50 years ago: Australia and the Apollo 8 mission that sent a Christmas message from the Moon

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Moss, Lecturer, UNSW

It was on December 21, 1968, that Apollo 8 launched from Cape Kennedy, in Florida, sending US astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell Jr and William Anders on the world’s first human mission to the Moon.

Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman leads the way as he, James Lovell and William Anders head out to the launch pad for the historical Apollo mission to the Moon. NASA

A few days later – on Christmas Eve Houston time, Christmas Day in Canberra – the three astronauts had just passed over the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon and were approaching a lunar sunrise when they sent back a historic Christmas message to the people of Earth.

[embedded content]

A few hours later, an Australian tracking station took over as prime data and relay receiving site for the mission.

Located among the gum trees and kangaroos just outside Canberra, Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station listened for the crucial acquisition of signal as the spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon on its final orbit, having fired its engine to return to Earth.

Australia’s Honeysuckle Creek tracking station acquired the Apollo 8 signal in December 1968. Hamish Lindsay, Author provided

Honeysuckle Creek received and retransmitted astronaut Jim Lovell’s first words to Mission Control on their way back home:

Houston, Apollo 8, over. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.

Apollo 8: the mission that ‘saved 1968’

The Apollo 8 mission was just the second crewed outing for the type of spacecraft that would ferry astronauts to the first lunar landing the following year.

Initially the mission was to test the lunar module in the safety of Earth orbit. But with that spacecraft still not ready, NASA took the bold decision to launch a command and service module around the Moon by itself as a precursor to a crewed landing.

Astronauts (left to right) William Anders, James Lovell Jr and Frank Borman in training for the Apollo mission. NASA

Also spurring the decision was the belief that the Russians were close to launching their own Moon shot.

Apollo 8 was the first manned launch of a massive Saturn V rocket, the first rendezvous with the Moon, and the first time human eyes saw the far side of the Moon.

The six-day mission was a spectacular success. The three astronauts completed ten orbits of the Moon and the spacecraft and ground support were thoroughly tested.

NASA was now one step closer to that “giant leap for mankind”.

Earthrise, taken by astronaut William Anders, December 24, 1968, from on board Apollo 8. NASA

The astronauts also took the now iconic “Earthrise” photograph of the Earth behind a lunar landscape. This was a profound image, containing all of humanity, bar the three astronauts.

Although the religious nature of Apollo 8’s Christmas Bible reading caused some controversy after the mission, it was heard by hundreds of millions of people.

That the message was transmitted from further than humans had ever been – the distance led to a delay of one second into all communications – made it all the more remarkable.

One member of the public famously wrote to NASA to credit the mission with having “saved 1968”, a year otherwise plagued by war and protests over Vietnam, civil rights and other issues.

Supporting Apollo down under

The Apollo program that enabled the first humans to leave Earth’s orbit was overwhelmingly an American endeavour, but not exclusively so.

At a time before dedicated spacecraft communication satellites, NASA relied on a chain of tracking and data relay stations around the world to communicate with Earth-orbiting satellites and astronauts. To ensure adequate coverage, these included stations in far off places such as Madagascar, Nigeria and Woomera in South Australia.

For missions further into the solar system, NASA used three principal stations: one near Canberra in Australia which included Honeysuckle Creek, another at Madrid in Spain, and the third at Goldstone in California.

At least one of these three stations would have a dish that would face the spacecraft at any given time, receiving their communications and passing them to Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

Honeysuckle Creek. Hamish Lindsay, Author provided

This was a global network of instantaneous data and voice communications, at a time when even a single international telephone call had to be booked weeks in advance and was extremely expensive.

For Apollo 8, Honeysuckle Creek received telemetry and voice communications when the spacecraft first went into orbit behind the Moon, when it first emerged back into communication with Earth, and when it began its fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on December 27.

Australian technicians were responsible for the vital task of aligning the dishes with the spacecraft and troubleshooting any problems that might arise with the equipment, a not unlikely occurrence with 1960s technology.

Technicians work at Honeysuckle Creek. National Archives of Australia (A1500, K20417), CC BY

Support for other missions

While only Lovell would fly again, on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, all the equipment and procedures tested on Apollo 8 – the spacecraft, the NASA technicians and the global network of tracking stations – would support the remaining Apollo flights.

Honeysuckle Creek was shut down and dismantled in 1981 but its receiving dishes moved not far away to Tidbinbilla.

Australia continues to play an important role in space exploration with scientists and technicians still supporting support NASA.

They are involved as part of the Deep Space Network, tracking spacecraft such as the New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and multiple missions to Mars.

As for the two Voyager spacecraft, which have travelled the furthest of any object made by humans, they now only have contact with Earth via Australia.

Even on Christmas Day, Tidbinbilla will be receiving messages from spacecraft around the Solar System.

So when you send a Christmas message this year, spare a thought for those messages from the Moon 50 years ago, and the role Australian scientists played in receiving them.

– ref. 50 years ago: Australia and the Apollo 8 mission that sent a Christmas message from the Moon – http://theconversation.com/50-years-ago-australia-and-the-apollo-8-mission-that-sent-a-christmas-message-from-the-moon-104391

How ‘access journalism’ is threatening investigative journalism

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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

A series of memoirs are appearing for Christmas – by Mike Carlton, Kerry O’Brien and the like – as the baby boomer generation of journalists gets some quality time to reflect, laugh, and reveal some new secrets.

As the receiver of a cheapo massive cardboard screed in 1972 for “investigative journalism” from my colleagues in the ABC’s This Day Tonight, my recollection was that “investigative journalism” was a cool, new genre any young journo wanted to be associated with.

I accepted the award with honour. It was mainly the result of reporting the corrupt antics of then NSW Liberal premier Sir Robin Askin.

Amid denials that illegal casinos existed, we found one well-known establishment across the road from the ABC’s radio headquarters in Forbes Street, near Kings Cross, and arrived with cameras at the front door one night to see if we could film inside. The answer was no, but we phoned our TDT presenter, the great Bill Peach, and asked him to ring the police because we had helpfully found one of these establishments for them. At the end of the show we reported the constabulary had not arrived and wished to remain in ignorance.

It was a laugh, but had a point. Not long later, I repeated this method with a mate of mine from Sydney University, conscientious objector Michael Matteson. When federal Liberal Minister Phillip Lynch said he couldn’t find any “draft dodgers” refusing to go to Vietnam, we found the very articulate pacifist in the university canteen where he sat every day. He gave a great interview.

Back then, no-one in our gang of young troublemakers had formulated a methodology for what we were doing on a daily basis. But we instinctively knew it was a different form of the trade from what we had learned from crusty old news heads as cadets. It was:

evidence-based
“transparent” in inviting the public to see our reasoning
balanced in giving the “other side” a time and place to respond
not pursuing a government or opposition agenda.

A decade later, both ABC’s Four Corners and Brian Toohey’s National Times would make an art of developing “the document trail” or “the money trail” and letting the public see for itself where these trails led. Many of the stories were about “secrets” that security agencies such as ASIO or the CIA didn’t want revealed (for example, Pine Gap and how it operated).

Hundreds of books have since been published on what constitutes “investigative journalism”. I taught at UTS from some of them (and my own experience) a decade ago.

Now comes what I detect to be a new form of journalism. It is often badged as “exclusive investigation”, but in fact has little in common with traditional methodologies. Very often it appears to be a leak from security agencies, not about them. The stories become a convenient form of government propaganda.

The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh recently called this new form “access journalism”. In this form, journalists report the access, usually an allegation, and do not either prove or disprove the allegation. This form has the following features:

the evidence is based on sources who cannot be named
there is no evidence base (such as a document or money trail)
it lacks transparency, in that the evidence cannot be independently verified
it serves one side’s agenda (usually the government’s)
it uses words in the text that have little definition (especially “is linked to”
it can be written and published very quickly.

The form is undoubtedly a response to the need for media to move faster for stories with big impact. But while allegations might suit US law, in Australia, where depth of research can be a useful legal defence, it is also particularly dangerous under our defamation laws.

Compare the traditional form of “investigative journalism”, which bears these traits:

it is based on identifiable sources whose standing and credibility enhance the claims
it is evidence-based (including documents, finances, and so on) proving a specific thesis or proposition formally stated in the text
its evidence is available for checking
it serves no-one’s agenda, in that several sides of the argument are heard, allowing readers/viewers to make up their own minds as to the truth
it does not use words that unnecessarily pre-judge the final conclusion
it takes a painstaking amount of time to build the evidence base, allow balance, and get legal advice if needed.

No media are immune to taking shortcuts in this transition to a digital future. Even the best, including Fairfax (now part of Nine) and the ABC can be seen to be sipping at the “access journalism” spring.

But an allegation is not necessarily a story, nor is a “link to something” automatically evidence. There needs to be larger conversation about what constitutes proper public evidence, proper reliable sources and transparency in both.

– ref. How ‘access journalism’ is threatening investigative journalism – http://theconversation.com/how-access-journalism-is-threatening-investigative-journalism-108831

If someone hurt you this year, forgiving them may improve your health (as long as you’re safe, too)

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alfred Allan, Professor, Edith Cowan University

During the end-of-year holidays families often come together to exchange gifts and, sometimes, to confront long-held grudges. What better gift than a peace offering?

Conflict is rarely pleasant and arguments in families can be particularly upsetting. We all know that knot in the pit of the stomach, the flushed face and sweaty hands we experience when we feel we have been dealt with unjustly.

This is a primal stress response to when we feel personally or socially threatened. Our natural reaction is to fight or avoid the person. Revenge might feel instinctive, but that can lead to a cycle of unpleasantness that rolls on and on.

Trying to forget or rationalise a hurtful incident, usually to avoid further confrontation, seldom works. Even if the unpleasant feelings might start to fade, they generally linger in our subconscious and any reminder can reignite them. A constructive way of getting rid of them is to forgive.

But how do we do this and what helps us in the process? We’ve been asking these questions since we started doing research with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (set up by the South African government to help deal with the trauma of apartheid) witnesses more than 20 years ago.

Victims who had indicated they had forgiven perpetrators were less angry and distressed than those who did not. We also found victims were more notably forgiving if they received an apology.

What actually is forgiveness?

Forgiveness does not mean forgetting or minimising the pain we feel; nor is it about excusing others. Forgiveness means making a conscious and deliberate decision to let go of our feelings of resentment or revenge, regardless of whether the person who has upset us deserves it.

Forgiveness is a process that takes time and patience. www.shutterstock.ocm, CC BY

Forgiveness is, in the first place, not about others. It is about stopping us from allowing resentment towards others to make life miserable for us.

People want to return to how they felt before the offending incident occurred. And they want to think of the event without bitterness and anger, a tightness in the chest, and endless rumination.

Forgiveness takes time. It sometimes helps to think of occasions when we have offended people in the past or to try to look genuinely at the situation through the offender’s eyes.

We must start by forgiving ourselves for any contribution we think we might have made to the incident. People often blame themselves partly for what may have happened.

Survivors of sexual abuse or harassment say the most difficult part of the forgiveness process is accepting they were not to blame and to stop being angry with themselves.

After forgiving yourself, it’s easier to then privately forgive other people involved. Research shows forgiveness helps us feel better and may help us live longer.

We can also tell or show someone we have forgiven them, such as by helping them out in some way without them asking.

A successful apology

One thing that often helps people to forgive is receiving an apology. While we may dread apologising, we usually think back positively about the times we’ve offered apologies.

A good apology ideally has three parts: an admission of responsibility, a demonstration of sorrow, and doing something to remedy the offence, or prevent a repetition of it. This could even just involve promising not to do it again.

When we asked people who had been offended by an intimate partner what convinced them their partner was truly sorry, they said actions spoke louder than words. One said it would help if their partner went out of their way to do something that would be an inconvenience for them.

Promising not to repeat hurtful actions makes an ideal apology. priscilla du preez unsplash, CC BY

An apology is not telling others we feel sorry they are angry; it is telling them we understand why they are angry with us, regret making them feel that way, and want to take their anger away. An effective apology is showing the person we understand why they are hurting.

A study that explored medical errors and the responses of those affected showed an apology was most effective where it focused on the needs of the patient. We might not always know how we can take away the anger, so it is usually good to ask the person we are apologising to what their needs are.

If the apology wasn’t good enough the first time, you can try again, but first listen carefully to what the person you are apologising to is saying, and address those concerns.

Misdirected apologies can make a situation worse, they can make people more angry and make it more difficult for them to forgive. So, don’t apologise unless it’s sincere.

Prioritise your safety

Forgiving ourselves is always good. But forgiving others is only beneficial if the advantages exceed the potential costs. We should therefore not forgive others if that might expose us to further abuse or exploitation.

The stress response we experience to being hurt is protective because it motivates us to stop people from abusing or taking advantage of us. Anger is sometimes functional.

We should not feel guilty if we do not forgive because some behaviour is simply unforgivable. www.shutterstock.com, CC BY

We should also not feel guilty if we do not forgive because some behaviour is simply unforgiveable and carrying our anger might be less harmful than the potential harm of forgiving.

There are also times when everyone may feel they are the victim or some people may not realise they have hurt others even if they can sense someone is unhappy with them.

A good way forward is to ask people what the issue is and then listen to understand, rather than listening to be able to respond. When we listen without instinctively thinking of a way to defend ourselves, we may realise there has been a misunderstanding or we’ve behaved inappropriately.

And if you feel offended by something that’s said or done, you could avoid unpleasant feelings by telling the other person how you feel.

– ref. If someone hurt you this year, forgiving them may improve your health (as long as you’re safe, too) – http://theconversation.com/if-someone-hurt-you-this-year-forgiving-them-may-improve-your-health-as-long-as-youre-safe-too-106253

Earthrise, a photo that changed the world

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Simon Torok, Honorary Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

December 24 is the 50th anniversary of Earthrise, arguably one of the most profound images in the history of human culture. When astronaut William Anders photographed a fragile blue sphere set in dark space peeking over the Moon, it changed our perception of our place in space and fuelled environmental awareness around the world.

The photo let us see our planet from a great distance for the first time. The living Earth, surrounded by the darkness of space, appears fragile and vulnerable, with finite resources.

Viewing a small blue Earth against the black backdrop of space, with the barren moonscape in the foreground, evokes feelings of vastness: we are a small planet, orbiting an ordinary star, in an unremarkable galaxy among the billions we can observe. The image prompts emotions of insignificance – Earth is only special because it’s the planet we live on.

As astronaut Jim Lovell said during the live broadcast from Apollo 8, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realise just what you have back there on Earth.”

[embedded content] The Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast.

Earthrise is a testament to the extraordinary capacity of human perception. Although, in 1968, the photograph seemed revelatory and unexpected, it belongs to an extraordinary history of representing the Earth from above. Anders may have produced an image that radically shifted our view of ourselves, but we were ready to see it.

A history of flight

People have always dreamed of flying. As we grew from hot-air balloons to space shuttles, the camera has been there for much of the ride.

After WWII, the US military used captured V-2 rockets to launch motion-picture cameras out of the atmosphere, producing the first images of Earth from space.

Russia’s Sputnik spurred the United States to launch a series of satellites — watching the enemy and the weather — and then NASA turned its attention to the Moon, launching a series of exploratory probes. One (Lunar Orbiter I, 1966) turned its camera across a sliver of the Moon’s surface and found the Earth, rising above it.

The non-human version of Earthrise from Lunar Orbiter in 1966. NASA

Despite not being the “first” image of the Earth from our Moon, Earthrise is special. It was directly witnessed by the astronauts as well as being captured by the camera. It elegantly illustrates how human perception is something that is constantly evolving, often hand in hand with technology.

Earthrise showed us that Earth is a connected system, and any changes made to this system potentially affect the whole of the planet. Although the Apollo missions sought to reveal the Moon, they also powerfully revealed the limits of our own planet. The idea of a Spaceship Earth, with its interdependent ecologies and finite resources, became an icon of a growing environmental movement concerned with the ecological impacts of industrialisation and population growth.

‘Spaceship Earth’ became a powerful rallying cry for environmental groups. Flickr, CC BY-SA

From space, we observe the thin shield provided by our atmosphere, allowing life to flourish on the surface of our planet. Lifeforms created Earth’s atmosphere by removing carbon dioxide and generating free oxygen. They created an unusual mix of gases compared to other planets – an atmosphere with a protective ozone layer and a mix of gases that trap heat and moderate extremes of temperature. Over millions of years, this special mix has allowed a huge diversity of life forms to evolve, including (relatively recently on this time scale) Homo sapiens.

The field of meteorology has benefited enormously from the technology foreshadowed by the Earthrise photo. Our knowledge is no longer limited to Earth-based weather-observing stations.

Satellites can now bring us an Earthrise-type image every ten minutes, allowing us to observe extremes such as tropical cyclones as they form over the ocean, potentially affecting life and land. Importantly, we now possess a long enough record of satellite information so that in many instances we can begin to examine long-term changes of such events.

Tropical Cyclone Owen seen from space. Bureau of Meteorology/AAP

The human population has doubled in the 50 years since the Earthrise image, resulting in habitat destruction, the spread of pest species and wildfires spurred by climate warming. Every year, our actions endanger more species.

Earth’s climate has undergone enormous changes in the five decades since the Earthrise photo was taken. Much of the increase in Australian and global temperatures has happened in the past 50 years. This warming is affecting us now, with an increase in the frequency of extreme events such as heatwaves, and vast changes across the oceans and polar caps.

With further warming projected, it is important that we take this chance to look back at the Earthrise photo of our little planet, so starkly presented against the vastness of space. The perspective that it offers us can help us choose the path for our planet for the next 50 years.

It reminds us of the wonders of the Earth system, its beauty and its fragility. It encourages us to continue to seek understanding of its weather systems, blue ocean and ice caps through scientific endeavour and sustained monitoring.

The beauty of our planet as seen from afar – and up close – can inspire us to make changes to secure the amazing and diverse animals that share our Earth.

Zoos become conservation organisations, holding, breeding and releasing critically endangered animals. Scientists teach us about the capacities of animals and the threats to their survival.

Communities rise to the challenge and people in their thousands take actions to help wildlife, from buying toilet paper made from recycled paper to not releasing balloons outdoors. If we stand together we can secure a future for all nature on this remarkable planet.

But is a 50-year-old photo enough to reignite the environmental awareness and action required to tackle today’s threats to nature? What will be this generation’s Earthrise moment?

The authors would like to acknowledge the significant contribution of Alicia Sometimes to this article.

– ref. Earthrise, a photo that changed the world – http://theconversation.com/earthrise-a-photo-that-changed-the-world-109009

Schools policy in 2018: reflecting on the big events and the new developments

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Hinz, Director of Research and Development, Pivot Professional Learning; and Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne

This is a longer read at just over 1,500 words. Enjoy!

The year 2018 was a mixed bag for schooling policy in Australia.

We had new ministers, a new organisation and some auspicious anniversaries. As Christmas approaches, it’s worth reflecting on the year that’s been.

Let’s begin in the states and territories

New South Wales

One of the biggest ticket items this year is the overhaul of the NSW school curriculum for the first time in decades. The curriculum is currently under review – and when it’s reformed, the effect will likely be felt far beyond NSW’s borders.

There have been multiple indications the reformed curriculum may have a greater focus on capabilities. These are also known as “soft skills” or “21st century skills”, and include creative and critical thinking. (The new Victorian Curriculum, and to a lesser extent the national Australian Curriculum, have also focused more closely on general capabilities.)

NSW premier Gladys Berijiklian announced in May 2018 they would review and overhaul the state curriculum. Peter Rae/AAP

This shift is a response to growing evidence of the vital importance of capabilities to school performance, life outcomes and the economy. There is also evidence they can and should be developed in education settings from toddler-hood through to the tertiary years and beyond. Debate now turns to the best way to do so.

South Australia

NSW is not the only state marching forward with its own bold program. The new South Australian government is embarking on an ambitious school improvement agenda to “speed up” the learning growth of every student in every classroom. This system-wide reform combines tailored approaches with a heavier emphasis on planning, data, literacy and numeracy, building on their successful trial of the phonics check.

Queensland

Queensland is steadily closing gaps in educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

It has also launched a new strategic plan. Notably, this includes early childhood education and post-school education, and additional measures for students in regional and rural areas, and students with disabilities. This is part of a cohesive approach to lifting and sustaining learning outcomes for all students.

Victoria

The re-election of the Andrews government in November sees the continuation of its Education State reform agenda. This includes funding more specialists in schools (teachers, doctors, speech pathologists, psychologists and social workers), building and renovating more schools, and providing more preschool.

Victorian state education minister James Merlino (left) and Victoria’s Premier, Daniel Andrews (right). Ellen Smith/AAP

Yes, in a landmark policy announcement, Victoria’s youngest residents will receive two years of funded preschool. Given the benefits of quality preschool to all students, especially reducing developmental vulnerability on school entry, it’s a solid investment. It is one of the only strategies proven by research to lift outcomes for all children.

Western Australia

Western Australia is turning its attention to better recruitment, development and support for school leaders, as part of its broader system improvement strategy.

Tasmania

In Tasmania, the ongoing implementation of the 2017 Education Act kept schools and department officials busy – in large part due to giant shift to 13 years of compulsory schooling (prep to year 12) by 2020.

Until recently, many schools finished at year ten and students wanting to continue their education move to a new school, often in a new town. This is a major factor in Tassie’s low year 12 completion rate of only 72% – a full 10% lower than the national average.

The Northern Territory

And the NT launched it’s latest strategic plan with a focus on school leadership, quality, equity, differentiated learning, community engagement and better data.

The NT is focusing on a strong public education system that ensures equity for all children. Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP

They also put out a new school funding model, with a greater emphasis on action and targeting to student needs and interventions.

ACT

The ACT became the first jurisdiction in Australia to provide every secondary student in a government school with a laptop. The ACT 2018-19 budget also provided A$9.2 million for research and trials of new teaching techniques in response to damning research that found once socio-economic backgrounds are taken into account, ACT students are up to a year behind their counterparts in other states and territories.

Turning to the federal level

Gonski 2.0

The March release of the Gonski 2.0 report was an early highlight. This review was tasked with identifying the school and classroom factors that can make the biggest, sustained difference to educational achievement. This includes what funding should be spent on, rather than structural issues like funding allocations.

The Gonski 2.0 report, authored by David Gonski (far left) was released in March 2018. Mick Tsikas

Gonski 2.0 advocated for a student-centred schooling system based on learning growth over time. Key recommendations focused on enhancing student voice, and better valuing of and support for teachers and school leaders, including providing them with the time and tools (including finer grain data, and data beyond NAPLAN) to focus on teaching and educational leadership, so they’re not swamped by administrative compliance.

(Astute readers will have noticed the key elements of Gonski 2.0 are already key elements of existing state and territory policy platforms and strategies.)

Happy anniversary?

2018 was the tenth anniversary of three major pillars of Australian schooling policy: NAPLAN, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and the Melbourne Declaration of Educational Goals for Young Australians. Each celebrated this milestone amidst growing debate on whether they had served their intended purpose.

In the case of NAPLAN, this was accompanied by a growing call for its abolition or overhaul. NAPLAN was intended as a nationally-comparable, point-in-time dataset on a few vital areas to support schools and system leaders to make program and resourcing decisions. It was also meant to inform parental choice of schools.

But misunderstanding and misuse of NAPLAN has led to perverse effects. These include an overemphasis on preparation by some schools and families, resulting in anxiety and curriculum narrowing.

In with the new

2018 also saw the launch of a new national institution – the Gonski Institute focused on addressing education inequality across Australia. Despite – or perhaps because of – near continuous reforms at state and federal levels this past decade, inequality continues to grow.

Dan Tehan, right, was appointed Federal Education Minister by Scott Morrison, left, in August 2018. Mick Tsikas/AAP

We also got a new federal education minister – Dan Tehan. He received the poisoned chalice of continuing the long and testy negotiations with the states on a five-year school funding agreement derived from the 2017 Education Act (the previous round of funding refoms) and the Gonski 2.0 findings.

These funding agreements are also a key element of the Coalition’s Quality Schools policy package, which has remained fairly constant the last few years.

It wasn’t until this week all jurisdictions were finally signed-up. But the last signatory – Victoria – only made a one-month deal. The Victorian government has expressed their concerns about a “dud deal” that provides more funding for students at non-government schools than those at government schools.

This short-term deal raises a bunch of questions as we head into the near year and the 2019 federal election – will there be by more short-term deals? Will other states seek to renegotiate better terms? Is Victoria banking on a change of government – and negotiating partner?

What do we know about federal Labor’s plans for education?

The key elements of Labor’s schooling policy pillars are restoring funding to schools cut by the Coalition. This includes, contentiously, restoring funding to some of the most over-funded non-government schools.

They have also pledged an additional year of preschool for all kids across Australia, and have announced they will establish a national evidence institute for education policy.

Federal Labor plans to establish a national evidence institute for education policy if they win the election in 2019. Wayne Taylor/AAP

A new year and new goals

The updating of the national goals for Australian schooling by Australia’s state, territory and Commonwealth education ministers next year provides an opportunity to reflect on the purposes of schooling in the 21st century.

It’s hard to find fault with Minister Tehan’s statement that “Australia needs a shared agenda across the country to ensure alignment between policy, practice and delivery” and that young people need “a quality school education, tailored to individual needs”.

But it’s also true the 2008 goals were never achieved because it was never properly implemented.

Grand goals are well and good, but we need to also provision for implementation and work hard to make it happen. This means time, resources, clarity on each stakeholder’s role in creating an excellent and equitable schooling system (which enables all young Australians to become successful learners, confident and creative individuals), and active and informed citizens.

It’s time to commit to action and cooperation, regardless of who wins the 2019 elections.

– ref. Schools policy in 2018: reflecting on the big events and the new developments – http://theconversation.com/schools-policy-in-2018-reflecting-on-the-big-events-and-the-new-developments-108079

Take the tram into a more playable city

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Troy Innocent, City of Melbourne Knowledge Fellow 2017-18, Senior Lecturer in Games and Interactivity, Swinburne University of Technology

Playable cities connect people and place in creative ways. They appropriate urban environments and infrastructure and provide ways for citizens to participate in smart cities. While people may be aware of smart cities, these are perceived to be more about technology and corporate interests, rather than about people.

Play invites participation. And the playable city invites you to become part of the experience, part of the artwork. It shifts the boundary of where an artwork begins and ends in relation to our urban environment.

The 2018 Melbourne Art Trams program connects people with art, with trams first being painted in creative ways in 1978. But, for the first time, one tram makes art “playable”.

Using a smartphone camera and an augmented reality app, the music changes with the tram’s speed. James H.H. Morgan, Author provided

My 32.5-metre tram artwork plays a musical score via augmented reality. It takes something that is functional and everyday and turns it into a playable public artwork.

Public art is often decorative, but should also be provocative – challenging our perception and understanding of public space. Central to the playable city concept is the role of art and play in transformation and defamiliarisation – so that we our world in a new light.

The playable city happens in conversation with people and places that make the city – it is a social framework. Conversation is what playable cities bring to smart cities, broadening our perspective and imagining of what our city could be.

A 32.5-metre-long musical score

Trams have been part of Melbourne life since 1889, with the first art trams rolling out onto the tracks in 1978. In 2013, this unique public art program returned after a 20-year hiatus as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. It’s widely recognised as a sign of Melbourne’s playful attitude to public space.

The 2018 festival team embraced the concept of a playable art tram by providing a C2-class tram on Route 96. At 32.5 metres, it’s Melbourne’s longest tram.

Viewed through a smartphone camera, the tram is roughly five times as wide as the screen. This allows it to be scanned as it moves – somewhat like a musical score being read by a pianola. The speed of the tram generates different musical compositions when it’s stationary, accelerating, at full speed, slowing to a stop and so on.

The particular ways in which trams move through urban spaces is the main inspiration for the work. Making it playable is a way to visualise and sonify that movement.

[embedded content] Troy Innocent talks about the playable city and his playable tram.

The Playable City

If a tram can be playable, then what other parts of the city could we play? While play in cities is not a new idea, in the past two decades we have seen a rise of creative technologies that present new opportunities for artists and designers working in public space.

In 2012, the Watershed Pervasive Media Studio recognised this trend and founded the Playable City project – reacting against the technological bias of smart cities at the time. Originating in Bristol, the international network now includes eight cities around the world.

Through a series of commissions – including talking lamp posts and street lights that mirror your shadows – a methodology has been developed that talks across urban planners, artists, technologists, designers, academics, local government, architects, creative producers and beyond. Since the project started, smart cities have become more diverse and have started to learn from the conversations that the Playable City started – particularly around citizen participation and co-creation.

Melbourne as a playable city

Playable cities bring people back into the civic conversation through playful strategies like public art, participatory design and urban play. A new conversation around Melbourne as a playable city is beginning to take shape. As Melbourne grows, this is a conversation that needs many voices and strategies.

As the Art Tram program demonstrates, Melbourne has always been a playable city. Quentin Stevens’s 2007 book, The Ludic City, features the urban landscape of Melbourne as a public playground – before the smartphone arrived and transformed public space.

The city has a long history of independent and experimental game development. Having recently completed a Melbourne Knowledge Fellowship researching playable cities overseas, it is clear what the city has to offer to this conversation and we hope to establish an urban play community in Melbourne.

Play that can reshape cities

Games and play have become increasingly embedded in daily life over the past two decades – they have become pervasive. I’m interested in games and play that are situated in unfamiliar contexts and locations, that cross over disciplines, that get us thinking and seeing the world in new ways.

As games and play become something that is not only about entertainment but also challenge and re-imagine our ways of being in the world, we will experience a wider range of creative expression and possibilities. Play can literally create alternative realities for us that are not separate from the world but reshape the world we already live in. Playable cities connect people and create opportunities for people to participate in the processes that shape the cities they live in.

Try it for yourself: download the Accelerando app (here or here) and go play a tram!

– ref. Take the tram into a more playable city – http://theconversation.com/take-the-tram-into-a-more-playable-city-106064

There aren’t plenty of fish in the sea, so let’s eat all that we catch

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aysha Fleming, Research Scientist, Adaptive Urban and Social Systems Program, Land and Water, CSIRO

‘Tis the season for seafood. While those in colder parts of the world tuck into turkey and hot dinners, in the southern hemisphere we get festive with prawn cocktails at Christmas and smoked salmon for New Year’s. Maybe crayfish and crab. Perhaps oysters and octopus. Or barramundi and more prawns on the barbie.

Yes, most of us love to eat fish. Some fish, anyway – and just some parts of those fish. When, for example, did you last eat a piece of fish that wasn’t a fillet?

That’s a problem when you consider how wild fish get caught. When fishing trawlers cast nets or reel out long lines, they don’t just catch the fish they know we want to eat. The industry calls the unwanted fish caught “bycatch”. These fish are generally discarded by being thrown back into the sea, alive or dead.

Our research shows that huge economic and environmental benefits could come from fully using fish now discarded. If all of the edible fish caught was kept and sold, both the sustainability and profitability of fishing would significantly improve.

Here’s the bycatch

Discarded fish accounts for 8% of the total global catch by volume. In Australia our reluctance to eat many types of fish makes the bycatch problem even worse.

As part of a CSIRO research team, we spent 12 months examining causes (and possible solutions) to the bycatch problem. This involved an economic analysis of fish caught and discarded by fishing trawlers operating in the Great Australian Bight Trawl Sector.

The Great Australian Bight Trawl Sector. Australian Fisheries Management Authority

This region of the Southern Ocean is fished mostly for deepwater flathead and bight redfish. There are, in fact, 120 different species that can be caught, but only 60 of these are eaten. The means up to 56% of any catch is discarded.

We calculated the cost and potential of the bycatch that fishing trawlers were already catching using the information about fish both caught and discarded that commercial fishing vessels are required to record in log books.

By our calculation, had the discarded fish been able to be sold, total annual fishing returns would have been increased by 18%, from A$1.97 million to A$2.32 million per vessel.

By always eating the same fish in the same ways, consumers are wasting other fish species. In the short term this means rising prices as the cost of finding and catching fish increases; in the longer term it means those fish will become luxury items and large swathes of the fishing industry will become unsustainable.

A typical trawler catch. The big fish are hapuka, the red fish are bight redfish; these will be kept. The yellow fish, ocean jacket, will be discarded. Matt Koopman

The obvious solution is to rethink how we use the fish we already catch. Cultural preferences and consumer demand are not external and fixed issues. We can make conscious choices.

Consumer problem

Why do we eat such a limited range of seafood? It is a combination of palate – what we are used to – and awareness. Culture plays a part, as does fashion. What our ancestors once commonly ate might strike us as unpalatable or as exotic as a foreign cuisine.

In Australia, most people tend to dislike “fishy” flavours like sardines and cook fish in a way – flinging it on the bbq – that may not work for more delicate, unusual species like clams. We prefer boneless fish that flakes but isn’t too soft or too oily (for example we love flathead, not eel). We have also gotten used to consuming the same foods at any time of year, with little thought to seasonality.

That means molluscs may be too irregular, leatherjacket might have too many bones, and dogfish might just have the wrong name.

But these consumption preferences are not immutable. They can change. As one fisher we spoke to said, there was much to be hopeful about reducing the level of discards, due not only to the potential of Asian markets but the increasing consumer interest in sustainable consumption.

Changing how we think about eating fish

Inspiration could come from the “nose to tail” movements that promote using all of the animal. The movement to use local produce could also help. There are restaurants in Scandinavia that specialise in cooking little-known previously discarded local species, cooking “whatever comes in that afternoon” off local fishing boats.

Programs to market lesser-known fish, provide recipes and identification charts are also becoming common overseas. Celebrity chefs or cooking programs could help make eating currently rejected fish fashionable.

Increased demand for a wider range of locally caught species would also reduce imported fish (Australia imports more seafood than it exports). This would help take the pressure off overseas fisheries that may be less sustainably managed than our own (which are subject to strict environmental regulations).

So next time you buy or eat fish, explore your options. Talk to your local fish supplier and restaurateur and try something new. Don’t throw another shrimp on the barbie; make it ocean jacket or whatever has just come in fresh instead.

This research was funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (project 2015/204) on behalf of the Australian government. Alistair Hobday, Matt Koopman, Ian Knuckey and Shijie Zhou contributed to the project

– ref. There aren’t plenty of fish in the sea, so let’s eat all that we catch – http://theconversation.com/there-arent-plenty-of-fish-in-the-sea-so-lets-eat-all-that-we-catch-104329

Friday essay: identity politics and the case for shared values

By The Conversation -

December 21, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tregear, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Melbourne

Recently, a group of respected academics, including Melbourne-born philosopher Peter Singer, announced that they were launching a new academic journal called the Journal of Controversial Ideas. In it, authors will have the option of remaining anonymous.

The editors say they wish to

enable academics – particularly younger, untenured, or otherwise vulnerable academics – to have the option of publishing under a pseudonym when they might otherwise be deterred from publishing by fear of death threats… threats to their families, or threats to their careers.

This is a justification that should trouble us all, not just those of us who happen to work in and for universities. Scientific advance, as well as the health of our society and the political and cultural freedoms that underpin it, depends on our capacity to accept that ideas, when properly and rigorously argued, are capable of being judged with a reasonable degree of objectivity, regardless of who is positing them.

We should expect academics in particular to be willing to assess an idea on the basis of what is being argued, not who is arguing it. Failing to do this is traditionally understood as committing an ad hominem fallacy.

True, we know that all human knowledge is subject to a myriad of visible and hidden prejudices that shape how we think. But reasoned argument gives us various tools that we can use to expose these prejudices, and thus also the possibility of rising above them.

Thus academics are trained to judge an idea primarily on the basis of the cogency, originality and rigour of the arguments that support it. We can assess the underlying validity of those arguments by scrutinising their inherent reasoning and by comparing them against bodies of pre-existing knowledge.

The peer review process is one particular tool we use to uphold these standards. It involves the “blind” assessment of submissions to academic publications. The recent “grievance studies” hoax, however, has drawn public attention to some of the weaknesses of the peer review system. It also helps us understand the wider context that has motivated the creation of a Journal of Controversial Ideas.

In this hoax, three academics concocted articles that parodied a certain style of academic argument. Several of the fake articles were accepted for publication despite their dubious content. Their titles included Human Reaction to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon and An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity: Themes of Objectification, Sexual Conquest, Male Control, and Masculine Toughness in a Sexually Objectifying Restaurant.

One hoax article purported to be a study of Human Reaction to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon. Shutterstock

The hoaxers argue that the fact such articles were accepted for publication points to the corrupting influence of “identity politics” on academia. The righteousness of one’s personal experiences of, or feelings about, an issue (and, more broadly, the identity groups with which one identifies) are, they suggest, increasingly valued as a source of authority over abstract reasoning or generalised observation.

When our identity becomes the principal filter through which we understand the world, however, we can no longer presume that notions like truth and objective facts actually exist. We must instead accept that we live in a world of multiple competing truths, with no agreed consensus about how we might choose between them.

Rejection of expert advice

Both the election of Trump and the result of the Brexit referendum in the UK have been in part attributed to the success of political campaigns so conceived. Both involved an explicit rejection of reasoned advice from academic experts such as political scientists, climate scientists, and economists. Instead, appeals for support targeted particular sections of the electorate based on voters’ race and ethnicity – identity politics at its purest.

This is not a phenomenon restricted to the political right. As the New York Times observed last year, the right has itself been responding to a form of political thinking already common to so-called “progressive” political movements.

For instance, if you happen to be white, male, cis-gendered, working class, and so on, you are likely to look for a tribal allegiance of your own. Or, as Mark Lilla put it in his 2017 book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, “as soon as you cast an issue exclusively in terms of identity you invite your adversary to do the same”.

Lilla argues that we must instead reassert the importance of appeals to a “universal democratic ‘we’” (as opposed to “I”) “on which solidarity can be built, duty instilled and action inspired”.

One of the reasons this is so difficult to do is that our identity does matter when we confront many genuine political grievances. Racism, poverty, misogyny, homophobia are, alas, very real problems. They affect us individually very differently depending on how others perceive us – or we perceive ourselves – in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality and the like.

To effectively solve the injustices that arise out of these social phenomena, it is necessary to recognise that the significant forms of disadvantage and discrimination they cause are not natural, but socially constructed. They need to be contested and addressed as such.

Lilla is right to argue, nevertheless, that we risk taking our focus on identity too far. The emergence of a Journal of Controversial Ideas is only one particular sign that our once generally accepted belief in the possibility of disinterested political, theoretical, or even scientific, knowledge may be threatened by an over-focus on identity.

Other signs include the rise of an “alternative facts” discourse and the now widespread lack of trust in public broadcasting and other forms of so-called “mainstream” media.

New forms of social media, on the other hand, are perfectly made for identity politics because they allow us easily to inhabit identity-based silos. Safe in these communities of shared background and interest, we risk never having to meet, let alone debate with, people who might think or act differently to us.

Cultural value

The influence of identity politics is felt in my own academic field of music. Here, questions of musical value are increasingly being understood as little more than a reflection of an individual’s contingent cultural appetites. Experience-centred methodologies such as autoethnography and action research, which license a researcher to make themselves the principal subject of research, lend this shift in perspective scholarly respectability.

But by focusing on the centrality of personal experience over shared knowledge, we can avoid having to consider a more inclusive or idealistic understanding of what our musical culture is. Or, indeed, ought to be.

We also risk becoming less concerned to learn about, or seek out, cultural experiences or perspectives that would seek to push us beyond the immediate limits of our own experiences and imagination.

Anna Funder (speaking here in 2012) declined to judge the Horne Prize under restrictive new guidelines which, she said, would disqualify a lot of her own work. Honner Media

Indeed, we start actively to avoid or suppress such perspectives altogether. The organisers of the Horne Prize in effect did this when they sought to disqualify “writing that purports to represent the experiences of those in any minority community of which the writer is not a member”. Judges David Marr and Anna Funder both resigned in protest and in the end the organisers backtracked.

The protests that erupted earlier this year concerning Opera Australia’s casting of the role of Maria for its forthcoming production of West Side Story is another example. Here it was argued Australian-born Julie Lea Goodwin, who has been cast as Maria, should instead have been of the same ethnic origin as Maria herself. This is despite the fact that West Side Story is itself a reworking of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (c.1595) by two Jewish-American men (Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim). Maria’s identity will always be more complex than the politics of identity would seem to allow.

Such a focus on identity may also distract us from considering the underlying economic forces that might be shaping particular forms of cultural or social behaviour, including identity politics itself. It is surely no coincidence that it is flourishing at the very same time we are being encouraged by online businesses to bracket ourselves by ethnicity, political affiliation, cultural tastes, sexuality, class, and so on. Just whose interests are ultimately being served?

To be sure, our identity unquestionably shapes (and can limit) how we interact with the world but it should not become the only foundation upon which we build our understanding of it. Claims to scholarly or political authority made on the basis of identity should also be subject to the same rigorous scrutiny and critique as any other form of public knowledge.

It is our rational systems of enquiry, and our underlying belief in the possibility of objective truth, that ultimately requires bolstering and defending by our universities, not narrow forms of knowing that would instead give primacy to our lived experience.

Without a continuing trust in such shared values we run the risk of being unable to convince people different from ourselves why they might wish to think or feel, let alone vote or act, like we do.

– ref. Friday essay: identity politics and the case for shared values – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-identity-politics-and-the-case-for-shared-values-107010

Grattan on Friday: 2018, the year of governing badly

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

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

Looking back on the federal politics of 2018, voters can conclude they’ve been given a rough trot.

What’s been dubbed “the permanent election campaign” to which we are subjected these days is a curse. Too often it encourages expedient rather than sound decisions and ugly behaviour dominated by noise and stunts.

Added to that, we’ve had from the Coalition this year an extraordinary series of leadership, policy and individual meltdowns. A government that started 2018 with a one-seat majority ends it in a minority, after the loss of a byelection and a defection to the crossbench.

This has indeed been the year of governing badly.

As the Coalition struggles towards Christmas it has been buffeted this week by a sex scandal involving an obscure Nationals MP and an attack from its own side over its energy policy.

The cavorting of Andrew Broad in “sugar baby” land has left the Nationals looking for a candidate for the Victorian seat of Mallee, safe in normal circumstances, but not to be taken for granted in these days of community independents and when the incumbent has been disgraced. (Broad will be around until the election – there is no byelection.)

Senior Nationals want a woman to run. The party’s deputy leader senator Bridget McKenzie is not ruling out seeking preselection but has no connection with the area. One government source says “it would be pretty late for her to be carpetbagging” into the seat. A strong local would seem better.

Whether the Liberals will make it a three-cornered contest is an open question (though they probably wouldn’t field a candidate if McKenzie ran).

In 2016 the Nationals contested Murray after a Liberal retired, and won the seat; the Liberals might think they could benefit in this contest from any backlash against the Nationals over Broad’s conduct. On the other hand, would they want to spend money on this seat in an election when dollars will be tight?

The Nationals have often been a steady and stabilising force within the Coalition. Coming out of this year they look like a chaotic rump, unable to manage their personal and political lives.

Barnaby Joyce destroyed his leadership with an affair and has been undermining his party as he tries to get it back. McCormack is a trier facing a job that often looks beyond him. He’ll last to the election (well, presumably) but probably not after that.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is the ultimate trier, believing the only possible salvation for the government is constant activity. For a very short time, he looked reasonably effective. But then all the freneticism stated to appear contrived and fake.

One big challenge Morrison has not been able to handle is the Coalition’s “woman problem”. Minimal female representation in both Coalition parties, claims of bullying in the Liberals, and the defection to the crossbench of Liberal MP Julia Banks will inevitably put off female voters. The Broad scandal feeds into the negative narrative.

Morrison himself has a “blokey” image that might turn away some female voters although Liberal sources dispute this.

It’s ironic that neither Coalition party will embrace quotas but Morrison wanted a female candidate in Wentworth (only to be rebuffed by the preselectors) and now McCormack urges a woman for Mallee.

Women are thought to be useful in desperate circumstances, it seems.

Amid all the year’s bedlam in conservative politics, one major policy issue remains unresolved – or more precisely it is the intersection of two issues, energy and climate.

The bitter battle within the Liberals over energy didn’t just bring down Malcolm Turnbull – it stopped the formulation of the sort of viable policy business pleads for, to give certainty to investors.

This week the Berejiklian government called out its federal counterpart; state energy minister Don Harwin declared it “out of touch” on energy and climate policy, saying “it’s time for them to change course”. But at a testy meeting of the COAG energy council federal minister Angus Taylor was defiantly unmoved.

Also this week came criticism from the Energy Security Board, which says in its 2018 Health of the Electricity Market report that when investment is needed “it is not helpful for the Commonwealth government to be threatening powers of divestment, price setting and discretionary asset write-downs.”

Energy policy both symbolises the deep ideological divide in the Liberal party and is at the core of it. The party won’t be credible on policy until it can formulate a broad position that is acceptable to stakeholders and the community. If it goes into opposition next year, doing so should be a top policy priority.

Its plan for a National Energy Guarantee was scuttled by the government itself during those crazy coup days in August. But this was not before devising the scheme had given then energy minister Josh Frydenberg a chance to show his credentials, as a policy formulator and a negotiator.

Frydenberg lost the NEG but won his colleagues’ respect. He received an overwhelming vote for Liberal deputy; as things stand, he’s well placed to lead his party at some future point.

Frydenberg, now treasurer, is one of the few senior Liberal who’s looked half way impressive this year. His next test will be the April 2 budget, although naturally ownership of that will lie as much or more with Morrison.

The timetable for a May election is now set. The government wants to maximise the period it has to try to regroup.

When parliament rose there was speculation the government might not want it to return in February because the Coalition faced a House defeat on a amendment to facilitate medical transfers from Manus and Nauru. This might make a March election more attractive, so the argument went.

But the government doesn’t seem so concerned about that vote now, believing some of the crossbenchers will drop off the amendment or want to weaken it.

Looking to 2019: the betting is firmly on an ALP victory, in the absence of a surprising turn of events. A win by either side would at least bring an end to the revolving prime ministerships, thanks to rule changes.

Assuming Labor won a solid majority, hopefully the voters might also get a little respite before the continuous campaigning started up again.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: 2018, the year of governing badly – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-2018-the-year-of-governing-badly-109152

Newsletter: New Zealand Politics Daily – December 20 2018

By Bryce Edwards -

December 20, 2018

Newsletter: New Zealand Politics Daily – December 20 2018

Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.

The Beehive and Parliament Buildings.SSC investigation into govt agencies use of private investigators, public service, personal data
Russel Norman (Stuff): Rotten to the core: The chilling truth revealed by the SSC report
Russel Norman (Spinoff): How the NZ state enabled oppressive and systematic Stasi-like surveillance
Press Editorial: More questions about spies and the public service
ODT Editorial: An ‘affront to democracy’
Herald Editorial: State agencies must take more care using private eyes
Oasis: Peter Hughes Inquiry on Public Service Spying
Emma Hatton (RNZ): Thompson and Clark probe – all you need to know
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Thompson & Clark, a preferred security and surveillance firm, dumped from Government work
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Gerry Brownlee knew Southern Response hired private spies
RNZ: Bridges on Thompson and Clark spying: ‘I never had anything to do with this’
Lucy Bennett (Herald): Simon Bridges asked to explain Government agency surveillance
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Private investigators used vehicle register to spy on environmentalists for years
RNZ: Nine to Noon: Spying on citizens: has the public service lost its way?
Robin Martin (RNZ): Review of New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals called for after State Services report
Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Only a first step in the data battle
Catriona MacLennan (Newsroom): The rise of gatekeeping within public service

Minimum wage
Mike Treen (Daily Blog): Facts refute critics of minimum wage increases – make the minimum wage a living wage
1News: Small businesses may be impacted over minimum wage increase, Business NZ says
Derek Cheng (Herald): Biggest minimum wage boost in history to benefit 210,000 people
RNZ: An extra $48 a week for some NZ families – Minimum wage to go up to $17.70 an hour
Debrin Foxcroft (Stuff): Govt to lift minimum wage to $17.70 an hour next year
Anna Whyte (1News): Boost for low-paid workers with minimum wage to jump to $17.70 an hour from April
Zane Small and Jenna Lynch (Newshub): Government to raise minimum wage by $1.2
Jamie Ensor and Jenna Lynch (Newshub): How much the minimum wage increase will add to Kiwi wallets
Sophie Bateman (Newshub): A brief history of the minimum wage in New Zealand
1News: ‘It’s been a long time’ – cleaner Mareta Sinoti among thousands who’ll take home more pay with minimum wage increase
Jenée Tibshraeny (Interest): Govt indicates further $1.20 and $1.10 hikes in 2020 and 2021; Bridges says National would increase the min. wage by 50c a year
1News: Minimum wage increase ‘too far, too fast’ – National’s Simon Bridges
No Right Turn: Delivering
David Farrar: Highest minimum wage in the developed world

Year in review
Graham Adams (Noted): Strange lessons of 2018: What goes on when we’re not looking
Guyon Espiner (RNZ): Politics wasn’t all scandal and leaks this year
Bryce Edwards (Newsroom): Political debate in 2018
Barry Soper (Newstalk ZB): Parliament’s risen for the year
1News: 1 NEWS political team’s biggest surprises and most revealing moments of 2018 (video)
Newshub: Politics in 2018: The year in review (video)
Rhonwyn Newson (Newshub): Kiwis doing great things: Unsung heroes of 2018
Public Address: WOTY: The Kindness Scandal

Environment and conservation
Kate Gudsell (RNZ): Calls to improve water testing after deadly bacteria found in Canterbury rivers
Paul Gorman and Tom Kitchin (Stuff): Antibiotic-resistant bacteria discovered in two Canterbury rivers
Holly Carran (Newshub): Antibiotic-resistant E. coli discovered in three popular Canterbury rivers
Herald: Nationwide river stocktake needed after ‘disturbing’ findings
David Clarkson (Stuff): Company denies discharging ammonia gas into Christchurch stream
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Tuatara, kea and pāua are among Kiwi creatures threatened by climate change
Steven Cowan: Climate change: the politicians fail again
RNZ: Fur seal pups beheaded and dumped in Canterbury bay
1News: DOC investigating after six seal pups found decapitated in Christchurch bay
Angie Skerrett (Newshub): EPA report released on ‘environmental effects’ of 1080 aerial operations
Lois Williams (RNZ): Russell forest possums ‘down 80 percent’ since 1080 drop
AAP: Scary statistic: 90.5 per cent of plastic is not recycled
Megan Sutherland (Newshub): Peter Burling ‘sad’ after finding My Food Bag beach balls in Waitematā Harbour
1News: America’s Cup hero Peter Burling ‘sad’ to find deflated My Food Bag beach balls in Waitematā Harbour

IPCA findings on Haumaha bullying allegations
Jared Savage (Herald): Wally Haumaha: Women speak out on ‘Dirty Politics’ in IPCA report
Jared Savage (Herald): ‘Inappropriate, unprofessional’: Damning report into Wally Haumaha’s behaviour
Thomas Manch (Stuff): High-ranking cop Wally Haumaha belittled staff, report to sa
RNZ: Wally Haumaha belittled female staff – IPCA
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Wally Haumaha belittled and humiliated staff – IPCA

Justice, corrections
RNZ: Survey reveals volume and nature of crimes committed in New Zealand last year
Kirsty Lawrence, Tony Wall and Blair Ensor (Stuff): Corrections acknowledges child sex offender should have been moved faster
David Fisher (Herald): Big Read: The desolation of Kaikohe and the single punch which ended a man’s life
Marty Sharpe (Stuff): A morning procession of male violence, sad histories and young men sent to jail

Sensible Sentencing Trust wrongly label man paedophile
RNZ: McVicar sorry for Sensible Sentencing Trust’s paedophile mistake
Michael Daly (Stuff): ‘Negligent, cavalier’ Sensible Sentencing Trust wrongly labels man a paedophile
Sam Hurley (Herald): Innocent man’s photo wrongly posted next to paedophile’s details by Sensible Sentencing Trust
RNZ: Sensible Sentencing Trust wrongly labels man as paedophile
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Sensible Sentencing Trust erroneously lists innocent man’s picture with paedophile description

Foreign affairs, migration
Newshub: Refugee group backs UN migration pact
Collette Devlin (Stuff): New Zealand votes for UN migration compact after legal advice
Gia Garrick (RNZ): Legal advice: Migration compact doesn’t compromise sovereignty
Derek Cheng (Herald): NZ to vote in favour of UN Migration Compact
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): New Zealand will support United Nations Global Migration Compact
AAP: New Zealand to back non-binding UN migration agreement
Laura Walters (Newsroom): NZ supports UN migration compact
Megan Gattey (Stuff): Here’s how much New Zealand’s population would change if everyone who wanted to migrate here actually did
Dan Satherley (Newshub): New Zealand’s population would balloon to 11 million without migration rules – survey
Jason Walls (Herald):New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Australia Chris Seed to head Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Eric Crampton: Coalitions mean plausible deniability

Google, media
Pattrick Smellie (Stuff): Google gets lesson: Want to offer news? Hire journalists
1News: ‘Not a great deal I can do’ to enforce suppression laws on Google, says Andrew Little after meeting with tech giant
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): Andrew Little gives Google a serve over Grace Millane suppression breach
Guardian: Grace Millane murder: New Zealand rebukes Google for emailing out suspect’s name
1News: Jenny Suo named as the new host of 1 NEWS Tonight
Rukuwai Tipene-Allen, Wikitōria Day (Māori TV): Miss World Oceania returns home with the crown
Māori TV: Miss World Oceania arrives home

Health
RNZ: Report highlights discriminatory disabled care system
Max Abbott (The Conversation): NZ mental health inquiry calls for fundamental change
Lucy Bennett (Herald): Nicky Stevens’ mother and brother meet Health Minister David Clark, urge more whānau support
Marty Sharpe (Stuff): New ways of working needed to address health inequities for Māori and Pacific people says Hawke’s Bay DHB
Cate Broughton (Stuff): Health board: Safe midwife staffing ‘not always achievable’
RNZ: Middlemore Hospital nurses and staff to rally over safety concerns
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Grey Power slams Government over Aged Care Commissioner failure
Alex Casey (Spinoff): Dinner with a cool granny in the neighbourhood? Sign us up
David Williams (Newsroom): The fight to save cash-strapped CanTeen
Stuff: Euthanasia: My dad ended his struggle with MS by starving himself
Samantha Gee (Stuff): Birth education programme based on Māori practices kicks off in top of the south
Edward Miller (Spinoff): Have New Zealand doctors been working in slave gloves?
Phil Taylor (Herald): Readers donate $155,000 for eye care in Vanuatu

Drug laws
1News: ‘A lot of policy work to be done’ before cannabis referendum, law expert says
Russell Brown (RNZ): Cannabis vote: Lead-up needs to hit the public’s sweet spot
Nandor Tanczos (Stuff): The people of New Zealand are owed a proper choice
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Stupid, naive drug move bungle of year
Mike Yardley (Herald): Cynical cannabis referendum from a Government that’s soft on crime
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Finally, we get a say on cannabis: The weed vote will rally the masses at 2020 election
Zane Small (Newshub): Exacerbate or minimise harm? Chlöe Swarbrick on cannabis referendum
Jonathan Fletcher (Stuff): Don’t completely decriminalise cannabis, just be more lenient
Laura Walters (Newsroom): Damning review of synthetics law

Parliament
Anna Bracewell-Worrall (Newshub): $66.50 for coffee and eggs? The huge cost of processing MPs’ receipts revealed
Jason Walls (Herald): Coalition’s scrapping of plans for new parliamentary buildings cost taxpayers up to $3m
Jason Walls (Herald): Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, is exploring the idea of an MP training camp
Phil Smith (RNZ): The House: When Parliamentary questions become Christmas gifts
Peter Dunne (Interest): What I want is a political party I can vote for at the next General Election
1News: Watch: Winston Peters has House laughing as he unveils long scroll of Government’s ‘achievements in 2018’
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Speaker Trevor Mallard honours Newshub’s Tova O’Brien for ‘compassionate’ Jami-Lee Ross coverage
RNZ: Highest annual turnover of staff ever at Parliament
David Farrar: Jacinda and “Simple Simon”

National Party, Chris Finlayson valedictory
Stacey Kirk (Stuff): Reflecting on Simon Bridges’ turbulent year as chief
1News: After failing to mention Simon Bridges in valedictory, Chris Finlayson offers muted appraisal of his 2020 election chances
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Chris Finlayson snubs Simon Bridges in valedictory speech
Claire Trevett (Herald): Chris Finlayson put in effort to deliver a better NZ
David Farrar: The Finlayson valedictory
Point of Order: Chris Finlayson bows out – but first he shares his thoughts on good governance
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): National Party Leadership Coup set forJanuary?

Transport
Damian George (Stuff): Vision Zero: Should New Zealand’s open road speed limit be lowered to 80kmh?
Damian George (Stuff): Team responsible for launching Wellington’s new bus network not up to the job – report
Laura Dooney (RNZ): Cause of Wellington’s bus network failure revealed
Georgina Campbell (Herald): Review confirms failings with Wellington’s bus network
Newshub: Report reveals raft of failings from Wellington’s new bus network
Elton Rikihana Smallman (Stuff): Passenger rail could bring development to transport corridor
Katie Fitzgerald (Newshub): Hamilton to Auckland train ‘can’t be fast enough’ – Mayor
Isobel Ewing (Newshub): ‘Wasteful spending’: National rubbishes Hamilton to Auckland train service trial
Nicole Lawton (Stuff): Auckland cyclist knocked unconscious after crash with e-scooter

Poverty, inequality
Graeme Colman (Stuff): Kiwis want a speedier end to child poverty
Bryan Bruce (Daily Blog): Hunger is the measure of our Economy
CPAG: Wellbeing Budget and Child Poverty Reduction Act lay foundations for change
Eva Corlett (RNZ): Families turned away from Auckland City Mission due to high demand
1News: Families turned away from Auckland City Mission because there’s not enough food to hand out
Mere McLean (Māori TV): Love Soup community kai service grows
Mānia Clarke (Māori TV): Minister to consider more ‘satellite offices’ on marae

Housing
Pattrick Smellie (Listener): Why residential property investment is falling out of trend
Nick Goodall (Herald): Top 10 predictions for housing market in 2019
Greg Ninness (Interest): First home buyers battling rising house prices & higher interest rates
Nicholas Boyack (Stuff): Long-vacant HNZ land in Lower Hutt to get 37 homes
1News: Staff verbally abused and seriously assaulted claims Queen Street business owner, who blames Auckland’s homeless population

Education
Jessica Long (Stuff): Costly price for New Zealand children led down path of inadequate water skills
John Lewis (ODT): Further backlash over Esol cuts
Don McKinnon (Stuff): Why we need a national policy on teaching foreign language
David Cohen (RNZ): Victoria Uni debate: ‘A change in name is more than a classification’
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Brash ban review clears Massey vice-chancellor

Local government
Anusha Bradley (RNZ): Part of Napier Port to be sold to protect region from climate change
Eric Crampton: Sunk costs in politics
Cleo Fraser (Newshub): Car-free CBD? Auckland’s High Street to ban cars on Thursday
Dominic Harris (Stuff): Bailout for Christchurch Town hall approved to ensure 2019 opening
Robin Martin (RNZ): Cyclone costs New Plymouth $4.5m and exposes water vulnerabilities
Christina Persico (Stuff): Report into ex-cyclone Gita response identifies $4.5m cost and 28 areas for improvement

Primary and extractive industries
Guy Trafford (Interest): The major impactors in 2019
Allan Barber (Interest): Reflections on the year that was
Sally Rae (ODT): Alliance chairman queries Govt’s subsidy stance
Alexandra Nelson (Newshub): ‘Pretty sad situation’: Waihi gold mine extension slammed by watchdog
Cameron Madgwick (Stuff): Oil and gas industry agrees with Greenpeace about Climate Commission
Cameron Madgwick (ODT): Rejecting natural gas makes us a foolish outlier

Te reo Māori
Māori TV: Hinurewa Poutu appointed to Te Matawai
Eden More (RNZ): New products used to normalise te reo Māori

Auckland Pride
Mandy Te (Stuff): Auckland Pride Parade to continue in 2019 despite reports of cancellation
RNZ: Auckland Pride Parade: ‘We will reinvent the Gala’
Sophie Bateman (Newshub): Auckland Pride Parade 2019 still on, but will be radically different

Sport
Madeleine Chapman (Spinoff): Stop investing so much in rowing and give that money to basketball
Gregor Paul (Herald): The silent war raging in New Zealand Rugby

Te Papa
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Te Papa spent thousands on legal costs against web series Get It To Te Papa
Puawai Cairns (Spinoff): Biculturalism in our national museum can’t be a one-way conversation

Marama Fox pleads guilty to drink-driving charges
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Former Māori Party co-leader Marama Fox pleads guilty to drink driving
Belinda Feek (Herald): Former Māori Party MP Marama Fox admits drink-driving
RNZ: Former MP pleads guilty to drink drive charge

Other
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Building safety inspections cut back despite councils’ shortcomings
Thomas Coughlan (Newsroom): Twyford would “absolutely” allow SPVs to fail
Chris Morris (ODT): Sexual abuse survivor to visit Vatican
Ben Waterworth (ODT): $995,000 boost for redevelopment ‘exciting’
Talisa Kupenga (Māori TV): Govt signs off $mil funds for Māori Wardens
RNZ: Coroners to give greater consideration to Māori values
Jessica Tyson (Māori TV): Bill to change whānau access to tūpāpaku passes third reading
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Black Power, Mongrel Mob in talks to form anti-Australia gang coalition
RNZ: NZ’s current account deficit hits highest level in nine years
Alice Webb-Liddall (Newshub): Popular YouTuber claims internet craze ‘planking’ was ‘killed’ by John Key

Ten feelgood environment stories you may have missed in 2018

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Hopkin, Editor: Energy + Environment, The Conversation

Let’s be honest – environment news isn’t always the jolliest, and 2018 was no exception. From climate change, to recycling, to energy policy, at times it has felt like we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next.

So here are ten upbeat environmental stories from this year that prove it’s not all doom and gloom.

Cane toads cracked

In September, scientists announced they have decoded the cane toad genome, potentially paving the way for new weapons to repel the slimy invaders.

The successful effort potentially makes it easier to identify viruses that can be used to attack the toxic toads.

[embedded content] Cracking the cane toad genome.

Bears on the mend

The treatment of bears imprisoned in Asian bile farms is heartbreaking. But the good news is they can recover from their ordeal if given the right care during rehabilitation, going on to lead relatively stress-free lives even after years of torture.

Tasty trick

Blockchain isn’t just for bitcoin and other clever stuff best left to the financial experts. It can also help tackle illegal tuna fishing, helping to ensure the fish on your dish is more sustainable and bringing much-needed transparency to an important global industry.

Why did the fish cross the road?

Crossing roads is hard enough if you have legs. You might think it’s impossible for fish, and technically you’d be right. But Queensland researchers have invented a device that lets fish do the next best thing: swim upstream through culverts beneath the road, even if they’re facing a raging torrent in the opposite direction.

[embedded content] A breakthrough for fish.

Epic feat

The excitingly named “epic duck challenge” proved that drones can do an even better job of surveying wildlife than human scientists. This development should help this under-resourced area of research finally take flight (sorry).

Hey, good lookin’

And before we leave the animal stories, there’s just time to take you back inside the world of million-dollar beauty pageants… for camels. We guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

Ready to wow the judges. Mahmood Al amri and Jaime Gongora, Author provided

Feeling the energy

Yes, it was a spirit-sapping year for energy policy, with one round of bickering after another. But throughout the year, South Australia’s big battery has been quietly kicking goals.

It celebrated its birthday in late November, and although questions remain over what will happen when its battery packs need replacing, it made A$13 million during the first half of 2018, and has generally been a roaring success considering that it owes its existence to some billionaires’ banter on Twitter.

Grounds for optimism

Your coffee habit could do more than give you a pick-me-up. Used coffee grounds can boost the health of your garden too, as long as you compost them first.

Contain your excitement

And if you’re more of a cola drinker, take heart in the fact that container deposit schemes really do help reduce the amount of plastic in the oceans, by as much as 40% off the US and Australian coasts. We’ll drink to that.

And… breathe

The holiday season is traditionally a time to draw breath and recoup for the new year. So you might like to meditate on the fact that our breath (and other animals’ too) literally helps trees to grow.

And if you like thinking about trees, why not sign up to our Beating Around the Bush series, with plenty more uplifting musings on some of Australia’s favourite species.

– ref. Ten feelgood environment stories you may have missed in 2018 – http://theconversation.com/ten-feelgood-environment-stories-you-may-have-missed-in-2018-108759

Why you shouldn’t force the kids to hug Granny at Christmas

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Edith Cowan University

Granny, who lives interstate and whom the kids haven’t seen since last year, is visiting for Christmas. She loves the kids and is eager to scoop them up and smother them with kisses. The young children, who only have a vague memory of who she is, are wary and would rather keep an eye on this strange woman for the next few hours before committing to any physical contact.

Faced with this situation, many parents would instinctively tell their kids to remember their manners and allow themselves to be smothered by Granny (or Grandad). It’s the polite thing to do, right? It is Christmas after all.

But in an era when we want children to be empowered, to be in charge of their bodies, and to be able to say no to unwanted attention, why do we allow our kids to be hugged and kissed against their will at family gatherings? Forced affection can undermine a child’s inherent sense of stranger danger and self-trust.

Building and maintaining trust and respect are key to a successful relationship with children. The respectful approach to parenting (also known as “educaring”) focuses on building cooperative relationships and treating each child as a unique human being.

Developed by Hungarian paediatrician Emmi Pikler and US parenting advocate Magda Gerber, the goal of this approach is to aid the development of an “authentic” child. Authentic in this sense means a child who feels secure, independent, competent in their abilities, and connected to the people and the environment around them. This approach has been shown to benefit children and to promote a healthy relationship between a child and their caregiver.

It is not an easy style of parenting. In many cases, it goes against how we ourselves were parented, and society’s conventional expectations of what parenting involves. An obedient child who never questioned authority was often viewed as a result of “good” parenting. In contrast, a child’s defiance reflects their confidence to disagree, and is a normal and beneficial part of development.

Christmas presence

When it comes to Christmas family gatherings, the respectful approach can include giving children information in advance, so they have an idea of what to expect.

Sitting down with your child and having a chat about where they will be going and who they will be meeting can help mentally prepare them them for an upcoming event. Showing photos from previous years can also help them remember which relatives are which, thus helping them warm up for the impending meeting by putting a face to a name.

Likewise, letting relatives know in advance that your child will have a say in their greeting can help them prepare for the possibility of not getting the hug to which they might feel entitled. You can also suggest your relative give the child a choice of greeting (a hug, high-five, fist-bump, or wave).

The key to this process is to wait and hear the child’s response – and, importantly, to respect their decision. This can be very hard – often the adult will feel disappointed and upset to realise the child does not want to hug them.

Letting children know that certain relatives may particularly like a hug can prepare them for that situation, while reassuring the child that they do have a say in the matter. You could try saying something like:

Grandpa is really looking forward to seeing you! He’ll ask you for a hug, but if you don’t feel like it you don’t have to. You might like to say hello in another way.

Children often relish the opportunity to exert some control. Autonomy is an important aspect of the respectful approach. For many children, it is their preference not to hug other people unless there is a close and connected relationship, and this should be fostered and supported. Occasionally, children may “test” the theory, by declining a hug and then waiting to see what happens.

As with adults, when their decision is respected, children feel more confident and valued. Over time, as a relationship becomes more familiar and connected, the child may feel more comfortable with closer contact.

For grandparents and other relatives, the good news is that this means when the child does agree to a hug (or even offers one of their own accord), it comes from a true desire to show affection, rather than from an adult imposing their wishes on them.

Incorporating aspects of the respectful approach into your Christmas can help your children feel more settled and secure, at what is often a hectic time of the year.

– ref. Why you shouldn’t force the kids to hug Granny at Christmas – http://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-force-the-kids-to-hug-granny-at-christmas-108059

What Australian soldiers ate for Christmas in WWI

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Merle Benbow, Senior lecturer in German and European Studies, University of Melbourne

We have just concluded four years of commemoration of the centenary of the first world war and, although the guns fell silent in November 1918, by Christmas many Australians were still separated from their loved ones.

For Australians serving overseas in WWI, celebrations such as Christmas were particularly difficult, a reminder that the war had laid waste to their routines and taken them away from their families.

We can see from historical documents that every effort was made to reproduce the form and content of a traditional Christmas meal, whether that be on board a ship, in the mess or even in the trenches

On active service

Maintaining the traditions of Christmas could be logistically difficult. It was often simply a slightly larger amount of food than the normal rations, with additional treats, such as the half pound of Christmas pudding that Major-General John Monash procured for every man in his Third Division in 1917. Alcohol was a welcome addition.

Women distribute Christmas billies to men in Cairo, Egypt, December 1915. Australian War Memorial

Christmas hampers and billies sent from home provided particular joy to those lucky enough to receive them. Some, however, experienced Christmas dinners like that of Private John Chugg of 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance, who complained “it was a miserable Xmas” in Egypt in 1914: “boiled beef unpeeled potatoes and tea without milk… [and] no mail or anything to cheer us”.

Sapper Alfred Galbraith described Christmas day in Ismailia Camp, Egypt, in December 1915 in a letter to his family. Each man chipped in to purchase a turkey and

chickens more like humming birds, soft drinks and a few biscuits. The chickens were dealt out 1 between 5 men and some of them would not feed one let alone 5 men, the one we got we tossed up to see who would get it & I won but I half it with my pal & then the two of us went & bought some […] biscuits & some tin fruit.

Alf is depicted in a photo of the dinner, sitting awkwardly on canvas at the end of a row of soldiers, mess tins in front of each and an occasional bottle, likely of beer. Alf’s Christmas letter concludes nostalgically “Dear Australia the land of my Birth which we will all be glad to see again … it will be a glorious day if I live to see it out … ” It was to be his last Christmas.

AIF troops celebrating Christmas at Ismailia Camp, Egypt, in December 1915. Museums Victoria

A special meal could have the effect of making the war recede, if briefly, for the soldiers who partook of it. This is the impression gleaned from the menu for the 1917 Christmas dinner at the “A” Mess of the 3rd Australian Divisional Headquarters in France, led by Monash.

The hand-drawn menu features bucolic sketches of rural French life, and a list of dishes in a mix of French and English, signalling the prestige of the officers’ dinner.

The 10 courses included hors d’oeuvres (olives and “Tomato au Lobster”), potage _(“_Crème de Giblet”), poisson, entrée (chicken), viands (pork and ham), legumes, sweets (three choices) and a cheese tart, ending with wine and coffee.

The menu served at an AIF Christmas Dinner in 1916. Museums Victoria collection, donated by Jean Bourke

The “B” Mess dinner at the Headquarters was almost as sumptuous, but with fewer courses. Its more simple menu included a humorous script, poetry and parodies. When the food concluded a toast was made to “Absent Ones”, drunk “while softly murmuring the words ‘Not lost but gone to CORPS’”. Notably, the term “Lest We Forget” was used to remind diners of good etiquette!

Christmas in transit

The voyage to active overseas service was a mixture of excitement, trepidation and monotony. Food service broke the boredom of long days at sea. On board the SS Suffolk on Christmas day 1915 diners were treated to a multi-course dinner, opening with olives, mock turtle soup and salmon cutlets in anchovy sauce. The next course featured iced asparagus, beef fillets with mushrooms and prawns in aspic, before the food became even more serious, with four types of meat, baked and boiled potatoes, and beans.

Members of the 4th Australian Field Ambulance at Christmas in Lemnos in 1915. Australian War Memorial

Four deserts followed, including plum pudding with both hard and brandy sauces. Like many special occasion menus of the war, diners signed their names on the back.

Aprés la guerre

The desire to be “home by Christmas” had been widely expressed from the very first year of the Great War, yet when the armistice finally came in 1918, Australians on active service still had a long journey ahead of them and faced another Christmas away from home.

In 1918, the 2nd Australian pioneers officers’ Christmas dinner took place “somewhere in France”, featuring a menu entirely in French save for the words “plum pudding” and “God Save the King”. Two half pages of the menu were dedicated to “Autographs”.

The souvenir menu card from the 13th Australian Field Ambulance 2nd anniversary dinner, held on Christmas Day 1918 in the Palace of Justice, Dinant-Sur-Meuse, Belgium likewise has a page for autographs. The festive menu features an extensive list of desserts.

The menu served to the 13th Australian Field Ambulance on Christmas Day 1918. Museums Victoria collection, donated by John Lord

Christmas dinner in 1919 saw Australians who had served in Europe returning home on the SS Königin Luise, a German ship allocated to Britain as part of war reparations. A menu saved by Sergeant Tom Robinson Lydster bears no references to the war.

A wreath of holly frames an eclectic menu including “Fillet of Sole au Vin Blanc, Asperges au Beurre Fondu” but also “Lamb cutlets, Tomato sauce, Roast Sirlion of Beef”. The Christmas element is provided by “Plum Pudding, Brandy Sauce, Mince Pies”. More than a year after the end of the war, some surviving Australians were yet to celebrate Christmas on home soil.

Christmas traditions for Australian soldiers, nurses and medics helped maintain cultural normalcy during overseas service. Yet Christmas on active service could be a time of significant stress, a reminder of loved ones far away and of fallen friends. Unfortunately, for those who returned to Australia, forever changed by their experiences, Christmas was not always what they remembered or had imagined.

– ref. What Australian soldiers ate for Christmas in WWI – http://theconversation.com/what-australian-soldiers-ate-for-christmas-in-wwi-108987

DNA from ancient Aboriginal Australian remains enables their return to Country

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Wright, Research associate, Griffith University

This article was coauthored by Gimuy Yidniji Traditional Owner Gudju Gudju Fourmile.

For many decades Aboriginal Australians have campaigned for the return of ancestral remains that continue to be stored in museums worldwide.

But in many instances these remains cannot be repatriated – as their geographic origin, tribal affiliation or language group was never identified. Without this information it is impossible for museums to determine appropriate custodians, which prevents their return.

Our research, published in Science Advances today, shows it is possible to determine the origin of Aboriginal Australian remains using DNA-based methods, enabling their return to Country.

Collaborative beginnings

Past injustices due to actions and policies implemented in early colonial history have left gaps in the self-knowledge of many contemporary Aboriginal Australians.

A key term in this context is “Country”: the place in which an Aboriginal Australian, or his or her ancestors, was born and lived. For some communities their Country encompasses large geographical areas; for others it is much smaller.

Aboriginal Australians believe they have a spiritual connection to their Country – and many believe that in order for their ancestor’s spirits to rest, their remains must be returned to Country.

The Lake Mungo World Heritage Site has a long history of Aboriginal occupation. Sherene Lambert (St Augustine’s College, Ipswich, Australia), Author provided

Many of our traditional owner collaborative partners wanted to learn more about their history through DNA analyses – and to directly test whether DNA might help with the return of unprovenanced remains from museums worldwide to Country.

Our research, undertaken in collaboration with Aboriginal Australian traditional owners and communities across Australia, tested whether it is possible to determine the origins of ancient individuals using DNA-based methods.

We successfully recovered ten nuclear genomes (DNA from cell nuclei) and 27 mitogenomes (DNA from cell mitochondria) from ancient pre-European Aboriginal Australians dating up to 1,540 years before present – and for whom we had records of Country.

These ancient genomic sequences, of known origin, were used as proxies for unprovenanced remains. We compared these against reference datasets of contemporary Aboriginal Australian nuclear and mitochondrial genomes.

Previously the only authentic pre-European DNA ever recovered from Aboriginal Australian remains was the mitochondrial genome of an ancient man from the Willandra Lakes region. Here we show it is also possible to recover ancient nuclear genomes from Aboriginal Australian remains, despite DNA survival in an Australian context being poor due to harsh climatic conditions.

Details of the locations and language groups of Aboriginal Australian samples uses in this study. Yellow shading indicates the distribution and location of Pama-Nyungan language families. Orange shading indicates the distribution of non–Pama-Nyungan language families. Dashed lines show the approximate distribution of accepted major language subgroups, with language names in italics. Red symbols indicate previously published mitochondrial or nuclear genomes; blue symbols indicate new unpublished data. Circles indicate contemporary Aboriginal Australian samples, and stars represent ancient individuals. Sample code abbreviations have been included in parentheses. Joanna Groom/Science Advances, Author provided

Mitochondrial vs nuclear DNA

We found by using maternally inherited DNA (mitochondrial DNA), we could successfully determine the origins of 62.1% of bodily remains of ancient Aboriginal Australians included in this research.

But we could not achieve this for the remaining 37.9% of the remains in the study. For these, the results were either inconclusive (due to a lack of contemporary matches or the matches identified were widespread across large geographic distances), or the results were unreliable. In two instances, the closest contemporary matches were not from the same geographic location, but some 635 kilometres away.

As the return to place and Country of ancestral remains is important to many Aboriginal Australian communities, repatriation to incorrect Country would be extremely problematic. Therefore, we are unable to recommend the use of mitochondrial DNA alone for repatriation.

Nuclear DNA (DNA inherited from both parents) provided the most accurate results, working in 100% of cases and to precise geographic locations.

The results obtained were supported by several different methods, each of which independently showed considerable population structure and local continuity between both the ancient and contemporary populations in each geographic location.

However, when combined, these analyses provide strong evidence that nuclear DNA, as a tool for repatriation, is very effective. If applied to unprovenanced ancestral remains, we believe this will greatly assist with their repatriation.

A need for national consultation and standards

Traditional Owner Gudju Gudju Fourmile of the Gimuy Yidniji People of Cairns told us this was an important result, and a solution to a problem that has been a major concern to Aboriginal Australians for more than 50 years. He said:

Many of our ancestors still remain on foreign land, and in storage of museums and collectors. We need to do the right thing to bring them home so their spirit will rest.

Despite our success, however, one question remains unanswered: how should this new tool be implemented? We believe that before DNA is used to facilitate repatriation of ancient remains, a detailed set of standards and protocols should be developed as best practice for museums and other institutions to follow.

As this method requires the destruction of unprovenanced ancient bone, albeit in small quantities, it is imperative that these standards be developed in close consultation with Indigenous communities across Australia. It is essential that a consensus be reached and a decision made by Aboriginal Australians at a national level. This requires a national debate, but it should be among our First People.

From subject to researcher

In addition to developing an effective tool for provenancing ancestral remains for repatriation, this research is significant because it was driven by Aboriginal Australian Traditional Owners and their communities. Their desire to learn more about themselves developed into a major research project in which they were actively involved and equal partners in the direction the research took.

Without their input and knowledge this research would not have been possible.

This is a significant shift from Aboriginal Australians being scientific subjects, as they were in the past, to them becoming researchers in their own right.

– ref. DNA from ancient Aboriginal Australian remains enables their return to Country – http://theconversation.com/dna-from-ancient-aboriginal-australian-remains-enables-their-return-to-country-108168

Serial killers’ fates are in politicians’ hands. Here’s why that’s a worry

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arie Freiberg, Emeritus Professor of Law, Monash University

The community has little sympathy for mass murderers, serial killers or anyone convicted of a very serious crime against another person.

Presumably, this is why the Sentence Administration Amendment (Multiple Murders) Act 2018 passed through the WA state parliament earlier this month without any substantial opposition and was supported by victims’ families.

When proclaimed, the new legislation will allow WA’s attorney-general to instruct the Prisoners Review Board to suspend the assessment, consideration or reporting for parole (or a re-socialisation program) for certain mass murderers and serial killers for up to six years at a time.

Previously, these orders only lasted three years, which meant prisoners denied parole were entitled to have their cases reviewed every three years.

This change affects six prisoners.

The attorney-general will also be able to make multiple instructions, which may mean he or she can order an offender will never be released. This decision is not subject to legal review except in exceptional circumstances.

The primary intention of this law is to reduce the trauma suffered by survivors and secondary victims of such crimes.

It fulfills an election commitment made in 2017 by the incoming McGowan Labor government.

Don’t these offenders deserve to die in jail?

Under WA law, a person convicted of murder and given a life sentence must be given a minimum term of 10 or 15 years, depending on the circumstances of the offence. Alternatively, the court may order the offender never be released on parole in certain circumstances. It’s easy to imagine that mass murderers and serial killers might warrant such a sentence.

However, where a life sentence for murder has been imposed and a minimum sentence served, it is the governor (usually acting on the advice of the attorney-general and the Prisoners Review Board) who has the ultimate power to parole a prisoner.

It appears that minimum sentences were set before the new legislation came into force for these six offenders, some for 30 years.

This arrangement is a hangover from when capital punishment was abolished in WA in 1984. Previously, the executive (that is, the political arm of government) made the final decision about whether the person would be executed. After abolition, the executive retained the power to decide which murderers would be released on parole. This system is unique to WA.

Who decides when someone’s released?

The difficulties with these changes to the law do not lie with the idea that mass murderers should never be released, but who decides if this should be the case.

Under the current law, it is the courts that can decide that “life means life”. This is an appropriate role for the judiciary. And it is appropriate for parliaments to make laws in relation to maximum sentences and parole generally.

However, it is not appropriate for politicians to make decisions about a specific person’s liberty, as they may be influenced by electoral or populist considerations rather than the merits of the individual case.

In the 1980s, most jurisdictions removed or limited the powers of attorneys-general to prosecute cases and gave this power to independent directors of public prosecutions.

In the same way, establishing independent parole boards from the 1950s, often chaired by retired or serving judicial officers, was designed to separate decisions about a person’s liberty from political influence.

Political pressure

As the debates in the WA parliament reveal, the political temptations are great. Why a delay of six years and not nine or 12? Why only serial killers and mass murderers? And how many victims are required to qualify? Why not paedophiles or child murderers or murderers of one victim?

The answer lies in the broad notion of the separation of powers: politicians make the law, the judiciary applies it and the executive carries out their decisions.

However, governments increasingly have shown a reluctance to trust courts or parole boards as the final decision-makers on sentencing and release powers, and have eroded their authority.

The Victorian parliament has legislated to effectively deny mass murderer Julian Knight and police killers the possibility of release on parole and many jurisdictions have introduced “no body, no parole” laws.

In WA, none of the six people subject to these new extended powers has been released after being considered by the Prisoners Review Board. This suggests the system was working effectively without the need for legislative reform.

It is understandable that victims should not be re-traumatised each time an offender is being considered for release, no matter how remote that possibility. And it is reasonable for the community to expect the most serious punishment for heinous crimes.

But it is also reasonable for citizens to expect that decisions about their liberty should be in the hands of impartial and independent bodies. This is what the “rule of law” should mean.

– ref. Serial killers’ fates are in politicians’ hands. Here’s why that’s a worry – http://theconversation.com/serial-killers-fates-are-in-politicians-hands-heres-why-thats-a-worry-108825

Christmas versus kilojoules – how to focus more on celebration and less on the food

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

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

Christmas and the holidays are a time to relax and celebrate with family and friends. But the festive season can also be a time of unwanted weight gain that won’t budge once the holidays are over.

Research (mostly from the United States) has found adults typically gain 400 to 900 grams over the holidays.

No-one wants to miss out on the celebrations. But knowing more about the kilojoule content of your favourite Christmas treats can help you make conscious decisions about which foods and drinks to have and enjoy, and what portion sizes to choose.

Check the comparisons below, and how much housework or the number of steps you’d need to take to expend that same number of kilojoules. (Note: calculations are based on an adult weighing 70-80 kilograms.)

Try this for starters

Which of these pre-dinner snacks is worth the effort:

A large handful of potato crisps containing 550kJ, which would take 32 minutes of vacuuming or 3294 steps to work off?

Or a handful of fresh cherries (about ten large or 15 small ones) which contains about 150kJ? This would take only 8.5 minutes of vacuuming or 880 steps to work off.

Here comes the main course

Two slices of roast pork and a 30g (matchbox size) piece of crackling contains about 1,415kJ. This is equivalent to spending 54 minutes cleaning windows or taking 8,500 steps.

If you substitute the pork for 12 medium prawns (about 70g) at 260kJ, this is equivalent to ten minutes of washing windows or taking 1,560 steps.

Sweet swap

If you eat one-eighth (about 90g) of a large plum pudding, you will have consumed about 1,080kJ. You’ll need to take about 6,350 steps to walk it off, or spend 41 minutes raking up leaves in the garden.

Smaller portions come with fewer kilojoules. Shutterstock

In contrast, one 25g rum ball contains about 350kJ, equivalent to 2,060 steps or 13 minutes of raking leaves.

Even better, half a cup of fresh fruit salad at 250kJ is equivalent to 1,470 steps or approximately nine minutes of raking leaves.

How to focus more on celebration

It’s possible to have fun at Christmas and celebrate the time with family and friends while reducing your focus on food. Here are some tips to get you started:

Take a breather between courses. Shutterstock

think about your Christmas food budget and try to stick to it. Going for less total food but better quality in your budget can help avoid food waste and reduce stress related to finances and food security.
if Christmas home cooking is a part of your routine, plan to give some away as gifts. Or, think about spending less time in the kitchen cooking and more time contacting those you have not been in touch with for a while.
plan some fun, post-dinner Christmas activities. Set up some old-fashioned physical games, like a hookey board, a set of skittles, or boules. Make playing compulsory before dessert is served!

Try not to feel guilty

You’d think people who stress about food would have healthier eating habits, but the research shows that this isn’t the case.

One study found that people who associated eating chocolate cake with guilt, rather than a celebration, had eating habits that were less healthy, especially when they were under stress.

Aside from avoiding over-eating, having a focus on enjoying healthy foods as well as some self-compassion can help improve your relationship with food.

– ref. Christmas versus kilojoules – how to focus more on celebration and less on the food – http://theconversation.com/christmas-versus-kilojoules-how-to-focus-more-on-celebration-and-less-on-the-food-107436

State of the Climate 2018: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Grose, Climate Projections Scientist, CSIRO

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO have released their fifth biennial State of the Climate report.

State of the Climate 2018 is the latest biennial snapshot of climate change in Australia. It focuses on observed long-term trends that are happening now and are likely to continue into the near future, as well as significant climate events that have occurred over the past two years. These changes are described through the latest observations from CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology marine, atmospheric and terrestrial monitoring programs.

The report also summarises the latest climate research from Australia and around the world. This will help inform a range of economic, environmental and social risk assessments and responses by government, industry and communities.

Multiple lines of evidence show the climate system changing in ways that are discernible from natural variability, and consistent with a human influence on climate. These changes are having an impact on our natural and built environment.

In particular, climate change is being felt through an increase in the frequency and severity of high-impact weather events such as heatwaves, extreme fire weather conditions, coastal inundation and marine heatwaves. These trends are projected to continue.

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Some of the report’s major findings are described below.

Passing major milestones

Australia’s average air temperature has warmed by just over 1℃ since national records began in 1910. Oceans around Australia have also warmed by around 1℃ since 1910.

Annual mean temperature over Australia and the seas surrounding Australia. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are rising globally. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to increase, and are the main contributor to the rise in CO₂, with some contribution from changes in land use.

Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations measured at Cape Grim, Tasmania (one of three main global measuring stations, alongside Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and Nunavut, Canada), have persisted at levels above 400 parts per million (ppm) since 2016. What’s more, the combined concentration of all greenhouse gases exceeded the equivalent of 500 ppm CO₂ in mid-2018. These milestones haven’t been crossed for at least 800,000 years, and likely 2 million years.

Changes in the atmosphere and land

Australia’s warming trend has led to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events. For example, very high monthly maximum temperatures that used to occur around 2% of the time (based on the average for 1951–80) now happen about 12% of the time (2003–17).

Other elements of Australia’s climate have also shown long-term changes. New analysis techniques now provide a more detailed picture of changes to fire weather through time. The annual total of daily values of the Forest Fire Danger Index is increasing over large areas of Australia. Most regions also saw an increase in the most extreme 10% of fire weather days, and fire seasons have lengthened.

Rainfall in April–October has been steadily decreasing in Western Australia’s Southwest, and has decreased since the 1990s in southeast Australia. In contrast, rainfall has increased in parts of northern Australia since the 1970s.

The observed long-term reduction in rainfall across southern Australia has led to even greater reductions in streamflow. Long-term average streamflow has decreased in most regions of southern Australia, and increased in regions of northern Australia.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and this is an important driver of the observed increase in the intensity of short-duration rainfall, sometimes linked to flash flooding. Southern Australia is projected to experience decreases in average rainfall and more time spent in drought. Meanwhile, most of the country can expect an increase in rainfall intensity.

Historically, significant weather and climate events are often the result of the combined influence of several extreme factors at once. Higher temperatures during periods of below-average rainfall, for instance, can exacerbate drought conditions. Temperature, dryness and wind come together to create dangerous bushfire conditions.

Trend in the annual sum of Forest Fire Danger Index, 1978–2017. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

Changes in the ocean

The warming in Australia’s oceans has contributed to longer and more frequent marine heatwaves – defined as periods when sea surface temperatures are much warmer than average. The world’s oceans are a crucial moderator of the climate, taking up more than 90% of the extra heat in the system – most of it is absorbed by the Southern Ocean.

Sea levels continue to rise through the combined effects of warming oceans and melting ice from land-based glaciers and ice sheets. Global average sea level has risen by more than 20cm since 1880, but the rate varies from place to place. About 25% of the CO₂ emitted by human activity diffuses into the oceans, making them more acidic in the process.

The past two years, 2016 and 2017, have seen back-to-back bleaching events in parts of the Great Barrier Reef, linked to marine heatwave events. These changes are very likely linked to warming oceans, and primarily driven by the human influence on the climate.

Global sea level change from 1880 estimated from tide gauges and satellites. CSIRO, Author provided

Well-established scientific theory and climate model studies both show that the warming would largely not have occurred without the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. In addition, the current increase in temperatures accords with projections made nearly 30 years ago. Warming is projected to continue into the future as the effect of past emissions continue, and more greenhouse gases are emitted. Australia is projected to experience increases in sea and air temperatures, with more hot days and marine heatwaves, and fewer cool extremes.

It takes time for the climate system to warm in response to increases in greenhouse gases, and the historical emissions over the past century have locked in some warming over the next two decades, regardless of any changes we might make to global emissions in that period. However, by the mid-21st century, higher ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to greater warming and associated impacts, and reducing emissions will lead to less warming and fewer associated impacts.

Australian average annual temperature 1861-1900 period in observations and global climate models. CSIRO, Author provided

State of the Climate 2018 can be read on either the Bureau of Meteorology or CSIRO websites. The online report includes an extensive list of references and useful links.

You can also watch accompanying behind-the-scenes videos on our research on climate extremes and ocean warming.

– ref. State of the Climate 2018: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO – http://theconversation.com/state-of-the-climate-2018-bureau-of-meteorology-and-csiro-109001

Doing away with essays won’t necessarily stop students cheating

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Hare, Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne

It’s never been easier for university students to cheat. We just need look to the scandal in 2015 that revealed up to 1,000 students from 16 Australian universities had hired the Sydney-based MyMaster company to ghost-write their assignments and sit online tests.

It’s known as contract cheating – when a student pays a third party to undertake their assignments which they then pass off as their own. Contract cheating isn’t new – the term was coined in 2006. But it’s becoming more commonplace because new technologies, such as the smart phone, are enablers.

Cheating is taken seriously by universities and the national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. Much of the focus has been on changing assessment tasks to ones deemed to be harder for a third party to undertake. This is called “authentic assessment”.

This type of assessment has been widely adopted at universities. They are comprised of tasks that evaluate knowledge and skills by presenting students with real-world scenarios or problems relevant to the kinds of challenges they would face following graduation. But new research found authentic assessment may be as vulnerable to cheating as other more obvious examples, such as essays.

What the research shows

This new study was conducted by academics from six universities, led by Tracey Bretag and Rowena Harper from the University of South Australia. The research – part of the federal government’s Contract Cheating and Assessment Design project – surveyed 14,086 students and 1,147 staff.

The goal of this research was to collect and understand student’s perceptions of the likelihood of cheating on 13 different assessment tasks. The research then asked teaching staff which of the 13 tasks they used.

Unique, in-class tasks were perceived to be the hardest to cheat on. from www.shutterstock.com

The researchers have previously reported from this data set that 6% of students admitted to cheating. The purpose of the current round of analysis was not to understand the extent of cheating, but perceptions of how easily it might be done, and if that correlated with the tasks educators set.

They found, for both students and teachers, assessments with a short turnaround time and heavily weighted in the final mark were perceived as the tasks which were the most likely to attract contract cheating.

Assessments perceived as the least likely to attract contract cheating were in-class tasks, personalised and unique tasks, vivas (oral explanations of a written task) and reflections on practical placements. But these tasks were the least likely to be set by educators, presumably because they’re resource and time intensive.

Contract cheating and assessment design

The research confirms the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is a complex one. There was no assessment tasks for which students reported a 0% likelihood of contract cheating. Students who engage in contract cheating both see and look for opportunities to cheat regardless of the assessment task.

For universities, that means they must assume cheating is always possible and simply changing what assessments they use will not combat the problem.

Authentic assessment might be as vulnerable to outsourcing as essays. from www.shutterstock.com

Many experts have advocated the use of supervised exams to combat cheating. But this new research adds to a growing body of evidence that exams provide universities and accrediting bodies with a false sense of security. In fact, previous data has shown students reported engaging in undetected cheating on supervised exams at higher rates than other types of cheating.

Another common approach is to use a series of small, graded tasks, such as spontaneous in-class tests, sometimes called continuous assessment. Even here, students indicated these were the third most likely form of assessment to be outsourced.

Who’s most likely to cheat?

There has been much attention, particularly during the MyMaster scandal, on international students’ use of contract cheating. The new research suggests both international students and domestic students from non-English speaking backgrounds are more likely to engage in contract cheating than other students.

The research also found business and commerce degrees were more likely be perceived as attracting contract cheating. Engineering was also particularly vulnerable to cheating.

Students from non-English speaking backgrounds hypothesised cheating would be most likely to occur in assessments that required research, analysis and thinking skills (essays), heavily weighted assignments and assessments with short turnaround times.

Students were still likely to cheat on supervised exams. from www.shutterstock.com

Perhaps unsurprisingly, students who indicated they were satisfied with the quality of teaching were less likely to think breaches of academic integrity were likely. In other words, this confirms previous research which showed students dissatisfied with their educational experience are more likely to cheat.

So what do we do about it?

This research provides yet more compelling evidence that curriculum and changes to teaching strategies and early intervention must be employed to support students’ academic endeavours.

The researchers also point out high levels of cheating risks undermining the reputation and quality of Australia’s A$34 billion export sector in international education.

The data demonstrates assessment tasks designed to develop relevant professional skills, which teachers are highly likely to set, were perceived by students as tasks that can easily be cheated on. These might include asking accounting students to memorandums, reports or other communication groups to stakeholders, such as shareholders. In fact, among students from a non-English speaking background, the risks of cheating might actually increase for these tasks. This means authentic assessment might run the increasing risk of being outsourced.

This research shows the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design is not a simple product of cause and effect. In fact, the nature of the task itself may be less relevant to the prevalence of cheating than other factors such as a student’s from non-English speaking background’s status, perceived opportunities to cheat or satisfaction with the teaching and learning environment.

All educators must remain vigilant about cheating. Teachers must be properly resourced by their universities to ensure they can create rich learning environments which uphold the integrity of the higher education system.

Burdened with large debts and facing a precarious job market after graduation, it’s perhaps unsurprising some students, particularly those who are struggling academically, take a transactional approach to their education. This new research provides more clear evidence contract cheating is a systemic problem that requires a sector-wide response.

– ref. Doing away with essays won’t necessarily stop students cheating – http://theconversation.com/doing-away-with-essays-wont-necessarily-stop-students-cheating-108995

Building in ways that meet the needs of Australia’s remote regions

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Robertson, Innovation Fellow and Lecturer, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Monash University

Remote areas were described as “unused” and/or “underperforming” in a 2017 address by internationally renowned architects Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of OMA. Similarly, a 2004 territorial study of Switzerland by ETH Studio Basel, led by architecture firm Herzog & De Meuron, painted the entire country as an urban landscape except for the most remote alpine regions. These were classified as “fallow land” and/or “quiet places”.

It follows that building policies typically centralise decision-making, resources and projects in the largest population centres, irrespective of population distribution or remote community needs. The urban perspective through which building policies are largely determined fails to assess the value of remote regions beyond market-oriented economics.

For remote-dwelling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the land, or Country, is entwined with spiritual and cultural identity. It cannot be valued in market terms.

A regional approach to building could meet remote community needs and bring about local economic development. It would also reinforce the United Nations-recognised right of Indigenous peoples to maintain cultural connections to Country.

What’s different about remote Indigenous settlement?

Remote Australia cannot be viewed through the same lens as rural Australia. For a start, it has distinct settlement patterns. These are characterised by the presence of large numbers of Indigenous people, a widely dispersed population and, as population geographer John Taylor describes it, a “frequent” and “circular” internal mobility.

While just 14% of Australia’s population lives in remote areas, 28% of Indigenous people do. In remote areas, Aboriginal people are more likely to have experienced histories that enabled them to maintain connections to traditional Country. This has resulted in a proportionally greater recognition of Aboriginal land tenure under either the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 or the Native Title Act 1993.

Northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory is typical of this pattern. It is extremely remote and has a largely Indigenous population, with 67% identifying as Yolngu.

There are three main settlement types: a largely non-Indigenous mining town of 2,500 people, Nhulunbuy; a mostly Indigenous ex-mission settlement of around 850 people called Yirrkala; and more than 30 homelands across the territory located on traditional family clan lands with populations of up to 150, but typically fewer than 50 people. The people move often from place to place due to seasonal and cultural obligations and/or availability of access to services.

Northeast Arnhem land is extremely remote and has a largely Indigenous population living in three main settlement types. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

Challenges of building remotely

Physical distance and political marginalisation make it difficult and costly to advocate for building in remote regions generally, but Australia’s remote Indigenous regions face further challenges.

Restrictive Aboriginal land tenure limits opportunities for building and/or economic development. For instance, there is no housing market due to the inability to buy and sell recognised Aboriginal land. This means that, unlike in the rest of Australia, buildings do not represent an economic “improvement” to the land.

Furthermore, in Yirrkala, no houses were built in the first five years of the federal government’s Strategic Indigenous Housing Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) – later relabelled the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing (NPARIH) and then the National Partnership on Remote Housing (NPRH). This was because others contested Rirratjingu clans’ traditional ownership of parts of the township, which delayed decisions on where houses could be built.

Materials are usually shipped in, but the Delta Reef Gumatj have begun building with locally made timber trusses. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

Economic development and job opportunities are also limited. A special agreement is required to establish an economic venture on Aboriginal land. Obtaining permission is costly and the process slow as extensive legal and anthropological work is required.

The result has been a dearth of local material and construction industries, and jobs, on remote Aboriginal land. Building materials are generally shipped in.

Collectively, these factors contribute to a reliance on government for investment in building. In Northeast Arnhem Land, the Australian or Northern Territory governments provide 95% of building funds.

Government-funded housing under construction by DRG, Gunyangara. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

Centralisation model dominates

The policy position of Australian, state and territory governments has long been one of centralisation. Funding is concentrated on the largest population centres where there is a perceived availability of jobs and economies of scale.

Immediate housing need in Northeast Arnhem Land by number. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

This position is upheld irrespective of identified building needs. For instance, in 2015 Nhulunbuy had 250 vacant houses after the Gove alumina refinery closed. There were shortfalls of 56 houses in Yirrkala and 81 houses across the Laynhapuy homelands. Yet 90% of government investment in building was in Nhulunbuy and Yirrkala, despite negligible need in Nhulunbuy and extensive need on the homelands.

The territorial distribution of capital works investment in Northeast Arnhem Land. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

The Northeast Arnhem Land experience aligns with that of other remote Indigenous regions. Homelands, in particular, have been chronically underfunded. After the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was abolished in 2005, state and territory governments largely assumed responsibility for infrastructure and services on homelands without allocating further funds for new housing. The Northern Territory government formalised this position in its Homelands Policy and amendments to it in 2013.

The stage structure at Baniyla Homeland is used as a house due to overcrowding. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

The situation is unlikely to change. If anything, it has intensified. In 2016, threats from the Western Australian government extended from ending new construction to ending basic services to between 100 and 150 of its smallest homelands (more commonly known as outstations in WA).

Government building projects in remote Indigenous Australia have not only failed to align with needs but also have limited local economic development. Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) Queensland Research Centre reports criticised the alliancing procurement methodology used in the SIHIP/NPARIH program because it allocated risk to the contractor. This knocked small-scale local contractors out of the tender process and resulted in limited use of local labour and materials.

Four steps to better building policy

Policy reforms could stimulate building in remote Indigenous regions. Reforms should focus on increasing local Indigenous input into decision-making. This is critical for identifying and responding to local needs.

From the most difficult to the easiest to enact, reform options could be:

alignment with the Uluru Statement from the Heart, treaty or constitutional amendment to give Indigenous people “their rightful place”, as Gough Whitlam put it, at a national level with statutory decision-making authority over their lands
amend legislation to devolve decision-making to Indigenous people at a local regional level, as occurred in 2017 amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 devolving these powers from the Northern Land Council to the Tiwi Land Council, Ngarrariyal Aboriginal Corporation and Baniyala Nimbarrki Land Authority, for self-determination of townships on their lands
restructure Regional Development Australia agencies to align with recognised territorial regions, as opposed to general population distribution, to foster best building practice and advocacy for local needs
do nothing but favour the specification of local suppliers (such as through the Supply Nation network), materials (in Northeast Arnhem Land the Delta Reef Gumatj have begun building with locally made concrete blocks and timber trusses) and labour (through slow builds and the use of semi-skilled technological systems) at a project-by-project level.

Self-funded Delta Reef Gumatj-built single men’s accommodation under construction, Gunyangara. Hannah Robertson, Author provided

These policy options are not necessarily mutually exclusive: where practicable they could be conducted in tandem or implemented in part.

The shift to a regional building approach does not require revolutionary change. Rather, it builds upon a remote region’s existing practices, knowledge and organisational systems by decentralising decision-making.

Building is not the panacea for the economic development challenges of remote Indigenous regions – it cannot employ every job seeker. But if building policy decision-making is regionally determined it can better align with community needs and contribute to local industry.

The Conversation is co-publishing articles with Future West (Australian Urbanism), produced by the University of Western Australia’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts. These articles look towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point, with the latest series focusing on the regions. You can read other articles here.

– ref. Building in ways that meet the needs of Australia’s remote regions – http://theconversation.com/building-in-ways-that-meet-the-needs-of-australias-remote-regions-106071

Yes, retailers exploit Christmas, but their decorations still evoke religious spirit

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Newton, Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University

Christmas trees in the aisles. Baubles hanging from the ceiling. Carols playing on the in-store speakers. Tinsel around the cash register.

Shops put a lot of effort into Christmas decorations. It’s in their interest to associate themselves with the celebration, and to encourage shoppers to think spending up big is part and parcel of its enjoyment.

Is this overt commercialisation of Christmas drowning out its true spirit?

Not necessarily, according to research by myself, Jimmy Wong from the Singapore University of Social Sciences and Riza Casidy from Deakin University.

We have found that seeing Christmas symbols – even a secular one – can evoke religious values in service contexts. Customers who had a Christian upbringing become more forgiving of poor service they personally receive but also more judgemental of any poor service they observe being meted out to vulnerable others.

The religious spirit of Christmas

Our research adds to a small but growing body of research on how Christmas affects attitudes and behaviour. Previous research has suggested that mere exposure to the word “Christmas” can evoke charitable behaviour, that Christmas displays improve the mood of those who celebrate Christmas, and that displaying outdoor Christmas decorations can make a household appear more welcoming.

Our results reinforce these findings. They show the strength of Christmas’s religious roots despite commercial and secular interest in de-emphasising the connection to Christianity.

For people brought up in a household where Christmas was primarily a religious celebration, encountering a Christmas symbol reminds them of religious meanings and values.

This effect did not depend on them still being a Christian. This shows the associations that children in Christian households develop between Christmas and religion remain potent long after childhood.

Christmas time at the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris. Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA

A double-edged sword

Across seven experiments, we presented more than 1,500 participants with scenarios describing various types of poor service.

Some scenarios described poor service that was personally experienced. Others described poor service directed towards someone else.

Accompanying these scenarios were various Christmas symbols. In one experiment, we had participants listen to Christmas carols or nursery rhymes. In other experiments, participants were shown images of where the poor service took place. Included in the background of some of these images was a Christmas tree.

We found that the mere presence of these Christmas symbols was enough for people with a Christian upbringing to judge the poor service less harshly, become less likely to warn others about it, and be less likely to switch to another business.

In our research, people with a Christian upbringing also became more concerned about the welfare of others after seeing a Christmas symbol. In particular, they more critically judged poor service involving someone they regarded as vulnerable (an older person, for example). They were also more likely to warn others about that poor service and to switch to another business.

Thus Christmas symbols represent a double-edged sword for retailers.

Christmas decorations for sale in a shop in Baghdad. Christians form about 5% of the population in Iraq. Ali Abbas/EPA

Other religious symbols

Christmas symbols are but one type of religious symbol. Would similar effects occur for other religions if matching religious symbols were observed? Our findings suggest they would.

In another of our experiments, we asked participants to unscramble sentences containing generic religious phrases or non-religious phrases.

Irrespective of their religious background, participants who unscrambled the generic religious phrases were less harsh in how they judged poor service than those who unscrambled the non-religious phrases.

These findings point to some interesting conclusions.

Although stores may try to co-opt Christmas symbolism for commercial gain, it seems these symbols can not be completely disconnected from associations established by Christianity.

Sometimes, such as the negative responses that occur after seeing a vulnerable person experiencing poor service, they can lead to outcomes where the true spirit of Christmas really does undercut a firm’s self-interest.

– ref. Yes, retailers exploit Christmas, but their decorations still evoke religious spirit – http://theconversation.com/yes-retailers-exploit-christmas-but-their-decorations-still-evoke-religious-spirit-108334

What the folk? Whatever happened to Australia’s national folklife centre?

By The Conversation -

December 20, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Gallagher, PhD Candidate, School of History, Australian National University

Most Australians know something about “folklore”. Every year crowds converge on Canberra for the National Folk Festival. But, folklore encompasses far more than song and dance. The term refers to a rich intangible heritage of games, yarns, legends, stories, crafts, jokes, tricks, taboos, poems, recipes, birthday customs and even graffiti.

It exists in the playground, in the kitchen, at the bar and even on the walls of the Australian War Memorial, stitched into the beautiful Changi quilts. Folklore is everywhere.

Australia has often undervalued its folklife. There was a time, however, when one government department took a special interest in the study and preservation of Australian folklore. In 1986, Barry Cohen, then Minister of Arts Heritage and Environment, commissioned a Committee of Inquiry into Folklife in Australia.

Folklife: Our Living Heritage (1987)

The resulting report Folklife: Our Living Heritage, was published in 1987. It concluded that despite the valiant efforts of individuals, local and community organisations, Australia was by “international standards […] poorly equipped” to ensure the protection of its folklore. Of the 51 recommendations, many depended on the success of the first: the establishment of an Australian Folklife Centre.

As part of this bold but much-needed initiative, the Centre would “provide national focus for action to record, safeguard and promote awareness of Australia’s heritage of folklife”. It was estimated that its establishment would cost $1.25 million (equivalent of $3.7 million today), with a further $1.5 million to support activities in its early years.

Several recommendations were concerned with folklife in schools, particularly important as the primary school playground is today a major location for children’s folkloric play. The committee decided not to report on traditional Aboriginal ceremony, lore and belief, but it did include Aboriginal craft and contemporary urban and rural folklife.

The inquiry made it clear that the government was, and still is, responsible for the protection of the nation’s tangible and intangible heritage. This was apparently not the news that the government and its new environment and arts minister, Graham Richardson, wanted to hear: none of the recommendations of the folklife inquiry were ever implemented by the Government.

Still, Australian folklorists were not so easily deterred. Inspired by initiatives like the American Folklife Center and the Ontario Folklife Centre, Gwenda Davey, Jennifer Gall and Pamela Rosenberg went ahead and declared the establishment of an Australian Folklife Centre in Canberra in December 1990.

Girls Playing ‘Oranges and Lemons’ Game, Melbourne, 1954. Courtesy of Museums Victoria and Dr June Factor, Item MM 104103.

Australia’s major coordinating body for national folk arts, the Australian Folk Trust, courageously took up responsibility for the Centre. The National Library, National Museum and National Film and Sound Archive were all on side. The Centre also had international support, even from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, which invited Australia to be the featured nation at the 1993 Festival of American Folklife. Only one country, Sweden, had declined the offer in 48 years. Much to the dismay of the folklore community, Australia was to be the second.

The Australian Folklife Centre should have been an early victory in Australia’s culture wars: a moment when the Federal Government made an important commitment to protecting the nation’s living culture. The Centre itself would have been an initiative not only of collection and preservation, but of research, advocacy, training and public policy. In the end, it could not continue its work without government funding and it wound up its affairs in 1994-5 after four years of hard work.

Timing appears to have been a major obstacle to gaining momentum. Established under the first Hawke government, but published under the second, the Folklife Inquiry suffered under changing government priorities after the 1987 federal election as well as a wave of post-Bicentenary fatigue. As the historian Frank Bongiorno has observed, Australia had just finished celebrating “the biggest party [it had] ever seen”.

A ‘national disgrace’

Folklorists did their best to maintain pressure on governments, but they were met with little success. In 1992, Gwenda Davey, a major proponent of the Centre and later the director of the promising Victorian Folklife Association in Melbourne, considered it a “national disgrace” that “Australia is one of the very few nations in the world which has no Ministries of Culture and no national institutions [primarily] dedicated to its traditional cultures”.

While the Labor government of the day might be an easy target of blame for the Centre’s demise, the story is far more complex (notably, no Coalition government has rushed to the rescue either).

Photograph of Roland Griffin and Barry Skipsey at the Gold Rush Folk Festival, Tennant Creek, 1981. Courtesy of NT Library, PH0662/0087.

The Australia Council, the government’s arts funding and advisory body, was focusing its efforts on supporting professional and contemporary arts rather than traditional amateur arts. And while folklorists have always prided themselves on their local and regional influence, they struggled to mobilise with one voice. Internal disagreements, especially about the definition of folklore, did not help.

Folklorists also struggled to weigh in on the big issues of the nation. As Richard Kurin, then director for Centre of Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies at the Smithsonian Institution noted in 1992, folklorists “should be at the forefront of national and international debates on fundamental cultural issues”.

One can’t help but wonder what Australia’s cultural landscape would look like if the Australian Folklife Centre had been successful. Would bus-loads of school children, while making the annual pilgrimage to Canberra, visit to learn about the games, recipes, dances and rhymes of their ancestors? Might they even find the time to record their own lore for the next generation?

– ref. What the folk? Whatever happened to Australia’s national folklife centre? – http://theconversation.com/what-the-folk-whatever-happened-to-australias-national-folklife-centre-108678

Newsletter: New Zealand Politics Daily – December 19 2018

By Bryce Edwards -

December 19, 2018

Newsletter: New Zealand Politics Daily – December 19 2018

Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.

The Beehive and Parliament Buildings.SSC investigation into govt agencies use of private investigators
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Public service bosses ignored warnings about Thompson & Clark for years
Hamish Rutherford (Stuff): Use of private investigators exposes carelessness about role of the government
David Williams (Newsroom): Behind Southern Response’s smokescreen of security
Jessie Chiang (RNZ): Environmental groups call for change after security firm revelations
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Southern Response boss resigns before meeting with Minister
Herald: Southern Response boss Ross Butler falls on his sword following spying revelations
RNZ: Southern Response chair resigns following spying revelations
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Southern Response chair resigns following Govt spying fiasco
1News: Chair of Southern Response resigns after spying scandal
Patrick Gower (Newshub): Southern Response chair refusing to resign after Govt spying fiasco
Lucy Bennett (Herald): SSC report into use of private investigators ‘disturbing’, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
RNZ: ‘Disturbing’ behaviour revealed by spying investigation – PM
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Security firm spied on politicians, activists and earthquake victims
Pattrick Smellie (BusinessDesk): MBIE involvement in spying on political parties an ‘affront to democracy’: SSC
Lucy Bennett (Herald): Damning report confirms Government agencies used private investigators for spying
1News: Report on security consultants finds widespread failings across Govt agencies – ‘We need to do better’
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): State sector spy inquiry finds wide failings
Emma Jolliff (Newshub): Spies used against earthquake victims ‘an affront to democracy’
Emma Hatton (RNZ): Thompson and Clark spied on earthquake victims, inquiry finds
Electoral Commission: Response to SSC inquiry
No Right Turn: A private Stasi
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Public service spying scum are the biggest threat to the people of NZ

Police investigation into use of private investigators
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Police officers caught moonlighting for security firms
Lucy Bennett (Herald): Police release findings of review into use of private investigators
No Right Turn: Nothing to see here, move along

Cannabis referendum, drug laws
Joel Ineson and Jonathan Guildford (Stuff): Health experts: Regulation key to proposed drug reform
Dominion Post Editorial: Drug referendum could be the gift we can’t give back
John Anthony (Stuff): Cannabis legalisation in New Zealand could bring in up to $240m in tax revenue, economist says
Benedict Collins (1News): New Zealanders will vote on whether cannabis should be legalised for personal use at 2020 election
RNZ: Binding referendum on legalising cannabis for personal use to be held at 2020 election
Anna Bracewell-Worrall and Vita Molyneux (Newshub): Cannabis referendum will be held during the 2020 election
Māori TV: Legalise it? 2020 cannabis referendum confirmed
Eleanor Ainge Roy (Guardian): New Zealand to hold referendum on legalising recreational cannabis
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Andrew Little throws Green Party lifeline of relevancy for 2020 election
Bonnie Flaws (Stuff): Medsafe investigating claims on cannabis billboard
Whanganui Chronicle: Greenfern Medicinal Marijuana launches crowdfunding campaign to build facilities at Normanby, South Taranaki

Migrant labour, immigration
Anusha Bradley (RNZ): Timely survey on working conditions in horticultural industry
Angie Skerrett (Newshub): Farming group welcomes proposed work visa changes
Tracey Roxburgh (ODT): Mixed reaction to work visa changes
RNZ: Proposed immigration changes would benefit regions – Lees-Galloway
1News: Major change to temporary work visas proposed by Government as jobs go unfilled

Google name suppression breach
Jo Moir (RNZ): Grace Millane: Google unable to explain suppression breach
Laura Walters (Newsroom): Little lays down the law for Google in NZ
Jamie Ensor and Jenna Lynch (Newshub): Grace Millane: Google to review system after ‘unacceptable’ name suppression breach
Herald: Justice Minister Andrew Little meets with Google over Grace Millane name suppression breach
Collette Devlin (Stuff): Justice Minister to tell Google breaking suppression is not acceptable
RNZ: Little to meet with Google reps over suppression laws

Justice, corrections
Kirsty Lawrence, Tony Wall and Blair Ensor (Stuff): Report reveals Corrections inaction over child sex offender in motel with children
Herald Editorial: Fine balance in Rouxle Le Roux sentencing
Belinda Feek (Herald):Hit-and-run victim’s mother calls for calm after driver’s death threats
Newstalk ZB: Lawyer says Le Roux was not solely to blame for hit and run (audio interview)
Michael Neilson (Herald): Hit and run driver subject of death threats as public backlash to sentence grows
Laine Moger (Stuff): Death threats for hit-and-run driver Rouxle Le Roux
Sophie Bateman (Newshub): Rouxle Le Roux: Death threats made 19yo ‘afraid to sleep’
Jason Walls (Herald): MPs accept 143,000 signature petition demanding tougher sentence for killer driver Rouxle Le Roux
1News: Tearful father of teen killed in hit-and-run asks Crown to ‘make this right’ as tougher sentence petition delivered to Parliament
RNZ: Teen’s grieving parents hand over petition with 143,000 signatures
Kendall Hutt (Stuff): Family of hit-and-run death cyclist submit petition over driver’s sentence
Eleisha Foon and Vita Molyneux (Newshub): Rouxle Le Roux: Petition handed to Parliament appealing hit-and-run driver’s sentence
Kate Gudsell (RNZ): Does NZ need a DNA databank for every citizen?
David Farrar: A sound choice for Chief Justice
Ross Meurant (Daily Blog): The real story behind the Crewe Murders
Ross Meurant (Daily Blog): Bok Tour reflection 2018

Foreign Affairs, Huawei ban
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Power of the Five Eyes in Huawei ban
Jason Walls (Herald): NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters and US Vice-President Mike Pence agreed to pool resources in the Pacific
Zane Small (Newshub): Winston Peters praises ‘personable’ Mike Pence after White House meeting
Point of Order: Pacific Reset – what Labour really thinks about it will be seen when US ships arrive

Environment and conservation
Kate Gudsell (RNZ): Kidney failure-causing pathogen found in Canterbury rivers
RNZ: Southland wetlands being lost at rate of 157ha a year
Paul Gorman (Stuff): Cleaner water goal of far-reaching Environment Canterbury strategy
Laurel Stowell (Whanganui Chronicle): Erosion work at Kai Iwi Beach ‘unforgivable’ – spokesman
Debrin Foxcroft (Stuff): No more single-use plastic bags in shops from July 1 next year
Zane Small (Newshub): Single-use plastic bags banned from July 1, Government confirms
ODT Editorial: The appalling 1080 fanatics
Angie Skerrett (Newshub): Million dollar scanner boosts Auckland Airport biosecurity
1News: 3-D technology behind new ‘game changing’ scanner for Auckland Airport
RNZ: New million-dollar x-ray scanner for Auckland Airport
Rachael Kelly (Stuff): Deadline looms for Invercargill’s aging heating appliance upgrades

Health
Nicholas Jones and Natalie Akoorie (Herald): Unfair care: What’s going wrong in the health system?
Oliver Lewis (Stuff): Drugs and alcohol significant in mental illness sudden deaths
RNZ: One in six ED patients had alcohol-related problems – snapshot
Merryn Gott (Newsroom): Lift the stigma to ease loneliness
Sam Hurley (Herald): Paedophile teacher granted ‘clean slate’ to work in aged care, despite industry fears
Stuff: Family of Nicky Stevens to meet with Minister of Health David Clark
Brianna McIlraith (Stuff): Teen cancer charity users slam closure of regional branches
Paul Mitchell (Stuff): Manawatū CanTeen branch to close in cancer charity’s national restructure
Janine Rankin (Manawatū Standard): Palmerston North still well down the queue for hospital revamp

Year in review
Richard Harman (Politik): So what is next? How this year will define 2019
Barry Soper (Newstalk ZB): No party covers itself in glory as parliamentary year draws to a close
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Media Person of the Year
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): TDB Political & Media Awards 2018 Part 1

Child Poverty bill
Anna Whyte (1News): Child Poverty Reduction bill ‘pioneering’, unashamedly bold’ says Ardern as it passes its final hurdle in Parliament
Lucy Bennett (Herald): Child Poverty Reduction Bill passes third reading
RNZ: Child poverty bill passes third reading in Parliament
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Baby Neve watches Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speak on child poverty reduction in Parliament

Government, budget
Jason Walls (Herald): Increase in contracts for Minister’s partner’s firm not conflict of interest – PM
Tracy Watkins (Stuff): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s big prediction for 2019

Parliament
Bryan Bruce (Daily Blog): Voting Blind in Britain and New Zealand
Phil Smith (RNZ): Tuesday’s things to do: reading it thrice
Daniela Maoate-Cox (RNZ): Parliament’s final week for 2018
Lucy Bennett (Herald): Former National minister Chris Finlayson bows out of politics
Anna Whyte (1News): Chris Finlayson praises Gerry Brownlee and Nikki Kaye, takes swipe at NZ First during valedictory speech
1News: Watch: Jacinda Ardern made to apologise after ‘simple, Simon’ comment in Parliament
Stuff: Did the prime minister just call her opponent names?

Education
Ross Himona: Tomorrow’s Schools Yesterday.
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Staff stood down pending investigation into Lower Hutt childcare centre
Natalie Polley (Waikato Times): St Stephen’s School in Bombay, south of Auckland, to re-open in 2020
Jessica Long and Katarina Williams (Stuff): Victoria University of Wellington name change rejected by Minister
Herald: Victoria University’s name to remain unchanged after Education Minister intervenes
1News: Education Minister denies Victoria University’s application to change name
Vita Molyneux (Newshub): Victoria University of Wellington has been denied a name change
RNZ: Victoria University of Wellington name change declined by education minister
Laura Walters (Newsroom): No name change for Victoria University

Jan Antolic/Karel Sroubek residency decision
Collette Devlin (Stuff): Immigration never expected Karel Sroubek to be granted residency
Gia Garrick (Stuff): Sroubek’s prison call to ex-wife behind minister’s u-turn on decision
Derek Cheng (Herald): Minister confident safety concerns of Karel Sroubek’s ex-wife taken care of
1News: Extracts of conversation between Czech drug smuggler Karel Sroubek and estranged wife released
Derek Cheng (Herald): Angry, desperate phone call from Sroubek to estranged wife released
Collette Devlin (Stuff): Karel Sroubek wife releases ‘threatening’ taped conversation of the drug-smuggler
Tova O’Brien (Newshub): Karel Sroubek allegedly threatens estranged wife in secret recording

Chief technology officer position scrapped
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Government scraps plan for national ‘chief technology officer’
Pattrick Smellie (BusinessDesk): Government scraps Chief Technology Officer role in favour of ‘a small group’
RNZ: Govt may ditch Chief Technology Officer role

Transport
Damian George (Stuff): Vision Zero: Lethal drunk and drugged drivers an increasing menace on our roads
Todd Niall (Stuff): Free Auckland buses and trains to curb drunk driving
Newshub: Why public transport will be free in Auckland on Friday
Gerald Piddock and Libby Wilson (Waikato Times): Hamilton-Auckland train trial gets tick from NZ Transport Agency
1News: Government gives Auckland to Hamilton passenger rail service the green light
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): NZTA approves Hamilton to Auckland passenger rail service business case
RNZ: Hamilton to Auckland passenger rail business case approved
RNZ: Delays on new diversion anger Wellington motorists
Brian Rudman (Herald): ‘Tis the season to be silly as scooters hit our footpaths

National Party vs Eminem
Stuff: Nats’ bill for ripping off Eminem music drops $375,000
Newshub: National Party wins bid to have Eminem copyright damages reduced
RNZ: Pleas weak, costs too heavy: Nats win Eminem appeal but must pay $225k
1News: National Party appeal means they will only pay 225K instead of 600K for using Eminem track

Primary industries
Gerald Piddock (Stuff): Council accused of railroading through consent hearing for egg farm
RNZ: Activists protest plans for North Waikato egg farm
ODT: 50,000 cows culled in M. bovis eradication bid
Lisette Reymer (Newshub): Opinion: Fonterra – I don’t know why my dad still flies your flag
Tracy Neal (RNZ): MPI reminds people of rules around use of set nets
RNZ: Foreign fishing crew members caught with undersized pāua
Sally Rae (ODT): Soal new CEO of Irrigation NZ

Housing
Anne Gibson (Herald): Govt eases house-buying cap by $50k, Opposition not impressed
Jenée Tibshraeny (Interest): Housing NZ loans and grants available for more pricey regional new builds

Local government, regions
Matthew Littlewood (Timaru Herald): HC Partners slam Alpine Energy sale proposal as irresponsible
Robert Steven (Stuff): Former Taupō mayor: ‘Rule-breaking hotel will ruin my rule-breaking aspirations’
Evan Harding (Southland Times): Invercargill CBD big winner from Provincial Growth Fund
Chris Morris (ODT): Boost for Southland projects
Zane Small (Newshub): Government funding boost set to transform Invercargill CBD
1News: Sheep and goat dairy industry among beneficiaries of Government’s almost $2 million investment in Southland
RNZ: Southland infrastructure, businesses to gain from new funding
Tom McRae (Newshub): Ferry from Auckland to Coromandel Town among grand plans for ‘neglected’ region
Logan Savoy (ODT): Visitor levy to remain at $5 per person
RNZ: Stewart Island visitor levy increase off the table for now
Matthew Theunissen (RNZ): Aucklanders dig Albert Park tunnel plan

Museums
Nic Rawlence (Herald): Te Papa’s latest restructure is a great leap backwards
Benn Bathgate (Stuff): Rotorua’s $10m Christmas present for museum
RNZ: Diaries describing ‘horror’ discovery of explorer’s body sold to museum

Christmas
Mānia Clarke (Māori TV): Govt challenged to open xmas purse strings for needy
Michael Daly (Stuff): O Come, All Ye Faithful – but keep it green and low carbon this Christmas
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Christmas music is so 1944: It’s offensive and strange, but that’s OK

Business
Kim Savage (RNZ): Measures to protect subcontractors’ money ‘needs to go further’
RNZ: Business confidence perks up
Jenée Tibshraeny (Interest): Some ‘Christmas cheer’ in December business confidence survey

Other
Luke Kirkness (Herald): Auckland Pride Parade scrapped and will be replaced by march, reports suggest
Bruce Munro (ODT): The file on YOU
Teuila Fuatai (Newsroom): Forced Māori representation not the answer
Martin van Beynen (Stuff): Quake claims lawyer Grant Shand questions conflict claims
Terry Baucher (Interest): Expect the Tax Working Group’s final report to recommend the introduction of a realisation-based Capital Gains Tax
Peter Cullen (Stuff): Secretly recording conversation with the boss is a breach of trust
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): ‘Really sad’ women are still harassed, five years on from Roast Busters
Mandy Te and Kendall Hutt (Stuff): Donations cover vet bill for 95-year-old man whose dog died after pack attack
Phillipa Yalden (Stuff): New Ngāruawāhia police station opens its doors
Jenesa Jeram (Spinoff): Stop telling young people NZ Super is unaffordable
RNZ: Māori language revitalisation body gets new chair
Amy Ridout (Stuff): ‘Do Kiwis like stinky people?’ Freedom campers bemoan Golden Bay facilities
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Former MP questions Joanne Harrison’s lack of knowledge about alleged Australian fraud
Stuff: Wellington’s economic agency appoints top brass
Anuja Nadkarni (Stuff): French supermarket Auchan slammed for ‘haka’ advertisement
Florence Kerr (Stuff): Mongrel Mob, Black Power should join forces to repel invaders, gang leader says

Unpacking the history of how Earth feeds life, and life changes Earth

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Dosseto, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong

At a fleeting glance, the study of life – biology – seems very separate from that of rocks, or geology.

But a look back through history shows that geological processes have been key to the evolution of life on Earth. Geology has shaped biology by creating favourable conditions, and indeed the basic “ingredients”, for life’s emergence and evolution.

And now there is growing evidence that this also works in reverse: life has shaped our planet’s atmosphere, oceans and landscapes in many ways.

Let’s take a walk back through time.

Our planet is a living organism

Early in the 20th century, Russian scientists posited that living organisms shape their environment in a way that allows life to be sustained. In the 1970s, a similar idea known as the “Gaia hypothesis” emerged in the Western world, thanks to scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.

Life started shaping the planet as soon as it appeared, possibly as early as 3.7 billion years ago. Back then radiations from the Sun were not as strong as today and without a little help, the whole planet should have remained frozen.

That little help may have come from bacteria producing the heat-trapping gas methane, with significant amounts of this greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere.

Much later – some 200 million years ago – a similar relationship happened in reverse. At this time, more complex lifeforms may have prevented a runaway build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (as seen on Venus) by trapping CO₂ in the skeleton of marine organisms like plankton. These then later became buried at the bottom of oceans to form limestones.

If it wasn’t for plankton, Earth (right) could have looked much like Venus (left). Wikimedia commons

We are made of star dust

The chemical elements that compose our body were made in the explosion of a star – we are made of star dust! We share the origin of our atoms with everything around us, including rocks.

But forces deep within planet Earth also shape life.

Weathering of mountains, and continents in general, also delivers essential nutrients to marine lifeforms. One example is phosphorus, which is released into rivers and oceans by weathering of the mineral apatite found in continental rocks. Phosphorus is also a building element of DNA molecules, and of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the “rechargeable battery” responsible for energy transfers in our cells.

The first widespread emergence of continents could have been key to the first oxidation of the atmosphere (called the Great Oxidation Event, about 2.4 billion years ago). By providing essential nutrients like phosphorus, weathering of the first continents would have allowed photosynthetic cyanobacteria that make up stromatolites to thrive and release oxygen into the atmosphere.

Stromatolites from Shark Bay, Western Australia. The ancestors of these living colonies of cyanobacteria played a big role in shaping early Earth’s atmosphere. Wikimedia commons

The big beast needs the little one

In 2018 we learned that at the start of the Jurassic Period (about 200 million years ago), plankton began to mineralise at greater ocean depths. Plankton produces oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis – and so, as a result, oxygen began to accumulate in the shallow oceans and reach its present level in the atmosphere.

The increase in atmospheric oxygen to modern levels would have allowed larger organisms to flourish (including the dinosaurs), because they have higher requirements for this element.

So not only is plankton a key piece of the ecological puzzle – because so many marine lifeforms depend on it – but it also gave the right conditions for the evolution of large marine reptiles.

Aristonectes (meaning ‘best swimmer’) is an extinct genus of plesiosaur, perhaps one of the many marine reptiles thankful for the role of plankton on ocean oxygenation. Wikimedia commons

Closing the loop

So the next question is naturally: what allowed plankton to mineralise differently during the Jurassic Period? Perhaps moving tectonic plates.

Between about 300 and 175 million years ago, continental plates were clustered into the supercontinent called Pangea. Plate reconstructions show that large parts of this supercontinent drifted through the tropics between about 250 and 200 million years ago.

As a result, continents experienced more abundant rainfall and rocks weathered more extensively, releasing to the oceans the elements necessary for plankton to build a calcium carbonate skeleton.

[embedded content] Global plate reconstruction between 330 and 150 million years ago, showing the distribution of major ocean basins and continental plates at 1 million year intervals. An approximation for the extent of the continents is shaded brown, and present-day coastlines are shaded green. Black lines with triangles indicate subduction zones, and black lines denote mid-ocean ridges and transform faults. The tropics, between 23.45 N and 23.45 S, are highlighted by the red band.

These processes close the loop between biology and geology. Tectonic plates moving into the tropics resulted in large supply of elements, allowing for the emergence of calcareous plankton, and this plankton in turn was responsible for the last major rise in atmospheric oxygen.

Humans are increasingly aware that they have shaped the planet to an unprecedented extent due to the emission of greenhouse gases linked to the Industrial Revolution, 200 years ago, and to the advent of the Agricultural Revolution some 8,000 years ago.

Cyanobacteria, vascular plants and plankton have also modified the whole chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere well before humankind, over much longer time scales.

However, there are striking differences between Homo sapiens on the one hand, and plankton and plants on the other. Humans are shaping the planet in a way that may eventually send the species itself into oblivion (and many others with them).

Our species is most likely the first to have the abilities to recognise and mitigate its impact on the environment on which it depends.

– ref. Unpacking the history of how Earth feeds life, and life changes Earth – http://theconversation.com/unpacking-the-history-of-how-earth-feeds-life-and-life-changes-earth-103162

Curious Kids: why are people colour blind?

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Martin, Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology & Eye Health, Central Clinical School, Save Sight Institute, University of Sydney

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

My name is Abhilasa. I am 10 years old and I live in Melbourne. My question is: Why are people colour blind? – Abhilasa, age 10, Melbourne.

Hi Abhilasa. Thank you for your great question.

Let’s say you have three tubs of paint: blue, green and red. You have a paintbrush and a piece of paper. You can use the three paints to make lots of different things. A green tree, a blue car, or a red apple. And if you want to paint a purple shirt, you can mix red and blue paint to make purple.

How do we see those different colours? In your eye you have special kinds of cells that pick up the light rays bouncing off each splotch of paint. These cells are called cone cells.

In the microscope, they look like ice-cream cones. But they are much smaller. The cone cells help you see the different colours.

There are three kinds of cone cell in most people’s eyes. They are called long wave cones, medium wave cones, and short wave cones, because they pick up different kinds of light waves (or rays).

The cone cells tell the brain how much of each type of light wave is bouncing off each splotch of paint.

Your brain puts those messages back together again.

So let’s say you mix red and blue paint to make a purple splotch. Lots of long and short wave light will bounce off that splotch, but not much medium wave light will (the reason this happens is hard to explain, but you just have to trust me that this is how light works). Then the long and short cones in your eyes get activated, and will send their message to the brain. The brain interprets the message and voilà! The splotch will look purple to you.

Colour blind people can still can see colours, but not as many as most people do. That’s because the cone cells in their eyes may be different.

There are three kinds of cone cells in most people’s eyes. Shutterstock

Some colour blind people only have two kinds of cone cell in their eye. Others have three kinds, but the cones do not pick up the same light waves as the cone cells in most people’s eyes do. So their brain does not get three different messages like most people’s brains do.

Being colour blind is a bit like what would happen if I took away one of your tubs of paint, so you only have two tubs. You could still make some different-coloured splotches, but not as many as when you had three tubs. That would not be so much fun. Being colour blind is sometimes not much fun either. Some kids laugh in school when colour blind kids get their coloured pencils mixed up. That’s mean.

But being colour blind can be good, too. Colour blind people are really good at spotting things that are far away, and they are better than most people at telling things apart by their shape.

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

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us on Twitter

CC BY-ND

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 are people colour blind? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-are-people-colour-blind-107599

Dramatic advances in forensics expose the need for genetic data legislation

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Curtis, Research fellow, Centre for Policy Futures (Genomics), The University of Queensland

Many people first became familiar with DNA testing through its use in the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1994. Now, 24 years later, there have been two dramatic advances in the capability of forensic genetics that mark the start of a new era.

The first is the amount of information we can predict about a person from DNA found at a crime scene, and the second is the way police can use open genealogy databases to identify people.

But we need to be careful how we use these new tools. If people lose trust in how DNA data is used and shared by police, it could have an adverse impact on other applications – such as medical care.

That’s why we’re calling for a Genetic Data Protection Act to ensure people have confidence in the way their DNA is accessed and used.

We can learn a lot more from DNA now

Predicting traits from DNA, known as “DNA phenotyping”, is improving. Facial prediction, health traits, predisposition to disease, even personality traits and things about our mental health can be predicted from genetic data. Some researchers are even considering predicting propensity to drink or smoke.

We’re getting better at predicting physical traits, like faces, from DNA data. Composite from PNAS

Law enforcement agencies around the world are using these traits to create predictive DNA “mugshots”, but in many countries there is no specific regulation on how and when they should be incorporated into policing.

And some types of predictions raise considerable ethical issues.

For example, should it be OK for law enforcement to predict the mental health or disease risk of a suspect? If so, should that information be used in a trial? If law enforcement predicts a high risk of a particular disease, should they be compelled to tell a suspect or their family?

Separation between databases is breaking down

You may be familiar with “CODIS” from CSI, this is the database that law enforcement has traditionally used to identify DNA collected at a crime scene. CODIS has around 17.7 million DNA profiles. There are strict rules around who can be included in these databases, and the vast majority of profiles are from convicted offenders.

According to best estimates, the number of people who have taken genetic ancestry tests is slightly higher than this, and police have started using this data as well. The type of data in CODIS only allows close family matches, but the type of data in open ancestry databases allows much deeper relations to be found.

Even if you haven’t participated in genetic testing or made your genetic data public, you may have a relative who has. Currently, law enforcement is able to identify people based on matches as distant as third cousins.

On average, people have around 190 third cousins. One estimate indicates that over 90% of Americans of European descent already have a third cousin or higher in the open genealogy database GEDmatch. It may take as little as 2% of the population uploading their DNA data in a genealogy database for the entire population to be identified this way.

The 238 relatives in your generation that might be affected if you share your genetic data. image designed by James Hereward and Caitlin Curtis

New statistical methods mean separations between previously distinct genetic databases are disappearing. Traditional forensic markers can now be cross referenced to ancestry data, even though they are completely different types of genetic data. This means close family members could be identified across different databases. These methods can also be used to re-identify subjects in medical genetics research projects.

There has been a lot of public support for the use of genetic genealogy to catch serial killers and rapists. In some cases, people are voluntarily uploading their data to help these efforts.

But where should we draw the line? Should genetic data only be used in serious crimes, or are we happy to have a comprehensive system of genetic surveillance that covers the entire population?

Private companies are aiding law enforcement

Both DNA phenotyping and forensic genealogy – which relies on amateur genealogists – are now being offered to law enforcement by private companies.

Parabon, a US-based pharmaceutical company, has partnered with armchair genealogist Cece Moore. She started using genetic genealogy to find the parents of adoptees and children born through sperm donation, but now uses it to catch criminals.

Parabon also offers facial prediction services. While the science of facial prediction from DNA is getting better, it is still contentious, and several prominent scientists have cast doubt on whether Parabon can really do what it is promising.

Nevertheless, this move out of government labs and into private ones raises questions about oversight – and what exactly is happening to the data generated.

Genetic data is different from other kinds of data

Genetic data is highly unique and can be thought of as a personal 15 million letter pin-code. Since the code doesn’t just identify us, it also contains important information about our disease risk, personality traits and even our physical features like our face, it is very difficult to keep anonymous.

Genetic data is different from other kinds of data. Edited from Shutterstock image

Unlike a credit card we can’t request a new genome if our data is compromised. And a stolen credit card won’t tell a perpetrator anything about the finances of our family members.

We understand what happens if we lose a credit card, but our understanding of genetic data is still developing. And we’re likely to see it put to unexpected uses in the future.

We need a ‘Genetic Data Protection Act’

Technological advances in genomics are outpacing public awareness, and existing legislation doesn’t fit genetic data well. Under current laws, the lab that produces the genetic data has ownership of the record. But if our genetic data represents a deep part of the essence of us, it shouldn’t be this easy for us to give up ownership of it.

We need new ways to protect genetic data to maintain trust in medical genomics. Sometimes people need their genome sequenced for medical purposes, but they might be reluctant to consent if trust has broken down around how genetic data could be used. That could result in poorer medical outcomes.

One solution to prevent this is a specific “Genetic Data Protection Act”, which would grant people ownership of their own data. However, it must be different from standard property rights: ownership should be immutable and nontransferable.

The issues around use of our genetic data are complex, individuals (and their descendants) must be protected. Under no circumstances should it be possible for an individual to unwittingly sign an agreement that results in a loss of control of their genetic data. Legislation is part of the solution, but education and new technological solutions will also be important.

The recent introduction of the digital My Health Record shows thatAustralians care about who is accessing their sensitive information. And people are already expressing unease about the confidentiality of their genetic data.

We must establish clear boundaries about how genetic data generated for medical purposes is used – whether by police or by any other interested parties. Giving genetic data the protection it needs, and making sure that medical genetic data doesn’t become a forensic resource will be crucial to ensure public trust in medical genetics.

– ref. Dramatic advances in forensics expose the need for genetic data legislation – http://theconversation.com/dramatic-advances-in-forensics-expose-the-need-for-genetic-data-legislation-105397

Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crime could improve how police and communities respond

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Kaladelfos, Lecturer in Criminology, School of Social Sciences, UNSW

Lessons learnt from a NSW parliamentary inquiry into hate crimes against Australia’s LGBTIQ community could change the way police and communities respond to complaints, and acknowledge the continued impact of past injustices.

The inquiry is the first of its kind in Australia to investigate both the scale of hate crimes against the LGBTIQ community and inadequate police responses. It was held because a growing body of research and community-driven activism pointed out the toll violence had taken, and continues to take, on LGBTIQ Australians.

Hearings into the handling of past hate crimes (between 1970 and 2010) concluded last month, with the inquiry due to report in 2019.

As well as the handling of these past cases, the inquiry is investigating matters including the impact of the now defunct “gay panic” defence. This provided an alleged “homosexual advance” was a partial defence to murder; South Australia is now the only state to maintain this defence.

This broad remit could lead to far-reaching and significant recommendations that acknowledge the problematic past policing of LGBTIQ communities. A consideration of responses to past violence against LGBTIQ people will provide a basic level of acknowledgement of past harms. It will also clarify the legacies of those experiences in relationships with police today.

Experiences of violence

The NSW inquiry defines hate crimes as LGBTIQ-related murder, physical and verbal violence, or institutional violence.

Contemporary surveys of Australian LGBTIQ people show unacceptably high rates of violent victimisation, with reports at alarming levels for transgender people.

The largest Australian study found 72% of LGBTIQ people had experienced verbal abuse, 41% threats of physical violence and 23% physical assault.

For transgender participants, 92% of trans women and 55% of trans men had experienced verbal abuse; 46% of trans women and 36% of trans men had experienced physical assault.

Historic hate crimes

The most well-known hate crime is the case of 27-year-old Scott Johnson, an American PhD student whose body was found naked at the bottom of North Head in Manly, Sydney, in 1988.

After 30 years of waiting and three coronial inquests, Johnson’s death, originally deemed a suicide, was finally recognised as a gay hate crime. The coroner found that Johnson was either pushed off the cliff or died trying to escape attackers.

NSW police have now offered a one million dollar reward for clues leading to the resolution of this cold case.

This year, the report In Pursuit of Truth and Justice, by health organisation ACON, drew together decades of research and community advocacy in investigating 88 historical hate crimes in NSW.

Like Johnson’s case, many of these crimes had been written off as accidental deaths or suicides. Months later, NSW police released the final report of Strike Force Parrabell, the internal investigation of police handling of these cases. Controversially, this reduced the number of deaths deemed hate crimes (it used different criteria).

Due to a history of problematic policing, the most effective means of obtaining a fuller picture of the past scale of hate crimes against the LGBTIQ community would be to call a Royal Commission, which would have the powers to conduct a full and independent investigation.

Policing homosexual offences

The police approach to LGBTIQ hate crimes is rooted in the historic criminalisation of male homosexual behaviours.

In the 1950s, as public awareness of homosexuality increased, NSW police intensified their policing of male homosexuality, especially at public meeting places and beats.

Then Police Commissioner Colin Delaney described homosexuality as:

Australia’s greatest menace

and a

cancer in the community.

Delaney ramped up the use of the vice squad to target homosexuals, with tactics that were often alleged to include entrapment, falsifications of statements, blackmail and threats of violence.

It was not until 1984 that sex between males in NSW was decriminalised.

Decriminalisation

But decriminalisation did not immediately shift perceptions of all police officers or members of the public. Many people continued to be victims of homophobic and transphobic violence, and reporting offences brought stigma and vilification.

The establishment of the community reporting mechanism the Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project in the 1990s was one way that advocacy groups tried to tackle distrust of police and the ongoing threat of violence. This project provided a safe place for gay and lesbian people to report offences and have them recorded without fear of encountering homophobia.

Since decriminalisation, NSW police have worked to re-build relationships with LGBTIQ communities through outreach programs, community visibility and participation, and the creation of the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Officer program.

Trust in police

Yet, continued distrust of police in LGBTIQ communities shows the long-standing effects of past practices and injustices, and their ongoing impact.

National research shows LGBTIQ people are reluctant to report offences to police. Earlier negative experiences often influence perceptions of how officers might treat their complaint.

Most worryingly, Victorian research shows young LGBTIQ people are the least likely to report offences to police. More than half would not report a hate crime, fearing a homophobic or transphobic response. More said they would report to a LGBTI Liaison Officer.

Achieving justice

The Australian community needs to work towards social and cultural change that will reduce violence against LGBTIQ people. Policing is an important part of this change.

The road ahead for achieving justice involves looking back to recognise and redress past wrongs and looking forward to create systems of safe reporting that work for marginalised communities.

One type of response in improving contemporary policing is unlikely to work for all, given the diversity of LGBTIQ communities. A variety of responses might focus on improving access to formal systems, including strengthening and better resourcing LGBTI police liaison programs to develop trust between police and LGBTIQ communities. It would also be helpful to implement third-party reporting mechanisms through which victims could report crimes in safe spaces, such as community organisations, instead of to police.

However, many people may prefer mechanisms for redress that do not involve the formal criminal justice system, such as restorative and transformative justice. These approaches are a process of victim and community restitution that involves perpetrators taking responsibility for their actions, recognising the harms done by violence, and changing their attitudes.

Finally, we need to aim for active interventions, including educational initiatives aimed at both the police and the broader public, that reduce the occurrence of homophobic and transphobic violence.

Ultimately, transforming the broader conditions that underpin and propel this violence will be the most significant way to achieve justice.

– ref. Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crime could improve how police and communities respond – http://theconversation.com/inquiry-into-lgbtiq-hate-crime-could-improve-how-police-and-communities-respond-108493

Not a season to be jolly: how to deal with dying during the holidays

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Anderson, Practitioner Scholar, Edith Cowan University

Dying doesn’t disappear at Christmas. For those who know death will come soon but don’t know exactly when, the festive season, when the air is thick with “joy”, can be particularly unsettling.

As a psychotherapist working in palliative care, I often see distressed patients in the lead up to Christmas. Patients can find decorations and carols being played in shopping centres particularly triggering, reminding them this may be their last Christmas.

The dying person may often face an inner struggle. They may want to be involved in activities but may not have the physical and emotional capacity to deal with the heightened stress and stimulation. Some may prefer to sit quietly and watch proceedings without necessarily being amongst the action, but still feeling like they are a part of things.

Regardless of the the type of life-threatening illness, and whether an infant, child, adolescent, young, middle or older aged person is dying, both the patient and their family members may experience deep distress. You may feel the impending death, and your family the anticipated loss. These gloomy or morbid feelings might clash with the celebrations of Christmas.

Whether it’s you or a loved one facing dying at this time of year, there are some practical tips available that draw from a wealth of research and experience.

If you are the one dying

Where possible, plan ahead how you want to spend your Christmas festive period so you don’t place additional pressure on yourself. Think about the most comfortable arrangements for you. Where and with whom do you want to spend Christmas Day? Which is the best time of day for you to manage different activities? Let people close to you know your thoughts.

The process of dying is unique to each individual. It may be quick or slow, spread over weeks or days. Palliative care specialist at Stanford University, Dr James Hallenbeck wrote:

For those who do die gradually, there’s often a final, rapid slide that happens in roughly the last few days of life — a phase known as ‘active dying’. A person may begin to lose their senses and desires. First hunger and then thirst are lost. Speech is lost next, followed by vision. The last senses to go are usually hearing and touch.

We have an ideal perception around death, that a dying person wants to be surrounded by family in their final hours. But some people in the active phase of dying may actually prefer to be alone. And while this may be difficult for family members to hear, you can give yourself permission to ask for whatever you would like.

Studies indicate some dying people may feel they’re a burden to their family. Other people have difficulty saying “no” because they don’t want to disappoint or hurt others, or they may fear conflict. Know your limitations and don’t push beyond these to simply please others.

Many dying people feel they may be a burden to their families. from shutterstock.com

Have kind consideration for yourself. Remember you are a person before you’re a patient. And remember it’s OK to say “no” and forgo invitations.

If you’re caring for a loved one who is dying

Essential care demands such as helping the person you are caring for to feed, go to the toilet, and clean themselves, will not disappear at Christmas. If your loved one is dying at home, they may require unrelenting attention.

Be realistic with your expectations. This can be a different and simpler Christmas than others. Allow for spontaneity. Try not to be a martyr and delegate and ask others to help. Doing so enables others to feel they’re included and contributing in special ways.

Listen to the person who is dying. Let them speak if and when they can. Gauge their mood and be guided by them. There is value in being present with the dying person without talking.

Heightened noise and activity, which often go hand in hand with the holiday season, can create distress for a terminally ill person. Ask family and friends to roster their visits over the different days of Christmas so as not to tire, overwhelm or stress the dying person.

People can think children don’t understand death and wouldn’t be able to cope with the concept, so often they may protect them by hiding it. But children are attuned to the family emotional dynamics. They know something is happening and they need their feelings validated. It can be helpful to get children involved in taking care of someone who is dying.

Research shows children do manage themselves well in the face of dying, when adults support them to deal with their responses.

Expect things can change quite suddenly. Have a backup plan ready. Keep emergency contact details readily on hand always.

When dying is happening at Christmas, it’s best to allow all feelings to be expressed rather than simply putting on a brave or smiling face. Feelings are a natural response to suffering and what may be a stressful situation.

It’s mostly important to remember not to hide your needs and feelings but to speak and communicate with your loved ones. Especially when dying may be imminent.

– ref. Not a season to be jolly: how to deal with dying during the holidays – http://theconversation.com/not-a-season-to-be-jolly-how-to-deal-with-dying-during-the-holidays-106063

Exploring Australia’s ‘other reefs’ south of Tasmania

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Bax, Director, NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub, CSIRO

Off southern Tasmania, at depths between 700 and 1,500 metres, more than 100 undersea mountains provide rocky pedestals for deep-sea coral reefs.

Unlike shallow tropical corals, deep-sea corals live in a cold environment without sunlight or symbiotic algae. They feed on tiny organisms filtered from passing currents, and protect an assortment of other animals in their intricate structures.

Deep-sea corals are fragile and slow-growing, and vulnerable to human activities such as fishing, mining and climate-related changes in ocean temperatures and acidity.

This week we returned from a month-long research voyage on CSIRO vessel Investigator, part of Australia’s Marine National Facility. We criss-crossed many seamounts in and near the Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks, which are home to both pristine and previously fished coral reefs. These two parks are part of a larger network of Australian Marine Parks that surround Australia’s coastline and protect our offshore marine environment.

The RV Investigator criss-crossed the Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks. CSIRO

The data we collected will answer our two key research questions: what grows where in these environments, and are corals regrowing after more than 20 years of protection?

Our eyes on the seafloor

Conducting research in rugged, remote deep-sea environments is expensive and technically challenging. It’s been a test of patience and ingenuity for the 40 ecologists, technicians and marine park managers on board, and the crew who provide electronics, computing and mechanical support.

But now, after four weeks of working around-the-clock shifts, we’re back in the port of Hobart. We have completed 147 transects covering more 200 kilometres in length and amassed more than 60,000 stereo images and some 300 hours of video for analysis.

The deep tow camera system weighs 350 kilos and has four cameras, four lights and a control unit encased in high-strength aluminium housings. CSIRO

A deep-tow camera system designed and built by CSIRO was our eye on the seafloor. This 350 kilogram system has four cameras, four lights and a control unit encased in high-strength aluminium housings.

An operations planner plots “flight-paths” down the seamounts, adding a one-kilometre run up for the vessel skipper to land the camera on each peak. The skipper navigates swell, wind and current to ensure a steady course for each one-hour transect.

An armoured fibre optic tow cable relays high-quality, real-time video back to the ship. This enables the camera “pilot” in the operations room to manoeuvre the camera system using a small joystick, and keep the view in focus, a mere two metres off the seafloor.

This is an often challenging job, as obstacles like large boulders or sheer rock walls loom out of the darkness with little warning. The greatest rapid ascent, a near-vertical cliff 45m in height, resulted in highly elevated blood pressure and one broken camera light!

Reaching into their world

Live imagery from the camera system was compelling. As well as the main reef-building stony coral Solenosmilia variabilis, we saw hundreds of other animals including feathery solitary soft corals, tulip-shaped glass sponges and crinoids. Their colours ranged from delicate creams and pinks to striking purples, bright yellows and golds.

To understand the make-up of coral communities glimpsed by our cameras, we also used a small net to sample the seafloor animals for identification. For several of the museum taxonomists onboard, this was their first contact with coral and mollusc species they had known, and even named, only from preserved specimens.

A deepwater hippolytid shrimp with large hooked claw, which it uses to clean coral and get food. CSIRO

We found a raft of undescribed species, as expected in such remote environments. In many cases this is likely to be the only time these species are ever collected. We also found animals living among the corals, hinting at their complex interdependencies. This included brittlestars curled around corals, polychaete worms tunnelling inside corals, and corals growing on shells.

We used an oceanographic profiler to sample the chemical properties of the water to 2,000m. Although further analysis is required, our aim here is to see whether long-term climate change is impacting the living conditions at these depths.

A curious feature of one of the southern seamounts is that it hosts the world’s only known aggregation of deep-water eels. We have sampled these eels twice before and were keen to learn more about this rare phenomenon.

Using an electric big-game fishing rig we landed two egg-laden female eels from a depth of 1,100 metres: a possible first for the record books.

Dave Logan of Parks Australia with an eel landed from more than a kilometre under the sea. Fraser Johnston/CSIRO

In a side-project, a team of observers recorded 42 seabird species and eight whale and dolphin species. They have one more set of data towards completing the first circum-Australia survey of marine birds and mammals.

More coral pedestals than we realise

An important finding was that living S. variabilis reefs extended between the seamounts on raised ridges down to about 1,450m. This means there is more of this important coral matrix in the Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks than we previously realised.

In areas that were revisited to assess the regrowth of corals after two decades of protection from fishing, we saw no evidence that the coral communities are recovering. But there were signs that some individual species of corals, featherstars and urchins have re-established a foothold.

In coming months we will work through a sub-sample of our deep-sea image library to identify the number and type of organisms in certain areas. This will give us a clear, quantitative picture of where and at what depth different species and communities live in these marine parks, and a foundation for predicting their likely occurrence both in Australia and around the world.

The seamount corals survey involved 10 organisations: CSIRO, the National Environmental Science Program Marine Biodiversity Hub, Australian Museum, Museums Victoria, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, NIWA (NZ), three Australian universities and Parks Australia.

– ref. Exploring Australia’s ‘other reefs’ south of Tasmania – http://theconversation.com/exploring-australias-other-reefs-south-of-tasmania-108986

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

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Garnaut, Professorial Research Fellow in Economics, University of Melbourne

Rather than waiting for the world to reach an agreement to act against multinational corporations that shift profits to tax havens, Australia should consider adopting our proposal for a cashflow tax, which would increase both investment and government revenue.

Many market-dominating multinational corporations have been aggressively reducing their global tax burdens by shifting their profits to tax havens.

BHP and Rio have been setting up so-called marketing hubs in low-tax Singapore.

Google bills Australians for advertisements on Australian websites in lower-tax Ireland, which itself pays fees to another subsidiary in even lower-tax Bermuda.

So big has the apparent flow of money into low-tax Ireland become that its national accounts data for 2015 showed a 26.3% real increase in gross domestic product.

Few think the Irish economy really improved by 26.3%.

What if we taxed cashflow instead of income?

In a new paper for the Melbourne Economic Forum, we propose replacing the conventional corporate income tax with what we are calling a “cashflow tax” to mitigate these problems while encouraging new private capital investment in Australia.

It wouldn’t tax profit as it is normally defined, but money coming in minus money going out – or “cashflow” – with the exception of money going out to repay loans, to pay dividends to shareholders, and to make payments to related parties that aren’t at arm’s length.

It could be easily done, because we already have all the information we need to tax onshore what happens onshore.

It would eliminate the messy distinction between capital expenditures, which can’t be deducted straight away, and other expenditures which can be. Everything that went out, for any purpose not exempt, would be immediately subtracted from what came in, and what was left would be taxed at 30%, or 25% if that’s what the government of the day wanted.

It would encourage investment…

It would make new investment – on things such as buildings, equipment, mines and the like – much more attractive. By immediately creating a negative cash flow, it would usually cut the investor’s tax bill to zero straight away.

We would allow companies to trade tax losses with companies making taxable profits, perhaps on the Australian Securities Exchange. Or they could carry forward their losses at the long-term government bond rate to offset against future profits.

…while levelling the financing playing field

Financial institutions would be taxed slightly differently, but at the same rate. Their taxable income would be interest and fees received minus interest and fees paid and costs including capital expenditure. Like other firms, they would be able to deduct capital expenditure immediately, but unlike other firms, they could also deduct the cost of borrowing.

For non-financial firms, because neither interest payments nor dividends would be tax deductible, the tax system would no longer favour debt over equity. They would no longer face a tax incentive to borrow instead of seeking out shareholders.

Reduced indebtedness would have advantages for financial efficiency and stability. It might reduce total profits of banks, but by immediately writing off capital expenditures banks could make higher profits per dollar lent.

It could be phased in over 10 years…

We propose phasing in the cashflow tax over 10 years – cutting company tax and lifting the cash flow tax by 3% per year.

Businesses that wanted to could make an irrevocable choice at any time to switch earlier.

Companies with big new capital investment plans would be likely to take the option of an early switch in order to immediately write off their expenses, while those paying interest on large accumulated debts would be likely to switch later.

…eventually raising an extra A$24 billion per year

Our modelling suggests that if the switch was phased in, the government would take in an extra A$24 billion per year when the transition was complete.

Most of the extra income would come from firms finding there were no longer tax advantages in shifting profits offshore.

If irrevocable switches were allowed, the government could take in up to an extra A$39 billion per year.

These estimates are likely to be conservative: they take no account of the additional capital expenditure that a cashflow tax would stimulate, or of the efficiency gains from replacing the heavily distorting corporate income tax with a non-distorting cashflow tax.

And securing the revenue base

While the Tax Office has been more active recently in clamping down on corporate tax avoidance, Australia’s anti-avoidance measures been ad hoc rather than systemic.

Global digital corporations are adept at using technology fees, management fees and puffed up interest rates for loans to inflate the tax-deductible expenses of their affiliates while declaring the income from those payments in tax havens.

Our proposal would disallow those deductions while allowing immediate total deductions for spending in Australia. Tax obligations wouldn’t be avoided, merely transferred to the Australian entity that provided the goods or services.

Early feedback

Our proposal was presented to a group of economists for feedback and reactions at the Melbourne Economic Forum on December 10.

They discussed the risk that multinational corporations such as digital companies and global fast-food chains would pull out of Australia if their opportunities for profit shifting to tax havens were closed down.

The general view was that they would stay in Australia because they could still earn rents (profits in excess of those necessary to encourage investment) from their Australian operations. The difference is that these rents would no longer be sheltered from Australian taxation. The Tax Office is already challenging the use of marketing hubs used by resource companies, which the cashflow tax would do in a more systematic way.

The Forum also discussed the need to draw clear boundaries between financial institutions and other companies, to prevent those companies claiming interest deductions as if they were financial institutions.

Further design features requiring consideration include the treatment of unincorporated businesses and dividend imputation.

We prepared the cashflow tax proposal with Stephen Anthony, chief economist, Industry Super Australia.

– ref. Here’s a long-term budget fix that would boost investment: replace company tax with cashflow tax – http://theconversation.com/heres-a-long-term-budget-fix-that-would-boost-investment-replace-company-tax-with-cashflow-tax-108347

Theatre is Lying is a welcome response to fake news and alternative facts

By The Conversation -

December 19, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Shiels, Lecturer – School of Art, RMIT University

Review: Theatre is Lying, ACCA, Melbourne.

In an era where local and international politics risks being less believable than a long-form TV series like House of Cards, it is apposite that the latest exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts (ACCA) in Melbourne focuses on ideas about artifice and illusion, truth and fiction and sleight of hand.

While not expressly political, Theatre is Lying exposes how visual art, performance and theatrical devices can interrogate what is real and what is not.

The artworks by Sol Calero, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Matthew Griffin, Daniel Jenatsch and artistic collaborators Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, employ digital montage, animation, video, light and sound and theatrical installations. Commissioned specifically for ACCA, these screen-based works and installations are a welcome response to a year bloated with fake news and alternative facts, offering critique, humour and escape rather than despair and cynicism.

Theatre is Lying not only offers conceptual and abstract means to engage with the truths and fictions of the contemporary world, but also presents alternative narratives and other way of reflecting on theatrics of politics against the backdrop of the 24/7 news cycle.

Recently the largesse of visual arts patrons has seen private collectors build new public museums, but the legacy of the McFarlane Biennial Commission, which supports this exhibition, goes beyond bricks and mortar to directly support current artists. For the next six years, the fund will fund the creation of ambitious and possibly career-defining works, forming keynote projects in ACCA’s exhibition program.

This, the first in the series, is characterised by artistic director Max Delany and senior curator Annika Kristensen, as an exhibition in five acts.

Matthew Griffin, The outernet 2018, two channel, high definition digital video, 33:34 mins. Courtesy of the artist, Photo: Andrew Curtis

Act One lampoons and hijacks TV current affairs. Utilising spilt screen formats, found footage and montage, artist Mathew Griffin inserts himself into absurdist panel discussions that replicate the everyday conventions of current affairs TV. At first glance the interviewee (Griffin) resembles another gormless commentator or politician who has not learnt to pause for breath. Only with close scrutiny is the artifice revealed.

One can’t help wondering initially if Randall and Breckon’s Rear View (2018) employs green screen to simulate a car travelling along the highway. Shot continuously with no edits, the 90-minute video operates at the intersection of cinema and performance art, referencing classic road movies.

Daniel Jenatsch, The Sheraton Hotel Incident 2018, two channel, high definition digital video, 5.1 surround sound, 15:00 mins. Courtesy of the artist, Photo: Andrew Curtis

The banality of the real time action and inaction becomes a feat of endurance coupled with forced voyeurism. Throughout the movie, the two women (Randall and Linda Chen) talk intermittently over the hum of the car while staring ahead and rarely making eye contact. The narrative is unclear; the reason for the journey and the relationship between the women is never explained.

Yet the boredom is fractured by the sound of wriggling, a bit of singing, a clinch that goes wrong and the pitiful crying that ensues when that advance has been rebuffed. In the end, the rear view of the road is the only certainty that can be believed.

‘Sir, we have missed our target’

The Sheraton Hotel Incident is an artistic interpretation of a stranger-than-truth event involving an inexplicably bungled training exercise by Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) agents in 1983. The purpose of the exercise was to rescue hostages from fictional foreign captors but ASIS failed to inform either hotel management or the police. Jenatsch employs the clichés of film noir and spy movies to recreate the event and subsequent enquiry.

The screen is often split and the action is realised through archival images, reports and animated action overlayed with written dialogue like “Sir, we have missed our target”. It is the simplicity of the animation that is most striking about this work. The action is presented in single frame images and the odd crumbly surfaces of the bodies and objects suggest a “Mummy movie” and a new surrealist weird.

In stark contrast to the fast pace and cliches of The Sheraton Hotel Incident, Colero’s La Puerta relies on the audience to produce the action. There are no performers here, instead the artwork is populated with spectators who encounter the constructed space.

Sol Calero, La puerta 2018 (detail), Site-specific installation: synthetic polymer paint and paper on plywood and composition board, cotton, pine. Courtesy of the artist, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich, and Galerie Crèvecoeur, Paris, Photo: Andrew Curtis

Easily recognised as a set for live theatre, the artist performs an elaborate transformation employing painted arches, screens and blinds to create the illusion of depth. Redolent with colour and patterning drawn from Colero’s Venezuelan heritage, the effect is disrupted by the exposure of raw timber framing in order to emphasise the things that are seen and the things that are not. In this case it is Colero’s ongoing engagement with issues about colonisation and identity.

Consuelo Cavaniglia, present distant 2018 (detail), powder coated steel, laminated glass, float glass, two-way mirror, rubber spacers, bolts, castors, lighting, 7 panels, each 225 x 220 x 90 cm; installation, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist, STATION, Melbourne, and Kronenberg Wright Artist Projects, Sydney, Photo: Andrew Curtis

By contrast Cavaniglia’s installation is pure theatre and illusion, comprising spotlights and search lights that are reflected and refracted through moveable glass screens. The theatrical is realised via an interplay of the coloured light that penetrates the screens, landing on the wall and floors and bathing the space and the audience with colour. Chance encounters between lights, screens and viewers are at the core of this work.

The gallery spaces at ACCA have no designated beginning or end point. Nor do the individual acts provide a conclusion. Rather, they offer an open-ended means to consider allusion, illusion, truth, lies and transparency.

Over summer, Theatre is Lying is an invitation to pause and unpick the way narrative and artifice are created and perceived and so sharpen the critical senses in anticipation of the performances that will be presented to us in the year to come.

Theatre is Lying can be seen at ACCA until 24 March 2019.

– ref. Theatre is Lying is a welcome response to fake news and alternative facts – http://theconversation.com/theatre-is-lying-is-a-welcome-response-to-fake-news-and-alternative-facts-108981

View from The Hill: Michael McCormack fails leadership test in handling of Broad scandal

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

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

It took disgraced Nationals MP Andrew Broad 24 hours after the “sugar baby” story broke to announce the inevitable – that he won’t recontest his Victorian seat of Mallee. They do things slowly in the Nationals.

In Michael McCormack’s case, at glacial pace. The Nationals leader’s handling of the Broad scandal has been appalling. His failure to instantly inform Scott Morrison of a potentially explosive situation – the prime minister only learned of it on Monday – is inexplicable, and must severely strain the relationship between the two men at the top of the government.

McCormack on Monday muddled his account, saying he had only been told “a couple of weeks ago”, when he urged Broad to go to the police over the actions of a woman he met on a “seeking arrangement” website.

McCormack’s timetable was blown out of the water within hours by an Australian Federal Police statement that said Broad had referred the matter to it on November 8.

On Tuesday, McCormack’s performance was extraordinary.

He explained his confusion over timing by saying, “I don’t carry around the dates and times of what people tell me”.

He hadn’t informed Morrison at the start because “I don’t tell the prime minister everything about every member of parliament. He’s got enough on his mind at the moment.

“And quite frankly I thought it was a matter for Andrew to sort out with his family. Obviously, I wasn’t aware of the entire extent of what had taken place. I wasn’t made aware of that until yesterday.”

Asked whether he wanted Broad to run for Parliament again, McCormack blathered rather than just saying no.

Any diligent leader would have got to the bottom of the matter at once, extracting the full picture from Broad. Any prudent leader would have briefed the prime minister without delay. Any savvy leader would have known the scandal was likely to leak and that, anyway, Broad’s behaviour showed he was in an untenable position.

McCormack must live in some parallel universe if he ever thought his assistant minister’s account of flying off on an overseas date, followed by an apparent move to blackmail him, was just “a personal matter between him and his family”.

Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie said in a statement late Tuesday “The Nationals are not a party where this standard of behaviour is acceptable”.

Yet McCormack kept Broad on as his assistant minister for weeks. And in his Monday morning statement announcing Broad had resigned from the frontbench, the Nationals leader said Broad “will continue as an effective and hardworking Member for Mallee”.

McCormack’s leadership is only secure because we are so close to an election. He was already under criticism from within his party and his conduct over Broad might have brought on a challenge in other circumstances.

The Nationals, supposed to be a party of family values, have bookended the year with two personal scandals. Barnaby Joyce’s affair with his former staffer, now mother of his son, distracted the Coalition in the early months.

How the Morrison government’s grand tactical plan to overshadow Labor’s national conference went awry! The big story about a surging budget position, promising dollars for tax cuts was expected to dominate the news.

As things turned out, the government did squeeze out the Labor coverage – but for the worst of reasons.

Labor’s management plans, in contrast, went as smoothly as clockwork.

Tricky issues, notably border security, were stitched up. Potentially controversial polices, including how broadly a Labor government would allow industry-wide bargaining have been left for decisions by the leadership later.

Even what seemed the risky course of having Kevin Rudd address the conference – as a gesture of reconciliation and party unity – played out without a hitch.

A raid on New South Wales ALP headquarters in Sydney in pursuit of an ICAC investigation was embarrassingly timed but didn’t threaten the narrative at the conference in Adelaide.

The conference was used as a platform for announcements – on housing affordability, the protection of superannuation, the environment, reconciliation, refugees, the pursuit of gender pay equality. There were few votes and only one of them, on a left proposal for a human rights charter, involved a count – the left narrowly lost.

Controversy over signing up to a nuclear weapons ban treaty, on which Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong have different views, was defused by wording that leaves plenty of latitude.

One significant proposal that was passed calls for a Labor government to recognise Palestine, something that various state conferences have been urging strongly.

The role of the unions was proudly acknowledged.

The ACTU secretary Sally McManus told the conference: “The trade union movement is the early warning system for this nation. We are the earthquake sensors in the ocean that feel the tremors before they reach the shores. We are the smoke alarm trying to wake you from your deepest sleep. The siren that makes you look up before it is too late.

“And we are sounding the alarm now. We see the unfairness, we see the fair go being crushed with growing inequality. It is time to listen and to act. And Australian Labor, Bill Shorten, is doing just that.”

It’s notable that in the election for the ALP national executive, the CFMMEU has gone from one representative to two. Its national secretary, Michael O’Connor, is now a member of it. The conference has left open how much the unions will get as Labor unveils more detail of its industrial policy over the coming months.

– ref. View from The Hill: Michael McCormack fails leadership test in handling of Broad scandal – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-michael-mccormack-fails-leadership-test-in-handling-of-broad-scandal-109008

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Tanya Plibersek on a united Labor

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

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

The Labor party has emerged from its three day national conference in Adelaide looking united and projecting itself as “ready to govern”.

Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek told The Conversation the ALP wants voters to see the party as “responsible and progressive”.

She says a Labor government would “work cooperatively with the trade union movement cause we share the same objective”.

“The union movement hasn’t got everything they wanted from the Labor party in this instance, but a lot of the changes we have made have been made better by the discussions that we’ve had over many months leading up to this conference,” she said.

On border security, Plibersek dismisses the use of three word slogans on both sides of the debate and argues “a more activist aid policy and more activist foreign policy” are needed to help asylum seekers.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Tanya Plibersek on a united Labor – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-tanya-plibersek-on-a-united-labor-109005

Poll wrap: Labor widens lead in Ipsos; US Democrats gained 40 House seats at midterms

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

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

This week’s Fairfax Ipsos poll, conducted December 12-15 from a sample of 1,200, gave Labor a 54-46 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since November. Primary votes were 37% Labor (up three), 36% Coalition (down one), 13% Greens (steady) and 6% One Nation (up one). As usual in Ipsos, the Greens are too high.

Respondent-allocated preferences were also 54-46 to Labor. While Malcolm Turnbull was PM, respondent preferences skewed to the Coalition relative to preferences derived from using 2016 election preference flows. However, Ipsos’ four polls since Scott Morrison became PM have shown no difference on average between respondent and previous election methods.

47% approved of Morrison (down one), and 39% disapproved (up three), for a net approval of +8. Bill Shorten’s net approval was down two points to -9. Morrison led by 46-37 as better PM (47-35 in November). Ipsos gives incumbent PMs higher ratings than Newspoll.

By 44-43, voters opposed Labor’s proposed changes that would restrict negative gearing tax deductions. By 48-43, voters opposed Labor’s proposal to halve the concession on capital gains tax. These questions highlight the potential for a Coalition scare campaign based on Labor’s proposed changes.

Four weeks ago, Ipsos and Essential both gave Labor just a 52-48 lead. The next week, Newspoll gave Labor a 55-45 lead, and now Ipsos is more in line with Newspoll.

Essential: 53-47 to Labor

This week’s Essential poll, conducted December 13-16 from a sample of 1,026, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since last fortnight. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (down one), 36% Labor (down three), 11% Greens (up one) and 7% One Nation (up one).

Since Morrison became PM, Essential has been consistently better for the Coalition than Newspoll. Last week’s Newspoll gave Labor a 41-35 primary vote lead, while Essential gives the Coalition a 37-36 primary lead.

A net +6 thought 2018 had been good for the Australian economy, but a net zero thought it had been good for their personal financial situation. Australian politics scored a net -50 and the Australian government a net -41. In voters’ predictions about next year, their personal financial situation was at a net +13 and the Australian economy at a net +2.

Since September, Morrison’s attribute scores have declined in positive attributes and gone up in negative attributes, with the largest change a seven-point increase in “erratic”. Morrison leads Shorten on most positive attributes and trails him on most negative ones, but differences are under eight points. An exception is that Morrison leads Shorten by four on being “out of touch”.

ReachTEL seat polls: huge swing to Labor in Kooyong, little swing in Boothby

ReachTEL has recently conducted federal seat polls of Kooyong in Victoria and Boothby in South Australia. In Kooyong, held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Labor led by 52-48, a 15-point swing to Labor since the 2016 election. In Boothby, the Liberals led by 51-49, a two-point swing to Labor.

Seat polls are unreliable, but the Victorian state election had large swings to Labor in blue-ribbon Liberal seats in inner Melbourne. Kooyong and Higgins are located in the same territory. As I wrote last week, ReachTEL also had a massive swing to Labor in Higgins.

Victorian election statewide two party vote: 57.6-42.4 to Labor

At the November 24 Victorian state election, the Liberals did not contest Richmond. The electoral commission has conducted a two party Labor vs Coalition count in all seats except Richmond. According to analyst Kevin Bonham, Labor’s share of the two party vote ranges from 57.4% to 57.9% depending on how Richmond is treated.

The measure I prefer is to assign Richmond the same swing as the rest of the state, giving a two party result of 57.6-42.4 to Labor, a 5.6% swing to Labor since the 2014 election. That is only 0.2% less for Labor than at their 2002 landslide under Steve Bracks.

Labor won 55 of the 88 lower house seats, seven fewer than in 2002. This was mainly because the Greens won three seats where Labor won the two party vote, and so did independent Russell Northe in Morwell.

In the upper house, the Greens won just one of 40 seats despite winning 9.3% of the vote. Bonham says the Greens were disadvantaged by being too big for micro parties to benefit from swapping preferences with them. However, they were also too small to win seats on raw quotas, as the major parties do.

While the Greens were the biggest victims of the group voting ticket system, they almost cost Fiona Patten her seat. In North Metro, Green Samantha Ratnam made quota before Socialist preferences were distributed, allowing Patten to win.

According to Bonham, had Ratnam been under quota before Socialist preferences, she would have gone well over quota on their preferences, but her surplus would have gone mainly to Derryn Hinch Justice, and that party would have won the final North Metro seat instead of Patten.

Democrats gained 40 House seats at US midterms

All 435 US House seats are up for election every two years. At the November 6 US midterm elections, Democrats won the House by a 235-199 seat margin, with one seat undecided due to a dispute over alleged fraud by Republican campaigners in North Carolina’s ninth district. Since the pre-election Congress, this is a 40-seat gain for Democrats. Since the 2016 House results, it is a 41-seat gain.

According to Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman, Democrats won the overall House popular vote by 8.6%. In 2016, Republicans won the House popular vote by 1.1%, and Donald Trump won the presidency despite losing to Hillary Clinton by 2.1% in the national popular vote.

Democrats’ gains mainly occurred in suburbs, where there was a high level of educational attainment. Republicans held up much better in rural America. While Democrats will have 54% of the new House, their seats will represent just 20% of US land area.

CNN analyst Harry Enten says this was Democrats’ largest seat gain in a House election since 1974, and the best performance in popular votes by a pre-election minority House party since records began in 1942. Although turnout was low by Australian standards at 50.3%, this was the highest turnout at a US midterm election in the last 100 years.

Republicans held the Senate by a 53-47 margin, a two-seat gain for Republicans since the last Congress. However, the 33 regular Senate races were last contested in 2012, when Democrats had a great year. Democrats lost North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Florida, but gained Nevada and Arizona. They won the 33 regular elections by 23-10. Including byelections in Minnesota and Mississippi, Democrats won the 35 Senate races by 24-11.

The new US Congress will be sworn in on January 3. Democrat House leader Nancy Pelosi is very likely to be elected Speaker of the new House.

In November 2020, the US presidency and all of the House are up. Of the 34 Senate seats that will be up for election, 22 are Republican-held and just 12 Democrat-held. This will be a big opportunity for Democrats to take back the Senate.

Theresa May wins Conservative confidence vote, 200-117

To trigger a Conservative motion of confidence in the leader, 15% (48 members in this case) of Conservative MPs must submit letters expressing no-confidence in the leader. This threshold was reached on December 12, but UK Prime Minister Theresa May won a confidence vote of all Conservative MPs by a 200-117 margin. May now cannot be challenged for a year.

If anywhere near 117 Conservatives reject May’s Brexit deal, it is very difficult to see it passing the House of Commons. The confidence vote in May does not make a “no deal” Brexit less likely. As I wrote on my personal website, unless the Commons acts in some way, Britain will crash out of the European Union on March 29, 2019.

– ref. Poll wrap: Labor widens lead in Ipsos; US Democrats gained 40 House seats at midterms – http://theconversation.com/poll-wrap-labor-widens-lead-in-ipsos-us-democrats-gained-40-house-seats-at-midterms-108907

Labor’s housing pledge is welcome, but direct investment in social housing would improve it

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Despite recent falls in the housing market, housing costs and indebtedness bite deeply into household budgets, especially at Christmas time. Just over 433,000 households confront housing stress and homelessness every day across Australia. They represent the current shortfall of social housing.

If Christmas offers a moment for reflection, ask yourself what should our resolutions be for the housing market? What should we expect our governments to do about it?

In this article, we look at this week’s major statement on housing policy from a key contender to lead Australia’s next government – made by Bill Shorten at the ALP national conference.

We applaud the principle of fairness and the ambition of the ALP policy. We are less supportive of the reliance on for-profit investors, market rent mechanisms and land grabs. Our research shows direct government investment in social housing is ultimately far more efficient and effective than subsidising investors in the long term.

So what is Labor’s policy?

Shorten’s announcement also pledges reform of tax concessions that are driving inequality between households and investors. However, Labor recognises that this might not be enough to tilt the balance in favour of low-income households, and directing the savings from these changes into housing programs is a welcome move.

Labor proposes to subsidise investors in affordable rental housing, much like the Rudd government’s National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS). Labor would offer an $8,500-a-year subsidy over 15 years to investors who build new homes for low-income and middle-income households to rent at an “affordable” rate – 20% below market rent.

Starting modestly, the program aims to produce 20,000 affordable units over three years, building to a much larger target of 250,000 dwellings over ten years.

State governments would also be required to get on board through partnership agreements, as they have done in the past, providing land and other forms of co-investment. Hefty stamp duty revenues in recent years should make this easier for the states.

While Labor’s targets appear high by recent standards, Commonwealth and state governments directly funded the building of 9,000 public housing dwellings each year for the better half of the 20th century – until 1996. Annual production is now down to 3,000 dwellings. That’s not even enough to maintain the existing public share of housing.

Since the mid-1990s, a preference for outsourcing social responsibility through private rental providers and indirect rental support payments has dominated public policy. The ALP’s subsidy-based policy continues this trend.

The proposal centres on maintaining returns to investors at levels that encourage investment. As our previous research has shown, over the longer term this increases cost per dwelling. The question remains, as it did under the NRAS: who are we trying to subsidise here, the investors or the tenants, and is it really equitable and effective?

What are the alternatives?

Previous work has shown that NRAS-type schemes offer most benefit to new affordable housing developments when the funds are directed to not for profit organisations, rather than “leaking” out to the for-profit private sector. The advantages of this approach include:

subsidies are retained within the affordable housing system
benefits are directed to regulated not-for-profit developers with a social purpose
the benefit is stretched out over a longer time, meaning government investment does not expire after a set time.

In the UK, a lack of direct conditional investment and weak definitions of affordability led to an 80% decline in social housing production. Without public equity, recurrent operating subsidies have no influence on design quality or ongoing impact after the expiry of providers’ obligations – or their cancellation. Yes, they can be switched on and off like a tap – as happened in 2014 with the NRAS.

With good design, a new scheme could overcome some of these deficiencies. Labor promises to provide lower annual subsidies than NRAS but for longer – 15 rather than 10 years – adding up to at least $127,500 from the Commonwealth for a tenancy to be offered at below market rents. It’s a substantial commitment.

Yet if this level of support was invested up front to build dwellings, rather than provided as an annual operating subsidy, it would make a substantial and enduring contribution to Australia’s housing needs. This is not only socially responsible, it can drive green innovation and is also more financially responsible too.

The only thing that stands in the way is the narrow public accounting doctrine that privileges day-to-day expenditure over long-term investments. This is something that, in the UK, even the Treasury and the National Audit Office are learning to overcome after the painful experience of the Private Finance Initiative.

How much more cost-effective is direct investment?

If equity and fairness are to be the yardsticks of policy, age pensioners, people with disabilities and low-paid workers should be the focus of our deepest support. Our AHURI research has established the level, type and location of investment required to meet the needs of 433,000 low-income households in housing stress or homeless across Australia. The current market offers no affordable or secure options for them.

Our research also compared the cost of subsidising investors versus direct investment by government. Our modelling of costs and review of international experience provide evidence that direct investment is far more efficient and effective in the medium and long term.

Capital funding model. Lawson et al, 2018, Author provided Operating subsidy funding model. Lawson et al, 2018, Author provided

Thus, we argue for more direct investment in social housing, strategic use of efficient mission-driven financing and retained investment via public equity and public land leases.

Recognition of the need for national leadership and policy reform is growing. After backpedalling, the Coalition government moved forward in 2018 to establish, with cross-party support, the National Housing Finance Corporation. This mission focused public corporation will soon channel lower-cost financing towards regulated not-for-profit housing. Of course, financing is debt and not quite the same as funding.

The Australian Greens have yet to announce their policy but an outline suggests a commitment to invest in social housing and establish a federal housing trust.

The ALP’s proposals are framed in line with the laudable principle of fairness and are a work in progress – rather than mission accomplished. Overcoming the shortfall of affordable and secure housing will require purposeful Commonwealth and state government funding, mission driven financing as well as land policies to make housing markets fairer for all.

– ref. Labor’s housing pledge is welcome, but direct investment in social housing would improve it – http://theconversation.com/labors-housing-pledge-is-welcome-but-direct-investment-in-social-housing-would-improve-it-108909

Tidelands struggles to stay afloat in its first series

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Turner, PhD student, University of Newcastle

Review: Tidelands, Netflix

The first original Netflix series filmed in Australia, Tidelands, is a speculative story about half-human/half-siren beings who live in the coastal Queensland town of Orphelin Bay. The story follows the return to the bay of Calliope (Cal), after she has spent time in jail for alleged arson. Tidelands has a lot of expectations to live up to. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always meet them.

Poster for Netflix original series Tidelands. IMDb

The initial episodes offer a strong, if not overly creative, premise. Supernatural beings are meddling in the world of humanity. It is an idea previously encountered in Interview with a Vampire and TV series such as Being Human, Teen Wolf and the Canadian series Bitten.

In Tidelands, the offspring of sirens and a mortal man, known as “tidelanders”, have various supernatural abilities. They can control the flow of water (and by extension blood), breathe underwater, are inhumanly fast and strong, and can influence people using their voices. (The latter ability is attributed to the sirens of Greek myth.)

But aside from the inhuman strength – which is routinely demonstrated- these abilities are left largely unexplored.

The cast is divided in two primary groups, the titular tidelanders and their queen Adrielle (Elsa Pataky), and the humans. The town, seemingly based on fishing, is actually the centre of a drug cartel, the drugs supplied by the tidelanders and sold by the humans.

Successive plots revolve around keeping the cartel running, the discovery of ancient artefacts, tensions between the town people, the tidelanders’ adultery, and several murders. Calliope’s brother runs the drug operation, and the town’s people suspect the tidelanders of the murders. There’s also a rebellion amongst the tidelanders, which draws in almost the entire cast.

Elsa Pataky as Adrielle and Madeleine Madden as Violca in Tidelands (2018) IMDb

The tidelanders themselves present an attractive, sexually diverse cast. The series includes lesbian and bisexual women (but not gay men), and has a notable variety in ethnicity. The townspeople, in contrast, are mostly white Australian actors. The tidelanders also live in a settlement outside of Orphelin Bay, perhaps referencing Romani camps of today.

Plotwise, the series contains many narratives – too many really. Many are left unresolved by the end of the season. There are multiple murders and romances, mysterious prophecies, and ancient artefacts.

The show has something of an identity crisis. It is not a procedural drama, nor an extended murder investigation, or supernatural romance. The result is a tangled confusion of storylines, all enjoyable to watch, but in need of greater exposition.

The cast members do deliver excellent performances but their characters aren’t explored deeply enough. This is, in part, because of the number of story lines but also because a lot of the time, nudity and sex are used as temporary resolutions to sub-plots, distracting from more major plotlines.

[embedded content] Trailer to Netflix original series Tidelands.

Elsa Pataky’s performance as the aloof, enigmatic queen of the tidelanders, Adrielle, is spectacular. She is graceful and charming, despite the character’s vicious tendencies. Alongside Charlotte Best’s performance as the rebellious outcast Calliope, the two actresses create a superb tension, which drives the first season.

The series is very well filmed, showcasing Australia’s beaches, oceans and small town life. The sets are beautifully made, particularly Adrielle’s manor, which is both austere and fitting for the queen of mysterious supernatural people. This focus on detail and capturing the cast’s expression and movements makes it watchable – but it could use more focus and clarity.

– ref. Tidelands struggles to stay afloat in its first series – http://theconversation.com/tidelands-struggles-to-stay-afloat-in-its-first-series-108751

Newsletter: New Zealand Politics Daily – December 18 2018

By Bryce Edwards -

December 18, 2018

Newsletter: New Zealand Politics Daily – December 18 2018

Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.

The Beehive and Parliament Buildings.Cannabis referendum to be held at 2020 election
Herald: Justice Minister confirms recreational cannabis referendum at 2020 election
Stuff: Cannabis referendum will be held at 2020 election, Government confirms
RNZ: Legalising cannabis: Simon Bridges says he would vote against it

Migrant labour, immigration
Jason Walls (Herald): The new proposed rules to make immigration system employer-led, rather than migrant-led
Laura Walters (Newsroom): Migration scheme overhaul aimed at regions
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Government proposes changes to migrant worker system
Colin Williscroft (Stuff): Migrant work visa changes to help regions struggling to fill jobs
RNZ: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern discusses protecting migrant workers
Jenée Tibshraeny (Stuff): Govt proposes ‘significant’ changes to work visas
Hawkes Bay Today: Revealed: Name suppression lapses for Samoan national accused of slavery
1News: Man charged with human trafficking and slavery in Hawke’s Bay is named
RNZ: Man arrested for human trafficking and slavery named
RNZ: Man arrested for human trafficking, slavery after targeting ‘vulnerable’ workers
Sophie Bateman (Newshub): Police, Immigration NZ uncover alleged decades-old Hawke’s Bay human trafficking operation
Michael Reddell: Immigration data: some questions

Thompson and Clark
Patrick Gower (Newshub): Exclusive: Inquiry finds Thompson and Clark spies snooped on earthquake victims
Steve Kilgallon (Stuff): Auckland Council pays spies $600K to catch taggers – but doesn’t know if they did

Health
Cate Broughton (Stuff): ACC spying: ‘It’s nothing less than warfare’
Karen Brown (RNZ): Pharmac to fund new Hep C treatment
Herald: Pharmac to fund ‘life-changing’ hepatitis C treatment, and drug for rare blood disorder haemophilia approved
Lucy Warhurst (Newshub): New treatment could see NZ eradicate Hepatitis C in next 20 years
Samantha Olley (Herald): Lakes DHB makes changes after 11 deaths among adverse events in a year
Cate Broughton (Stuff): Large rotting swabs left in woman during C-section birth
RNZ: Lactation consultant censured over tongue-tie operation
Mere McLean (Māori TV): Mental health, addiction survey shows cultural gaps
Herald: Nicky Stevens’ family to discuss damning Coroner’s rulings with Health Minister

Education
Bryce Edwards (Herald): Political Roundup: The battle for our school system
Bryce Edwards (Herald): Political Roundup: The case against major school reform
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Auckland principals want action over ‘poor’ truancy services
John Gerritsen (RNZ): Mental health issues, online gaming causing rise in teen truancy
Gregor Paul (Herald): Rugby: St Kentigern College head David Hodge says school prepared to stand down in player poaching row
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): St Kent’s forced to review 1st XV scholarships

Justice
Edward Willis (Newsroom): Prisoner voting rights measure of democracy
1News: White collar criminals a third less likely to be imprisoned for their crimes than benefit fraudsters
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Google may be ‘untouchable’ over Grace Millane suppression breach after NZ involvement denied
1News: ‘I just don’t think that’s good enough,’ PM says of Google’s lackadaisical approach to name suppression
1News: Mother of 15-year-old cyclist killed in Rouxle Le Roux hit-and-run speaks out as Crown Law states appeal possible
Bridget Grace (Newshub): Rouxle Le Roux: ‘Jail sentence may be appropriate’ for hit-and-run driver – law expert
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Rouxle Le Roux: What does her home detention sentence mean?
Sophie Bateman (Newshub): Rouxle Le Roux: Crown Law asked to consider home detention appeal
Paul Buchanan: Differential Justice
David Cormack (Herald): The progressive justice reforms of Mark Mitchell

Chief Justice appointment
Barry Soper (Newstalk ZB): New Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann’s extraordinary salary shows law is vocation to follow
Derek Cheng (Herald): New chief justice wants justice for all, especially the vulnerable
Derek Cheng (Herald): New Chief Justice named as Justice Helen Winkelmann
1News:Justice Helen Winkelmann appointed as New Zealand’s new Chief Justice
Alice Webb-Liddall (Newshub): Helen Winkelmann appointed Chief Justice of New Zealand

Foreign affairs and trade
Richard Harman (Politik): Peters leaves PM out of China speech preparation
1News: Winston Peters meets with top US official in Washington, DC
Liam Hehir (Stuff): If National is dog whistling on migration, others have too
1News: UN pact to increase global cooperation on migration not in New Zealand’s interest – Simon Bridges
RNZ: Tonga’s Speaker talks modern parliament rebuild with NZ

Environment and conservation
RNZ: UN climate conference agreement: Mixed reactions
Sarah Mead (Newsroom): Climate change: ‘The gap is big’
No Right Turn: Climate Change: Unfit for office
Meriana Johnsen (RNZ): Lack of indigenous rights protection in Paris agreement frustrates ropu
RNZ: DOC spent more than $1m to protect staff from protesters
Amber-Leigh Woolf (Stuff):Six supermarkets break up with inundated soft plastic recycling scheme
Stuff: No more single-use plastic bags in shops from July 1 next year
Herald: NZ-wide ban on all single-use plastic bags by July 2019
Xan Hading (Hawkes Bay Today): Apology still outstanding, says Te Mata Peak Peoples’ Track Society

Employment for workers with disabilities
Logan Savory (ODT): Support for Southland DisAbility Enterprises over recycling decision
1News: Visit the Auckland cookie company providing opportunities for the disabled – ‘It absolutely warms my heart’

Economy
Liam Dann (Herald): The bull market is dead, the stockmarket party is over
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): KiwiSaver ‘collapsing faster than the Black Caps in the 90s’
BusinessDesk: Real-time GDP tracker born out of frustration

Government, budget
Alan Johnson (Daily Blog): Labour & Green Budget Responsibility Rules are strangling us
Arthur Grimes (Newsroom): Wellbeing Budget: a rocket or a drone?
Herald Editorial: ‘Wellbeing’ can be no substitute for economic growth
Scott Palmer (Newshub): Grant Robertson’s plan for 2019

Jan Antolik/Karel Sroubek residency case
Collette Devlin (Stuff): Government delays release of controversial immigration information on Karel Sroubek
Tova O’Brien (Newshub): She may not be, but Jacinda Ardern looks dodgy

Canterbury quakes
Michael Hayward (Stuff): Potentially costly class action against Southern Response given go-ahead
Martin van Beynen (Stuff): Christchurch quake advocates face class action challenge

Housing
Frances Hancock and Tim McCreanor (Herald): Govt needs to intervene against housing at Ihumātao
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Govt raises price caps for HomeStart grants and low-deposit loans outside of Auckland
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): Economist: Maybe it’s the way tenants live in them that makes houses cold
Sean Hogan (1News): Emergency housing options in Hawke’s Bay being squeezed by swelling summer population
Chris Hutching (Stuff): Spotlight on ‘high risk’ property deals with new anti-money laundering rules

Primary and extractive industries
Gerard Hutching (Stuff): Almost 100 farmers fined for Nait offences since the beginning of the year
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Government confident it can eradicate Mycoplasma bovis
1News: Government confident eradication right approach to tackling Mycoplasma bovis
Herald: Government believes Mycoplasma bovis can be eradicated
Angie Skerrett (Newshub): ‘Massive achievement’: New Zealand set to eradicate M bovis
Jane Patterson (RNZ): Government optimistic about M Bovis eradication programme
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Govt hails M. bovis progress
Zane Small (Newshub): ‘Industrial eyesore’: Backlash over mega egg factory planned for Orini
No Right Turn: Farmers pollute, we pay
Sam Hurley (Herald): Fears for further harm to NZ wine industry after Auckland woman convicted of faking EU export papers
RNZ: Auckland exporter convicted over false wine exports
Evan Harding (Southland Times): Merchant ship crew fined for plundering pāua stocks in Bluff
RNZ: Waihi mine extension plan gets the go ahead

Transport, roading, road toll
Marty Sharpe (Stuff): Vision Zero: Brakes applied to government pledge to provide students free driving lessons and defensive driving courses
Phil Pennington (RNZ): NZTA had concerns about heavy vehicle checks two years ago
Press Editorial: Safety improvements vital, but driving habits can’t be ignored
Jono Edwards (ODT): Millions for South in road safety plan
MIchael Hayward (Stuff): More congestion as Christchurch faces ‘failing transport system’ – report
Melanie Earley (Stuff): ‘I was just a blubbering mess’: train drivers suffering PTSD due to fatal crashes
John Gibb (ODT): Hood calls for rethink on e-scooters

Local government
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Banning cars from parking in Auckland’s Queen St could improve air quality, say councillors
Herald: Golfers win reprieve over Chamberlain Park tussle with council
Anne Gibson (Herald): ‘Nightmare’ on Quay St: legal action planned to challenge works, waterfront road narrowing
Conan Young (RNZ): Canterbury Regional Council staff ditch lunch to call for better pay
Donna-Lee Biddle (Stuff): Council thanked for foiling grand plans for Head Hunters headquarters in Tokoroa
Mike Yardley (Stuff): Ultimate gladiatorial scenario won’t eventuate
Mike Watson (Stuff): Off-highway New Plymouth to Hawera cycle/walking link gains support

Māori-Crown relations, treaty settlements
Laura Walters (Newsroom): One-stop shop for Māori-Crown relations
John Boynton (RNZ): Ngāpuhi vote: minister forced back to the drawing board
Jo Moir (RNZ): Ngāpuhi reject government’s treaty mandate proposal
Raniera Harrison (Māori TV): Ngāpuhi votes against entering into direct negotiations

Financial sector
RNZ: Consumers want more from their financial providers
David Hargreaves (Interest): Buy-now-pay-later schemes disrupt non-bank finance sector
Gareth Vaughan (Interest): New RBNZ bank capital proposals a victory for the NZ owned banks

Legal profession
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): Lawyer questions law firms’ motivation for changes after #MeToo
Tom Hunt (Stufff: Law Society shake-up after report sparked by Russell McVeagh scandal
Alice Webb-Liddall (Newshub): Law Society to change rules on reporting of harassment, bullying

Capital gains tax
Max Rashbrooke (Stuff): Capital gains tax should be called a fairness tax
Troy Bowker (Stuff): Treaty claims could be the straw that breaks the back of capital gains tax
Louis Houlbrooke (Stuff): Let’s not tax Kiwis for ‘paper gains’ on property and savings

Police
Kirsty Lawrence (Stuff): Rural police stations to be open at night ‘on demand’ only
Mei Heron (1News): Police team up with prostitutes to produce action-plan in case of sexual assault
Emme McKay (Herald): World-first partnership between NZ Police and Prostitutes’ Collective
Māori TV: Ngaruawahia’s new one-stop cop shop

Census
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Prime minister blames National for census debacle, says Stats NZ warned them of budgetary constraints
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Census is a massive failure

Tourism
RNZ: Department of Conservation launches new tourist campaign: ‘Visit the Kiwi way’
Tess Brunton (RNZ): Tourism industry eager for an associate minister
Tess Brunton (RNZ): Tourism: majority unaware it’s NZ’s biggest earner, survey finds
David Loughrey (ODT): Otago’s views on tourism mixed
Rebecca Howard (BusinessDesk): Guest nights at record high as tourism surges

Christmas
Megan Sutherland (Newshub): What you can do to help those in need this Christmas
Zane Small (Newshub): Auckland City Mission: Mums, kids spending nights waiting for handouts
Edward O’Driscoll (Newshub): Thousands line up for Christmas food parcels from Auckland City Mission
Donna-Marie Lever (1News): Increased need for food parcels sees Christchurch City Mission in overdrive this Christmas
Anusha Bradley (RNZ): Hawke’s Bay volunteers prepare to spread some Christmas cheer

Year in review
Public Address: Word of the Year 2018: Time to vote!
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): A look back on NZ’s 2018 MeToo movement
Cas Carter (Stuff): 2018’s biggest turkeys should have admitted errors earlier

Joanne Harrison fraud case
1News: Transport ministry fraudster Joanne Harrison to be deported back to UK
Anna Leask (Herald): Ministry of Transport fraudster Joanne Harrison to be paroled, deported, banned from returning to NZ
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Transport Ministry fraudster Joanne Harrison to be released from jail and deported to UK
RNZ: Transport Ministry fraudster to be deported to UK

Arts
Chris Trotter (Daily Blog): An Absent Mirror: Why Can’t This Country Produce Its Own Political Television Series?
Te Aniwa Hurihanganui (RNZ): Pouwhenua mark Wellington’s upcoming Te Matatini celebrations
Andrew McRae (RNZ): Planned Hamilton performing arts theatre gets $6m funding boost
David Loughrey (ODT): Focus on Dunedin’s arts woe

Other
Collette Devlin (Stuff): More bullying reports at Oranga Tamariki-Ministry for Children
Hilary Stace (Public Address): The stories the Royal Commission needs to hear about state care abuse and disability
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Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): NZ officials consider impact of Australia’s controversial encryption law
Richard MacManus (Newsroom): Australia’s encryption law threatens NZ cloud data
Katarina Williams (Stuff): Rugby boss speaks candidly on own experience of domestic violence
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We finally have the rulebook for the Paris Agreement, but global climate action is still inadequate

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Dooley, Researcher, Australian German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne

Three years after the Paris Agreement was struck, we now finally know the rules – or most of them, at least – for its implementation.

The Paris Rulebook, agreed at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, gives countries a common framework for reporting and reviewing progress towards their climate targets.

Yet the new rules fall short in one crucial area. While the world will now be able to see how much we are lagging behind on the necessary climate action, the rulebook offers little to compel countries to up their game to the level required.

The national pledges adopted in Paris are still woefully inadequate to meet the 1.5℃ or 2℃ global warming goals of the Paris Agreement. In the run-up to the Katowice talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report detailing the urgent need to accelerate climate policy. Yet the summit ran into trouble in its efforts to formally welcome the report, with delegates eventually agreeing to welcome its “timely completion”.

Rather than directly asking for national climate targets to be increased, the Katowice text simply reiterates the existing request in the Paris Agreement for countries to communicate and update their contributions by 2020.

Much now hinges on the UN General Assembly summit in September 2019, to bring the much-needed political momentum towards a new raft of pledges in 2020 that are actually in line with the scientific reality.

Ratcheting up ambition

A key element of the Paris Agreement is the Global Stocktake – a five-yearly assessment of whether countries are collectively on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals to limit global warming.

The new rulebook affirms that this process will consider “equity and best available science”. But it does not elaborate specifically on how these inputs will be used, and how the outcomes of the stocktake will increase ambition.

This raises concerns that the rulebook will ensure we know if we are falling behind on climate action, but will offer no prescription for fixing things. This risks failing to address one of the biggest issues with the Paris Agreement so far: that countries are under no obligation to ensure their climate pledges are in line with the overall goals. A successful, ambitious and prescriptive five-yearly review process will be essential to get the world on track.

Transparency and accounting

One of the aims of the Katowice talks was to develop a common set of formats and schedules for countries to report their climate policy progress.

The new rules allow a degree of flexibility for the most vulnerable countries, who are not compelled to submit quantified climate pledges or regular transparency reports. All other countries will be bound to report on their climate action every two years, starting in 2024.

However, given the “bottom-up” nature of the Paris Agreement, countries are largely able to determine their own accounting rules, with guidelines agreed on what information they should provide. But a future international carbon trading market will obviously require a standardised set of rules. The newly agreed rulebook carries a substantial risk of double-counting where countries could potentially count overseas emissions reductions towards their own target, even if another country has also claimed this reduction for itself.

This issue became a major stumbling block in the negotiations, with Brazil and others refusing to agree to rules that would close this loophole, and so discussions will continue next year. In the meantime, the UN has no official agreement on how to implement international carbon trading.

Accounting rules for action in the land sector have also been difficult to agree. Countries such as Brazil and some African nations sought to avoid an agreement on this issue, while others, such as Australia, New Zealand and the European Union, prefer to continue existing rules that have delivered windfall credits to these countries.

Finance

The new rulebook defines what will constitute “climate finance”, and how it will be reported and reviewed.

Developed countries are now obliged to report every two years on what climate finance they plan to provide, while other countries in a position to provide climate finance are encouraged to follow the same schedule.

But with a plethora of eligible financial instruments – concessional and non-concessional loans, guarantees, equity, and investments from public and private sources – the situation is very complex. In some cases, vulnerable countries could be left worse off, such as if loans have to be repaid with interest, or if financial risk instruments fail.

Countries can voluntarily choose to report the grant equivalent value of these financial instruments. Such reporting will be crucial for understanding the scale of climate finance mobilised.

The Paris Agreement delivered the blueprint for a global response to climate change. Now, the Paris Rulebook lays out a structure for reporting and understanding the climate action of all countries.

But the world is far from on track to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The latest report from the UN Environment Programme suggests existing climate targets would need to be increased “around fivefold” for a chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃. The newly agreed rules don’t offer a way to put us on this trajectory.

Multilateral climate policy has perhaps taken us as far as it can – it is now time for action at the national level. Australia, as a country with very high per-capita emissions, needs to step up to a leadership position and take on our fair share of the global response. This means making a 60% emissions cut by 2030, as outlined by the Climate Change Authority in 2015.

Such an ambitious pledge from Australia and other leading nations would galvanise the international climate talks in 2020. What the world urgently needs is a race to the top, rather than the current jockeying for position.

– ref. We finally have the rulebook for the Paris Agreement, but global climate action is still inadequate – http://theconversation.com/we-finally-have-the-rulebook-for-the-paris-agreement-but-global-climate-action-is-still-inadequate-108918

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

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Henry, Adjunct Lecturer, UNSW

Debates about cyber security in Australia over the past few weeks have largely centred around the passing of the government’s controversial Assistance and Access bill. But while government access to encrypted messages is an important subject, protecting Australia from threat could depend more on the task of developing a solid and robust cyber security response plan.

Australia released its first Cyber Incident Management Arrangements (CIMA) for state, territory and federal governments on December 12. It’s a commendable move towards a comprehensive national civil defence strategy for cyber space.

Coming at least a decade after the need was first foreshadowed by the government, this is just the initial step on a path that demands much more development. Beyond CIMA, the government needs to better explain to the public the unique threats posed by large scale cyber incidents and, on that basis, engage the private sector and a wider community of experts on addressing those unique threats.

Australia is poorly prepared

The aim of the new cyber incident arrangements is to reduce the scope, impact and severity of a “national cyber incident”.

A national cyber incident is defined as being of potential national importance, but less severe than a “crisis” that would trigger the government’s Australian Government Crisis Management Framework (AGCMF).

Australia is currently ill-prepared to respond to a major cyber incident, such as the Wannacry or NotPetya attacks in 2017.

Wannacry severely disrupted the UK’s National Health Service, at a cost of A$160 million. NotPetya shut down the world’s largest shipping container company, Maersk, for several weeks, costing it A$500 million.

When costs for random cyber attacks are so high, it’s vital that all Australian governments have coordinated response plans to high-threat incidents. The CIMA sets out inter-jurisdictional coordination arrangements, roles and responsibilities, and principles for cooperation.

A higher-level cyber crisis that would trigger the AGCMF (a process that itself looks somewhat under-prepared) is one that:

… results in sustained disruption to essential services, severe economic damage, a threat to national security or loss of life.

More cyber experts and cyber incident exercises

At just seven pages in length, in glossy brochure format, the CIMA does not outline specific operational incident management protocols.

This will be up to state and territory governments to negotiate with the Commonwealth. That means the protocols developed may be subject to competing budget priorities, political appetite, divergent levels of cyber maturity, and, most importantly, staffing requirements.

Australia has a serious crisis in the availability of skilled cyber personnel in general. This is particularly the case in specialist areas required for the management of complex cyber incidents.

Government agencies struggle to compete with major corporations, such as the major banks, for the top-level recruits.

Australia needs people with expertise in cybersecurity.

The skills crisis is exacerbated by the lack of high quality education and training programs in Australia for this specialist task. Our universities, for the most part, do not teach – or even research – complex cyber incidents on a scale that could begin to service the national need.

The federal government must move quickly to strengthen and formalise arrangements for collaboration with key non-governmental partners – particularly the business sector, but also researchers and large non-profit entities.

Critical infrastructure providers, such as electricity companies, should be among the first businesses targeted for collaboration due to the scale of potential fallout if they came under attack.

To help achieve this, CIMA outlines plans to institutionalise, for the first time, regular cyber incident exercises that address nationwide needs.

Better long-term planning is needed

While these moves are a good start, there are three longer term tasks that need attention.

First, the government needs to construct a consistent, credible and durable public narrative around the purpose of its cyber incident policies, and associated exercise programs.

Former Cyber Security Minister Dan Tehan has spoken of a single cyber storm, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke of a perfect cyber storm (several storms together), and Cyber Coordinator Alastair McGibbon spoke of a cyber catastrophe as the only existential threat Australia faced.

But there is little articulation in the public domain of what these ideas actually mean.

The new cyber incident management arrangements are meant to operate below the level of national cyber crisis. But the country is in dire need of a civil defence strategy for cyber space that addresses both levels of attack. There is no significant mention of cyber threats in the website of the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub.

This is a completely new form of civil defence, and it may need a new form of organisation to carry it forward. A new, dedicated arm of a distant agency, such as the State Emergency Services (SES), is another potential solution.

One of us (Greg Austin) proposed in 2016 the creation of a new “cyber civil corps”. This would be a disciplined service relying on part-time commitments from the people best trained to respond to national cyber emergencies. A cyber civil corps could also help to define training needs and contribute to national training packages.

The second task falls to private business, who face potentially crippling costs in random cyber attacks.

They will need to build their own body of expertise in cyber simulations and exercise. Contracting out such responsibilities to consulting companies, or one-off reports, would produce scattershot results. Any “lessons learnt” within firms about contingency management could fail to be consolidated and shared with the wider business community.

The third task of all stakeholders is to mobilise an expanding knowledge community led by researchers from academia, government and the private sector.

What exists at the moment is minimalist, and appears hostage to the preferences of a handful of senior officials in Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and the Department of Home Affairs who may not be in post within several years.

Cyber civil defence is the responsibility of the entire community. Australia needs a national standing committee for cyber security emergency management and resilience that is an equal partnership between government, business, and academic specialists.

– ref. New guidelines for responding to cyber attacks don’t go far enough – http://theconversation.com/new-guidelines-for-responding-to-cyber-attacks-dont-go-far-enough-108908

Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Rolling back “neoliberalism” in our schooling system

By Bryce Edwards -

December 18, 2018

Political Roundup: Rolling back “neoliberalism” in our schooling system

By Dr Bryce Edwards

Equality, fairness, and cooperation look set to become the priorities underpinning the operations of the schooling system. They’re the values that are explicit in the radical new proposals to overhaul education and roll back the “neoliberal” Tomorrow’s Schools model that was imposed in the 1980s.The status quo, based on competition and a business model is deemed to have failed, creating inequality and poor outcomes.

This column rounds up the arguments in favour of this view, and in support of implementing the recommendations of the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce. It follows on from yesterday’s column – The Case against major school reform – which gave the other side of the story.

The case in favour of major school reform was put very strongly by Peter O’Connor in his column yesterday. He condemns the status quo as being all about producing winners and losers, and exacerbating the class system in New Zealand society – see: End of the Tomorrow’s Schools neoliberal experiment.

O’Connor is an educationalist at the University of Auckland, and a spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group. He welcomes the proposed new reforms as being a “very real philosophical shift”, which if implemented would amount to one of the biggest rollbacks of all the neoliberal market reforms of the 1980s.

He argues that the new recommendations say “schools must be involved in levelling the playing field rather than tilting it even further towards the rich and privileged. The task force recommendations puts social justice and the battle for the rights of the most marginalised at the heart of its proposed reforms.”

Rightwing and self-interested voices opposing the changes are simply an indication, according to O’Connor, that the reforms are worth implementing. He even embraces some of the rightwing critiques as being accurate: “David Seymour was right when he said the review was an attack on the autonomy of schools. The old fashioned 1980s idea that schools should be autonomous competing business units deserves to be dismantled”.

Another educationalist – and former Alliance MP – Liz Gordon has an equally negative evaluation of the Tomorrow’s Schools model, and views the latest proposals as “a wonderful breath of fresh air” – see: Yesterday’s schools.

She explains the origins of the reforms under David Lange: “Exactly 30 years ago, a taskforce headed by a supermarket magnate, and urged on by an ideological Treasury and rampantly privatising Labour Government, came up with a report on schooling that led to the Tomorrow’s Schools reports. These reforms, owing nothing to good educational practice and everything to Friedmanite economics, have done their best in the resulting period to destroy our society and environment.”

Gordon is particularly dismissive of the Board of Trustees model, labelling it “inherently flawed” and drawing attention to an OECD report that labelled them “self-perpetuating oligarchies”.

Peter Lyons, an economics teacher at Saint Peter’s College in Epsom, says the competitive model has created too many losers and not enough winners – see: Education reforms chance to bring back fairness to system.

Lyons explains how the status quo is based on rightwing market ideology, and has failed: “In the 1990s, New Zealand’s schooling system was dominated by a market-driven philosophy. Competition between schools would ensure greater efficiency and improved performance. Winner schools could even ‘take over’ loser schools just like in the real world of business.”

But he argues that it hasn’t worked in practice: “there are some tragic flaws in this ideology. There was never a level playing field to start with. Winner schools have far greater access to additional funding. This may be through international fee paying students, wealthy alumni, affluent fee paying parents or even black tie dinners that can raise an additional $100,000 in a single evening. Winner schools could then poach higher quality staff or top performing students and sports stars.”

Carol Anderson is another education practitioner with plenty of experience of different sides of the schooling system, and she provides a useful reading of the new proposals, focusing especially on what they would mean for the current boards of trustees – see: How the education reform proposals might affect schools, trustees and parents.

Anderson, who is a lawyer at Education Law NZ, explains the role of the boards, suggesting they currently have too much responsibility, which produces problems: “Since 1989 New Zealand school boards have had to deal with more extensive and demanding legal, educational and financial responsibilities than school boards in other education systems around the world. In practice, the extra administrative burden has fallen largely on the principal, detracting from their role as educational leader of the school. The Tomorrow’s Schools system currently provides widely varying quality of governance. The Task Force considers that it has led to serious educational inequality”.

Her very good article explains how the reduction in responsibilities of the boards is meant to help the schools. And she also provides many useful clarifications of what the proposals might mean. For example, she says: “a closer reading of the report shows that there is potential for more flexible arrangements. Contrary to the impression created in the media, the full report makes it clear that while the Hub will have overall legal responsibility, it will have the flexibility to delegate some of those responsibilities back to individual schools.”

Another informative overview of these issues is provided in John Gerritsen’s Taskforce suggests huge school reform. Interestingly, he also reports the responses of the President of the School Trustees Association, Lorraine Kerr, who believes “the plan to take responsibilities away from school trustees was not necessarily a bad thing in the view of trustees.” He quotes her saying, “For boards, all those things that distract them, the compliance, the accountabilities and even the employment issues will hopefully sit over here so that boards can think about why they were there in the first place and that was around helping to improve student achievement.”

A significant focus of the proposed reforms relates to school zoning. Previously, school zones were viewed as a barrier to student choice and to school performance. But the zoning rules may be boosted and better regulated under the new model – to ensure that students can attend their local schools, reducing the ability of the schools to pick and choose their students. The current rules have been labelled as “racist and unfair” by the taskforce.

As if to reiterate the current problems with zoning, John Gerritsen reported yesterday that “Schools are illegally refusing to enrol children by saying their classrooms are too full or insisting on permanent addresses for families in emergency housing. Attendance services and the legal help organisation YouthLaw said the problem was increasing, and one school was trying to insist that children live in its zone for a year before they could enrol” – see: Schools illegally refusing to enrol local children.

Furthermore, in the weekend, more allegations of competitive behaviour by the schools came out, with Katarina Williams reporting that the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins believes there is a problem. He is quoted saying “We don’t want school principals’ remuneration, in the future, to be based on their ability to poach kids from other schools” – see: Education leaders concerned school heads boost student rolls to line their own pockets.

Hipkins also announced in the weekend that he wants to fast-track one of the taskforce’s recommendations – getting rid of decile system funding, to be replaced by an “Equity index” system – see Colin Williscroft and Jonathan Milne’s Census problems force ‘frustrated’ Minister to urgently overhaul school funding.

According to the taskforce, the current decile funding system is a blunt and inappropriate instrument, and it simply produces further disadvantage for many schools and communities. Hipkins acknowledges this, with the above article reporting his belief that the flash new buildings were going to the wealthy schools. Hipkins says: “One of the challenges around property that we’re grappling with is that most of the new property money goes into areas where there’s population growth, which tends to be the higher socio-economic areas…. At the moment I think the school system contributes to the growth in inequality”.

The decile funding system was already ear-marked to be replaced by the last National Government, but due to current problems with census data, Hipkins has ordered that the new system be brought in as early as two years’ time, instead of five years’ time.

Finally, the Chair of the taskforce making the recommendations is educationalist Bali Haque. And earlier in the year he wrote an illuminating opinion piece about how he saw the current schooling model. This piece provides, perhaps, the best – and most ideological – arguments for reform – see: Tomorrows Schools review must deal with the market’s failure.

Conform to the social norm: why people follow what other people do

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Campbell Pryor, PhD Student in Psychology, University of Melbourne

Why do people tend to do what others do, prefer what others prefer, and choose what others choose?

Our study, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, shows that people tend to copy other people’s choices, even when they know that those people did not make their choices freely, and when the decision does not reflect their own actual preferences.

It is well established that people tend to conform to behaviours that are common among other people. These are known as social norms.

Yet our finding that people conform to other’s choices that they know are completely arbitrary cannot be explained by most theories of this social norm effect. As such, it sheds new light on why people conform to social norms.

Would you do as others do?

Imagine you have witnessed a man rob a bank but then he gives the stolen money to an orphanage. Do you call the police or leave the robber be, so the orphanage can keep the money?

We posed this moral dilemma to 150 participants recruited online in our first experiment. Before they made their choice, we also presented information about how similar participants in a previous experiment had imagined acting during this dilemma.

Half of our participants were told that most other people had imagined reporting the robber. The remaining half were told that most other people had imagined not calling the police.

Crucially, however, we made it clear to our participants that these norms did not reflect people’s preferences. Instead, the norm was said to have occurred due to some faulty code in the experiment that randomly allocated the previous participants to imagining reporting or not reporting the robber.

This made it clear that the norms were arbitrary and did not actually reflect anybody’s preferred choice.

Whom did they follow?

We found that participants followed the social norms of the previous people, even though they knew they were entirely arbitrary and did not reflect anyone’s actual choices.

Simply telling people that many other people had been randomly allocated to imagine reporting the robber increased their tendency to favour reporting the robber.

A series of subsequent experiments, involving 631 new participants recruited online, showed that this result was robust. It held over different participants and different moral dilemmas. It was not caused by our participants not understanding that the norm was entirely arbitrary.

Why would people behave in such a seemingly irrational manner? Our participants knew that the norms were arbitrary, so why would they conform to them?

Is it the right thing to do?

One common explanation for norm conformity is that, if everyone else is choosing to do one thing, it is probably a good thing to do.

The other common explanation is that failing to follow a norm may elicit negative social sanctions, and so we conform to norms in an effort to avoid these negative responses.

Neither of these can explain our finding that people conform to arbitrary norms. Such norms offer no useful information about the value of different options or potential social sanctions.

Instead, our results support an alternative theory, termed self-categorisation theory. The basic idea is that people conform to the norms of certain social groups whenever they have a personal desire to feel like they belong to that group.

Importantly, for self-categorisation theory it does not matter whether a norm reflects people’s preference, as long as the behaviour is simply associated with the group. Thus, our results suggest that self-categorisation may play a role in norm adherence.

The cascade effect

But are we ever really presented with arbitrary norms that offer no rational reason for us to conform to them? If you see a packed restaurant next to an empty one, the packed restaurant must be better, right?

It’s a busy restaurant so it must be good, right? Shutterstock/EmmepiPhoto

Well, if everyone before you followed the same thought process, it is perfectly possible that an initial arbitrary decision by some early restaurant-goers cascaded into one restaurant being popular and the other remaining empty.

Termed information cascade, this phenomenon emphasises how norms can snowball from potentially irrelevant starting conditions whenever we are influenced by people’s earlier decisions.

Defaults may also lead to social norms that do not reflect people’s preferences but instead are driven by our tendency towards inaction.

For example, registered organ donors remain a minority in Australia, despite most Australians supporting organ donation. This is frequently attributed to our use of an opt-in registration system.

In fact, defaults may lead to norms occurring for reasons that run counter to the decision-maker’s interests, such as a company choosing the cheapest healthcare plan as a default. Our results suggest that people will still tend to follow such norms.

Conform to good behaviour

Increasingly, social norms are being used to encourage pro-social behaviour.

They have been successfully used to encourage healthy eating, increase attendance at doctor appointments, reduce tax evasion, increase towel reuse at hotels, decrease long-term energy use, and increase organ donor registrations.

The better we can understand why people conform to social norms, the able we will be to design behavioural change interventions to address the problems facing our society.

The fact that the social norm effect works even for arbitrary norms opens up new and exciting avenues to facilitate behavioural change that were not previously possible.

– ref. Conform to the social norm: why people follow what other people do – http://theconversation.com/conform-to-the-social-norm-why-people-follow-what-other-people-do-107446