Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gina Masterton, PhD Candidate, Law School, Griffith University

Fiona (not her real name) came to Australia from New Zealand as a 19-year-old backpacker. Here, she met a man, got married and had two boys. The domestic violence began after her first son’s birth, and Fiona endured it for several years.

In 2017, when her children were eight and ten, Fiona summoned the strength to leave her husband. Not being an Australian citizen, she found she wasn’t eligible for government assistance, so Fiona fled back to New Zealand seeking protection and support.

Her husband immediately acted to have the children returned to Australia and, being a citizen, received free legal assistance from the government. Fiona was ordered to return her children to Australia.

This happened because under international law, Fiona’s case is considered one of “child abduction”. Under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 1980, a child is considered “abducted” if he or she is removed by one parent without the other parent’s consent.

The Convention was drafted in the late 1970s to deal with fathers abducting their children across borders after losing custody of their children, or believing they would lose custody. It was never meant to be applied to cases involving mothers fleeing domestic violence.

Read more: Are women escaping family violence overseas considered refugees?

The Convention makes no mention of domestic violence and has no protections for abused mothers. Despite this, for the past couple of decades, 70% of Hague cases have involved mothers fleeing domestic violence. When this law is applied to such cases, the outcomes can be catastrophic for abused women and children.

My research has explored how the Convention affects abused mothers who flee with their children across international borders. I have interviewed ten women, including Fiona, who were ordered to return their children to an abusive situation by Australian and other courts. All felt their voices were not heard and their domestic violence experiences not believed by the courts. They felt they were treated like criminals.

Catastrophic outcomes

The Sydney Family Court, in 2008, ordered a 24-year-old woman to return her two young sons to the UK, where they had been born. The woman had fled with her children to Sydney where her family lived, after years of abuse. Shortly after her return, she fled again to a refuge with her children. On the way there, she was brutally murdered by her estranged husband, on a public street, in front of her children and mother.

When the Convention was drafted, abductors were assumed to be non-primary carers who were taking the law into their own hands after having lost a custody battle. But it’s now been recognised most so-called abductors are mothers who are the children’s primary carers.

The Convention is the main international agreement that covers international parental child abduction. It provides an expeditious process to have a child returned to their home country. A child must have been abducted to, or retained in, a Hague Convention member country for the process to work. Nearly 100 countries – including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the US – are signatories.

The Convention came into effect in Australia in 1987. It is implemented through the Family Law Act 1975 and the Australian Family Law (Child Abduction Convention) Regulations 1986. Australia’s Central Authority, which is part of the Attorney-General’s department, handles all cases of international parental child abduction to and from Australia. Its powers stem from the Convention and the Regulations are strictly enforced by the courts in all cases.

Read more: How Victoria’s family violence system fails some victims – by assuming they’re perpetrators

Some exceptions in Australia’s Regulations can be raised in dometic-violence related abduction cases. But lawyers I also interviewed in my research have said the bar has been set so high by the courts, these are too hard to meet. Also the “best interests of the child” test, which is applied in domestic family law cases, is not the test applied in Hague cases.

Fiona’s husband was provided with free legal representation. Experienced lawyers worked with their counterparts in NZ to return the children to their father in Australia and the New Zealand Family Court cooperated by ordering the children’s return.

Fiona told me that the Convention

discriminates against mothers and kids … and the judges and lawyers don’t really consider the domestic violence the mothers have gone through and that the kids have witnessed.

Fiona and the children returned with just a bag of clothes. She received a small family assistance payment from Centrelink because the children were citizens, but no public housing, access to community services or free legal representation.

Many women suffer alone and have no outside or government assistance. from shutterstock.com

Fiona’s mother had to move from New Zealand to Brisbane to support her daugher and the children financially, emotionally, and physically. After one year, the Brisbane Family Court awarded Fiona’s husband full parental responsibility for the children. Fiona returned to New Zealand, broke and devasted.

To this day, she survives on the generosity of women she befriended on social media who also lost their children to abusive partners. She is still being financially and emotionally abused by her ex, and struggles with anxiety and depression.

What other countries have done

Progress has been made in this area outside of Australia.

In a child abduction case considered by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010, the court held the Convention was obligated to consider general principles of international law and other human rights instruments. It also held the Convention “cannot be interpreted in a vacuum” and that the “best interests of the child must always be paramount.”

There has also been a substantial change in US law, which has allowed courts to see domestic violence as a defence under the Convention.

In Australia, mothers fleeing domestic violence with their children still face harsh legal consequences. A woman fleeing with her child across borders within Australia can be penalised if she has violated family court orders without a reasonable excuse. A court may vary the orders, order her to pay the legal costs of the other parent, or a fine, and could even sentence her to imprisonment.

Read more: ‘Silent victims’: royal commission recommends better protections for child victims of family violence

She can also be charged with child stealing. If she is a citizen, she may be eligible to access various community resources, including Legal Aid, for representation.

However, a mother fleeing from overseas to Australia is in a different situation. She will face serious legal consequences under the Convention. The US courts can criminally prosecute a mother who has abducted her child from that country and imprison her. Even if she is an Australian citizen, she may have to represent herself in court if she can’t afford a lawyer. Unlike her abusive partner, she has no right to free lawyers.

It’s rare for Australia’s Legal Aid to fund these defences, as mothers generally don’t have a good chance of succeeding in court. My analysis of Hague cases heard in Australia between 2015 and 2018 showed not one case where the mother was represented by Legal Aid.

Rita’s story

Rita (not her real name) was an Australian citizen who met an American man in LA, where she had relocated for work, married and had a son. After experiencing domestic violence for two years, she fled back to Brisbane with her two-year old. She was given access to income and other Centrelink services, government housing, Medicare, pro bono legal representation and charity assistance.

Even so, after an application lodged by her husband, the Central Authority and the Brisbane Family Court ordered Rita to return her infant to LA. Rita also returned.

She received no housing, no medical assistance, and no free legal representation. She suffered from anxiety and depression, and could not work. If it had not been for a friend, she would have been homeless. She told me:

Because of the Convention, I could have been sent to federal prison in California, and have lost my son to someone who abused both of us. He had legal custody of my son and I had nothing, just because I tried to keep me and my son alive.

Australia’s law makers need to take cases of this nature far more seriously. One step forward would be to add a separate “domestic violence defence” to the Regulations under which the Hague Convention is administered.

In doing so, abused mothers accused of abducting their children would have a better chance of defeating a return application. And our courts would not be able to continue putting women’s lives and their children’s safety in jeopardy.

– ref. Fleeing family violence to another country and taking your child is not ‘abduction’, but that’s how the law sees it – http://theconversation.com/fleeing-family-violence-to-another-country-and-taking-your-child-is-not-abduction-but-thats-how-the-law-sees-it-109664

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hobbins, ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney

At Sydney’s enormous Rookwood Cemetery, a lichen-spotted headstone captures a family’s double burden of grief.

The grave contains the remains of 19-year-old Harriet Ann Ottaway, who died on 2 July 1919. Its monument also commemorates her brother Henry James Ottaway, who “died of wounds in Belgium, 23rd Sept 1917, aged 21 years”.

While Henry was killed at the infamous Battle of Passchendaele, Harriet’s headstone makes no mention of her own courageous combat with “Spanish flu”.

Harriet’s story typifies the enduring public silence around the pneumonic influenza pandemic of 1918–19. Worldwide, it killed an estimated 50-100 million people – at least three times all of the deaths caused by the First World War.

Read more: Why historians ignored the Spanish flu

After the disease came ashore in January 1919, about a third of all Australians were infected and the flu left nearly 15,000 dead in under a year. Those figures match the average annual death rate for the Australian Imperial Force throughout 1914–18.

Arguably, we could consider 1919 as another year of war, albeit against a new enemy. Indeed, the typical victims had similar profiles: fit, young adults aged 20-40. The major difference was that in 1919, women like Harriet formed a significant proportion of the casualties.

Read more: World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)

Deadly flu spread rapidly

There was no doubt about the medical and social impact of the “Spanish flu”. Although its origins remain contested, it certainly didn’t arise in Spain. What is known is that by early 1918, a highly infectious respiratory disease, caused by a then-unknown agent, was moving rapidly across Europe and the United States. By the middle of that year, as the war was reaching a tipping point, it had spread to Africa, India and Asia.

About a third of the entire world’s population was infected with Spanish flu. Macleay Museum, Author provided

It also took on a much deadlier profile. While victims initially suffered the typical signs and symptoms of influenza – including aches, fever, coughing and an overwhelming weariness – a frighteningly high proportion went rapidly downhill.

Patients’ lungs filled with fluid – which is why it became known as “pneumonic influenza” – and they struggled to breathe. For nurses and doctors, a tell-tale sign of impending death was a blue, plum or mahogany colour in the victim’s cheeks.

This, sadly, was the fate of young Harriet Ottaway. Having nursed a dying aunt through early 1919, in June she tended her married sister Lillian, who had come down with pneumonic influenza.

Despite taking the recommended precautions, Harriet contracted the infection and died in hospital. Ironically, Lillian survived. But in the space of less than two years she had lost both a brother to the Great War and her younger sister to the Spanish flu.

An intimate impact worldwide

Indeed, as Harriet’s headstone reminds us, this was an intimate pandemic. The statistics can seem overwhelming until you realise what it means that about a third of the entire world’s population was infected.

Whatever your heritage, your ancestors and their communities were almost certainly touched by the disease. It’s a part of all of our family histories and many local histories.

Read more: How infectious diseases have shaped our culture, habits and language

It wasn’t just victims who were affected. Across Australia, regulations intended to reduce the spread and impact of the pandemic caused profound disruption. The nation’s quarantine system held back the flu for several months, meaning that a less deadly version came ashore in 1919.

But it caused delay and resentment for the 180,000 soldiers, nurses and partners who returned home by sea that year.

Leaflets like this one from Victoria tried to warn people of the dangers of Spanish flu. Board of Public Health, Victoria/Public Records Office of Victoria

Responses within Australia varied from state to state but the crisis often led to the closure of schools, churches, theatres, pubs, race meetings and agricultural shows, plus the delay of victory celebrations.

The result was not only economic hardship, but significant interruptions in education, entertainment, travel, shopping and worship. The funeral business boomed, however, as the nation’s annual death rate went up by approximately 25%.

Yet for some reason, the silence of Harriet’s headstone is repeated across the country. Compared with the Anzac memorials that peppered our towns and suburbs in the decades after the Great War, few monuments mark the impact of pneumonic influenza.

Nevertheless, its stories of suffering and sacrifice have been perpetuated in other ways, especially within family and community memories. A century later, these stories deserve to be researched and commemorated.

Read more: Speaking with: Peter Doherty about infectious disease pandemics

Despite the disruption, fear and substantial personal risk posed by the flu, tens of thousands of ordinary Australians rose to the challenge. The wartime spirit of volunteering and community service saw church groups, civic leaders, council workers, teachers, nurses and organisations such as the Red Cross step up.

They staffed relief depots and emergency hospitals, delivered comforts from pyjamas to soup, and cared for victims who were critically ill or convalescent. A substantial proportion of these courageous carers were women, at a time when many were being commanded to hand back their wartime jobs to returning servicemen.

In resurrecting stories such as the sad tale of Harriet Ottaway, it’s time to restore our memories of the “Spanish flu” and commemorate how our community came together to battle this unprecedented public crisis.

– ref. 100 years later, why don’t we commemorate the victims and heroes of “Spanish flu”? – http://theconversation.com/100-years-later-why-dont-we-commemorate-the-victims-and-heroes-of-spanish-flu-109885

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Massimiliano Tani, Professor of Finance and Economics, UNSW

Women are considerably over-represented in the teaching profession. Recent data show, among recent Australian university graduates, 97% of pre-primary teachers, 85% of primary teachers and 68% of secondary teachers are female. Similarly, large proportions of women in teaching are also observed across the OECD.

The share of male teachers in Australia has been declining since 1977. What can explain this notable and persistent gender imbalance? Generally, it’s attributed to gender differences in occupational preferences and social roles.

Read more: Male teachers are an endangered species in Australia: new research

But our research suggests economic forces may be a key contributing factor. Understanding and addressing the reasons for the gender imbalance in teaching is important. It represents a distortion in this particular labour market. It could also send and perpetuate unhelpful signals about the career aspirations of men and women, to the detriment of both.

“It’s the labour market, silly!”

In a recent paper, we considered whether women (and men) choose to become teachers in line with or in spite of economic incentives. In the context of Australia, research shows the quality of people who choose to go into teaching responds to the relative wage distribution in the labour market. In other words, a higher wage attracts better quality teachers.

Our analysis investigated whether the gender composition in teaching reflects the relative wage distributions for women and men. In particular, we compared the salaries of women choosing to become teachers to that of women choosing other professions. We also carried out a similar analysis for men.

This approach helps explain the observed gender distribution. For men, the opportunity cost of becoming a teacher relative to choosing another profession is high. Men give up a higher potential salary by choosing teaching over a non-teaching career.

For women, the opposite occurs. Average salaries are lower in non-teaching occupations, so the choice to become a teacher comes at a substantially lower opportunity cost. It can even be a more profitable career choice than others because for women with a Bachelor of Arts (BA), teaching is one of the best paying jobs.

Read more: We need to support more men to become primary teachers

This suggests wage structures in the labour market underpin occupational choices. Men and women face different trade-offs and opportunity costs when choosing careers. This may contribute to the observed concentration of women – or feminisation — in certain occupations.

Clearly, the concentration of women in teaching is problematic from a gender equality perspective. Parents, students and schools value the exposure to a diverse workforce that is more representative of society.

What can be done to attract more men to teaching?

A seemingly obvious solution is to increase teachers’ salaries across the board. But this may, in fact, raise the concentration of women in teaching even more. Higher salaries would further increase the returns in teaching relative to other professions for women.

Raising salaries for all teachers wouldn’t necessarily encourage more men to go into teaching. from www.shutterstock.com

But it would have a small or negligible impact on the returns for men. Men would continue to be attracted to the higher salaries in professions other than teaching.

Efforts to raise the share of male teachers are likely to have limited success until the underlying structural economic incentives are addressed. That is, the higher wages in non-teaching jobs, which tend to pull men away from teaching.

Read more: Primary schools are losing more and more male teachers, so how can we retain them?

Discussions around the gender composition of different occupations, particularly teaching, tend to focus on factors such as gender predisposition, social influences and job attributes, such as greater flexibility and work-life balance. These factors may play an important role to varying degrees, but reviewing and reforming the monetary incentives which influence gender segregation in occupations is a good starting point.

Additional ways we could address this are by:

• providing additional scholarships for men in teaching
• ensuring teaching career plans fulfil the ambitions and expectations of both male and female teachers
• improving the image of teaching as an essential job to enhance a society.

– ref. Why are teachers mostly female? Because men get better pay in other professions – http://theconversation.com/why-are-teachers-mostly-female-because-men-get-better-pay-in-other-professions-109569

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Phillips, Associate Professor, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Director, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Australian National University

Labor is going into the election promising to tax capital gains more heavily. Depending on who you listen to, it’ll either hit the very highest of earners, or middle earners – people such as teachers and nurses. The same critics have claimed different things at different times.

The truth is even stranger. In part because people who present as being part of one income group are often better described as being part of another.

It’s certainly stranger than fiction.

What are capital gains?

Capital gains are the profits made from buying something at one price and selling it at another. These profits are typically taxed at only half the rate of other income. (Technically, only half of each capital gain is taxed.)

The discount, introduced by Prime Minister John Howard in late 1999, was sold as ensuring that profit takers wouldn’t be taxed on the workings of inflation, a concession that was already built into the system, although in a more complicated way.

But because inflation had fallen so dramatically, the 50% discount went much further. It taxed capital gains, so-called “unearned income”, at a much lower rate than income earned in the form of wages and salaries, and also at a lower rate than bank interest and other forms of income.

In the lead up to the coming election (and the last one) the Labor Party has promised to wind back the discount, cutting it from 50% to 25% for newly-purchased assets held for more than a year, meaning that for those assets three quarters of each gain will be taxed instead of one half.

There are two (apparently contradictory) views about who the changes will hit, both of them spelled out in the pages of The Australian, and both sourced to the treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Frydenberg/Bowen tweets

On January 5 the treasurer said investors would pay the “world’s highest tax” under Labor’s changes.

But that would only be the case if they were the very highest earners, on more than A$180,000. And it would only be the case for a short time where the capital gains are a one off.

Mr Frydenberg quoted a rate of 36.75% for capital gains tax, which would be three quarters of 49%, which itself would be made up of the top marginal rate of 45% plus the 2% Medicare levy plus the 2% temporary budget repair levy that Labor plans to reintroduce for two years.

That top marginal rate only applies to Australians on more than A$180,000.

Then ten days later on January 15, Mr Frydenberg said most of the workers hurt would be on much lower incomes, of up to A$80,000.

Then shadow treasurer Chris Bowen entered the debate, calling Fyrdenberg’s second claim “silly”. He said 70% of the total amount of capital gains tax discounts claimed was claimed by the top earners.

But he didn’t address the treasurer’s contention that most of the beneficiaries are lower earners.

What the data says

The Australian National University’s microsimulation model of the tax and social security system, PolicyMod, and the Australian Tax Officie’s Taxstats 2015-16 enable us to get at the truth.

Using a 2% sample of the tax returns submitted, including the information about capital gains and capital losses, we are able to work out who is the hardest hit by capital gains tax by income, age and gender.

At first blush we find that almost all capital gains tax collected – 85% – is paid by the top 10% of income earners. The bottom 10% (and also the bottom 20%) pay nothing.

It shouldn’t be surprising. High earners pay more tax than low earners because they earn more. The top 10% of earners also pay 51% of personal income tax.

Not many people pay capital gains tax

Around 900,000 Australians report capital gains per year, a figure used by the treasurer to suggest capital gains are widespread.

But after taking losses into account, the number reporting net capital gains falls to 670,000. Only about 540,000 of them pay capital gains tax. The others have taxable incomes below the tax-free threshold.

Of the 540,000 who do pay capital gains tax, 29% are in the top 10% of earners by taxable income.

A very high 12.7% are in the top 3% of earners, meaning they are on the very highest tax bracket, earning A$180,000 or more.

Small in number though they are, the Australians in the top 3% who pay capital gains tax, pay 74% of it. They pay 30.7% of all personal income tax.

They’re often retirees, and women

Older Australians pay only 5.6% of all personal income tax but about 29% of all capital gains tax.

Surprisingly, partnered women are also over-represented, paying 19.4% of personal income tax but an outsized 28.7% of capital gains tax. This is what you would expect if couples planning to minimise tax put the asset they were planning to buy and sell in the name of the lower paid partner.

Persons with wages and salaries are underrepresented, paying around 88% of personal income tax but only around 47% of capital gains tax.

But these figures are misleading.

Partnered women pay 19.4% of personal income tax but an outsized 28.7% of capital gains tax. Shutterstock

It gets stranger still

By definition, most people’s incomes will be high in the year in which they pay capital gains tax. Examining their total income in that year, as we have done, will wrongly make it look as if it is mainly high income people who pay capital gains tax.

An alternative measure would be to rank people by their taxable income after deducting their capital gains. It’d rank them by something more like their normal income.

When we do that we find that the share of capital gains tax paid by the top 10% of earners is nothing like the 85% we first found. It’s a much lower 38%.

This measure produces another, very odd, result.

The bottom 10% turn out to pay, not none of the capital gains tax collected as we had thought, but an overweight 20%.

Stranger still, the next-bottom 10%, the people who fit somewhere between the bottom 10% and the 20%, pay only 4% of the capital gains tax collected.

Our lowest earners embrace capital gains…

There’s something odd at the bottom for those reporting capital gains. The clue lies in what they are at the bottom of. They are at the bottom of the taxable income scale.

And they are indeed odd.

The bottom 10% claim an awful lot of capital gains – an average of A$161,000 per capital gains tax payer, which is more than that claimed by any other income group, including the top 10%.

Capital gains make up a large share of their taxable income, larger than for higher income groups, and far lower than for other low income groups. Only around 8% receive government pensions or allowances.

Although their taxable incomes, after deducting net capital gains, are in the bottom 10%, their actual wealth and living standards are likely much higher up the distribution. Many own shares and businesses or have negatively geared investment properties. They get dividend imputation cheques and report business losses.

…although they don’t act like low earners

To get closer to the unvarnished truth, we would need to compare capital gains by household, examining the combined income of each household, which is less easy to manipulate than the income of an individual. But Australia’s tax system is built around individuals, so it’s hard to do. We would also like to know more about their typical income and whether capital gains were likely a one off or something more permanent.

Here’s what we can say:

Labor’s change will “grandfather” existing assets, meaning they will continue to be taxed under the present, more generous, arrangement. This means Labor’s change won’t have much of an effect for years, making any simple guess of how much money it makes an overestimate.

Read more: Capital gains tax concession is too generous: economists poll

At the moment, personal taxpayers pay A$6.7 billion per year in capital gains tax. Labor’s changes could potentially reap half that amount, but they would build up to it slowly, and by the time they got there, fewer people would look for capital gains as a means of escaping tax, meaning they would never get there, and giving a boost to other kinds of tax revenue.

It’s pretty certain that those who would feel it most would be higher income earners, older Australians, partnered women, quite often on behalf of their higher income partner.

– ref. Stranger than fiction. Who Labor’s capital gains tax changes will really hurt – http://theconversation.com/stranger-than-fiction-who-labors-capital-gains-tax-changes-will-really-hurt-109657

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Simpson, Chair of Indigenous Linguistics and Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University

In 1788 there were between 300 and 700 Indigenous languages spoken across Australia by millions of people, as shown in anthropologist Norman Tindale’s 1974 map. However in the Australian 2016 Census, only around 160 of these languages were reported as being spoken at home.

And of these, only 13 traditional Indigenous languages are still spoken by children. It means that in 60 years’ time only 13 of Australia’s languages will be left, unless something is done now to encourage these children to keep speaking their language, and to encourage children from other language groups to start speaking their heritage languages.

Read more: Why do so few Aussies speak an Australian language?

In the Australian 2016 Census, nearly 650,000 Australians identified as Indigenous. Of these, around 10% (63,754) reported themselves as speaking an Indigenous language at home (they could also be speaking English and/or another Indigenous language). So which languages have the most speakers today?

Even for the 13 traditional Indigenous languages still spoken by children, the total numbers of speakers are tiny. The largest speaker numbers are:

• Djambarrpuyngu (one of the large group of Yolŋu languages spoken in Arnhem Land – 4,264 speakers)

• Pitjantjatjara (one of the large group of Western Desert languages – 3,054 speakers)

• Warlpiri (spoken in Central Australia – 2,276 speakers)

• Tiwi (spoken on the Tiwi Islands – 2,020 speakers )

• Murrinh-Patha (spoken at Wadeye in the Northern Territory – 1,966 speakers)

• Kunwinjku (one of a group of related languages spoken in west Arnhem Land – 1,702 speakers)

13,733 people report that they speak a new Indigenous language. New languages have developed since 1788 from contact between English speakers and Indigenous languages speakers.

These include Kriol spoken in the Katherine region and across the Kimberley, Yumpla Tok spoken in the Torres Strait and Cape York, and Aboriginal English. Others don’t have widely recognised names, and so the Census under-reports these.

Anthropologist Norman Tindale’s 1974 map of Aboriginal languages. Held at the South Australia Museum

Of the 600,000 other Indigenous people, many are actively relearning their ancestral languages. From the 2016 census these include:

However we should be wary of difficulties in counting languages and speakers in the Census. One is drawing boundaries between languages and dialects.

Another is variable names for languages – if Indigenous people don’t have a name for the language they talk (which is common among the world’s smaller languages), or if the Census data analysers don’t recognise that name, then their language will be assigned to “Australian Indigenous languages not further defined” – in the 2016 Census this accounts for 8,625 of the 63,754 people.

Read more: Some Australian Indigenous languages you should know

A third difficulty is that the Census question doesn’t distinguish between people who speak an Indigenous language as their main means of everyday talk, and people who are actively relearning an Indigenous language, and use English for most everyday talk.

The ambiguities and incompleteness in the Census results mean that it is important to find other ways to supplement it. Later this year the Australian government will release its National Indigenous Languages Report which will give a more comprehensive picture.

Read more: Explainer: how Tasmania’s Aboriginal people reclaimed a language, palawa kani

Supporting languages

Indigenous people who speak English or a new Indigenous language as their first language often want to learn and reawaken their heritage language from old recordings and documents, and sometimes from elderly speakers.

The Federal government is currently supporting many groups in language reawakening, which can be a transformative activity. In some places it has made Indigenous people and heritage visible through signage, welcomes to country and art events.

Signage at Hobart’s Mount Wellington using the Tasmanian Aboriginal, palawi kani, name for the mountain, kunanyi. Flickr/Pursuedbybear, CC BY-NC-SA

The demand to learn these languages at school level is increasing, and the supply of teachers with relevant training can’t keep up. There’s only one public teacher education program that addresses this demand: the Master of Indigenous Language Education at the University of Sydney.

Three reawakening languages are now taught at university level: Kaurna (University of Adelaide), Gamilaraay (Australian National University and University of Sydney and Wiradjuri (Charles Sturt University).

Other languages still spoken by children and taught at universities include Yolŋu Matha through Charles Darwin University, and Pitjantjatjara through the University of South Australia.

In 2019 Charles Darwin University and the Australian National University are combining forces with Bininj Kunwok people to teach their language online.

Pressure to speak English

Indigenous people who don’t speak English as a first language face enormous pressure to switch to speaking English only (even though elsewhere in the world multilingualism is common, and affords social and intellectual advantages).

Things that currently make it hard are that:

• all government services are delivered in English as the default

• interpreters and translations are often not available, or only available for serious court cases and serious medical problems

• schools mostly operate in English with inadequate attention to the language needs of the children.

The number of first language speakers of new and traditional language who need language support for access to services is very small – around 60,000. Governments could require at least some of the public servants servicing that area to speak the local language. There are few local Indigenous public servants in remote communities – what if a concerted effort was made to recruit and train more local people?

Jill Seraine doing the Bininj Kunwok course. Provided by Cathy Bow, Author provided

Schooling is another area for support. Governments could say that in communities where the majority of the population speak a language other than English, then the schools should recognise the children’s mother tongue in the initial years of schooling, in order to make the best decisions on how to use languages in their education. Skilled teachers fluent in the local Indigenous language and English are highly valuable in this process.  The most cost-effective way of doing this is to make sure local Indigenous people have access to good teacher training.

Having more local Indigenous teachers in remote communities has many other social advantages as well. Properly supporting lessons in Indigenous languages in schools requires rich documentation of the language and society, and so protects cultural heritage. Above all, it shows that the children’s first language is valued by everyone.

A New Year’s Resolution for this International Year of Indigenous Languages: let’s encourage governments to work with Indigenous people to help fulfil hopes for our national languages treasure.

– ref. The state of Australia’s Indigenous languages – and how we can help people speak them more often – http://theconversation.com/the-state-of-australias-indigenous-languages-and-how-we-can-help-people-speak-them-more-often-109662

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

The political down time over summer can be something of a respite for an embattled government. But for Scott Morrison, it has just brought more setbacks. The weekend announcement by cabinet minister Kelly O’Dwyer that she will leave parliament at the election is the latest and most serious.

O’Dwyer says she wants to see more of her two young children, and would like to have a third, which involves medical challenges.

Her decision is understandable. The first woman to have a baby while a federal cabinet minister has been juggling an enormous load.

But with the general expectation that the Morrison government is headed for opposition, many people will think (rightly or wrongly) that O’Dwyer was also influenced by the likelihood she faced the grind of opposition, which is a lot less satisfying than the burden of office.

Bad timing for the minister for women

Her insistence at Saturday’s joint news conference with Morrison that he will win the election won’t convince anyone.

If the Liberals didn’t have their acute “woman problem”, O’Dwyer’s jumping ship wouldn’t be such a concern. She’s been a competent minister, not an outstanding performer. She was not in “future leader” lists.

But it’s altogether another matter to have your minister for women bailing out when there has been a huge argument about the dearth of females in Coalition ranks, damaging allegations of bullying within the Liberal party, and high profile Victorian backbencher Julia Banks deserting to the crossbench.

All in all, the Liberal party is presenting a very poor face to women voters. It was O’Dwyer herself who told colleagues last year that the Liberals were widely regarded as “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers”.

Anti-women climate-change deniers?

An effort earlier this month to have assistant ministers Sarah Henderson and Linda Reynolds talk up the Liberals’ credentials on women looked like the gimmick it was.

O’Dwyer says she has “no doubt” her successor as the Higgins candidate will be a woman. Morrison also says he thinks there will be a female replacement.

But this just highlights how the Liberal party’s failure to bring enough women through the ranks now forces it into unfortunate corners.

The candidate will be chosen by a local preselection. As one journalist quipped at the news conference, is the situation that blokes needn’t apply?

And what if a man happened to win? Remember Morrison’s experience in the Wentworth byelection, where he wanted a woman and the preselectors gave him Dave Sharma?

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Wentworth preselectors’ rebuff to Morrison caps week of mayhem

Sharma was generally considered a good candidate – and Morrison is happy for him to have his second try against independent Kerryn Phelps at the general election.

Assuming, however, that Higgins preselectors heed the gender call, it seems they will have some strong female contenders to choose from.

Paediatrician Katie Allen, who contested the state election, has flagged she will run; Victorian senator Jane Hume is considering a tilt.

There is inevitable speculation about whether former Abbott chief- of-staff Peta Credlin might chance her arm for preselection.

But her hard-edged political stance would be a risk in an electorate where the Greens have been strong – savvy Liberals point out a climate sceptic wouldn’t play well there. And it would be embarrassing for her if she ran for preselection and was defeated.

O’Dwyer rejects the suggestion she was swayed by the possibility she might lose Higgins. Some Liberals were pessimistic about the seat after the party’s drubbing in the Victorian election, and Labor was ahead in two-party terms in a poll it commissioned late last year.

Read more: Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer says Liberals were ‘subject to threats’ in leadership battle

But the government has a 10% margin in two-party terms against Labor, and despite the polling the ALP doesn’t expect to win the seat. (In 2016 the Greens finished second.)

O’Dwyer, who is also minister for jobs and industrial relations, remains in her positions and in cabinet until the election. Understandably Morrison would not want a reshuffle. But having a lame duck minister in the important IR portfolio is less than optimal.

Attention turns to Bishop

Inevitably O’Dwyer’s announcement has turned attention onto the future of former deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop. Bishop has said she is contesting the election but there is continuing speculation she might withdraw.

While she has previously left open the possibility of running for the opposition leadership this makes no sense.

Now in her early 60s, her chances of ever becoming PM would be virtually nil if Labor won with a good majority and was set for two terms. That’s if she had the numbers to get the leadership in the first place.

It is assumed Bishop has said she’s staying so she stymies any replacement she doesn’t want (such as attorney-general Christian Porter whose own seat is at risk) and can secure a candidate she favours.

Even though she’s a backbencher now, it would be a another blow for the Liberals if Bishop does decide to retire at the election.

Read more: Julie Bishop goes to backbench, Marise Payne becomes new foreign minister

She was humiliated when she received only a handful of votes in the August leadership ballot. Her treatment left her deeply angry, especially because none of her Western Australian colleagues supported her.

But out in the community she is very popular and many voters still can’t understand why, when there was a change of prime minister, she was not the one chosen.

If Bishop were to walk away, she would be making a rational decision. But it would send another powerful negative vibe to voters about the Liberal party and women.

– ref. View from The Hill: O’Dwyer’s decision turns the spotlight onto Bishop – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-odwyers-decision-turns-the-spotlight-onto-bishop-110159

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Wake, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, UNSW

Review: Deer Woman, Sydney Festival

One of the most exhilarating things about Wesley Enoch’s tenure as Artistic Director of the Sydney Festival has been the huge increase in the number of First Nations artists programmed, not only from Australia but also Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Festival audiences have had the opportunity not only to witness a local festival being decolonised, but also to listen to an increasingly global dialogue through and about First Nations performance.

Like Gabriel Dharmoo’s Anthropologies Imaginaires and Cliff Cardinal’s Huff in the 2017 festival, Deer Woman is a work written, directed, designed, composed, stage managed and performed by First Nations artists from Canada. And like these works, it too is anchored by a solo performance of fierce skill, focus and precision.

On entering the theatre, we see a sparse set: two screens stand at roughly 45 degrees to the audience and 90 degrees to each other; in between the screens, there is a camera on a tripod and a blue cooler. The screens display infrared footage of deer nosing about in the forest, their eyes glowing green. In the background, the Everly Brothers croon “Devoted to You,” “Walk Right Back,” and “Love Hurts.” The harmonies are beautiful but the titles and lyrics do not bode well.

Throughout Deer Woman, Cherish Violet Blood expertly balances the demands of cinematic and theatrical acting. Prudence Upton

Silence falls, except for the crickets, and Lila (played by Cherish Violet Blood) enters from between the screens. She puts on a hoody, opens the cooler, pulls out a can and cracks it open. It gives a satisfying hiss. “Hey, I’m back,” she says – apparently, we have already been conversing.

Having established that we are in the middle of something – though we are not sure what – Lila begins to set the scene. The first act introduces us to Lila’s girlfriend, Gloria. Lila tells how Gloria, who works at a halfway house, got free tickets to a performance and decided to take the women for an outing. Unbeknownst to her, it featured a woman hanging on a meat hook while a man fisted her. The audience gasps at the inappropriateness, but we are not off the metaphorical hook either.

Instead, Lila teases us about going to see the show, crying a little bit, exclaiming over its “power” and “importance,” and heading home feeling like a good person. “Enjoy your pain porno!” shouts Gloria as she and the women leave at interval. We, on the other hand, have already been warned that Deer Woman has no interval. How are we going to negotiate the next 90 minutes?

This mood of teasing, daring and warning the audience shifts into something happier in the second act. Lila stands – finally – and takes us back to her childhood. Her favourite people are Aunty Gary – her mother’s queer brother, who is described as “our only uncle and aunty; we’re really lucky he’s both” – and her sister Hammy.

We then learn about Lila’s sexual abuse, which she decides she can take as long as it keeps her little sister safe, and her young adulthood in the army. It is while she is away that Hammy goes missing. It seems that Lila was protecting a country that still does not protect its own. The third act deals with the aftermath of Hammy’s disappearance, including Lila’s detailed plans for revenge.

Deer Woman is a work of immense power – to invoke the theatregoer mocked in the first act – but also restraint. Tara Beagan’s script is immaculately structured, and the language is striking for its specificity (welfare pops, Gretzy, the Chinook, the Sally Ann), poetry (Bob is as “quiet as a stump” and Gary is a “pessimistic cheerleader”), and bleak humour (Gloria claims to attend the “uni of life – you graduate by not getting killed”).

Deer Woman excels because of its solo performer, Cherish Violet Blood. Prudence Upton

The set, by director and designer Andy Moro, is similarly effective. Most of the time, the live performer and the two screens are in sync but occasionally they decouple. One screen might dissolve into footage of the fairground while the other screen might freeze Blood’s face wearing a particular expression. The sound design is similarly understated: we hear the distant cries of people enjoying rides, crowds at a rally, and one sister singing the other to sleep.

None of this would matter though if the wrong person were cast as Lila and Deer Woman excels because Blood does. Throughout the entire show, Blood expertly balances the demands of cinematic and theatrical acting, combining subtle facial gestures within the frame with expansive physical ones beyond it. It is a consummate performance that oscillates between entertaining, confessing to, disciplining, daring and playing with the audience.

Within the context of this year’s festival, Deer Woman serves as an important counterpoint to Adam Lazarus’s Daughter, one of the most conservative shows – in form, content and politics – I have seen in some time. Indeed, I could not help but think of Daughter in the opening scenes, when Lila is describing Gloria’s disastrous outing to the theatre, which features a “white guy saying real rank stuff”. While both shows are solo performances that deal with gender and sexual violence, that is where the similarities end.

Whereas Daughter employs theatre to amplify the loudest voice in the room, i.e. that of the privileged straight man, Deer Woman puts a queer woman of colour centre-stage, has her survey the room and speak her desire to destroy it. Indeed, rather than the violence against women, it seemed to be the idea of women taking revenge that shocked the audience. People who had been sitting forward started to lean back, several people walked out, and one woman muttered to her companion “this is horrible.”

Deer Woman features a sparse set. Prudence Upton

Companies often grant reviewers only one ticket, meaning that I regularly see theatre by myself. When a show finishes I always walk briskly and purposefully to the car park or train station, informed by a lifetime of banal advice: walk as if someone is expecting you, keep your keys at the ready, call someone on your phone, don’t wear headphones, do wear shoes you can run in if need be.

But on the night of Deer Woman, I walk more slowly, open my chest and shoulders, feel the strength in my back. There is an army of big sisters out there, I think to myself, and we are coming for you. In the morning, news of Aiia Maasarwe’s murder would break and I would shrink back to my normal size. But for one glorious moment, I was – like Deer Woman – wild and free.

Deer Woman is being staged as part of the Sydney Festival until January 20.

– ref. Deer Woman is a work of immense power and restraint – http://theconversation.com/deer-woman-is-a-work-of-immense-power-and-restraint-110096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Bolleter, Deputy Director, Australian Urban Design Research Centre, University of Western Australia

Australia is one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world. Nonetheless, in recent times many Australians have come to regard population growth, and particularly immigration, as a problem – at best – to be solved. In contrast, we believe population growth and migration present a creative opportunity to shape new Australian cities unlike any we have built to date.

In a globalised economy where technology has prevailed over geography, Australians are natural global citizens. However, all is not well in multicultural Australia. Recent and credible polling indicates that 64% of Australians think the level of immigration over the past decade has been too high – up from 50% in 2016.

Read more: Australians think immigration should be cut? Well, it depends on how you ask

We believe such opinions (in part) stem from entrenched migration patterns. Currently 90% of new arrivals settle in Sydney or Melbourne where they compound housing affordability and congestion issues, among others. Migrants from overseas are the main contributors to both cities’ populations growing by over 100,000 people each year.

In response to these issues, the Morrison government is considering a plan requiring some new migrants, including refugees, to settle for up to five years in regional areas.

However, there are limits to this approach. Voting patterns indicate Australians in regional Australia are also often resistant to increased migration. Moreover, the mechanisation and automation of farming mean that jobs are often scarce.

So what can Australia do?

Australia will need more drastic solutions over the longer term. Refugees now number over 25 million people worldwide. Due to climate change alone a deluge of refugees is predicted by 2050, particularly in Asia – 144 million in China, 63 million in India and 62 million in Bangladesh.

In the face of this, demographer Bernard Salt asks:

What does Australia do? Board and turn back every boat? Leave the refugees without support on the Kimberley coast? Plan to help as many as we can and then hope we can ship back tens of thousands of people?

Clearly, Australia will need a plan to deal with this situation, particularly given the panic over the arrival of small numbers of “boat people” and the Coalition government reducing immigration to the lowest level in more than a decade. We could bemoan a lack of support for increased immigration in Australia, or instead bear this resistance in mind and try to find a creative (part) solution.

This is where our Refuge City model is potentially instructive. As Robert Wiblin has urged in the past:

If Australians are not so enthusiastic about sharing their good luck with refugees [and migrants], a charter city administered by Australia will at least allow them access to the governmental and legal institutions which have served Australia so well.

In line with this sentiment, we have designed an urban model for a bustling, multicultural and entrepreneurial metropolis located on Australia’s northern coast which would run under its own charter. Such a city would provide refuge and opportunity for many migrants, above and beyond what Australia already accepts through its humanitarian migration program.

An indicative plan for Refuge City. ‘Future Making’ students and staff, University of Western Australia

Read more: New cities? It’s an idea worth thinking about for Australia

A city of cities on the north coast

Why the northern coast? We selected this area because it has many advantages, such as proximity to rapidly growing Indonesia, availability of mineral and energy resources, and – in the case of the Northern Territory – Commonwealth control of land. This is important because it gives the federal government full legislative power to create a charter city unconstrained by opposition from the states.

Refuge City would comprise dense, car-phobic and adaptable urban neighbourhoods (of up to 32,000 people) based partly on migrant ethnicities – forming a city of cities, rather than a monolithic mass of urbanism.

A city of cities: a model of the proposed Refuge City. ‘Future Making’ students and staff, University of Western Australia

As required, this form would enable different cultural groups to follow many of their own cultural practices and develop a measure of self sufficiency. The design of these neighbourhoods would be developed with the communities and would reference – within limits – the urban traditions of the residents’ home countries so to provide a “home away from home”.

A cross-section view of a Refuge City neighbourhood. Nur Mohd Rozlan, Author provided

Rather than the cultural model of the “melting pot” – which is under assault in many cities of the world – these urban neighbourhoods would cradle islands of relative cultural specificity yet maintain an overall cultural diversity. Natural areas, recreational open spaces and schools would provide crucial interstitial spaces between the urban islands and their respective communities. Moreover, an integrated bus system and a wide distribution of jobs would also stimulate interactions between communities. This will moderate the cultural specificity of the urban islands over time.

The design of each city neighbourhood will reference the urban traditions of the residents’ home countries. ‘Future Making’ students and staff, University of Western Australia

Adapting the charter city model

Like other charter cities such as Shenzen, an independent government would govern the city, running it with respect to a specific charter. The autonomous government will incorporate an alliance of representatives from Australia’s federal and territory governments and potentially other countries within the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

Read more: Xiong’an, Xi Jinping’s new city-making machine turned on

The charter’s terms, which will define the city’s operation, include a much lower personal and company tax regime than elsewhere in Australia, to stimulate investment and jobs. Businesses would pay workers the Australian minimum wage but would not otherwise offer award wages or conditions. Complementing this will be a basic but liveable social security, housing, education and primary health care system.

On arrival, migrants would receive a temporary visa. They would be able to apply for a skilled migration visa if they gain marketable skills from the city’s trade schools and university campuses, or a permanent business visa if they establish a successful business (both business and education would be conducted in English).

Moreover the city would avoid the need for mandatory offshore detention of arrivals by boat, which the UN Human Rights Council has condemned as a “massive abuse” of migrants. This has in turn profoundly damaged Australia’s moral authority globally. Despite our tarnished reputation, Australian residents would be welcome in Refuge City, whether as students attending global university hubs, starting a business, or enjoying the city’s bustling diversity while on a weekend getaway. Conversely, Refuge City residents would also be able to visit other Australian cities, and in particular Darwin.

Through a leasehold model, Indigenous landholders would maintain ownership of Refuge City land and gain a sustainable and substantial rental income from it. This is not unprecedented. Canberra embodies a similar system, with all land leased to “owners” as a Crown lease.

Moreover, given Indigenous culture’s continuing ownership and intimate knowledge of the land, we would develop the Refuge City designs with land councils. Without such sincere engagement, traditional owners would rightly veto new city development under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

Through our Refuge City model Australians could aid many more refugees than they would otherwise accept as fully fledged immigrants to the existing cities. In so doing, we could make Australia the world’s great 21st-century refuge.

Refuge City montage. By Julian Bolleter based on a photo by Ludo Kuipers, Author provided

Read more: Australia, a nation in need of compassion-focused therapy

– ref. Refuge City, a new kind of city for our times – http://theconversation.com/refuge-city-a-new-kind-of-city-for-our-times-106992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

Heading back to work after the holidays means turning your thoughts to what’s for lunch. Are you a meticulous lunch planner, or do you only make a decision once those first hunger pangs signal it’s lunchtime?

Whether you bring lunch from home or buy it from a staff canteen or food outlet will depend on the availability of food nearby and whether you have a workplace kitchen with a fridge, microwave and sandwich press.

While it’s easy for work lunch to be an afterthought, there are multiple advantages to bringing your lunch from home and eating in a staff room, rather than at your desk.

Read more: What is a balanced diet anyway?

Planning healthy lunches and eating with others can lower your stress, improve your work performance and help your bank balance – not to mention improve your overall nutrition.

Being organised is worth it

Planning meals for the week ahead gives you more control of your food choices.

The most recent national nutrition survey of 4,500 adults found those who “grazed”, rather than ate regular meals, had poorer diets and were more likely to carry excess weight.

Rather than thinking about your options at lunchtime, plan and shop for the week ahead. Minerva Studio/Shutterstock

A 2017 French study of 40,000 adults found those who planned their meals were 13% more likely to have the healthiest eating patterns and 25% more likely to consume a better variety of healthy foods, compared to those who didn’t plan.

The planners also had about a 20% lower risk of having obesity. But we need to keep in mind that this is an association and does not prove causation.

Read more: Want to be happier, healthier, save money? It’s time to get cooking

Even doctors report that poor nutrition at work makes them feel irritable, tired, hungry, frustrated and unwell. It makes it harder for them to concentrate, and affects their performance and decision-making.

Workplace interventions to promote healthier eating have included nutrition education, support or counselling to help change behaviours, personalised feedback on nutrition and/or workplace changes such as increased availability of healthier meals, vegetables, fruit and water. These programs have led to small but positive improvements in dietary patterns, lifestyle choices and feelings of wellness.

One study found eating with others at work helped promote social cohesion and boosted poeple’s sense of well-being.

In another study that followed 39,000 Thai adults over four years, researchers found those who ate by themselves were more likely to be unhappy.

Company is food for the mind. Shutterstock

Put happy food in your lunch box

Having a healthy diet may lower the risk of developing depression, according to a review of the research into diet and depression, which pooled results from 21 studies involving 117,229 people.

The researchers found high intakes of vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, fish, olive oil, low-fat dairy products, and low intakes of animal foods, were associated with a lower risk of depression.

A greater risk was linked to high intakes of red and/or processed meat, refined grains, lollies, high-fat dairy products, butter, potatoes, gravies and low intakes of vegetables and fruit.

In a program aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable intakes in young adults, those who were given two extra serves to eat each day reported an increase in vitality, well-being and motivation compared to those told to stick to their usual (low) intakes.

Take fruit you actually like, even if it’s a bit more expensive. Alliance/Shutterstock

Interestingly, participants who were given vouchers to purchase more vegetables and fruit, and sent text message reminders to eat more of them, didn’t increase their fruit and vegetable intake as much as those who were actually given the extra serves.

So having the healthy foods available is key to eating them.

Take lunch to save money

Preparing food at home saves you money. A survey of 437 adults in the United States found those who prepared meals at home more often spent less money on food away from home, less money on food overall, and had healthier dietary intakes.

Australian research shows eating healthily can be more affordable than eating unhealthy foods.

The image below shows the ingredients to make five work lunches that incorporate:

• 3 serves of salad/vegetables
• 2 pieces of fruit
• a tub yoghurt or cheese
• vegetable sticks with some dip for snacks.

Plan a lunch menu, write a matching shopping list and start saving money. Bronte Goddensmith 2019

This costs about A$7.50 a day. If you bought a fast-food lunch plus a couple of snacks it could cost A$10-A$15 or more each day.

Over a year, the savings from bringing lunch from home versus buying it adds up to A$600 to A$1,800 for one person.

Read more: We asked five experts: is cheese bad for you?

Pack a healthy lunchbox the night before

You need to be organised to take your own lunch so other factors that influence your food choices don’t hijack good intentions. Try these tips:

1) plan your lunches for the week – write a matching shopping list so you have all the ingredient at your fingertips

2) invest in a lunchbox – pack it the night before and put it in the fridge. That way you minimise time needed in the morning to make lunch

Be creative so it’s easy to eat healthy food at work. Image from Rijk Zwaan 2018

3) try a lunch of leftovers – as you clear away the evening meal, pack leftovers into microwave safe storage containers and refrigerate

4) portion out healthy snacks in small containers – this could include nuts, dip and vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, baby corn, snack cucumbers and carrot sticks.

5) buy a range of fruits you really like – relative to the cost of snacks from vending machines, it’s less expensive and much better for you

6) try making a stack of sandwiches, such as curried egg or cheese on weekends and freeze them

7) make a mini-salad in a snaplock bag using baby cos lettuce cups, cherry tomatoes and capsicum so you can grab and go

8) freeze bottles of water and add one or two to you lunch box to keep food cool on your way to work.

– ref. Back to work? Take lunch from home to save time and money – and boost your mood – http://theconversation.com/back-to-work-take-lunch-from-home-to-save-time-and-money-and-boost-your-mood-107717

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, PhD candidate in Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Anyone can play video games, right?

If you’ve been following recent buzz in the gaming industry, you might be under the impression that video games are more accessible than they’ve ever been. Popular talking points include how video game audiences are increasingly large and diverse.

This perception is due, in large part (as games researcher Jesper Juul identifies), to the rise of more user-friendly interfaces that bypass many of the roadblocks associated with controller “literacy”. (For example, knowing that if you want your avatar to jump further you need to hold the jump button down rather than just press it.)

Read more: Game therapy: serious video games can help children with cerebral palsy

It’s true that more people are now able to play games without such a high degree of prior gaming knowledge – thanks to haptic play on mobile devices and natural interfaces on videogame consoles, such as those displayed by the recent Nintendo Switch or Sony’s PlaystationVR. These control schemes are more intuitive, and far less reliant on players accumulating controller literacy.

But despite the celebratory discourse around gaming’s increased accessibility, serious efforts to make gaming accessible to people living with disability remain rare.

The videogame industry needs to improve in this area. And that depends on changing the assumptions made at a design level about who plays video games.

Videogame designers make assumptions about the body

We know that people with disabilities play videogames – and make money by livestreaming their play as well as competing in e-sports tournaments.

AbleGamers is an organisation that advocates for disabled gamers, and it estimates there to be around 33 million gamers with disabilities in the United States alone.

But recent media reports suggest that people living with a disability face barriers to entry formed by inaccessible technologies.

All video games – from those played on a PlayStation 4 to an Oculus Rift – are technologies of the body. We scan movements on the screen with our eyes, grip controllers with our hands, rapidly tap buttons with our fingers, and so on.

But the assumption that everyone who plays video games has a body that functions in the same way can be exclusionary for gamers living with a disability.

Pokemon Let’s GO features motion-based controls for capturing Pokemon. from www.shutterstock.com

The current state of play

One aspect of Ablegamers work involves evaluating video games from a disability perspective.

For example, its evaluation of the Nintendo Switch points out some usability issues for disabled players. Its report addresses the Switch controller’s inability to reprogram buttons – a function necessary for those unable to use the traditional configuration.

It also addresses an inability to change screen font sizes, a potential issue for players with visual impairments. These issues underline how the Switch’s design is based on normative assumptions about the bodies that will use it.

AbleGamers has published an open access manual for more inclusive game design.

Read more: How playing video games can change your retirement

Aside from the hardware, there can also be usability issues within games themselves. A number of games released in 2018 exemplify a lack of accessibility.

For example, the recent Spyro Reignited Trilogy for current generation consoles did not feature subtitles. Subtitles are a necessity for deaf players, and an option in many contemporary games.

Another of the year’s most hotly anticipated releases, Pokemon: Let’s GO, featured motion-based controls for capturing Pokemon. As one of the main game play features, this has created a number of accessibility issues for players with physical disabilities unable to perform the requisite gesture.

In both of these instances, and indeed in many more, considerations of disability have been sidelined, and players with disabilities potentially excluded from play.

How is this being redressed?

There have been some recent advances by game developers which seek to increase accessibility.

This year Microsoft has released its “Adaptive Controller” for the Xbox One, which is designed to redress accessibility issues present with the Xbox One’s standard controller. As the controller’s advertising copy reads:

Designed primarily to meet the needs of gamers with limited mobility, the Xbox Adaptive Controller features large programmable buttons and connects to external switches, buttons, mounts and joysticks to help make gaming more accessible.

The Xbox adaptive controller provides more options for players. Xbox

For the most part, though, players are still incredibly reliant on third-party developers to create specialised devices, which can be costly. For example, one device used by a quadriplegic Dota 2 streamer costs $449. This creates potential economic barriers for players with disabilities.

As researchers David Wästerfors and Kristofer Hansson point out, players with disabilities are also creating their own specialised controllers.

But shouldn’t the onus be on game developers to make gaming accessible?

Read more: Stay alive, and if something moves, shoot it: one year of phenomenal success for Fortnite

Awareness at design level

Redressing a tendency to marginalise disability in games requires much more awareness of disability at a design level.

“Game engines” – the tools used for the creation of video games – are already encouraging accessibility. Epic Games’s Unreal Engine 4 is a good case in point. This engine allows game developers to see what their game would look like with various forms of colour blindness, enabling them to more diligently incorporate disability into game design.

We need to see more of this in the industry.

In 2018, video games are culturally significant, and central to the lives of many. It’s crucial that, within the context of broader conversations about gaming and exclusion, we take issues of disability and accessibility in gaming seriously.

The stakes of being excluded will only increase, as videogames become more central in our everyday lives.

– ref. It’s designers who can make gaming more accessible for people living with disabilities – http://theconversation.com/its-designers-who-can-make-gaming-more-accessible-for-people-living-with-disabilities-107594

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

On June 23, 2016 the United Kingdom held a referendum to decide whether it should leave or remain in the European Union. More than 30 million people took part in the vote with 51.9% choosing to leave and 48.1% to remain.

Six months later, the new Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a speech in which she said:

the British people voted for change… And it is the job of this government to deliver it.

Where it got messy is deciding how to leave the Union. Would it be a clean break, the so-called hard Brexit, or a softer version where some links to the EU remained?

But first, a bit about the EU

The European Union is an economic and political partnership of 28 European countries across the whole continent, including France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, the UK and Ireland. It operates under a “single market” which means goods, services, capitals and people can move around as if the member states were one country.

Nineteen of the member countries, not including the UK, share a common currency, the Euro. The EU also has its own parliament which sets rules in areas including the environment, transport and consumer rights.

The European Union is made up of 28 member states. Reuters

May’s hard Brexit strategy

Theresa May’s vision for leaving the European Union came in a Brexit White Paper, which she delivered to Parliament on February 2, 2017. The paper explained that, in negotiating the exit with the EU, the UK would:

• not be seeking membership of the EU’s single market
• pursue a new strategic partnership with the EU
• pursue a new customs arrangement with the EU to secure new trade agreements with other countries bilaterally and in wider groupings.

In substance, this white paper is a clear indication for the hard Brexit option. A soft Brexit would be where the UK would somehow remain in the European single market, or at the very least become an external member of the EU Customs Union. This is the case for Turkey and some micro-nations including Monaco, Andorra and San Marino.

Read more: Experts read the Brexit white paper – so you don’t have to

A customs union is an arrangement between two or more countries which allows goods to circulate freely in the area of the union. This is done by removing tariffs between the countries inside the union and introducing a common external tariff for the countries outside the union.

A customs union does not cover trade in services and flows of capital and people. But the treaties that have established the EU enshrine the single market (of which the customs union is a component) in four inextricable pillars: the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour. For the EU this is an all-or-nothing package, so that single market members cannot pick and choose only some of the four freedoms.

Hard or soft, deal or no deal?

The issue of a hard or soft Brexit is different from that of the deal, or no-deal, Brexit. The first issue has already been set: it’s a hard Brexit, as Theresa May is not seeking membership of both the EU single market and Customs Union.

May isn’t seeking for the UK to remain part of the European Customs Union. Picture taken in UK specialty store in Berlin by Clemens Bilan

This allows the UK to independently negotiate international trade agreements either with individual countries or other customs unions after the UK’s official withdrawal date: March, 29 2019. After this date, the UK and EU may or may not strike a deal on what happens next.

So, the post-withdrawal arrangements with the EU comprise the deal or no-deal issue currently at stake: will the UK crash out of the EU with or without shared plans, and with or without a gradual implementation period?

The Brexit deal

Both the UK government and the EU governing bodies clearly prefer to split with a deal and a more gradual separation process. To this aim, the two sides have spent nearly two years in the painstaking negotiation of a withdrawal agreement.

This is the now infamous “Brexit deal” – a 585-page legally-binding text agreed to by the EU and UK government on November, 14 2018. The deal sets the terms of the UK’s divorce from the EU and can only enter into force once ratified by the UK parliament.

But, on January 15, 2019 Britain’s House of Commons rejected the Brexit deal by a stunning and unprecedented majority of 230. More than one third of Theresa May’s majority MPs joined the opposition parties against the Brexit deal despite confirming their confidence on the government the following day.

Read more: Theresa May Brexit deal hammered in parliament, but be wary of prospects of a new ‘consensus’ approach

So what’s the problem with the deal?

Like in an actual divorce, the rejected agreement sets the terms for splitting the assets, liabilities and people shared across the two sides. Leaving aside the numerous legal resolutions especially affecting commerce, the deal in particular defines how much money the UK owes the EU and the terms under which the estimated £39bn will be paid.

Theresa May’s deal (between the EU and the UK) on Brexit was shot down by a majority in the House of Commons. Parliamentary Recording Unit Handout/EPA

The deal also preserves the existing residency and working rights of UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU and of the EU citizens living in the UK up until the end of the Brexit implementation period set for 31 December 2020.

But the thorniest issue of the Brexit deal, and the one that proved to be its major fault line, is the proposed method of avoiding the return of a physical border between the UK’s Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – an EU member state.

Ireland is split in two, and there are no hard borders as long as everyone is part of the EU. from shutterstock.com

The Northern Ireland backstop

The island of Ireland is divided into two separate entities: the Republic of Ireland, which is an independent nation member of the EU, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK and has 18 seats in the UK parliament.

The Northern Ireland backstop is a convoluted measure of last resort to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland until the UK and the EU can find a long-term solution for an indefinite period – even after the expiration of the Brexit implementation period (December, 31 2020).

The fact is – with or without the Brexit deal – the Brexit White Paper’s outline to stay outside the EU Single Market and Customs Union means that, eventually, a physical border will reappear on the island of Ireland.

Read more: Would staying in a customs union after Brexit avoid a hard border with Ireland?

This is an ominous prospect as memories of the “Troubles”, the bloody Northern Ireland conflict triggered by border clashes in the late 1960s – between the majority unionist or UK loyalist Protestant population and the minority Catholic or Irish nationalist one – are still fresh.

Over the years the UK and Ireland’s EU membership eliminated any hard borders in Ireland. This played a major part in spelling the end of the Troubles in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which is also based on keeping the whole of Ireland border-free.

A hard Brexit repudiates one of the cornerstones of the Good Friday Agreements and, short of a customs union with the EU, any deal would only kick the can down the road. Theresa May’s proposed solution is the Irish border Brexit backstop.

Conservative Brexit hardliners and the Northern Irish Democratic Union Party voted against Theresa May’s deal. PAUL MCERLANE/EPA

It’s called a backstop precisely because it pushes the UK border with the EU back away from Northern Ireland. This would mean Northern Ireland would all but remain subject to the EU legal framework and be kept virtually separate from the rest of the UK for an indefinite time.

And this is why the conservative Brexit hardliners, and the small but indispensable Northern Irish Democratic Union Party (DUP), voted against Theresa May’s deal. Despite the fact a majority of Northern Irish voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, the DUP fears the backstop would provide momentum to those who wish to reunify Ireland.

Read more: Brexit and Northern Ireland: the latest commitments explained

On the other hand, despite Theresa May’s insistence, the EU is not providing any legally binding guarantee of a definite expiry date for the Irish backstop. The EU’s strategic game is clear, as the continuing existence of the Irish backstop provides yet another strong negotiating chip in respect to any future dealings with the UK.

So what are the alternatives to Theresa May’s hard Brexit deal? Wild guesses include delaying or withdrawing the withdrawal, so to speak, while some even call for a second Brexit referendum. Considering the political uncertainties and legal realities, any guess is little more than wishful thinking.

– ref. What’s the deal (or no-deal) with Brexit? Here’s everything explained – http://theconversation.com/whats-the-deal-or-no-deal-with-brexit-heres-everything-explained-110024

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Ibrahim, Professor, Health Law and Ageing Research Unit, Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University

A surprising group of people stand to benefit from the aged care royal commission, whose hearings start today. These are residents of nursing homes in the far future — people in their 50s and 60s, and their children. How is that possible?

All current nursing home residents the royal commission was established to help will have died before there is any substantive change.

The latest statistics show there are 207,142 older people living in 2,695 facilities owned by 902 different providers. These providers receive more than A$11.2 billion a year from the commonwealth government. A total of 57,769 residents, or more than 27%, die every year.

Read more: Many older people in care die prematurely, and not from natural causes

Residents on average live in nursing homes for two years and six months. This is shorter than the average of three to five years it takes for most royal commissions to form, investigate, conclude and deliver their recommendations.

How did we get here?

It’s been a long road to this royal commission, paved with repeated shocking and disturbing episodes of neglect, abuse and poor care for our vulnerable elderly parents, grandparents and neighbours in residential care.

However, Oakden was the final straw. The South Australian aged care mental health facility closed in 2017 following revelations of abuse and neglect dating back a decade.

Read more: Too many Australians living in nursing homes take their own lives

This royal commission has its genesis in the 1997 Aged Care Act. Perhaps its greatest failing was a lack of an explicit single national common standard and understanding of the purpose of residential aged care facilities. That is what should be achieved for the person who becomes a resident.

We all understand the purpose of child care, schools, hospitals and prisons. We judge these by how they improve the lives and well-being of people they serve. However, the absence of a common positive social understanding of the purpose of nursing homes contributes to the community’s inability to judge how well they perform. The Act describes nursing homes’ tasks, activities and services but this is not enough.

Evidence was there, but not acted on

Another important and under-recognised factor is that the decade the Aged Care Act was written coincided with new thinking around patient safety, evidence-based practice and clinical governance.

However, over the next two decades, successive governments, regulators and providers did not manage to actively or sufficiently apply this new knowledge to practice. That includes evidence from premature deaths investigated by coroners across Australia.

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

For instance, Riverside nursing home’s licence was revoked after 57 residents had kerosene added to baths in January 2000 to control an outbreak of scabies. A fundamental contributing factor was the failure to apply up-to-date evidence. We’d known about a better treatment for scabies since 1931.

Read more: There’s no need to lock older people into nursing homes ‘for their own safety’

In Quakers Hill, a recently employed registered nurse admitted to deliberately lighting a fire that killed 14 people. Contributing factors included the failure of clinical governance systems to recognise and assist impaired health professionals; and a lack of scrutiny of the employee’s qualifications and credentials.

And in Victoria, staff failed to disclose to the family, GP and coroner the true circumstances of a resident who was found dead, lying head-first in an outdoor water feature. A contributing factor was not promoting the right culture for incidents to be reported and disclosed openly.

What will the royal commission uncover?

The royal commission will revisit the known. It will also uncover more criminal acts and other deliberate acts of elder abuse. It will examine care that causes unintended harm and premature death from injury.

Read more: Elder abuse report ignores impact on people’s health

The scale of the investigation is enormous and far greater than most people realise. We don’t know the breadth and depth of harm across the nation as this has not previously been examined in a rigorous, systematic way that we do with health care.

The royal commission appears to have limited its investigation to the nature of care over the past five years, which covers the current 207,142 living residents and the those who died in the past five years (around 290,000 residents).

The health department’s submission to the House of Representatives inquiry into residential aged care (submission 72, p8), advised receiving reports of assault or alleged assault of 1.2% of residents a year. Over five years, the total number of residents affected would be more than 12,400 incidents (1.2% of 207,000 residents each year for five years).

Along with these serious incidents of potential abuse remains the question of substandard clinical care. A conservative estimate would be based on the premise that aged care performs as well as health care, which harms a minimum of 6% of patients from each interaction. This equates to more than 62,100 incidents of harm (6% of 207,000 residents each year for five years).

Read more: Violence between residents in nursing homes can lead to death and demands our attention

The scale of neglect and abuse is potentially so large the royal commission will be consumed with addressing the potential criminal and human rights abuses. This is also consistent with why royal commissions are usually called — to investigate corruption, impropriety, illegal activity or gross administrative incompetence.

The challenge facing the royal commission is to better understand and rectify substandard clinical care by identifying how the aged care sector, government, regulators and health professionals failed to recognise, report and address this harm. By comparison, we’ve know how to do this in the health care sector since 2000.

We also need the royal commission to lead to reforms that shift the sector from being ranked 17th of 96 countries internationally to one that is exceptional, on par with the performance of our health care system.

Who is this royal commission for?

This royal commission matters most to those who are still young, healthy and living at home. It is this group who will receive the benefits of any positive reforms or suffer the consequences of any shortcomings.

Given the broad terms of reference for the royal commission, it is difficult to imagine how it will deliver its findings in 12 months. A more realistic estimate is the inquiry will take up to three years followed by a fourth year for the incumbent government to consider the recommendations, a fifth year for reform to be debated in parliament and legislated, then five years for any substantive policy and practice reforms to be put in place.

This takes us to 2030, by which time at least four cohorts of residents will have entered a nursing home and died.

– ref. Aged care royal commission benefits Generation X: it’s too late for the silent generation – http://theconversation.com/aged-care-royal-commission-benefits-generation-x-its-too-late-for-the-silent-generation-106607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Kristin Merga, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University

Australian schools constantly strive to improve the literacy outcomes of their students. Supporting literacy achievement for struggling readers is particularly important because these readers have their disadvantage compounded: capable students develop “richer” skills through continued exposure to reading, and the gap between them and struggling readers widens.

The number of Australian students deemed “low performers” in reading literacy proficiency has been rising over time. Our percentage of high performers is shrinking – nearly one in five adolescents are in the low performer category.

Read more: Six things you should do when reading with your kids

With school about to start for the year, we should consider how we can optimise support for struggling readers. Young people’s literacy attainment significantly shapes their academic, vocational and social potential. More than seven million adult Australians have their opportunities limited by their literacy level.

Research suggests the presence of qualified library staff in school libraries is associated with better student performance in literacy. But until now, little was known about what specifically they do to achieve this. My new research gives us insight into these key practices.

What do they do?

In 2018, I visited 30 schools in urban and rural sites as part of the Teacher Librarians as Australian Literature Advocates in Schools project. I interviewed teacher librarians to explore a range of questions, including the role they play as literacy educators.

For some children, silent reading time is the only time they have to read. from www.shutterstock.com

There are 40 recurring literacy support strategies used by teacher librarians. But my recent paper focuses on ten strategies that have a particularly strong link to supporting struggling readers:

1. Identification of struggling readers. Teacher librarians support the timely identification of struggling readers through the data they collect on student performance. The sooner struggling readers are identified, the sooner the school can help them.

2. Providing age and skill-appropriate materials for struggling readers. Teacher librarians match students with age-appropriate materials they can manage and topics and genres they prefer. The more a student enjoys and is interested in reading, the more likely they are to keep it up.

3. Teaching students how to choose books they like. Both children in primary and secondary schools have suggested they would read more if it were easier to choose books that appeal to them. Teacher librarians teach students how to do this.

4. Support for students with special needs and readers at risk. For example, Hannah, a teacher librarian, described working with “a young boy who is dyslexic, and I was reading to him and made a dyslexic error, and went back and explained what I’d done and he said, ‘Yeah, I do that, too.’” She then connected him with age and skill-appropriate materials, and he went on to read “an enormous amount”.

5. Matching struggling readers to appropriate books for their skill level. Research suggests when struggling readers have texts matched appropriately with their ability and personal interest, they are more persistent, invested, and use more cognitive skills. Teacher librarians show expertise in making good matches.

6. Promoting access to books. Access to books is positively related to reading motivation, reading skills, reading frequency and positive attitudes toward reading. Teacher librarians make their books accessible. Francesca described regular use of a pop-up library:

We take [it] out into the wilds. And you know, kids will come up and go, ‘oh, what have you got, what have you got.’”

7. Making books and reading socially acceptable. Where young people believe books are socially acceptable, they’re more likely to read and have a positive attitude toward reading. Reading frequency is associated with literacy benefits, so this is ideal. Teacher librarians use a variety of strategies to enhance how books are viewed socially in their schools, including facilitating peer recommendations.

8. Reading to students beyond the early years. Reading aloud offers a range of benefits in the early years and beyond, including an increased enjoyment of reading and increased motivation. Libba described reading aloud to the teenage boys in her classes as a wonderful experience that was very well received. One boy even stated: “that was beautiful”.

Read more: Research shows the importance of parents reading with children – even after children can read

9. Facilitating silent reading time. Though opportunities for silent reading at school may be limited, for some struggling readers, it’s the only book reading they do. Teacher librarians act as keen advocates for silent reading in their library and more broadly in the school. And something is better than nothing, especially for readers who struggle.

10. Preparing students for high stakes literacy testing. Achievement on high-stakes literacy tests is essential for graduation in Western Australia, a controversial move which has seen graduation rates slide. A similar initiative has been explored but rejected in NSW.

Teacher librarians supported struggling readers to achieve this essential academic goal through a range of initiatives. For example, teacher librarian Stephanie supported students to use practice online testing programs in her library, which gave students the practice they needed to sit both NAPLAN and online literacy and numeracy assessment (OLNA) tests.

Why does this matter?

Teacher librarians in Australian schools are a valuable resource often taken for granted. They have faced significant budgetary cuts in recent times, despite a 2011 government inquiry into school libraries. Teacher librarians noted they play an important educative role in our schools.

Read more: Six things you can do to get boys reading more

Recent findings suggest teacher librarians’ morale and related sense of job security may be low. If schools and policy-makers wish to improve students’ literacy outcomes, they should invest in school libraries and our dual-qualified teacher librarians.

– ref. Ten ways teacher librarians improve literacy in schools – http://theconversation.com/ten-ways-teacher-librarians-improve-literacy-in-schools-110026

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

Incentives, in one form or other, are central to our lives.

The Soviet experiment ended in December 1991 because it turned out that when people got paid the same whether they worked hard or slacked off, most people slacked off.

People often work incredibly hard early in their careers to improve their promotion prospects. Parents will to go to extraordinary, sometimes life threatening, lengths to protect their children because of biological incentives. Doctors, nurses, emergency workers, and teachers often go above and beyond the call because of intrinsic motivation.

Without incentives of some kind nothing much happens. As former US treasury secretary Larry Summers once noted, “nobody in the history of the world ever washed a rental car.”

We are bombarded by incentives…

From bonuses for meeting “key performance indicators”, to stock options for executives, to no-claim bonuses on insurance policies, to the threat of the sack for to poor performance, we swim in a sea of incentives.

While carefully designed ones can improve our performance, perhaps dramatically, poorly thought out ones can do the opposite. And, unfortunately, they are all too common.

The problem is, people really do respond to incentives – often in the most literal and destructive ways.

…with unintended consequences

The list of incentive schemes that have gone awry is almost endless. The consequences range from corporate malfeasance, to teachers cheating on behalf of their students, to plagues of rats and snakes.

We have witnessed staggering accounting scandals and bankruptcies like those of Enron and WorldCom where the high-powered incentives for senior executives to report good results became high-powered incentives to create what appeared to be good results.

Anyone who has read or watched “The Big Short” knows the story of how high-powered incentives for mortgage brokers and traders of mortgage-backed securities triggered the global financial crisis.

Closer to home, the Hayne royal commission has shown how incentives in Australia’s financial services sector have led to questionable and sometimes illegal behaviour.

Teachers can cheat, hunters can breed cane toads…

Even where millions of dollars aren’t at stake, incentives can lead to perverse outcomes. Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame was highly critical of the Obama administration’s “Cash for Clunkers” program that was to buy back old cars at high prices and scrap them in order stimulate new car sales

He warned that as originally designed it would encourage people with younger cars to hold on to them for longer in order to qualify for the high price, holding sales back.

In a similar vein, Pauline Hanson’s proposal to pay welfare recipients 10 cents for each live cane toad they turn over to the authorities would also likely exacerbate the cane toad problem by leading to breeding of toads for the bounty. The same thing happened with cobras in colonial India and with rats in colonial Vietnam. Yuck!

Told their careers depended on their students performing well in tests, some teachers in Pennsylvania famously falsified tests by erasing incorrect answers after the papers had been handed in and replacing them with correct ones in order to lift results.

Read more: The economics of ‘cash for cane toads’ – a textbook example of perverse incentives

Incentives work alright, but often in ways we wish they hadn’t.

Oddly, the way to escape perverse outcomes might be to make incentives harder to understand.

…unless the incentives are opaque

In a paper just published in the the RAND Journal of Economics, Florian Ederer of Yale, Margaret Meyer of Oxford and I suggest making incentives less obvious.

Where there are two dimensions of a job that we want incentivised, it can make sense to pay out on only one, but not to say which one.

It’s an approach the British National Health Service stumbled on to after first attempting to incentivise low waiting times and then patient outcomes.

Read more: Getting an initial specialists’ appointment is the hidden waitlist

When it announced it was going to rewards hospital for lower waiting times, waiting times plunged as patients were reportedly left in ambulances and not “checked in” in order to cut reported waiting times, leading to some appalling outcomes. When they switched to rewarding measured outcomes instead, waiting times soared.

Being vague about what it actually paid on enabled it to get both.

There’s power in vagueness

It’s why teachers don’t announce what material is going to be on a final exam ahead of the exam (because otherwise the students would study only that material).

It is why the Productivity Commission in its recommendation that an independent panel select ten “best in show” super funds to be on a list of default funds presented to people entering the workforce stopped short of setting out exactly what the criteria would be.

It’s why Google and Facebook don’t reveal the algorithms they use to rank web sites and keep changing them, a practice about which News Corporation complains in a submission the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s digital platforms inquiry.

If Google and Facebook did make clear exactly what they were rewarding throughout high placement in search results (length of time on site, links from other sites, number of hits) the publishers would aim for that at the expense of other things.

We could learn a bit from Google and Facebook. Sometimes it’s best for the people whose good behaviour you are trying to encourage not to know exactly which behaviour you’ll reward.

Read more: Digital platforms. Why the ACCC’s proposals for Google and Facebook matter big time

– ref. Vital Signs: the power of not being too clear – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-the-power-of-not-being-too-clear-110027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David C. Ribar, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

Financial well-being is hard to get a handle on.

That’s because it’s a mix of how people feel and how they objectively are.

And it’s multifaceted, including things such as spending, saving, investing, borrowing, and insuring, and competing goals that involve trade-offs, such as whether to spend or save.

To help, the Melbourne Institute and the Commonwealth Bank have pulled the dimensions together in a collection of measures we think are the first of their kind: the Reported and Observed Financial Well-being Scales.

The results released this week show most Australians are doing OK. They report no difficulty paying necessary expenses, can cover unexpected expenses, and feel on track to provide for their financial futures. However, a substantial minority struggle.

As expected, people’s income, assets, and home ownership play big roles in their financial well-being. But their attitudes, capabilities, and behaviour are probably even more important, meaning good financial well-being is possible even at modest levels of income and wealth.

Two ways of examining well-being

Adapting definitions that have been proposed for Australia and elsewhere, we define financial well-being as the extent to which people both perceive and have

• financial outcomes in which they meet their financial obligations
• financial freedom to make choices that allow them to enjoy life
• control of their finances, and
• financial security

now, in the future, and under possible adverse circumstances.

To construct the scales, we sieved through 33 self-reported survey measures and 17 bank-record measures that captured different elements of our definition. Formal analyis resulted in our two distinct but related scales.

The first, which we call the CBA-MI Reported Financial Well-being Scale, uses people’s answers to 10 survey questions about how they feel; about things such as dealing with their expenses, building up savings, and control over their finances.

The second, which we call the CBA-MI Observed Financial Well-being Scale, uses data from people’s bank records about their balances, payment problems, and ability to cover unexpected expenses.

The two scales move together. People with high levels of financial well-being on one scale tend to have high levels on the other.

However, the two scales are distinct and capture different aspects of well-being, complementing each other and jointly providing a fuller picture than either could alone.

Melbourne Institute – Commonwealth Bank

What do the measures tell us?

On average, Australians enjoy moderate to high levels of financial well-being, but many experience problems. About a quarter of people report difficulty meeting their necessary expenses, and more than a third report not being able to handle a major unexpected expense or not having enough money for future financial needs.

When it came to characteristics associated with financial well-being, we find that people who earn more and own more assets enjoy higher well-being on average. Home-owners, healthier people, and married couples also tend to have a higher financial wellbeing. But within these categories financial well-being can vary.

Read more: Why single women are more likely to retire poor

Both measures of well-being are higher for people who balance their spending and savings, have strong savings habits, always pay their credit card balances, sacrifice for the future, and actively plan and budget.

And there are surprises.

Retirees and older people tend to enjoy higher financial well-being than younger people, contrasting with the view that retirement is accompanied by financial distress.

People with high mortgage debt and large housing costs also experience higher levels of well-being, although this may be associated with the wealth that is associated with their homes.

Read more: Why we should worry less about retirement – and leave super at 9.5%

The strong agreement between the two scales reassures us that they are indeed measuring financial well-being. However, the scales sometimes diverge, particularly when measuring the financial well-being of people with complex financial situations, including immigrants and business owners.

Improving financial well-being

The low levels of financial well-being experienced by some Australians are a cause for concern. Our measures can help identify these people and their circumstances.

More importantly, they tell us that people in similar circumstances can experience very different levels of financial well-being, telling us there is considerable scope for improving outcomes.

And the strong associations of well-being with financial attitudes, capabilities, and behaviours — all characteristics that can be changed — point to promising avenues for interventions.

– ref. The financially well-off defy the stereotypes. They include retirees, and mortgagees – http://theconversation.com/the-financially-well-off-defy-the-stereotypes-they-include-retirees-and-mortgagees-103431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Rademaker, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian National University

Linguistically speaking, Australia is special. With around 250 languages spoken when Australia was first colonised, Australia was one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.

But few people speak our Indigenous languages. As of 2016, only 10% of Australia’s Indigenous population spoke an Indigenous language at home. Most Indigenous languages are now “asleep”, waiting to be woken up by language revivalists.

Australian languages did not simply fade away; they were actively silenced by governments, schools and missions.

Read more: Some Australian Indigenous languages you should know

At most missions through the mid-20th century, Aboriginal languages were to be replaced with English. The Commonwealth Office of Education explained its intention in 1953:

The policy of assimilation demands a lingua franca as soon as possible – not only for communication between aboriginal and European but between aboriginal and aboriginal. That lingua franca must be English… There is a need everywhere for a planned, vigorous and maintained drive for English. Substitution of a new language for the old is not likely to disrupt the traditional social structure of the people any more than the substitution of Christian religion for their old religion and superstitions. In fact the former might assist the latter process.

As linguist Arthur Capell wrote in 1964:

Government policy looks forward to the loss of Aboriginal languages so that the Aborigines may be “assimilated.”

In pursuit of this policy, the Commonwealth Government banned Aboriginal languages in schools. It required teachers in mission schools to report on whether and for what reason they used any Aboriginal words. Aboriginal languages were to be forbidden even in the playground. The use of mission dormitories, separating children from families, compounded the attack on language.

Mission school children on Groote Eylandt in the 1960s. Groote Eylandt Linguistics

This attack was partly based on the idea that Aboriginal languages were deficient and impaired critical thinking. Missionary linguist Beulah Lowe was told in the 1950s that Aboriginal people have “no real language.” Linguist Robert Dixon remembered being told in 1963 that Aboriginal languages were “just a few grunts and groans.”

As recently as 1969, the Commonwealth government presumed the need for “remedial work” in Aboriginal schools due to the supposed “inhibitory influences” of “bilingualism in education”.

Nowadays educators are aware of the cognitive benefits of being multilingual.

Translating the Bible

The few Europeans who did learn Australian languages were mostly missionaries. But their approaches were contradictory. On the one hand they directly contributed to the loss of Aboriginal languages by putting children in dormitories, English-only schools and separating families. On the other, missionaries showed a greater concern for languages than other colonisers, due to their drive to translate the Bible.

These efforts to translate the Bible were slow compared to those overseas. The first Aboriginal Bible was completed in 2007 (in Kriol, spoken in northern Australia). The Maori Bible was complete in 1868 and by 1946 the Bible was in 30 Pacific languages.

Read more: Meet the remote Indigenous community where a few thousand people use 15 different languages

Translation efforts began in 1824 when Lancelot Threlkeld began learning Awabakal of the Lake Macquarie region and, with his Aboriginal co-translator Biraban, completed an Awabakal Gospel. But disease and violence devastated the community. By 1840 only 16 people were left at the mission.

Other small-scale translation projects followed. German missionaries, perhaps due to their Lutheran tradition of Bible translation or their unfamiliarity with English, made significant efforts. Teichelmann and Schurmann, for example, wrote a grammar of the Kaurna language of the Adelaide region in 1840.

Missionary Judith Stokes and Gula Lalara work on the Anindilyakwa language in the 1970s. Groote Eylandt Linguistics

Missionary linguists always depended on Aboriginal co-translators to teach and translate their language. Carl Strehlow at Hermannsburg worked in with Moses Tjalkabota. Strehlow was one of the few who acknowledged his Aboriginal partner; we don’t know the names of others.

In many places, Aboriginal people used missionaries to have their language and knowledge recorded for future generations. Their foresight is being rewarded. Now, over a century later, their work is being used in language revival projects.

Learning English

Meanwhile, many Aboriginal people quickly learned English, finding it brought them opportunities to defend their interests. They were often gifted linguists. Usually already multilingual when the colonisers came, adding English was relatively easy.

Dispossession of land often meant distinct Aboriginal language communities were thrust together, so Aboriginal people used English, or an English pidgin, as a lingua franca. Some thought it best to keep their language secret from colonisers, perhaps to hide their Aboriginality and the associated discrimination, perhaps to uphold their authority over their cultural knowledge. So they spoke English.

Changing attitudes

By the 1940s, white Australia was realising Aboriginal people were not doomed to extinction. Instead, they assumed Aboriginal cultures and languages would die out once Aboriginal people assimilated.

Read more: Friday essay: dreaming of a ‘white Christmas’ on the Aboriginal missions

Aboriginal linguists and missionaries at Hermannsburg, Ernabella and Milingimbi in central and northern Australia advanced translation in Arrente, Pitjantjatjara and Yolngu Matha and used language in the classroom. Yet as late as 1964, Capell wrote of recording languages so that they “may be handed down to generations who will see them only as darker members of a European culture”. Linguistic research was still considered a matter of archiving languages on their deathbeds.

Attitudes began changing in the 1960s. In 1963, Yolngu people presented their Bark Petition to the Commonwealth government. The petition was written first in Gupapyngu with an English translation. Aboriginal languages could no longer be dismissed as “grunts and groans” of little cultural value.

In 1973, the Commonwealth government introduced mother tongue education at select Aboriginal schools. Aboriginal educators increasingly called for and implemented “two-ways” education.

Today it is possible to study Indigenous Languages Education or Yolngu Studies. Or you could learn a word a day through RN’s Word Up. Communities are “waking up” languages such as Kaurna and Awabakal. But there is a long way to go. Communities wishing to keep language strong still face barriers of policy, prejudice, funding and resourcing.

– ref. Why do so few Aussies speak an Australian language? – http://theconversation.com/why-do-so-few-aussies-speak-an-australian-language-109570

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare and Law, University of Adelaide

Australia is a nation of animal lovers, so when animal abuse is reported in the media, the public are understandably horrified. And they are enraged when the punishment for the offence is seen to be inadequate.

In 2016, a Tasmanian man was sentenced to 49 hours of community service and ordered to pay court costs of A$82.15 for beating six penguins to death with sticks. This caused a public outcry and led to more 50,000 people signing a petition calling for a review into the sentence.

Community outrage across Australia over the decade has led to a number of state and territory governments changing their animal welfare laws to increase the maximum penalties for offences. Queensland amended its maximum penalty for cruelty from two to three years in 2016. South Australia amended the Animal Welfare Act 1985 in 2008.

The maximum time for imprisonment in SA jumped from one to two years, and the maximum fine increased from A$10,0000 to A$20,000.

The SA amendments also introduced a new aggravated offence for particularly horrific crimes against animals, which were deliberate or reckless. Those found guilty of this offence can receive a four-year prison sentence or a A$50,000 fine.

Read more: Australia’s new bill to protect animals will do anything but

An increase in the maximum penalty for an offence in legislation doesn’t necessarily mean penalties increase in practice. Maximum penalties are put in place as a guide for the courts to benchmark the seriousness of a particular offence.

Judges have a degree of discretion, are guided by previous decisions and have to consider some basic sentencing principles in determining sentence.

Our research – undertaken in collaboration with the SA RSPCA, and published in the journal Animals – shows that penalties have in fact doubled in SA since the change in law. We also looked at the nature of offences in the state and the demographics of offenders.

Who is in charge of prosecution for animal cruelty?

While the police have powers to prosecute animal cruelty cases, the bulk of animal law enforcement in South Australia is done by the RSPCA. The state government has given the RSPCA (SA) powers to enforce animal welfare laws.

Most reported offences were against pets, and a minority included livestock. Drimtry Ulitin/Unsplash

Eight animal welfare inspectors respond to cruelty complaints made by the public through the RSPCA’s cruelty hotline. The inspectors communicate with in-house lawyers to determine whether they will take the case to court. RSPCA inspectors have comparable powers to the police when it comes to investigation and enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act – but they have limited manpower and funds.

Average penalty has increased

Until now the average penalty courts give for animal cruelty offences has remained unknown. We analysed 314 closed case files dated between 2006-2008 and 2016-2018 to compare the penalties given before and after the legal change.

We found the average fine increased from A$700 to A$1,535 over the 12 year period, from before to after the law change with the average prison sentences doubling from 37 to 77 days. But, the maximum prison sentence ever handed down for animal cruelty in SA is still only seven months; 41 months shy of the maximum available.

Is this poor use of statutory maximums unique to animal law? Well, probably not; this is a common feature of the criminal law in relation to so-called summary or minor offences. These can be heard by a single magistrate and include road traffic crimes and minor assaults.

Who are the main offenders?

We also investigated the types of offences committed against animals, and the demographics of offenders.

The majority of offences in our study involved companion animals, or pets, (75%) with the remainder involving livestock.

Read more: Want to help animals? Don’t forget the chickens

Thankfully, the percentage of serious, aggravated offences (at least those detected), is low – at 5% of the total. To be classified as a serious offence, the offender’s action must cause serious harm or death to the animal, which was deliberate.

The remaining were the lesser offences, often involving a failure of care, such as poor feeding, or failing to get veterinary treatment when needed.

Males were three times more likely to commit (or at least be charged) with an aggravated offence than females. There was no difference in the proportion of males and females committing the lesser offence.

The average age of offenders across all offences was late 30s to early 40s, with the aggravated offence tending to be perpetrated by slightly younger males.

Previous research suggests males rely on aggression more than females, and females tend to have more empathy for animals.

We found that a higher percentage of animal offences were recorded in Adelaide’s northern suburbs (31%). The north-western suburbs had the second highest rates (9%), closely followed by the southern suburbs (8%).

Adelaide’s northern suburbs were ranked as the most disadvantaged area in SA in the 2016 Australian Census. Since many cruelty cases result from a failure to provide basic care to animals, this is likely a contributing factor to these statistics.

Penalties aren’t enough

While the increase in average penalties is a good sign, it’s likely not enough to decrease animal abuse. The maximum penalty is more of a symbolic gesture to “get tough” rather than a practical figure.

There hasn’t been much research into whether increasing penalties for animal cruelty does reduce the abuse. South Australia hasn’t seen a decrease in offences reported by the RSPCA in their annual statistics, since the change.

Given socioeconomic factors appear to play a part in abuse, education programs in animal care and responsible pet ownership could be more beneficial. As could penalties that better fit the crime, or those that focus on rehabilitation (such as counselling and anger management) to tackle the root of the issue.

Acts of animal cruelty can be reported to your state or territory RSPCA, either by phone or email.

• ACT: 0407 078 221
• NSW: 1300 CRUELTY (1300 278 358)
• NT: 1300 720 386
• Qld: 1300 ANIMAL (1300 264 625)
• SA: 1300 4 RSPCA (1300 477 722)
• Tas: 1300 139 947
• Vic: 03 9224 2222
• WA: 1300 CRUELTY (1300 278 3589)

– ref. Penalties for animal cruelty double in SA, but is this enough to stop animal abuse? – http://theconversation.com/penalties-for-animal-cruelty-double-in-sa-but-is-this-enough-to-stop-animal-abuse-108021

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynn Sheridan, Senior Academic Professional Studies, University of Wollongong

Starting this month, teaching students who fail or haven’t yet taken the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) will not be able to teach in Victorian schools. Previously, around one in 20 teachers who had failed the test or hadn’t taken it yet received provisional registration. Prospective students who took the test late in 2018 received their results on January 11.

Victoria is the first state to implement these new standards. The test is a federal initiative. By 2020, all states and territories will be required to ensure all new teachers pass the test before registration.

The test is meant to ensure all new teachers can read, write and perform simple maths equations. In this Viewpoints, Lynn Sheridan argues this test can’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, while Nan Bahr argues we should prevent teaching students who haven’t yet passed, or who fail the test, from registering.

Lynn Sheridan: The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) is limited in assessing the future quality of teachers. This test only assesses the students’ baseline literacy and numeracy skills for teaching in the classroom. It is modelled on year nine NAPLAN tests, complex to administer and expensive for students to access.

This means students who don’t have the means to pay the A$185 fee (up to three times) will be barred from registration, regardless of their efficacy as a teacher. It also doesn’t test for a range of personal attributes essential to good teaching, including interpersonal and communication skills, resilience and passion for teaching. And it measures their test-taking ability, not their ability to teach that knowledge in practice.

Increased attention on how we select teachers for initial teacher education programs and employment is needed. Research shows we need to pay attention to both academic and non-academic capabilities to recruit the most appropriate teachers.

Ensuring initial teacher education programs are effective and high quality are now national education priorities. But there has been little systematic focus on how we make decisions about choosing teachers for the classroom, or students for initial teacher education programs.

Teacher effectiveness can only be measured by how they support their students’ achievement. A new teacher needs job opportunities and colleagues who support their teaching. Research shows practise is far more important than natural talent.

It takes time, practice and support for a new teacher to fully understand the demands of the profession and become an effective teacher. The personal attributes of the person selected, their development and commitment to improvement, teaching opportunities and guidance are crucial to good teaching.

Testing prospective teachers for literacy and numeracy alone is not enough. from www.shutterstock.com

Nan Bahr: The vital life skills of literacy and numeracy are learned and honed at school and they must be taught and demonstrated by every teacher. Send away applicants for teacher registration who can’t meet the mark. Link them up with support programs for literacy and numeracy, and only provide provisional registration when they have met the standard. We know parents expect it.

If we want our children to be fully literate, and numerate, they need to be taught by people who have a high level of personal skill. The literature, social media and intuition tell us how important it is for teachers to have strong personal literacy and numeracy capabilities. They’ll struggle to employ the required skills for instant feedback in spotting basic errors and appropriately correcting them: fundamental for enhancing learning. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to unpick complex texts, problems, and ideas with their students.

As teachers, they need a deep understanding of what it means to be literate and how they can lead learners to their own functional and critical literacy. Without this, our children will not be enabled to be effective communicators of their ideas or self-reliant as functional adults.

These capabilities are important life skills. Without numeracy and critical literacy skills, a person will struggle. A calculator won’t help without a conceptual understanding of what needs to be calculated and why. A spell check won’t help comprehension of the messaging in written communication. A grammar check won’t help anyone be a powerful writer capable of advocating for themselves or their families.

If we want these capabilities for our children, teachers must have them. Some might say to leave it as a requirement only for the English and maths teachers, but functional and critical literacy and numeracy are a feature of every discipline area.

The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education regularly identifies pre-service teachers who struggle. There is an opportunity to re-sit the tests multiple times. But if a pre-service teacher can’t pass, they’re clearly not ready to oversee student literacy and numeracy development.

If a student teacher can’t pass the test, they’re clearly not ready to oversee student literacy and numeracy development. from www.shutterstock.com

Lynn Sheridan: The literacy and numeracy test (LANTITE) is a useful indicator of a graduate teacher’s ability to pass a year nine NAPLAN style test. It’s only a very simplistic “first pass” instrument to determine suitability of students for the teaching profession.

The LANTITE test does not determine a teacher’s level of personal skills, intuition or life skills. It simply tests baseline literacy and numeracy skills at a year nine level only.

Current research suggests it would be better to assess a graduate teacher’s suitability for teaching based on their teaching performance and teaching degree results.

Much more is required to develop quality graduate teachers. Firstly, they should be selected on both academic and non-academic attributes, then supported in their education and into the teaching profession. Through this coordinated, long-term approach, student teachers can develop as effective teachers.

Nan Bahr: There is definitely more to teaching than functional personal literacy and numeracy. I also agree tests are inexact measures for understanding the deep and nuanced dimensions of critical literacy and numeracy. But we shouldn’t forgive people who have not yet demonstrated functional literacy and numeracy and allow them to be registered teachers anyway.

A teacher’s perceived professionalism is undermined if their written communication is poor, or if they can’t do simple calculations. Even apart from the classroom context, a teacher’s letter to parents peppered with spelling errors, or assessments with miscalculated grades undermine the professional perceptions of the capabilities of teachers to teach complex ideas.

The profession’s reputation and status can’t withstand such a body blow. We should fully support the requirement for teachers to demonstrate basic literacy and numeracy skills prior to professional registration.

– ref. Viewpoints: should teaching students who fail a literacy and numeracy test be barred from teaching? – http://theconversation.com/viewpoints-should-teaching-students-who-fail-a-literacy-and-numeracy-test-be-barred-from-teaching-109882

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

Sea ice cover in Antarctica shrank rapidly to a record low in late 2016 and has remained well below average. But what’s behind this dramatic melting and low ice cover since?

Our two articles published earlier this month suggest that a combination of natural variability in the atmosphere and ocean were to blame, though human-induced climate change may also play a role.

Read more: Record high to record low: what on earth is happening to Antarctica’s sea ice?

What happened to Antarctic sea ice in 2016?

Antarctic sea ice is frozen seawater, usually less than a few metres thick. It differs from ice shelves, which are formed by glaciers, float in the sea, and are up to a kilometre thick.

Sea ice cover in Antarctica is crucial to the global climate and marine ecosystems and satellites have been monitoring it since the late 1970s. In contrast to the Arctic, sea ice around Antarctica had been slowly expanding (see figure below).

Read more: Expanding sea ice is causing headaches for Antarctic stations

However, in late 2016 Antarctic sea ice dramatically and rapidly melted reaching a record low. This piqued the interest of climate scientists because such large, unexpected and rapid changes are rare. Sea ice coverage is still well below average now.

We wanted to know what caused this unprecedented decline of Antarctic sea ice and what changes in the system have sustained those declines. We also wanted to know if this was a temporary shift or the beginning of a longer-term decline, as predicted by climate models. Finally, we wanted to know whether human-induced climate change contributed to these record lows.

Hunting for clues

Sea ice cover around Antarctica varies a lot from one year or decade to the next. In fact, Antarctic sea ice cover had reached a record high as recently as 2014.

Antarctic and Arctic sea ice cover (shown as the net anomaly from the 1981–2010 average) for January 1979 to May 2018. Thin lines are monthly averages and indicate the variability at shorter time-scales. Thick lines are 11-month running averages. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

That provided a clue. As year-to-year and decade-to-decade sea ice cover varies so much, this can mask longer-term melting of sea ice due to anthropogenic warming.

The next clue was in records broken far away from Antarctica. In the spring of 2016 sea surface temperatures and rainfall in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean were at record highs. This was in association with a strongly negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event, which brought warmer waters to the northwest of Australia.

While IOD events influence rainfall in south-eastern Australia, we found (using both statistical analysis and climate model experiments) that it promoted a pattern in the winds over the Southern Ocean that was particularly conducive to decreasing sea ice.

These surface winds blowing from the north not only pushed the sea ice back towards the Antarctic continent, they were also warmer, helping to melt the sea ice.

These northerly winds almost perfectly matched the main regions where sea ice declined.

Atmospheric circulation and sea ice concentration during September to October 2016. The top figure shows the Sep–Oct wind anomaly (vectors, scale in upper right, m/s) in the lower part of the atmosphere; red shading shows warmer, northerly airflow, and blue shading represents southerly flow. The bottom figure shows sea ice extent: green represents more sea ice than average, and purple shows regions of a reduction in sea ice (Figure 2a of Wang, et al 2019. Author provided

Though previous studies had linked this wind pattern to the sea ice decline, our studies are the first to argue for the dominant role of the tropical eastern Indian Ocean in driving it.

But this wasn’t the only factor.

Later in 2016 the typical westerly winds that surround Antarctica weakened to record lows. This caused the ocean surface to warm up, promoting less sea ice cover.

The weaker winds started at the top of the atmosphere over Antarctica, in the region known as the stratospheric polar vortex. We think this sequential occurrence of tropical and then stratospheric influences contributed to the record declines in 2016.

Taken together, the evidence we present supports the idea that the rapid Antarctic sea ice decline in late 2016 was largely due to natural climate variability.

The current state of Antarctic sea ice

Since then, sea ice has remained mostly well below average in association with warmer upper ocean temperatures around Antarctica.

We argue these are the product of stronger than normal westerly winds in the previous 15 or so years around Antarctica, driven again from the tropics. These stronger westerlies induced a response in the ocean, with warmer subsurface water moving towards the surface over time.

The combination of record tropical sea surface temperatures and weakened westerly winds in 2016 warmed the entire upper 600m of water in most regions of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. These warmer ocean temperatures have maintained the reduced extent of sea ice.

Read more: A 20-year plan welcomed for Australia in the Antarctic

Antarctic sea ice extent is seeing a record low start to the New Year. It suggests the initial rapid decline seen in late 2016 was not an isolated event and, when combined with the decadal-timescale warming of the upper Southern Ocean, could mean reduced sea ice extent for some time.

We argue what we are seeing so far can be understood in terms of natural variability superimposed on a long-term human-induced warming signal.

This is because the rainfall and ocean temperature records seen in the tropical eastern Indian Ocean that led to the initial sea ice decline in 2016 likely have some climate change contribution.

This warming and the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole may also impact the surface wind patterns over coming decades.

Such changes could be driving climate change effects that are starting to emerge in the Antarctic region. However the limited data record and large variability indicate it’s still too early to tell.

We would like to acknowledge the role of our co-authors S Abhik, Cecilia M Bitz, Christine TY Chung, Alice DuVivier, Harry H Hendon, Marika M Holland, Eun-Pa Lim, LuAnne Thompson, Peter van Rensch and Dongxia Yang in contributing to the research discussed in this article.

– ref. Why Antarctica’s sea ice cover is so low (and no, it’s not just about climate change) – http://theconversation.com/why-antarcticas-sea-ice-cover-is-so-low-and-no-its-not-just-about-climate-change-109572

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alessandro R Demaio, Australian Medical Doctor; Fellow in Global Health & NCDs, University of Copenhagen

If we’re serious about feeding the world’s growing population healthy food, and not ruining the planet, we need to get used to a new style of eating. This includes cutting our Western meat and sugar intakes by around 50%, and doubling the amount of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes we consume.

These are the findings our the EAT-Lancet Commission, released today. The Commission brought together 37 leading experts in nutrition, agriculture, ecology, political sciences and environmental sustainability, from 16 countries.

Over two years, we mapped the links between food, health and the environment and formulated global targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production. This includes five specific strategies to achieve them through global cooperation.

Read more: How to conserve half the planet without going hungry

Right now, we produce, ship, eat and waste food in a way that is a lose-lose for both people and planet – but we can flip this trend.

What’s going wrong with our food supply?

Almost one billion people lack sufficient food, yet more than two billion suffer from obesity and food-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

The foods causing these health epidemics – combined with the way we produce our food – are pushing our planet to the brink.

One-third of the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change come from food production. Our global food system leads to extensive deforestation and species extinction, while depleting our oceans, and fresh water resources.

To make matters worse, we lose or throw away around one-third of all food produced. That’s enough to feed the world’s hungry four times over, every year.

At the same time, our food systems are at risk due to environmental degradation and climate change. These food systems are essential to providing the diverse, high-quality foods we all consume every day.

A radical new approach

To improve the health of people and the planet, we’ve developed a “planetary health diet” which is globally applicable – irrespective of your geographic, economic or cultural background – and locally adaptable.

The diet is a “flexitarian” approach to eating. It’s largely composed of vegetables and fruits, wholegrains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils. It includes high-quality meat, dairy and sugar, but in quantities far lower than are consumed in many wealthier societies.

Many of us need to eat more veggies and less red meat. Joshua Resnick/Shutterstock

The planetary health diet consists of:

• vegetables and fruit (550g per day per day)
• wholegrains (230 grams per day)
• dairy products such as milk and cheese (250g per day)
• protein sourced from plants, such as lentils, peas, nuts and soy foods (100 grams per day)
• small quantities of fish (28 grams per day), chicken (25 grams per day) and red meat (14 grams per day)
• eggs (1.5 per week)
• small quantities of fats (50g per day) and sugar (30g per day).

Of course, some populations don’t get nearly enough animal-source foods necessary for growth, cognitive development and optimal nutrition. Food systems in these regions need to improve access to healthy, high-quality diets for all.

The shift is radical but achievable – and is possible without any expansion in land use for agriculture. Such a shift will also see us reduce the amount of water used during production, while reducing nitrogen and phosphorous usage and runoff. This is critical to safeguarding land and ocean resources.

By 2040, our food systems should begin soaking up greenhouse emissions – rather than being a net emitter. Carbon dioxide emissions must be down to zero, while methane and nitrous oxide emissions be kept in close check.

How to get there

The commission outlines five implementable strategies for a food transformation:

1. Make healthy diets the new normal – leaving no-one behind

Shift the world to healthy, tasty and sustainable diets by investing in better public health information and implementing supportive policies. Start with kids – much can happen by changing school meals to form healthy and sustainable habits, early on.

Unhealthy food outlets and their marketing must be restricted. Informal markets and street vendors should also be encouraged to sell healthier and more sustainable food.

Read more: Let’s untangle the murky politics around kids and food (and ditch the guilt)

2. Grow what’s best for both people and planet

Realign food system priorities for people and planet so agriculture becomes a leading contributor to sustainable development rather than the largest driver of environmental change. Examples include:

• incorporating organic farm waste into soils
• drastically reducing tillage where soil is turned and churned to prepare for growing crops
• investing more in agroforestry, where trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland to increase biodiversity and reduce erosion
• producing a more diverse range of foods in circular farming systems that protect and enhance biodiversity, rather than farming single crops or livestock.

The measure of success in this area is that agriculture one day becomes a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Technology can help us make better use of our farmlands. Shutterstock

3. Produce more of the right food, from less

Move away from producing “more” food towards producing “better food”.

This means using sustainable “agroecological” practices and emerging technologies, such as applying micro doses of fertiliser via GPS-guided tractors, or improving drip irrigation and using drought-resistant food sources to get more “crop per drop” of water.

In animal production, reformulating feed to make it more nutritious would allow us to reduce the amount of grain and therefore land needed for food. Feed additives such as algae are also being developed. Tests show these can reduce methane emissions by up to 30%.

We also need to redirect subsidies and other incentives to currently under-produced crops that underpin healthy diets – notably, fruits, vegetables and nuts – rather than crops whose overconsumption drives poor health.

4. Safeguard our land and oceans

There is essentially no additional land to spare for further agricultural expansion. Degraded land must be restored or reforested. Specific strategies for curbing biodiversity loss include keeping half of the current global land area for nature, while sharing space on cultivated lands.

The same applies for our oceans. We need to protect the marine ecosystems fisheries depend on. Fish stocks must be kept at sustainable levels, while aquaculture – which currently provides more than 40% of all fish consumed – must incorporate “circular production”. This includes strategies such as sourcing protein-rich feeds from insects grown on food waste.

5. Radically reduce food losses and waste

We need to more than halve our food losses and waste.

Poor harvest scheduling, careless handling of produce and inadequate cooling and storage are some of the reasons why food is lost. Similarly, consumers must start throwing less food away. This means being more conscious about portions, better consumer understanding of “best before” and “use by” labels, and embracing the opportunities that lie in leftovers.

Circular food systems that innovate new ways to reduce or eliminate waste through reuse will also play a significant role and will additionally open new business opportunities.

Read more: Australian communities are fighting food waste with circular economies

For significant transformation to happen, all levels of society must be engaged, from individual consumers to policymakers and everybody along the food supply chain. These changes will not happen overnight, and they are not the responsibility of a handful of stakeholders. When it comes to food and sustainability, we are all at the decision dining table.

The EAT-Lancet Commission’s Australian launch is in Melbourne on February 1. Limited free tickets are available.

– ref. How to feed a growing population healthy food without ruining the planet – http://theconversation.com/how-to-feed-a-growing-population-healthy-food-without-ruining-the-planet-108994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly D. Wiltshire, PhD Candidate, Flinders University

When I go to see the new film Storm Boy, which opens in cinemas nationally today, my mind will turn to the landscape that forms the film’s backdrop. This is the Kurangk (Coorong), land of the Ngarrindjeri Nation. The Nation’s cultural heritage, testifying to the Ngarrindjeri’s enduring connection to the region, is being destroyed by off-road vehicles.

The film, starring Geoffrey Rush, Jai Courtney, David Gulpilil, and Finn Little, is a new adaptation of Colin Thiele’s 1964 novel, first made into film in 1976. The story, about a young boy who adopts a clever, orphaned pelican, is widely loved among Australians.

The Kurangk is found in south eastern South Australia and covers an area of 50,000 hectares. Its main feature is a long, brackish to very salty estuary that stretches 130 km in a south-east direction from the Murray Mouth, where Australia’s iconic Murray River meets the sea.

The southern Kurangk is an important breeding ground for Noris (pelicans), with the broader landscape supporting over 200 species of birds. As a result of these unique qualities and others the Kurangk has been recognised under the Ramsar Convention as a Wetland of International Importance since 1985.

Read more: Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage

The region is an important cultural landscape that has sustained the Ngarrindjeri Nation culturally and economically since Creation. Middens comprising of discarded cockle shells, which can be found on the sand dunes of the Younghusband Peninsula that separate the Kurangk’s estuary from the Southern Ocean, are testament to this ongoing connection.

In the early 1980s, archaeologist Roger Luebbers documented the location, size and content of various middens in the Kurangk, demonstrating that these middens form the largest, most extensive evidence of Aboriginal occupation in the region. At the time Luebbers also worked with members of the Ngarrindjeri Nation, recording oral accounts to get a sense of people’s continued connection to the Kurangk since colonisation.

His work demonstrated an uninterpreted and continuing connection of the Ngarrindjeri Nation into historic times, which continues today through the ongoing management, use and enjoyment of this landscape.

Noris (pelicans) on the Kurangk at dawn. Photo: Amy Della-Sale/Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority Inc.

Disappearing under the wheel

Luebbers considered the cultural heritage of the Kurangk unparalleled in temperate Australia and argued for its long-term protection. But despite the high quality and comprehensiveness of these archaeological investigations, little has been done to ensure the long-term protection of this heritage.

Archaeologist Roger Luebbers examining middens on the Kurangk. Photo: Rhys Jones, AIATSIS, JONES.R05_CS-000141919

Studies have shown that sand dunes, where middens lie, are vulnerable to visitors to the Kurangk, especially off-road vehicles such as quad bikes and four-wheel drives. Since the 1980s these have become much more common. As a result, the number of visitors to remote, dune areas of the Kurangk has steadily increased over the intervening decades, coinciding with increased impacts to Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage, which are physically disturbed by the tyres of the vehicles.

Read more: Friday essay: how archaeology helped save the Franklin River

While there are signs in the Kurangk directing people to stay within fenced access tracks and designated camping areas, numerous visitors ignore or even vandalise these so they can access dune areas where the vast middens are located.

Given the large area the Kurangk occupies, illegal vehicle use can go undetected despite National Parks rangers regularly monitoring visitor use. Ngarrindjeri elders I have worked with over the years have described burial grounds within the Coorong turned to dust as a result of illegal vehicles.

Encroaching seas

Climate change is also having a dramatic impact on the landscape of the Kurangk. Vehicle tracks along the ocean have become reduced thanks to erosion linked to sea level rise. Tragically, some visitors have lost their lives trying to negotiate this thin strip of coastline.

Vehicle track along the ocean in the southern Kurangk. Author provided

Read more: Explainer: why the rock art of Murujuga deserves World Heritage status

As access to these parts of the Kurangk becomes more restricted, more people are encroaching illegally on the dunes where Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage lies. Stopping vehicle access to areas where people have historically had access is difficult. The South Australian government must also balance this with its obligation to allow continued public access due the Kurangk’s National Park status.

The impact of visitors on Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage within the Kurangk is an ongoing issue, forming a range of broader concerns the Ngarrindjeri Nation wants to address with their long-term vision for country.

To protect this amazing heritage and the landscape where it resides, we’ll need to address visitor behaviour, improve infrastructure, and address the effects of climate change. Otherwise an irreplaceable record of the Ngarrindjeri Nations’ long-term and continued connection to this incredible cultural landscape will be destroyed forever.

The author would like to thank the ongoing support of Ngarrindjeri elders and colleagues, Grant Rigney, Amy Della-Sale and Roger Luebbers.

– ref. In the land of Storm Boy, the cultural heritage of the Coorong is under threat – http://theconversation.com/in-the-land-of-storm-boy-the-cultural-heritage-of-the-coorong-is-under-threat-109944

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Chou, Senior lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

The world is still celebrating the historic landing of China’s Chang’e-4 on the dark side of the moon on January 3. This week, China announced its plans to follow up with three more lunar missions, laying the groundwork for a lunar base.

Colonising the Moon, and beyond, has always being a human aspiration. Technological advancements, and the discovery of a considerable source of water close to the lunar poles, has made this idea even more appealing.

But how close is China to actually achieving this goal?

If we focus on the technology currently available, China could start building a base on the Moon today.

Read more: Will China’s moon landing launch a new space race?

The first lunar base

The first lunar base would likely be an unmanned facility run by automated robotics – similar to Amazon warehouses – to ensure that the necessary infrastructures and support systems are fully operational before people arrive.

The lunar environment is susceptible to deep vacuum conditions, strong temperature fluctuations and solar radiation, among other conditions hostile to humans. More importantly, we have yet to fully understand the long term impact on the human body of being in space, and on the Moon.

Seeds taken to the Moon by the Chang’e-4 mission have now reportedly sprouted. This is the first time plants have been grown on the Moon, paving the way for a future food farm on the lunar base.

Building a lunar base is no different than building the first oil rig out in the ocean. The logistics of moving construction parts must be considered, feasibility studies must be conducted and, in this case, soil samples must be tested.

China has taken the first step by examining the soil of the lunar surface. This is necessary for building an underground habitat and supporting infrastructure that will shield the base from the harsh surface conditions.

3D printed everything

Of all the possible technologies for building a lunar base, 3D printing offers the most effective strategy. 3D printing on Earth has revolutionised manufacturing productivity and efficiency, reducing both waste and cost.

China’s vision is to develop the capability to 3D print both inside and outside of the lunar base. 3D printers have the potential to make everything from daily items, like drinking cups, to repair parts for the base.

But 3D printing in space is a real challenge. It will require new technologies that can operate in the micro gravity environment of the Moon. 3D printing machines that are able to shape parts in the vacuum of space must be developed.

Read more: Want to build a moon base? Easy. Just print it

New materials are required

We know that Earth materials, such as fibre optics, change properties once they are in space. So materials that are effective on Earth, might not be effective on the Moon.

Whatever the intended use of the 3D printed component, it will have to be resistant to the conditions of lunar environment. So the development of printing material is crucial. Step-by-step, researchers are finding and developing new materials and technologies to address this challenge.

For example, researchers in Germany expect to have the first “ready to use” stainless steel tools to be 3D printed under microgravity in the near future. NASA also demonstrated 3D printing technology in zero gravity showing it is feasible to 3D print in space.

On a larger scale we have seen houses being 3D printed on Earth. In a similar way, the lunar base will likely be built using prefabricated parts in combination with large-scale 3D printing.

Examples of what this might look like can be seen to entries in the 3D printed habitat challenge, which was started by NASA in 2005. The competition seeks to advance 3D printing construction technology needed to create sustainable housing solutions for Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond.

NASA’s Habitat Challenge: Team Gamma showing their habitat design. NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge

Living on the Moon

So far, we’ve focused on the technological feasibility of building a lunar base, but we also need to consider the long term effect of lunar living on humans. To date, limited studies have been conducted to examine the the biological impact on human physiology at the cellular level.

We know that the human organs, tissues and cells are highly responsive to gravity, but an understanding of how human cells function and regenerate is currently lacking.

What happens if the astronauts get sick? Will medicine from Earth still work? If astronauts are to live on the Moon, these fundamental questions need to be answered.

In the long term, 3D bioprinting of human organs and tissues will play a crucial role in sustaining lunar missions by allowing for robotic surgeries. Russia recently demonstrated the first 3D bioprinter to function under microgravity.

Read more: Five reasons to forget Mars for now and return to the moon

To infinity and beyond

Can China build a lunar base? Absolutely. Can human beings survive on the Moon and other planets for the long term? The answer to that is less clear.

What is certain is that China will use the next 10 to 15 years to develop the requisite technical capabilities for conducting manned lunar missions and set the stage for space exploration.

– ref. How realistic are China’s plans to build a research station on the Moon? – http://theconversation.com/how-realistic-are-chinas-plans-to-build-a-research-station-on-the-moon-109942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sabrina Chakori, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Wrapped, sealed, boxed, cling-filmed and vacuum packed. We have become used to consumables being packaged in every way imaginable.

The history of “packaging” goes back to the first human settlements. First leaves, gourds and animals skins were used. Then ceramics, glass and tin. Then paper and cardboard. But with the invention of plastic and the celebration of “throwaway living” since the 1950s, the environmental costs of an overpackaged world have become manifest.

Plastic now litters the planet, contaminating ecosystems and posing a significant threat to wildlife and human health. Food and beverage packaging accounts for almost two-thirds of total packaging waste. Recycling, though important, has proven an incapable primary strategy to cope with the scale of plastic rubbish. In Australia, for example, just 11.8% of the 3.5 million tonnes of plastics consumed in 2016-2017 were recycled.

Bananas wrapped in single-use plastic packaging. Sabrina Chakori

Initiatives to cut down on waste can initially be strongly resisted by consumers used to the convenience, as shown by the reaction to Australia’s two major supermarket chains phasing out free single-use plastic shopping bags. But after just three months, shoppers have adapted, and an estimated 1.5 billion bags have been prevented from entering the environment.

Can we dispose with our disposable mentality further, by doing something to cut down on all the packaging of our food and beverages?

Yes we can.

The emergence of zero-packaging food stores is challenging the idea that individually packaged items are a necessary feature of the modern food industry. These new businesses demonstrate how products can be offered without packaging. In doing so they provide both environmental and economic benefits.

The zero-packaging alternative

Zero-packaging shops, sometimes known as zero-waste grocery stores, allow customers to bring and refill their own containers. They offer food products (cereals, pasta, oils) and even household products (soap, dishwashing powder). You simply bring your own jars and containers and buy as little or as much as you need.

Negozio Leggero is a zero-packaging chain with stores in Italy, France and Switzerland. Negozio Leggero

These stores can already be found in many countries across the world. They are more than just individual trading businesses making a small difference.

They are part of an important and growing trend promoting an environmentally sustainable “reuse” mentality. Their way of doing business shows we can change the current ‘linear’ economic system in which we continuously take, make, use and throw away materials.

Rethinking the system

Food packaging is part and parcel of a globalised food market. The greater the distance that food travels, the more packaging is needed.

Zero-packaging stores encourage sourcing locally. They can therefore play an important role in enhancing local economy and supporting local producers. They can help break globalised agribusiness monopolies, regenerating the diversity of rural enterprises and communities. The book Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market illustrates the benefits of reclaiming back the food industry.

Read more: Let’s reap the economic benefits of local food over big farming

Packaging also contributes to another problem with the current industrialised food system. It doubles as an advertising tool, using all the psychological tricks that marketers have to persuade us to buy a brand. These strategies appeal to desire, encouraging people to buy more than what they really need. This has arguably exacerbated problems such as obesity and food waste. It has given multinational conglomerates with large marketing budgets an advantage over small and local producers.

Next steps

Not all of packaging is wasteful. It can stop food spoiling, for example, and enables us to enjoy foods not locally produced. But what is driving the growth of the global food packaging market – expected to be worth US$411.3 billion by 2025 – is rising demand for single-serve and portable food packs due to “lifestyle changes”. Most of us recognise these are not lifestyle changes for the better; they are the result of us spending more time working or commuting, and eating more processed and unhealthier food.

Read more: Want to be happier, healthier, save money? It’s time to get cooking

Zero-packaging stores show, in their own small way, a viable and healthier alternative to the current system. Both for ourselves, local economies and the planet.

While these shops are still niche, governments interested in human and environmental health can help them grow. Bans on plastic bags point to what is possible.

How easily we have adapted to no longer having those bags to carry food a few metres to the car and then to the kitchen show that we, as consumers, can change our behaviour. We can choose, when possible, unpacked products. There is, of course, a small sacrifice in the form of convenience, but we just might find that we benefit more, both personally and for a greater environmental, economic and social good.

– ref. Recycling is not enough. Zero-packaging stores show we can kick our plastic addiction – http://theconversation.com/recycling-is-not-enough-zero-packaging-stores-show-we-can-kick-our-plastic-addiction-106357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Roggema, Professor Spatial Transformation, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen

This is a long read. Enjoy!

More towers at Sydney’s Darling Harbour are among redevelopment plans for the inner city waterfront precinct and this has prompted recent debate.

Plans open for public commentary include proposals for new tall buildings at Cockle Bay and at the Harbourside Shopping Centre.

Critics include Russell Hand and Christopher Ashworth, senior planners at the City of Sydney, who have lodged formal objections.

Alex Greenwich, independent MP for Sydney, describes the Cockle Bay proposal as “very poor planning”. In the same article, Graham Quint of the National Trust says Darling Harbour would be “degraded” by overdevelopment.

Celebrated architect Philip Cox fears the area has “gone backwards” as it does not really create a unique urban space, nor does it contribute much to the city.

Plans for ever larger buildings, bringing in more people and attracting more tourists may mark a point of no return for the precinct. It would place increased pressure on the available space, which already houses a town full of people.

More development of the type proposed also leaves little space to regenerate the city, to create places where nature and open space can help to deal with floods or heat, let alone create a valuable ecological landscape.

Read more: Utzon Lecture: Re-imagining the Harbour City

To see where development of Darling Harbour went wrong and what we could do better, we need to consider the area as a whole. That’s Darling Harbour itself, Cockle Bay, the Darling Harbour Corridor, Barangaroo, Darling Park and Tumbalong Park.

Three examples highlight how development of the Darling Harbour area over the past 30 years has been botched.

1. Darling Harbour as a noisy neighbour

Walk down Darling Harbour towards Barangaroo on a random night and this is what you’ll face.

Noisy bars and restaurants along Cockle Bay are full; quieter places inside are, even for Sydney’s standards, expensive; bright lights compare with the neon of Shanghai’s Nanjing Road; and there is activity everywhere, even on the water where party boats disturb not only human but also animal life.

I am not against a lively precinct. But Darling Harbour is currently operating like your noisy neighbour — a nice guy but with too many bad habits. He eats too much, burps whenever it is convenient, grows fat and watches the same programs every day.

There it is, consuming tourists (4.6 million in the year ending March 2018), growing bigger buildings all around, producing noises no-one wants to hear, and looking like a huge TV screen flickering flashy lights into the night.

Read more: Will a casino be a boon or a bane for Barangaroo?

Barangaroo is the next stage of “badnertainment”, adding more expensive drinking and eating venues, increasing traffic congestion, and continuing the gambling boulevard all the way through to Headland Park. Compared to the former port facilities that stood there, at least people can enter this space up to the water’s edge.

But Barangaroo remains a private collection of colossal buildings, impenetrable if you don’t belong to the corporate world.

2. Tumbalong Park, hidden behind a highway

Tumbalong Park is hidden behind a highway, so far back no one can see the water. Though there are paths, plants and a stage, the overkill of lights and noise is not what you’d expect from a park.

Read more: Our cities need more trees, but that means being prepared to cut some down

Anyone who wants to spend time there on a hot day will experience the “heat island effect”. Here, heat is amplified compared with the surrounding area as the grass is surrounded by large chunks of concrete and glass. That, combined with a feeling of being observed from all sides, might explain why you hardly find people sitting on the grass.

3. Highway cuts up public space

Where do people plan a highway through a public space? In Sydney, this is quite normal. The Western Distributor splits the City from Circular Quay and Darling Harbour. A spaghetti of ramps, concrete traffic lanes and multilayered traffic disconnects surrounding areas including Ultimo and Haymarket from the real beauty: the water and water’s edge of Cockle Bay. What could be a coherent urban precinct is cut in half and displaces the urban front from the water’s edge.

Let’s transform this ‘blinging, boring barrier’

These three failings form an urban sink hole for Sydney’s residents — a gap in which tourists are trapped and the corporates show off. Through traffic and congestion dominate the area.

Darling Harbour is full of bling, the park is boring, and the highway is a barrier. Sydney created a blinging, boring barrier.

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

Why can’t Darling Harbour and Cockle Bay be a sensitive space, where you can experience relative darkness and silence when eating and drinking, and you can enjoy the tranquility of dark water so close to the city centre?

Wouldn’t it be sensational if you could whisper a secret message to your darling instead of shouting how his or her working day was? Wouldn’t it be great if you could sit on the edge of the harbour, dangling your tired feet in the water? How great could it be if the space was green with trees, bush, ecofriendly river edges, where kids could explore water and nature?

Tranquility, darkness and human scale are the ingredients for an environment that can be completely green and still urban. Higher densities are possible as long as these are sustainable, we use environmental-friendly materials and are placed in a larger green and ecological zone fronting the water. This then creates the space for people to enjoy the environment and relax.

Climate change makes this urgent

This is urgent. Climate change will cause and enforce changes to city centres, especially when they’re fronting water edges, like Darling Harbour.

Rising sea levels (up to 2m by the end of the century), and more flash flooding as a result of more intense rain are expected.

So green buffer zones on either side of the water’s edge are required to deal with rising water levels and more intense rain events.

Environments must be flexible, adaptive and resilient to survive. The types of activities currently in the Darling Harbour area are mono-functional, inflexible and vulnerable to climate impacts.

Here’s what we can learn from other cities

Toronto

Toronto’s city centre has a series of greening projects along its waterfront. These include nature reserves, a bicycle path, sandy beach-like areas and zones in which urban water is purified at the same time made available for the public to use in playgrounds.

Toronto’s water purification site is also an urban playground. Author provided

New York

Another good example is in New York, where Manhattan is transforming its Hudson River edges with parks and green areas. There is open-air office space such as the Hudson Yards, and continuous parks along the river, such as the Riverpark Boulevard.

These continuous parks can not only protect the city from flooding but also suit the daily needs of the jogging, cycling or wandering New Yorker.

New York’s Riverpark Boulevard has been designed to protect the city from flooding, as well as providing people place to walk, jog or wander. Author provided

Shanghai

In Shanghai there’s a large program to green the river edge. Over 100,000 trees are being planted along the Huangpu River. This program is meant to clean the air, mitigate the urban heat island effect and offer space to occasional floods. But it also functions as an enormous park, with a continuous cycle-path and the option to run the marathon (once up and down).

Shanghai is transforming its riverside with more than 100,000 trees and parklands long enough to run a marathon. Author provided

Amsterdam

Finally, Amsterdam is redeveloping the northern shore of the IJ river. Here, new green spaces, water purification and ecological reserves are realised in the midst of a high-density mixed-use urban environment. One of the eye-catchers is EYE, the national movie theatre.

Amsterdam is transforming the IJ north shore. Author provided

Sydney, it’s up to you

These examples show that large, western cities are successfully implementing sustainable ecological developments along their waterfronts.

These are not realised because of some high-level green ambition, but out of pure necessity. People ask for cleaner environments so they can enjoy, exercise and play with their kids in a healthy and safe place.

In Darling Harbour, we’re faced with short-term economic benefits, with a focus on tourists, and a vulnerable waterline. Is this the long-term future for Sydneysiders?

Or could the waterfront become the lovely place for humans and nature, which also protects Sydneysiders living immediately behind the waterfront?

– ref. How Darling Harbour was botched (and could be reborn) – http://theconversation.com/how-darling-harbour-was-botched-and-could-be-reborn-109869

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

Many of us start a typical day by checking our phones to read emails, social media posts and the weather. Our phones are trusted devices we use constantly throughout the day to communicate. But the trust we place in our phones, and the way we interact with the world, also makes it easy for scammers to target us.

Our evolutionary past also makes us susceptible to scams. Humans are curious social animals, which means we are more trusting than we should be. That’s especially the case when we’re dealing with people over the phone, email or via SMS, where we don’t have the normal body language cues we would subconsciously process when making decisions.

We are also susceptible to fear and other psychological tools scammers use to create a sense of urgency that tricks us into making irrational decisions and taking action. Simply being aware that scams are out there is not enough to protect us from them. We also need to change our behaviour.

Scam using branding and authority to make you click to see the confidential information. Damien Manuel

Read more: Why ‘Nigerian Prince’ scams continue to dupe us

Who are these scammers and what do they want?

Scammers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are individuals, others are gangs. The more sophisticated scammers are criminal syndicates and foreign governments looking for a way to subvert international sanctions and obtain money through cyber crime.

The motivations of scammers ranges greatly, but can include:

• stealing intellectual property
• tricking you to install malicious software (to steal your data or hold you to ransom)
• stealing your identity so they can pretend to be you and conduct fraud
• tricking you to part with your hard earned cash
• gaining control of your device to steal information at a later date or using your device to attack other people you know.

What techniques are they using?

Scammers are experts at social engineering and use a number of tricks to build rapport, credibility and trust with their targets.

Modifying the caller ID is a simple way to build credibility by making a call or SMS appear to come from an authority like the Australian Tax Office. The rise of cheap Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and other online tools has made it even easier for anyone to exploit the phone systems and “spoof” other numbers.

An SMS scam that uses urgency and fear of fines to get people to click a link. Damien Manuel

In the VoIP phone system, the person initiating the call defines the caller ID seen by the receiver. This is the same for traditional phone systems, however the lower price of VoIP and ease at which the caller ID can be modified without any technical knowledge (via a simple web page) makes it faster and cheaper for scammers to cycle through a number of fake caller IDs in a single day. It also allows them to move to a new source number or VoIP provider very quickly, making it harder for telcos in Australia to block.

There are legitimate business reasons for allowing the caller ID to be modified, such as when companies operating call centres want all outbound phone calls from their staff to appear to originate from a single “help desk” phone number.

Read more: New ‘virtual kidnapping’ scam targeting Chinese students makes use of data shared online

Email spoofing is also common and easy to do. This is where an attacker forges the email header, making the email look like it originated from a friend, authority or service provider, such as a bank. A key way to identify a spoofed email is to check the email address itself (the reply field) rather than just relying on the display name in the “from” field.

Most email clients (such as Gmail or Outlook) on desktops or laptops are capable of displaying email headers. Unfortunately email clients on most smartphones and tablets make it difficult to see the real source and often only show the forged “display name” information.

Phone and email are the two main scam delivery methods. Losses from attempts to gain your personal information rose by more than 61% between 2017 and 2018. This trend shows no sign of slowing down. Last year, Australians lost more than $10 million to scammers.

An example of a scam email. Damien Manuel

Signs of a scam

Ten common warning signs you are dealing with a scammer include the following:

• being asked for password, PINs or other sensitive information
• being told you are owed a refund
• being told you have unpaid bills, unpaid fines from the police or a government department
• being notified there is a problem with your email or bank account
• being asked for urgent help
• being congratulated on winning a competition (you didn’t enter)
• being asked you to click on a link or open a document
• being sent you an unexpected invoice to open
• receiving a critical alert message with a link to click
• receiving a tracking number and link for a delivery (you didn’t order).

A scam telling you your mail box full is designed to make you click on a link. Damien Manuel

Read more: More than just money: getting caught in a romance scam could cost you your life

Simple tips to avoid being conned

Firstly, don’t click on any links, don’t respond to offers to opt-out or unsubscribe, don’t call return calls from numbers you don’t recognise and, most importantly, don’t give out personal information – even if you think it isn’t important.

Remember, some scams are multi-step scams. The best thing you can do is to report the scam and tell your friends and family to be aware of the scam so they can modify their behaviours.

Scams can be reported to various government agencies, such as Scam Watch, the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) and, in some cases, the service provider – for example, the ATO, Telstra, AusPost and the banks.

An example of a multi-step scam that validates your email is real and then harvests the credentials you enter. Damien Manuel

– ref. Australians lost more than $10 million to scammers last year. Follow these easy tips to avoid being conned. – http://theconversation.com/australians-lost-more-than-10-million-to-scammers-last-year-follow-these-easy-tips-to-avoid-being-conned-109728

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael O’Keefe, Head of Department, Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University

The foreign policy community met with relief the announcement Morrison’s first overseas trip for 2019 would be to Vanuatu and Fiji. The trip is a long overdue symbol of a priority outlined in the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: “stepping up our engagement in the Pacific”.

There had been much criticism of the PM’s failure to attend last year’s Pacific Islands Forum given the white paper’s stated aims to

engage with the Pacific with greater intensity and ambition, deliver more integrated and innovative policy and make further, substantial long-term investments in the region’s development.

Although Vanuatu’s prime minister, Charlot Salwai, visited Australia last year, Morrison’s trip to Port Vila on Wednesday is the first by an Australian PM since Bob Hawke in 1990.

The trip had a strong defence focus, with Morrison saying Australia’s contribution to Vanuatu’s police and security will ensure “the stability of our region”. He is also reportedly negotiating a bilateral security agreement. This represents a deeper militarisation of Australia’s Pacific foreign policy.

Morrison’s aims to formalise security relations are an attempt to gain influence in the face of China’s rising competition. Australia’s undiplomatic and somewhat hysterical response to rumours of a Chinese military base being built in Vanuatu in 2018 highlights Canberra’s sensitivity to “foreign” intervention in the South Pacific.

Although Vanuatu was quick to deny the rumours, debate in Australia raged over the geopolitical implications, with some commentators saying a strike could be launched from the base to Australia.

Read more: Response to rumours of a Chinese military base in Vanuatu speaks volumes about Australian foreign policy

The government’s recent pattern of providing support for PNG’s Manus Island naval base, Fiji’s Black Rock Base, or new Patrol Boats to 12 Pacific Island nations, is part of a tectonic shift that has occurred in foreign policy toward the Pacific.

Australia’s focus is security, concentrating on external threats and the possibility of internal instability. The Pacific’s concern, however, is sustainable development and climate change, which Australia seems to ignore.

The question is whether Canberra will simply continue framing the Pacific through the lens of Australian policy priorities or focus on what the Pacific wants.

Australia’s relationship with Vanuatu

Australia already has significant defence relations with the other Pacific Island military nations – PNG and Fiji. Canberra has a longstanding defence cooperation relationship with PNG and this trip will likely lead to greater defence cooperation with Fiji – especially as Australia beat China in the bid to build the Black Rock Base.

And in 2017, under then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, Australia negotiated a bilateral security treaty with the Solomon Islands security cooperation agreement. This agreement allows Australian police personnel to deploy rapidly to Solomon Islands (with the consent of both countries) if there is a threat, which includes natural disasters.

With regards to Vanuatu, Australia is already its main development assistance partner. And Australia’s trading and investment relationship with Vanuatu is as significant as is possible with a small island nation of 285,000 people. And out of the Pacific nations and Timor Leste, Vanuatu has the larger number of workers in Australia and New Zealand as part of the Seasonal Worker Program.

Read more: Vanuatu disaster exposes limits of Australian internationalism

In the 1980s Australia gave Vanuatu a patrol boat to police its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and will give a modern advanced vessel as part of the Pacific Maritime Security Program. This program, detailed in the 2016 Defence White Paper, is a A$2 billion commitment to the region over 30 years, and seeks to support regional countries in defending their maritime boundaries from transnational crime and illegal fishing.

While the Pacific is focused on development, Australia’s priority is security. DAN HIMBRECHTS

The Australian Federal Police also has a longstanding training relationship with the Vanuatu Police through DFAT’s Policing and Justice Support Program. In 2018 it was announced that Australia would train 300 new recruits.

Despite all of this, the Morrison Government is reportedly placing increased security cooperation with Vanuatu high on the agenda. So, why now? Perhaps because Canberra’s Pacific “step up” has not all been plain sailing and relations with Vanuatu have been strained recently.

Australia at odds with the Pacific

In the past, Australia’s relations with the Pacific had been characterised by aid and development rather than security. Canberra remains the region’s number one aid donor. However, under successive Liberal governments, the aid budget has declined.

This has continued under the Morrison government and there is concern militarisation will draw funds away from development projects that more closely meet the interests of Pacific Island nations.

The other key plank in the government’s Pacific “step up” was the announcement of a infrastructure development bank. This multi-billion dollar initiative is short on detail but plans to provide loans for “high priority” infrastructure projects including telecommunications, energy, transport and water.

Read more: If there’s one thing Pacific nations don’t need, it’s yet another infrastructure investment bank

The loans will be provided at concessional rates and the bank is aimed at countering Chinese influence. Australia has criticised China’s debt book diplomacy, so increasing the debt pool of Pacific countries seems at odds with these concerns.

Morrison’s Pacific pivot is in full swing. So far, the Infrastructure Bank raises more questions than it answers. The security focus of Morrison’s trip is likely to lead to more speculation about what Australia wants to give. If we want to build sustainable relationships, we should be listening closely to what Vanuatu wants to get from any security agreement.

– ref. Morrison’s Vanuatu trip shows the government’s continued focus on militarising the Pacific – http://theconversation.com/morrisons-vanuatu-trip-shows-the-governments-continued-focus-on-militarising-the-pacific-109883

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

The widespread deaths of fish in the Darling River – with more predicted to come – has raised serious questions about the allocation of water between agriculture and the environment. Water-hungry crops like cotton and rice are also raising eyebrows: are they worth growing in the Murray Darling Basin?

The situation is a little more complicated than it may appear. Cotton and rice need plenty of water, but they might actually be some of the best crops to help cope with a rapidly changing climate.

Read more: The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought

Flexible crops are vital

It’s true cotton and rice are both “thirsty” crops. Cotton requires about 7.8 million litres per hectare to grow, while rice needs roughly 12.6 million litres per hectare.

More importantly however, they are both annual crops. Farmers plant, grow and harvest in the same 12 month period. This means they can look to the year ahead and decide how much to plant given water availability and seasonal rainfall predictions.

Along the Murray and Darling rivers, which are some of the most variable in the world, the flexibility to plant more or less in a given year is very valuable. In a drought year with limited water like this one, a rice or cotton farmer may even chose to plant nothing and simply sell their remaining water allocation to another farmer.

During a flood year they can move into full production and grow bumper crops. For an annual crop like this, farmers may only three good years out of five to have a viable business.

In contrast, perennial crops like orchards or vineyards need a very secure water supply, every year without fail. The trees and vines take years to mature, so a bad drought can be devastating: if they die, a farm could be set back a decade waiting for them to regrow.

Read more: How is oxygen ‘sucked out’ of our waterways?

The Murray Darling Basin is an epicentre for the impact of climate change, in terms of water availability. It’s vital we have crops like rice and cotton that can produce in a good year. Then, with relatively minor consequences, not produce in a dry year when it would be better to have the remaining water going to the environment and higher value agricultural crops like citrus, stone fruit and grapes. Our rural communities need to produce a diverse range of agricultural commodities and industries to be more resilient and thrive.

Do we have the balance right?

While I think we need the cotton and rice industries, this doesn’t mean that we’re distributing water well. The disastrous algal blooms choking the Darling River show clearly taking too much water out of the Murray Darling Basin severely damages freshwater ecosystems during droughts.

Read more: Explainer: what causes algal blooms, and how we can stop them

The sort of tragedy we’re seeing on the Darling River is because too little water has been allocated to the environment.

We need to reallocate water from irrigated agriculture to improve the health of the environment, support people living along the rivers, and other rural industries that depend on healthy rivers, like grazing, recreational fishing and tourism.

This is, I believe, in large part a value judgement. If we, as a society, are going to take water from the rivers, we have to decide how much of the environment to allow to die off in that process. This is how we support irrigated agriculture and associated communities. The fish deaths on the Darling River are a clear sign we have not got that balance right.

The ‘water stock market’ generally works

The trade in water allocations – between, for example, rice and cotton growers to a perennial crop producer – is a key drought adaptation measure in the Murray Darling Basin. It will only become more important with climate change, which is predicted to make droughts more frequent and intense.

Read more: Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years

In a drought year, we need a grape grower who’s short of water to be able to quickly buy extra water from a farmer who might produce a lower-value crop. This keeps the vineyard alive, able to keep employing the people picking the grapes, and keeping their wine production facility going.

This is critical for rural communities in drought for maintaining employment and small businesses who supply services from nearby towns. Therefore, we need a modest share of annual crop growers like rice and cotton growers in the system to keep our broader communities healthy.

While some irrigators appear to have broken the rules and taken water they were not entitled to, this is also a crisis of management. Our state governments, in particular, have failed to adequately fulfil their duties to the environment and the Australian public as stewards of our rivers.

Read more: It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin

– ref. Cotton and rice have an important place in the Murray Darling Basin – http://theconversation.com/cotton-and-rice-have-an-important-place-in-the-murray-darling-basin-109953

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney

For decades Gillette has been selling razors using the slogan “the best a man can get”. This week the Procter & Gamble-owned brand has adopted “the best a man can be” as part of a marketing campaign meant to challenge toxic masculinity.

Explicitly aligning itself with the #metoo movement, the message is that men have to change if we want to end sexual harassment, bullying and domestic violence.

The campaign’s centrepiece, a 108-second “short film”, has divided opinion. Among those to declare their contempt for Gillette’s “virtue signalling” is the British television presenter Piers Morgan, who has labelled the advert “man-hating” and part of a “war on masculinity”.

On the other side, those lauding Gillette include Glamour magazine contributor Helen Wilson-Beevers, who has praised the the video as a “self-assured piece of advertising that Gillette should be proud of”.

The new corporate political activism

Gillette’s campaign exemplifies of a new type of corporate political activism where corporations and their chief executives publicly back progressive social and political causes.

A textbook example is Nike’s advertisements featuring American football player Colin Kaepernick, who began the practice of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African Americans.

A Nike billboard featuring Colin Kaepernick near Union Square in San Francisco. D. Ross Cameron/EPA

Whereas in the past corporations could be expected to be the targets of political activists – on such issues climate change, worker exploitation and animal cruelty – today many corporations see advantage in becoming the activists.

Nike is the classic case study. In 1997 the company was being dragged over the public coals for the use of child labour in the factories it contracted to made its shoes in countries like Indonesia. By 2017 it some considered it a leader in corporate social activism.

This can be very good for business. Corporate activism is a marketing strategy geared at the management of corporate values and identity, as well as reputation building. It has been explicitly identified has having the twin objectives: to influence public opinion but also to improve consumer attitudes about the company.

Nike exemplifies this as well. While some saw the Kaepernick ad as a calculated market risk, it paid off. By the end of 2018 Nikes sales far exceeded expectations, and its share price continued to rise.

This is not to say that nobody at Nike or Gillette genuinely believes in the causes the organisations have chosen to support. But that support would still have depended on the cause passing the “business case” test – with any social benefits seen as being matched to self-interested commercial benefits.

After all, we don’t see many corporations campaigning to eliminate aggressive corporate tax avoidance, even though that is the leading way they contribute to society.

Praise to #metoo

This tells us something about the causes that corporate activists put their money behind. Put simply, when a corporation backs a progressive social movement it is because the company is reasonably confident that its cause has mainstream support.

Gillette’s embrace of #metoo themes is thus a corporate endorsement of how mainstream the that movement has become. In barely a year it has grown into a global social phenomena bringing women’s experience of workplace sexual harassment and exploitation out of the shadows. In the words of the #metoo founder Tarana Burke, the goal is to build “a world free of sexual violence”.

That Gillette has aligned itself with the #metoo movement is not something for the brand to be congratulated on. It is #metoo that deserves the praise.

– ref. Gillette’s corporate calculation shows just how far the #metoo movement has come – http://theconversation.com/gillettes-corporate-calculation-shows-just-how-far-the-metoo-movement-has-come-109936

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Orr, Professor of Law, The University of Queensland

“Make Australia Great.” So began several million text messages, sent last week from Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. Palmer’s bumptious campaign techniques actually predated those of Donald Trump.

But now he is aping Trump’s slogans and nationalism, if with a less reactionary, more third-way ethos. The chances of Palmer rising again, like the proverbial political soufflé, are remote. But what of his campaign methods?

Mass texting (I’ll dub it “mexting”) is nothing new in electoral politics. Fifteen years ago it proved controversial, during a local election on the Gold Coast. Late night texts were sent to target young voters while they were out on the town.

The message – which came from nightclubs, urging voters to keeping licensed venues open all hours – was lost in a backlash. In those days people paid not just per text they sent, but often to receive them as well.

Mobiles have since become more ubiquitous, intimate fixtures, and we no longer pay to receive messages, nor do many of us pay for individual texts.

Palmer’s party admits to receiving more than 3,000 complaints (which he claims were robo-calls by trade unions), and he says there’s more to come. But why risk alienating the very people you are reaching out to? And how, if at all, does the law regulate such in-your-face campaign techniques?

The law on ‘mexting’?

For once, the legal how is easier than the political why. The national Spam Act of 2003 regulates unsolicited electronic messages via telephone and email. But only commercial messages, about goods and services or investments, are prohibited.

Social and political advocacy is not treated as suspect. On the contrary, it is encouraged. The Privacy Act, in particular, lets MPs and parties collect data on citizens’ views, to better personalise their messages.

Exempting politicians from privacy laws is based on the philosophy that freedom of political communication is vital to Australia’s democratic process.

Read more: Australia should strengthen its privacy laws and remove exemptions for politicians

Even when government agencies, charities or political parties offer services or solicit donations or membership, they are given a free hand. All they have to do is include a link about who authorised the message.

Palmer parroting Trump. Darren England/AAP

The licence to advocate, provided it is not done anonymously, is an old one under electoral law in English-speaking democracies. The obligation to “tag” messages enables the speaker to be traced and helps us discount the source of political opinions.

Read more: Don’t be distracted by an SMS in the same-sex marriage survey debate

That is merely a rule about form, not manner or content. When it comes to manner, there are laws against offensive messages via mass media – whether broadcast or sent by post. (Good luck enforcing that rule in the back passages of the internet.)

There are also, famously, rules against discriminatory “hate” speech.

When it comes to content, you need to avoid defaming people. But there is no general requirement of truth, in the media or in politics, outside rules against misleading parliament, and a limited offence of materially false, paid, election-time ads in South Australia.

At the 2016 general election, the Labor Party dismayed the government and many observers, by mexting as part of its so-called “Mediscare” campaign. The texts looked like they came from Medicare itself. The trick led to a tightening of rules and a new offence of “impersonating” a Commonwealth body.

Other in-your-face campaign methods

Mexting sits in a long line of in-your-face campaign methods. The century old tradition of handing out flyers lives on, as letterboxes in marginal electorates will surely testify later this year.

Another was the “soap box” speech, trundled around shopping precincts via a loudspeaker on the back of a ute. In the middle of last century it was so typical that, as a young candidate, Gough Whitlam is said to have campaigned this way via a boat, to reach outlying suburbs not well serviced by roads.

Sound trucks show the ‘soap box’ method of campaigning is still used in Japan. Wikimedia Commons

It is all but dead today in Australia, but lives on in the “sound trucks” of Japan.

More recent innovations are the ubiquitous “direct-mail” – a personalised if expensive variant of letterbox stuffing. Plus the “robo-call”, where a pre-recorded message is automatically dialled to thousands of telephones. I well recall picking up my landline, over dinner in 2007, to hear John Howard greet me. He happily ploughed on despite my unflattering response.

As for how, practically, a campaign assembles thousands of valid mobile numbers… well, Palmer’s party says it has no list. It may have obtained it from a marketing firm. Commercial entities, notoriously, collect and trade files of phone numbers, postal and email addresses, and more.

Still, why? A cynic might say that for Palmer, any notoriety is good notoriety. His gambit has people talking about him again. Minor parties expect to alienate people: their goal is to attract a few percent of the vote.

Why major parties employ such tactics is another matter. They have to build broader coalitions of voters. But there is a cost-benefit analysis at work. Electronic messaging can reach swathes of people more cheaply than broadcast advertising, which in any event lacks the reach it once had. And negative advertising, like Mediscare, tends to work.

As it is, modern parties lack mass memberships and cannot rely primarily on organic influence or door-knocking by activists.

So while spamming, in text or audio, seems perverse – and is unlikely to be as effective as targeted or viral messaging on social media, or community-based campaigning – it won’t disappear.

For my part, I won’t grumble about a text from Mr Palmer popping up in my pocket. It beats his huge yellow billboards in terms of a blight on our public spaces.

– ref. From robo calls to spam texts: annoying campaign tricks that are legal – http://theconversation.com/from-robo-calls-to-spam-texts-annoying-campaign-tricks-that-are-legal-109943

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Crommelin, Research Lecturer, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW

The saga of Opal Tower, the 36-storey Sydney apartment building evacuated on Christmas Eve after frightening cracking, has helped to expose the deep cracks in Australia’s approach to building apartments.

An interim engineering assessment released yesterday indicates concrete panels cracked due to their manufacture and assembly deviating from the original design. Though the building is structurally sound and in no danger of collapse, repairing the faults will be costly, slow and disruptive to residents.

The tower’s size, age (it is less than six months old) and the timing of its cracks might have made it particularly newsworthy, but badly built apartment blocks are far from unusual. Right now across Australia’s cities many buildings have significant leaks, cracks and fire safety failings.

So we can’t just address faults in individual developments. We need to identify the systemic flaws in how “compact city” policies have been planned and implemented.

Cracks in the compact city

The consequences of these flaws increasingly affect us all.

As the population of Australia’s capital cities grows, more of us are living in apartments. Governments have been promoting greater housing density as an alternative to sprawl for decades. But they haven’t always ensured this density has been done well, including in terms of building quality.

Gutted: these photos show inside an affected Opal Tower apartment. Furniture, floorings and the ceiling have been removed, and propping equipment installed. Residents have complained about no notification such work would occur. Image supplied/AAP

In the aftermath of the Opal Tower saga, experts have pointed to many reasons why building defects can occur.

These include the fact that developers owe buyers few legal obligations once the apartments are sold, which limits their risk if they get things wrong. There are also significant market pressures, particularly in boom times, to build quickly and cheaply. And there are gaps in how the construction process is overseen, meaning errors go unnoticed.

These are not new observations, but getting regulations in place to address them has proven challenging. A case in point is NSW’s new defects bond, requiring developers to put aside 2% of the building value to fix defects down the track. The bond’s introduction was delayed for years, and it will be a few more years yet before we know if it works.

Scoping the problem

So just how severe is the situation? Right now, we don’t know for sure.

In 2012 a City Futures Research Centre project surveyed apartment owners in NSW. Out of more than 1,000 respondents, 72% knew of defects in their strata-title complex. Among those whose apartments had been built since 2000, the percentage was 85%.

That project only looked at building defects as one of a number of issues facing apartment owners, however, so it didn’t document the issue in detail.

Our new research project will examine just how prevalent building defects are, the reasons they occur, and how strata-titled housing can be improved.

While the research will focus on Sydney, we hope it is a step towards changing planning and development policies to ensure better quality apartment buildings nation-wide.

Increasing inequality

A system allowing defective apartment buildings not only creates huge financial and emotional stress for residents but much wider economic and social risks.

Poor building practices undermine confidence in the multibillion-dollar construction industry, the strata management industry and in the planning system.

They also contribute to inequality. This is because apartment residents are more likely to be younger, renting, on lower incomes, and from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Amid growing concerns about the widening gap between housing “haves” and “have nots”, there is renewed political interest in housing policy. Certainly this is a crucial issue for governments to tackle, but it goes beyond a focus on housing supply and prices. Addressing quality must also be a priority.

At the same time, we also need to step back and reconsider how we do compact-city planning more broadly – including the roles governments and the private market play. With two-thirds of us now calling our biggest cities home, we need to have a serious public conversation about what we want our cities to be and how we can best achieve those goals.

We can’t afford to ignore the growing evidence that our cities are cracking under the strain. Because like the Opal Tower owners, we’re all going to bear the cost when things go wrong, and we’ll all have to live amid the wreckage.

– ref. The big lesson from Opal Tower is that badly built apartments aren’t only an issue for residents – http://theconversation.com/the-big-lesson-from-opal-tower-is-that-badly-built-apartments-arent-only-an-issue-for-residents-109722

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Regina Scheyvens, Professor of Development Studies, Massey University

If you live in a tourist destination, you might dread the holiday invasion. Likewise, disgruntled tourists complain about crowded and polluted beaches, national parks or attractions.

Graffiti in Oviedo, northern Spain, following a spate of attacks on tourism facilities in Barcelona. EPA/ALBERTO MORANTE, CC BY-ND

Overtourism is now a serious issue in many parts of the world. A good visitor experience may not be a finite resource in the same way as oil, but many popular destinations in Europe are reaching what could be termed “peak tourism”.

Concerns have been raised from Amsterdam to Dubrovnik about noise pollution, crowded parks, pressure on public facilities and rising rents. And in what is depicted as a “global battle” between travellers and locals, anti-tourism street marches have occurred in Barcelona and Venice.

Read more: Anti-tourism attacks in Spain: who is behind them and what do they want?

Unsustainable tourism growth

Tucked away in a seemingly idyllic spot in the South Pacific, New Zealand is not immune to such concerns, which is why Massey University is hosting the world’s first research conference on tourism and the sustainable development goals this month.

Between 2013 and 2018, international tourist arrivals in New Zealand grew by 1.2 million to a total of 3.8 million. During the 12 months to March last year, tourists spent almost $40 billion, and the industry now provides one in every 12 jobs.

Economists see this growth as very positive for the country’s development, but many New Zealanders are ambivalent: 39% have expressed concern over the negative impacts of the growth in international visitors. The pressure on some destinations is particularly intense. For example, the 20,000 permanent residents of the summer and winter playground of Queenstown play host to around three million visitors a year.

Tourists digging holes in the vulcanic sand of a hot water beach in New Zealand. from www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND

Read more: Rethinking tourism and its contribution to conservation in New Zealand

Meanwhile local government bodies lament the pressure on public infrastructure and demands for waste disposal from freedom campers. Contractors at four Central Otago freedom camping sites have struggled to clear 16 tonnes of rubbish accumulated over the last two months.

A test case for concerns about the promise versus the pitfalls of tourism is the case of cruise tourism in Akaroa Harbour. The battle line lies between some business owners whose livelihoods depend on cruise tourists and local residents who feel their beautiful harbour and quaint town are marred by air and noise pollution and congestion associated with hundreds of tourists dropping in on their town with each cruise.

Read more: Why Australia might be at risk of ‘overtourism’

In Australia, the Guinness World Record-certified whitest sand beach in the world – Hyams Beach – has turned away thousands of potential visitors during the Christmas and New Year period. There are only 110 permanent residents and 400 parking spaces, but up to 5000 tourists wanting to visit the beach each day during summer.

These experiences reflect the pressures and tensions tourism brings to many parts of the world, and the need for better ways of regulating tourist activity and capturing the gains from tourism.

A more sustainable way forward

It is clear that most people do not wish to see an end to tourism. But they do want the industry to be far more sustainable. While the term “sustainable tourism” has long been criticised for its lack of clout – and the way it can be seen as merely “sustaining tourism”, there is a way forward. We can look to the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), ratified in 2015 by 193 countries and set to guide global development through to 2030.

The SDGs require governments, civil society and business interests to play their parts in creating a more sustainable world. Furthermore, they are multi-faceted, considering social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability.

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

The SDGs can help to guide the tourism industry to make more sustainable choices. For example, a strategy by hotels, cruise ships and restaurants to buy as much fresh produce from local farmers as possible would shorten the supply chain and save food miles (thus contributing to SDG 13 on combating climate change). It would also enhance local development (SDG 1 on eliminating poverty).

Tourist resorts in the Pacific could tackle the sexual harrassment from guests that many resort employees experience to show they care about SDG 8 on “decent work for all” and SDG 5 on “empowering all women and girls”.

Tourism trades in luxury products and indulgent experiences, and as such it places a heavy burden on the natural environment and results in waste management issues. SDG 12 on sustainable production and consumption can encourage companies to offer tourists more sustainable products and to reduce wastage of energy, fresh water and food.

Efforts to capture the benefits of tourism while preventing overtourism should pay careful attention to the SDGs.

– ref. We’re in the era of overtourism but there is a more sustainable way forward – http://theconversation.com/were-in-the-era-of-overtourism-but-there-is-a-more-sustainable-way-forward-108906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathon Sargeant, Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Classroom Management, Australian Catholic University

Recent reports suggest Australian classrooms, from the students’ perspective, are some of the most disruptive in the world. But do we have a behavioural crisis in our schools? Perhaps not.

At the end of this month, thousands of teachers and children begin or return to school. Throughout the day, each child will be expected to follow the instructions of multiple teachers, leaders, and mentors. In school, children are expected change activities with little prior notice. Some tasks require significant physical effort, while others exact a heavy intellectual toll.

Read more: How teachers are taught to discipline a classroom might not be the best way

The child’s performance in each activity is assessed in comparison with other children and with those who have gone before. The activities planned for them might occur in groups or alone, with or without technology, and with or without help.

Each child’s teacher will be focused on delivering the best possible learning experiences that are interesting, effective, and sometimes fun. Alongside this focus on learning is the task of classroom and behaviour management, an enduring challenge for teachers.

How is classroom disruption measured?

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparative study of student achievement directed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The PISA 2015 report provides an international comparison on how Australian 15-year old’s fare in scientific, mathematical, and reading literacy.

One part of this major report focuses on students’ accounts (with a focus on science classes) of the climate of classroom discipline. The report analysed student responses to questions about how often (every lesson to never) they experienced certain disruptions in science, such as “there is noise and disorder” and “students cannot work well”.

These results suggest Australian classrooms have a problem with in-class disruptions. Previous PISA study have explored this theme with relation to other literacy domains such as reading achievement in 2009. One study found the classroom climate didn’t always affect a nations performance. Australia’s students did not rank as poorly, which may offer some insights for the teaching of science.

Stages of personal development matter

It’s important to note this assessment is focused on 15-year-olds who are at a particularly challenging phase of personal development that includes increasing disconnection from their schools. It doesn’t necessarily represent the experiences of other ages, particularly not in the primary school years.

Secondary school sees the emergence of independence, boundary pushing and a period of social adjustment. Secondary schools are often large, busy systems where pupils mix beyond age groupings and are not anchored to a particular class group. At 15 years old, these students are ten years in with three to go.

Interest in a lesson alone is to enough to stop all disruption in a classroom. from www.shutterstock.com

The students surveyed reported experiences of not paying attention, not listening to what the teacher says and excessive noise and disorder. These results align with similar research that asked children about the causes of problematic behaviour.

While such knowledge is not new, the understanding that children themselves are aware of the complexities and dynamics of the school experience does need to be acknowledged. Neither teacher or students enjoy a disrupted class.

Why is Australia so low?

Our schools are busy, vibrant, and filled with lessons that promote interaction between students and teachers. The fact poor discipline is defined as not listening and being off-task is perhaps a little melodramatic compared with some of the more extreme but infrequent outbursts (less than 3%) that can occur. But multiply that by 15 or 20 and there’s a bigger problem.

Education systems that remain in some countries are no longer representative of Australian culture and are not reflective of the accepted standards of educational practice. In many respects, Australia is one of the hardest places to teach because of the importance placed on engagement as well as performance. For example, China and Singapore have high levels of direct instruction, where Australian education focuses on getting the student involved and ensuring the teacher knows the students as individuals.

The classroom management debate has raged for decades and often doesn’t move at the same pace as other society norms. This teacher education video from the 1940s is a good example of how different styles can impact students. It also shows how simple prevention techniques can influence class mood.

In many ways, the best behaviour management relies on what happens when no misbehaviour is present. At these times, effective teachers are building positive relationships, acknowledging, and supporting students, gathering their feedback, and supporting those who need assistance. Most teachers do this well, most of the time, but disruptions still happen.

Problematic behaviour and school success are impacted by a multitude of factors such as bullying, poor motivation, difficulty in understanding, tiredness, competing curriculum priorities and the ever-present cycles of assessment.

There is enormous pressure on teachers to achieve results and the issue of a crowded curriculum is well documented. This pressure is also being felt by students and families, especially in the senior school years. Such pressures can affect a teacher’s ability to manage a class and can also affect a student’s ability to manage themselves.

Classroom management has been sidelined by academic performance

In recent years, teacher education programs have had to respond to government priorities that focus on academic performance. Programs relating to inclusive education and classroom management have drifted to the side.

Unfortunately, the skills of classroom management are far more complex than just “good teaching”. A false assumption made by as many early career teachers as experienced ones is that if their teaching is interesting, there should be no reason for misbehaviour.

Read more: Teachers shouldn’t have to manage behaviour issues by themselves – schools need to support them

But interest alone is not enough. Classroom energy fluctuates, ability levels vary and not everyone is motivated by the same content. Teachers have to read the room and respond to many different demands of students to keep things flowing.

Yes, teachers would benefit from more direct instruction in how to deal with behavioural challenges. But they should also be skilled at prevention and should be supported in building those skills.

This report alerts us to the importance of effective teaching, and the fact that students do care about their learning environment. Everyone is on the same page here: students are trying to learn and teachers are trying to teach. Things will still go wrong, but far less frequently when trust and respect flows both ways.

– ref. Are Australian classrooms really the most disruptive in the world? Not if you look at the whole picture – http://theconversation.com/are-australian-classrooms-really-the-most-disruptive-in-the-world-not-if-you-look-at-the-whole-picture-109888

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paulomi (Polly) Burey, Senior Lecturer (Food Science), University of Southern Queensland

Curious Kids is a series for children. Kids can send questions to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au. You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

How do tongues taste food? – Ridley, age 4, Melbourne.

Dear Ridley,

This is a really good question. Tasting food actually uses all of your senses. Your senses gather up all the information and combine it into a message about the taste of food that gets sent to your brain. For example, your eyes help you recognise food and remember how it tastes.

It’s not just about the tongue. The five senses – taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell – help collect messages about a food and send it to your brain. Shutterstock

Read more: Curious Kids: How do we get allergic to food?

Your tongue has special parts that pick up flavour, bundled together as taste buds. They help you taste different flavours, like sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and a special one called “umami” which some people say is a bit like a mix of all the others put together.

The taste buds pick up clues about how a food tastes and sends messages about it to your brain along special wires called nerves.

Your brain gets messages from your taste buds via nerves. Shutterstock

To taste something properly, you need to chew food into small pieces and to have a lot of drool, or saliva. This help the flavour molecules (also known as “tastants”) reach your taste buds.

This picture shows a close-up of taste buds on a tongue. Shutterstock

Try this experiment: if you lick a piece of sliced apple, how does it taste? Now drink some water to wash away the flavour, and take a bite of the apple and chew it up. When you cut an apple, only some flavour is released. But if you chew it into smaller pieces, more flavour can escape into your mouth.

Foods taste sweeter if the sugar particles are smaller. Want to try another experiment? With permission, put some large sugar crystals on your tongue for five seconds. How sweet do they taste? Now rinse your mouth with water and put some fine icing sugar on your tongue – is it sweeter or less sweet than the big sugar crystals?

The smaller the sugar particles are, the easier it is for your tongue to taste the sweetness. (For the adults reading, this is because smaller particles have a higher surface area). This trick helps food scientists develop sweet foods with less sugar.

Saliva and smell

When you chew your food, you also produce saliva (or spit) which dissolves some of the food flavour for your to tongue taste.

Want to try another experiment? Stick out your tongue as far as it can go and dry the saliva off with some thick paper towel. While your tongue is still sticking out, have your parent put some food on your tongue, like yoghurt. How strong is the flavour? Next, pull your tongue back into your mouth and taste the food. Is the flavour stronger, weaker, or the same?

If your nose is blocked, food tastes weaker. This is because your nose also helps you “taste” food too.

Try it! While holding your nose closed, put some food in your mouth and chew. Can you taste it? While still eating the food, let go of your nose and keep eating. Is the flavour stronger, weaker, or the same?

In fact, without your sense of smell it can be hard to taste the difference between a raw apple and a raw onion!

When it comes to tasting flavour, your nose helps a lot. Flickr/Bruce Tuten, CC BY

So your tongue and nose work together to help you taste your food. I hope you can help your tongue taste more by chewing your food fully and using your saliva to help make the flavour stronger.

And if you have something to eat that you don’t like, try holding your nose!

Read more: Curious Kids: why do some people find some foods yummy but others find the same foods yucky?

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

CC BY-ND

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

– ref. Curious Kids: how do tongues taste food? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-tongues-taste-food-103744

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography, University of Western Australia

Many people in Australia will head to the beach this summer and that’ll most likely include a dip or a plunge into the sea. But have you ever wondered where those ocean waters come from, and what influence they may have?

Australia is surrounded by ocean currents that have a strong controlling influence on things such as climate, ecosystems, fish migrations, the transport of ocean debris and on water quality.

We did a study, published in April 2018, that helps to give us a better understanding of those ocean currents.

Surface currents around the Australian continent. Ems Wijeratne/Charitha Pattiaratchi/Roger Proctor

Read more: New map shows that only 13% of the oceans are still truly wild

Go with the flow: Indian Ocean

Our 15 year simulation indicates that water from the Pacific Ocean enters the Indonesian Archipelago through the Mindanao current (north) and Halmahera Sea (south).

It then enters the Indian ocean as the Indonesian Throughflow between many Indonesian Islands, with flow through the Timor Passage being the most dominant.

Most of this water flows west as the South Equatorial Current. Re-circulation of the SEC creates the Eastern Gyre that contributes to the Holloway Current. This in turn feeds the Leeuwin Current – the longest boundary current in the world (Ocean currents that flow adjacent to a coastline are called boundary currents)

The Leeuwin Current is the major boundary current along the west coast and as it moves southward. Indian Ocean water is supplied by the South Indian Counter Current increasing the Leeuwin Current transport by 60%.

The Leeuwin Current turns east at Cape Leeuwin, in Western Australia’s south-west, and continues to Tasmania as the South Australian and Zeehan Currents.

The Leeuwin Current passes the lighthouse at the Cape Leeuwin in WA. Flickr/Cheng, CC BY-NC-ND

There is a strong seasonal variation in the strength of the boundary currents in the Indian Ocean with a progression southwards of the peak transport along the coast.

The Holloway Current peaks in April/May (coinciding with changes in the monsoon winds), the Leeuwin Current reaches a maximum along the west and south coasts in June and August.

Read more: Climate change is slowing Atlantic currents that help keep Europe warm

Go with the flow: Pacific Ocean

In the Pacific Ocean, the northern branches of the South Equatorial Current are the main inputs initiating the Hiri Current and East Australian Current.

At around latitude 15 degrees south the currents split in two: southward to form the East Australian Current, and northward to form the Hiri Current which contributes to a clockwise gyre in the Gulf of Papua.

The East Australian Current is the dominant current in the region transporting 33 million cubic metres of water per second southward.

At around 32S, the East Australian Current separates from the coast and 60% of the water flows eastward to New Zealand as the Tasman Front. The remaining 40% flows southward as the East Australian Current extension and contributes to the Tasman Outflow.

The Tasman outflow is the major conduit of water from the Pacific to Indian Ocean and contributes to the Flinders Current, flowing westward from Tasmania and past Cape Leeuwin into the Indian Ocean.

Along the southern continental slope, the Flinders Current appears as an undercurrent beneath the Leeuwin Current and a surface current further offshore. The Flinders Current contributes to the Leeuwin Undercurrent directly as a northward flow, flowing to the north-west of Australia in water depths 300 metres to 800 metres.

Impact of the currents

Understanding ocean circulation is a fundamental tenet of physical oceanography and scientists have been charting the pathways of ocean currents since the American hydrographer Matthew Maury, one of the founders of oceanography, who first charted the Gulf Stream in 1855.

One of the first maps of circulation around Australia was by Halliday (1921) who showed the movement of “warm” and “cold” waters around Australia. Although some of the major features (such as the East Australian Current) were correctly identified, a more fine scale description is now available.

Ocean surface currents around Australia by Halliday 1921.

The unique feature of ocean currents around Australia is that along both east and west coasts they transport warmer water southwards and influence the local climate, particularly air temperature and rainfall, as well as species distribution.

Read more: Explainer: how the Antarctic Circumpolar Current helps keep Antarctica frozen

For example, the south west of Australia is up to 5C warmer in winter and receives more than double the rainfall compared to regions located on similar latitudes along western coastlines of other continents.

Similarly many tropical species of fish are found in the southwest of Australia that hitch a ride on the ocean currents.

The Pacific Ocean is the origin of waters around Australia with a direct link to the east and an indirect link to west.

Ocean water from the Pacific Ocean flows through the Indonesian Archipelago, a region subject to high solar heating and rainfall runoff, creating lower density water. This water, augmented by water from the Indian Ocean, flows around the western and southern coasts, converging along the southern coast of Tasmania.

So next time you head for a dip in the coastal waters around Australian, spare a thought for where that water has come from and where it may be going next.

Time for a plunge in the water at Bondi Beach, NSW. Flickr/Roderick Eime, CC BY-ND

– ref. A current affair: the movement of ocean waters around Australia – http://theconversation.com/a-current-affair-the-movement-of-ocean-waters-around-australia-96779

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Banister, Team Leader in Medicinal Chemistry, University of Sydney

Recent media reports have suggested a rise in a dangerous new party drug known as “monkey dust”. This is a slang name for the drug MDPV (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone), as well as other members of the chemical class known as “synthetic cathinones”, or “bath salts”.

The effects of monkey dust are similar to other stimulants such as ecstasy (MDMA) and cocaine. Revellers may be using the drug on purpose as a substitute for these, or may mistakenly think it’s MDMA. However, the potency and effects are different, and can lead to trouble.

Synthetic cathinones are synthetic derivatives of a stimulant found in the khat plant, a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. More than 140 individual synthetic cathinones have been identified as illicit drugs, so users can never be certain about a substance from its street name alone.

This class also includes drugs you may have heard of before including ephylone (the dangerous drug detected recently via pill testing at an Australian music festival), methylone, and mephedrone.

Read more: Weekly Dose: ephylone, the dangerous designer stimulant found at Groovin the Moo

What is MDPV?

MDPV was developed by pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim in the mid-1960s as a central nervous system stimulant. But development never got far enough for it to be tested on humans.

It first reappeared in internet drug forum discussions around 2005, and became increasingly prevalent in the United States, Europe and elsewhere over the following years.

MDPV has been illegal in Australia since 2010, and around the same time in many other jurisdictions including the United States, Canada, and much of Europe, accounting for a decline in its availability.

The Drug Enforcement Administration reported that MDPV accounted for more than 50% of all synthetic cathinones encountered in law enforcement seizures in the US by 2011. The proportion had dropped to less than 1% by 2015.

The recent seizure of more than four kilograms of MDPV imported into Australia suggests a market for the drug still exists.

MDPV is a white crystalline powder in its pure form, but manufacturing impurities often render it from off-white to pale brown. It’s usually sold as a powder, powder-filled capsules or tablets. MDPV and other cathinones are often misrepresented as MDMA for sale due to similar appearance and some common effects. Laboratory testing of street pills containing MDPV shows it’s commonly mixed with other drugs.

Read more: Weekly Dose: ecstasy, the party drug that could be used to treat PTSD

What does MDPV do?

An oral dose of MDPV is estimated to be around 5-20 milligrams (compared to 100-150 milligrams for MDMA). The main psychoactive effects last two to three hours, and side-effects persist for several additional hours.

Users report MDPV produces euphoria, feelings of empathy (although less so than MDMA), increased sociability, mental and physical stimulation, and sexual arousal.

Side-effects, particularly at high doses, can include anxiety and paranoia, delusions, muscle spasms, and an elevated heart rate. In extreme cases, MDPV has been linked to rhabdomyolysis (rapid muscle breakdown), brain injury, and death.

Animals in lab studies wanted to self-administer the drug, meaning it’s addictive. from www.shutterstock.com

Like other cathinones, MDPV is a stimulant and shares some effects with other stimulants such as amphetamine, cocaine and MDMA. MDPV produces its effects by inhibiting the reuptake of two important signalling molecules (neurotransmitters) in the brain; norepinephrine and dopamine.

Norepinephine is generally responsible for preparing the brain and body for action in the so-called “fight or flight response”, while dopamine is involved in more complex functions such as arousal, motivation, reward and motor control.

By blocking the ability of certain brain cells (neurons) to reabsorb these neurotransmitters, MDPV effectively increases the intensity and duration of norepinephrine and dopamine signalling. Cocaine works in a similar way, but in a lab test, MDPV was a much more potent inhibitor than cocaine.

Other norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors (NDRIs) include pharmaceuticals such as methylphenidate (known as ritalin and used to treat ADHD) and buproprion (an antidepressant). But the psychoactive and stimulant effects of MDPV are much stronger than pharmaceutical NDRIs.

Pyrovalerone – a hybrid of mephedrone and MDPV – is an approved appetite suppressant used medically for weight loss. However, it’s rarely used due to its potential for abuse.

Studies in laboratory animals highlight the stimulating effects of MDPV, and also its potential for dependence. Mice trained to identify MDPV find it similar to both MDMA and methamphetamine. MDPV stimulates movement in rats approximately ten times more potently than cocaine, and rats will readily self-administer MDPV, suggesting it’s addictive.

Dangers

MDPV has been involved in dozens of deaths in Europe, detailed in a report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, as well as in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere.

But many of these deaths involved extreme doses, repeated dosing (“bingeing”), intravenous use or additional drugs. In fatal cases involving a single synthetic cathinone, death has been attributed to complications arising from extremely high body temperatures or damage to the vessels of the heart. Fortunately, specialised drug testing can detect MDPV and its derivatives.

Although simple colour-based reagent tests may identify MDPV, these tests may also cross-react with similar cathinones, some of which are less dangerous, and some of which are more so.

For reliable identification, more sophisticated technology such as mass spectrometry or infrared spectroscopy, of the type drug experts are campaigning to take place at festivals, is required. In this regard, small, portable, and relatively cheap infrared analysers may be useful for on-site testing services.

Read more: While law makers squabble over pill testing, people should test their drugs at home

– ref. Weekly Dose: new drug MDPV, or ‘monkey dust’, found in Australia. What is it and what are the harms? – http://theconversation.com/weekly-dose-new-drug-mdpv-or-monkey-dust-found-in-australia-what-is-it-and-what-are-the-harms-109505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fran Sheldon, Professor, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Griffith University

The deaths of millions of fish in the lower Darling River system over the past few weeks should come as no surprise. Quite apart from specific warnings given to the NSW government by their own specialists in 2013, scientists have been warning of devastation since the 1990s.

Put simply, ecological evidence shows the Barwon-Darling River is not meant to dry out to disconnected pools – even during drought conditions. Water diversions have disrupted the natural balance of wetlands that support massive ecosystems.

Unless we allow flows to resume, we’re in danger of seeing one of the worst environmental catastrophes in Australia.

Read more: Explainer: what causes algal blooms, and how we can stop them

Dryland river

The Barwon-Darling River is a “dryland river”, which means it is naturally prone to periods of extensive low flow punctuated by periods of flooding.

However, the presence of certain iconic river animals within its channels tell us that a dry river bed is not normal for this system. The murray cod, dead versions of which have recently bought graziers to tears and politicians to retch, are the sentinels of permanent deep waterholes and river channels – you just don’t find them in rivers that dry out regularly.

Less conspicuous is the large river mussel, Alathyria jacksoni, an inhabitant of this system for thousands of years. Its shells are abundant in aboriginal middens along the banks. These invertebrates are unable to tolerate low flows and low oxygen, and while dead fish will float (for a while), shoals of river mussels are probably dead on the river bed.

This extensive drying event will cause regional extinction of a whole raft of riverine species and impact others, such as the rakali. We are witnessing an ecosystem in collapse.

Catastrophic drying

We can see the effects of permanent drying around the world. The most famous example is the drying of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once the world’s fourth largest inland lake, it was reduced to less than 10% of its original volume after years of water extraction for irrigation.

The basin that once held the Aral Sea. The giant lake has shrunk dramatically since dams were built around it in the 1960s. AAP Image/NASA Earth Observatory

The visual results of this exploitation still shock: images of large fishing boats stranded in a sea of sand, abandoned fishing villages, and a vastly changed microclimate for the regions surrounding the now-dry seabed. Its draining has been described as “the world’s worst environmental disaster”.

Read more: Humans drained the Aral Sea once before – but there are no free refills this time round

So, what does the Aral Sea and its major tributaries and the Darling River system with its tributary rivers have in common? Quite a lot, actually. They both have limited access to the outside world: the Aral Sea basin has no outflow to the sea, and while the Darling River system connects to the River Murray at times of high flow, most of its water is held within a vast network of wetlands and floodplain channels. Both are semi-arid. More worryingly, both have more the 50% of their average inflows extracted for irrigation.

There is one striking difference between them. The Aral Sea was a permanent inland lake and its disappearance was visually obvious. The wetlands and floodplains of the Barwon-Darling are mostly ephemeral, and the extent of their drying is therefore hard to visualise.

Read more: It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin

An orphaned ship in former Aral Sea, near Aral, Kazakhstan. Wikipedia

All the main tributaries of the Darling River have floodplain wetland complexes in their lower reaches (such as the Gwydir Wetlands, Macquarie Marshes and Narran Lakes). When the rivers flow they absorb the water from upstream, filling before releasing water downstream to the next wetland complex; the wetlands acting like a series of tipping buckets. Regular river flows are essential for these sponge-like wetlands.

So, how has this hydrological harmony of regular flows and fill-and-spill wetlands changed? And how does this relate to the massive fish kills we are seeing in the lower Darling system?

Read more: How is oxygen ‘sucked out’ of our waterways?

While high flows will still make it through the Barwon-Darling, filling the floodplains and wetlands, and connecting to the River Murray, the low and medium flow events have disappeared. Instead, these are captured in the upper sections of the basin in artificial water storages and used in irrigation.

This has essentially dried the wetlands and floodplains at the ends of the tributaries. Any water not diverted for irrigation is now absorbed by the continually parched upstream wetlands, leaving the lower reaches vulnerable when drought hits.

By continually keeping the Barwon-Darling in a state of low (or no) flow, with its natural wetlands dry, we have reduced its ability to cope with extended drought.

Read more: Why a wetland might not be wet

While droughts are a natural part of this system and its river animals have adapted, they can’t adjust to continual high water caused in some areas by water diversions – and they certainly can’t survive long-term drying.

The Basin Plan has come some way in restoring some flows to the Barwon-Darling, but unless we find a way to restore more of the low and medium flows to this system we are likely witnessing Australia’s worst environmental disaster.

Read more: It will take decades, but the Murray Darling Basin Plan is delivering environmental improvements

– ref. The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought – http://theconversation.com/the-darling-river-is-simply-not-supposed-to-dry-out-even-in-drought-109880