Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vassilis Kostakos, Professor of Human Computer Interaction, University of Melbourne

Almost nine out of ten Australians take some form of medication, according to a recent poll. Much of that will be in tablet form, either prescribed or bought over the counter.

But in the rush of daily life it can be easy to confuse or mix up pills, especially if you or someone you care for is taking several medications. So how can you be sure the pill you’re about to take is the correct one?

We’ve designed some technology that could help with this issue. Also, the tool might one day be suitable for pill testing at music festivals and other events where other pill drugs are available.

Read more: Your period tracking app could tell Facebook when you’re pregnant – an ‘algorithmic guardian’ could stop it

In our experiments we have demonstrated how off-the-shelf mobile hardware can be used to identify pills. Soon we expect this hardware may be built into most smartphones.

How does it work?

The enabling technology, known as near-infrared spectroscopy, is not new. What is new is that it has been miniaturised.

The technology works by shining infrared light onto the pill. The pill absorbs and reflects some of the light depending on its chemical composition.

By measuring the spectrum of the reflected light, we can obtain a unique signature for this pill. By cross-referencing this signature against a database on known pills or chemicals we can identify the pill.

Our prototype scans pills and displays the results to a paired smartphone. Smart Hospital Living Lab, Author provided

The technology does not damage the pill, since it simply shines infrared light for a couple of seconds.

It does not rely on the visual appearance of the pill at all. In our tests we could accurately differentiate between pills that look virtually identical.

Further accuracy improvements are expected soon. But at this stage we can say this technology allows for pill-testing to be done on the spot, using a mobile device. It’s no longer necessary to ship samples to a dedicated testing facility.

At the moment the technology has been tried on only about 60 pills that can be bought over the counter, such as painkillers, vitamins and other supplements. It could easily be extended to prescription medications.

We actually developed our prototype to be used on prescription and over-the-counter pills, as a way to make sure people are taking the correct medication. This work is being carried out as part of a broader Smart Hospital project to make hospitals safer and more efficient.

For example, medication errors occur when nurses give the incorrect pill to patients in a hospital, or when patients take the wrong pill at home. Our technology has been designed to reduce such errors due to mislabelling or lack of labels.

Which brings us to the debate on pill testing.

Checking ‘other’ pills

It’s become clear that our technology also has the potential to check other types of pills and could be used in scenarios such as people attending music festivals, on-the-spot police checks, or any other situation.

But there are some potential problems here. Our work has shown that environmental factors – such as ambient light – may affect the accuracy of the system, so it’s unlikely to be as accurate as in controlled lab settings.

Also, because our prototype works by cross-referencing to a database of known pills, it can be challenging for the system to identify home-made pills that may not exactly match the chemical composition in our database.

Still, there are a couple of ways to deal with this situation.

First, the system can provide a confidence rating, effectively saying that it has not seen a particular pill before, but it can report which pill it is most similar to.

Second, if we are interested in certain active chemical components in the pill, it can report which of those components are present in the pill, but not necessarily in what amounts.

The tech’s coming, ready or not

The technology for pill testing is changing quickly. Soon these changes will have an impact on the arguments used by the different sides of the pill-testing debate that has gripped Australia.

Our technology demonstrates the potential for making pill-testing a private matter, with no need for any taxpayer-funded testing at events. It is entirely conceivable that soon it will be possible to buy a pill-testing device that you can carry in your pocket and use where and when you choose.

Pill-testing proponents argue that it has the potential in its current form at festivals to be one last safeguard and source of advice before pills are consumed (or not).

Read more: Here’s why doctors are backing pill testing at music festivals across Australia

With the pill-testing technology maturing and being miniaturised even further, we expect within a few years to see widespread prototypes being used. While the hardware is quickly improving, the main challenge remains the analysis that we have developed to differentiate between pills.

We want to raise awareness about this technology and advise all camps in the pill-testing debate that they need to consider how to respond to this technology.

Pill-testing critics might need to consider ways to stop pill-testing given the availability of cheap testing devices – should such devices be banned?

Pill-testing supporters need to consider that pill-testing may soon be possible outside well-staffed festival tents. Therefore, there is a need for new interventions, as well as a consideration of who maintains the pill database: government, industry, NGOs, or perhaps some crowdsourced approach?

– ref. What pill is that? Cheap and easy pill testing could soon be in your own hands – http://theconversation.com/what-pill-is-that-cheap-and-easy-pill-testing-could-soon-be-in-your-own-hands-112697

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqui Horan, Associate Professor, Monash University

There has been some debate over the recent conviction of George Pell, whose first trial ended with a hung jury, and the second a unanimous guilty verdict. People are questioning our justice system, the potential bias of the jury, and whether the initial hung verdict invalidates the second, unanimous one.

So, why should Australians trust 12 inexperienced people to sit in judgment on our most serious criminal trials, and get the verdict right?

Read more: How an appeal could uphold or overturn George Pell’s conviction

The importance of juries

Australian democracy is underpinned by citizen participation. Citizens have two mandatory obligations – voting and jury service.

Lay person participation in the legal system is considered central to a healthy democracy. Lawyers play a major role in making the laws in parliament. Judges then apply the laws. If juries weren’t used, lawyers would have a monopoly over the law. Lawyers have their own specialised language in which they communicate among themselves. Including juries in the legal system forces lawyers to use common language.

It’s the collective wisdom of 12 that makes a jury. Jurors bring to the trial 12 times more life experience than a judge. Psychological research has established that personal, subconscious biases can be identified and addressed in group discussion.

How do juries work?

Jurors are randomly selected from the Australian electoral roll. While each state or territory varies in its selection processes, they share some common steps. Randomly selected citizens will receive a summons to attend court. Once the jurors arrive at the courthouse, they wait to be randomly chosen to go to a specific courtroom as part of a jury panel.

Once in the courtroom, a potential juror’s name (or allocated number) may be pulled out of a box. That potential juror can then either

• seek to be excused (because perhaps they know someone involved in the trial)

• take a seat in the jury box, or

• be removed from the jury by one of the parties to the case. This is known as the “peremptory challenge” process.

While it’s unusual for a prosecutor to “challenge” (deselect) a juror, some jurisdictions still allow for a defendant to “challenge” a juror based on the way they look and sometimes their name and occupation.

But a substantial body of US research has highlighted that, based on such limited information, the peremptory challenge process is no better than a guessing game, as it’s not possible for a defendant to know whether a citizen is going to be favourable to their defence just based on what they look like and their occupation.

Some Australian jurisdictions have reduced the number of challenges a defendant can use. The UK has done away with this process altogether as it interferes with the important perception that juries are fairly chosen and therefore represent the community.

A defendant has no way of knowing how a jury will vote based only on their age or occupation. from shutterstock.com

Several Australian studies confirm our juries reflect a cross-section of our community in terms of cultural mix, age and gender balance. Juries are more likely to be better educated than the ordinary member of the public. This may, in part, be a result of counsels’ preference for educated jurors when exercising their peremptory challenges.

What about outside influence?

Jurors are forbidden from having any prior intimate knowledge of the trial, from privately communicating with anyone involved in the trial and from doing their own research. Maintaining the impartiality of jurors has become problematic in the digital age.

Last century, courts used to successfully make orders to suppress potentially prejudicial information (such as prior convictions). But the far reach of the internet means such suppression orders no longer work as they can’t prevent publication on overseas websites or social media that is accessed locally.

Read more: We knew George Pell was guilty of child sex abuse. Why couldn’t we say it until now?

Jurors are told by the judge not to look at any media reports on their case. But jurors on trials of high profile defendants may not be able to avoid the barrage of negative pre-trial publicity. US research suggests jurors who are exposed to negative publicity are significantly more likely to judge the defendant guilty compared to subjects exposed to less pre-trial publicity.

New South Wales, Queensland, the ACT, South Australia and Western Australia allow a defendant to apply for trial by judge without a jury when prejudicial publicity is perceived to be significant. But there is no research that confirms a judge sitting alone without a jury is any better at resisting prejudicial publicity.

Read more: Trial by judge alone may not be the answer to giving high-profile defendants a fair hearing

How do they reach a verdict, and what is a hung jury?

A typical jury trial will take fewer than ten days. The jurors hear the evidence, listen to the arguments of both parties and are provided with instructions on the relevant law by the judge. It is then time to deliberate and decide whether the defendant is “guilty” or “not guilty” of the offences charged. No written reasons for the verdicts are required.

The vast majority of juries are able to reach their verdict unanimously. In some types of cases, agreement of 11 out of 12 jurors is an acceptable verdict. A hung jury occurs when a jury deliberates for several hours or days, but are unable to agree on a verdict. In the usual course, the same case will be presented to a new jury.

A 2000 study indicated hung juries occurred in a small number (3-8%) of Australian trials. This study identified that longer trials, and jury trials in more culturally diverse city courts, may be more likely to attract a hung jury.

An initial hung verdict does not invalidate a second, unanimous one – it more likely means some of the jurors from the first trial were also in agreement with the final verdict.

Do juries get it ‘right’?

Jury secrecy means we have no accurate way of knowing whether juries are getting it “right”. Australian jurors are forbidden from discussing their deliberations with anyone, including why they came to a decision.

A few overseas studies have asked trial judges what verdict they would have come to in jury trials. A comparison between what the judges said and the real jury verdict reveals a high level of agreement between the two.

While scientifically we cannot confirm that specific jury verdicts are “correct”, the jury system is necessary for Australia’s justice system.

– ref. All about juries: why do we actually need them and can they get it ‘wrong’? – http://theconversation.com/all-about-juries-why-do-we-actually-need-them-and-can-they-get-it-wrong-112703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yasmine Probst, Senior lecturer, School of Medicine, University of Wollongong

The number of people in Australia who follow vegetarian or plant-based diets is growing rapidly. People might choose to be vegetarian for ethical, cultural or health-related reasons.

While not all vegetarians are necessarily following a healthy diet, research shows vegetarianism can have many benefits for health. One we’re learning more about is its potential to strengthen our immune systems.

We’re still working out what aspects of a vegetarian diet may be responsible for this – whether it’s the lack of meat or the emphasis on plant-based foods.

But we think the higher volume of foods including fruits, vegetables and legumes seen in vegetarian diets is likely to have a lot to do with any associated health benefits.

Read more: We asked five experts: is vegetarianism healthier?

What do vegetarians eat?

Vegetarian diets are comprised of combinations of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, legumes and, for some, dairy and eggs.

There are many types of vegetarian eating patterns, from vegan (no animal products) through to lacto-ovo (some animal products such as eggs and dairy). But each avoids eating meat.

There are also a few semi-vegetarian approaches which include eating small amounts of some meats. People who primarily follow a vegetarian diet but include fish are referred to as pescetarian, while those who occasionally eat other forms of meat are considered flexitarian.

Importantly, not all vegetarians follow a healthy and balanced diet. Many won’t eat the recommended daily servings of fruit and vegetables, and will consume too much junk food.

But studies show that balanced vegetarian eating patterns could be good for our immune system and the related response of the body.

Defending from attack

Our bodies are faced with daily challenges such as getting rid of toxic chemicals and defending against nasty viruses. The immune system is “switched on” in response to these attacks.

Having a healthy immune system is important, as it prevents us from becoming sick. A healthy immune system can be supported by a number of lifestyle factors including adequate sleep, healthy body weight and regular physical activity. It can also be substantially affected by the foods we eat and drink.

Some research has found following a vegetarian diet could improve our immune systems. From shutterstock.com

People following vegetarian diets tend to have lowered levels of white blood cells, our natural defender cells. This is the case for vegetarian diets including vegan, lacto-vegetarian and lacto-ovo vegetarian.

Having very low levels of these cells is not ideal as it can affect the body’s ability to fight infection. However, having just the right number of white cells within a healthy range may reduce your chances of getting sick.

An added shield of protection

As well as helping the immune system, vegetarian diets may also help our body with a related process called inflammation. Vegetarian diets have been shown to prevent inflammation due to the antioxidant components within the foods.

Inflammation occurs when the body releases cells to attack unwanted pathogens or respond to injury. It may result in redness to an area of the body or the release of certain chemicals inside our bodies. Inflammation is a protective measure that the body uses to stay as healthy as it can.

Read more: Five life lessons from your immune system

People who follow vegetarian diets have lower levels of some of these chemicals (called C-reactive protein and fibrinogen) compared to people following a non-vegetarian diet.

This means people maintaining a vegetarian diet long-term are at a lower risk of getting type 2 diabetes, heart disease or even some cancers. Each of these chronic diseases is associated with increased inflammation in the body. This is shown in blood tests by increased levels of C-reactive protein, as this is a signal of systemic inflammation.

The reason why vegetarians have lowered levels of inflammation remains to be fully understood.

We suspect the high amount of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds are helping. These foods are full of important nutrients including fibres, vitamins, minerals and compounds called phytochemicals.

All of these nutrients have been shown to improve levels of inflammation in the long term and may influence the body’s immune response as an added bonus.

Should I switch to a vegetarian diet?

Going vegetarian may not be for everyone.

And it’s unwise to start a new eating pattern without understanding the potential impacts it can have on your health.

Vegetarian diets that are inappropriately balanced can lead to an increased risk of iron, zinc and vitamin B12 deficiencies. This can be detrimental to overall health, particularly if followed for extended periods of time.

The risks may be greater for certain groups of people who have added nutrient needs due to life stage, gender or for another health-related reason.

So vegetarian eating should always be undertaken carefully and under professional guidance, preferably that of a dietitian, to minimise these risks.

Read more: Love meat too much to be vegetarian? Go ‘flexitarian’

But importantly, only 5.1% of the Australian population eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables – five serves of vegetables and two serves of fruit each day.

So whether you’re vegetarian or not, focusing on incorporating more plant-based foods into your diet is worthwhile. We’re constantly learning more ways this is good for your health.

– ref. Eat your vegetables – studies show plant-based diets are good for immunity – http://theconversation.com/eat-your-vegetables-studies-show-plant-based-diets-are-good-for-immunity-107964

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Dargaville, Senior lecturer, Monash University

People have used moving water to create energy for thousands of years. Today, pumped hydro is the most common form of grid-connected energy storage in the world.

This technology is in the spotlight because it pairs so well with solar and wind renewable energy. During the day, when solar panels and wind farms may be generating their highest level of energy, people don’t need really need much electricity. Unless it is stored somewhere the energy is lost.

Read more: Snowy hydro scheme will be left high and dry unless we look after the mountains

Pumped hydro can cheaply and easily store the excess energy, releasing it again at night when demand rises.

Here’s how it all works:

How it works

Put as simply as possible, it involves pumping water to a reservoir at the top of a hill when energy is in plentiful supply, then letting it flow back down through a turbine to generate electricity when demand increases.

Like all storage systems, you get less energy out than you put in – in this case, generally around 80% of the original input – because you lose energy to friction in the pipes and turbine as well as in the generator. For comparison, lithium ion batteries are around 90-95% efficient, while hydrogen energy storage is less than 50% efficient

The benefit is we can store a lot of energy at the top of the hill and keep it there in a reservoir until we need the energy back again. Then it can be released through the pipes (this is called “penstock”) to generate electricity. This means pumped hydro can create a lot of additional electricity when demand is high (for example, during a heatwave).

The disadvantage of pumped hydro is you need to have two reservoirs separated by a significant elevation difference (more than 200m is typically required, more than 300m is ideal). So it doesn’t work where you don’t have hills. However, research has identified 22,000 potential sites in Australia.

Read more: Want energy storage? Here are 22,000 sites for pumped hydro across Australia

Pumped hydro is traditionally paired with relatively inflexible coal or nuclear power stations, using under-utilised electricity when demand is low (weekends and nighttime), then providing additional generation when demand increases during day and into the evening.

With the rapid increase in deployment of wind and solar, pumped hydro is again gaining interest. This is because the output of wind and solar plant is subject to the variability in the weather. For example, solar power plants generate the most electricity in the middle of the day, while demand for electricity is often highest in the evening. The wind might die down for hours or even days, then suddenly blow a gale. Pumped hydro can play a key role in smoothing out this variability.

If the electricity being produced by wind and solar plant is greater than demand, then the energy has to be curtailed (and is lost), unless we have a way to store it. Using this excess power to pump water up hill means the solar or wind energy is not wasted and the water can be held in reservoirs until demand rises in the evening.

There are lots of different kinds of energy storage technologies, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. For large-scale grid-connected systems where many hours of storage are required, pumped hydro is the most economically viable option.

Read more: Snowy Hydro gets a boost, but ‘seawater hydro’ could help South Australia

– ref. Five gifs that explain how pumped hydro actually works – http://theconversation.com/five-gifs-that-explain-how-pumped-hydro-actually-works-112610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerrylee Rogers, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong

Coastal wetlands don’t cover much global area but they punch well above their carbon weight by sequestering the most atmospheric carbon dioxide of all natural ecosystems.

Termed “blue carbon ecosystems” by virtue of their connection to the sea, the salty, oxygen-depleted soils in which wetlands grow are ideal for burying and storing organic carbon.

In our research, published today in Nature, we found that carbon storage by coastal wetlands is linked to sea-level rise. Our findings suggest as sea levels rise, these wetlands can help mitigate climate change.

Sea-level rise benefits coastal wetlands

We looked at how changing sea levels over the past few millennia has affected coastal wetlands (mostly mangroves and saltmarshes). We found they adapt to rising sea levels by increasing the height of their soil layers, capturing mineral sediment and accumulating dense root material. Much of this is carbon-rich material, which means rising sea levels prompt the wetlands to store even more carbon.

We investigated how saltmarshes have responded to variations in “relative sea level” over the past few millennia. (Relative sea level is the position of the water’s edge in relation to the land rather than the total volume of water within the ocean, which is called the eustatic sea level.)

Read more: Mangrove forests can rebound thanks to climate change – it’s an opportunity we must take

What does past sea-level rise tell us?

Global variation in the rate of sea-level rise over the past 6,000 years is largely related to the proximity of coastlines to ice sheets that extended over high northern latitudes during the last glacial period, some 26,000 years ago.

As ice sheets melted, northern continents slowly adjusted elevation in relation to the ocean due to flexure of the Earth’s mantle.

Karaaf Wetlands in Victoria, Australia. Boobook48/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

For much of North America and Europe, this has resulted in a gradual rise in relative sea level over the past few thousand years. By contrast, the southern continents of Australia, South America and Africa were less affected by glacial ice sheets, and sea-level history on these coastlines more closely reflects ocean surface “eustatic” trends, which stabilised over this period.

Our analysis of carbon stored in more than 300 saltmarshes across six continents showed that coastlines subject to consistent relative sea-level rise over the past 6,000 years had, on average, two to four times more carbon in the upper 20cm of sediment, and five to nine times more carbon in the lower 50-100cm of sediment, compared with saltmarshes on coastlines where sea level was more stable over the same period.

In other words, on coastlines where sea level is rising, organic carbon is more efficiently buried as the wetland grows and carbon is stored safely below the surface.

Give wetlands more space

We propose that the difference in saltmarsh carbon storage in wetlands of the southern hemisphere and the North Atlantic is related to “accommodation space”: the space available for a wetland to store mineral and organic sediments.

Coastal wetlands live within the upper portion of the intertidal zone, roughly between mean sea level and the upper limit of high tide.

These tidal boundaries define where coastal wetlands can store mineral and organic material. As mineral and organic material accumulates within this zone it creates layers, raising the ground of the wetlands.

The coastal wetlands of Broome, Western Australia. Shutterstock

New accommodation space for storage of carbon is therefore created when the sea is rising, as has happened on many shorelines of the North Atlantic Ocean over the past 6,000 years.

To confirm this theory we analysed changes in carbon storage within a unique wetland that has experienced rapid relative sea-level rise over the past 30 years.

Read more: Without wetlands, what will protect the Great Barrier Reef?

When underground mine supports were removed from a coal mine under Lake Macquarie in southeastern Australia in the 1980s, the shoreline subsided a metre in a matter of months, causing a relative rise in sea level.

Following this the rate of mineral accumulation doubled, and the rate of organic accumulation increased fourfold, with much of the organic material being carbon. The result suggests that sea-level rise over the coming decades might transform our relatively low-carbon southern hemisphere marshes into carbon sequestration hot-spots.

How to help coastal wetlands

The coastlines of Africa, Australia, China and South America, where stable sea levels over the past few millennia have constrained accommodation space, contain about half of the world’s saltmarshes.

Saltmarsh on the shores of Westernport Bay in Victoria. Author provided

A doubling of carbon sequestration in these wetlands, we’ve estimated, could remove an extra 5 million tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere per year. However, this potential benefit is compromised by the ongoing clearance and reclamation of these wetlands.

Preserving coastal wetlands is critical. Some coastal areas around the world have been cut off from tides to lessen floods, but restoring this connection will promote coastal wetlands – which also reduce the effects of floods – and carbon capture, as well as increase biodiversity and fisheries production.

Read more: As communities rebuild after hurricanes, study shows wetlands can significantly reduce property damage

In some cases, planning for future wetland expansion will mean restricting coastal developments, however these decisions will provide returns in terms of avoided nuisance flooding as the sea rises.

Finally, the increased carbon storage will help mitigate climate change. Wetlands store flood water, buffer the coast from storms, cycle nutrients through the ecosystem and provided vital sea and land habitat. They are precious, and worth protecting.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of their colleagues, Janine Adams, Lisa Schile-Beers and Colin Woodroffe.

– ref. Rising seas allow coastal wetlands to store more carbon – http://theconversation.com/rising-seas-allow-coastal-wetlands-to-store-more-carbon-113020

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Pitman, Senior Research Fellow, Curtin University

Australia is often characterised as having a mass higher education system. In fact, it could be called near-universal. According to the 2016 Census, 56% of Australians aged 15 years and over – 9.6 million people – hold a post-school qualification, up from 46% in 2006.

Universal education does not mean every Australian should attain a higher education or tertiary qualification. It means every Australian should be given the opportunity to get one if they want.

The distinction between “mass” and “universal” is not just an academic one. Viewing higher and tertiary education as universal could help an incoming government better design policy. All Australians need to be prepared for, informed about and able to make a choice that is right for them about whether or not to pursue post-school education.

Needs-based funding of schools

If the government could do one thing to improve post-school education outcomes, it needs to happen in our primary and high schools. Prior academic achievement is one of the main predictors of higher education aspiration and success. In some studies it’s the main factor.

Needs-based funding puts more money into education. In particular, it puts more money into the schools and students who need it most.

The Gillard-led Labor government recognised the importance of this approach by adopting a needs-based school funding model. The Turnbull-led Coalition government reaffirmed this commitment, with the specific aim of helping under-achieving students focus on improvement.

Pay attention to the details of what Labor and the Coalition promise on needs-based funding this coming election. Alan Porritt/AAP

This coming election, look closely at what positions the Coalition and Labor take on needs-based school funding. Both have signed up in principle, but there should be a clear commitment on how much extra money will be provided. This is not the same as simply spending more money to maintain standards in an ever-expanding system.

There also needs to be a clear explanation of how that money will be spread around, to ensure those furthest behind get the resources they need to catch up.

It’s not university or TAFE

Too many Australians – and successive governments – think in terms of students having to make a choice between university or vocational studies or neither. Tertiary education policy shouldn’t be seen this way.

For many people, the false trichotomy of degree-or-trade-or-job is locked in way too early by social and family expectations, and curriculum choices. Greater flexibility in how lifelong education is understood and explained (in terms of pathways and options) needs to be developed at the policy level.

TAFE is a good option in its own right. from www.shutterstock.com

This isn’t about merging the vocational and higher education sectors. That is neither necessary nor desirable. All tertiary education providers play a part in delivering lifelong education opportunities.

What is needed is more cooperation between state and federal governments. They need to be able to coordinate on how these various organisations will be funded and how students will be financially supported.

In many cases, there are fewer financial barriers to doing a university degree than a vocational course. This can lead some students to make a choice that seems right for them, but over the long term doesn’t work out.

The good news is all the pieces are there – even if they don’t quite fit together yet. The Coalition government has made great strides in how students can access loans for vocational courses. But the VET fee cap means some vocational courses still result in the student having to cover the excess up front, which is not the case for higher education degrees.

For example, an Australian student studying a Diploma of Business in 2019 would have a loan cap of just over A$5,000. They would have to cover the rest of the cost of the course. Depending on the provider, this could be several thousand more.

If the same student chose to study a Bachelor of Business at a university, they would have access to a loan for the full amount, which would be more than A$30,000 for the entire degree.

The next government should work towards making sure everyone has the opportunity to attend university if they want. from www.shutterstock.com

Against this, students can be more sure they’re getting what they pay for from universities than from vocational education providers. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency is responsible for the registration and quality oversight of all higher education providers, public and private.

The vocational training sector could benefit from a similarly national and coordinated approach to quality assurance. Given there are more than 5,000 vocational providers, a more realistic approach might be to provide a similar oversight (or even expand TEQSA) to cover all courses offered by the public TAFES, to begin with.

Whoever forms the next government needs to finish the job of creating a more unified structure of financial support and pathway information. It should allow students to think first and foremost about what skills and knowledge are right for them and not about what the institution they’re going to or the degree they’re going to do is called.

Making Australian higher education look more like, well, Australia

The foundation of the Australian higher education system is built on two broad principles. The first is that they exist for the betterment of the nation. The second is that the doors of universities and other higher education institutions are open to everyone. This is actually written into the founding acts of our oldest universities.

The journey towards realising the second principle has been long, rocky and as yet uncompleted. Too many groups of students still remain under-represented. These include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people with disability, those living in regional areas and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Progress has been made and much of the big policy picture has been painted. In particular, more institutions have been created to better meet demand, a demand-driven system of funding has been introduced so there is federal funding for each student place, and an income-contingent loan scheme has been provided to remove many of the upfront financial barriers to accessing university.

To make progress in the higher education sector, we also need to make progress in schools. Mick Tsikas/AAP

But finishing the picture requires a final push. Committing to a sustainable, needs-based funding of school education and harmonising the support structure for vocational and higher education would go a long way towards achieving this goal. It may be enough, but if not there is another thing that would work – quotas.

Quotas are contentious, as recent political debate shows. It’s likely the concern would be raised that quotas would ignore the very different institutional profiles that are in play. For example, a regionally based university is going to find it easier to recruit regional students than one in a CBD.

One solution would be to apply the quota at the sector level, rather than the institutional level. The government could then enforce the quotas in a number of ways. It could use performance-based funding to reward the universities doing the heavy lifting. Or it could allow the universities to virtually trade between themselves.

For example, a university with a below-average enrolment of regional students could “purchase” the excess from a university with an above-average enrolment. The students would not actually move institution, but the money would. This would mean the university with the extra enrolments would receive additional financial support to help with the costs associated with supporting these students.

– ref. Australia should start planning for universal tertiary education – http://theconversation.com/australia-should-start-planning-for-universal-tertiary-education-110783

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harriet Radermacher, Adjunct Lecturer, Department of General Practice, Monash University

Who decides what matters in the lives of voters? In the run-up to the 2018 Victorian state election, media focused on a few potential big issues of concern or interest. Newspapers featured pieces on the consequences of uncapped population growth in Victoria, particularly suburban housing sprawl and unaffordability. Public transport and the growing economic divide between communities also attracted media attention.

Against this background, and in light of concerns raised by previous research, we wanted to engage with older women and to hear more directly from them about their lives, their experiences and the challenges they face. Specifically, we asked, what matters to older women as they grow older, as the city’s population changes and urban development continues apace?

Read more: What do single, older women want? Their ‘own little space’ (and garden) to call home, for a start

The result of our research, Vital Conversations with Older Women Living in Greater Melbourne, is being launched today. It started with the assumption that there are common and interconnected factors in the lives of all women with potential impacts on their health and well-being. We understood that these factors take on different dimensions depending on age cohorts and ethnic and cultural backgrounds, as well as the health, social and economic circumstances of individual women.

Previously, Vital Signs 2017 provided a snapshot of Greater Melbourne across a whole range of domains for people of all ages. The report indicated older women living in Greater Melbourne face a range of challenges and, in some cases, extreme disadvantage.

For example, the number of older women couch surfing increased by 83% between 2012 and 2017. There was a 75% increase in older women sleeping in their cars and presenting at homelessness services. In addition, at least one in ten people aged over 60 experience isolation and loneliness.

Read more: Taking the pulse of a city: Melbourne’s Vital Signs

For all the attention given to problems associated with growing older, including the so-called financial burden of aged care to the public purse, older women have had very little opportunity to contribute their views. They need to be taken seriously about the things that matter to them, which are central to their health and well-being.

In all, 127 women participated in 18 facilitated group conversations. The groups were diverse. The women were between 50 and 91 years of age, lived across 22 local government areas and came from many different multicultural backgrounds.

What did the women have to say?

The conversations were designed to enable older women to voice their opinions and share their knowledge, experience and expertise across a range of domains. They were asked to talk about not only their own experiences but also their observations of friends and acquaintances.

Having meaningful and reciprocal connections with family and community was central to the women’s overall well-being. The emphasis on social inclusion and feelings of belonging was not surprising, given the huge shifts in the pace of society today. As the majority of the older women noted, people find themselves with less and less time for meaningful connections despite their obvious importance.

Most agreed a key challenge was to maintain their sense of social connectedness and meaningful engagement with the world around them in light of the city’s exponential neighbourhood development and urban growth. One woman observed that some found meaningful social connections in volunteering:

Volunteers actually get as much as the participants […] I have seen people like Mary who has finished work and what do you do? Your life changes and you need something to fill in that space, and I have seen them, lots of people who come here and that’s how they contribute, so they therefore support other people but they are actually being supported themselves.

Other challenges included:

• changes to their health
• family and generational change
• ageism and abuse
• access to information and technology
• threats to their financial and housing security.

One woman noted:

I certainly think it’s hard to age well if you don’t have housing and some money. If you’ve got economic insecurity then your old age is going to be pretty crappy.

Read more: Generation Share: why more older Australians are living in share houses

There was also a sense of frustration about ongoing stereotypes about older women that lead to assumptions about their experiences and needs. In the words of one woman:

How can we change the perception that we are frail and need guidance with managing our lives!

Rather than being in need of help, the women expressed a desire for autonomy, choices and respect.

When provided with the opportunity, older women have the capacity to voice their opinions, knowledge and experience. They want to promote their ability to be active participants in family, community and wider society. Some already juggle multiple roles:

Being in my early 60s, I am now part of that ‘sandwich generation’ where I not only care for my grandchild but I also have the responsibility for my ageing parent. That creates logistic challenges sometimes!

Read more: When it comes to childcare, grandparents are the least stressful option for mum and dad

Voices of experience worth listening to

The wide-ranging conversations indicated that many older women want to be taken seriously through engagement in public life. They are ready to contribute their experiences and ideas to policy and planning.

Despite the challenging trajectory of the lives of many of the participants, this research clearly demonstrated their resilience and adaptation to changing life circumstances. Women described how they have integrated creative strategies in their everyday lives to deal with the transitions and challenges of growing older in Greater Melbourne. In having these conversations, the women revealed their vast reserves of personal resources and capacity to navigate these challenges.

Participants also reinforced the view that a proactive approach that includes engaging with older women from across all walks of life will ensure the sharing of relevant, innovative community initiatives and ideas. For the women who contributed to the Vital Conversations study, interesting ideas included creative housing models which forge relationships between land and housing developers and all levels of government, or private rental initiatives.

Inclusive research that listens to the perspectives of older women has the capacity to reveal the complexity behind the statistics. In doing so we gain a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of the lives of older women and the transitions they face in a dynamic city like Melbourne.

This article was co-authored by Susan Feldman, an independent researcher who produced the Vital Conversations report with Harriet Radermacher.

– ref. Vital conversations: older women have their say about the challenges of life in a city like Melbourne – http://theconversation.com/vital-conversations-older-women-have-their-say-about-the-challenges-of-life-in-a-city-like-melbourne-112772

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Bolton, PhD student, Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Boosting workforce participation has been the gender catchcry for at least a decade.

Women are paid less than men? Increase female workforce participation! Want to boost the economy? Increase female workforce participation!

It can look like a simple and attractive solution.

After all, around one fifth of the wage gap is due to women taking career breaks to bear and care for young children.

And research suggests that reducing the wage gap by even half would increase Australia’s Gross Domestic Product by A$60 billion over 20 years.

But while a lot of focus is placed on getting women back into the workforce, my research indicates we might be better served by focusing policy on helping to balance the scales on the domestic end.

It takes two to be unequal

What if, instead of asking, “how can we reduce women’s time out of the workforce to reduce the pay gap?” we asked, “how can we improve male participation in domestic settings and childcare?”

Australian women undertake the lion’s share of unpaid domestic chores and 70% of unpaid childcare.

As part of my work on intersectional Australian masculinities, I have for the past two years been conducting a survey of Australian men exploring how they were taught to think of themselves and men in boyhood and how those expectations match society’s expectations today.

It also asks them to reflect on what makes a “good” man.

The preliminary results suggest that in boyhood many men were taught to hold in their emotions and exhibit mental and physical strength.

But the same men said they recognised they needed to display kindness, affection, emotional and physical availability and be a “good father” to measure up in the modern world.

Read more: The mystery of stay-at-home dads

They overwhelmingly described a “good” man as one who cares most of all for the needs of others, is honest and caring, and has positive interactions with women and children.

They said they wanted to spend more time at home and engaging with their children.

Yet despite this, the statistics show they are not taking the time they might.

Men aren’t yet doing what they say they want to do

Australia introduced its current paid parental leave scheme in 2011, providing up to 18 weeks paid leave at the rate of minimum wage for one parent.

In the years since, research has found that although the scheme is open to both men and women 99.4% of those taking the leave are mothers.

An additional two weeks leave, also paid at minimum wage, is offered to partners as dad and partner pay. Only about one third of men are using it. The proportion of men taking leave following the birth of a child remains unchanged.

Around half of Australian businesses offer employer-funded leave. However while between 92% and 96% of women avail themselves of it, only 5% to 8% of men do the same.

When calculated as a proportion of average previous earnings, Australia has one of the lowest paid parental leave entitlements for primary carers among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and also one of the lowest entitlements for partner-only pay, and the lowest adoption of partner leave by eligible fathers.

Chicken and egg

So, what’s going wrong? It might in part be a “chicken and the egg” situation. If women earn less, it makes more financial sense for them to take the time off, which in turn means they earn less.

However, my research also shows that men still consider their role as “the provider” to be an important part of their role as men in modern Australia.

They agree less on what society wants from them today than they do about what they were once taught society wanted from them.

I suggest that this confusion forms an important cultural barrier to men making choices that would increase their role in the home and free them their sense of responsibility for the financial security of their families.

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

One reading of the data is that Australian men have similar anxieties to those reported by women for decades regarding the pressure to be all things to all people: to “have it all”.

If we helped men increase their participation in the home, we could simultaneously help them meet their desire to be closer to their children, redistribute some of the burden of domestic work, alleviate the barriers to women returning to work and give Australians of all genders more choice in the way they manage their families.

The data discussed in this article is part of an ongoing research project at The University of Sydney. If you would like to be a part of this research, you can take the survey at this link or contact Rachael Bolton at rachael.bolton@sydney.edu.au

– ref. What if we’ve had gender the wrong way around? What if, for workplace parity, we focused on men? – http://theconversation.com/what-if-weve-had-gender-the-wrong-way-around-what-if-for-workplace-parity-we-focused-on-men-107142

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

Spending on social security and welfare accounts for more than a third of the Commonwealth budget.

Because of its size, it has been one of the main targets of proposed cuts in every Coalition government budget since 2014.

Despite this, social security and welfare spending has continued to grow. In fact the best way to describe the approach of the Coalition’s past five budgets is attempted rather than actual austerity, with the Senate rejecting or never considering repeated cuts. More than A$10 billion of these were served up again and again in budgets as so-called “zombie measures”.

Whoever wins government will continue to face pressure to further increase welfare and social security spending as the National Disability Insurance Scheme ramps up and a royal commission and demographic shifts build the case for more spending on aged care.

It is also widely recognised that Newstart, the main payment for unemployed Australians, is increasingly inadequate. It has slipped relative to pensions and wages each year because it is indexed to the slower-growing consumer price index. Payments for single parents are also inadequate, having been cut as a result of specific government decisions.

They say it’s us versus them…

The Coalition has responded with policy proposals that stigmatise recipients, such as drug-testing. It has introduced programs such as Online Compliance Intervention (“robodebt”) and ParentsNext that have arguably overreached in clawing back payments and imposing sanctions.

In 2014, the new Coalition government’s first budget speech classified people whose main source of income was support payments as “leaners not lifters”. In 2017, the human services minister described welfare dependency as the most pressing problem facing Australia’s social security system, likening it to “poison” for the unemployed.

And yet most of us are recipients at one time or another or have family members or friends who become recipients because of unemployment, ill health or family breakup.

… but we are them

During any fortnight, more than 5 million Australians, or roughly a quarter of the adult population, receive an income-tested social security payment. This includes an age pension, a disability support pension, Newstart, a carer’s payment, a parenting payment or one of seven other categories of income support.

Family tax benefits supplement the incomes of around another 855,000 families. And 900,000 or so families, many of them not receiving social security benefits or other family payments, are assisted with childcare costs.

As we look over longer periods, receipt of social security payments becomes ever more common.

The social services minister has used point-in-time administrative data to show that in 2018 the share of working-age Australians on welfare fell to 15.1%, “the lowest rate of welfare dependency in over 25 years”.

But the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey finds that over the course of an entire year (2016) about one-third of working-age households contained someone who received an income support payment for some of it.

The longer the time period, the more common becomes the receipt of payments.

Between 2001 and 2015 around 70% of working-age households included someone who received an income support payment at some point (not including the age pension or family payments).

It is one of the most important lessons of longitudinal surveys like HILDA – we, our family or friends are in this together.

While the likelihood of receiving support is greater than acknowledged, that support is less intense than is commonly believed. HILDA shows that 70% of working-age households received some social security benefits over a 15-year period. However, only around 1% of working-age households receive the bulk of their income (90%) from benefits for 10 years or more.

These were people with deep and persistent disadvantage. They were highly likely to be Indigenous Australians or people living in areas with limited job opportunities or people with long-standing disabilities or educational disadvantages.

As the 2016 HILDA report notes:

The welfare system does indeed provide temporary rather than long-term support for most recipients, and is potentially playing a very important safety net role.

The social security system is among the core institutions of contemporary Australian society. And it can be regarded as one of the main levers of not just social policy but economic policy. Australian governments have used the social security system to stimulate household spending during recessions or to avoid recessions — as happened during the global financial crisis.

An effective social security and welfare system is an essential underpinning of a modern economy, not least because security when people are in work requires security during periods when people are looking for work or outside the labour market.

Immediate priorities…

The first welfare priority for a new government has to be to increase the Newstart unemployment benefit. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has promised that, if elected, Labor will do this via a “root-and-branch review”.

Crossbenchers Rebekha Sharkie and the departing Cathy McGowan want to go further. They have introduced a private member’s bill that would create an independent commission to examine the adequacy of all social security payments other than family payments and payments to veterans. The commission would make recommendations rather than set rates.

The review promised by Shorten and the ongoing commission proposed by crossbenchers need not be mutually exclusive. An immediate review could be used to increase payments in the short term, while an ongoing commission could examine longer-term priorities.

Another urgent priority should be to reform the employment services network. It operates more like a system of penalties than an employment service, requiring participants to apply for 20 jobs a month or go on Work for the Dole programs rather preparing them for work.

… and beyond

There is a case for going further. We are overdue for a comprehensive review of Australia’s social security system. This should be undertaken in an integrated fashion and include tax, family payments and payments for childcare and to support people who study and work.

Looking further ahead, the ageing of Australia’s population is going to force us to spend more on health and aged care.

Population ageing and increased life expectancy represent a fundamental challenge that will inevitably be met by collecting and distributing more of our economy in tax and benefits than at present.

– ref. Future budgets are going to have to spend more on welfare, which is fine. It’s spending on us – http://theconversation.com/future-budgets-are-going-to-have-to-spend-more-on-welfare-which-is-fine-its-spending-on-us-111498

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Akshaya Kamalnath, Lecturer, Deakin University

More women on boards is seen as an important indicator of gender equality and board effectiveness.

The Australian government’s annual gender insights report, published last week, says greater female board membership helps drive more equitable pay across all levels of an organisation.

The Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) emphasises other benefits. Last month, when it published its latest gender diversity progress report, managing director Angus Armour noted diverse boards help prevent groupthink (when like-minded people make the mistake of agreeing with one another without considering alternate viewpoints), “leading to better outcomes for shareholders, consumers, employees and the community”.

All this might be true, but there’s a problem in thinking board gender statistics alone indicate significant progress on diversity if the women getting picked for boards generally belong to the same networks as the male directors.

Outsiders need not apply

Women now hold almost 30% of all board positions in Australia’s top 200 listed companies. Former AICD head Elizabeth Proust says that’s significant, because research “has shown this is the point at which you genuinely change the conversation around any table.”

Read more: ‘Network contagion’ is key to getting healthier numbers of women on company boards

But that’s not necessarily what the evidence from Australia’s banking royal commission shows.

Equal numbers of women and men on the boards of IOOF or Commonwealth Bank, for example, didn’t seem to lead to any better outcomes than at ANZ (37.5% of directors female), Westpac (33%) or NAB (30%).

Perhaps that’s because board membership is still an extremely exclusive club.

In 2018 just 220 new board appointments were made in the ASX200 (with 100 of them women). Social connections drive those appointments, according to researcher Sherene Smith. There are few “outsiders”.

Read more: Company boards are stacked with friends of friends so how can we expect change?

So whatever progress has been made in increasing board gender diversity, there remains a fundamental problem of a lack of equal opportunity in the board appointments process. The lack of outsiders means groupthink is still a problem, because people from similar backgrounds and social circles are less likely to have very different perspectives, or be prepared to challenge the group.

More than demographic balance

Mai Chen, of New Zealand’s Superdiversity Institute of Law, Policy and Business, talks about the difference between the type of diversity that promotes diverse thinking and ticking off achievement of mere “demographic balance”.

This is certainly not to say that increasing female representation on boards is pointless. As Peta Spender puts it, “the role that women play on the boards of ASX 200 companies is a measure of women’s democratic leadership”.

But for greater gender equality to really contribute to greater thought diversity, we have to think about all the other factors that might be just as important, such as ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, work and life experiences, educational attainment, or even personality traits.

Gender is only one facet of diversity. Ideally a board should have members who are able to not only arrive at different solutions but also voice these solutions.

Different aspects of diversity may be relevant for different companies. A company with offshore businesses, for example, might require foreign directors. A tech company might need to have a director with expertise in machine learning.

Experiences, perspectives, preferences

Gender, of course, is relatively easy to measure. Diversity of thought less so.

But it’s not impossible. In New Zealand, consultancy Diversity of Thought assists organisations to assess their success in achieving a diversity of thought through questionnaires that cover experiences, perspectives and thought preferences.

Some examples of the questions used are:

• “How would you describe your socio-economic status during your teenage years?” – to assess diversity in socio-economic experience

• “When addressing a problem, do you prefer to find an entirely new solution?” – to assess creative thought preference).

In the longer run, investors, employees, customers and wider society can all benefit from companies taking a broader approach to board diversity that aims to get multiple viewpoints into corporate decision-making.

– ref. Reality check. Having a woman on your board needn’t make it diverse – http://theconversation.com/reality-check-having-a-woman-on-your-board-neednt-make-it-diverse-103526

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Hopper, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Sarah is an aspiring actor, recently graduated from a prestigious acting school. She lands her first contract with a major theatre company to work with a respected director. The play includes performance of a simulated rape scene. Over the weeks of rehearsal, Sarah finds it difficult to get out of the role and relax. She becomes increasingly angry at her boyfriend and finds she can’t keep the role separate from her life. She can’t sleep well. Yet she is encouraged by the director to “ride the wave of emotion”.

Sarah speaks to the stage manager who has been tasked with the new role of mental health first aid officer in the company. She is told to seek help from a psychologist – who she can’t afford. The director is frustrated by Sarah’s increasing disconnection with the play as she goes through the motions. She completes the season. Nine months later she has not received a single call-back from any auditions, still isn’t sleeping and is working in a café to pay the rent

Sarah’s story is a composite of actors’ responses from the 2015 Actors Wellbeing study and entirely emblematic of the state of affairs within Australia’s performing arts scene.

This industry is fraught with extreme financial pressures, a highly casualised workforce and endemic competition. The performing arts are also rife with preventable mental health issues, compromised physical health and addiction.

In short, this is no fertile garden for the #MeToo movement to gain root.

Read more: Out of character: how acting puts a mental strain on performers

The movement has undoubtedly opened up an important discourse, challenging the stigma of speaking out against exploitation and harassment in the arts and other industries. Live Performance Australia, Screen Producers Australia and the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, in a joint initiative, have released a new code of practice on discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment and bullying. This is a significant step.

However, the larger task remains to engineer a genuine culture shift at the grassroots of the arts; to adequately support artist wellbeing in a competitive and under-funded sector. Real culture change doesn’t come cheap. It takes money, time and resources and on that front, Australia is a long way from Hollywood.

In our competitive and underfunded sector, power relationships are ever present. It is simply too easy for an artist to not be selected for future contracts if they are perceived to have had mental or physical health issues in the past. Young artists have very strong motivation not to disclose such issues and risk succumbing to career-ending illness or injury.

Performing artists across Australia are thrust into the sector, usually with poor business acumen, only to chase intermittent and largely unsupported contracts. Serial unemployment in a chosen form of creative expression is considered the norm for the majority of those committed to an arts career, influenced in part by socioeconomic status and geographical location.

Performance in every sense of the word requires the combination of talent and commitment. This naturally places stress on the mind and the body. Regardless of artistic discipline, there is a growing body of evidence that paints a disturbing picture of the health issues associated with being an artist.

Eighty four per cent of Australian orchestral musicians have been reported to experience sustained, performance-limiting pain.

Many orchestral musicians experience sustained pain. Shutterstock

Psychological risk factors such as disordered eating, sleep and social support have been related to the high frequency of injury in dancers. Depression, substance abuse and suicide attempts were frequently reported in a 2014 survey of nearly 3000 Australians working across the spectrum of performing arts genres.

Artists are often unaware of the healthcare support available to them and rely on teachers and arts management for such advice. In turn, healthcare providers often aren’t aware of the demands of working as an artist and the severe effect incapacitation has on an artist’s identity and career.

Read more: Artists’ welfare: why it’s time to act

Major arts organisations with adequate funding are leading the way in recognising health issues in the arts. Community organisations such as the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare and the Australian Alliance for Wellness in Entertainment are building awareness and a network of support for the arts community. But these organisations all work in the face of the larger underfunded and casualised arts sector.

While the industry is certainly supportive of #MeToo in the broader sense, real change will only occur through structural change at its core.

The benefits and possibilities of bespoke health support in the arts are exemplified by initiatives such as the UK-based National Institute for Dance Medicine and Science (funded by both the NHS and the community), which provides access to high quality, affordable, research-informed and dance specific health care.

Government and philanthropic funding to establish best practices in education and healthcare delivery is the next essential step in supporting the thousands of Australians whose profession and livelihoods are dedicated to arts.

– ref. Hollywood may be able to afford #MeToo, but it’s a stretch for the Australian arts – http://theconversation.com/hollywood-may-be-able-to-afford-metoo-but-its-a-stretch-for-the-australian-arts-111842

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Scott, Professor, University of Melbourne

In an attempt to crack down on specialists charging exorbitant fees, the Morrison government has pledged to create a website listing individual specialists’ fees.

The website is voluntary and doctors will post their own fees. Patients will be able to compare doctors whose fees are listed, and the searchable website will have a special focus on the high fees in gynaecology, obstetrics and cancer services.

The announcement, made on Saturday, follows the release of a ministerial advisory committee’s report on out-of-pocket costs, which the government has had since November.

But while the website is a good first step, transparency alone is unlikely to be enough to ensure Australians aren’t forgoing care because of high costs.

Read more: More visits to the doctor doesn’t mean better care – it’s time for a Medicare shake-up

What’s the problem?

A central problem is the lack of transparency around out-of-pocket costs. Patients are typically unaware of the full out-of-pocket costs they might incur at the time of referral and admission.

The Consumers Health Forum’s recent report found Australian consumers face higher than average out-of-pocket costs compared to most countries. This translates into people often avoiding visiting a GP or specialist and failing to fill scripts due to cost.

A report from the Grattan Institute using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows many people already miss out on health care because of cost: 5% skip GP visits, 8% don’t go to a specialist, 8% don’t fill their prescription and 18% don’t go to the dentist. This will happen more if fees go up.

Those who avoid care because of cost are often those most in need, leading to concerns about equity of access. Delaying or foregoing care means when people do visit their doctor, their condition may be much worse than if they had presented earlier. This can affect long-term health outcomes and lead to higher costs over time.

Read more: Many Australians pay too much for health care – here’s what the government needs to do

“Value” is also about providing information on the various options for care, including the evidence base of the treatments offered, waiting times for various providers, and how the quality of care might vary between the options.

Consumers, with the help of GPs where necessary, should be able to assess these trade-offs to arrive at a decision that works best for them.

But patients know little about the quality of care provided when they are offered treatment or even whether they will really get better as a result.

Significant numbers of procedures and treatments performed on patients in Australia are considered “low value care” – when treatments have little effect on health outcomes, and may even cause harm. Recent estimates for New South Wales public hospitals suggest that between 11% and 20% of treatments involve low-value care.

These issues are being tackled through the Choosing Wisely campaign which is increasing awareness of tests and treatments that are of low value and may cause harm.

The Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce is also reviewing how these procedures are funded through Medicare.

This website will make specialist fees publicly available to consumers – but only if the specialists choose to list their fees. From shutterstock.com

Your right to know the costs of care

What are your rights as a patient in relation to the costs of medical treatment? At present, it seems consumers have very few.

There are no consistent enforceable guidelines on health-care providers to provide information on costs. Voluntary codes of practice are in place to encourage fee transparency but cannot be enforced.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s website provides guidelines on informed financial consent in health care. Unfortunately these place the onus to gather the relevant information on the costs of care on consumers:

You should ask your doctor, your health fund, and your hospital about any extra money you may have to pay out of your own pocket, commonly known as a “gap” payment.

Health professionals should be required to provide information that will assist consumers make informed decisions.

Why we need more than a website

Gathering information on specialists’ fees and making sense of it is an enormous burden to place on vulnerable patients. This is especially the case for the elderly and those with little education who are reluctant to appear to question their trusted doctor.

We don’t know how effective a website of usually charged fees will be and who will use it. It’s possible it will advantage the rich by increasing their access to information, while not increasing access for poorer consumers.

Published fees may also be used by other doctors to set fees, and could potentially increase fees, if they see their prices are lower than others.

The onus should be on clinicians, and the system, to give patients easily accessible and digestible information as part of the service they provide.

Read more: Specialists are free to set their fees, but there are ways to ensure patients don’t get ripped off

If health professionals cannot provide and interpret these costs to patients, we need to consider other trained workers – health “cost navigators” – who could advise patients as to how to decide on the best treatment for the best price.

The issues of out-of-pocket expenses are serious. They threaten the sustainability of our health system and adversely influence health. We need to ensure patients don’t face prohibitive costs that discourage them from treatment or force them into debilitating financial straits.

– ref. We need more than a website to stop Australians paying exorbitant out-of-pocket health costs – http://theconversation.com/we-need-more-than-a-website-to-stop-australians-paying-exorbitant-out-of-pocket-health-costs-108740

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shaun Adams, Isotope Bioarchaeologist Research Fellow, Griffith University

To mark the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements we’re taking a look at how researchers use some of the elements in their work.

Today’s it’s strontium, a chemical that can help fireworks burn red. It’s also an element that is naturally found in teeth and can be used as way to identify where somebody grew up.

Thousands of skeletal remains of Aboriginal people are kept in museums across Australia, North America and Europe.

Many Aboriginal people refer to these collections as ancestral remains. Although some have now been returned to their descendant communities, many more await return.

The challenge is knowing where to return them.

One estimate is that up to 25% of Aboriginal remains held in Australian institutions have no details of where they were taken from.

Read more: What teeth can tell about the lives and environments of ancient humans and Neanderthals

Our study, published today in the journal GeoArchaeology, aims to tackle the issue of repatriating such remains.

Our work uses the element strontium to determine specifically where somebody grew up. Strontium is an element in all rock and is transferred into body tissues.

Chemical help with the past

Strontium, named after Strontian, a small town in western Scotland, is described as a soft, silvery metal that burns in air and reacts with water.

For decades the ratio of two forms of strontium (the isotopes ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) have been measured in archaeological and palaeontological material. These have helped in answering questions that relate to the behaviour of past populations.

Perhaps the most famous study involved the 5,000-year-old ice man Otzi who was found in the European Alps. Strontium isotopes in Otzi’s teeth helped scientists determine where he was born in northern Italy, which added to our understanding of the mobility of ancient European populations during the Chalcolithic period – the Copper Age from about 3500BCE to 2300BCE.

Here in Australia, the strontium technique has had some use in a few cases, but in general is underutilised.

More than DNA

In a complementary project focusing on DNA, research has shown that genetic material can be used to help locate Aboriginal populations.

But the recovery of ancient DNA from many ancestral remains in Australia continues to prove challenging. Australia’s harsh environmental conditions lead to a poor state of preservation in many remains. This makes the recovery of biological material for DNA analyses difficult and in some cases not at all possible.

Using the isotope chemistry of tooth enamel and bone we can bypass these issues of preservation. The strontium-based process involves measuring a robust geochemical signature, not a biological one subject to decomposition.

Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body and can hold evidence of the region where a person lived as a child. This makes it a suitable material to establish where a person was originally from. Bones are also useful as they help provide information about the burial site.

We use strontium isotopes to help with resolving the issue of provenance: the place where people belong.

The abundance of isotopes

The element strontium (chemical symbol, Sr) has an atomic number of 38 and four forms known as isotopes, ⁸⁴Sr, ⁸⁶Sr, ⁸⁷Sr and ⁸⁸Sr. Although these isotopes are stable, their natural abundance changes.

In particular, the amount of ⁸⁶Sr and ⁸⁷Sr in rock varies depending on the age of the rock and when it formed.

But strontium doesn’t just stay in rocks. When rocks break down, these isotopes end up in soil and water, where they are taken up by plants, animals and humans.

So for people it’s not simply a case of “you are what you eat”, but also “you are where you ate”. Our bodies become an isotope record of where we have been and what we have eaten.

One Elder from the advisory committee set up for this project, Gudjugudju, put it succinctly when he said that our ancestors carry the signature of their country in their bones and their teeth.

A new look at Far North Queensland

Before strontium isotopes in human teeth can be used to determine their place of origin we must first know how the element in the landscape changes.

We sampled strontium isotopes throughout Cape York to build a series of maps that can show where people may have grown up. These maps were developed and created in close consultation with an Aboriginal advisory committee representing several Cape York Aboriginal communities.

One of many new maps: Cape York strontium isotope results can be used to match human values to environmental signals in soil, plants and water. Shaun Adams et al. 2019, Author provided

Our results demonstrate that Australia’s ancient and diverse geology culminates in a wider range in strontium isotopes than found in overseas studies.

We also found that strontium isotope signatures were transferred relatively unaltered from the geology through the hydrology and finally biology, ie. from the land to water, animals and humans.

For Cape York, we now have a partially complete genomic map and a comprehensive isotopic map that Aboriginal groups can use as a tool to help determine the provenance of their ancestors.

… but there’s a catch

The Queensland Museum holds a large number of ancestral remains whose place of origin is still unknown. But current museum policy does not allow for invasive testing on ancestral remains without community consent.

This presents something of a “Catch 22”.

Aboriginal committees in other parts of the country have been thinking about how to return remains where there is no information on where they came from.

The Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council, which is the peak Aboriginal advisory committee for Victoria, has developed a policy, Bringing the Ancestors Home, that identifies the need to develop an approach to more seamlessly see the repatriation of ancestral remains to descendant communities.

Read more: Poor health in Aboriginal children after European colonisation revealed in their skeletal remains

The Commonwealth National Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation has developed a concept for a National Resting Place in Canberra for ancestral remains whose descendant communities can’t be identified.

Our research in Far North Queensland, combining isotopes and ancient DNA, provides a new way to help these communities repatriate their ancestors.

A collaboration between science and Aboriginal communities may represent the best way forward for resolving this complex social issue.

If you’re an academic researcher working with a particular element from the periodic table and have an interesting story to tell then why not get in touch.

– ref. Where did you grow up? How strontium in your teeth can help answer that question – http://theconversation.com/where-did-you-grow-up-how-strontium-in-your-teeth-can-help-answer-that-question-112705

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shaun Adams, Isotope Bioarchaeologist Research Fellow, Griffith University

To mark the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements we’re taking a look at how researchers use some of the elements in their work.

Today’s it’s strontium, a chemical that can help fireworks burn red. It’s also an element that is naturally found in teeth and can be used as way to identify where somebody grew up.

Thousands of skeletal remains of Aboriginal people are kept in museums across Australia, North America and Europe.

Many Aboriginal people refer to these collections as ancestral remains. Although some have now been returned to their descendant communities, many more await return.

The challenge is knowing where to return them.

One estimate is that up to 25% of Aboriginal remains held in Australian institutions have no details of where they were taken from.

Read more: What teeth can tell about the lives and environments of ancient humans and Neanderthals

Our study, published today in the journal GeoArchaeology, aims to tackle the issue of repatriating such remains.

Our work uses the element strontium to determine specifically where somebody grew up. Strontium is an element in all rock and is transferred into body tissues.

Chemical help with the past

Strontium, named after Strontian, a small town in western Scotland, is described as a soft, silvery metal that burns in air and reacts with water.

For decades the ratio of two forms of strontium (the isotopes ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) have been measured in archaeological and palaeontological material. These have helped in answering questions that relate to the behaviour of past populations.

Perhaps the most famous study involved the 5,000-year-old ice man Otzi who was found in the European Alps. Strontium isotopes in Otzi’s teeth helped scientists determine where he was born in northern Italy, which added to our understanding of the mobility of ancient European populations during the Chalcolithic period – the Copper Age from about 3500BCE to 2300BCE.

Here in Australia, the strontium technique has had some use in a few cases, but in general is underutilised.

More than DNA

In a complementary project focusing on DNA, research has shown that genetic material can be used to help locate Aboriginal populations.

But the recovery of ancient DNA from many ancestral remains in Australia continues to prove challenging. Australia’s harsh environmental conditions lead to a poor state of preservation in many remains. This makes the recovery of biological material for DNA analyses difficult and in some cases not at all possible.

Using the isotope chemistry of tooth enamel and bone we can bypass these issues of preservation. The strontium-based process involves measuring a robust geochemical signature, not a biological one subject to decomposition.

Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body and can hold evidence of the region where a person lived as a child. This makes it a suitable material to establish where a person was originally from. Bones are also useful as they help provide information about the burial site.

We use strontium isotopes to help with resolving the issue of provenance: the place where people belong.

The abundance of isotopes

The element strontium (chemical symbol, Sr) has an atomic number of 38 and four forms known as isotopes, ⁸⁴Sr, ⁸⁶Sr, ⁸⁷Sr and ⁸⁸Sr. Although these isotopes are stable, their natural abundance changes.

In particular, the amount of ⁸⁶Sr and ⁸⁷Sr in rock varies depending on the age of the rock and when it formed.

But strontium doesn’t just stay in rocks. When rocks break down, these isotopes end up in soil and water, where they are taken up by plants, animals and humans.

So for people it’s not simply a case of “you are what you eat”, but also “you are where you ate”. Our bodies become an isotope record of where we have been and what we have eaten.

One Elder from the advisory committee set up for this project, Gudjugudju, put it succinctly when he said that our ancestors carry the signature of their country in their bones and their teeth.

A new look at Far North Queensland

Before strontium isotopes in human teeth can be used to determine their place of origin we must first know how the element in the landscape changes.

We sampled strontium isotopes throughout Cape York to build a series of maps that can show where people may have grown up. These maps were developed and created in close consultation with an Aboriginal advisory committee representing several Cape York Aboriginal communities.

One of many new maps: Cape York strontium isotope results can be used to match human values to environmental signals in soil, plants and water. Shaun Adams et al. 2019, Author provided

Our results demonstrate that Australia’s ancient and diverse geology culminates in a wider range in strontium isotopes than found in overseas studies.

We also found that strontium isotope signatures were transferred relatively unaltered from the geology through the hydrology and finally biology, ie. from the land to water, animals and humans.

For Cape York, we now have a partially complete genomic map and a comprehensive isotopic map that Aboriginal groups can use as a tool to help determine the provenance of their ancestors.

… but there’s a catch

The Queensland Museum holds a large number of ancestral remains whose place of origin is still unknown. But current museum policy does not allow for invasive testing on ancestral remains without community consent.

This presents something of a “Catch 22”.

Aboriginal committees in other parts of the country have been thinking about how to return remains where there is no information on where they came from.

The Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council, which is the peak Aboriginal advisory committee for Victoria, has developed a policy, Bringing the Ancestors Home, that identifies the need to develop an approach to more seamlessly see the repatriation of ancestral remains to descendant communities.

Read more: Poor health in Aboriginal children after European colonisation revealed in their skeletal remains

The Commonwealth National Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation has developed a concept for a National Resting Place in Canberra for ancestral remains whose descendant communities can’t be identified.

Our research in Far North Queensland, combining isotopes and ancient DNA, provides a new way to help these communities repatriate their ancestors.

A collaboration between science and Aboriginal communities may represent the best way forward for resolving this complex social issue.

– ref. Where did you grow up? How strontium in your teeth can help answer that – http://theconversation.com/where-did-you-grow-up-how-strontium-in-your-teeth-can-help-answer-that-112705

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University

Review: La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre, Adelaide Festival

By chance, I happened to overhear a conversation on theatre audiences before seeing this remarkable, sulphurous show about the senseless murder of a gay man, Ihsane Jarfi, in Liege, Belgium in 2012. The argument being put forward was that as theatre asks for spectators’ attention and favour, their needs should shape the delivery of stage production.

La Reprise places sharp limits on this argument. It is unforgiving in taking audiences where they probably don’t want to go – the heart of a killing – and forensic in presenting details that will stick in their mind like hot wires. It stakes out its terrifying truth and attends to it with every device that dramatic intelligence and skill can provide.

The performers in La Reprise start by telling their own stories. Hubert Amiel

In this, spectator needs are not so much the end-point as the vehicle for the show’s raison d’etre. We go to enjoy the play, of course. Once there, more importantly, we bear witness to it.

A cross between verbatim theatre and true-crime reconstruction, La Reprise (literally, “the recovery”, “the repetition”) is a work by director Milo Rau and an ensemble of French and Flemish actors, some professional, some not.

Rau, appointed Artistic Director of theatre company NT Ghent in Belgium last year, recently posted his controversial and resolutely political Ghent Manifesto laying down ten “rules” to govern theatre production.

La Reprise is his first show to appear after the Manifesto, and follows all these rules: it uses at least two languages; the ensemble were centrally involved in creating the play; a significant part of rehearsals were spent outside the rehearsal room; and the set design is containable in the back of a normal-size moving van.

But it’s the Manifesto’s first rule that gives La Reprise its committed form and tone:

It’s not just about portraying the world anymore. It’s about changing it. The aim is not to depict the real, but to make the representation itself real.

Adopting a classic five act structure, La Reprise is, on one level, very simple. It tells the story of how Jarfi died: how he got into a car with a group of drunken, unemployed youths, for unknown reasons; how they took him to the outskirts of Liege, stripped him naked and beat him unconscious, leaving him to an agonising death.

It shows how his parents and his ex-boyfriend reacted, and the thoughts of one of the men who killed him. There is also a semi-narrator figure, though the narrative function is distributed through the cast in different ways at different times.

It’s the “how” of the story-telling, though, that makes La Reprise so startling and – to use a word too long in cold storage – engagé. The theatrical means are low-rent: a mobile video camera and a central video screen.

The six performers take turns talking directly to the audience from the stage, or directly to the audience via the video camera, their faces magnified on the screen, minutely accessible.

Initially, they tell their own story – of the development of the play, or being cast in it. Gradually, however, the actors shade into their characters. “When does the tragedy begin?” asks Tom Adjibi, the actor playing Jarfi. It’s not entirely certain. But at some point, the drama arises, like a wreath of smoke.

There are four types of dialogue in La Reprise: actors talking about acting; actors talking about their real-life characters; actors talking as their real-life characters; and actors stooging around the stage in a neutral gear that becomes more invested as the story reaches its climax.

This verbal ambiguity has its visual equivalent. Sometimes the screen shows what is happening on stage; sometimes it shows what seems to be happening, but is actually pre-recorded footage, slightly divergent; and sometimes it shows what can’t possibly be happening – a man walking his dog or a room suddenly full of people on a dance floor.

La Reprise uses a central video screen in innovative ways. Hubert Amiel

In the long, gruelling scene in which Jarfi is picked up, beaten up and taken to the killing ground, the action is presented twice, simultaneously: once in the theatre – real car, real rain; once on screen – close-ups on the faces of the perpetrators, reflected lights of the passing traffic.

We flip between the two registers in easy moves that are uneasy in their implications. What are we doing exactly? Remembering something or reliving it?

However, before breaking out the favoured critical terms – meta(theatrical), inter(sectional), post(dramatic) – it’s worth asking what all this cleverness is for. It isn’t for performative display.

Rather La Reprise casts a spell of invocation, a call to the dead to speak, through the medium of representational drama. Because what the dead have to say is unknown, and their experiences die with them, fracturing the dialogue and stage images in a non-linear way creates cognitive gaps in which the audience can be asked to do some of the work.

La Reprise recreates a murder with forensic detail. Hubert Amiel

And magically we do it. This is realism at its most flexible and courageous, less a set of conventions than a compulsion to imagine the seemingly unimaginable. What were the last moments of Jarfi’s life actually like? What did it feel like for this blameless man to know he was shortly going to die?

La Reprise allows these questions to be genuinely asked and truthfully answered. Can there be anything starker and more demanding than to identify with another person at their most fateful hour?

If Brecht’s “alienation effect” is, as he defined it, the ability to see one’s own mother as another man’s wife, then empathy is surely the opposite: the ability to see another man’s boyfriend as one’s own son.

This is La Reprise’s ultimate invocation: the call to feel something for someone no longer there, but who should be.

La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre is playing as part of the Adelaide Festival until March 7.

– ref. La Reprise: startling theatre and a call to the dead to speak – http://theconversation.com/la-reprise-startling-theatre-and-a-call-to-the-dead-to-speak-113032

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wencheng Yang, Post Doctoral Researcher, Security Research Institute, Edith Cowan University

Despite what every spy movie in the past 30 years would have you think, fingerprint and face scanners used to unlock your smartphone or other devices aren’t nearly as secure as they’re made out to be.

While it’s not great if your password is made public in a data breach, at least you can easily change it. If the scan of your fingerprint or face – known as “biometric template data” – is revealed in the same way, you could be in real trouble. After all, you can’t get a new fingerprint or face.

Your biometric template data are permanently and uniquely linked to you. The exposure of that data to hackers could seriously compromise user privacy and the security of a biometric system.

Current techniques provide effective security from breaches, but advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are rendering these protections obsolete.

Read more: Receiving a login code via SMS and email isn’t secure. Here’s what to use instead

How biometric data could be breached

If a hacker wanted to access a system that was protected by a fingerprint or face scanner, there are a number of ways they could do it:

1. your fingerprint or face scan (template data) stored in the database could be replaced by a hacker to gain unauthorised access to a system

2. a physical copy or spoof of your fingerprint or face could be created from the stored template data (with play doh, for example) to gain unauthorised access to a system

3. stolen template data could be reused to gain unauthorised access to a system

4. stolen template data could be used by a hacker to unlawfully track an individual from one system to another.

Biometric data need urgent protection

Nowadays, biometric systems are increasingly used in our civil, commercial and national defence applications.

Consumer devices equipped with biometric systems are found in everyday electronic devices like smartphones. MasterCard and Visa both offer credit cards with embedded fingerprint scanners. And wearable fitness devices are increasingly using biometrics to unlock smart cars and smart homes.

So how can we protect raw template data? A range of encryption techniques have been proposed. These fall into two categories: cancellable biometrics and biometric cryptosystems.

Read more: When your body becomes your password, the end of the login is nigh

In cancellable biometrics, complex mathematical functions are used to transform the original template data when your fingerprint or face is being scanned. This transformation is non-reversible, meaning there’s no risk of the transformed template data being turned back into your original fingerprint or face scan.

In a case where the database holding the transformed template data is breached, the stored records can be deleted. Additionally, when you scan your fingerprint or face again, the scan will result in a new unique template even if you use the same finger or face.

In biometric cryptosystems, the original template data are combined with a cryptographic key to generate a “black box”. The cryptographic key is the “secret” and query data are the “key” to unlock the “black box” so that the secret can be retrieved. The cryptographic key is released upon successful authentication.

AI is making security harder

In recent years, new biometric systems that incorporate AI have really come to the forefront of consumer electronics. Think: smart cameras with built-in AI capability to recognise and track specific faces.

But AI is a double-edged sword. While new developments, such as deep artificial neural networks, have enhanced the performance of biometric systems, potential threats could arise from the integration of AI.

For example, researchers at New York University created a tool called DeepMasterPrints. It uses deep learning techniques to generate fake fingerprints that can unlock a large number of mobile devices. It’s similar to the way that a master key can unlock every door.

Researchers have also demonstrated how deep artificial neural networks can be trained so that the original biometric inputs (such as the image of a person’s face) can be obtained from the stored template data.

Read more: Facial recognition is increasingly common, but how does it work?

New data protection techniques are needed

Thwarting these types of threats is one of the most pressing issues facing designers of secure AI-based biometric recognition systems.

Existing encryption techniques designed for non AI-based biometric systems are incompatible with AI-based biometric systems. So new protection techniques are needed.

Academic researchers and biometric scanner manufacturers should work together to secure users’ sensitive biometric template data, thus minimising the risk to users’ privacy and identity.

In academic research, special focus should be put on two most important aspects: recognition accuracy and security. As this research falls within Australia’s science and research priority of cybersecurity, both government and private sectors should provide more resources to the development of this emerging technology.

– ref. Fingerprint and face scanners aren’t as secure as we think they are – http://theconversation.com/fingerprint-and-face-scanners-arent-as-secure-as-we-think-they-are-112414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Attfield, Scholarly Teaching Fellow, Communications, University of Technology Sydney

When I heard about the new ABC TV soap The Heights (set in a fictional suburb of Perth), I was pretty excited. The promos suggested the show would include representation of working-class social housing residents. I tried to recall any Australian show (of any genre) that was set on a social housing estate and couldn’t think of one (happy to be proven wrong on this one).

I was a bit concerned – would this be a middle-class imagining of working-class life? But I was reassured by an article written by one of the show’s co-creators, Que Minh Luu. In her piece, she speaks of the need to diversify Australian television and bring the stories of minorities and marginalised communities to our screens. She mentions too that she has lived in social housing, which signalled to me that she understands the experiences of the characters.

The Heights is a soap opera – a television genre that is generally undervalued. Soaps don’t usually have the high production values of so-called “quality television”. They are made in bulk (The Heights already has 30 episodes), and have large ensemble casts. They have fast-moving storylines and require exposition and shortcuts to set the scene. But soaps also require actors to display enormous range, and the production process requires speed and agility, particularly when working with tight budgets.

There is some clunky dialogue in the first couple of episodes, as characters deliver expository lines to bring the viewer up to speed. There isn’t time for lengthy character development – we need to know pretty quickly who is who. Overall though, The Heights is a soap seeped in realism, and by the end of the first series (binge-watched on ABC iview), I was hooked.

Official trailer for ABC TV’s The Heights (2019).

There is a lot to love about this show, but particularly from a working-class perspective. The residents of Arcadia Heights are believable and the main thrust of the drama comes from their everyday lives, rather than ridiculous over-the top plots (no Bouncer’s Dream so far). Daily life for these characters is represented with nuance and a real understanding of the kinds of struggles and triumphs experienced by working-class people.

There are moments in the show that made me sigh with relief – at last! Yazeed Daher’s character Kam, for example, is a school student living with his older brother, his aunty, uncle and two cousins in a small apartment. Kam is keen to study, but there is no space at home. He is seen studying in the apartment block corridor.

Kam eventually finds a quiet place to study when his neighbour Iris (Carina Hoang), allows him to use the back room of her corner store. This moment demonstrates the obstacles that working-class students face.

Kam’s older brother, Ash (Phoenix Raei), is a builder’s labourer who falls in with a group of rich kids. He is initially enthralled by their excess – they can afford to party every night. They have beautiful clothes and lush homes. But Kam warns Ash that he’ll never fit in with the rich kids. And he is right. It becomes clear that Ash’s rich friends are intrigued by his cultural background (he is Iranian) and they exoticise him. They also display class fetish – he is their “bit of rough”.

Having been that “bit of rough” when I was young, I know how this works. Ash soon realises that unlike his new group, his family and his friends back in Arcadia Heights won’t treat him like a pet or a project.

The neighbours have your back

The community in Arcadia Heights is tight. Everyone helps each other. People watching from a distance might find this part rather hard to believe, but those of us who grew up in social housing know that your neighbours have your back. Everyone pitches in when needed. You can rely on the community.

Iris helps Kam. Everyone helps Hazel (Fiona Press) when she takes on the full-time care of her grandchild. Uncle Max (Kelton Pell) helps his elderly and disabled neighbour Audrey (Davilia O’Connor) and the community all comes together to keep the local pub alive (the unofficial community centre).

The working-class characters are representative of social housing communities and are diverse in terms of cultural background, religion, sexuality, gender, ability. This diversity is the reality of working-class neighbourhoods – there is a tendency elsewhere to use “working class” as shorthand for “white”, but this is just not the case.

Phoenix Raei as Ash, Yazeed Daher as Kam and Eddie Stowers as Fetu in ABC’s The Heights. Bohdan Warchomij/ABC TV

This show demonstrates the intersections between class, race, gender, sexuality, ability and religion. Ash is uncomfortable when his rich friends press him to talk about his experiences as a refugee – they might be “woke” but they don’t understand his lived experience. High school student Sabine (Bridie McKim) moves into the neighbourhood with her mother Claudia (Roz Hammond), an emergency doctor. Sabine has previously lived in an affluent area and has a private school boyfriend, Dane (Nicholas Di Nardo).

Then she makes friends with Mich (Calen Tassone) who is a “class straddler”. His mother is a lawyer and his father is an ex-cop living in the social housing block. Mich is Indigenous and understands racism and discrimination and is also trying to understand his own identity as an Indigenous person. Sabine is disabled and has also experienced discrimination – they form a strong bond.

Social issues abound in the show – the storylines include gambling addiction, teenage sex, gentrification among others, but running through the writing is a great deal of humour and heart.

The Heights isn’t perfect – there is some stilted dialogue at times and some rather unbelievable sets. The house occupied by Renee (Saskia Hampele) and her tradie husband Mark (Dan Paris), is a TARDIS with an unfeasibly large interior. There are some stereotypical characters too – particularly Watto (Noel O’Neill), the drunken Irishman who lives for the pub, and Iris does sometimes border on an Asian stereotype with her “Tiger Parent” impulses.

But overall, the characters feel pretty real to me and there are some stand out performances from the younger cast members. Calen Tassone and Bridie McKim are fantastic and their banter is delivered with great timing.

The Heights has a lot to offer. I look forward to watching the next series and spending more time with the community in Arcadia Heights.

– ref. The Heights – at last, a credible Australian working-class soap – http://theconversation.com/the-heights-at-last-a-credible-australian-working-class-soap-112961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Elphick, Honorary Research Fellow, Law School, University of Western Australia

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

Wednesday, November 15 2017, Northbridge Plaza, Perth, 7.00am:

“Yes responses, 7,817,247, representing 61.6% …” read the chief statistician of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, David Kalisch, on the big screen. The huge crowd erupted. Hugging, crying, comfort, joy.

That was one of the happiest moments of my life, along with December 7 2017, when marriage equality legislation passed the federal parliament.

For younger generations, this was the moment one of our defining and most hard-fought social movements had succeeded. We had won, despite the barriers put in front of us and the damaging impact of the postal survey.

Read more: New research reveals how the marriage equality debate damaged LGBT Australians’ mental health

However, just as gaining the right to vote did not end the women’s rights movement, so, too, will marriage equality not end the LGBTI+ rights movement.

As concisely put by Anna Brown, director of legal advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre:

Our victory in the marriage equality campaign was the starting point for something even bigger.

Below, I consider what’s next for LGBTI+ rights in Australia, outlining key areas for reform. Importantly, it is just one perspective and cannot reflect every concern of the very large and diverse LGBTI+ community.

Equality and non-discrimination rights

In the aftermath of marriage equality becoming law, the federal government commissioned the Ruddock inquiry into religious freedom, with the report eventually released in December.

Much of the reaction to this inquiry has centred on existing exemptions that allow religious schools to discriminate against LGBT students, teachers, staff and contract workers (these federal exemptions do not apply on the basis of intersex status).

A bill before the Senate, sponsored by Labor’s Penny Wong, would remove exemptions for LGBT students. This would ensure they cannot be excluded from schools on the basis of their LGBT status.

However, we must go further. The Greens have proposed also removing exemptions for LGBT teachers, staff and contract workers. This reflects a just.equal survey finding last year that 79% of Australians opposed religious schools being allowed to sack LGBT staff.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has indicated Labor’s broad support for the principle that teachers should not be discriminated against, but has not specified if religious qualifications will remain.

Whatever its form, all LGBTI+ people should be protected from federal discrimination law in religious schools, without qualification. Some state and territory discrimination laws also provide exemptions to religious schools and these should also be removed.

Read more: Ruddock report constrains, not expands, federal religious exemptions

Most states and territories also have other exemptions to LGBTI+ protections, which should be scrutinised.

One example is sporting exemptions. These allow individuals to be excluded from competitive sporting activities on the basis of their gender identity or intersex status.

Even without exemptions, other forms of discrimination against LGBTI+ people remain permissible.

The federal Fair Work Act does not provide protection on the basis of gender identity or intersex status. Only under federal laws and ACT, South Australian and Tasmanian laws are intersex status and non-binary gender identity explicitly protected from discrimination.

In New South Wales, even bisexuality is not protected.

Equality Australia’s recent survey of LGBTI+ people found discrimination to be respondents’ number one concern. The discrimination law gaps identified above should be filled as soon as possible.

Freedom from harmful practices

The intersex community is often the forgotten “I” in “LGBTI+”, despite comprising up to an estimated 1.7% of the global population.

In an interview for this article, Morgan Carpenter, co-executive director of Intersex Human Rights Australia, points out that:

Intersex people – born with variations of sex characteristics – are still largely misunderstood, and our rights to autonomy over our own bodies remains denied. Children with intersex variations are still subjected to harmful practices, including surgeries designed to “enhance” genital appearance, with judicial sanction.

It should be a priority to end these harmful practices and ensure the sex characteristics of intersex children are not altered without their informed consent.

The harmful practice of conversion therapy – whereby LGBT people are “treated” in an attempt to diminish or suppress their sexual orientation and/or gender identity – also remains prevalent in Australia.

A recent La Trobe University report found that up to 10% of LGBTI+ people in Australia are still subjected to conversion therapy. A PFLAG/just.equal survey last year found the top political priority of LGBTI+ Australians was to ban conversion therapy.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews recently announced that conversion therapy will be banned in that state, though further details are not yet known.

While banning the practice is an important step that should be followed by other states and territories, conversion therapy survivors Nathan Despott and Chris Csabs have argued that preventing conversion therapy requires further nuance:

[A] broader focus opens the way for the key recommendations of survivor advocates, namely legislation to address practitioners and referrers, protections for children, support for survivors, regulation of the counselling industry, and a public education campaign.

Legal and identity-related rights

In most states and territories, transgender and gender-diverse people – those whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex – are required to undergo surgery or medical treatment prior to changing their sex or gender marker on their birth certificate.

Many transgender and gender-diverse people choose not to have surgery, or cannot afford it. This should not stop them from obtaining identity documents that match their actual identity.

Tasmania also still requires transgender people to be unmarried prior to changing the sex or gender marker on their birth certificate.

This has the effect of forcing divorce on transgender people who are married and want their birth certificate to match their gender identity. True marriage equality will only be achieved when these requirements are removed.

There is also a debate to be had, as in Tasmania, on whether we should remove sex entirely from birth certificates.

Finally, there is no federal prohibition of vilification on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. Four states and territories also do not prohibit LGBTI+ vilification.

One area in which vilification remains prevalent is sport. The Out on the Fields survey found that 82% of LGBT respondents reported witnessing homophobia at sport. And 84% of all respondents believed an openly LGB person would not be very safe as a spectator at a sporting event.

Just as racial vilification is now unacceptable and unlawful, so too should vilification on the basis of LGBTI+ status be unacceptable and unlawful.

Restoring funding of Safe Schools at a federal level would go some way to preventing this kind of bullying and harassment of LGBTI+ children.

Read more: FactCheck: does the Safe Schools program contain ‘highly explicit material’?

Health rights

Another key area for reform is LGBTI+ health rights.

Medicare and private health insurance do not cover many treatments that transgender and gender-diverse people may require to transition, such as surgical changes, because these are deemed “cosmetic”.

As transgender advocate and lawyer Dale Sheridan told me:

While an approximate 10% Medicare rebate is provided for genital surgery, the treatment undertaken for most transgender and gender-diverse people is far in excess of this. For example, I have spent over $15,000 on four years of electrolysis to remove my facial hair, and there is no rebate available because this is considered cosmetic. However, having a beard does not match my female appearance and has caused much dysphoria.

The LGBTI+ community also lacks access to appropriate mental health care.

Under a Mental Health Care Plan, which can be granted by a general practitioner in Australia, individuals can access rebates for ten sessions with a psychologist per year. This is the case whether a person identifies as LGBTI+ or not.

Read more: Explainer: what treatment do young children receive for gender dysphoria and is it irreversible?

However, this upper limit places a particular burden on the LGBTI+ community. Those who are LGBTI+ are more likely to experience poor mental health. LGBTI+ people aged 16 to 27 are five times more likely to attempt suicide compared to the general population.

The out-of-pocket expenses associated with regular mental health care are too great for many LGBTI+ people, particularly when you consider they are three times more likely to experience homelessness.

Particular groups face further burdens. For example, there is often very little awareness of specific issues facing the bisexual community. Visibility is a key advocacy priority. As bisexual advocate Misty Farquhar told me:

The mental health of bisexual people is incredibly poor due to the double discrimination we face, both from straight people and gay/lesbian folk. Our levels of psychological distress are second only to the transgender community, and the intersection of bisexuality and transgender identities is significant. We need to feel genuinely included and treated as equals, both in mainstream society and the LGBTIQ+ community. This can start to be addressed by genuine representation and targeted services.

Developing a national suicide and mental health strategy for LGBTI+ people could help to address some of these issues.

Intersectional rights

What is often forgotten about the LGBTI+ community is that many of us face intersectional and compounding forms of discrimination. This may be through our age, gender, race, disability or other attributes.

A 2018 report showed that 46% of people with a disability who identified as LGBTI+ had experienced discrimination, harassment or abuse in the preceding year. They were nearly five times more likely to be unemployed than LGBTI+ people without a disability.

LGBTI+ refugees seeking asylum in Australia are regularly required by tribunals and courts to name gay clubs in Sydney, answer questions about Madonna, and provide evidence of their sexual promiscuity. Sometimes, applications are rejected on the basis that an applicant does not “look gay”.

Indigenous Australians who are LGBTI+ are often marginalised and excluded from the queer community. The prevalence of racism on LGBTI+ dating apps is notorious.

Furthermore, the experiences of older LGBTI+ people remain under-examined and stigmatised.

In any further steps to advance LGBTI+ rights, we must not forget the diversity of our community. We need to devote special attention to those facing intersectional, compounding forms of discrimination and rights abuse.

Overall, acting on the key areas outlined in this article would represent significant strides forward in promoting LGBTI+ rights in Australia. Though marriage equality was an important step, it was but one in a struggle that has a long way to go.

– ref. Marriage equality was momentous, but there is still much to do to progress LGBTI+ rights in Australia – http://theconversation.com/marriage-equality-was-momentous-but-there-is-still-much-to-do-to-progress-lgbti-rights-in-australia-110786

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

School funding debates in Australia are complex and messy. Stakeholders routinely complain about being hard done by. But the real unfairness is that state schools get less government funding than governments themselves say the schools need, and will continue to do so.

Read more: Explaining Australia’s school funding debate: what’s at stake

Meanwhile, many private schools are already funded at 100% of their target level, and the rest are on the way.

This fails the playground test: the lament of a five-year-old when an adult says one thing and does another. Australian school funding is unfair because it doesn’t live up to its own rules and standards.

School resources

Needs-based funding has broad public and political support. David Gonski’s 2011 report stated differences in educational outcomes should not be the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions. It’s written in legislation, which defines each school’s target level of government funding, or Schooling Resource Standard.

David Gonski at the public release of the Gonski Report in 2012. Alan Porritt/AAP

Under the SRS, every student receives a base amount of funding. When parents choose a non-government school, base funding is reduced according to their capacity to contribute. Students with higher needs attract more funding, regardless of their parents’ capacity to contribute.

No model is perfect, but the structure of the SRS is sound. Schools get more money if their students need it.

Parents can (generally) afford to exercise their right to choose, because non-government schools that serve disadvantaged communities are nearly fully funded by government. Meanwhile, taxpayers save money – at least in theory – when parents opt out of the state school system.

Read more: Gonski 2.0: Is this the school funding plan we have been looking for? Finally, yes

Of course the formula could be improved. The SRS is long overdue for a refresh.

A proposed new model for calculating parent’s capacity to contribute, based on their family income, still needs to be finalised and legislated. But it’s clearly fairer than the previous model based on where families lived.

Looking beyond the formula, the federal Coalition’s A$1.2 billion Choice and Affordability Fund should go. It subsidises low-fee private schools even when parents can afford to pay their way. And education systems (such as Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican, plus state education departments) need to better account for how they distribute the funding they receive as a lump sum.

Theory doesn’t necessarily translate to practice

But these issues pale in comparison with the gap between funding theory and funding practice.

Very few schools actually get their target level of government funding. Most schools get less, some much less. A few schools get more. And a handful of high-fee private schools – the schools least in need of extra cash – get nearly three times what the formula says they need.

Public state schools get less government funding than governments themselves say they need. Dan Himbrechts/AAP

The discrepancies are not random. Government schools educate the bulk of disadvantaged students, but in 2017 were funded at 90% of SRS on average. The non-government school average was about 95%.

Recent analysis by the ABC shows the funding gap grew over the past decade. Because parents pay fees, non-government schools should never get more public dollars per student than comparable government schools. A decade ago, one in 20 private schools did. By 2016, it was more than one in three.

What about the coming decade?

Under the Coalition’s 2017 legislation, federal funding will transition to 80% of SRS for private schools and 20% for government schools. It will be consistent across states – a big improvement. And overfunded schools finally lose funding, something Labor never managed to achieve.

The 2017 legislation also requires minimum contributions from state governments. But based on the recently signed National School Reform Agreement, it looks like most government schools will be stuck at 95% of their target level (20% federal funding, 75% state), while private schools will hit 100% (80% federal, 20% state).

Under Coalition management, overfunded schools will finally lose some excess funding. Joel Carrett/AAP

And there’s one last sting in the tail. The National School Reform Agreement allows state governments – for the first time – to claim depreciation, transport and part of their expenditure on regulatory authorities as up to 4% of their contribution to school funding. But only for government schools. This reduces effective funding for government schools by about A$2 billion per year by 2027.

Read more: Explainer: how does funding work in the Catholic school system?

Under Coalition policy, the effective funding for each state school will plateau at 91% of SRS, while non-government schools get full whack. Private schools serving disadvantaged students will continue to get more taxpayer dollars than similar government schools. As a five-year-old might say, it’s not fair.

Labor is on course to deliver fairer funding, having committed to building on the 2017 legislation. Labor should lock in the new model for calculating parents’ capacity to contribute, instigate a broader review of the SRS formula and abolish the Choice and Affordability Fund.

Bill Shorten’s Labor is on track to deliver fairer school funding. Daniel Pockett/AAP

Labor has also promised A$14 billion extra for government schools over a decade. This would lift the federal contribution to 22.2% of SRS by 2022. Yet government schools would still be underfunded relative to SRS, especially if states could continue to count depreciation, transport and regulatory expenditures as if they represented real money for schools.

If Labor wins the 2019 federal election, it should leverage its budget war chest to renegotiate the national agreements so states can no longer claim depreciation, transport and regulatory expenditures as part of their schools funding. That would put government schools on track to reach 97.2% of SRS. Not quite full funding, but within touching distance.

Read more: FactCheck: does Victoria have Australia’s lowest rate of public school funding?

For an average government school, the difference between 91% and 100% of SRS is about A$1,500 per student per year. With just half of that money, a typical state primary school could employ two dedicated instructional leaders to improve teaching practice and pay for relief time for other teachers to work with them. Fair funding just might transform the education of the children at that school and the thousands of schools like it.

– ref. What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding – http://theconversation.com/what-the-next-government-needs-to-do-to-tackle-unfairness-in-school-funding-110879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Johnstone, Security Researcher, Associate Professor in Resilient Systems, Edith Cowan University

When it comes to personal cybersecurity, you might think you’re doing alright. Maybe you’ve got multi-factor authentication setup on your phone so that you have to enter a code sent to you by SMS before you can login to your email or bank account from a new device.

What you might not realise is that new scams have made authentication using a code sent by SMS messages, emails or voice calls less secure than they used to be.

Multi-factor authentication is listed in the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight Maturity Model as a recommended security measure for businesses to reduce their risk of cyber attack.

Last month, in an updated list, authentication via SMS messages, emails or voice calls was downgraded, indicating they’re no longer considered optimal for security.

Here’s what you should do instead.

What is multi-factor authentication?

Whenever we login to an app or device, we are usually asked for some form of identity check. This is often something we know (like a password), but it can also be something we have (like a security key or an access card) or something we are (like a fingerprint).

The last of these is often preferred because, while you can forget a password or a card, your biometric signature is always with you.

Multi-factor authentication is when more than one identity check is conducted via different channels. For instance, it’s common these days to enter your password, and an extra authentication code you need to enter is sent to your phone via SMS message, email or voice mail.

Lots of services, such as banks, already offer this feature. You’re sent a “one-time” code to your phone in order to confirm authority to enact a transaction.

This is good because:

• it uses two separate channels
• the code is randomly generated, so it can’t be guessed
• the code has a limited lifetime

How could this go wrong?

Suppose a cybercriminal has stolen your phone, but you have it locked via fingerprint. If the criminal wants to compromise your bank account and attempts to login, your bank sends an authentication code to your phone.

Depending on how your phone settings are configured, the code could pop-up on your phone screen, even when it’s still locked. The criminal could then input the code and access your bank account. Note that “do not disturb” settings on your phone won’t help as the message still appears, albeit quietly. In order to avoid this problem, you need to disable message previews entirely in your phone’s settings.

A more elaborate hack involves “SIM swapping”. If a criminal has some of your identity details, they might be able to convince your phone provider that they are you and request a new SIM attached to your phone number to be sent to them. That way, anytime an authentication code is sent from one of your accounts, it will go to the hacker instead of you.

This happened to a technology journalist in the US a couple of years ago, who described the experience:

At about 9pm on Tuesday, August 22 a hacker swapped his or her own SIM card with mine, presumably by calling T-Mobile. This, in turn, shut off network services to my phone and, moments later, allowed the hacker to change most of my Gmail passwords, my Facebook password, and text on my behalf. All of the two-factor notifications went, by default, to my phone number so I received none of them and in about two minutes I was locked out of my digital life.

Then there is the question of whether you want to provide your phone number to the service you are using. Facebook has come under fire in recent days for requiring users to provide their phone number to secure their accounts, but then allowing others to search for their profile via their phone number. They have also reportedly used phone numbers to target users with ads.

This is not to say that splitting identity checks is a bad thing, it’s just that sending part of an identity check via a less-secure channel promotes a false sense of security that could be worse than using no security at all.

Multi-factor authentication is important – as long as you do it via the right channels.

Which authentication combinations are best?

Let’s consider some combinations of multi-factor authentication that have varying degrees of ease of use and security.

An obvious first choice is something you know and something you have, say a password and a physical access card. A cybercriminal has to obtain both to impersonate you. Not impossible, but difficult.

Another combination is a password and a voiceprint. A voiceprint recognition system records you speaking a particular passphrase and then matches your voice when you need to authenticate your identity. This is attractive because you can’t leave your voice at home or in the car.

But could your voice be forged? With the aid of digital software, it might be possible to take an existing recording of your voice, unpack and re-sequence it to produce the required phrase. This is somewhat challenging, but not impossible.

A third combination is a card and a voiceprint. This choice removes the need to remember a password, which could be stolen, and as long as you keep the physical token (the card or key) safe, it is very hard for someone else to impersonate you.

There are no perfect solutions yet and using the most secure version of authentication depends on it being offered by the service you are using, such as your bank.

Cyber security is about managing risk, so which combination of multi-factor authentication suits your needs depends on the balance you accept between usability and security.

– ref. Receiving a login code via SMS and email isn’t secure. Here’s what to use instead – http://theconversation.com/receiving-a-login-code-via-sms-and-email-isnt-secure-heres-what-to-use-instead-112767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

A landmark ruling by an Australian court is expected to have international consequences for newsrooms, with media companies on notice they face large compensation claims if they fail to take care of journalists who regularly cover traumatic events.

The Victorian County Court accepted the potential for psychological damage on those whose work requires them to report on traumatic events, including violent crimes. The court ruled on February 22 that an Age journalist be awarded $180,000 for psychological injury suffered during the decade she worked at the Melbourne-based newspaper, from 2003 to 2013.

The journalist, known in court as “YZ” to protect her identity, reported on 32 murders and many more cases as a court reporter. She covered Melbourne’s “gangland wars”, was threatened by one of its notorious figures, and found it increasingly difficult to report on events involving the death of children, such as the case of four-year-old Darcey Freeman who was thrown by her father from West Gate Bridge in 2009.

Read more: New research reveals how Australian journalists are faring four years after redundancy

After complaining that she was “done” with “death and destruction”, the journalist was transferred to the sports desk. But a senior editor later persuaded her, against her wishes, to cover the Supreme Court where she was exposed to detailed, graphic accounts of horrific crimes, including the trials of Donna Fitchett, Robert Farquharson and Darcey Freeman’s father.

The repeated exposure to traumatic events had a serious impact on her mental health. YZ took a voluntary redundancy from the newspaper in 2013.

In her court challenge, the journalist alleged The Age:

• had no system in place to enable her to deal with the trauma of her work
• failed to provide support and training in covering traumatic events, including from qualified peers
• did not intervene when she and others complained
• transferred her to court reporting after she had complained of being unable to cope with trauma experienced from previous crime reporting.

The Age contested whether the journalist was actually suffering from post-traumatic stress. It argued that even if a peer-support program had been in place it would not have made a material difference to the journalist’s experience.

Further, The Age denied it knew or should have known there was a foreseeable risk of psychological injury to its journalists and simultaneously argued that the plaintiff knew “by reason of her work she was at high risk of foreseeable injury”.

Judge Chris O’Neill found the journalist’s evidence more compelling than the media company’s, even though the psychological injury she had suffered put her at a disadvantage when being cross-examined in court.

Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in the United States, says:

This is a historic judgment – the first time in the world, to my knowledge, that a news organisation has been found liable for a reporter’s occupational PTSD.

Media companies need to take PTSD seriously

This is not the first time a journalist has sued over occupational PTSD, as Shapiro calls it, but it is the first time one has succeeded. In 2012, another Australian journalist unsuccessfully sued the same newspaper.

In that earlier case, discussed by a co-author of this article (Ricketson) in Australian Journalism Review, the judge was reluctant to accept either the psychological impact on journalists covering traumatic events or The Age’s tardiness in implementing a trauma-aware newsroom. In stark contrast, the judge in the YZ case readily accepted both these key concepts.

Historically, the idea of journalists suing their employers for occupational PTSD was unheard of. Newsroom culture dictated that journalists did whatever was asked of them, including intrusions on grieving relatives, or “death knocks” as they are known. Doing these was intrinsic to the so-called “school of hard knocks”. Cadet journalists were blooded in the newsroom by their ability to do these tasks.

The academic literature shows that newsroom culture has been a key contributor to the problem of journalists feeling unable to express concerns about covering traumatic events for fear of appearing weak and unsuited to the job.

What is alarming from the evidence provided to Judge O’Neill is the extent to which these attitudes still hold sway in contemporary newsrooms. YZ said that as a crime reporter she worked in a “blokey environment” where the implicit message was “toughen up, princess”.

Duty of care

The YZ case shows The Age had learnt little about its duty of care to journalists from the earlier case it defended. One of its own witnesses, the editorial training manager, gave evidence of his frustration at being unable to persuade management to implement a suitable training and support program. Judge O’Neill found him a compelling witness.

Read more: Media Files: Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy and former MP David Feeney on the digital disruption of media and politics

The Dart Center has a range of tip sheets on its website for self-care and peer support. What is clear from this case is that it’s not just about individual journalists and what they do, but about editors and media executive taking action.

One media organisation that is leading the way is the ABC. The national broadcaster has had a peer-support program in place for a decade.

Such programs are vital, not just for individual journalists, but for democracy and civil society. This is because whatever changes have been sweeping through the news media, there is no change in the incidence of disasters, crimes and traumatic events that need to be covered.

News workers need help. And they are beginning to demand it.

– ref. Media companies on notice over traumatised journalists after landmark court decision – http://theconversation.com/media-companies-on-notice-over-traumatised-journalists-after-landmark-court-decision-112766

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rae Thomas, Associate professor, Bond University

Sarah lives in London. She is pregnant with her first child. Her mother had gestational diabetes and Sarah is told this puts her into a higher risk category for the condition, thus she should have a test.

At 26 weeks, she has a 75g fasting glucose test to see if she has gestational diabetes. The test requires fasting, drinking the equivalent of two cans of soft drink, and takes several hours.

The next week her doctor tells her the initial fasting blood test showed a blood glucose level of 5.5 millimoles per litre (mmol/l), and that the two-hour level was 7.5mmol/l. This means she is under the cut-off and so not diagnosed with gestational diabetes. She is delighted.

Read more: How to rein in the widening disease definitions that label more healthy people as sick

Donna lives in Brisbane and is pregnant with her first child too. In Australia all women are tested for gestational diabetes and Donna is told to have a routine test for diabetes at 26 weeks.

She takes the same test which shows she has the same blood glucose level as Sarah. But because Donna lives in Australia she is diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Donna is devastated.

Donna was allocated a dedicated care provider when she was 15 weeks pregnant. But now she is considered “high risk” and is transferred to “standard care” where she has a different health provider every visit. She also has more medical appointments than before and sees a dietitian.

Since 2014, more Australian women have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes than in previous years and compared to women in other countries. But it’s not because they’re less healthy – it’s because the threshold for diagnosis has changed.

What is gestational diabetes?

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a diagnosis some pregnant women receive when they have elevated blood sugar (glucose) in pregnancy. A diagnosis can occur in several ways.

Some are diagnosed with diabetes while pregnant but have blood glucose levels high enough to be similar to diabetes diagnosed outside of pregnancy.

Some women diagnosed with gesational diabetes may still have lower blood sugar levels than those with diabetes who aren’t pregnant. Echo Grid

Others have glucose levels higher than normal and so are diagnosed with developing diabetes while pregnant but wouldn’t fulfil the usual criteria for diabetes if they weren’t pregnant. These two different women would be diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

Some women may have been diagnosed with diabetes before they were pregnant. These women would be diagnosed with pregestational diabetes.

These diagnostic pathways differ and the health risks to the mothers and babies diagnosed in these different pathways also differs, but all women are treated the same: their blood glucose levels are monitored and their diet restricted.

Why does gestational diabetes worry clinicians?

Several health problems can occur for mothers diagnosed with high glucose levels in pregnancy and their babies, including a higher risk of having a “big” baby. The average baby weighs just over 3kg but “big” babies are over the 90th percentile and weigh around 4kg.

Other risks include having a pre-term delivery, having a cesarean section and babies having low glucose levels at birth. Rarely, babies can have a stuck shoulder during birth.

Chance of having a big baby

Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome study cohort., Author provided

Chance of having a cesarean section

Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome study cohort, Author provided

Chance of the baby sustaining a shoulder or other birth injury

Shoulder dystocia is where one of the baby’s shoulders becomes stuck behind the mother’s pelvic bone during childbirth. Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome study cohort, Author provided

Women diagnosed with gestational diabetes also often report feelings of self-blame, anxiety, confusion and stress of managing a new dietary regime.

Why is Donna diagnosed and not Sarah?

There is currently no internationally uniform definition of gestational diabetes. Experts disagree about the degree of glucose intolerance that poses a sufficiently increased risk to mother or baby.

A multinational study published in 2009 was supposed to clarify the uncertainty but the results showed that increased glucose levels were a continuous risk for poor outcomes in pregnancy. There was no clear cut-off; the more glucose intolerant, the more risk to mother and baby.

An international group recommended a cut-off but different countries have adopted different testing regimes and cut-offs.

In Australia, the diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes changed in 2014 with the aim to improve diagnostic accuracy and prevent harmful health outcomes for women and their babies.

This figure shows you how complicated it is. The glucose results of 1,248 Brisbane women from the HAPO study were matched to four different international criteria for gestational diabetes. Although 191 women would have met one or more criteria, only 30 (15%) met criteria for all four.

Abbreviations: ADIPS Australasian Diabetes in Pregnancy Society; IADPSG International Association of the Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups; NICE National Institute for Clinical Excellence; ACOG American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Adapted from McIntyre HD, Gibbons KS, Lowe J, Oats JJN. Colour and pictures added., CC BY-NC-ND

Testing processes can also differ. Australia has universal screening, with a one-step process where all women have a test for diabetes, and those who test positive are diagnosed.

New Zealand has a two-step confirmatory process where women who test positive on an initial test (around 25% of women) go onto have a second confirmatory test. Only women with a positive result in the second test are diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

In some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, only women with at least one risk factor for gestational diabetes will be offered testing.

Rising rates in Australia

Rates of gestational diabetes diagnoses in Australia have increased from 2% in 1990 to nearly 14% in 2017.

Some of this is due to the increasing age of women becoming pregnant, more women being overweight, more testing, and better recording. But much of the rise has occurred since 2014 when the Australian definition changed.

Read more: Weight gain during pregnancy: how much is too much?

The percentage of women diagnosed with gestational diabetes in Mackay in Far North Queensland increased from 9.8% to 19.6% in the first year of the change.

In a Melbourne hospital, researchers found the percentage of women diagnosed with gestational diabetes increased from 5.9% in 2014 under the old criteria, to 10.3% in 2016 under the new criteria.

In both studies, there was little to no change in health outcomes for mothers or babies.

A diagnosis depends, at least in part, on where you live. Adi Saputra

So although there were significant increases in the number of women diagnosed with gestational diabetes, there are seemingly negligible health benefits.

However there were substantial health care costs. The Melbourne hospital above spent A$560,000 more caring for the additional women diagnosed with gestational diabetes under the criteria change.

Applying the same formula to the Australian population data, we estimate the net increase in Australian health costs due to the change in gestational diabetes criteria to be around A$28 million per year.

Guidelines and clinical practices are often revisited every two to five years, especially when there is emerging evidence of benefits or harms. It’s time to review how we define gestational diabetes and the impact on women, their babies and the Australian health system.

Read more: The risks associated with gestational diabetes don’t end after pregnancy

– ref. Are you at risk of being diagnosed with gestational diabetes? It depends on where you live – http://theconversation.com/are-you-at-risk-of-being-diagnosed-with-gestational-diabetes-it-depends-on-where-you-live-112515

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fan Zhang, Lecturer in Architectural Science, Griffith University

It might be blisteringly hot outside, but if you work in an office building, the chances are it’s always reassuringly cool (or cold, depending on your preference) once you walk inside.

In Australia and much of the rest of the world, it’s become standard practice for offices to be cooled or heated to a uniform 22℃. In many Australian offices, this temperature is even officially enshrined in commercial tenancy agreements.

And yet temperature is routinely one of the sore points of office politics – many office workers constantly feel too hot or cold at work. Of course, that might simply be because the air conditioning doesn’t work very well where you work. But it’s also reasonable to ask whether 22℃ is really such a magic number after all.

Our review of the available research, published recently in the journal Applied Energy, suggests not.

Read more: Shivering in summer? Sweating in winter? Your building is living a lie

The air conditioning industries certainly view 22℃ as the magic number, judging by guidelines published by the European and US industry peak bodies. Both claim that office workers’ cognitive performance at different temperatures follows an “inverted U” shaped curve, which peaks at 22℃.

Inverted-U function between temperature and cognitive performance. CREDIT

This explains why 22℃ has prevailed as the chosen figure all over the world, regardless of how much it might cost to heat or cool work spaces to that temperature in different climates. In the heat of an Australian summer this typically involves lots of cooling, but the view is that the prodigious output of comfortably cool workers more than justifies the electricity bill.

But are things really as simple as the graph above would have us believe? To answer that question, we critically reviewed almost 300 studies from a wide range of disciplines including physiology, psychology, ergonomics, neuroscience, sports science, human-technology interaction, and more.

We concluded that the relationship between temperature and performance is not an “inverted U” but rather an “extended U”. The evidence in fact suggests that human performance remains relatively stable across a broad range of acceptable temperatures, but then rapidly deteriorates once it gets any hotter or colder than this. The boundaries of the acceptable ranges depend on a lot of factors, such as the type of task you are doing, how demanding the task is, how adverse the temperature is, how skilled and motivated you are in doing your task, to name just a few. Our previous research found that workers perform just the same at 25℃, for instance.

Extended-U relationship between temperature and cognitive performance. CREDIT, Author provided

This is because humans are not just simple, passive machines. We can adapt in all sorts of ways to moderate levels of thermal stress. Common ways of adaptation include behavioural adjustment, physiological acclimatisation, psychological habituation, and probably most important of all, expectation adjustment.

So it turns out that our brains can still be at their sharpest even if it’s not exactly 22℃. But that’s not the only reason why the magic temperature is a myth. The existing rationale conflates “cognitive performance” with “office productivity”, when in reality these are two very different things.

Read more: Chill out. A slightly warmer office won’t make it too hot to think

“Performance” is a person’s ability to produce “goal-directed activity”. In performance science, a job or task is often broken down into different performance components, such as memory, concentration, logical thinking, executive function and so on. “Productivity” is the extent to which an organisation is progressing towards its systemic goals, whether that be the amount of products they sell in a year, or the number of customers served within a specific period of time and how satisfied those customers are with the quality of service they received.

But there is no standard way to quantify office productivity. The common practice is to use performance measures as a proxy for overall productivity, but this is problematic for several reasons.

The first is that simulated performance tasks do not accurately represent the nature of real work carried out in actual workplaces. Standard cognitive tasks testing your memory, concentration and vigilance performance might not faithfully capture your ability to generate useful contribution towards achieving your company’s goals.

Second, productivity can also depend on many factors besides workers’ ability to perform. These might include workplace culture, organisational structure, job security and satisfaction, workload, management style, and personal factors such as injury, loss of sleep, life events, health and well-being, or financial stress. Distracted, disgruntled or worried workers aren’t going to be very productive, regardless of what the office temperature will be.

Read more: Five tips to get the most out of your workday

There are practical implications to this. Office managers might be wasting money chasing the “best” temperature for maximum productivity while ignoring other factors that have a much larger bearing on it.

An air-conditioning setpoint which is closer to the outdoor weather, aided by Personal Comfort Systems (like a desk fan, or contact cooling/heating device) may save energy bills while maintaining high levels of workplace satisfaction and mental performance.

– ref. Why the ‘perfect’ office temperature is a myth – http://theconversation.com/why-the-perfect-office-temperature-is-a-myth-111823

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Whitzman, Professor of Urban Planning, University of Melbourne

The worst-case scenario has happened twice for young women using public transport in Melbourne in the past nine months. In June 2018, Eurydice Dixon, 23, was walking from the tram to her home, through a well-used park just north of the central city, when a young man is alleged to have stalked, raped and murdered her. In January 2019, another young man is alleged to have raped and murdered 21-year-old Palestinian exchange student Aiia Maasarwe 100 metres from the tram she took home from central Melbourne.

Even before these attacks, students reported feeling unsafe when using public transport. In April to June 2018, we undertook a survey, as part of a 17-city global study of tertiary students’ safety on public transport. We received over 500 completed surveys.

What did our survey find?

A large proportion of female students report a climate of fear on public transport. Just under half (45.1%) said they “rarely” or “never” feel safe on public transport after dark, compared to 11.3% of men.

Almost three in five women (58.9%) say they try to reduce their risk of victimisation in various ways. These include avoiding certain lines and stops, ensuring they are met at a stop and being constantly on alert. Just under half (45.4%) of female students report fear of victimisation as a reason for not using public transport.

This was not just a matter of perceptions. Almost four-fifths (79.4%) of female students and an equivalent proportion of LGBTI+ students said they had been victims of unwanted sexual gestures, comments, advances, exposed genitals, groping or being followed on public transport in the previous three years.

Over half (51.7%) of men reported having been victimised. These incidents were more likely to be gestures and comments rather than groping or being stalked.

Only 5.7% of those who had been victimised reported this to anyone in authority. This is hardly surprising. The public safety messages from police, transport authorities and tertiary educational institutions do not encourage the reporting of incidents. Instead, they emphasise the responsibility of potential victims to protect themselves.

The immediate response of police to the killing of Eurydice Dixon was this statement: “Make sure you have situational awareness. Be aware of your own personal safety. If you’ve got a mobile phone, carry it; if you’ve got any concerns, call the police.”

But both Eurydice Dixon and Aiia Maasarwe were allegedly carrying their phones and sending messages as to their whereabouts when attacked.

As Change.org executive director Sally Rugg said, these messages “suggest that the police can’t stop men from raping people, so it’s up to the women to take precautions, which is insulting to men, unhelpful and untrue”.

Outrage at any suggestion that Eurydice Dixon might have contributed to her death was rooted in women’s own widespread experience of harassment and violence. Julian Smith/AAP

Counting the cost of student safety concerns

With 18 tertiary institutions located throughout Greater Melbourne, safe public transport access touches on issues of social justice, environmental sustainability and economic productivity. The situation in most tertiary institutions is one of car dependence. For instance, at the largest Deakin University campus, 61% of students and staff drove alone to work in 2012.

The outer suburbs fare worst – 50% of these areas have “very low” or “low” public transport frequency. Yet these suburbs have very high needs for public transport in terms of the proportion of adults without cars, including many tertiary students – a concept called “transport disadvantage”. Students living in middle and outer Melbourne tend to be more dependent on public transport and more likely to travel in the evenings, two risk factors for victimisation.

Tertiary students have a huge economic impact, through the revenue they generate for their institutions, their role in the workforce, the services they use and the purchases they make. The 2016 census recorded 1.4 million university students in Australia – 26% of them, or almost 400,000, international students.

A national survey of university students found public transport is where sexual harassment is most common. Dennis Diatel/Shutterstock

In 2016, the City of Melbourne had 227,000 students living and/or studying within the municipality, with 45,000 students calling it home. A third are international fee-paying students, who often live in high-priced apartments sold on the basis of safe and convenient access to campuses.

The issues of safety are nationwide. In 2016, a study involving 30,000 students in all 39 Australian universities underscored the high rates of assault and harassment of women and sexual minorities. Public transport was the most common location for sexual harassment – 22% of incidents, as opposed to 14% on university grounds and 13% in a university teaching space. And 57% of perpetrators of sexual harassment were identified as male students from their university.

We need a better approach

There are precedents for a better approach. In 2015, Transport for London, in partnership with police, launched its “Report it to Stop it” campaign.

The campaign built on a series of videos encouraging women to come forward in reporting unwanted sexualised staring, remarks, groping and stalking on public transport. The videos also show the consequences of reporting, with a man being identified and arrested for sexual harassment. A reporting hotline can be called or texted 24 hours a day, every day.

In the first year of the campaign, reports of harassment on public transport increased by 36%, with a 40% increase in criminal charges. An evaluation after the first year found 84% of women respondents agreed the campaign “made me feel more confident to take action against unwanted sexual behaviour if it occurred”.

Our report recommends that the Victorian government work with police, public transport providers and tertiary institutions on a coordinated campaign to encourage better reporting of sexually related crimes on public transport. This would include:

• investing in a common hotline
• creating publicity materials (including posters, videos, ad campaigns) to encourage reporting by both victims and witnesses
• employing consistent messaging on all these organisations’ websites that put the onus for safety where it belongs: on offenders not to offend, and on institutions to respond properly to offences. This should include public education on consequences of offences.

We also recommend that people who make reports be treated respectfully and their concerns treated seriously. All reports should be immediately followed up and all efforts made to arrest, charge and convict offenders. All public security and authorised officers, drivers and station attendants should be trained in how to respond to complaints and concerns.

Our third recommendation is that tertiary educational institutions have a role to play in cases where offenders as well as victims are students. Very clear messaging is needed on campus that offences on public transport as well as on campus are an institutional responsibility.

Our final recommendation is that state government recognise the impacts of infrequent, unreliable and inadequate transport services on the mobility and safety of people with lower incomes and less access to cars, including tertiary students. Authorities should consider partnering with ride-sharing services to make “the last kilometre” home from some public transport stops safer and more secure. Without a coordinated campaign to tackle the root causes of victimisation and fear, putting more CCTV, lighting and officers on trains is no longer enough.

– ref. Students don’t feel safe on public transport but many have no choice but to use it – http://theconversation.com/students-dont-feel-safe-on-public-transport-but-many-have-no-choice-but-to-use-it-112225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pat Ranald, Research fellow, University of Sydney

Australia’s trade minister Simon Birmingham and his Indonesian counterpart Enggartiasto Lukita signed the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement on Monday. Only afterwards (as is often the case) did we get to see what was in it.

We might never see an independent assessment of its costs and benefits.

Beforehand the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released a summary of the good news about increased Australian agricultural and education exports, together with statements of support from export industry representatives.

It said more than 99% of Australian goods exports by value would enter Indonesia duty free or under significantly improved preferential arrangements by 2020. Indonesia will guarantee automatic issue of import permits for key products including live cattle, frozen beef, sheep meat, feed grains, rolled steel coil, citrus products, carrots and potatoes. Australia will immediately eliminate remaining tariffs on Indonesian imports into Australia.

But most deals have winners and losers. The devil is in the detailed text, released only after the ceremony.

Employment rights? The environment?

First, what’s missing. There are no chapters committing both governments to implement basic labour rights and environmental standards as defined in the United Nations agreements, and to prevent them from seeking trade advantages by reducing these rights and standards.

Such chapters are increasingly included in trade deals, like the completed but not yet implemented Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11) encompassing nations including Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru and Vietnam, and the Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement at present under negotiation.

They acknowledge that trade agreements increase competitive pressures, and are intended to prevent a race to the bottom on labour rights and environmental standards.

The fact they are missing from the Indonesia-Australia agreement shows neither government sees them as a priority.

Extra-national tribunals

The deal does include something else contentious that was included in the Trans-Trans-Pacific Partnership; so-called investor-state dispute settlement clauses, in Chapter 14, Section B.

They give special rights to foreign corporations to bypass local courts and sue governments for millions of dollars in extra-national tribunals if they believe a change in law or policy will harm their investment.

The tobacco giant Philip Morris tried it in 2011 using investor-state dispute settlement provisions in an obscure Australia Hong Kong agreement after it lost a fight against Australia’s plain packaging laws in the High Court. It eventually lost in the international tribunal, although after four years and at the cost to Australia of nearly 40 million dollars.

Temporary migrant workers

Article 12.9 of the Indonesia-Australia agreement will give Indonesia an additional 4,000 temporary working holiday visas, and a commitment over the next three years to negotiate arrangements for more “contractual service providers”.

Unlike permanent migrants, who have the same rights as other workers, temporary workers and contractual service providers are tied to one employer and can be deported if they lose their jobs, and so are vulnerable to exploitation, as shown by recent research.

After signing, the implementing legislation has to be passed by both the Australian and Indonesian parliaments before it can come into force.

And not for some time

In Australia, the next steps are for the treaty to be reviewed by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. But the likely calling of the federal election in April will dissolve this committee. The committee will be reconstituted after the election with the winning party having a majority.

Last year Labor faced a strong backlash from its membership and unions when it supported the implementing legislation for the TPP-11 despite the fact that it was contrary to the then Labor policy.

This led to the adoption of an even stronger policy at its national conference and a draft bill that would apply to both future and existing trade agreements.

It requires independent assessments of the economic, social and environmental impacts of future trade agreements before they are ratified, outlaws investor-state dispute settlement clauses and the removal of labour market testing for temporary workers, mandates labour rights and environmental clauses and requires the renegotiation of non-compliant agreements should Labor win office.

Read more: The Senate is set to approve it, but what exactly is the Trans Pacific Partnership?

If the Coalition wins office but not a Senate majority, and Labor implements its policy, a Coalition government could face opposition to ratification of the Indonesia-Australia agreement in the Senate.

If Labor wins government, it will face pressure from its base to implement its policy to conduct an independent assessment and renegotiate the provisions before ratification.

In Indonesia, which has elections in April, the deal could also face a rocky road.

Criticisms of the process led civil society groups to lodge a case which resulted in a ruling by the Indonesian Constitutional Court in November that the Indonesian President cannot approve trade agreements without parliamentary approval.

The opposition parties have been sceptical about the deal. Azam Azman Natawijana, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing trade, was quoted in The Australian saying he expected the ratification process to be protracted.

Read more: Investor rights to sue governments pose real dangers

– ref. It’s more than a free trade agreement. But what exactly have Australia and Indonesia signed? – http://theconversation.com/its-more-than-a-free-trade-agreement-but-what-exactly-have-australia-and-indonesia-signed-112853

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

At 45, it is no longer a question of whether Ben Quilty is the next big thing in Australian art, but of how big will he get – a Storrier, a Whiteley or a Nolan?

Quilty is a large exhibition of monumental paintings, selected by the curator Lisa Slade, mainly from work made by the artist over the past six years. After its inaugural showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia, as part of the Adelaide Festival, it will tour to the state galleries in Brisbane and Sydney.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Self-portrait after Afghanistan, 2012, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 130.0 x 120.0 cm. Private collection, Sydney, Courtesy the artist, photo: Mim Stirling. L/BQ/9-1

To call it a survey show may be a bit of a misnomer for apart from a couple of early Torana paintings – Quilty’s emblems of masculinity personified in a car – most of the show consists of huge slabs of paint. Some commemorate the artist’s service as an official war artist in Afghanistan, others his ultimately futile campaign to save the lives of Bali Nine pair Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. There are refugees and the life vests on Lesbos, Aboriginal massacre sites, Trump and the Last Supper as well as portraits of himself, his family and friends.

Missing are Quilty’s smaller and more intimate paintings, drawings and prints. Quilty is a remarkably prolific artist and the curatorial choice was made to focus on his more recent, “public manifesto” pieces. As the artist explained to me, “I left it completely up to the curator – the selection, the hang, everything”.

Installation view: Quilty featuring Self Portrait, the executioner and Myuran by Ben Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019. Photo: Grant Handcock.

Read more: Myuran Sukumaran’s artistic voice is raw, premature and unsettling

Quilty outlines the narrative of the exhibition,

My work is about working out how to live in this world, it’s about compassion and empathy but also anger and resistance. Through it I hope to push compassion to the front of national debate.

It is a very “noisy” exhibition, where the works scream at you from the walls, proclaiming the urgency, passion and raw emotion of the narrative content, as well as the energy and exuberance of the young artist wishing to demonstrate his mastery of a painter’s bag of tricks.

Thick sensuous slabs of oil paint, endless Rorschach blots and the juxtapositioning of negative and positive spaces are some of Quilty’s favourite formal strategies. There is a prevailing sameness of medium and technique that runs throughout this exhibition.

Installation view: Quilty featuring Irin Irinji and Fairy Bower Rorschach, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019. photo: Grant Handcock.

John Brack, arguably the finest painter Australia has produced, related to me the experience of visiting the Louvre in Paris and being overwhelmed by the great halls of masterpieces all screaming at the viewer, “look at me, I’m a genius”. Finally Brack took refuge with the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians and the silence and eternal validity of their work. The “en masse” emotional pitch of Quilty’s exhibition, after a while, loses its ability to shock.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Captain Kate Porter, After Afghanistan, 2012, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 180.0 x 170.0 cm. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Collection of Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Courtesy the artist, photo: Mim Storling. L/BQ/4-1

Quilty ascribes to the philosophy that the artist is the conscience of society and it is up to the artist to take a stand and lead on issues that matter. In his case, these include the plight of refugees, global warming and the environment, the unfinished business of recognising Australia’s Aboriginal heritage and the bloodshed of the colonial period, and the mounting anxiety associated with living in the “post-truth” age.

Quilty’s Last Supper series of paintings had their origins in the unexpected victory of President Donald Trump in 2016. They are basically eschatological images dealing with a gathering of drunken, evil elders around a festive table set to mark the end of the world. While a grotesque image of a large man with a blonde wig may be discernible in some of the paintings, an attempt is made at universality, rather than specificity.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, The Last Supper, 2016, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 204.0 x 267.0 cm. Private collection, Courtesy the artist.

These are possibly some of the more abstracted images in the exhibition where contorted masses of flesh and bone writhe as if some sort of surrealist anatomical monstrosity.

As the series progresses chronologically, the early thematic literalness is progressively abandoned as increasingly Quilty seeks to create an image of universal anxiety. These are some of the more successful paintings by the artist to date.

Quilty is an artist who appears to be always in a hurry. Passion and urgency inherent in the subject matter, perhaps may require a more distilled and deliberate technical resolution to increase the effectiveness as paintings. It is difficult to doubt the artist’s sincerity and commitment to the causes he champions, but one can question the technical resolution of some of the pieces.

If 15 years ago, images of a backyard Torana could be painted with gusto in thick impasto as a measure for male testosterone levels, the abandoned orange life vests of 2016, washed up on the island of Lesbos and presented as emblems of human sacrifice could, perhaps, call for an alternative artistic strategy.

Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Omid Ali Avaz, 2016, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 130.0 x 110.0 cm; Gift of Paul Walker and Patricia Mason in memory of Omid Ali Avaz through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2018. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Brenton McGeachie. 20183P84

Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Chaim Soutine could all empower an inanimate object with the profound power of a spiritual icon. In Quilty’s huge series of life vests, the materiality of the object is perfectly conveyed in paint, but it is left to the beholder to value add to the experience through their imagination.

Quilty is an interesting phenomenon in the Australian art scene, my hope is that he will not be eaten up by the Sydney art machine, as has been so frequently the case for artists in the past. The hope is that he will be allowed, and will allow himself, to explore and find his true potential as an artist.

Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide March 2 – June 2, touring to Queensland Art Gallery + Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 29 Jun – 13 Oct 2019 and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 9 Nov 2019 – 2 Feb 2020.

– ref. A noisy, passionate show from an artist in a hurry, Quilty has just one emotional pitch – http://theconversation.com/a-noisy-passionate-show-from-an-artist-in-a-hurry-quilty-has-just-one-emotional-pitch-112943

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Pavlovich, Assistant Lecturer in Taxation, Massey University

As part of a major review of New Zealand’s tax system, the government’s Tax Working Group recommended a comprehensive capital gains tax. New Zealand is one of few countries without a capital gains tax, and the proposal has generated outrage.

Commentators have described the proposed tax as a “mangy dog”, “an envy tax”, an “attack on the kiwi way of life” and “offensive to New Zealand values”.

Digging deeper beyond the headline-grabbing rhetoric, some commentators have expressed concern the proposed tax will have a detrimental impact on the economy by distorting investment decisions and creating an excessive administrative burden on taxpayers and the Inland Revenue Department (IRD). There are also claims about the lack of fairness in taxing “hard earned gains” that have been built up for retirement.

Missing from the debate is the fact that a capital gains tax should reduce income taxes for most New Zealanders.

Read more: Stranger than fiction. Who Labor’s capital gains tax changes will really hurt

A fair tax system

The debate strikes at the heart of two essential elements used to assess the quality of a tax: equity and efficiency.

In order to be equitable, a tax should treat people with similar economic situations in a similar way. This is called horizontal equity. Equally, taxation should fall more heavily on those who have the ability to pay. This is referred to as vertical equity.

These are the principles set out by the great Scottish economist Adam Smith in his 18th-century magnum opus The Wealth of Nations. In order to evaluate the tax proposals, New Zealand’s Tax Working Group used Smith’s principles of fairness alongside two distinctly New Zealand frameworks: Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview) and the Living Standards Framework. These two frameworks have been developed to guide policy makers toward the objective of inter-generational well-being, including the effect of policy on growing inequality and non-economic factors such as social and environmental capital.

Not taxing capital gains results in a failure to achieve both horizontal and vertical equity.

Taxing passive gains

Currently, in New Zealand, some income is taxed and some is not. The income that is taxed is typically derived from personal services (“hard work”) and from investments of capital (interest, rent and dividends). The income that is not taxed is typically derived from market movement, such as capital gains on assets.

On the whole, we have a counterintuitive approach to taxation in New Zealand where we tax “hard work” and fail to tax gains that accrue passively. Two people in similar situations are taxed differently. A person who invests in a small business that produces goods and services pays tax on all their profits, while another who invests in property that accumulates passive gains, does not.

In a world where the accumulation of capital through passive gain is increasingly being held by a smaller group, the need to tax those gains is becoming more urgent.

Statistics provided by the Tax Working Group indicate the taxation burden is flat across all income groups. This means our tax system does not operate according to Smith’s ability-to-pay principle. We have progressive tax rates but those in the highest income deciles enjoy much of their income in the form of tax-free capital gains. New Zealand’s failure to tax capital gains is inequitable.

Tax efficiency

The claims that a capital gains tax is inefficient centre around administrative issues and investment distortions. The first claim has some merit – new taxes usually result in additional administration, especially early on. The second has no merit whatsoever.

For New Zealand’s economy to thrive, greater investment in the production of goods and services is required. However, these investments are often risky. And they are taxed when profitable. Hence it is a far more attractive investment proposition to invest in low-risk assets that attract little or no tax, such as land.

Contrary to popular belief, land investment, in itself, is not a productive activity. The land is there regardless of who owns it. Someone may conduct productive activity on the land, such as farming or building houses, but the ownership itself does not produce goods or services. A capital gains tax would reduce distortion in investment choices, not increase it.

If tax applies to gains on investment in assets as it does to business profits, it will encourage investment decisions based on where the greatest return can be made, not where tax-free gains are derived. The lack of capital gains tax has been distorting investment decisions for decades.

Impact on economy

In the longer term, it would be a positive outcome to attract some investment out of property and into production of goods and services, regardless of any possible adjustments that might occur in the short term.

And the tax cuts? Missing from this debate entirely has been recognition of the Tax Working Group’s recommendation that the additional tax collected from a capital gains tax should be used to reduce income taxes. This is not a “tax grab” but a reallocation of the tax burden.

If the government were to implement the recommendations of the Tax Working Group report, most New Zealanders would find themselves with an increase in their after tax income. Greater equality would seem to be more consistent with kiwi values than the status quo.

– ref. Why a proposed capital gains tax could mean tax cuts for most New Zealanders – http://theconversation.com/why-a-proposed-capital-gains-tax-could-mean-tax-cuts-for-most-new-zealanders-112852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Woinarski, Professor (conservation biology), Charles Darwin University

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

We need nature. It gives us inspiration, health, resources, life. But we are losing it. Extinction is the most acute and irreversible manifestation of this loss.

Australian species have suffered at a disproportionate rate. Far more mammal species have become extinct in Australia than in any other country over the past 200 years.

The thylacine is the most recognised and mourned of our lost species, but the lesser bilby has gone, so too the pig-footed bandicoot, the Toolache wallaby, the white-footed rabbit-rat, along with many other mammals that lived only in Australia. The paradise parrot has joined them, the robust white-eye, the King Island emu, the Christmas Island forest skink, the southern gastric-brooding frog, the Phillip Island glory pea, and at least another 100 species that were part of the fabric of this land, part of what made Australia distinctive.

And that’s just the tally for known extinctions. Many more have been lost without ever being named. Still others hover in the graveyard – we’re not sure whether they linger or are gone.

Read more: What makes some species more likely to go extinct?

The losses continue: three Australian vertebrate species became extinct in the past decade. Most of the factors that caused the losses remain unchecked, and new threats are appearing, intensifying, expanding. Many species persist only in slivers of their former range and in a fraction of their previous abundance, and the long-established momentum of their decline will soon take them over the brink.

The toolache wallaby is just one of Australia’s many extinct species. John Gould, F.R.S., Mammals of Australia, Vol. II Plate 19, London, 1863

Unnecessarily extinct

These losses need not have happened. Almost all were predictable and preventable. They represent failures in our duty of care, legislation, policy and management. They give witness to, and warn us about, the malaise of our land and waters.

How do we staunch the wound and maintain Australia’s wildlife? It’s a problem with many facets and no single solution. Here we provide ten recommendations, based on an underlying recognition that more extinctions will be inevitable unless we treat nature as part of the essence of this country, rather than as a dispensable tangent, an economic externality.

1. We should commit to preventing any more extinctions. As a society, we need to treat our nature with more respect – our plants and animals have lived in this place for hundreds of thousands, often millions, of years. They are integral to this country. We should not deny them their existence.

2. We should craft an intergenerational social contract. We have been gifted an extraordinary nature. We have an obligation to pass to following generations a world as full of wonder, beauty and diversity as our generation has inherited.

3. We should highlight our respect for, and obligation to, nature in our constitution, just as that fusty document could be refreshed and some of its deficiencies redressed through the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Those drafting the blueprint for the way our country is governed gave little or no heed to its nature. A constitution is more than a simple administrative rule book. Countries such as Ecuador, Palau and Bhutan have constitutions that commit to caring for their natural legacy and recognise that society and nature are interdependent.

4. We should build a generation-scale funding commitment and long-term vision to escape the fickle, futile, three-year cycle of contested government funding. Environmental challenges in Australia are deeply ingrained and longstanding, and the conservation response and its resourcing need to be implemented on a scale of decades.

5. As Paul Keating stated in his landmark Redfern speech, we should all see Australia through Aboriginal eyes – more deeply feel the way the country’s heart beats; become part of the land; fit into the landscape. This can happen through teaching curricula, through reverting to Indigenous names for landmarks, through reinvigorating Indigenous land management, and through pervasive cultural respect.

6. We need to live within our environmental limits – constraining the use of water, soil and other natural resources to levels that are sustainable, restraining population growth and setting a positive example to the world in our efforts to minimise climate change.

7. We need to celebrate and learn from our successes. There are now many examples of how good management and investments can help threatened species recover. We are capable of reversing our mismanagement.

8. Funding to prevent extinctions is woefully inadequate, of course, and needs to be increased. The budgeting is opaque, but the Australian government spends about A$200 million a year on the conservation of threatened species, about 10% of what the US government outlays for its own threatened species. Understandably, our American counterparts are more successful. For context, Australians spend about A$4 billion a year caring for pet cats.

9. Environmental law needs strengthening. Too much is discretionary and enforcement is patchy. We suggest tightening the accountability for environmental failures, including extinction. Should species die out, formal inquests should be mandatory to learn the necessary lessons and make systemic improvements.

10. We need to enhance our environmental research, management and monitoring capability. Many threatened species remain poorly known and most are not adequately monitored. This makes it is hard to measure progress in response to management, or the speed of their collapse towards extinction.

Read more: Eulogy for a seastar, Australia’s first recorded marine extinction

Extinction is not inevitable. It is a failure, potentially even a crime – a theft from the future that is entirely preventable. We can and should prevent extinctions, and safeguard and celebrate the diversity of Australian life.

– ref. An end to endings: how to stop more Australian species going extinct – http://theconversation.com/an-end-to-endings-how-to-stop-more-australian-species-going-extinct-111627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

Values such as care, compassion and safety are more important to us now than they were in the 1980s. The importance of respecting authority has fallen since the beginning of the 20th century, while judging right and wrong based on loyalty to country and family has steadily risen.

Our analysis, using the Google Books database and published in Plos One, showed distinctive trends in our moral priorities between 1900 to 2007.

How we should understand these changes in moral sensibility is a fascinating problem. Morality is not rigid or monolithic. Moral Foundations Theory, for instance, puts forward five moral grammars, each with its own set of associated virtues and vices.

These are:

• purity-based morality, which is rooted in ideas of sanctity and piety. When standards of purity are violated, the reaction is disgust, and violators are seen as unclean and tarnished

• authority-based morality, which prizes duty, deference, and social order. It abhors those who show disrespect and disobedience

• fairness-based morality, which stands in opposition to authority-based morality. It judges right and wrong using values of equality, impartiality and tolerance, and disdains bias and prejudice

• ingroup-based morality, which esteems loyalty to family, community or nation, and judges those who threaten or undermine them as immoral

• harm-based morality, which values care, compassion and safety, and views wrongness in terms of suffering, mistreatment and cruelty.

People of different ages, genders, personalities, and political beliefs employ these moralities to different degrees. People on the political right, for instance, are more likely to endorse the moralities of purity, authority and ingroup loyalty. Those on the left rely more on the morality of harm and fairness. Women tend to endorse harm-based morality more than men.

We used these five moral foundations in our analysis. Put simply, our culture, at least as revealed through moral language in the books we read and write, is increasing the emphasis it places on some moral foundations and decreasing its emphasis on others.

Read more: The greatest moral challenge of our time? It’s how we think about morality itself

Historical change in moral concepts

Moral psychologists know a lot about how people today vary in their moral thinking, but they have largely ignored how moral thinking has changed historically. As cultures evolve and societies develop, people’s ways of thinking about good and evil also transform. The nature of that transformation is a matter of speculation.

One narrative suggests our recent history is one of de-moralisation. On this view, our societies have become progressively less prudish and judgmental. We have become more accepting of others, rational, irreligious, and scientific in how we approach matters of right and wrong.

A contrary narrative implies re-moralisation. By this account, our culture is increasingly censorious. More things offend and outrage us, and the growing polarisation of political debate reveals excesses of righteousness and self-righteousness.

We wanted to find which of these stories best captured how morals have changed over time, and we used an emerging field of inquiry to do so – culturomics. Culturomics uses very large text databases to track changes in cultural beliefs and values. Changing patterns of language use over time may reveal alterations in how people have made sense of their world and themselves.

Patterns of language is one of way to see how people make sense of themselves and the world. Annie Spratt/unsplash

The most common platform for examining such cultural shifts is the Google Books database. Containing more than 500 billion words from 5 million scanned and digitised books, the database is a rich source of information on the rising and falling popularity of words.

Studies using English-language books, for example, have shown increases in individualist values, revealed through decreases in “us” and increases in “me”. Studies in Chinese-language books have shown similar declines in words associated with collectivist values in recent decades.

Read more: Google’s vast library reveals the rising tide of climate-related words in literature

To date, there has only been one culturomic study of moral language. The researchers examined changes in the frequency of a set of virtue words such as “conscience”, “honesty” and “kindness” over the 20th century. As the de-moralisation narrative would predict, most of these words showed a significant decline in popularity, suggesting ideas of moral virtue became less culturally salient.

In our study, we explored changes in 20th century morality in greater depth. Each of the five foundations was represented by large, well-validated sets of virtue and vice words. We also examined changes in a set of basic moral terms such as “good”, “moral”, “righteous”; and “bad”, “evil”, and “wrong”.

We extracted the relative frequency of each word in a set for every year, standardised it so that the year in which this frequency peaked scored 100, and then averaged the words in the set. The trajectory of these averaged values over time reflects broad changes in the prominence of each form of morality.

Differently moral

We found basic moral terms (see the black line below) became dramatically scarcer in English-language books as the 20th century unfolded – which fits the de-moralisation narrative. But an equally dramatic rebound began in about 1980, implying a striking re-moralisation.

The five moral foundations, on the other hand, show a vastly changing trajectory. The purity foundation (green line) shows the same plunge and rebound as the basic moral terms. Ideas of sacredness, piety and purity, and of sin, desecration and indecency, fell until about 1980, and rose afterwards.

The other moralities show very different pathways. Perhaps surprisingly, the egalitarian morality of fairness (blue) showed no consistent rise or fall.

In contrast, the hierarchy-based morality of authority (grey) underwent a gentle decline for the first half of the century. It then sharply rose as the gathering crisis of authority shook the Western world in the late 1960s. This morality of obedience and conformity, insubordination and rebellion, then receded equally sharply through the 1970s.

Ingroup morality (orange), reflected in the communal language of loyalty and unity, insiders and outsiders, displays the clearest upward trend through the 20th century. Discernible bumps around the two world wars point to passing elevations in the “us and them” morality of threatened communities.

Finally, harm-based morality (red) presents a complex but intriguing trend. Its prominence falls from 1900 to the 1970s, interrupted by similar wartime bumps when themes of suffering and destruction became understandably urgent. But harm rises steeply from about 1980 in the absence of a single dominating global conflict.

What can we say about this?

The decades since 1980 can be seen as a period when moral concerns experienced a revival. What has driven this revival is open to speculation. Some might see the election of conservative governments in the US, UK and Australia at the start of this period as a pivotal change.

That might explain the rise of the typically conservative purity-based morality but not the even steeper increase in the typically liberal harm foundation.

Others might point to the rise of social justice concerns – or “political correctness” to critics – as the basis for the upswing in harm-based morality. The surge of harm language during early- and mid-century wartime may point to the late century rise being linked to the so called “culture wars”. Certainly, the simultaneous rise in conservative (purity) and left-liberal (harm) moralities since that time is a recipe for moral conflict and polarisation.

Read more: How we decide who and what we care about – and whether robots stand a chance

Our research has its limitations. Books are windows into only some aspects of culture. The population of English-language books is dominated by American and to a lesser extent British volumes, and we cannot isolate patterns specific to different English-speaking nations. The Google Books database does not allow us to examine changes in morality over the past decade.

Even so, this research points to some important cultural transformations. How we tend to think about matters of right and wrong is different now from how we once did and, if the trends are to be believed, how we will in the future.

– ref. Changing morals: we’re more compassionate than 100 years ago, but more judgmental too – http://theconversation.com/changing-morals-were-more-compassionate-than-100-years-ago-but-more-judgmental-too-112504

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Staples, Senior Lecturer in Management, RMIT University

The words are a little different, but the requirements are as good as unchanged. The new Australian Securities Exchange corporate governance principles adopted last week have shuffled more words than they have altered.

When the ASX first published its governance principles in 2003 it was a decade late to the global governance party and playing catch up after the A$5.3 billion collapse of HIH Insurance.

In 2003 it modelled its new code on the British 1992 Cadbury Report.

A decade and a half on it is still playing catch-up, tweaking and reheating its code a fourth time in the wake of the banking royal commission.

The 2019 reheat is straight out of the 1992 playbook.

In 1992 City of London grandee Sir Adrian Cadbury was given the job of pulling British corporate high fliers into line after a string of scandals and collapses.

While his “restoring trust” strategy worked, it was never a rigorous, evidence-driven exercise. It was instead a cobbling together of “best practice” ideas with the aim of warding off tougher legislation.

Some 25 years on, that self regulatory approach remains deeply flawed.

Australia’s 2003 code didn’t stop the company collapses during the global financial crisis or the systemic misconduct revealed in the royal commission.

The latest revisions have variously been reported as a “potent mix of new and increased recommendations for company directors” and worthy of applause, but the commentary glosses over some fairly obvious problems with self-regulation.

The changes are minor.

What do the changes do?

The tweaks focus on the composition of the board, the role of the board in instilling a culture of acting lawfully and ethically and responsibly, and integrity of corporate reports.

Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne wanted boards to take responsibility for their role in establishing culture.

The ASX is signalling that it has listened to him, saying “a listed entity should articulate and disclose its values”, but it is also signalling that it doesn’t want to go as far as incorporating corporate social responsibility via a “social license to operate”, a phrase AMP chair David Murray labelled politically correct nonsense.

Other changes re-emphasise having the right people on boards (dovetailing into debates about diversity and gender equality) and safeguarding the integrity of corporate reports in light of scandals such as the collapse of Carillion in the UK, and the Gupta corruption scandal in South Africa which engulfed international heavyweights KPMG, McKinsey and Bell Pottinger.

Why are companies writing their own rules?

While the royal commission revealed damning misconduct, its final report left commentators such as Satyajit Das, Stephen Long, Alan Kohler, Adele Ferguson, and Tim Colebatch scratching their heads.

Of most concern was the heavy onus placed on the banks themselves to resolve their problems – to self-regulate.

It creates the opportunity for the Australian Securities Exchange working with the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Business Council of Australia to claim the field for themselves.

The Institute wants to broaden directors duties but not to change board structures. The Council labels criticism “business bashing”.

Hayne wants the codes to be enforceable. But the principles are written using loose “if not, why not” language. They are anything but enforceable.

What’s the way forward?

The current ASX code should be abandoned.
If Australia is to have a corporate governance code it should be written by a government-convened commission of experts and community representatives – as has happened in Germany – rather than by and for industry insiders.

Read more: Solving deep problems with corporate governance requires more than rearranging deck chairs

– ref. Word games and virtue signalling as the stock exchange reworks its corporate governance code – http://theconversation.com/word-games-and-virtue-signalling-as-the-stock-exchange-reworks-its-corporate-governance-code-112768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Farmer, Senior Research Officer, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

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.

How much does a brain weigh? – Question from the students of Ms Young’s Grade 5/6 class, Baden Powell College, Victoria.

A newborn baby’s brain weighs about 400 grams – a bit lighter than half a litre of milk, or about the same as four medium-sized rainbow lorikeets. By the time that baby reaches her teens, her brain now weighs about 1.4 – 1.5 kilograms: one whole extra litre of milk or a whopping nine or 10 extra lorikeets!

And while a teenager’s brain is still learning and developing, it won’t get much bigger in size – an adult brain is about 1.4 – 1.5kg too.

That 1.5 kilograms takes up about 1300 millilitres, and is about 70% water. The remaining 30% is made up of fat and protein with a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt.

This makes the brain sound quite similar to pancakes but the brain is much more useful for thinking and (as you might imagine) far less delicious than pancakes.

I don’t have to imagine how delicious brains are because I once tried eating some at a Teppanyaki restaurant in Japan. At least, I think that it was brain: it was listed on the menu as “meat of the head” and I think that it was chicken brain. At least, I hope that it was chicken brain. At the time, I wished that it was pancakes.

Delicious or not, these ingredients make up the 86 billion thinking cells (called “neurons”) and 80 billion or so supporting cells that, together, make up your brain.

This is a whole lot of cells; it is similar to the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy!

Your brain has lots of different parts that all take care of different things, like memory, movement, feelings, imagination. Shutterstock

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do our brains freak us out with scary dreams?

Big brains, little brains

One of the smallest “brains” belongs to a microscopic worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. It only has 302 brain cells, each one with its own name.

The sperm whale, on the other hand, has a whopping big brain. The biggest brain on Earth, in fact. It is 8 litres: about the size of a small school backpack, or considerably more lorikeet parrots than you could fit into a small school backpack. But please, do not try this at home. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

The biggest brain on Earth belongs to the sperm whale. Shutterstock

“But wait!” I hear you cry. “The blue whale is the biggest whale on Earth. Why doesn’t it have the biggest brain?!”.

Blue whales might be the biggest whales, but they don’t have the biggest brains. Unlike blue whales, sperm whales need to do complicated things like herding and hunting in order to survive.

These tricky tasks require more brain power than simple filter-feeding (which is what blue whales do), and that may be why sperm whales have bigger brains.

As for your brain, you can keep it healthy by eating healthy food (so, not pancakes… OK some pancakes), drinking lots of water, getting some exercise, thinking and using your imagination.

You can use your imagination to wonder what brains taste like or imagine how big your school bag would have to be to comfortably accommodate 64 lorikeets.

Above all, keep thinking up excellent questions about the world around you.

David Farmer is the brains (pun absolutely intended) behind the Melbourne Comedy Festival show “Why You’re Not Dead Yet” which is all about brain function.

Read more: Curious Kids: If Australia is at the bottom of the world, why are we the right way up?

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: how much does a brain weigh? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-much-does-a-brain-weigh-112000

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

Review: Two Feet, Adelaide Festival

There are many reasons for a dance choreographer to revisit a work from their back catalogue. With Two Feet, an exhilarating two-hour work that brought audiences to their feet for the opening weekend of the Adelaide Festival, acclaimed Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard has added another.

When Two Feet premiered in 1988, Tankard herself played one of the early 20th century’s greatest ballerinas, Russian Olga Spessivtzeva. She has recreated the work for one of the most brilliant ballet dancers of the current generation, Russian Natalia Osipova.

Tankard has a long association with Adelaide, and it was during her tenure as Artistic Director of the Australian Dance Theatre (1993-1999) that the company developed a solid international reputation. Local audiences would recognise aspects of her quirky, homespun style in this work, while it also bears the traces of her six years as a featured dancer with Pina Bausch’s famed Wuppertaler Tanztheatre.

Spessivtzeva was a dancer known for her work with the Ballet Russes and Paris Opera Ballet from 1916-1934, and perhaps more famously, for a series of mental breakdowns. In 1934, following a successful Australian tour, she was found wandering down a deserted road outside of Sydney.

Natalia Osipova plays fellow Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva. Both dancers are renowned for their interpretations of Giselle. Regis Lansac

The dancer’s most famous role was that of the title character in Giselle, one of the great 19th century romantic operas. And like Giselle, whose madness is expressed by the compulsion to dance to the point of being consumed by it, Spessivtzeva was known for her fanaticism and a perfectionism that ultimately proved too onerous for her body.

She famously identified with the character, and her interpretation of the role, which includes a tragic scene in which she literally dances herself to death, has remained a fixed reference point for all future Giselles.

Read more: Dada Masilo’s Giselle is a courageous retelling for our times

Enter Osipova, who like Spessivtzeva, has been critically acclaimed for her Giselle. She has been lauded both for her raw, emotional approach to the character, but also for her high leaps, which make it appear as though she is flying across the stage in the ballet’s key dance scenes. In an interview late last year Tankard observed of Osipova, “she’s like a modern day Olga”.

Yet this is no autobiography of Spessivtzeva – we know little of her actual inner emotional life. Instead, with new sequences developed with Osipova, Tankard offers up a rich piece of dance theatre which riffs on what would today be recognised as Olga’s struggle with depression. Known for her obsessive repetition of dance exercises along the barre prior to performing, Olga’s mental illness is linked to the rigorous demands of dance training.

The internal logic of the work weaves a twisted but uncannily connected web connecting Osipova and her mental state with the extreme, cruel, and sometimes comic ways in which dance is taught and learned.

Spessivtzeva was known for her obsessive dance training along the barre. Regis Lansac

One of the comic sequences is drawn from a 1957 primer, Every Child’s Book of Dance and Ballet, which sets out with diagrams and writing how a young girl is to perform the absurdly over-mimed “Shrimp” dance. Osipova attempts to master the steps as they are authoritatively delivered via voice-over in English and Russian.

The instructions are frequently ridiculous, as the girl, net in hand, is instructed how to dance out the capture and eventual release of a large shrimp while acting cute for the audience. In its silliness, it is also vaguely menacing.

So too are some of Osipova’s own revelations, as when she reveals in one sequence that her mother frequently found her with her legs strapped behind her head to the bed post. As she demonstrates the pose, she tells us, “I never felt anything because I’m used to pain”.

Adding further depth to this richly layered show were the projections of Tankard’s long-time collaborator Regis Lansac. His photographic and video images created the physical world that commented on, shaped, encased, and made the dance possible.

Regis Lansac’s photographic and video projections added a rich layer to Tankard’s production. Regis Lansac

Nowhere were Lansac’s projections more magical and necessary than in the work’s final scene. Mirroring Giselle’s breakdown, Olga finds herself in a forest, where she dances herself into an emotional and physical breakdown. We feel the chill of the air as a forest of trees is revealed in the mist, then reflected in the light pool of water that floods the stage.

When Osipova, as Olga playing both Giselle and herself enters this world in a calf-length tutu, the juxtaposition of the elegant, Romantic world, and a menacing natural one elevate the drama. Osipova’s Olga is now a body that is contained, restrained, confined. Her movements are jerky, defeated, those of someone struggling in vain to discipline an uncooperative body.

As she falls, repeatedly, we are witnessing an excruciating beauty unfolding in front of us. There is no happy ending here, only the dancer and the audience alone together, in the dark.

Two Feet is playing as part of the Adelaide Festival until March 5.

– ref. Meryl Tankard revisits Two Feet, the tragic story of a dancer’s perfectionism – http://theconversation.com/meryl-tankard-revisits-two-feet-the-tragic-story-of-a-dancers-perfectionism-112947

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sabine Braat, Biostatistician, University of Melbourne

This article is in the series This is research, where we ask academics to share and discuss open access articles that reveal important aspects of science.

Today’s piece explains the term “number needed to treat” or NNT. It’s a way to get a sense of whether the treatment you’re considering is likely to have an impact or not.

Whether it’s quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake or making healthier dietary choices, many of us have habits we’d like to change. But it’s really hard to know which treatment path to take.

To advise their patients on the best of course of action, doctors sometimes compare treatments using something called the “number needed to treat” (NNT).

In deciding whether to embark on a course of treatment, NNT can help. But the term is easily misunderstood by patients, and doctors as well.

So it’s useful to break down what NNT means.

Read more: Trust Me, I’m An Expert: What research says about how to stick to your New Year’s resolutions

Comparing treatments

The NNT is a measure used to compare the benefits and harms of treatments. It was developed by three epidemiologists about 30 years ago.

Doctors like it for a couple of reasons:

1. it’s easy to calculate
2. it allows doctors to describe the effect of a treatment in terms of the number of patients that need to be treated in order to help one additional patient.

To understand how, let’s imagine we are running a randomised controlled trial to compare the effect of two different treatments intended to help smokers quit. Quitting smoking is notoriously hard, even with good intentions.

Read more: Randomised control trials: what makes them the gold standard in medical research?

Study participants are randomly assigned to a prescribed treatment (for example, a drug, let’s call it “NoSmoke”) or some minimal behavioural support (such as counselling).

Suppose we find that 16.5% of the smokers who received NoSmoke stopped smoking, while only 7.5% of those who received counselling quit.

It would seem obvious to compare these treatments by looking at the difference between these two percentages. Since 16.5% is greater than 7.5% (by 9%!), we could conclude that NoSmoke is more beneficial than counselling in helping people to stop smoking.

Looking at the percentages of smokers that quit, NoSmoke seems to be more effective than counselling. Karen Lamb and Sabine Braat, Author provided

Although the difference in percentages is a useful way to compare the effect of treatments it can be tricky to interpret because it is abstract: it involves a probability. In our example, the probability for a person to stop smoking increases from 7.5% with counselling to 16.5% with NoSmoke.

The NNT gives us an alternative way to understand the impact of a treatment.

Real outcomes for patients

In this smoking example, the NNT helps you see how many patients need to receive a stop smoking treatment (compared to another treatment) for one more patient to stop smoking.

Read more: Why Australian prisoners are smoking nicotine-infused tea leaves

The NNT is obtained by dividing 100% by the difference in percentages of patients with the outcome. In our example above, the NNT is about 11 (100 divided by 9 – since 16.5 minus 7.5 is 9). This means that to have one additional smoker quitting, on average 11 smokers need to use NoSmoke (rather than receive minimal behavioural support).

A higher NNT means that more patients need to receive the new treatment in order for one additional patient to reach the outcome compared to the reference treatment.

Nicotine replacement therapy

Let’s look at some real data. In a large review paper published in 2016, the NNT for all types of nicotine replacement therapy was reported to be 23. This means that on average 23 smokers need to receive nicotine replacement therapy – such as a patch, gum, or lozenge – for one additional smoker to quit (compared to behavioural support only).

Comparing this value with our hypothetical clinical trial NoSmoke data presented above, we can quickly see that the use of NoSmoke (which had an NNT of 11) is about 2 times more likely to result in quitting than use of nicotine replacement therapy.

NNT values show how many people need to be treated in order for a treatment to be effective for one person. Karen Lamb and Sabine Braat, Author provided

The ideal NNT for treatment benefit is 1, in which case every single patient on the new treatment should benefit from receiving this new treatment.

The NNT can express both benefits and harms. For instance, the NNT for heart palpitations or chest pains with nicotine replacement therapy is 94: this means on average 94 persons would have to use nicotine replacement therapy to observe one additional person with a harmful outcome (heart palpitations or chest pains).

Understanding the NNT

While the use of NNT is widespread, it has been reported that the NNT is actually frequently misunderstood by patients and doctors alike.

In addition, shortcomings of the NNT are well described in the scientific literature. The NNT varies with the risk of the outcome under the reference treatment (in our example this is the “risk” of stopping smoking for those that received counselling) and depends on duration of treatment and follow-up. These factors should be similar between studies when comparing NNTs.

The NNT may claim to be a helpful way to compare treatments quickly, however measures such as the difference in percentages may actually be easier to grasp and less likely to mislead both patient and doctor.

The open access research paper referred to in this analysis is Nicotine receptor partial agonists for smoking cessation.

– ref. Want to quit a bad habit? Here’s one way to compare treatments – http://theconversation.com/want-to-quit-a-bad-habit-heres-one-way-to-compare-treatments-109144