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

University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini speaks with Michelle Grattan about the week in politics. They discuss Scott Morrison’s attempt to burnish the Coalition’s climate change credentials; focus group research into the independent push in Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah; the appointment of the new chair of the ABC, Ita Buttrose; and the conviction of Cardinal George Pell.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Morrison’s climate pitch to voters and Warringah votes – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-morrisons-climate-pitch-to-voters-and-warringah-votes-112773

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vivienne Glance, Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, University of Western Australia

Review: Giselle, Perth Festival

To reimagine a classic and present it as a story relevant for our times takes more than fiddling around the edges. It requires a courageous retelling, and that is just what South African dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo has done with her Giselle.

This ballet, based on a Slavic legend, was first performed in 1841 and set in the Middle Ages.

In the original story, Giselle is courted by the nobleman, Albrecht. But they cannot be together, as he is already betrothed. Giselle suffers deeply when he is forced to leave her and she dies of a broken heart. Soon her spirit is roused from her grave by spirits known as the Wilis and their queen, Myrtha.

These avenging ghosts force any man they encounter to dance until he dies of exhaustion. When Albrecht faces this terrible fate, Giselle rescues him. Through this act of forgiveness she is released from the hold of the Wilis and her spirit can rest.

Dada Masilo is having none of this. She follows the original story outline but changes it in significant ways, making the story cleverly contemporary.

Dada Masilo’s retelling of Giselle is unconventional. Stella Olivier

This is apparent from the start. The original medieval peasants bringing in the grape harvest are now farmers toiling in the field under a hot sun. The work is back-breaking and the local “nobles” are cruel and arrogant.

When Albrecht courts Giselle we are swept up in the romance through their beautiful pas de deux. But in this version, when he reunites with Bathilde, his equal and his betrothed, he does so with relish and without any thought of Giselle.

This makes his actions towards her all the more terrible: it is deliberate abuse, not an impossible love between two people from different social classes as in the original.

The most emphatic change in this retelling, though, is the role of the Wilis. They become avenging spirits who are powerful and have agency. The men they meet are tormented and beaten to death, rather than dying from exhaustion. Their queen, Myrtha, is a sangoma, a shaman-like figure from South Africa who communicates with ancestors but is also a traditional healer.

The set for Masilo’s production is sparse, with projections and lighting creating the settings. The opening image of an idyllic landscape is ironic, presented in black and white like a pen and ink drawing. Other images of clouds which slowly change colour create a range of atmospheres, from warm autumn days to ominous sunsets.

The most emphatic change in this retelling is to the role of the Wilis. John Hogg

The effect is to keep our focus firmly on the dancers, who are all sensational. There is no corps de ballet here to provide crowd scenes or spectacle, only a company of 12 dancers. But they are also actors, using voice, song, chant and expression to convey the story.

As Giselle, Masilo is brilliant, with an impressive emotional range. We journey with her as she transforms from being a carefree, cheeky, young woman, through her humiliation, anger and then revenge.

Xola Willie as Albrecht is charismatic and seductive, the perfect portrayal of the narcissist we cannot help but like, even though we know Giselle will suffer at his hands.

When he finally rejects her for Bathilde, danced by an impressive Liyabuya Gongo, Giselle disintegrates before our eyes. Her solo dance before her death is filled with pain and equally painful to watch.

The slow funeral procession across the stage that follows is accompanied by a recording of a traditional hymn, Hamba Nhliziyo Yami. The lyrics translate as “Go to heaven my heart, for there is no peace on earth”, and the scene ends with one moving moment as Giselle’s mother (Sinazo Bokolo) picks up her child and carries her away.

Llewellyn Mnguni’s Queen Myrtha is portrayed as androgynous. The power and intensity of this performance pulls us into the mystical world of the Wilis as they wreak their revenge.

The choreography throughout is sensational. It blends classical ballet with contemporary dance, but is rooted firmly in the energy and movements seen in South Africa, such as traditional Zulu dance.

The sparse set for Masilo’s Giselle allows the dancers to shine. Stella Olivier

The contemporary soundtrack has echoes of the original orchestral arrangement but is mixed with drums, electronica and pumping bass lines. Like the choreography, it blended many musical styles and was a fitting accompaniment. However, even though the recorded music was excellent, it lacked the vibrancy of a live performance.

The final scene after the Wilis have killed Albrecht is both magical and sinister. It reflects the funeral procession across the stage that ended Act One, but this time the dancers walk in the opposite direction. One by one they throw a white powder into the air. This hangs like clouds above as each of them exits, symbolising their release from the spirit world to eternal rest.

Giselle is the last to leave. She approaches Albrecht’s prone body, throws her powder, then walks over him as if he did not exist. This Giselle’s innocence has turned to revenge, and she does not forgive.

Giselle is being performed as part of the 2019 Perth Festival until March 2.

– ref. Dada Masilo’s Giselle is a courageous retelling for our times – http://theconversation.com/dada-masilos-giselle-is-a-courageous-retelling-for-our-times-112764

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Boland, Senior Lecturer of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Charles Darwin University

Three people were taken to hospital following a chemical spill at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation facility at Lucas Heights this morning.

Despite the Sydney site’s notoriety as home to Australia’s only nuclear reactor, the ANSTO said the spill involved “approx 250mL of sodium hydroxide”, a substance that does not contain radioactive material.

Sodium hydroxide can be bought at many supermarkets or hardware stores for less than A$10 a kilogram.

Read more: The battle against bugs: it’s time to end chemical warfare

Most people will have used sodium hydroxide (NaOH – commonly known as caustic soda or lye) at some point in their life, either in chemistry classes at school or as a strong cleaning agent in the home.

The chemical also has many other uses as varied as cleaning drains, making soap, and producing rocket fuel.

Even though the chemical is easily available, it can still be dangerous.

Don’t try this at home

At room temperature, NaOH is a white solid that looks something like its close relative table salt (NaCl – sodium chloride).

It dissolves readily in water, in a process that causes the mixture to heat up. In many industrial uses, such as the one in the incident at Lucas Heights, the NaOH is dissolved in water and used as such.

Solid NaOH should not be handled with bare skin. Any water on the skin (such as sweat), will dissolve some of the solid NaOH, creating a very concentrated solution directly in contact with the skin.

The chemistry of what happens when NaOH comes into contact with the skin is not dependent upon the concentration of material. The only thing that happens if there is more NaOH is that the reactions happen faster, thus causing more damage, more quickly.

Not just chemical burns

The main danger from skin contact is that the sodium hydroxide reacts with the fats (and proteins) that make up the outside of the cells in skin.

This reaction has two effects. One is the obvious fact that if the cell membranes break down, the cells die. The other is, just like dissolving in water, the reaction with the membranes gives out heat.

This reaction is known as saponification – a process for making soap. If you’ve ever spilled a dilute solution of sodium hydroxide on your skin, and then washed it off with water, you’ve probably been surprised by the soapy sensation of the process.

The reaction of the NaOH with your skin literally produces soap.

In small quantities on the outer layer of skin, this is not particularly dangerous, but in concentrated form, the reaction can very quickly burn a hole through the skin and into the tissue beneath.

Anyone who has seen the 1999 movie Fight Club will know how painful that can be.

But this process of dissolving otherwise insoluble fats is the main household use for sodium hydroxide. When mixed with the fats that sometimes deposit in drains, the sodium hydroxide reacts to turn them into water soluble soap, which can then be washed away.

Treat like any other burn

The treatment for almost all burns is the same. Remove the source of the burn (in this case the sodium hydroxide) and then flush the affected area for 20 minutes with cold running water.

In the case of a chemical burn, using copious amounts of running water will quickly dilute and wash away the cause of the burn.

If the victim has the burning chemical on their clothing, try to cut off the clothing rather than pull it off over the head, risking spreading the chemical to unaffected parts of the patient.

Accidents do happen

We are often surrounded by chemicals that pose potential serious dangers if incorrectly handled. This is doubly true for many industrial sites.

Read more: Your car is more likely to be hacked by your mechanic than a terrorist

For this reason we should be aware of their presence in our environment, the hazards that they pose, how to handle them safely, and how to respond correctly in the event of a spillage or contact with the body.

The three staff members at Lucas Heights were reportedly taken to the nearby Sutherland Hospital and were said to be in a stable condition.

– ref. Spill at a nuclear facility shows potential burn risks from a household chemical – http://theconversation.com/spill-at-a-nuclear-facility-shows-potential-burn-risks-from-a-household-chemical-112763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Becher, Associate Professor of Business Law, Victoria University of Wellington

The political economy of digital capitalism is largely premised on a new exchange: individuals enjoy cheap or free services and goods in exchange for their personal information.

Put simply, individuals often pay online, consciously or unintentionally, with their data and privacy. As a result, companies hold a vast amount of information on consumers, and consumers allegedly agree to that practice. But as our research shows, online privacy agreements are largely incomprehensible.

Read more: Why are Australians still using Facebook?

Regulating privacy

Privacy issues are becoming more and more salient, in part due to enormous privacy scandals. Perhaps most conspicuously, a massive public protest erupted in response to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. In this case, the data of millions of people’s Facebook profiles was harvested. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified before two US senate committees about the company’s privacy practices.

Read more: Why you should talk to your children about Cambridge Analytica

Privacy is now also at the forefront of policy making. The most systematic legislative attempt to make more order in the messy world of privacy is the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It comes as no surprise that European legislature was breaking the ground in this realm. The EU is known to have a strong focus on citizens’ rights. It is committed to data protection, and to consumer protection more generally.

The GDPR came into force in May 2018. Its primary objective is to level the playing field and give individuals more control over their personal data. The GDPR also aspires to force companies to be more transparent around data collection and more cautious about its usage.

Clear and plain language

Another interesting aspect of the GDPR is its requirement to clearly communicate privacy terms to end users. In this respect, the GDPR requires companies to use “clear and plain language” in their privacy agreements.

Making privacy policies readable may bring about a few notable benefits. For starters, drafting readable policies better respects users’ autonomy. Beyond that, readability can contribute to better comprehension of legal texts. This, in turn, can make such texts more salient, leading companies to draft more balanced terms.

But does this indeed materialise? In our study (with Professor Uri Benoliel from Israel), we examined whether, half a year post-GDPR, companies present users with online privacy agreements that are readable. We applied two well-established linguistic tools: the Flesch Reading Ease test and the Flesch-Kincaid test. Both tests are based on the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per word.

We measured the readability of more than 200 privacy policies. We gathered these policies from the most popular English websites in the UK and Ireland. Our sample included policies used by companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, Youtube, and the BBC.

We had good reasons to be optimistic. The GDPR receives a lot of attention. It employs harsh penalties, which can presumably serve as effective deterrence. Additionally, the cultural convention is that Europeans generally tend to be compliant and law abiding.

But we were disappointed. Instead of the recommended Flesch-Kincaid score of 8th grade for consumer-related materials, understanding the average policy in our sample requires almost 13 years of education. Almost all the privacy policies in our sample, about 97%, received a higher than recommended score.

Readability remains a challenge

The European legislature thought that using plain language in privacy agreements can be part of a better, holistic approach to users’ privacy. We believe this is an idea worth exploring.

While not a magic bullet, readability can prove to be important for users’ privacy. But despite the GDPR’s requirement, European citizens still encounter privacy policies that are largely unreadable.

Does the GDPR just bark, but not bite? While it is perhaps too early to say, we located 24 websites in our sample that included their privacy policies as drafted pre-GDPR. We then measured their readability. The results show that current privacy policies are only slightly more readable than the older ones.

This may offer some lessons. Most notably perhaps, good intentions and extensive legislation may not suffice. Merely having a general, vague law is not likely to yield the anticipated change.

– ref. Should online users be bound by their privacy agreements? – http://theconversation.com/should-online-users-be-bound-by-their-privacy-agreements-112301

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Hall, Professor of Health Economics and Director, Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation, University of Technology Sydney

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.

Over the last 35 years, Medicare has given Australians access to high-quality health care at a reasonable cost. But, despite our justifiable pride in Medicare, it’s time to reconsider the way we pay for health care.

Australia’s Medicare system is a A$20 billion-a-year program. It subsidises most of our out-of-hospital doctor consultations, blood tests, X-rays and scans, physio appointments, eye tests and many other health services. It’s based on a long list of items and each time an item is provided, Medicare pays a benefit.

But paying doctors and other health providers a set fee for each service they deliver is not delivering optimal value for the health dollar. There are two reasons for this.

First, it encourages a higher volume of services, but not necessarily better-value services.

Second, it constrains doctors into delivering the care based on the items in the schedule, which often don’t meet the needs of complex patients.

Read more: Explainer: what is Medicare and how does it work?

One promising alternative is “bundled payments”. Rather than paying doctors a “fee for service”, they would be paid a prospective lump sum to care for the patient’s medical problem, over a specified period.

The lump sum would be a pooled payment for all services provided to treat the condition. The provider’s role would be to coordinate the patient’s care across different parts of the health system and work with a range of health professionals to deliver high-quality care.

This would give doctors greater flexibility to manage the care patients need. At the same time, doctors would be held accountable via measurements of the quality of their care.

Importantly, this would give patients greater access to a broader range of services and make it easier to navigate our complicated health system.

Why health costs are rising

Between 1984 and 2018, Australian government spending on services outside of hospitals has increased from A$426 to A$818 per person, after adjusting for inflation.

This increase is almost entirely due to service volume. Back in 1984, the average Australian made 7.25 out-of-hospital Medicare claims a year. By 2018, this had escalated to 15.34; a doubling in the average number of claims.

The biggest growth has been in the number of pathology claims for blood and tissue tests (1.4 in 1984 to 5.2 in 2018), followed by GP consultations (4.2 compared to 6.3) and diagnostic imaging, including X-rays and other types of scans (0.3 versus 1.0).

This is not just the result of population ageing. At every age, we are making more Medicare claims. In 1985, people aged between 75 and 84 made 16.1 Medicare claims per year. In 2018, this number had grown to 44.6 claims per person per year.

Australians are making many more Medicare claims than they used to. Dave Hunt/AAP

Medicare prices have been very steady. For GP consultations, for example, the benefit paid per service has increased by 72% over the 35-year period, and mostly as a direct result of policy initiatives such as the Strengthening Medicare reforms introduced in 2004-05.

In fact, since 2005, the benefit per service has declined by 6% in real terms. This is a result, in part, of the Medicare freeze imposed by government between 2012 and 2018.

So price control is only one part of constraining expenditure growth. The other is the volume of services.

Read more: FactCheck: has Medicare spending more than doubled in the last decade?

The medical care market has undergone considerable corporatisation. Corporate entities now own around 10% to 15% of all GP practices in Australia.

Corporate entities can own and run primary care practices as well as pathology laboratories, diagnostic imaging services and even pharmacies. This creates more incentive to refer patients to their own businesses for blood tests and imaging to increase the volume of claims, and therefore increase profits.

Greater spending doesn’t mean better care

The second critique of Medicare is that current funding arrangements create disincentives for delivering optimum care over a longer period, particularly for complex patients who require multiple services from multiple providers. They might have cancer, for instance, or multiple chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes or dementia.

Currently, Medicare makes a payment for every claim made within what we call an “episode of care” – a set of services to treat a condition, or a procedure. Each provider in that episode has an incentive to increase their own volume of care, but there are virtually no incentives to coordinate or deliver an optimum pathway of care for the patient.

Further, there are too few opportunities and rewards in this system to give doctors flexibility to offer different types of care for patients. This includes care provided by nurses, physiotherapists or dietitians; email or telephone consultations; patient education; and coordination services.

Instead, pay doctors a lump sum

The main feature of a good payment system is that it creates the right incentives for providers and patients to use health care resources effectively, efficiently and equitably.

Bundling payment involves working out the best care pathways for each condition. Cancer, for example, is a complex disease that requires ongoing care from primary, specialist and hospital services.

Under a bundled payment, the patient’s GP clinic would be paid a lump sum to ensure the patient receives all the services they need. This includes consultations, health checks, blood tests, physiotherapy, dietetics, patient education, and so on. The GP would have more control over how each of those services is delivered.

Sometimes will be best cared for by a physiotherapist. Africa Studio/Shutterstock

If viable, the GP could bring some of these services into their practice, or they could subcontract them to other organisations.

The practice would be held accountable for providing high-quality care through various performance measures. These could range from patient satisfaction measures to objective measures such as timeliness of care or fewer avoidable complications. Payments could, in part, be made conditional on meeting performance targets.

Ultimately, because we are giving the provider more say over how care is delivered, the model of care can be more easily adapted to the needs of the patient.

Health reform must be based on evidence

In the small number of countries where bundled payments have been piloted, they are associated with improved quality, financial savings and increased patient satisfaction.

A bundled payment for hip-fracture patients in England, for example, resulted in more patients receiving surgery within 48 hours after admission and lower death rates.

Read more: Creating a better health system: lessons from England

Although these studies show promise, the evidence base is still in its infancy.

Successful reform in this area will require careful design of the bundles, the payment levels and patient selection process, as well as how best to monitor quality care. In particular it requires robust evidence to determine:

• what constitutes an optimal bundle of care for a particular condition
• the cost of delivering those services
• how the payment should be adjusted for the specific characteristics of a patient
• the role performance targets may play in motivating health providers to deliver high-quality care.

Read more: Is it time to ditch the private health insurance rebate? It’s a question Labor can’t ignore

– ref. More visits to the doctor doesn’t mean better care – it’s time for a Medicare shake-up – http://theconversation.com/more-visits-to-the-doctor-doesnt-mean-better-care-its-time-for-a-medicare-shake-up-110884

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claudia Baldwin, Associate Professor, Urban Design and Town Planning, Sustainability Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast

Heatwaves have killed more Australians than road accidents, fires, floods and all other natural disasters combined. Although recent research shows extreme cold is a worry in some parts of Australia, our hottest summer on record points to more heat-related deaths to come. The record heatwaves have highlighted the damaging effects of heat stress. Understandably, it’s becoming a major public health challenge.

Read more: 2018-19 was Australia’s hottest summer on record, with a warm autumn likely too

The risk of extreme heat events and the adverse impacts on older people has been extensively discussed in research. Remarkably, very little attention has been paid to the role of urban greenery in reducing heat stress for seniors.

Older people are particularly at risk of heat stress. Pre-existing medical conditions and limited mobility increase their vulnerability. Deaths of older people increase during extreme heat events.

The physical features of urban areas shape the capacity of older adults to engage in many activities when it’s hot. These include vegetation volume and coverage, thermal design, and the extent of shading in public areas and walkways. Increasing urban greenery may offer a way to improve older people’s comfort and social experience.

Read more: Building cool cities for a hot future

Ageing adds urgency to greening

It is expected 20% of the global population will be older than 60 by 2050. The figure for Australia is even higher, at 23%. This means that by 2050 around one in four Australians will be more vulnerable to extreme heat.

Older people are more vulnerable to heat stress. PorporLing/Shutterstock

Climate change may make the problem worse by fuelling even more extreme heat events.

Planning our urban centres to meet the needs of a rapidly ageing population is a matter of urgency. Urban greening to reduce their vulnerability to heat stress should be central to this agenda. It can also improve people’s quality of life, reduce social isolation and loneliness, and ease the burden on health systems.

An important task is matching the design of communities with the needs of an ageing population. Where older adults live and the quality of their local areas strongly influence their lived experiences. Yet recent research found the experiences of seniors were often not accounted for in research on neighbourhood design.

Read more: Eight simple changes to our neighbourhoods can help us age well

What about aged care?

People face choices about where they live as they age. The common choices are to “age in place” or to move into aged care.

Ageing in place includes living in one’s own home or co-habiting with relatives or friends. Around 90% of Australian seniors choose this option, with the remainder opting for aged-care facilities.

If one in ten Australian seniors live in aged-care facilities, it is clear these should be designed to minimise heat stress. This isn’t just good for residents; it may also benefit operators by lowering health-care and electricity costs.

While these facilities are purpose-built for older people, many in Australia were built well over a decade ago, when heat stress was not such a large concern. Many more facilities are being built now and will be into the future. Yet it is uncertain whether they are being actively designed to reduce the impacts of heat.

Read more: Australian cities are lagging behind in greening up their buildings

What has our research found?

We recently conducted a focus group to investigate this issue. Participants were senior managers from four large corporate providers of aged care in Australia. We investigated if and how providers try to minimise heat stress through design. We also sought to understand the rationales used to support these design approaches.

Several participants reported on refurbishments that they expect will have cooling effects. Cited design approaches included green roofs and walls, as well as sensory gardens. Other expected benefits included reducing anxiety and improving the mental health of residents.

The fact that single design interventions could produce multiple benefits improved the potential for corporate buy-in. Participants expected that increasing green space and green cover would give their facilities a competitive advantage by attracting more clients and providing a better working environment for staff.

Participants also reported on challenges of including greening in their projects. For example, the benefits of trees were weighed against concerns about roots disrupting footpaths and becoming trip hazards. Species selection was another concern, with fears that inappropriate plants could die and undermine support for greening programs.

Our research suggests that more can be done to make cities hospitable for older people, especially during extreme heat. Urban greening is a start. Encouraging aged-care providers to adopt green infrastructure will have benefits. But we should also consider reforms to planning systems and urban design to better protect older people who choose to age in place.

Read more: If planners understand it’s cool to green cities, what’s stopping them?

– ref. How do we save ageing Australians from the heat? Greening our cities is a good start – http://theconversation.com/how-do-we-save-ageing-australians-from-the-heat-greening-our-cities-is-a-good-start-112613

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dong-Xu Liu, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology

According to the latest GLOBOCAN cancer database, New Zealand’s breast cancer incidence rate is among the highest in the world. It affects one in nine women in their lifetime and accounts for almost half of all cancers for women in New Zealand.

Worldwide, about 2.1 million women develop breast cancer every year, and despite better treatment options, more than 627,000 die from the disease.

More than 75% of all breast cancers are oestrogen-dependent, and endocrine therapy (also known as hormonal therapy) is currently the most effective form of treatment. But a significant proportion of patients relapse and their tumours seem to develop resistance to the drugs used in endocrine therapy.

In our latest research, published today, we have developed a new breast cancer test that predicts a patient’s response to endocrine therapy and their risk of relapse – allowing patients and their doctors to make better treatment decisions.

Read more: Many women with breast cancer may not need chemo, but beware misleading headlines

Hormone dependent breast cancer

Breast cancer is not a single disease but a complex group of diseases. Each tumour responds to treatment differently.

A subtype of breast cancer is called oestrogen receptor positive if it has receptors for the hormone oestrogen. This suggests the cancer cells, like normal breast cells, receive signals from oestrogen that could promote their growth. Clinicians currently rely on the number of oestrogen receptors in tumours as a biomarker to predict a patient’s response to endocrine therapies. Unfortunately, the accuracy of this test is not satisfactory because oestrogen-dependent tumours can develop drug resistance.

The response rate to endocrine therapy is only 30-40%. Up to 40-50% of patients don’t benefit from endocrine therapy and will relapse. There is no clear method to predict which breast tumours will become resistant to endocrine therapy drugs, such as tamoxifen.

Accurate prediction of a patient’s response to therapy is essential for them to receive correct and timely treatments. Non-responders do not benefit from endocrine therapy while potentially suffering from treatment-associated adverse effects. Ineffective treatments also delay access to other options for non-responders, which can cost lives.

Read more: What causes breast cancer in women? What we know, don’t know and suspect

More accurate prediction

Our research has shown a cancer-related protein, named SHON (secreted hominoid-specific oncogene), is associated with breast cancer’s response to treatment. It accurately predicts if a patient will benefit from five-year anti-oestrogen therapy and how they will respond to chemotherapy, which is often used to shrink a tumour before surgery.

We have demonstrated that if the genes responsible for oestrogen receptors are active but those for the SHON protein are inactive in the nucleus of a cancer tumour cell, treatment with tamoxifen had no impact on a patient’s survival. If a tumour has both oestrogen receptor and SHON expression, tamoxifen reduces a patient’s risk of dying from breast cancer by 79%.

In addition, we have also shown that if the SHON protein is present inside cells in oestrogen receptor negative tumours, it predicts clinical outcomes for patients receiving chemotherapy based on the drug anthracycline. Given resistance to tamoxifen and chemotherapy limits successful management of breast cancer, SHON may serve as a biomarker for the selection of patients for endocrine therapy.

Future implementation

Breast cancer is curable if treated early and with correct therapy. We might have found a way to improve the efficacy of endocrine therapy, which is the most widely used treatment for more than three quarters of all breast cancer patients. If we can predict those patients who will not respond to the therapy, they can get other treatments, such as more toxic chemotherapy drugs, sooner. This would improve their chance of survival and quality of life after cancer.

We have identified the SHON biomarker by analysing a large number of breast cancer tumours at the Nottingham University Hospital’s (NUH) early-stage breast cancer collection. We have validated the findings using the NUH’s collection of oestrogen receptor negative early-stage and locally advanced breast cancer cells. These tissue collections have been used in the development of the Nottingham Prognostic Index and the Plus version, widely used decision-making tools in breast cancer treatment.

Our study has clearly demonstrated that SHON expression in tumours is a potential biomarker for tamoxifen and chemotherapy responses. This would give doctors and their patients a reliable prognostic tool to use as they make decisions about the most effective treatment options.

But the exact mechanism is still unclear. Identification of a potential SHON receptor, and determining the role of SHON in oestrogen receptor negative breast cancer will be the next priority in identifying its mechanisms of action. More studies are required before this test is implemented in clinics.

– ref. How a new breast cancer biomarker could help patients identify best treatment options – http://theconversation.com/how-a-new-breast-cancer-biomarker-could-help-patients-identify-best-treatment-options-112220

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Richards, Lecturer Sport Business Management, Western Sydney University

St George Illawarra and NSW State of Origin player Jack de Belin has become the first player to be banned under a new “no fault stand down” policy introduced by the National Rugby League (NRL).

This policy allows the NRL to stand down players facing criminal charges that carry a jail term of 11 years or more, pending the outcome. Players will remain on full pay and will be allowed to continue to train with their teams until the matter is resolved.

In December 2018, the NRL was urged to take “urgent action” after a spate of allegations of domestic violence and assault by players. The sport’s governing body was accused of failing to adequately condemn these acts of violence against women.

Could it be that finally rugby league is listening to the criticism?

Just a few weeks ago, Ben Barba was sacked by his NRL club following allegations he physically assaulted his partner and mother of his four children. After a history of off-field incidents, he was deregistered by the NRL. Despite one former player speaking out in support of Barba, he has been widely condemned by the NRL community.

Violence on the field too often translates to violence off the field. Barba’s sacking should herald a culture shift in the NRL away from versions of masculinity that are exclusive and threatening to women. The sport must move towards a culture that is better aligned with the values of society.

Rugby League – a bastion of masculinity

For many years, rugby league has provided an outlet for violence that allows masculinity to be performed.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, league epitomised orthodox masculine characteristics such as aggressive competition and toughness. Fighting, confrontation and belligerence has been revered in media coverage and by the wider public. For example, The Footy Show valorised versions of masculinity that portrayed men as hyper-heterosexual, stoic and aggressive. The hosts repeatedly demonstrated disrespect for women.

But in recent years, social customs, gender relations and the expectations of even hyper-masculine warrior athletes began to change. The Footy Show has been cancelled; and evidence from America’s most similar sport, American football (NFL), suggests that since 2006, there has been a slight decrease in players arrested for domestic violence.

Barba’s sacking appears to provide evidence of an emerging social contract with masculinity. No longer is men’s violence acceptable to the public. Rugby League — finally now — is taking action.

While player welfare is important, so is the welfare of women. The “boys will be boys” excuse no longer stands. NRL endorsed campaigns, such as Power For Change, an initiative described as “empowering young people to be leaders of change against domestic violence”, appeared hypocritical in the face of five sexual assault charges in the most recent off-season. On the sixth, the NRL took action.

It appeared the Australian sporting community had had enough. NRL fans, particularly, were fed up with misbehaving players and seeking significant change. Sanctioning players with bans and fines has proven ineffective.

In addition to introducing their “no fault stand down policy”, NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg has called on other codes to honour the NRL-imposed ban. The Northern Hemisphere Super League has closed the door on Barba and Rugby Australia boss, Raelene Castle, said they would also respect the NRL’s wishes.

Inclusive masculinities

The NRL is today at a crossroads.

There has been a highly visible, and extensively documented phenomenon that millennial men reject orthodox notions of masculinity. They instead value intimacy among friends, tactility, respect for women, and disregard for violence. Much of the reason for this is considered to be related to changing mores surrounding male homosexuality. When this changes, so does everything about masculinity.

The sociological work on this suggests that when heterosexual men exist in a culture that maintains high antipathy toward gay men (as existed in the 1980s), they will try to distance themselves from anything associated with gay men. Thus, men revere violence and stoicism, and hyper-sexualise women. They are thought weak for showing emotions concerning care for other men, or fear of confrontation.

However, as cultural attitudes have shifted, making homophobia and not homosexuality stigmatised, heterosexual men have more social freedom to express gender in ways that were once taboo. So it becomes permissible to talk your way through a problem with another male instead of fighting.

Scholars call this inclusive masculinity, but more colloquially it might be understood as a highly revered, feminised masculinity. In the last few decades, we have seen wholesale shifts to adolescent masculinities, something epitomised by the burgeoning of the “bromance”.

Read more: The bromance is blossoming, says study

The NRL has divided fans with its recent rule change. Although the rule change sends a strong message to players and clubs that violence will not be tolerated within the code, until the wider culture of Rugby League begins embracing alternative forms of masculinity, the cause of the problem will still remain.

– ref. Rugby league may finally have reached its tipping point on player behaviour and violence – http://theconversation.com/rugby-league-may-finally-have-reached-its-tipping-point-on-player-behaviour-and-violence-111421

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maggie Kirkman, Senior Research Fellow, Jean Hailes Research Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Women’s genitals are as diverse as our faces, as you can see in the Labia Library photo gallery. We are accustomed to some faces being accepted as “beautiful”, and know that the standard varies across time and culture. We may be less familiar with the idea that similar judgements are made about the vulva.

The vulva includes the inner lips (labia minora) and outer lips (labia majora), the clitoris, and the vaginal opening. Labia can be long or short, wrinkled or smooth, dark or light. One side is often longer than the other, consistent with the asymmetry of most body parts. The exterior of the clitoris can be pea-sized or as big as a thumb.

Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Just as some people seek cosmetic surgery on visible parts of their bodies, women have resorted to cosmetic surgery on their genitals to make them resemble an ideal. The Western ideal vulva is represented by the Barbie doll: “a clean slit”.

More than half of GPs surveyed in 2016 reported being consulted by women and girls wanting genital cosmetic surgery.

Read more: What’s normal, anyway? GPs should discourage women from unnecessary genital surgery

But what do women see when they search for cosmetic surgery?

Doctors advertise online, offering procedures including labiaplasty to reduce the labia minora, reduction of the clitoral hood, and plumping up of the labia majora.

Our research team wanted to learn what was in popular websites advertising Australian clinics, and analysed 31 websites in 2016. The same or similar websites came up in our search this week.

Websites gave a strong impression that female genitals diverging from the “ideal” need surgery. Although most websites acknowledged that vulvas were naturally diverse, they used language that pathologised any appearance other than a Barbie doll.

Visible labia minora were described as “hypertrophic” (showing excessive growth), which sounds like a medical diagnosis. According to one doctor:

The primary goal of labiaplasty is to reduce the size of the labia by surgically removing excess skin and shaping it into a more youthful and attractive form.

Websites didn’t say why it was better to be youthful than mature in sexuality or sexual organs. “Youthful” implies a yearning for women who are compliant and self-effacing, with no alarming sexual organs and presumably sexual needs.

Websites also emphasised the need to be “feminine”, with a “neat” and “tidy” vulva, conjuring up images of a 1950s housewife. These doctors reinforced the idea of binary sex, in which women must look undeniably female, with no visible clitoris. One website claimed a protruding clitoris “can feel and appear like a very small penis, which can cause deep insecurity and sexual anxiety”.

“Excess, floppy or uneven Labia Minora” justified cosmetic surgery, as did psychological, emotional, and physical discomfort. These were often described as “symptoms” requiring surgery to improve women’s health and well-being. According to one website:

The truth is that relationships, exercise, even dressing can be negatively impacted by a large inner or outer labia.

A typical “patient testimonial” claimed that, after labiaplasty, “Suddenly empowered, I felt more womanly than ever.”

Large labia minora were said to be “unhealthy and unhygienic”. Women were warned that, should “symptoms” be left “untreated”, they would worsen and “contribute to an unpleasant smell developing in the sensitive area”.

Only one website talked about the lack of evidence to support claims about hygiene:

There is no evidence to suggest that labiaplasty surgery can reduce problems with recurrent thrush or address hygiene concerns or problems.

It was also claimed on some sites that women’s sex life would improve because they would no longer be anxious about the way their genitals looked, and because cutting off visible labia minora would make women more attractive:

It will be very apparent to your sexual partner that the external structure of the labia will have been altered visually—namely they’ll be smaller and better aligned. Your sexual partner will clearly notice this change for the better.

Some websites claimed cosmetic surgery had nothing to do with fashion or social pressure and everything to do with individual choice:

Labiaplasty is an individual consideration. It is not merely the domain of strippers or porn stars. It can improve the physical and psychological quality of life for women who [are] affected by genital irregularities. […] Part of being a woman is not ‘putting up with it’ but taking control by having access to choice.“

The sales pitch emphasised that labiaplasty was “simple,” “safe and pain-free”, “one-hour surgery”.

The websites’ primary interest appeared to be commercial. While most doctors showed awareness of at least some ethical practices (including risks or side-effects, usually described as “rare”), few gave evidence of practising ethically, such as performing surgery only on adults.

Only two warned of potential loss of sensation or the harmful effects of scarring.

Three websites did recommend that women seek a second opinion and another required a recommendation from an independent doctor.

Genital cosmetic surgery can cause loss of sensation and scarring. Shutterstock

Of course, doctors may practise ethically without giving details on their websites. However, it could be considered poor ethical practice to persuade women they need surgery on genitals showing no evidence of abnormality.

Medical organisations point to the lack of “high-quality evidence” to support female genital surgery for cosmetic reasons. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, for example, dismisses claims cosmetic genital surgery enhances sexual function or women’s self-image. The college has also raised concern that such surgery may exploit vulnerable women.

While supporting genital surgery for female anatomy following trauma, mutilation or congenital anomalies, the Australian Federation of Medical Women opposes the promotion of surgical techniques that make unproven claims about sexual satisfaction or attractiveness:

promoting and performing such surgery carries significant risks of physical and psychological harm to women and girls.

Because these websites represent GPs and surgeons, they carry the weight of professional and scientific respectability, which gives power to their message: women’s most intimate bodies need to be shaped to conform to fashion or beauty ideals.

The first principle of medicine is to do no harm. Encouraging women to cut off bits of their genitals to suit a fashion trend or social constructions of womanhood has at least the potential for harm. The time has come for stricter regulation and monitoring of medical advertisements rather than of women’s bodies.

Read more: Vulvas, periods and leaks: women need the right words to seek help for conditions ‘down there’

This research was conducted by Kimberley Chibnall during her honours year towards the degree of Bachelor of Health Science, under the supervision of Maggie Kirkman and Karalyn McDonald.

– ref. What do normal labia look like? Sometimes doctors are the wrong people to ask – http://theconversation.com/what-do-normal-labia-look-like-sometimes-doctors-are-the-wrong-people-to-ask-112513

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Jones, Climate Scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Australian summers are getting hotter. Today marks the end of our warmest summer on record, setting new national temperature records. Worsening drought, locally significant flooding, damaging bushfires, and heatwaves capped a summer of extremes.

As we look to autumn, warmer temperatures overall and below average rainfall – especially in eastern parts of the country – are likely.

Australian summer mean temperature anomalies against the 1961–1990 average. Bureau of Meteorology

Read more: The stubborn high-pressure system behind Australia’s record heatwaves

Very hot…

The starkest feature of this summer was the record warmth. The national average temperature is expected to be about 2.1℃ above average, and will easily beat the previous record high set in summer 2012-13 (which was 1.28℃ warmer than average).

Very low rainfall accompanied the record heat of summer. At the national scale, each month was notably dry, and total summer rainfall was around 30% below average; the lowest for summer since 1982–83. The monsoon onset was delayed in Darwin until the 23rd of January (the latest since 1972–73) and typical monsoonal weather was absent for most of summer.

Preliminary summer 2018–19 mean temperature deciles. Bureau of Meteorology

In December 2018 Australia saw its highest mean, maximum and minimum temperatures on record (monthly averages, compared to all other Decembers). Notable heatwaves affected the north of Australia at the start of the month, spreading to the west and south during the second half of December. Temperatures peaked at 49.3℃ at Marble Bar in Western Australia on the 27th, with mid-to-high 40s extending over larger areas.

The heat continued into January, which set a national monthly mean temperature record at 2.91℃ above the 1961–1990 average. Heatwave conditions which had emerged in December persisted, with a prolonged warm spell and numerous records set. Eight of the ten hottest days for the nation occurred during the month, while a minimum temperature of 36.6℃ at Wanaaring (Borrona Downs) in western New South Wales on the 26th set a new national minimum temperature record.

Temperatures moderated a little in the east of the country for February, partly in response to flooding rainfall in tropical Queensland. Even so, the national mean temperature will come in around 1.4℃ above average, making this February likely to be the fourth or fifth warmest on record.

…and very dry

Australia has seen dry summers before and many of these have been notably hot. The summers of 1972–73 and 1982–83 – which featured mean temperatures 0.90℃ and 0.92℃ above average, respectively – both came during the latter stages of significant droughts, and were both records at the time.

As the State of the Climate 2018 report outlines, Australia has warmed by just over 1℃ since 1910, with most warming occurring since 1950. This warming means global and Australian climate variability sits on top of a higher average temperature, which explains why 2018-19 was warmer again.

A major rain event affected tropical Queensland during late January to early February, associated with a slow-moving monsoonal low. Some sites had a year’s worth of rain in a two-week period, including Townsville Airport which had 1,257mm in ten days. Many Queenslanders affected by this monsoonal low went from drought conditions to floods in a matter of days. Flooding was severe and continues to affect rivers near the Gulf of Carpentaria, as well as some inland rivers which flow towards Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre.

Preliminary summer 2018–19 rainfall deciles. Bureau of Meteorology

The outlook for autumn

Spring 2018 saw a positive Indian Ocean Dipole which faded in early summer. At the start of summer sea surface temperature anomalies in the central Pacific exceeded 0.8℃, which is the typical threshold for El Niño affecting the oceans, but these declined as summer progressed. Combined with a lack of coupling between the atmosphere and ocean, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation remained neutral, though normal rainfall patterns shifted to oceans to the north and east, leaving Australia drier as a result.

As we move into autumn, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole tend to have less influence at this time of year. The onset of new Indian Ocean Dipole or El Niño/La Niña events typically happens in late autumn or winter/spring.

Over recent years, autumn rainfall has also become less reliable, with declines in cool season rainfall in the southeast and southwest. Temperatures are also rising, in a local expression of the global warming trend.

Read more: Explainer: El Niño and La Niña

The Bureau’s outlook for autumn shows high probabilities that day and night-time temperatures will remain above average for most of the country. We expect to see continued below-average rainfall in much of the east, where drought is currently widespread.

Looking to the winter, the Bureau’s ENSO Wrap-Up suggests the Pacific Ocean is likely to remain warmer than average. The potential for an El Niño remains, with approximately a 50% chance of El Niño developing during the southern hemisphere autumn or winter, twice the normal likelihood.

Rainfall outlook for autumn 2019. Bureau of Meteorology

For more information watch BOM’s March–May 2019 Climate and Water Outlook video and subscribe to receive Climate Information emails.

– ref. 2018-19 was Australia’s hottest summer on record, with a warm autumn likely too – http://theconversation.com/2018-19-was-australias-hottest-summer-on-record-with-a-warm-autumn-likely-too-112616

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Matthews, Lecturer Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Innovation Centre | PhD Candidate in Image Forensics and Cyber | Councillor, University of Adelaide

When it comes to car hacking, you should be more worried about dodgy dealers than one-off hackers with criminal intent.

Hollywood would have us believe our cars are extremely vulnerable to hackers. A hacker remotely logs into the onboard computer of a car on display in a showroom, causing the car to burst through the glass out onto the street – just in the nick of time to block a car chase.

Car hacking scene in Hollywood blockbuster The Fate of the Furious.

And researchers have had some success replicating such a scenario. In 2015, headlines were made all over the world when security researchers were able to hack a Jeep Cherokee. They remotely controlled everything from windscreen wipers and air conditioning to the car’s ability to accelerate. Ultimately they crashed the car on a nearby embankment, safely ending their experiment.

If you believed everything that has been written since, you would think we are all driving around in accidents waiting to happen. At a moment’s notice any criminal could hack your vehicle, seize control and kill everyone inside.

While this threat may exist, it has never happened in the real world – and it’s significantly overhyped.

Read more: Here’s how we can stop driverless cars from being hacked

Cars are now controlled by computers

Today’s motor vehicles are a complicated system of interconnected electrical sub-systems, where traditional mechanical connections have been replaced with electrical counterparts.

Take the accelerator, for example. This simple device used to be controlled by a physical cable connected to a valve on the engine. Today it is controlled by drive-by-wire system.

Under a drive-by-wire system, the position of the throttle valve is controlled by a computer. This computer receives signals from the accelerator and correspondingly instructs a small motor connected to the throttle valve. Many of the engineering benefits are unnoticed by a typical consumer, but this system allows an engine to run more smoothly.

A failure of the drive-by-wire system was suspected to be the cause of unintended acceleration in 2002 Toyota vehicles. The fault resulted in at least one fatal crash, in 2017, being settled outside of court. An analysis commissioned by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could not rule out software error, but did find significant mechanical defects in pedals.

These were ultimately errors in quality, not hacked cars. But it does introduce an interesting scenario. What if someone could program your accelerator without your knowledge?

Hack the computer and you can control the car

The backbone of today’s modern interconnected vehicle is a protocol called a Controller Area Network (CAN bus). The network is built on the principle of a master control unit, with multiple slave devices.

Slave devices in our car could be anything from the switch on the inside of your door, to the roof light, and even the steering wheel. These devices allow inputs from the master unit. For example, the master unit could receive a signal from a door switch and based on this send a signal to the roof light to turn it on.

The problem is, if you have physical access to the network you can send and receive signals to any devices connected to it.

While you do need physical access to breach the network, this is easily accessible via an onboard diagnostic port hidden out of sight under your steering wheel. Devices such as Bluetooth, cellular and Wi-Fi, which are being added to cars, can also provide access, but not as easily as simply plugging in.

Bluetooth, for example, only has a limited range, and to access a car via Wi-Fi or cellular you still require the vehicle’s IP address and access to the Wi-Fi password. The Jeep hack mentioned above was enabled by weak default passwords chosen by the manufacturer.

Read more: Australia’s car industry needs cybersecurity rules to deal with the hacking threat

Enter the malevolent mechanic

Remote car hacks aren’t particularly easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to be lured into a false sense of security.

The Evil Maid attack is a term coined by security analyst Joanna Rutkowska. It’s a simple attack due to the prevalence of devices left insecure in hotel rooms around the world.

The basic premise of the attack is as follows:

1. the target is away on holiday or business with one or more devices
2. these devices are left unattended in the target’s hotel room
3. the target assumes the devices are secure since they are the only one with the key to the room, but then the maid comes in
4. while the target is away, the maid does something to the device, such as installing malware or even physically opening up the device
5. the target has no idea and is breached.

If we look at this attack in the context of the CAN bus protocol it quickly becomes apparent the protocol is at its weakest when physical access is granted. Such access is granted to trusted parties whenever we get our vehicles serviced, when it’s out of our sight. The mechanic is the most likely “maid”.

As part of a good maintenance routine your mechanic will plug a device into the On Board Diagnostic (ODB) port to ensure there are no fault or diagnostic codes for the vehicle that need to be resolved.

An example of an On Board Diagnostic (OBD) port in a car. This port is normally under the steering wheel. endolith/flickr

But, what would happen if a mechanic needed some extra business? Perhaps they wanted you to come back for service more often. Could they program your electronic brake sensor to trigger early by manipulating a control algorithm? Yes, and this would result in a lower life for your brake pads.

Maybe they could modify one of the many computers within your vehicle so that it logs more kilometres than are actually being done? Or if they wanted to hide the fact they had taken your Ferrari for a spin, they could program the computer to wind back the odometer. Far easier than the manual method, which ended so badly in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

All of these are viable hacks – and your mechanic could be doing it right now.

Read more: We asked people if they would trust driverless cars

The case for verification and transparency

This isn’t a new problem. It’s no different from a used car dealer using a drill to run the speedo back to show a lower mileage. New technologies just mean the same tricks could be implemented in different ways.

Unfortunately, there is little that could be done to prevent a bad mechanic from doing such things.

Security researchers are currently focused on improving the security behind the CAN bus protocol. The likely reason no major incident has been reported to date is the CAN bus relies on its obscure implementation for security.

Verification and transparency could be a solution. A system, proposed by researchers at Blackhat, involves an audit log that could assist everyday people in assessing the risks to any unauthorised changes to their vehicle, and improve the robustness of the system.

Until then, we will just have to keep using a trusted mechanic.

– ref. Your car is more likely to be hacked by your mechanic than a terrorist – http://theconversation.com/your-car-is-more-likely-to-be-hacked-by-your-mechanic-than-a-terrorist-111616

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

As a standoff over Australian coal shipments through the northern Chinese port of Dalian continues, it underscores the extent of Australia’s economic dependence on China.

One-third of all Australia’s exports globally are China-bound.

Market reaction to a Chinese coal “ban” was telling and reflected concerns about an over-dependence on one client.

The Australian dollar tumbled before recovering. Coal producers were pegged back.

Initially, the decision was attributed to local customs officials, but this misunderstood the nature of the Chinese regime.

No decision to restrain imports from China’s largest supplier of raw materials would be taken without the imprimatur of the leadership in Beijing.

While the freeze on Australian coal imports through Dalian may prove to be a short, sharp shock, what China’s action does convey is a message that Beijing can turn an import spigot on and off at will.

Why it might have chosen now to remind Australia of its vulnerability to central planning decisions, arbitrarily applied, is not clear. But it’s reasonable to speculate that politics is involved.

Read more: Huawei executive’s arrest will further test an already shaky US-China relationship

What is notable about China’s action is that it does not, at this stage, affect Russian and Indonesian coal imports. Australia appears to have been singled out.

Australia is far and away the world’s largest coal exporter. It accounts for more than 20% of China’s coal imports, the bulk of it thermal coal for greedy power stations.

China’s foreign ministry has said there is no “ban” on Australian coal imports through the Dalian port. But with demurrage charges mounting on coal carriers obliged to stand offshore for 40 days or more, use of the word “ban” is moot.

If politics is a factor, then several possibilities present themselves in what has been a rocky relationship over the past several years. Beijing could be signalling its displeasure over Australia’s decision to bar the technology company Huawei from participating in the build-out of Australia’s 5G communications network.

Other possible causes of Chinese unhappiness include Canberra’s decision to deny a re-entry permit to Australia for businessman Huang Xiangmo. This follows a decision to deny Huang Australian citizenship on grounds that his links with the Chinese Communist Party render him a security risk.

Delicate late-stage negotiations between the US and China on trade could also be a factor. Beijing might regard meting out a bit of grief to one of America’s closest allies as a reminder of its ability to exact retribution if things do not go its way.

Then there are the twin issues of the South China Sea and China’s push into the southwest Pacific.

Canberra is a persistent – if low-key – critic of Beijing’s militarisation of disputed territory in waters that are subject to claims and counter-claims before international tribunals.

These waters span trade routes through which the bulk of Australia’s seaborne trade passes to its markets in north Asia, including trans-shipment points like Dalian.

Beijing will also not have overlooked a vigorous campaign against its interests being waged by elements of the Australian foreign and security policy establishment.

At the forefront of this criticism is the government-funded Australian Security Policy Institute. ASPI spokespeople have focused particularly on China’s alleged breaches of cyber security.

Sections of the Australian media, feeding off ASPI criticism of cyber breaches, will have added to Chinese displeasure.

Then there are irritants like the continued detention on security grounds of Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun. Yang has been a persistent critic of the Communist Party.

While a freeze initiated by Beijing – during which no senior Australian official visited China for high-level talks for the better part of two years – has been lifted, relations remain problematic.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne went to Beijing late last year for talks with her Chinese counterpart. These were designed to “re-set” the relationship. But episodes like the “ban” on coal shipments foreshadow further difficulties in the Sino-Australia relationship as China’s power and influence grow.

Read more: Australia and China push the ‘reset’ button on an important relationship

Other explanations offered for what appeared to be, on the face of it, arbitrary action against Australian coal shipments relate to pressures on China’s hard-pressed domestic producers.

In a slowing Chinese economy, competition from higher-quality and competitively priced imports has battered domestic coal producers.

In other words, a number of factors are likely to have been at play in China’s decision to halt Australian coal imports through Dalian, if only temporarily.

Read more: Australian-Chinese author’s detention raises important questions about China’s motivations

These coal shipments, it should be noted, amount to a relatively small proportion of the 300 million tonnes shipped annually.

About 7 million tonnes passes through Dalian. This is coking or metallurgical coal for the steel industry, to distinguish it from thermal coal for power generation.

In 2017-19 coal exports to China were worth about A$13 billion, second only to exports of A$50 billion of iron ore and concentrates.

However, if the ban spreads to other ports Australian exporters will have cause for much deeper concern.

Uncertainties among Australian exporters are not helped by an opaque Chinese system that denies transparent explanations – unless it suits Beijing – of actions that are unfriendly to its trading partners.

China’s slowdown in imports of Australian wine last year is a case in point. The problem has eased, but the episode unnerved wine exporters whose production is geared significantly to a booming Chinese market.

Australian officials will also be concerned about action taken against Canadian nationals who have been detained in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest – pending extradition to the US – of the daughter of the Huawei founder.

Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, has been fighting extradition through the courts in Vancouver to prevent her removal to the US, where she has been charged with violations of sanctions against doing business with Iran.

The arrest of two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – for allegedly endangering China’s national security is widely viewed as retaliation against Canada for the arrest of Meng.

What all this tells us is that dealing with a more nationalistic, assertive and ruthless China in pursuit of what it regards as its national interests will become more, not less, difficult.

Western officials can talk about a rules-based international order until they’re blue in the face, but if the rules don’t correspond with Beijing’s own preferences, then chances are it will disregard them.

This is a reality that has taken some time to impress itself on those who might have believed that encouragement to China to live up to expectations of it becoming a “responsible stakeholder” will survive an encounter with Chinese self-interest.

In that regard, Beijing and Washington are not dissimilar in a new era in which a more nationalist US is shunning multilateral trading agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership and looking to a narrower self-interest.

The new US-China trade deal is set to be concluded next month. You can be sure that interruptions to Australian coal shipments to China will be very far from their concerns.

– ref. The Chinese coal ‘ban’ carries a significant political message – http://theconversation.com/the-chinese-coal-ban-carries-a-significant-political-message-112535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Redento B. Recio, Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Informal Urbanism (InfUr-) Hub, University of Melbourne

About 2.5 billion people, or half of the global labour force, work in the informal economy, the International Labour Organisation estimates. In developing Asian countries, more than 50% of the urban labour force is in informal work. Street vending is the most visible form of this. Yet no accurate statistics on street vendors are available.

Official planning documents do not include informal trading activities; they are “off the map”. This invisibility largely stems from state rules that consider street vending illegal. Amid the harsh policies, street vendors devise ways to cope with poverty and their insecure livelihood.

Read more: Nigeria should tackle poverty rather than hound hawkers off the streets

In the Baclaran district of Metro Manila, the capital of the Philippines, informal hawkers have resorted to several arrangements to gain financial capital or grow their small enterprises. These hawkers sell clothes, shoes, housewares, toys, gadgets, fresh fruits and vegetables, among other things.

Vendors occupy a street under a rail track. Redento Recio, Author provided

Some hawkers who want to avoid shelling out cash resort to the hango (harvest) system. Hango is a consignment agreement between hawkers and their suppliers where the former pays for the goods after a day of vending. Fruit juice vendor Frederic* said:

[Under hango], we could sell without financial capital. In the morning we obtain our goods from the suppliers, and pay them in the evening.

What options do vendors have?

For vendors who need capital, typically in the range of 3,000 Philippine pesos (A$79) to ₱300,000 (A$790), five options are possible.

The first is assistance from family. The second is a credit window from a vendors’ cooperative. But these mechanisms have limitations.

Family assistance is often exclusive to relatives and relies on the financial capacity of the lending individuals. The cooperative assists only those associate members with semi-fixed stalls.

The third scheme is paluwagan (to ease), a mutual savings scheme. During the peak season (September to December), paluwagan allows vendors to put aside extra profits to see them through lean months. The daily share ranges from ₱50 (A$1.30) to ₱1,000 (A$26).

While some vendors fail to join paluwagan due to evictions and poor sales, others initiate it even after the peak season. Vendor Nelly* noted: “For us, it’s all year round because it augments our capital.”

Many vendors borrow from loan sharks to keep a steady supply of stock. Redento Recio, Author provided

A fourth recourse for the financially strapped is to approach loan sharks and informal lenders. The monthly interest rate is 20%, with a repayment period of up to four months. For some hawkers, the high interest rate and the daily payment add to their financial woes. Vendor Rosie* said:

When we’re unable to vend, we couldn’t pay the loan sharks. That’s a major problem for us. Sometimes, we don’t even have an income to buy rice.

Despite this, many vendors still cling on to loan sharks.

Vendor Sheila* said:

Poor sales force us to borrow from the loan sharks. Otherwise, we would run out of stock. We couldn’t vend if we don’t borrow.

An old vendor, Esperanza*, said:

I always tell [the loan sharks] to visit me every day so I could pay. I don’t renege on my debts from 5-6 lenders (loan sharks) because they have helped me raise my children.

In the absence of pro-poor formal micro-credit institutions in Baclaran, the statements above show how loan sharks have helped vendors survive the uncertainty of street life. Yet, the availability of credit windows at times leads to multiple loans and over-indebtedness.

Read more: How we can protect the women who make most high-quality footballs

Street space for rent

When too deeply in debt, some vendors are compelled to give up their primary asset – their vending space. Vendor leader Nancy* explained:

When they [vendors] have two debt obligations, they look for a third lender until they are forced to give up their space because many [loan sharks] run after them.

This recourse, giving up their vending spaces, represents the hawkers’ fifth mechanism to generate money or pay off their debts: they sell or rent out their claimed spaces.

Some vendors rent out their claimed part of the streetscape to cope with financial distress. Redento Recio, Author provided

Barangay (village) official Allen* confirmed this arrangement:

Yes, they are able to ‘sell’ and rent out the streets and sidewalks. We know that these things happen, but we could not stop them since the agreement is mostly verbal.

The rental agreement period commonly lasts for one to two years, with fees ranging from ₱40,000 (A$1,051) to ₱300,000 (A$7,887) based on the size and location of the vending space. Although Allen noted that their barangay refuses to honour any (informal) sale or rental arrangement, in other barangays the agreement becomes valid when the two parties sign a written agreement in front of vendor leaders and barangay officials. Some local officials are even asked to sign the document.

Esperanza, a vendor leader, explained:

They – the renter or buyer, the seller, and the lender – must have written [agreement] … It couldn’t be based on verbal [agreement] alone. There is a ‘legal’ [procedure]. It goes through the barangay. A barangay [official] must sign it. The [vendor] leader acts as a witness. It’s difficult [if there’s no witness] since we’re talking about their livelihood.

Harnessing self-help mechanisms

These various finance-generating schemes are rooted in the insecure street presence of vendors. They reveal the vendors’ dogged determination to survive and improve their lives under conditions where state agencies are unwilling or unable to provide the necessary support and services.

When linked to policymaking, however, strategies like the hango consignment and the paluwagan mutual savings scheme can guide planners in recognising the informal practices that enable traders to earn a living.

Read more: Why lending through community-based organisations makes sense

Policymakers should pay more attention to informal work. World Bank

To support efforts to implement the New Urban Agenda and attain the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable), planners and state officials need to consider these self-help mechanisms in designing an inclusive urban governance. This must address the unresponsive formal policies and the precarious conditions in informal work.

* Note: All the names in this article are pseudonyms to protect the research participants’ identity.

Read more: What can the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals do for cities?

– ref. Street vendors’ self-help strategies highlight cities’ neglect of how the other half survive – http://theconversation.com/street-vendors-self-help-strategies-highlight-cities-neglect-of-how-the-other-half-survive-110283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fabrizio Carmignani, Professor, Griffith Business School, Griffith 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.

Any discussion of the tax system requires a common understanding that its purpose goes beyond revenue.

To see this, ask whether we would be willing to raise as much revenue as we do now by simply requiring each resident and business to pay A$16,400 a year, with no further complications.

We could do this. It would generate the A$450 billion the Commonwealth raises now.

And it would be appealing in some ways. It would minimise tax evasion. There would be no exemptions, no tax returns, no loopholes. And payment would be easy to monitor. It would also save the taxpayer the cost of submitting tax returns and the government the cost of checking them.

We all want some fairness

People who earn more than A$76,000 would be delighted, because they would pay less tax than they do now.

Households with people who earn much less would be less happy. Each child, no matter how young, would have to pay A$16,400. A household with two parents (one working) and one child would have to pay twice as much as it does now.

Unemployed Australians would pay the same as mining tycoons. Mum-and-dad businesses would pay the same as large corporations.

But we wouldn’t accept such a system, because it wouldn’t be fair. And that’s not just because fairness is one of our core values.

Inequality has an economic cost. Modelling by staff of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that a 1% increase in a nation’s inequality lowers its gross domestic product by between 0.6% and 1.1%.

The researchers find that beyond a certain point growing inequality can undermine the foundations of market economies and lead to inequalities of opportunity. They report:

This smothers social mobility, and weakens incentives to invest in knowledge. The result is a misallocation of skills, and even waste through more unemployment, ultimately undermining efficiency and growth potential.

Progressivity helps

Almost all developed countries use the tax system to fight inequality, by increasing the rate of personal income tax as taxable income grows. In a typical “progressive” personal income tax system the first $5000 earned might be taxed at ten cents in the dollar, while subsequent earnings might be taxed at 20 cents in the dollar. The result is that higher earners pay a greater proportion of their earnings in tax.

Australia has such a system. Our personal income tax system is more progressive than most of the 36 OECD members.

But it has been getting less progressive over time.

A standard measure is the difference in proportion of earnings devoted to tax (the “tax wedge”) for high earners on 167% of a nation’s average income and low earners on 67% of the average. The greater the difference, the more progressive the system.

The graph shows Australia’s system became less progressive throughout the first mining boom in the 2000s. It then became more progressive during the global financial crisis and probably as a result of the government’s response to it. Progressivity has been drifting down since.

Unless we take action to make our personal income tax system more progressive, it is likely to become less progressive still.

Tax cuts legislated in 2018 will accentuate the trend by dramatically flattening Australia’s personal income tax scales by 2024-25, unless reversed as Labor has promised should it win the election.

Our company tax rate is high …

Company taxes are almost always proportional, set at a flat rate. Debate is about how high that rate should be.

Lower rates are said to encourage business investment, stimulating employment, wages and economic growth. But if company taxes are cut, government needs to find more revenue from somewhere else, or wind back spending.

Read more: New figures put it beyond doubt. When it comes to company tax, we are a high-tax country, in part because it works well for us

Australia’s standard rate is 30%, reduced to 26.5% (and soon enough 25%) for companies with turnovers of less than A$50 million. It is the second-highest rate in the OECD, behind only France. A broader measure of Australia’s “effective” company tax rate, taking into account tax breaks, still shows it is high compared to other countries.

The high rate is little noticed at home. Most Australian shareholders are able to get a tax credit for the company tax paid on the profit that funds their dividend (a practice Labor has promised to wind back). This means the credit can cut the the income tax collected from a dividend recipient to zero, but not below it resulting in a payment from the Tax Office.

… which may not be a problem

There is no clear association between corporate tax cuts and economic growth.

Rough calculations using OECD and International Monetary Fund data suggest that, if anything, higher economic growth is associated with smaller tax cuts.

In part this is because foreign companies consider things other than the tax rate in deciding where to invest. In part it is because the revenue lost from corporate tax cuts has to be made up from somewhere else (most likely from extra income tax as incomes rise and push people into higher tax brackets).

Since 2001, when Australia’s rate of company tax was cut to 30%, Australia’s annual economic growth rate has averaged 2.9%. In the 17 years before then, when the company tax rate averaged about 39%, annual economic growth averaged 3.5%.

None of this implies causality. But it does show that lower company tax rates and better economic performance do not necessarily go together.

International surveys show that Australia, despite its relatively high company tax rate, is regarded as one of the 20 countries in which doing business is easiest. What most works against Australia is the high costs of electricity.

New taxes are waiting in the wings

In summary, there appears to be scope for reducing personal income tax rates at the lower end of income distribution while increasing them at the top end.

Our company tax rates are high, but this need not be a problem.

If company taxes were to be cut, other taxes would have to increase. One option is to increase the goods and services tax. But this is not ideal as the GST is a regressive tax; that is, it tends to make income distribution more unequal.

There are other options.

We could impose an extra, much higher tax rate on very high incomes, as Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed for the US.

It wouldn’t be a first. Australia’s top marginal rate was 75% in the early 1950s. Or we could reimpose an inheritance tax. A well-designed one would not only fund government spending but also work against intergenerational inequality.

Read more: The workplace challenge facing Australia (spoiler alert – it’s not technology)

– ref. Fairness isn’t optional. How to design a tax system that works – http://theconversation.com/fairness-isnt-optional-how-to-design-a-tax-system-that-works-111493

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

It seems that whoever wins the White House in 2020, the US federal deficit will blow up.

President Donald Trump has already signed into law massive tax cuts that are estimated to expand the deficit by at least US$1.5 trillion over the next decade.

The list of Democrats seeking their party’s presidential nomination has moved into double digits, but there aren’t many fiscal conservatives among them.

Bernie Sanders looks set to try and outdo his own 2016 campaign and its big-spending proposals that include “Medicare for all” and free public tertiary education. Other leading contenders such as senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have announced similar plans.

And the rock star du jour of US progressive politics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or @AOC as the cool kids say), has gone even further with her “Green New Deal” — a grab bag of gigantic spending projects being presented as an environmental policy. They are estimated to cost between US$51 trillion and US$93 trillion over a decade.

The big question amid all this red ink is: does it matter?

Red ink for a return

There have generally been two schools of thought on this. On the conservative side, elected representatives and commentators have emphasised that higher spending eventually results in higher interest rates as borrowers compensate for risk, and higher taxes as a result. In short, there’s no free lunch.

The more liberal position on deficits is that it depends what the government spends the money on. Economic stimulus during a downturn, such as during the Great Recession of 2008, is a good idea provided that it is temporary. And even in ordinary economic times, there may be large investments in physical and social infrastructure that have high returns, far exceeding the government’s cost of borrowing.

If spending on early-childhood education has double-digit rates of return and the government can borrow long-term at 3%, these investments are a no-brainer.

Notice the logic in that argument. The returns need to be carefully assessed and compared to the actual government cost of borrowing.

Not red ink without reason

Various commentators on the political left – explified by Paul Krugman of the New York Times – argue that this logic is licence for serious government spending on infrastructure, but with an eye to the overall size of the spending. As Krugman puts it

Am I saying that Democrats should completely ignore budget deficits? No; if and when they’re ready to move on things like some form of Medicare for All, the sums will be so large that asking how they’ll be paid for will be crucial.

I have said repeatedly in this column and elsewhere that the same is true in Australia. We can borrow cheaply, there are high-return government investments to be made, and we are suffering from “secular stagnation” – a protracted period of lower growth.

But that doesn’t mean that @AOC’s socialist (her own term) wish list can be funded in a consequence-free way just because the US prints its own currency.

Accompanying the @AOC-Sanders-Warren agenda is a cottage industry of “heterodox” economists like Stephanie Kelton who say deficits don’t matter for countries that issue their own currencies. Why? Because they can always print more. They risk hyperinflation if they do enough of it, but heterodox economists argue that’s unlikely.

Except in Weimar Germany. And Zimbabwe. And Venezuela.

The recent tragedy in Venezuela is instructive. When the crude oil price collapsed in 2014 the government was left with a huge deficit, but still needed to pay the salaries of government workers and the military. So it printed money. With more money in the economy, but no increase in the number of things available to buy, the price of goods climbed.

That meant the government had to print still more money for the workers whose incomes bought less, which led to more inflation, more money printing, even higher prices, and pretty quickly hyperinflation of over 1,200,000%.

Just because Australia has avoided hyperinflation…

Economists who promote the idea of large deficits point out that that hasn’t happened in Australia or the United States, but one of the reasons for that is that they have avoided really large deficits.

After the next US election, who knows.

In a timely warning, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the US Senate this week: “the idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currencies I think is just wrong”.

More importantly, the idea that deficits need not matter is dangerous.

It is a proposition with zero appeal among mainstream economists, but populist politicians are drawn to it and are increasingly keen to sell it to the public.

Let’s be clear. We should invest more in education, health, high-speed rail and child care if the numbers stack up, even if it means increasing deficits. But deficits do matter. We would be unwise to think we could do it without limit.

Read more: Now is the time to plan how to fight the next recession

– ref. Vital Signs. Do deficits matter any more? – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-do-deficits-matter-any-more-112680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW

When Nora Heysen’s portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman was awarded the 1938 Archibald Prize, the Sydney Sun’s headline was Girl Makes History, Girl artist takes Archibald Prize.

The story began, “Miss Nora Heysen, daughter of the famous Adelaide landscape painter, Hans Heysen,..” The writer was more interested in stating the importance of Hans Heysen as “the incomparable painter of the Australian gum-tree” than in the artist who won the prize.

Harold Cazneaux, Hans Heysen in his studio 1935 gelatin-silver photograph. 25.9 x 19.0 cm (image & sheet) Gift of the Cazneaux Family 1978 Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

With a name as famous as “Heysen”, Nora could never escape the presence of her father. The media was also fascinated by her gender. Nora Heysen was the first woman to be awarded the Archibald, the most lucrative of all Australian art prizes, judged by a conservative arts establishment consisting entirely of men.

While some previous Archibald winners are familiar to students of Australian art history, it is fair to say that Ernest Buckmaster, W B McInnes and Charles Wheeler are today less highly regarded than they were in their lifetimes.

Nora Heysen, Self-portrait 1932 oil on canvas, 76.2 x 61.2 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Gift of Howard Hinton 1932 © Lou Klepac

Yet these men were awarded the Archibald at the same time as today’s heroines of Australian modernism – Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Crowley and Dorrit Black – were working in obscurity.

Cossington Smith, despite regularly exhibiting her work, was most commonly seen as a “lady amateur”. Black founded the Modern Art Centre in Sydney before returning to her native Adelaide in 1935, yet in her lifetime she was totally ignored by the art establishment.

Crowley, who initially worked with Black, joined with Rah Fizelle to create the Crowley-Fizelle school. By the late 1930s, this was the principal centre for modernist painting and the nursery for abstract art in this country. The pair received so little attention that towards the end of Crowley’s life she described herself and her colleagues as being “the most extinguished artists” in Australia.

Nora Heysen, Self-portrait 1934 oil on canvas 43.1 x 36.3 cm. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 1999 © Lou Klepac

Those women artists, such as Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor who did have a public presence, were recognised more for their “decorative” graphic art than for the “serious” business of portraits or landscapes.

Heysen was not the only woman painting in an academic tradition to exhibit in the 1938 Archibald Prize exhibition. The Sydney Morning Herald’s review noted portraits by Tempe Manning, Dora Wilson and Violet McInnes. The critic, Kenneth Wilkinson, paid special attention to the self-portrait by Mary Edwards, claiming that “the canvas has been painted with much sensitivity and feeling”.

He was not so kind to most of the other entries, describing them as “drab”. However:

In the midst of these sober surroundings Miss Heysen’s portrait stands out in joyous style. It is not a masterpiece in the sense that the late George Lambert’s character studies were masterpieces, but it contains many fine qualities. The hands have a tender fragility that depends on clever use of paint. The figure has a concentrated poise which accords with the Oriental gown Madame Schuurman is wearing. The reflected lights in the skin are many and complex. The red curtain is bold, yet warm, and the area of green at the left shimmers with lovely light.

It was not surprising that it had taken the Trustees only an hour to find the winner. Heysen had also submitted a more conventional portrait of a barrister, but the Trustees had been entranced by the beautiful Eurasian woman with a Chinese cloak. As Nora later noted, “They gave it to the woman because she looked so beautiful. They were all men judges.”

Madame Elink Schuurman 1938 oil on canvas: 87 x 68 cm. Private collection . Reproduced in Catherine Speck’s ‘Heysen to Heysen: Selected letters of Hans Heysen and Nora Heysen’, newly reprinted by Wakefield Press.

A different path

Although Nora Heysen had first learnt to draw in her father’s studio, her mature work owes more to subsequent studies in London where she met the artist Lucien Pissarro. He told her to, “Do away with the earth colours”.

Nora Heysen, London breakfast 1935 oil on canvas. 47.0 x 53.5 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1996 © Lou Klepac

Later she visited Paris where she saw works by the Impressionists and as she said, “I was never the same again”.

When she returned to Australia, her father did not appreciate her new painterly style and colour cleansed of any brown tones. Despite their close and loving relationship, Hans Heysen never could understand his daughter’s need for a separate identity.

When she was in London, painting in an environment that defined her by her work rather than her family, she had begun to sign her name differently. When she sent works home to Australia to sell, she signed them “Nora H”. Her father thought she was being absent-minded and completed the signature as “Heysen”.

Harold Cazneaux, Portrait of Nora Heysen at work, 9th March, 1939. gelatin silver photograph 18.5 x 14.2 cm. National Library of Australia

With her mother’s active support Nora Heysen quietly set herself on a distinctively different path. She settled in Sydney, far away from the family home in Hahndorf. Hans Heysen painted landscapes. Even though she was easily able to mimic Hans’s distinctive gum trees, Nora painted portraits. She once said, “I thought father had a copyright on the gum trees really”.

Hans Heysen, Droving into the light 1914–21 oil on canvas 155.0 x 122.0 cm. Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Gift of Mr W H Vincent, 1922 © C Heysen

Both of the Heysens painted flowers, but her bright clean tones often quoted 17th Century Dutch art, while his were more a continuation of his love of the French artist Henri Fantin-Latour.

Heysen’s use of colour, as well as her family connections, meant that her works were readily accepted for exhibition at Sydney’s Society of Artists, where several prominent members were Trustees at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and therefore judges of the Archibald prize.

Nora Heysen, Corn cobs 1938 oil on canvas 40.5 x 51.3 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Purchased 1987 © Lou Klepac

Still, after her win, most newspapers and magazines were more interested in Nora Heysen’s cooking, leisure and domestic activities than her art. According to the Adelaide News:

Marriage is beyond the ambit of Miss Heysen’s plans — it would interfere with her paintings, she said in Sydney today. Miss Heysen said there was no reason whatever why women should not be as good painters as men. ‘The difficulty is that they get married and are tied up to domestic life,’ she said. ‘I am going to stick to painting.’

She knew the reality of what marriage meant to talented women artists. Her mother, the talented Selma Bartels, had abandoned art for domesticity and eight children. Heysen said, “I think at times she was bitter about it, that she’d given it all away.”

Nora Heysen, Eggs 1927 oil on canvas 36.6 x 52.5 cm. New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale The Howard Hinton Collection. Gift of Howard Hinton, 1933 © Lou Klepac

The artist Max Meldrum avoided commentary on Nora’s art after her win, but felt free to discuss the issue of gender with The Sun’s reporter:

“If I were a woman,” he said. “I would certainly prefer raising a healthy family to a career in art. …. A great artist has to tread a lonely road. He needs all the manly qualities — courage, strength and endurance… I believe that such a life is unnatural and impossible for a woman.”

Nora Heysen, Portrait study 1933 oil on canvas, 67.2 x 56.4 cm. National Gallery of Victoria © Lou Klepac National Gallery of Victoria © Lou Klepac

The attack came as a surprise to the artist. In the aftermath of her win, she was commissioned to paint several portraits, including one of Lionel Lindsay, commissioned by Sir James MacGregor. Both subject and patron had been Archibald judges. Although she enjoyed painting portraits of people she knew, she did not enjoy commissions. She said, “I’d rather go and make roads, I think, than paint commissioned portraits.”

In 1943, with MacGregor’s support, she became the first woman to be appointed an official Australian War Artist. As well as painting portraits of many women serving in the armed forces, she travelled to New Guinea to record the activities of nurses in recaptured areas. She found the experience frustrating as often, “I couldn’t do the work that I wanted to do because you didn’t have the freedom to do it.”

Nora Heysen, Theatre Sister Margaret Sullivan 1944 oil on canvas. 91.8 x 66.0 cm. Australian War Memorial, Canberra © Lou Klepac

Because of the conditions under which she worked, most of the New Guinea works are drawings and small paintings. The heavily gendered nature of the Australian armed forces meant that she had little contact with other War artists, who were more closely embedded with the soldiers.

It was while she was in New Guinea that Heysen met the pathologist Dr Robert Black, who she described as “my first love affair”. He was married with a child and his wife was not willing to divorce. After the war they lived together in Sydney for some years, flouting convention and scandalising her family. In 1953, the day after Black’s divorce was finalised, they married. By then it was too late for her to have children.

Despite her earlier statement, she had always wanted a child and often made children the subject of her art. The couple moved to Hunters Hill, to house with a large garden and many cats, which was to be her home for the rest of her life. She described herself as “a general provider for animals and all the strays”, which came to her garden. Heysen accompanied Black on his research excursions to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, which also became the subjects of her art.

Nora Heysen, A bunch of flowers 1930, oil on canvas 46.2 x 38.0 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bequest of Nora Heysen AM, 2005 © Lou Klepac

Marriage was less than conducive to the quality of Heysen’s art. She later described her work of that period as “uneven”. The 1950s, when the dominant narrative for women was domesticity, was not a good time to be a woman artist, or indeed a woman in any profession. After 20 years the marriage foundered, and Black moved to a new relationship.

Nora Heysen continued to paint, but faded from public view. She continued to hold occasional exhibitions, including a joint exhibition with her father in 1963. Her subjects were from her daily life: cats, flowers from the garden, friends’ children.

As her eyesight began to deteriorate she turned to drawing in pastels. In October 1962, the same year that her mother died, John Hetherington wrote an extended article on Nora Heysen, defining her as the daughter of a famous father. It was given the heading: “I don’t know if I exist in my own right”.

This was also the year of the first edition of Bernard Smith’s Australian Painting, the book that effectively defined Australian art for a generation. Nora Heysen was not mentioned. She had vanished from the official narrative of Australian art.

Nora Heysen, Cedars interior (c. 1930) oil on canvas on composition board. 88.0 x 78.0 cm (framed) The Cedars, Hahndorf Nora Heysen Foundation © Lou Klepac

Rediscovery

The rediscovery of Nora Heysen’s art was triggered by the new wave feminism of the 1970s. Her work was included in the ground breaking exhibition Australian Women Artists: One Hundred Years of 1975. In 1985, she was given a small retrospective exhibition at the Old Clarendon Gallery in South Australia, a minor honour.

The first significant recognition of the range and strength of her art came in 1989 when Lou Klepac curated a full scale retrospective for the National Trust’s S.H. Ervin Museum and Art Gallery. She later said, “I’ve only just thought that I am a person, painter, in my own right since Lou Klepac discovered me and put on this retrospective show.” In 2000 Klepac curated a further Nora Heysen exhibition for the National Library of Australia.

Success breeds success. Nora Heysen’s significance as an official war artist meant that she was a dominant figure in the Australian War Memorial’s 1994 exhibition of women war artists. Her importance as a war artist was further recognised in 2014 when her painting, Transport Driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles), was selected as the cover image for Catherine Speck’s Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars.

Nora Heysen at 92, pictured in front of Hans Heysen’s Red Gold, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2003. Photo: Brenton Edwards © News Ltd

Speck had earlier written on Nora Heysen and the way in which father and daughter interacted in Heysen to Heysen, a detailed study of the father/daughter bond as recorded in their correspondence.

In 1993, Nora Heysen was honoured by an Australia Council Award for Achievement in the Arts; an Order of Australia came in 1998. The awards were recognition of her own achievements as an artist and the significance of an enduring career. She died in 2003 at the age of 92, still living in the house at Hunters Hill, embedded in its garden.

The National Gallery of Victoria’s new exhibition, Hans and Nora Heysen: Two generations of Australian Art shows how their relationship was both a blessing and a curse. The Heysen name eased her path, but even in her greatest triumph she was still defined as being her father’s daughter.

The exhibition Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australia Art is at the NGV Australia from March 8-July 28.

– ref. Friday essay: Nora Heysen, more than her father’s daughter – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-nora-heysen-more-than-her-fathers-daughter-111074

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Habib, Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University

Korea-watchers around the world are scrambling to tease out the meaning of the abruptly concluded US-DPRK summit in Hanoi. I want to cast a critical eye on denuclearisation itself as the framing objective of the summit negotiations.

If we step back for a moment to look at the extraordinary developments in Korean Peninsula diplomacy over the past year, we see three parties who want different things.

The Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea remembers all too well the chaos of 2017 that brought Korea to the bring of war, and sees a permanent peace regime as the most important objective of its engagement efforts.

Read more: Economic growth and ‘Trump-proofing’ – why the latest inter-Korea summit matters

For their part, the North Koreans want to neutralise the military threat from the US, see sanctions lifted, and obtain economic assistance to accelerate the development of their economy. The Trump administration, and much of the broader US foreign policy establishment, remains attached to the denuclearisation of North Korea as the end game of this process.

But denuclearisation is a fantasy that is leaving Washington as the odd man out on the Korean Peninsula. The goalposts on the Korean Peninsula are changing as the momentum for inter-Korean engagement grows, while the importance of the US as the indispensable security guarantor is diminishing.

Who walked out on whom?

Like everyone else, I will be watching closely over the coming days as details begin to emerge about the sticking points that led to the abrupt conclusion of the summit.

In the lead-up to the Hanoi summit, the Trump administration did signal some flexibility on verification measures for full, independent accounting of North Korea’s nuclear program as a condition for further negotiation.

It is ironic that Trump’s apparent willingness to befriend authoritarian leaders has opened the door for negotiations for a permanent peace regime in Korea, which previous US administrations had kept quarantined behind the demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” (CVID).

However, in his final press conference in Hanoi, the US president indicated that the North Korean delegation asked for too much in requesting the lifting all economic sanctions in exchange for the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities.

Considering the enormous pressure Trump has come under from domestic quarters not to sell out the denuclearisation agenda, there was no way the US delegation could accept those terms.

But there is another possibility. The Congressional testimony of Michael Cohen from Washington may have created fresh doubts in the minds of the North Korean delegation about Trump’s ability to deliver on a deal. It is possible that Kim Jong-un presented terms they knew the Americans could not accept, to avoid the possibility of a lame-duck deal negotiated by a compromised president.

It is important to recognise that the US and North Korea run at different political speeds. Since 1945, North Korea’s three Kims have presided through 13 US presidents. US presidents are confined to term limits and captive to the political demands of relatively short election cycles. The now extreme polarisation of American politics ensures that promises made by Trump may not be honoured by an incoming administration.

With a US presidential election looming in 2020 and widespread criticism within the American foreign policy establishment of Trump’s negotiating position, and with recurring allegations of criminality fuelling calls for his impeachment, it is understandable that the North Koreans might be cautious about making concessions.

They will remember the failure of the US Congress to ratify the Agreed Framework when President Bill Clinton was facing impeachment during the 1990s.

The denuclearisation of North Korea is a fantasy

Regardless of who blinked first, the failure to reach agreement in Hanoi further demonstrates that North Korea will never willingly denuclearise. This is not a secret. It has been obvious for more than a decade, since the failure of the Six-Party Talks. Beyond the economic sanctions regime, there is very little the US can do about it.

It bears repeating why this is the case:

1. Successive US administrations have considered and rejected the use of military force against North Korea on the grounds that it poses an unacceptable risk to its ally in South Korea

2. Because of the longstanding sanctions regime, the US lacks sufficient economic leverage over the DPRK to bring it to heel, even with the expansive list of goods banned from export to the North, and the expansive powers of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to restrict financial flows in and out of the DPRK

3. North Korea is adept at sanctions-busting, in spite of the squeeze being placed on the country by existing measures.

Read more: As the shaky US-North Korea summit is set to begin, the parties must search for common interest

Holding out for denuclearisation as an end game is an exercise in futility. It is bad policy. It unnecessarily backs the US into a corner of weakness where it cannot bring its obvious strategic and economic advantages to bear.

Denuclearisation has been the obstacle that has kept the US and North Korea at the stage of talking about talking, halting progress on other confidence-building measures that could improve the relationship and take some of the heat out of the Korean Peninsula security dilemma.

Missed opportunity for a peace settlement

The dominant school of thought in disarmament circles is that states that acquire nuclear weapons are a threat to international peace and security, and so must be prevented from doing so. This is the denuclearisation perspective that has dominated the discourse on North Korea in the US and informed the longstanding CVID policy.

There is an clear logic here that stems from the terrible and awesome destructiveness of nuclear weapons, with which few could argue. From this perspective, any negotiations with North Korea that do not result in full nuclear relinquishment will be interpreted as a sell-out.

However, there is also an obvious hypocrisy in this position (and in the nuclear non-proliferation regime more generally) given the size of the US nuclear arsenal and the deliberate ambiguity of its doctrine around nuclear first-strike. It is this hypocrisy that the DPRK exploits in its official interpretation of denuclearisation as meaning the universal relinquishment of nuclear weapons by all countries.

There is another school of thought that it is not nuclear weapons per se that represent a threat to international peace and security. Rather, it is an international environment teeming with existential threats in which states feel compelled to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves.

From this perspective, a peace declaration could diminish the level of insecurity that feeds the desire for nuclear proliferation. If the perception of imminent threat lessens, then the probability of nuclear weapons use in the event of conflict is also reduced.

There is space within this perspective to work towards nuclear disarmament. But that goal is one element of a bigger picture. This is the essence of the South Korean position on inter-Korean summit diplomacy, and the fading shadow of a missed opportunity in Hanoi.

These summits are part of a long-term peace-building process. Clearly, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are not on the same page in their negotiating objectives.

If US-DPRK bilateral negotiations are to continue, they are going to have to find a lowest common denominator on which they can build. Regardless of how we feel about Kim Jong-un, the political system he presides over, and the abuses of his regime, denuclearisation is never going to be the lowest common denominator upon which the US-DPRK relationship can evolve.

– ref. Chasing the denuclearisation fantasy: The US-North Korea summit ends abruptly in Hanoi – http://theconversation.com/chasing-the-denuclearisation-fantasy-the-us-north-korea-summit-ends-abruptly-in-hanoi-112397

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

The Sydney electorate of Warringah will be one of the most fascinating battlegrounds in the May election, with a high profile independent Zali Stegall challenging former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Despite the seat being on about 11 per cent, Abbott describes this as a “full on marginal seat campaign”.

Abbott is running hard on local issues. He says over-development and traffic congestion are the biggest issues and if reelected he is keen to use his position to be a “champion” for the Northern beaches tunnel. He’s trying to tone down his stridency, this week attempting to avoid being drawn to deeply into the row around the criminal conviction of Cardinal George Pell.

Steggall, a lawyer and former Olympian, is running against Abbott on a campaign that says Warringah voters want “a new voice”.

Keenly focused on climate change policy, Steggall is very critical of the government’s efforts and says even Labor’s energy policy “needs again to be toughened up.”

Steggall, who grew up and lives in the electorate, has only had Abbott as an MP and has never voted Liberal nor has she had voted Labor.

Pressed on who she had voted for, she told The Conversation she has mostly voted independent but “wouldn’t want to say never” to having voted Greens.

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– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Tony Abbott and Zali Steggall on Warringah votes – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-tony-abbott-and-zali-steggall-on-warringah-votes-112702

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Brown, Postdoctoral Research Affiliate, University of Adelaide

We all know a set of twins; perhaps even a set of identical twins. In Australia, twins account for about one in 80 births.

But in research published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, we learn of a very unique set of Australian twins.

A boy and a girl from Brisbane, aged four, have been identified as only the second set of semi-identical, or sesquizygotic twins, in the world. They are the first to have been observed in utero (in the womb).

This extremely rare phenomena is the result of two sperm fertilising the same egg.

Read more: Seeing double: why twins are so important for health and medical research

How do twins occur?

The most common type of twins are non-identical twins, which can be the same or different sexes. Non-identical twins are also known as fraternal twins or dizygotic twins (from two zygotes, what we call the earliest embryo when the egg and sperm fuse).

This type of twinning occurs when more than one egg is released from the ovary at ovulation (normally just a single egg is selected and released), and both of the eggs are fertilised by different sperm. These twins are no more genetically similar than siblings born years apart.

The rates of non-identical twins differ between groups: it’s about eight in 1,000 in caucasian populations, 16 in 1,000 in African populations, and four in 1,000 in people of Asian decent. This suggests there is a genetic component to non-identical twins.

Read more: Explainer: twins, triplets, quadruplets and more

Identical twins (also known as monozygotic – originating from one zygote) are less common. They are the product of just one egg and one sperm, which originally form one embryo, but which break into two during the earliest stages of pregnancy. Scientists are continuing to explore how this occurs biologically, but the process remains a mystery.

The rate of identical twins is consistent across the globe at about four in 1,000 births. This suggests it’s probably just a random biological phenomena not influenced by genetics.

There are three different genetic configurations possible in human twins. UNSW

Prior to today, there was only one reported case of a third type of twins – semi-identical twins.

In 2006, twins in the US were identified as semi-identical twins when they were examined as infants for another medical condition. They too were the result of one egg fusing with two sperm.

But now we know the Queensland siblings are the second set of twins to fall into this mysterious and fascinating category.

What are semi-identical twins?

Scientists believe semi-identical twins are the result of one egg allowing two sperm in simultaneously (which has previously been thought to be non-viable, meaning a pregnancy would never occur).

In the case reported in today’s research, the pregnancy was identified as twins at six weeks. The ultrasound showed they shared a placenta, which is common to 70% of identical twins.

But at 14 weeks of pregnancy, tests revealed the twins were non-identical – one was a girl and the other a boy. Ordinarily non-identical twins would have their own placenta. They were an anomaly.

Thorough DNA testing has revealed they are identical on the maternal side (confirming they came from just one egg, like identical twins). But they are more like non-identical twins on the paternal side, sharing only a proportion of their father’s DNA.

Read more: How twins like the Scott brothers distinguish themselves in battle

Scientists understand biologically how the DNA of our mother and father mix to create an embryo (and subsequently a baby). On the day the egg and sperm meet in the fallopian tube, the DNA, packaged into chromosomes, divides equally into two, allowing the baby to inherit one copy of information from mum and one from dad.

When this doesn’t go to plan, a baby may get too many or too few chromosomes, resulting in genetic disorders like Down Syndrome (an extra copy of Chromosome 21). This may also result in a pregnancy which is not viable.

We still don’t know a lot

There is no scientific precedent for how one embryo manages to separate three sets of chromosomes, as is the case in semi-identical twins. This may remain a scientific mystery.

We have no idea how similar these twins are going to look, although the best guess is that they will be like every other set of non-identical, fraternal twins.

As they are just the second case of this type of twins ever identified, it’s hard to know if they will have a special connection beyond their extra shared DNA.

A search by researchers through huge databases of twins across the globe failed to find more semi-identical twins, suggesting this type of twinning is very rare.

Discoveries like this that teach us just how much there is still to learn about biology and health, and how fascinating the world of reproduction and pregnancy is.

– ref. Same same but different: when identical twins are non-identical – http://theconversation.com/same-same-but-different-when-identical-twins-are-non-identical-112684

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hamer, Professor of Evidence Law, University of Sydney

A criminal trial often helps to provide finality for the accused, and closure for victims and society. But following this week’s news, George Pell’s barrister, Robert Richter QC, indicated Pell maintains his innocence and the legal team have already lodged an appeal. Richter said this would be pursued following Pell’s sentencing.

Pell’s conviction no longer appears final, but provisional. The Vatican initially said it would wait until the appeal outcome before launching its own investigation that could lead to the Cardinal being defrocked. But it has now been confirmed the investigation is starting regardless.

The Australian government, though, said it will only strip Pell of his Order of Australia honours if he loses the appeal. Meanwhile, the media and community are awash with confusion about the verdict that came in a retrial after the first trial concluded with a hung jury. It seems many people are holding their breath until the appeal is heard.

Defendants generally only get one appeal, though that one appeal may be taken further to the High Court. If Pell’s appeal is dismissed, he will require exceptional intervention from the Government, which is very rare.

So, what is an appeal, and what might it look like for someone with Pell’s profile and convictions?

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

How long would an appeal take?

The appeal process is fairly elaborate. It requires the Court of Appeal’s leave (or approval). If given, the defence and prosecution will make written submissions to the court. There is then a hearing, on the basis of which the court will make a decision, explain its reasoning, and make appropriate orders.

Robert Richter could appeal the verdict on several grounds. David Crossling/AAP

In this case, the court may dismiss the appeal, allow the appeal and order a retrial, or allow the appeal and order that Pell be acquitted. With a crowded list of cases, this entire procedure often takes more than a year. The Pell appeal may be relatively simple and decided more quickly.

Bail was revoked pending sentencing, anticipating a custodial sentence, and Pell will remain in custody until the appeal. If the appeal is upheld, the court may make a decision immediately following the hearing and publish its reasons subsequently.

Evidence at the trial

The trial did not involve a great deal of evidence. One of the alleged victims had made a report to police in 2015, claiming the assaults occurred after mass. The other alleged victim died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2014, apparently without reporting abuse.

Like many delayed sexual assault cases – almost 20 years in this case – there simply isn’t much evidence available. At Pell’s trial, there seemed to have been little more than the complainant’s allegations and Pell’s denials. Pell did not testify. Video of his denials to police were played to the jury.

The jury may have preferred to see how Pell coped with cross-examination. But he has the right to silence, and his failure to enter the witness box can’t be used against him.

A few other witnesses gave evidence about the masses delivered by Pell at St Patrick’s Cathedral, where the abuse allegedly took place. They supported the defence’s claims of the impossibility of the abuse taking place. Witnesses noted the then Archbishop Pell would have been accompanied at all times during the crowded events and would not have had the opportunity to commit the offences.

The defence claimed it would have been impossible to conduct the abuse right after mass, when St Patrick’s Cathedral was crowded with people. VICTORIA POLICE

Other types of evidence often relied on by the prosecution in child sexual abuse trials did not feature in the Pell trial. The prosecution wasn’t able to present the complainant’s earlier reports of abuse. It seems he told no one prior to the police report.

The absence of earlier reports would not necessarily help the defence. Courts now recognise there are many reasons why victims of child sexual assault find it hard to talk. They feel confused and powerless, particularly where the offender is in a position of authority.

Read more: Triggering past trauma: how to take care of yourself if you’re affected by the Pell news

Many child sexual assault prosecutions rely on evidence of other alleged victims to demonstrate the defendant’s propensity or tendency for child sexual abuse. Such evidence was potentially available in the Pell trial – other allegations had been made from his time in Ballarat in the 1970s.

However, this evidence was not admitted at trial. The two sets of allegations were kept entirely separate (and the trials split), perhaps to avoid the risk of jury prejudice. Pell’s Melbourne convictions (in the cathedral trial) were suppressed while the Ballarat charges (swimmers trial) were pending.

It was only when the prosecution dropped the Ballarat charges that the convictions on the Melbourne charges were made public.

The court heard the offences were committed in the sacristy of the cathedral. Image tendered as evidence at trial, provided by Victoria Police

What would the defence appeal?

Because only limited evidence was relied on at trial, relatively few legal issues were raised. This means the defence may find it difficult to identify any legal error as a ground for appeal. Richter has indicated the defence will claim there were errors regarding the constitution of the jury and the defence not being permitted to use a graphic.

If errors are found, the Court of Appeal would still dismiss the appeal if the errors seem too slight to have affected the outcome.

The other defence argument on appeal could be that the conviction was unreasonable. The jury simply got the facts wrong. Here the defence may face obstacles. The Court of Appeal is unlikely to entertain claims the jury was prejudiced and blamed Pell for the Church’s inadequate response to other paedophile priests.

Appeal courts generally trust a properly directed jury will comply with its duties. Appeal courts are also generally wary of overriding jury verdicts, particularly where they rest upon witness credibility, as in this case. Inconsistencies and gaps in a complainant’s account may be attributed to the delay rather than fabrication.

However, the Court of Appeal may feel well placed to assess the defence argument of impossibility. And in this case, unusually, the court may be able to assess the complainant’s demeanour, since the witness testified over video link.

This may be one of those exceptional cases where the court is prepared to say the jury got it wrong. But the court may also hesitate to override the jury – the community’s representatives – in a case that has opened such a rift in Australian society.

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

– ref. How an appeal could uphold or overturn George Pell’s conviction – http://theconversation.com/how-an-appeal-could-uphold-or-overturn-george-pells-conviction-112620

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giovanni Di Lieto, Senior Lecturer of international trade law, Monash Business School, Monash University

It’s hard to tell if Donald Trump’s trumpeting of “substantial progress” in trade talks, leading to a cosy weekend at Mar-a-Lago to sign a deal with Chinese president Xi Jingping, represents reality.

Most observers, though, will be relieved by his decision to again defer his threat to escalate the US-China trade war and hike up tariffs from 10% to 25% on US$200 billion worth of Chinese imports. (The total value of US imports from China in 2018 was US$493 billion.)

Read more: WTO offers Trump a solution to enforcing a trade deal with a China that breaks promises

Trade wars are generally considered bad for everyone. KPMG has calculated a full escalation of the trade war – with a 25% tariff applying to all goods traded (worth US$604.5 billion in 2018) – would cost Australia A$58 billion over the next decade.

But far worse for Australia, and its Asia-Pacific neighbours, could be a deal to end the trade war, especially if it involves a grand geopolitical bargain between the US and China.

Bilateral world order

Considering the US administration’s hard-line approach, for a truly comprehensive deal to occur China would have to subscribe to a serious restructuring of its industrial system. This would ultimately mean phasing out covert state subsidies, liberalising its financial markets and giving up on meaningful technological competition in security-sensitive sectors.

But out of fear an ongoing trade war will harm its export-driven economic progress, and also as an expedient step for advancing its regional hegemony, China might eventually agree to all this as part of a grand bargain.

Essentially, a grand bargain with an “America First” US administration makes sense on the mutually beneficial assumption it would lay the foundations for a bilateral world order.

US and Chinese delegations talk trade in Washington, DC on January 21, 2019. Shawn Thew/EPA

As part of the deal the US would dramatically reduce its strategic footprint from the Middle East through to the Korean peninsula. The advantage would be it could focus resources on limiting China’s naval role across Indo-Pacific trading routes.

Retreating to a more sustainable role as the indispensable maritime power across the Pacific and Indian oceans would leave China free rein to exert its weight on land in Eurasia.

The US might see that as advantage. Chinese regional hegemony inland would give Russia more to think about on its south-eastern border, rather than causing problems for US allies in eastern Europe. It would also put extreme pressure on India to finally evolve into a subsidiary power to the US maritime empire, one of the wildest strategic dreams in Washington.

Read more: The collapse of the US-Russia INF Treaty makes arms control a global priority

The downside would be that Russia might end up as a subservient commodity supplier to China’s regional empire. Russia’s geo-economic downgrade would strengthen European resolve to run independently of the US, one of the worst nightmares in Washington.

For China, the prize would be achieving the main strategic ambitions of its Belt and Road Initiative, ultimately controlling land trading routes from Beijing to Venice. The strategic cost would be abandoning its maritime ambitions.

Where this leaves Australia

Where would this bilateral world system vision leave Australia?

Certainly worse off than the current situation. With interlocking spheres of influence across the Indo-Pacific rim (US) and the Eurasian landmass (China), at best Australia would become a marginal economic and security appendage of the two hegemons.

Relegated to the role of a price- and rule-taking commodity supplier to China, Australia would remain only nominally a US ally. It would be a rather disposable buffer state at the frontier of two empires, caught between the economic and security crossfire of proxy conflicts.

Weaknesses and opportunities

Compared to this scenario, a protracted US-China trade war may well serve Australia’s national interests much better.

Though tariffs will weaken the global economy, it will hurt the US and China the most. It might even weaken their respective commercial and military grips on the Asia-Pacific region to the point that patterns of more distributed power relations could emerge.

Read more: Why there will be no winners from the US-China trade war

Economic analysis suggests many Asian economies are already relative winners, as tariffs motivate US and Chinese businesses to “decouple”.

Malaysia, Japan, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines lead the nations gaining from US and Chinese companies buying goods elsewhere. Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and India are the top beneficiaries from US companies shifting production away from China.

Several Asian countries have also seized the opportunity to play the US and China against each other.

The Philippines has revitalised relations with China to manage the South China Sea dispute more independently from the US. This has not stopped it remaining by far the largest recipient of US military aid in Asia.

South Korea has signed bilateral free-trade agreements with both China and the US, positioning itself as an intermediary that will allow American and Chinese companies to trade in a way that circumvents the tariffs.

Malaysia’s government has affirmed strategic neutrality by pulling back from deals that would put it in debt to Chinese investors.

This is arguably an unprecedented opportunity for Australia to start carving a more independent foreign policy.

Our interests lie in taking an active role in promoting a world system truly based on multilateral rules rather than great power relations.

The worst-case scenario for an ongoing US-China trade war is that it turns into real war. But that’s unlikely.

So long as it remains a manageable trade dispute, it is better for Australia, and much of the rest of the world, than trade peace leading to a bilateral world system.

– ref. What’s worse than the US-China trade war? A grand peace bargain – http://theconversation.com/whats-worse-than-the-us-china-trade-war-a-grand-peace-bargain-111608

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Biddle, Associate Professor, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

Never has more data been held about us by government or companies that we interact with. Never has this data been so useful for analytical purposes.

But with such opportunities come risks and challenges. If personal data is going to be used for research and policy purposes, we need effective data governance arrangements in place, and community support (social licence) for this data to be used.

The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods has recently undertaken a survey of a representative sample of Australians to learn their views about about how personal data is used, stored and shared.

While Australians report a high level of support for the government to use and share data, there is less confidence that the government has the right safeguards in place or can be trusted with people’s data.

Read more: Soft terms like ‘open’ and ‘sharing’ don’t tell the true story of your data

What government should do with data

In the ANUPoll survey of more than 2,000 Australian adults (available for download at the Australian Data Archive) we asked:

On the whole, do you think the Commonwealth Government should or should not be able to do the following?

Six potential data uses were given.

Do you think the Commonwealth Government should or should not be able to … ? ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods Working Paper

Overall, Australians are supportive of the Australian government using data for purposes such as allocating resources to those who need it the most, and ensuring people are not claiming benefits to which they are not entitled.

They were slightly less supportive about providing data to researchers, though most still agreed or strongly agreed that it was worthwhile.

Perceptions of government data use

Community attitudes to the use of data by government are tied to perceptions about whether the government can keep personal data secure, and whether it’s behaving in a transparent and trustworthy manner.

To measure views of the Australian population on these issues, respondents were told:

Following are a number of statements about the Australian government and the data it holds about Australian residents.

They were then asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that the Australian government:

• could respond quickly and effectively to a data breach
• has the ability to prevent data being hacked or leaked
• can be trusted to use data responsibly
• is open and honest about how data are collected, used and shared.

Respondents did not express strong support for the view that the Australian government is able to protect people’s data, or is using data in an appropriate way.

To what extent do you agree or disagree that the Australian Government … ? ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods Working Paper

Read more: What are tech companies doing about ethical use of data? Not much

We also asked respondents to:

[think] about the data about you that the Australian Government might currently hold, such as your income tax data, social security records, or use of health services.

We then asked for their level of concern about five specific forms of data breaches or misuse of their own personal data.

We found that there are considerable concerns about different forms of data breaches or misuse.

More than 70% of respondents were concerned or very concerned about the accidental release of personal information, deliberate hacking of government systems, and data being provided to consultants or private sector organisations who may misuse the data.

Level of concern about specific forms of data breaches or misuse of a person’s own data … ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods Working Paper

More than 60% were concerned or very concerned about their data being used by the Australian government to make unfair decisions. And more than half were concerned or very concerned about their data being provided to academic researchers who may misuse their information.

Read more: Facebook’s data lockdown is a disaster for academic researchers

Trust in government to manage data

The data environment in Australia is changing rapidly. More digital information about us is being created, captured, stored and shared than ever before, and there is a greater capacity to link information across multiple sources of data, and across multiple time periods.

While this creates opportunities, it also creates the risk that the data will be used in a way that is not in our best interests.

There is policy debate at the moment about how data should be used and shared. If we don’t make use of the data available, that has costs in terms of worse service delivery and less effective government. So, locking data up is not a cost-free option.

But sharing data or making data available in a way that breaches people’s privacy can be harmful to individuals, and may generate a significant (and legitimate) public backlash. This would reduce the chance of data being made available in any form, and mean that the potential benefits of improving the wellbeing of Australians are lost.

If government, researchers and private companies want to be able to make use of the richness of the new data age, there is an urgent and continuing need to build up trust across the population, and to put policies in place that reassure consumers and users of government services.

– ref. Australians want to support government use and sharing of data, but don’t trust their data will be safe – http://theconversation.com/australians-want-to-support-government-use-and-sharing-of-data-but-dont-trust-their-data-will-be-safe-111610

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

In appointing Ita Buttrose to chair the ABC, the Morrison government might just have got it right, having got it so hopelessly wrong last time.

Buttrose comes with what might be called three big negative advantages:

• she is not a former business associate of the prime minister

• she is not a well-known climate-change denier like Maurice Newman, whom John Howard appointed in 2007

• she is not a strident culture warrior like Keith Windschuttle, Ron Brunton and Janet Albrechtsen, with whom Howard stacked the ABC board in the early 2000s.

She also has many positive advantages.

She’s tough. She worked for the Packers — Frank and Kerry – and for Rupert Murdoch at senior management and board level. That is not territory for shrinking violets.

She knows the media – albeit mainly print and commercial television. She was founding editor of the ground-breaking magazine Cleo, an assertive magazine for women, openly discussing what were then taboo subjects such as women’s sexuality, which it celebrated with a nude male centrefold.

Its advertising pitch was, “What Cleo wants, Cleo gets”, a statement encouraging women to be ambitious and take their place in the world.

She went on to edit The Australian Women’s Weekly, the Packer flagship, and later was editor-in-chief of Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in Sydney, before being appointed by him to the News Limited board.

Read more: Constant attacks on the ABC will come back to haunt the Coalition government

As an editor in the 1980s, she exhibited a strong sense of decency and fairness by standing out against the moral panic in some elements of the media over HIV-AIDS when that disease first emerged in Australia.

Hysterical preachers thundered about how the wrath of God was being brought down on homosexuals and people who engaged in extra-marital sex. Buttrose was part of the more responsible elements of media that repudiated this untruthful and prejudicial drivel.

When tragic cases emerged of HIV-contaminated blood having been used in blood transfusions, she and others such as the then chair of the National AIDS Task Force, Professor David Penington, worked hard to restore public trust in the blood bank, once procedures had been adopted to eliminate the risk.

More recently as national president of Dementia Australia she has been a high-profile advocate for a stronger public policy response to dementia and greater public awareness of the needs of people with dementia.

Given her background, and her demeanour at the media conference at which the prime minister announced her appointment, she promises to bring strong moral leadership to the ABC.

And if it’s one thing the ABC needs in the wake of the disaster that engulfed the former chair Justin Milne and managing director Michelle Guthrie last September, it is strong moral leadership.

Buttrose said she was a devoted ABC listener who believed passionately in the ABC’s independence. She said her priority was to restore stability to the board and management.

She also endorsed the ABC’s continued involvement in digital media, which will give no comfort to those in commercial media who have been campaigning to have the ABC’s wings clipped in this area.

Twice she reiterated the level of trust the Australian public has in the ABC’s news service, making the point that on ABC news, the public got stories they did not get on commercial media.

Asked whether the ABC needed more funding, she said she had not seen the books, but if she thought more funding was needed, “I won’t be frightened to ask”.

Buttrose’s stated attitude to the ABC and the answers she gave at the media conference evoked memories of Sir Zelman Cowen.

He was appointed governor-general in 1977 after Sir John Kerr had bitterly divided the nation by sacking Gough Whitlam as prime minister in 1975.

Upon his appointment, Sir Zelman said he wanted to bring “a touch of healing”.

There is still a lot of healing to be done at the ABC, and the scrutiny arising from last year’s crisis is not over yet.

The surviving members of the ABC board are scheduled to appear next Tuesday (March 5) at the Senate inquiry into political interference in the ABC. What they did – or failed to do – in protecting the independence of the ABC will undoubtedly be a central question.

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

A major cause of that crisis was the stacking of the board with political mates and special-interest groups who share the government’s worldview.

The ABC Act contains a provision designed to prevent this, but it has been routinely ignored by ministers and prime ministers for decades.

The act provides for an independent nominations panel whose job is to present names to the minister for communications and the prime minister.

Ita Buttrose was not nominated by the panel, as the prime minister revealed in his announcement. Even so, it is a choice that has merit, and if she succeeds in reasserting the ABC’s independence from political interference, that will make a pleasing irony.

– ref. Ita Buttrose’s appointment as new ABC chair a promising step in the right direction – http://theconversation.com/ita-buttroses-appointment-as-new-abc-chair-a-promising-step-in-the-right-direction-112683

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Finnane, Professor (honorary), University of Melbourne

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

Every so often a woman takes up arms to lead a spirited struggle against invaders and occupiers of her homeland. Such women usually wind up dead at an early age, but they capture the imagination. The most famous example in British history is Boudica, aka Boedicea; in French history, it is Joan of Arc.

The Taiwanese revolutionary Hsieh Hsüeh-hung （1901-1970）is such a figure, although like most aspects of Taiwan’s history her significance is contested. Born in Taiwan, buried in Beijing, Hsieh was a communist and also an advocate of Taiwanese self-determination. In the history of world communism she is noted for being one of the founders of the Taiwanese Communist Party, established in 1928.

In the annals of the Taiwan independence movement, Hsieh has emerged as a heroine of the 1947 uprising, now the subject of an annual commemoration held in Taiwan in 28 February. In 1948 she founded the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government Alliance.

Hsieh Hsüeh-hung’s fate – in life and in death – was determined by the shifts in attitude towards Taiwanese independence on the part of ruling powers, and by the status of its local left-wing movements. To some degree, she is not so much a woman hidden in history as one rendered visible by it.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Théroigne de Méricourt, feminist revolutionary

Blood on the snow

Hsieh was a child of the Japanese empire. In 1894, seven years before her birth, Japan defeated China in a short war at sea, afterwards demanding Taiwan as part of the post-war settlement. It was to be the sovereign power in the island for the next half-century.

Hsieh’s parents were immigrants from Fujian province, the most common source of settlers in Taiwan. The family was poor. Hsieh was sent into service in a Japanese family at the age of eight. At 12, she was sold into a shopkeeper’s family to be raised as their daughter-in-law.

Hsieh Hsüeh-hung was born into poverty. Wikimedia Commons

In an early show of feistiness, she ran away when in her teens, finding work initially in a Japanese sugar factory in Tainan and later, in her home-town of Chang-hua, as a representative for Singer sewing machines. As an extremely young person, she was exposed to the impact of international capitalism on her home turf, and to extremes of social inequality.

To these experiences, she added a growing political awareness. In Chang-hua she formed a relationship with a merchant named Chang Shu-min, to whom she was married for some years. The couple lived for around three years in Japan, where she began to acquire an education, learning to read and write in both Japanese and Chinese. Both there and back in Taiwan she came in contact with politically progressive organisations.

In April 1919, she paid her first visit to the Chinese mainland, staying in Qingdao, which at that time was about to be transferred from German to Japanese control under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, sparking the radicalising May Fourth Movement in China.

When she returned in 1925 it was to Shanghai, where she enrolled in Shanghai University – more like a cadre training school than an academy and dominated by Communist Party members. Together with fellow-Taiwanese Lin Mushu she was there recommended for acceptance at the Far Eastern Toilers’ University in Moscow, where they were groomed to set up the Taiwanese Communist Party.

Read more: Small but mighty: why Taiwan matters to Australia

The Taiwanese Communist Party was formally established on 5 April 1928. Its charter was the Taiwanese as a people or nation (minzu), and its slogan was “long live Taiwan independence.” The Chinese Communist Party early on took a similar view. In Mao’s stated opinion (circa 1936), Taiwan’s relationship to China was comparable to Korea’s. For Hsieh, there was no contradiction between the fight for socialism and the fight for Taiwan’s independence.

If being Taiwanese was one driving force in her political life, being a woman was another. At birth she was registered with the name A-nü, or “girlie,” not really a name at all.

From this assigned anonymity she became a vivid presence in history under the name “Hsüeh-hung”, meaning “the snow turns red”. She took the name, it is said, after seeing a worker’s blood spattered on the snow in Qingdao.

As a communist cadre, she was active in peasant and worker associations, but she took a rather independent view of the position of women in Taiwan. In 1930, she pointed to women’s emancipation movements in the Western bourgeoisie as worthy of emulation by Taiwanese women, with equal participation in political life among the goals. It is easy to see how in later years such views would land her in trouble with the Chinese Communist Party.

A born oppositionist

The 1920s were the decade of Hsieh’s political formation. Thereafter till her death in 1970 she was in conflict with three different regimes. To her cost, she was a born oppositionist.

The first of these regimes was the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan, the target of all political opposition movements in the island. In the context of a rising fascism in the Japanese home islands, the authorities conducted a sweep of Taiwan’s communist activists in 1931. This destroyed the Taiwanese party. Arrested, imprisoned, and subsequently sentenced on charges of threats to public security, Hsieh spent the next nine years in jail.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Hop Lin Jong, a Chinese immigrant in the early days of White Australia

The Japanese were replaced in 1945 by China’s Nationalist Party, which established a heavy-handed administration on the island, thoroughly alienating the locals. On 27 February 1947 a conflict between tax agents and a cigarette dealer met with protests. A brutal crackdown on 28 February led to an island-wide uprising that was eventually suppressed with great violence.

The insurgency unfolded in various ways across the island. In Taichung, near to her hometown on the central west coat, Hsieh, a known activist and political organiser, chaired a protest rally calling for self-government and played a key role in dismantling Nationalist Party authority in the city.

Taichung’s few days of independence are associated with three principles set down by her: protect mainlanders; protect public property; place weapons “in the hands of the people”.

Her name is also connected with the formation of the Twenty-Seventh Militia Corps, an armed force of 4,000 men meant to provide organised defence against the Nationalist forces. Between the things she actually did and the things she was blamed for doing, a legend grew up around her. With the collapse of the resistance on 9 May, a price was put on her head, and she fled the island.

The last part of Hsieh’s life, a period of more than 20 years, was passed entirely on the mainland, where unaccountably she found herself in conflict with yet a third regime, the Chinese Communist Party. Present with other communist leaders at the declaration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she was appointed to a number of official positions in the early 1950s, including chair of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government Alliance.

The honeymoon was short-lived. She modified her position on Taiwanese independence to accommodate new political realities in the region, but never quite to the Party’s satisfaction. In 1952 she was attacked for lack of humility before the Party and for murky political thinking in relation to Taiwan.

In 1957 she was attacked again, and declared a “rightist”, losing her positions and her party membership. In the Cultural Revolution, she was attacked once more, this time physically. A photo provided to her biographer, now widely published on the internet, shows her in the hands of Red Guards in 1968. She died in Beijing in 1970, of lung cancer.

In the hands of Red Guards, 1968. The placard around her neck describes her as a ‘Big-time rightist’, with the characters for her name crossed out. Source: Chen Fang-ming, Hsieh Hsüeh-hung p’ing-chuan (Biography of Hsieh Hsüeh-hung), Taipei, 1991.

Emotionally, Hsieh shared most of her life and her mission with fellow-Taiwanese Yang K’o-huang, who was imprisoned with her in 1931, worked with her in a small business during the war years, and accompanied her to the mainland. The couple were never legally married: Yang had another family. But in the People’s Republic of China they lived together through the few good years and the many bad until her death. Her final words to him were that he should maintain the struggle: “the final victory will go to the people of Taiwan.”

In 1986, the Party decided to rehabilitate Hsieh. A short biographical statement written for the rehabilitation formalities included mention of her “deviations and errors” but conceded that she had “opposed invasion by outsiders” and had shown a spirit of struggle for “the realisation of the unification of the ancestral land.”

Left unchallenged, the rehabilitation statement might have defined her legacy. In 1991, however, a biography of her appeared in Taiwan. The author, long-time political dissident Chen Fang-ming, offered readers a portrait of Hsieh as a life-long champion of Taiwanese self-determination, whose tenacity and courage in face of political persecution put male political actors of her generation to shame. Widely read and influential, this biography effectively reclaimed Hsieh for Taiwan.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Hsieh Hsüeh-hung, communist champion of Taiwanese self-determination – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-hsieh-hsueh-hung-communist-champion-of-taiwanese-self-determination-112604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damien Manuel, Director, Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation (CSRI), Deakin 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.

When it comes to data security, there is an inherent tension between safety and privacy. The government’s job is to balance these priorities with laws that will keep Australians safe, improve the economy and protect personal data from unwarranted surveillance.

This is a delicate line to walk. Recent debate has revolved around whether technology companies should be required to help law enforcement agencies gain access to the encrypted messages of suspected criminals.

While this is undoubtedly an important issue, the enacted legislation – the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act – fails on both fronts. Not only is it unlikely to stop criminals, it could make personal communications between everyday people less secure.

Rather than focus on the passage of high-profile legislation that clearly portrays a misunderstanding of the technology in question, the government would do better to invest in a comprehensive cyber security strategy that will actually have an impact.

Achieving the goals set out in the strategy we already have would be a good place to start.

Read more: The difference between cybersecurity and cybercrime, and why it matters

Poor progress on cyber security

The Turnbull government launched Australia’s first Cyber Security Strategy in April 2016. It promised to dramatically improve the online safety of all Australian families and businesses.

In 2017, the government released the first annual update to report on how well it was doing. On the surface some progress had been made, but a lot of items were incomplete – and the promised linkages to businesses and the community were not working well.

Unfortunately, there was never a second update. Prime ministers were toppled, cabinets were reshuffled and it appears the Morrison government lost interest in truly protecting Australians.

So, where did it all go wrong?

A steady erosion of privacy

Few Australians paid much notice when vested interests hijacked technology law reforms. The amendment of the Copyright Act in 2015 forced internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to sites containing pirated content. Movie studios now had their own version of China’s “Great Firewall” to block and control internet content in Australia.

In 2017, the government implemented its data retention laws, which effectively enabled specific government agencies to spy on law-abiding citizens. The digital trail (metadata) people left through phone calls, SMS messages, emails and internet activity was retained by telecommunications carriers and made accessible to law enforcement.

The public was assured only limited agencies would have access to the data to hunt for terrorists. In 2018, we learned that many more agencies were accessing the data than originally promised.

Enter the Assistance and Access legislation. Australia’s technology sector strongly objected to the bill, but the Morrison government’s consultation process was a whitewash. The government ignored advice on the damage the legislation would do to the developing cyber sector outlined in the Cyber Security Strategy – the very sector the Turnbull government had been counting on to help rebuild the economy in this hyper-connected digital world.

Read more: What skills does a cybersecurity professional need?

While the government focuses on the hunt for terrorists, it neglects the thousands of Australians who fall victim each year to international cybercrime syndicates and foreign governments.

Australians lose money to cybercrime via scam emails and phone calls designed to harvest passwords, banking credentials and other personal information. Losses from some categories of cybercrime have increased by more than 70% in the last 12 months. The impact of cybercrime on Australian business and individuals is estimated at $7 billion a year.

So, where should government focus its attention?

Seven actions that would make Australia safer

If the next government is serious about protecting Australian businesses and families, here are seven concrete actions it should take immediately upon taking office.

1. Review the Cyber Security Strategy

Work with industry associations, the business and financial sectors, telecommunication providers, cyber startups, state government agencies and all levels of the education sector to develop a plan to protect Australians and businesses. The plan must be comprehensive, collaborative and, most importantly, inclusive. It should be adopted at the federal level and by states and territories.

2. Make Australians a harder target for cybercriminals

The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre is implementing technical and process controls that help people in the UK fight cybercrime in smart, innovative ways. The UK’s Active Cyber Defence program uses top-secret intelligence to prevent cyber attacks and to detect and block malicious email campaigns used by scammers. It also investigates how people actually use technology, with the aim of implementing behavioural change programs to improve public safety.

3. Create a community education campaign

A comprehensive community education program would improve online behaviours and make businesses and families safer. We had the iconic Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign from 1981 to help reduce skin cancer through community education. Where is the equivalent campaign for cyber safety to nudge behavioural change in the community at all levels from kids through to adults?

4. Improve cyber safety education in schools

Build digital literacy into education from primary through to tertiary level so that young Australians understand the consequences of their online behaviours. For example, they should know the risks of sharing personal details and nude selfies online.

Read more: Cybersecurity of the power grid: A growing challenge

5. Streamline industry certifications

Encourage the adoption of existing industry certifications, and stop special interest groups from introducing more. There are already more than 100 industry certifications. Minimum standards for government staff should be defined, including for managers, technologists and software developers.

The United States Defence Department introduced minimum industry certification for people in government who handle data. The Australian government should do the same by picking a number of vendor-agnostic certifications as mandatory in each job category.

6. Work with small and medium businesses

The existing cyber strategy doesn’t do enough to engage with the business sector. Small and medium businesses form a critical part of the larger business supply-chain ecosystem, so the ramifications of a breach could be far-reaching.

The Australian Signals Directorate recommends businesses follow “The Essential Eight” – a list of strategies businesses can adopt to reduce their risk of cyber attack. This is good advice, but it doesn’t address the human side of exploitation, called social engineering, which tricks people into disclosing passwords that protect sensitive or confidential information.

7. Focus on health, legal and tertiary education sectors

The health, legal and tertiary education sectors have a low level of cyber maturity. These are among the top four sectors reporting breaches, according to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

While health sector breaches could lead to personal harm and blackmail, breaches in the legal sector could result in the disclosure of time-sensitive business transactions and personal details. And the tertiary education sector – a powerhouse of intellectual research – is ripe for foreign governments to steal the knowledge underpinning Australia’s future technologies.

A single person doing the wrong thing and making a mistake can cause a major security breach. More than 900,000 people are employed in the Australian health and welfare sector, and the chance of one of these people making a mistake is unfortunately very high.

– ref. Seven ways the government can make Australians safer – without compromising online privacy – http://theconversation.com/seven-ways-the-government-can-make-australians-safer-without-compromising-online-privacy-111091

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwen Dalton, Associate professor, Management Discipline Group UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

As US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meet at a summit in Vietnam, we are again seeing the same kind of language used in relation to North Korea. The country is constantly described as the “hermit kingdom” and words like “nuclear threat” enter the headlines.

The US president himself called Kim “Rocket Man”, delegitimising the country and its leader. This kind of language demonises North Korea and closes off possibilities for more constructive engagement.

Past research has identified that the media regularly engage in “conflict-priming” during times of international conflict. An example was the dehumanisation of Arab citizens during the Bush-labelled “war on terror”. The authors noted the language “took the form of animal imagery” that equated human actions with subhuman behaviours.

Our research into Australia’s coverage of North Korea showed the news media often uncritically reproduced metaphors that framed North Korea as dangerous, provocative, irrational, secretive, impoverished and totalitarian.

The wider public picks up cues about the national interest, and how it might influence their own, from the media. A widespread group-think on North Korea’s impulsiveness and aggression could quickly and dramatically escalate tensions.

Read more: When governments go to war, the Fourth Estate goes AWOL

The hermit kingdom and other metaphors

We analysed coverage on North Korea in three major Australian media outlets: The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and transcripts of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) over three years – from January 1 2010 to December 31 2012.

The word ‘nuclear’ often accompanies ‘North Korea’. Washington Post Screenshot

We found North Korea was rarely referred to as a country or its rulers as a government. Instead it was described as: an impoverished rogue state; a secretive state; the world’s most isolated state; a totalitarian regime; an evil regime; and Asia’s worst regime. The country’s leader was often referred to a ruthless psychopath or demonic big brother.

Several dominant metaphors appeared in the coverage. These framed North Korea as

• a military threat (conflict metaphor)
• unpredictable, irrational and ruthless (psychopathology metaphor)
• isolated and secretive (pariah metaphor)
• a cruel dystopia (Orwellian metaphor)
• impoverished (basket-case metaphor).

These metaphors help shape public perceptions of North Korea, giving the country a negative, often adversarial orientation. Without a change to the North Korean frame, resourced and evidence-based intervention is more likely to fail due to donor disengagement.

We also run the risk of dehumanising the North Korean people. In the event of conflict, such dehumanising can mean humanitarian imperatives are pushed aside in favour of attack.

North Korea – nuclear and narcissistic

The conflict metaphor was the most frequent across the three news sites, particularly referring to the country’s “nuclear” capabilities. Typing “North Korea” into Google News today elicits much of the same:

The word ‘nuclear’ appears frequently in coverage on North Korea. Google News screenshot

While the extent of North Korea’s nuclear capability is not categorically known, it is often assumed, with references to a possible “nuclear holocaust” and fears a North Korean rocket carrying a nuclear warhead could reach Australia.

Another common theme in our research was that North Korea was covered as if suffering from a pathological, narcissistic disorder. North Korea was often portrayed as seeking attention or exploiting the threat of nuclear retaliation to extricate more aid.

We can still see this today. An article in The Australian this week noted that Kim Jong-un was a master of “deceptive statecraft” as practised by his father. The author wrote:

Pyongyang is a master at getting something meaningful from the US and giving up something less meaningful or even meaningless in return… In the schoolyard, this is like the bully promising not to punch you in the face tomorrow in return for your pocket money today.

Another piece in Fox News used similar language, talking about the country as if a narcissist stringing along a romantic interest with manipulation and deceit.

Kim’s father and grandfather – who ruled North Korea before him – have a history of stringing along past US presidents of both parties with assurances of cooperative behavior and then breaking their promises.

So, North Korea is depicted as an isolated and backward country run by a tyrant with comically eccentric, excessive tastes. And its leader is perceived as a liar and a cheat.

This unbalanced consideration of North Korean motives makes us virtually oblivious to the country’s point of view. A failure to understand North Korea’s interests has serious implications for how Australia (and its allies) respond to North Korea.

Why it matters

Research shows recognising others’ concerns as valid is key to resolving long-term conflicts. But, by reinforcing a negative, often adversarial stance towards North Korea, the media effectively demonise North Korea’s interests and close off the possibility of engagement.

This locks North Korea and the “civilised” West into a mutually antagonistic relationship that precludes any solution other than the enemy being eliminated through conversion or destruction.

Read more: Beyond the war of words: how might the Australian media’s coverage of China affect social cohesion?

The Australian media would be substantially enlivened by more stories illustrating individual and community life. This would give North Koreans a human face and offer the Australian public a less singular, monotonous depiction of a country so often written about with such a limited lexicon.

Access into North Korea can be tricky for journalists. But our analysis found even where human stories of refugees exist, they are often tied to negative metaphors. For the sake of balance, the media should resist common, creative descriptions and let North Korean refugees speak for themselves.

Such journalism would alter the way we view North Korea and soften the tendency to see it as an adversarial, irrational, rogue state populated by brainwashed citizens devoted to the cult of the Kims. It also should seek to better capture some of the complexities and differences of opinion that make the North Korean problem so difficult to resolve.

– ref. Hermit kingdom, nuclear nation … If the media keep calling North Korea names, it will only prolong conflict – http://theconversation.com/hermit-kingdom-nuclear-nation-if-the-media-keep-calling-north-korea-names-it-will-only-prolong-conflict-112507

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Felmingham, Chair of Clinical Psychology, University of Melbourne

The conviction of Cardinal George Pell on childhood sexual abuse charges has dominated the media this week, rocked the Catholic Church and led to much public anger and confusion.

But the most important consideration at this time must be with the survivors of clerical abuse and their families.

While this conviction will provide a sense of justice and validation for many, the reactions of survivors and their families are likely to be complex and varied and may include anger, validation, sadness, loss and relief.

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

Ongoing psychological trauma

While not every child who has experienced abuse develops symptoms of mental illness, research shows childhood sexual abuse can have profoundly damaging effects on people’s long-term psychological and social functioning.

Common outcomes can include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), shame and anger, depression, substance abuse and addiction, suicide and impaired capacity for intimacy or relationships.

People’s self-identity, spirituality and capacity to trust others may be particularly impaired with clerical sexual abuse.

A key factor of psychological trauma among survivors of childhood abuse is not having their experience heard, validated or recognised. This has been the unfortunate experience of many survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy.

Survivors and their families rightfully feel a sense of rage at the abusers, and at the institutions that protected them.

People who have experienced sexual abuse during childhood are at high risk of mental health problems during later life. From shutterstock.com

The Catholic Church has only recently begun to recognise the extent and reality of clerical sexual abuse, most evident in their summit on clerical sexual abuse at the Vatican in the recent weeks.

How survivors might feel now

At a time like this, survivors may feel less alone in being a survivor of clerical abuse, or child sexual abuse more generally.

They may also feel pride in the courage of other survivors in having come forward with their experiences. The news may even motivate some survivors to consider reporting their own abuse.

Some survivors will feel a sense of justice. But they may equally feel anger at the length of time this verdict has taken, and rage at the power structures in the Catholic Church that protected these abusers for so long.

For many families who have lost their children to suicide or drug addiction, this result will not replace their pain or loss.

For survivors or families who have not had their abuse or the abuse of their loved ones recognised, or had their abusers convicted, this may stir up further feelings of rage and frustration.

Read more: Complex trauma: how abuse and neglect can have life-long effects

The media plays an important role

Previous research of mass media exposure of large-scale trauma events has shown that intensive media exposure can increase PTSD symptoms in the short-term, particularly in those who have experienced previous trauma.

For many survivors who have ongoing PTSD, media reports may trigger reminders of their own abuse, leading to an escalation in PTSD symptoms including intrusive memories, nightmares and sleeping problems.

The media must carefully consider how they cover these events. While it’s important to widely report these convictions to break the silence that so often surrounds childhood sexual abuse and abuse by the clergy, the level of detail in which these events are reported may be triggering.

Read more: Do trauma victims really repress memories and can therapy induce false memories?

If you hear details about a childhood sexual assault, and you have experienced something similar, it can trigger memories of your own abuse — even if you haven’t thought of these things for a long time.

Any sexual contact with a child is abuse and violation and must be considered a serious crime, but reporting graphic accounts of these events is not necessary.

How to get help

If you are experiencing an escalation of distress, it’s important to seek positive and compassionate support from people you trust.

Try to avoid conflict or pressure, and be compassionate to yourself. Give yourself a break and accept where you are at in your recovery.

Try to keep balanced by eating well, exercising and allowing yourself time to rest.

Specialist trauma and childhood sexual abuse treatment services are available in the community. You may choose to discuss your needs with a GP who can refer you to appropriate services, such as a clinical psychologist.

It should also be recognised that many people in the Catholic and wider community will be feeling shocked, confused and disturbed by these events. Many people who have not been personally affected by child sexual abuse will still be feeling angry and betrayed.

If this is familiar, seek support from others and talk about your concerns so you’re able to process these events.

If this article has raised issues for you or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 44.

– ref. Triggering past trauma: how to take care of yourself if you’re affected by the Pell news – http://theconversation.com/triggering-past-trauma-how-to-take-care-of-yourself-if-youre-affected-by-the-pell-news-112608

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

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.

This election campaign, Labor’s health focus is expected to be on Medicare, which it regards as one of its defining achievements. But with almost half the population covered by private health insurance, Labor needs to tread carefully on this vexed topic.

Government subsidies for private health insurance premiums cost over A$6 billion a year. Is it time to scrap the rebate and redirect these funds elsewhere in the health system?

If Labor sees private health insurance as a system that provides unnecessary extravagances that Medicare won’t cover, it can’t justify this type of subsidy.

But picking a fight with the private health insurance industry would be politically foolhardy. And families have factored the subsidies into their budgets, so cutting or eliminating the subsidies would put further pressure on family finances at a time of wage stagnation.

Read more: Do you really need private health insurance? Here’s what you need to know before deciding

We’re unlikely to see much of a discussion about private health insurance during the election campaign. But the party that wins government must commit to reforming the ailing private health insurance system.

How did we get here?

Private health insurance has been a contested policy zone for more than 50 years.

Gough Whitlam prompted a bitter debate over whether government health insurance should be for everyone (universal) or just for the poor (residual), when in 1968 he committed Labor to a universal scheme to replace the then residual model. The new universal model eventually became Medibank in 1975, then Medicare in 1984.

It wasn’t until the 1996 election that then opposition leader John Howard formally conceded defeat on this issue, acknowledging that Medicare should be for all. However, Liberal governments keep returning to “residual” rhetoric, arguing wealthy people should pay directly for health care rather than use the universal scheme, Medicare.

After winning the 1996 election, Howard opened a second front in the health-care war by reinstituting government subsidies for private health insurance.

The cost of the first subsidy scheme – known as the Private Health Insurance Incentive Scheme – was estimated at A$600 million a year. Two decades later, the private health insurance subsidy has increased ten-fold to more than A$6 billion a year.

Getting people to sign up and stay

Liberal governments offer carrots to encourage people to take out insurance – subsidies for premiums – but also use two sticks to penalise people for not taking out insurance. The sticks have proved to be more effective than the carrots in increasing insurance enrolment.

The first stick penalises the rich if they don’t have private health insurance. It is based on the “residual” ideology, that those who can afford to pay their own way should take out private health insurance and not use public hospitals. This stick takes the form of a Medicare Levy surcharge, starting at 1% of income to be paid by singles who earn more than A$90,000 a year, or families on more than A$180,000 a year. People who have private health insurance are exempt from the surcharge.

Read more: Private health insurance premium increases explained in 14 charts

The second stick penalises people who do not take out private health insurance before turning 31. They have to pay higher premiums if they join later in life. When introduced in 2000 this scheme – known as Lifetime Healthcover – increased coverage from about 30% to around 45% of the population.

What is private health for?

Neither side of politics has confronted the fundamental question: what is the role of private health care and private health insurance, given we have universal health coverage?

Private health insurance can complement universal health insurance, providing insurance for services not covered by Medicare. Dental insurance is a good example.

Private health insurance can also be a substitute, where it overlaps with or replaces the public scheme, such as insurance for private hospital care for hip replacements. More than half of all hip replacements are done in private hospitals.

The Liberal approach is simple: private health insurance is both an essential substitute for the universal public hospital system (“it takes pressure off the public hospital system”) and a complement (“it gives people choice of doctor”).

Labor approaches private health insurance a bit like one might approach a dead cat on the table – as an issue that has to be dealt with, but that everybody wishes would just go away.

But private health insurance won’t go away. If Labor sees it solely as a complement, providing unnecessary extravagances not covered by Medicare, then the argument for any public subsidy is weak.

But if Labor sees private care primarily as a substitute, then the A$6 billion of subsidy to private care through the rebate may be better value for money than further support for public hospitals. If that is the case, Labor will have to confront the issue of whether to continue some combination of carrots and sticks, and what can be done to make the industry more efficient.

Time for real reform

Private health insurance premiums have risen dramatically, faster than average weekly earnings, as have consumer complaints.

Labor is seeking to exploit public outrage at high private health insurance premiums by promising to establish a Productivity Commission review into the sector.

In the meantime, Labor would freeze private health insurance premium increases – in effect, kicking the policy can two years down the road.

Whichever party wins the election, it ought to revisit our nation’s history with failing industries. Over recent decades we have learnt that propping up industries in the face of consumers turning away from their products is not a long-term proposition.

Private health insurance is no car industry, but it’s not a sunrise industry either. Yet it receives a greater subsidy than manufacturing at its subsidised peak at the end of the 1960s.

The government has to decide why it’s subsidising the private health care industry. If it decides it doesn’t want to in future, it needs a carefully managed transition.

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

Even if private care is seen primarily as a substitute for the public sector – and a way to take some demand off – subsidies for private care may be counter-productive.

Doctors earn more for each hour worked in the private sector, which makes it harder for public hospitals to attract staff. So subsidies may end up undermining access to care in the public system.

Australians feel pressured to take out private health insurance because of the sticks, but the product is only sustainable with its current level of coverage because of the carrots: the hefty public subsidies. Without the carrots and sticks, coverage would probably return to the pre-1996 levels of around one-third of the population.

The incoming government should look at the effectiveness and efficiency of the carrots and sticks, whether consumers and taxpayers get value for money from private health insurance, and how to address rising out-of-pocket costs.

– ref. Is it time to ditch the private health insurance rebate? It’s a question Labor can’t ignore – http://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-ditch-the-private-health-insurance-rebate-its-a-question-labor-cant-ignore-111171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Madden, Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Almost half of Australia’s packaging waste is not being recovered for recycling, according to the first comprehensive study to track the fate of used packaging materials.

Overall, 56% of packaging was recovered for recycling in 2017-18, according to our study, carried out at the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures and published by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation, a not-for-profit group that aims to reduce the environmental impact of packaging and is leading the effort to implement the National Packaging Targets.

Only 32% of plastic packaging was recovered for recycling, whereas the figure for paper and cardboard was 72%.

Total amounts of packaging waste generated and recovered in Australia for the 2017-18 financial year. APCO/UTS ISF

Used packaging materials such as glass, paper, metal and plastic make up 15% of all recyclable waste generated in Australia, according to our calculations based on available government data. By taking a snapshot of our current performance in recovering these materials, we can identify which areas are most in need of attention. This will help us work towards a “circular economy” approach in which packaging materials are reclaimed, reused and recycled, rather than thrown away.

Read more: Explainer: what is the circular economy?

The chart below shows that the most significant losses to landfill happen before waste is collected for sorting. Households and businesses are still throwing recyclable packaging, approximately 32% of total packaging consumed, into red bins instead of into recycling.

The fate of Australia’s recyclables. APCO/UTS ISF

The 56% recovery figure includes packaging material recovered for export, as well as materials that are currently stockpiled. This includes glass which is not currently in high demand for local manufacturing.

Waste exported overseas represents a significant proportion – about 34% – of total packaging waste recovered. Evidently, there is a clear opportunity to improve local waste management practices and grow local demand for products that contain recycled materials. This would help make Australia’s packaging system more resilient to fluctuations in global markets.

The biggest recent market shock was the recycling crisis sparked by China’s decision to limit the imports of large amounts of recyclable materials.

Read more: A crisis too big to waste: China’s recycling ban calls for a long-term rethink in Australia

In April last year, state and federal environment ministers and local governments reacted to that crisis with the launch of the National Packaging Targets. This included a pledge to pursue circular economy principles.

In practice, this means avoiding packaging waste, improving local recovery of recyclables, and increasing the demand for products that contain recycled materials. Already we have seen major brands such as Unilever commit to using at least 25% locally sourced recycled plastic in packaging such as shampoo bottles. This is a big step in the right direction, and aligns with the trending global agenda to eliminate plastic pollution.

However, developing a circular economy for packaging in Australia requires coordinated action across the whole supply chain. This includes manufacturers, brand owners, consumers, and the resource recovery sector.

Better source separation is important and this requires consumer education and awareness raising, as well as smarter design of packaging to make it easier to recycle. These strategies are already supported by the new Australasian Recycling Label, which could potentially be mandated for all types of packaging.

A further consequence of better source separation is a reduction in the contamination of the collected materials. This would improve the efficiency of the material recovery facilities (MRFs) that sort the mixed recyclables into separate streams for reprocessing.

What we also need is more and better data on packaging consumption and recycling infrastructure capabilities. Some future actions are clear, such as addressing problematic plastic packaging. Others decisions that might involve broad systemic interventions need more information about the best way to encourage packaging circularity. Key to success will be the willingness of all stakeholders to develop a collective, consistent and proactive approach to information sharing and problem solving.

This article was coauthored by Brooke Donnelly, chief executive of the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation.

– ref. Only half of packaging waste is recycled – here’s how to do better – http://theconversation.com/only-half-of-packaging-waste-is-recycled-heres-how-to-do-better-112231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stewart Lockie, Director, The Cairns Institute, James Cook University

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

Rural and regional Australia is a big place – too big to be contained in one rural policy or represented by a single political party.

Several features of contemporary rural and regional Australia stand out, though, as deserving of serious policy attention.

Read more: Report recommends big ideas for regional Australia – beyond decentralisation

The Indigenous estate

Indigenous peoples are among rural and regional Australia’s largest landholders. Native title rights are recognised on more than 37% of the Australian landmass. Exclusive possession native title applies to around 13%. Both these numbers will grow.

The cultural and social significance of the Indigenous estate is immense. So too is its economic significance. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enterprises are active in agriculture, mining, infrastructure development, land and water management, and protected area management.

Governments have taken some positive steps to assist Indigenous enterprise. Changing procurement policy to encourage local suppliers is an excellent example. This must be seen in the context, however, of the missteps of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy and failure to engage with the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Read more: Building in ways that meet the needs of Australia’s remote regions

Respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aspirations for sovereignty and “closing the gap” on health, safety, education and employment are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, finance, insurance and business models that are relevant to the collective and enduring nature of native title rights will go a long way towards realising the economic potential of the Indigenous estate.

Native Title determinations as at December 31 2018. Native Title exists in green areas (darker green denotes exclusive title) and does not exist in brown areas (lighter brown denotes title extinguished). National Native Title Tribunal, CC BY

Read more: The Indigenous community deserves a voice in the constitution. Will the nation finally listen?

New labour markets

Agriculture, mining and other resources industries contribute mightily to Australia’s GDP. Yet their contribution to employment is comparatively small.

In 2016, agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted for 215,601 jobs in regional Australia. Mining provided 102,639 jobs. By contrast, health care and social assistance provided 445,087 jobs, retail 341,190, construction 292,279, education and training 291,902 and accommodation and food services 253,501.

Health care and social assistance and education and training contributed more new regional jobs over the last decade than any other industry.

This is not about commodity price cycles and their short-term impact on labour demand. It is about the relentless substitution of labour with technology as business owners strive to lift productivity and lower costs. Advances in automation and telecommunications will accelerate this trend.

The policy imperative is not to ignore resource industries or the workers who depend on them, but to face up to structural change in the labour market.

It is not unreasonable for regions hit by job losses following mine or plant closures to look for new projects to fill the void. But it is important to recognise that fewer jobs will be on offer in the resources industries. And these jobs will require higher levels of skills and training.

Maintaining high employment across non-metropolitan regions will depend, ultimately, on continued growth in other industries.

Read more: The best way to boost the economy is to improve the lives of deprived students

Climate action

In the land of drought and flooding rain, climate variability is a given.

Whether or not climate change is behind severe drought, rural and regional communities must take a precautionary approach. Dean Lewins/AAP

Managing for that variability is something we need to do better, even before taking climate change into account. The South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission into water use shows that political commitment to cross-border cooperation and the maintenance of environmental flows is fragile.

What evidence we do have on rural and regional Australians’ beliefs about climate change suggests uncertainty and lack of trust in government are more prevalent than outright denial. A precautionary approach to climate is favoured over business as usual.

Why a precautionary approach? Because failure to act on climate presents a number of risks. These include:

• reduced market access for regions and industry sectors not seen to be reducing emissions
• failure to develop cost-effective and industry-specific technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• lost opportunities to develop markets in carbon sequestration
• escalating economic and social impacts on rural and regional communities as climate variability increases.

Importantly, only the last of these risks is actually contingent on climate change.

Transition planning

The sustainability challenges facing rural and regional Australia are not solely environmental.

In the 21st century, industries require stable, high-speed telecommunications infrastructure. That’s no less true of agriculture and mining than it is of tech start-ups and e-retailers. Unfortunately, the digital divide between urban and rural Australia is a significant constraint on innovation.

Read more: Will Australia’s digital divide – fast for the city, slow in the country – ever be bridged?

The industries of the 21st century also require stable and responsive institutional and governance infrastructure.

The rural politics we see reported in the media looks every bit as polarised and resistant to change as anywhere. Yet Australia’s best rural policies have always been the result of collaborative approaches to planning and innovation.

Landcare and regional natural resource management programs stand out for the positive relationships they have built across the agriculture, conservation, industry and Indigenous sectors.

While federal and state infrastructure funding is critical for the regions, so too is support for integrated and collaborative planning. Place-based approaches are not a panacea but it is always in specific places, and specific communities, that business, services, natural resource management, energy, transport and telecommunications infrastructure, and so on, come together.

Electoral diversity

Social conservatism, support for traditional rural industries and scepticism about climate change are all highly visible in rural politics today.

I have outlined some of the risks arising from climate scepticism, but contemporary social conservatism carries political risks too.

Most obvious is the alienation of voters who do not share these views. They include:

• farmers who want meaningful action on climate
• lifestyle migrants with no historical loyalty to the National Party
• young people with more socially progressive attitudes.

Read more: Meet the new seachangers: now it’s younger Australians moving out of the big cities

It is worth remembering that in the plebiscite on marriage equality most rural and regional electorates took the progressive option and voted yes.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voters warrant extra attention. Indigenous voters have swung elections in the Northern Territory with their preference for candidates who respect local leadership and priorities over traditional party allegiances and ideologies. Candidates for any seat with a large Indigenous population ignore these voters at their peril. As the Australia Electoral Commission works to lift the Indigenous vote, this influence will grow.

In sum, the issues that matter to rural and regional Australians are far more diverse than those discussed here. Many will disagree with how I have represented one or other issue. That, really, is the point.

– ref. People and issues outside our big cities are diverse, but these priorities stand out – http://theconversation.com/people-and-issues-outside-our-big-cities-are-diverse-but-these-priorities-stand-out-110971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosalind Smith, Professor and Acting PVC Research and Innovation, University of Newcastle, University of Newcastle

The dramatic life of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots is a hot topic in popular culture. Josie Rourke’s 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots has reached wide audiences, while the Sydney Theatre Company play Mary Stuart is playing to packed houses. What fuels this interest in a queen who died over 400 years ago?

As the differing treatments of her life in the film and play demonstrate, Mary Stuart is a figure open to opposing interpretations of what it means to be a powerful woman. They explore deeply held cultural anxieties over what might happen if a woman holds the role of head of state, which resonate today.

She was queen of France through marriage in her teenage years, then returned to Scotland in 1561 to rule as queen by birth. Her Scottish reign was initially successful, but errors in managing the powerful factions and religious divides of her court and nation led to a series of disastrous events in 1567.

Mary Queen of Scots, oil on canvas, 17th century (artist unknown). Wikimedia Commons

Following the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley, she quickly married one of his supposed killers, Lord Bothwell. She was then driven from the throne and forced to abdicate. Fleeing to England, Mary sought protection from her Protestant cousin and fellow queen, Elizabeth I.

But instead of finding refuge, she was kept under house arrest in England for 19 years, before she was publicly beheaded in 1587 for treason.

If this colourful history were not enough, portrayals of Mary Stuart since the Renaissance have been sharply divided.

Catholic defences viewed her as an innocent victim of scheming and powerful men, wholly virtuous and martyr to the Catholic cause. Protestant attacks viewed her as an adulterer and murderer, driven by private passion to abandon her realm.

This polarised view of Mary’s reign has persisted over centuries. Biographers in the 19th century, such as Agnes Strickland, used the queen as an example of why women’s “feminine” qualities conflicted with their ability to exercise power. They were seen as too weak, or too irresponsible. Mary’s short and disastrous life as queen of Scots is often contrasted with Elizabeth I’s long and peaceful reign, making Elizabeth the exception rather than the rule.

Read more: Mary, Queen of Scots was a poet – and you should know it

In 2019, the question of whether women have the capacity to be successful leaders is still contested. Hillary Clinton, with years of political experience, was defeated by Donald Trump, with none, in the 2016 US election. In Australia, Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop was not put forward to lead the Liberal Party and nation in a recent leadership spill, despite her qualifications.

Two very different stories

In Josie Rourke’s film, we see a sophisticated and beautiful queen (played by Saoirse Ronan) who is ruled by the heart: falling in love with the handsome Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden) in an unwise match that leads to the murders and schemes eventually forcing her abdication.

Mary’s passionate reign is contrasted with Elizabeth’s icy political acumen. Mary Stuart has a lover and a son but no kingdom, while Elizabeth (Margot Robbie) is lonely and barren but successful. Each wants what the other has and is obsessed by personal rivalry with the other.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018) trailer.

The message the film sends is not only that women cannot have it all, but if they do exercise power they will be derailed by jealousy and caught up in trivial power struggles. It ends with an image of a male king, Mary’s son James (Andrew Rothney), uniting England and Scotland in peaceful prosperity once Elizabeth and Mary’s exhausting personal battle is over.

This provides a deeply conservative take on women’s ability to exercise power responsibly and to balance emotional, familial and workplace demands. Set in the past, it suggests that this is a universal story: that women are unsuited to leadership and unable to govern themselves and others. It forms part of a wider political backlash against women’s potential in positions of authority.

By contrast, Kate Mulvany’s adaptation of the 19th century play Mary Stuart, originally by Friedrich Schiller, tells a very different story of women’s leadership. The two queens are initially opposed, with Mary (played by Caroline Brazier) isolated in prison and Elizabeth (Helen Thomson) surrounded by male courtiers at the height of her power.

But the play slowly uncovers their shared experiences in a society where power is everywhere held by men. It provides a sympathetic, but not sanitised, treatment of women’s experience of leadership, friendship and rivalry.

Helen Thomson as Elizabeth I and Caroline Brazier as Mary Stuart in STC’s Mary Stuart. The play presents both queens as complex women. Brett Boardman

Both queens are portrayed as complex women of intelligence, wit, courage and humour. Mary’s relationship with her jailer Paulet (Simon Burke) gives a sense of her warmth and bravery in the face of deprivation and illness, and her exchanges with the militant Mortimer (Fayssal Bazzi) reveal her strategic and political power even in confinement.

Elizabeth is similarly seen to be confident in the exercise of her authority, playing mercilessly with the ambitions of the French ambassador to marry her to his king, and engaged in a spectrum of relationships with her courtiers, from intimacy to reciprocal ties of duty and care.

The third act brings the queens together. If Mary is first Elizabeth’s echo, submissive and secondary, they move through shared points of connection until Mary becomes the aggressor, claiming her right to the English throne. Key to their alignment is their experience of sexual abuse by men: Elizabeth as a 14-year-old raped by her stepfather, Mary by her Scottish husbands (at least as the play tells it).

Caroline Brazier in Sydney Theatre Company’s new production of Mary Stuart. Brett Boardman

In the final scene, both recite the same prayer, Elizabeth in the vernacular English of Protestantism and Mary in the Latin of Catholicism, while their maid sings a version of Greensleeves that concludes “all are in captivity”.

The experience of these queens is the experience of so many women, as the #MeToo movement has shown. At a time when the disenfranchised are seen to be both victims and agents in speaking out against sexual abuse, the story of Mary Stuart takes on new relevance.

Rather than exceptions, or polarised versions of idealised and vilified femininity, the queens are at once victims and agents, disempowered and empowered, flawed and inspiring.

The retelling of Mary Stuart’s history in popular forms can repeat and reinforce old stories about women and power. But it can also break these open, reaching into the past to imagine new and complex ways in which women might be leaders: at once vulnerable and flawed, strategic and successful.

– ref. Mary, Queen of Scots is newly relevant in the age of #MeToo – http://theconversation.com/mary-queen-of-scots-is-newly-relevant-in-the-age-of-metoo-111604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Bant, Professor of Law, University of Melbourne

At last, our corporate watchdog has a strong set of teeth with which to fight crime and serious misconduct in the financial sector.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Corporate and Financial Sector Penalties) Bill finally made it through parliament last week.

In cases of serious misconduct it will empower the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to seek new, hefty fines. For example, in cases of unconscionable conduct, ASIC can seek A$10.5 million (up from the previous A$1 million), to get back three times the proceeds of (or expense saved from) the misconduct, or fine a corporation 10% of its annual turnover up to a maximum of A$210 million, whichever is the greatest.

The enhanced fines were recommended by the Treasury’s ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforce which predated the financial services royal commission.

The legislation (and the speed with which it was finally passed) makes it clear that parliament wants to stop fines and penalties being viewed simply as a cost of doing business.

This has been made even clearer by courts being given power to make “relinquishment orders” that aim to strip any remaining profits from wrongdoers over and above the penalties.

Also important is the bill’s change to the definition of the word “dishonest”.

The new definition requires courts simply to focus on whether the conduct was dishonest “according to the standards of ordinary people”.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

Previously courts were required to use an “eye of the beholder” definition that required plaintiffs to prove that the wrongdoer also understood the conduct was dishonest according to those standards.

As the royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne noted, under the previous definition it was all too easy for directors and senior managers to blame misconduct on “processing and administrative errors” – in effect saying wrongdoers didn’t realise they were being dishonest even if ordinary people would have thought they were.

Strong, yet imperfect

While there is much to be applauded in this legislation, there are serious remaining problems raised in submissions to the Treasury that have been left unaddressed.

That might in part be due to the speed with which the bill was prepared and passed, but it is also the result of a wider systemic problem.

The pieces of legislation expressly changed by the bill were the major ones dealing with corporations, financial service providers, consumer credit providers, and insurance.

That meant that other statutes that also prohibit misconduct in trade and commerce remain unchanged, and were apparently not taken into account in drafting the bill. It has made the treatment of similar misconduct inconsistent.

An example illustrates the problem.

The pieces of legislation changed provide a defence to a civil pecuniary penalty order only where a defendant made a “mistake of fact”, established by considering whether the defendant “considered whether or not facts existed” and “was under a mistaken but reasonable belief about those facts”.

But an unchanged part of the law, Section 226 of the Australian Consumer Law, allows the court to show leniency where it establishes that “the person acted honestly and reasonably and, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, ought fairly to be excused”. So rather than having its hands tied, the court can consider all the circumstances, including whether the seriousness of the breach (for example, causing physical harm to consumers) demands a large penalty, notwithstanding that the defendant made an honest and reasonable mistake.

The second approach is arguably better, but the discrepancy between the two is likely to lead to “regulatory arbitrage” as both sides tie up the legal system trying to establish which part of the law should apply.

Anything but a complete redesign

This government, like many before it, has responded to deficiencies in the law by attempting to patch it up. It said it couldn’t respond to the royal commission’s recommendations before parliament closed because it would need to amend more than 40 pieces of legislation.

But that’s indicative of the problem. Patching up legislation, rather than replacing it with something simple, runs the risk of making it worse. Hayne spoke about enforcing core principles. We’re not there yet.

Read more: Understanding Hayne. Why less is more

– ref. Fines that’ll hurt. ASIC’s powerful, if ill-fitting, teeth – http://theconversation.com/fines-thatll-hurt-asics-powerful-if-ill-fitting-teeth-112298