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

Review: Kwongkan, Perth Festival 2019

“Kwongkan” means sand in the language of the Nyoongar people, the first inhabitants of south-west Western Australia. Both Nyoongar and Indian traditional ceremonies, which are recreated in this collaboration between Australia and India, take place on the bare earth. Dancing feet connect with the sacred earth beneath.

But sand also has wider cultural significance. It appears in phrases like “putting your head in the sand”, to imply someone is ignoring the obvious or not thinking. There’s also the “sands of time” and images of sand running through an hourglass, both reminding us that time may be running out.

These themes are all too relevant when considering the urgent global challenge of climate change, explored in this world premiere performance as part of Wendy Martin’s final and stunning 2019 Perth Festival.

Through ancient dance practices, contemporary live music, aerial acrobatics, sound, video and epic theatre, Kwongkan invites us to hope for change, but more importantly, to be stirred to action.

Isha Sharvani (front) and Tao Issaro, Kate Harman, Ian Wilkes (back left to right). Daniel Grant

Created and directed by Mark Howett of Ochre Contemporary Dance Productions, the production grew out of a three-year collaboration with Daksha Sheth Dance Company, who are based in the western Indian state of Kerala. Like Ochre, Daksha Seth brings together “performing artists from diverse backgrounds who seek to bridge contemporary dance and traditional dance movements”.

Howett travelled with an ensemble of artists to sacred desert lands in Australia and tropical India to create this journey from the past to the present, with a weather eye on the future. The result is not just dance theatre, but a hybrid form with strong narrative strands and a political punch.

Performed on a large, bare wooden platform overlooked by Norfolk Pines, and extending up onto the raised sloping grass behind, there is vast space available and Howett uses it well. A film screen at the back sets the tone of the work right from the start. A video (produced by Howett and associate director Tao Issaro) flashes images of bushfires, floods, polluted oceans, falling trees and rusty cars, one after the other, demonstrating the urgency of this story of climate change and humanity’s role in it.

After the dramatic bushfire opening sequence, the three performers enter, each dancing in their own cultural style. We are led on a journey through colonisation, loss, forced-forgetting and consumption. The performers move beyond pure dance into a blend of movement, acting and direct presentation, demanding a range of skills from each of them.

Isha Sharvani (front), Kate Harman (middle), and Ian Wilkes (back). Daniel Grant

These were amply supplied by the three main dancers. Ian Wilkes, a young and very talented Nyoongar performer, is terrific. He will be known to Perth audiences through his work with Yirra Yaakin Theatre and with Ochre Contemporary Dance Productions.

Wilkes switches easily from traditional Nyoongar to contemporary dance, and on to dramatic performance. A highlight was the sequence where he became a kangaroo entangled in the barbed wire from a fence, then transformed into a man, subjugated by missionaries and forced to wear Western clothes.

Another regular Ochre performer, Kate Harmann, brings an intense emotional commitment to both the dance and the drama. When she manipulates a flimsy sheet of clear plastic, she creates beautiful yet disturbing images, ripe with metaphor.

Finally, Isha Shavani, the lead dancer of Daksha Sheth and a renowned aerialist, brought grace, precision and strength to her performance. She is trained in various Indian dance forms such as Kathak, Chau and Kalaripayattu, and displayed her skills in rope Mallakhamb (where acrobatic feats and poses are performed using a hanging rope). She was exceptional in the dance forms of all three cultures and is a compelling presence.

The intensity of these performances was supported by Tao Issaro’s compositions. He is Shavani’s brother, and describes himself as “a son of an artistic tribe”. He performs energetically on his drums and found objects, complementing a layered instrumental music track incorporating sounds of nature. One impressive drum is hand made from a large brass biryani pot covered with hide.

Lead dancer of Daksha Sheth, Isha Sharvani. Daniel Grant

Kwongkan builds to its climax when the performers desperately try to clear the stage of a mountain of plastic. Balancing on top of an oil drum – a fitting podium if ever there was one – Wilkes uses a megaphone to urge us to get our heads out of the sand. He recalls the quote from Native American leader Chief Seattle, who watched the destruction of his country following colonisation and famously said “we can’t eat money”.

In the context of pleas from young people around the world to adults to save their future, this final sequence has a powerful impact.

It is interesting to see the epic theatre techniques of Bertolt Brecht alive and well today. Brecht used theatre to confront an audience and arouse in them the capacity to action. He wanted them to make a decision about a political issue, to question orthodoxy and become active and curious. His work aimed to awaken the audience to the realisation that they can change society for the better.

We are used to being empathetic with characters on stage, but in doing so we remain detached from them and uncritical. Epic theatre aims to disrupt that state. Kwongkan takes this one step further and invites onto the stage a member of Millennium Kids, an organisation that works with young people to encourage action on environmental issues.

13-year-old Bella spoke on the night I saw the performance, and pleaded with us to take action on climate change. In light of growing global movements such as School Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion, Kwongkan uses art to reflect the zeitgeist. It begs the question: if the art we are given is not doing that, why not?

Kwongkan is playing as part of the Perth Festival until February 20.

– ref. In Kwongkan, Indian and Australian performers convey an urgent climate change message – http://theconversation.com/in-kwongkan-indian-and-australian-performers-convey-an-urgent-climate-change-message-111985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGorrery, PhD Candidate in Criminal Law, Deakin University

The Sentencing Advisory Council has just released the first ever review of how animal cruelty offenders are sentenced in Victoria.

That report was developed in response to growing community concern about how animal cruelty offenders are sentenced. Several cases have received significant media attention. The report was also designed to provide an evidence base for the government when it overhauls Victoria’s animal cruelty legislation this year, which it described in 2018 as “outdated”.

Read more: Australia increasingly uncomfortable with animal cruelty

What is animal cruelty?

One of the most noteworthy findings in the report is that most animal cruelty offending sentenced in Victoria does not involve deliberate or malicious forms of cruelty (such as beating or torturing a pet).

Instead, the majority of animal cruelty resulting in sentences in Victoria is the result of neglect-related behaviours, such as failing to provide sufficient food, drink, water, shelter or veterinary treatment to an animal. That type of offending made up at least half, but probably closer to three-quarters, of all animal cruelty offences between 2008 and 2017.

This is consistent with observations in RSPCA Victoria’s annual report, which noted that “the majority of reports that we receive seem to be the result of ignorance or inability rather than malice”.

Who committed these offences?

From 2008 to 2017, at least 998 offenders were sentenced for animal cruelty in Victoria. That’s about 100 per year. Men represented almost three-quarters of those offenders, and a quarter were women. Less than 1% were corporations.

To put this in context, this is slightly less than the rate at which men are sentenced for all offending in Victoria. In the most recent financial year, Victorian courts sentenced over 100,000 cases. Four out of five offenders in those cases were male (79%).

However, there was a subgroup of animal cruelty offenders – those whose case was flagged as involving family violence – who were much more likely to be male. Of the 231 animal cruelty cases sentenced in 2016 and 2017, 15% of cases were flagged as related to family violence (35 cases). And of those 35 offenders, 33 were male.

Who prosecutes animal cruelty?

Two agencies, Victoria Police and the Office of Public Prosecutions, prosecute most crimes in Victoria. However, the responsibility for prosecuting animal cruelty offences also falls on local councils, two additional government departments and RSPCA Victoria.

In fact, RSPCA Victoria is one of the only non-government bodies in the country with the power to prosecute people for criminal offences. It was responsible for prosecuting more than half of all animal cruelty cases in Victoria in the past ten years.

Auth.

Victoria Police prosecuted the second-largest number of cases. Police usually discover animal cruelty when a neighbour has reported what they think is animal cruelty, or when officers enter a house for some other reason, such as executing a search warrant or responding to a report of family violence.

How many animal cruelty offences were there?

Nearly 3,000 charges of animal cruelty were sentenced in Victoria from 2008 to 2017. But this does not represent all animal cruelty that occurred in the state during those ten years. A lot of animal cruelty is never discovered or investigated, in large part because the victims are unable to speak for themselves.

There are also many complaints about animal cruelty that don’t result in a sentence being imposed. For example, between 2011 and 2017, 79,000 complaints of animal cruelty were to the various prosecuting agencies. Those complaints led to just over 6,000 charges being laid, which in turn led to nearly 2,800 offences being sentenced.

There are good reasons for this disparity between the number of complaints and charges sentenced. For one thing, many complaints of animal cruelty don’t actually constitute cruelty, such as a neighbour complaining about a dog being left in the backyard for the day.

More importantly, though, the legislation these agencies are enforcing is “directed at animal welfare rather than enforcement of the criminal law”. In other words, a criminal justice response is a last resort and in many cases will not be the most appropriate way of ensuring animal welfare.

How were animal cruelty offences sentenced?

Of the 3,000 charges that were sentenced, 60% resulted in a fine and 4% in a term of imprisonment. The average fine was about $1,400 and the average prison term was three months.

The high rate of fines for animal cruelty warrants further consideration. Not only has the Sentencing Council’s previous research found that 40% of fines in Victoria are never paid, but more importantly, if the offender is a farmer who is struggling financially and has been unable to water, feed or medicate their livestock, it would seem incongruous to burden them further with a monetary penalty. Alternatively, if the offender engaged in more deliberate acts of cruelty, this would usually indicate that some form of rehabilitation is needed.

When sentencing an animal cruelty offender, courts in Victoria have an option available to them known as a “control order”. This is an order that either prohibits or restricts the offender’s ability to own or be in charge of animals. It can also place conditions on their ability to have animals. For example, one farmer was ordered to undertake a sheep management course and pay for a vet to regularly inspect any livestock under his care.

The council found that a control order was imposed in just 20% of animal cruelty cases. The rate was particularly low in cases prosecuted by Victoria Police (less than 1%). Yet when the council spoke to prosecutors responsible for animal cruelty cases, they said that often the most desirable outcome of the criminal proceedings is to have a control order imposed.

There is a question, though, about whether agencies would have enough resources to monitor control orders if they were imposed more often. That would involve a lot of extra work, which would in turn require additional resources.

Where to from here?

The findings in this report are consistent with similar research in Queensland, New South Wales and most recently South Australia. Men are the most common offenders of animal cruelty, and fines are the most common sentence imposed.

Read more: Penalties for animal cruelty double in SA, but is this enough to stop animal abuse?

It is hoped this report will prompt discussion about the role of the criminal justice system in responding to animal cruelty. Given the high rate of neglect-related offending – which is usually because the person either didn’t know how to care for their animals or didn’t have the resources to do so – is the criminal law the best response to those sorts of behaviours? And if it is, what should that response look like?

We also need to consider if monetary penalties are the best way to protect animals from similar offending in the future, or if it would be better to place more emphasis on control orders and provide agencies with the resources they need to monitor them.

– ref. New report shines light on who commits animal cruelty and how they are punished – http://theconversation.com/new-report-shines-light-on-who-commits-animal-cruelty-and-how-they-are-punished-111262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University

The Cambrian explosion more than 500 million years ago is often considered biology’s “big bang”.

Virtually all the major kinds of animals evolved in life’s greatest ever burst of evolution, rapidly populating a weird and biologically sparse planet with everything from jellyfish to vertebrates, and turning it into the Earth we recognise today.

But our recent study, published this week in PNAS, shows this burst of rapid evolutionary innovation also ended surprisingly quickly.

Read more: New study confirms what scientists already know: basic research is under-valued

Animals took perhaps only 20 million years to fill most of the empty ecological niches (ways to make a living) on our entire planet. From then on, the pace of evolution slowed drastically, reverting to rates considered more normal and which have held sway for most of the subsequent 520 million years up to the present.

Cambrian seascape off South Australia, dominated by large (Redlichia) and small (Estaingia) trilobites. Katrina Kenny, CC BY-NC-ND

Our work suggests that evolution can fill even huge ecological vacuums extremely rapidly.

This has implications given the widespread global changes currently being wrought by humans. Ecological niches are being destroyed and created more rapidly than at any time since the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

The largest adaptive radiation of all time

Adaptive radiation is when a species finds itself surrounded by empty niches, and rapidly evolves into a range of different species with different lifestyles (such as herbivores or carnivores) to fill the entire vacuum.

As the environment becomes saturated, evolution gradually slows down to normal rates. Famous examples of adaptive radiation include marsupials in Australia and anole lizards in the Caribbean.

The biggest adaptive radiation of all is the Cambrian Explosion. Life first appeared at least 3.5 billion years ago, but for the subsequent 3 billion years little more than microbes and simple blobs existed.

At (or shortly before) the start of the Cambrian Period (541 million years ago), modern animals evolved. They rapidly diversified into all the major groups (phyla) of animals we see today, such as jellyfish and corals, segmented worms (such as earthworms), molluscs (such as snails), arthropods (such as crabs), and even vertebrates (backboned animals, which eventually included ourselves).

The strange-yet-familiar evolutionary products of the Cambrian period are exquisitely preserved in spectacular fossil sites around the world, such as the Burgess Shale in Canada and Chengjiang in China. Australia has its own: the Emu Bay Shale on Kangaroo Island.

Trilobites (Estaingia) freshly excavated from Cambrian rocks (Emu Bay Shale) on Kangaroo Island. John Paterson, University of New England, CC BY-NC-ND

There is widespread agreement that evolution must have been turbocharged during the Cambrian explosion. But we didn’t really know for sure how long this unprecedented burst of rapid innovation and adaptation lasted.

If sustained across most of the Cambrian Period (which stretches from 541 million to 485 million years ago), then this would suggest that animals took more than 50 million years to fill up our planet.

Over in a (geological) eyeblink

Our study is the most thorough and mathematically precise measurement of evolution across the Cambrian Period.

Evolutionary rates are usually hard to calculate, partly because of the patchy fossil record. The complicated chain of events required for a dead organism to turn to stone means most carcasses are lost to time.

There are certainly rare instances where an evolving population is preserved across successively younger deposits, providing irrefutable evidence of evolution-in-action. More often, though, we find (say) a jaw bone in one place, followed by a limb bone on a different continent that is millions of years younger.

We circumvented the patchiness of the Cambrian fossil record in two ways. First, we focused on the dominant creatures of the Cambrian, the trilobites (an extinct group of marine arthropods related to other jointed-legged creatures like crabs, spiders and insects).

Trilobites are diverse and abundant (giving us a large and dense sample of fossils to work with), and also have very complex, robustly mineralised exoskeletons or “shells” (giving us lots of anatomical traits to measure).

Trilobites, such as this Olenellus, were the most diverse and abundant animals in the Cambrian. Russell Bicknell, University of New England; Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, CC BY-NC-ND

Second, we used powerful new Bayesian methods called Markov-Chain Monte Carlo, which fully account for the uncertainty generated by missing data (such as gaps in the fossil record).

When faced with incomplete data, these methods don’t try to do the impossible and spit out a single precise answer. Rather, they cleverly infer the universe of probable answers given the fuzzy information at hand.

Our study reveals that evolution had subsided to the more normal rates within the early Cambrian – by at least 520 million years ago. Thus, the Cambrian explosion was over much earlier than many had suspected, indeed almost as soon as the first trilobites appeared.

If modern animals first evolved at the very beginning of the Cambrian, then their global adaptive radiation took a mere 20 million years.

While this is still substantial, it represents only 0.5% of the 3.5-billion-year history of life on Earth: a surprisingly brief interval to fill the Earth with body plans as disparate as starfish, snails, shrimps and fish.

Life finds a way

The rapid rise of animals suggested by our study emphasises the ability of evolution to quickly take advantage of every opportunity.

As the fictional mathematician Ian Malcolm put it in the first Jurassic Park (1993) movie, “life finds a way”!

The Cambrian explosion represented the first time animals evolved to fill the planet. Since then, several mass extinctions – such as the meteorite impact that contributed to the extinction the non-avian dinosaurs and much else – have partially cleared the decks.

Every time, life has rebounded rapidly.

Today, as humans transform and stress our planet, we are facing another mass extinction. Evolutionary niches are being destroyed and created at a rate faster than at any time since the dinosaur age.

The rapidity of evolution in the past might lead to optimism that life might adapt to the worst that humans can throw at it.

Read more: Climate change is killing off Earth’s little creatures

But this artificially rapid global change might be too fast for many species. Furthermore, much of the rapid evolution triggered by humans is far from desirable.

Swallows that evolve wingshapes to better manoeuvre through heavy traffic might be cute. But superbugs resistant to every known antibiotic, and subterranean mosquitos adapted to feast on London tube commuters, are less so!

A particularly vicious subspecies of mosquito has evolved on the London underground to bite humans. francok35/pixabay

– ref. Life quickly finds a way: the surprisingly swift end to evolution’s big bang – http://theconversation.com/life-quickly-finds-a-way-the-surprisingly-swift-end-to-evolutions-big-bang-110984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janna Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University

A second woman is said to be pregnant with a gene-edited baby in China, according to reports this year. It follows revelations last November that gene-edited twins had been born, which caused much debate.

One of the fears expressed by scientists is that gene editing may result in unwanted side effects.

But beyond the health and medical concerns, what are the philosophical issues at stake here when it comes to gene-editing babies?

Read more: ‘Designer’ babies won’t be common anytime soon – despite recent CRISPR twins

Undesirable mutations introduced by gene editing to sperm, eggs or early-stage embryos could be reproduced in future generations. But future generations are unable to give their consent to the risks being taken, says Francis S Collins, the former leader of the Human Genome Project and now director of the US National Institutes of Health.

The Chinese scientist responsible for the gene-edited babies aimed to produce offspring of HIV-infected fathers who will be naturally resistant to the virus.

Read more: ‘Designer’ babies won’t be common anytime soon – despite recent CRISPR twins

Eliminating disease and other harmful conditions may be a laudable aim, and most people would welcome a world in which no one has to suffer from, for example, haemophilia, muscular dystrophy or other genetically carried disorders and disabilities.

Should we, shouldn’t we

Let us assume that the health risks of gene editing are exaggerated or can be eliminated. While designer babies may be some way off, we need to start thinking now about how far should we go in editing away undesired characteristics or adding those that are desirable.

Any prospective project to enhance the qualities of the population recalls wrongs committed by government-sponsored eugenics programs in the United States and Canada, as well as Germany in the early 20th century.

In 1939, the Australian government also passed legislation to institutionalise or sterilise those deemed deficient, but it was never put into practice.

Some philosophers argue there is nothing wrong with allowing parents to select characteristics that they want their children to have. In his 2010 book Enhancing Evolution, the UK bio-ethicist John Harris says this is ethically no more problematic than giving a child a good education.

Australian philosopher Julian Savulescu argues that parents ought to use whatever technology is available to select the children whose characteristics will enable them to live the best lives.

These philosophers fail to take seriously the social problems that genetic enhancement is likely to cause.

Only the wealthy

Use of the technology is going to be expensive – especially when it is first introduced – and only wealthy parents will be able to afford to enhance their children.

The result may not be as bad as imagined in the 1997 science fiction film Gattaca, which portrays a society divided between the genetically privileged and those whose lack of enhancement consigns them to menial jobs.

But genetic enhancement is likely to make societies more unequal, and equality of opportunity will become more and more meaningless.

Let us imagine that all parents in a future society will be able to choose the characteristics of their children. Some philosophers worry that babies designed to meet the demands of parents will make them into consumer products.

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas argues, in his 2014 book The Future of Human Nature, that genetic engineering will restrict the ability of individuals to make free choices.

Even if this is not so, it may drastically affect parent/child relationships by undermining a basic ethical principle: that parents should accept, love and care for whatever children they have.

What parents want

Genetic engineering is likely to heighten parental expectations. If parents don’t get the child of their choice – if the qualities they selected do not materialise or if the child fails to make use of them – their disappointment could lead to denigration or rejection.

Ethical doubts about genetic engineering motivate a view that many philosophers favour: that genetic therapy to eliminate disease and disability is ethically acceptable, given that the risks can be overcome.

But genetic enhancement is ethically problematic. The line between enhancement and therapy is difficult to draw.

Studies show people who are physically attractive are likely to earn more than those considered to have below-average looks. Does this mean “ugliness” is a disability that ought to be corrected by genetic engineering?

Or, similarly, is having a below-average IQ a disability, something that should be subject to change through gene-editing?

Gene editing and prejudice

Should parents be able to engineer the skin colour of their children to try to circumvent the social bias they might otherwise experience? Being black creates serious disadvantage in some societies.

But it is a mistake to treat social problems as if they were the fault of properties possessed by some individuals.

If people are intolerant, then catering to their prejudices will not make them more tolerant. They will find other reasons or objects for their intolerance.

Read more: Cloning monkeys for research puts humans on a slippery ethical slope

If less attractive people are disadvantaged or people of low intelligence are belittled, we ought to question our standards and behaviour. If black people face social discrimination, we should fight against racism rather than seek to accommodate it.

Behind this response lies the liberal conviction that we ought to welcome human differences and respect individuals in all their variety and ways of being.

To eliminate disease and severe disabilities is a worthy objective. No person should suffer them. But to eliminate human variety is not only risky; it eliminates perspectives that enrich us.

– ref. What we risk as humans if we allow gene-edited babies: a philosopher’s view – http://theconversation.com/what-we-risk-as-humans-if-we-allow-gene-edited-babies-a-philosophers-view-110498

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Walsh, Associate Director, Government Relations, Australian Catholic University

Eight months is a long time in politics. (If you don’t believe me, take a look at what’s happened in the federal parliament in the past week.) So waiting eight months for a response to a parliamentary report raises certain expectations. When the federal government delivered its response last week to an ambitious parliamentary blueprint for regional Australia, the almost eight-month wait had led many of us to expect something detailed and sophisticated. Many of us are now disappointed.

In formally responding to Regions at the Ready, produced by the Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation, the government has declined the invitation to engage in clever policymaking. Instead, it has stuck to the well-worn path of decentralising public sector jobs.

Read more: Report recommends big ideas for regional Australia – beyond decentralisation

Out of 13 recommendations in Regions at the Ready, the government has accepted only five without reservation. Four of these relate to decentralisation (the fifth is on access to higher education in regional Australia). For the remaining recommendations and issues, the government has employed a strategy familiar to all political observers: kicking the can down the road. The government will form an “expert panel” to undertake “a targeted assessment of the key issues raised in the report”.

Some may suggest eight months was enough time to assess those key issues.

To understand the level of underachievement here, it’s necessary to recall the level of policy ambition in Regions at the Ready. When the report was released in June 2018, at the conclusion of a year-long inquiry and on the back of almost 200 submissions, it raised hopes of a better way of designing and delivering regional policy. I described it at the time as “a far-reaching and highly practical work program for regional development”, and I haven’t changed my view.

Bringing together parliamentarians from both sides of the aisle, plus a prominent crossbench member in Cathy McGowan, the select committee grappled with the biggest issues facing regional communities: globalisation, population ageing, urbanisation and technological change.

The committee was also asked to consider decentralisation of public service jobs. It delivered on that task, but it built decentralisation into a much bigger, smarter approach to “place-based” policymaking. Sure, the committee said, moving public servants from the city to the country might be a good idea (depending on the circumstances), but our vision for regional Australia has to be bigger than this.

But the sticking point – and it’s a big one – is politics. The next federal election is looming. While we may not go to the polls until May, Canberra has already tipped over into full campaign mode. Not only is the government flagging in the polls nationally, but a crop of independent candidates is mounting a challenge to sitting Coalition members in regional and rural seats.

In these circumstances, it isn’t surprising that the government has retreated to what must seem safe ground in regional policy: buy them off with “roads and rail” and fiddle with public service jobs.

There may be more to come. But the government’s new expert panel is required to deliver its assessment of the big picture issues by March 31 2019 – and such a truncated process screams “electioneering”. It seems doubtful the bipartisan spirit of the committee’s report will survive this process.

Read more: Australia’s dangerous fantasy: diverting population growth to the regions

We’ve seen all of this before, in different guises. Politics tends to confound good policymaking for regional development. While the tension between politics and policy is evident across every portfolio of government, regional development is more prone than many to charges of partisanship and pork-barrelling.

The intimate relationship between regional development and the National Party is also in play. That relationship is increasingly fraught, as anyone who has read journalist Gabrielle Chan’s excellent Rusted Off will know. The key question may be: will regional Australians be willing to accept yet another tranche of low-tech, low-ambition policy for their communities?

Regions at the Ready was a genuine, deliberate attempt to sidestep the politicisation of regional policy. As I, and many others, argued in submissions to the inquiry, regional communities in Australia deserve sophisticated policy.

Shifting public service jobs to regional Australia is a policy that Coalition governments keep taking up, despite the lack of evidence that it is effective (and often in the absence of clear goals).

It’s regrettable, but perhaps inevitable, that the good policy work contained in Regions at the Ready is still sitting on the shelf. Whether it gathers dust for eternity will depend partly on how much ambition the National Party can muster between now and the election, and partly on what happens in that election.

– ref. How big ideas for regional Australia were given short shrift – http://theconversation.com/how-big-ideas-for-regional-australia-were-given-short-shrift-111817

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rhian Parker, Academic Convenor, MAEVe ( Melbourne Alliance to End Violence against women and their children, University of Melbourne

Every week in Australia, a woman is murdered by someone she knows. And it’s usually an intimate male partner or ex-partner.

One in three women has suffered physical violence since the age of 15. In most cases (92% of the time) it’s by a man she knows.

Added to this, one-quarter of Australian women have suffered emotional abuse from a current or former partner. This occurs when a partner seeks to gain psychological and emotional control of the woman by demeaning her, controlling her actions, being verbally abusive and intimidating her.

Physical and emotional abuse is not only distressing, it’s psychologically damaging and increases women’s risk of developing a mental illness.

Read more: Revealed: the hidden problem of economic abuse in Australia

How violence increases the risk

Women who have experienced domestic violence or abuse are at a significantly higher risk of experiencing a range of mental health conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and thoughts of suicide.

In situations of domestic violence, an abuser’s outburst is commonly followed by remorse and apology. But this “honeymoon” period usually ends in violence and abuse. This cycle means women are constantly anticipating the next outburst. Women in these situations feel they have little control, particularly when the abuse is happening in their own home.

Read more: Why some migrants in abusive relationships don’t receive help, and are deported

It’s no wonder living under such physical and emotional pressure impacts on mental and physical well-being.

One review of studies found the odds of experiencing PTSD was about seven times higher for women who had been victims of domestic violence than those who had not.

The likelihood of developing depression was 2.7 times greater, anxiety four times greater, and drug and alcohol misuse six times greater.

The likelihood of having suicidal thoughts was 3.5 times greater for women who had experienced domestic violence than those who hadn’t.

Survivors of domestic abuse are often reluctant to talk about their experiences. From shutterstock.com

An Australian study of 1,257 female patients visiting GPs found women who were depressed were 5.8 times more likely to have experienced physical, emotional or sexual abuse than women who were not depressed.

Not only is domestic violence and abuse a risk factor for psychological disorders, but women who have pre-existing mental health issues are more likely to be targets for domestic abusers.

Women who are receiving mental health services for depression, anxiety and PTSD, for instance, are at higher risk of experiencing domestic violence compared to women who do not have these disorders.

Read more: Pregnant women are at increased risk of domestic violence in all cultural groups

How do mental health services respond?

Although survivors of domestic violence are more likely to suffer mental illness, they are not routinely asked about domestic violence or abuse when getting mental health treatment. So they’re not provided with appropriate referrals or support.

One study found only 15% of mental health practitioners routinely enquired about domestic violence. Some 60% reported a lack of knowledge about domestic violence, while 27% believed they did not have adequate referral resources.

One-quarter (27%) of mental health practitioners provided women experiencing domestic violence with information about support services and 23% made a referral to counselling.

In the absence of direct questioning, survivors of domestic violence are reluctant to disclose abuse to health service providers. If mental health providers are managing the symptoms of the mental illness but ignoring the cause of the trauma, treatment is less likely to be successful.

Practitioners need to routinely ask women about present or past incidents of domestic violence if they are diagnosed as depressed or anxious, or if they show any other signs of mental distress.

Practitioners should be able to provide referrals to specialist services and need to be adequately trained to respond to those who disclose domestic violence. This means not focusing solely on medical treatment, but also on referrals and support.

Read more: Man who burnt his wife alive gets at least 27 years’ jail, but not life – as victim was no stranger

– ref. How domestic violence affects women’s mental health – http://theconversation.com/how-domestic-violence-affects-womens-mental-health-104926

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine M. Philip, Doctor of Philosophy, Ecosystem Management, University of New England

One of the many difficulties faced by the pioneers of Australia’s sheep industry was finding a reliable shepherd. Among the convict labour available, for every two experienced farm labourers there were five convicted sheep, horse, cattle or poultry thieves.

The conditions were demanding. Convicts returning from pasture with fewer sheep than they left with faced a penalty of up to 100 lashes – close to a death sentence. Going bush was the only option for those unwilling to submit to the punishment back “inside”, as the settlements were called. Sheep were lost through negligence and misadventure, others to hungry dingoes.

Read more: Dingo dinners: what’s on the menu for Australia’s top predator?

Eradicating dingoes therefore had a double benefit for the graziers: they would reduce stock losses, and eliminate the need for (unreliable) convict labour.

Reverend Samuel Marsden announced the first plan for the destruction of the native dog in Sydney Town, 1811. On offer was a generous bounty of one gallon of spirits for each complete skin of a fully grown native dog.

(Incidentally, Marsden went on to introduce sheep to New Zealand, followed by the mysterious disappearance of the Maori kuri dog in following decades.)

Three years later, the first instance of using poison to eradicate the dingo was recorded in the Sydney Gazette. A “gentleman farmer” with extensive stock in the Nepean District initiated the operation. By applying arsenic to the body of a dead ox on his property, he managed to eradicate all the wild dogs from his landholding. The technique gathered a quiet following, though there were concerns that in the wrong hands this venture could inadvertently backfire on the penal colony.

Revolutionising toxicology

In 1818 French scientist Pierre Joseph Pelletier successfully extracted beautiful but sinister crystals from the plant nux vomica. This discovery revolutionised toxicology: it enabled mass production of a highly toxic, stable and cheap poison known as strychnine.

Strychnos Nux vomica, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen 1887 (Plate 107).

The crystals were soon to be exported en masse around the world. Strychinine became an essential item in the Australian farmer’s toolkit, and by 1852 its use on landholdings was mandatory to control unwanted wildlife. In 1871 author Anthony Trollope wrote in his observations of Australian life:

On many large runs, carts are continually being taken round with (strychnine) baits to be set on the paths of the dingo. In smaller establishments the squatter or his head-man goes about with strychnine in his pocket and lumps of meat tied up in a handkerchief.

Over the course of the 19th century, the Australian economy became irreversibly dependent on this industrial agrochemical farming system.

The pace of Australia’s agricultural revolution was rapid; between 1822, when fine wool became NSW’s major export product, and 1850, the national flock numbers increased from 120,000 to 16 million. By 1892 the Australian sheep flock numbered 106 million.

Fluctuations in the size of the Australian sheep flock 1800-2017. Australian Bureau of Statistics

A central Australian dingo extermination campaign was launched in 1897, to eradicate dingo and rabbit populations from South Australia’s arid zone. Described as the “Party of Poisoners”, the team travelled from Gawler Range to Wilpena Pound, covering an area 1,000km long by 480km wide. It took five months.

Read more: Why the WA government is wrong to play identity politics with dingoes

The poisoners dispensed phosphorised pollard and strychnine sticks and laid poisoned grain in lightly covered furrows. Meat baits were placed around the bases of the red and white mallee bush. Billabongs were poisoned. All species that might have competed for the scarce resources were effectively eliminated – carnivore and herbivore. Farming ultimately failed in the region. The natural biodiversity never recovered.

The Hudson Bros. Poison Cart 1883: initially designed to dispense dingo baits, by 1920 the. devices were being used in the thousands, to eradicate herbivores. Powerhouse Museum

The legacy of Australia’s chemical-dependent farming over the past 200 years remains largely unacknowledged in conversations about the current biodiversity crisis. Australia has around 500 threatened animal species, and our rate of mammalian extinctions is unparalleled anywhere in the world. The main drivers of the crisis are attributed to introduced species, changed fire regimes, and land clearing.

In the history of agricultural expansion, it was the dingo that was the initial target of eradication campaigns. Land clearing worked in concert with the broad scale application of vertebrate pesticides. The expansion in the application, range, methods of delivery and quantity of poison and poisoned baits applied was rapid, using increasingly sophisticated machinery.

The effects reverberated throughout Australia’s ecosystems: the removal of the dingo, the top order predator, lead to the explosion of herbivore populations, more poisons, the establishment of introduced species and destabilising of the native ecosystem.

Influence of the dingo on ecosystem function. Restoration Ecology, Newsome et al. 2015

In the 1870s newspapers were reporting on the impact of herbivore populations including the introduced rabbit. The South Australian Advertiser, wrote in 1877:

We have destroyed the balance of nature in two ways simultaneously, by destroying the carnivore and introducing a new herbivorous animal of immense reproductive powers.

Read more: Was agriculture the greatest blunder in human history?

In the 21st century, more vertebrate poisons are dispensed by air in National Parks, than on private land – in efforts to protect biodiversity from invasive species.

My research examines how poison has been normalised in land management. The use of vertebrate pesticides has been supported by services and systems embedded within Australia’s social, political and legal framework for 200 years.

Applying more vertebrate pesticides to the environment to try and solve the problem, is arguably an extreme case of mistaking the poison for the cure.

– ref. How Australia made poisoning animals normal – http://theconversation.com/how-australia-made-poisoning-animals-normal-107004

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

Parliament is failing workers with superannuation. And this time it’s Labor and the Greens who are doing it.

The Coalition’s Protecting Your Super Package Bill was designed to cut the unnecessary costs in super, significantly boosting balances when workers retire.

It was gutted in parliament last week as both Labor and the Greens sought amendments to the provisions for default insurance.

They might have been well-intentioned, but an analysis of the effect of their amendments shows that they weren’t serving the interests of most Australians.

Australians are paying for insurance they don’t need

In January the Productivity Commission reported that super funds were defaulting far too many Australians into life, disability, and income-protection insurance that they didn’t need. They were paying an unnecessary A$3 billion a year.

Most under-25s work in casual and part-time jobs. The overwhelming majority don’t have dependants, so life insurance is inappropriate for them. Often they don’t even know they are insured.

As they change jobs, they can find themselves defaulted into multiple policies, even though it is only legal to claim on income protection once, and even though very few do.

The Commission estimates that this unnecessary insurance takes as much as 14% out of the member’s super balance by the time he or she retires.

The government’s legislation would have fixed these problems by making life, disability, and income-protection insurance “opt-in” for people under 25 and those with small account balances.

Read more: Productivity Commission finds super a bad deal

Insurance would have started only once there was A$6,000 in your account; typically after one year’s full-time work.

The premise was simple: while the change would not be the best for everyone, it would provide the greatest benefit to the most workers at the least cost.

Labor’s amendments would hurt young workers…

Grattan Institute calculations find Labor’s amendments would cost younger Australians at least A$400 million a year.

They would address problems for the small number of young or low-income people who do need such insurance, at the cost of forcing millions more to pay for insurance they don’t need.

As an example, Labor wants automatic insurance cover to commence at age 22 instead of 25.

Our calculations show this would ensure some 43,000 young workers with dependent children or a mortgage would be insured. But another 550,000 young workers with neither would be defaulted into paying for insurance they didn’t need, draining their retirement savings by A$200 million a year.

Similarly, Labor wants super funds to be able to hold onto inactive accounts for 16 months, as opposed to the 13 in the Coalition’s bill.

Labor says this will protect women on maternity leave, but very few women take more than 13 months. The average mother takes 26 weeks, paid and unpaid. Only one in five takes more than 37 weeks.

Read more: We won’t fix female super until we fix female pay

Lifting the threshold to 16 months would mean an extra 3 months of premiums paid by the much larger group who have inactive accounts because they have changed jobs and therefore superannuation funds. Our calculations suggest that could cost them A$100 million a year, and possibly more.

And Labor is insisting that workers in high-risk industries continue to be defaulted into life and disability insurance through super, despite already being insured against accidents at work through workers’ compensation.

If a person dies through a work-related accident in Victoria or New South Wales, their dependants receive compensation in the order of A$750,000. This is far more than they are likely to get from insurance through super, where the average benefit is about A$100,000. Our estimate is that this extension would cost workers A$115 million in unnecessary premiums.

On each of these three proposed Labor amendments, vastly more people would be hurt than helped.

Those who would be helped would be free to opt into insurance without the amendments.

As well, the Coalition legislation allows super funds to apply for an exemption where they can demonstrate that defaulting young workers into insurance would in fact be in their interests.

…and one of the Greens amendments is worse

Faced with this series of bad amendments from Labor, late last week the Coalition struck a deal with the Greens instead.

The new law will scrap exit fees and impose a cap on fees of 3% for account balances below A$6,000, saving Australians A$570 million in the first year.

But the Greens opposed removing default insurance for people aged under 25 and those with super balances below $6,000.

The Greens did this even though only a tiny minority of the 1.4 million Australians aged under 25 and with super need life insurance. They discarded a A$1 billion to A$2 billion per year boost to the retirement savings of younger and low-income Australians.

The party defended its position on the basis that “nobody needs insurance until they need it”.

It’s an argument a bit like asking people to pay for car insurance even though they don’t own cars, on the grounds they one day will.

The practical effect would be to subsidise car owners, or in this case to subsidise the older and wealthier super fund members who do stand to benefit from life and income-protection insurance.

Another chance?

The Coalition reportedly plans to introduce a new bill in the House of Representatives to try again.

But it will have little chance of becoming law before the election expected in May.

In the meantime the industry will be free to extract millions more in insurance payments from the super savings of younger Australians.

It is in its interest to drag things out.

Read more: The Productivity Commission inquiry was just the start. It’s time for a broader review of super and how much it is needed

– ref. This time it’s Labor and the Greens standing in the way of cheaper super – http://theconversation.com/this-time-its-labor-and-the-greens-standing-in-the-way-of-cheaper-super-111977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Notre Dame Australia

2018 was a good year for cinema but this is not reflected in the Oscar nominations for Best Picture. This year’s nominees are notable mainly for their mediocrity. There are, of course, a couple of exceptions.

The best:

The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent film, The Favourite, is an outlandish black comedy following the machinations of two ladies in Queen Anne’s court as they try to win and maintain Anne’s affection at each other’s expense. Rachel Weisz, as Lady Sarah, and Emma Stone, as Abigail, the ingenue attempting to replace Sarah at Anne’s side, are clearly enjoying themselves. But Olivia Colman, whose extraordinary comic timing is once again on display, steals the show. She manages to portray Queen Anne as completely inept, and yet with a hint of pathos that enables the viewer to be moderately sympathetic towards her. The whole thing plays like a delirious parody of royalty, and combines the delightful nihilism of Lanthimos’ earlier The Lobster – also starring Weisz and Colman (and a better film than The Favourite) – with the lurid sensationalism of something like Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. This is certainly the most engaging of the nominees, and receives my vote for Best Picture.

BlacKkKlansman

John David Washington, right, and Adam Driver in BlacKkKlansman (2018). Focus Features, Legendary Entertainment, Perfect World Pictures

Spike Lee’s recent film marks a return to form for the director who, despite his legendary status in Hollywood, has always been hit and miss. The story on which the film is based – an African American police officer from Colorado Springs infiltrates the David Duke-led Ku Klux Klan – is so bizarre that it alone would be enough to make a fascinating film. Add to this the effortlessness of Lee’s craft and the excellent performances – including Topher Grace as David Duke – and the result is a very good comedy. Still, the premise raises some ideological questions, as does the film’s claim that it is more than just a rollicking tale – evident in a closing credit sequence that attempts to situate this story in the contemporary milieu of racial tension in the USA. The notion that a policeman – whose role, by definition, is to defend the city (the polis) through the maintenance of power relations amongst its inhabitants – could be a progressive political activist is absurd.

The rest:

Vice

Christian Bale and Amy Adams in Vice (2018). Annapurna Pictures, Gary Sanchez Productions, Plan B Entertainment

Vice, in its combination of political critique and dramatic reenactment, recalls The Big Short, the earlier film from writer-director Adam McKay (of Anchorman fame) that featured many of the same cast. Though not as impressive as The Favourite and BlacKkKlansman, Vice is, at least, formally ambitious. Ostensibly a biopic of Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and his rise to power, it plays like a critical essay about the systemic and personal abuses of the American right in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In an industry dominated by sentiment and melodrama, it is nice to see a biographical film attempting a more intellectually engaged approach to its subject. At the same time, its critique is fairly obvious – the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib etc., are widely recognised as such – and its tone is, at times, rather smarmy. Still, it offers some insight into an often overlooked figure in the corridors of American power.

Roma

Yalitza Aparicio in Roma (2018). Esperanto Filmoj, Participant Media.

Laborious and unsatisfying, Alfonso Cuarón’s latest film – made for Netflix – plays like an homage to great European directors like Antonioni, Rossellini, and Fellini. But one of these masters Cuarón is not. The story follows the difficulties encountered by an Indigenous American maid living with a middle class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s as she falls pregnant to an unwilling father who leaves her to fend for herself. A few things happen – not that much – but this isn’t really the problem (after all, Tarkovsky made some excellent films in which little happens slowly). Each image feels painfully rendered, we can sense the presence behind every long tracking sequence and detailed domestic tableau, and the result completely disengages us from the drama on screen. Given we’ve seen it all before, done more effectively and with much more style, Roma feels a little redundant. This is the case even at the visual level, with the flat Netflix aesthetic failing to endow Cuarón’s panoramic vision with any clarity or depth. This feels like a long film-school exercise, and provides further evidence that shooting something in black and white doesn’t automatically endow it with artistic merit.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Joseph Mazzello, Ben Hardy and Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) GK Films, New Regency Pictures, Queen Films Ltd.

It is very strange that a film like Bohemian Rhapsody would be nominated for Best Picture. Don’t get me wrong, it is an enjoyable film, and features rousing renditions of some of Queen’s most popular anthems. Yet director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) offers nothing of any note here. Rami Malek, who is good in the TV series Mr. Robot, seems out of his depth, and his efforts to transform into singer Freddie Mercury are ever visible. This is the kind of film one might watch on a plane and find mildly inspirational – it offers the rare spectacle of artists succeeding, a fantasy seldom realised in real life – only to forget it all by the time you are collecting your luggage. On a more negative note, it is at times moralistic in its vision of sexuality and desire, depicting Mercury’s time in the Berlin queer scene as decadent and destructive. Mercury is redeemed when he enters a monogamous relationship and reunites with his heterosexual band mates, all in time for Live Aid.

A Star is Born

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born (2018). Warner Bros. Pictures, Live Nation Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Like Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born is a sentimental melodrama about a singer’s rise to fame – in this case, in tandem with the increasing alcoholism and general decline of her mentor, partner, and husband. Lady Gaga plays Ally, the ingenue who wins the heart of grizzled rocker Jack (played by Bradley Cooper, who also directs the film). Lots of people like Lady Gaga, which might account for this film’s popularity, but she, along with Cooper, seem to be straining hard to capture the viewer’s attention. They both lack the onscreen magnetism possessed by the two stars of an earlier version of the film, Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. That said, there is nothing very wrong with this film. It is engaging, in the sense that one watches it, doesn’t walk out of the cinema, and passes a couple of hours pleasantly – but there is also nothing notable here at a cinematic or technical level.

Green Book

Viggo Mortensen, right, and Mahershala Ali in Green Book (2018) Participant Media, DreamWorks, Amblin Partners

Green Book is also a watchable, seamless film, anchored around the charisma of its two leads, Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. The narrative follows popular pianist and entertainer Don Shirley (Ali) as he tours the segregated South with Tony Lip (Mortensen), a hardboiled East Coast Italian, as his driver and bodyguard of sorts. The title comes from the “Green Book” they use to book appropriate (black-friendly) accommodation and dining. It is impossible to remain unmoved during scenes in which the talented Shirley is asked to use an outdoor toilet because he is black, and refused admittance to the restaurant of an establishment in which he is performing, and the relationship that develops between Tony and Shirley is an effective emotional centrepiece for the film. However, its essentially paternalistic approach to race relations – it seems to take the magnanimity of Lip and his family to affirm Shirley’s humanity – and its unbridled sentimentality will raise the eyebrows of anyone with more than a rudimentary knowledge of recent American history and culture. But maybe I am expecting too much from director Peter Farrelly, the writer of inane comedies like Me, Myself and Irene, Shallow Hal and Stuck on You.

Black Panther

Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong’o in Black Panther (2018). Marvel Studios, Moonlighting Films, Korean Film Council

Perhaps the most disappointing of the year’s nominees, Black Panther is an average Marvel film – better than some (Spider-Man: Homecoming) and worse than others (Thor: Ragnarok). Its action sequences – critical to the success of a superhero film – are quite impressive, and the design is colourful, but the narrative is uneven and awkwardly paced, involving a revelation of identity that isn’t really a revelation at all, which occurs at an arbitrary place in the narrative. The story follows two conflicting “panthers”, one good (Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman) and one bad (Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan) as they battle for control of the (mystically presented) nation Wakanda and its valuable resources. The film is rife with ideological contradictions in its presentation of the “good” panther as following a liberal model of black activism, and the “bad” panther as following a militant model. It seems to suggest that politics can occur without violence (the liberal dream) without recognising perhaps the chief insight of the 20th century – that politics is always violent, in its management of the city, in its determination of friend and enemy, and in its administration of the human. Furthermore, historically, liberalism, as Domenico Losurdo convincingly demonstrates in Liberalism: A Counter-History was built upon the back of slavery.

The omitted

According to virtually every aesthetic criterion, Luca Guadagnino’s retelling of Dario Argento’s famous horror film, Suspiria, is one of 2018’s strongest films. It is stylish – incorporating several technical innovations – with lavish cinematography and design that, nonetheless, is effectively counterpointed with the cold edge of late 1970s Berlin. The narrative interweaving of the horror story of young Jessica (Dakota Johnson) attending a dance academy run by witches with the political turmoil in West Germany involving the Red Army Faction, lends a historical weight lacking (for better or worse) from Argento’s version. The measured pace of the first three quarters of the film explodes into a dazzlingly colourful phantasmagoria of blood and bodies in the final extended sequence, with a surprising – and satisfying – last twist. The fact that a film as interesting as Suspiria (including Thom Yorke’s hypnotic score) can be completely eschewed by the Academy is testament to the absurdity – and arbitrariness – of the whole Oscars process.

Similarly, American Animals, a hilarious, real-life dramatisation of an art heist that incorporates the actual people portrayed into the scenes alongside actors playing them, is another standout from 2018. There is no American film more intellectually and existentially engaging than American Animals – yet it didn’t receive a single nomination.

David Gordon Green’s new Halloween film is also exceptionally intense, and, arguably, one of the great slasher films. Mind you, horror films, like action films, are rarely nominated for Best Picture Oscars, unless they’ve been made by William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection)!

– ref. Best Picture at the Oscars? Why it has to be The Favourite out of a weak bunch – http://theconversation.com/best-picture-at-the-oscars-why-it-has-to-be-the-favourite-out-of-a-weak-bunch-111996

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Sear, PhD Candidate, UNSW Canberra Cyber, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW

The Australian political digital infrastructure is a target in an ongoing nation state cyber competition which falls just below the threshold of open conflict.

Today Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a statement to parliament, saying:

The Australian Cyber Security Centre recently identified a malicious intrusion into the Australian Parliament House computer network.

During the course of this work, we also became aware that the networks of some political parties – Liberal, Labor and the Nationals – have also been affected.

Read more: ‘State actor’ makes cyber attack on Australian political parties

But cyber measures targeting Australian government infrastructure are the “new normal”. It’s the government response which is the most unique thing about this recent attack.

The new normal

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) – which incorporates the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) – analyses and responds to cyber security threats.

In January ASD identified in a report that across the three financial years (2015-16 to 2017-18) there were 1,097 cyber incidents affecting unclassified and classified government networks which were “considered serious enough to warrant an operational response.”

These figures include all identified intrusions. The prime minister fingered a “sophisticated state actor” for the activity discussed today.

Cyber power states capable of adopting “sophisticated” measures might include the United States, Israel, Russia, perhaps Iran and North Korea. Suspicion currently falls on China.

Advanced persistent threats

Cyber threat actors with such abilities are often identified by a set of handles called Advanced Persistent Threat or APTs.

An APT is a group with a style. They are identifiable by the type of malware (malicious software) they like to deploy, their methods and even their working hours.

For example APT28 is associated with Russian measures to interfere with the 2016 US election

Some APTs have even been publicly traced by cyber security companies to specific buildings in China.

APT1 or Unit 61398 may be linked to the intrusions against the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and possibly the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Unit 61398​has been traced to a non-descript office building in Shanghai.

The advance in APT refers to the “sophistication” mentioned by the PM.

Read more: How we trace the hackers behind a cyber attack

New scanning tool released

The ACSC today publicly released a “scanning tool, configured to search for known malicious web shells that we have encountered in this investigation.”

The release supports this being called a state sponsored intrusion. A web shell is an exploitation vector often used by APTs which enables an intruder to execute wider network compromise. A web shell is uploaded to a web server remotely, and then an adversary can leverage other techniques like privileges and issue commands. A webshell is a form of a malware.

One well-known shell called “China Chopper” is delivered by a small web application, and then is able to “brute force” password guessing against the authentication portal.

If such malware was used in this incident, this explains why politicians and those working at Australian Parliament House were asked to change their passwords following the latest incident.

Journalism and social media surrounding incidents such as these pivot on speculation of how it could be a adversary state, and who that might be.

Malware and its deployment is close to a signature of an APT and requires teams to deliver and subsequently monitor. That the ACSC has released such a specific scanning tool is a clue why they and the prime minister can make such claims.

An intrusion of Australian Parliament House is symbolically powerful, but whether any actual data was taken at an unclassified level might not be of great intelligence import.

The prime minister’s announcement today suggests Australian political parties have been exposed.

How elections are hacked

In 2018 I detailed how there are a few options for an adversary seeking to “hack” an election.

Read more: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: Australia should stay away from electronic voting

The first is to “go loud” and undermine the public’s belief in the players, the process, or the outcome itself. This might involve stealing information from a major party, for example, and then anonymously leaking it.

Or it might mean attacking and changing the data held by the Australian Electoral Commission or the electoral rolls each party holds. This would force the agency to publicly admit a concern, which in turn would undermine confidence in the system.

This is likely why today the prime minister said in his statement:

I have instructed the Australian Cyber Security Centre to be ready to provide any political party or electoral body in Australia with immediate support, including making their technical experts available.

They have already briefed the Electoral Commissions and those responsible for cyber security for all states and territories.

They have also worked with global anti-virus companies to ensure Australia’s friends and allies have the capacity to detect this malicious activity.

Vulnerability of political parties

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s response alluded to what might be another concern of our security and electoral agencies. He said:

…our party political structures perhaps are more vulnerable. Political parties are small organisations with only a few full-time staff, they collect, store and use large amounts of information about voters and communities.

I have previously suggested the real risk to any election is the manipulation of social media, and a more successful and secretive campaign to alter the outcome of the Australian election might focus on a minor party.

An adversary could steal the membership and donor database and electoral roll of a party with poor security, locate the social media accounts of those people, and then slowly use social media manipulations to influence an active, vocal group of voters.

Shades of grey

This is unlikely to have been the first attempt by a “sophisticated state actor” to target networks of Australian political parties. It’s best not to consider such intrusions as if they “did or didn’t work.”

There are shades of grey.

Adversaries clearly penetrated a key network and then leveraged access into others. But the duration of such a presence or whether they are even still in a network is challenging to ascertain. Equally, the government has not suggested data has been removed.

Recognition but no data theft may be a result of improved security awareness at parliament house and in party networks. The government and its administration have been taking action.

The Department of Parliamentary Services – that supplies ICT to parliament house – has improved security in “network design changes to harden the internal ICT network against cyber attack”.

This month a Joint Committee opened a new inquiry into government resilience following a report from the National Audit Office last year which found “relatively low levels of effectiveness of Commonwealth entities in managing cyber risks”.

Government response is what’s new

As the ASD and my own observation has noted, this is likely not the first intrusion of this kind – it may be an APT with more “sophisticated” malware than previous attempts. But the response and fall out from the government is certainly new.

What is increasingly clear is that attribution has become more possible, and especially within alliance structures in the Five Eyes intelligence network – Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States – more common.

Sometimes in cyber security it’s challenging to tell the difference between the noise and signal. The persistent presence of Russian sponsored trolls in Australian online politics, the blurring of digital borders with China and cyber enabled threats to our democratic infrastructure: these are not new.

Australia is not immune to the new immersive information war. Digital border protection might yet become an issue in the 2019 election. In addition to raising concerns our politicians and cyber security agencies will need to develop a strong and clear strategic communication approach to both the Australian public and our adversaries as these incidents escalate.

– ref. A state actor has targeted Australian political parties – but that shouldn’t surprise us – http://theconversation.com/a-state-actor-has-targeted-australian-political-parties-but-that-shouldnt-surprise-us-111997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia

Many parts of Australia have suffered a run of severe and, in some cases, unprecedented weather events this summer. One common feature of many of these events – including the Tasmanian heatwave and the devastating Townsville floods – was that they were caused by weather systems that parked themselves in one place for days or weeks on end.

It all began with a blocking high – so-called because it blocks the progress of other nearby weather systems – in the Tasman Sea throughout January and early February.

This system prevented rain-bearing cold fronts from moving across Tasmania, and led to prolonged hot dry northwesterly winds, below-average rainfall and scorching temperatures.

Read more: Dry lightning has set Tasmania ablaze, and climate change makes it more likely to happen again

Meanwhile, to the north, an intense monsoon low sat stationary over northwest Queensland for 10 days. It was fed on its northeastern flank by extremely saturated northwesterly winds from Indonesia, which converged over the greater northeast Queensland area with strong moist trade winds from the Coral Sea, forming a “convergence zone”.

Ironically, these trade winds originated from the northern flank of the blocking high in the Tasman, deluging Queensland while leaving the island state parched.

Unusually prolonged

Convergence zones along the monsoon trough are not uncommon during the wet season, from December to March. But it is extremely rare for a stationary convergence zone to persist for more than a week.

Could this pattern conceivably be linked to global climate change? Are we witnessing a slowing of our weather systems as well as more extreme weather?

There does seem to be a plausible link between human-induced warming, slowing of jet streams, blocking highs, and extreme weather around the world. The recent Tasman Sea blocking high can be added to that list, along with other blocking highs that caused unprecedented wildfires in California and an extreme heatwave in Europe last year.

There is also a trend for the slowing of the forward speed (as opposed to wind speed) of tropical cyclones around the world. One recent study showed the average forward speeds of tropical cyclones fell by 10% worldwide between 1949 and 2016. Meanwhile, over the same period, the forward speed of tropical cyclones dropped by 22% over land in the Australian region.

Climate change is expected to weaken the world’s circulatory winds due to greater warming in high latitudes compared with the tropics, causing a slowing of the speed at which tropical cyclones move forward.

Obviously, if tropical cyclones are moving more slowly, this can leave particular regions bearing the brunt of the rainfall. In 2017, Houston and surrounding parts of Texas received unprecedented rainfall associated with the “stalling” of Hurricane Harvey.

Townsville’s floods echoed this pattern. Near the centre of the deep monsoon low, highly saturated warm air was forced to rise due to colliding winds, delivering more than a year’s worth of rainfall to parts of northwest Queensland in just a week.

The widespread rain has caused significant rises in many of the rivers that feed into the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, and some runoff has made it into the Channel Country and will eventually reach Lake Eyre in South Australia. Unfortunately, little runoff has found its way into the upper reaches of the Darling River system.

Satellite images before (right) and after (left) the floods in northwest Queensland. Courtesy of Japan Meteorological Agency, Author provided

Huge impacts

The social, economic and environmental impacts of Australia’s recent slow-moving weather disasters have been huge. Catastrophic fires invaded ancient temperate rainforests in Tasmania, while Townsville’s unprecedented flooding has caused damage worth more than A$600 million and delivered a A$1 billion hit to cattle farmers in surrounding areas.

Townsville’s Ross River, which flows through suburbs downstream from the Ross River Dam, has reached a 1-in-500-year flood level. Some tributaries of the dam witnessed phenomenal amounts of runoff, reliably considered as a 1-in-2,000-year event

Up to half a million cattle are estimated to have died across the area, a consequence of their poor condition after years of drought, combined with prolonged exposure to water and wind during the rain event.

Read more: Queensland’s floods are so huge the only way to track them is from space

Farther afield, both Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island – located under the clear skies associated with the blocking high – have recorded exceptionally low rainfall so far this year, worsening the drought conditions caused by a very dry 2018. These normally lush subtropical islands in the Tasman Sea are struggling to find enough water to supply their residents’ and tourists’ demands.

Many parts of Australia have tolerated widespread extreme weather events this year, including some records. This follows a warm and generally dry 2018. In fact, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record in Australia have occurred since 2005, with only 1998 remaining from last century with reliable records extending back to 1910. Steady warming of our atmosphere and oceans is directly linked to more extreme weather events in Australia and globally.

If those extreme weather events travel more slowly across the landscape, their effects on individual regions could be more devastating still.

– ref. How climate change can make catastrophic weather systems linger for longer – http://theconversation.com/how-climate-change-can-make-catastrophic-weather-systems-linger-for-longer-111832

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

“A sophisticated state actor” has hacked the networks of the major political parties, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has told Parliament.

Recently the Parliament House network was disrupted, and the intrusion into the parties’ networks was discovered when this was being dealt with.

While the government has not identified the “state actor”, the Chinese are being blamed.

Morrison gave the reassurance that “there is no evidence of any electoral interference. We have put in place a number of measures to ensure the integrity of our electoral system”.

In his statement to the House Morrison said: “The Australian Cyber Security Centre recently identified a malicious intrusion into the Australian Parliament House computer network.

“During the course of this work, we also became aware that the networks of some political parties – Liberal, Labor and the Nationals – have also been affected.

“Our security agencies have detected this activity and acted decisively to confront it. They are securing these systems and protecting users”.

The Centre would provide any party or electoral body with technical help to deal with hacking, Morrison said.

“They have already briefed the Electoral Commissions and those responsible for cyber security for all states and territories. They have also worked with global anti-virus companies to ensure Australia’s friends and allies have the capacity to detect this malicious activity,” he said.

“The methods used by malicious actors are constantly evolving and this incident reinforces yet again the importance of cyber security as a fundamental part of everyone’s business.

“Public confidence in the integrity of our democratic processes is an essential element of Australian sovereignty and governance,” he said.

“Our political system and our democracy remains strong, vibrant and is protected. We stand united in the protection of our values and our sovereignty”.

Bill Shorten said party political structures were perhaps more vulnerable than government institutions – and progressive parties particularly so.

“We have seen overseas that it is progressive parties that are more likely to be targeted by ultra-right wing organisations.

“Political parties are small organisations with only a few full-time staff, they collect, store and use large amounts of information about voters and communities. These institutions can be a soft target and our national approach to cyber security needs to pay more attention to non-government organisations,” Shorten said.

– ref. ‘State actor’ makes cyber attack on Australian political parties – http://theconversation.com/state-actor-makes-cyber-attack-on-australian-political-parties-111993

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Neale, Career Development Fellow (Lecturer), University of Wollongong

The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend we eat 30g of nuts – a small handful – each day. But many of us know nuts are high in calories and fat.

So should we be eating nuts or will they make us gain weight?

In short, the answer is yes, we should eat them, and no, they won’t make us gain weight if eaten in moderate amounts. The fats in nuts are mostly the “good” fats. And aside from that, our bodies don’t actually absorb all the fat found in nuts. But we do absorb the nutrients they provide.

Read more: Five food mistakes to avoid if you’re trying to lose weight

Dietary fat: friend or foe?

Nuts do contain fat, and the amount of fat varies between nut types. For example, a 30g serving of raw cashews or pistachios contains around 15g of fat, whereas the same amount of raw macadamias contains around 22g of fat.

There are different kinds of fats in our diet and some are better for us than others. Nuts contain mainly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These types of fats are known as “good fats”. They can help lower cholesterol when we eat them in place of saturated fats.

The type of fats present varies between nuts. For example, walnuts are rich in polyunsaturated fats, whereas other types of nuts such as hazelnuts and macadamias have more monounsaturated fat.

What the evidence says

Even if the type of fat in nuts is good for us, they are still high in fat and calories. But this doesn’t mean we should be avoiding them to manage our weight.

Studies that looked at people’s eating habits and body weight over a long period have found people who regularly eat nuts tend to gain less weight over time than people who don’t.

Nuts are a healthier option for a snack than many processed alternatives. From shutterstock.com

We see a similar pattern in clinical studies that asked people to include nuts in their diets and then looked at the effects on body weight.

A review of more than 30 studies examined the effects of eating nuts on body weight. It did not find people who ate nuts had increased their body weight, body mass index (BMI), or waist circumference, compared to a control group of people who did not eat nuts.

In fact, one study found that when people ate a pattern of food aimed at weight loss, the group of people who ate nuts lost more body fat than those who didn’t eat nuts.

Read more: Got high cholesterol? Here are five foods to eat and avoid

Let’s nut this out

There are several possible explanations for why eating nuts doesn’t seem to lead to weight gain.

1. We don’t absorb all of the fat in nuts: The fat in nuts is stored in the nut’s cell walls, which don’t easily break down during digestion. As a result, when we eat nuts, we don’t absorb all of the fat. Some of the fat instead is passed out in our faeces. The amount of calories we absorb from eating nuts might be between 5% and 30% less that what we had previously thought.

2. Nuts increase the amount of calories we burn: Not only do we not absorb all the calories in nuts, but eating nuts may also increase the amount of energy and fat we burn. It’s thought this may partially be explained by the protein and unsaturated fats in nuts, although we don’t yet know exactly how this occurs. Increases in the number of calories burnt can help us maintain or lose weight.

3. Nuts help us feel full for longer: As well as fat, nuts are rich in protein and fibre. So, nuts help to keep us feeling full after we eat them, meaning we’re likely to eat less at later meals. Recent studies have also suggested providing people with nuts helps improve the overall quality of the types of foods they eat. This may be because nuts replace “junk foods” as snacks.

4. People who eat nuts have healthier lifestyles in general: We can’t rule out the idea that eating nuts is just a sign of a healthier lifestyle. However, randomised controlled trials, which can control for lifestyle factors like eating habits, still find no negative effect on body weight when people eat nuts. This means the favourable effects of nuts are not just the result of nut eaters having healthier lifestyles – the nuts themselves play a role.

Read more: Want to improve your mood? It’s time to ditch the junk food

Overall, the evidence suggests nuts are a healthy snack that can provide us with many of the nutrients our bodies need. We can confidently include the recommended 30g of nuts a day in a healthy diet, without worrying about the effect they will have on our waistlines.

– ref. Health check: will eating nuts make you gain weight? – http://theconversation.com/health-check-will-eating-nuts-make-you-gain-weight-108491

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Harvey-Smith, Professor and Australian Government’s Women in STEM Ambassador, UNSW

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

What makes a shooting star fall? – Katelyn, age 7, Adelaide.

Hi Katelyn,

Thanks for asking your fantastic question.

I’ll bet you’ve looked up at the night sky and seen lots of stars. They are beautiful aren’t they? Each star is a huge glowing ball of gas, just like the Sun. Stars look much smaller and fainter than our Sun because they are very far away.

Despite their name, shooting stars are not stars at all. They are tiny space adventurers who accidentally wander into our sky and get sucked toward us by the Earth’s gravity.

Let’s look at the journey of one of these adventurers. I’ll call her Gemma.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do stars twinkle?

Once upon a time there was a tiny speck of dust — space dust — called Gemma. For many years she had spent her time wandering carefree through space and dancing around the planets and the stars.

One day, Gemma noticed a light in the distance. “What’s that?”, she wondered to herself. As she got closer, she saw a beautiful vision of a blue planet, hanging in space like a marble, covered with swirling colours of blue and white. “Wow! That’s the planet Earth,” she said to herself. “Just like I have read about in my books!” (In this story, specks of space dust read books just like you and me).

Gemma, is that you? Ralph Arvesen/Flickr, CC BY

After spending so long floating through the darkness of space, Gemma felt a strange attraction towards this beautiful new distraction.

It wasn’t just the fascination of Earth. It felt like an invisible force was bringing her slowly closer and closer to this bright globe of light.

The pull of gravity

As Gemma flew closer, she realised that she was being pulled towards the Earth by the force of gravity. “I’ve read about this in my books,” she thought, remembering that gravity is the same force that keeps humans standing on the Earth instead of floating away. The bigger the planet, the stronger its gravity.

As she neared the planet, Gemma could now see the outline of the oceans and the clouds and the sun glinting off the sparkling water.

Suddenly, she noticed the blackness of space was turning into a beautiful blue sky. She had entered the atmosphere of Earth! She had read that the atmosphere was a thick blanket of air, more than 100 kilometres thick that wraps around the surface of our planet and allows all the animals and people to breathe.

As she encountered the air, Gemma felt the chill of deep space subside. She started to feel as warm as a summer’s day. As she jostled and bounced through the air like an aeroplane, she started to glow with an energy and light that she had not felt before. “This must be friction, making me warm — just like the friction when I rub my hands together!” she thought to herself. A lot of friction can make things glow, and Gemma started to glow brighter and brighter.

As her speed increased, Gemma felt like she was on a roller coaster. “Wheeeeeeee!!” she called out with excitement, as she rocketed towards the blue planet, shining like a beautiful, bright star.

All the children on Earth looked up and were very excited to see Gemma, the shooting star from outer space, racing down to join them on Earth. She was just as excited to see them, and to have new friends on this beautiful planet Earth.

Next time you see a shooting star, say hello to Gemma!

Read more: Curious Kids: what’s it like to be a fighter pilot?

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: what makes a shooting star fall? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-makes-a-shooting-star-fall-111068

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

An Ipsos poll conducted for Nine newspapers – previously Fairfax papers – gave Labor just a 51-49 lead, a three-point gain for the Coalition since the last Ipsos poll in mid-December. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up two), 33% Labor (down four), 13% Greens (steady) and 16% for all Others (up two). The poll was conducted February 12-15 from a sample of 1,200.

This is the narrowest lead for Labor in any national poll since Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull. The movement towards the Coalition will be attributed to Labor’s support for the Medevac bill, which saw the Coalition defeated in the House of Representatives on February 12.

Ipsos has a reputation for being volatile, and it always has the Greens too high. Both the volatility and the high Greens vote may be explained by Ipsos being the only live phone pollster in Australia – Newspoll, Essential and ReachTEL use either robopolling, online methods or a combination.

49% approved of Morrison’s performance (up two), and 40% disapproved (up one), for a net approval of +9. Bill Shorten’s net approval was down three points to -12. Morrison led Shorten by 48-38 as better PM (46-37 in December). Ipsos gives incumbent PMs far better ratings than Newspoll.

Labor’s Chris Bowen was preferred as Treasurer over incumbent Josh Frydenberg by a narrow 31-30 margin – a strong result for Bowen on an issue that is usually perceived to favour the Coalition. Voters trusted Labor by a 49-34 margin over the Liberals to respond to the banking royal commission. Labor’s proposal to abolish franking credit cash refunds was opposed by 43-40; last week’s Newspoll had opposition at 44-35.

Read more: Poll wrap: Labor maintains Newspoll lead but Morrison’s ratings up, and Abbott behind in Warringah

While the Medevac bill could have assisted the Coalition, a Queensland YouGov Galaxy poll, conducted February 13-14 – at about the same time as Ipsos – gave federal Labor a 52-48 lead.

At the 2016 election, the Coalition’s Queensland two party vote was 3.7% higher than its national vote, and in 2013 the difference was 3.5%. Even in 2007, when Queenslander Kevin Rudd was very popular, the Coalition still performed 2.3% better in Queensland than nationally.

If the Queensland Galaxy result is correct, Labor is very likely ahead nationally by at least 55-45, in contrast to Ipsos. YouGov Galaxy is the pollster that conducts Newspoll.

While the Queensland Galaxy suggests that Ipsos is an outlier, we cannot know until we get more polls. Next Sunday night’s Newspoll release will be keenly anticipated.

Queensland Galaxy: 52-48 to federal Labor

A Queensland Galaxy poll for The Courier Mail, conducted February 13-14 from a sample of 810, gave federal Labor a 52-48 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since November. Primary votes were 35% LNP (down three), 34% Labor (steady), 10% Greens (up one), 8% One Nation (down one) and 5% for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (up four).

The Coalition holds eight Queensland seats by margins of 4% or less. This poll implies a 6% swing to Labor in Queensland since the 2016 election.

The Coalition led Labor by 44-29 on best plan for border security and asylum seekers. This question did not ask about the medevac bill. It is a general question on an issue where the Coalition is perceived to have an advantage.

In the state politics part of this poll, primary votes were 35% Labor (down one since November), 35% LNP (up one), 11% Greens (steady), 8% One Nation (down two) and 4% Katter’s Australian Party (steady). No two party estimate was given, but Labor was ahead by 52-48 or 53-47.

48% approved of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s performance (steady) and 38% disapproved (up one), for a net approval of +10. Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington’s net approval fell ten points to -4. Palasczuk had a 47-27 lead as better Premier (43-26 in November).

At the November 2017 Queensland election, One Nation contested 61 of the 93 seats and won 13.7% of the statewide vote – their vote would probably have been about 18% had they contested every seat.

Read more: Labor wins a majority in Queensland as polling in Victoria shows a tie

In both the state and federal polls, One Nation is down to 8% in Queensland. I believe One Nation has been identified as a right-wing party, not a populist party. Under Turnbull, there was space to the Coalition’s right, but with Morrison that space has been reduced.

National Essential: 55-45 to Labor

Last week’s national Essential poll, conducted February 6-11 from a sample of 1,067, gave Labor a 55-45 lead, a three-point gain for Labor since Essential’s late January poll. Primary votes were 38% Labor (up two), 34% Coalition (down four), 10% Greens (steady), 7% One Nation (steady) and 11% for all Others (up two). This poll was taken before the medevac bill passed the House.

28% thought the banking royal commission would lead to significant changes in the way banks operate, 47% thought it would lead to minor changes and 25% no real difference.

Showing disillusion with both sides of politics, 27% trusted Labor to implement the royal commission’s recommendations, 23% the Liberals and 35% thought there was no difference, with another 15% undecided.

By 59-11, voters agreed that Morrison should not end parliament before it deals with the royal commission’s recommendations. By 55-15, they agreed that the banks have more power than politicians, and will find a way to block meaningful reform.

Newspoll economy questions

In additional questions from last week’s Newspoll, Morrison led Shorten by 48-33 on more capable of handling the economy (50-32 in October). In general, incumbents benefit from this type of question, and the economy is perceived as a strength for the Coalition. The 15-point gap is narrower than any Turnbull lead over Shorten on this question in the six times it was polled while Turnbull was PM.

33% thought the government should prioritise increased funding of government services, 30% paying down government debt and 27% cuts to personal income tax.

The Westpac February consumer confidence rebounded to 103.8, up from 99.6 in January – the first month since late 2017 the index had fallen below 100. While Australian economic data for December has been weak, stocks have continued to rise.

NSW Essential: 51-49 to Labor

The New South Wales election will be held on March 23. An Essential poll, conducted February 6-11 from a small sample of 544, gave Labor a 51-49 lead. Primary votes were 39% Coalition, 36% Labor, 9% Greens and 8% One Nation. Premier Gladys Berejiklian had a 35% positive rating, 25% negative. Opposition Leader Michael Daley had a 27% positive rating, 20% negative.

– ref. Poll wrap: Labor’s lead narrows to just 51-49 in Ipsos, but is it an outlier? – http://theconversation.com/poll-wrap-labors-lead-narrows-to-just-51-49-in-ipsos-but-is-it-an-outlier-111980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathalie Collins, Academic Director (National Programs), Edith Cowan University

Of all the fictional virtual assistants we know from pop culture, few stand up to the original and perhaps most famous: the HAL 9000 from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

We should probably be thankful for that. After all, Alexa may shut your lights off, but she won’t turn against you and wreak havoc on your life. Or will she?

Amazon Alexa, Samsung Bixby, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, IBM Watson and other virtual assistants are advertised as a cross between your friend, your servant, your helpful companion and sidekick.

HAL presents us something more sinister, but perhaps more realistic. While tech companies push virtual assistants as integral to a better, easier life, 2001: A Space Odyssey asks: at what cost?

The film illustrates the technological ecosystem companies are really competing to own – one where we trade in our privacy for small conveniences.

Read more: Do I want an always-on digital assistant listening in all the time?

‘I want to help you’ – HAL

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL is introduced to the crew of a spaceship as one of them. But with cognitive capabilities well beyond those of his human companions, HAL is omnipresent – and embedded in the technology keeping the crew alive.

The crew trust HAL, eschewing privacy for the sake of his aid in controlling the whole ship. It doesn’t occur to them that the people who designed HAL might not have had the crew’s best interests at heart. Or that HAL’s loyalty is to Mission Control and, beyond that, his programming.

Likewise, although it is clear that the function of modern virtual assistants are driven by profit, it isn’t obvious to the average consumer exactly how their presence is being monetised. Consumers may be more educated about their online privacy these days, yet the consequences of the virtual world intruding into the physical hasn’t properly permeated public consciousness.

Allowing a machine to record you 24/7 in exchange for convenience is a high price to pay. It might not seem that way because virtual assistants wear the halo of trust earned by the other services they are known for – Google’s search is unparalleled and Amazon’s retail experience leads the global marketplace.

Like HAL, these machines process incredible amounts of data. So much so, that even their creators are not quite sure of their capabilities, or how they will reach their goal. The commercial benefit of virtual assistants lies in their ability to predict your behaviour through what they capture, and create opportunities for transactions. Mining big data for predictive analytics is all the rage in the business world.

So, while companies are marketing virtual assistants as your “assistant”, they are in fact your “analyst”.

Read more: There’s a reason Siri, Alexa and AI are imagined as female – sexism

‘I could see your lips move’ – HAL

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the crew clearly never read the HAL “Quick Start Guide”. They didn’t know he could lie, and they were also unaware he could read lips. When the crew steps out of the ship to have a moment of privacy, HAL’s cameras could still see them and got the gist of their not-so-private conversation. Then push came to shove… and well, eventually the crew ended up getting the shove.

An unintended consequence of having a virtual assistant at our beck and call is that it is always listening, and it may also be recording. No surprise, that’s exactly what Amazon’s been doing. If companies are recording you in your home, slip ups like sending recordings to the wrong person, unintentionally releasing information, or accidentally allowing someone to listen in are inevitable.

Oh, and if you believe you are protected by the terms and conditions, you are likely mistaken. But that’s OK – like the 2001: A Space Odyssey crew, you probably don’t understand or read them anyway.

Read more: ‘Alexa, call my lawyer!’ Are you legally liable if someone makes a purchase using your virtual assistant?

‘I am afraid I can’t do that, Dave’ – HAL

Kubrick used 2001 to illustrate technological, physical and psychological enslavement. HAL first controls the physical environment and then attempts to exert his control over the psychological one. If we re-imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey with HAL as the hero, then he’s quite right to kill the crew. After all, these pesky humans are unpredictable because they’re likely to let their emotions mess up the mission.

If we re-imagine our lives with Google as the hero, well then we are the “assistant”, helping Google get the data it needs to better monitor and predict your behaviour – for shareholders.

Luckily, humanity still has time to adjust before the machines fully take over our lives on behalf of tech companies. As long as people still have their parrots ordering food from Amazon it will be clear to the public that trusting that machine may not be such a good idea.

Still, artificial intelligence improves at a rapid pace. Eventually we will have to decide if want consumer privacy to triumph, and blow the constant monitoring out of an airlock.

– ref. Just like HAL, your voice assistant isn’t working for you even if it feels like it is – http://theconversation.com/just-like-hal-your-voice-assistant-isnt-working-for-you-even-if-it-feels-like-it-is-111177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

Over the past weeks, the US government has been in peace negotiations with the Taliban. It has been 17 years since US and allied troops first deployed to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and support a democratically elected government.

The current peace negotiations have progressed further than any other attempted during the conflict. But they have two serious problems. Firstly, they have have not included the democratically elected government of Afghanistan, led by President Ashraf Ghani. Secondly, they have failed to include a single woman.

The situation so far

Peace negotiations can take many forms. At their most basic, they cover ceasefires and division of territory. But they often go further to address underlying causes of conflict and pave the way for durable solutions. They include extensive informal discussions before any formal agreement is signed.

In 1996, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. It banned women from attending school and denied them their most basic rights. The Taliban provided safe haven for those responsible for the attacks against the US on September 11, 2001.

The US is keen to withdraw its remaining troops. But they want to secure a commitment from the Taliban that Afghanistan will not be home to terrorist groups planning attacks against the United States.

The most recent reports show the Afghan government controls 56% of Afghan districts, or 65% of the population. The Taliban controls 15% of the districts, with 29% remaining contested.

Peace negotiations are often fraught with tension about who is allowed at the table. So far, the Taliban has refused to allow the government of Afghanistan to participate in the current negotiations. The chief US negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been briefing the Afghan government on the progress of negotiations taking place in various Gulf States.

Read more: Afghanistan: the tensions inside the Taliban over recent US peace talks

Khalilzad is under pressure from US President Donald Trump to move the negotiations forward. But excluding the government is problematic. It could indicate the likely failure of negotiations, end up making the government look even weaker than it is and/or pave the way for a return to deeply conservative religious rule for Afghanistan.

It is often tempting for power brokers to prioritise the participation of armed groups in peace negotiations. But it’s important to ensure broader participation of civil society.

Research examining every peace agreement since the Cold War shows the participation of civil society makes a peace agreement 64% less likely to fail. The key reason is the peace process is perceived as more legitimate if civil society is included. But including civil society also ensures the concerns of the broader community are accounted for and that those who carried arms do not receive positive reinforcement by monopolising the benefits negotiated in the agreement.

What about the women?

Afghan women are angry about being excluded from the peace negotiations. The country’s leading women’s rights group, the Afghan Women’s Network, released a statement calling for “the full, equal and meaningful participation of women” in the negotiations.

Life for women in Afghanistan remains hard. The latest Reuters Poll said Afghanistan was the second most dangerous country to be a woman, down from the most dangerous five years earlier. The country still makes the top of the list for violence against women, discrimination, and lack of access to health care.

But significant progress has been made in the past 17 years. Data from the UN Development Program show gender inequality dropped by ten percentage points between 2005 and 2017.

Women have strengthened their political, economic and social presence through efforts to advance their status and respect for their rights. Girls have been able to go to school. Women have become members of parliament, governors and police.

Read more: Trump and Turnbull have little cause for satisfaction over progress in Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution includes a hard won provision that enshrines the equality of men and women. But the Taliban is calling for a new constitution and it is highly unlikely if this was agreed, such a provision would survive.

Research drawing on extensive quantitative and qualitative data has shown that the way a country treats its women is the best indicator of its peacefulness. This is a better indicator than wealth, ethnic and religious identity or democracy.

We also know that women’s participation in peace processes makes for a more effective outcome. A peace processes is 35% more likley to last at least 15 years if women are at the negotiating table, have observer status, or participate in consultations, inclusive commissions or problem-solving workshops.

Women can negotiate with the Taliban

Even so, men and people from the international community often believe the struggles faced by Afghan women mean they are not in a position to negotiate with the patriarchal Taliban.

But Afghan women like Palwasha Hassan have been working for years to pursue peace with the Taliban. Hassan sits on the country’s High Peace Council and has seen how women across the country have already negotiated with local Taliban leaders. She says “the international community is failing to value what we have achieved together and the progress we have made so far.”

She conducted a workshop in 2010 with women across local communities. Stories included one woman who had negotiated to keep a local girls’ school open by arguing that educated girls could do better in Islamic studies, including learning to read the Quran. She also guaranteed to her Taliban interlocutors that a prayer space in the school would be reserved strictly for women and girls only.

Another woman explained how she and others negotiated the release of hostages being held by the local Taliban commander. She appealed to Islamic values of life and justice, and persuaded the captors that the hostage was being held unjustly.

International agreements

The importance of women’s participation in international peace and security was codified by UN Security Council resolution 1325 nearly 20 years ago.

Read more: As Australia takes the world stage, it’s time to fulfil promises to Afghan and Syrian women

Seventy-nine countries, including Afghanistan, have National Action Plans to guide the resolution’s implementation and the subsequent seven Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace and Security.

In October 2017, the US became the first country in the world to pass a Women, Peace and Security Act, signed off by President Trump himself. It was passed explicitly to

ensure that the United States promotes the meaningful participation of women in mediation and negotiation processes seeking to prevent, mitigate, or resolve violent conflict” across the world.

Democratic Senators have urged the Trump administration to ensure Afghan women’s involvement in the peace negotiations. But so far no one has invoked the new law.

There are few who wouldn’t hope for peace for Afghanistan, but as Palwasha Hassan says, the negotiations “have to include women, both to protect our rights and also to ensure the durability of the peace that follows.”

– ref. A peace agreement in Afghanistan won’t last if there are no women at the table – http://theconversation.com/a-peace-agreement-in-afghanistan-wont-last-if-there-are-no-women-at-the-table-111820

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Hughes, Senior Research Fellow – Criminologist and Drug Policy Researcher, UNSW

In the early 2000s New South Wales became the first Australian state to introduce drug detection dogs for policing, with the aim of “targeting drug supply” and “attacking the root causes of drugs” in society. It gave police powers to use specially trained dogs to sniff for drugs in designated public places without the use of a warrant.

Drug dog policies have since expanded across all states of Australia and many other parts of the globe.

But our new research shows it’s an ineffective tool for targeting drug supply because it catches low-level users rather than suppliers. We also show this is an inevitable byproduct of where drug dogs are deployed: public settings such as licensed premises and festivals.

After almost 20 years of such policies, it’s time for reform.

Read more: Why drug-detection dogs are sniffing up the wrong tree

The wrong targets

In 2006 the NSW Ombudsman released a comprehensive review of the dogs, finding evidence of a high “false positive” rate. In 74% of occasions when a dog indicated they smelled a prohibited substance, no drugs were found.

The review also found dogs predominantly targeted young male drug users and not suppliers.

This led the Ombudsman to conclude the dogs were an “ineffective tool”. The Ombudsman also questioned whether the additional powers to use drug dogs should be retained.

But since then, these powers have expanded, including across the entire Kings Cross entertainment precinct and all Sydney public transport lines. Concern about their use continues to grow.

Drug dogs are now used at Sydney train stations. NSW Police/AAP

Nothing has changed

Our new research provides the most comprehensive analysis of the use of drug detection dogs since the NSW Ombudsman review more than a decade ago. We used data on all recorded criminal incidents and persons of interest involving drug detection dogs that led to a formal police response from June 2008 to June 2018.

We found little has changed in the police use of drug detection dogs.

The main group detected by the dogs were young males detected for use or possession offences (86.4% of incidents). Supply offences were only detected in 4.8% of incidents. Use or possession detections were 18 times more likely than those for supply.

Most of the young people who were detected had only small quantities of cannabis or ecstasy. These are the least harmful of all illicit drugs.

Read more: Three Charts on who uses illicit drugs in Australia

Target dealers, not users

We also looked at when and where drug detection dog encounters occurred, and whether circumstances for detection of suppliers differed. Our findings showed they did.

Consumer offences (use or possession) were most detected on weekends and in licensed premises, on public transport or in public places. In contrast, supply offences were most detected midweek in residential premises.

But only 10.9% of all deployments were at residential settings (compared with 83.3% at public settings).

Our research provides the first evidence that if dogs were deployed differently – less at recreational settings and more at residential premises with the use of a warrant – they could be more effective at detecting drug suppliers.

When police dogs are deployed at residential premises, suppliers are detected in 52.5% incidents. In contrast, suppliers are only detected in 5.9% and 13.4% of incidents when dogs are deployed on public transport or at licensed premises, respectively.

Read more: Our drugs policies have failed. It’s time to reinvent them based on what actually works

The current deployment strategy will not be able to detect drug suppliers and will disproportionately target drug users and young people. This raises both civil liberty concerns about the use of public searches and concerns for the safety of people who use drugs in recreational and public settings.

Time for policy reform

Research has suggested the presence of drug detection dogs at festivals and other public places seldom deters drug-taking. But it often leads to more risky drug behaviour from people who use drugs, such as purchasing drugs inside rather than outside festivals, switching to less detectable but more harmful drugs, and hurried consumption of drugs upon sight of dogs.

The deployment of drug detection dogs at festivals raises particular concerns in light of five recent deaths at festivals in Sydney, and the broader debates about how to improve festival safety.

The use of drug dogs rarely deters people from taking drugs at festivals and public events. Shutterstock

Our new study adds to existing research and continued opposition by various groups, including NSW Greens MP David David Shoebridge and drug harm reduction group Unharm. It suggests that a change in the deployment of drug dogs is possible and could lead to the detection of drug suppliers, not drug users.

Policy reform could reduce some of the unintended consequences of the current policies governing drug detection dogs, such as the risks to public health, and ensure a better use of scarce drug policy resources.

– ref. It’s time to change our drug dog policies to catch dealers, not low-level users at public events – http://theconversation.com/its-time-to-change-our-drug-dog-policies-to-catch-dealers-not-low-level-users-at-public-events-111710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lizzy Lowe, Postdoctoral researcher, Macquarie University

Insects are important wildlife often overlooked in urban habitats. What we do notice are the cockroaches, ants and mosquitoes in and around our homes. All too often we reach for the insect spray.

But not all insects are pests – a wide variety of them help keep our cities healthy. They pollinate plants, feed other wildlife, recycle our rubbish, and eat other insect pests. Insects are vital to our well-being.

Unfortunately, like many other wild animals, insects are under threat. A recent study warned that 40% of the world’s insect species face the prospect of extinction, amid threats such as climate change, habitat loss, and humanity’s overenthusiastic use of synthetic chemicals.

Australians use large amounts of pesticides to tackle creepy crawlies in their homes and gardens. But our fondness for fly spray has potentially serious impacts on urban ecosystems and public health.

We need a more sustainable way to deal with urban insect pests. Our recently published article in the Journal of Pest Science outlines some of the ways to do it.

What’s wrong with pesticides anyway?

Since becoming publicly available in the 1950s, insect sprays have been a popular way to deal with cockroaches, flies, moths, and ants around the home and backyard, and are also widely used by local councils to keep pests at bay. But what may have been effective in the past won’t necessarily work in the future, or may have unintended consequences.

Many pests, such as mosquitoes, are now becoming resistant to commonly used products. In parts of the world affected by diseases such as dengue, this jeopardises our ability to control outbreaks.

Read more: Chemical or natural: what’s the best way to repel mozzies?

Another, perhaps wider, problem is that indiscriminate use of insecticides can kill more than just pests. Many species on which we rely for keeping our backyard gardens, bushland, wetlands and parks healthy can become collateral damage. This includes predatory species that can themselves help keep pests under control. As pest species often reproduce faster than their predators (a pattern that’s likely to be reinforced by climate change), we can get trapped in a cycle in which pest numbers bounce back higher than ever.

Many wasps are predatory and specialise in eating insects that can be pests around the home. Manu Saunders

Read more: Five reasons not to spray the bugs in your garden this summer

How do we do things differently?

Fortunately, there are alternatives to chemical pest control that don’t harm your household or the environment. For centuries, sustainable agriculture systems have used environmentally friendly approaches, and city-dwellers can take a leaf from their books.

Integrated pest management is one such sustainable approach. It focuses on prevention rather than treatment, and uses environmentally friendly options such as biological control (using predators to eat pests) to safeguard crops. Chemical insecticides are used only as a last resort.

There are many other farming practices that support sustainable pest control; these focus on behavioural change such as keeping areas clean, or simple physical controls such as fly mesh or netting around fruit trees.

Adopting these methods for urban pest control isn’t necessarily straightforward. There might be local regulations on particular pest control activities, or simply a lack of knowledge about urban pest ecology.

For urgent pest situations, it may be more expensive and time-consuming to set up a biological control program than to arrange the spraying of an insecticide. Insecticides take effect immediately, whereas biological control takes longer to have an effect. Prevention, the cornerstone of integrated pest management, requires careful planning before pests become a nuisance.

The goal of integrated pest management is not to eliminate insect pests entirely, but rather to reduce their numbers to the point at which they no longer cause a problem. By this logic, chemical insecticides should only be used if the economic damage caused by the pests outweighs the cost of the chemicals. If you hate the idea of a single cockroach living anywhere nearby, this might require you to adjust your mindset.

What can I do at home?

Don’t give pests opportunities. Be mindful of how we produce and dispose of waste. Flies and cockroaches thrive in our rubbish, but they can be effectively managed by ensuring that food waste is stored in insect-proof containers, recycled, or properly disposed of. Don’t leave buckets of water around the backyard, as this invites mosquitoes to breed.

Don’t open your door to pests. Seal cracks and crevices in the outside of your house, and ensure there are screens on your doors and windows.

Support the animals that control insect pests – they’ll do the hard work for you! In particular, don’t be so quick to kill spiders and wasps, because they prey on pests in your home and garden.

Spiders like this leaf curler will happily eat a range of pests, including ants, around your home. jim-mclean/flickr

Read more: The secret agents protecting our crops and gardens

What can we do as a community?

Urban communities can learn a lot from sustainable farming. First, there needs to be better education and support provided to the public and policy makers. Workshops run by local councils and information sessions with local gardening groups are a great way to start.

We can also work together to help debunk the popular myth that most insects are damaging or unwanted pests. Reaching for the fly spray might be easy, but remember you may end up killing friends as well as foes.

– ref. The battle against bugs: it’s time to end chemical warfare – http://theconversation.com/the-battle-against-bugs-its-time-to-end-chemical-warfare-111629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

I Need to Know is an ongoing series for teens in search of reliable, confidential advice about life’s tricky questions. If you’re a teen, send us your questions about sex, drugs, health and relationships, and we’ll ask an expert to answer it for you.

Hi! I only recently have gotten a boyfriend and have started having regular sex. After 2 or more days, it starts to get a bit sore down there. Is that normal? I just assumed it was pain from friction, but I don’t know if that’s right and I’ve never sought help because it’s a bit embarrassing!

Sandra, 17, in Sydney

Key points

• Sex should never hurt
• if it does, tell the person to stop
• get checked out by a GP or sexual health clinic to make sure it’s not something that needs to be treated – better safe than sorry.

Hi, and thanks for your question! You’re not alone in finding that sex isn’t always straightforward. By sex, I assume you mean intercourse. What I’m not sure about is where you mean by “down there”. In a woman’s body, down there is lots of places!

The Conversation, CC BY-ND

To start with, sex shouldn’t hurt, and if it does, a good tip is to say “stop”, no matter what! The aftermath of sex also shouldn’t hurt – whether it’s two minutes, two hours or two days later.

Even very vigorous intercourse where there’s lots of friction should not actually hurt. It can happen if there’s not enough natural (or artificial) lubrication or if there’s some muscle tension in the vagina. Both of these can be signs of not being fully aroused (turned on) beforehand or during sex, or being a bit anxious about having sex.

Read more: Female sexual dysfunction or not knowing how to ask for what feels good?

A new partner or relationship can bring some anxiety for each person. It can affect the way a woman’s body (or a man’s) gets aroused and how comfortable sex feels. Good communication with your partner about what feels good is really helpful.

If you have background worry about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) or pregnancy, that can definitely affect enjoyment of sex. Getting armed with knowledge and equipment to prevent any unwanted consequences of sex should be a routine part of getting into a relationship for both parties.

The cause of your pain also depends on where it is – is it at the opening of the vagina, or other parts of the vulva? Is it related to peeing, and is it always in the same place?

Inflammation (redness and soreness) can cause pain – this could be from inside the vagina such as with a thrush infection (which is not sexually transmitted) or from the skin in the vulva (which could be from dermatitis or a skin condition).

Some STIs cause pain in the genital area, for example herpes (caused by the cold sore virus), but you would be likely to notice the sores as well. A common STI such as chlamydia often has no symptoms, but could cause pain higher up in the pelvic area or when you wee. A condition known as vulvodynia causes chronic pain, not just from having sex – it can also be triggered by the conditions mentioned above.

Read more: Health Check: what controls our sex drive? When and why do we feel like sex?

You deserve to be enjoying a happy and healthy sex life, and not feeling embarrassed about one of the most natural experiences in the world – even if it’s not always going right. It’s important you do get personal advice, since this could be something that needs treatment. It would be good to have a doctor or sexual health clinic check up, and this can all be done completely confidentially.

If you’re a teenager and have a question you’d like answered by an expert, you can:

• email us at jsyk@theconversation.edu.au
• submit your question anonymously through Incogneato, or
• DM us on Instagram.

Please tell us your name (you can use a fake name if you don’t want to be identified), age and which city you live in. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

– ref. I Need to Know: ‘is it normal to get sore down there after sex?’ – http://theconversation.com/i-need-to-know-is-it-normal-to-get-sore-down-there-after-sex-111744

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

Price is the most delicate element of the marketing mix, and much thought goes into setting prices to nudge us towards spending more.

There’s one particularly cunning type of pricing strategy that marketers use to get you to switch your choice from one option to a more expensive or profitable one.

It’s called the decoy effect.

Imagine you are shopping for a Nutribullet blender. You see two options. The cheaper one, at $89, promotes 900 watts of power and a five-piece accessory kit. The more expensive one, at $149, is 1,200 watts and has 12 accessories.

Which one you choose will depend on some assessment of their relative value for money. It’s not immediately apparent, though, that the more expensive option is better value. It’s 50% more powerful but costs almost 80% more. It does have more than twice as many plastic accessories, but what are they worth?

Now consider the two in light of a third option.

This one, for $125, offers 1,000 watts and nine accessories. It enables you to make what feels like a more considered comparison. For $36 more than the cheaper option, you get four more accessories and an extra 100 watts of power. But if you spend just $24 extra, you get a further three accessories and 200 watts more power. Bargain!

You have just experienced the decoy effect.

Asymmetric dominance

The decoy effect is defined as the phenomenon whereby consumers change their preference between two options when presented with a third option – the “decoy” – that is “asymmetrically dominated”. It is also referred to as the “attraction effect” or “asymmetric dominance effect”.

What asymmetric domination means is the decoy is priced to make one of the other options much more attractive. It is “dominated” in terms of perceived value (quantity, quality, extra features and so on). The decoy is not intended to sell, just to nudge consumers away from the “competitor” and towards the “target” – usually the more expensive or profitable option.

The effect was first described by academics Joel Huber, John Payne and Christopher Puto in a paper presented to a conference in 1981 (and later published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 1982).

They demonstrated the effect through experiments in which participants (university students) were asked to makes choices in scenarios involving beer, cars, restaurants, lottery tickets, films and television sets.

In each product scenario participants first had to choose between two options. Then they were given a third option – a decoy designed to nudge them toward picking the target over the competitor. In every case except the lottery tickets the decoy successfully increased the probability of the target being chosen.

These findings were, in marketing terms, revolutionary. They challenged established doctrines – known as the “similarity heuristic” and the “regularity condition” – that a new product will take away market share from an existing product and cannot increase the probability of a customer choosing the original product.

How decoys work

When consumers are faced with many alternatives, they often experience choice overload – what psychologist Barry Schwartz has termed the tyranny or paradox of choice. Multiple behavioural experiments have consistently demonstrated that greater choice complexity increases anxiety and hinders decision-making.

In an attempt to reduce this anxiety, consumers tend to simplify the process by selecting only a couple of criteria (say price and quantity) to determine the best value for money.

Through manipulating these key choice attributes, a decoy steers you in a particular direction while giving you the feeling you are making a rational, informed choice.

The decoy effect is thus a form of “nudging” – defined by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (the pioneers of nudge theory) as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options”. Not all nudging is manipulative, and some argue that even manipulative nudging can be justified if the ends are noble. It has proven useful in social marketing to encourage people to make good decisions such as using less energy, eating healthier or becoming organ donors.

Read more: ‘Nudging’ people towards changing behaviour: what works and why (not)?

In the market

We see decoy pricing in many areas.

A decade ago behavioural economist Dan Ariely spoke about his fascination with the pricing structure of The Economist and how he tested the options on 100 of his students.

In one scenario the students had a choice of a web-only subscription or a print-only subscription for twice the price; 68% chose the cheaper web-only option.

They were given a third option – a web-and-print subscription for the same price as the print-only option. Now just 16% chose the cheaper option, with 84% opting for the obviously better combined option.

In this second scenario the print-only option had become the decoy and the combined option the target. Even The Economist was intrigued by Ariely’s finding, publishing a story about it entitled “The importance of irrelevant alternatives”.

Subscription pricing for The Australian today replicates this “irrelevant alternative”, though in a slightly different way to the pricing architecture Ariely examined.

Why would you choose the digital-only subscription when you can get the weekend paper delivered for no extra cost?

In this instance, the digital-only option is the decoy and the digital+weekend paper option is the target. The intention appears to be to discourage you from choosing the more expensive six-day paper option. Because that option is not necessarily more profitable for the company. What traditionally made print editions profitable, despite the cost of printing and distribution, was the advertising they carried. That’s no longer the case. It makes sense to encourage subscribers to move online.

Not all decoys are so conspicuous. In fact the decoy effect may be extremely effective by being quite subtle.

Consider the price of drinks at a well-known juice bar: a small (350 ml) size costs $6.10; the medium (450 ml) $7.10; and the large (610 ml) $7.50.

Which would you buy?

If you’re good at doing maths in your head, or committed enough to use a calculator, you might work out that the medium is slightly better value than the small, and the large better value again.

But the pricing of the medium option – $1 more than the small but just 40 cents cheaper than the large – is designed to be asymmetrically dominated, steering you to see the biggest drink as the best value for money.

So have you just made the sensible choice, or been manipulated to spend more on a drink larger than you needed?

– ref. The decoy effect: how you are influenced to choose without really knowing it – http://theconversation.com/the-decoy-effect-how-you-are-influenced-to-choose-without-really-knowing-it-111259

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Goodin, Postdoctoral fellow in the Program in Early American Economy & Society, at the Library Company of Philadelphia.., Australian National University

The natives of new Holland are perhaps the quickest fighters in the world … They remind me of Homer’s description of his heroes. The warriors throw themselves into the same attitudes, they harangue, they brandish and cast their spears in a manner similar to that described by the celebrated poet, “so saying, swaying back and forth, he launched his long-shadowed spear”.

–Benjamin Bowen Carter , 1798

This laudatory account of a group of Indigenous Australians, including Woollarawarre Bennelong, has been collecting dust in Rhode Island since 1798, when the fledgling United States was just beginning to stretch into the Asia-Pacific region, led by private merchant sailors.

It is contained in one of two 220-year-old journals from the merchant ship Ann & Hope (held in the John Carter Brown Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society respectively) penned by sailors Benjamin Page, Jr. the teenage son of the ship’s captain and Benjamin Bowen Carter, the ship’s surgeon.

They have been largely forgotten by historians, bar one or two, but shed light on Bennelong in particular: a celebrated yet misunderstood man. For much of white Australian history, Bennelong was portrayed as a tragic victim of alcoholism and cultural homelessness. Captured in November 1789 under orders from Governor Arthur Phillip to be taught English and serve as a cultural intermediary, he was later taken to England, returning to his homeland in 1795.

In their 11-month journey around the world, the Ann & Hope’s crew spent just four days in Sydney. But Page and Carter wrote thousands of words about New Holland’s people, environment, and trading prospects. Chief among their fascinations was witnessing Bennelong adjudicate an unusually messy payback punishment, which they recorded in excruciating and bloody detail.

Benjamin Page Jr., Ann & Hope logbook, 1798-1799, Brown & Ives Records, Box 715, folder 1, John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island. Author provided.

In doing so, they inadvertently reveal that Bennelong continued to hold positions of authority long after his return from the UK – in contrast to accounts by many eminent historians and popular authors that depicted him as lost between two worlds, comfortable in neither.

According to writer and academic Deborah Bird Rose, in Aboriginal communities,

reciprocity designed to re-establish social relations ruptured by wrong-doing is called ‘payback’. It is physical violence that is expected to be roughly equivalent to the offence. Its purpose is to restore a sense of balance and to effect a form of closure.

Echoing this desire for balance, Carter observed in 1798 that:

The generosity of these people is singular. When their enemies have discharged their spears, they will return them and prepare themselves for another assault. They frequently during the battle ran up to the opposite party and received their spears from the enemy. Nor did their antagonists throw a foul spear or improve in the least the advantage put into their hands, of killing an enemy when alone or unguarded.

Unfortunately, this protocol went awry when Bennelong decreed (apparently unconvincingly) that the appropriate punishment had been met.

He was violently rebuffed and, according to Page:

Whilst Bennelong was sitting down unguarded to our great surprise we saw one spear pierced through the left side of his breast he rose up immediately and had another flung at him which he kept off with his iron shield by his looks and words he seemed to enquire who did it then several of both parties arose and seemed to be in a great passion the women especially who were crying and beating themselves at a terrible rate at length.

Bennelong walked away about a hundred yards and sat down with the spear then through him after it was pulled out with the loss of blood he fainted then the women began with more tremendous shrieks and yells than before thinking he was dead and were down upon their knees a sucking the blood from the wound after several were speared through the legs & thighs.

Benjamin Page Jr., Ann & Hope logbook, 1798-1799, Brown & Ives Records, Box 715, folder 1, John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island. Author provided

Nearly being killed while adjudicating a payback punishment does not paint Bennelong in the most favourable light. But the fact that as late as 1798 he was given the honour of adjudicating such a ceremony challenges much of the outdated historiography about him.

Bennelong has been mistakenly remembered for centuries, encouraged by national institutions such as the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The dictionary is currently rewriting its entry on Bennelong and other Indigenous Australians to reflect the new findings of scholars such as Shino Konishi, Keith Vincent Smith, Kate Fullagar, and Emma Dortins.

Read more: Indigenous lives, the ‘cult of forgetfulness’ and the Australian Dictionary of Biography

Bennelong’s 1966 entry in the dictionary is especially careless for highlighting how, after being the first Aboriginal man to visit England in 1792, he returned to Sydney,

and thereafter references to him are scanty, though it is clear that he could no longer find contentment or full acceptance either among his countrymen or the white men. Two years later he had become “so fond of drinking that he lost no opportunity of being intoxicated, and in that state was so savage and violent as to be capable of any mischief”.

Less disparagingly, Inga Clendinnen argues that, after returning from Europe, Bennelong, “with his anger and his anguish, simply drops from British notice”.

In reality, he dropped from official British records, but certainly not from positions of authority or from visiting American sailors’ notice.

The New South Wales government’s pledge to build a memorial on the land where Bennelong is buried certainly could not come at a better time.

Meanwhile, historians who have been diligently rewriting Bennelong’s history are finally being written about in the mainstream press. And who knows, maybe there are more dusty journals scattered around the world that will contribute to this rewriting over the next 200 years.

The author thanks Josiah Ober of Stanford University for translating from Greek the Iliad quote at the top of this page.

– ref. Sailors’ journals shed new light on Bennelong, a man misunderstood by history – http://theconversation.com/sailors-journals-shed-new-light-on-bennelong-a-man-misunderstood-by-history-111266

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Vagg, Clinical associate professor, Deakin University School of Medicine and Pain Specialist, Deakin University

Making the decision to operate on a baby or toddler can be complex and confronting for parents. It involves weighing the risks versus the expected benefits for the child.

One of the questions impacting the decision has traditionally been whether general anaesthesia is safe for vulnerable, rapidly developing brains.

Parents in this situation can be reassured after a new study published in The Lancet this week showed a single episode of general anaesthesia in infancy had no detectable impact on subsequent brain development.

Read more: When your child has to go to hospital it is always hard – even when it is for the best

Why the worry?

The Food and Drug Administration in the United States sounded a note of caution as long ago as 2007 after some studies showed some of the gases used in general anaesthesia seemed to have permanent negative effects on the developing brains of rats and monkeys.

Research was planned and funded to settle this issue by examining evidence in the real world. After all, human brains are not the same as rat brains.

Studies that had been done in humans were observational (backward-looking). This makes it hard to differentiate the effect of the anaesthesia from effects of the condition for which the surgery was being performed, or other factors affecting the child.

What this study offers

The strengths of the study are significant. First, it was large, involving 722 participants from children’s hospitals across seven countries, including Australia.

It was also well-designed. In particular, this was a prospective (forward-looking) study with a design that enabled researchers to clearly discern the isolated effect of the anaesthesia.

This was achieved by comparing the same procedure done for the same reason using either spinal anaesthesia, where the patient is numb in the area of surgery but awake, or conventional general anaesthesia, where the patient is unconscious.

Parents are often worried about the effect an anaesthetic will have on their baby. From shutterstock.com

The procedure chosen for the study was the repair of a groin hernia, a condition where internal tissues of the abdomen protrude through a weak spot in the abdominal muscle. People who undergo the surgery overwhelmingly have good outcomes and low complication rates. It’s also performed in children who are generally otherwise fairly healthy.

This surgery is usually done within the first couple of months of a child’s life to prevent abnormal development of the lower abdominal wall which would make the hernia difficult and painful to repair later. It also decreases the risk of requiring emergency surgery.

The children recruited into this study were all younger than six months old at the time of surgery.

Another major strength of the study was the length of time the children were followed. Those who were operated on stayed under assessment until they turned five. At this age, the children were given standard tests of brain function which are known to be good at predicting future development. Normal testing at this age would show with a lot of confidence that there was no detriment from the general anaesthesia. And this was found to be the case.

Each of these attributes means the findings are likely to be reliable and able to be generalised from country to country.

Read more: Looking online for info on your child’s health? Here are some tips

Some things to be aware of

The only real weakness of the study was that the population assessed was overwhelmingly male (84% of participants) as groin hernia is much more common in baby boys. The authors acknowledge this and highlight the need for future studies to include more girls.

It’s also important to emphasise that in order to enable a clear and definite answer, this study only looked at a single episode of general anaesthesia. It was not designed to assess the risk of repeated or unusually prolonged exposure to general anaesthesia. So it provides a piece of the puzzle, but not the complete picture.

Taken as a whole, this study is reassuring for parents of children undergoing elective surgery at an early age. In a practical sense, it allows other factors such as surgical risk, or the impact of deferring or avoiding the operation, to take a more important place in decision-making.

Parents can put concerns about general anaesthesia harming their baby’s brain to bed for now, at least as far as one-off operations go.

– ref. Putting babies under general anaesthetic won’t affect their development, new research shows – http://theconversation.com/putting-babies-under-general-anaesthetic-wont-affect-their-development-new-research-shows-111727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melitta Hogarth, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland

This week saw the release of the annual Closing the Gap report. Much like the previous decade of reports, we learned progress was lacking, failure was apparent and in 2018, only two of the seven targets were on track.

This is hardly a surprise. Each year, we’ve heard of the failures and the inability to make a significant impact on the gap.

Read more: Four lessons from 11 years of Closing the Gap reports

When handing down his report, Prime Minister Scott Morrison indicated a shift in the approaches to addressing the disparities between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. This shift has been the result of Closing the Gap Refresh, a review of the original goals set in the more formally known, National Indigenous Reform Agreement.

He also looked to embed some of the recommendations made by Special Envoy of Indigenous Affairs, Tony Abbott. Morrison and Abbott have focused specifically on education as a means to address inequities, but there’s little reason to think this will affect real change.

What has changed?

There are three new targets in the Closing the Gap Refresh that will act as drivers in education. They are:

• to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the top two bands of NAPLAN reading and numeracy for years three, five, seven and nine by an average of 6% by 2028

• to decrease the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the bottom two bands of NAPLAN reading and numeracy for years three, five, seven and nine by an average of 6% by 2028

• to have 47% of Aboriginal and Torres strait islander peoples (aged 20-64 years) complete a Certificate III or above by 2028.

The original target set in 2008 to halve the gap in attainment of year 12 or equivalent qualifications between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous 20-24 year olds by 2020 has been maintained. Presumably, this is because this target, unlike the others, has not expired yet.

The first two targets are ambitious, but also selective in their focus. NAPLAN testing only looks at reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy.

The 2019 Closing the Gap Report indicates there has been significant gains made in reading and numeracy in certain year levels in the national data. The focus may be placed on these two areas because progress has already been seen, so they’re not “doomed to fail”.

Notably, in the other two targets, the original target measured the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had completed year 12 or a Certificate II. The shift in focus from a Certificate II to a Certificate III is significant. And it hides a political agenda shared within the Closing the Gap report.

That is, by improving educational outcomes and expectations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the government can anticipate “a return on investment through reduced service dependency, reduced health and justice interventions and improved education and employment participation” (found on page 59 of the report).

In other words, there is an expectation that education will improve health, reduce incarcerations and minimise welfare dependency.

No more top-down approach to policy-making?

Another significant change is the approach in policy-making and decision-making by addressing the top-down approach and providing space for Indigenous voice. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has made a commitment to form a partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives through the formation of a Ministerial Council on Closing the Gap.

Read more: Closing the gap on Indigenous education must start with commitment and respect

In my PhD, I analysed the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Strategy. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Advisory Group was predominantly made up of non-Indigenous peoples. There were only two Indigenous representatives within the Advisory Group.

My fear is that this Ministerial Council will simply become a re-branding of the Advisory Group. The power of the non-Indigenous representatives on the Advisory Group had the potential of silencing the Indigenous representatives. The non-Indigenous representatives were drawn from the then-named Australian Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs Senior Officials Committee (AEEYSOC).

It’s not encouraging to read that the proposed Ministerial Council will be made up “with Ministers nominated by jurisdictions” (found on page 154 of the report). Ironically, partnerships through the Indigenous Education Consultative Bodies (IECBs) existed up until late 2014 when they were defunded by federal government. Only some states and territories maintained their Consultative Bodies.

The sharing of responsibility potentially shifts the failures from federal government to states and territories, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples themselves. This shift can then be used to further perpetuate disadvantage and stereotypes.

Waiving HECS fees for teachers working in remote Indigenous communities

Tony Abbott, as Morrison’s Special Envoy of Indigenous Affairs, has suggested waiving HECS fees for some 3,100 teachers in some 300 schools. He proposes this will give initial teachers incentive to consider beginning their career in remote locations.

But as Linda Burney so aptly reminds her colleagues, the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples live in urban areas.

As a former classroom teacher who worked in an Indigenous community for almost ten years, I’ve seen many “fresh” teachers come and go in community. The demands and dynamics of teaching in a community where suddenly you’re the visible minority while you’re still learning the craft and the various other community factors in play, requires maturity and an ability to reflect rather than react.

Now, as an academic working in Initial Teacher Education, I see many teachers who have these qualities. But, many of these students have families and other demands that would potentially hinder their chances to make such a commitment.

Read more: To really close the gap we need more Indigenous university graduates

We also need to ask how systems and schools will ensure the teachers being selected to take on this opportunity are “the very best teachers”, as Indigenous Affairs minister Nigel Scullion put it.

The National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools program, coordinated out of Australian Catholic University, could provide some answers here. Teachers in this project are selected on the basis of their deep content knowledge as well as commitment to social justice.

What’s next?

It’s not lost that we’re only months out from an election. It could explain why the government that outrightly rejected the Uluru Statement of the Heart is now calling for and formalising partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Morrison says “we should […] embrace the requirement to change, we simply will not succeed by continuing to work in the same way” (found on page 7 of the report). It’s hard not to be cynical and think it’s just words and hollow promises.

Read more: Three reasons why the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians aren’t closing

We shouldn’t have to wait for answers. We need further clarification on the strategies put forward. We need action – not just snippets of what comes next. Don’t leave us hanging, hoping that the very thing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples called for in the Uluru Statement occurs, that “we will be heard”.

– ref. There’s little reason for optimism about Closing the Gap, despite changes to education targets – http://theconversation.com/theres-little-reason-for-optimism-about-closing-the-gap-despite-changes-to-education-targets-111840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annamarie Jagose, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney

Recently, the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) — the peak professional body for Australian English teachers — published a special issue of the journal English in Australia entitled “Love in English.” It addressed the continued marginalisation of some genders and sexualities within the classroom.

One article in this journal analysed sample text lists provided by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). The article found only two of the 21 fiction texts portrayed non-heterosexual protagonists, named characters, experiences, or relationships. Before you go imagining radical queer literature stealthily making its way into the secondary classroom, the texts in question were Twelfth Night and The Great Gatsby.

Read more: Telling the real story: diversity in young adult literature

An extensive amount of educational research has demonstrated schools are enjoyable and productive places for some students, but not others. As much as we would like to think otherwise, it’s clear schools do not serve all members of the population equally well.

Schools are sites of learning about social, cultural, political and economic positions, rights and possibilities. Schools can either double-down on social inequalities or they can help change attitudes.

The queer experience at school

Consider the situation of the many Australian school students who consider themselves sexually or gender diverse. A 2015 study of over 700 LGBTIQ+ Australian youth indicated 94% had heard homophobic language at school. Some 58% of these young people heard homophobic language on a daily basis.

Additionally, 45% of participants had witnessed physical harassment of classmates who were perceived as being sexually and/or gender diverse.

Including queer texts in the curriculum could help change negative attitudes towards people who identify as LGBTQI+. from www.shutterstock.com

These findings are consistent with other research that indicates homophobic violence is increasing in Australian schools. The Writing Themselves In report indicated that in 1998, 69% of sexually or gender diverse young people reported homophobic violence. In 2004, this figure rose to 74%, and by 2010 it was 80%.

Understanding difference

Being provided with a safe learning environment is not the only thing queer young people are being denied. They’re also being denied the opportunity to learn about the histories and experience of people like themselves.

As researchers at Sydney and Western Sydney University have noted:

Discrimination can be perpetuated by what is present — and what is noticeably absent — in the curriculum.

Queer inclusions in curricula have the potential to make a meaningful difference to schooling environments, especially in understanding and confronting inequalities. The entire national English curriculum identifies teaching young Australians to contribute to “a democratic, equitable and just society that is prosperous, cohesive and culturally diverse” as its core purpose.

In addition to this admirable aim, the Australian Curriculum’s General Capabilities and Cross-Curriculum Priorities emphasise developing respect, reciprocity, empathy and open-mindedness. While all of these things might be assisted by the expansion of the Australian English curriculum to include more explicit representations of LGBTIQ+ lives, it ain’t necessarily so. That’s where teachers come in.

Read more: The art of seeing Aboriginal Australia’s queer potential

The literary texts students spend time on in school allow opportunities to explore different lives and life chances.

Even when the texts are mainstream, they can still be alternative, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has influentially argued. Think about the queer subtexts of Euripides. Think Virgil. Think Plato and Socrates.

How about all the LGBTIQ+ discussions of Marlowe, Spenser, Milton or Shakespeare? Or Dickens, Dickinson, James, Melville, Proust, Wilde, Woolf? One of the most powerful things about mainstream literature is its capacity to undo itself.

Taught well, literature encourages new ways of understanding difference. Even taught badly, literature allows students to safely explore and test their beliefs.

Queer youth are more than an ‘at risk’ group

One reason to include books with transparently queer characters in the recommended reading for secondary students is it allows students to push back against the assumption queer youth are inherently “at risk.”

There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the well-being, mental health and educational achievement of LGBTIQ+ young people is often poorer than their cisgender and heterosexual peers.

The queer experience isn’t just adversity – there’s joy too. from www.shutterstock.com

But it’s important to acknowledge the resilience, strength and joy of queer students too. Queer kids and the people who love them need to know they can survive and thrive while we wait for the ideal of an inclusive Australia to arrive.

Simply setting texts that present diversity doesn’t mean teachers will support their messages, that students won’t resist and reject them, or that the books won’t perpetuate negative attitudes towards queer people. Diversity can no more be guaranteed than love. Not even the love of books.

Ask the kids

Perhaps a more useful way to approach this issue would be to ask students themselves what they want to read and why. At the University of Sydney, we’re working with young people and other marginalised communities to understand what they’re interested in and what they think would benefit them.

We could rely on our expertise and suggest any number of compelling literary texts that might be included in the Australian English curriculum: Christos Tsiolkas’s Barracuda, Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Jordi Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox, Peter Polites’ Down the Hume or Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, to name just a few.

Read more: Friday essay: transgenderism in film and literature

But, rather than continuing to make decisions on behalf of youth, we are determined to open more channels for them to tell us about their wants and needs in education, and more broadly. Young people are often a topic of discussion. It’s time for them to be included in discussions, and discussion around the school curriculum should not be an exception.

What might a crowdsourced queer-friendly English curriculum look like in Australia? Please contribute in the comments below this article.

– ref. Pages and prejudice: how queer texts could fight homophobia in Australian schools – http://theconversation.com/pages-and-prejudice-how-queer-texts-could-fight-homophobia-in-australian-schools-111437

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

University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini and Michelle Grattan talk about the week in politics. They discuss including the government’s historic defeat in the House of Representatives on the medevac legislation, plans to reopen the Christmas Island detention facility, One Nation’s embarrassing conduct and the push for a royal commission into the treatment of disabled people.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on reopening Christmas Island and One Nation’s shenanigans – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-reopening-christmas-island-and-one-nations-shenanigans-111910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Pouliot, Australian National University

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

It’s worth tolerating the mosquitoes and the disconcerting rustle of unseen creatures that populate forests after dark, for the chance to encounter the eerie pale green glow of a less-known inhabitant.

Australia is a land of extremes, of curious organisms with quirky adaptations. Even our ghosts are more perplexing than your regular spook, and you don’t need a Geiger counter or infrared camera to track them down. Ghosts feature fantastically in folklore across the globe, but Australia’s ghost collective has a special fungal addition. Stealing the limelight, or rather the twilight, is the ghost fungus, Omphalotus nidiformis.

Ghost fungi are large, common and conspicuous, yet they manage to escape the gaze of most. As interest in fungi grows in Australia, the ghost fungi is getting a curious new look-in.

The Conversation

Fungi are well known for their perplexing traits and peculiar forms. One of the more mesmerising – and other-worldly – traits is luminosity. A conspicuous quirk, luminosity has been recognised for a good while. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was among the first to have reported terrestrial bioluminescence (bios meaning living and lumen meaning light) in the phenomenon of “glowing wood” or “shining wood” –luminescent mycelia in decomposing wood.

However, well before Aristotle’s time, Aboriginal Australians knew about the luminescence of fungi. Early settlers in Australia recorded the reactions of different Aboriginal groups to what we think was the ghost fungus. Some, such as the Kombumerri of southeastern Queensland, associated luminous fungi with evil spirits and supernatural activities of Dreamtime ancestors. West Australian Aboriginal people referred to the ghost fungus as Chinga, meaning spirit.

Ghost fungi often grow en masse in large overlapping clusters around the bases of both living and dead trees. Author provided

Similarly in Micronesia, some people destroyed luminous fungi believing them to be an evil omen, while others used them in body decoration, especially for intimidating enemies.

In California, miners believed them to mark the spot where a miner had died. This seemingly inexplicable glowing trait gave rise to rich and colourful folk histories.

Lighting up the night

The ghost fungus contains a light-emitting substance called luciferin (lucifer meaning light-bringing). In the presence of oxygen, luciferin is oxidised by an enzyme called luciferase. As a result of this chemical reaction, energy is released as a greenish light. The light from the ghost fungus is often subtle and usually requires quite dark conditions to see. To experience ghost fungi at their most spectacular you need to allow your eyes time to adjust to the darkness, and don’t use a torch.

Ghost fungi have been widely recorded across Australia, especially in the forests of the south-eastern seaboard. They often appear in large overlapping clusters around the bases of a variety of trees, commonly Eucalyptus, but also Acacia, Hakea, Melaleuca, Casuarina and other tree genera as well as understorey species.

The large funnel-shaped mushrooms (the reproductive part of the fungus) are variable in form and colour, but are mostly white to cream coloured with various shades of brown, yellow, green, grey, purple and black, usually around the centre of the cap. On the underside, the lamellae (radiating plates that contain the spores) are white to cream coloured and extend down the stipe (stem).

This adaptable fungus obtains its tucker as both a weak parasite of some tree species and as a saprobe, which means it gets nutrition from breaking down organic matter such as wood.

Young ghost fungi can appear remarkably similar to edible oyster (Pleurotus) mushrooms, but be warned, ghost fungi are toxic. Author provided

Although fungal bioluminescence has been well documented, little research has been done to establish why fungi go to the trouble of glowing. While some experiments have shown that bioluminescence attracts spore-dispersing insects to particular fungi, this appears not to be the case with the ghost fungus.

Researchers who tested whether insects are more readily attracted to the ghost fungus concluded that bioluminescence is more likely to be an incidental by-product of metabolism, rather than conferring any selective advantage.

Those who find this scientific explanation rather unimaginative might prefer to stick with the theory that these fungi help guide fairies (or perhaps a bilby or bandicoot) through the darkened forest.

If you stumble across ghost fungi in daylight, however, they look far less puzzling. It does bear a superficial resemblance to the delicious oyster mushroom (and were once classified in the same genus), but unfortunately they are toxic. Ghost fungi possess a powerful emetic that causes nausea and vomiting. (And who knows, it might even cause you to glow terrifyingly green…)

Returning to darkness

We live in the Age of Illumination, plagued by light pollution. Earth’s nights are getting brighter and many scientists are concerned about the effects on wildlife as well as how they stymie human appreciation of nature. Artificial lights disorient birds, especially those that migrate at night and other species such as hatching turtles that confuse artificial light with that of the moon. Exposure to artificial light also affects human health.

A nighttime wander through the forest reveals its nocturnal inhabitants and may reward one with the pleasures of finding ghost fungi. Only in darkness is their magic revealed.

Alison Pouliot will be launching her book on Australian fungi, The Allure of Fungi, in Melbourne, Daylesford, Apollo Bay and Shellharbour. For more details on these events go here.

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. The glowing ghost mushroom looks like it comes from a fungal netherworld – http://theconversation.com/the-glowing-ghost-mushroom-looks-like-it-comes-from-a-fungal-netherworld-111607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathleen McPhillips, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

All eyes will turn to Rome between 21-24 February, when senior church clerics across the world meet to discuss how to handle the widening sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Until recently, this has been focused on the abuse of children. But now Pope Francis has admitted – for the first time – sexual abuse by priests against religious women exists and must be acknowledged.

And Catholic women are speaking out, under the #NunsToo hashtag.

Twenty-five years ago, Irish nun, Maura O’Donohue prepared an extensive report for the Vatican on the abuse of nuns internationally by priests. Her report was based on information supplied by priests, doctors and others, and she had been assured records existed for several of the incidents. But the report was covered up.

In late November, influenced by the success of the #MeToo movement, a group of women theologians convened a meeting – called Voices of Change – in Rome to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of male clerics, and decry the patriarchy of the Catholic hierarchy.

Doris Wagner, a German theologian, recalled her terror as a young woman in a mixed-gender religious order. A superior of the order entered her room one night and raped her. She knew if she were to report this, she would be told it was her fault, so she kept quiet. Years later, she did tell her superior, who did exactly as she feared – she blamed her, and asked if she had used contraceptives.

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

Wagner said she was later groomed by priest Hermann Geissler. He worked in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican organisation that deals with complaints of child sexual abuse. This led to a series of sexual assaults in the confessional, which she reported.

Geissler was found to have acted inappropriately but was not removed from his job, despite working on child sex abuse cases. He was publicly outed and resigned only after Wagner disclosed the story at the meeting in Rome last year. But the priest who committed the rape is still ordained and living in a religious community with young women.

Wagner also read from a report that estimated up to 30% of Catholic sisters had been sexually abused and many more are at risk of clerical sexual abuse.

In Australia, reports suggest the number of Catholic women abused by priests vastly outnumber the survivors of child sexual abuse uncovered by the royal commission into the issue. These women and men often came from strict religious families, and had little experience of the world or sexual matters.

As this group finds its voice and begins to speak out, the leadership of the Church will face another crisis of legitimacy and round of public inquiries.

Read more: Royal commission hearings show Catholic Church faces a massive reform task

It is clear the sexual abuse of women, children and vulnerable adults has been normalised in Catholic clerical culture. Abuse is exercised at every level of ministry, from parish priest to the most senior clerics. Perpetrators are protected and victims silenced. This is aided by a culture of clerical entitlement and opportunity.

The child sex abuse royal commission’s final report provided ample evidence of this. It states:

Few survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred before the 1990s described receiving any formal response from the relevant Catholic Church authority when they reported the abuse. Instead, they were often disbelieved, ignored or punished, and in some cases were further abused.

Recently, a number of international cases have seen very senior Catholic clerics accused of protecting perpetrators of child sexual abuse. A Philadelphia Grand Jury recently found Church leaders protected more than 300 priest perpetrators. Australia’s royal commission also noted:

… the avoidance of public scandal, the maintenance of the reputation of the Catholic Church and loyalty to priests… largely determined the responses of Catholic Church authorities when allegations of child sexual abuse arose… Complaints of child sexual abuse were not reported to police or other civil authorities…

There are also cases of high-level clerical sexual abusers, including serial offender US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who is now being defrocked, and Argentian bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who has been accused of sexual misconduct with young seminarians. Pope Francis’ response was to remove Zanchetta from Argentina and promote him to a position of power in the Vatican’s finance office.

Nuns have kept quiet about sexual abuse for far too long. from shutterstock.com

Francis has not adequately handled a number of crises. This includes last year, when he defended a Chilean bishop who had covered up cases of child sexual abuse. As US feminist theologian Mary Hunt says, “you can’t make this stuff up”.

Read more: George Pell and the requirement for the mandatory reporting of sex predator priests

Little information has been provided about the agenda for the upcoming, so-called “protection of minors in the Church” meeting in late February. But it’s clear there will be no survivors, lay women or men in attendance – just the bishops, senior Vatican officials and Pope Francis.

This is the cohort who has protected priest perpetrators, covered up hundreds of cases, failed to report criminal activity to the police, blamed victims and promoted the guilty to positions of power. It is clear the answers to this catastrophic problem will not come from Church leaders. Instead, it is victims, survivors, lay people and experts in institutional change that need to be leading the dialogue, and enacting change. And one such group may be the Voices of Change.

– ref. The Catholic Church is headed for another sex abuse scandal as #NunsToo speak up – http://theconversation.com/the-catholic-church-is-headed-for-another-sex-abuse-scandal-as-nunstoo-speak-up-111539

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dempster, Director, Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research; Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW

It’s 50 years since man first stepped on the Moon. Now the focus is on going back to our nearest orbiting neighbour – not to leave footprints, but to mine the place.

Australia has a well-earned reputation as a mining nation. We are home to some of the largest mining companies (such as Vale, Glencore, Rio Tinto, and BHP), some of the best mine automation, and some of the best mining researchers.

Read more: How realistic are China’s plans to build a research station on the Moon?

But do we have the drive and determination to be part of any mining exploration of the Moon?

To the Moon

As far as space goes, the Moon is sexy again. Within the past three months:

• the Chinese landed a rover on the Moon’s far side

• NASA announced it is partnering with nine companies to deliver payloads to the Moon, consistent with its new push for more Moon missions

• the Moon Race competition has been announced, looking at entries in four themes: manufacturing, energy, resources, biology

• the European Space Agency (ESA) announced its interest in mining the Moon for water

• a US collaborative study was released about commercial exploitation of water from the Moon.

Not to be outdone, there is an Australian angle. We at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) announced our Wilde mission to extract water from the shaded craters at the Moon’s poles.

Australian interests

The Australian angle is important. With the establishment of Australia’s Space Agency, there is a need for us to try to establish niches in space, and it makes sense to exploit our strengths in mining to do so.

This is consistent with one of the agency’s priorities of:

… developing a strategy to position Australia as an international leader in specialised space capabilities.

As the agency’s chief executive Megan Clark told the subscription newsletter Space and Satellite AU earlier this month:

Rio Tinto is developing autonomous drilling and that’s the sort of thing you will need to do on Mars and on the Moon. While we’re drilling for iron ore in the Pilbara, on the Moon they might be looking for basic resources to survive like soils, water and oxygen.

The CSIRO has also put space resource utilisation into its space road map (which can be downloaded here). At each of the two most recent CSIRO Space 2.0 workshops, the attendees voted space resource utilisation (off-Earth mining) to be the most promising opportunity discussed.

The ultimate aim of space mining is to exploit asteroids, the most valuable – known as 511 Davida – is estimated to be worth US$27 quintillion (that’s or 27×10¹⁸ or 27 million million million dollars). Another estimate puts that value closer to US$1 trillion, which is still a lot of potential earning.

Risky business

The opportunities are enormous, but the risks are high too – risks with which mining companies are currently not familiar. The high-level processes are familiar such as exploration (prospecting), mining methods, processing, transportation, but the specifics of doing those things in such challenging conditions – vacuum, microgravity, far from Earth, and so on – are not.

The research we are proposing for the Wilde project aims to start chipping away at reducing those perceived risks, to the point where big miners are more comfortable to invest.

One of the important risks in any mining is the legal framework. Two international treaties apply quite specifically in this case: the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (ratified by 107 countries and signed by a further 23) and the Moon Agreement (or Moon Treaty, ratified by 18 and signed by a further four) of 1979. Australia has ratified both.

When it comes to trying to determine from these treaties whether space mining is allowed, there are two problems.

First, the treaties were drafted at a time when the problems they were trying to avoid were geopolitical. Space activity was considered to be the realm of nation states and they wanted celestial bodies not to be considered property of any nation states.

Second, commercial exploitation of resources is never explicitly mentioned. (A third problem could be that the treaties have never been tested in court.)

This creates a situation in which the interpretation of the treaties can lead to strong support to both sides of the argument. For instance, Article 1 of the Outer Space Treaty says:

The exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

This could preclude commercial development.

But the same article also states:

Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.

This could enshrine the right to use those same resources.

For all humanity

There are similar disputes about what exactly was meant when other articles in that treaty refer to sovereignty, appropriation, exploration and use.

The Moon Treaty deals with scientific and non-scientific use of space resources. Article 11 states that the Moon and other celestial bodies and their resources are the common heritage of all mankind (a less gender-specific phrase would be “all humanity”), and that the exploitation of resources would be governed by an international regime, not defined in the treaty. It also dictates “an equitable sharing by all States Parties in the benefits derived from those resources”.

Read more: Curious Kids: How does the Moon, being so far away, affect the tides on Earth?

On the face of it, this may appear to put signatories to this agreement at a disadvantage, by constraining them as to what they can do.

Other global commons such as the high seas, Antarctica and geostationary orbit are well regulated by comparison, and given that the Moon Treaty envisages that “regime” of rules, then it may be time to define that regime, and, as a Treaty signatory with an interest in space resources, Australia has the motivation to lead that discussion.

How that initiative will evolve will depend on various factors, but the next time it gets a public airing, at the Off-Earth Mining Forum in November, we hope to have made significant progress.

– ref. Australia: well placed to join the Moon mining race … or is it? – http://theconversation.com/australia-well-placed-to-join-the-moon-mining-race-or-is-it-111746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Green, Merck Serono Senior Lecturer in Reproductive Biology, University of Melbourne

In prenatal ultrasounds or at delivery, many new parents look between their baby’s legs: the presence of a penis is taken as a strong sign that it’s a boy.

For humans and other animals, development of a penis was thought to be driven by “male hormones” (androgens) produced entirely by the testes of the male fetus as it grows in the uterus.

However, a new paper released today indicates this might not be the case. Instead, some of the masculinising hormones that drive penis development may come from other sources in the developing fetus. These include the liver, the adrenals (small glands found on the kidneys) and placenta.

For the first time, this work comprehensively looks at the possible sites of hormone production outside the testes and their role in regulating masculinisation – the process of gaining typical male characteristics. This helps us see how we develop as embryos, and might feed into a bigger picture of why disorders of penis development are increasing.

Read more: Our relationship with dick pics: it’s complicated

Testosterone is not enough

The penis develops from an embryonic structure called the genital tubercle or GT.

The GT is present in both males and females, and develops into either a clitoris or penis, depending on its exposure to hormones secreted by the developing gonads (ovaries or testes).

In females, the developing ovaries do not produce early hormones and the GT becomes feminised, forming a clitoris.

In males, the developing testes produce testosterone. This circulates in the developing fetus and causes masculinisation of target tissues and induces penis development from the GT.

Testosterone itself is a relatively weak hormone. It is converted in the penis to another hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which has a much more potent masculinising effect.

It is the local conversion of testosterone to DHT within the tissue that is important for penis development and other changes.

There are several ways in which the fetus can make DHT. The most simple is via conversion from testicular testosterone (the so-called “canonical” pathway). However, DHT can also be produced via other steroid hormone pathways active in many tissues, which is explored further in this new paper.

Read more: What makes you a man or a woman? Geneticist Jenny Graves explains

Common birth defects

Understanding the pathways that control penis development is important. Disorders affecting penis development are among the most common birth defects seen in humans, with hypospadias (a disorder affecting development of the urethra) currently affecting around 1 in every 115 live males born in Australia, and rates are on the rise.

The urethra, the hole through which urine passes out of the body, is found in a range of different locations in the disorder known as hypospadias from www.shutterstock.com

In fact, the incidence of hypospadias has doubled over the past 40 years. Such a rapid increase in incidence has been attributed to environmental factors, with endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) being proposed as a major cause. EDCs are man-made chemicals used in many industries – for example, in the production of plastics, cosmetics, flame retardants and pesticides. They can interfere with hormone and metabolic systems in our bodies.

Of the 1,484 EDCs currently identified, a large number are known to negatively affect male reproductive development.

Many studies have identified how EDCs negatively affect organs, such as the liver and adrenals, leading to diseases and disorders which damage the health of these organs and disturb male development.

Backdoor pathway

By measuring hormones from blood samples and tissues during the second trimester of human fetal development, this new research helps us understand the pathways driving the production of DHT, and masculinisation of the penis.

It suggests that in addition to the canonical pathway (testosterone from the testis converted to DHT in the GT and driving penis development), male steroids are synthesised by other organs, such as the placenta, liver and adrenal gland via a process called the “backdoor” pathway to contribute to masculinisation. Notably, the backdoor pathway was first discovered through research conducted here in Australia on marsupials.

The findings of this research suggest that EDCs might have effects in non-reproductive tissues, including the adrenals and liver, and then cause male reproductive diseases such as hypospadias.

Also, it indicates that placental defects, such as intrauterine growth restriction that results in babies being born small, might contribute to male reproductive diseases in humans.

Further research is now required to follow-up on these interesting findings to explore possible new causal pathways of disorders that begin during pregnancy.

– ref. You need more than just testes to make a penis – http://theconversation.com/you-need-more-than-just-testes-to-make-a-penis-111625