Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon KA Robson, Honorary Professor, University of Sydney

Many people on a tropical island getaway might take a jungle hike, or learn about the local wildlife. My colleagues and I went one better: we tracked down the world’s biggest bee species, which hadn’t been spotted for decades, while on holiday in Indonesia’s North Molucca islands.

Wallace’s giant bee, Megachile pluto, is fascinating for many reasons. It’s the largest of all known living bees, with a body length about that of a human thumb and a wingspan of more than 6cm. What’s more, its last confirmed sighting in the field was in 1981. After numerous efforts to rediscover it, it was unclear whether the species still remained in the wild.

Beenormous: M. pluto is roughly four times the size of a European honeybee. Clay Bolt, Author provided

The bee also has a special place in scientific history. It was first collected by the British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859, as part of his work in the Malay Archipelago. He described the female bee as “a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle”.

Wallace not only independently derived the theory of natural selection as an explanation for evolution alongside Charles Darwin, but his detailed studies of the distribution of animals gave rise to the famous Wallace Line, a boundary that splits Australia and Asia and helps to explain the distribution patterns of many plants and animals.

Read more: Wallacea: a living laboratory of evolution

Holiday plans

How did four biologists from across the globe, two from Australia (myself and Glen Chilton) and two from the United States (Eli Wyman and Clay Bolt), end up on this journey?

My involvement started at the prompting of Glen, who although specialising in ornithology and writing was interested in both Wallace and the rediscovery of potentially extinct species. He became aware of the existence of the world’s largest bee, and after two years of cajoling I agreed that searching for the bee would represent an excellent holiday.

During the planning for our trip, we became aware that Eli and Clay were also, independently, planning to travel to the Moluccas to search for M. pluto. After a brief Skype call we decided it made sense to join forces and collaborate. So despite our two duos never having met in person, we were a team heading out into the field.

And what a great team it was: Eli’s expertise in all things bee-related; Clay’s fantastic photographic skills; Glen’s enthusiasm and knowledge of Wallace; and my own fascination with the evolution of insect behaviour.

On the ground

We converged on the island of Ternate and began our search across the North Molucca islands for termite mounds containing bee-sized holes, helped by two excellent local guides, Ekawati Ka’aba and Iswan Maujad.

M. pluto is a solitary bee species that forms communal nests inside termite mounds, using its mandibles to collect and apply tree resin to the inner walls of its nest. So we knew what to look out for.

After five fruitless days of searching termite mounds, we were about to call it quits and head for a late lunch when we spotted another mound near the edge of a path.

Inspection with a torch and binoculars revealed a hole that looked promising. Clay scaled the tree and reported that the hole looked to be lined with resin – very exciting. Our guides constructed a platform from branches, we inspected the hole in more detail, and there she was. Cue intense excitement and cries of jubilation as we all rushed to peer inside and catch a glimpse.

Now that we had the bee, we had to be able to prove it, so we put away our iPhone cameras in favour of better-quality (but riskier: the bee might escape!) footage with more professional photographic and video equipment. We gently coaxed her out of her nest and into a small flight chamber, and then eventually Clay got the magic shot, where we released the bee back onto her nest and photographed her at the entrance to her home. Mission accomplished.

Capturing the evidence. Simon Robson, Author provided

Confirming that the world’s largest bee species is still alive is an enticing development for ecologists. We can learn a lot about the ecology, behaviour and ecological significance of this giant. Amid a global decline in many insects, it’s wonderful to discover this special species is still surviving.

Read more: Ten years after the crisis, what is happening to the world’s bees?

We also hope our discovery will galvanise conservation movements in Indonesia, and we were inspired by the reception our journey met with many people in the conservation and forestry fields of the North Molucca islands.

We would love more work to be done to assess the bee’s current conservation status. Plans to produce a documentary about Wallace and the rediscovery of this bee are underway, and we hope that its rediscovery provides further impetus to conservation efforts generally.

Not a bad outcome for a holiday!

– ref. Catch the buzz: how a tropical holiday led us to find the world’s biggest bee – http://theconversation.com/catch-the-buzz-how-a-tropical-holiday-led-us-to-find-the-worlds-biggest-bee-112138

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patricia Lane, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney

A “granny flat agreement” is an informal arrangement between a parent and their adult child or children. The parent (often elderly) contributes funds to create granny flat accommodation either by modifying a home or by buying a suitable property in the name of the children. In return they agree to provide the parent with a lifetime right to live in the granny flat, or at least until the parent needs residential care.

Many of these arrangements work out well. The older person then enjoys the love and support of having their family close by as they age.

When an arrangement of this kind goes wrong, however, it can seriously threaten the wealth, autonomy and dignity of the elderly parent. If the relationship between the parent and child, or child’s spouse, breaks down and the parent is asked to leave the property, he or she may be left with nothing.

Read more: Flatting in retirement: how to provide suitable and affordable housing for ageing people

Read more: Co-housing works well for older people, once they get past the image problem

How does the law treat granny flats?

The parent’s only chance of recovering her contribution is to go to court. These court cases depend on applying a complex set of rules.

The parent must prove the contribution was not a gift but that they supplied funds as part of an arrangement that the parties would live together. Agreements creating interests in land need to be in writing, and usually there is no written agreement.

The court can apply equitable principles. A parent who contributed to improving the property ought to have the contributions back, or a proportionate share of the property returned if the arrangement ends prematurely, because it is unjust for children to retain the benefit of the contribution without providing the granny flat.

A parent who made a contribution to renovations or extensions ought to get that back if living arrangements break down. Paul Maguire/Shutterstock

Where the court finds that the parent relied on a promise by the child that the parent would have an interest in the house, or at least a right to live with the child for life, the child can be required to repay the contribution.

This often means the child must sell their house if they cannot refinance to obtain the money to pay the parent. If the parent is entitled to a share of the property, the house has to be sold to realise the parent’s share.

The problem for parents is that court cases cost money, unless Legal Aid is available, but only parents who are truly destitute qualify for assistance. The parent has to produce evidence of the arrangement or the promise. They often have to recount conversations from many years ago to prove there was an arrangement. The children have to spend money on their own lawyers.

Parents and children very rarely put these agreements in writing and almost never consult a lawyer. Sometimes, to help the child get finance, a parent may have told the lender the contribution was a gift.

All this makes court cases complex, difficult and expensive.

Read more: The Financial Services Royal Commission highlights the vulnerability of many older Australians

In New South Wales, the Property (Relationships) Act 1984 may apply to granny flat disputes, but the parent still has to show how they contributed to the child’s property. Other states and territories – including Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and ACT – have similar laws for couples, which might apply to family arrangements. However, the NSW legislation is broader, which makes things worse for parents outside NSW.

When a dispute arises, the parties usually want to resolve the matter as quickly and as cheaply as possible. But court cases can take a year or more to get to hearing. Affidavits must be prepared and financial documents reviewed. During this time the parent may be living in emergency housing, often at public expense.

The picture gets worse if the child’s marriage breaks down. The parent’s claim then gets taken into family property proceedings between the child and their spouse in the Family Court or Federal Circuit Court. This can take even longer than going to the Supreme Court.

A better way to resolve disputes

Parties to these disputes need fast access to a system of practical rules for separating the parties’ property interests, and one that offers early mediation. These rules would cover factors such as increases in the value of the property, how long the parties lived together, what benefits they received, and other discretionary considerations. Such rules might provide the basis for a set of statutory guidelines for a tribunal to apply.

Civil and administrative tribunals emphasise informality and conciliation, so giving these tribunals jurisdiction to resolve granny flat disputes according to statutory guidelines would arguably be more efficient than going to the Supreme Court or Family Court.

Parents and children who trust each other may be reluctant to get legal advice on a granny flat arrangement, but they really should. Alexander Raths/Shutterstock

Parties really should seek legal advice on granny flat arrangements before they commit to the deal. But parents often trust their children and are optimistic that they can live together as a family. If a lawyer provides advice to an elderly parent individually and with an awareness of their client’s possible incapacity or vulnerability to undue influence, that gives all parties a chance to decide what they want to happen if the relationship breaks down.

Centrelink recognises granny flat arrangements, so parents’ contributions are not automatically treated as a gift. Gifting attracts an asset test under which the parent might be deemed still to have the funds contributed, which could reduce their pension.

The children can also be worse off if the Tax Office considers that the child accepting the contribution made a capital gain because the parents’ contribution increased the value of the home.

Although the Australian Law Reform Commission has looked at some aspects of this issue, action is need to reduce the complexity of existing equitable and statutory rules. Elderly parents should not have to take their children to court in expensive legal proceedings to retrieve the contribution that was meant to ensure they had a secure home in their later years.

Read more: We need more flexible housing for 21st-century lives

– ref. When granny flats go wrong – perils for parents highlight need for law reform – http://theconversation.com/when-granny-flats-go-wrong-perils-for-parents-highlight-need-for-law-reform-103335

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

The supermarket giant Woolworths this week broke ranks and announced it was going to stop selling A$1 per litre milk. It will now charge A$1.10, or A$2.20 for two litres.

Chief executive Brad Banducci made it clear that there was more to the decision than straightforward economics:

We’ve heard the outlook will continue to be extremely tough for dairy farmers… This is affecting milk production and farm viability, which is devastating for farmers and the regional communities in which they live.

The Labor Party has been threatening to impose a minimum farm-gate price.

Will what Woolworths is doing help farmers? Only a bit.

Milk prices are internationally set

The so-called “milk wars” began on Australia Day 2011 when Coles announced it was cutting milk prices to A$1 a litre.

Woolworths and Aldi followed suit.

The milk market does not just consist of dairy farmers, supermarkets and customers. There are also the processors – companies such as the ASX-listed Murray Goulburn, Parmalat, Lion and Fonterra – that stand between farmers and supermarkets. Then there is the international market for dairy products like butter, cheese and milk powder.

The biggest determinant of farm gate prices in Australia is not what the major supermarkets do, but world dairy prices.

The Department of Agriculture says 37% of Australian milk production is exported.

Add to that the roughly 35% that goes into locally consumed butter, cheese and milk powder that is subject to competition from imports. You can quickly see the prices of nearly three-quarters of the milk produced in Australia are set globally.

Dairy Australia has a higher estimate. Because even fresh milk is subject to foreign competition, it believes 90% of the annual movement in farm-gate prices comes from changes in international prices.

Those changes are beyond the effective control of Australian farmers and regulators.

Many of them are the result of changes in the exchange rate.

International prices are generally set in US dollars. That means a rising Australian dollar can cut the return to Australian farmers, while a falling Australian dollar can enhance it.

Farmers have been angry at Coles and Woolworths for squeezing prices. Protest rally in Melbourne, 2016. Mal Fairclough/AAP

Processors get the cream

It is tempting to think an increase in retail prices, like the Woolworths 10 cents, would help farmers. But it normally wouldn’t, much.

Someone between the cow and the customer would get the 10 cents, but not necessarily the farmer.

When the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission examined the dairy industry last year it:

did not obtain any evidence that supermarket pricing, including $1 per litre milk, has a direct impact on farm-gate prices

Further, farmers’ lack of bargaining power means they are unlikely to benefit from an increase in the retail (or wholesale) prices of private label milk or other dairy products

Even if processors were to receive higher wholesale prices from sales to supermarkets, this does not mean the processors will pay farmers any more than they have to.

This time it will be different. Woolworths says “every cent of the increase will end up with Australian dairy farmers”. The processors have guaranteed it.

Normally there would be no guarantee that an increase in the wholesale price would flow through to farmers. The processors could pocket it, and the inefficient ones could use it to stay in business, to the long-term detriment of customers.

Consumers are at one end of the line…

Banducci said Woolworths was “acutely aware of the budgetary pressures facing many of our customers and have not taken this decision lightly”.

He is right to recognise it will hurt customers.

It won’t, mind you, hurt customers who buy branded milk like a2 – whose marketing success under chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka has pushed the value of the company to A$10 billion, making it bigger than Lendlease, Medibank Private, the AMP and Coca-Cola Amatil. Not bad for a company that didn’t exist at the turn of the century.

Instead it will hurt customers who can afford it the least. For a typical family of four with average milk consumption, the extra 10 cents a litre works out at about A$40 a year.

…and farmers at the other

Dairy farming is difficult, and much of Australia is less than ideally suited to it. Farmers have to contend with volatile prices, drought and isolation.

They are the least powerful players in the “value chain” that runs from cows to customers via importers, processors and supermarkets.

Neither government intervention nor higher retail prices can do much to help them.

Read more: Low milk prices unearth the supply chain’s dirty secrets

– ref. Vital Signs: why more expensive milk won’t help farmers much – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-why-more-expensive-milk-wont-help-farmers-much-112145

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angelina Hurley, PhD candidate, Griffith University

I am from Queensland. Unfortunately, from personal experience I know racism well. An early recollection of this was at six years old, my first sporting event at a new school.

I beat the local, white school hero in my opening sprint race. My win wasn’t met with congratulation, but instead with shock and tongue-in-cheek commentary about how it wasn’t a surprise I won because I was black, and black people run fast. Also, if I ever got in trouble with the cops (inevitability implied) at least I could easily get away. Hilarious!

First Nations people’s lives are dominated by white opinion and voices. In this power relation, humour is of central importance. For Aboriginal people, ridicule, denigration and insult delivered under the guise of, or trying to be passed off as, humour is nothing new. Negative stereotypes of First Nations peoples constitute the humour of the dominant culture, which often dehumanises the marginalised “other”.

Yet humour is also a way of giving voice to Aboriginal people, of telling the truth. What interests me, makes me laugh the most, and what I believe should be a focus and obligation, is taking the opportunity to educate through humour. Not being scared to tell it like it is.

Still, whatever is usually presented as the “norm” in mainstream society, predominantly in the media, has much influence over what informs perceptions of what is natural and normal. A series of recent events have prompted much commentary about what is and isn’t offensive – and to whom – all under the umbrella of humour. And they were laced with attitudes and racial stereotypes that did not bode well for better relations with First Nations peoples.

My first examples are of cartoons by Mark Knight and the late Bill Leak. I do understand that the definition of a caricature is an exaggerated and skewed depiction of certain characteristics. However, several now notorious examples by Leak were laced with more than just humorous intent. This so-called humour was just a racist set of negative stereotypes concerned with sex, violence and family life. Two stand out: his cartoon that portrayed domestic violence as part of a usual cultural experience for First Nations peoples, and another that painted Aboriginal men as irresponsible alcoholics.

Stereotypes like these also ring true for other people of colour, as we saw with the cartoon by Mark Knight depicting Serena Williams at the US Open. Said Knight: “The cartoon was just about Serena on the day having a tantrum. That’s basically it.”

Yet from the perspective of peoples of colour, it was obvious that the image was not simply about Serena having a tantrum. Not only was there misrepresentation of Serena in the cartoon but also of Naomi Osaka who is of Japanese and Haitian descent but was depicted as a white women with blonde hair. The ugly stereotypes represented here for us were rude and lazy.

Read more: The Herald Sun’s Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature

Ignorance not a defence

Given the long careers of both Leak and Knight, it was very hard to believe any rebuttals about their lack of knowledge of the history of their art and denying offensive intent in these depictions. Defences of ignorance and the right to free speech, denials, and claims of being censored by political correctness and reverse racism are disingenuous. To simply respond to the discourse with phrases like “it’s political correctness gone mad” immediately attempts to dismantle and dismiss any relevance and truth behind our voices and perspective.

As a humorist and creative artist myself, I understand and accept the comedic rules around no holds barred and truth telling. However, as South African writer Sisonke Msimang said on the ABC’s Q&A program last September:

I also reject the notion that ignorance can presume innocence and that ongoing ignorance and especially denial is a vehicle for purposeful offence.

It wasn’t just white cartoonists that took us by surprise last year. International comedian and host of the Daily Show Trevor Noah also disappointed us, to say the least. An event highly anticipated by First Nations audiences – his tour of Australia – turned sour very quickly when a YouTube clip of Noah’s emerged. It quickly made the rounds through our community, raising a few red flags and a lot of questions. The call went out. Should we be supporting this guy?

The offence lay in the inference of us as Aboriginal women being inferior, being ugly and repulsive, and only worthy of consideration as objects of sexual satisfaction. I was also personally surprised at Noah’s inability to draw parallels between South Africa’s apartheid and our White Australia policy – after all, his mother is black.

Noah since 2013 has built a reputation for using humour to speak against and critically analyse racism. He has a widespread popularity that is explicitly based on anti-racist views. Dr Chelsea Bond and I subsequently invited him on our radio show to explain himself. He attempted to – but no apology was forthcoming.

What underlies the representation of Aboriginal peoples in mainstream society is a long history of denial of the norms of the brutality, cruelty and genocide. The term “political correctness” is often used to imply that those who resent this sort of racialised comedy just lack a sense of humour.

But we use humour in a different way. In Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, Professor Lillian Holt provides an overview of what she deems Australian First Nations peoples’ uniquely indefinable sense of humour. It is a universal vehicle used by the disadvantaged and marginalised as a means of expression, a tool of healing, survival and diversion from hard times.

Holt cites a scene in Phillip Noyce’s Backroads (1977), one of the first Australian films to be made with Indigenous collaboration. In it, Bill Hunter’s character, Jack, stops to ask directions from a blackfella sitting by the road.

Hey, Jackie, can I take this road to the pub?

You might as well, you white bastard. You took everything else.

Bill Hunter and Gary Foley in Back Roads (1977). imdb

Social media

A lot of comedy evolves from being a part of an oppressed group and making sense of that. And while you are trying to make sense of it you have to laugh about it.

Social media have become an important avenue for Indigenous humour. It’s a safer, less policed and regulated space in which to speak out than we’ve historically been used to.

A perfect example of this was the response to the recent Studio 10 panel in which Kerri-Anne Kennerley forcefully aired her views about First Nations peoples in remote communities. Her claims that those attending a Change the Date rally had probably never even been to the outback or a regional community weren’t taken lightly by our people.

What Kerri-Anne and Studio 10 received in response were not only expert, factually informed, firsthand responses, but also black clap backs (i.e. a quick, witty, critical comeback). The Aboriginal twittersphere was quickly inundated with the hash tag #ThingsKAKdid.

Tweets under #ThingsKAKdid included mock postings of fictional events such as the time KAK went on the Freedom Rides, the time she opened the Aboriginal tent embassy and the time she toured with the Warumpi Band. One post featured Kerri-Anne’s head superimposed onto Gough Whitlam’s, handing dirt from the land into the hands of legendary Aboriginal rights activist Vincent Lingiari.

As always in times of hardship, attack and dismissal, we survive and prevail through humour.

– ref. Friday essay: it’s not funny to us – an Aboriginal perspective on political correctness and humour – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-not-funny-to-us-an-aboriginal-perspective-on-political-correctness-and-humour-111535

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

As a parliament that will be unmourned winds down to the election, this fortnight has been the season for goodbyes from those departing (voluntarily).

The most dramatic was Thursday’s announcement by Julie Bishop that she isn’t running again.

Bishop’s claim she’d reconsidered her plans on the basis she believed the government will be re-elected doesn’t wash. She was always expected to bail out – it was a matter of when she’d say so.

Though anticipated, Bishop’s departure is another blow for the woman-poor Liberal party – and another reminder of the costs of tearing down Malcolm Turnbull.

Read more: Liberals lose yet another high-profile woman, yet still no action on gender

If he had remained prime minister, the government would be going to the polls with Bishop deputy Liberal leader and foreign minister. The Liberals would still have a “woman problem”, but they’d also have a woman in their leadership team – she of those famous red shoes she dubbed her “comfortable work boot”.

Bishop still smarts over her colleagues, including those from her home state of Western Australia as well as the party’s moderates, refusing to support her in the August leadership ballot, when she was humiliated with only 11 votes. The moderates argued they were operating tactically, to stymie Peter Dutton.

Would the government have been better off electorally if the Liberals had chosen Bishop over Scott Morrison? If Morrison does badly in May, history will ask that question.

Bishop is not the street brawler Morrison is. But if she had won the leadership and gone immediately to an election, the result could have been interesting.

Read more: Julie Bishop to quit parliament at the election

Among many others leaving parliament are cabinet minister Kelly O’Dwyer, former Labor ministers Wayne Swan, Jenny Macklin and Kate Ellis, and Nationals senator John “Wacka” Williams. “Wacka” never served on the frontbench but his dogged pursuit of the financial sector’s scandals gives him a legacy more substantial than many ministers leave.

In this parliament’s dying days a bow is due to Speaker Tony Smith. He’s not retiring but if there is a change of government, his speakership will be over.

When he was press secretary to then-treasurer Peter Costello, the joke about Smith was that he would say to media queries, “off the record, no comment”. As Speaker, Smith has asserted his “voice”; he has been fair and strong. On Thursday, he gave fellow Liberal Tim Wilson a rap over the knuckles for the highly political way he has handled a parliamentary inquiry into the opposition’s policy on franking credits.

It’s often said of organisations that the whole is greater than the sum of the individuals. With our parliament, the contributions of some (albeit too few) individuals outshine the impression voters have of the collective.

No one is sure if the political weather changed in this fractious fortnight, which has been chaotic for both sides.

Labor defeated the government in the House early last week over the medical transfer legislation, but since then has been trying to minimise the harm to itself.

So when the government declared sick transferees would be sent straight to Christmas Island – a plan designed to trap the opposition rather than a sensible medical policy – Bill Shorten just agreed. He wasn’t going to let more political capital seep away.

Labor knows it has taken a hit among some voters with its support for the legislation, though this could be partly mitigated by the issue involving the role of doctors, respected in the community.

The Coalition grabbed the controversy as a life raft, but then found itself blown somewhat off course by the Helloworld affair.

That cluster bomb has managed to strike both a current and a former minister. It started with a story about Finance Minister Mathias Cormann booking flights for a Singapore holiday through a mate, Helloworld CEO and Liberal party treasurer Andrew Burnes, and the company failing to process his credit card for payment.

Read more: View from The Hill: Minister who watches the nation’s credit card overlooks his own

It then spread to disclosures about Helloworld subsidiary QBT getting speedy access to the Australian embassy in Washington, allegedly courtesy of the close friendship Burnes has with ambassador and former treasurer Joe Hockey (a big shareholder in Helloworld.)

Hockey was frustrated that his travel arrangements were being handled unprofessionally, which provided a potential opening for QBT.

Whistleblower Russell Carstensen, formerly group general manager of QBT, wrote in a Thursday letter to a Senate estimates committee that in April 2017, when Carstensen was in Europe, Burnes had contacted him to say “he had arranged a meeting with Mr Hockey and I had to fly home via Washington to meet with him”, which he did.

According to Carstensen, when he asked Burnes how the appointment with the ambassador could be arranged so quickly, Burnes replied “Hockey owes me”.

Burnes late Thursday said he hadn’t organised any meeting, adding “I emphatically deny ever having told Mr Carstensen that Mr Hockey ‘owes me’ or any words to that effect”.

Wherever the story goes from here, the public’s take will be simply one of mates doing favours for mates, adding to people’s cynicism about politicians generally and the government in particular.

The mates affair is unlikely to have the same direct impact as the medical transfer controversy. The strength of that issue, however, will be determined by whether any boats appear. If there are none, Labor could dodge a bullet because the government’s rhetoric will start to sound hollow.

While this fortnight has had that “end of term” feel, of course there is the big test to go before the parliament finishes.

Just as in 2016, a budget will be used as an election launching pad. It’s a gamble for the Coalition. Last time – when the Turnbull government built the budget around company tax cuts – it didn’t end so well.

The Morrison government has to shape an April 2 budget that shores up its economic credentials as well as offering some voter bait – a budget that’s reasonably received on the night and can underpin a campaign.

Bill Shorten must produce a parliamentary reply two days later that mixes demolition with some positive initiatives.

No pressure anyone.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Bishop’s boots were made for walking – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-bishops-boots-were-made-for-walking-112251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Jensen, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently said both the Australian Parliament and its major political parties were hacked by a “sophisticated state actor.”

This raises concerns that a foreign adversary may be intending to weaponise, or strategically release documents, with an eye towards altering the 2019 election outcome.

Read more: A state actor has targeted Australian political parties – but that shouldn’t surprise us

While the hacking of party and parliamentary systems is normally a covert activity, influence operations are necessarily noisy and public in order to reach citizens – even if efforts are made to obscure their origins.

If a state actor has designs to weaponise materials recently hacked, we will likely see them seek to inflame religious and ethnic differences, as well as embarrass the major parties in an effort to drive votes to minor parties.

If this comes to pass, there are four things Australians should look for.

1. Strategic interest for a foreign government to intervene

If the major parties have roughly the same policy position in relation to a foreign country, a foreign state would have little incentive to intervene, for example, in favour of Labor against the Coalition.

They may, however, attempt to amplify social divisions between the parties as a way of reducing the ability of Australians to work together after the election.

They may also try to drive down the already low levels of support for democracy and politicians in Australia to further undermine Australian democracy.

Finally, they may also try to drive the vote away from the major parties to minor parties which might be more favourable to their agenda.

This could be achieved by strategically releasing hacked materials which embarrass the major parties or their candidates, moving voters away from those parties and towards minor parties. These stories will likely be distributed first on social media platforms and later amplified by foreign and domestic broadcast media.

It is no secret that Russia and China seek a weakening of the Five Eyes security relationship between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. If weakened, that would undermine the alliance structure which has helped prevent major wars for the last 70 years.

2. Disproportionate attention by foreign media to a local campaign

In the US, although Tulsi Gabbard’s polling numbers rank her near the bottom of declared and anticipated candidates for the Democratic nomination, she has received significant attention from Russia’s overt or “white” propaganda outlets, Sputnik and RT (formerly Russia Today).

The suspected reason for this attention is that some of her foreign policy positions on the Middle East are consistent with Russian interests in the region.

In Australia, we might find greater attention than normal directed at One Nation or Fraser Anning – as well as the strategic promotion of Green candidates in certain places to push political discussion further right and further left at the same time.

3. Promoted posts on Facebook and other social media platforms

Research into the 2016 US election found widespread violations of election law. The vast majority of promoted ads on Facebook during the election campaign were from groups which failed to file with the Federal Election Commission and some of this unregistered content came from Russia.

Ads placed by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which is under indictment by the Mueller investigation, ended up disproportionately in the newsfeeds of Facebook users in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – two of the three states that looked like a lock for Clinton until the very end of the campaign.

What makes Facebook and many other social media platforms particularly of concern is the ability to use data to target ads using geographic and interest categories. One can imagine that if a foreign government were armed with voting data hacked from the parties, this process would be all the more effective.

Read more: New guidelines for responding to cyber attacks don’t go far enough

Seats in Australia which might be targeted include seats like Swan (considered a marginal seat with competition against the Liberals on both the left and the right) and the seats of conservative politicians on GetUp’s “hitlist” – such as Tony Abbott’s and Peter Dutton’s seats of Warringah and Dickson.

4. Focus on identity manipulation, rather than fake news

The term “fake news” suffers from conceptual ambiguities – it means different things to different people. “Fake news” has been used not just as a form of classification to describe material which “mimics news media content in form but not in organisational process or intent” but also used to describe satire and even as an epithet used to dismiss disagreeable claims of a factual nature.

Studies of propaganda show that information need not be factually false to effectively manipulate target audiences.

The best propaganda uses claims which are factually true, placing them into a different context which can be used to manipulate audiences or by amplifying negative aspects of a group, policy or politician, without placing that information in a wider context.

For example, to amplify concerns about immigrants, one might highlight the immigrant background of someone convicted of a crime, irrespective of the overall propensity for immigrants to commit crimes compared to native born Australians.

This creates what communication scholars call a “representative anecdote” through which people come to understand and think about a topic with which they are otherwise unfamiliar. While immigrants may or may not be more likely to commit crimes than other Australians, the reporting creates that association.

Among the ways foreign influence operations function is through the politicisation of identities. Previous research has found evidence of efforts to heighten ethnic and racial differences through Chinese language WeChat official accounts operating in Australia as well as through Russian trolling efforts which have targeted Australia. This is the same pattern followed by Russia during the 2016 US election.

Liberal democracies are designed to handle conflicts over interests through negotiation and compromise. Identities, however, are less amenable to compromise. These efforts may not be “fake news” but they are effective in undermining the capacity of a democratic nation to mobilise its people in pursuit of common goals.

Read more: How digital media blur the border between Australia and China

The Russian playbook

No country is immune from the risk of foreign influence operations. While historically these operations might have involved the creation of false documents and on the ground operations in target countries, today materials can be sourced, faked, and disseminated from the relative security of the perpetrating country. They may include both authentic and faked documents – making it hard for a campaign to charge that certain documents are faked without affirming the validity of others.

Most importantly, in a digitally connected world, these operations can scale up quickly and reach substantially larger populations than previously possible.

While the Russian interference in the 2016 US election has received considerable attention, Russia is not the only perpetrator and the US is not the only target.

But the Russians created a playbook which other countries can readily draw upon and adapt. The question remains as to who that might be in an Australian context.

– ref. We’ve been hacked – so will the data be weaponised to influence election 2019? Here’s what to look for – http://theconversation.com/weve-been-hacked-so-will-the-data-be-weaponised-to-influence-election-2019-heres-what-to-look-for-112130

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Dew, Professor of Sociology, Victoria University of Wellington

The use of pharmaceuticals is on the rise and, globally, the expenses for drugs are projected to reach US$1.5 trillion by 2021.

The ageing of populations is one of the drivers of this upward trend, but another important influence is our growing tendency to treat conditions and circumstances we didn’t use to medicalise.

Read more: Medicines to treat side effects of other medicines? Sometimes less is more beneficial

Proto diseases

One reason for this medicalisation is the creation of new conditions. The goal of preventing future disability and early death has fashioned new disorders – including high cholesterol and blood pressure. Such proto diseases are based on a person’s risk profile at a time when disease is not present and symptoms are not felt.

Proto diseases can be identified in an ever growing proportion of the population. The belief that treating these conditions will lead to future cost savings drives up drug consumption, aimed at bringing cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose levels into line.

A simple shift towards lowering the threshold that determines when someone should be taking such drugs can lead to a substantial expansion in the number of people who are offered them by health professionals. While these medicines can indeed prevent future disease for individuals, if one takes a population health approach, it is not a given that cost savings will outweigh costs incurred.

Evidence-based medicine

Another driver is the dominance of evidence-based medicine (EBM). The idea of basing medicine on evidence would seem to be common sense. However, sitting at the top of the hierarchy of evidence-based medicine is the evaluation procedure of the double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Read more: Randomised control trials: what makes them the gold standard in medical research?

This particular type of trial was designed to assess the efficacy of medications. The first such trial assessed the use of streptomycin in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Following the fallout from the thalidomide tragedy in the 1950s and 1960s, there was an increased impetus to put in place rigorous procedures for the assessment of potentially toxic pharmaceuticals by clinical trials. This effort to prevent lethal and dangerous drugs getting on to the market was transformed from a test for new drugs to a standard that all therapeutic interventions were expected to meet.

This remains the case even though many therapeutic interventions – surgery, counselling, public health advice – do not work like drugs and are not as easy to assess. As a consequence, medications are about the only form of therapeutic intervention that can successfully become evidence-based.

Since the development of the evidence-based medicine movement, there has been a trend where health professionals are required to follow evidence-based protocols and guidelines. These guidelines are an effective way of promoting the expansion of medication use. If health professionals do not follow standards and guidelines – for example don’t ask you to take a cholesterol test when you reach a certain age and recommend the cholesterol-lowering drug – they are in danger of being viewed as incompetent practitioners.

For many people their sense of identity is shaped by their relationship to medications. At times they may be reliant on drugs for some quality of life, but they often have to trade off what is gained against at times debilitating side effects.

Read more: We’re all at risk from scary medicine side effects, but we have to weigh the risks with the benefits

Remedies and poisons

Some pharmaceuticals work very well. They can help prolong life and ameliorate symptoms. Many people will recall situations where they were glad a drug was readily available.

But the Greek term pharmakon refers to both remedy and poison. Pharmaceuticals are well known for their toxic effects, which is one reason why access to many drugs is carefully controlled, requiring a medical doctor’s prescription. But research shows that even with doctors overseeing these drugs, side effects occur on a large scale and we have woefully inadequate means of reporting side effects and adverse reactions.

The costs of responding to adverse drug reactions and the disease and premature death they can cause makes side effects an important public health problem. Yet only around 10% of serious adverse drug reactions are reported to agencies that monitor drug safety.

To deal with this issue, we need to consider trends in drug consumption, regulation and policy. We need to understand how decisions about drug use are made in clinical consultations and in homes, and how drug monitoring agencies, drug subsidising agencies and drug trial methodologies work.

There is little resistance to the ever expanding use of pharmaceuticals. Individuals, health professionals and health care institutions, nation states and international health agencies are increasingly governed by the dominance of pharmaceutical approaches to health care.

But there are interventions that we could be putting in place to ameliorate this expansion. We need to develop more rigorous vigilance procedures so that when drugs come on the market, they are carefully monitored for adverse reactions, and both patients and health practitioners are actively encouraged to report any concerns to drug monitoring agencies.

We also need to regulate the advertising of prescription medicines more tightly, particularly in New Zealand where drug companies can advertise their products and only have to make fleeting reference to possible side effects.

– ref. As pharmaceutical use continues to rise, side effects are becoming a costly health issue – http://theconversation.com/as-pharmaceutical-use-continues-to-rise-side-effects-are-becoming-a-costly-health-issue-105494

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Paul Mika, Senior Lecturer, School of Management, Massey University

Tourism is New Zealand’s biggest export earner, contributing 21% of foreign exchange earnings. The latest data show tourists added NZ$39.1 billion to the economy and the industry has seen a 44% increase over the past five years.

But tourism also brings unwanted pressures on infrastructure and natural resources. Recently, a conference focused on sustainability in tourism and how the industry could contribute to the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), ratified in 2015 as the playbook for global development to 2030.

Read more: We’re in the era of overtourism but there is a more sustainable way forward

The meeting challenged the growth agenda that continues to dominate thinking in the tourism industry. The rhetoric around the SDGs came under fire for being based on ideas of utilitarianism (maximising growth and profits) and managerialism (all problems are solvable with good management).

An uneasy tension was evident in how sustainability is viewed. On the one hand, the narrative was one of hopelessness because sustainability in tourism is constantly counter-punched by commercialism and inequalities between locals and outsiders. On the other hand, there was hope. Sustainability in tourism should be possible because corporates allude to re-imagined approaches to social responsibility and indigenous tourism operators see SDGs as compatible with their values and needs.

Read more: ‘Sustainable tourism’ is not working – here’s how we can change that

Here are five major insights on the role of tourism in sustainable development.

1) The SDGs are not infallible

They are full of contradictions and tensions, and born of an institution of ultimate compromise – the United Nations. The UN advances progress based on a “middle ground” approach. For now, the SDGs represent accepted wisdom about what a good life might look like in 2030.

2) Sustainability means change

Sustainability requires a change in mindset, beliefs, assumptions, habits and behaviours – not just of some, but everyone. Everybody stands to lose if we do not achieve a more sustainable world.

According to ancient indigenous wisdom, we are all interconnected, and the UN is beginning to appreciate that. The real challenge is how we institute a shift toward sustainability, after generations of market-driven economics that will not easily release us from its grasp. Like during all major disruptions, we must address root causes to procure lasting effects.

In economic parlance, achieving a shift from growth to sustainability requires us to rethink the incentives and rules (carrots and sticks) we use to guide entrepreneurs and enterprises. We might see sustainability rise in the entrepreneur’s estimation because of natural catastrophes, abhorrence at widespread poverty, and when consumers demand it.

3) We are a long way off

Companies and policymakers are a long way off working out how to do the SDGs justice, but some are making a pretty good start. One global tourism operator, for example, immediately after a major earthquake in one of its prime destinations raised $400,000 from an appeal. They also believed that getting tourists to return would offer longer term benefits to locals, so donated 100% of the profits from travel to the region in the year after the quake to the rebuild. Their philosophy: profit first, then purpose follows. More growth enables the company to do more good. This makes sense because you cannot help anyone if you don’t have the money. But if you wait until you have money to have purpose, then sustainability is merely about economic attainment, only one strand of the many ideals within the SDGs. We should, instead, be aiming for ‘inclusive tourism’ which moves us some way toward tourism being the transformative, partnership-centred, equitable benefit-sharing between companies and local communities that might sustain people and environments over generations.

4) Indigenous perspective

Indigenous knowledge presents alternative sets of values and behaviours that are inherently sustainable and offer potential models.

Indigenous communities are often deprived of opportunity and resources to develop sustainable enterprises of their own. Some indigenous entrepreneurs who start their own enterprises are affected by public doubt about whether they can or should do it. There is also the issue of how indigenous lands should be used – either for large-scale foreign-owned resorts that usually preclude local ownership or for small-scale locally owned ones that are accessible to locals.

5) Customer power

As tourists, tourism operators and tourism agencies, we ought to be prepared to look beyond the idyllic post card images to understand the undesirable consequences of tourism: waste, working conditions, water quality and impacts on the environment. It is important we become discerning customers who ask about sustainability of products and services.

– ref. Five insights that could move tourism closer towards sustainability – http://theconversation.com/five-insights-that-could-move-tourism-closer-towards-sustainability-110594

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emmanuel Stamatakis, Professor of Physical Activity, Lifestyle, and Population Health, University of Sydney

Have you recently carried heavy shopping bags up a few flights of stairs? Or run the last 100 metres to the station to catch your train? If you have, you may have unknowingly been doing a style of exercise called high-intensity incidental physical activity.

Our paper, published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, shows this type of regular, incidental activity that gets you huffing and puffing is likely to produce health benefits, even if you do it in 30-second bursts, spread over the day.

In fact, incorporating more high intensity activity into our daily routines – whether that’s by vacuuming the carpet with vigour or walking uphill to buy your lunch – could be the key to helping all of us get some high quality exercise each day. And that includes people who are overweight and unfit.

Read more: Health Check: high-intensity micro workouts vs traditional regimes

What is high intensity exercise?

Until recently, most health authorities prescribed activity lasting for at least ten continuous minutes, although there was no credible scientific evidence behind this.

This recommendation was recently refuted by the 2018 US Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Report. The new guidelines state any movement matters for health, no matter how long it lasts.

This appreciation for short episodes of physical activity aligns with the core principles of high intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT in a hugely popular regime involving repeated short sessions, from six seconds to four minutes, with rests from 30 seconds to four minutes in-between.

Among a range of different regimes, we consistently see that any type of high intensity interval training, irrespective of the number of repetitions, boosts fitness rapidly and improves cardiovascular health and fitness.

That’s because when we regularly repeat even short bursts of strenuous exercise, we instruct our bodies to adapt (in other words, to get fitter) so we’re able to respond better to the physical demands of life (or the next time we exercise strenuously).

Read more: Yes, your kids can run all day – they’ve got muscles like endurance athletes

The same principle is at play with incidental physical activities. Even brief sessions of 20 seconds of stair-climbing (60 steps) repeated three times a day on three days per week over six weeks can lead to measurable improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness. This type of fitness indicates how well the lungs, heart, and circulatory systems are working, and the higher it is the lower the risk for future heart disease is.

In fact, research suggests physical activity intensity may be more important for the long-term health of middle-aged and older people than total duration.

Achievable for everyone

The main reasons people don’t do enough exercise tend to include the cost, lack of time, skills, and motivation.

Exercise regimes like high intensity interval training are safe and effective ways to boost fitness, but they’re often impractical. People with chronic conditions and most middle aged and older people, for example, will likely require supervision by a fitness professional.

Walking to and from the supermarket is a good option if it’s not too far. From shutterstock.com

Aside from the practicalities, some people may find back-to-back bouts of very high exertion overwhelming and unpleasant.

But there are plenty of free and accessible ways to incorporate incidental physical activity into our routines, including:

• replacing short car trips with fast walking, or cycling if it’s safe

• walking up the stairs at a fast pace instead of using the lift

• leaving the car at the edge of the shopping centre car park and carrying the shopping for 100m

• doing three or four “walking sprints” during longer stretches of walking by stepping up your pace for 100-200 metres (until you feel your heart rate is increasing and you find yourself out of breath to the point that you find it hard to speak)

• vigorous walking at a pace of about 130-140 steps per minute

• looking for opportunities to walk uphill

• taking your dog to an off-leash area and jogging for 30-90 seconds alongside the pup.

Read more: Four common myths about exercise and weight loss

This type of incidental activity can make it easier to achieve the recommended 30 minutes of physical activity a day. It can also help boost fitness and make strenuous activity feel easier – even for those of us who are the least fit.

– ref. Don’t have time to exercise? Here’s a regime everyone can squeeze in – http://theconversation.com/dont-have-time-to-exercise-heres-a-regime-everyone-can-squeeze-in-111600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Walter Jarvis, Director, UTS Master of Management; Lecturer in Managing, Leading & Stewardship, University of Technology Sydney

The banking royal commission has seen spectacular resignations, calls for changes in the law, and calls for cultural change within banks.

But what about changes in education, which is where much of what’s wrong begins?

Business schools teach the people who will one day be the managers and leaders who run banks and other financial institutions.

They have had a hand in driving much of what came before the commission – the prioritisation of profit (ends) over how people are treated (means).

They’ve taught the theories that have led to obscene executive compensation and unprecedented earnings inequality.

They are arguably a “force for evil”, purveyors of “immoral profit strategies”.

One professor has suggested the only way to fix them is to bulldoze them.

Amorality as a ticket to respect

They’ve become like this – probably amoral rather than immoral – in order to seem values-free, like the physical sciences such as chemistry and physics that are accorded so much respect.

But what they have taught hasn’t been values-free. Business schools have taught that there’s an imperative to maximise profits, almost no matter what. It may have even become self-fulfilling, freeing students from a sense of moral responsibility.

The idea comes from the “homo economicus” strand of economic theory, much challenged in economics itself. Managers, shareholders, customers and everyone else are said to be selfish maximisers of personal wealth and power with little regard for honesty and decency.

Because managers’ incentives are linked to the value of their company’s shares (shareholder value primacy), they are said to put shareholder value above everything else.

There’s an alternative

There’s another way, and it’s gaining ground. More and more universities are teaching stakeholder theory, in which corporations exist to create value for multiple stakeholders such as customers, employees, suppliers, communities and ecologies, rather than only shareholders.

At the University of Technology Sydney we are also teaching a course entitled Managing, Leading and Stewardship in which students learn what it’s like to be in “morally unequal” situations. We invite them to explore organisational and management practices more aligned to moral equality; including cooperatives, commons, and employee ownership.

They are introduced to the well recognised German-based “enterprise” or mitbestimmung model, in which workers are elected as directors, taking between one-third and one-half of all supervisory board positions.

It is a governance model in which labour (workers) and capital (management) are not just deemed equally important but are held jointly responsible for the long-term well-being of the enterprise. It has operated in Germany and other parts of Europe for more than 70 years.

Sometimes it is known as the “two boards” model (a supervisory board and a management board). The recently-declared US 2020 Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has incorporated it into in her Accountable Capitalism policy.

It’s a dignity threshold

UTS and business schools in the United States are also developing courses that ask students to role play decisions with ethical dilemmas.

At the base of these courses is the idea of a “dignity threshold”, the minimum level of respect that should be accorded to people affected by and engaged in a business – not only those directly involved (customers and employees), but also those indirectly affected, such as local schools, hospitals, and government agencies.

“Dignity” means being treated as the moral equal of anyone else, a definition outlined in the book Humanity without Dignity by Andrea Sangiovanni.

At the royal commission, it became clear that many of those affected by the misbehaviour of banks and related institutions could sense that they weren’t being treated as morally equal. They were dehumanised and treated as means to do what many witnesses from within the sector said was their sole purpose: making money.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

If we want our future managers and leaders to stop engaging in such conduct, we will need to start teaching them about how to be morally as well as financially accountable.

It is what publicly funded universities are for – to project and enhance society’s values.

The legitimacy of business (and business schools) hinges on ensuring they do it.

The Conversation

– ref. What are we teaching in business schools? The royal commission’s challenge to amoral theory – http://theconversation.com/what-are-we-teaching-in-business-schools-the-royal-commissions-challenge-to-amoral-theory-110901

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorana Bartels, Professor, School of Law and Justice, University of Canberra

Justice reinvestment seeks to reduce the number of people in prison by investing money that would have been spent on prisons in early intervention, prevention and diversion. It involves working with communities to design local solutions to address the drivers of crime and imprisonment.

In 2013, a Senate committee recommended that the Commonwealth take a leadership role in supporting the implementation of justice reinvestment and provide funding for a trial of justice reinvestment in Australia.

Read more: As Indigenous incarceration rates keep rising, justice reinvestment offers a solution

In 2017, the Australian Law Reform Commission released its Pathways to Justice report on the over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It recommended that Commonwealth, state and territory governments establish an independent justice reinvestment body and justice reinvestment trials. Both of these should have significant Indigenous involvement.

There has not been any coordinated response to either of these reports, but there are small justice reinvestment projects in most states and territories. In New South Wales, the Bourke Maranguka Justice Reinvestment project has recorded:

• a 23% decrease in police-recorded incidents of domestic violence
• a 14% decrease in bail breaches for adults
• a 42% reduction in days spent in custody for adults
• a 31% increase in year 12 student retention rates
• a 38% reduction in charges across the top five juvenile offence categories.

An impact assessment by KPMG found the project achieved savings of $3.1 million in 2017.

The ACT example

The ACT has one prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC), which houses all prisoners. The prison opened in 2010 as Australia’s first human rights prison, but has failed to live up to its goals.

This is partly due to it being overcrowded. According to the Report on Government Services, the AMC operated at 108% of its design capacity in 2017-18. Operating at or above 95% “compromises the ability of prison management to safely and humanely manage prisoners”.

The ACT imprisonment rate has increased by 24% since 2015, compared with a 13% increase nationally.

The ACT government was advised it would cost $200 million to expand the AMC. Last week, it announced it had ruled out expansion. Instead, it will redirect $14.5 million into a range of community programs, legislative reforms and policy initiatives. These include:

• improving rehabilitation options, including a purpose-built “reintegration centre” for up to 80 prisoners. This will allow for a wide range of programs, including trauma and relationship counselling, alcohol, tobacco and other drug rehabilitation, and job training skills – all of which have been associated with reduced reoffending

• establishing a bail accommodation support service and exploring accommodation issues for detainees after their release – one in three detainees at the AMC were homeless or living in a hostel immediately before they were imprisoned

• expanding the Strong Connected Neighbourhoods program, which supports people in high-density housing and has been shown to reduce crime

• continuing a family-centric program delivered by Indigenous-run organisations, which has shown promising results.

The female imprisonment rate in the ACT has increased by 98% since 2015, compared with a 19% increase for men. In addition, 32 of the 36 women (89%) who entered the AMC in the September 2018 quarter were unsentenced, compared with 85% of men and 75% of prisoners nationally. The increase in women’s imprisonment nationally has been the subject of recent media attention, especially in the context of their experience of family violence and imprisonment for unpaid fines in Western Australia.

Read more: FactCheck Q&A: are Indigenous Australians the most incarcerated people on Earth?

Unfortunately, the government’s announcement did not expressly consider the specific needs of women, including the intersection between their victimisation histories, substance abuse, mental illness and offending behaviour. The need for gender-sensitive responses has been the subject of previous research in the ACT context.

Nevertheless, the ACT is to be commended for its initiative. This represents the most far-reaching commitment by an Australian government to justice reinvestment. It is significant that the policy is called “Building Communities Not Prisons”. As the ACT justice minister has stated:

Justice reinvestment is honest about the reality of incarceration in Australia. While crime rates are going down, incarceration rates are going up. The most just justice system is a system that acts early to help prevent the kinds of circumstances that can lead to crime in the first place.

How Australia can address its addiction to prisons

Australia’s imprisonment rate has risen year on year since 2011. We have a higher imprisonment rate than Canada and every country in Western Europe.

Read more: State of imprisonment: can ACT achieve a ‘human rights’ prison?

In 2016, the NSW government announced that it would spend $3.8 billion building new prisons. The corrections minister, David Elliott, said:

This is, it must be said, not money the state government is happy to spend … My personal preference would always be that this money, this NSW taxpayers’ money, is spent on schools and hospitals. But governments do have a choice in how they allocate the public’s money. And the evidence supporting justice reinvestment is strong and growing.

In September 2018, the Queensland government asked the Queensland Productivity Commission to undertake an inquiry into imprisonment and reoffending. In its draft report, the commission described imprisonment as a “growing policy problem” and stated that “increasing imprisonment can make the community less safe”. It also recognised that imprisonment “is costly, and this cost is borne by the community”.

It remains to be seen what the commission recommends, but all Australian governments should have the courage to follow the ACT’s lead and invest in communities, not razor wire.

– ref. Australian governments should follow the ACT’s lead in building communities, not prisons – http://theconversation.com/australian-governments-should-follow-the-acts-lead-in-building-communities-not-prisons-111990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Towler, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, UNSW

Yenny is 26 years old, lives in Melbourne, and has a very specific talent.

One day, she was driving her car when she recognised a man who had been several years below her at high school and whom she hadn’t seen for more than ten years. What makes this particularly impressive is that she recognised him from the briefest glimpse in her rear-view mirror while he was driving the car behind hers.

Yenny recounts many such amazing feats of recognition and is one of a very small proportion of the population known as “super-recognisers”. She was the top performer on a national test of face recognition abilities in Australia, coming first out of 20,000 participants.

Read more: Combining the facial recognition decisions of humans and computers can prevent costly mistakes

Could you learn to spot a face as well as Yenny? Well … maybe. Our new research shows that many training courses offered in this field of expertise are ineffective in improving people’s accuracy in face identification.

But other ways of learning how to identify faces may work; we’re just not yet sure exactly how.

In-demand expertise

Super-recognisers are used by police and security agencies to spot targets in crowded train stations, monitor surveillance footage, and track people of interest.

During the 2011 London riots, for example, super-recognisers from the Metropolitan Police identified more than 600 people from very poor-quality surveillance footage – a task that not even the best facial recognition software can perform reliably.

So can anyone become a super-recogniser? Can you make up for a lack of superpowers through training? In our paper we assessed the effectiveness of training courses given to practitioners who make facial identification decisions for a living.

We reviewed 11 training courses that comply with international training standards from Australia, UK, US and Finland.

Sample test of face recognition: are the side-by-side images of the same, or different people? Answers can be found in the paper acknowledgements (click on journal link). Towler and colleagues, PLOS ONE, CC BY

We found that training courses typically teach facial anatomy – focusing on the muscles, bones and shape of the face – and instruct trainees to inspect faces feature by feature. Novices and genuine trainees completed one of four training courses and we tracked their identification accuracy from before to after training.

Surprisingly, we found the training courses had almost no effect on people’s accuracy. This was especially surprising to the people who took the training – an astonishing 93% of trainees thought the training had improved their ability to identify faces.

Our research shows that even the world’s best available training – used to train police, border control agents, forensic scientists and other security personnel – does not compensate for talent in face recognition.

This is consistent with recent research suggesting that our face identification abilities are largely predetermined by genetics.

Forensic facial examiners

This may come as disappointing news to people who hope to become a super-recogniser. But all is not lost.

Scientists have recently discovered that some specialist groups of practitioners show very high levels of accuracy. Forensic facial examiners routinely compare images of faces to turn CCTV images into informative face identification evidence in criminal trials. Recent work shows that they too outperform novices in very challenging tests.

CCTV footage doesn’t always produce clear images, so identifying people can be difficult. Shutterstock.com

Forensic facial examiners present a paradox for scientists. They perform face identification tasks with a high degree of accuracy, and this ability appears to be acquired through professional experience and training.

Our study suggests there is no benefit of face identification training courses when tested immediately before and after.

In addition, previous work has suggested that merely performing face-matching tasks in daily work is not sufficient to improve accuracy. Some passport officers have been working for 20 years and perform no better than others who have been working for just a few months.

Read more: Passport staff miss one in seven fake ID checks

This paradox suggests there is something particular about the type of training and professional experience that forensic facial examiners receive that enables them to develop visual expertise in identifying faces, and which isn’t provided by standard training courses.

How do they do it?

In our current research we are working closely with government agencies to uncover the basis of forensic facial examiners’ expertise. For example, we now know that part of their expertise comes from using a very particular comparison strategy, where they break the face down into individual facial features and then slowly and systematically assess the similarity of each feature in turn.

Interestingly, the nature of this expertise appears to be qualitatively different to that of super-recognisers – Yenny recognised her old classmate using a quick, intuitive process as she glanced in the rear-view mirror.

Super-recognisers can pick out a face they may have seen only once before. Shutterstock.com

However, these snap judgements made by super-recognisers may not be suitable for the type of identification evidence that forensic facial examiners give in court, where a careful analysis of facial images is necessary to support identification decisions. Importantly, forensic facial examiners provide detailed reports of the observations used to support their decisions, which can then be cross-examined in court.

Trainable vs hardwired

Super-recognisers and forensic facial examiners use distinct routes to high performance in face identification.

Effective training appears to target the slower, deliberate and analytical visual processing that characterises forensic facial examiners.

The faster and more intuitive skill that enabled Yenny to recognise faces of relative strangers in her rear-view mirror is likely to be untrainable, and hard-wired.

This raises the question of how to balance these different sources of expertise. It may be that super-recognisers are best suited to surveillance-type roles, such as monitoring CCTV or searching for targets in large crowds.

Forensic facial examiners may be better suited to providing identification evidence to the court, which requires thorough explanations of how and why the expert came to their decision.

Alternatively, it may be possible to train super-recognisers in the expert skills characterising forensic facial examination, or to form teams that include both types of expert.

The aim of our work is to integrate these sources of human expertise with the latest face recognition software to improve the accuracy of face identification evidence. Such a system can make society safer, but also fairer, by reducing the likelihood of wrongful convictions.

Can you beat Yenny’s high score of 88% on the super-recogniser test? Find out here.

– ref. Super-recognisers accurately pick out a face in a crowd – but can this skill be taught? – http://theconversation.com/super-recognisers-accurately-pick-out-a-face-in-a-crowd-but-can-this-skill-be-taught-112003

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW

The Hayne Royal Commission began and ended with strident criticism of the mortgage broking industry.

It recommended brokers be required to act in the “best interests” of intending borrowers, and that intending borrowers, rather than the successful lender, pay the broker’s fee.

So-called “trailing” annual payments from lenders would be outlawed as soon as possible and upfront commissions outlawed after two or three years.

It’s the only set of recommendations the government has been lukewarm about adopting, announcing instead that while brokers will be required to act in the best interests of borrowers and from July 1 2020 will no longer be able to accept new trailing commissions, decisions about upfront commissions will be delayed until a further review, to take place “in three years time”.

The government is right to be cautious.

What’s the problem with commissions?

Both the royal commission and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission are concerned commissions:

• encourage brokers to recommend mortgages that borrowers cannot plausibly afford

• cause the broker to recommend higher paying products over lower paying products, potentially to the detriment of borrowers.

So what’s the go with brokers?

Typically a borrower approaches a broker who works with banks to secure a loan.

According to ASIC, the method of payment is fairly standard:

• the broker receives a commission from banks for each successful home loan. The commission is often divided into an upfront payment and a trailing commission, which is paid over time

• the lender benefits because it can spread its commission expenses over time. It can also terminate commissions if it believes a broker has behaved badly

• the commission rates are relatively similar across lenders, with upfront commissions typically ranging from 0.46% to 0.65% of the loan amount, about $3,000 on a $500,000 loan. Trailing commissions typically range from 0.1% to 0.35% of the ongoing loan, about $1,000 per year on a $500,000 loan

• lenders can also offer bonus payments, loyalty payments and “soft dollar commissions” which take many forms, including overseas conferences and holidays, shopping vouchers and tickets to sporting events

• loan aggregators can also play a role. They provide back-office support and ancillary services to brokers. Some are partly owned by banks. These banks receive a slightly larger share of loans from brokers who deal with these aggregators than from brokers that don’t.

In practice brokers often provide good service

ASIC research finds that regardless of the conflicted remuneration structure the interest rates brokers obtain for clients are not significantly worse (or better) than those obtained by borrowers who deal with banks direct.

Their clients are slightly different, on average two years younger than bank clients and with incomes about A$6,000 lower. Brokers’ clients borrow slightly more than direct bank clients and their loans are more likely to be interest only.

Although until legislation has not compelled brokers to act in clients’ best interests, other professional standards often do so.

And brokers are keen to get referrals and repeat business, which relies on brokers providing good service in the first place.

They’ve little incentive to push bad loans

Because banks compete for business, they tend to pay similar commissions, in much the same way as they tend to charge similar interest rates. It means that in practice there is isn’t much incentive for a broker to recommend one lender over another. This is especially so when you factor in the desire to get repeat business, and referrals, which they would lose if they pushed poor products.

And it is hard to recommend unnecessary loans. Borrowers usually come to brokers to arrange loans for homes they are already planning to buy. There aren’t that many extra dollars in recommending clients borrow more, and even if brokers did recommend higher loans they would still be subject to banks’ serviceability and equity checks.

At the moment banks are highly reluctant to lend large sums at high loan to valuation ratios.

All this means that commissions have a muted effect on brokers’ lending recommendations, with conflicts being ameliorated by the practical reality of commission homogenisation and the desire for repeat business and referrals.

And if commissions went…

If commissions went, brokers would have to be paid by borrowers.

Many borrowers would baulk at the fees, and would go to banks instead. This would increase banks’ costs, which could be passed on through additional borrowing fees. It would also increase the time borrowers must devote to sorting through potential lenders.

Some borrowers who lack financial expertise would then have to rely on banks’ advice, rather than brokers’; and, banks are hardly less independent about their products than are brokers.

It would be the smaller brokers that would suffer the most, some going out of business. Larger brokers would also be affected, but less so, due to economies of scale. The end result would be fewer brokers, and less access to advice.

It’d be an unintended consequence of what Hayne recommended, and perhaps an unnecessary one.

While there are always bad apples in every industry, removing commissions would be a blunt – and potentially unnecessary – instrument with plenty of downsides.

The Conversation

– ref. Honest brokers. Why mortgage broker commissions aren’t the problem – http://theconversation.com/honest-brokers-why-mortgage-broker-commissions-arent-the-problem-111631

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Latty, Senior Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

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

Most school kids can describe in detail the life cycle of butterflies: eggs hatch into caterpillars, caterpillars turn into cocoons and cocoons hatch. This seemingly basic bit of biology was once hotly debated. It was a pioneering naturalist, Maria Sibylla Merian, whose meticulous observations conclusively linked caterpillars to butterflies, laying the groundwork for the fields of entomology, animal behaviour and ecology.

Maria Sibylla Merian was born in 1647 in Frankfurt at a time when the scientific study of life was in its infancy. Although she was trained as an artist, Merian is arguably one of the first true field ecologists. She studied the behaviour and interactions of living things at a time when taxonomy and systematics (naming and cataloguing) were the main pursuit of naturalists.

Like most modern entomologists, Merian’s passion for insects started early. At 13, she began collecting and raising caterpillars as subjects for her paintings. She often painted by candlelight, awaiting the moment when a caterpillar formed its cocoon or a newly formed butterfly later emerged from it.

An image from Merian’s book Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Wikimedia Commons

Merian painted caterpillars feeding on their host plants and predatory animals feeding on their prey. She was intent on capturing not only the anatomy of her subjects, but also their life cycles and interactions with other living things. Rather than working from preserved specimens (as was the convention of the time), she captured the ecology of species, centuries before the term even existed.

The fact that Merian found the time to conduct her studies is a testament to the power of a curious mind. Unlike many male naturalists of her day, Merian did not have the freedom to devote all of her time to the study of insects.

In 1665, at the age of 18, Merian married her stepfather’s apprentice, painter Johann Andreas Graff. Her first daughter, Johanna, was born in 1688 and in 1670 the family moved to Nuremburg. Her second daughter, Dorothea, was born in 1678.

Merian’s marriage appears to have been an unhappy one. In 1685, she left Graff to live in a religious community, taking both daughters with her. In 1692, Graff formally divorced Merian.

As a mother of two, Merian was responsible for home-care and child-rearing. She secured her family’s finances by teaching painting to the daughters of wealthy families. In many ways, she was one of the first “science moms”, trying to balance the challenges of her research against a demanding family life.

All of this at a time when women were still being burned as witches – being a curious, intelligent woman was very hazardous indeed.

In Surinam with her daughter

A 17th-century portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian by an unknown artist. Wikimedia Commons

Merian’s work on caterpillars was a key contribution to an ongoing debate of her day. On one side were those who believed that life arose from inanimate matter; flies, for example, arose from rotting meat; other insects formed from mud; raindrops produced frogs. On the other side were those who believed that life arose only from pre-existing life.

By breeding butterflies from egg to adult for several generations, Merian showed definitively that eggs hatched into caterpillars, which eventually turned into butterflies.

Merian’s books on caterpillars (published in 1679 and 1683) would have been enough on their own to earn her a place in science history.

But in 1669, at the age of 52 and with her youngest daughter (then aged 20) in tow, she embarked on one of the first purely scientific expeditions in history. Her goal was to illustrate new species of insects in Surinam, a South American country (now known as Suriname) only recently colonised by the Dutch. After two months of dangerous travel, the two women arrived in an entomologists’ paradise.

Surrounded by new species, Merian was itching to collect and paint everything she could get her hands on. She immediately ran into problems, however, as the Dutch planters of the island were unwilling to help two unaccompanied women collect insects from the forest, a mission they believed to be frivolous.

So Merian forged relationships with enslaved Africans and Indigenous people who agreed to bring her specimens and who shared with her the medicinal and culinary uses of many plants. For example, Merian writes that enslaved Amerindian women used the seeds from particular plants to abort fetuses in order to spare them from the cruelty of slavery. It is a stark reminder of the unmitigated horrors of 1600s colonialism.

Maria Sibylla Merian, illuminated copper-engraving from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Plate XXIII. Solanum mammosum 1705. Wikimedia Commons

Merian and her daughter worked in Surinam for two years before Merian’s failing health forced her to return home. The book that resulted from her time in Surinam, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, was well known in both artistic and scientific circles.

Merian’s eldest daughter, Joanna, eventually made the journey to Surinam and would send her mother new specimens and paintings until Merian’s death in 1717.

Sceptical men

I am an insect ecologist and a field biologist; Merian’s work forms the very foundations of my discipline. Yet I am ashamed to confess that until relatively recently I was unaware of the magnitude of Merian’s contribution to biology. It has only been in the last few decades that recognition for her scientific contributions has had a resurgence.

How did such a scientific superhero all but disappear from science history?

Merian was well known in her time. Karl Linnaeus, famous for developing a system for classifying life, referred heavily to her illustrations in his species descriptions. The grandfather of Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, cites Merian’s work in his book The Botanic Garden.

But, after her death, inaccuracies began to creep into the hand-painted copies of Merian’s books. New plates with imaginary insects were added. Others were recoloured to be more aesthetically pleasing. The careful attention to detail that made Merian’s work so incredible was gradually eroded.

In the 1830s, naturalist Lansdowne Guilding – who had never visited Surinam – wrote a scathing critique of Merian’s work in a book entitled Observations on the work of Maria Sibylla Merian on the Insects, of Surinam. He uses words like “careless”, “worthless” and “vile and useless” to describe Merian’s engravings, which he felt were riddled with inaccuracies. Many of the errors Guilding attacks were added after Merian’s death and were not faithful to her original work.

There is also a strong undercurrent of sexism in Guilding’s critiques; in one place he accuses Merian of ignoring facts “every boy entomologist would know”. Guilding attacks Merian for relying too heavily on the knowledge of African slaves and Amerindians, people he regarded as unreliable.

The fact that Merian was an artist who had no formal scientific training also played a role in the efforts to discredit her. By the 1800s, biology was practised by university-trained academics and self-trained naturalists like Merian were now treated with an air of disdain. Never mind the fact that women of Merian’s day were barred from university educations.

Colored copper engraving from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, Plate XLIII. ‘Spiders, ants and hummingbird on a branch of a guava’. Wikimedia Commons

It didn’t help that some of Merian’s observations sounded fantastical – she claimed that in Surinam there lived tarantulas that ate birds, and ants that formed bridges with their bodies. These claims seemed too odd to be true and so began to attract considerable scepticism.

Other authors began to see Merian’s observations as the flights of fancy of an old woman far outside her depth. And so Merian ceased to be remembered as a pioneering naturalist. She was instead dismissed as an old woman who painted beautiful – but entirely unscientific – pictures of butterflies. Although her work continued to inspire and influence generations of artists, her contributions as a scientist were largely forgotten.

Modern scientists have since confirmed the “bird-eating” tarantula’s habit of occasionally consuming small birds and we now know that army ants do indeed build bridges out of their living bodies.

Merian’s “flights of fancy” were not fanciful after all.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Maria Sibylla Merian, 17th-century entomologist and scientific adventurer – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-maria-sibylla-merian-17th-century-entomologist-and-scientific-adventurer-112057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Vatsikopoulos, Lecturer in Journalism, University of Technology Sydney

This week, Department of Communications and Arts secretary Mike Mrdak told a Senate hearing our Pacific neighbours will soon experience “the full suite of programs available on Australian networks”. This means the region will see some of our most highly rated reality shows such as Married at First Sight and The Bachelor.

This is all part of the government’s Pacific pivot and the A$17 million package to broadcast commercial television throughout the region announced by the prime minister last year. It’s also part of Australia’s “soft power” strategy, a branding that enables it to influence other countries and have its voice heard.

Australia’s soft power attraction in the Asia Pacific has been in free fall for the past few years. The government is sitting on two major reviews. First is the Soft Power Review – a strong recommendation of the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper – for which the consultation period ended in October 2018. Second is the Review of Australian Broadcasting in the Asia-Pacific, the consultation period for which ended in August 2018.

The second review was established in 2017. This was the first time the government addressed the issue of soft power in the Pacific since axing the ABC’s Australia Network in 2014. The Australia Network broadcast to the region with redistribution partnerships to 30 countries.

The ABC charter states it has responsibility “to transmit to countries outside Australia broadcasting programs of news, current affairs, entertainment and cultural enrichment” that will “encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs”.

In other words, the ABC is already enabled as Australia’s soft power tool. Despite this, the government is giving money to commercial televisions to do the work. At the Senate hearing this week, Mrdak denied this was in breach of the ABC charter because it did not involve broadcasting but purchasing content made by Australia’s commercial broadcasters for distribution to regional broadcasters.

Read more: Lost in transmission: the Australia Network, soft power and diplomacy

The government must move quickly with its reviews and their recommendations, and articulate its policy responses before the next election, if Australia’s standing in the region is to be restored. Because other powers, especially China, are fast filling the gap we’re leaving behind.

The importance of soft power

Soft power is a term coined by Harvard Professor Joseph S. Nye in the late 1980s. He referred to soft power as the ability of a country to gain influence and power through attraction and without coercion. Soft power leads to nation branding or the reputation a nation enjoys in the world.

This is what business academic Yin Fang defines as:

… the total sum of all perceptions of a nation in the minds of international stakeholders, which may contain some of the following elements: people, place, culture/language, history, food, fashion, famous faces (celebrities), global brands and so on.

The 2018 Soft Power 30 Report showed Australia had fallen four places in four years. The report is a measure of the influence of international nations. We are 10th in the overall soft power index but are marked as moving downward: 7th in culture, 6th in education, 9th in government and completely absent from the top ten in the areas of digital, enterprise and engagement.

Read more: Soft power and the institutionalisation of influence

In the alternative, and hipper, Monocle Soft Power Index, Australia sits at number 8. But the report also warns it “… is in need of a shakeup if it is to remain an attractive proposition”.

It praises the country for committing to an official review of its soft power but adds “it’s unclear if that will now be a priority”.

In addressing a seminar on the future of Australia’s broadcasting and soft power in the region, veteran broadcaster and former head of the Australia Network Bruce Dover said:

Where once Australia was a brand in Asia, people knew what the Australia Network was, they knew what Radio Australia was, it’s lost – it’s gone…

He then added that the axing of the Australia Network by the Coalition government “… was for more political reasons about whacking the ABC than a considered view on the worth of soft diplomacy or having a voice in the region”.

The ABC isn’t entirely free from blame. It abandoned the most needy of its audience in Asia and the Pacific by switching off its shortwave radio service in 2017. Citing outdated technology, the ABC was trying to make the most of its severe funding cutbacks by prioritising digital services. And that’s when China moved in and took over the shortwave frequencies.

So, what’s China doing?

The government’s Pacific pivot is about waking up and finding China has expanded into the region, and not just in infrastructure projects but in broadcasting. A recent ABC investigation reported China’s Central Global Television Network (CGTN) is broadcasting to 1.2 billion people in Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic and is expanding to create 200 international bureaus by 2020.

Read more: Soft power goes hard: China’s economic interest in the Pacific comes with strings attached

This may be, as the ABC suggests, “informational warfare”, where the soldiers may actually be Westerners working for the other side. This year alone, more than 2,200 people lost their jobs in the Australian media.

Edwin Maher was one of the first Australians to work for CCTV, as CGTN was then called. He was a weatherman when I worked in the ABC’s Melbourne newsroom in the late ’80s, but for over a decade he has been a presenter on China’s television. There will be more like him in future.

China is actively recruiting Westerners to front its programs. Australian faces will likely present news on on CGTN, while Australian voices broadcast in English to Pacific Islanders on shortwave.

In the competitive world of nation-branding and soft power, who will know the difference? The new Edwin Mahers will be telling the same stories as Australia, but with a China focus. In 2016 President Xi Jinping announced that the media must serve the party and directed them to tell China’s stories that reflect well on the ruling party and its policies.

This is the reality of informational warfare. The Morrison government must release its two crucial soft power reports and announce a policy framework that will determine our standing, influence and power in the region.

Vanuatu’s Daily Post has welcomed the news Australia will provide entertaining programs to the Pacific. But the opinion piece also says:

Pacific islanders aren’t likely to be very fussy about how that comes about. But if the goal is helping Pacific islanders know more about Australia — and helping Australians know more about the Pacific – then a different approach is needed.

Australia’s soft power is too important to be determined by vengeful payback to the ABC, or by currying favour with commercial television barons. It is about statecraft.

– ref. As Australia’s soft power in the Pacific fades, China’s voice gets louder – http://theconversation.com/as-australias-soft-power-in-the-pacific-fades-chinas-voice-gets-louder-111841

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Dunn, Associate Lecturer in Anatomy and Cell Biology, Western Sydney University

Some men may shudder at the thought of “the snip”. But vasectomies are a safe and effective form of contraception for men who have completed their family, or don’t wish to have children.

Medicare data shows more than 25,000 Australian men have had a vasectomy in the last financial year. The relatively simple surgical procedure involves disrupting the sperm-carrying tubes in the scrotum to prevent sperm from getting into the seminal fluid when a man ejaculates.

Typically, sperm only make up around 2-5% of total ejaculate volume. That means following a successful vasectomy, at least 95% of the end product will still remain, while eliminating the risk of pregnancy.

The procedure

Generally, vasectomies are carried out under local anaesthetic. The surgery can usually be completed within 15-30 minutes.

In the “no-scalpel” method, a single puncture is made through the scrotum using specialised equipment. The tubes can then be accessed without having to make an incision. This method is considered best practice as it is minimally invasive, does not require stitches and results in very little scarring.

There is also the more traditional incision method where a scalpel is used to make one or two small access points through which the doctor performs the procedure.

Read more: Few Australian women use long-acting contraceptives, despite their advantages

For anyone worried about the function of the penis after the procedure, the penis actually has very little to do with a vasectomy. An incision, or a puncture, is made into the scrotum, and the focus of the procedure is the small internal tubes which connect the testes to the penis, called the vas deferens. The vas deferens carry sperm from the testicles to the prostate where it’s mixed with semen for ejaculation.

This process of a vasectomy involves severing the vas deferens. From shutterstock.com

In most procedures, around 1-2cms of the vas deferens will be removed to minimise the chance of the tubes rejoining later on.

Techniques to close the ends of the vas deferens include cauterisation (electrical or thermal burning to create scar tissue) and ligation (tying the tubes).

Some of the highest success rates involve an “open ended” technique (successful at least 99.5% of the time). This is where the upper portion of the tube is either cauterised or ligated while the end closer to the testes remains open. This has a lower risk of complications than other methods and appears to be a popular choice among Australian doctors.

How successful are vasectomies?

Generally vasectomies are very effective, with success rates well above 99% and with minimal long-term complications.

Potential complications immediately after surgery include infection and haematoma (internal bleeding), but the risks of such complications are small (1-2%). The risk is even less when the “no-scalpel” method is used.

After a vasectomy, the chance of a couple becoming pregnant again is well under 1%. From shutterstock.com

The most common long-term complication of a vasectomy is pain in the scrotum, yet this only affects about 2% of men. It is believed the “open-ended” method minimises the chance of this happening.

Importantly, vasectomies are only fully effective after around three months as it takes time for sperm to clear completely from the vas deferens. So it’s sensible to continue to use an alternative form of contraception immediately following the procedure, until given the all-clear by a doctor.

Reversals

Someone who has had a vasectomy may wish to have the procedure reversed, for a variety of reasons.

Not every service that offers a vasectomy will offer a vasectomy reversal, called a vasovasostomy. But it can be done. The procedure essentially involves reconnecting the previously disconnected vas deferens.

Read more: Here’s what’s on the horizon for a male contraceptive pill – but don’t hold your breath

Of vasectomised men, around 3-6% opt to have a vasectomy reversal, after which successful pregnancy may be achieved in up to 80% of cases.

There are many factors that could affect this chance. The age of the female partner is among the most significant.

It’s also important to note that the longer the duration since the vasectomy, the lower the odds of a successful reversal and future pregnancy.

In some cases, if a couple want more children following a vasectomy, a more realistic and time-efficient option may be IVF. Sperm can still be extracted directly from the testes of a man who has had a vasectomy.

– ref. Explainer: how does a vasectomy work and can it be reversed? – http://theconversation.com/explainer-how-does-a-vasectomy-work-and-can-it-be-reversed-110780

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leila Mahmoudi Farahani, Research Fellow in Urban Studies, RMIT University

Recent studies show Melbourne’s and Sydney’s fast-growing outer suburbs lag behind other parts of the city in access to urban design, employment and amenities and services that foster liveability. The National Growth Areas Alliance of local councils launched a national campaign, “Catch up with the outer suburbs”, on Monday. But what is it really like to live in these areas?

Living Liveable is a short documentary film produced by RMIT University researchers showcasing the lived experiences of residents in Melbourne’s outer suburbs. The film includes interviews with 11 residents that highlight their perceptions and experiences of liveability in their suburbs. This article explores their reasons for living where they do and recounts their experiences of life in the outer suburbs.

Living Liveable, a documentary produced by RMIT researchers.

Why all the fuss about liveability?

Liveability and its underlying indicators have been the subject of substantial research. Most well-known liveability indices produced by the private sector — such as the Mercer Quality of Living Ranking and the Economist Intelligent Unit’s Liveability Index — rank cities against each other. And most Australian capital cities are ranked relatively high in such global liveability indices.

Read more: The world’s ‘most liveable city’ title isn’t a measure of the things most of us actually care about

These measures overlook inequities within cities between established inner areas and newer outer suburban areas. Many of these urban fringe suburbs are experiencing rapid population growth. RMIT researchers have developed spatial liveability indicators, showing that residents in outer suburbs lack access to basic amenities that inner-city residents take for granted.

Read more: Some suburbs are being short-changed on services and liveability – which ones and what’s the solution?

Yet residents’ perceptions of their neighbourhoods and their lived experiences are often unheard in such measures. The interviews show that a combination of factors shapes decisions to live in an outer suburb. These include perceived affordability, people’s aspirations for a good life, and access to public transport. As one resident said:

I was looking for an affordable area where I can, you know, buy a decent-size house within a decent budget and all those things. So, this area probably suits me, which is nearest for public transport, but yeah, it’s a bit far from the CBD area, which is alright. – male resident of Wyndham

Access to green spaces and a sense of community were among the things residents loved most about living in their suburb:

We live opposite a beautiful park … it’s right at our doorstep. We feel very, very lucky to live opposite this beautiful park, it’s very well maintained by the local council and it’s highly utilised. So even just out there walking, I’ve got to know people in my neighbourhood. – female resident of Wyndham

Residents value access to green spaces.

Read more: City-by-city analysis shows our capitals aren’t liveable for many residents

Traffic makes life worse

However, traffic volumes and poor access to daily living destinations and public transport had negative impacts on residents’ lived experiences. While current liveability indices usually consider access to daily living destinations – such as food outlets, schools, hospitals, and public transport – traffic is often overlooked. Yet, 10 out of 11 people mentioned traffic, in 30 separate instances, as something that makes their neighbourhoods less liveable.

A painter living in the City of Casey described how increasing traffic in recent years was forcing him to wake up half an hour earlier and get back home half an hour later in the afternoon.

I’m a painter, so I work anywhere from here to the city. The Monash [freeway] … I call it my driveway. So I’m on that every day, and it just depends which exit I’m taking for the day.

So, I get up at the moment at 4.50am. I get up to beat the traffic, which starts at about 5.20, and then I get to the job, and then I might have a bit of a snooze in my car or eat breakfast. And that’s just all just to beat traffic. And I can stay there for an hour before I have to, you know, knock on the client’s door, and say, “Oh I’m here to start.”

And, yeah, then at the end of the working day, which is 4pm, after I’ve done my eight hours, I just have to grind with the traffic on the way home… I might get home at about 6.10pm.

For some, the traffic has affected their mental health and increased stress levels.

We’ve lived in this house for 16 years and just the buildup of traffic … I was used to getting from A to B very quickly. I now have to plan, embed in my day, more time to get from A to B. I think that’s the biggest negative.

And it’s certainly one that impacts my husband. He doesn’t work locally. He works in the eastern suburbs and he also has to travel around a lot for his work. And that’s becoming a bit of a nightmare for him and actually creating a bit of stress. – female resident of Wyndham

Lack of access to daily living destinations, including employment and supermarkets, means residents depend on their cars. This adds to their cost of living and reduces neighbourhood liveability.

Read more: Designing suburbs to cut car use closes gaps in health and wealth

Lack of public transport or infrequent services also has negative impacts on residents’ quality of life and well-being.

I take my hubby to work in Derrimut and so that normally takes me … about two hours easy; just over two hours. … he doesn’t drive. He can’t use the train simply because the train doesn’t go anywhere near where he works. There’s nothing. No public transport to take my husband to work.

S0 … we’ve got no choice. So, if something happens to me, uh, we’re in a load of trouble. That’s where it’s difficult. We need more public transport. We really do. – female resident of Wyndham

Planners need to hear what residents say

The film highlights the gaps in current measures of liveability. For example, future liveability indices should consider including traffic and car-dependency indicators. Increasing traffic, the time spent travelling, and the financial burden of car dependency can detract from some of the key reasons residents choose to live in Melbourne’s outer suburbs – namely, affordability and sense of community.

We need to engage with communities and hear from them about their lived experience to better understand and measure their quality of life, their health and their neighbourhoods’ liveability. Objective measures of the quality of access should be accompanied by insights from residents about their lives in the suburbs. The voice of residents needs to be included in the planning of our cities as they grow, as well as the metrics of how successful we are in delivering equitable cities that foster healthy, affordable and prosperous lives for all.

Read more: Melbourne or Sydney? This is how our two biggest cities compare for liveability

– ref. Living ‘liveable’: this is what residents have to say about life on the urban fringe – http://theconversation.com/living-liveable-this-is-what-residents-have-to-say-about-life-on-the-urban-fringe-111339

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Belgrave, Lecturer in Politics and Citizenship, Massey University

Until recently, New Zealand’s relationship with China has been easy and at little cost to Wellington. But those days are probably over. New Zealand’s decision to block Huawei from its 5G cellular networks due to security concerns is the first in what could be many hard choices New Zealand will need to make that challenge Wellington’s relationship with Beijing.

For over a decade New Zealand has reaped the benefits of a free-trade agreement with China and seen a boom of Chinese tourists. China is New Zealand’s largest export destination and, apart from concerns about the influence of Chinese capital on the housing market, there have been few negatives for New Zealand.

Long-held fears that New Zealand would eventually have to “choose” between Chinese economic opportunities and American military security had not eventuated.

Read more: New Zealand’s Pacific reset: strategic anxieties about rising China

But now New Zealand business people in China have warned of souring relations and the tourism industry is worried about a downturn due to backlash following the Huawei controversy.

China’s growing might

During Labour’s government under Helen Clark (1999-2008) and under the National government with John Key as prime minister (2008-2016), New Zealand could be all things to all people, building closer relationships with China while finally calming the last of the lingering American resentment over New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policies. But now, there are difficult decisions to be made.

As China becomes more assertive on the world stage, it is becoming increasingly difficult for New Zealand to keep up this balancing act. Two forces are pushing a more demanding line from Beijing. One is China’s move to assert more control over waters well off its coast.

For decades, Beijing was happy to let the US Navy maintain order over the Western Pacific to facilitate global trade with China. As China’s own economic and military abilities have grown, it has begun to show that it is willing to protect what it sees as its own patch. Its mammoth island building in the South China Sea is a testament to its new-found desire to push its territorial claims after decades of patience.

Read more: Despite strong words, the US has few options left to reverse China’s gains in the South China Sea

China’s stronger foreign policy is testing what is known as the “rules-based order”, essentially a set of agreed rules that facilitate diplomacy, global trade, and resolve disputes between nations. This is very concerning for New Zealand as it needs stable rules to allow it to trade with the world. New Zealand doesn’t have the size to bully other countries into getting what we want.

Trump-style posturing would get New Zealand nowhere. A more powerful China doesn’t need to threaten the rules-based system, but the transition could create uncertainty for business and higher risks of trade disruption. It is vital for New Zealand that an Asia-Pacific dominated by China is as orderly as one dominated by the US.

Tech made in China

The other force challenging the relationship is China’s emergence as a source of technology rather than simply a manufacturer of other countries’ goods. Many Chinese firms like Huawei are now direct competitors of Western tech companies. Huawei’s success makes it strategically important for Beijing and a point of pride for ordinary Chinese citizens.

Yet, unlike Western countries, China actively monitors its population through a wide variety of mass surveillance technology. Therefore, there is a trust problem when Chinese firms claim that their devices are secure from Beijing’s spies. New Zealand’s decision to effectively ban Huawei components from 5G cellular networks could be the first in many decisions needed to ensure national security.

Chinese designed goods are becoming more common and issues around privacy and national security will get stronger as everyday household goods become connected to the internet. Restrictions on Chinese-made goods will further frustrate Beijing and will invite greater retaliation to New Zealand exporters and tourist operators.

In more extreme cases, foreign nationals have been detained in China in response to overseas arrests of prominent Chinese individuals. As many as 13 Canadians were detained recently in China following the arrest of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver at the request of US prosecutors.

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

Declaring the limits of the relationship

If New Zealand is to maintain a healthy relationship with China, it needs to be clear on what it is not willing to accept. It is easy to say individual privacy, national security and freedom of speech are vital interests of New Zealand, but Wellington needs to be clear to its citizens and to China what exactly those concepts mean in detail. All relationships require compromise, so Wellington needs to be direct about what it won’t compromise.

New Zealand spent decades during the Cold War debating how much public criticism of the US the government could allow itself before it risked its alliance with the Americans. New Zealanders wondered if they really had an independent foreign policy if they couldn’t stand up to their friends. Eventually nationalist sentiment spilled over in the form of the anti-nuclear policy.

New Zealand is now heading for the same debate as Kiwis worry about how much they can push back against Beijing’s interests before it starts to hurt the economy. Now that the relationship with China is beginning to have significant costs as well as benefits, it’s probably time New Zealanders figured out how much they are prepared to pay for an easy trading relationship with China.

– ref. Huawei or the highway? The rising costs of New Zealand’s relationship with China – http://theconversation.com/huawei-or-the-highway-the-rising-costs-of-new-zealands-relationship-with-china-111909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Roy, Lecturer in Education, University of Newcastle

On Monday, the federal parliament agreed on a motion to support a royal commission into the abuse of disabled people. This is a good thing, but we still need a timeline, terms of reference and a whole lot more detail.

This commission has been a long time coming. The stories we’ve heard over the last few years in the media have been devastating, such as a child with a disability being stripped naked and locked in a closet. We can expect the stories that will be revealed over the course of this royal commission to be similarly hard to hear.

Any of us can be or become disabled. At least a half of us will become disabled as we age. This is not an issue just for “others”, this is an issue for all of us.

Read more: What you need to know if your child with a disability is starting school soon

Why a royal commission?

Royal commissions deal with systemic and endemic issues. People with a disability need societal support to overcome the barriers their ability presents in a society where able-bodied people are seen as “normal”. This leads to a systemic power structure that allows those who seek out targets to abuse the ability to do so with very little accountability.

Families are unlikely to complain about the services they rely on for everyday life, in case of retribution or the removal of these services. Such issues were also apparent in the the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This means it’s very likely many incidents go unreported.

Without this royal commission, we won’t know the full scope of abuse perpetrated against students with disabilities. from www.shutterstock.com

Some 20% of Australians have a disability. A royal commission into the violence, abuse and neglect perpetrated against people with disability has the potential to be huge. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse cost upwards of A$500 million dollars. So the appropriate cost of the proposed royal commission into disability abuse may be well above the A$26 million floated in parliament this week.

Is there really an issue?

Looking at school education alone in the latest ABS statistics, 336,000 students with a disability are enrolled in mainstream schools. This does not include thousands of children with a disability who are home schooled, often because of the abuse or discrimination they experience in mainstream settings.

Statistics on how common the abuse of children with a disability in schools is can be hard to find. But in 2018, NSW revealed there were 657 complaints about staff members in one year alone. Some 438 of these complaints were allegations of sexual or physical abuse against staff working in public schools.

Read more: NSW could lead the way in educating students with a disability

In 2017, shocking allegations were revealed through Freedom of Information requests: 246 reports of abuse were made about staff in the NSW Department of Education.

In 2015 reports revealed that a child with autism was being placed in a “blue cage” in a school. And in Victoria a coffin-like box was being used as a form of restraint.

Inquiries in SA, NSW and reports from Queensland reveal widespread denial of enrolment, denial of supports and funding, denial of learning, children being beaten, hit and isolated.

Even if the abuse is reported, children with a disability are too often seen as unreliable witnesses. A disability is wrongly (and offensively) assumed to mean an intellectual disability. It is assumed they simply don’t have the mental capacity.

Education systems often investigate themselves, which presents difficulties with conflict of interest. Most abusers tend to abuse in private, so the findings are either not proven, or a quick confidentiality settlement is made to silence the alleged victims. A royal commission would mean an independent authority would do the investigating.

Making it work

For this royal commission to work, the terms of reference must be broad. It must include all institutions where people with a disability go about their lives – especially schools where children spend most of their time when not in the family home.

The terms of reference for this royal commission must be broad enough to make sure everyone gets heard. from www.shutterstock.com

It must have power to compel all witnesses, including those at the highest level of state and federal politics, to give evidence.

It must allow those with confidentiality agreements to be able to share their stories without prejudice.

It must be well funded, to allow millions of voices across education, aged care and all institutions and settings to be heard and have access.

It must deal with both historic abuse as well as current systemic, discriminatory and abusive practices. A royal commission can’t change the past, but it can help heal the wounds, shine a light on the present and create a more equal future. This was demonstrated by the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Read more: Happy birthday, Braille: how writing you can touch is still helping blind people to read and learn

Given how potentially widespread this issue may be, A$500 million dollars and four years as a time-line may be a good starting point for resourcing this royal commission. It needs to be established now, before the election, so it has bipartisan support.

The leadership must also involve those with a disability. Any investigation that seeks to redress the exclusion and abuse of people with a disability should not further disenfranchise them by excluding them from leadership on this issue.

– ref. Why schools desperately need a royal commission into the abuse of disabled people – http://theconversation.com/why-schools-desperately-need-a-royal-commission-into-the-abuse-of-disabled-people-112058

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Beer, Dean, Research and Innovation, University of South Australia

Governments change priorities all the time. Some argue governments will focus on developing regional areas at one point in time and then refocus on major cities at another.

Our research shows that there are cycles in how much priority governments attach to regional issues. But these fluctuations are overshadowed by a larger, long-term trend towards greater involvement with regional communities.

Our findings show that regional Australia matters more today than it has at any other time since the 1940s.

Cycles of regional commitment

Inattention to particular constituencies can be costly. Victoria’s Kennett government lost office in 1999, when regional communities such as Ballarat and Bendigo became disillusioned with what they saw as a Melbourne-centric government.

This was a time when governments in other states, and nationally, were paying more attention to regional voters, with the Howard Coalition government nervously watching One Nation as a growing political force. In Queensland, the pressure was more acute, with a few regionally focused conservative politicians claiming seats in parliament.

Read more: How big ideas for regional Australia were given short shrift

Appointing a minister with regional responsibilities is one clear marker of intent in the government of the day. John Sharp, the Howard government’s first minister for transport and regional development, released a budget statement with 19 major investments in regional areas. These included money for drought assistance, rural roads, and counselling and support services for young people and families.

Sharp said:

The Coalition government has not simply sat idly as regional Australia continued to suffer from neglect.

There are now six ministers and one parliamentary secretary for regional development in Australian parliaments. Bridget McKenzie (federal), Michael McCormack (federal), Tim Whetstone (South Australia), Jaclyn Symes (Victoria), John Barilaro (New South Wales), Alannah MacTiernan (Western Australia) and Mark Shelton (Tasmania) are the most recent expression of a trend that started almost 30 years ago.

Our research

We examined all state and Australian government gazettes from 1939 to 2015 to find out how many “regional” ministers were in place over time. Our criteria were for the term “regional” to be in the title and for the representative to have responsibilities associated with improving the well-being of rural and remote communities.

We then used our data to develop an index, in which we gave a score of 1 for each month in the year where an identifiable regional minister held office.

For each jurisdiction the maximum possible score in any year was 12. For Australia, with six states and one federal government, the maximum possible score was 84.

Our results, in the table above, came as a surprise. It is clear that political engagement with the regions has grown rapidly since the late 1980s.

Previous research has suggested the 1940-1960s period was one of strong governmental commitment to the regions. This was reflected in announcements on the need to “decentralise” the population.

But our data suggest the notion of a “golden era” of regional policy and government support prior to the 1970s is misplaced.

Nation-wide policies in support of agriculture, mining or infrastructure development supported regional communities. But the well-being of these places was not the primary goal.

From 1972 to 1975, the Whitlam government was committed to addressing inequalities associated with where people live. This brought fresh enthusiasm for regional portfolios in state governments, but that tide quickly waned as the political climate changed.

Read more: Election 2016: how well are the major parties meeting the needs of rural and regional Australia?

Australian governments did not begin to appoint regional ministers as a matter of course until the late 1980s. This was a period linked to the end of old-fashioned, class-based politics and the rise of our more complex political landscape.

The trend has continued since and the presence of the six regional ministers and one parliamentary secretary in the halls of political power means there has never been a better time for regions to lobby governments.

There are now more ministers than ever before ready, able and willing to receive delegations and advocate for country towns, rural industries and remote Australia.
This means regional leaders have an opportunity to be heard in the run-up to the NSW and federal elections. The challenge is to determine the key messages and how they should be delivered.

– ref. Regional Australia is calling the shots now more than ever – http://theconversation.com/regional-australia-is-calling-the-shots-now-more-than-ever-110432

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas T. Van Dam, Senior Lecturer in Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne

Last night’s episode of ABC’s Catalyst, “The Mindfulness Experiment”, offered a unique glimpse into what happens to people during Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, an eight-week structured training program in mindfulness meditation.

The program followed 15 ordinary Australians who were seeking to deal with conditions including chronic pain, stress and anxiety. At the end of the experiment, many of the participants had shown improvement.

But if you’re considering dipping a toe into practising mindfulness, or taking the full plunge, there are several things you should consider first.

Read more: What is mindfulness? Nobody really knows, and that’s a problem

Mindfulness is not relaxation

The origins of mindfulness can be found in Eastern traditions. One definition suggests it’s a way of orienting attention and awareness to the present, reminding oneself to stay present when the mind wanders, and carefully discerning those behaviours that are helpful from those that are not.

Contrary to popular belief, mindfulness is not a way to relax or manage emotions. During practice, you will most likely experience unrest, have unpleasant thoughts and feelings, and learn unexpected and unsettling things about yourself.

While relaxation can and does occur, it’s not always as expected and it’s not really the goal.

Mindfulness is not a quick fix

Problems that have developed over weeks, months, or years cannot be fixed overnight. Behaviour change is hard. The patterns we most want to change (such as addictive behaviours, dysfunctional relationships, anxious thinking) require the investment of serious time and effort.

Instructor Timothea Goddard championed the practice of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction in Australia and facilitated the Catalyst participants’ mindfulness journey. She acknowledges doing up to an hour of practice a day can seem demanding. But if the challenges a person is dealing with are significant, this may be what’s required.

She adds that just like physical fitness, courses offering sustained daily practice may be more likely to offer greater transformation experiences.

While we have little data on the frequency or length of practice necessary, decades of research in psychotherapy and behaviour change suggest there is no such thing as a quick fix.

Participants in the Catalyst episode took part in eight weeks of mindfulness training. ABC

Mindfulness is not an escape

You may imagine mindfulness to be like a beach holiday where you leave all the stress, pressure, and deadlines behind. It’s not.

Mindfulness practice creates awareness around the issues that most need our attention. Often we’re drawn to emotional and physical pain we’ve been avoiding.

One participant in The Mindfulness Experiment, Sam, found this difficult. “I want to forget about the areas that are painful, not concentrate on them,” she said.

Mindfulness provides a method, not to escape, but to explore pain or hardship with acceptance, curiosity, and emotional balance.

Mindfulness is not a panacea

Despite suggestions it will fix everything, there are many circumstances and conditions for which mindfulness is simply not effective or appropriate.

If your main reason for seeking out mindfulness is for mental illness or another medical condition, speak first to a medical professional. Meditation is not meant as a replacement for traditional medicine.

Read more: Mindfulness can improve living with a disability

Is mindfulness for you?

An individual session with a skilled instructor can help you work out whether mindfulness is going to be right for you generally, and which approach specifically might help you.

Mindfulness is not one size fits all. Personal attention before and during practice can make a huge difference, especially in a group. We know from psychotherapy research individual adjustments must be made.

Who created the program?

Perhaps this seems like a strange question; few therapy clients or surgery patients know who created the method being used and they often get better. But unlike therapy or medical procedures, meditation is not overseen by any regulatory agency.

Consider what you want to get from the program and whether there is evidence the program and instructor can help you to achieve those goals.

This advice is especially important when considering apps. Few have been examined scientifically.

Read more: Can an app help us find mindfulness in today’s busy high-tech world?

Does the instructor have a personal practice?

Those who do not have a regular mindfulness practice themselves may struggle to teach others to cultivate a practice effectively.

Programs that train people to provide structured meditation programs (such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) require professional training, supervision, and extensive personal practice. While we don’t know if personal practice is necessary, it seems likely it is helpful in guiding others.

– ref. We don’t yet fully understand what mindfulness is, but this is what it’s not – http://theconversation.com/we-dont-yet-fully-understand-what-mindfulness-is-but-this-is-what-its-not-110698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Clark, Professor Emeritus, Asian Art History, University of Sydney

Review: Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art, Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The exhibition Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art, Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is the first major loan to Australia from this repository of what have become the canonical art works of Chinese culture. It deserves to be seen by all those interested in Chinese art, and hopefully will be the precursor for many such loans in the future.

Ming dynasty 1368–1644 Attributed to Qiu Ying (c1494–1552), ‘After Zhao Boju’s painting on alchemy’, hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper 131.1 x 49.6 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photo: © National Palace Museum, Taipei

Perhaps it will also prod the National Palace Museum in Beijing to do a major loan exhibition, in the same way that Sydney has already been blessed with major loans from other mainland Chinese provincial museums. The great ecumene of Chinese culture and its artefacts is too broad and its products too interesting and significant to let them stay entrapped within one exclusive political domain or another.

We can view exhibitions in terms of their spectacle, the variously pleasing or unappealing aesthetic qualities of the works displayed, or in terms of an art tendency or cultural world represented by the kinds of works shown. Art works are also markers for a flow in cultural material between different countries, and one can think about why such a work was shown in this country or not, as the case may be.

This Sydney exhibition forms part of a broad spectrum of National Palace Museum Taipei excursions abroad beginning in 1961 with the Smithsonian Museum and including later the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Ordinary viewers and specialist scholars may quibble about so many masterworks of Chinese art not seen in this exhibition. For instance, paintings from the Northern and Southern Song dynasties now in Taipei, such as Fan Kuan (ca. 950 to ca.1031) Travellers among mountains and streams, will not now be allowed to go overseas because of conservation considerations. The Australian viewer may hunger after such actual works but even in Taipei, many of these have a very restricted display schedule of about a month once every two or three years.

Apart from the question of how works appear or do not, there is the matter of how any given exhibition was generated. The current one was subject of a Loan Agreement in 2018 and is therefore the product of long and complex cultural diplomatic contacts much beyond curatorial decisions.

The works shown are organised in the following categories: Heaven and Earth; Seasons; Places; Landscape; Humanity. They were chosen to introduce works to a broad and often unfamiliar or uneducated audience, for whom explication of fuller art historical meaning could have been daunting.

Yuan dynasty 1279–1368 Four abridged phrases from ‘Detailed ceremonials’ hanging scroll, ink on paper 56.5 x 25.9 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei Photo: © National Palace Museum, Taipei

An opening and very carefully calibrated presentation of calligraphies manages to show without pedagogic introduction the main types of calligraphic form via some well-known examples. These are carefully drawn against various types of production, format and author. Specialists might find it difficult to encounter first the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) piece Four abridged phrases from Detailed Ceremonials, followed by the Song Emperor Huizong (reigned, 1101-25), Poem on peonies in regular script.

Still, what might be called the limpid rigidity of his scripts actually can prepare the untutored viewer for the wider range of graphic forms in the older Song stele rubbing of 18 scripts of Mengying (active after the 900s). This set of mannerisms has long antecedents in China, including the Bound tablets for the shan sacrifice of the Tang Emperor Xuanzong of 725, shown elsewhere in the exhibition.

The visitor can thus in a few paces, and via works some of which are “national treasures”, see much of the historical range of written production and re-production with its attendant graphic sensibility through calligraphy, relief printing, and carving.

Song dynasty 960–1279, Emperor Huizong (1082–1135; (reign 1101–25), ‘Poem on peonies in. regular script’, album leaf, ink on paper, 34.8 x 53.3 cm National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photo: © National Palace Museum, Taipei

There are several art historically significant paintings in the exhibition. One is attributed to Mi Fu (1051-1107) but is given as a 17th century copy after a work by Mi Fu’s son Mi Youren, and carries the encomium of Emperor Qian Long (reg. 1731-1796), a horizontal handscroll Cloudy Mountains with self-written inscription.

The sketchy tonality and brushwork with apparently not much ink contrast, apparently casually, even rather carelessly applied, became one of a core set of styles that was later to define the painting of literati landscape.

One other type of work here displayed is Southern Sung album paintings. Later research established in many cases that these were done for female members of the imperial court and even, in some cases, by female painters. These albums are very dark in their surviving state and turned flat on their side as here displayed are not easily seen by the viewer.

They are important, such as Taiye Lotus Pond by Feng Dayou (active mid-12th century), Viewing a Waterfall by Xia Gui (act.1180-c1230) and Evening stroll by Lamplight by Ma Lin (c.1195-1264).

These ostensibly highly professional paintings also displayed values of “realistic” drawing sought in the Song academic manner that became the genealogical base for the alternative, non-literati trajectory of ink painting in the late Ming, such as Parting at Jinchang by Tang Yin(1470-1524).

Song dynasty 960–1279, Xia Gui (active 1180–c1230), ‘Viewing a waterfall’, album leaf, ink and colour on silk, 24.7 x 25.7 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei Photo: © National Palace Museum, Taipei

The Song album paintings displayed a poetic visualization of a domestic life which was neither that of the lonely, politically exiled recluse, or the grand, cosmographic, landscape panorama.

In terms of the presentation of paintings in this exhibition, one could get involved over the minutiae of attribution. (Is the Viewing Geese at the Orchid Painting by Qian Xuan (1239-1301) the original work in a series of later historical transmissions or is it in some way a later Ming variation? And the green and blue landscape Viewing the Spring given to Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) may or may not be by him.)

Exhibitions of paintings seem of necessity to include ceramic and bronze pieces that hint at the domestic decoration of everyday life. These utensils and various kinds of display draw from domestic celebration of guests, formal ancestral ritual, and court ceremonial life.

Unfortunately these linkages require some commitment to discern in the rather haphazard collection of ceramics and bronze displayed here, despite the presence of rare ceramic pieces that are unquestionably major art historical monuments.

These include the monochrome Song Celadon warming bowl in the shape of a lotus blossom (960-1279) or the Jin-Yuan Dish with sky-blue glaze and purple splashes (ca 115-1368). These are very splendid but into what kind and period of imperial, scholarly, or plebeian taste they may fit is quite unclear.

Northern Song, late 1000s–early 1100s Song dynasty 960–1279 ‘Celadon warming bowl in shape of a lotus blossom’ porcelain, ru ware, 10.4 x 16.2 cm (rim diam) National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photo: © National Palace Museum, Taipei

The relationship with later cloisonné enamels of the 18th century also shown remains a bit too close to a display of accumulated consumer treasure for appreciative viewing.

Qing dynasty 1644–1911, ‘In celebration of the. Amitabha Buddha’ (detail), National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photo: © National Palace Museum, Taipei

Indeed the problem of all introductory exhibitions, (even when referring to a canonical collection), is that the supposed status of works may provide the all-fulfilling meaning for the viewer rather than access via cosmographic, historical, conceptual or other kinds of interpretation. These will require much more thorough expostulation, and narrower selection of works by type, series, or period.

Display spectacle is what actual museums now require before all else. With a little insight and patience, and detailed if occasionally circumlocutory catalogue notes, this exhibition has well provided it.

Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art, Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei is at the AGNSW until May 5.

– ref. Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art is an exercise in spectacle – http://theconversation.com/heaven-and-earth-in-chinese-art-is-an-exercise-in-spectacle-111988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hussein Abbass, Professor, School of Engineering & IT, UNSW-Canberra, UNSW

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

Are robots smarter than humans? – Liam, age 7, New Lambton.

This is a great question, Liam.

Some people believe that humans will always be smarter than robots. Some people say that robots are not as smart as we think.

Some predict that robots will be smarter than humans by 2045. Others say it will take hundreds of years before robots become smarter than humans. Some others predict that robots will be a billion times smarter than humans. `

We know a lot about human brains, but not enough to design a robot that has a brain as complex as ours.

You could think of a robot as a type of computer. Similar to our brain, robots have a computer inside their body to do the thinking for them. These computers are still not as complex as a human brain. However, some computers are extremely powerful and they could do things better than humans.

Read more: Curious Kids: how did spoken language start?

Human vs robot!

About 22 years ago, a robot called Deep Blue played against the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, and won the first game. You may say that Deep Blue was smarter than Kasparov because it won the game, but let us think deeper.

Kasparov was extremely good at chess. When he was a child your age, he went to a special school to learn chess. He kept learning and practising chess until he became the best player in the whole world.

Garry Kasparov sitting on the right playing against Deep Blue, operated by Feng-Hsiung Hsu ASAI FIB/flickr, CC BY

Deep Blue did not learn how to play chess. It simply followed instructions given by a team of smart human scientists. By following these instructions, Deep Blue won against Kasparov. It played better than Kasparov, but this was only because of the clever humans who designed it. It could not learn like Kasparov.

In 2017, another robot named AlphaGo Zero, learnt to play a much harder game called Go by playing five million games against itself for a few days using an extremely fast computer. A human will take at least 570 years of continuous play without sleep or rest to play five million Go games.

AlphaGo Zero defeated world champions, both humans and robots. Today, it is the best Go player in the world. Better than any human and it even learnt to play by itself without going to a school or help from any scientists. But the only thing it can do is play Go.

What does it mean to be smart?

Smartness is not just about winning or learning. The humans who designed Deep Blue and AlphaGo were smart because they worked together as a team to solve a problem that nobody could solve before.

Real smartness is to be a good person who helps others when possible, contributes to the community, and works with others to make the world a better place. Humans are smart when they work together, respect one another, and when they help each other in the community. They are smart when they do the right thing like looking after animals who cannot look after themselves.

Robots are not yet as good as humans at working with other humans or even working with other robots. Robots find teamwork an extremely difficult thing to do. This is one of the problems I am trying to solve in my research.

If we develop very smart robots, they could help us. But some people are worried about making robots

If robots become smarter than humans, I hope they will help all humans have better lives. asharkyu/shutterstock, CC BY

And so, even though we have amazing robots today that do lots of things better than humans they are not as smart as humans yet. How long will it take robots to become truly smarter than humans? It’s very hard to say.

Humans are creative and any scientist may come up with a clever idea very soon to design these super smart robots. Maybe this scientist is you, Liam. If you study hard, you might become this scientist who designs the smartest robot ever.

Read more: An AI professor explains: three concerns about granting citizenship to robot Sophia

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: are robots smarter than humans? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-are-robots-smarter-than-humans-110787

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorraine Finlay, Lecturer in Law, Murdoch University

The prime minister’s announcement yesterday that a “sophisticated state actor” had hacked the computer networks of Australia’s major political parties again highlights the serious threat posed by cyber attacks.

This follows a breach of the Parliament House network earlier this year. Previous examples in Australia include the 2015 malware attack on the Bureau of Meteorology and breaches of the computer systems at the Australian National University in 2018.

Indeed, cyber measures targeting Australian government infrastructure have been described as the “new normal”.

Read more: A state actor has targeted Australian political parties – but that shouldn’t surprise us

Australia is not alone in facing this threat, and it is a significant one. The US Secretary of Homeland Security highlighted the seriousness of this challenge when she recently suggested that:

… cyber-attacks in terms of their breadth and scope of possible consequences now exceed the risk of physical attacks.

Technological advances continue to outpace legal developments. While intelligence officials have suggested the most recent attack came from a “nation state”, the reality is that the existing international law framework fails to provide timely or effective legal remedies.

The problem of attribution

One of the most significant hurdles is the problem of attribution. For a nation state to be held responsible under international law for a particular act, that act must be attributable to that state. There are a variety of ways this can occur. For example, the conduct of state organs (such as government departments and officials) will usually be attributable to the state.

But here’s a key problem: in the case of cyber attacks, states don’t generally operate through formal state bodies. Instead, they tend to use non-state actors who are less visible, more removed and offer plausible deniability. This creates problems of both factual and legal attribution.

Read more: Is counter-attack justified against a state-sponsored cyber attack? It’s a legal grey area

The factual problem is that it is often extremely difficult to accurately identify the origin of a cyber attack. The lack of boundaries and anonymity that are characteristic of cyberspace make it hard for states to identify exactly who is responsible for a specific cyber attack.

Perpetrators are becoming increasingly effective at masking their true identities and locations. They may even deliberately make it look as though innocent third parties are responsible for an attack.

The legal problem of attribution arises from the fact that international law does not generally hold states responsible for the actions of non-state actors.

Responsibility will only be attributed if the state either acknowledges and adopts the conduct of the non-state actor as its own, or the state directs or controls the non-state actor.

The former is unlikely given the lengths that states go to mask their involvement in cyber attacks in the first place. The latter is also unlikely, given the high threshold set by international law to establish the required direction or control.

The International Court of Justice has held that a state must be shown to have had “effective control” over each specific act for which attribution is sought. Simply providing financial aid or equipment to support a cyber attack, or even providing a safe haven base for individual hackers, would likely not be enough to meet the “effective control” test.

Given these problems, it is highly unlikely that a state will ever be held publicly accountable under the existing legal framework.

It is one thing for intelligence officials to privately suggest China may be to blame for the most recent breach. But that is a long way from meeting the high threshold required to establish state responsibility under international law.

How can a state respond to a cyber attack?

Even if legal attribution could be established, that does not entirely resolve the legal complexities. International law has few mechanisms that allow a state to respond effectively to a cyber attack once it has occurred.

A state is allowed to use force in self-defence – but only in response to an armed attack. An armed attack in this context refers to only the most grave use of force. It is highly unlikely that acts of cyber espionage focused primarily on gathering intelligence or data could ever be characterised as an armed attack under this definition.

Similarly, while countermeasures (a broad category of temporary, reversible measures designed to induce a state to cease its wrongful conduct) are allowed under international law in certain circumstances, the conditions imposed on these mean they are of limited use in the context of cyber attacks. For example, in all but the most urgent circumstances, an injured state must notify the responsible state of the decision to take countermeasures and offer to negotiate with them before any countermeasures are actually taken. Such procedural requirements are simply impractical when responding to cyber attacks, given their potential speed and reach.

Cyber attacks by foreign states pose a real and growing threat to Australia. Unfortunately, the existing international law framework provides little effective protection or recourse. This makes it even more important for Australia to ensure we are doing everything possible to protect ourselves and our democratic institutions from cyber attacks.

– ref. Why international law is failing to keep pace with technology in preventing cyber attacks – http://theconversation.com/why-international-law-is-failing-to-keep-pace-with-technology-in-preventing-cyber-attacks-111998

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kaufman, Postdoctoral researcher in vaccine acceptance and communication, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has named vaccine hesitancy as one of their top 10 threats to global health for 2019.

Last week, the wife of an NRL footballer made national headlines after posting on Instagram that the couple did not plan to vaccinate their children.

Indeed, there’s rarely a time vaccination isn’t a hot topic of public debate. What’s important to note is that anyone can use evidence-based communication techniques to be an advocate for vaccination – you don’t need to be an expert in the field.

Conversations between peers can be very influential, because our behaviours are shaped by social norms, or what other people in our network value and do.

Read more: Why people born between 1966 and 1994 are at greater risk of measles – and what to do about it

Who do we need to talk to?

While the current measles outbreaks in the United States and Europe are concerning, much of the reporting has over-simplified the issue, with sensationalised headlines placing the blame almost solely on “anti-vax” parents.

In reality, the vast majority of people whose children are missing some or all doses of the recommended vaccines are not “anti-vaxxers”, and labelling them as such is unhelpful.

The ability to register for vaccination exemption based on conscientious objection was removed in 2016, but it was last recorded in December 2015 as affecting only 1.34% of eligible children.

Current childhood vaccination coverage in Australia is between 90.75-94.67%, depending on age.

This suggests that missed opportunities and access barriers, such as parents being unable to get to the GP or a council immunisation session, are much more substantial contributors to under-vaccination.

Under-vaccination is regarded as a threat to global health. From shutterstock.com

Communication about vaccines is unlikely to impact the behaviour of firm refusers and those facing access barriers. However, communication has enormous influence when it comes to the 43% of parents who have some questions or concerns about vaccines.

Aggressive or dismissive language can make people less likely to vaccinate, while open, respectful discussion with a trusted individual can encourage hesitant parents towards vaccination.

Read more: Want to boost vaccination? Don’t punish parents, build their trust

Tips for discussing vaccination

Many people struggle with how to discuss vaccination when confronted with a friend, relative or acquaintance who expresses hesitancy.

Simply providing lots of facts or dismissing their views is not effective.

Instead, these are some tips everyone can use when talking about vaccines, drawing from evidence-based communication techniques. Studies in the United States and Canada have trained healthcare providers to use techniques like these to increase uptake of adolescent HPV vaccination and infant vaccines, and more studies are currently underway.

Ask about, and listen to, people’s concerns: not everyone is driven by the same issues or experiences. Find out what specifically is concerning the person. Is it safety? Effectiveness? Side effects?

Acknowledge their concerns: remember, everyone loves their children. No one is refusing to vaccinate because they want their child to get sick, or because they wilfully hope other children will get sick. Acknowledging that you see where someone is coming from can go a long way in establishing trust.

Provide information to respond to their concerns: share what you know, and try to provide reliable sources for your information. Be careful not to debunk myths too aggressively, as this can actually backfire.

Share personal stories: emotive stories tend to have more impact than facts. This is one reason stories of rare vaccine adverse events can seem to carry more weight than overwhelming safety figures. Share your own stories of positive experiences with vaccines, or better yet, discuss your experience with the diseases they prevent.

Don’t pass judgment: people may discuss vaccination many times with many different people before they decide to vaccinate, especially if they are very hesitant. Your goal should be to establish yourself as a trusted, non-judgmental person with whom they can share their questions and concerns. Berating them won’t convince them to vaccinate, but it will convince them never to speak to you about vaccines again.

Read more: Australians’ attitudes to vaccination are more complex than a simple ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ label

These communication tips can help support discussions about vaccines with someone who is hesitant, but open to discussing their position. If, however, you find yourself publicly debating a “vocal vaccine denier”, the WHO has developed a toolkit to help guide your responses.

In such a situation, your intended audience is not the vaccine denier themselves, but the public who may be watching or reading your debate.

The techniques used by a vaccine denier could include referring to conspiracies, fake experts, selective or misrepresented evidence, or impossible expectations (such as 100% safety). The WHO recommends you identify the techniques the denier uses and then correct their content.

If you’re a strong supporter of vaccination, you can become a powerful ally in the effort to sustain high coverage rates in your community. Listen and share your views respectfully, build and maintain open and trusting relationships, and yours may be the words that encourage another person to vaccinate.

– ref. Everyone can be an effective advocate for vaccination: here’s how – http://theconversation.com/everyone-can-be-an-effective-advocate-for-vaccination-heres-how-111828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Doherty, Research Fellow, Deakin University

The Australian government’s target of killing 2 million feral cats by 2020 attracted significant public interest and media attention when it was unveiled in 2015.

But in our new research, published today in Conservation Letters, we explain why it has a shaky scientific foundation.

The target was developed for the Threatened Species Strategy. At the time of its launch in 2015, there was no reliable estimate of the size of Australia’s feral cat population. Figures of between 5 million and 18 million were quoted, but their origin is murky: it’s possible they came from a single estimate of feral cat density in Victoria, extrapolated across the continent.

A recent review estimated a much smaller population size — probably varying from 2 million to 6 million, depending on environmental conditions. Using this estimate, the proportion of Australia’s cat population to be killed under the government’s target is now likely in the range 32-95%, rather than 11-40% based on the original population estimate.

Read more: Australia’s species need an independent champion

Targets for the removal of pest animals should consider how they will affect an animal’s current and future population size. But because a scientific justification for the 2 million target was never provided, it is unclear whether or how the revised estimate would alter the target.

Feral cats culled in Queensland. http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/news-story/746d8ad0366fe9f64ea9c26d36a41a37

Hitting the target, missing the point

For cat control to have a lasting effect on feral populations, it needs to be intense, sustained, and carried out over large areas. This is because cats can rapidly reproduce and re-invade areas. To benefit threatened species, cat control also needs to be undertaken in areas that contain — or could potentially contain — native species that are threatened by cats.

Research commissioned by the government conservatively estimated that around 211,500 feral cats were killed in 12 months in 2015–16 (ranging between around 135,500 and 287,600). This estimate was used to report that the first-year target to kill 150,000 cats was met with room to spare.

The benefit to threatened species of achieving this target is unclear, because we don’t know if the control efforts had a measurable effect on cat populations; whether they took place in areas that would benefit threatened species; or how (or if) the target and related activities contributed to the estimated 211,500 cat deaths.

Around 75% of the killed cats were attributed to shooting by farmers and hunters. It is questionable whether such approaches could keep pace with high rates of population growth and re-invasion from surrounding areas.

These and other issues were known before the target was set, leading experts to recommend that an overall cat culling target should not be set.

Cat image captured using camera traps in the Hawkesbury region, NSW. Western Sydney University

Shifting focus

The focus on killing cats risks distracting attention from other threats to native wildlife. These threats include habitat loss, which has been largely overlooked in the Threatened Species Strategy.

Habitat loss is politically sensitive because its main driver is the clearing of land to make way for economic activities such as agriculture, urban development, and mining. The strategy mentions feral cats more than 70 times, but habitat loss is mentioned just twice and land clearing not at all. Australia has one of the world’s worst rates of land clearing, which has recently increased in some regions. For instance, clearing of native vegetation in New South Wales rose by 800% between 2013 and 2016.

Read more: Let’s get this straight, habitat loss is the number-one threat to Australia’s species

A focus on feral cats is warranted, but not at the expense of tackling other conservation threats too. A comprehensive, integrated approach towards threatened species conservation is essential.

Any upside?

Despite its questionable scientific basis, it is possible that the ambitious nature of the 2 million target has raised the public profile of feral cats as a conservation issue. However, to our knowledge, there has been no attempt to measure the effectiveness of the target in raising awareness or changing attitudes, and so this remains a hypothetical proposition.

Raising awareness about the negative impacts of cats on native wildlife is important.

The Threatened Species Strategy has other targets that are more closely linked to conservation outcomes, such as the eradication of cats from five particular islands and the establishment of ten new fenced cat-free exclosures. Achieving these targets will make a small contribution to the culling target, but have a comparatively large benefit for some threatened species.

Read more: For whom the bell tolls: cats kill more than a million Australian birds every day

Australia’s target to kill 2 million feral cats is a highly visible symbol of a broader campaign, but the success of policies aimed at reducing the impacts of feral cats should focus squarely on the recovery of native species.

– ref. Feral cat cull: why the 2 million target is on scientifically shaky ground – http://theconversation.com/feral-cat-cull-why-the-2-million-target-is-on-scientifically-shaky-ground-111824

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Denny, Research Fellow – Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of Tasmania

Sensationalist claims that 40% of jobs in Australia won’t exist in the future are unhelpful for young Australians thinking about entering the workforce. The reality is some jobs will no longer exist, new jobs will be created and most jobs will undergo some form of transformation. The skills we need for work are changing, but young Australians can plan for these changes.

Fears of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) wiping out future work are well founded – new technology is changing the way we work. But as the current workforce grows up alongside an ageing population, future generations will have many job opportunities, if they acquire the right skills.

Jobs of the future

The prospect of having a single occupation for life is becoming increasingly unlikely. Today’s 15 year-olds are likely to have 17 changes in employers across five different careers. And for three in five young Australians with a post-school qualification (such as a degree or vocational qualification), less than half are able to secure more than 35 hours of work per week.

When considering which career path to follow, young Australians should be mindful that the jobs at risk are those which have high levels of routine, and repeatable and predictable processes requiring precision. These include administrative and clerical jobs, such as working as a receptionist or data entry clerk. Automation or AI will replace these jobs, if it hasn’t already.

Read more: Three things high school graduates should keep in mind when they have their ATARs

Non-routine jobs which need human problem-solving, creativity, adaptability, flexibility, physical dexterity, and communication skills will be the jobs of the future. So will jobs requiring physical proximity and interpersonal skills. Examples include engineering, design, construction, education, health services and care work.

The economy is undergoing an industry restructuring in response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is the name given to a combination of technological mega-trends happening all at the same time (for example, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, automation and robotics, digital disruption and so on). Significant economic, demographic and social shifts are happening at the same time.

As this change happens, the prospect of polarisation of the workforce is a looming concern for young people. “Polarisation” is the hollowing out of the labour market: a decline in the share of mid-level skilled jobs considered “entry level” for young Australians. This will mean reduced opportunities for young people to enter the workforce, and limited opportunities for upward career progression from lower-skilled jobs.

Which industries show growth?

The Australian economy has shifted from one which produces goods to one which services people. Almost 80% of the workforce is employed in the services industries.

The Department of Jobs and Small Business projects that over the five years to May 2023, employment will increase in 17 of the 19 broad industry sectors in Australia. And it will decline in two: agriculture, forestry and fishing; and wholesale trade.

Almost two-thirds of employment growth is projected to be in four sectors: health care and social assistance; construction; education and training; and professional, scientific and technical services. Jobs will exist for people with the skills to fill those jobs.

New jobs are projected to be created across a range of occupations. Aged and disabled care, registered nursing, child care, software and applications programming, and waiting are the top five areas of growth.

But employment in five broad occupation groups is also projected to decline: personal assistants and secretaries, office managers and program administrators, machine and stationary plant operators, farmers and farm managers, and clerical and office support workers are likely to be replaced by automation or AI.

Skills young people can learn now

Achieving a university degree no longer automatically means a graduate will get immediate and meaningful employment. The youth unemployment rate for graduates is increasing at a greater rate than for those without a tertiary qualification. According to the Foundation for Young Australians, it now takes on average 4.7 years for a person to transition from full time education to full time employment.

Read more: Graduate employment is up, but finding a job can still take a while

Research from the Foundation for Young Australians found there are four key factors which can accelerate the transition from education to full time work:

• an education that builds transferable skills such as problem-solving, communication and team work

• being able to undertake relevant paid work experience

• finding employment in a sector which is growing

• an optimistic mindset.

Employers of technical and trade workers still place the most emphasis on job-specific skills, but across all jobs employability skills are the most important. Employers look for communication skills above all other skills, followed by organisational skills, writing, planning and detail orientation, team work and problem-solving. Young people will need to make sure they also have transferable skills such as digital literacy, critical thinking and creativity.

The NSW government challenged a group of researchers to identify what today’s kindergarteners will need to survive and thrive in the 21st century. The report says developing deep knowledge and specialist expertise over time is critical.

Employability skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking are considered generic, and are likely to also be job-specific and not necessarily transferable. For example, problem-solving skills will be very different for a mining engineer to those required by a kindergarten teacher. These “generic skills” need to be learned in context.

Read more: Hints, tips and pitfalls for graduates in getting their first job

The Australian Industry Skills Committee has also developed a practical resource that describes the mega-trends impacting Australia’s economy and society, scenarios for the future and the impact on work and skills. It may benefit parents, teachers, policy-makers and even forward-thinking teens to read about these trends.

– ref. Choosing a career? These jobs won’t go out of style – http://theconversation.com/choosing-a-career-these-jobs-wont-go-out-of-style-111425

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Leishman, Professor of Housing Economics, University of Adelaide

Housing prices are falling in Sydney and Melbourne, so housing must be becoming more affordable – right?

The annual growth of house prices has been slowing consistently for more than a year in Australia’s largest cities. Prices finally started falling in the latter part of last year. The decline began much earlier in Perth and Darwin. Prices in most other cities, with the exception of Hobart, have been more stable.

Melbourne and Sydney have had sharp falls in house prices, but the declines started much earlier in Perth and Darwin. ABS, Author provided

House owners have a secret weapon

A rise in house prices is a mixed blessing. For those whose employment and savings strategies have helped them become home owners, price inflation is a good thing – the value of the house rises while the mortgage debt stays the same, or falls. For others, the savings and income targets for owning a home become ever more elusive.

Read more: Head start for home owners makes a big difference for housing stress

So this should mean falling house prices are bad for home owners and good for aspiring home owners, right? In practice, things don’t work out quite like this, for several reasons.

Provided they are financially “liquid” (they have a job and can cope financially), home owners have a secret weapon: they don’t have to sell.

Research shows housing markets tend to operate in periods of “frenzy” alternating with periods of relative inactivity. Lots of people try to capitalise and trade up in a hot market. Once markets cool, people tend to stay where they are and wait for prices to improve.

For aspiring home owners, this is bad news. Although prices might be falling, fewer people are vacating their houses. This reduces the supply of houses on the market at lower prices.

Weaker markets make loans harder to get

House markets adjust to economic cycles, although these adjustments tend to be exaggerated and are prone to overshooting. The global financial crisis is an obvious example of an extreme correction when asset values plummeted.

The current dip in house prices in Australia is almost certainly a milder adjustment. However, even minor adjustments in the housing market are associated with adjustments elsewhere in the economy, particularly in labour markets.

The graph below shows the national trends in employment and underemployment over the past three years. Although total employment has been growing, the reported level of underemployment (a measure of the desire of workers to work more hours than they do) was also growing for much of 2018. Low wages growth and limited working hours do not help when people are already struggling to afford a house.

National trends in employment and underemployment. ABS, Author provided

The supply of finance in mortgage markets also depends on the economic cycle. Unfortunately, falling house prices and a deteriorating economic outlook tend to translate to tighter lending conditions.

Read more: No surplus, no share market growth, no lift in wage growth. Economic survey points to bleaker times post-election

So while housing prices might be falling in our biggest cities, at the same time it’s becoming harder to get a home loan. The number of first home buyer dwellings financed fell by more than 5% in the year to November 2018.

So what’s next for the housing market?

Change in the total number of properties sold is also a useful leading indicator, meaning that transactions data tend to signal a change in market conditions long before average prices begin to change. The chart below shows the year-on-year growth in transactions peaked in the third quarter of 2017.

Changes in the number of properties sold in Australia. ABS, Author provided

The growth in transactions began slowing, then became negative in the early months of 2018. These changes occurred much earlier than the plateau, then fall, in prices in late 2018.

The outlook is never certain, but it is worth noting that prices very rarely stabilise or begin growing while the transaction volume is still declining.

Like many sectors of the economy, housing markets are cyclical. But what makes the housing market different is the historical fact that periods of falling prices are much less frequent than periods of rising prices. The market will soon return to its long-run unsustainable trajectory of rising prices and declining affordability.

During the current price adjustment, housing affordability may appear to improve slightly. But low wages growth and limited working hours, coupled with lending restrictions, combine to make it just as hard for first home owners to enter the market.

Read more: Local councils put affordable housing supply in the too hard basket

Current circumstances create opportunity elsewhere in the housing system. In particular, modestly falling prices coupled with lenders issuing fewer mortgages to owner-occupiers create fertile conditions for private residential investors. Times like this tend to favour cash buyers rather than those who need to scrape together a deposit and secure a mortgage before they can buy a house.

Paradoxically, then, declining house prices are no better for housing affordability than rising prices.

– ref. Why falling house prices do less to improve affordability than you might think – http://theconversation.com/why-falling-house-prices-do-less-to-improve-affordability-than-you-might-think-111267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Giancaspro, Lecturer in Law, University of Adelaide

Online retail giant Amazon’s “Dash Buttons” are considered a key part of Amazon’s strategy to dominate online shopping around the globe.

Derided as “gimmicky” and lauded as “unquestionably efficient”, the battery-powered WiFi-connected gizmos were launched in March 2015. About the size of a packet of chewing gum, they enable Amazon Prime customers to instantly order particular items at the push of a button.

Read more: Amazon’s dashing vision of the future of shopping: Think fast, Think less, Buy more

More than 300 different buttons are now available for specific branded products such as coffee, washing powder, energy drinks, tissues and confectionery. Amazon sells thousands of the buttons every day – for US$4.99 – and those buttons in turn ensure customers keep buying consumable items from Amazon.

But in Germany, Amazon’s second-largest market after the US, Dash Buttons have been deemed illegal.

There’s a good chance they might suffer the same fate in Australia.

German ruling

In January 2019 a German court ruled that Dash Buttons violated a law based on European Union consumer rights directives.

The relevant directive requires pre-contractual disclosure of details about goods being sold. It says an online vendor must make the consumer aware of basic information – such as product characteristics, price and terms of sale – immediately before they place their order.

The directive is not binding and so must be implemented through a nation’s domestic law. The Higher Regional Court of Munich ruled that the German law implementing the directive requires “buttons” that can process orders to be labelled with the words “order to pay” or “similarly unambiguous” wording.

Amazon Dash Buttons are marked solely with the brand name and/or logo they order. As such, they have been banned from sale and use in Germany.

More than 300 different Dash Buttons are available for consumable products you might want to restock regularly. www.shutterstock.com

Consumer law in Australia

Dash Buttons might similarly contravene consumer protection laws in Australia, where they have been available since June 2018.

Section 18 of the Competition and Consumer Act (2010) prohibits people (including companies) engaged in trade or commerce from misleading or deceiving others, intentionally or otherwise.

According to the Federal Court of Australia, whether a person has breached Section 18 requires an objective analysis of all the relevant facts and circumstances. The person’s conduct only needs to be reasonably capable of misleading or deceiving someone – evidence that a member of the public has actually been misled is relevant but not conclusive.

As mentioned, Dash Buttons provide no information about the nature of a product or its pricing when pushed. Consumers could potentially be stung by sudden price hikes for specific products or increases in delivery charges. They might be unaware of sudden and significant changes to products (such as Cadbury’s announcement earlier this month it is reducing the size of its chocolate blocks).

Pushing a Dash Button one day might deliver something different than pressing it the day before. Any of these changes will be invisible. You will know nothing until the sale is processed.

Read more: I studied buttons for 7 years and learned these 5 lessons about how and why people push them

Is Amazon affected?

Amazon is an American company, headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The company’s conditions of use state that you subscribe to US federal and Washington state laws when using the Amazon Dash service.

At first glance, this means Australian consumer laws do not apply to sales processed in the US. Indeed, international law prohibits a country from applying its law in another country without permission. Australia can’t force its consumer laws to apply in the US or vice versa.

However, where a company sells products in another country, it voluntarily subscribes to that country’s laws.

Section 131 of Australia’s Competition and Consumer Act 2010 purports to apply Australian consumer law to foreign corporations. But for years it was uncertain if consumer laws applied to online sellers with no physical presence in Australia.

In 2016, however the Federal Court ended lingering doubt by confirming that Australian consumer laws can bind foreign companies selling products online in Australia, even where they operate predominantly outside of Australia and stipulate the laws of another country apply to their transactions.

In this case the ACCC took Valve Corporation, a US video game distributor, to court for refusing to refund a Tasmanian man for games he bought that did not work. The company had refused the refunds on the grounds it was not bound by Australian consumer laws.

What this means is that Amazon could indeed be caught by Australian consumer laws. Its Dash Buttons could be deemed misleading or deceptive under Section 18.

Potential consequences

It will take a test case from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to decide the issue.

If the competition watchdog did successfully challenge the legality of Dash Buttons, the Federal Court could then ban their sale in Australia. It might require Amazon to change how it markets products with Dash Buttons.

The consequences of the buttons being deemed illegal could be very significant for Amazon, now the world’s biggest public company with a market capitalisation of about US$800 billion.

Although official figures haven’t been released, the company claimed in April 2017 that four orders a minute – about 5,760 a day – were placed using Dash Buttons.

Even if the sales lost as a result of an unfavourable court ruling comprise only a fraction of the company’s revenue, Dash Buttons have other great value to the company. They are a crucial way to gather the consumer information the company wants to increase its market share.

Read more: Amazon poses a double threat to Australian retailers

Amazon has unsurprisingly slammed the German ruling as “hostile to innovation”, and is planning to challenge it.

But it’s possible it might just end up pushing the wrong buttons.

– ref. Amazon’s Dash Buttons, now banned in Germany, might be pushing legal limits in Australia – http://theconversation.com/amazons-dash-buttons-now-banned-in-germany-might-be-pushing-legal-limits-in-australia-111632

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Professor, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia

Review: Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley, Art Gallery of Western Australia.

For the past century, the curator has been the deciding factor in what is shown by museums and galleries, reassuring audiences of the importance of what they are seeing. While acknowledging other commercial and audience drivers, the centrality of curatorial decision-making has been sacrosanct.

But when the curatorial team from the Art Gallery of Western Australia embarked on an epic quest to document the art of the Kimberley region in the state’s north west, they abandoned this idea of a single authorial voice in favour of a new model of partnership and exchange. Artists and art centres in the Kimberley were invited to help shape the Desert River Sea project.

This is, after all, an area with a 50,000-year history of continuous cultural engagement, made up of over 200 communities and 30 language groups. Since the 1980s, it has been an important hub for contemporary art.

Ngarralja Tommy May with his art work Untitled, synthetic polymer and paint pen on sheep hide, 2018. Courtesy Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency

Through centres such as Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency at Fitzroy Crossing, (which opened in 1981), the Goolarabooloo Aboriginal Arts & Crafts Centre, Broome (which opened in 1985) and the East Kimberley Waringarri Aboriginal Arts Centre, founded in Kununurra in 1988, a worldwide audience had been created for the region’s art.

These centres have nurtured and showcased artists such as Rover Thomas, Paddy Bedford, Janangoo Butcher Cherel, Queenie Garagarag Mckenzie, Jimmy Pike and Freddy Timms. Many have acquired art star status, acknowledged nationally and internationally.

So what has the Desert River Sea project achieved and how does it differ from other survey exhibitions of Aboriginal art that have populated galleries in Australia, North America, and Europe?

After six years of travel, conversations and exchange, coordinating curators Carly Lane and Emelia Galatis have overseen a massive project that culminated with eight major commissions.

Shirley Purdie, Goorralg-Goorralg: Storm Bird and Willy Wagtail, natural ochre and pigment on canvas, 2018. Courtesy Warnum Art Centre

Some communities used the commissioning funds to revive ceremonies and teach younger members the correct protocols for “painting up” before rituals. Garry and Darrell Sibosado from Lombadina, created a stunning Rainbow Serpent (Aalingoon) from carved and incised pearl shell.

At the Kira Kiro Art Centre in Kalumburu, the focus was on showcasing the works of Betty Bundamurra and the late Mrs. Taylor. These two elders document their country with an expressive armoury of lively dots and brush marks in a rich, ochre palette.

The final celebration of what has been achieved by the 40 artists within the parameters of these commissions, is presented in a compelling and vibrant exhibition, on show as part of the Perth Festival. It is a highly condensed tour through the vast landscape of the northwest, literally from the sea, through the rivers and into the desert.

Each commission has its own area in the expansive gallery. But through multiple lines of sight, many enchanting connections are made and some surprising juxtapositions are encountered.

From Eva Nargoodah’s bush clothes fabricated from Dingo Flour bags, past Mrs. Taylor’s array of scintillating dots and shapes evoking fruitful abundance and onto Mervyn Street’s extraordinary carved and painted cow hides, it is an exhilarating journey that encapsulates the diversity of approaches to recording life in the Kimberley.

Mrs Taylor, Aru, ochre pigments on paper, 2018. Courtesy the artist’s family and Kira Koro Art Centre

The hides that Street carefully shaves and then paints to describe the heifers and bulls he knows so well from years of mustering and branding are a stand out example of the synthesis between people and place this show encapsulates.

“I have been around a lot of places, and these memories are all in my head,” he explains. “I use art to tell my history … I have to keep it in my mind and share it for young generations”.

Mervyn Street Droving cattle in the summertime 2018 (detail) shaved and etched cow hide 195.5 x 217.5 cm. Courtesy Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency

Several of the communities have created film-based works that both describe the landscape and chronicle important cultural protocols. These videos are documents of empowerment that speak eloquently about a deep connection to country and the need to maintain cultural practices as communities seek to regain sovereignty over their land.

Daniel Walbidi from Bidyadanga has created an installation depicting Wirnpa, a creation being. Constructed within the gallery, it echoes a similar work he made on the shoreline of a salt lake that was slowly swallowed up by the advancing waters. The large scale video work chronicling that process is screened on the back wall, completing the loop that links his country with this city environment.

Joey Tjungurrayi Wangkartu, Wangkartu, Helicopter, kiln fired glass, 2017. Courtesy Warlayirti Artists

One of the most arresting series of works are the sumptuous glass panels made by the Warlayirti Artists from Balgo. These nine artists have documented the abundance of bush tucker found on country using beads, rods and sheets of coloured glass. Fused together, they form luminous panels and glow magically in the gallery.

The vibrancy of the works on show and the integrity of the outcome has only been possible because of the courageous decision to rethink the curatorial parameters of this project, allowing multiple voices to shape the outcome. Both the Gallery and its partner Rio Tinto are to be congratulated on this initiative.

Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley, is at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, until 27 May.

– ref. Desert River Sea is a vibrant, compelling tour of the Kimberley – http://theconversation.com/desert-river-sea-is-a-vibrant-compelling-tour-of-the-kimberley-111597

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

Mathias Cormann’s 2018 family holiday in Singapore is costing him a good deal more than the $2780.82 he belatedly paid for airfares booked with Helloworld travel company’s CEO who happened to be the Liberal party treasurer and a mate.

Cormann, Government Senate Leader, says he gave his credit card number to Andrew Burnes in July 2017 and assumed – until a media query this week – the transaction had gone through. He received no reminders about the outstanding payments.

He also says he had nothing to do with handling a contract his Finance department awarded a subsidiary of the company around the same time.

In his explanation for not noticing he hadn’t been charged, Cormann told a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday he travelled a lot and many travel-related expenses went through his card.

It’s reasonable to take Cormann at his word about missing that the charge hadn’t been processed. Even accepting this, however, the affair looks bad for Cormann, who failed the “Caesar’s wife” test.

He should not have booked through the CEO, given the man is a political and personal associate, and the company has a commercial relationship with Cormann’s department.

If he wanted to use that company, he should have gone to the normal booking service. It would have been more prudent to have used another travel agency.

Helloworld’s chief financial officer Michael Burnett says, in a letter Cormann produced on Tuesday, that the flights were never intended to be free. But Burnett provided an odd explanation for no reminders. “Because we held your credit card details at the time of the booking, payment reminders were not sent to you, even though the amount remained listed as ‘Outstanding’ on our internal system”.

You’d expect the company would have either processed the payment or sent a reminder.

Scott Morrison’s aggressive reaction – accusing Labor of going “to the bottom of the chum bucket” – when the opposition asked if Cormann had any conflict of interest, given the contract, doesn’t help the government. The public’s default position is scepticism when it comes to politicians’ conduct.

Giving Cormann the benefit of all doubt, the matter smacks of cosiness and cronyism – a politician using his connections to smooth his way (just as that famous picture of Joe Hockey and Cormann smoking cigars sent a signal of complacency and came to haunt both of them).

This is one more setback for Cormann, who has seen his reputation badly dented in the last few months.

His decision in August to throw his lot in with Peter Dutton and declare Malcolm Turnbull had lost the confidence of the Liberal party sealed the fate of the former prime minister, with all that followed, including the Coalition being plunged into minority government.

There were multiple players in Turnbull’s downfall, not least Turnbull himself, but Cormann was a major one.

Cormann’s judgement was also off beam in his belief that he could muster the necessary crossbench votes last year to pass the government’s tax cuts for large companies.

His commitment was a factor in the government’s clinging to this measure for too long, to the detriment of Turnbull.

Earlier this year it was revealed Cormann used a defence plane, at a cost of $37,000, to fly from Canberra to Perth so he could drop into Adelaide to lobby (unsuccessfully) a couple of Centre Alliance senators to support the cuts.

His spokesperson said at the time: “Use of the special purpose aircraft was approved in the appropriate way to facilitate official business in Adelaide in transit from Canberra back to Perth in between two parliamentary sitting weeks”.

Cormann, obsessed with trying to rustle up votes, didn’t stop to consider how over-the-top this would look to most people, who would say “find a way to fly commercial” or “have a video call”. After Bronwyn Bishop’s helicopter flight, politicians should automatically hit a pause button before ordering up expensive transport.

It is obvious from Cormann’s demeanour that he is very aware he’s politically diminished. His reputation was as one of the government’s best performers, but he is not out in the media as much these days.

Another cabinet minister, Michaelia Cash, embroiled in the court case about her office leaking an imminent police raid on the AWU, has almost disappeared from public view.

This week’s Senate estimates hearings have been damning for the embattled Cash.

The Australian Federal Police gave evidence on Monday that Cash and former justice minister Michael Keenan had declined, despite at least two requests, to provide “witness statements” about media leaks. Rather, they responded by letter.

Morrison defended the two ministers’ behaviour. “I’m advised that both ministers did, in fact, cooperate with that investigation on a voluntary basis,” he told parliament on Tuesday. “I’m advised that neither minister received any further requests for information after they responded to the AFP’s initial invitation to provide information”.

On Tuesday night, Cash was put through the wringer during a Senate estimates hearing. Amazingly, the minister said she had not read the AFP’s Monday evidence. Asked why, she said, “because I haven’t”.

Taxpayers, incidentally, are currently up for $288,812 for Cash’s legal representation.

Although Cormann’s tickets affair is very different from the issue involving Cash and Keenan, the message from the behaviour of all three is one of elitism – politicians thinking they don’t have to do things the way ordinary people do.

– ref. View from the Hill: Minister who watches the nation’s credit card overlooks his own – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-minister-who-watches-the-nations-credit-card-overlooks-his-own-112081

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Moro, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Bond University

Australia was one of the first countries in the world to have more computers than students in schools. But as the numbers of computers and other technological devices increased, student performance did not. The days of cramming computers into classrooms and expecting improvements in learning are numbered.

Some argue there’s little evidence to justify investment in technology in the classroom. In fact, some studies even suggest potential harms. Some have suggested links between screen time and increased ADHD, screen addiction, aggression, depression, and anxiety, dizziness, headaches and blurred vision.

Read more: No gimmicks: technology in schools must serve a purpose

There is also a risk that schools’ focus on acquiring the “next best thing” may come at the expense of students’ interpersonal, cognitive, critical thinking and communication skill development. Teachers should use technology in a balanced way that enhances learning and skill development. Here are six evidence-based tips on how to do just that.

1. Use two (or more) ways of communicating

There are endless opportunities for students’ writing to appear in ways that combine two or more modes (such as visual, audio or spatial). Making e-books, videos, animations, blogs, web pages, and digital games are the new ways of demonstrating literacy that involve clever combinations of these modes.

Words are rarely used on their own on digital platforms now. Instead, they’re illustrated with images, screen layouts, pop-ups, hyperlinks, and sounds to create meaning in different ways to, say, an essay.

Multimodal literacies are actually a requirement for students in the Australian curriculum. More than 200 learning outcomes address this type of literacy, right from foundation (prep) to year 12. Supporting children to create multimodal designs, even something as simple as creating a digital drawing or diagram, is a fantastic way to ensure educational benefit when using technology.

Nearly half (44%) of current jobs are at high risk of being digitally disrupted in the next 20 years. The fastest-growing jobs now require multimodal design and digital communication skills, for example engineering or architecture.

Read more: Face recognition technology in classrooms is here – and that’s ok

2. Channel creativity

Look for opportunities for students to produce rather than consume, and to be interactive and creative. Don’t just play educational games – make them. Students shouldn’t be sitting passively watching a screen, or sitting through lecture-style content while watching the teacher flip through slides.

Avoid educational software that simply requires students to engage in closed answer, “fill-in-the-blank” responses. While sometimes useful for memorising information, such as spelling words, using platforms that encourage creativity and support children to think for themselves is better for learning.

A game created by a primary school student, using multimodal literacy skills developed in the classroom. Kathy Mills/Author Provided

Try to choose technologies that support interactivity, critical thinking, and problem solving. Examples include educational games that allow exploration (e.g. The King’s Request), or websites that encourage the learner to solve problems (e.g. Scratch), write basic code (e.g. Hour of Code), express their creativity (e.g. Stencyl) or build something (e.g. Roblox for education).

3. Choose collaboration

Give students opportunities to work together in learning and engaging with digital media. Collaborative digital activities can be used to engage students in higher order thinking skills and explore content in depth with the support of classmates.

This includes devices and software that allow multi-user learning and encourage students to interact with each other. This includes interactive discussion boards, or applications such as “minecraft for education” where students can experience a digital learning environment together.

Incorporate “distributed expertise”, where classmates help each other out in areas of digital strength, rather than seeing the teacher as the only expert. This has been shown to have great benefits in developing students’ soft-skills (such as creative thinking, communication and teamwork).

Students using Augmented Reality as a new technology to understand anatomy. Christian Moro/Author Provided

4. Movement is key

Many digital technologies involve more sensory involvement than in the past. Using virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality (also called hybrid reality – where digital and physical objects co-exist), can encourage children to be active physically while using their brains.

A student uses a tablet during a science lesson to play a game that assesses their understanding of the content covered. Christian Moro/Author Provided

Research shows moving can help keep the brain active. Cognition is deeply connected to the child’s bodily interactions with the world, so technology use and learning doesn’t need to be motionless!

This can include placing QR-codes (markers) around the room for them to scan, or the student using augmented reality apps where their smartphone or tablet is used to render 3D objects, text or animations on the screen when the camera is pointed towards a marker. An example of software capable of performing this includes Augment, which also offers specific instructions and accounts for educators.

5. Media-free moments

While research supports the many benefits of using modern technologies for learning, there are guidelines for managing time with technology. Teachers and parents should establish media-free zones, and set content and time limits appropriate to age and the curriculum.

Removing smartphones, turning off computers and keeping an area completely technology-free at regular times during the day is important to establish healthy habits with technology.

6. Support cyber citizenship

Teach students digital etiquette, how to present and protect themselves online, and how to be critically literate. Model good digital citizenship and behaviour, and always be ready to learn. Adults can’t assume children know how to interact safely and responsibly online.

Research shows critical skills are often lacking among primary students. Teachers and parents have an important responsibility to show students how to critically evaluate how reliable online sources and other media are.

Read more: Why children should be taught to build a positive online presence

– ref. Technology and learning in the classroom: six tips to get the balance right – http://theconversation.com/technology-and-learning-in-the-classroom-six-tips-to-get-the-balance-right-111430

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Feld, Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington

Professors and graduate students are at opposite ends of the university hierarchy in terms of experience, qualifications and pay. But at many universities, both do the same job: they teach tutorials offered in parallel with lectures.

Our research explores whether it makes sense for professors to teach tutorials – and we found it doesn’t. They are no more effective as tutorial instructors than students.

This finding implies that universities can reduce costs or free up professors’ time by asking students to teach more tutorials.

Read more: There’s pressure on academics to learn how to teach. But they need more support

Measuring instructors’ effectiveness

We conducted a survey about tutorial instruction in OECD universities. Our results show that tutorials are used in 63% of OECD universities. At 25% of these institutions, tutorials are taught by students, 29% by professors and 49% by a mixture of the two.

Using professors to teach small groups is expensive, and reducing costs is a central concern given the increases in tuition fees and student debt.

We have studied the costs and benefits of using tutorial instructors with different academic ranks, using data from a Dutch business school that offers four key features. First, tutorials are taught by a wide range of instructors, ranging from bachelor’s students to full professors. Second, the school’s dataset is large enough (we observe more than 12,000 students) to give us enough statistical power to detect even small differences between instructors.

Third, at this business school students are randomly assigned to instructors of different academic ranks, creating a perfect experiment for seeing whether academic rank matters. Finally, we were able to supplement these already excellent data with measures of students’ satisfaction with the course, and students’ earnings and job satisfaction after graduation, for some of these students. This is important since instructors might matter in many ways and we need to cast a wide net to capture a range of student outcomes.

Students just as effective

Overall, our results show that lower-ranked instructors teach tutorials as effectively as higher-ranked ones. The most effective instructors – postdoctoral researchers – increase students grades by less than 0.02 points on a 10-point grade scale compared with student instructors. The differences between all other instructor types, from student instructor and full professor, is smaller than that.

Full professors are also no better than student instructors in improving students’ grades in the next related course or job satisfaction and earnings after graduation. We do, however, find that higher-ranked instructors achieve somewhat better course evaluations, but these differences are small.

These findings are counter-intuitive. Yet they are consistent with the general findings in primary and secondary education that formal education does a poor job at predicting who teaches well.

What could be the reason why all the extra qualification and experience of professors does not translate into better results for their students? The content of tutorials might be adjusted in a way that students can easily teach them. Further, lower-ranked instructors may compensate for their lack of experience by being better able to relate to students and being more motivated.

Key implication

The implications of our findings are obvious. Universities can free up resources by not asking their most expensive staff to do a job that students can do equally well. We show that the business school we study can reduce the overall wages they pay to tutorial instructors by 50% if they only employ student instructors.

There are, of course, reasons why universities might not want to exclusively rely on student instructors. Students might not be able to teach some more technically advanced master’s courses. There might be some research-inactive but tenured professors whose most valuable use of time is tutorial teaching. And, as with other research that rely on data from one institution, future studies need to show whether our results hold in other universities as well.

But even if these studies uncover some benefits to students of being taught by a professor, we would be surprised if these are worth the extra costs.

– ref. Research shows students are as good as professors in tutorial teaching – http://theconversation.com/research-shows-students-are-as-good-as-professors-in-tutorial-teaching-106845

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Thornton, Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

Over the weekend, Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority issued notices for a major recycling company to stop receiving waste at two of its sites.

While the full consequences of these notices are yet to be realised, in the short term this means at least one council will have to dump kerbside recycling in landfill.

Read more: Australian recycling plants have no incentive to improve

This isn’t a new problem. It’s a result of China’s decision to stop accepting Australia’s recyclables, and a clear sign we’ve been playing catch-up but not focusing on sustainable solutions. We need to work out how to deal with recycling in Australia – and determine how much it will cost, and who will pay.

We’re missing a piece of the financial puzzle

Kerbside collections are of course funded by householders as part of their annual rates. After China stopped buying Australian recycling we saw the garbage component of rates rise, so the collection aspect of the costs seems to be addressed. But of course there are a range of materials that cannot be placed in kerbside bins, but can be recycled.

As reported recently in The Age, analysis by an environmental consultancy has found the prices consumers may have to pay to ensure there are systems in place to recycle a range of specific items. For example, it would cost A$16 to recycle a mattress. Given that my local landfill charges A$23 to dispose of a mattress, it seems to make economic sense to pay into a compulsory recycling scheme (and I would not have to transport the mattress to the landfill, which is another bonus).

However, the piece of the loop that is missing is the encouragement (by levies or incentives), for businesses to use more recycled materials in their products.

It does not make sense to collect and stockpile recyclable materials until commodity prices are high enough to justify sorting them. This habit makes us dependent on overseas markets and creates domestic issues.

Nor is it good to have a stop-start approach, in which recyclables are sorted properly when there is space, but sent to landfill when there is not (or have householders call the council fortnightly to see whether they should place their recycling bin out).

A recycling industry association has provided a ten-point plan for resolving what they consider the essential issues with recycling. This very positive list includes investing waste levy funds into recycling, providing incentives for companies to use more recycled material, and educating consumers and businesses on recycling issues.

Encouraging businesses to use more recycled material is crucial. Instead of just reporting how much of their waste is recycled rather than sent to landfill, all organisations should report on the percentage of materials they buy from recycled sources.

This would help consumers make better buying decisions, and give guidance for governments to target specific sectors or programs to increase the use of recyclables.

Better systems

We need a “fresh eyes” approach to how we manage waste, focusing equally on the environmental, economic and social aspects of this issue. One barrier is the lack of a centralised approach by all three spheres of government. It doesn’t make sense for state or local governments to have to to manage this large-scale infrastructure issue in isolation.

The largest portion of responsibility for waste management lies with the generator, but that is not to say others may not have a level of involvement. We all have some responsibility for the waste we create in our own homes, and how we dispose of it. Besides recycling, that also means (where possible) avoiding and reducing trash, and buying items made with recyclables – this is called “closing of the loop”.

Some businesses have made significant efforts to reduce their dependence on virgin raw materials, and are using recycled material to either make or package their products. But we do not hear much about this.

Perhaps it is time for a scheme similar to the “Buy Australian” program or energy efficiency stars, which would enable consumers to readily identify the level of recycled material in a product. Currently it is very difficult to tell.

Retailers often say they’re driven by consumers in what they can provide, so why not use our supposed power to force improvements (and more importantly, reductions), in use of virgin materials?

The banning of plastic bags by supermarkets was consumer-driven – so now is the time to encourage companies to reduce their waste burden. Perhaps you can approach a retailer about excess packaging, or make sure you check the label to see if an item was made or packaged with recycled materials.

Read more: Electronic waste is recycled in appalling conditions in India

As we move towards a federal election we should also be asking what our political parties are proposing to do about our waste crisis. It’s time to ask local candidates about their sustainable plan for resolving Australia’s issues with recycling, waste management and reducing resource use.

– ref. The ‘recycling crisis’ may be here to stay – http://theconversation.com/the-recycling-crisis-may-be-here-to-stay-112055

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo McDonald, Director, Centre for Rock Art Research + Management, University of Western Australia

Rock inscriptions made by crews from two North American whaleships in the early 19th century were found superimposed over earlier Aboriginal engravings in the Dampier Archipelago.

Details of the find in northern Western Australia are in a paper published today in Antiquity.

They provide the earliest evidence for North American whalers’ memorialising practices in Australia, and have substantial implications for maritime history.

At the time, the Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) was home to the Yaburara people. The rock art across the archipelago is testament to their artists asserting their connections to this place for millennia.

Read more: Where art meets industry: protecting the spectacular rock art of the Burrup Peninsula

So did the whalers encounter the Yaburara? Did they engrave over earlier Aboriginal markings as an act of assertion, a realignment of a shifting political landscape? Or were they simply marking a milestone in their multi-year voyages, celebrating landfall after many months at sea?

The answer to all these questions is, we don’t know.

But these inscriptions provide a rare insight into the lives of whalers, filling a gap in our knowledge about this earliest industry on our northwestern coast.

Such historical inscriptions might be dismissed as graffiti. However, like other rock art, they tell important stories about our human past that cannot be gleaned from other sources.

Whaling in Australia

Ship-based whaling was a global phenomenon that lasted centuries. At its peak in the mid-19th century, around 900 wooden sailing ships were at sea on multi-year voyages, crewed by around 22,000 whalemen.

Most whaling in Australian waters was conducted by foreign vessels, and in the 19th century North American whalers dominated the globe.

Illustration of an American whaling ship in the 19th century. Dr Kenneth McPherson, Indian Ocean Collection, WA Museum (with permission), Author provided

Whaling led to some of the earliest contacts between American, European and a range of indigenous societies in Africa, Australasia and the Pacific.

But early visits by foreign whalers to Australia’s northwest are poorly documented given the absence of a British colonial land-based presence in the area until the 1860s.

While explorer William Dampier named the Dampier Archipelago and Rosemary Island in 1699, British naval Captain Phillip Parker King was the first to document encounters with the Yaburara people in 1818. His visit to the archipelago in the rainy season (February) coincided with large groups of people using the seasonally abundant resources at this time.

The Swan River Colony (Perth) was established in 1829, but permanent European colonisation of the northwest only began in the early 1860s with an influx of pastoralists and pearlers.

For the Yaburara, this colonisation was catastrophic. It culminated in the Flying Foam Massacre in 1868 in which many Yaburara people were killed.

Early whaling contact

A few surviving ship logbooks record English and North American whalers on the Dampier Archipelago from 1801, but the heyday of whaling near “The Rosemary Islands” was between the 1840s and 1860s.

The logbooks describe American whaling ships worked together to hunt herds of humpback whales, which migrate along Australia’s northwest coastline during the winter months.

The ships’ crews made landfall to collect firewood and drinking water, and to post lookouts on vantage points to assist in sighting whales for the open boats to pursue.

Research by archaeologists from the University of Western Australia working with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation and industry partner Rio Tinto has found some evidence of two such landfalls in inscriptions from the crew of two North American whalers – the Connecticut and the Delta.

The earliest of these inscriptions records that the Connecticut visited Rosemary Island on August 18 1842. At least part of this inscription was made by Jacob Anderson, identified from the Connecticut’s crew list as a 19-year-old African-American sailor.

Research shows this set of ships’ and people’s names was placed over an earlier set of Aboriginal grid motifs. This was along a ridgeline that has millennia of evidence for the Yaburara producing rock art and raising standing stones and quarrying tool-stone elevated above this seascape.

Visualising the Connecticut inscription.

The dates and names found in the inscription correlate with port records that show the Connecticut left the town of New London in Connecticut, US, for the New Holland ground (as the waters off Australia’s northwest were known) in 1841, with Captain Daniel Crocker and a crew of 26.

Connecticut inscription, tracing by Ken Mulvaney. Antiquity, Paterson et al 2019 (with permission)

The Connecticut returned to New London on June 16 1843, with 1,800 barrels of oil, travelling via Fremantle, New Zealand and Cape Horn.

The largest of the Connecticut inscriptions showing micro-analysis of the inscription over the Aboriginal engravings. Antiquity, Paterson et al 2019 (with permission)

The Connecticut’s logbook for the voyage is missing, so without these inscriptions we would know nothing of this ship’s visit to the Dampier Archipelago.

On another island, another set of inscriptions record a visit to a similar vantage point by crew of the Delta on July 12 1849.

Details of the Delta inscriptions. Centre for Rock Art Research + Management

Registered in Greenport, New York, the Delta made 18 global whaling voyages between 1832 and 1856. Its logbook confirms it was whaling in the Dampier Archipelago between June 2 and September 8 1849.

The voyage of the Delta as researched from Log Book entries. Antiquity, Paterson et al 2019 (with permission)

While the log records crew members going ashore to shoot kangaroos and collect water, no mention is made of them making inscriptions or having any contact with Yaburara people.

Given it was the dry season, and the lack of permanent water on the islands, this lack of contact is not surprising.

But again, these whalers chose to make their marks on surfaces that were already marked by the Yaburara. By recording their presence at these specific historical moments, the whalers continued the long tradition of the Yaburara in interacting with and marking their maritime environment.

Protecting the heritage

Between 1822 and 1963, whalers killed more than 26,000 southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) and 40,000 humpback whales (Megaptera novaengliae) in Australia and New Zealand, driving populations to near-extinction.

Commercial whaling in Australian waters ended 40 years ago on November 21 1978, with the closure of the Cheynes Beach Whaling Station in Albany, Western Australia.

Today there are signs of renewal, with whale populations increasing, and Aboriginal people are reclaiming responsibility for management of the archipelago.

Read more: Explainer: why the rock art of Murujuga deserves World Heritage status

There is a strong push for World Heritage Listing of Murujuga — one of the most significant concentrations for human artistic creativity on the planet, recording millennia of human responses to the sustainable use of this productive landscape.

These two whaling inscriptions provide the only known archaeological insight into this earliest global resource extraction in Australia’s northwest – the whale oil industry – which began over two centuries ago.

They demonstrate yet again the unique capacity of Murujuga’s rock art to shed light on previously unknown details of our shared human history.

– ref. Rock art shows early contact with US whalers on Australia’s remote northwest coast – http://theconversation.com/rock-art-shows-early-contact-with-us-whalers-on-australias-remote-northwest-coast-104931