Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beth Goldblatt, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney

ParentsNext is to be the subject of a Senate inquiry, with submissions closing on February 1.

The program has been widely criticised for making parents’ lives more difficult and for unfairly stopping payments.

But that wasn’t how it began, and it wasn’t what was trialled.

The program trialled from April 2016 provided intensive job-readiness training (and parenting programs) for single parents “at risk”, often Indigenous, to help prepare them to enter the workforce when their youngest was ready for school.

An announcement in the 2017 budget declared the trial a success and said that from July 2018 it would be expanded to an extra 20 locations with “a significant Indigenous population”, and to the entire country, less intensively.

ParentsNext promotional video, Department of Jobs and Small Business.

The expanded program would place participation requirements on parents such as reporting to a service provider and would lead to loss of benefits for non-compliance. This was supported by a new so-called Targeted Compliance Framework also introduced last year.

The ParentsNext that was implemented from July 1 made parenting payments and other benefits conditional on taking part in the program for targeted groups of vulnerable parents.

Parents have had their parenting payments docked for failing to attend “story time sessions”, and domestic violence survivors have been retraumatised by being made to retell their stories (sometimes in front of their children) in order to keep receiving payments.

Understanding compliance zones in Jobactive, Disability Employment Services and ParentsNext, Department of Jobs and Small Business.

Even ParentsNext providers are unhappy

ParentsNext service providers’ representative, Jobs Australia, has begged Jobs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer to disentangle ParentsNext from the compliance requirements, saying it is doing the opposite of what was intended.

It said that the compliance aspects of the program are adding to parents’ stress and financial hardship.

Examples of problems include: rural parents without smart phones or enough data are being suspended for not reporting if they can’t travel to providers in other towns to report. Parents are being referred to emergency relief on a Friday to buy food because payment suspensions can’t be lifted until Monday. A pregnant woman had payments suspended after she was rushed to hospital for a premature birth and was unable to report.

A key consideration for the Senate inquiry ought to be whether this violates human rights.

It threatens human rights

Australia is signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which establishes social security as a human right.

Social security is an entitlement provided by a society to members who are in need due to circumstances such as illness, disability, unemployment, old age and caring responsibilities.

That right, as with others in the International Covenant, must be “exercised without discrimination”, including on the basis of sex, race, language and national or social origin.

And leads to discrimination

Since a disproportionate number of people automatically enrolled in ParentsNext and facing payment cuts are Indigenous, the program appears to discriminate on the basis of race.

It might also discriminate against disadvantaged parents who are new to Australia and face language and cultural barriers making compliance a challenge.

Almost all of the participants – 96% – are women, meaning conditions attached to their social security payments could lead to gender discrimination in their access to social security rights. Selected mothers are being punished for undertaking the unpaid care work necessary to raise children, in a context where affordable child care and appropriate employment is often not available.

It might also discriminate against children on the basis of their family type. Children in disadvantaged sole parent families face discrimination as a result of the withdrawal of payments – which is less likely to affect children in families with lower vulnerability.

The United Nations is watching

Conditionality itself may be at odds with Australia’s obligations.

One interpretation of international human rights says that, to the greatest extent possible, states should refrain from imposing co-responsibilities or conditionalities on receipt of social protection, and instead should channel financial and human resources into improving the level of benefits provided and the quality and accessibility of social services available.

Withholding entitlements cannot be a correct response to structural challenges such as lack of jobs and childcare.

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has already expressed concern about the effect of cuts to the payments available to single parents.

These cuts, together with the compliance requirements attached to ParentsNext, raise questions about Australia’s stated commitments to its international human rights obligations.

When Australia joined the International Covenant in 1976 it promised to use its social security system to promote rather than chip away at human rights. The Senate committee provides an opportunity to ensure this does not continue.

Read more: It’s not just Newstart. Single parents are $271 per fortnight worse off. Labor needs an overarching welfare review

– ref. More than unpopular. How ParentsNext intrudes on single parents’ human rights – http://theconversation.com/more-than-unpopular-how-parentsnext-intrudes-on-single-parents-human-rights-108754

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

In international tax circles, as in other areas, we often talk about American exceptionalism.

But these days, it is becoming increasingly clear that Australia is exceptional in taxation, among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and indeed, compared to countries around the globe.

The OECD has just produced its first-ever detailed comparison of company tax collections and rates and effective rates around the world. The “statutory” or headline rate comparisons cover 94 countries. The harder to calculate “effective” tax comparisons cover 88 countries.

The bad news – for companies – is that Australia is close to the top among the 94 countries, and in one of the measures, the effective marginal company tax rate (more on this later), third from the top.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

Interestingly, in another recent report, the OECD shows that Australia clearly falls into the “low tax” group among OECD countries, with a tax-to-GDP ratio below 25%. But within that context we rely heavily on company tax.

Company tax revenues are high

Australia’s A$80 billion in company tax collections in 2016 was about 4.6% of GDP, ranking Australia twelfth out of the 88 countries for which the OECD had information.

Company tax accounted for 16% of Australia’s total tax revenue, the 27th highest out of the 88 countries.

The statistics have oddities. Luxembourg and Switzerland also have a high share of company tax revenues because they attract so much global capital. In contrast, the overall high-taxing countries of France, Denmark and Finland collect much less revenue from company tax.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

Headline rates are heading down

Corporate tax rates have been trending down for at least two decades. The Trump tax changes in 2017 that lowered the US federal rate to 21% was the latest dramatic change, but the United Kingdom now has a rate of 19% and many European countries sit at or below 25%. The change since 2000 has been dramatic and the global average is now 20%.

In our Asian region, the average headline corporate tax rate is 15%. As a result of tax incentives available around Asia, companies involved in manufacturing and supply chains often face a lower, or zero, rate.

This trend was identified by the Henry Tax Review in 2009, which recommended transitioning to a 25% rate, which today could be financed with a 1% increase in Australia’s GST rate, according to recent modelling by Chris Murphy.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

What matters are effective tax rates

The OECD also compares effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs), and effective average tax rates (EATRs), for corporate investment. These combine the headline rate with the rules for corporate investment, depreciation allowances for plant and equipment, and intellectual property investment.

In theory, investors choose to invest based on the expected after-tax rate of return, taking into account tax breaks and special rules.

The EMTR determines the tax cost of expanding an existing investment: putting one more dollar into that investment. In the EMTR ranking, Australia is third highest.

Countries that provide a tax break known as allowance for corporate equity, including Belgium and Italy, actually have negative tax rates on increased investment.

The EATR reflects the tax rate that would be paid on an entire new investment. In the EATR ranking, Australia is, again, near the top in ninth place, at 30% – the same as our statutory rate.

OECD Corporate Tax Statistics. OECD

Unlike many other countries, Australia has few tax incentives. We do not have a low tax regime for intellectual property or accelerated depreciation for new equipment – except for small businesses, and mining exploration. Only in research and development did Australia provide higher tax subsidies than some other countries and the R&D concession is being tightened.

Overall, Australia’s high rate and broad corporate tax base makes new investment, or the expansion of existing investment, expensive relative to other countries.

Why are we such an outlier?

Australia is a resource extraction and exporting economy.

We haven’t had to compete quite as hard for foreign investment as other countries.

Our relatively high rate of company tax serves two purposes: to tax company profits and to get a fair return on resources in the ground which state governments, through royalties, don’t properly charge for.

And we are geographically isolated, meaning that, even in the global digital economy, it is hard for companies to service us from offshore. Many have to be here and subject to tax.

Also, and importantly, our reliance on corporate tax is not as dramatic as it seems, because of our almost unique dividend imputation system. About one third to one half of corporate tax revenues are handed back to shareholders in credits against company tax already collected. (New Zealand, which has an imputation system, also has high corporate tax revenues).

Kevin Davies suggests that the “real” corporate tax rate in Australia, taking account of dividend imputation, is below 20%.

But that assumes a closed economy. The reality is that the imputation system subsidises some domestic investors – especially tax-free retirees with self managed super funds – while pushing the full weight of company tax onto foreign investment, at the expense of the economy as a whole, and at the expense of Australians who could potentially benefit from that investment.

Read more: Tax reform aside, there’s no real case to kill off dividend imputation

The political heat generated by Labor’s proposal to end the payment of imputation cheques to retirees who don’t pay tax shows their high value to domestic investors. Self-managed super funds are massively overweight in stocks that provide imputation credits, skewing the Australian share market and the dividend policy of our largest companies.

Does it matter?

Australia’s high company tax rate, and the bias in our imputation system against foreign equity, mean that large multinationals will increasingly borrow to finance Australian investment rather than issue shares.

They will get tax deductions for outbound flows of interest, service fees and royalties, while shifting more and more of their sales, marketing and intellectual property offshore where they can.

Australia can, and is, clamping down on profit shifting, but it’s a never-ending battle.

A bold suggestion is that we should scrap our system of dividend imputation and use the money saved to dramatically cut the rate of company tax. It would make Australia much more attractive to foreign investors, although much less attractive to retirees.

Another idea aired in The Conversation late last year is that we should make new capital investment fully tax deductible, turning company tax into a “cashflow tax”.

Read more: Here’s a long-term budget fix that would boost investment: replace company tax with cashflow tax

What we’ll probably end up with is a compromise – a combination of permitting greater deductions for new investment and lowering the rate will be the answer, while limiting or ending dividend imputation.

There’s much to be proud of in being a weird mob.

But as David Ingles and I argued in a research paper last year, it is not smart to ignore what’s happening in other places.

It is true we are geographically isolated, and it is true our resources make us different, but we exist in a global tax environment in which investors consider tax when they decide where to put their money. It is beyond our control.

Read more: Myth busting claims on the impact of the company tax cut

– ref. New figures put it beyond doubt. When it comes to company tax, we are a high-tax country, in part because it works well for us – http://theconversation.com/new-figures-put-it-beyond-doubt-when-it-comes-to-company-tax-we-are-a-high-tax-country-in-part-because-it-works-well-for-us-109875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Connory, PhD candidate, assistant researcher and teaching associate, Monash University

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

Ruby Lindsay was among the first women in Australian graphic design. In the early-20th century she pursued a full-time career in magazine and book illustration, likely the first woman in Australia to successfully do so.

Lindsay created a beautiful array of work during the arts and crafts movement, in the early 1900s. This was a period when artists and designers reacted against the mass production of the Industrial Revolution and focused instead on handmade work.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Caterina Cornaro, the last queen of Cyprus

Born in 1887, Lindsay grew up in the gold rush town of Creswick, Victoria, with her five brothers and parents Robert (1843-1915) and Jane Elizabeth (1848-1932). She moved to Melbourne, at the age of 16. Her designs included hand drawn type and posters, like a Sydney Society of Artists poster from 1907, and black and white illustrations for newspapers of the day, including The Bulletin, Punch and The Gadfly.

Poster for the Sydney Society of Artists’ Picture Show, 1907 (left) and cover illustration for The Gadfly, both by Ruby Lindsay, 1907 (right). Both images are out of copyright.

Even though she made a significant contribution, most have never heard of Lindsay because women working at this time were marginalised by their gender and society. Restrictive ideas about identity, roles and expectations were something Lindsay quietly challenged through her practice in graphic design.

Overshadowed

Lindsay’s visibility was overshadowed by the men surrounding her – her brothers Percy Lindsay (1870–1952) and Sir Lionel Lindsay (1874-1961), who were also well known for cartoons they had published in The Bulletin; Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) who was the author and illustrator of The Magic Pudding; and Daryl Lindsay (1889-1976), who was knighted for his services to art in 1963. Her eventual husband was the Australian artist and political cartoonist William Dyson (1880-1938).

However, Lindsay went to great lengths to stand on her own two feet. She deliberately obscured her relationship to her famous brothers by changing her name and signing her work as “Ruby Lind”, “Ruby Lyne”, “Ruby Lyn” and once, in At the Labour in Vain, as “Ruby Ramsbottom.”

Ruby Lindsay (1887-1919). Image is out of copyright.

Lindsay also distanced herself from the general misogynistic tone of The Bulletin. This newspaper was extreme in its Nationalist tone, which, as various historians have noted, marginalised and mocked women.

Ironically it was her brother Daryl who wrote, in his memoir The Leafy Tree, of Ruby’s drive to break the suppressive female stereotype of the day. “Social engagements, affairs of the heart, all took second place to [her] overriding ambition to become a black and white artist,” he wrote. Lindsay was tough and showed how determination and a self-made image required an independent and forceful effort. She was “never without a sketch-book and pencil in her hands …”, Daryl wrote.

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

On show

It’s doubtful Lindsay could afford a formal education but due to her head-strong efforts she was noticed by William Moore in the short-lived magazine Native Companion. In 1907 he wrote, “She has turned out every variety of drawing, from book illustrations to designs for pantomimic costumes … Ruby Lindsay must realise that she has already made a distinct advance.”

In 1907, the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings hosted the extraordinary Women’s Work Exhibition, which gave Lindsay a chance to show her work. The event, according to the catalogue, drew both royal and international audiences and “over 250,000 attendees”, who flocked to see the work on display.

The event exhibited “women’s craftwork and patriotism … displaying a distinctly feminine response to Australian nationalism.” It came at a time when Australia was still new to Federation – in fact the Royal Melbourne Exhibition buildings were the location for the first sitting of the Federal parliament.

First Class Diploma design for Women’s Work Exhibition, by Ruby Lindsay, 1907 (left) and illustration for Punch, title ‘The Ascent of Woman’, by Ruby Lindsay, 31 October, pp. 639,1907 (right). Both images are out of copyright.

The political discourse in Australia, at this time, focused on Nationalism, childbearing and parenthood, and feminism, and the exhibition provided an opportunity for women to have a presence in these discussions. Following international events, such as the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Melbourne exhibition was significant because it was not a single pavilion but a fully dedicated event for women to demonstrate their participation in the amateur and paid workforce.

There is no denying this period in Australian history saw a woman’s place as being a mother and wife, however the exhibition was also an opportunity to challenge these ideas. Lindsay engaged enthusiastically in the event and submitted many pieces in competitive categories. She both designed and won the First Class Diploma.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Petronella Oortman and her giant dolls’ house

Graphic design – referred to as applied art at this time – was also represented by Eirene Mort (1879-1977), who submitted an alphabet influenced by Australian flora and fauna, and also designed the second class diploma. Her illustrative certificate displayed women’s work that included depictions of manual and farm labour.

One of Lindsay’s illustrations that appeared in Punch at the time, communicated her will for women to succeed at the event. It shows a woman standing with an axe and ceramic pot in her Grecian garb. Signed “Ruby Lind”, it encourages woman’s contributions to society outside of the home. Through the image Ruby demonstrates that women should be viewed as more than domesticated objects.

Lindsay’s life was cut short when she died, of what might have been the Spanish Flu. She had married Dyson and given birth to her daughter Betty while living in London. Her almost forgotten legacy is worthy of celebration because it has laid a foundation the Australian design community can be proud of.

Her independent streak was with her to the end – the name on the headstone in London reads “Ruby Lind”.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Ruby Lindsay, one of Australia’s first female graphic designers – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-ruby-lindsay-one-of-australias-first-female-graphic-designers-109184

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthea McCarthy-Jones, Lecturer, UNSW

Last week, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for his second six-year term as Venezuela’s president. Maduro won the election off the back of international condemnation of vote buying and electoral fraud. While the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, called Venezuela’s government “illegitimate”, Maduro declared:

Venezuela is at the centre of a world war led by the United States imperialism and its satellite countries.

Such statements have become par for the course by a leader and government determined to frame Venezuela’s political, social and economic woes as a product of a protracted ideological battle with the United States.

While these discursive tactics may hold some traction with small parts of the population, the harsh reality of life in Venezuela and the government’s inability and, at times, unwillingness to address clear policy failings has significantly reduced support for President Maduro and his government.

Read more: Venezuelans reject Maduro presidency — but most would oppose foreign military operation to oust him

The scale of Venezuela’s current social, economic and political crisis is so severe it is difficult to comprehend. Hyperinflation has decimated the national currency and crippled the economy. Oil production – which accounts for 95% of the country’s export revenues – has halved since President Maduro took power in 2013 and the industry has been further weakened by the collapse of the price of oil in 2014.

In 2018, the economy contracted by 18% and by the end of the year inflation had soared to 1 million percent. The IMF has predicted inflation will increase to 10 million percent by the latter half of 2019. These are dizzying figures but they only reflect one part of the complex situation Venezuela is facing.

Venezuela’s economy is in a dire state as shown by these shelves in a market in Caracas in 2016. MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EPA

Across the country there are power cuts, food and medicine shortages, increasing internal security problems, rising homicide rates and wide-spread malnutrition. According to the UN, these factors have resulted in three million people fleeing the country since 2015 making it the largest exodus in Venezuelan history.

So, how did it come to this?

The foundations of President Maduro’s current problems date back to the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013. The spectacular rise in popularity of Chavismo, which promoted the cult of Chávez as the liberator of the Venezuelan people, became the vehicle in which Chávez successfully consolidated his legitimacy and the significant political changes made during his time in power from 1999-2013.

Read more: The good, the bad and the ugly: Hugo Chávez and the international left

Chávez employed a charismatic leadership style that positioned himself as a man of the people rather than a member of the elite. He used transformation and transaction tactics to govern and maintain legitimacy. He was a keen orator and used his weekly TV program to connect with the masses. Chavismo rests on socialist values and calls for an independent Latin America, free from the US.

The charismatic Hugo Chavez led Venezuela for over a decade. DAVID FERNANDEZ/EPA

While Maduro shares the same politics – and was the foreign minister in the Chávez government – his problems centre on his inability to emulate Chávez’s leadership style to generate the type of popular support and perceived legitimacy of his predecessor.

As a result, Maduro has increasingly sought to centralise power in the executive and systematically remove political rivals and members of the Venezuelan opposition from participating in democratic processes. For instance, he led the creation of a constituent assembly as a means to bypass the opposition-controlled national assembly.

His controversial changes to the 2018 presidential election, such as bringing it forward by six months to limit the time the opposition had to organise a strong campaign, as well as allegations of vote tampering, point to the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the regime.

Read more: Refugees from Venezuela are fleeing to Latin American cities, not refugee camps

However, Venezuela under President Maduro has gone beyond simply transitioning to a more concentrated authoritarian-style rule. Venezuela has now morphed into what has been termed a “mafia state”.

Venezuela – the mafia state

A mafia state refers to a state that has effectively been criminalised. Here, criminal entities have successfully infiltrated and compromised government institutions at all levels. Currently, more than 100 Venezuelan government officials – ranging from but not limited to individuals in the ministries of the vice president, defence, foreign affairs, intelligence and the national guard – have been implicated in criminal activity.

The clearest example of the complex nexus between criminality and the Venezuelan state has been the emergence of a powerful Venezuelan drug trafficking organisation known as the Cartel of the Suns. The organisation’s name is a reference to the gold stars on epaulettes of military generals but is more generally symbolic of the direct links between serving government officials and the drug trafficking organisation.

Former Vice President Tarek el-Aissami and former President of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello, are allegedly involved in the Cartel of the Suns and are among a litany of Venezuelan officials who have had sanctions imposed on them by the United States.

Venezuela’s first lady, Celia Flores, is also implicated by association. Her nephews have been convicted of trafficking cocaine in the United States, and according to Insight Crime, Ms Flores’s son is also under investigation in relation to drug trafficking activities.

Beginning with President Chávez and continuing under President Maduro, Venezuela has evolved into a rampant kleptocracy. The systematic removal of transparency and accountability in the Venezuela political system has allowed tens of billions of dollars to disappear from the treasury over the past two decades.

Maduro blames the US for the country’s crisis.

For example, in November 2018 a former bodyguard of President Chávez, who later went on to become the treasurer of Venezuela, pled guilty to receiving more than US$1 billion in bribes.

Venezuela’s outlook is bleak. The opposition remains fractured but continues to dispute President Maduro’s legitimacy and right to govern, and it appears to be almost impossible for the opposition to pressure President Maduro to negotiate while he continues to enjoy the support of the Venezuelan military.

Read more: Venezuela election: Maduro claims close victory, but opposition to challenge

At this point the parties have reached an impasse and if current trends continue, things will get much worse in Venezuela before they can have a chance of getting better.

– ref. Venezuela is fast becoming a ‘mafia state’: here’s what you need to know – http://theconversation.com/venezuela-is-fast-becoming-a-mafia-state-heres-what-you-need-to-know-109887

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Co-Director Centre for Commercial Law, Bond University

Imagine an internet where you couldn’t access any content unless it complied with every law of all the countries in the world.

In this scenario, you would be prevented from expressing views that were critical of many of the world’s dictatorships. You would not be able to question aspects of some religions due to blasphemy laws. And some of the photos you post of your children would be illegal.

A development like this is not as far fetched as it currently may seem.

Every country wants its laws respected online. The scenario above may be an unavoidable outcome if countries are successful in seeking to impose their laws globally. Even though they can’t prosecute the person who posted the content, they can try to force the internet platforms that host the content to remove or block it.

A legal opinion released last week in a case currently before the courts in the European Union argues content should generally only be blocked in countries where it breaches the law, not globally. This is a sensible approach, and a necessity if we wish to continue to enjoy the benefits currently offered by the internet.

Read more: Country rules: the ‘splinternet’ may be the future of the web

A trend of global orders

There have been numerous examples of courts seeking to impose their content restrictions globally by ordering the major internet platforms to remove or block access to specific content.

The most recent high profile case is a 2017 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, in which the court sought to compel Google to block certain search results globally. That dispute is still ongoing after a US court sided with Google.

Courts in Australia and the United States have also opted for global content restrictions, without regard for the impact on internet users in other countries. For example, in the Australian case, Justice Pembroke ordered Twitter to block all future postings globally – regardless of topic – by a particular Twitter user.

This is troubling. After all, what is illegal in one country may be perfectly legal in all other countries. Why should the harshest laws determine what can be posted online? Why should duties imposed by one country trump rights afforded to us by the laws in many other countries – particularly international human rights laws?

Read more: Innocence or arrogance? US court oversteps on internet regulation

The Google France case

The latest case to address this question is an ongoing dispute in the EU. The French data protection authority (CNIL) sought to force search engines to remove search results (known as de-referencing) globally where those results violate the EU’s so-called “right to be forgotten” legislation.

The right to be forgotten is an aspect of the EU’s data privacy law that, in simplified terms, gives people the right to have online content blocked on search engines, where the content is no longer relevant.

Google disputed this and the matter has reached the EU’s highest court – the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). On 10 January 2019, an Advocate General of the court issued his opinion on the matter (so far only available in French). Such opinions are not binding on the court, but the judgment often follows the reasoning of the Advocate General. The judges are now beginning their deliberations in this case and their judgment will be given at a later date.

In his opinion, the Advocate General concluded that, in relation to the right to be forgotten, search engines:

…must take every measure available to it to ensure full and effective de-referencing within the EU.

He went on to say that de-referencing of the search results should only apply inside the EU.

But he didn’t rule out the possibility that:

…in certain situations, a search engine operator may be required to take de-referencing actions at the worldwide level.

This is similar to a nuanced approach advocated for by the Swedish data protection authority in a parallel case currently before the Swedish courts.

Read more: Google court ruling creates a more forgetful internet

The significance

If the EU court adopts the approach of the Canadian Supreme Court and seeks to impose EU law globally, many other countries – including repressive dictatorships – are likely to view this as a “green light” to impose their laws globally.

But if the EU court adopts the more measured approach proposed in the Advocate General’s opinion, we may see a reversal of the current dangerous trend of global content restriction orders.

It may be months until we see the final judgment. But the stakes are high and the future of the internet, as we know it, hangs in the balance.

– ref. The future of the internet looks brighter thanks to an EU court opinion – http://theconversation.com/the-future-of-the-internet-looks-brighter-thanks-to-an-eu-court-opinion-109721

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Shih Pearson, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Sydney

Review: Dust, Sydney Festival 2019

What kind of world are we leaving for our children? So goes our conversation everywhere these days, it seems, as our planet overheats and burns in winter as well as summer, coral and other species die in alarming numbers, glaciers melt and seas rise, sending more and more people on the move. What world might we leave at all?

Dust, Dancenorth’s new show currently playing in the Sydney Festival, is a reflection on the world our children will inherit – although not in any didactic way. The show, inspired by the birth of co-choreographers Kyle Page and Amber Haines’s son in 2017, is cohesive and yet leaves room for the poetic, exploring a world on the brink of turning back into dust.

Dust is cohesive and yet leaves room for the poetic. Pippa Samaya

Beautiful costumes by Harriet Oxley wrap the seven dancers in artfully dyed and sweat-soiled layers of cloth, seeming at times like crumpled paper, or the last shreds of social life clinging to our backs. A monolithic wall, designed by Liminal Spaces and lit by Nicklas Pajanti, intersects the space.

Over the course of an hour and a half, the wall unpacks and reforms into an enclosure, an ex-closure, a dividing wedge, a destroyed urban skyline, a road, and a boat lost at sea. A deep, electronic ostinato grows, augmented and manipulated by the live performance of Canadian violinist Jessica Moss with co-composer Alisdair Macindoe.

This is big-scale theatre with big aims. Dramaturgically, scenographically, and choreographically, Dust employs all elements at its disposal and knits them together in a satisfying way.

Dancenorth, a relatively small dance company based in far-north Queensland, should be commended on this big vision – they are making work equal in scope and polish to many of the big dance companies from “down south”, with a fraction of the resources. Since artistic director Page took on the company three years ago, Dancenorth has managed to create a buzz among audiences and the dance community alike.

As always, however, the big issues can be as congested as the M4 in peak-hour. As much as I enjoyed Dust, I also left with a lingering feeling of its … competence.

“Competency” is hardly a bad thing to achieve, but in the case of contemporary art, where the aim is always to find something new, I can’t help but acknowledge that there is a lot of pseudo-post-apocalyptic dance going around lately. Casts of dancers in muted, dusty colours, versions of pants and tops somewhere between martial arts uniforms (the timelessness of tradition) and abstracted landscape (beyond society as we know it) are not unique to this performance.

Dancenorth has managed to create a buzz among audiences and the dance community. Pippa Samaya

The movement itself is likewise familiar, even nostalgic, reminding me of choreographic strategies that were in vogue in the 1990s. For example, the sequence where highly articulate dancer Samantha Hines, inert and exhausted, manipulates hand, then chin, shoulder and hip each at a turn, in a moment of auto-puppetry.

This is not surprising, as both Kyle Page and Amber Haines cut their teeth as dancers with well-known Australian companies Chunky Move (under director Gideon Obarzanek) and Australian Dance Theatre (with director Garry Stewart).

Movement characteristic of these “schools” (if we can call them that) is evident in the extensive use of the floor and fluidity moving to and from the floor, the incorporation of street styles such as popping with release-based contemporary dance and even balletic movements, and the fluctuating speed changes and reversals like a DJ’s scratches embodied.

It is, in fact, heartening to see this next generation of Australian choreographers taking on our companies, rather than directors being imported from overseas as boards succumb to cultural cringe.

If this talk of familiarity sounds damning, I don’t mean it to be. The dancers are great, approaching their performances with intensity and deftness. Standout moments included Ashley McLellan’s opening solo, vulnerable and barely there one minute, insistent the next. I was taken up by this world that the dancers, along with all the creative team, made manifest on stage.

The dancers in Dust approach their performances with intensity and deftness. Pippa Samaya

Even more importantly, the show gave me more than enough to prompt my own flow of meanings and connections, drawn out from the daily fodder of news, social media likes (and un-likes), public transport chatter, etcetera, from the world around me. I confess I went to see Dust uninformed, by design – I didn’t read the program notes, or the Festival’s promotional material.

I was rewarded with an inundation of images: an early duo in which the dancers pause arms up in a hug but fail to reach one another, faces impassive, unable to touch another; Felix Sampson stuttering and trembling, air in short supply; the full ensemble traversing an uneven road, to end, nowhere, boxed in a cluster of futile half gestures.

That same box becomes a small boat lost in high seas, with Georgia Rudd and Ashley McLellan tossed adrift; a chaotic riot under yellow light gives way to a citadel centre stage; dancers open and close their mouths in a language that is only noise; the sound of drones overhead – we are caught up in a whirlwind.

This is, in the end, what theatre should do. It helps us make sense of our world, giving emotive, possibly, and also poetic, intellectual, political shape to the small and big, individual and communal issues of life.

The ending of Dust remains unclear. I counted at least five possibilities in the last fifteen minutes. But choosing which image to leave us with is a daunting task; after all, what world will we be leaving to our children?

– ref. Dancenorth’s Dust is ambitious theatre in an age of uncertainty – http://theconversation.com/dancenorths-dust-is-ambitious-theatre-in-an-age-of-uncertainty-109870

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Igor Martek, Lecturer In Construction, Deakin University

In signing the Paris Climate Agreement, the Australian government committed to a global goal of zero net emissions by 2050. Australia’s promised reductions to 2030, on a per person and emissions intensity basis, exceed even the targets set by the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea and the European Union.

But are we on the right track to achieve our 2030 target of 26-28% below 2005 levels? With one of the highest population growth rates in the developed world, this represents at least a 50% reduction in emissions per person over the next dozen years.

Read more: Australia is not on track to reach 2030 Paris target (but the potential is there)

Consider the impact of one sector, the built environment. The construction, operation and maintenance of buildings accounts for almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. As Australia’s population grows, to an estimated 31 million in 2030, even more buildings will be needed.

In 2017, around 18,000 dwelling units were approved for construction every month. Melbourne is predicted to need another 720,000 homes by 2031; Sydney, 664,000 new homes within 20 years. Australia will have 10 million residential units by 2020, compared to 6 million in 1990. Ordinary citizens might be too preoccupied with home ownership at any cost to worry about the level of emissions from the built environment and urban development.

What’s being done to reduce these emissions?

The National Construction Code of Australia sets minimal obligatory requirements for energy efficiency. Software developed by the National Housing Rating Scheme (NatHERS) assesses compliance.

Beyond mandatory minimum requirements in Australia are more aspirational voluntary measures. Two major measures are the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) and Green Star.

This combination of obligatory and voluntary performance rating measures makes up the practical totality of our strategy for reducing built environment emissions. Still in its experimentation stage, it is far from adequate.

An effective strategy to cut emissions must encompass the whole lifecycle of planning, designing, constructing, operating and even decommissioning and disposal of buildings. A holistic vision of sustainable building calls for building strategies that are less resource-intensive and pollution-producing. The sustainability of the urban landscape is more than the sum of the sustainability of its component buildings; transport, amenities, social fabric and culture, among other factors, have to be taken into account.

Australia’s emission reduction strategy fails to incorporate the whole range of sustainability factors that impact emissions from the built environment.

There are also much-reported criticisms of existing mandatory and voluntary measures. A large volume of research details the failure of voluntary measures to accurately evaluate energy performance and the granting of misleading ratings based on tokenistic gestures.

Read more: Greenwashing the property market: why ‘green star’ ratings don’t guarantee more sustainable buildings

On top of that, the strategy of using front runners to push boundaries and win over the majority has been proven ineffective, at best. We see compelling evidence in the low level of voluntary measures permeating the Australian building industry. Some major voluntary rating tools have penetration rates of less than 0.5% across the Australian building industry.

As for obligatory tools, NatHERS-endorsed buildings have been shown to underperform against traditional “non-green” houses.

That said, voluntary and obligatory tools are not so much a weak link in our emission reduction strategy as the only link. And therein lies the fundamental problem.

So what do the experts suggest?

We conducted a study involving a cohort of 26 experts drawn from the sustainability profession. We posed the question of what must be done to generate a working strategy to improve Australia’s chances of keeping the carbon-neutral promise by 2050 was posed. Here is what the experts said:

Sustainability transition in Australia is failing because:

• government lacks commitment to develop effective regulations, audit performance, resolve vested interests (developers), clarify its own vision and, above all, sell that sustainability vision to the community

• sustainability advocates are stuck in isolated silos of fragmented markets (commercial and residential) and hampered by multiple jurisdictions with varied sustainability regimes

• most importantly, end users just do not care – nobody has bothered to communicate the Paris Accord promise to Joe and Mary Citizen, let alone explain why it matters to them.

Tweaking the rating tools further would be a good thing. Getting more than a token few buildings rated would be better. But the show-and-tell display of a pageant of beautiful, green-rated headquarters buildings from our socially responsible corporations is not going to save us. Beyond the CBD islands of our major cities lies a sea of suburban sprawl that continues to chew up ever more energy and resources.

Read more: A task for Australia’s energy ministers: remove barriers to better buildings

It costs between 8% and 30% more than the usual costs of a building to reduce emissions. Someone needs to explain to the struggling home owner why the Paris climate promise is worth it. Given the next election won’t be for a few months, our political parties still have time to formulate their pitch on who exactly is expected to pay.

– ref. Buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions. What will it take to make them ‘green’ – and who’ll pay? – http://theconversation.com/buildings-produce-25-of-australias-emissions-what-will-it-take-to-make-them-green-and-wholl-pay-105652

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Alexandra, PhD candidate, RMIT University

Fish deaths in the Darling River have once more raised the public profile of incessant political controversies about the Murray Darling Basin. These divisive debates reveal the deeply contested nature of reforms to water policy in the Basin.

It feels like Australia has been here before – algae blooms are not uncommon in these rivers. In 1992, the Darling suffered the world’s largest toxic algal bloom, over 1,000 kilometres long. This crisis became an iconic catalyst, and helped prompt the state and federal governments agreeing to water reforms in 1994.

Hopefully, our current crisis may be an opportunity to shine a strong light on the complexities of governing the Basin, and initiate the meaningful reforms needed to restore public trust.

Read more: How is oxygen ‘sucked out’ of our waterways?

Forewarned is forearmed

The rivers of the basin are unique and precious. Australia needs high quality and independent science to understand them and guide their management. Unfortunately in 2012 state and federal governments cut three important programs that provided vital research on the Basin’s rivers:

So while yesterday’s announcement of A$5 million funding to a new native fish recovery program is welcome, good science alone is not enough. Good policy processes and robust institutions are needed to apply this information. We cannot continue to ignore expert warnings.

Allegations have surfaced that experts warned of the possibility of mass fish deaths as far back as 2012. AAP Image/Supplied, Kate McBride

A crisis of trust

Since a 2017 Four Corners program exposed disturbing allegations of water theft and corruption, the media has revealed a host of further probity issues.

These and a plethora of formal inquiries into MDB governance indicates a crisis of trust, legitimacy and public confidence – in short, a loss of authority.

The 2018 federal Senate inquiry documents a litany of concerns, while disturbing evidence given at a South Australian Royal Commission raised substantive doubts about failures to heed the best scientific advice in the development of the Basin Plan.

Read more: Explainer: what causes algal blooms, and how we can stop them

More Commonwealth oversight is not enough

Without doubt pressure is mounting for more reforms. The Senate’s Rural and Regional Affairs Committee and the Productivity Commission have recommended splitting the Murray Darling Basin Authority into two entities – the MDB Corporation and a MDB Regulator – in order to clearly separate the Commonwealth’s regulatory oversight from other roles.

These proposals deserve critical scrutiny. Structural reorganisation can provide an illusion of government action, but can have long-term effects on the efficacy and justice of water governance.

The Murray Darling has a unique place in Australia’s history, environment, economy and culture. Agreements about its governance have their origins in debates leading up to Federation in 1901. Any renegotiation needs to respect the Constitution and the different legal powers of the states and the Commonwealth.

So reform to institutional arrangements need bespoke design. These are the legitimate remit of our discursive democracy. Nonetheless, the OECD’s 12 water governance principles usefully provide guidance about the need for clarity of roles, transparency, effectiveness, efficiency and broad stakeholder engagement.

Current calls for reorganisation focus on clarifying the Commonwealth’s regulatory role, but this is fairly narrow. Reforms are needed at all scales.

The governance challenges in the MDB require modernisation and redesign of arrangements across regional, state and Commonwealth agencies. This includes structuring “constructive tensions” that ensure transparency and accountability. Just like the police don’t control the courts, we need to more clearly define and separate roles in the water sector.

Embracing radical transparency

We need all water agencies to adopt a formal charter of transparency and openness. All state and Commonwealth agencies should open their books to scrutiny, rather than hiding information behind claims of “commercial in confidence” or opaque “freedom of information” processes.

Greater transparency measures should also be a condition of all water licences. It’s entirely feasible to create modern monitoring regimes, using state-of-the art digital metering coupled with annual water-use declarations. These would be similar to tax returns enforced with random audits and satellite verification of areas irrigated. If made publicly available, all interested parties could audit water extractions.

But doubts don’t exclusively focus on irrigators’ compliance. We also need to address the states and their willingness and capability to enforce regulations. Policies of radical transparency could be supported with openly available water data. With digital meters and automated gauging of river flows, we could create a computer platform where anybody could develop river models using real data, in near real-time.

Harnessing the power of citizen involvement, trust and openly sharing information has been a hallmark of Australia’s landcare and natural resource management. This is where we should look for the next generation of governance in the Basin.

Open books means communities, industries, research and educational institutions can all help monitor our institutions and ensure rivers are managed in the public’s interest.

Read more: Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years

Finally, droughts should not come as surprise. They are a recurrent feature of the Basin. With climate change, more frequent and intense droughts are predicted. As a nation we can do better than lurching from crisis to crisis each time drought returns.

We need careful deliberation about the institutions that will rebuild public confidence and restore trust in the governing of the Murray Darling. It’s time to develop a 21st century system that is cooperative, transparent and just.

– ref. It’s time to restore public trust in the governing of the Murray Darling Basin – http://theconversation.com/its-time-to-restore-public-trust-in-the-governing-of-the-murray-darling-basin-109797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Elliott, Dean of External Engagment and Executive Director of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of South Australia

When you’re lost, Siri can be your best friend. But if she can’t retrieve the right address from your contacts, she can drive you crazy.

And so it is with the legion of virtual personal assistants that are entering our lives. From Amazon’s Alexa to Google’s Home, people are busy talking to intelligent machines as never before.

It’s estimated that more than 60% of internet traffic is now generated by machine-to-machine, and person-to-machine, communication. IT advisory firm Gartner has predicted that by 2020 the average person will be having more conversations with robots than with their partner. (Sometimes we don’t even know we are doing it).

And just as texting changed written communication, talking bots could change the way we communicate with each other.

Read more: Emotionless chatbots are taking over customer service – and it’s bad news for consumers

Talk is social

The late sociologist Diedre Boden wrote that human sociability is created through “talk, talk, talk and more talk”.

Talking person-to-person is not only how we exchange information, but also how we used to carry out many tasks, such as ordering pizzas, booking plane tickets and confirming meetings. And it’s these tasks that we are increasingly subcontracting to robots.

When we communicate face-to-face there is an expectation of mutual attentiveness, but these norms could be wholly deconstructed if we were to have the majority of our conversations with non-humans.

Unlike face-to-face talk, chatbots do not require us put effort into making the conversation polite or interesting. We don’t need to be charming, amusing, or assert our intelligence.

Bots don’t need to like us, even if we have a need to be liked. In fact, this would wildly complicate matters. A machine will simply extract the information it needs to create an appropriate response.

It is possible that talking to machines all the time could re-engineer the way we have conversations. We could end up with the linguistic equivalent of emojis. As an article in the New York Times recently put it, interacting with robots could “mean atrophy for our social muscles”. If they’re just machines, why bother with pleasantries?

The scientific research on this is still unclear. Some studies have found people can actually be remarkably cordial to robots, while other research suggests we’re liable to be rude and curt when we know our conversational partner isn’t human. We could get used to bossing things around, and this behaviour could bleed into everyday life.

Remembering our manners

Tech companies are already trying to head off this problem. After fielding concerns from parents, Amazon created a politeness mode for its Echo devices that gently reminds its users to say “please.”

And some chatbots are being developed to go even further and mimic human emotion. For example, clinical psychologist Alison Darcy built a talking bot to help people with depression and anxiety. The delightfully named Woebot spoke to 50,000 people in its first week of deployment – more than a human psychologist could speak to in a lifetime.

Read more: Do chatbots have a role to play in suicide prevention?

In a study with 70 young adults, Darcy found that after two weeks of interacting with the bot, the test subjects had lower incidences of depression and anxiety. They were impressed, and even touched, by the software’s attentiveness.

One of the subjects told Darcy’s team:

Woebot felt like a real person that showed concern.

Glitches and misunderstandings

In 1950, scientist Alan Turing designed an experiment to answer one of science’s most enduring questions: Is it possible to create a robot that could be mistaken for a human?

To date, the answer has mostly been no.

The reason for this is that AI devices respond to speech by drawing from an enormous database of code, scripted utterances and network conversation. So they can rarely respond to the unexpected shifts in, and immense complexity of, human conversation, save in minor ways.

Brian Christian, author of two books about AI, says of such machine talk:

What you get, the cobbling together of hundreds of thousands of prior conversations, is a kind of conversational purée. Made of human parts, but less than a human sum.

At this stage, we can best get a glimpse into the differences between day-to-day talk and automated machine conversation when something goes awry, or there is a technical glitch.

Take, for example, the story of a family in Portland Oregon whose Amazon Alexa interpreted a background human conversation in the family home as answers to its questions. Alexa subsequently sent a recording of the conversation to a person in their list of contacts, just as (it thought) it had been requested to.

Read more: Teaching chatbots how to do the right thing

AI is all around us

Even though we might be having less of them, human conversations aren’t going to decrease in significance anytime soon.

Nevertheless, the ubiquity of the smartphone has essentially liquefied our social world, which almost always includes a level of digital engagement with others outside the immediate social context. This has created a complex, contradictory mix of being present with others, even when they’re not physically there.

AI is not about the future – our lives are already saturated in it. Chatbots, softbots, and virtual personal assistants are becoming an integral part of our daily lives, even if we are not always aware of their role.

If talking to chatbots and virtual personal assistants becomes the new normal, we should be aware of the ways they could change how we talk to each other, and how we relate to ourselves.

One thing is certain. AI is having a profound impact on what it means to be human.

Professor Elliott’s new book, The Culture of AI: Everyday Life and the Digital Revolution, is published by Routledge.

– ref. Will talking to AI voice assistants re-engineer our human conversations? – http://theconversation.com/will-talking-to-ai-voice-assistants-re-engineer-our-human-conversations-108922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Director and CEO of the Australia India Institute; Professor of Development Geography, University of Melbourne

In recent days, Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne announced efforts to strengthen Australia’s involvement in the Indian Ocean region, and the importance of working with India in defence and other activities. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi – a geopolitical conference co-hosted by the Indian government – Payne said:

Our respective futures are intertwined and heavily dependent on how well we cooperate on the challenges and opportunities in the Indian Ocean in the decades ahead.

Among Payne’s announcements was A$25 million for a four-year infrastructure program in South Asia (The South Asia Regional Infrastructure Connectivity initiative, or SARIC), which will primarily focus on the transport and energy sectors.

She also pointed to increasing defence activities in the Indian Ocean, noting that in 2014, Australia and India had conducted 11 defence activities together, with the figure reaching 38 in 2018.

Read more: Government report provides important opportunity to rethink Australia’s relationship with India

Payne’s speech highlights the emergent power of the Indian Ocean region in world affairs. The region comprises the ocean itself and the countries that border it. These include Australia, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Somalia, Tanzania, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

In terms of global political significance, the Atlantic Ocean can be viewed as the ocean of our grandparents and parents; the Pacific Ocean as the ocean of us and our children; and the Indian Ocean as the ocean of our children and grandchildren.

There is an obvious sense in which the region is the future. The average age of people in the region’s countries is under 30, compared to 38 in the US and 46 in Japan. The countries bordering the Indian Ocean are home to 2.5 billion people, which is one-third of the world’s population.

The countries in the Indian Ocean region host a wide variety of races, cultures, and religions. from shutterstock.com

But there is also a strong economic and political logic to spotlighting the Indian Ocean as a key emerging region in world affairs and strategic priority for Australia.

Some 80% of the world’s maritime oil trade flows through three narrow passages of water, known as choke points, in the Indian Ocean. This includes the Strait of Hormuz – located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman – which provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

The economies of many Indian Ocean countries are expanding rapidly as investors seek new opportunities. Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Tanzania witnessed economic growth in excess of 5% in 2017 – well above the global average of 3.2%.

India is the fastest growing major economy in the world. With a population expected to become the world’s largest in the coming decades, it is also the one with the most potential.

The strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most strategically important choke points. from shutterstock.com

Politically, the Indian Ocean is becoming a pivotal zone of strategic competition. China is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across the region as part of its One Belt One Road initiative.

For instance, China gave Kenya a US$3.2 billion loan to construct a 470 kilometre railway (Kenya’s biggest infrastructure project in over 50 years) linking the capital Nairobi to the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa.

Chinese state-backed firms are also investing in infrastructure and ports in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bangladesh. Western powers, including Australia and the United States, have sought to counter-balance China’s growing influence across the region by launching their own infrastructure funds – such as the US$113 million US fund announced last August for digital economy, energy, and infrastructure projects.

In security terms, piracy, unregulated migration, and the continued presence of extremist groups in Somalia, Bangladesh and parts of Indonesia pose significant threats to Indian ocean countries.

Countries in the region need to collaborate to build economic strength and address geopolitical risks, and there is a logical leadership role for India, being the largest player in the region.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Shangri La Dialogue in June, 2008:

The Indo-Pacific is a natural region. It is also home to a vast array of global opportunities and challenges. I am increasingly convinced with each passing day that the destinies of those of us who live in the region are linked.

More than previous Indian Prime Ministers, Modi has travelled up and down the east coast of Africa to promote cooperation and strengthen trade and investment ties, and he has articulated strong visions of India-Africa cooperative interest.

China financed Kenya’s biggest infrastructure project in over 50 years – a railway running from Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa. DANIEL IRUNGU/EPA

Broader groups are also emerging. In 1997, nations bordering the Bay of Bengal established the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), which works to promote trade links and is currently negotiating a free trade agreement. Australia, along with 21 other border states, is a member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) which seeks to promote sustainable economic growth, trade liberalisation and security.

But, notwithstanding India’s energy and this organisational growth, Indian Ocean cooperation is weak relative to Atlantic and Pacific initiatives.

Read more: Cooperation is key to securing maritime security in the Indian Ocean

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper seeks to support IORA in areas such as maritime security and international law. Private organisations, such as the Minderoo Foundation, are doing impressive research – as part of the Flourishing Oceans intiative – on the migration of sea life in an effort to advance environmental sustainability and conservation.

But Australia could focus more on how to promote the Indian Ocean. In Australia’s foreign affairs circles, there used to be a sense Asia stopped at Malta. But it seems the current general understanding of the “Indo-Pacific” extends west only as far as India.

What this misses – apart from the historical relevance and contemporary economic and political significance of the Indian Ocean region generously defined – is the importance of the ocean itself.

Not just important for trade and ties

If the Ocean was a rainforest, and widely acknowledged as a repository of enormous biodiversity, imagine the uproar at its current contamination and the clamour around collaborating across all countries bordering the ocean to protect it.

The reefs, mangroves, and marine species that live in the Ocean are under imminent threat. According to some estimates, the Indian Ocean is warming three times faster than the Pacific Ocean .

Overfishing, coastal degradation, and pollution are also harming the ocean. This could have catastrophic implications for the tens of millions of fishermen dependent on the region’s marine resources and the enormous population who rely on the Indian Ocean for their protein.

Australia must continue to strengthen its ties in the region – such as with India and Indonesia – and also build new connections, particularly in Africa.

– ref. Why the Indian Ocean region might soon play a lead role in world affairs – http://theconversation.com/why-the-indian-ocean-region-might-soon-play-a-lead-role-in-world-affairs-109663

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eloise Stephenson, PhD Candidate, Griffith University

Ross River virus is Australia’s most common mosquito-borne disease. It infects around 4,000 people a year and, despite being named after a river in North Queensland, is found in all states and territories, including Tasmania.

While the disease isn’t fatal, it can cause debilitating joint pain, swelling and fatigue lasting weeks or even months. It can leave sufferers unable to work or look after children, and is estimated to cost the economy A$2.7 to A$5.6 million each year.

There is no treatment or vaccine for Ross River virus; the only way to prevent is to avoid mosquito bites.

Read more: Explainer: what is Ross River virus?

Mosquitoes pick up the disease-causing pathogen by feeding on an infected animal. The typical transmission cycle involves mosquitoes moving the virus between native animals but occasionally, an infected mosquito will bite a person. If this occurs, the mosquito can spread Ross River virus to the person.

Animal hosts

Ross River virus has been found in a range of animals, including rats, dogs, horses, possums, flying foxes, bats and birds. But marsupials – kangaroos and wallabies in particular – are generally better than other animals at amplifying the virus under experimental infection and are therefore thought to be “reservoir hosts”.

The virus circulates in the blood of kangaroos and wallabies for longer than other animals, and at higher concentrations. It’s then much more likely to be picked up by a blood-feeding mosquito.

Kangaroos are a common sight around Australia’s coastal wetlands. Dr Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), Author provided

Dead-end hosts

When we think of animals and disease we often try to identify which species are good at transmitting the virus to mosquitoes (the reservoir hosts). But more recently, researchers have started to focus on species that get bitten by mosquitoes but don’t transmit the virus.

These species, known as dead-end hosts, may be important for reducing transmission of the virus.

With Ross River virus, research suggests birds that get Ross River virus from a mosquito cannot transmit the virus to another mosquito. If this is true, having an abundance of birds in and around our urban environments may reduce the transmission of Ross River virus to animals, mosquitoes and humans in cities.

Other reservoir hosts?

Even in areas with a high rates of Ross River virus in humans, we don’t always find an abundance of kangaroos and wallabies. So there must be other factors – or animals yet to be identified as reservoirs or dead-end hosts – playing an important role in transmission.

Ross River virus is prevalent in the Pacific Islands, for instance, where there aren’t any kangaroos and wallabies. One study of blood donors in French Polynesia found that 42.4% of people tested had previously been exposed to the virus. The rates are even higher in American Samoa, where 63% of people had been exposed.

Read more: The worst year for mosquitoes ever? Here’s how we find out

It’s unclear if the virus has recently started circulating in these islands, or if it’s been circulating there longer, and what animals have been acting as hosts.

What about people?

Mosquitoes can transmit some viruses, such as dengue and Zika between people quite easily.

But the chances of a mosquito picking up Ross River virus when biting an infected human is low, though not impossible. The virus circulates in our blood at lower concentrations and for shorter periods of time compared with marsupials.

Stop mozzies biting with insect repellents. Elizaveta Galitckaia/Shutterstock

If humans are infected with Ross River virus, around 30% will develop symptoms of joint pain and fatigue (and sometimes a rash) three to 11 days after exposure, while some may not experience any symptoms until three weeks after exposure.

To reduce your risk of contracting Ross River virus, take care to cover up when you’re outdoors at sunset and wear repellent when you’re in outdoor environments where mosquitoes and wildlife may be frequently mixing.

Read more: Mozzie repellent clothing might stop some bites but you’ll still need a cream or spray

– ref. How Australian wildlife spread and suppress Ross River virus – http://theconversation.com/how-australian-wildlife-spread-and-suppress-ross-river-virus-107267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby Sander, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond University

What if you never had to return to work? Never had to return to work at the office, that is.

You’d be able to juggle kids on school holidays. You wouldn’t need to navigate traffic jams. Your employer might gain increased productivity, lower turnover and lower lease costs. But there are less obvious downsides.

In 2010, as part of building a case for the national broadband network, the Gillard government set a target for teleworking, suggesting the Australian economy could save between A$1.4 billion and A$1.9 billion a year if 10% of the workforce teleworked half the time.

Her successors have cooled on the idea. The web address www.telework.gov.au no longer works and reliable statistics for telework don’t exist.

Yet it’s attractive.

It seems like a grand idea…

Studies find working from home cuts commuting times and associated fatigue, transport congestion, and environmental impacts. Worldwide, an increasing number of employers are allowing it in order to attract and retain staff.

Employees value it as a way to maintain a work-life balance, in particular millennials.

And the office has become a nightmare for some. A tide of research finds many employees working in modern open-plan offices are so distracted by noise and interruptions they can’t concentrate.

Read more: A new study should be the final nail for open-plan offices

In my research on the workplace, employees frequently tell me they have to work from home to get work done.

Other research supports these findings. A two-year study using randomly assigned groups found a 13% productivity increase. It also found turnover decreased by 50% among those working at home and that they took shorter breaks and fewer sick days. And the company saved around US$2,000 (A$2,784) per employee on lease costs.

It’s enough to make employers allow working from home for everyone who can. But a key finding from the same study sounds a cautionary note.

More than half the volunteers that worked from home felt so isolated they changed their minds about wanting to do it all the time.

…until you try it

It’s not just isolation and loneliness.

Research shows working from home is far worse for team cohesion and innovation than working in the office.

In 2013 Yahoo chief executive Marissa Meyer banned working from home, saying that in order “to become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.”

Since then, other large corporates including Bank of America and IBM have followed suit.

Read more: Marissa Mayer is right: your company needs you (in the office)

Contrary to what we might think, research shows that as the availability of laptops and other remote work devices increases, proximity has becoming more important.

One study showed that engineers who shared a physical office were 20% more likely to stay in touch digitally than those who worked remotely. Employees who were in the same office emailed four times as often to collaborate on shared projects than staff who weren’t in the office. The result, for these sorts of projects, was 32% faster project completion times.

Other research finds face to face interaction is essential for identifying opportunities for collaboration, innovation and developing relationships and networks.

Another study of home workers from 15 countries found 42% of remote workers had trouble sleeping, waking up repeatedly in the night, compared to only 29% who always worked in the office.

Some 41% of highly mobile workers felt stress “always or most of the time” compared to only 25% who always worked at the office.

Part of the stress is due to being tethered to mobile devices, often kept by beds, as well as the challenges of working from home. Locating colleagues to keep projects moving and trying to do conference calls surrounded by children, barking dogs or delivery people at the door is not as easy as it sounds.

Perhaps not surprisingly then, another study finds that, rather than being helpful, working from home is likely to interfere with family life.

And other studies suggest not being in the office regularly can hinder your career, resulting in being overlooked for projects or promotions. Out of sight can mean out of mind.

For some, what’s best will be some of both

There are strong, evidence-based reasons to both work from home and the office. So, what’s best?

One thing that can be said with certainty is that workers shouldn’t be forced to work from home because the office is too noisy for them to concentrate.

Employers need to ensure the workplace is designed effectively for the type of work that needs to be done, and also for the type of people who work there.

Access to flexible work, including working from home is important, but it needs to be balanced with the benefits of face to face interaction.

Read more: The rise of the coworking space – sign of the times or flash in the pan?

A halfway house is for employees working from home to have access to shared coworking spaces (working with workers from other firms and other industries) where they can get some of the benefits of being in the office without having to travel there.

Coworking spaces have been shown to reduce isolation, while providing employees with the benefits of access to a more diverse network and exposure to innovative ideas.

Read more: The benefits – and pitfalls – of working in isolation

– ref. It’s not just the isolation. Working from home has surprising downsides – http://theconversation.com/its-not-just-the-isolation-working-from-home-has-surprising-downsides-107140

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josh Stenberg, Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Sydney

The Water Margin, also known in English as Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers, is one of the most powerful narratives to emerge from China. The book, conventionally attributed to an otherwise obscure Yuan dynasty figure called Shi Nai’an, takes the form of a skein of connected tales surrounding various heroic figures who — persecuted, exploited, wronged, or trapped by venal officials — eventually band together in the fortress of Liangshan (Mount Liang), in the present-day province of Shandong.

Its influence has gone far beyond the usual genres of fiction, film, art, and theatre. The stories provide, even today, a point of reference for codes of honour, social and economic networks, secret societies and political movements.

Generations of China’s governments have sought to represent themselves as guardians of an often explicitly neo-Confucian order characterised by a fixed and morally-grounded political and social order constructed of hierarchical relationships. But The Water Margin represents another, equally real and representative, Chinese worldview. In this world, local injustice is the rule, and defence against cruel local authority is a matter of vengeance, stratagem, and violence.

Read more: Why you should read China’s vast, 18th century novel, Dream of the Red Chamber

From this universe, itself a highly mediated depiction of the rapidly decaying Northern Song dynasty in the 12th century, derive fictional worlds of errantry, struggle and righteousness that have gone through endless narrative and cinematic iterations.

Illustration from The Water Margin. Circa 15th Century. Wikimedia

Of these descendants, the most familiar today are the fictional worlds of Hong Kong writer Jin Yong, which remain the closest thing to a reading list for adolescents in the Chinese world, and the kung fu genre that has been the global calling card of Sinophone film since at least Bruce Lee.

Rebels with a cause

With printed versions dating back to the 14th century, The Water Margin largely follows the adventures of strongmen, innkeepers, footpads, peasants, vagabonds, fishermen, hunters, petty officials and local gentry. Surrounding these protagonists are the thousands of nameless followers and victims who are knocked off or maimed (just as they might be casually dispatched in Homer) in the novel’s thousand-odd pages.

Women, when they (not so very often) appear, are hard-nosed mistresses, pugnacious sisters, hapless wives, strategising helpmeets, or murderous innkeepers (one of whom has hit on Mrs. Lovett’s idea of baking humans into pies a full 800 hundred years before her). This also sets it apart from the mainstream of imperial fiction, which is substantially preoccupied with the passions and travails of high-born, talented women and their ambitious scholar swains, not to mention emperors and generals.

It is only a novel after a fashion: The Water Margin’s text is substantially the record of stories that had already been circulating at the time at the time it was committed to the page. Shi Nai’an’s authorship is little more than a conventional attribution, and the text is far from stable, existing in various versions beginning from the 14th century, two hundred years after the events it depicts. It reached its usual present form in the 17th century.

Li Kui (李逵), from The Water Margin. Wikimedia

In the Ming (14th-17th century) and Qing (17th-20th century) dynasties, the bandits of The Water Margin continued to influence all manner of groups operating far from the seat of power, despite periodic attempts to ban the book.

The fact that the villains of the novel are local officials, while the bandits remain at least notionally loyal to the imperial court, has proven an enduring inspiration. Many are the brands of rebellion that have found it practical to be on the other side of the law while retaining a claim to the values of brotherhood, honour, loyalty and patriotism.

Enduring legacy

The plot’s political relevance has never gone away. Having been adopted in the 1930s by reformers as a healthily anti-feudal narrative, it was later deployed in a major 1975 government campaign, in which the leader of the Liangshan bandits in the book, Song Jiang, was criticised for accepting the emperor’s offer of amnesty. Had he not given the game away? And was he therefore not guilty of coexistence with forces inimical to the masses, just as party members, late in the Maoist era, would be guilty of capitulationism if their fervour flagged?

This move, widely interpreted as an effort to head off the fall of the Gang of Four shows how centrally the characters have been retained even in modern and contemporary Chinese consciousness.

Read more: How Conrad’s imperial horror story Heart of Darkness resonates with our globalised times

A board for a Sichuan board game, based on The Water Margin. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

It’s commonplace to lament human transience and contrast it with the immutability of nature. But those going in search of the dense marshlands of Shandong —- where in the novel crafty fishermen might cause unwary inconvenient minor officials to disappear —- will be disappointed. The entire geography of the novel has been altered beyond recognition by river engineering and irrigation.

This of course does not prevent local governments continuing to put up buildings tagged to certain events in the novel, hoping at the same time that the message of righteous rebellion against local authority is never taken too literally. The formidable, impregnable, fortified mountain, Liangshan, rises just short of 200 metres in reality.

The place of The Water Margin has moved almost entirely into the imaginary, and it is the situations, the events, the stratagems and above all the characters – furious and righteous, looking to set the world right – that have left their mark on posterity.

– ref. Guide to the classics: The Water Margin, China’s outlaw novel – http://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-water-margin-chinas-outlaw-novel-99835

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc C-Scott, Senior lecturer in Screen Media, Victoria University

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) wrapped-up in Las Vegas last week. The annual event gives enthusiasts a taste of the latest gadgets and devices on the horizon of consumer technology.

This year, we saw advances in digital health, new integrations for voice assistants, an expanding door to secure your deliveries (which can be heated or cooled), a machine to fold your clothes, and even a flying vehicle.

Television technology was, once again, a focus. LG introduced a roll-up TV screen, we saw more inbuilt technology and integrations, and bigger and better pictures.

So what does this mean for the future of television in Australia?

Read more: Noisivision, radiospects, tellser … what, indeed, is television?

What we mean when we talk about TV

Before we get into the technology, let’s have a chat about screens.

Television content is no longer limited to the television screen: we can now view it on our mobiles, tablets, desktop computers and laptops.

And research shows Australians are increasingly consuming media across multiple screens. In 2017, the average Australian home had 6.6 screens, up from 5.4 in 2012. This trend is likely to continue with the expansion of screen-based technology.

Companies such as Microsoft and Google are continuing to invest in the development of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technology. Take mixed reality glasses, for example, which were again showcased at CES this year.

These types of glasses have the potential to make the traditional television screens obsolete, by effectively giving users a mobile screen that allows them to view media of size, anywhere they want.

Microsoft HoloLens.

The future of the TV screen as we know it

After flirting with 3D television earlier in the decade, manufacturers have decided to cease investing in the technology, which means there was no 3D television at CES this year. Instead, we saw upgrades to traditional screen technology.

The most talked about was LG’s rollable screen television. It’s not quite origami, but it’s close. Imagine those old roll up projector screens integrated into a low TV unit, with a 65 inch OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV screen and 4K resolution. The screen also allows you to partly roll it down to remove those annoying top and bottom black bars, used in films of a wider aspect ratio.

LG Display rollable OLED TV hands-on.

In addition to rollable televisions, a number of brands showcased their 8K televisions. Unfortunately the increase in image quality won’t mean much for Aussies, other than a potential drop in the price of 4K televisions. Here’s why.

Currently, the maximum broadcast quality of free-to-air television in Australia is high definition (1920 x 1080 pixels). Some secondary channels are broadcast in standard definition (720 x 576 pixels). If you’re watching on a 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) or 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) screen, the image will be a much lower quality than you would expect, essentially pixelated.

While Foxtel has recently launched its dedicated 4K cricket channel, there is no clear sign of when, or if, other broadcasters plan to embrace broadcast technologies that offer greater resolutions – even though freeing up spectrum space was part of the reason for ending community television use of the broadcast spectrum.

So take note anyone planning to purchase an 8K television in the near future: you may have difficulty accessing image quality that will match the screen’s potential.

Read more: Community TV’s last stand from the government’s spectrum grab

VOD continues to grow

One technology that has the potential to deliver higher image quality is video streaming. Operating via the internet, video-on-demand (VOD) services could adapt far quicker than Australia’s traditional broadcasters.

Image quality on HD, 4K and 8K screens. Shutterstock

And the VOD market will continue to expand in Australia in 2019.

We recently saw the launch of Network Ten’s subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) service, Ten All Access. It integrates Ten’s local programming with programming from the service of their US owner, CBS All Access.

A new dedicated sports streaming service, Kayo Sports, has also recently launched. The service leverages the current media rights obtained by Fox Sports, which allows for more than 50 sports to be delivered by the service.

Stan, one of the original SVoD services launched in Australia, has had a recent upgrade, obtaining the rights to stream Disney content. Disney has announced in will launch its own VOD service in 2019, although it’s currently unclear whether it will be available outside of US. But the deal with Stan will give Disney an indication of Australia’s appetite for its content.

Read more: Australia’s digital divide is not going away

Bandwidth is an issue

In addition to the introduction of new services, streaming continues to be integrated into Smart TVs, with Samsung announcing at CES that it will integrate iTunes into its TVs.

The use of internet-connected televisions is increasing in Australia. While 27% of households owned one in 2014-15, the figure jumped to 42% in 2016-17. But bandwith could impede streaming services from delivering higher resolution content. While more than 86% of Australian households have internet access, speed is an issue.

Netflix already offers a 4K option, but recommends “a steady internet connection speed of 25 megabits per second or higher”. According to a 2017 Ookla Speed Test Global Index, Australia was ranked 55th in the world for fixed broadband. With an average download speed of 25.88 Mbps. This speed is to be shared across devices in the home, making the Netflix 4K recommendation unattainable for many.

– ref. Roll-up screens and 8K resolution: what the future of television looks like – http://theconversation.com/roll-up-screens-and-8k-resolution-what-the-future-of-television-looks-like-109512

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

Curious Kids is a series for children. Send your question 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.

Why has nobody found any life outside of Earth? – Anna G, age 12, Strathfield, Sydney.

Anna, thank you for your amazing question.

Astronomers like us are hunting for “Earth-like” planets, but they’re not easy to find. And the conditions needed life for to exist have to be just right.

It’s likely that if such a planet exists, it will be outside our Solar System, and it’s very hard to study planets so far away.

But before we go on, it helps to remember how big the Universe is.

Our place in the Universe

Earth is inside our Solar System, along with the other planets (like Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter) orbiting a star we call the Sun.

But our Solar System is just one of many inside the huge Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way is just one of many, many galaxies in the Universe. Plus, we have no way of knowing exactly how big the Universe is beyond what we can directly see.

So while there may be life on other planets, it could be in another solar system in a different part of the Milky Way galaxy. Or in another galaxy far, far away.

We don’t have the technology yet to study such far away planets. But we are still trying to collect what clues we can using the technology we’ve got.

Read more: Curious Kids: Where are all the other galaxies hidden?

What makes a planet liveable? Follow the water

Much of the search for life has focused on trying to find liquid water, because it is essential for all life forms here on Earth.

Cells are mostly made up of water. Many of the chemical reactions that occur in our metabolism can only occur in the presence of water because it is an incredibly good solvent (meaning it will happily dissolve most things you put in it).

And water is very common. In fact, the components that make up water (hydrogen and oxygen) are the first and third most abundant elements in the Milky Way galaxy.

Oxygen loves grabbing onto other elements to make different chemicals. This means that we find water almost everywhere we look, from the surface of planets in our Solar System, to the depths of interstellar space.

Fountains of water expel out from Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

But for life as we know it to exist, you would need a planet where water exists in a liquid state. Otherwise your cells would freeze or boil away.

Earth is in a perfect position from our Sun to support water in a liquid state. Astronomers call this ideal location from a star the “habitable” or “Goldilocks zone”.

Scientists last year discovered that there is permanent liquid water on Mars, which made a lot of people very excited. Water is also inside craters on Mercury, and there are vast water oceans on some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons.

But we still haven’t found life on Mars, or any other planet in our Solar System.

Read more: Curious Kids: What plants could grow in the Goldilocks zone of space?

What about outside our Solar System?

Planets outside our Solar System are called exoplanets. They orbit their own stars (as you know, our Sun is really just a big star).

For example, there is an exoplanet called Kepler-22b, which is in the habitable zone of another star called Kepler-22. Kepler 22b is bigger than Earth.

An artist’s depiction of Kepler 22b, an exoplanet in the habitable zone of a star called Kepler 22. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Fainter stars have habitable zones that are closer to them and brighter stars have their habitable zones further away.

A star’s habitable zone (shown here between the orange and red lines) ultimately depends upon how bright and hot the star is. Sonny Harman

Finding a world within a star’s habitable zone where liquid water can exist would be a great start to finding life. Unfortunately, we have not perfected the technology for it yet.

But finding a planet with the right conditions for life isn’t enough; we need to be able to detect signatures of life itself (scientists call these “biosignatures”). For example, we can look at a planet’s atmosphere and see what gasses are in it. If we found a planet with lots of oxygen, we can infer there may be life there.

At the moment, it is not possible to detect biosignatures on Earth-like planets around others stars.

Maybe, Anna, you might be the one of the scientists who develops the technology that makes all this possible, and will discover the first inhabited world beyond Earth.

Read more: Curious Kids: what started the Big Bang?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us on Twitter by tagging @ConversationEDU with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
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Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: why has nobody found any life outside of Earth? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-has-nobody-found-any-life-outside-of-earth-105128

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Blazevich, Professor of Biomechanics, Edith Cowan University

The serve is arguably the most important component of the modern tennis game – and the faster, the better.

But when broken down to very simplistic scientific considerations, the speeds we routinely see top players reach when they deliver a serve are theoretically impossible.

So how do they do it? The answer involves Isaac Newton, ping pong and a little bit of “cheating” (from a physics point of view).

Read more: Get a grip: the twist in the wrist that can ruin tennis careers

Serving fast seems impossible

A ball hit fast and straight cannot clear the net and still land in the service square unless the ball is struck from at least 2.6 metres above the ground. According to this equation, there’s simply not enough time for gravity to drag a high-speed ball down inside the service square.

Even if a player and their racket combined could reach up nearly three metres, the margin for error would be just 13 centimetres. And that’s only if you can serve over the lowest part of the net.

So unless you’re well over six feet tall (183 cm), serving super fast is impossible – from a physics point of view. Yet we regularly see even the shortest players serving over 180 km per hour with great accuracy.

So how is it done?

The answer of course is that players impart topspin on the ball.

This phenomenon was observed and at least partly described in 1672 by Isaac Newton (after watching court tennis) – but a more well-known description of top-spin is linked to German physicist HG Magnus, who observed it in ping pong.

Spin is a crucial part of elite table tennis. AAP/EPA/ANDREAS SCHAAD

If the racket is brushed over the top of the ball during the serve, the ball will spin forwards as it travels. The air surrounding the ball also starts to spin with it.

Physicists call this air the “boundary layer”, and it forms around all moving objects as they travel (you’ll feel this as a rush of wind when a car, truck or train rushes past). As the ball pushes into the oncoming air, the air that travels over the top of the ball collides with the oncoming air. That air is slowed and deflected upwards away from the ball.

The air travelling under the ball meets oncoming air travelling in the same direction and is dragged behind the ball and then also upward.

According to Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So if air is drawn upwards behind the ball, then the ball must move downwards in response.

A great demonstration of this effect can be seen in this video:

Players often use the topspin tactic to great effect during the second serve. Despite the risk of not clearing the net, a top level player usually serves with a high racket head speed, to allow them to put even more topspin on the ball.

With less of the racket speed being used to give the ball forward velocity and more going across the ball to create spin, the ball will certainly travel slower than in a first serve.

But the greater topspin allows a greater margin for error as the ball easily clears the net but still drops rapidly to land well inside the service square.

Read more: You’ll never see another teenage tennis champ – here’s why

Beyond brute force

Of course, muscle power also has a role to play in delivering a serve with heat – but perhaps not as much as you might think.

Our muscles are amazing motors and produce the incredible forces we need to lift heavy objects, walk up mountains and climb trees.

But it has long been known, and demonstrated experimentally 80 years ago, that muscles can’t produce much force when they shorten very quickly. It’s theoretically impossible to serve at high speeds by relying on muscle power alone. To do this, we humans must cheat a little.

You might have noticed that the best tennis players “throw” their racket at the ball when they serve, as you can see in this video:

Watch Roger Federer serve in slow motion.

This throw-like movement requires the player’s body to move before their arm, the upper arm to move before the lower arm, the lower arm to move before the hand, and the hand to move before the fingers.

The wrist snaps forward. The racket moves quickest when the legs have already extended and the upper arm has stopped moving forward.

When we use this throw-like pattern, much of the energy generated by the legs and shoulder muscles early in the movement is transferred to the forearm, then hand.

This is because the forearm and hand are still moving at the end of the serve and much of the energy that was located in the body moves to them during the serving action. The hand is much smaller than the whole body, or the whole arm. But it has a lot of energy, so it moves incredibly quickly.

Read more: The terrible toll tennis can take on top players who play too much

The time difference between movements of the lower and upper body also allows elastic tissues, like tendons, to store energy. These tissues recoil rapidly later in the serve when the arm snaps forwards, releasing the stored energy at speeds much faster than muscles can contract.

It is this throw-like movement – rather than brute force – that causes the hand and racket to move at speeds much higher than our muscles could possibly allow.

So to serve at your best, you have to throw your racket in a way that projects the ball at a high speed – but add some spin. It’s simple physics.

This article has been updated at the request of the author to remove the word “cheating” from the title. In this context, “cheating” referred to a workaround, not breaking the rules of the game.

– ref. Fast serves don’t make sense – unless you factor in physics – http://theconversation.com/fast-serves-dont-make-sense-unless-you-factor-in-physics-106937

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoltan Szabo, Cellist and musicologist, University of Sydney

Review: La Passion de Simone, Sydney Festival 2019

It is striking that the cosmopolitan, culturally vibrant city of Sydney, with its covetous interest in a broad spectrum of recent (contemporary is such a loaded term!) literature, theatre, jazz and classical music, rarely offers opera from the last hundred years or so. For goodness’ sake, The Nose, Dmitri Shostakovich’s ground shaking opera from 1928 was premiered less than a year ago in Australia!

It is most commendable, then, that the Sydney Festival in 2019 presented the Australian premiere of La Passion de Simone, a work by prominent Finnish composer, Kaija Saariaho, performed by Sydney Chamber Opera at its customary high standard.

The genre of La Passion de Simone is slightly ambiguous. While according to the Festival’s media sheet it is an opera, the Sydney Morning Herald’s review calls it a cantata-like meditation, yet the composer herself refers to it as an oratorio.

Soprano Jane Sheldon in La Passion de Simone. Victor Frankowski

At any rate, it is a staged composition for soprano, choir and orchestra, perhaps closest to a passion play, as it led the near-capacity audience through the life and sufferings of French philosopher Simone Weil. The Latin verb patior means suffering (hence passion), although more than once, Weil’s passion for social justice is also referred to in the text, adding another valid meaning to the same word.

The composition consists of 15 scenes, a clear reference to the 15 stations of Christ’s suffering on the way to the cross. (If your ecclesiastical memories recall only 14 stations, you are not wrong; it was only in 2000 that Pope St. John Paul II added a 15th station, extending the scenes of suffering and death with the resurrection of Jesus.)

The link between Jesus Christ and Simone Weil is obvious and intentional, if more than a little tenuous. Indeed, both were Jewish and selflessly died a painful death at a very similar age. But a direct parallel of Weil’s life and famously complex philosophical thoughts to the Via Crucis of Jesus – as Lebanese-born Amin Maalouf’s libretto proposes – rings false even if it is an artistically intriguing proposition. After all, among many other interests, Weil worked as a correspondent to La Révolution prolétarienne (or The revolution of the proletariat), a syndicalist magazine in Paris in the 1920s.

The sparse stage arrangement for La Passion de Simone. Victor Frankowski

Simone Weil, this modern-day Jeanne d’Arc doggedly following her beliefs, this frail French woman who died of starvation in 1934 to prove exploitation of the poor wrong, was a paradoxical philosopher. She had mystic ideas but also a working knowledge of classical languages such as Sanskrit and Greek. Her Spartan asceticism appealed to many then and later, and she gained a particular influence after her untimely death.

Her life was guided by a crusade for social and political justice, but was by no means without controversies. She fought passionately for the rights of the underprivileged. Her writings are fuelled with catholic zest, yet even a few days before her death, she refused to be baptised. Both André Gide’s description of her as “the patron saint of all outsiders” and Leon Trotsky’s as a “melancholy revolutionary” seem to be fitting, albeit reflecting different aspects of her life.

La Passion de Simone, originally composed for a full choir and orchestra, premiered on this occasion in a chamber version prepared by the composer. In the cavernous space of Bay 17 of Carriageworks, the 19-piece ensemble of Sydney Chamber Opera was placed stage right along with four members of the Song Company (Susannah Lawergren, Jessica O’Donoghue, Owen Elsley, Mark Donnelly), right next to the wall.

On the other side of the stage, adorned only by a large mound of white rice in the centre, stood soprano, Jane Sheldon, with her back to the audience. She never took a single step or showed her face to the audience throughout the 75-minute work.

Director Imara Savage and set & costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby (both having worked with SCO before) used the huge stage effectively by using it very little. The delicate lighting was Alexander Berlage’s work, Bob Scott was responsible for the subtle amplification and sound design.

Soprano Jane Sheldon appeared as a projection on a giant wall-to-wall screen, offsetting the sparseness of the stage. Victor Frankowski

The sparseness of the stage and lack of action on it was splendidly offset by a giant wall-to-wall screen, onto which video artist Mike Daly projected a much-larger-than-life Sheldon, in the same beige costume as the singer on stage. She stood – pained and battered – under a relentless downpour of white rice against a black backdrop for most of the performance. Until the last few minutes, stage-Sheldon’s head and hand movements precisely followed screen-Sheldon’s movements. The metaphor was as simple as it was powerful.

One of the strengths of this minimalist production is that, despite the limited visual or sonic challenges, the audience’s attention is constantly divided at least four ways: between the live and the projected protagonist, the orchestra on stage and the surtitles.

There is always something happening, for example, multiple voices transferring the text of the monodrama from different parts of the stage. Sheldon is presented as the sister of Weil narrating the composition (referring to Weil as “my elder sister, my little sister”) and occasionally as Weil herself. The chorus comments on her life and actions and occasionally an electronically projected stage-whisper cites from Weil’s own writings.

Soprano Jane Sheldon is showered with rice in a wall-to-wall projection in La Passion de Simone. Victor Frankowski

Beyond her singing, the expressive possibilities of the protagonist are deliberately limited. Sheldon’s movements deviate only in the last ten minutes or so from her screen-self; her jerky, marionette-like gestures suggest trance-like pain. But it is her singing that radiates memorably throughout the evening. Her understanding of this extensive monodrama is exemplary, both in the technical and musical sense. She uses vibrato sparingly, making it almost ornamental.

Despite no visible contact with the conductor Jack Symonds, the innovative spiritus rector behind the Sydney Chamber Opera, no ensemble or balance problems marred the performance. Symonds’s correct and always reliable conducting made the performance safe and did justice to the strengths of the composition: the well-balanced orchestration, the lush sounds and the lyric atmosphere.

However, even his artistic contribution could not help most of the 15 movements feeling static, due to their almost universally slow tempo and limitations of the compositorial toolkit. After a while, the block chords of the first few movements became mannered, as did the string slides (glissandi), the sustained brass chords or the mostly steady beats of the percussions. Ostensibly having a meditative quality in mind, this work is almost completely bereft of emotional climactic points – which Simone Weil’s life was not.

– ref. La Passion de Simone brings Simone Weil’s sufferings to life, but the movements feel static – http://theconversation.com/la-passion-de-simone-brings-simone-weils-sufferings-to-life-but-the-movements-feel-static-109794

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Khan, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, UNSW

A million fish have died in the Murray Darling basin, as oxygen levels plummet due to major algal blooms. Experts have warned we could see more mass deaths this week.

Read more: Explainer: what causes algal blooms, and how we can stop them

Fingers have been pointed at poor water management after a long period of drought. However, mass fish deaths can also be caused by floods, and even raw sewage.

So what’s going on when oxygen gets “sucked out of the water”?

The phenomenon is very well known to water quality engineers; we call it “biochemical oxygen demand”. To understand it, we need to talk about a little bit of biology and a little bit of chemistry.

When oxygen meets water

Oxygen molecules are soluble in water in the same way that sugar is soluble in water. Once its dissolved, you can’t see it (and, unlike sugar, oxygen is tasteless).

The maximum amount of oxygen that you can dissolve in water depends on a number of factors, including the water temperature, ambient air pressure, and salinity. But roughly speaking, the maximum amount of dissolvable oxygen, known as the “saturation concentration” is typically around 7-10 milligrams of oxygen per litre of water (7-10 mg/L).

This dissolved oxygen is what fish use to breathe. Fish take water in through their mouths and force it through their gill passages. Gills, like our lungs, are full of blood vessels. As water passes over the thin walls of the gills, dissolved oxygen is transferred into the blood and then transported to the fish’s cells. The higher the oxygen concentration in the water, the easier it is for this transfer to occur.

Once in the cells, the oxygen molecules play a key role in the process of “aerobic respiration”. The oxygen reacts with energy-rich organic substances, such as sugars, carbohydrates and fats to break them down and release energy for the cells. The main waste product from this process is carbon dioxide (CO₂). This is why we all need to breath in oxygen and we breathe out carbon dioxide. Fish do that too. A simple way to express this is:

Organic substances + Oxygen → Carbon dioxide + Water + Energy

The Hunter River in NSW suffered a ‘blackwater’ event in 2016 when floodwaters washed organic matter into the river. Andrew S/Flickr, CC BY-SA

What is the biochemical oxygen demand?

Just like fish and people, many bacteria gain energy from processes of aerobic respiration, according to the simplified chemical reaction shown above. Therefore, if there are organic substances in a waterway, the bacteria that live in that waterway can consume them. This is an important process of “biodegradation” and is the reason our planet is not littered by the carcasses of animals that have died over many thousands of years. But this form of biodegradation also consumes oxygen, which comes from dissolved oxygen in the waterway.

Rivers can replenish their oxygen from contact with the air. However this is a relatively slow process, especially if the water is stagnant (flowing creates turbulence and mixes in more oxygen). So if there is a lot of organic matter present and bacteria are feasting on it, oxygen concentrations in the river can suddenly drop.

Obviously, “organic substances” can include many different things, such as sugars, fats and proteins. Some molecules contain more energy than others, and some are easier for the bacteria to biodegrade. So the amount of aerobic respiration that will occur depends on the exact chemical nature of the organic substances, as well as their concentration.

Therefore, instead of referring to the concentration of “organic substances”, we more commonly refer to the thing that really matters: how much aerobic respiration the organic substances can trigger and how much oxygen this will cause to be consumed. This is what we call the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and we usually express it as a concentration in terms of milligrams of oxygen per litre of water (mg/L).

Like us, bacteria don’t consume all of the food which is available to them instantly – they graze on it over time. Biodegradation therefore can take days, or longer. So when we measure the BOD of a contaminated water sample, we need to assess how much oxygen is consumed (per litre of water) over a specified period of time. The standard period of time is usually five days and we refer to this value as the BOD5 (mg/L).

Murray cod pull oxygenated water through their gills, transferring it to their bloodstream. Without oxygen in the water, they die. Guo Chai Lim/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

As I mentioned earlier, clean water might only have a concentration of dissolved oxygen of up to around 7-10 mg/L. So if we add organic material in a concentration which has a higher BOD5 than this, we can expect it to deplete the ambient dissolved oxygen concentration during the next five days.

Read more: More of us are drinking recycled sewage water than most people realise

This phenomena is the main reason for which biological sewage treatment was invented. Raw (untreated) municipal sewage can have a BOD5 of 300-500 mg/L. If this were discharged to a clean waterway, the typical base-level of 7-10 mg/L of oxygen would be consumed, leaving none available for fish or other aquatic organisms.

So the purpose of biological sewage treatment is to grow lots of bacteria in large tanks of sewage and provide them with plentiful oxygen for aerobic respiration. To do this, air can be bubbled through the sewage, or sometimes surface aerators are used to churn up the sewage.

By supplying lots of oxygen, we ensure the BOD5 is effectively consumed while the sewage is still in the tanks, before it’s released to the environment. Well treated sewage can have a BOD5 as low as 5 mg/L, which can then be further diluted as it’s discharged to the environment.

In the case of the Darling river, the high BOD load was created by algae, which died when temperatures dropped. This provided a feast for bacteria, lowering oxygen, which in turn killed hundreds of thousands of fish. Now, unless we clean the river, those rotting fish could become fodder for another round of bacteria, triggering a second de-oxygenation event.

– ref. How is oxygen ‘sucked out’ of our waterways? – http://theconversation.com/how-is-oxygen-sucked-out-of-our-waterways-109795

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Fleming, Professor, University of Technology Sydney

The sleazy “sugar baby” scandal involving Australian politician Andrew Broad, exposed for his reported cringy attempts to hook up with a woman almost half his age, might look like just another case of a politician caught in flagrante delicto.

The 43-year-old married father of two reportedly arranged to meet the 25-year-old “Amy” while in Hong Kong for a fruit conference. He was presumably seeking to be discreet, but his penchant for bragging about how important he was along with Amy’s interest in financial gain ensured his sext messages ended up with the gossipy Australian women’s magazine New Idea.

What gives this story greater social import is how the pair met – through a dating platform designed specifically to match wealthy men with young attractive women. Such sites, as I argue in a recently published book, symbolise the rise of what I call sugar daddy capitalism – a deformalisation movement at the centre of Western capitalism that is erasing already blurred lines between commercial and non-commercial worlds.

Transactional intimacy

Sugar baby websites are the brainchild of US tech entrepreneur Brandon Wade. He has established a stable of such sites and apps, all based on the same premise: helping wealthy older men (sugar daddies) meet beautiful, usually much younger women (sugar babies) who want to be wined and dined in expensive restaurants and showered with gifts, including cash.

According to Wade, who has built a lucrative business empire on the concept, his typical sugar daddy has an annual income of US$200,000 and spends about US$3,000 a month on a sugar baby. About 40% are married. A similar proportion of the sugar babies are university students. They’re not obliged to provide sexual favours, but those who have talked about their experiences indicate that is usually expected if they want material rewards to keep flowing their way.

Brendon Wade, right, in a promotional image for one of his apps, Carrot Dating. Carrot Dating

Wade isn’t appealing to romantics. He has called love “a concept invented by poor people”. As he told CNN in 2014:

“As I look at the future of traditional relationships, I see divorces, heartbreaks and broken families. Marriage is messy, but divorce is even messier. Yet marriage is not the only path to happiness or financial security. An arrangement can provide the same benefits as a marriage without the risk.”

His ideas repudiate the family values Andrew Broad, a socially conservative politician, has claimed to believe in. It’s a transactional approach to intimacy, based on the iron law of supply and demand. Only hard cash counts, something rich and powerful men have long exploited.

Read more: Rise in ‘sugar babies’ mirrors increase in student sex work

Another way of looking at sugar baby websites is that they are promoting barely disguised sex work. Indeed Wade has been branded a kind of “e-pimp”. We can see his digital platforms as exemplifying a wider trend of casualisation in working relationships, using technology to extend the so-called gig economy.

Informal relationships

The pundits of neoliberalism champion casualisation, individual contracts and other forms of “gig work” because they believe supply and demand is the right way to determine all prices, including wages. It’s up to the individuals involved to decide what kind of arrangement best suits them. And this ought to happen behind closed doors.

Friedrich Hayek, a key figure of the neoliberal revolution, argued in his book The Road to Serfdom that deals between individuals are superior to state laws and regulations because they foster personal freedom. Money and self-interest would be the only universal principles permitted, with governments coming into the picture only as a last resort. That’s why in Hayek’s ideal society everyone would interact on a strictly private basis, guided only by the cool logic of the marketplace and personal preferences.

If the economy was rebuilt around this idea, neoliberal theorists like to believe, we’d all soon be rich micro-entrepreneurs, free to tailor our working lives to individual taste rather than being handcuffed to global standards imposed by trade unions and government.

What happens in reality when these ideas are put into practice? The sugar daddy phenomenon shows us.

Onward to the past

Consider the status of sex work in the Australian state of New South Wales, which decriminalised prostitution in 1995 (in large part to stamp out police corruption associated with illegal brothels).

Colourful Australian medical entrepreneur Geoffrey Edelsten, right, met his third and most recent wife, Gabi Grecko, through a sugar baby website. When they wed in 2015 he was 73 and she was 26. Joe Castro/AAP

Sex workers are generally considered independent contractors. That means, like other workers in the gig economy, they don’t get the benefits full employees enjoy, such as employer contributions to superannuation, holiday pay and sick leave.

Nevertheless they are still deemed workers – and that is important. Employers (or “hirers”) must observe regulations that specifically cover workers, including the right to join a union, and so on.

Moreover, if it turns out workers are being exploited by “sham contracts”, where they are for all intents and purposes full employees but being treated otherwise, the federal Fair Work Act comes into play. Businesses can be fined up to $30,000 for violating provisions on this issue.

Sex worker advocates have campaigned long and hard to be recognised by employment legislation, including the right to unionise. The next step is a national award.

Sugar baby sites are as disruptive to this whole system as platforms like Uber have been to highly regulated taxi industries. They turn sex work back into a strictly private affair.

Uber’s official line is that it’s just enabling ordinary citizens to share a ride, instead of the regulated system of taxi drivers requiring a licence and police background checks. Sugar baby sites exploit the same loophole. Sugar babies are not officially workers, and thus fall completely outside any germane employment legislation.

Read more: The ‘Uberisation’ of work is driving people to co-operatives

In this sense, these websites and apps represent a return to the past where prostitution was an informal affair and protections and standards were largely non-existent.

Given recent trends, there is a distinct danger that large swathes of the economy could soon be restructured in the same way.

So while it is tempting to focus on the salacious aspects of the Andrew Broad scandal, with all its hypocrisy and double standards, let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture exposed – of a technology-enabled economic ideology sweeping both working and personal relationships.

It might soon be knocking at your door.

– ref. Sugar daddy capitalism: even the world’s oldest profession is being uberised – http://theconversation.com/sugar-daddy-capitalism-even-the-worlds-oldest-profession-is-being-uberised-109426

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Blazevich, Professor of Biomechanics, Edith Cowan University

The serve is arguably the most important component of the modern tennis game – and the faster, the better.

But when broken down to very simplistic scientific considerations, the speeds we routinely see top players reach when they deliver a serve are theoretically impossible.

So how do they do it? The answer involves Isaac Newton, ping pong and a little bit of “cheating” (from a physics point of view).

Read more: Get a grip: the twist in the wrist that can ruin tennis careers

Serving fast seems impossible

A ball hit fast and straight cannot clear the net and still land in the service square unless the ball is struck from at least 2.6 metres above the ground. According to this equation, there’s simply not enough time for gravity to drag a high-speed ball down inside the service square.

Even if a player and their racket combined could reach up nearly three metres, the margin for error would be just 13 centimetres. And that’s only if you can serve over the lowest part of the net.

So unless you’re well over six feet tall (183 cm), serving super fast is impossible – from a physics point of view. Yet we regularly see even the shortest players serving over 180 km per hour with great accuracy.

So how is it done?

The answer of course is that players impart topspin on the ball.

This phenomenon was observed and at least partly described in 1672 by Isaac Newton (after watching court tennis) – but a more well-known description of top-spin is linked to German physicist HG Magnus, who observed it in ping pong.

Spin is a crucial part of elite table tennis. AAP/EPA/ANDREAS SCHAAD

If the racket is brushed over the top of the ball during the serve, the ball will spin forwards as it travels. The air surrounding the ball also starts to spin with it.

Physicists call this air the “boundary layer”, and it forms around all moving objects as they travel (you’ll feel this as a rush of wind when a car, truck or train rushes past). As the ball pushes into the oncoming air, the air that travels over the top of the ball collides with the oncoming air. That air is slowed and deflected upwards away from the ball.

The air travelling under the ball meets oncoming air travelling in the same direction and is dragged behind the ball and then also upward.

According to Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So if air is drawn upwards behind the ball, then the ball must move downwards in response.

A great demonstration of this effect can be seen in this video:

Players often use the topspin tactic to great effect during the second serve. Despite the risk of not clearing the net, a top level player usually serves with a high racket head speed, to allow them to put even more topspin on the ball.

With less of the racket speed being used to give the ball forward velocity and more going across the ball to create spin, the ball will certainly travel slower than in a first serve.

But the greater topspin allows a greater margin for error as the ball easily clears the net but still drops rapidly to land well inside the service square.

Read more: You’ll never see another teenage tennis champ – here’s why

Beyond brute force

Of course, muscle power also has a role to play in delivering a serve with heat – but perhaps not as much as you might think.

Our muscles are amazing motors and produce the incredible forces we need to lift heavy objects, walk up mountains and climb trees.

But it has long been known, and demonstrated experimentally 80 years ago, that muscles can’t produce much force when they shorten very quickly. It’s theoretically impossible to serve at high speeds by relying on muscle power alone. To do this, we humans must cheat a little.

You might have noticed that the best tennis players “throw” their racket at the ball when they serve, as you can see in this video:

Watch Roger Federer serve in slow motion.

This throw-like movement requires the player’s body to move before their arm, the upper arm to move before the lower arm, the lower arm to move before the hand, and the hand to move before the fingers.

The wrist snaps forward. The racket moves quickest when the legs have already extended and the upper arm has stopped moving forward.

When we use this throw-like pattern, much of the energy generated by the legs and shoulder muscles early in the movement is transferred to the forearm, then hand.

This is because the forearm and hand are still moving at the end of the serve and much of the energy that was located in the body moves to them during the serving action. The hand is much smaller than the whole body, or the whole arm. But it has a lot of energy, so it moves incredibly quickly.

Read more: The terrible toll tennis can take on top players who play too much

The time difference between movements of the lower and upper body also allows elastic tissues, like tendons, to store energy. These tissues recoil rapidly later in the serve when the arm snaps forwards, releasing the stored energy at speeds much faster than muscles can contract.

It is this throw-like movement – rather than brute force – that causes the hand and racket to move at speeds much higher than our muscles could possibly allow.

So to serve at your best, you have to throw your racket in a way that projects the ball at a high speed – but add some spin. It’s simple physics.

– ref. Fast serves don’t make sense – unless you factor in physics and ‘cheating’ – http://theconversation.com/fast-serves-dont-make-sense-unless-you-factor-in-physics-and-cheating-106937

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ron Levy, Associate professor, Australian National University

Many commentators have been alarmed at the electoral wins of ultra conservative leaders around the world, as well as policy decisions such as Brexit made by a popular referendum. They see these as signs of a rising populism.

In its benign forms, populism can simply mean ordinary citizens’ desire to see their interests and preferences better reflected in policy making. It may also mean greater direct involvement in government by the people themselves.

But in its more dangerous manifestations, populism can mean a reckless, extreme distrust in governmental expertise. It can be under-informed, and divide communities between “us” and “them”. And – in its impatience to see change – it can tear down useful democratic values and institutions such as inclusivity and a neutral judiciary, which safeguard our rights in a democracy.

Read more: The pathologies of populism

There is at least one way we could harness the populist trend and turn it in a more useful direction: deliberative democracy.

As the name suggests, deliberative democracy aims to promote not only democratic majority rule, but also deliberation. This means well-informed, inclusive and reflective decision-making. While populism gives a greater role to ordinary citizens in the affairs of government, deliberative democracy models can improve this by ensuring citizen input is robustly inclusive, reflective and well-informed.

So far, deliberative democracy is the best answer we have to the challenge of populism.

Deliberative democracy at work

One form of deliberative democracy is to enlist ordinary citizens in deliberation, such as in the case of citizens’ juries. Here, randomly-picked groups of citizens are invited to attend a series of organised sessions, where they become well-informed on a specific policy matter before advising governments on the best way forward.

This model has been used hundreds of times around the world, including in the ACT (on matters such as housing) and South Australia (on nuclear waste).

Read more: City calls on jury of its citizens to deliberate on Melbourne’s future

To many, such an approach seems fanciful. their cynicism is based on the assumption members of the public couldn’t possibly deliberate about public matters thoughtfully. But many studies show that creative approaches to democracy, such as citizens’ juries, can increase how well ordinary citizens deliberate about the matters put to them. Citizens’ juries can be informed, inclusive, thoughtful, fair and intellectually supple.

Citizens’ juries have a particular kind of democratic legitimacy. Since they are randomly-selected, and often demographically representative of the larger population, the public tends to see jury members as “just like me”, which creates more trust in the process.

But citizens’ juries have limitations. One is that the process has so far only included a handful of citizens at one time. And some critics will insist that only a vote in which all eligible voters can participate confers democratic legitimacy. This is where the referendum can be used as part of the deliberative democracy model.

Referendums can provide a neutral, democratically robust input into matters of public interest that politicians cannot resolve themselves. They can, for example, spur governments to act where a clear majority of the population has a considered view, but the government is divided and therefore powerless to act on that view.

Think of climate change mitigation, as well as other environmental matters such as coal seam gas mining and fracking.

But when a policy matter is put to a referendum or plebiscite – in which all eligible citizens could vote – it is a hard task to bring most of the people up to speed. It is far easier to inform people on a citizens’ jury, which might include just 50 people.

The conundrum is therefore that the citizens’ jury is deliberative but (according to some) democratically insufficient, while a referendum or plebiscite is more democratically robust but not always deliberative. But we can take useful steps toward making referendums or plebiscites more deliberative.

A few referendums are on the horizon, including another one on Brexit. ANDY RAIN/EPA

Around the world a number of academics, including the author, have proposed the “deliberative referendum”. Those who doubt referendums can be deliberative may prefer the term “informed referendum”.

The deliberative/informed referendum

Reforming a referendum or plebscite to make it more deliberative can be done through several methods – some already common. They include:

Voting online or at computer voting stations, which is already in use in many places. This can permit more interactive voting than a mere yes/no vote. In a new approach, before they could cast their votes, voters are asked to interact with a 15-minute tutorial informing them of the relevant issues. For instance, a vote on a local housing development plan would canvass environmental, economic and social arguments for and against greater urban density.

Multi-option voting would depart from the traditional yes/no vote, presenting voters with several options and avoiding the artificial reduction of complex matters into a binary choice. Preferential voting could still allow a single option to emerge with majority support.

Value-based voting could take place, meaning one set of ballot options put to voters would concern not just final choices, such as urban density levels adopted in a city plan, but also the values underlying them. Voters could rank values such as environmental sustainability and economic development. This would encourage voters to think more thoroughly about their final choices.

Citizens’ juries should be held in the lead up to a referendum. This has happened in many cases, such as in the recent Irish abortion referendum. A citizens’ jury could help to inform the broader public about the issues at stake. As a neutral body, the jury would write the questions on the ballot and the content of the information tutorials.

An optional measure would be a political misinformation law enacted to prevent politicians and others from uttering false statements likely to mislead voters. This method has been common, most of all, in Australia. Granted, around the world it has been subject to challenges under constitutional free speech and communication guarantees. But in Australia political misinformation laws were upheld by judges who cited the value of accurate information for voters.

Robust anti-misinformation laws would have been useful in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, which had a number of whoppers. For instance, campaigners greatly overstated the costs to the UK of both staying in and leaving the EU.

Referendums on Australia becoming a republic, and on Brexit (again), may be on the horizon. Other cases, such as the urban density example, are perennially unresolved matters in localities around Australia – in part because governments cannot decide whether to favour homeowners, developers, environmentalists or other groups. Even societies experiencing war often turn to referendums to try to jolt them out of their entrenched cycles of violence.

Referendums and plebiscites can be democratic circuit-breakers in a system of government that is in theory dedicated to serving the public, but that in many cases falls short.

Read more: Australia’s public servants: dedicated, highly trained … and elitist

Of course, there is still a risk the circuit-break may end up merely giving greater voice to a coarse populism, which knows it wants to tear down elitism and expertise, but not what to replace them with. However, work on deliberative referendum design suggests we needn’t be quite so fearful of populism. At least sometimes, and to some degree, populism can be remade so the public can have a more deliberative input into government decision-making.

– ref. Populism’s problems can be fixed by getting the public better-informed. And that’s actually possible – http://theconversation.com/populisms-problems-can-be-fixed-by-getting-the-public-better-informed-and-thats-actually-possible-109720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alyce Wilson, Senior Research Officer at Burnet Institute, Lecturer at Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Medical Doctor at Royal Women’s Hospital, Burnet Institute

More than 90% of Australian women start breastfeeding soon after the birth of their baby, but only 15% are exclusively breastfeeding at six months, despite national and international recommendations.

The World Health Organisation recommends infants begin breastfeeding within one hour of birth and continue to breastfeed exclusively until six months old. After this, nutritious complementary foods can be added to the baby’s diet, with recommendations to continue to breastfeed for up to two years or beyond.

But for new mothers, establishing and continuing breastfeeding can be challenging. Here are five things mums can do to make it easier.

Read more: ‘Nipple Nazis’ vs overwrought mums: the breastfeeding debate

1. Talk to your partner and family early about your desire to breastfeed

Women who have a partner who is informed, supportive and encouraging are more likely to start breastfeeding and breastfeed for longer. Before the baby is born, talk to your partner and family about your desire to breastfeed, why it might be important to you and what support you might need.

You and your partner can prepare by learning as much as you can about breastfeeding, what to expect in the first few weeks, common challenges and where to go for help. The Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) holds regular breastfeeding education classes and can provide ongoing support. Talking to your midwife or health-care provider during pregnancy visits about what to expect in the first hours and days can be helpful.

Having emotional, practical and physical support from partners helps create a supportive breastfeeding environment and enriches the breastfeeding experience for both parents.

Your partner and family members can help with cooking, washing, performing other household chores and looking after other children. This will leave you with the space you need to rest and feel cared for, as you learn about your baby and become confident in the breastfeeding process.

Many women want to breastfeed but struggle. from www.shutterstock.com

2. Reach out early and often

Breastfeeding can take time to learn and does not always “just happen”. The first few days after birth are important for getting attachment of your baby on the breast right and finding good feeding positions. Most newborn babies want to feed often, especially in the first weeks. This is important as it will help to establish an adequate milk supply and the time between feeds will settle over time.

You may be given conflicting advice and you need to work out what’s right for you. Trust your instincts and if something doesn’t seem right, seek help early and often. While in hospital, ask your midwife to help with attachment and positioning and if you need more assistance, a lactation consultant may help.

When you are home, you can get support from your maternal and child health nurse, the 24/7 national breastfeeding helpline (1800 686 268) or find a local ABA support group. There are many useful resources available on the ABA website and the Australian Parenting Website, Raising Children.

A laid back/reclining position helps with breastfeeding. from ww.shutterstock.com

Read more: My baby is crying. Is it colic? How can I help?

3. Eat and drink well

Breastfeeding is thirsty work for you and your baby! A healthy diet is always important and especially so when breastfeeding. Eat plenty of wholegrain breads and cereals, fruit and vegetables, milk, cheese and yoghurt and iron-rich foods such as red meat, chicken, fish, legumes, nuts and green leafy vegetables.

Choose nutrient-rich ready-to-eat snacks such as fruit, yoghurt, hard boiled eggs, nuts, crackers with cheese or avocado, vegetables and cans of fish or beans. Eat according to your appetite and aim for steady weight loss back to your pre-pregnancy weight. Drinking plenty of water is very important, especially during hot weather.

4. Make it practical

Breastfeeding means you also need to think about practical things such as what you might want to wear and what other supports you need around you. Wear breastfeeding friendly clothes, maternity bras, and find a comfortable position for feeding, such as a laid back or reclining position. Imagine you’re leaning back in a deck chair with the baby supported by your body, rather than sitting upright or hunching forward and needing to support the baby on a pillow or your arm.

When at home, practise skin-to-skin contact by placing your baby directly on your bare chest covered with a warm blanket. Skin-to-skin contact stimulates the release of oxytocin which not only helps with “milk let down” but it can also “prime” the following breastfeeding interaction.

When preparing to return to work and breastfeeding, encourage your workplace to provide a private space to feed or express, have a small fridge where milk can be stored and ask for scheduled lactation breaks.

Read more: Feeding frenzy: public breastfeeding is good for us all

5. Know your rights

Women can breastfeed anytime, anywhere. Australian federal and local laws explicitly state women are legally supported to breastfeed or express milk in public.

You have the right to feed your baby whenever and wherever they need to be fed. You wouldn’t expect someone to eat their lunch in the toilet so why should your baby? We can all help to make our communities breastfeeding friendly.

– ref. Want to breastfeed? These five things will make it easier – http://theconversation.com/want-to-breastfeed-these-five-things-will-make-it-easier-109507

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Orr, Veterinarian and PhD candidate, University of Sydney

Australia’s wildlife is unique and endearing, with many species found nowhere else in the world. Unfortunately, it isn’t rare to encounter sick or injured wildlife around your home or by the side of the road. My research, recently published in the Australian Veterinary Journal, estimates between 177,580 and 355,160 injured wild animals are brought into NSW veterinary clinics alone every year.

But until now, very little was known about what happens to wildlife after they’re brought to a vet. My colleagues and I surveyed 132 veterinary clinics around Australia, examining the demands and expectations of treating wildlife. We also looked for risks to animal welfare as a result of these findings.

Most clinics only saw a handful of wildlife patients every week, with birds and marsupials such as possums the most common. Sadly, the majority (82%) of wildlife arrived in veterinary care due to trauma of some kind. The most common cause was animals being hit by cars, followed by undefined trauma and predation by another animal.

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

Most clinics examined and treated wildlife for free, with less than 10% receiving some kind of payment. These were usually made by wildlife rehabilitation groups or members of the public.

Due to the painful and serious nature of trauma, around a third of clinics reported euthanasia was the most common outcome for wildlife at their clinic. More positively, more than half indicated that wildlife were usually passed onto wildlife rehabilitators, suggesting this is the most common outcome.

Kangaroo with burns to all four limbs after a fire. Author Provided

Almost three quarters of veterinary clinics said they only saw wildlife when they had spare time. This is concerning, as delays to treatment raises serious animal welfare concerns.

Additionally, many veterinary clinics indicated they felt a lack of time, knowledge and skills interfered with their ability to treat wildlife.

As veterinary clinics are small businesses, wildlife present a conundrum. They are not owned (although technically they are owned by the Crown), expect treatment with no payment and don’t look like the usual pets seen by most vets. With clinics full of paying clients expecting prompt treatment, it can be hard to prioritise wildlife.

So what is the solution?

Ideally, either the state or federal government would take financial responsibility for wildlife. The federal government does pay for some wildlife treatment at private veterinary clinics, but this is part of a biosecurity monitoring scheme and isn’t open to most clinics.

Read more: How dogs and cats can get their day in court

Donations from the public to treat wildlife would also likely be welcomed. However, help can come in other ways. One large clinic in Sydney is trialling an in-house wildlife carer, who would triage wildlife and take responsibility for ensuring wildlife are prioritised. Appointing a “wildlife champion” in a clinic is another option, where an interested vet or nurse is designated the “go to” person for wildlife cases.

Wombat in the wild. From Shutterstock

What should you do if you find injured wildlife?

1. Call your local wildlife care group for advice

Some animals aren’t actually injured, such as fledgling birds which are learning to fly, and others (such as goannas) can be dangerous, so be sure to seek advice before approaching wildlife. If you don’t know who your local wildlife care group is, type into a search engine “wildlife carer” to locate one near you.

2. Keep yourself safe

Armed with advice from a wildlife carer, ensure you don’t put yourself in a risky situation to rescue wildlife. Take care around busy roads, use a barrier between yourself and the injured animal (such as a towel or welding gloves) and avoid the bitey end! Wildlife are inherently fearful of people, which means they might attack if scared.

Read more: Put out water for the wildlife in your garden on hot days

3. Secure the injured animal before transport

You don’t want an injured animal to escape in your car on the way to the vet. If the injured animal is a bird, small reptile or baby marsupial, a cardboard box with air holes and lined with a towel makes a good transport container. Don’t offer wildlife food, as they have very special diets and digestive systems.

4. Give as much information as possible

When you get to the vet, ensure you provide detailed information on where you found the animal. If the animal is healthy enough to enter wildlife rehabilitation, the wildlife carers will need to release the animal as close as possible to the location where it was found. This is because many animals, such as possums, are fiercely territorial and often die if relocated outside their territory.

Ultimately, many injured wild animals cannot be saved and will be euthanased after being dropped off at a veterinary clinic. This is not a bad outcome. Wildlife aren’t pets – they need to be fit to survive if they are ever going to have a chance in the wild. Injuries such as a badly broken wing or losing an eye would condemn wildlife upon release to starvation or predation.

It is much kinder to humanely euthanase injured wildlife which have no chance of survival rather than let them suffer a prolonged death in the wild. Even if the animal you drop off at the vet is ultimately euthansed, you have still saved it from prolonged suffering.

– ref. What happens after you take injured wildlife to the vet? – http://theconversation.com/what-happens-after-you-take-injured-wildlife-to-the-vet-109084

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Warren, Associate Professor, College of Business and Economics, Australian National University

There’s a lot in the Productivity Commission’s landmark 722-page table-thumper of a report into Australia’s superannuation system, completed after nearly three years of invesigation. For now, I’ll make three comments.

The Commission gets the industry

First, it’s a very valuable report. The Productivity Commission (PC) has undertaken a deep analysis of the superannuation industry and collected a range of information that was previously unavailable. The research has been conducted with considerable care and diligence, backed by insight. I am confident the PC understands the industry. The report is a great resource that will probably be cited for years to come.

Yet sets itself against the industry…

My second comment relates to the gusto by which the PC has called out shortcomings of the system, and advocated for key changes. While the PC is aiming to be constructive, the report reads as quite critical.

It seems guilty of overstatement for dramatic effect, which I fear may inhibit moving forward. Many report headings read as if they are brickbats. It headlined two of its diagrams: “the character of member harm”. It sets the tone on page five:

The system delivers good outcomes for many members, but not all. The industry’s peak body submitted that “the Australian superannuation system is not broken, and is in fact a world class private pension system”. The evidence suggests otherwise.

In my view, the system is better described as being very good with room for improvement.

The PC has raised the ire of the industry, which will create a barrier to change as the advocacy ramps up.

While most of its recommendations are sensible, the idea of a panel selecting a “best-in-show” shortlist of 10 default funds is controversial.

The recommendation is being attacked on its potential shortcomings, when the debate ought to be around whether it is the best option among a set of imperfect alternatives. The simpler question of whether the PC’s recommendation is better than the current system is not being debated.

We are travelling down an adversarial path unlikely to build consensus around what needs to happen.

Production Commission video outlining its draft report released in May 2018.

…and raises more important questions

Third, the PC has recommended further investigations going beyond its terms of reference. I will finish by focusing on Recommendation 30: an independent public inquiry into the role of compulsory superannuation in the broader retirement incomes system, including the net impact of compulsory super on private and public savings.

Surprising, there is no established position on how effective superannuation has been in working toward Australians supporting themselves in retirement. It is an open question whether the costly tax concessions attached to super provide an overall benefit to Australian society.

The Commission also wants the inquiry to examine who is hurt and who is helped by compulsory superannuation, both over time and at any point in time.

Recommendation 30. Superannuation: Assessing Efficiency and Competitiveness. Productivity Commission, December 2018

The PC is calling for an examination into the amounts being contributed into super, given that it called for the inquiry to be completed ahead of the the next scheduled increase in the compulsory contribution rate from 9.5% of salary to 10% in June 2021.

The PC was limited to examining the efficiency of the system under current policy settings. But the settings themselves are arguably the greatest barrier to the efficiency of the system, and its ability to serve the public. An inquiry into super’s place within the broader retirement income system would be an opportunity to work out how it can serve us best.

Too often the discussion is framed as if superannuation is the only resource supporting members through retirement. The call to lift the compulsory levy from 9.5% to 12% – some have argued for 15% or even 20% – epitomises this myopic perspective.

The reaction to a recent Grattan Institute report (Money in retirement: more than enough, November 2018) addressing various aspects of system design and questioning the need to increase the levy was revealing.

Grattan was lambasted for their stance, unfairly in my opinion. Much of the criticism came from those with a stake in seeing the levy increased, and mostly danced around the fringes of the argument. All this is indicative of an inability to have a thoughtful discussion over important policy issues.

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

Superannuation interacts with many other aspects of retirement support, including the social security system (specifically the aged pension), the tax system, other assets held by individuals, in particular whether they own a home, and personal circumstances.

Money siphoned off into super to support spending in retirement comes at the cost of lower spending power during the working years.

Placing more in superannuation might be entirely right for some, but might come at a cost for others.

They are good questions

The first interrelation between super and other features of the system needs to be better understood. There are various flags pointing to inconsistencies.

Claims that people are not saving enough for retirement do not gel with many retirees taking money out of super at the minimum rates.

Meanwhile the social safety net is substantial. The (single) aged pension of A$24,824 is 86% of the Association of Superannuation Funds “modest” living standard up to age 85, and 91% of it after age 91. And Australians have access to affordable health care.

Home ownership is a key determinant of capacity to support oneself through retirement, and it is only heightened by it being excluded from the pension means test. There can be a huge gap between retirees who own their home and those who do not.

Many low income earners struggle to establish themselves in life, yet are forced to invest in super, on which they may be taxed at greater rate than their current income tax rate.

Read more: Productivity Commission finds super a bad deal. And yes, it comes out of wages

The super system is designed around individuals, yet most people operate within households.

The PC is right to call for an inquiry into the entire system design. It would be an opportunity to examine the interaction of super with everything else, whether it is doing what it should, and whether it is treating different types of Australians in the way we would want.

Read more: Superannuation: why we stick with the duds

– ref. The Productivity Commission inquiry was just the start. It’s time for a broader review of super and how much it is needed – http://theconversation.com/the-productivity-commission-inquiry-was-just-the-start-its-time-for-a-broader-review-of-super-and-how-much-it-is-needed-109661

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Thorp, Professor of Finance, University of Sydney

Picking an under-performing superannuation fund can cost you about 13 years’ pay over a working lifetime – roughly the value of an apartment in Melbourne or Sydney.

High fees alone can delete two years’ pay, and poor investment performance can account for the rest. These are just some of many disturbing calculations made by the Productivity Commission in its landmark assessment.

After more than 25 years of compulsory super, numerous attempts to improve competition, and multiple reviews and inquiries, material differences in superannuation fund performance persist.

Around 5 million super accounts are in chronically under performing funds. The resulting damage to retirement incomes is “nigh impossible to overstate” according to the Commission.

Read more: Productivity Commission finds super a bad deal. And yes, it comes out of wages

Why do so many of us pick super funds that lose earnings by sub-standard management and high fees?

One reason is that many of us actually don’t choose a fund – we let an outdated default system choose for us. Another is that if we do try to choose for ourselves, we face a complex decision, often hidden in a morass of product information, calculators and forms.

Defaults date back to union times

The start of compulsory super in Australia was in industrial claims by unions in the late 1980s for benefits in the form of employer contributions. In 1992 responsibility for ensuring employers paid super was transferred to the the Australian Taxation Office. But the early ties to the wage setting system, and unions and employer organisations, persist.

At present, workers who do not choose their own superannuation fund are given an account in the (default) fund chosen by their employer, commonly from options prescribed in workplace agreements. Consequently, workers often acquire a new super account with each new employer, from a set of funds decided by various industrial agreements.

Read more: How changes noted in the 1992-93 cabinet papers affect our super today

This default fund arrangement means that: first, many people are losing savings to redundant fees and insurance premiums as they change jobs and acquire multiple accounts; second, that vulnerable workers such as women, gig-economy workers, casuals and young people are most affected; and third, that competition for members can be dulled by entrenched relationships between employers and funds.

There is no doubt the default system needs a complete renovation. We should not tolerate multiple fees and charges and persistent underperformance in a system where workers are forced to save.

The Commission wants best-in-show defaults

The Commission proposes that members only ever hold one (default) account, supported by a centralised, online service such as myGov. When people change or add jobs, their super contributions would go to their current active account, unless they decide otherwise.

More controversially, the Commission argues for an expert-selected, shortlist of funds to help new workers pick the first one.

If new workers don’t choose a fund for themselves, they would be (sequentially) allocated to funds on the short-list. The industry fears that the short-list could cause excessive concentration, trickery in order to get on the list, and the demise of good funds that just miss out. The Commission reasons that competition to be on the list will raise fund performance and save defaulting members billions.

Any short list is too long if members don’t have the information they need to make a sound comparison between superannuation entities.

Production Commission video outlining its draft report released in May 2018.

Because we are very bad at fine print…

The report recommends funds publish “simple, single-page product dashboards for all superannuation investment options”. In fact, the Securities and Investments Commission is developing a one-page dashboard for MySuper default products, but dashboards can be hard for members to find (hidden behind a lot of “clicks”), difficult to compare, and challenging to understand.

Experiments to assess whether super fund members would be able to detect an under-performing fund using the dashboard, if the under-performance appeared gradually over a period of “years”, show serious weaknesses.

In one experiment, participants noticed rising fees, and would switch funds to avoid them, but would tolerate low returns for very long periods. One of the main items on the dashboard is a graph that’s designed to show historical investment performance against the fund’s target. However, experiment participants rated the graph as hard to use because of its complication.

…and find it hard to understand risk

Most concerning was how poorly participants understood information about risk. It is hard to overstate the importance of a grasp of investment risk to a sound comparison of superannuation funds. About 70% of default account balances are invested in risky “growth” assets that earn higher average returns by accepting higher variability of returns.

Unfortunately, the industry (and regu

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

latory) rules mean risk information only shows the likelihood of negative returns, not the range of possible returns. Fewer than 20% of participants in the experiment were able to answer simple comprehension questions about the risk information correctly.

Read more: HILDA Survey reveals striking gender and age divide in financial literacy. Test yourself with this quiz

The Commission rightly recommends the dashboards be simple and effective, that they promote comparisons and be easy to find at critical times for decisions.

But it’s also important to realise many workers, especially young or new workers, are unlikely to be able to use the dashboards to choose well. It’s why we need good defaults.

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

– ref. Superannuation: why we stick with the duds – http://theconversation.com/superannuation-why-we-stick-with-the-duds-109660

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Macquarie University

You don’t have to be an avid gardener or know all the Latin names of plants to appreciate the opportunity for reflection that a stroll in the garden can afford us. The explosion of colours, shapes, and textures in the garden, the tenacity and ingenuity of the plants, so determined to claim their right to life and beauty, can suspend for us the troubling aspects of everyday life.

But gardens are also bound to their political and religious history, traces of which can be found in our ongoing cultural obsession with them. The connection between the famous gardens of Versailles, once the coveted possession of Louis XIV, and our humble back garden is deeper than we might imagine.

Read more: Friday essay: what is it about Versailles?

In the book of Genesis, our creation begins in Eden, the “garden of God” which our ancestors, Adam and Eve, failed to appreciate. Having lost our privileged access to this divine garden because of their sin, we perpetually try to re-create it – in our homes, in our cities, in our heads. The earthly garden as a reflection of the paradise we can hope to experience after death is also a central motif in the Qur’an, a promise delivered by Allah himself.

Adam and Eve Chased out of the Terrestrial Paradise. Jean Achille Benouville, 1841. Wikimedia

Gods and kings

In the ancient Near East, in whose fertile soil the Biblical traditions took shape, kings (who often assumed priestly duties) were believed to have the monopoly of communicating with the gods in the royal garden. This was seen as a microcosm of the divine garden.

In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (from around 2000 BCE), the hero-king Gilgamesh travels to the wondrous garden of the sun-god, where flowers boast precious gems instead of leaves, in a quest to claim immortality. Although immortality eludes Gilgamesh, the divine garden offers him wisdom. Thus equipped, he returns to his city, Uruk, also known as “the garden of Gilgamesh,” and builds magnificent walls which will etch his name into the memory of mankind.

Read more: Guide to the classics: the Epic of Gilgamesh

In another story, despite his uneasy relationship with the fertility goddess Inanna, whose advances he eventually rejects, Gilgamesh poses as her dedicated gardener. He carves a throne and a bed for Inanna from the Huluppu tree while she makes him a magical drum and drumstick from it to summon warriors to battle. When Inanna’s favourite tree is threatened by a serpent nesting at its roots, only Gilgamesh and his companions rush to her aid.

Throughout the Near East, the garden was a place where gods confirmed the legitimacy of kings. Sargon I (1920-1881 BCE), the founder of the Akkadian-Sumerian empire, poses in the epic The Legend of Sargon as a humble gardener, and was hand-picked by the goddess to become the king.

Ancient Near Eastern kings invested exorbitant sums of money in building magnificent royal gardens, architectural marvels which crystallised in people’s minds their unique communion with the gods. Sennacherib (704-681 BCE) likely commissioned the famous hanging gardens to be built near his capital Nineveh, although we still commonly refer to them as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

‘Garden party of Aššurbanipal’ relief, reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Found in Nineveh, Iraq, dated circa 645 BCE. British Museum

The notion was also known to the Israelite king Solomon (circa 970-931 BCE), who proudly announced his construction of lavish, well-irrigated gardens and groves, and was widely used by the Achaemenids (a Persian dynasty). Indeed the Persian word for an enclosed garden, pairi-daêza, was introduced into Greek as paradeisos (“paradise”) by the historian Xenophon.

A possible image of Prince Mirza Hindal in a Garden from Los Angeles County Museum of Arts (public domain). India, Mughal, 1600-1610. Wikimedia

In his biography of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the Xenophon notes with admiration the king’s impeccable gardening skills which matched his royal virtue. Seleucus I, Alexander the Great’s general who came to rule Babylon, also embraced the profile of the king as gardener. His famous garden at Daphne, outside Antioch, renowned for its abundance of shady laurel trees, tall cypresses, and perennial fountains, was closely associated with the foundation of the Seleucid dynasty and Apollo, their divine patron. In the east the tradition never lost its appeal.

From the Middle East to the world

The Romans, who inherited the kingdoms of Alexander’s successors, adopted the ideology of gardens with renewed zeal, transplanting it in Europe. The Roman Empire withered, but generations of aspiring aristocrats and rulers, including Charlemagne, Count Robert II of Artois (1250-1302), Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464), and Henri II (1519-1559) never forgot the sense of grandeur and superhuman aura that exotic, exclusive gardens could afford them.

Dating from the Middle Ages, the Vatican Gardens, owned by the Pope, continue to evoke the political and religious dimensions of the garden, which were especially celebrated in Britain with the ascension of Henry VIII in 1509. European colonization of the Middle East saw the idea of the garden reintroduced in the places of its origin, but, also imported in the New World. Gardens such as the Victoria gardens in Mumbai showed off the legitimacy of British rule.

Read more: The science is in: gardening is good for you

The Vatican evokes the political and religious dimensions of gardens. Shutterstock

The connection of the garden with politics remains strong. Community gardens are cast as an epitome of democratic values, and the Royal Gardens in all major Australian cities advocate inclusiveness, despite their monarchical titles. Gardens surrounded ancient temples to bring worshippers closer to god; gardens surround war memorials inviting us to reflect on life lost and life gained.

So next time you’re wandering around your own garden, reflect on the fact that you’re walking in the footsteps of the kings and queens of yesteryear, in your own slice of paradise.

– ref. Heaven on earth: the ancient roots of your backyard garden – http://theconversation.com/heaven-on-earth-the-ancient-roots-of-your-backyard-garden-108682

EveningReport Editor’s Note: See Also The Ultimate Guide to Butterflies & How to Prevent Their Decline – DIY Garden

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Higher Education Program Director, Grattan Institute

Four years on from the worst new graduate employment outcomes ever, the 2018 statistics released today show cause for optimism. Although full-time employment rates remain well down on a decade ago, they are improving.

Graduates in health-related courses fare the best

In early 2018, about four months after completing an undergraduate course, 73% of new graduates who were looking for full-time employment had found it. This continues a positive trend since the low point of 68% in 2014. But apart from the early 1990s recession, it’s still a poor result by historical standards.

Full-time undergraduate employment rates, approximately four months after completion. Department of Education and Training, Graduate Outcomes Survey and Graduate Careers Australia, Graduate Destination Survey

These overall results hide substantial differences between graduates of different degrees. As usual, health-related occupations have the best employment rate, with medicine, pharmacy and physiotherapy recording more than 90% employment.

Also as usual, graduates in the visual and performing arts have the worst outcomes, with just over half in full-time employment. Biological sciences graduates did better in 2018 than 2017, but with 58% in full-time employment they’re still in a tough labour market.

A follow-up survey three years after graduation suggests employment rates improve significantly over time, although the strong fields at the four-month point usually retain their top position.

Job quality is stable

Compared to 2017, job quality for new graduates in 2018 is stable. In both 2017 and 2018, 72% of graduates working full-time were in professional or managerial occupations. On a more subjective measure, in 2018 27% of graduates with full-time jobs felt they were not fully using their skills, slightly up on 2017.

Read more: Five myths about Australian university graduate outcomes

Unfortunately, graduates from courses with poor overall full-time employment rates also have relatively low rates of professional and managerial employment and relatively high rates of reporting their job does not fully use their skills.

Starting salaries are up slightly, but the gender gap has increased

Median starting salaries also differ significantly between fields in 2018, ranging from a high of A$83,700 for dentistry to a low of A$47,000 for pharmacy. This reflects their system for professional registration.

The overall median starting salary in 2018 was A$61,000, up from A$60,000 in 2017. This roughly reflects salary increases across the overall labour market.

The gender pay gap for graduates widened again in 2018. from www.shutterstock.com

In 2017, the graduate gender pay gap had narrowed to men earning 2% more than women. But in 2018 it widened again to 5%, or A$3,000 a year. Some of this is due to men choosing courses that lead to higher-paying jobs. But even in highly-feminised fields such as nursing and teaching men report slightly higher median salaries.

Prestige universities do not provide better outcomes

At first glance, the most surprising results in this survey are those reporting outcomes by university. Students from some of the most prestigious universities report poor employment and salary outcomes, while students from some regional universities do very well.

These counter-intuitive results highlight the importance of looking carefully at other characteristics of graduates. Regional universities enrol more mature-age students than big-city sandstone universities. Older people often already have work histories and current jobs, which is why they earn more when they graduate.

Read more: Does it pay to graduate from an ‘elite’ university? Not as much as you’d think

Sandstone universities are also more likely to have large arts and science faculties, and graduates in those fields can drag down median salaries. Even so, previous studies have found employers typically don’t initially pay a wage premium to graduates from sandstone universities. They want to see performance before they pay more, rather than trust university prestige.

Employer satisfaction

The complicated issue of graduate quality is examined in another report released today, the employer satisfaction survey. This survey has a bias, as it relies on graduates nominating their supervisor to participate.

Graduates who think they’re doing badly are unlikely to nominate their supervisor, so the report’s 85% overall employer satisfaction is probably above the true number. But the survey is still useful for comparisons.

As with some of the other employment outcomes, employer satisfaction by university does not follow any prestige-based pattern. Only one sandstone university, the University of Queensland, makes it to the top ten universities by employer satisfaction. Bond University graduates have the most satisfied employers, followed by Western Sydney University and James Cook University graduates.

Read more: The problem isn’t unskilled graduates, it’s a lack of full-time job opportunities

While employers were generally happy with their graduate hires, 40% said the qualification could have better developed graduates “technical and professional skills”. That seems high. On the other hand, few employers (5%) suggested the qualification could improve “teamwork and interpersonal skills”.

Job growth is critical to employment outcomes

The government wants universities to do more on graduate employment. Graduate job outcomes are likely to be part of new university performance funding scheme.

But as the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, says in his media release on these reports, job creation is crucial. Especially as total graduate numbers continue to increase, job growth is the vital link between employability, which universities can help with, and actual employment for their graduates.

In 2014, an increasing number of graduates collided with a declining number of professional and managerial jobs for people aged between 20 and 24 years. This is what caused the worst-ever graduate employment outcome.

Professional and managerial jobs, people aged 20 to 24 years. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Detailed labour force

But since 2014, with a couple of hesitations, the jobs trend has been positive. Job numbers were still going up in late 2018, which is a good sign for recent graduates looking for work.

The labour market will always fluctuate, but at least in the short term both the outcomes survey released today and the latest ABS figures suggest employment opportunities for graduates are increasing.

– ref. Graduate employment is up, but finding a job can still take a while – http://theconversation.com/graduate-employment-is-up-but-finding-a-job-can-still-take-a-while-109654

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

When Amazon launched its Alexa virtual assistant in 2014, it probably didn’t think that a bird would expose a potentially significant legal issue with the device. But an African grey parrot named Rocco, living in Blewbury, England, appears to have done just that.

Last month, Rocco made headlines for his habit of secretly ordering goods through his owner’s voice-activated Alexa device, which charges purchases to the linked Amazon account. The African grey species, which is renowned for its ability to mimic human speech, successfully ordered fruit, vegetables, ice-cream, a kettle, light bulbs and a kite.

Virtual assistants such as Alexa are growing in popularity. The number of users worldwide is projected to reach 1.8 billion by 2021. Unlike some rival models, such as Google Home, Alexa does not have individual voice recognition capability. Since Alexa cannot currently be trained to respond only to a selected person, anyone in your home could purchase items through your account.

Rocco’s ability to manipulate Alexa raises an important question: if someone made an unauthorised purchase on your Alexa device, would you be legally liable to pay for it?

The answer lies in contract law.

Read more: Digital assistants like Alexa and Siri might not be offering you the best deals

You are responsible

The setting for voice purchasing via Alexa can only be be switched on or off. That is, either the function is deactivated so that no one can make vocal purchase orders at all, or it’s calibrated to require a vocal confirmation code to authorise purchases.

In the first case, you cannot enjoy one of the technology’s most convenient features. In the second case, you are still susceptible to a third party – human or capable animal – overhearing and mimicking your voice to make illegitimate purchases. You must then act swiftly to cancel the order in time.

Amazon’s Conditions of Use, which govern voice purchasing through Alexa, state:

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your account, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password.

A golden rule of Australian contract law is that once you sign a contract you are deemed to have read, understood and accepted the terms – even if you haven’t. This is also the legal position in the US, whose laws govern the Amazon Conditions of Use.

So, when you sign up to use Alexa, you agree to be responsible for any purchases made on the device by you, your resident parrot, a mischievous friend or relative, or an unwelcome burglar. It doesn’t matter whether you intended the purchase or not.

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

There are exceptions

If your pet is responsible, you will have a stronger case to avoid paying because animals other than humans lack the legal capacity to enter into contracts, so the transaction would be “voidable”. If a human is to blame, which is more likely, there is a legal exception that might still save you having to pay up.

African grey parrots are very good at mimicking human speech.

Under both Australian and US law, where a party to a contract is mistaken about the identity of their counterpart, the contract may be void under the “doctrine of mistake”.

In Australia, this rule applies where parties do not contract face-to-face, which will always be the case when someone orders through Amazon via Alexa. The critical factor is “materiality” – you need to prove that mistaken identity was vitally important to the transaction.

This will be difficult given Amazon has no interest in who specifically is ordering its products, and the Alexa owner would not normally care who at Amazon’s end has processed the order. But the fact someone made a purchase without the owner’s permission in circumstances where they could not reasonably prevent it might suffice as “material” for the courts.

American law is similar. Section 153 of the influential Restatement (Second) of Contracts states that a party can plead mistake and escape the contract where the mistake is material, and:

1. enforcing the contract would be unconscionable (unjust), or
2. the other party had reason to know of the mistake or actually caused it through their own fault.

Amazon would never be at fault, nor able to tell if an unauthorised party made a purchase on Alexa, so you would need to prove that the transaction was unjust and that mistaken identity was critically important.

A potential snag is the exception stated in Section 154: this says that Section 153 won’t apply if you and the other party have agreed that you will bear the risk. It might come down to how a court reads the Amazon Conditions of Use.

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

Legal precedents

Recent US court decisions emphasise that the mistake doctrine won’t apply where the other party’s identity is immaterial or irrelevant. Again, it would certainly be relevant where the Alexa owner had no way of preventing the unauthorised purchase (such as criminal activity). Enforcement would be grossly unfair in that situation.

The courts would probably not be as lenient if it were a friend, relative or pet doing the deed, as their use of Alexa is an assumed risk on the owner’s part. But it is still arguable that the owner should be legally excused because they had no involvement whatsoever in the purchase. The nature and value of the products purchased might also weigh into a court’s assessment.

To avoid a costly lawsuit, Alexa owners should deactivate voice purchasing when the unit is unsupervised, or discretely implement and use a confirmation code for voice purchases.

Users should also regularly check their accounts to ensure that any unauthorised purchases are picked up early and cancelled in time.

Finally, consider a dog instead of a parrot.

– ref. ‘Alexa, call my lawyer!’ Are you legally liable if someone makes a purchase using your virtual assistant? – http://theconversation.com/alexa-call-my-lawyer-are-you-legally-liable-if-someone-makes-a-purchase-using-your-virtual-assistant-109075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Mayes, DECRA Research Fellow, Deakin University

This article is part of a series focusing on the politics of food – what we eat, how our views of food are changing and why it matters from a cultural and political standpoint.

Like the Anzac soldier and bronzed surf lifesaver, the farmer holds a special place in the Australian imagination. Through hard work on a harsh and unforgiving continent, the farmer cultivated a nation. Or so the story goes.

Is this the whole story? Farming and agriculture were crucial to establishing the new nation, but they were also intimately involved in settler-colonial violence and dispossession of Indigenous Australians’ land and foodways.

The mythos of the farmer

In 1906, George Essex Evans celebrated the farmer in his poem, “The Men Upon the Land”. According to Evans, it is not the bankers or office workers who “shall make Australia great,” but:

the hearts that build the nation, are the men upon the land.

The agrarian nationalism of Evans’ poetry taps into a long history that regards the farmer as the backbone of society. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of America, famously described farmers as “the most valuable citizens”.

While factory workers and artisans could flee to another country if things got difficult, Jefferson said, the farmers:

…are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.

As such, farmers put down literal and metaphorical roots in a place.

In the 1930s, these ideas of agrarian civic virtue formed the basis of the Country Party in Australia. Earle Page, 11th prime minister and leader of the Country Party (1921-1939), used the notion of “country-mindedness” to argue that Australia depended on farmers and graziers for its high standard of living. It was also the farmers who forged the core elements of the national character by taming the environment, making it productive, and creating a home.

Therefore, according to Page, the nation owes a special debt to the farmer.

Read more: Water in northern Australia: a history of Aboriginal exclusion

The mythos of the Australian farmer who battled a harsh environment of drought, floods and fires continues today. Although over 85% of Australians live in urban centres, it is in the bush, writes historian Don Watson, where “the real Australians live”.

The existence of these “real Australians” – the bushman and the farmer – continues to authenticate and deepen urban-dwelling Australians’ claim to the continent. Note the way prime ministers from Bob Hawke to Malcolm Turnbull wear Akubra hats and R.M. Williams apparel and pose with tractors in a bid to appear “authentic”.

Politicians frequently dust off the Akubra hat when they visit regional Australia. Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Violence of settling a new population

The celebration of the farmer for taming the continent and creating a homeland for white Australia, however, masks the role of agriculture in settler-colonial violence.

Agriculture played an important part in establishing settler-colonial societies such as Australia, as well as the United States, Canada and New Zealand. In contrast to exploitative colonialism, in which a nation takes all the mineral resources of a colony and then leaves, settler-colonialism seeks to establish a new and permanent society.

Agriculture allows a population to settle, reproduce and grow at the cost of Indigenous peoples.

As Patrick Wolfe, an anthropologist who studied settler-colonial societies, has observed, agriculture “progressively eats into Indigenous territory” for the reproduction of the settler population while simultaneously curtailing “the reproduction of Indigenous modes of production”.

This situation has forced Indigenous peoples to either enter the new economy of a colony, usually in the form of unfree labour, or raid farms for food, which Wolfe notes is “the classic pretext for colonial death-squads”.

Map showing regions of Australia devoted to sheep and wheat in the 1920s. National Library of Australia

In Australia, the expansion of agriculture led to many of the bloodiest massacres in the 19th century.

Declarations of the intent to murder were not kept quiet. In 1824, L. E. Threlkeld, an English missionary, records in his diary a public meeting in Bathurst where a man named William Cox, “one the largest holders of sheep in the colony”, declared:

…that the best thing that could be done, would be to shoot all the Blacks and manure the ground with their carcas[s]es, which was all the good they were fit for!

In May and September of that year, there were two separate massacres within 50km of Bathurst. At least 51 Wiradjuri men, women and children were murdered. It is unknown if Cox was involved, but from Threlkeld’s account, he had certainly made his views clear.

Agricultural and evolutionary progress

Agriculture not only instigated violent clashes, but was also used as an evolutionary marker. The “stadial theory” of societal evolution, associated with the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th Century and influential at the time of colonisation, held that there are four stages of civilisation: hunter and gather, pastoral and herding, settled agriculture and commercial exchange.

On this basis, Aboriginal Australians were regarded as the lowest stage of societal evolution, a stage where there were no property rights and therefore no basis for claims to territory.

As early as Lachlan Macquarie’s tenure as governor of NSW in the 1810s, efforts were made to forcibly transform local Indigenous populations into settled farmers.

In 1840, the London-based Imperial Land Commissioners advised NSW Governor George Gipps that:

…reserves of Land should be made for [Aboriginal peoples’] use and benefit in order that the best means should be taken for enabling them to pass from the hunting to the agricultural and pastoral life.

By the 1860s, farming and gardening were key activities of the “civilising” process of the protectorates and missions. It was believed that cultivation and improvement of the soil would correspond to a cultivation and improvement of the self.

Yet, in this process of “improvement”, traditional lands were stolen and intricate systems of knowledge disrupted.

These are not the stories we tend to tell about farming in Australia. Few books on the history of agriculture in Australia mention the violence, dispossession and evolutionary ideas that contributed to the destruction of Indigenous foodways.

Read more: Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on

Instead, we focus on the resilience and the triumph of the farmer battling the elements and creating a new homeland. According to environmental historian, Cameron Muir, this myth is:

…founded on a perception of the Australian environment as hostile and useless, and hence why the moral character of those who battled the land and made it grow European commodity plants was revered.

But was the environment hostile to human flourishing?

The belief that Australia was inhospitable ignores the fact that Indigenous peoples had lived on the continent for more than 60,000 years.

Tragically, over the past 230 years, Indigenous foodways have progressively been decimated, and today Indigenous Australians suffer disproportionately from food insecurity and diet-related diseases.

Thus, the myth of the battling farmer not only celebrates but silences historical wrongs and their present-day effects.

A way forward?

The recent recognition of the work of Bruce Pascoe and others has challenged the centuries-old “accepted view” of Indigenous peoples in Australia as:

simply wandering from plant to plant, kangaroo to kangaroo in hapless opportunism.

Pascoe highlights the intricacy and sophistication of Indigenous foodways in cultivating, harvesting and processing foods.

Read more: Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated

Drawing on the work of Pascoe, Charles Massy, a fifth-generation sheep farmer in NSW and agriculture reform advocate, has tried to promote his approach to “regenerative agriculture” within the context of the history of Australian agriculture – a history he considers environmentally and socially destructive.

He acknowledges the importance of recognising the past and continuing connection of Indigenous peoples to the land and contends that to:

…manage, nurture and regenerate country, then we need to fathom where it came from … what it is made of, how it works and functions, how it was managed before us.

While we can’t change past wrongs, we can start re-thinking the environmental, social and political implications of the way we produce our food on this continent.

Restoring the land and environment is important, but we also need to address the role of farming in dispossession and violence. This is not only about remembering, but moving forward in a way that avoids repeating the past and may open up ways of restoring Indigenous foodways and listening to the voices of those who have suffered and resisted settler-colonialism.

Read other articles in the politics of food series here.

– ref. Cultivating a nation: why the mythos of the Australian farmer is problematic – http://theconversation.com/cultivating-a-nation-why-the-mythos-of-the-australian-farmer-is-problematic-106517

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By H. Peter Soyer, Professor of Dermatology, The University of Queensland

There’s a lot to be said for sunshine – both good and bad. It’s our main source of vitamin D, which is essential for bone and muscle health. Populations with higher levels of sun exposure also have better blood pressure and mood levels, and fewer autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

On the other hand, excess UV exposure is estimated to contribute to 95% of melanomas and 99% of non-melanoma skin cancers. These skin cancers account for a whopping 80% of all new cancers each year in Australia.

Like any medicine, the dose counts. And in Australia, particularly in the summer, our dose of UV is so high that even short incidental exposures – like while you hang out the washing or walk from your carpark into the shops – adds up to huge lifetime doses.

Fortunately, when it comes to tanning, the advice is clear: don’t. A UV dose that’s high enough to induce a tan is already much higher than the dose needed for vitamin D production. A four-year-long study of 1,113 people in Nambour, Queensland, found no difference in vitamin D levels between sunscreen users and sunscreen avoiders.

Read more: Monday’s medical myth: we’re not getting enough sun

What’s happening in the skin when I get a tan?

A tan forms when ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun discharge too much energy into our skin, causing damage to membranes, proteins, and most importantly, DNA. The excess energy of UVB rays (part of the UV ray that penetrates the upper layers of our skin) prevents the DNA from copying correctly when the cells multiply which can cause mutations.

UVA rays which penetrate deeper into the skin can trigger a reactive and harmful process (known as oxidative free radical damage) which can damage not just DNA but also many of the skin’s structural components. It’s been estimated a single day’s sun exposure can cause up to a million DNA defects in each skin cell.

Excess energy from UVB rays causes DNA bases to link up incorrectly, making it difficult to copy accurately and leading to mutations that can cause cancer. NASA/David Herring

Once their DNA repair mechanisms detect large amounts of damage, skin cells signal pigment-producing cells (melanocytes) to start producing extra melanin, the pigment that gives our skin, hair and eyes their colour.

The extra melanin is parcelled up and transported into other skin cells to settle over and protect the part of the cell containing the DNA. This filters some UV rays and gives tanned skin its brown colour. But this tan doesn’t provide much help – it’s only as protective as SPF 2 sunscreen.

Read more: Explainer: what happens to your skin when you get sunburnt?

Wrinkles, blotches and broken capillaries

Two in three Australians will develop a skin cancer in their lifetime, mostly thanks to the DNA damage caused by UVB rays. But premature ageing is a less well-known effect of too much sun exposure.

UVA rays penetrate deep into the dermis, the lower layer of the skin, and generate reactive oxygen that damages the skin’s structures. Over time this causes solar elastosis, where irregularly thickened clumps of elastic fibres form, then degrade into disorganised, tangled structures.

This 70-year-old has deep wrinkling and skin darkening caused by long-term sun exposure on her neck and part of her chest exposed by her shirt, while the rest of her skin has stayed relatively clear and unwrinkled. Author provided

Eventually this can take the form of roughening or leathery appearance, deep wrinkling, dark blotches and star-shaped white patches, and an overall yellowish tone. Prematurely-aged skin is often more easily-bruised or has broken capillaries.

Dark blotches and white scar-like patches are common signs of ageing caused by too much sun. DermNetNZ.org

But I like the way a tan looks. What now?

It’s well known that a tanned look seems healthy and attractive to many Australians. Recent research shows Australians who feel particularly self-conscious about their body are more likely to intentionally tan to increase their sense of attractiveness.

Fortunately, there’s a safe way to indulge in the aesthetics of golden-brown skin: any tan that comes out of a bottle with the active ingredient dihydroxyacetone. This is a colourless sugar molecule that turns brown when it reacts with amino acids in the skin. It’s safe to use because it doesn’t penetrate deeper than the very top layer of skin, where the cells are already dead.

Don’t be tempted by solariums and sunbeds, because they emit up to six times as much UV as the midday summer sun. Commercial solariums are illegal in Australia for this reason, but there are still privately-owned sunbeds in use. Avoid them at all costs.

Read more: How do the chemicals in sunscreen protect our skin from damage?

So how do I stay sun safe without living in a cave?

There are two parts to sunsafe behaviour in Australia that lets you get the health benefits of sunshine and prevents you from being one of the 2.4 million Aussies getting sunburnt each weekend.

First, you should wear 30+ SPF sunscreen every day when the UV index in your area is three or higher. By putting it on everywhere that isn’t covered by that day’s outfit, you protect yourself from the damage accumulated by short exposures, day in and day out, in Australia’s intense UV environment.

You should make sunscreen part of your morning routine, like brushing your teeth. Use the Cancer Council’s free Sun Smart app or check your local weather report to find out the UV index where you are today.

During the cooler months in southern parts of Australia, when the UV index is often below three, it’s good to spend some time on most days, in the middle of the day, with skin exposed to the sun to maintain healthy vitamin D levels.

So, a lunchtime stroll with your sleeves rolled up is a good idea in July in Hobart, where the UV index only gets up to one. In Brisbane at the same time, with an average July UV index of four, you don’t need to take special steps to get enough vitamin D.

Second, if you’re planning to be outside for a prolonged time, you should follow the Slip Slop Slap Seek Slide advice. Slip on a long-sleeved shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat, seek shade and slide on some sunglasses. Reapply your sunscreen every two hours, and be sure to use plenty: you want about a teaspoon each for your back, chest, head/neck, and each arm and leg.

– ref. There’s no such thing as a safe tan. Here’s what’s happening underneath your summer glow – http://theconversation.com/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-safe-tan-heres-whats-happening-underneath-your-summer-glow-109439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smerdon, Assistant Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

Economics teachers can all thank Pauline Hanson for providing an excellent example to add to their classes.

Indeed, it’s rare that Economics 101 lessons are as readily on display as in the Queensland senator’s “cash for cane toads” proposal.

Both textbook wisdom and historical failures tell us the plan won’t work.

Hanson’s proposal involves paying welfare recipients 10 cents for each toad they collect (alive) and hand over to their local council. The council would then kill the toads humanely in large freezers.

The senator is right to be concerned about the cane toad problem. Introduced in the 1930s as a biological fix to control native beetles eating sugar cane crops, the animals have prospered with devastating impact on native flora and fauna. It’s estimated there are now more than 200 million across Queensland and northern New South Wales.

Read more: We’ve cracked the cane toad genome, and that could help put the brakes on its invasion

They carry toxins at all stages of their life cycle, including as eggs. Ingesting the toxin is fatal to many Australian species. Their voracious appetites both deplete insect populations such as honey bees and threaten the food sources of other native animals.

The reason Hanson’s idea is fundamentally flawed, both in theory and in practice, has to do with incentives.

A native of Latin America, the cane toad has adapted well to Australia due to the lack of natural predators. Toads have spread from Queensland as far west as Broome, Western Australia. www.shutterstock.com

History repeating

Incentives are central to economics. They are ingrained in the laws of demand and supply, and the setting of interest rates and taxes.

Humans react to incentives. The key is setting them just right by accounting for all of the costs involved.

This is the most obvious and least interesting problem with the scheme. In NSW and Queensland, you can earn 10 cents by returning an empty drink container to your local supermarket. That’s a task exponentially easier than catching a cane toad and delivering it alive to your local council chambers.

If it were just a case of the incentives being too low, the solution would be simple: raise the price.

However, this would run into a surprising phenomenon called the Cobra effect. Also known as “perverse incentives”, it describes a situation in which a seemingly well-intentioned proposal actually makes things much worse.

The Cobra effect is named after a curious incident from British Colonial India. Faced with a cobra outbreak, the local government of Delhi enacted a cash-for-cobras scheme, with initial success. But as cobras became harder to find, the locals responded to the incentives in a completely logical way: they started breeding the snakes to claim their bounties. When the scheme was scrapped, breeders released their now-worthless snakes, resulting in the city having more cobras than before the scheme.

A similar case comes from French-run Vietnam.

When the colonial government built a sewerage system under Hanoi early in the 20th century, it inadvertently helped create a rat plague. Its solution was a cash-for-rats scheme – though to save the government having to dispose of hundreds of thousands of rat carcasses, it only required collectors turning in a rat’s tail to claim their bounty.

Crowd displeasers

The consequences this time were not only the creation of pop-up rat-breeding farms, but also hordes of tail-less rats roaming the city streets.

Of course, at its current pittance of 10 cents a toad, Hanson’s proposal is unlikely to lead to lucrative cane-toad farming.

It’s a reasonable claim that the incentives would simply be too low to be effective, leading to no change in the status quo (besides large freezers sitting empty at local council buildings).

Yet even as a toothless policy, a cash-for-cane-toads scheme could produce other unintended consequences.

When people already do something out of their own goodness, like volunteering, putting a price on the activity by offering chump change can actually put them off. Behavioural economists call this “crowding out of intrinsic motivation”. It explains why blood donation rates are no different between countries that pay donors (such as the United States) and those that rely on volunteers (such as Australia).

Read more: For love, not money: kidney exchange encourages social contract

One of the best-known examples in economics involved a day-care in Israel that introduced small fines for parents who were late picking up their children. The result was a doubling of lateness. Before the fine, parents would try to come on time because it was the right thing to do. After the fine, however, that moral value had a price: about three dollars.

Notably, parents continued to come late after the fines were removed. Parents who pay pocket money for chores need only imagine how their own kids would respond if they moved to a “volunteer system”.

Thus economics gives us a third reason to doubt Senator Hanson’s proposal will work: the risk that altruistic citizens who have culled cane toads for free will be discouraged by a price being put on the activity.

Instead of considering the “priceless” value of native ecosystems when spotting an offending creature, people may start weighing up their efforts against 10 cents. This cost-benefit thinking could continue even after the compensation scheme ends.

The cane toad is the world’s largest toad. An adult’s body is typically 10-15 cm in length, but some grow at large as 24 cm. www.shutterstock.com

That’s the crux of why this payment scheme wouldn’t work. Setting a high price perverts the incentives, while setting a low price crowds out intrinsic motivations. In either case, taxpayer money is wasted and the toad problem is potentially made worse.

The best approach is to leave prices out of it and trust our experts, who are continuing to come up with remarkably innovative ideas to solve the cane toad problem.

Senator Hanson’s proposal was no doubt made with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, in reality the only real beneficiaries would be economics teachers.

– ref. The economics of ‘cash for cane toads’ – a textbook example of perverse incentives – http://theconversation.com/the-economics-of-cash-for-cane-toads-a-textbook-example-of-perverse-incentives-109574

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

Home prices slid in 2018, in some places by quite a lot.

According to the widely-used Corelogic Hedonic Home Value Index, home prices were down 4.8% across the nation in 2018. Sydney was particularly hard hit, down 8.9% and prices in Melbourne slipped 7.0%. Hobart was a bright spot, but an exception, up 8.7%.

You might be dying to ask what “hedonic” means. The word relates to pleasure, in this case the pleasure of owning a home.

Hedonic. It’s how we compare like with like

In earlier times monthly house price moves were calculated by comparing the average price of houses sold in one month with the average price of houses sold in the previous month.

But what if the “pleasure” that was sold in that month was different from the pleasure that was sold the previous month? What if, for example, in December mainly good five-bedroom mansions in good suburbs were sold, whereas in January it was mainly one bedroom dumps located where people didn’t want to live? The average recorded price would go down even if the price of individual houses had not.

The hedonic index gets around this by comparing like with like – the price of three-bedroom homes in a middle ranking suburb with the price of three-bedroom homes in the same middle ranking suburb and so on. It’s made up of a lot of indexes combined, and is unaffected by the mix of properties that happen to be sold in any particular month.

The results are not good news for current home owners, but they are worth putting into perspective.

How far back do you want to go?

In Melbourne prices are down 7.2% from their peak, but they are no lower than they were as recently as February 2017. In Sydney, prices are no lower than they were in August 2016 according to Corelogic.

So, should we focus on the latest very recent drop in prices, or the incredibly strong growth over the previous 20 years?

The following chart from Corelogic’s Head of Research Tim Lawless demonstrates that long-run growth in Sydney, as well as the fact there have been pretty significant short-run dips along the way.

The most obvious point to make is that if you bought recently then the current price drops hurt. If you had a 20% deposit, the latest falls in Sydney and Melbourne have wiped out about half of your starting equity; more if you factor in stamp duty and moving costs.

If you bought a longer time ago, you might feel the sting of the latest price slide just a touch, but you are still well ahead.

So from a personal perspective, it’s natural that some people will care a lot about what’s happened, and others won’t much mind.

What’ll it mean for the economy?

The biggest concern is the so-called “wealth effect”.

When home prices fall, homeowners feel (and are) poorer.

It affects how much they are prepared to spend, although as the Reserve Bank and others have pointed out the size of the effect remains unclear.

But it might be bigger than you think. Many of us aren’t rational. We have “reference points”. If, because of the barrage of media reports at the time, we use the start of 2018 (the top of the market) as our reference point, then even those of us who have owned properties for a long time will feel poorer. And because of that, we might spend less.

Since private spending accounts for well over half of Australia’s gross domestic product, spending less can have a big effect.

What’ll it mean for the banks?

Australia’s big four banks are the biggest lenders to residential property owners and are among the biggest companies in Australia.

Could the slide in property prices put them in jeopardy?

If a few homebuyers had a 20% deposit and suffered at most maybe a 15% fall in prices, there isn’t a problem, right?

That view is basically correct – except when it’s not.

Some lenders have been bulking up loans to borrowers who earlier took out, say, A$600,000. When their homes came to be worth, say, $1.5 million they lent them more – boosting their loans by most of the extra value.

The practice calls into question the view that only a small number of the most recent buyers are highly leveraged. Many more folks could be – but without the loan-level data that the banks have, we don’t know.

Is 2018 a good predictor of 2019?

At the heart of all of these questions is whether the 2018 price falls are likely to continue, which would mean them getting much bigger.

That depends on what caused them.

A key part of it was that banks (at least the big four) lent less than they used to. With less money borrowed, there was less money to bid up prices.

As I have noted before, Australian banks were arguably lending too much; about 25% more than US banks to equivalent borrowers.

Read more: Vital Signs: why now is the right time to clamp down on negative gearing

Post Royal Commission, that’s changed. As has been widely discussed, banks are now looking at borrower’s expenses much more carefully. Too carefully, according to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who has called on them to lend more.

The important point is that if there has been a one-off adjustment in the borrowing capacity of Australians, then the price falls should stop fairly soon: predictions of more modest falls in 2019 followed by a reset and uptick in 2020 mightn’t be too far off the mark.

If so, the short-term slide will remain for most people, just that.

Read more: Vital Signs: we are witnessing a slowly deflating property bubble, for now

– ref. Vital Signs: so far, it’s more of a house price blip than a bust in the making – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-so-far-its-more-of-a-house-price-blip-than-a-bust-in-the-making-109568

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Trigg, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English Literature, University of Melbourne

Review: Quarterly Essay, Net Loss, by Sebastian Smee

Guilty as charged. Yes, I spend too much time on social media. Yes, I have become more easily distracted. Yes, I have given up too much personal information to various apps and websites over the years. And yes, I have read a number of articles that articulate precisely how foolish, or at least, misguided this behaviour is.

And so when I opened up Sebastian Smee’s Quarterly Essay, Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age, I was primed to feed my own anxiety as I read his confessions: first, about how much time he spends on his phone, checking messages, listening to podcasts, watching videos, keeping an eye on Twitter and the news; and second, how conscious he is that he has given over various degrees of information about himself to the various interfaces and apps that relentlessly market this information on to other agencies in order to market other products back to the reduced versions of our selves we willingly project online.

Read more: Addicted to social media? Try an e-fasting plan

Quarterly Essay

If these were Smee’s confessions, I could easily make them my own too. Indeed, this is one of the ironies of contemporary digital life: the more Facebook, for example, extends its global reach, the more people can become instantly aware of discussions on Facebook about Facebook’s use and sale of the data it accumulates through our global conversations about why and how we use it, and its affects on our sense of self.

Smee is concerned with the fate of the “inner life” in contemporary culture: how we can any longer preserve the illusion that we each have a private inner core of being or selfhood that is untouched by the dispersal and dissemination of our public selves across a wide range of media. Has not that “inner life”, he asks, become weakened and thinned out, as a result of our perpetual, seemingly uncontrollable engagement with the algorithms and formulae of digital life and the surveillance cultures and technologies of late capitalism:

Once nurtured in secret, protected by norms of discretion or a presumption of mystery, this ‘inner’ self today feels harshly illuminated and remorselessly externalised, and at the same time flattened, constricted and quantified.

Smee argues that we have become complicit in this process of our own commodification and “reduction”. We are, he writes,

betrayed … by ourselves — by our willingness, what can often seem our eagerness, to make ourselves smaller

He claims, sometimes directly, sometimes more cautiously, that human nature is changing: “Today, being human means being distracted. It is our new default setting”.

This kind of claim is not new, of course. Anxiety about the contemporary age and its difference from the past dates back at least to medieval culture. More recently (but over a century ago), Virginia Woolf famously suggested that human nature changed “on or about December 1910”. Indeed, Smee’s machinic metaphor — “our new default setting” — demonstrates the extent to which industrialisation naturalised the idea of humanity as something that can be programmed. This metaphor would have been impossible, say, in the renaissance.

Nor is distraction a new phenomenon. In Fanny Burney’s Evelina (1778), a well-educated young girl, brought up in the country, is astonished to find how little attention is paid to the music and singing at the opera and other London entertainments:

There was an exceeding good concert, but too much talking to hear it well. Indeed I am quite astonished to find how little music is attended to in silence; for, though every body seems to admire, hardly any body listens.

Smee is not particularly interested in history, though. He offers many instances of what he sees as the problem: the way social media and our digital selves offer us only diminished, impoverished versions of ourselves that threaten to displace our inner lives. These lives are “tangled knots of narrative, with feelings and hurts and elaborate, fantastical dreams, which can be as enduring as mountains or as fleeting as clouds”, he writes.

To help us register what he thinks we are losing, Smee takes us through a range of examples from literature and art. Chekhov looms largest in his intellectual landscape, as a writer who most eloquently dramatizes the schism between the inside and the outside of the self, between a “true core” and a “sham exterior”. Cézanne, too, offers a vision of the self and “life” that is “fluid and multifaceted, like a rippling mosaic”. Smee insists that these rich and intense visions of human life are increasingly lost to us.

Yet his essay is itself a powerful demonstration of the inner life at work. It is not structured by argumentative sequence, empirical data or any theoretical work on contemporary digital culture; if anything, Smee defers judgments, sets problems aside, asks questions and refuses to push further.

Net Loss is a classic essay in Montaigne’s sense: experimenting and testing ideas (the French word essai comes from Latin exagium, “weighing”: itself appropriate to Smee’s astrological identity as a Libra, another account of the self he toys with then sets aside).

At one point he is tempted to read another story by Chekhov as “a prescient commentary” on the envy-inducing affects of Facebook. “I won’t go there,” he says. “But I will say two things that strike me about it now”.

For all his fear about loss, or losing the inner life by giving too much of it away through panic at our own mortality, Smee’s own choices, questions, worries, recollections, selections from books still structure his essay, which juxtaposes memories, quotations and descriptions of works of art, music, cinema and literature. The essay is a mosaic of cultural allusion that is meaningful precisely because it is held together by the narrative self that analyses and makes these connections. It is an example of distraction as an art form.

– ref. The art of distraction: Sebastian Smee’s Quarterly Essay – http://theconversation.com/the-art-of-distraction-sebastian-smees-quarterly-essay-109571

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michele Burford, Professor – Australian Rivers Institute, and Dean – Research Infrastructure, Griffith University

Outbreaks of algae have killed up to a million fish in the Murray Darling Basin over the last two weeks. The phenomena of “algae blooms”, when the population of algae in a river rapidly grows and dies, can be devastating to local wildlife, ecosystems and people. But what are algae blooms? What causes them, and can we prevent them?

Microscopic algae are fundamental to life on earth. These tiny plants provide the fuel that drives marine and freshwater foodwebs, and via photosynthesis, they gobble up carbon dioxide to help counteract emissions, and provide us with oxygen to breathe. Besides rivers, streams, lakes, estuaries and the coast, they can also be found in diverse environments such as snow, soil, and in corals.

Read more: Are toxic algal blooms the new normal for Australia’s major rivers?

But when humans channel agricultural run-off, sewerage and stormwater discharge into waterways, we dramatically increase the amount of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. This creates an imbalance, because some microscopic algae are supremely effective at mopping up nutrients and can grow very quickly, dividing up to once a day and quickly overtaking other species. The result is an algal bloom.

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) under a microscope. Author provided

So why don’t we have algal blooms all the time? This is because algae don’t just require nutrients to grow. Like any plant, factors such as temperature and light availability are also important in determining how quickly algae grow and whether they form blooms. Blooms also need slow moving or still water to become established.

In Australia, our algal blooms are typically in freshwaters. The main group of algae responsible for this are known as blue-green algae, or more accurately, cyanobacteria. They regularly bloom in warmer weather in our reservoirs, lakes and slow flowing rivers. In 2016, for example, 1,700km of the Murray River was affected by an algal bloom.

There are many ways they impact the environment and economy. Some algal blooms are toxic, requiring expensive water treatment and – in extreme cases – shutdown of water supplies. This isn’t just a problem in Australia. In 2014, some 500,000 people in the US were left without drinking water due to a toxic algal bloom in Lake Erie.

The toxins can also affect domestic animals, such as dogs, when they drink contaminated water, and limit use of lakes and rivers for swimming, boating and fishing. Even when algal blooms are not toxic, they unbalance the food web, reducing the number of species of animals and plants.

They can also reduce oxygen levels at night, as they switch from photosynthesis (producing oxygen) during the day, to a process called respiration at night where they use oxygen. Low oxygen can stress and even kill fish and other animals if they cannot escape this.

At some point, algal blooms crash when conditions become unsuitable. The resulting dead algae break down, providing an ideal food source for bacteria. This is when waters can become smelly, often with a rotten egg smell. As the bacteria multiply, they suck the oxygen out of the water. At this point, oxygen levels become low both day and night.

If the area of low oxygen is extensive, such as a whole lake or many kilometres of a river system, fish and other animals may not be able to escape to more suitable oxygen levels, and major fish deaths typically occur.

Some of the up to a million fish that have died in the Darling River system in far western NSW. KATE MCBRIDE/AAP

In other areas of the world, algal blooms have caused such severe oxygen conditions that thousands of square kilometres of ocean around the world are now known as dead zones, where no animals can live. These vast dead zones are not something we ever want to see in Australia.

So what can be done about blooms?

There are a wide range of treatments that can be used to control blooms, for example, aerating the water, and adding clays and chemicals, but the catch is they are very expensive on a large scale.

Ideally, the problem should be tackled at the source. This means reducing nutrient loads to our waterways. There has already been progress on this in our cities where sewage treatment plants have been upgraded to reduce nutrient loads to waterways. But tackling nutrients coming from agriculture – erosion, fertilisers, animal waste – is much more challenging and expensive because of the vast areas involved. So this remains work in progress.

It’s also very difficult to predict when blooms will occur; despite being simple plants, algae have an amazing range of strategies to grow and survive. But as we learn more about their complexity our ability to model and predict blooms will improve. This is crucial to managing risks to water supplies and preventing major environmental effects, such as fish deaths.

Read more: Toxin linked to motor neuron disease found in Australian algal blooms

Ultimately there are no quick fixes to algal blooms. Given the pressure we put on our waterways, they are here to stay. In fact they are likely to increase due to increasing temperatures and more extreme conditions, such as droughts. We know what we need to do to reduce the scale and likelihood of blooms: the challenge is devoting the resources to achieve it.

– ref. Explainer: what causes algal blooms, and how we can stop them – http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-causes-algal-blooms-and-how-we-can-stop-them-109646

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maggie Hall, Adjunct Lecturer, UNSW, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University

Calls for public access to information about convicted child sex offenders occur often in Australia. It may seem like common sense that allowing the public to know the whereabouts of dangerous people should increase community safety. As in many areas of criminal justice, the real story is more complicated.

Home affairs minister Peter Dutton’s recent call to have the states agree to a publicly accessible register reflects this kind of common sense view. All Australian states already have registers and the National Child Offender System (NCOS) allows police to record and share child offender information across states.

Child sex offenders are required to keep police informed of their address and other personal details for a period of time (which varies across states and the nature of convictions) after they are released into the community. But in most Australian states, these details are not available to the public.

Besides the political appeal of being seen to crack down on crime, evidence shows public sex offender registers do more harm than good. The Australian Institute of Criminology recently reviewed the latest evidence from Australia and overseas on the effectiveness of public and non-public sex offender registries. The report concluded:

while public sex offender registries may have a small general deterrent effect on first time offenders, they do not reduce recidivism. Further, despite having strong public support, they appear to have little effect on levels of fear in the community.

A 2011 US paper compared research on offending rates of sex offenders who appear on public registers and those don’t. It detected little difference in rates of re-offending between the two groups. These registers can have other, unintended, consequences including creating community panic and vigilante attacks.

Read more: The causes of paedophilia and child sexual abuse are more complex than the public believes

Where public registers are available

Among Australian states, the South Australian police website has hosted a public access register since 2014 for sex offenders who have failed to report to police or given false information, and whose whereabouts are unknown. Western Australia recently introduced a register of sex offenders with limited access to the public. The scheme provides:

• photographs and personal details of offenders who have either failed to comply with their reporting obligations, provided false or misleading information to police and whose whereabouts aren’t known to police
• photographs of dangerous and high risk offenders in the searchers’ local suburb or surrounding suburbs
• a parent or guardian with an avenue to inquire about a specific person who has regular contact with their child.

The US, South Korea and the Maldives are the only countries that allow public access to sex offender registers. Open public registers have existed under federal legislation in the US since 1994, but the legislation is inconsistently applied across states. New York State, for instance, refuses to fully comply with the register, preferring an evidence-based approach where judges use risk assessment tools to place offenders into categories.

Maintenance of registries is also often expensive and information may not be updated due to lack of resources.

Community safety vs panic

Knowing where convicted sex offenders live may allow people to believe they can organise their and their children’s lives to reduce the risk of harm. This may be attractive to politicians seeking to tap into people’s wish to protect their children. But the Australian Institute of Criminology review concluded registries had no appreciable effect on levels of fear in the community.

Conversely, some researchers have considered whether registries actually do the opposite and magnify safety fears. In 2007, residents of an upstate New York town displayed what the researchers called “community-wide hysteria”, including sleeping difficulties, after notification about sex offenders living nearby.

Others have raised concerns access to registers may lead to a false sense of security and perpetuate myths about “stranger danger” when most child sex offenders are known by, and are often related to, the victim. Some Australian groups have expressed concerns that publication in small communities may mitigate against reporting, as well as identify and stigmatise victims.

Read more: Sex offender registers don’t mean we can assume children are safe

Public registers can affect real-estate prices too, and create ghettoes by establishing multiple exclusion zones.

Vigilante justice

It’s easy to dismiss concerns about rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders into the community. But if one considers preventing crime to be the primary aim of criminal justice, then rehabilitation is important to protect the community. Sex offenders are the most stigmatised group of offenders – both in prison and after release. Exclusion and virtual exile on release from prison provide further barriers to rehabilitation.

The risk of vigilantism is real too, despite Derryn Hinch’s claims to the contrary. In Tennessee, in September 2007, a man’s wife died after two neighbours set their house on fire. This was believed to have been prompted by the man’s recent charges for possession of child pornography.

In one US study, up to 15% of respondents reported being physically assaulted after being publicly identified as sex offenders, and about 19% of sex offenders reported negative effects had been experienced by other members of their households. One-third of the offenders in the study had experienced physical threats. Another study found 5% of attacks (some fatal) were on people with no history of child sex offending, possibly due to incorrect information on the registers.

While the idea of public access to identifying information about convicted child sex offenders is attractive, there is little evidence it improves public safety.

– ref. Sex offender registries don’t prevent re-offending (and vigilante justice is real) – http://theconversation.com/sex-offender-registries-dont-prevent-re-offending-and-vigilante-justice-is-real-109573

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Austin, Professor UNSW Canberra Cyber, UNSW

In Germany this week, the legal limbo that defines cyberspace around the world was on full display.

The country’s Federal Office for IT Safety (BSI for its German initials) had been tracking a cyber attack targeting some of the country’s parliamentarians since early December. It ultimately led to the public release of mobile phone numbers, credit card information and ID card details of hundreds of members of parliament, and other public figures.

Only some MPs were informed by BSI about the attacks, while others learned about them only after the details were published in the media. MPs were outraged that BSI had failed to notify them that their personal data was being targeted, despite knowing about elements of the attack for up to four weeks.

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

A deeper concern, raised by some MPs, was that over the same period, BSI (which is not a law enforcement agency) did not inform the German police that a political crime of this seriousness had possibly been committed. Once engaged, the police quickly found a suspect who reportedly confessed.

Hacking, whether or not data is publicly compromised, is a crime in most countries. The crime is constituted simply by the unlawful accessing of data or machines. But few countries have laws that require their cyber agencies that monitor hacking to report the criminal acts – either to third party victims or to the police.

This legal vacuum needs to be addressed urgently.

Is hacking a ‘serious crime’?

The challenge for cyber agencies or private sector firms which detect a hack is that these events are very common. Millions take place every day, and complex forensic information needs to be assembled in order to judge which incidents are serious enough to require notification. This sets up a defacto, but ill-defined, distinction between “petty crime” (most hacks) and “serious crime”.

What this means in reality can be illustrated by the practice in the Australian state of New South Wales. In NSW, there is an obligation under the Crimes Act to report serious crimes. These are defined as those attracting legal penalties of five years or more of imprisonment. But when it comes to cyber hacking, it’s often not immediately clear whether the extent of a hack would trigger such a penalty threshold.

This uncertainty was at play in the German hack, with BSI justifying its failure to notify with the claim it was still trying to analyse it, and did not know the full scale of it.

Even after arresting the suspect and knowing the scale of the attack, the head of cyber security at the Federal Police Office (BKA) said it was still unclear whether the hack was a serious crime inspired by political motives. The suspicion that it may have been politically motivated arises from the fact that the only political party whose MPs were not targeted was the extreme right party, AfD.

Read more: Russians hack home internet connections – here’s how to protect yourself

What ‘mandatory reporting’ means in Australia

In 2018, after a long public debate, Australia introduced the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme as an amendment to the Privacy Act. The NDB requires companies to notify the Office of the Information Commissioner (not the police), as well as any victims, if personal data they hold is compromised in a way that constitutes a serious breach of privacy.

This civil code provision is very weak due, in part, to the fact that it allows the firm or agency involved to self-assess the seriousness of the breach over a 30-day period before the obligation to notify kicks in.

It is also weak because there is a blanket exemption for law enforcement activities, and for the secrecy needs of the government. Australian cyber agencies, such as the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Centre for Cyber Security, appear to have zero obligation to tell either the police or victims that there has been been a hack or a data breach.

That means, if Australian cyber agencies learned that a foreign government had hacked an Australian citizen, the victim may never be told. Or if family photos of an unclothed child were hacked from a family computer by a paedophile, the victim’s family might never know.

A right to know?

In many countries, cyber agencies do notify large corporations of certain hack attacks, regardless of the kind or scale. There are several motivations for this mostly voluntary practice. One is to help corporations realise the seriousness of state-sponsored espionage against them. Another is to help the cyber agency itself coordinate an investigation of the hack, and figure out what might have been lost.

That is not the same as the police investigating the crime.

In most countries, only police agencies are authorised to investigate crimes for the purposes of court prosecution. Few jurisdictions, if any, have formally clarified the ways in which police and courts may rely on information on cyber hacks collected by cyber agencies or security companies.

Read more: 30 years ago, the world’s first cyberattack set the stage for modern cybersecurity challenges

Australia is yet to have a serious debate about cyber crime reporting, and its forensic complexities: who is responsible for what, and where the priorities should lie. It’s at least a decade overdue.

While recognising that some distinction will need to be made between petty and serious cyber crimes, such a debate should recognise the right of citizens to be informed by our cyber agencies when they have been assaulted in cyber space and, if possible, by whom.

– ref. Should cyber officials be required to tell victims of cyber crimes they’ve been hacked? – http://theconversation.com/should-cyber-officials-be-required-to-tell-victims-of-cyber-crimes-theyve-been-hacked-109510

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

Want more to retire on?

In its long-awaited final report on the efficiency and competitiveness of Australia’s leaky superannuation system, Australia’s Productivity Commission provides a roadmap.

Weeding out scores of persistently underperforming funds, clamping down on unwanted multiple accounts and insurance policies, and letting workers choose funds from a simple list of top performers would give the typical worker entering the workforce today an extra A$533,000 in retirement.

Even Australians at present in their mid fifties would gain an extra A$79,000.

If this government or the next cares about the welfare of Australians rather than looking after the superannuation industry it’ll use the recommendations to drive retirement incomes higher.

So why the continued talk (from Labor) about lifting compulsory super contributions from the present 9.5% of salary to 12%, and then perhaps an unprecedented 15%?

It’s probably because (and Paul Keating, the former treasurer and prime minister who is the father of Australia’s compulsory superannuation system says this) they think the contributions don’t come from workers, but from employers.

To date, they’ve been dead wrong. And with workers’ bargaining power arguably weaker than in the past, there’s no reason whatsoever to think they’ll be right from here on.

Past super increases have come out of wages

Australia’s superannuation system requires employers to make the compulsory contributions on behalf of their workers. Right now that contribution is set at 9.5% of wages and is scheduled to increase incrementally to 12% by July 2025.

So, for workers, what’s not to like?

It’s that while employers hand over the cheque, workers pay for almost all of it via lower wages. Bill Shorten, then assistant treasurer, made this point in a speech in 2010:

Because it’s wages, not profits, that will fund super increases in the next few years. Wages are the seedbed of the whole operation. An increase in super is not, absolutely not, a tax on business. Essentially, both employers and employees would consider the Superannuation Guarantee increases to be a different way of receiving a wage increase.

The Henry Tax Review and other investigations have found this is exactly what happens. Increases in the compulsory super contributions have led to wages being lower than they otherwise would have been.

Even Paul Keating, speaking in 2007, made this point. Compulsory super contributions come out of wages, not from the pockets of employers:

The cost of superannuation was never borne by employers. It was absorbed into the overall wage cost […] In other words, had employers not paid nine percentage points of wages, as superannuation contributions, they would have paid it in cash as wages.

This is more than mere theory. Compulsory super was designed to forestall wage rises. Concerned about a wages breakout in 1985, then Treasurer Paul Keating and ACTU President Bill Kelty struck a deal to defer wage rises in exchange for super contributions.

When the Super Guarantee climbed from 9% to 9.25% in 2013, the Fair Work Commission stated in its minimum wage decision of that year that the increase was “lower than it otherwise would have been in the absence of the super guarantee increase”.

The pay of 40% of Australian workers is based on an award or the National Minimum Wage and is therefore affected by the Commission’s decisions. For these people, there is no question: their wages are lower than they would’ve been if super hadn’t increased.

Where’s the evidence employers pay for super?

If wage rises came from the pockets of employers then we should see a spike in wages plus super when compulsory super was introduced, and again when it was increased. But there wasn’t one when compulsory super was introduced – a point Bill Shorten has made in the past.

When compulsory super was introduced via awards in 1986, workers’ total remuneration (excluding super) made up 63.3% of national income. By 2002, when the phase-in was complete, it made up 60.1%.

Out of the 26 countries for which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has data, Australia recorded the tenth largest slide in the labour share of national income during the period compulsory super contributions were ramped up.

Read more: The superannuation myth: why it’s a mistake to increase contributions to 12% of earnings

Of course, changes in super aren’t the only thing that affects workers’ share of national income.

But the size of the fall in the labour share in Australia over the period when the super guarantee was increasing isn’t consistent with the idea that employers picked up the tab for super.

Would it be different this time?

Paul Keating argues that while in the past lifting compulsory super to 9.5% was paid for from wages, a future increase to 12% today would not be:

Workers are not getting real wage increases anywhere, and can’t get them. The Reserve Bank governor makes the point every week. So the award of an extra 2.5% of super to employees via the super guarantee will give them a share of productivity they will not get in the market – without any loss to their cash wages.

But such claims are difficult to square with concerns that workers’ weak bargaining power is one of the reasons for current low wages growth. If employers aren’t willing to give wage rises, why would they absorb an increase in the compulsory Super Guarantee?

And while real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) haven’t grown particularly quickly, the dollar value of wages continues to grow: by 2.2% a year over the past five years. It would be easy for employers to simply reduce those increases to offset any increase in compulsory super – as they have in the past.

And no, more contributions won’t help workers

The Grattan Institute’s recent report, Money in Retirement, showed increasing the compulsory super would primarily benefit the top 20% of Australians. It would hurt the bottom half during working life a lot more than it helps them once retired.

Their higher super contributions would not improve their retirement outcomes: their extra super income would be largely offset by lower part-pensions. What’s more, the age pension is indexed to wages. If wages grew by less (as they would as compulsory super contributions were increased) pensions would grow by less too.

Lifting compulsory super would also cost the budget A$2 billion a year in extra tax breaks, largely for high-income earners, because it is lightly taxed.

That would mean higher taxes elsewhere, or fewer services.

For low-income Australians, increasing compulsory super contributions would be a thoroughly bad deal. It means giving up wage increases in return for no boost in their retirement incomes.

A government that wanted to boost the living standards of working Australians both now and in retirement would consider carefully all of the Productivity Commission’s suggestions including this one: an independent inquiry into the whole idea and effectiveness of Australia’s regime of compulsory contributions, to be completed “ahead of any increase in the Superannuation Guarantee rate ”.

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

– ref. Productivity Commission finds super a bad deal. And yes, it comes out of wages – http://theconversation.com/productivity-commission-finds-super-a-bad-deal-and-yes-it-comes-out-of-wages-109638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dorukalp Durmus, Honorary Associate, University of Sydney

Next time you’re in a museum or art gallery, observe each painting a little more closely. You may notice cracks on the surface of the canvas, especially if the painting is very old.

The damage you see is caused by radiant energy striking the painting’s surface – and light (visible radiation) causes irreversible damage to artwork.

However, all is not lost. Our new research shows that optimised smart lighting systems can reduce damage to paintings while preserving their colour appearance.

Read more: Terahertz spectroscopy: the new tool to help detect art fraud

The dilemma

Damage to artwork by infrared, ultraviolet and visible radiation is well documented. When a photon (an elementary light particle) is absorbed by a pigment in paint, the pigment molecule elevates to a higher energy state. In this excited state, the molecule’s chemical composition changes. This is called a photochemical action.

Viewed from the human perspective, the photochemical action manifests itself as cracks, discolouration, or surface hardening.

Johannes Vermeer painted The Milkmaid in 1660. from www.shutterstock.com

Not surprisingly, daylight, which includes infrared and ultraviolet radiation, is highly damaging to paintings. In museums, it is common practice to use incandescent, and more recently, light emitting diodes (LEDs), to reduce damage.

However, a group of researchers showed that light can cause colour degradation regardless of the lighting technology. Bright yellow colours in Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers are turning dark brown due to absorption of blue and green light from LEDs. Research on the conservation of artwork makes it look like this is a losing battle.

Of course, you will be right in thinking that the best conservation method would be the complete absence of light. But we need light for visibility and to appreciate the beauty of a painting.

This leaves us with a dilemma of two conflicting parameters: visibility and damage.

Read more: Curious Kids: How does glow in the dark paint work?

Light optimisation

Lighting technology in itself may not be enough to tackle this dilemma. However, the way we use technology can make a difference.

Our approach to address this problem is based on three key facts:

1. light triggers photochemical actions only when it is absorbed by a pigment
2. the reflectance factor of a pigment (its effectiveness in reflecting light) determines the amount of light absorption
3. light output (composition of the light spectrum, and the intensity of the light) of lighting devices, such as LEDs, can be fine-tuned.

Yellow colours are particularly vulnerable to being damaged by light. from www.shutterstock.com

It is possible to measure the reflectance factor of a painting and optimise lighting to reduce absorption. Previous research shows that optimising light to lessen absorption can reduce energy consumption significantly, and with no loss in visual experience. Objects look equally natural and attractive under optimised light sources compared to regular white light sources.

In this new study, we optimised LEDs for five paintings to reduce light absorption. Using a genetic algorithm (an artificial intelligence technique), we reduced light absorption between 19% and 47%. Besides the benefits for the painting, this method almost halved the energy consumed by lighting.

In addition to increased sustainability and art conservation, the colour quality of the paintings was another parameter in our optimisation process. Colour appearance and brightness of paintings were held constant not to lower the appreciation of the artwork.

Read more: How eye disorders may have influenced the work of famous painters

This is possible due to a quirk in our visual system. Photoreceptor cone cells, the cells in our retinas which enable human colour vision, are not equally sensitive to the whole visible spectrum.

Different combinations of wavelength and intensity can result in identical signals in our brain. This understanding gives us the flexibility of using different light sources to facilitate identical colour appearances.

This smart lighting system requires scanning of the artwork to obtain colour information. Then, a precise projection system emits optimised lighting to the painting.

This method offers a solution to extend the lifetime of works of art, such as the world-famous Mona Lisa, without leaving them in the dark.

– ref. How the right lighting could save the Mona Lisa – http://theconversation.com/how-the-right-lighting-could-save-the-mona-lisa-95938

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nancy Lee, Researcher and project officer, University of Sydney

This article is part of a series focusing on the politics of food – what we eat, how our views of food are changing and why it matters from a cultural and political standpoint.

Another year, another list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. And another round of Michelin stars, Good Food Guide hats, and Gourmet Traveller Top 100 Restaurants in Australia.

These days, there are more restaurant awards than you can poke a stick at. The World’s 50 Best list has long been a target for criticism for its gender imbalance and heavily Eurocentric perspective. (There is now an Asia’s 50 Best and a Latin America’s 50 Best list, because presumably “Asia” and “Latin America” are not included in “World”.)

Though it is well known the process behind choosing the restaurants for this list is pretty arbitrary, it still carries weight in the restaurant world, with rankings used as a selling point, including here in Australia. Judging by the fanfare that heralds another night of awards, and the rush of increased interest that follows the enthusiastic media coverage, restaurant awards and lists are here to stay.

Recently, an ABC article ruffled some feathers by providing an audit of which chefs and restaurants win awards in Australia. The perhaps not-so-surprising finding: European (namely, Italian) restaurants outnumber Asian restaurants in the number of accolades, year after year.

Asian restaurants run by non-Asian owners

There are multiple factors that play into this. The framework of “professional” cooking is French and has long been acknowledged as an “art” or “skill”, while “ethnic” food continues to be othered as a reflection of “culture”. The chefs representing most top-end restaurants and writers at most major food publications also remain predominantly white.

This is part of the reason why restaurants that offer dining experiences that hew toward the European notion of high quality – tablecloths, quiet rooms, attentive service – are regarded as “better”, or more worthy, than the Chinese or Thai place that may emphasise feeding you quickly and efficiently. It follows that the people winning the awards are, by and large, also white.

Dig a little deeper and another trend emerges: the few “ethnic” restaurants in Australia that are routinely feted and held up as high-end are largely owned or run by white men.

Chin Chin, for example, is run by Chris Lucas’ restaurant group, while Spice Temple is owned by Rockpool Dining Group, with Neil Perry at the helm. Supernormal is part of the Andrew McConnell empire, while Cho Cho San is owned by Jonathan Barthelmess and Sam Christie.

Read more: Friday essay: the politics of curry

As the authors of the ABC article point out, plenty of cooks in restaurant kitchens are from diverse backgrounds, while the people in leadership positions are mostly white (sometimes capitalising on the food of different cultures). It should be noted, however, that one of the most prominent and respected chefs in Australia is Tetsuya Wakuda, who is Japanese. Dan Hong has headed up Mr Wong and Ms G’s, and Victor Liong is making waves in Melbourne, but they are comparatively rare examples of high-profile Asian chefs outside Asia.

The question of “ethnic” food prepared by “non-ethnic” chefs or served at restaurants with “non-ethnic” owners has recently become a sensitive issue in the United States, in particular. Given the fraught relationship all colonised countries have with race, however, this debate should also be happening elsewhere – including here in Australia.

Power dynamics and the influence of the media

While it can feel discomfiting for a person of colour to see a white person profit from the food of marginalised cultures, if done respectfully, with a deep, well-researched understanding of the culture that informs the food, it can also be seen as someone exploring a different culture and translating it to a wider audience. Maybe.

But there are broader dynamics at play beyond race – who has access to power, and what kind of power, and why. These are issues that tend to be glossed over. Understanding these dynamics will go some way to explaining why things are, and remain, the way they are.

Duck your head into any kitchen, anywhere in the world, and you will typically see workers from a diverse range of backgrounds. Often in Western countries, they are predominantly immigrants, doing what they can to make a living. They are the dishwashers and line cooks, performing the manual labour, while the head chef inspects everything at the pass before it goes out to the dining room.

Read more: Recipes for racism? Kitchen Cabinet and the politics of food

To be considered for high-profile awards (or high-profile media coverage), you have to be a certain kind of chef, capable of presenting a certain kind of narrative. Usually this involves using food as an outlet for creativity, as a canvas for artistic expression, or to convey personal beliefs or passions.

Of course, these are also the chefs who have the budget to travel widely and extensively for “research”, gleaning the knowledge to replicate the traditional foods found in exotic countries. Chefs I spoke with in my research commented that it’s hard to know which comes first – great food that attracts media attention, or great PR that attracts media attention pushing you to be a better chef.

The quintessential “celebrity chefs” (like Neil Perry, Peter Gilmore, or Matt Moran) are, by and large, articulate and passionate about their work, their produce and their industry. They have generally, over time, been trained to be comfortable in front of a camera, or a roomful of media. Many now have PR firms fielding requests for their time; there are even PR firms that specialise in food content and working with restaurants.

Read more: Jamie Oliver’s ‘jerk rice’ is a recipe for disaster – here’s why

The positive media attention of restaurant lists and awards relies on a positive media image of cooking as an artistic pursuit. Thanks to shows like MasterChef and Chef’s Table, we have been presented with a specific (and mostly false) cultural narrative: being a chef is glamorous and fun.

But as Australian restaurant legend Gay Bilson lamented at the most recent Symposium of Australian Gastronomy, in many ways, heightened media attention erases the labour that goes into cooking and hospitality – hours of working over a hot stove, of being on your feet all day, of constantly meeting the demands of other people, day in and day out.

The immigrants who run the local Chinese place in your neighbourhood are far less likely to get this kind of attention, and therefore less likely to enjoy the mobility that being a chef spotlighted in the media affords.

Some argue that more people of colour and diverse cultural perspectives in food media will help expand the way we understand the food world.

Comedian Jenny Yang’s parody in response to a Bon Appetit video featuring a white chef explaining the finer points of eating Vietnamese pho.

But it is also not the sole responsibility of people of colour to convince others that food from their cultural background is as worthy of acclaim as European food.

So what’s the answer? It’s always going to be complicated. But as consumers, it’s up to us to think a little more critically about restaurant awards. It’s on us to chat to the people cooking for us and get to know what happens in kitchens, to read more widely and understand what we’re eating.

It is not enough to get excited about the diversity of food in our multicultural cities. We need to engage with and understand the work and power structures that exist in the kitchens that make our food, and the media culture that tells us about what we’re eating, and who cooks for us.

Read other articles in the politics of food series here.

– ref. Why celebrity, award-winning chefs are usually white men – http://theconversation.com/why-celebrity-award-winning-chefs-are-usually-white-men-106709