaluation skills (what Howard Rheingold calls “crap detection”) as well as ethical engagement by talking through specific examples

• provide clear ways that kids can check primary sources, such as looking for credible primary sources (not just depending on the Wikipedia entries, but reading the primary sources linked by them)

• encourage kids to protect their personal data, and explain that when you put something online it will most likely be there forever

• brainstorm with them about possible online pitfalls, like bullying, scams, targeted advertising, child exploitation and identity theft

• commit to learning alongside your kids about the online worlds they inhabit.

Terms to search and explore with your child

• password strength – the measure of the effectiveness of a password against attackers
• two-factor (or two-step) authentication (2FA) is a method of confirming a user’s claimed identity by utilising something they know like a password, with a second verification like an SMS or verification app
• encryption – the translation of data into a secret code instead of “plain text”
• blockchain – a distributed ledger technology that records transactions using many computers
• cyberbullying – the use of services such as text messages or social media to bully a person
• SSL – the “s” at the end of https:// when you visit a website, which means you can generally trust the site to transport your personal information in an end-to-end encrypted format
• virtual private network (VPN) ensures a safe and encrypted connection over a less secure network
• virus and malware – software written expressly to infect and harm computer networks and devices
• IPFS – interplanetary file system, the decentralised web
• peepeth – blockchain-powered, decentralised social network
• hardware wallets – a device that stores the public and private keys which can be used to secure cryptocurrencies, and can also act as a means of two factor authentication.

Security tools to explore with your child

• haveibeenpwned.com – check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach
• interland – embark on a quest to become a confident explorer of the online world
• Google security check – evaluate your security within the Google ecosystem
• authy.com – add two-factor authentication to common services
• howsecureismypassword.net – work out how long it would take a computer to crack your password.

This article was written with significant input from Kieran Nolan, a Melbourne-based educational technologist.

– ref. Skills like ‘crap detection’ can help kids meet cybersecurity challenges head on – http://theconversation.com/skills-like-crap-detection-can-help-kids-meet-cybersecurity-challenges-head-on-113915

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristy Campion, Lecturer in Terrorism Studies, Charles Sturt University

The first step in coming to terms with the attack in Christchurch is to understand that it has been produced by right wing extremism, both in Australia and internationally.

The problem does not lie with immigration policies. The problem does not lie with the so-called outsiders, such as Muslim communities, who are so often the targets of right wing rage.

In this country, the problem lies with the broader Australian community that ignores or accepts the presence of right wing extremists in its midst, and tolerates the increasingly Islamophobic and anti-immigrant discourse in Australia.

Right wing extremism generally starts with perception (or construction) of a threat that imperils the extremist’s way of life. Groups promoting this idea, like the Antipodean Resistance and the Lads Society, have dominated headlines in Australia in recent years. But they are far from the sum of the extreme right in Australia.

Instead, they are a recent manifestation of a recurring problem that can be traced back decades. Here’s a primer on the history of right wing extremism in Australia.

Read more: Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media

What right wing extremism is and what drives it

Right wing extremism is an umbrella term used to describe a complex array of ideologies. The core components are authoritarianism, anti-democracy and exclusionary nationalism.

Fascist, national socialist, white supremacist ideologies – especially those that advocate ethno-states and monocultures – sit firmly within the remit of right wing extremism.

Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and intolerance are fellow travellers: they are characteristics of the ideologies, without actually defining them.

In Australia, right wing extremists tend to position themselves in response to an imagined or constructed threat. Sympathisers believe that society is degenerating, or is at risk of degenerating. Then they externalise this to attribute blame to a target group, such as an ethnic or ideological community.

Right wing extremists foster feelings of peril, and exploit crises to drive narratives that society’s problems are entirely the fault of a target group of outsiders.

They believe the only way to safeguard their society is to remove the threat – often through violence.

The roots of Australian right wing extremism

Historians of the radical right have documented reactionary and radical groups, collectively referred to as the Old Guard, operating in Australia in the 1920s. These groups were concerned about the communist threat, and were driven by the Bolshevik-led Russian revolution in 1917. Although they stockpiled arms, they did not appear to proactively engage in violence.

In the 1930s, members of the Old Guard splintered into a New Guard, and decided to take violent action against communism. They engaged in street fights with Australian communists and trade unionists, disrupted their meetings, and established an alternative employment bureau to try and deter workers from accessing unions.

There was also support for a formal fascist movement. Fascist circles arose in Melbourne in support of Benito Mussolini, and national socialist strongholds formed as early as 1932. Although established independently, they were soon directly administered by the Nazi Party through the Auslands Organisation. Members were considered to be anti-Semitic, fascist and concerned with German/Aryan identity.

Another prominent voice of the extreme right was Alexander Rud Mills. He believed that modern Christianity had degenerated into so-called “Jew-worship”, and the only way to restore it was through a racial interpretation of Odinism (a form of Norse paganism), which he orientated towards Aryan ideals. It is worth noting that the Christchurch perpetrator’s manifesto referenced Valhalla, the hall of fallen heroes in Norse mythology.

Mills was a loud supporter of the Australia First Movement, which promoted the idea that Australia was – and should remain – a white country. In 1941, members in Western Australia were found in possession of plans to assassinate prominent Australians, sabotage vulnerable areas, and drafts of speeches welcoming the Japanese in the event of an invasion.

After the war, these sentiments did not entirely disappear, but were relegated to the political fringe. The Australian League of Rights and its leader, Eric Butler, rose to prominence. In 1946, Butler published The International Jew: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Butler argued that a Zionist Occupation Government existed, and used its wealth to control the governments of the world, including Nazi Germany, in order to enslave various races.

Read more: Christchurch mosque shootings must end New Zealand’s innocence about right-wing terrorism

Attempts to infiltrate mainstream politics

Members of the Australian League of Rights adopted various strategies to subvert democracy. The most significant was “elite penetration”, where members would join mainstream political parties, attempt to subvert their core values and ideas and attain leadership positions.

We saw echoes of this strategy by the Lads Society in 2018, when they infiltrated the Young Nationals conference. It was also supported by the Christchurch perpetrator in his manifesto, when he encouraged fellow travellers to “Lightning Blitz” dominant positions.

Right wing extremism reduced in the sixties, but it nonetheless remained in subcultural networks. In 1964, Nazi materials were still being imported to Australia – including Stormtrooper magazines, and stickers proclaiming “Hitler was right”. There was also the (albeit unsuccessful) formation of the Australia Nationalist Socialist Party – a neo-Nazi party which struggled to attract or retain recruits. Its leaders were found in possession of explosives, detonators, and other weapons, and jailed for unlawful possession in 1964.

In 1968, serious attempts were made to revitalise the radical right, but this time using the democratic process. The National Socialist Party of Australia was reformed, and attempted to foster an Australian-centric style, orientating it away from typical Nazism.

The group, which adopted the Eureka flag and exploited Henry Lawson’s writings, gained some support given their deliberate exploitation of white Australian symbols and anti-communist attitudes. It was rumoured they had a “kill list” of 100 Australians.

Shootings and firebombings

Towards 1976, there were other extreme right groups who did not engage with the democratic process, instead seeking to use violence to effect change. Among them, ASIO monitored Safari 8, the Legion of the Frontiersmen of the Commonwealth, and the Australian Youth Coalition.

Ultimately, they executed no attacks and swiftly disbanded.

The next prominent surge in activity came in the late eighties from the National Action and the Australian Nationalist Movement. Both of these groups persecuted immigrants, homosexuals, and communists – all of whom they believed put white culture in peril. National Action was involved in a number of attacks in Sydney, including a drive-by shooting; while Australian Nationalist Movement launched a prolonged firebombing campaign against Asian businesses in Perth.

While activity appeared to slump after law enforcement clamped down, it persisted in subcultural networks and “skinhead” counterculture. The ideological foundations, especially around racialised identity, was kept alive by groups such as the Southern Cross Hammerskins, Combat 18/Blood and Honour, and the Women of the Southern Legion (a chapter of Women for Aryan Unity).

Read more: Four lessons we must take away from the Christchurch terror attack

The international rise of right wing extremism

In 2009, right wing extremism began to rise around the world, in response to a supposedly existential threat: jihadism, and the broader Muslim community in the West. This was more a response to the threat supposedly posed by immigration to white culture, heritage, and values, than to an actual fear of jihadism.

Groups with international connections, such as the Australian Defence League and Right Wing Resistance, were formed. The rise of Reclaim Australia also saw extremist members of these groups splinter off to form new groups, such as the True Blue Crew and the United Patriots Front.

Phillip Galea, associated with both of these groups, was apprehended on terrorism charges in 2016. The United Patriots Front has given way to the Lads Society. They are joined in this by Antipodean Resistance – an outwardly nationalist socialist group which defines outsiders as left wing groups, Jews, and homosexuals, and condemns interracial couples and supposed sexual promiscuity.

But these groups barely touch the surface of this surge. Australia has hosted a mix of groups on the extreme right in the last decade. This includes the Nationalist Australian Alternative, Proud Boys, Soldiers of Odin, Identity Australia, Australian Traditional, Australian Liberty Alliance, New National Action, the Patriotic Youth League, and more.

The fact that Christchurch attack has been shared and exploited by extreme right wing elements in Australia shows we have a long way to go in confronting this threat.

– ref. Right-wing extremism has a long history in Australia – http://theconversation.com/right-wing-extremism-has-a-long-history-in-australia-113842

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Rahn, Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, University of New England; Senior Research Officer, School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University

Most Australians prefer to die at home but few adequately plan for it. Consequently, just one in seven dies at home.

Some say they will make plans “when the need arises”. But what if you have a heart attack, go into a coma, have a stroke, or develop dementia before having shared your thoughts? We’re all ageing and none of us knows when our health will deteriorate to the point where we need daily domestic or medical assistance.

In the absence of clear instructions, you may instead be admitted into a hospital or aged care facility. That’s where most Australians aged 65 and over end up dying.

Read more: A good death: Australians need support to die at home

The earlier you start planning for your aged care, the better. To start off, think about the possible scenarios you may encounter in later life.

Consider whom you wish to maintain relationships with, including intimate partners.

Think about how you will pay for home and aged care services, and whom you might rely on to be your advocate or carer.

Communicate your decisions (verbally and in writing) in as much detail as possible to those who need to know, such as future carers and health providers. This removes much of the guesswork later.

Relying on government-funded services is risky

Government-funded home care packages are intended to keep people in their homes for as long as possible. They provide supplementary support such as cleaning or shopping services, home visits by nurses and, in some cases, equipment to help with mobility or minor home modifications.

But while demand for these services is increasing, staffing and funding levels aren’t keeping up. Older Australians wait, on average, 18-24 months to access a home care package. In the meantime, many people are forced to move into residential care.

Read more: Explainer: what is a home care package and who is eligible?

More than 3.5 million Australians are expected to be using aged care services by 2050. This would require an additional 980,000 workers in the aged care workforce.

However, aged care providers already report a shortage of workers. In fact, the home care workforce has declined since 2012, meaning much-needed home care services are not always available.

Many older Australians want to stay in their homes for as long as possible. Elien Dumon

It’s also important to note that Australia’s aged care system is increasingly moving to a “user pays” model, whereby aged care clients are means-tested and expected to contribute financially to their care.

So it’s unwise to assume government funding will be sufficient to pay for your aged care services.

Attitudes to residential aged care

Aged care horror stories abound in the media, especially now the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is underway. Unfortunately, equal media coverage is not afforded to the many excellent aged care facilities in Australia.

The royal commission reported some Australians would rather die than live in residential aged care. But there is scarcely any research into public perceptions of residential aged care and whether they change over time.

Read more: Would you like to grow old at home? Why we’re struggling to meet demand for subsidised home care

In my own research, such attitudes resulted from exposure to negative media coverage, visiting residential aged care facilities, or working in aged care. Of particular concern were issues typical of institutional living – lack of privacy, personal choice or control. This was a particular issue for partnered residents, who represent one-third of aged care residents.

However, simply making a pronouncement that you reject residential care is not sufficient to prevent it happening. Entry into residential care usually happens in response to a crisis, either because people live alone or because family carers can no longer cope. The most common trigger is dementia.

Besides residential aged care, your other options include living independently with or without voluntary family or community support, a home care package and/or self-funded care. However, every scenario requires that you prepare in advance as follows.

Maintaining social connections and learning can decrease your risk of dementia. Val Vesa

Preparing for the end of your life

On an individual level, there are five important things you can do for yourself.

1. Adopt a healthy lifestyle

Learn about dementia, which is preventable in one-third of cases. Make lifestyle changes to reduce this and other diseases of old age. Maintaining social connections, getting regular exercise, lifelong learning, quitting smoking, losing weight, treating depression and even correcting for hearing loss all make a significant difference.

Read more: Some brain training programs are backed by evidence. Here’s how to pick them

2. Consult a financial planner

Early in your working life, plan your retirement income to last to 90 years of age and beyond. Aim to be debt-free and factor in costs associated with home care.

Assume you’ll be one of the 62% of people over 85 who needs residential aged care in their final years and budget accordingly. For this, you will need a bond of A$300,000 to A$500,000 minimum. Except in the lowest socioeconomic groups (who are exempted from bonds), insufficient bond money means many people, especially if they’re partnered, will not be able to afford residential aged care.

3. Talk about your wishes

First consider your preferences: where you want to die, who cares for you and what provisions you are likely to need. Then make your wishes widely known, especially to anyone you’d like to have care for you.

4. Write it down

Record your wishes using formal end-of-life planning tools well before you need them. Learn about Enduring Guardianship, Enduring Power of Attorney and Advance Care Planning in your state. By recording your wishes and nominating representatives, you will be reducing the stress and uncertainty for your family and health providers.

End of life planning tools can help. Trinity Treft

Choose representatives who will willingly act as advocates on your behalf, to ensure your wishes will be carried out. Advance care planning is especially important if you do not want medical intervention to keep you alive.

5. Choose carefully where you live

Consider the suitability of your home and suburb if walking becomes difficult and driving is no longer an option. Are you near a hospital? Can you reach it by public transport? Can you walk to the shops? Is your garden high-maintenance? Are friends and family nearby? Are there services available that could come to your home? Move before you need to.

Support (and be supported by) your community

Ageing is a whole-of-community issue – it affects us all. We cannot expect individuals to be solely responsible for their care.

In the past, caring for older people in their final years was routinely carried out by families and communities. This is still the best strategy. But it relies on communities forming volunteer groups to actively care for their older people.

To safeguard your future, support a volunteer organisation in your neighbourhood, such as Compassionate Communities (in Sydney, the Blue Mountains, and southwest Western Australia), One Good Street (in Melbourne), Good Karma Networks (in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand), or Amitayus Home Hospice (in Byron Shire, NSW).

Some of these organisations provide training for those caring for older people. Others invite neighbours to help each other by sharing their knowledge or skills with older people and their carers.

Read more: As home care packages become big business, older people are not getting the personalised support they need

– ref. Don’t wait for a crisis – start planning your aged care now – http://theconversation.com/dont-wait-for-a-crisis-start-planning-your-aged-care-now-113572

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Haswell, Professor of Health, Safety and Environment, School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland University of Technology

Australia, like its competitors Qatar, Canada and the United States, aspires to become the world’s largest exporter of gas, arguing this helps importing nations reduce their greenhouse emissions by replacing coal.

Yes, burning gas emits less carbon dioxide than burning coal. Yet the “fugitive emissions” – the methane that escapes, often unmeasured, during production, distribution and combustion of gas – is a much more potent short-term greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Read more: Who gets to decide whether we dig up coal and gas?

A special report issued by the World Health Organisation after the 2018 Katowice climate summit urged governments to take “specific commitments to reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants” such as methane, so as to boost the chances of staying with the Paris Agreement’s ambitious 1.5℃ global warming limit.

Current gas expansion plans in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland, where another 2,500 coal seam gas wells have been approved, reveal little impetus to deliver on this. Harvesting all of WA’s gas reserves would emit about 4.4 times more carbon dioxide equivalent than Australia’s total domestic energy-related emissions budget.

Gas as a cause of local ill-health

There are not only global, but also significant local and regional risks to health and well-being associated with unconventional gas mining. Our comprehensive review examines the current state of the evidence.

Since our previous reviews (see here, here and here), more than 1,400 further peer-reviewed articles have been published, helping to clarify how expanding unconventional gas production across Australia risks our health, well-being, climate, water and food security.

Read more: Chief Scientist CSG report leaves health concerns unanswered

This research has been possible because, since 2010, 17.6 million US citizens’ homes have been within a mile (1.6km) of gas wells and fracking operations. Furthermore, some US research funding is independent of the gas industry, whereas much of Australia’s comparatively small budget for research in this area is channelled through an industry-funded CSIRO research hub.

Key medical findings

There is evidence that living close to unconventional gas mining activities is linked to a wide range of health conditions, including psychological and social problems.

The US literature now consistently reports higher frequencies of low birth weight, extreme premature births, higher-risk pregnancies and some birth defects, in pregnancies spent closer to unconventional gas mining activities, compared with pregnancies further away. No parallel studies have so far been published in Australia.

US studies have found increased indicators of cardiovascular disease, higher rates of sinus disorders, fatigue and migraines, and hospitalisations for asthma, heart, neurological, kidney and urinary tract conditions, and childhood blood cancer near shale gas operations.

Exploratory studies in Queensland found higher rates of hospitalisation for circulatory, immune system and respiratory disorders in children and adults in the Darling Downs region where coal seam gas mining is concentrated.

Water exposure

Chemicals found in gas mining wastewater include volatile organic compounds such as benzene, phenols and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, as well as heavy metals, radioactive materials, and endocrine-disrupting substances – compounds that can affect the body’s hormones.

This wastewater can find its way into aquifers and surface water through spillage, injection procedures, and leakage from wastewater ponds.

The environmental safety of treated wastewater and the vast quantities of crystalline salt produced is unclear, raising questions about cumulative long-term impacts on soil productivity and drinking water security.

Concern about the unconventional gas industry’s use of large quantities of water has increased since 2013. Particularly relevant to Australian agriculture and remote communities is research showing an unexpected but consistent increase in the “water footprint” of gas wells across all six major shale oil and gas mining regions of the US from 2011 to 2016. Maximum increases in water use per well (7.7-fold higher, Permian deposits, New Mexico and Texas) and wastewater production per well (14-fold, Eagle Ford deposits, Texas) occurred where water stress is very high. The drop in water efficiency was tied to a drop in gas prices.

Air exposure

Research on the potentially harmful substances emitted into the atmosphere during water removal, gas production and processing, wastewater handling and transport has expanded. These substances include fine particulate pollutants, ground-level ozone, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hydrogen sulfide, formaldehyde, diesel exhaust and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Measuring concentrations and human exposures to these pollutants is complicated, as they vary widely and unpredictably in both time and location. This makes it difficult to prove a definitive causal link to human health impacts, despite the mounting circumstantial evidence.

Read more: Why Australians need a national environment protection agency to safeguard their health

Our review found substantially more evidence of what we suspected in 2013: that gas mining poses significant threats to the global climate, to food and water supplies, and to health and well-being.

On this basis, Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) has reinforced its position that no new gas developments should occur in Australia, and that governments should increase monitoring, regulation and management of existing wells and gas production and transport infrastructure.

– ref. Expanding gas mining threatens our climate, water and health – http://theconversation.com/expanding-gas-mining-threatens-our-climate-water-and-health-113047

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tahj Rosmarin, Research officer, University of Melbourne

The ubiquitous kebab van has become part of the urban character of Melbourne over the past three decades. Long before the food-truck craze hit Melbourne, inner-city dwellers knew the kebab van: a food outlet of modest scale, temporary construction (most often existing within a van or trailer), and typically located within car washes or petrol stations at the intersections of busy arterial roads.

Almost by stealth, the kebab van filtered through suburban road networks and car-service businesses. Mainstream culture tolerates them because they occupy unattractive, undesired urban voids and provide alternatives to the corporate likes of McDonald’s. Despite the kebab van’s subculture status, the practices of “kebab urbanism” can teach policymakers and planners a lot about placemaking.

Musa’s Kebabs blends into its gritty urban setting in Brunswick by day, but at night it’s a bright beacon in a fairly bleak street. James Connor

A pathway for migrants

Migrant urbanism and kebab urbanism are closely linked. The value of the kebab van cannot really be understood without first recognising the value of immigration. First introduced by Middle Eastern and Turkish immigrants in the 1960s, mainstream Australian culture adopted kebabs, which have come to symbolise the success of multicultural policy.

For many migrants, the kebab van is a point of entry into a new society. They provide a path of transition into starting a business, allowing owners to establish a customer base and earn money before committing to a formal shop lease. This process of social mobility is well established in many Asian cities, where informal street vendors can end up running more formal establishments.

Despite this, the kebab van is rarely acknowledged as part of the image Melbourne projects globally – especially compared to its renowned daytime sibling, the café of Southern European heritage, which is widespread across Melbourne’s high streets and neighbourhoods. Rather, the kebab van is seen as something temporary, to be phased out as the city gentrifies. Often occupying unwanted urban territories, these kebab vans have had to mediate and negotiate the challenges of difficult spaces in order to survive.

Creating opportunities in difficult sites

Most restaurants would never open a shop on the corner of a busy intersection. The conditions are far from ideal – these are loud, inaccessible and unpleasant areas. However, kebab vans see these sites as opportunities. In fact, it is the commonplace urban character of kebab van locations and their relatively unsociable night-time trading hours that have allowed them to proliferate across the city.

Richmond Hektik Kebab and HSP is located at a petrol station on a busy intersection in Richmond. Access by car is imperative – hence it faces the street and has flashing signage. James Connor

During the day, the kebab vans’ modest scale, unassuming form and chameleon-like signage help them blend into their urban surroundings. At night it’s a different story – their locations on arterial roads and key intersections, flashing signs and oversized font purposefully demand attention to attract business.

Kebab vans come alive when the daytime businesses they share space with are closed. Some vans even offer dining areas in what were driveways and parking spots only hours earlier.

Sam’s Kebabworx, set on a development site in Preston, provides semi-permanent seating with couches and dining tables. James Connor

Longstanding but still temporary

Many kebab vans have existed for over a decade and have become local suburban icons. Town Hall Kebab in Brunswick was located next to a car wash at the rear of a church. The kebab van earned its reputation as an “institution” among its many competitors along a popular culinary streetscape. Even celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain praised the van’s cuisine.

Anthony Bourdain goes to Town Hall Kebab. The site where Town Hall Kebab once stood has reverted to being a carpark. Tahj Rosmarin

Despite this, the restaurant was still considered temporary and became embroiled in a legal dispute. Town Hall Kebab was ordered to vacate the premises. It no longer operates from a van but as a fixed food outlet instead. What was a well-known restaurant and social gathering space along a popular Melbourne high street reverted to its original function as a car park – although the owner, the Anglican Church, plans to develop a community space.

While kebab vans can contribute significantly to sub/urban identity, sometimes over decades, their temporary nature means they can exist and depart very quickly. It’s common to hear of cases like those of Town Hall Kebab owner Abou Ahmed and Glenny Kebabs owner Asad Syed, who was evicted from a petrol station in Glen Waverley. Despite succeeding in a legal bid to re-open his business, Syed was looking for another site.

Food truck or kebab van?

Cases like these demonstrate the grey areas of informal trading and the problems many policymakers face when trying to formalise these situations. Unfortunately, the outlook of many politicians and city makers is that kebab vans are ugly and detract from the ideal urban or suburban experience.

Interestingly, this outlook is at odds with the concurrent promotion of food-truck culture by many of these same proponents, confirming cultural biases against the “other”. Sites such as “Welcome to Thornbury” represent the homogenisation of this phenomenon and mark decisive moments in the gentrification of such areas.

Highly individual kebab vans arguably spawned a higher-end and more generic descendant in the food truck. Sunflowery/Shutterstock

Defying the generic city

Kebab urbanism offers an alternative to the spread of generic urbanism, fuelled by gentrification of many inner-city suburbs. They operate across many different spaces and spectrums – ranging from the car to the pedestrian, temporary to permanent, formal to informal. It is small urban gestures such as these that continue to diversify, enliven and humanise our cities. They insert human activities and the sense of security from being among people in spaces that would otherwise be considered unsuitable for socialising, or even threatening.

There is no doubt that kebab vans affirm the successes of Australian multiculturalism’s bottom-up practices. They have become a mainstay of Melbourne’s urbanity.

Top-down multicultural policies need to reflect and complement this reality, in order to dispel the populist and polarising myths of immigrants’ inability to adapt to Australian culture. On the contrary, migrant urbanism, of which kebab urbanism forms a subset, will continue to complement, enhance and help renew our shared culture.

– ref. Kebab urbanism: Melbourne’s ‘other’ cafe makes the city a more human place – http://theconversation.com/kebab-urbanism-melbournes-other-cafe-makes-the-city-a-more-human-place-112228

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Worthington, Adjunct Professor, Swinburne University of Technology

After recreational cannabis use became legal in Canada last October, research shows the number of bank notes in circulation fell sharply. Before, marijuana buyers used cash to keep their transactions anonymous. After, there was a massive switch to the convenience of cashless payments.

The fall in October was particularly large and contrasts with average monthly gains of 0.4 per cent over the previous five years. Bank of Canada

It’s a prime example of what makes a cashless society so attractive to law makers and enforcers wanting to put the squeeze on the “black economy” that can’t be tracked or taxed.

But not everyone clinging to cash has illicit motivations.

This month Philadelphia became the first major US city requiring all merchants to accept cash. This week the state of New Jersey followed suit. Other US cities and states are considering the same.

The chief concern is that cashless payment systems discriminate against the “unbanked” – those without a bank account – making life harder for those already on the margins. “It’s really a fairness issue,” said the councillor who sponsored the ban. “Equal access is what we’re trying to get.”

So as nations make plans to become cashless societies, and automated teller machines start to go the way of telephone booths, it’s timely to consider the pros and cons of cashless payments. We need ensure our enthusiastic march to the future does not trample over people or leave them behind.

Counting the unbanked

A national survey by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation shows about 8.4 million US households – or 6.5% of all households – were unbanked in 2017. Philadelphia’s new law is primarily to protect such people.

Taking effect on July 1, the law requires most stores to accept cash, and forbids them charging a surcharge for paying with cash. New York, Washington and Chicago are among the cities investigating similar measures.

Read more: Why cash remains sacred in American churches

In Britain a review of cash accessibility headed by former chief financial ombudsman Natalie Ceeney has urged financial regulators to stop the country “sleepwalking” into a cashless society. Its report, published this month, recommends a national guarantee that consumers will be able to access and use cash for as long as they need it.

About 17% of the British population – over 8 million adults – would struggle to cope in a cashless society, the report says: “While most of society recognises the benefits of digital payments, our research shows the technology doesn’t yet work for everyone.”

The tip of the iceberg is the decline in bank branches and ATMs. Two-thirds of bank branches have closed in the past three decades, and the rate of closure in accelerating. Cashpoints are disappearing at a rate of nearly 500 a month.

Learning from Sweden

But this is simply the most obvious symptom, according to the Ceeney report, with evidence from other countries demonstrating the issue of merchants accepting cash is more important.

“Sweden, the most cashless society in the world, outlines the dangers of sleepwalking into a cashless society: millions of people could potentially be left out of the economy,” it says, “and face increased risks of isolation, exploitation, debt and rising costs.”

About 85% of transactions in Sweden are now digital. Half the nation’s retailers expect to stop accepting cash before 2025.

Percentage of Swedes that used cash for their most recent purchase. The Riksbank

The nation is now counting the societal costs.

The Riksbank, Sweden’s Central Bank, is asking all banks to keep providing and accepting cash while government works out how best to protect those who most rely on cash – such as those aged 65 or more, those living in rural areas, those with disabilities and recent immigrants.

An estimated 1 million Swedes are not comfortable with using a computer or smart phone to do their banking. Immigrants often do not have a bank account or credit history to get a payment card.

Considering consequences

“If cash disappears that would be a big change, with major implications for society and the economy,” Mats Dillen, the head of the Swedish Parliament Committee studying the issue, has said. “We need to pause and think about whether this is good or bad and not just sit back and let it happen.”

The New York City Council member pushing the bill to ban cashless-only stores, Ritchie Torres, agrees. He is particularly concerned about the issues of class and ethnic discrimination.

“I started coming across coffee shops and cafés that were exclusively cashless and I thought: but what if I was a low-income New Yorker who has no access to a card?” Ritchie Torres has explained. “I thought about it more and realised that even if a policy seems neutral in theory it can be racially exclusionary in practice.

Read more: Why a ‘cashless’ society would hurt the poor: A lesson from India

“In some ways making a payment card a requirement for consumption is analogous to making identification a requirement for voting. The effect is the same: it disempowers communities of colour.”

These are timely reminders that we should never assume that technological change is value-free, or necessarily an improvement. All revolutions have their hidden costs. We need to ensure those costs are shared equitably, and that no one is accidentally disadvantaged by them.

– ref. Depending on who you are, the benefits of a cashless society are greatly overrated – http://theconversation.com/depending-on-who-you-are-the-benefits-of-a-cashless-society-are-greatly-overrated-113268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Opponents of Australia’s strong immigration program will be disappointed.

In announcing a cut in Australia’s migration ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000 per year, federal population minister Alan Tudge launched an all-out defence of immigration as a driver of economic prosperity.

It has not only boosted gross domestic product and budget revenue, as would be expected when with more people, but also also living standards – measured as GDP per person. Tudge explained:

This is often not sort of fully understood. Not only does population growth help with GDP growth overall, but it helps with GDP per capita growth too. It’s actually made all of us wealthier.

In fact, Treasury estimates that 20% of our per capita wealth generated over the last 40 years has been due to population factors. How does that come about? In part because when we bring in migrants, they come in younger than what the average Australian is. On average, a migrant comes in at the age of 26. The average age of an Australian is about 37. So it very much helps with our workforce participation, and that’s essentially a big driver of our GDP per capita growth.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison added:

I would also mention from a pensions point of view and social welfare point of view, achieving more of a balance in the working-age population means there’s more people in the working age to actually pay for the pensions and the welfare bill for those who aren’t able to be in the workforce and with an ageing population.

The lower ceiling announced on Wednesday will make little difference to Australia’s migrant intake. It is already close to 160,000, at about 162,000. Other changes will attempt to influence where migrants settle.

Two new regional visas for skilled workers will require them to live and work in less urban Australia (outside of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and the Gold Coast) for three years before being able to become a permanent resident. Of the 160,000 potential places, 23,000 will be set aside for these visa-holders. International students studying outside the big cities will get access to an extra year in Australia on a post-study work visa.

Immigration shouldn’t supress wages

Tudge’s acceptance that migration neither boosts unemployment nor cuts wages is consistent with most evidence from Australia and overseas.

New arrivals increase the supply of workers (such as teachers and house-builders), which might be expected to depress existing residents’ wages. But there are two countervailing forces.

First, migrants also increase the demand for goods and services (as the arrivals’ children get taught and their homes get built), which might be expected to boost preexisting residents’ wages.

Second, if migrants fill jobs that would otherwise go unfilled, they can boost the productivity, and hence the wages, of existing residents.

Most studies of migration shocks, such as the repatriation of more than a million French citizens to metropolitan France after the Algerian civil war, have found that the net effect is close to zero.

There is hardly any evidence that it does

An exception is work in the United States by George Borjas, who found that the boatlift of 125,000 mostly low-skilled immigrants from Cuba to Miami in 1980 did suppress the wages of low-skilled Miami workers, if not Miami workers overall. But this finding has been disputed.

In 2015 Nathan Deutscher, Hang Thi and I set out to replicate his work, using changes in the immigration rates of different skill groups to Australia to identify the effects of immigration on the earnings and employment prospects of particular groups of Australian workers.

Our data came from the Australian Census, the Surveys of Income and Housing, and the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey.

We isolated 40 distinct skill groups at a national level, identifying them with a combination of educational attainment and workforce experience and examined six outcomes – annual earnings, weekly earnings, wage rates, hours worked, labour market participation rate, and unemployment.

We explored 114 different possibilities, controlling for macroeconomic conditions and for the fact that immigrants to Australia are disproportionately highly skilled with higher wages.

In Australia, we found next to none

We found immigration had no overall impact on the wages of incumbent workers. If anything, the effect was slightly positive.

Some of our estimates showed immigration had a negative effect on some groups of incumbent workers, but the positive effects outnumbered negative effects by three to one. The vast majority of effects were zero.

The statistical basis for our finding of no overall effect was incredibly strong. It more than passed the standard tests.

Our research only looked at one, very limited, aspect of immigration. Immigrants can also bring cultural and demographic benefits. And until infrastructure catches up, they can increase congestion.

But immigration doesn’t seem to harm either jobs or wages, a point the Morrison government is right to acknowledge.

Read more: Solving the ‘population problem’ through policy

– ref. The government is right – immigration helps us rather than harms us – http://theconversation.com/the-government-is-right-immigration-helps-us-rather-than-harms-us-113919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philomena Murray, Professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

There is a song by the Melbourne band Little Heroes, called One Perfect Day, from back in 1982 (though it still attracts a cult following). In it, the lead singer asks his ex-girlfriend in England: tell me, is it still raining there in England, and did the government fall last night?

Well, it is still raining. And there is still talk of the government of Theresa May falling. We just observed a week of three parliamentary votes on Brexit, where the government was defeated in two of them.

In another extraordinary day yesterday, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, invoked the “Erskine May” parliamentary rules of procedure. That means that an amendment “which is the same, in substance” as an issue that has already been voted on cannot be proposed again in parliament. The speaker said that a new proposal must be “not different in terms of wording, but different in terms of substance”. Unless there are significant changes to the substance of the government’s proposed Withdrawal Agreement, it cannot be sent back to the House for a third “meaningful” vote.

So, what might happen now, with nine days to go until the UK is supposed to leave the EU?

Read more: John Bercow’s Brexit bombshell – it was arrogant for the government not to see this coming

The UK could still leave without an agreement

If there is no parliamentary support for the Withdrawal Agreement, that does not mean the UK does not leave. The UK will leave on 29 March unless the UK government requests an extension to Article 50, which was activated by Theresa May two years ago on 29 March 2017. The Article says, among other things:

The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

If the UK leaves in a little over a week, it will no longer be in the EU and will no longer be party to hundreds of international treaties and thousands of pieces of legislation.

Proroguing the parliament is an option

What are the options in order to avoid crashing out this way? Could the British government somehow get the Withdrawal Agreement through parliament on a third attempt?

One step that Theresa May might be contemplating is taking the extraordinary measure of “proroguing” the parliament. Proroguing effectively means terminating the current session, without actually dissolving it, and having parliament reconvene in a new session. The government would then have the option – if the temporary suspension of the parliament goes smoothly – to re-send the Withdrawal Agreement for a meaningful vote to a newly-convened parliament.

This may not occur in time for the looming exit deadline, and May is unlikely to attempt to present the deal for a third time, unless the Speaker changes his position. So, May could be obliged to yet again set out for Brussels and some EU national capitals to shore up support for an extension of Article 50.

Read more: Brexit: views from around Europe on future relationship between UK and EU

So far, no request to extend Article 50

The EU has not yet received a formal request for an extension of Article 50, even though the House of Commons voted last week for such an extension and May has now indicated she will request one. Nathalie Loiseau, the French Minister for the EU, said, “No such request has been made”.

Perhaps giving a sense of the frustration in some EU capitals about the negotiations, Loiseau revealed she has called her cat Brexit because it is indecisive, as it “meows loudly to be let out each morning, but then refuses to go outside when she opens the door”.

The EU would no doubt request that an extension be fully justified – and there is little European appetite to reopen negotiations with Britain. The EU has been preparing for Brexit for some time.

It is conceivable that Theresa May could seek to justify a request that Article 50 be extended well beyond the 30 June 2019 date currently under discussion in the UK. But there are major problems with this, as the UK would need to take part in the European Parliament elections to take place in May this year. It could also be obliged to contribute to the new EU budget round, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework.

Read more: Why wait for the Brexit fog to clear? Australian, British and multinational businesses are moving on

The Brexit saga continues

Of course, the idea of voting more than once on a Brexit deal in Parliament raises again the call for a second referendum on EU membership by the people – a people’s vote.

Alternatively, the UK could remain in the EU and revoke Article 50. A recent court ruling that this does not require the consent of the other 27 EU states has emboldened those who are campaigning for a new referendum – although it is far from clear what questions would appear on the ballot paper.

The possibility of Theresa May resigning is never far from the minds of her detractors – whether the European Research Group in her own party, or the Labour party leadership under Jeremy Corbyn.

Meanwhile, the UK Trade Secretary Liam Fox has announced a trade deal that has just been initialled with Iceland and Norway. He stated that this was in addition to the agreement signed with Liechtenstein. At least Norway and Iceland are larger than Liechtenstein, a country of fewer than 38,000 people – famous for being the world’s largest exporter of false teeth.

These new trading partners are considerably smaller than the EU Single Market of over 500 million that the UK currently belongs to. They will certainly not fill the huge void left by Brexit.

Yet again, Theresa May’s government is no doubt hoping for just One Perfect Day, but it is not looking likely at the moment.

– ref. Nine days and counting: what options does the UK have before the Brexit deadline? – http://theconversation.com/nine-days-and-counting-what-options-does-the-uk-have-before-the-brexit-deadline-113910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meghan A. Bohren, Lecturer in Gender and Women’s Health, University of Melbourne

Women have traditionally been supported by a companion during childbirth, and there is good evidence this benefits both the woman and the baby.

The World Health Organisation recommends continuous support for women during childbirth. Yet across the world, initiatives promoting health facilities as the safest place to give birth have not necessarily respected this tradition.

But now we have new evidence on the ways women are supported during childbirth by a doula or other labour companion.

Our research has found labour companions (including doulas, partners, and family members) support women during childbirth by providing information, advocating for the woman’s needs, and providing practical and emotional support.

Importantly, our research also indicates pairing a woman with a doula from the same ethnic, linguistic or religious background as her may be an important way to improve equity and provide culturally responsive care.

Read more: So your birth didn’t go according to plan? Don’t blame yourself

What is doula care?

The word “doula” comes from a Greek word meaning “woman’s servant”.

Doulas are trained, non-medical professionals who provide continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to women before, during and after childbirth, to facilitate the best possible birth experience.

Research has shown doula care is beneficial for both women and babies. Peter Oslanec/Unsplash

Doulas typically meet with a woman (and sometimes her partner or family) during pregnancy to help her to prepare for childbirth, build rapport, manage expectations and provide evidence-based resources.

When a woman goes into labour, she alerts her doula. The doula supports the woman throughout labour and childbirth. This is typically at a birthing clinic or hospital (some doulas may also attend home births).

Four ways to support women during labour

Our Cochrane review, published this week, brings together data from 51 studies across 22 countries looking at support provided by labour companions, including doulas.

First, we found through providing information, labour companions bridge communication gaps between health workers, such as doctors and midwives, and the woman. They keep her informed about the process of childbirth and her progress through labour. They may also provide her with tips around effectively using non-pharmacological pain relief, such as meditation or relaxation.

Second, labour companions advocate for the woman, speaking up in support of her and her preferences.

Third, labour companions provide practical support, which could include encouraging the woman to move around, providing massage, and holding her hand.

And finally, labour companions offer emotional support, helping the woman to feel in control and confident by praising and reassuring her, and providing a continuous physical presence.

Improved outcomes for mums and babies

The benefits of continuous support during labour and birth were highlighted in an earlier Cochrane review, which analysed data from 26 studies across 17 countries involving more than 15,000 women.

Continuous support was provided by a woman’s partner, family member, or friend; hospital staff (student midwives); or a doula.

The review found continuous support could improve several health outcomes for both the woman and her baby. Women may be more likely to have a vaginal birth (without the need for caesarean, forceps or vacuum extraction).

Read more: Explainer: what are women’s options for giving birth?

In addition, women who receive continuous support may be less likely to use pain medications, may have shorter labours, and may be more likely to be satisfied with their birth experience.

The babies of women who receive continuous support may be less likely to have low five-minute Apgar scores, which assess babies’ health and well-being at birth and shortly afterwards.

Who can benefit from doula care?

Recent media has highlighted that doulas are fit for royals. Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has hired a doula to support her during her current pregnancy.

Meghan Markle is using a birth doula. AAP

In Australia, doula care typically ranges from A$500-A$2,500, depending on the doula’s experience and the services they offer. This cost typically includes one to two visits during pregnancy, attendance at birth, and one visit after birth.

While the cost of doula care may sound prohibitive, our findings highlight that providing community-based doula care for migrant, refugee and other foreign-born women in high-income countries may be an important way to improve equity and culturally responsive care.

When migrant women receive care from community-based doulas (from the same ethnic, linguistic, and/or religious background as them), they may feel more confident and less like “outsiders” in their new communities.

In Sweden and the United States, research has shown that foreign-born women supported by community-based doulas were more satisfied with their birth experiences, and doulas themselves felt empowered.

Community-based doulas may also be particularly beneficial for Indigenous women, whose traditional birthing practices are strongly linked to their cultural identities. In Canada, the British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres provides scholarships to pregnant Indigenous women to hire a doula.

Read more: Death doulas can fill care gaps at the end of life

Doula services may be provided free of charge for low income people and families, as a way to improve equity. The Doula Project provides free doula services to low income women in New York City through volunteers.

Supporting women to have a labour companion or doula of her choice during childbirth is an effective way to improve health outcomes, and is an important component of respectful maternity care.

Labour companionship and doula support may increase equity directly through improved women’s empowerment and provision of culturally responsive care, and indirectly by reducing the over-medicalisation of childbirth.

Sarah Chapman, a knowledge broker at Cochrane UK, contributed to this article.

– ref. What is a doula and how do they help women giving birth? – http://theconversation.com/what-is-a-doula-and-how-do-they-help-women-giving-birth-113562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noel Hanna, Leading Education Professional (Physics), UNSW

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

What makes an echo? – Minnie, age 4.

That’s a tricky question. The simplest way to answer is to say that an echo is a sound that later comes back to where it came from.

Before we get into what makes an echo, we need to have a think about sound.

What is a sound?

What we call “sound” is really just the air in our ears moving back and forth.

The air can move fast or slow. We can hear air moving back and forth between 20 and 20,000 times per second. That’s really, really fast! (For the grownups reading right now, human hearing is from about 20 – 20,000 Hertz, which means repetitions per second).

But did you know that there are faster and slower air movements that can be heard by other animals, but not people?

Where does sound come from?

If we hear the air moving in our ears, where did that moving air come from?

A sound can come from anything that vibrates or moves back and forth.

It could start with the moving string of a guitar or the vocal folds in your voice box that move when you speak or sing.

Once the air starts to move, it travels in all directions until it finds something to stop it.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why are we ticklish?

Bounce back!

When sound travelling in air (we call this a sound wave) hits a hard flat surface, like a tiled bathroom wall, most of it bounces back. Maybe this is why people like to sing in the shower.

This is a drawing of how sound bounces back. gritsalak karalak/shutterstock

But to get a really good echo, that sounds the same as the original sound, we need a very big bathroom, or another very big, hard-walled place – like a valley or a canyon!

Here’s a video of a man playing trumpet in a canyon. The vibration of his lips makes the sound, which bounces back from the hard wall of rock on the other side of the valley:

For a sound to bounce back and make an echo, there has to be a lot of space between the sound source and the thing (wall or mountain) that it hits and bounces back.

Why? Because it takes time for the sound to come back as an echo. If there’s no big space, it won’t sound like an echo because the sound that comes back will get mixed up with the original sound.

Noticing changes in the sound can still be useful. Some animals like bats and dolphins, and even some children, can use this to tell where they are. This is called “echolocation”.

Here’s a BBC video about a child named Sam who uses echolocation to get around.

So if you don’t have a very large bathroom, you may want to try a bushwalk in a valley, or perhaps an underground carpark to find your echos.

If you know of any good echo spots, leave a comment below. I can start you off by telling you that there is a place called Echo Point at Katoomba in NSW.

Did you know?

The name “echo” comes from a Greek legend. In that story, a kind of mountain fairy named Echo was cursed by the god Zeus’ wife Hera so that she could only repeat what was said to her.

Some people believe that when a duck quacks, it does not echo but some scientists in the UK did an experiment and said that was not true.

Many scientists like to study sounds without echoes. For this, they design special rooms called “anechoic chambers”, that stop sound from bouncing back. The Acoustics Lab at the University of New South Wales even has an anechoic pipe. It is so long that any sound that goes in doesn’t come back out.

Read more: Curious Kids: Who made the alphabet song?

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: what makes an echo? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-makes-an-echo-109141

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

The government has announced a reduced annual cap on migration of 160,000 for each of the next four years, as well as measures to stream a greater proportion of migrants to regional areas and boost the skilled component to these places.

The overhaul of the program comes after pressure from various quarters including conservative Liberals for immigration to be lowered, and the government talking up the need for “congestion busting”.

The government said cutting the migration cap by 15 per cent would reduce the maximum intake by a cumulative 120,000 over four years.

But the migration cap, although it is 30,000 lower than the present cap, in fact broadly reflects the actual current level of intake.

Last year permanent migration fell to its lowest level in a decade as a result of visa and other tightening.

Two new regional visas will be introduced for skilled workers, requiring them to live and work in regional areas for three years before being eligible to access permanent residency.

Skilled Employers Sponsored Regional and Skilled Work Regional visa holders will be given priority processing and will have access to a larger pool of eligible jobs.

Some 23,000 places will be set aside for regional skilled visas – this is a rise from 8,534 in 2017-18.

There will also be new tertiary scholarships for Australian and international students to study in the regions – these will be worth $15,000 and go to more than 1000 local and foreign students annually.

International students studying at regional universities will be given access to an extra year in Australia on a post-study work visa.

The government says the new migration program increases the focus on skills, with the number of Employer Sponsored places rising from 35,528 in 2017-18 to 39,000 in 2019-20. The family stream of the program hasn’t changed with 47,732 places available in 2019-20.

The program’s composition will be kept at about 70 per cent in the skilled stream and 30 per cent in the family stream.

Scott Morrison said the government’s plan “manages population growth by adopting well targeted, responsible, and sustainable immigration policies”.

Morrison said migrants “are an invaluable part of Australia’s economic and social fabric. Our economic strength is supported by a successful migration program that brings skilled people of working age”.

He warned against those who wanted to run scare campaigns as a result of the announcements, saying they would be taking Australians for mugs.

Better targeting the intake would address skills shortages and benefit the whole economy, he said. “It will take pressure off in those cities that are straining, while supporting the cities and towns that are keen to have stronger growth”.

Morrison said managing population growth was not just about the migration intake, but also about infrastructure, city and regional deals, congestion busting projects, removing traffic bottlenecks, funding essential services, and providing key skills to regional to rural areas.

“Our plan marks a turning point in the way population is treated across government, with a move to greater collaboration, transparency and longer term planning. It is a comprehensive plan that engages and partners with our states and territories and local governments.”

Morrison said he wanted Australians to “spend less time in traffic and more time with their families”.

“Meanwhile I know we have rural and regional communities that have plans and opportunities to grow their shires, who are looking for more people to come and settle in their districts to fill jobs, inject more life into their towns, and shore up the important education and health services for the future they rely on.”

– ref. Slimmed-down migration program has regional focus – http://theconversation.com/slimmed-down-migration-program-has-regional-focus-113847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Bryant, Professor & Director of Traumatic Stress Clinic, UNSW

The world was saddened and distressed to learn of the shocking Christchurch mosque attacks on Friday, which claimed the lives of 50 people and injured nearly as many. Since then we’ve heard heartbreaking stories of the victims and their families as we try to piece together how this could have happened.

For those at the scene or who were directly affected, such an attack is likely to have enduring physiological impacts. This may include anxiety, disturbed sleep, nightmares, unwanted memories of the event repeatedly popping into their minds, and fear of future attacks.

For people in the community who hear about such events or witness them on television, the news may be distressing but these feelings will typically abate in the following days and weeks. However, some people who watch these events unfold may be more affected because they trigger memories of past traumatic experiences in their own lives.

Read more: The psychology of fear and hate, and what each of us can do to stop it

Does it matter if you watch?

The Christchurch gunman livestreamed his attack on Facebook. The feed, and subsequent videos, showed him moving through the mosque and shooting at victims indiscriminately. The videos were then shared and broadcast, despite calls from police, researchers, journalists and other commentators not to do so.

The mental health effects of broadcasting graphic images of terrorist attacks are often debated after terrorists attacks. Research from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York suggests that the more people watch television footage of these events, particularly children, the more likely they are to experience psychological distress.

Seeing the events unfold from the assailant’s perspective, and particularly in real time, is more akin to being present at the scene as a witness than watching a secondhand account on a news report. This level of exposure increases the risk of viewers (such as drone operators) experiencing marked distress.

The more you watch, the greater the distress. Steinar Engeland

The Christchurch attacks may cause more psychological harm to particular populations, such as refugees from conflict zones. Exposure to war, persecution, detention and other traumatic events increases the risk of psychological difficulties. This leaves refugees more vulnerable to lasting effects of subsequent stressors, such as the Christchurch attacks.

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

What are the risks for witness and victims?

Of course, the people who are most likely to be affected in the long term are the immediate victims of the attacks, their family members and friends, worshippers at the mosques, and also the emergency service personnel who responded to the incidents.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a form of anxiety that comprises of intrusive memories of the traumatic event that are more like reliving the experience than thinking back to it. These memories are accompanied by extreme distress, which motivates people to avoid reminders of the event (such as news reports) or memories of the trauma.

People with PTSD also often experience general anxiety, such as poor sleep, anger outbursts, and poor concentration.

Read more: Acting out the nightmares of post-traumatic stress disorder

The risk of developing PTSD is greater when the trauma is interpersonal – in other words, when it’s caused by a person or group of people perpetrating violence or abuse against others. A hate crime such as the Christchurch attack is likely to have a particularly toxic psychological effect on the victims.

Despite this, prior studies of terrorist attacks suggest most people will adapt over time and resume good mental health. Around 10-20% of those affected are likely to develop PTSD.

Survivors and victims’ family and friends are also at risk of a newly recognised condition called prolonged grief disorder. This may be diagnosed when a person’s reaction to their grief, in the long term, impedes their ability to function. Of course it’s normal to experience acute grief, but this diagnosis would be applied if the grief doesn’t ease after around six months.

The likelihood of developing prolonged grief disorder is heightened by losing a loved one in traumatic circumstances. Likewise, experiencing grief can compound PTSD reactions.

How do you work through the trauma?

Past experience and research tells us the best way to deal with immediate distress is to turn to your own social support network and talk to people you trust about how you’re coping.

In the case of the recent attacks, mosques provide a natural social support network in which worshippers can meet, share and support each other.

First talk to your own social support networks. Jono Searle/AAP

If the distress doesn’t abate and persists for months, it’s time to seek professional help. For people with persistent stress or grief reactions, it may be beneficial to see a clinical psychologist who specialises in trauma-focused cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT).

Read more: Social supports build resilience and reduce distress after trauma

Clinical mental health guidelines recommend trauma-focused CBT for people with persistent stress reactions after trauma and also for prolonged grief. These interventions are usually relatively brief, requiring around ten sessions with a therapist.

But many people don’t receive adequate mental health care after traumatic events. This may be due to stigma about seeking help for mental health issues, not knowing how to get assistance, or being treated by people who don’t use evidence-based methods.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has announced additional support and funding for mental health services in Christchurch. Hopefully this will remove some of the barriers for survivors, family and friends to access quality mental health care.

– ref. How to take care of your mental health after the Christchurch attacks – http://theconversation.com/how-to-take-care-of-your-mental-health-after-the-christchurch-attacks-113733

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa Christensen, Lecturer in Criminology & Justice | Co-leader of the Sexual Violence and Research Prevention Unit (SVRPU), University of the Sunshine Coast

Recent events, including the conviction and sentencing of George Pell for sexually abusing two children in the 1990s and the documentary airing allegations about Michael Jackson’s abuse of two young boys, have made prominent the topic of child sexual abuse. Many parents may be concerned about the safety of their child, and whether they are missing signs the child may be being groomed, or sexually abused.

Child sexual abuse is a global problem. Victimisation rates are estimated at 18% for girls and almost 8% for boys. But these rates don’t show the full picture as they only reflect cases that have been reported. Most cases of child sexual abuse are perpetrated by someone known to the child or related to the child.

Findings from the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse show victims can take up to 26 years to disclose sexual abuse. So, if the child isn’t disclosing their experience, what can a parent do? Here are some signs to look for to protect your child, as well as what to do if you suspect they are experiencing sexual abuse or are at risk of being abused.

Encourage open conversation

The best weapon any caregiver has for protecting their child is to proactively engage in open communication about personal safety with their child from a young age. Helping a child build their knowledge of personal safety is a form of primary prevention of child sexual abuse.

This might include parents teaching their children the correct names for their genitalia, creating a shared language around warning signs, and basic rules regarding personal safety. Having these open conversations early on will build the child’s knowledge and may encourage the child to be more open about uncomfortable experiences they may have.

Why children may not tell

There are many reasons why children might not disclose abuse immediately. These include feelings of self-blame, embarrassment, shame, powerlessness or fear of the perpetrator.

Some children may simply not know how to talk about the abuse. The likelihood of non-disclosure may be magnified when the perpetrator is a family member or known to the family. Here, the child might feel conflicted, as they want the abuse to stop but are concerned about the perpetrator’s well-being if they disclose, or fear the consequences of disclosure such as family separation or distress.

Read more: Incest: why is ‘worst of the worst’ abuse so often ignored?

Grooming dynamics also shed light on why children may not disclose. Grooming is where a perpetrator manipulates a child using psychological pressure, tangible incentives (such as toys and money) and attention.

Once abuse occurs, the child’s silence may be maintained by the perpetrator suggesting the child will not be believed about the abuse, using threats and blame (“you will ruin the family if you tell anyone”) and distorting the abuse (such as suggesting it is part of a “game”).

Research suggests children are more likely to disclose sexual abuse if they feel they have at least one trusted adult they can turn to, who will listen and believe them.

Male victims are less likely to disclose than female victims. This may be due to it seeming un-masculine to seek help, being viewed as homosexual (if the perpetrator is male), and confusion about the experience due to the visible physiological responses they may have – such as an erection.

The severity of the abuse has also been linked to disclosure. Research has found the more severe the abuse, the more likely the child is to disclose it. Researchers have suggested in these instances, the child’s fear of being abused again may override any perceived negative consequences associated with disclosing the abuse.

What are some of the warning signs of sexual abuse?

While children may not disclose sexual abuse, they may show possible indicators. This might include one or more of the following:

• significant changes in behaviour (such as reverting to soiling or bed wetting, a decline in school performance)
• sexual behaviour or knowledge about sex that is beyond the child’s age
• sudden fears or fear of being with a specific person
• unexplained change in emotional state
• becoming unusually secretive
• pain in the genital or anal area.

But be alert not alarmed – these are possible indicators, not tell-tale signs. Just because an older child wets the bed does not mean they are (or have been) the victim of sexual abuse.

While children show curiosity and a range of behaviours while growing up, the take home message is to be alert to changes in emotions and behaviour that seem out of the ordinary for your child.

What do I do if I suspect my child is being sexually abused?

If you are concerned about a child, you can ask questions such as: “is anything worrying you?”, “are you OK?” and “is there anything you would like me to do to support you?”.

A child’s disclosure of sexual abuse may be intentional or non-intentional, complete or incomplete, verbal or non-verbal. The child may draw a picture or use toys to re-enact the situation. Importantly, how you respond to the child can impact on their recovery from such trauma.

If a child discloses to you that they are being sexually abused, give the child your undivided attention. Believing the child is critical to the child’s psychological well-being. Allow the child to use their own words and to take their time. Assure the child that they have done the right thing by telling you.

Avoid quizzing the child as this may add unnecessary pressure, and could interfere with legal proceedings (which may be considered as directing the child’s disclosure). The important thing at this stage is to be a supportive listener and ensure the child is safe.

You can report the incident to police or child protection. These individuals are specifically trained professionals in questioning children. Even without a disclosure, you can report your concerns.

Read more: Programs to prevent child sexual abuse increase knowledge and skills but do they reduce risks?

– ref. What parents need to know about the signs of child sexual abuse – http://theconversation.com/what-parents-need-to-know-about-the-signs-of-child-sexual-abuse-113559

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

A unique opportunity exists for infrastructure investment in Australia as transport as we know it faces disruption from autonomous vehicles.

Disruption is not a dirty word. Traditional transport models are being transformed for the better by savvy young upstarts: the taxi industry by Uber, for instance, and even bus services by on-demand provider Bridj in parts of Sydney.

Read more: Disruption ahead: personal mobility is breaking down old transport divides

How do we manage this rapidly evolving technology, and what is the role of local government?

Autonomous vehicles will soon be a familiar sight in bush and city landscapes. In New South Wales the transport minister, Andrew Constance, predicted in 2017 that public transport might not be needed in future, certainly with no drivers, because autonomous cars will handle everything.

Singapore’s driverless taxi, nuTonomy, in 2016. EPA/AAP

I don’t think this will happen. The car is a good servant, but a bad master in shaping our city, even autonomous ones.

What will a city of autonomous cars look like?

A fully car-based approach to autonomous vehicles would involve cars driving around suburbs day and night, searching for people to pick up on demand. These vehicles would move into corridors, main roads and freeways, travelling at high speeds with just a metre or so between them.

Read more: The winners and losers in the race for driverless cars

Increased road capacity, safety and the very real prospect of solar-powered cars are undeniable benefits.

But what kind of city would we have? We would see more urban sprawl, possibly worse congestion and a departure from walkable cities.

We would lose an opportunity to reclaim pleasing city grids and urban centres. These spaces, which our city planners intended for pedestrians, have often been devoured by cars but are now returning to their rightful place as meeting spaces.

Read more: Smart cities: does this mean more transport disruptions?

The case for trackless trams

Autonomous transit vehicles with a collective benefit to society offer us a chance to continue to reclaim these spaces by providing rapid shared mobility where it doesn’t exist today. This is why I like the trackless tram: it has the high quality of autonomous transport like light rail, but at a tenth of the cost.

Trackless trams give us the capacity to not only catch up on years of under-investment in transport infrastructure, but also fund ambitious urban regeneration projects that will shape our future cities. This is what is driving trackless tram studies in Townsville, Sydney’s inner west, Wyndham in Melbourne and Perth.

Read more: Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail

It’s also possible to use trackless trams to create new opportunities on the edges of our cities, like the Western Sydney Aerotropolis. There, Liverpool City Council wants to maximise the benefits of the new airport through transport connectivity back to the city’s CBD. Dr Tim Williams, Australasia cities leader at ARUP, declared Liverpool to be the surprise star of Australia’s future city planning for this reason.

Liverpool’s CBD is less than 18km away from the new airport site now under construction, but it might as well be a world away given the narrow roads and rural lands that currently separate the two.

NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley has committed A$10 million towards preliminary work on a rapid transit link between the airport and Liverpool should he become premier after the March 23 election.

And Liverpool Council is investing significant resources to find out what these upgrades should be. This is an opportunity to embrace autonomous vehicles like trackless trams to create a strong link between the new airport and aerotropolis.

Read more: Western Sydney Aerotropolis won’t build itself – a lot is riding on what governments do

The role of city councils

Historically, councils have often been the passive recipients of state and federal investments. But councils like Liverpool are recognising their role in championing infrastructure investment that will support high-quality future growth.

Adelaide’s driverless electric shuttle for the Tonsley Innovation District is part of a five-year trial of autonomous vehicle tech. David Mariuz/AAP

Councils are also identifying that they can control many of the mechanisms, particularly planning controls, that could be useful to minimise value leakage and maximise value capture for the common good.

Read more: Paying for infrastructure means using ‘land value capture’, but does it also mean more tax?

Developers are telling us that if we can give them up-front certainty on quality and timing of infrastructure and associated land development opportunities, then they can be willing partners in co-funding new transport connections like a trackless tram.

The challenge is to create partnerships with all levels of government, developers and the community, to focus the opportunities from current levels of infrastructure investment and enable bold rather than risk-averse approaches to the future.

New technology brings new challenges, but also new opportunities. For the sake of future generations, we need to get in before the window closes.

Read more: Utopia or nightmare? The answer lies in how we embrace self-driving, electric and shared vehicles

– ref. Autonomous transport will shape our cities’ future – best get on the right path early – http://theconversation.com/autonomous-transport-will-shape-our-cities-future-best-get-on-the-right-path-early-113023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danny Davis, Executive Director, Australian Institute of Performance Sciences, and researcher at, La Trobe University

Right now Greg Combet is arguably the most powerful man in Australia.

Earlier this month the former trade unionist and federal politician declared his intention to transform Australian business. His radical idea: to promote the concept of “long-term value”.

Combet is chairman of Industry Super Australia, which represents 16 of Australia’s biggest industry funds and thus the vast bulk of the A$630 billion saved by more than 11 million Australians.

These super funds would use their massive clout as investors to transform corporate culture, Combet told the Australian Financial Review. He wants business to focus on long-term sustainability, not be “hostage to the short-term share price or six-monthly profit announcements”.

Read more: With a billion reasons not to trust super trustees, we need regulators to act in the public interest

“The energy sector is an example of where long-term thinking is needed,” he said. “We have to start making a significant transition from old coal-fired power plants to renewable energy generation and distribution.”

But his ambition is much broader than this one controversial issue.

Not that revolutionary

Not everyone is happy about the idea of industry super funds, which have strong links to trade unions, pushing companies to focus on environmental, social and governance performance.

This week the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority, responding to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s “urgent” request for guidance on “aggressive union behaviour”, warned super funds to keep away from financial activism.

Heather Ridout, a former head of the Australian Industry Group who now chairs the AustralianSuper fund, has told Frydenberg to stop politicising super.

Combet says his agenda has nothing to do with “activism”.

He’s right. His ideas really aren’t that revolutionary. In other parts of the world they would simply be regarded as responsible investor behaviour.

Greg Combet at the launch of his political memoir, The Fights of My Life, in July 2014. Paul Miller/AAP

Australian super funds have a legal obligation to manage their members’ funds for the long term.

Representing “retirement timeframe” interests means super funds want companies to think about how to sustain value over decades.

Up to now this has not necessarily translated into funds directly and consistently communicating their long-term interests to company boards. Combet’s declaration signals this is going to change.

There is plenty of research to suggest this will be a good thing.

Companies focused on the long term are more successful. They prioritise ethical behaviour, customer service, community value, environmental stewardship and other non-financial outcomes. Over the longer term they also have stronger share price growth.

Investors who help companies focus on the long term thus help themselves. It is a virtuous circle.

But revolutionary enough

According to the ASX Corporate Governance Council, not known for revolutionary subversion, the issues that effective boards must now take into account include “culture, conduct risk, digital disruption, cyber-security, sustainability and climate change”. There are others coming.

In the wake of the revelations of the banking royal commission, it would be irresponsible for the heads of superannuation funds to sit by as passive observers and not direct boards to these issues.

Globally, institutional investors, governments and companies are working together to move beyond solving specific issues such as corporate social responsibility, sustainability reporting and ethical investment.

Read more: What is corporate social responsibility – and does it work?

In fact, the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment initiative, boasting more than 7,000 corporate and investor signatories, exhorts investors to go beyond “strictly financial benefits” and engage with companies on environmental, social and governance factors. Integrated approaches are at the forefront of practice.

Australia has been lagging behind. So for Combet to spell out a clear ambition to harness the power of the superannuation sector for long-term thinking is significant.

Perhaps he senses the opportunity to lead changes to the Australian economy, and society, that were out of reach during his 19 months as federal industry minister.

He wields immense power in a sector with even greater latent power. Superannuation assets now total A$2.7 trillion, and funds own about half of Australian shares. If Combet can leverage Industry Super Australia’s fund bloc to get the ball rolling, the momentum could be truly ground-breaking.

We will now see which of Australia’s economic elite join his mission and collaborate in building global momentum. Those who want to resist, or who cannot organise themselves to participate, should know the clock is now ticking.

– ref. Super power: why the future of Australian capitalism is now in Greg Combet’s hands – http://theconversation.com/super-power-why-the-future-of-australian-capitalism-is-now-in-greg-combets-hands-113648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Quodling, PhD candidate researching governance of social media platforms, Queensland University of Technology

As families in Christchurch bury their loved ones following Friday’s terrorist attack, global attention now turns to preventing such a thing ever happening again.

In particular, the role social media played in broadcasting live footage and amplifying its reach is under the microscope. Facebook and YouTube face intense scrutiny.

Read more: Social media create a spectacle society that makes it easier for terrorists to achieve notoriety

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern has reportedly been in contact with Facebook executives to press the case that the footage should not available for viewing. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for a moratorium on amateur livestreaming services.

But beyond these immediate responses, this terrible incident presents an opportunity for longer term reform. It’s time for social media platforms to be more open about how livestreaming works, how it is moderated, and what should happen if or when the rules break down.

Increasing scrutiny

With the alleged perpetrator apparently flying under the radar prior to this incident in Christchurch, our collective focus is now turned to the online radicalisation of young men.

As part of that, online platforms face increased scrutiny and Facebook and Youtube have drawn criticism.

After dissemination of the original livestream occurred on Facebook, YouTube became a venue for the re-upload and propagation of the recorded footage.

Both platforms have made public statements about their efforts at moderation.

YouTube noted the challenges of dealing with an “unprecedented volume” of uploads.

Although it’s been reported less than 4000 people saw the initial stream on Facebook, Facebook said:

In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload […]

Focusing chiefly on live-streaming is somewhat reductive. Although the shooter initially streamed his own footage, the greater challenge of controlling the video largely relates to two issues:

1. the length of time it was available on Facebook’s platform before it was removed
2. the moderation of “mirror” video publication by people who had chosen to download, edit, and re-upload the video for their own purposes.

These issues illustrate the weaknesses of existing content moderation policies and practices.

Not an easy task

Content moderation is a complex and unenviable responsibility. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube are expected to balance the virtues of free expression and newsworthiness with socio-cultural norms and personal desires, as well as the local regulatory regimes of the countries they operate in.

When platforms perform this responsibility poorly (or, utterly abdicate it) they pass on the task to others — like the New Zealand Internet Service Providers that blocked access to websites that were re-distributing the shooter’s footage.

People might reasonably expect platforms like Facebook and YouTube to have thorough controls over what is uploaded on their sites. However, the companies’ huge user bases mean they often must balance the application of automated, algorithmic systems for content moderation (like Microsoft’s PhotoDNA, and YouTube’s ContentID) with teams of human moderators.

Read more: A guide for parents and teachers: what to do if your teenager watches violent footage

We know from investigative reporting that the moderation teams at platforms like Facebook and YouTube are tasked with particularly challenging work. They seem to have a relatively high turnover of staff who are quickly burnt-out by severe workloads while moderating the worst content on the internet. They are supported with only meagre wages, and what could be viewed as inadequate mental healthcare.

And while some algorithmic systems can be effective at scale, they can also be subverted by competent users who understand aspects of their methodology. If you’ve ever found a video on YouTube where the colours are distorted, the audio playback is slightly out of sync, or the image is heavily zoomed and cropped, you’ve likely seen someone’s attempt to get around ContentID algorithms.

For online platforms, the response to terror attacks is further complicated by the difficult balance they must strike between their desire to protect users from gratuitous or appalling footage with their commitment to inform people seeking news through their platform.

We must also acknowledge the other ways livestreaming features in modern life. Livestreaming is a lucrative niche entertainment industry, with thousands of innocent users broadcasting hobbies with friends from board games to mukbang (social eating), to video games. Livestreaming is important for activists in authoritarian countries, allowing them to share eyewitness footage of crimes, and shift power relationships. A ban on livestreaming would prevent a lot of this activity.

We need a new approach

Facebook and YouTube’s challenges in addressing the issue of livestreamed hate crimes tells us something important. We need a more open, transparent approach to moderation. Platforms must talk openly about how this work is done, and be prepared to incorporate feedback from our governments and society more broadly.

Read more: Christchurch attacks are a stark warning of toxic political environment that allows hate to flourish

A good place to start is the Santa Clara principles, generated initially from a content moderation conference held in February 2018 and updated in May 2018. These offer a solid foundation for reform, stating:

1. companies should publish the numbers of posts removed and accounts permanently or temporarily suspended due to violations of their content guidelines
2. companies should provide notice to each user whose content is taken down or account is suspended about the reason for the removal or suspension
3. companies should provide a meaningful opportunity for timely appeal of any content removal or account suspension.

A more socially responsible approach to platforms’ roles as moderators of public discourse necessitates a move away from the black-box secrecy platforms are accustomed to — and a move towards more thorough public discussions about content moderation.

In the end, greater transparency may facilitate a less reactive policy landscape, where both public policy and opinion have a greater understanding around the complexities of managing new and innovative communications technologies.

– ref. Anxieties over livestreams can help us design better Facebook and YouTube content moderation – http://theconversation.com/anxieties-over-livestreams-can-help-us-design-better-facebook-and-youtube-content-moderation-113750

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By U. Satya Sainadh, Postdoctoral researcher, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

When you deal with things at the quantum scale, where things are very small, the world is quite fuzzy and bizarre in comparison to our everyday experiences.

For example, we can’t ordinarily walk through solid walls. But at the quantum scale, when a particle encounters a seemingly insurmountable barrier, it can sometimes pass through to the other side – a process known as quantum tunnelling.

But how fast a particle could tunnel through a barrier was always a puzzle.

Read more: What do we mean by meaning? Science can help with that

In work published today in Nature we’ve solved part of the problem.

Why is that important? It’s a breakthrough that could have an impact on future technologies we see in our homes, at work or elsewhere.

Many of today’s technologies – such as semiconductors, the LED screen on your smart phone, or lasers – are based on our understanding of how things work in the quantum world.

So the more we can learn, the more we can develop.

Back to the tunnelling

For quantum particles, such as electrons, when we say they can tunnel through barriers, we don’t refer to a physical obstacles, but barriers of energy.

Things behave differently in the quantum world. Shutterstock/VectorMine

Tunnelling is possible due to the wave nature of the electron. Quantum mechanics assigns wave nature to every particle, and hence there is always a finite probability for the wave to propagate through barriers, just as sound travels through walls.

It may sound counterintuitive, but this is what is exploited in technologies such as scanning tunnelling microscopes, which allow scientists to create images with atomic resolution. This is also naturally observed in nuclear fusion, and in biological processes such as photosynthesis.

Although the phenomenon of quantum tunnelling is well studied and utilised, physicists still lacked a complete understanding of it, especially with regards to its dynamics.

If we could exploit the dynamics of tunnelling – for example, use it to carry more information – it could possibly give us a new handle on future quantum technologies.

A tunnel speed test

The first step towards this goal is to measure the speed of the tunnelling process. This is no simple feat, as the time scales involved in the measurement are extremely small.

For energy barriers the size of few billionths of a metre, as in our experiment, some physicists had calculated the tunnelling process would take around a hundred attoseconds (1 attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second).

To put things in perspective, if an attosecond is stretched to a second, then a second equals the age of the universe.

The estimated times are so extremely small that they were previously treated as practically instantaneous. Hence for our experiment we needed a clock that can time these events with enormous accuracy and precision.

The technological advancements in ultrafast laser systems enabled us to implement such a clock at the Australian Attosecond Science Facility, Centre for Quantum Dynamics, at Griffith University.

Part of the experiment set up at the Griffith University lab. U. Satya Sainadh, Author provided

The clock in the experiment is not mechanical or electrical – rather it is the rotating electric field vector of an ultrafast laser pulse.

Light is just electromagnetic radiation made of electric and magnetic fields varying at a rapid rate. We used this rapidly changing field to induce tunnelling in atomic hydrogen and also as a stopwatch to measure when it ends.

How fast?

The choice of using atomic hydrogen (which is simply a bound pair of one electron and one proton) avoids the complications that arise from other atoms, making it easier to compare and interpret the results unambiguously.

The tunnelling time we measured was found to be no more than 1.8 attoseconds, much smaller than some theories had predicted. This measurement calls for a serious reconsideration of our understanding of tunnelling dynamics.

Various theories estimated a range of tunnelling times – from zero to hundreds of attoseconds – and there was no consensus among physicists on which single theoretical estimate was correct.

A basic reason for the disagreements lies in the very concept of time in quantum mechanics. Because of quantum uncertainties, there can be no absolute certainty in the time at which a particle enters into or emerges from the barrier.

But experiments like ours, using precise measurements on simple systems, could guide us in refining our understanding of such times

The next technologies

Quantum leaps in the technological world are often rooted in the quest for fundamental science.

Future quantum technologies that incorporates many of the quantum features – such as superposition and entanglement – will lead to what technologists call the “second quantum revolution”.

Read more: We’ve designed a ‘flux capacitor’, but it won’t take us Back to the Future

By fully understanding the quantum dynamics of the simplest possible atomic tunnelling event – with a single proton and a single electron – we have shown that certain types of theories can be relied on to give the right answer, where other types of theories fail.

This gives us confidence about what theories to apply to other, more complicated systems.

Measurements at the attosecond scale not only add an extra dimension for the future quantum technologies but also can fundamentally help in understanding the elephant of the quantum room: what is time?

You might also like: In Trust Me, I’m An Expert: The explainer episode, Andrew White, a professor in physics at the University of Queensland, tells us how far quantum mechanics has come, why the research hit a wall, and what exciting breakthroughs might be just around the corner.

– ref. We did a breakthrough ‘speed test’ in quantum tunnelling, and here’s why that’s exciting – http://theconversation.com/we-did-a-breakthrough-speed-test-in-quantum-tunnelling-and-heres-why-thats-exciting-113761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asher Warren, Lecturer, University of Tasmania

This year marks the tenth biennial Tasmanian Arts festival Ten Days on the Island, and the first under new artistic director, Lindy Hume. Since it began in 2001, the festival has always been ambitious: seeking to showcase Tasmanian art, bring international works to the island, and at the same time be a festival for the whole of the state, rather than just the hub of Hobart.

Its challenge has only increased with Tasmania’s now burgeoning festival scene, which includes The Unconformity, Dark MOFO, and the Festival of Voices to name just a few.

It should come as no surprise then, that this year’s Ten Days adopted a new approach, moving from ten consecutive days to programming split up over three distinct weekends. The first two weekends took place in the state’s north west and north east respectively, with the festival due to conclude this weekend in the south.

Read more: The Unconformity festival embraces the power and peculiarity of Tasmania’s wild west

This distribution of work across the state makes it a challenge for all but the most intrepid to see everything. With this in mind, I have focused on the festival’s first two weekends, but to summarise even these two weeks is a challenging task.

The diversity of work reflects the different regions of Tasmania – often proud of their isolation. While this creates a challenge in finding coherence, the work of these two weeks was notable for a number of key themes: belonging, life, death, and Tasmania’s colonial history.

Stories of the island

Ten Days officially began at dawn on March 8, on the beachfront at the Devonport surf life-saving club in the state’s north west, with Mapali – Dawn Gathering.

Narrated by the commanding voice of Dave mangenner Gough, the ceremony began with a Welcome to Country that celebrated the local Aboriginal (palawa) communities, with the sweeping and smoking of the beach, the gathering of kelp to make water carriers, and the unbroken practice of crafting intricate shell necklaces.

This year’s Ten Days on the Island festival is spread across three weekends and three parts of Tasmania.

A short time later, Jessie Pangas and Anne Morrison’s Here She Is opened at Devonport’s Stewart St Gallery. There could have been no more fitting work to celebrate International Women’s Day.

A collaged, stitched and woven collection of stories and connections between women of the north west coast, Here She Is was built from audio recordings, participant submissions, archival materials and artistic responses to these materials.

Here She Is was the perfect work for International Women’s Day. Provided by Ten Days on the Island

It is a dense work, constantly drawing you closer to make out handwriting and listen to stories. Yet evocative spaces open up between the fragments, pictures, and conversations, where just as much is left unsaid. This induces viewers to participate in the work through the addition of their own recollections, stories and mementos of the women in their lives.

Another hour’s drive along the north coast brought us just near the picturesque coastal township of Boat Harbour, for Big hArt’s Acoustic Life of Sheds, a series of intimate concerts held in sheds throughout the region.

It was a rather genteel and romantic affair, as we travelled from an industrial potato shed, to woodworker’s sanctuaries, a derelict grain silo, and a shearing shed.

In the shearing shed, a collaborative suite of songs written and performed by Lucky Oceans and Heath Cullen closed the tour. The songs were written from the perspective of nonhuman things: from the shed we were sitting in, to an artificial intelligence in the not too distant future. A delightful and masterful set, these voices were used to interrogate the more problematic foundations of our “shed-romanticism”: their footprints on the landscape and the consumption behind the junk that fills them.

But as an audience member, I longed for a little more breathing space. The pace left little time to engage with fellow patrons, the sheds, their owners and their histories.

Audiences for Acoustic Life of Sheds visited locations including an industrial potato shed, a derelict grain silo, and a shearing shed. Beth Sometimes

The second weekend took place in the state’s north east. Tamar Island, just a short drive from Launceston, was the site for youth dance company Stompin’s ambitious new work, Nowhere. The work explores this island on an island, its colonial and pre-colonial history, and most poignantly, its future.

The young troupe built toward a mesmerising sequence that evoked the interplay of natural plant formations and wind patterns, leading to a penultimate gesture equal parts touching and devastating. As they broke away and wandered in single file from the island and into the sunset, Nowhere asked us what, and even who, will be left to applaud when our environment disappears?

Later that week, forty minutes west of Launceston, I was ushered by a stage manager in blue scrubs to an upstairs room of Deloraine’s Empire Hotel, to see Robert Jarman’s new work The Protecting Veil.

Delivered by Jarman in a matching set of blue scrubs, The Protecting Veil uses Nicolas Poussin’s second series of sacrament paintings as its structure – a structure also utilised by British writer, director and performer Neil Bartlett in his 1997 work, The Seven Sacraments of Nicolas Poussin .

Drawing on the rituals and figures depicted in these seven images, Jarman delivers an art history lecture of sorts, weaving in personal experience and contemporary politics, and reflecting on the ways that rituals structure our lives, from birth to death.

Guitarist David Malone shares the stage throughout. His musical interludes help build a certain feeling in the work, heightened by the room’s arrangement and the scrubs: the feeling of waiting in a hospital or funeral parlour.

The titular “protecting veil”, we learn, refers not just to the curtains that force viewers to contemplate Poussin’s seven paintings one at a time, but the curtains that surround patients, and the curtains which cover the glass in funeral viewing parlours.

The show warms up, literally and figuratively, as we reach the sacrament of communion (taken as a joyful tea break with jam rolls) before moving on toward death. When this moment arrives, the intimate audience dutifully obeys the request not to applaud, but our reverence – the ritual – seems a little forced.

Perhaps this is because of a scene I had witnessed just before the show began. Somewhat serendipitously, while waiting downstairs at the public bar of the hotel, I saw the Deloraine social club raise their glasses (and I mine) to a recently deceased member of the community. The collection of downstairs rituals were profoundly ordinary, but touching in their camaraderie – from the raffle held in her honour, to a ribald rendition of the folk song Old Grey Mare.

Read more: Hail MONA! But what about the rest of Tasmanian art?

Finally, I visited Crime Scene, a forensic-style installation in the Longford Town Hall by Anna Gibbs, Elizabeth Day, Julie Gough and Noelene Lucas.

Four video works are projected from inside onto each of the four walls. Each piece takes an instance of violence researched through colonial records, and attempts to present the evidence though an aesthetic lens. These pieces seek to draw our attention back to the deep scars of Tasmania’s history, not only between invading colonists and the Indigenous peoples, but also among the settlers.

Crime Scene is an installation exploring colonial violence. Courtesy the artists

The simplicity of these works allows the researched accounts of this violence to cut through. In fact, they quite relentlessly confront the wounds that haunt Tasmania – wounds that Greg Lehman notes must be properly addressed before they can begin to heal.

In moving their base of operations to Burnie, and embracing a more distributed Ten Days, the festival has broken away from the old. This new generation model offers a valuable example of how arts and culture might be curated for and by Tasmania’s diverse population, giving great voice to the north of the state.

Change is always difficult, but it is necessary as Tasmania becomes more and more globally connected. Ten Days on the Island serves a vital role in developing a diverse cultural sector (which is in many ways dominated by MONA and its festivals) and supporting the next generation of Tasmanian artists to speak not only to the island, but also to a national and international audience.

Ten Days on the Island concludes March 24.

– ref. Births, deaths and rituals: a revamped Ten Days on the Island explores Tasmania’s past and present – http://theconversation.com/births-deaths-and-rituals-a-revamped-ten-days-on-the-island-explores-tasmanias-past-and-present-113745

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of the Sunshine Coast

The world is reeling in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Christchurch. The attack has also raised a number of side issues, including the ethics of broadcasting the live stream of the attack, which was later shared on other platforms.

As social media is fast becoming the favoured news source among young people, concerns have been raised about the potential impact such footage may have on those exposed to it.

Adolescents are particularly affected by violent imagery. As their brains are still developing, they may have trouble processing the information. This basically means the bits of information teens will pay attention to, what they highlight in their memory, and how they organise, conceptualise or contextualise information is still a work in progress. In adults, this is more or less set.

The use of social media as conduits for extreme violence is a relatively new issue and a fast moving beast. So research has struggled to keep up with potential emerging impacts.

But there are some things we do know about the impact of violent imagery on the adolescent brain, and ways in which adults can help teenagers process such information.

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

Violence and the developing brain

Concerns regarding the impact of violent imagery on the developing brain are nothing new. They were first raised after images of the second world war appeared in some of the first television broadcasts from the late 40s. By the early 70s, the US Surgeon General acknowledged the potential for harm of such footage on younger members of the community.

Fast forward to today and a raft of different research methods continue to demonstrate links between exposure to media violence and increased aggression or fear in adolescents. The primary concern for older male adolescents appears to centre around its impact on aggressive tendencies. But younger adolescents may also exhibit heightened fear responses.

A couple of primary issues appear to be at play. Exposure to violence can lead to desensitisation, which contributes to later acts of violence in adolescence. The psychologiccal mechanism by which this occurs suggests desensitisation from habitual media violence reduces fear and promotes aggression enhancing thoughts. This increases the likelihood of proactively committing an aggressive act.

Peer norms remain a strong benchmark for most teenage behaviour, and these too appear to influence aggression (either increasing or decreasing), suggesting a role for social context.

It may then be fair to speculate that peers sharing violent content via social media could provide a perfect storm of desensitisation and tacit peer approval of, or at the very least encouraging interest in, acts of extreme violence.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has signalled their concerns regarding the potential harmful impact of media violence on teens, and suggested parents and schools need to be vigilant in responding to the influence of social media.

And a number of studies have recommended limiting exposure to social media, or monitoring its use, as well more action by social media sites to prevent streaming of violence. How such recommendations can be practically achieved with today’s ubiquitous use of social media is a trickier question.

Read more: How to talk to children about terrorism

So what can parents and teachers actually do?

Research into possible ways of ameliorating the effect of media violence in influencing adolescent aggression or fear has arrived at some helpful pointers for both parents and teachers:

• discuss what you are seeing on television (or Facebook) with the teenager. Remaining silent during the broadcasting of violent imagery can be perceived by your teen as tacit endorsement of the depicted acts

• engage your teenager with questions and improve their empathy by looking at the impact of the violence from several points of view. For instance, what about both the victim’s and perpetrator’s family – how must they be feeling now? This appears to be a more effective approach with teenagers and young adults than simply stating your own point of view

• parents and schools can take an active role in directly teaching adolescents about media manipulation methods and falsehoods spread to serve a particular agenda. This includes how to spot fake news, hoaxes and propaganda

• help the teenager develop critical thinking and a healthy level of cynicism. This can be done by encouraging them to take a step back and think about the motivations of those who report or broadcast especially violent or confronting imagery.

Read more: How to help kids navigate fake news and misinformation online

If you notice a substantial change in a teenager’s behaviour following a highly publicised violent act – such as being frightened to take public transport, checking locks at night, keeping weaponry on them or nearby, or suddenly more being aggressive and/or anxious in general – it may be time to seek help from your school counsellor or GP.

– ref. A guide for parents and teachers: what to do if your teenager watches violent footage – http://theconversation.com/a-guide-for-parents-and-teachers-what-to-do-if-your-teenager-watches-violent-footage-113753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyn Phillipson, NHMRC-ARC Dementia Development Fellow, University of Wollongong

The Royal Commission into Aged Care has unleashed a spate of claims of system failure within the residential aged care sector.

Now, as the commission shifts its focus to care in the community, we’re also seeing claims of failure within the home care packages program.

This scheme aims to support older people with complex support needs to stay at home. But what we’ve got is a market-based system where the processes involved in accessing support and managing services are making it difficult for vulnerable older Australians to receive the care they want.

If this system is to be workable, older people need better information and more personalised supports to enable choice and control – especially those with complex needs.

Read more: Would you like to grow old at home? Why we’re struggling to meet demand for subsidised home care

Consumer directed care

A growing number of older Australians are receiving home care subsidised by the government. During the 2017-18 financial year, 116,843 people accessed home care packages.

From July 1 2015, all home care packages have been delivered on what’s called a Consumer Directed Care basis.

This means that, theoretically, home care providers must work with consumers to design and deliver services that meet their goals and care needs, as determined by an Aged Care Assessment Team.

However, in reviewing the active steps outlined in the government pathway to access a package, we must consider the person who is navigating this path.

They are frail older people with complex support needs, often seeking help at times of crisis. These include the growing number of older Australians living with multiple medical conditions and complex age-related syndromes such as dementia.

Read more: Explainer: what is a home care package and who is eligible?

After a person has been assessed, they will receive a letter informing them they are eligible. However, due to long waiting lists, this does not provide them with immediate access to care; most wait many months before they are actually assigned a package by My Aged Care.

When they eventually receive a letter confirming their package, the consumer will be approached by various service providers. They will need to sign a complex contract with their chosen provider.

If the consumer is feeling frustrated and confused during these early stages, this is only the beginning. The recent marketisation of home care means managing their own care requires going through impersonal, centralised provider systems.

The Conversation, CC BY-ND

People need clear information to choose a provider

The first thing people assigned a home care package need to do is choose a care provider.

There are now close to 900 different providers offering home care packages. This includes not-for-profits, as well as a growing number of for-profit providers competing for new business.

In reality, however, few older people research different providers. Once they’re assigned a home care package, their name is placed on a centralised database accessible by all registered service providers.

The person then receives unsolicited phone calls from the sales teams of different providers, offering their services and trying to make appointments to come and visit. For consumers, this represents a shift from a familiar government model of care provision to a market model.

Research shows consumers often don’t understand consumer directed care, and this can leave them vulnerable to the forceful marketing tactics employed by some providers. It can also make negotiating a complex contract with legal, financial and personal implications very difficult.

Older people granted a home care package will be approached by different providers wanting their business. From shutterstock.com

To make informed choices between providers, people need accessible information. There is currently insufficient information for older people and their families to compare services on indicators of quality (such as the number of complaints agencies receive, the training of staff, the types of specialist services they offer, and so on).

To address this gap, the government must commit to collecting and publishing data on home care quality. This would drive service improvement and increase people’s ability to make informed choices between different providers.

Service and administrative fees

To make informed choices, people also need to be able to compare services on the basis of price.

The average profit per client for home care package providers was A$2,832 in 2016-17, but there’s significant variability between providers’ fees.

For example, the use of people’s individual care budgets to cover administration or case management fees ranges between 10-45% of their total package.

High fees and administrative costs may reveal the profit-driven motives of a few unscrupulous providers.

Read more: What is ‘quality’ in aged care? Here’s what studies (and our readers) say

Because of administrative fees, many people are spending a high portion of their individual budgets on case management to support their care.

While there’s evidence case management can provide clinical benefits for older people, in the context of the current home care funding model, it may also leave people with less money for direct care services than they need.

People need support to manage their packages

We’re currently looking at the experiences of people with dementia using home care packages. Unsurprisingly, we’re finding that while they are grateful for the services they’re receiving, they are having a difficult time managing their care. For some this may be due to their limited decision-making capacity, but for many, their choice and control is being limited as much by the service model.

For example, to enable providers to compete in the open market, many have adopted central 1800 numbers to support people to manage their services. This means if consumers want to change something, they are funnelled through this system.

Think about your own experience of service helplines, such as with telephone or energy companies. Now consider a woman with dementia who needs to call a 1800 number to change the time of her shower so she can see her doctor.

Rather than communicating with a local and known case manager, she now needs to speak to someone she doesn’t know and who is not familiar with her care needs.

Instead of facilitating choice and control, this demand on the consumer to constantly articulate their needs to unfamiliar people means many are frustrated, and some are even opting out of services.

How can we improve things?

The three words the government associates with consumer directed home care are choice, control and markets.

But the system doesn’t foster control. Although consumers technically have choices, the marketised and bureaucratic approaches of service providers make it difficult for consumers to articulate and receive support for their personal choices.

The processes, information and supports available to assist older people and their families are inadequate to facilitate the type of choices and control one might associate with “consumer directed” care.

Read more: Seven steps to help you choose the right home care provider

There’s an urgent need to improve the processes for accessing timely home care packages, particularly for those with complex support needs. This includes the quality and accessibility of information, resources and decision-making tools.

There’s also a significant need for training, advocacy and impartial support for choice, particularly for people with limited decision-making capacity, such as those living with dementia.

Research and practice in aged care and disability in other settings provide extensive resources for person-centred planning and decision making which could be adapted for use in our home care system.

– ref. As home care packages become big business, older people are not getting the personalised support they need – http://theconversation.com/as-home-care-packages-become-big-business-older-people-are-not-getting-the-personalised-support-they-need-113183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gareth Bryant, Lecturer in Political Economy, University of Sydney

State elections are always about spending promises, but this time not much is being said about how they will be funded.

Last minute costings on individual announcements tend to rely on the general presumption that the state economy will keep growing and somehow produce the needed revenue.

This is evident in the costings released by the NSW Parliamentary Budget Office, which show that new spending promises from both major parties exceed new revenue promises.

The Labor Party has managed to find some new revenue through increased taxes on luxury cars, boats and vacant properties, while the Coalition has unveiled no new revenue initiatives at all.

While the property market has been climbing this needn’t have mattered that much. But for the past 20 months Sydney prices have been falling. Projected stamp duty revenues are being repeatedly revised downwards. The latest wipes A$9.5 billion off what was expected at the time of the 2017 budget.

NSW state revenue by type, A$ billion

University of Sydney Policy Lab

Austerity, or an alternative?

It’s looking as if the incoming NSW government will need to moderate spending including spending on essential services and infrastructure, but there might be a way out.

Today, we published a new report for the Sydney Policy Lab outlining two ways in which the NSW government can ready its budget for a post-housing boom economy.

Politicians of all parties tell us that fiscal rules create binding constraints for state governments and they are right.

But there are imaginative ways to strengthen state finances and to interpret those constraints.

Alternative 1: taxing residential land

Although land used for holiday homes and rental properties faces land tax, land used for owner-occupied housing is exempt in NSW, meaning as much as A$1 trillion of land is exempt.

It is a source of wealth – one of the few covered by state tax powers – that the budget can no longer afford to ignore.

Extending NSW land tax to owner-occupied residences with safeguards could fund much of the state’s needed service and infrastructure spending and wind back the outsized reliance on stamp duty.

With so many people locked out of home ownership altogether, it would make the tax system fairer.

Alternative 2: redefining ‘investment’

Under NSW budget rules spending on services is defined as cost that needs to be matched by immediate revenue. Spending on infrastructure, often on infrastructure which will later be privatised, is defined as an investment, meaning it doens’t have to be matched by immediate revenue.

It is why there is talk about a squeeze on services in the midst of record spending on infrastructure.

There’s room to change those definitions.

While there are good macroeconomic and budgetary reasons to differentiate day to day spending from investments, much of what is defined as day to day spending is in fact an investment.

There’s no reason why the state’s power to borrow to invest in infrastructure couldn’t also be used to invest in public services like health and education. With a change of rules, governments could borrow to invest in nurses and teachers at interest rates currently reserved for toll roads.

First steps

A practical starting point would be to connect spending on public services to the savings they create in other parts of the state budget, and account for this as the return on the investment.

As an example, “justice reinvestment” could fund programs aimed at reducing Indigenous incarceration out of the savings those programs would eventually deliver in other areas.

The redefinition would remove the present bias towards programs that build only physical infrastructure that has to be paid for later with tolls or privatisations.

Both ideas could help whichever party or parties form government after Saturday’s election, and help NSW. Without them, budgeting will become more difficult.

Read more: NSW election likely to be close, and Mark Latham will win an upper house seat

– ref. Two ways to fund NSW election promises as property prices crash – http://theconversation.com/two-ways-to-fund-nsw-election-promises-as-property-prices-crash-113835

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Marika Guggisberg, Research and Teaching Academic in Domestic and Family Violence, CQUniversity Australia

A graphic new video game called Rape Day, set to launch in April, triggered a swift and widespread public outcry.

Created by an independent developer, Rape Day is a set in a zombie apocalypse, where the player controls a protagonist described as a “menacing serial killer rapist”.

Rape Day is a “visual novel” – players choose from a variety of sequences of still images that contain written dialogue options and prewritten story choices.

And the rape of women is encouraged to progress the plot.

Crossing the line

But why do we consider depictions of rape in video games to cross the line, but not other forms of violence?

‘Rape Day’ sparked huge public outcry leading to the game being pulled from Steam. Desk Plant

Sexual violence is connected to a complex interplay of societal attitudes and inequality.

For too long, society’s reaction to sexual violence was to ignore the issue. It is a well-established fact that most incidences of sexual assault remain undetected, whereas homicides are commonly uncovered and perpetrators brought to the attention of the authorities.

Violent video games where sexual assault is the explicit goal should never be allowed.

Read more: Violence towards women in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 evokes toxic masculinity

And some studies found playing video games with sexually violent content was associated with rape myth acceptance: “she asked for it” and “no means yes”.

It is important, however, not to fall into the trap of assuming a definitive cause-effect relationship. Video games like Rape Day contribute to rape culture, but it joins a raft of other cultural influences.

But we’re seeing a global, cultural shift.

The global #MeToo movement resulted in many victims of sexual harassment and violence coming forward. They used a collective voice to speak out against gendered violence, sharing their experiences of unacceptable masculine sexual domination, and continues to be empowering.

Sexual violence has also led to national strategies to influence societal and individual attitudes, including engaging men in the process of changing gender norms and assumptions.

And we see this cultural shift reflected in the widespread public outrage against Rape Day.

Public reaction

The game went online on March 6, 2019, sparking a petition on change.org, which garnered almost 8,000 signatures. It is likely to have contributed to the decision to pull Rape Day from the gaming distribution service Steam Direct.

Steam, owned by a US private company Valve, released a statement on their decision to not distribute Rape Day, saying:

“Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary – we simply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judgement call about any risk it puts to Valve, our developer partners, or our customers. After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think ‘Rape Day’ poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.”

This ban elicited positive comments on the Steam website among gamers. One comment noted:

“Rape is one of the most serious problems in our society and it needs to stop. We cannot normalize gender violence or rape.”

Comments such as these acknowledge the difference between making a game from sexual violence that objectifies women and reinforces sexism, and other violent content commonly present in video games.

Read more: Violent video games and real violence: there’s a link but it’s not so simple

There were strong reactions around the world. Not only was Rape Day banned in European countries such as Germany, but politicians in Austria and the UK became involved, calling for more restrictive legislation.

For example, Hannah Bardell, a British member of parliament, described the video game as “utterly perverted”.

Censorship and regulation

When it comes to regulation, Australia uses the Guidelines for the Classification of Computer Games. It indicates that games depicting “actual sexual violence” or where “incentives and rewards” are associated with sexual violence will be restricted.

Given Rape Day’s content, we can anticipate the game will be banned from sale in Australia if the developer submits an application. Consumers can also make complaints to the Classification Review Board about video game ratings or other decisions about games under the National Classification Code.

Censorship is typically not valued among gamers, and according to Kotaku editor Alex Walker, Australia is “famous” for banning games.

Japanese game Omega Labyrinth Z, for instance, is situated within a school setting where players can control a number of young girls battling evil forces. The Classification Board banned the game because of the gratuitous, exploitative depictions of sexual activity with characters appearing under 18 years of age, violating classification rules.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do adults think video games are bad?

When Rape Day was pulled from Steam, the developer, Desk Plant, acknowledged that the game could be seen as problematic.

“I might agree with Steam that my game is not the right fit for a distribution site that is marketed at the general masses and children… My next move is to sell the game on my own site. Maybe that would have been a better move for me from the start.”

But still, the game will be available to any player choosing to purchase it in some countries around the world, even though restrictions are currently being discussed.

Navigating this space requires sensitive decision-making, not only among overseeing bodies but also video game players. And the widespread statements approving Valve’s decision to distance the company from the game, the petitions, and the global reactions shows us that cultural change around sexual assault can, and does, happen.

– ref. ‘Rape Day’: A new video game glorifying sexual assault raises questions about regulation – http://theconversation.com/rape-day-a-new-video-game-glorifying-sexual-assault-raises-questions-about-regulation-113178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brooke Huuskes, Lecturer in Human Anatomy, Physiology Anatomy & Microbiology, La Trobe University

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

Why do we have two kidneys when we can live with only one? – Question from the students of Ms Morris’ Grade 5 class, Ringwood North Primary School, Victoria.

This is a really great question. The answer is scientists are not completely sure but we do have some theories. That is often the case with science.

Most of the animals you see above ground on Earth today, including humans, are the same on both sides. We have two eyes, two ears, and even two nostrils. Scientists gave this a fancy name called “bilateral symmetry.”

If you look in the mirror and draw an imaginary line down the middle of your reflection you will see that you have an arm and a leg on each side. If you had goggles that let you see your insides, you would see that you also have a kidney and a lung on each side too.

But it wasn’t always like this. And some animals still only have one kidney.

Around 500 million years ago, our long-lost relatives that were living in the ocean (some of whom probably only had one kidney) decided to leave the water to walk and live on land.

This was a very important moment in our history because on land, animals could change to grow a very complicated body with all of the important organs that are inside you, including two kidneys.

Read more: Curious Kids: how does my tummy turn food into poo?

Two kidneys better than one?

Right now, your kidneys are getting rid of all things your body does not need. They do this by “cleaning” your blood.

All of this waste will exit your body when you go to the toilet to pee. But your kidneys do a lot more than just clean your blood. They help your bones stay healthy, tell your body when to make new blood cells, and even help you stay upright when you’re walking around all day by taking care of your blood pressure.

With all those important functions, scientist think having two kidneys must be important for our survival.

Kidneys ‘clean’ your blood and send waste to your bladder, so you can pee it out. Shutterstock

Growing up with one kidney

It is true, you can live with only one kidney. Some people are born with only one because the other one did not grow properly. Other times, the two kidneys touch each other when they are first growing and join together, making one kidney shaped like a horseshoe. People with these types of kidneys have to be very careful because they might get sick more easily than someone who has two kidneys.

Needing an extra kidney

Sometimes our kidneys stop working. When this happens our blood cannot be cleaned and we can get very sick. The only way to stay alive is to be attached to a big machine that cleans your blood for you, or have a kidney transplant.

This happened to me when my kidneys stopped working properly. My dad gave me one of his kidneys. Thanks, Dad.

There are two people involved in a kidney transplant: a donor who is going to give their kidney, and a recipient who will receive the kidney.

After the new kidney is put into the recipient, both the donor and recipient only have one kidney that works properly. Both the donor and the recipient can live long happy lives with only one kidney. They just have to take extra care that they eat healthily and exercise to stay fit. One person living in Australia has been using a transplanted kidney for 45 years!

So, while your body works best when all of your organs are inside you and working properly, scientists still don’t exactly know why we have two kidneys. However, it is good to know that we have a few spare parts that we can live without.

And if you’re an adult reading this, it’s good to make sure you are registered as an organ donor and also chat to your family so they know you want to donate. You may one day save a life.

Read more: Curious Kids: why are burps so loud?

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: why do we have two kidneys when we can live with only one? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-have-two-kidneys-when-we-can-live-with-only-one-113201

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Woods, Professor of Health Economics, University of Technology Sydney

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is this week turning its focus to aged care in the home.

So far it has heard evidence of long waiting times to access home care services and a complicated system of fees. It’s only a matter of time before it questions the reasons behind those wait lists and fees.

Unlike aged care, access to many health care services is unlimited. Anyone can seek an appointment with their GP or turn up to a hospital emergency department, in most cases for free.

But the number of home care packages available to older Australians is capped, and the frail elderly are asked to foot some of the bill.

While some may argue to uncap the number of home care places, and replicate parts of the health system by providing free care for all, it’s not that simple. Governments will keep increasing the number of subsidised home care services in response to needs, but costs will also keep rising.

The challenge is to find the right funding balance between individuals and taxpayers, and for the system as a whole to remain sustainable.

Read more: Aged care failures show how little we value older people – and those who care for them

Why are many health services free?

Australia has a high standard of health care, which supports people to live to a longer, and generally healthier, old age.

Our Medicare system of funding is based on the principle of universal public health insurance which is paid for by the government (that is, the taxpayers). Public patients receive free care in public hospitals. Medical services by GPs and specialists are subsidised, as are many blood tests, X-rays and other imaging, allied health services (such as optometry), and most medicines.

In the year to September 2018, 86% of all GP attendances were “bulk billed” (provided at no cost to the patient).

These benefits, however, come at a cost. About 10% of Australia’s economic output (gross domestic product) is spent on health care and two-thirds of this is funded by governments.

And, of course, not all health services are free for most people. Visits to dentists, physiotherapists and others are regular reminders of this. A more equitable way of funding dental care is one of the emerging issues for the upcoming federal election.

Read more: Two million Aussies delay or don’t go to the dentist – here’s how we can fix that

What is home care?

Aged care plays a different role to health care in supporting people to stay at home. There are two forms of home care.

First, the Commonwealth Home Support Program assists with daily activities such as meals, transport and personal care (showering, dressing, and so on) and some allied health services such as physiotherapy and podiatry (foot care).

In 2016-17, around 723,000 people received one or more of these services.

Second, Home Care Packages provide expanded support, with daily activities as well as more complex health care from nurses and allied health workers.

At September 2018, there were over 90,000 people receiving one of the government’s subsidised Home Care Packages.

Why are many elderly asked to help pay for home care?

Australia’s population is ageing. In 2017 3.8 million Australians were aged 65 and over. In the next 40 years this will probably grow to 8.8 million. The costs of funding aged care will continue to increase.

In 2011, when one of us (Michael Woods) was the presiding commissioner on the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into aged care, we put forward three principles to help governments create a sustainable funding models for aged care:

• accommodation and everyday living expenses should be the responsibility of individuals, with a safety net for those of limited means

• health care services provided through aged care (such as nursing and allied health care) should be subject to charging arrangements consistent with those in the health care system

• individuals should contribute to the cost of their personal care according to their capacity to pay, but should not be exposed to catastrophic costs of care.

The current fee arrangements broadly reflect the intent of these principles.

The government aims to keep fees for the basic Commonwealth Home Support Program at very affordable levels and has produced fee guidelines for providers. There are no formal income tests and while some providers do no more than seek a voluntary contribution for some services, others may recover around 10% of the cost of some services as direct fees or membership subscriptions.

Many older people prefer to receive care at home rather than going into residential aged care. From shutterstock.com

For the more complex and higher cost home care packages, providers can charge consumers a basic daily fee of 17.5% of the basic rate of the single age pension.

There is also an income-tested care fee, which recognises many older people have a greater capacity to contribute to the costs of their everyday living expenses. As a safety net for all, however, there are annual and lifetime caps on these fees.

Read more: Explainer: what is a home care package and who is eligible?

The home care system has many issues to address, but it is not in crisis

Despite the growing number of government-subsidised home care packages, the latest aged care statistics show that at December 2018 there were over 127,000 people on a national priority list for services that met their needs.

The wait time for some, sadly, is too long. However, some subsidised help is available for nearly all people on the list. Over 96% of people on the list had been offered, and were generally accepting, a lower level of subsidised support while they waited for a higher level of service.

There are also questions about how this queue is created and the assessment process itself that the royal commission may want to follow up.

For example, not all assessments and referrals to services are necessarily based on current needs. At December 2018, 96,000 people who were waiting for their approved level of home care package also had an approval for a permanent place in residential aged care. This suggests the assessment process may contain an element of anticipating future needs, rather than reflecting current needs.

Another concern with the current assessment process is a lack of focus by some assessors on helping older people to regain a level of independence through short-term “reablement” programs rather than adding them to the queue for ongoing services. As the Department of Health notes, a wellness and reablement approach in assessment and service delivery is not being consistently and effectively applied across the regions.

Read more: There is extra funding for aged care in the budget, but not enough to meet demand

For the foreseeable future we can expect the government to keep increasing the number of subsidised home care services, but it will also keep a careful eye on the balance between public and private funding, and seek to keep the overall cost to the elderly and to the budget within sustainable limits.

– ref. Would you like to grow old at home? Why we’re struggling to meet demand for subsidised home care – http://theconversation.com/would-you-like-to-grow-old-at-home-why-were-struggling-to-meet-demand-for-subsidised-home-care-112963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trisia Farrelly, Senior Lecturer, Massey University

A powerful marriage between the fossil fuel and plastic industries threatens to exacerbate the global plastic pollution crisis. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) estimates the next five years will see a 33-36% surge in global plastics production.

This will undermine all current efforts to manage plastic waste. It is time to stop trying (and failing) to bail out the bathtub. Instead, we need to turn off the tap.

Read more: The major source of ocean plastic pollution you’ve probably never heard of

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) has recognised plastic pollution as a “rapidly increasing serious issue of global concern that needs an urgent global response”. An expert group formed last year proposed an international treaty on plastic pollution as the most effective response.

Together with Giulia Carlini, at CIEL, I was part of a 30-strong group of non-governmental organisations within this expert group attending the UNEA summit this week to discuss how we can start making plastic pollution history.

Unfortunately, despite strong statements from developing countries, including the Pacific Island states, a small group of countries stalled negotiations. This effectively turns back the clock on ambitious global action, and leaves us more desperate than ever for a real solution to our plastic problem.

Why we need a treaty

The first step is to reject the many false solutions that pop up in our news feeds.

Recycling is one of those false solutions. The scale of plastic production is too big for recycling alone. Of all the plastics produced between 1950 and 2015, only 9% have been recycled. This figure is set to plummet as China and a growing number of developing countries are rejecting plastic waste from Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world.

China had been a major destination for Australia and New Zealand’s recyclable waste. China’s shutdown meant Australia lost the market for a third of its plastic waste. It also left New Zealand with 400 tonnes of stockpiled plastic waste last year.

With limited domestic recycling facilities, Australia and New Zealand are seeking new markets. Last year, New Zealand sent about 250,000 tonnes of plastic to landfill, and a further 6,300 tonnes to Malaysia for recycling. But now Malaysia is also rejecting other countries’ hazardous plastic waste.

Sending our platic to Asia is not a solution. EPA/Diego Azubel, CC BY-SA

Even if we manage to find new plastic recycling markets, there is another problem. Recycling is not as safe as you might think. Flame retardants and other toxins are added to many plastics, and these compounds find a second life when plastics are recycled into new products, including children’s toys.

Plastic-to-energy is a false solution

What about burning plastic waste to generate energy? Think again. Incineration is expensive, can take decades for investors to break even. It is the opposite of a “zero waste” approach and locks countries into a perpetual cycle of producing and importing waste to “feed the beast”. And incineration leaves a legacy of contaminated air, soil, and water.

Producing lower-grade materials from plastic waste (such as roads, fenceposts and park benches) is not the solution either. No matter where we put it, plastic doesn’t go away. It just breaks into ever smaller pieces with a greater potential for harm in air, water, soil and marine and freshwater ecosystems.

This is why researchers are paying more attention to the less visible hazards posed when micro (less than 5mm long) and nano (less than 100 nanometres long) sized plastics carry pathogens, invasive species and persistent organic pollutants. They have found that plastics can emit methane contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

Tyres wear down into microplastics which find their way into the ocean. When plastics break down to nanoparticles, they are small enough to pass through cell walls. Our clothes release plastic microfibres into water from washing machines.

Plastic is truly global

Plastic pollution moves readily around the globe. It travels through trade, on winds, river and tidal flows, and in the guts of migrating birds and mammals. We don’t always know which toxic chemicals are in them, nor their recycled content. Plastic pollution can end up thousands of kilometres from the source.

This makes plastic pollution a matter of international concern. It cannot be solved solely within national borders or regions. A global, legally binding treaty with clear targets and standards is the real game-changer we urgently need.

The NGO component of UNEA’s expert group recognised an international treaty as the most effective response. The proposed treaty has the potential to capture the full life cycle of plastics by focusing on prevention, right at the top of the waste hierarchy.

The Zero Waste hierarchy. Zero Waste Europe

These solutions could include restricting the volume of new or “virgin” plastics in products, banning avoidable plastics (such as single-use plastic bags and straws), and curbing the use of toxic additives.

Read more: We can’t recycle our way to ‘zero waste’

More than 90 civil society organisations around the world and a growing number of countries have indicated early support for a treaty. Australia and New Zealand have not.

– ref. We need a legally binding treaty to make plastic pollution history – http://theconversation.com/we-need-a-legally-binding-treaty-to-make-plastic-pollution-history-113351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher: Technology and Learning, Western Sydney University

It’s a parent’s responsibility to protect their children from harm, no matter where that threat of harm comes from. But what if the threat is a hoax?

We’ve seen recently a rollercoaster of panic from parents trying to protect their kids from a supposed online threat known as the Momo challenge, that has for months been debunked as a hoax.

Yet the panic from parents continued, as did reports in the media and even warnings from celebrites – all of which could have been avoided if parents had done a few simple checks before raising the alarm.

So how can you as a parent protect your children (and yourself) from falling for these hoaxes if you don’t even know whether something is not a genuine threat in the first place?

Before I give some help and advice on that, let’s look at this latest hoax: the Momo challenge.

The Momo challenge

Momo is a ghoulish character who is said to use social media and other online tools to encourage youngsters to complete dangerous tasks involving self-harm.

But the whole Momo challenge is a manufactured myth.

The creepy image was copied from a sculpture by Japanese special-effects company Link Factory. Its use in the hoax was condemned by its original artist several months ago.

Even this revelation did not stop the spread – of both the hoax and the warnings about it – continuing for several months afterwards.

The Momo challenge is just the latest in a series of manufactured online hoaxes designed to generate paranoia among adults.

Other online hoaxes

We’ve had the “blue whale challenge”, allegedly linked to numerous teen deaths around the world. The trend later turned out to be a fake.

We were told the deadly TidePod challenge was encouraging kids to be filmed while eating poisonous laundry detergent pods (they weren’t).

There was also a challenge that linked kids choking to death to snorting condoms for more YouTube likes (no deaths have been reported).

These hoaxes are carefully designed to grab your attention and incite shock and panic, so you share the information with everyone you know. The designers of the hoax callously tap directly into parents’ Achilles heel: their fears regarding their children’s safety.

Posting the hoax online fits the designer’s aim perfectly because it can travel far and wide online very quickly. This is of course a win from the perpetrators’ perspective, whose very aim is to go viral! The more attention they get, the more profit or fame.

What parents should do to help protect your kids from such hoaxes

Hoaxes that threaten your kids one day, and turn out to be fake the next, are mentally and emotionally exhausting for kids and adults. Parents can feel an increasing lack of control.

But this doesn’t need to be the case. There are tools and tricks you can apply to help you spot a hoax.

1. Investigate: see if it’s real

Information about any so-called challenge is often shared on social media, where fake news and misleading information is rife.

If you are concerned about a hoax it’s important to investigate, by using a reputable news website or a reliable fact-checking site such as Snopes or FullFact.

Both are good fact-checking resources that gives readers evidence-based analysis (Snopes and FullFact have both published content on Momo).

Even a simple web search of the name of any supposed threat can help you. Add the words “hoax” or “scam” to your search queries and you will very quickly see if there is any real evidence to support the claims of harm you may be hearing about.

2. Help your child investigate authenticity

Use the opportunity to educate your child about these online challenges. When you hear about one, go online with your child and investigate.

This is the perfect opening to help your child understand fake content online. Explain why someone would want to start a hoax to scare people (for example, to achieve fame).

3. Explore alternatives for viewing

You may be concerned about your child using online video streaming services such as YouTube or Facebook, where they could be exposed to any hoax video.

As an alternative, look for other ways for your children to view their favoured content.

Many of the popular shows that kids watch online also have their own apps with pre-screened videos: for example PBS kids videos and Disney Channel app.

4. Avoid causing unnecessary alarm

It’s important to be careful about sharing news articles that perpetuate a hoax or myth with other adults.

Before sharing potentially wrong information, do some internet research of your own to check out the accuracy of any threat.

5. Be a critical, alert consumer

We live our lives on the internet, and there is a mass of misleading online information designed to manipulate our thinking.

It’s important to read and stay up to date about how the online world operates, and to be critical of what you view and read online.

Ask yourself some basic questions such as:

• who is going to benefit from this online post/article?

• what is the underlying purpose of it?

• is the author/creator trying to sway my thinking, and why?

6. What if you think a threat is genuine?

Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms have options to report anything you think may be a serious threat. If you’re still worried, call your local police.

The online space is always changing. Keeping you and your kids safe online involves being aware of emerging and new safety issues, and committing to a bit of research before you panic.

– ref. Don’t fall for it: a parent’s guide to protecting your kids from online hoaxes – http://theconversation.com/dont-fall-for-it-a-parents-guide-to-protecting-your-kids-from-online-hoaxes-113179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona McGaughey, Lecturer, Law School, University of Western Australia

On International Women’s Day this year, Australia hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Not only did we fail to support a United Nations (UN) motion that called for greater accountability for human rights violations against women and girls, but comments made by our prime minister provoked international outrage.

The UN resolution proposed “policies and legislation that respect women and girls’ right to bodily autonomy”. Perhaps Australia refused to support this motion because some of its domestic laws effectively maintain sex discrimination against women.

Abortion is still restricted and even criminalised in some circumstances, in some Australian states, which impinges on women’s capacity to access safe reproductive healthcare.

Read more: Crowd-mapping gender equality – a powerful tool for shaping a better city launches in Melbourne

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, at an International Women’s Day event, generated controversy by saying:

We’re not about setting Australians against each other, trying to push some down and lift others up. We want to see women rise but we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.

In contrast, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, a “proud feminist” stated:

When we exclude women, everyone pays the price. When we include women, the whole world wins.

Following international media coverage, Morrison sought to clarify his earlier remarks:

What I was saying yesterday is I don’t want to see this agenda pursued by setting women against men. No. Australian against Australian. No. I want to bring all Australians together to focus on this. That’s what I’m fair dinkum about.

How Australia measures up

Fair dinkum though, these developments are disappointing. Australia was one of 47 states elected to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) for a 2018-2020 term. It currently has real potential to contribute to global progress on women’s rights.

Indeed, one of the five “pillars” of Australia’s bid for a HRC seat was gender equality. Foreign Minister Marise Payne recently reiterated Australia’s commitment to these pillars in her speech to the HRC.

We can measure whether Australia has demonstrated its commitment to its voluntary pledges as a member of the HRC in a number of ways. We can assess whether Australia’s public statements at the council address its objectives.

In 2018, gender equality was the most consistent theme of Australia’s statements before the council. Australia promoted gender equality through statements on violence against women, female genital mutilation, discrimination against women and women’s rights.

On this measure, then, Australia performed well.

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

In recent years, Australia has at times reacted with hostility to constructive critique from the UN human rights bodies.

But in June 2018, in response to a report from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop struck a more diplomatic tone. Bishop thanked the special rapporteur for her report and commented:

Independent scrutiny, transparency and accountability are critical to upholding the human rights of all people and Australia welcomes such scrutiny. Australia is carefully considering the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations and appreciates the opportunity to make a preliminary response today.

In this area, then, Australia also appears to be doing better.

A poor record in Indigenous communities

But in the same statement, Australia acknowledged the following:

The Special Rapporteur noted particular concerns regarding the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. We acknowledge and regret that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience violence at higher levels than non-Indigenous Australian women. We must do better.

Indeed, the special rapporteur called on the Australian government to make policy in this area with – rather than for – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. She noted that current policy settings are insufficient to address the “institutional, systemic, multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination” experienced by Indigenous women and girls.

On top of that, Australia is falling down on its commitments in terms of how it responds to the human rights performance of other countries. The Universal Periodic Review process, administered by the HRC, scrutinises each UN state’s behaviour on cycles of four and a half years. According to a public database of recommendations, only 4% of Australia’s recommendations to other states related to gender equality.

Far fewer of Australia’s recommendations – 0.6% – related to its commitment “pillar” of Indigenous rights.

Read more: Parents can promote gender equality and help prevent violence against women. Here’s how

Plenty of room for improvement

Gender equality is one of many areas in which Australia’s public discourse is poorly served by a lack of comprehensive human rights protection in our domestic law.

From the prime minister’s public comments to Australia’s diplomatic behaviour, there is considerable room for improvement if we are to be “fair dinkum” about gender equality.

Having secured a place on the HRC as a defender of gender equality, Australia ought to be beyond immature statements that depict women’s equality as necessarily diminishing men’s capacity or rights in society.

– ref. Australia’s performance on gender equality – are we fair dinkum? – http://theconversation.com/australias-performance-on-gender-equality-are-we-fair-dinkum-113657