Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Breen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith University

When you grow up with no books in the house except maybe the full Readers Digest set of Catherine Cooksons and Bert Ryan’s Guide to Fishing you worship other heroes. The great battles in life are not going down in drama theatres, they’re not happening in-between the dusty covers of old books, they’re happening every weekend on sporting fields. I know this because my dad and everyone else in my suburb is into sport, and really, I have no choice. The other thing is – I like it.

This is the 1980s and the passion that flares in the smoke-filled lounge rooms of suburban houses and public bars is addictive. The ribbing and the rivalries funny, even if they do sometimes edge toward the dark side. The passion is the same whether the action is broadcast from big ticket fields or live on scratchy little league ovals. In fact, the passion is actually worse when it’s occurring on the two lane driveway in my front yard – my dad presiding over cricket matches with improvised rules. Six and out, wheelie bin for wickets and when the ball cannot be retrieved even by the dog – definitely out.

Life moments are one-day test matches between the West Indies and Australia going down to the wire, 16 runs off seven balls, everyone sunburnt and screaming at the TV. Cut to the underdog thrill of watching Wally Lewis get right up into Mark Geyer’s face in a tense State of Origin decider or the excitement I feel racing out of bed at dawn to witness an unlikely Australian victory in the America’s Cup even though I’ve never been on a yacht in my life – a bright blue day when I learn that drinking beer out of a yard glass is a national and political skill and not just something that happens at BBQs.

Sport is a dominant thread in Australia’s cultural DNA. But it’s also divisive. I didn’t realise how much until I started hanging out in underground art scenes and falling asleep under tables in my university tutorials. Not liking sport was something that could set you apart. Sport was the enemy. I wasn’t sure why you had to choose sides. For people who were heavily into pointing out the problematics of binaries on a day to day basis I was pretty surprised they couldn’t see when they were making one.

Most of the artists I knew were always looking for excuses why art couldn’t seem to compete with sport. Publishers chatted to me in mild tones about rugby union over lunch but when I got too excited about sport and my working class roots started showing they tended to change the subject.

That’s why I wasn’t so surprised when around the turn of the new millennium no one except me seemed to like Lleyton Hewitt. Lleyton was a fighter. He wasn’t so different in spirit from many of the Aussie cricket players I’d watched. Or NRL stars. He had that same take no prisoners attitude my dad worshipped and had instilled in me but by the time Lleyton erupted onto the world stage no one was really listening.

When you play tennis there’s no team and no 20 metres of paddock to protect you. Still. I didn’t understand why telling a few inept lines people to go back to the satellites was so harsh, especially when I’d heard worse. By then my dad was gone. His ashes splayed out in sad ceremony over Manly Beach and I watched Lleyton win his first ATP tournament in Adelaide alone. When I watched Lleyton play I admired his skill and his attitude but he fired something else in me. I believed I could win. Achieve things. Make things happen because deep down I doubted if I really could.

Crazy five-hour slogs

By 1999 I’d graduated honours, I’d enrolled in a PhD. I was still poor and hungry but kicking goals and one golden summer day in November my mates and I car pooled it down to the polling booth at Main Beach to vote in the referendum on the republic, slightly stoned, taking great pleasure in freaking out the royalists in their “no” t-shirts. We went home and partied but by six-o-clock the bad news became clear. Australia had voted no. When it came to winning in the political arena, we were getting used to disappointment.

I watched Lleyton’s US Open victory in 2001 alone. The match started at 3am Australian time and ended at 9.15am when a big serving Pete Sampras was summarily dispatched. At 8.15am I rang my boss and said I’m not coming in until he wins. He said who? I said Lleyton Hewitt and then I hung up. I nearly lost my job that day but my boss let it go. I wanted him to fire me. A Gold Coast businessman riding on the coat tails of a Howard government-sponsored sell out of welfare – I spent most of the day taking resumes off people the company rolled through the database tubes like stale bread rolls.

At around 9.15am Lleyton went for a dig down the line and Sampras lost and said he wished he had legs like him and I got on the bus and wondered why there weren’t people screaming in the streets – I’d seen streamers hanging off Yatala pies when Paddy Rafter made the final at Wimbledon but he was a Queenslander and better looking and said “sorry mate” when he fluffed a serve. He also sweated so much he cramped up and lost. People loved Paddy and people didn’t love Lleyton. So I went in to work.

The Australian sports media doesn’t have a great history of supporting individual sports stars. We’re a team sport country, a pack mentality country. There are exceptions. Greg Norman. Pat Rafter. Craig Lowndes. Men with Teflon reputations who can sell anything: housing developments, hotel chains, car insurance, underpants. A preference that stands in for the defining modus operandi of the country. The swell of the crowd. It’s just too easy to run things down especially when you have someone very damn good in your midst. The media was ferocious. Even when Lleyton won they found a way to spin it negatively.

By 2004, I was living in a share house with a bunch of people working the kind of university teaching hours a week that are pretty much illegal now rolling in cash until the semesters ended and then we weren’t. And Mark Latham was priming us to believe in a revolution we thought we wanted. Articulating a distaste for the status quo that felt right and probably real at the time and something we fell for. Maybe the power structure did have a flair. I even wrote him a letter when he lost. I’m glad now, of course, that I never sent it. That’s the thing about political heroes. They come and go. Latham was like a Tamagotchi – something you feel embarrassed about coveting when it’s over. Lleyton, I never gave up on.

Leighton Hewitt training in 2004. Darshan Kumar/AAP

No one who has ever watched Lleyton play one of his epic matches comes out a hater and I mean the whole thing – not just the chainsaws and his trademarked “C’mon’s” in bite-sized highlights. I mean those crazy five hour slogs where you end up doing three weeks’ worth of ironing because you can’t sit still, drinking a bottle of port or whatever’s congealing in the cupboard because the match has gone so long there’s no shops open, going down on your knees in despair when he misses a pull shot, running around the house like you’re on ice swearing you’ll never say a bad word about Nalbandian again as long as the true gods, wherever they are, shine down on the guy in the Rusty branded shoes.

The Darth Vader

That all changed in 2016 when Lleyton walked up the tunnel at Rod Laver arena for the last time, his blonde-locked kids in tow, looking star struck and sad in front of the cameras, their dad stoic and dignified saying only, “Let’s go find mummy.”

If Lleyton was the Vegemite of Australian men’s tennis then Nick Kyrgios is its Darth Vader. The most talented Jedi in the universe, whose greatest battle seems to be playing out in his head. Skulking onto court headphones in, he silences arenas, punters waiting with baited breath to see what the show is going to consist of next – more intense dark or that brilliant, untouchable light?

Whatever he gives, the Australian media makes him pay for it – selecting three second bites from three hour games where he might have let his composure slip. The armchair judgement spooling out in a bad case of déjà vu. Lleyton cared too much, Kyrgios doesn’t care enough. The new Aussie tennis player everyone loves to hate even when he’s got the kind of serve that can slice up a court like a light saber. But to say Nick doesn’t care is a misreading. Like Tomic, one gets the sense that he is very, very conscious of how he appears.

Nick Kyrgios playing in London earlier this year: the most talented Jedi in the universe. Neil Hall/AAP

Both of them playing at times like they don’t want to be there because looking like you couldn’t care less is cool. The kind of guys that might expend a lot of energy to get you alone but once you’re there they spend the whole time looking at their phones. Because you don’t want to appear as if you’re really invested. The difference between them and Lleyton is generational. It’s an attitude I recognise sometimes in my students. When Kyrgios can’t zone, he tunnels into his head.

World rankings of Aussie tennis players shift regularly. Many of our current players have slid in and out of the Top 20 but Australia has not had a world number one since Hewitt. So I wait for the Davis Cup team to grow up under Lleyton’s tutelage and get fired up watching our women tennis players, the bouncy tenaciousness of Daria Gavrilova and the steely determination of Ash Barty – knowing the future of Aussie tennis is bright even if it’s perhaps too hard to call because Top 20 in the world is an incredible achievement by any standard but it ain’t number one – and I’ll keep relishing those moments Lleyton comes back out of retirement to strut his stuff on the doubles court, thankful he’s still got it – the power to exhilarate and light up the winner inside me.

The way I feel about all of this can probably be exemplified by the film clip for the Grimes song Oblivion. Grimes knows she’s playing on that gap between what is real and what gets played out. Oiled up dudes in white towels doing weights in slow motion in dressing rooms while she’s smooching around in an Amish dress or slam dancing jocks at a frat party – she’s not above the fray, she’s in it. When I watch her I am that girl with the boom box at the footy, maybe less cool but with the same smirk, dancing in the spare seats.

– ref. Friday essay: love hurts – on a life of sports fandom – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-love-hurts-on-a-life-of-sports-fandom-105661

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

In the topsy turvy Liberal universe, just when the right is trying to tighten its grip on the throat of the party, the government is haring off to the left, with this week’s legislation to allow it to break up recalcitrant energy companies.

As former deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop – who as a backbencher has become very forthright – said in the Coalition party room on Tuesday, “this is not orthodox Liberal policy”. Bishop canvassed the danger of sovereign risk.

To find a rationale for a frolic into what in other circumstances the Liberals would no doubt denounce as “socialism”, one might see it as driven by the veto of the so-called conservatives.

Those on the right (led by Tony Abbott and his band) have long stopped the government putting forward a sound energy policy, despite the strong pleas from stakeholders across the board.

Instead, trying to respond to the pressing electoral issue of high electricity prices, the government has reached for its “big stick” including the threat of divestiture – a policy that’s being attacked by Labor as well as business.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen was correct on Thursday when he said: “this is what we see when a government’s policy agenda falls apart”.

Having to defend this draconian policy, first from critical Coalition backbenchers (who won some changes) and then in parliament, the government found itself tied in knots.

Given this is such a radical proposal, it was also in an enormous rush with the legislation, introducing it on Wednesday and wanting the House of Representatives to pass it by Thursday.

But that timetable was stymied by Labor. Passage through the House will have to wait until February.

Meanwhile there will be a Senate inquiry, reporting in March. This puts off a Senate vote until budget week in April – ensuring a lot of noise about this controversial measure just when the government will want all the attention on a budget crafted to appeal to voters for a May election.

Even if the divestiture legislation gets through the Senate next year, a likely Labor election victory would mean we’ll probably never see this particular “big stick” wielded. It’s highly doubtful the threat will have been worth the angst, or the trashing of Liberal principles.

The final parliamentary fortnight of 2018 coincided with the first fortnight of the hung parliament.

For Scott Morrison, it has been an excruciating two weeks, with the backlash from the Liberals’ trouncing in Victoria, Julia Banks’ defection to the crossbench, Malcolm Turnbull’s provocative interventions, and an impasse with Labor over the plan to protect LGBT students.

The government’s stress culminated in Thursday’s extraordinary battle to prevent a defeat on the floor of the House.

This test of strength was over amendments, based on a proposal originally coming from new Wentworth member Kerryn Phelps, that would make it easier to transfer people needing medical treatment from Nauru and Manus to Australia.

As both sides played the tactics, a remarkable thing happened in the House of Representatives. Behaviour improved one hundred percent, with none of the usual screaming and exchanges of insults. This pleasing development was, unsurprisingly, driven by cynicism – neither government nor opposition could afford to have anyone thrown out ahead of the possible crucial vote.

Earlier, Morrison had shown anything but restraint when at his news conference he described Bill Shorten as “a clear and present threat to Australia’s safety”. Once that would have been taken as a serious claim, which a prime minister would have been called on to justify. In these days, it’s seen as a passing comment.

In what was a highly aggressive performance, Morrison gave us another foretaste of what he’ll be like on the hustings.

In the end, by its delaying tactics in the Senate, the government prevented the amendments reaching the House before it adjourned, and so avoided a test of the numbers.

Defeat in the House would not have equalled a no confidence vote, but it would have been a serious blow for Morrison. Looking for a precedent, the House of Representatives’ clerks office went back to votes lost in 1929 (which led to an election) and on the 1941 budget (which brought down the Fadden government).

But the government may have just put off, rather than prevented, the reckoning. Phelps said on Sky, “I am sad that we didn’t get this through today … because I believe it would have gone through on the numbers … But you know if have to wait until February, at least I believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Dodging this vote meant that legislation to give authorities better access to encrypted messages to help in the fight against terrorism looked like it would be delayed. Once the House had adjourned, any Labor amendments the Senate might pass couldn’t go back there until February.

The government had declared the encryption measure was urgent, and the blame game started in anticipation of a hold up. Then, mid-debate in the Senate, Labor abandoned its attempt to amend the bill, which glided through. In an agreement which may mean something or nothing, the government undertook to consider the ALP amendments in the new year.

Shorten didn’t want to be open to the government’s accusations of impeding legislation the security agencies said would help prevent terrorist acts. “I couldn’t go home and leave Australians over Christmas without some of the protections which we all agree are necessary,” he said.

The events of this week show why the government decided to have the minimum of sitting days before the election next year.

The new parliamentary session will open with a deadlock on the protection of gay students, the divestiture plan up in the air, and the Nauru-Manus vote hanging over the government.

And by that time Scott Morrison will have had his first and probably his last Christmas at Kirribilli.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Hokey-pokey politics as the government is shaken all about – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-hokey-pokey-politics-as-the-government-is-shaken-all-about-108364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University

There has been a six-fold increase in sales of infant formula prescribed for babies with cows’ milk protein allergy in the United Kingdom from 2006 to 2016. This is despite no evidence of a concurrent increase in the prevalence of infants with the allergy.

An investigation published today in the BMJ found infant formula manufacturers have been funding the development of guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of cows’ milk allergy as well as providing research and consultancy funds to those who wrote them.

Rates of cow’s milk allergy appear to have been relatively stable – estimated at between 1-2% over the last decade.

Research has found the perception of an allergic response to cow’s milk protein in children is ten times greater than what actual diagnosis would indicate. This means guidelines on allergy for doctors are really important.

In some cases, doctors who spoke to the BMJ said the guidelines were so vague that

virtually every single infant could potentially be diagnosed using these symptoms.

A diagnosis can only be made only by excluding cow’s milk protein from the maternal diet, observing symptoms, and then reintroducing it. But the BMJ paper notes that evidence for advising such exclusions to treat non-specific symptoms in breastfed infants is weak.

The paper also found much of the education for health professionals and parents about cows’ milk allergy was provided by organisations also funded by the infant formula industry.

Previous research has found that changes in diagnostic and treatment guidelines can have enormous effects on the revenue of pharmaceutical and nutritional products. Conflicts of interest due to industry funding have been found to affect doctors’ prescribing behaviour, research results and the quality of patient care.

Parents are also vulnerable to marketing. They crave a happy, quiet, calm baby who sleeps, eats and poos in a predictable pattern.

But babies wake often. They can have difficulty adjusting to life outside the womb and their stomachs are getting used to digesting food. They vomit. They cry for reasons that are hard to understand.

Marketing takes this normal infant behaviour and turns it into a problem that can be solved by buying a product.

Read more: Why advertisers use pictures to sell pharmaceuticals – and shouldn’t

When businesses are allowed to shape the guidelines health professionals use to diagnose and treat, this can lead to guidelines that find normal infant behaviour is treatable – with a product.

Unfortunately there may similar pressures on doctors in Australia.

A variety of infant formula products available in Australia claim to be antidotes to normal challenges new parents face such as crying, vomiting and constipation.

An advertisement in Australian Doctor. ., Author provided

The above advertisement is from the publication Australian Doctor (which is available through subscription to medical professionals and includes drug advertising). It is a powerful piece of persuasion. It invokes every parent’s desire for a good night’s sleep and a contented, healthy baby to drive purchasing behaviour. Notice the presence of the mother in this picture. Although we can’t see her, we presume she is also sleeping somewhere.

When parents are desperate for help, doctors want to provide it. Colic is a variation of normal infant behaviour. It has no known medical cause or cure and this can make doctors feel powerless. However, this advertisement offers them a way to help. It gives doctors a solution – they just need to suggest the infant formula.

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

Parents are told to seek assistance from health professionals when they are concerned about their baby. However, if health professional guidelines and education is contaminated with marketing and influenced in other ways by infant formula manufacturers, the support they provide will be of poor quality.

Health professionals need independent, non-commercial information on infant feeding and parents should be protected from predatory marketing through effective enforcement of regulations.

– ref. Infant formula companies are behind the guidelines on milk allergy, and their sales are soaring – http://theconversation.com/infant-formula-companies-are-behind-the-guidelines-on-milk-allergy-and-their-sales-are-soaring-108255

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester

Among the tributes, critiques and personal reminsces on the life of former US president George H.W. Bush, there has been plenty of reflection on his war record – but less on how he handled himself during the early skirmishes of the climate battle.

Scientists had been warning of potential problems from the buildup of greenhouse gases for a decade before Bush took office. The warnings culminated in 1988, when NASA climatologist James Hansen, after testifying to a Senate panel, uttered the famous words:

It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.

By then, Bush’s presidential run was gaining steam. After eight years as vice-president to Ronald Reagan, he wanted the top job, and in Michael Dukakis he faced a Democrat opponent with relatively strong environmental credentials.

Read more: Why we’ll miss George H.W. Bush, America’s last foreign policy president

On August 31, 1988, on the campaign trail, Bush promised:

Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the ‘greenhouse effect’ are forgetting about the ‘White House effect’. In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House. It will include the Soviets, the Chinese… The agenda will be clear. We will talk about global warming.

Bush won the election, and hosted his promised summit in April 1990. But he fudged his promise for a clear and open discussion of global warming.

Bert Bolin, the “father of climate science” and founding chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found himself mysteriously not invited to the summit. Leaked briefing papers showed the Bush administration’s line was that it was “not beneficial to discuss whether there is or is not warming… In the eyes of the public we will lose this debate.”

Denial and obfuscation

In May 1989, Al Gore, who had unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination the previous year, accused the president of seeking to dodge the climate issue, after it emerged that the Bush Administration had censored Hansen’s Congressional testimony, altering his conclusions about global warming data to make them seem less certain.

Meanwhile, climate deniers were becoming increasingly active, including in the Bush White House. A coal industry-sponsored documentary titled The Greening of Planet Earth began circulating, while Bush’s chief of staff John Sununu became a vocal roadblock to climate policy, throwing up bureaucratic obstacles and winning Cabinet battles against those who wanted a stronger policy. Bush himself reportedly had no strong interest in global warming and was largely briefed on it by non-scientists.

Yet the world pressed on with the climate issue, setting the June 1992 Rio Earth Summit as the deadline for completing a new United Nations treaty that would formalise the global negotiation process. The US administration said that Bush – up for re-election in November – would refuse to attend if the treaty text included targets and timetables for emissions reductions. Bush’s words were: “The American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period.” It’s a sentiment we’re still used to hearing from many of today’s politicians.

The major dilemma facing international negotiators was whether to accommodate the United States and have a weak treaty, or push ahead without them. The fate of the Convention on the Law of the Sea – which languished for almost a decade without ratification because of US opposition – pushed them towards compromise. It took a British initiative – with UK Environment Secretary Michael Howard flying to the US to convince the Americans they could sign on – before Bush would agree to attend.

An October 1992 Washington Post profile paints a picture of a man who was not really engaged in the global warming issue. Based on interviews with more than 20 policy officials and other advisers, Bush was described as being:

…detached, uninterested, and as his brief remarks in the April meeting showed, responsive only to the politics of a complex issue. He never sat for a full-dress scientific briefing on it or exercised control over administration policy, even after infighting among administration officials became public, or leaders of other industrialised nations pledged action.

Historic compromises

The Rio deal – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – was quickly signed and ratified by enough countries, including the US, to become international law. The first annual summit was held in Berlin in 1995, and negotiators are currently gathered in Katowice, Poland, for the 24th round of talks. Along the way, the negotiations have delivered the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.

But the key battle, which has never been won, was for the implementation of binding targets and timetables for countries, especially wealthy ones, to cut their emissions. The inherent weakness of Paris Agreement, which does not contain binding targets and is not currently on track to meet its stated goals, is the result of compromises made decades ago.

Bush’s son, George W. Bush, had a far worse record on climate action during his own presidency. But Bush senior was in the White House during the formative years of the international climate effort. He had the chance to be a genuine leader, had he seized it. But when we needed decisive, brave and far-sighted leadership, instead we got the same backing-in of corporate interests, and nearsighted defence of the status quo, that we have grown so used to seeing from political leaders.

Read more: 15th-century Chinese sailors have a lesson for Trump about climate policy

There is of course plenty of blame to go around for our species’ failure to address climate change. One of Bush’s oldest friends, who served as secretary of state, James Baker, has tried to get Republicans on board with climate action, including with the recent Baker-Shulz carbon dividend plan. But many high-profile Republicans, the current president included, still wear their climate recalcitrance as a badge of honour.

We are living with the consequences today. And the children who went on strike last Friday, fighting a battle they should not have had to join, will live with them for the rest of their lives.

– ref. George Bush Sr could have got in on the ground floor of climate action – history would have thanked him – http://theconversation.com/george-bush-sr-could-have-got-in-on-the-ground-floor-of-climate-action-history-would-have-thanked-him-108050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dodd, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Today we’re taking a look back at some of the biggest issues of 2018 with special guest Kath Viner, editor-in-chief of The Guardian.

As the media grappled this year with how to cover Donald Trump and his “alternative facts”, Viner says it may be time for the media to pay less attention to what he says.

“Surely the thing to do is report on what is actually happening. So less on what Trump is saying but actually what his administration is doing,” Viner said.

“We don’t hear about what he’s doing because we’re too busy commenting on what he’s saying.”

We also talked about how newsrooms are funding journalism and particularly investigative journalism, in an era when journalists are increasingly vilified and even physically attacked or killed.

Viner also identified what she saw as the major challenges ahead.

“I think the other big challenge for next year is how we deal with the rise of the far right and how we report on it without inflaming it or over-exaggerating it,” she said.

Read more: Media Files: On the Serena Williams cartoon — and how the UK phone hacking scandal led to a media crackdown in South Africa

Media Files is produced by a team of academics who have spent decades working in and reporting on the media industry. They’re passionate about sharing their understanding of the media landscape, especially how journalists operate, how media policy is changing, and how commercial manoeuvres and digital disruption are affecting the kinds of media and journalism we consume.

Media Files will be out every month, with occasional off-schedule episodes released when we’ve got fresh analysis we can’t wait to share with you. To make sure you don’t miss an episode, find us and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, in Pocket Casts or wherever you find your podcasts. And while you’re there, please rate and review us – it really helps others to find us.

You can find more podcast episodes from The Conversation here.

Read more: Media Files: What does the future newsroom look like?

Recorded at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism. Producer: Andy Hazel. Production assistance Gavin Nebauer.

Additional audio

Theme music by Susie Wilkins.

– ref. Media Files: Covering Trump, funding news and the rise of impunity. The Guardian’s Kath Viner on the big media stories of 2018 – http://theconversation.com/media-files-covering-trump-funding-news-and-the-rise-of-impunity-the-guardians-kath-viner-on-the-big-media-stories-of-2018-106540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Biddle, Associate Professor, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

Support for democracy and trust in politicians is falling. We hear a lot about evidence-based policy as a way to stem this decline, but less about how that evidence should be generated.

One idea that may generate the type of evidence that will help make more informed decisions appears, paradoxically, fairly unpopular with the punters.

Perhaps the problem is that not enough has been done to explain to the public what this idea – carefully testing new policies on small groups first – might mean in practice.

In a new paper just released, we show that we may still be a long way off adopting this practice.

The rollout of the National Broadband Network has been plagued by delays, changes of plan and consumers unhappy with the end result. Mark Esposito/AAP

There is an emerging view that there should be much greater use of evaluations of public policies, including randomised controlled trials (RCTs), to test the effectiveness of new policies before they are rolled out. This applies particularly to policies or programs for which there is limited or no evidence about their likely impact.

RCTs have been around for years in medicine and other sciences, and are increasingly being used by small and large companies to test products and services. Conceptually they are simple, although implementing one can be complex. A RCT involves selecting a sample from a population of interest and randomly dividing them into two groups (using the equivalent of a coin toss). One group is given an intervention (that is, a program or policy) and the other is not. If the RCT has been done properly, the differences in the outcomes of the two groups tells us the impact of the intervention being trialled.

Read more: The heart of the matter: how effective is the flu jab really?

There are other ways to try to measure causation, and some are necessary when an RCT isn’t possible. However, Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh argues in his new book Randomistas that:

Researchers have spent years thinking about how best to come up with credible comparison groups, but the benchmark to which they keep returning is the randomised controlled trial. There’s simply no better way to determine the counterfactual than to randomly allocate participants into two groups: one that gets the treatment, and another that does not.

Our study

While there is strong support within the policy and research community on the important role of trials and evaluations, we know far less about what the general public thinks about how policies should be implemented and to what extent they should be trialled before widespread introduction.

Read more: From ‘trust us, we’re doctors’ to the rise of evidence-based medicine

In a survey undertaken as part of the ANUPoll series, we ran an online survey experiment that measured the level of support for trials in general and RCTs in particular. We also looked at the factors that influence that support, and whether there is a causal relationship between expert opinion, party identification and support for an RCT.

That is, we ran an RCT on RCTs.

As part of the survey, we asked respondents to “consider a hypothetical proposal to reform” in one of five policy areas (school education; early childhood education; health; policing; support for those seeking employment). We then asked “which of the following approaches do you think the government should take?”:

• Introduce the policy for everyone in Australia at the same time
• Introduce the policy to everyone, but do it in stages
• Trial on a small segment of the population who need it most, or
• Trial on a small segment of the population chosen randomly,

We found that more people want new government policies rolled out without testing – except for jobless support.

Some key findings emerge:

• There is a roughly even split between those who think a new policy should be introduced to everyone at once and those who think it should be trialled on a small segment of the population.

• Respondents support trials for employment policies the most strongly but are most likely to support an RCT for a policy related to school education. They are least likely to support it for health service delivery and employment support.

• Those who live in disadvantaged areas and those with low levels of education are the least supportive of RCTs.

What influence do experts’ views have?

The type of policy that is being proposed clearly matters for whether the general public thinks it should be trialled as part of an RCT. However, the views of those outside the political system also matter. We tested this potential effect by randomly varying the wording of the question across respondents.

One “treatment” that we applied to the question was to vary what respondents were told on whether experts generally support the policy, are generally opposed to the policy, or are divided on the policy (with one-third of respondents given each of the options).

Randomised controlled trials are commonplace in the area of medical products – after all, we all feel better knowing a new product has been thoroughly tested. AAP

The greatest support for a trial in general or an RCT in particular occurs when experts are generally opposed to the policy. Conversely, the least support for a trial or an RCT comes when experts are generally in support of the policy, implying respondents believe sufficient evidence must already exist. Support is somewhere in between when there is variation in support.

This has implications, we think, for researchers engaged in policy debates. One potential effect of arguing publicly for a different point of view to policymakers or other researchers is to increase the level of support for trials among the general population. We should make a case for uncertainty when it does exist, as that would appear to increase support for future gathering of evidence.

Indeed, this advocacy for uncertainty has underpinned the push for greater trials and evaluations in policy (and the social sciences).

Building support

It is clear that RCTs are likely to be increasingly used by policymakers to test the effect of policy interventions. However, to be truly effective and to avoid a backlash, RCTs need to be supported not only by researchers and policymakers but also by the general public. At first glance, this buy-in is a long way off.

– ref. Voters are crying out for better government but have mixed views on how to achieve it – http://theconversation.com/voters-are-crying-out-for-better-government-but-have-mixed-views-on-how-to-achieve-it-107713

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jana Matthews, ANZ Chair in Business Growth. Director, Australian Centre for Business Growth, University of South Australia

The Australian government has a plan to help the nation’s small and medium-sized businesses – but it’s not a very well-developed one.

Its cornerstone is A$2 billion for a “Securitisation Fund” to provide loans to small business through smaller banks and non-bank lenders, plus a “Business Growth Fund” that will enable big banks and super funds to take passive equity stakes in small business. The assumption is that more money will help small and medium-sized enterprises fund their expansion plans.

The problem is most small and medium companies do not have expansion plans.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ first management capability survey, published in August 2017, indicates that only a third of medium-sized companies (defined as those with 20 to 199 employees) have a written plan of any kind. The percentage is much lower for small companies – those with five to 19 employees (and lower still for micro-businesses, employing four or fewer people).

The Australian Centre for Business Growth at the University of South Australia collects data and delivers programs for those running small and medium-sized companies. Since it began in 2014, the centre has worked with more than 1,500 business proprietors. They all wanted to do better. Hardly any of them had a plan.

The federal government’s assistance package seems to assume that access to more capital will accelerate company growth. Our experience suggests executives of small and medium companies need knowledge capital as well as financial capital to grow.

If they don’t know what to do when, who to hire, how to manage people, or how to plan and execute, simply providing more money does not accelerate growth.

This year we collected data from 145 of the companies that have been through one of our growth programs. In the past financial year they increased their revenues, on average, by 27%, their profits by 19%, and employment by 32%. Their growth was the result of learning how to develop and execute an expansion plan, that is, knowing how to generate and where to deploy financial capital in order to grow.

Passing a public-interest test

It’s true that small and medium enterprises need money for growth. But before they get funding, they need to learn what to do with that money to grow.

Driver’s education and a proficiency test are compulsory before we give people a licence to drive a car. We need something equivalent before we provide public funds – even as loans – to businesses.

We justify allowing people to borrow against their homes to start a company because it’s “their decision” and “their money”. But if taxpayers’ money is being provided, the federal government has a duty of care to ensure every company has a comprehensive plan for growth before receiving funding.

That plan should cover all the bases from products to markets and customers; culture, people and organisation; finance; risks and externalities; governance and strategy.

If financial capital is not coupled with knowledge capital, investments in small and medium-sized companies will not deliver returns. Only after those running a company understand how to grow, and have a plan to grow, will they achieve what we all want – more jobs, higher wages, and greater economic prosperity for all.

– ref. Thanks for the $2 billion for small-business expansion; now all we need are plans to expand – http://theconversation.com/thanks-for-the-2-billion-for-small-business-expansion-now-all-we-need-are-plans-to-expand-107797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kellie Bousfield, Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Australia’s education system often suffers a barrage of criticism – claims of stagnant or declining NAPLAN results, slippage in international comparisons and rankings, and an irrelevant curriculum, tend to draw the attention of politicians, the media, and the Australian public.

It’s not often we are able to celebrate what’s right in Australia’s education system. But yesterday’s student presence at Parliament house and Friday’s protests where more than 15,OOO Australian students skipped class to demand greater action on climate change should be cause for celebration.

Read more: The world needs a new generation of citizen lobbyists

Far from being concerned about an afternoon off school, parents should feel satisfied schools and teachers are doing their job. Participation in these protests meets many of the key goals of our current education system, including students’ capacity to engage in, and strengthen, democracy. Rather than proof of a flawed education system, politically active and engaged students are evidence many aspects of our education system are working well.

Students want action on climate change

Protests called out the federal government’s lack of action on climate change during the protests. Wednesday’s parliament house rally specifically targeted the Adani coal mine project. Students were also seeking an audience with the prime minister to have their concerns heard.

The government’s response to these protests has been, at best, dismissive. Students’ actions have not been recognised as a genuine attempt to engage in robust democratic debate about climate change. Before Friday’s walk-out, Scott Morrison relegated students to the confines of their classrooms, “what we want”, he argued, “is more learning in schools and less activism”.

The students are right: activism is learning. Lukas Coch/AAP

Other members of government have been equally off-hand. Senator James McGrath was more concerned with a spelling error on a single student’s placard than the basis of their grievance. Resources minister Matt Canavan deemed protests as nothing more than a quick ticket “to the dole queue”.

The government’s response is both misinformed and misdirected. Beyond the obvious lack of recognition of political protest as a fundamental pillar of democracy, and means to political change, it also demonstrates a lack of recognition of the goals of Australian schooling, as outlined in our Melbourne Declaration.

The Melbourne Declaration and the role of education

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians is a document signed by all Australian education ministers which outlines the mandated knowledge, skills and values of schooling for the period 2009-2018. The declaration is a national road map for education and a statement of intent by both federal and state governments, across partisan lines.

The declaration outlines two key goals:

1. Australian schooling promotes both equity and excellence
2. all young Australians become: successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens

It’s the first goal that gathers public attention as excellence and equity, in the form of measurable academic outcomes, dominates public discussion (think NAPLAN, My School, and PISA). More often than not, we’re told it’s here we’re getting things wrong.

Read more: The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians: what it is and why it needs updating

In the second goal, the declaration attends to the broad purpose and significance of education. That is, the democratic purpose of education, as an avenue for students’ successful participation in civil society. If events of the last week are anything to go by, our students are all over goal two.

Students at a rally demanding action on climate change in Sydney, Friday, November 30, 2018. Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Sustainability is a stated priority in the Australian curriculum. Beyond understanding sustainable patterns of living and impacts of climate change, students are expected to develop skills to inform and persuade others to take action. Through these protests, relevant sections of the Melbourne Declaration read like a tick-list of student achievement. Students have demonstrated:

• the ability to think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence
• creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness
• the ability to to plan activities independently, collaborate, work in teams and communicate ideas
• enterprise and initiative to use their creative abilities
• preparation for their roles as community members
• the ability to embrace opportunities and make rational and informed decisions about their own lives
• a commitment to participate in Australia’s civic life
• ability to work for the common good, to sustain and improve natural and social environments
• their place as responsible global and local citizens.

The Melbourne Declaration is a recognition that education is more than a classroom test and more than measurable results. This is not to suggest the much lauded 3R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) are not important in education – they are. Rather, it’s an understanding that education and learning is also, and importantly, social, and sometimes immeasurable in nature and practice.

Read more: Why we’re building a climate change game for 12-year-olds

Australian students’ activities over the past week evidence their knowledge and capabilities in an education system valuing both economic and democratic functions of education.

Rather than dismiss students’ actions as ill-informed or misdirected, or deny their capacity to effectively participate in democratic processes, we should recognise their learning and achievements. Let’s celebrate this achievement in Australian education, and encourage their capacity as active and informed citizens within our democracy.

Australian students understand progress happens when individuals join together to demand change. Politicians, take heed.

– ref. Student protests show Australian education does get some things right – http://theconversation.com/student-protests-show-australian-education-does-get-some-things-right-108258

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Linden, Sessional Lecturer, PhD (Management) Candidate, School of Management, RMIT University

As the final round of what the Twitterverse calls #BankingRC ended, two of Australia’s most highly respected business journalists sought to sum up what has emerged in the 68 days of hearings. They didn’t hold back.

Adele Ferguson said it had exposed rampant institutionalised corruption. The ABC’s Peter Ryan said that, after 34 years in journalism, it had struck him that the royal commission was not so much a finance story as a crime story.

If you were to take both assessments at face value, it would look as if Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s final recommendations in February will be straightforward: criminal prosecutions and sweeping changes to make the costs of misconduct much higher.

However, as we argue here, there are grounds for concern this won’t be the way it plays out.

Hayne under pressure

This isn’t because Hayne and senior counsel haven’t been diligent in exposing the problems, but because they now have to make a choice between acting on the concerns of victims, or the concerns of those who think that recommending anything (other than asking banks to say sorry and do better in the future) will threaten financial stability and economic growth.

The stakes are suddenly high.

Acting on the concerns of victims and protecting the public requires a three-pronged approach:

1. ending the traditional exploitative but lucrative business model
2. tightening regulatory oversight
3. reforming the basic building blocks of corporate governance.

The finance services sector knows it will have to do something, but it wants to do as little as possible. It’s prepared to raise the spectre of financial instability in order to get away with it.

The illusion of change

It is keen to create the illusion of change – divestitures, executive departures, reorganisations – even before Hayne reports.

Its supporters are putting forward minor red-herring solutions already known not to work, such as increasing financial literacy and “professionalising” selling.

The regulators who have traditionally supported it are launching long-delayed court actions, even though putting bankers behind bars requires watertight cases.

The threat of instability

At the same time external pressures on the commissioner are being ratcheted up.

There is talk of a credit crunch if banks are forced to obey the law and lend responsibly.

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe told a parliamentary committee that an overreaction could “stifle innovation”.

Neither the Reserve Bank nor the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority seems keen to accept that the nature of big banks could itself threaten financial stability.

Even though big banks are riskier

That is certainly a finding of longitudinal studies of European banks during and after the global financial crisis.

The big shareholder-focused banks were found to be systemically riskier, less efficient and have lower-quality loans than the smaller not-for-profit banks overseen by boards with employee-and-union-elected directors.

Read more: Research suggests bigger banks are worse for customers

Business models also made a difference. Universal banks that cross-sell financial products were found to be riskier than banks that simply take deposits and provide loans.

Our banks are in denial

The big banks themselves don’t seem to get that their size, cross-selling business models and shareholder-focused boards are part of the problem.

In the final fortnight’s hearings Westpac’s Brian Hartzer was belligerent. ANZ’s Shayne Elliott said his bank had been a victim of credit growth.

AMP chief executive Mike Wilkins blamed bad apples. Commonwealth Bank chair Catherine Livingstone and her new chief executive, Matt Comyn, blamed their predecessors.

The National Australia Bank’s Ken Henry said the problem was a culture that would take years to change. His chief executive, Andrew Thorburn, spoke of “organisational drift”.

They are trying to sidetrack discussion into a narrow debate about how bank directors should interpret their duties, rather than a broader discussion about the nature of banks and who their directors work for.

Anything but structure

Former Institute of Company Directors chair Elizabeth Proust doesn’t see the need to make banks accountable to their customers given that “boards already take non-shareholder interests into account”.

The chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, doesn’t see it either.

“We don’t want companies to get confused, so I think their duty should be just to the long-term interests of shareholders,” he said.

Hayne is at risk of being sidetracked into wrestling with what he at one point called a column of smoke – organisational culture.

In the final round he invoked the Group of Thirty as a definitive statement about how to fix bank culture.

Read more: A tip for bankers ahead of the royal commission: be more like doctors

The Group of Thirty is a private think tank made up of a who’s who of ex-central bankers, academics and banking executives, including former Westpac chief Gail Kelly.

Its 2015 report might be the source of incoming AMP chairman David Murray’s line that you can’t regulate for culture.

But the research the Group of Thirty relies on is old, United States-focused and equivocal.

Read more: In defence of ASIC: there’s more to regulation than prosecution

If its views are accepted, it will be left to boards and executives to reform themselves.

Worse still, they won’t get much assistance. Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byres has told the commission that his organisation not only lacks the skill set to oversee cultural change but doesn’t want the job.

Which is a column of smoke

You can see where things are heading.

If everyone starts talking about changing culture rather than rules and structures little is likely to change.

Adele Ferguson is right to worry out loud. “This is a moment in time that won’t easily be recaptured. Let’s hope it isn’t squandered,” she said.

Indeed.

– ref. Will Hayne blink? The problems with banks demand tough measures that neither they nor their regulators want – http://theconversation.com/will-hayne-blink-the-problems-with-banks-demand-tough-measures-that-neither-they-nor-their-regulators-want-107953

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Dalziell, Associate Professor, English and Literary Studies, University of Western Australia

The note Leonard Cohen wrote to his former lover Marianne Ihlen as she lay upon her death bed became a viral phenomenon after they both died in 2016. But Cohen’s last letter to Ihlen was not entirely what you read.

Ihlen had been hospitalised with leukaemia in Norway when a friend contacted Cohen to inform him of her impending death. He responded with the letter (sent as an email) within hours. Ihlen died several days later, on July 28th, having had this farewell message read to her. For a private communication, this letter soon became very public.

Already it is canonised, and not only among fans of the Canadian poet, singer and songwriter. It was recently included in a collection of correspondence, Written in History: Letters that Changed the World, edited by English historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.

Montefiore starts his introduction to the book with the declaration that, “Nothing beats the immediacy and authenticity of a letter.” But the history of the Cohen letter’s circulation shows how “authenticity” can be rendered questionable by those seeking to exploit its “immediacy”. It also highlights the myth-making around this writer-muse relationship that gathered fabled resonance after Cohen and Ihlen met on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, although the relationship had all but run its course by the decade’s end.

Ihlen’s friend who brokered this final exchange with Cohen was film-maker Jan Christian Mollestad. Within days of Ihlen’s passing, Canada’s national English-language broadcaster, CBC radio, had tracked down Mollestad. An interview with him was posted on the station’s website, along with a truncated transcription, on August 5 2016.

In response to a question from the interviewer, Mollestad went on to “quote” Cohen’s letter in full.

Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.

And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.

The text of this letter, as Mollestad recited it, was immediately picked up by other news outlets. The Guardian and Rolling Stone both ran the story of the letter on August 7th, repeating the CBC version in full.

Read more: Friday essay: a fresh perspective on Leonard Cohen and the island that inspired him

The letter’s instant notoriety was born not only of its gentle farewell to the soon-to-be departed Ihlen, but also because of the intimations of Cohen’s own demise. And its consumption was massively enabled by social media.

A YouTube tribute video created after Marianne and Leonard’s deaths.

‘The syntax of love’

A follow-up article in the Guardian praised the letter’s “economy of words, the syntax of love, his ability to go straight to the only matter that matters – her death, his mortality, their love – is a thing of beauty and wisdom in itself.” It was a sentiment echoed by many.

On November 7 2016, Cohen died. The letter was immediately resurrected across multiple news and social media outlets. It was used now to focus on Cohen’s prediction that, “I will follow you very soon,” and his evocation, through the image of Ihlen’s reaching hand, of being drawn towards her in death.

Over the following months, the letter was read in “tributes” for the departed singer, frequently paired with a performance of So Long, Marianne from Cohen’s 1967 debut album. In November 2017, Adam Cohen, Leonard’s son, interpolated the letter into the lyrics of So Long, Marianne at a star-studded, first-anniversary tribute show in Montreal.

Cohen’s letter, now seemingly endorsed by his family, had become part of his canon. All good … except that the words used in it weren’t Cohen’s.

What happened?

Bypassing the abbreviated transcript and listening to the recorded version of the CBC interview with Mollestad is revealing. Journalist Rosemary Barton asks: “I know you don’t have it [the letter] in front of you, but I’m sure given it was written by Leonard Cohen you can remember part of it?”

In response, it is clear that Mollestad is paraphrasing. He stumbles a number of times, trying several phrases over in different forms as he struggles to accurately recall Cohen’s words. As he reaches the conclusion of the letter as he recalls it, he simply mumbles, “something like that”.

When the interview was transcribed for the CBC website some editorial “smoothing” of Mollestad’s recalled version of the letter was undertaken to remove his justifiable hesitations. In the process, more minor changes were made.

In his book, Montefiore resurrects what is likely an accurate copy of Cohen’s letter, with permission to use attributed to “The estate of Leonard Cohen”. Its differences are, understandably, considerable. It reads in full:

Dearest Marianne,

I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand. This old body has given up, just as yours has too, and the eviction notice is on its way any day now.

I’ve never forgotten your love and your beauty. But you know that. I don’t have to say any more. Safe travels old friend. See you down the road. Love and gratitude. Leonard

Not only is the Mollestad/CBC version a full third longer, but in small but meaningful ways the intent of Cohen’s original was also altered.

Cohen’s “Dearest Marianne” strikes a different opening note to the resignation of “Well Marianne”. Mollestad has Ihlen reaching out (or back) for Cohen’s hand, whereas Cohen gives himself the possibility of reaching for hers; Mollestad’s introduced reference to Ihlen’s “wisdom” changes the inflection of the relationship between the two protagonists; and Cohen’s reference to the couple facing “eviction” from their bodies alters the constant gentleness and intimacy of Mollestad’s version.

Arguably Mollestad’s version is a little more pleasing in some of its phrasing, with “so close behind you” coming more easily than Cohen’s “just a little behind you”; and his reference to a “good journey” chiming more satisfactorily than Cohen’s “safe travels” with the shared closing salutation, “see you down the road”.

The Cohen letter’s circulation in its original form may change, ever so slightly, how the personal histories of Cohen and Ihlen are remembered. And this is a letter that has been changed by history, as journalists and social media commentators, feeding a voracious news-cycle, cast authenticity aside in the process.

Although the appearance of the Cohen letter in Montefiore’s volume appears to correct the record, it will be interesting to see which of the two versions survives.

It will likely be the one originally posted by the CBC. Not only is it far more widely known and available, but many people will probably find it more appealing and moving than the original.

– ref. Mythmaking, social media and the truth about Leonard Cohen’s last letter to Marianne Ihlen – http://theconversation.com/mythmaking-social-media-and-the-truth-about-leonard-cohens-last-letter-to-marianne-ihlen-108082

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stanley Shanapinda, Research Fellow, La Trobe University

One of the key functions of the government is to collect and archive national records. This includes everything from property records and registers of births, deaths and taxes, to Parliamentary proceedings, and even the ABC’s digital library of Australian news and entertainment.

A new report released today from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) considers the important role these records play as the collective digital identity of our nation.

The report’s author, Anne Lyons, explains how an attack on these records could disrupt the day-to-day functioning of society, and why we need to do more to protect them.

Read more: Hooray, we’re digital natives – so who preserves our culture?

Why are these records important?

Given that we live in the digital era, our digital identity records have been transformed into electronic data and are stored virtually in cloud servers. These servers act as the memory centre of the nation, preserving Australia’s unaltered history.

We can trust these records are accurate, confidential and not interfered with. All this digital information may be referred to as “digital identity assets”.

These assets are worth protecting, because they are important for the functioning of government, and are a legacy for future generations. Collectively, they embody who and what Australia is as a nation, its journey, and its time and place in history.

What could happen if they were hacked?

The impact of any theft, manipulation, destruction or deletion of digital identity assets could be catastrophic.

The courts would not be able to function without the relevant digital records. Manipulated property title deeds could create legal challenges. Passports and visas may not be able to be verified and issued. And historic records could be tampered with or forged.

In the worst-case scenario, such an attack could interfere with the proper functioning of government, and shatter public trust and confidence in government institutions.

Lyons paints a picture of what it would look like if property records were hacked:

You wake up in 2022 to discover that the Australian financial system’s in crisis. Digital land titles have been altered, and it’s impossible for people and companies to prove ownership of their assets. The stock market moves into freefall as confidence in the financial sector evaporates when the essential underpinning of Australia’s multitrillion-dollar housing market – ownership – is thrown into question. There’s a rush to try to prove ownership, but nowhere to turn. Banks cease all property lending and business lending that has property as collateral. The real estate market, insurance market and ancillary industries come to a halt. The economy begins to lurch.

Read more: Preservationists race to capture cultural monuments with 3D images

What are we doing to prevent attacks?

Three pieces of legislation have been passed since 2017 to protect the nation against crimes committed over the internet targeting telecommunications, water, electricity and gas equipment. These are the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act, the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Act and the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Act.

But cyber attacks are not only targeted at our nation’s critical infrastructure. Servers that host digital identity assets are also at risk. Nation states and individual hackers could gain access to databases using our email communications to gain access.

Despite this risk, our lawmakers have failed to exert the same vigour in crafting laws that protect digital identity assets as they have exerted in efforts to decrypt the WhatsApp messages of criminal targets.

There is no clear and specific cybersecurity governance framework in the law books geared towards detecting and preventing attacks against these assets.

How to protect our digital heritage

1. Assess cyber vulnerabilities alongside social ones

Governments need to improve their holistic situational awareness to counter threats. That means assessing cyber vulnerabilities in conjunction with societal ones.

Online disinformation campaigns and malicious cyber activities are all referred to as hybrid threats. Hybrid threats – which could make use of digital identity assets – are challenging to detect and to make sense of due to their dynamic nature. Understanding the complex nature of a hybrid threat is referred to as cyber situational awareness.

Outside of the cyber environment, situational awareness may refer to an awareness of cultural, ethnic and religious tensions in society that could be vulnerable to online exploitation. For example, in the 1980s the Soviet government used the HIV epidemic to sow social division in the United States. Under operation INFEKTION, Russia spread stories that the American government created the virus and spread it among its population.

In cases like this, it’s feasible that digital health records could be hacked and altered to serve as fake evidence. In this way, societal vulnerabilities can become one part of a mixed bag of threats.

Our ability to effectively resist and recover from malicious hybrid activities depends on our capacity to detect, analyse and understand the nature of the threat, in near real time. Metadata can be used for this purpose to show who accessed a server and from what location.

To improve cyber situational awareness, access logs should be retained and the computer emergency response team must collect metadata from government departments themselves, and analyse the data in near real time. This is a growing trend in the cybersecurity sector and public bodies must gear up.

2. Store copies of historical records offline

We also need to simulate how digital identity assets can be used against us and be prepared to counter the propaganda. Schools and universities can store multiple offline historic records, which can be used to verify accuracy when conflicting stories arise. Using National Archives as a central repository for digital identity assets is a single point of failure. Redundancy work-arounds must be created.

Read more: How the internet is reshaping World Heritage and our experience of it

3. Engage the private sector

This is a job too big and too important to be left to government alone. Historical societies and charitable organisations may need to store hard and soft copies of the same records all over the country. Relevant laws must mandate, cybersecurity situational awareness for telecommunications companies, ISPs, computer emergency response teams, law enforcement and security agencies, but in clear and responsible fashion.

We must take a proactive approach that mandates the roll out of appropriate advance counter measures. A legal mandate that is largely based on past incidents may not be an effective strategy to prevent dynamic hybrid threats. This is how we will tell hackers to back off our national heritage.

– ref. Protecting our digital heritage in the age of cyber threats – http://theconversation.com/protecting-our-digital-heritage-in-the-age-of-cyber-threats-108252

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathon Louth, Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Community Services Research, Flinders University

Sport is central to the lives of many Australians. This isn’t simply a reference to participation levels, but the importance of sport as a social institution. Organised sport, from the elite level though to local community clubs, is a part of a complex social ecology that is an important part of our lives.

This means it is vital that we acknowledge sport as a crucial learning place for gendered relations. In our research, we examined how sport can be used as a “hook” to start conversations with men and boys around domestic violence and respectful relationships. Community leaders and role models can be harnessed to instil healthy attitudes in young men. In their absence, the sporting field can serve to sustain the drivers of violence against women and girls.

Read more: Violence towards women in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 evokes toxic masculinity

Working with Power Community Limited, the community arm of the Port Adelaide Football Club and the NO MORE program in the Northern Territory, we examined the effectiveness of primary prevention family and domestic violence programs aimed at men and boys in distinctly different environments. Port Adelaide’s Power to End Violence Against Women program targets year 10 boys, primarily in metropolitan schools across Adelaide, while the NO MORE program, with a focus on football clubs, works across the NT, with an emphasis on remote Indigenous communities.

Sport is a social glue and a focal point of activity for many families. At a much larger scale, our very sense of nation and what it is to be “Australian” is often defined through sporting prowess. Sport also feeds into an Indigenous sense of manhood, so long as their indigeneity remains unthreatening to the broader Australian community. Outward displays of indigeneity that do not conform are loudly rejected – think former AFL star Adam Goodes and his “war dance”.

Former AFL star for the Sydney Swans was booed for weeks after he performed a war dance directed at opposition fans. Dan Himbrechts/AAP

What it is to be a man is performed through sport. Within this environment, boys are socialised to be tough, competitive, and to win – success and status are core to becoming and being a man.

Read more: Un-designing masculinities: K-pop and the new global man?

In the focus groups for participants from the Port Adelaide program, one student powerfully stated:

men are taught not to show emotions … or you’ll be cut from the crop.

It is a sentiment that drives home how early boys are taught that they are measured against a particular idea of manliness.

However, we were also able to show that positive messages “stick”. Year 11 students, who had taken part in the program the previous year, recalled content on respectful relationships and positive bystanding. One student was adamant that:

…after [doing] this course it is wrong not to step in.

The use of high-profile footballers assisted with the retention of key messages. Students and teachers universally saw the value in having AFL footballers contribute to the delivery of the program as a mechanism to “cut through” and get the attention of participants.

Port Adelaide Player Ambassador Ollie Wines with students as part of the Power to End Violence Against Women program. PAFC

The NO MORE program works with a range of stakeholders, including men’s groups and football clubs. Indeed, on the Tiwi Islands, a men’s group member declared that “It’s Aussie Rules or it’s nothing”.

Another Tiwi Islander made the point that by fixing themselves, they were fixing their community. Bridging between sport and primary prevention programs made complete sense to these men. They also spoke about the need for it to be taken into their schools as part of an Aboriginal-led movement.

Charlie King, the founder of NO MORE, says this is indicative of every remote community that he has spent time in. For Charlie, an ABC sports commentator and Gurindji man, you will always “find small group of men who want to make a difference.”

In Ngukurr, in southeast Arnhem Land, we observed a NO MORE march that snaked its way through the community before gathering on the football oval. There the community came together to link arms as a show strength and connectedness to say “no more” to family and domestic violence.

While the beginning of a community movement and activation could be sensed, there was an understanding that this would take time. As one of the Elders who planned the event noted:

…you’re looking at generation after generation. This is a generational plan … because you might be a father and you might be a mother later on, it’s about what sorts of seeds you’re planting.

Community members link arms on the football oval to say ‘no more’ to family and domestic Violence, Ngukurr 2018. J. Louth

The comment is not dissimilar to one made by an AFL player involved in the Port Adelaide program: “The purpose is to impact the generations … getting the younger generations to know that [violence against women] is an issue and not to tolerate it.”

These are certainly gains, but care needs to be taken to ensure that the programs are not simply activating an ethos of “real men don’t hit women”. Such a view, while advocating nonviolence, is one-dimensional and limited in that it arises from the very norms and attitudes that sustain regimes of gendered violence.

Sporting clubs, whether elite or local, are only just starting to examine their contribution to the reproduction of values and attitudes that permit behaviours – including silence – that contribute to violence against women.

With the onset of the #MeToo movement and wider anti-domestic violence campaigns, the footballing world has the chance to work with this momentum to change the narrative and disrupt harmful and systemic behaviours.

– ref. How sport can tackle violence against women and girls – http://theconversation.com/how-sport-can-tackle-violence-against-women-and-girls-107886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Seth Delpachitra, Clinical Tutor in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne

If you’re about to, or have had, surgery in a public hospital, you may have wondered which doctor was actually operating on you. Was there one, or several? And what kind of training and expertise did they have? Would a junior doctor be allowed to cut you open and stitch you up?

In Australia, training of medical students to become junior doctors, and of junior doctors to become specialists, all occurs in the public system. This means some junior doctors may be involved in your care, but what they can or can’t do is limited to their level of training and qualifications.

The person in charge of your care in the operating theatre is a consultant surgeon. They have years of education and training in their specialty and supervise the more junior staff. They will most likely be operating on you, but may require assistance from specialist registrars, residents and interns.

Here’s what the team of doctors looks like.

Medical students – generally observers

Medical students are university students doing coursework to become a doctor. They are commonplace on hospital wards and will often be present in the operating theatre.

As medical students are in a purely training role, their scope in surgery is limited to helping with paperwork and daily ward activities, including ward rounds. They can only ever perform these duties under direct supervision of a qualified medical practitioner.

There are no specific guidelines on what medical students are allowed to do in a hospital. But in the operating theatre a student is generally just observing.

They may be able to assist with minor, low-risk aspects of care when the senior medical staff deem this appropriate. This might include putting in drips, placing simple skin dressings, and taking basic observations.

Interns – can assist in surgery

Interns have completed their university medical training and are in their first year of being practising doctors. The Medical Board of Australia – the body governing doctors and their scope of practice – gives interns provisional registration.

Interns can only work in directly supervised settings. They often rotate through specialties provided by the hospital (including surgical teams). But they cannot perform any surgical procedures in the operating theatre alone.

They may, however, be called on as a surgical assistant to hold instruments and provide an extra pair of hands. Their involvement is often limited to that of an assistant, so they may retract tissues, suction bodily fluids or pass instruments. This is all done under the direct supervision of the consultant surgeon and registrar.

Interns can be asked to hold surgical instruments. from shutterstock.com

Residents – can do minor procedures under supervision

Residents are junior doctors who have completed their internship and hold a general registration. They do not have any specialist qualifications. You may interact with residents more frequently if you are staying at the hospital overnight, as they are often involved with general care on the ward.

There are senior residents (who can also be called senior house officers, or SHO) and junior residents (junior house officers, or JHO). Senior residents have typically completed a number of years of rotations in a variety of specialities, but have not yet decided on a medical specialty.

A senior resident performs the same duties as a junior, but has more experience and exposure. They may be capable of doing a job two interns may normally be required to perform.

Like interns, residents can’t perform surgical procedures in the operating theatre alone. But senior residents who are interested in becoming surgeons may play a role in minor parts of a surgical procedure. They could suture a surgical wound under the supervision of a senior registrar or consultant, for example.

Again, there are no definite guidelines as to what minor duties a resident or intern can perform in theatre. This decision is based on the experience of the junior doctor, the level of complexity of the case, and the clinical judgement of the consultant supervising surgeon.

Registrar – can perform surgery under supervision

Registrars are senior doctors. They have chosen a specialty and committed to training and working in that specialty only. A surgical registrar may be doing advanced surgical training through their relevant training college. A registrar would typically be registered as a general medical practitioner.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons provides surgical training across nine surgical specialities including neurosurgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery and general surgery. The Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons provides advanced surgical training for dual qualified oral and maxillofacial (includes the mouth, face and close structures) surgery.

Other surgical colleges provide training to other specialty surgery programs such as opthalmology or obstetrics and gynaecology.

The term “registrar” and “resident” can be confusing as some countries such as the United States use them interchangeably to refer to specialist trainees in their advanced surgical program.

In the US, the term resident and registrar is used interchangeably.

Specialist registrars are responsible for making major decisions about patient care. They will usually be the doctor who admits patients to the hospital from the emergency department and who has the skill to perform a full surgical procedure under consultant supervision.

Registrars usually do an intensive four to six years of an advanced surgical training program. As a surgical registrar advances through their program, they will develop independence in certain procedures and the degree of supervision they require will diminish until they can operate competently and independently.

Consultant – in charge of your surgery

A consultant is the most qualified doctor in the hospital. Consultants have completed their specialist registrar training and are fully qualified to perform surgery independently, without supervision.

A consultant surgeon has typically done four to six years of medical school, an intern and resident year, and then five to seven years of advanced surgical training. Consultant surgeons have specialist registration.

Some consultants will do further fellowship training in a highly specialised aspect of surgery either in Australia or internationally.

Consultants, above all, are teachers, providing surgical guidance to registrars under their wing. Consultant surgeons are ultimately responsible for making decisions about patients with complex conditions, such as cancers or complex reconstructive surgery, or when a patient’s condition is unstable.

They are always present and available if more junior members of the team need support or assistance in theatre.

Simple surgical procedures such as fixing a simple fracture, are often done by a senior surgical registrar or consultant surgeon. More complex surgical procedures, such removing head and neck cancers (which would include removing the cancer and lymph nodes as well as reconstruction) may require more specialists, and there may be multiple consultant surgeons looking after you.

The number of doctors and surgeons will vary with the degree of difficulty of the surgery. Generally, your postoperative care will be provided on ward rounds with the registrar, residents and interns.

It is important to be well informed about the people who will be looking after you while you are in hospital. Public hospitals are teaching and training centres, but you should always feel comfortable asking what each person’s role is in the team responsible for your care.

– ref. I’m having surgery in a public hospital. Will a junior doctor operate on me? – http://theconversation.com/im-having-surgery-in-a-public-hospital-will-a-junior-doctor-operate-on-me-106710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pep Canadell, CSIRO Scientist, and Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, CSIRO

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels and industry are projected to rise more than 2% (range 1.8% to 3.7%) in 2018, taking global fossil CO₂ emissions to a new record high of 37.1 billion tonnes.

The strong growth is the second consecutive year of increasing emissions since the 2014-16 period when emissions stabilised, further slowing progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement that require a peak in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. Strong growth in emissions from the use of coal, oil and natural gas suggests CO₂ emissions are likely to increase further in 2019.

Read more: What is a pre-industrial climate and why does it matter?

Strong energy demand is behind the rise in emissions growth, which is outpacing the speed at which decarbonisation of the energy system is taking place. Total energy consumption around the world increased by one sixth over the past decade, the result of a growing global middle class and the need to provide electricity to hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. The challenge, then, is for all nations to decarbonise their economies while also satisfying the need for energy, particularly in developing countries where continued growth in energy supply is needed.

These analyses are part of the new annual assessment of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), published today in three separate papers. The GCP brings together scientists who use climate and industrial data from around the world to develop the most comprehensive picture of the Earth’s sources and sinks of greenhouse gases.

Historical CO₂ fossil fuel emissions (black, red dot is our projection for 2018) and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) from the IPCC 1.5℃ special report (2018) to stabilise the climate below 1.5℃ and 2℃ warming above pre-industrial levels. Global Carbon Project/Jackson et al. 2018

Sources of fossil fuel emissions

A surprise in 2018 (and 2017) was the return to growth in CO₂ emissions from coal use after an apparent peak in 2013, although coal emissions in 2017 were still 3% below the 2013 record high. This change was one primary reason for the higher increase in emissions growth in 2018, on top of long-term growth in oil and natural gas emissions. The largest national contributions to the growth in coal emissions came from China and India, while the single largest decline in coal emissions was in the United States, where more than 250 coal-fired power plants have closed since 2010 and more are expected to close down over the next five years.

The growth of emissions from cement production has slowed significantly.

Annual global CO₂ fossil fuel emissions to 2017, with the 2018 projection suggesting coal will approach the levels seen in 2013. (Le Quere et al. 2018, ESSD; Jackson et al. 2018, ERL) Global Carbon Project

Country trends

Most countries are contributing to the increase in global fossil CO₂ emissions. However, 19 countries representing 20% of the global emissions, showed declining trends in emissions in the past decade (2008-17) while their economies continued to grow. These countries are: Aruba, Barbados, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, the US, and Uzbekistan.

Turning to changes in CO₂ emissions in 2018, unexpectedly, China, which accounts for 27% of global emissions, is set to grow 4.7%, up from 1.7% growth in 2017. Likewise, and despite the long-term trend of emissions declines, the US is set to increase its emissions by 2.5% this year, due to increased heating and cooling demands and oil use. The European Union is set to reduce its emissions by 0.7%, compared with 1.4% growth in 2017, potentially the first reduction since 2014. Indian emissions are expected to grow 6.3% on the back of strong growth in coal use. Greenhouse gas emissions in Australia have increased for the last four years to June 2018.

Annual CO₂ fossil fuel emissions to 2017, and projected 2018 emissions based on partial data to September (dot points with error bars). Global Carbon Project/Le Quere et al. 2018/Jackson et al. 2018 CO₂ emissions per capita to 2017. Global Carbon Project 2018. Access the complete infographic at: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/17/infographics.

Outlook

An unprecedented energy revolution is already underway towards cleaner sources of energy. Globally, renewable energy (solar, wind, and biofuels) is growing at an extraordinary rate, with a doubling of the global capacity every four years, albeit starting from a very low base compared with energy generated from fossil fuels. A continuation and acceleration of this trend is consistent with the requirements of the Paris Agreement. However, the same scenarios also call for the equally rapid decline in emissions from fossil fuels, something we do not see in our latest data presented here. The stronger growth in emissions projected for 2018, which is likely to extend into 2019, is inconsistent with agreed-upon climate targets.

Global Carbon Project

The recent Emissions Gap Report 2018 shows large and growing discrepancies among 1) current emissions trends, 2) national emissions reduction committed by countries, and 3) the declining trends required to meet the targets of the Paris agreement.

All countries need to increase their mitigation efforts and levels of ambition to reverse the tide of emissions growth, if decarbonisation pathways consistent with the climate targets of 1.5℃ and well-below 2℃ are to be met.

Read more: We’ve got a climate goal of 1.5 degrees – so how do we get there?

– ref. Carbon emissions will reach 37 billion tonnes in 2018, a record high – http://theconversation.com/carbon-emissions-will-reach-37-billion-tonnes-in-2018-a-record-high-108041

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

Does renewable electricity raise or lower electricity prices? There is more to this question than meets the eye: are prices lower before or after renewable subsidies are recovered, how has variability been accounted for, how have changes in network costs been accounted for, and so on and on.

Faced with a complex problem, policy makers often turn to specialists who simulate the future using their assumptions of costs and investments and their characterisation of the power system and market. This sort of thing has a dismal track record in predicting prices and is susceptible to the perception, even if not the reality, that she who pays the piper picks the tune.

Read more: Explainer: why we shouldn’t be so quick to trust energy modelling

An alternative is a data-driven regression that analyses large quantities of historic market data to understand the factors that have driven energy prices in the past. This approach requires few assumptions, and the quality and predictive power of the model is objectively measured. Even if the future is uncertain, we might be able to get a better sense of it by looking carefully at the past.

My colleagues and I used this approach to analyse South Australia’s wholesale prices from July 2012 to July 2018, during which period the annual average wholesale price increased by more than 30%.

There are many potential explanations for this increase: the last coal-fired power station closed in South Australia and two coal-fired power stations closed in Victoria; a greenhouse gas emissions tax came and went; electricity generation from the wind and sun increased by around 70%; while the price of gas climbed by a similar amount.

Read more: How to move energy policy models beyond bias and vested interests

However, our research found by far the biggest reason for higher wholesale electricity prices in South Australia is higher gas prices. It does not help that so much of South Australia’s gas-fired electricity generation is remarkably inefficient.

Victorian Energy Policy Centre, Author provided

Displacing expensive gas that is inefficiently used with cheaper sources of electricity can be expected to reduce wholesale prices. And so it does. In fact we found that in 2018, wind and solar generation in South Australia reduced prices by A$38 per megawatt-hour from what they otherwise would have been. Consumers were charged A$11 per MWh to subsidise this production, suggesting the subsidy paid for itself more than three times over.

Yes, with the rise of variable renewable production in South Australia, spot market electricity prices are more variable in 2018 than 2013. But there is no evidence that the power system, properly operated, can’t cope with it. Indeed, prices have been far more volatile in the past, long before the wind and sun became significant sources of power in South Australia.

In the market, prices are providing incentives for the development of storage and its substitutes and market participants are responding to these signals with investment in batteries and their substitutes and complements.

Read more: Making Australia a renewable energy exporting superpower

We also considered whether customers would have been better off if the state government had stepped in to extend the life of the Northern coal fired power station. Northern’s closure in 2016 raised wholesale prices by A$13 per MWh, but by 2018 all of this was offset by price reductions attributable to higher production from the wind and sun.

If the government had stepped in to keep Northern operating, customers and/or taxpayers would have been charged for the foregone emission reductions needed to ensure that Australia meets its Paris Agreement commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even before counting the public money needed to revive the plant and mine, Australians would have been worse off. We are now extending our research and expect to reach similar conclusions on coal generation closure and renewable subsidies in other parts of Australia.

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s excellent energy policy review popularised the concept of an energy “tri-lemma”, suggesting that electricity policy needed to address trade-offs between prices, reliability, and emissions reductions.

Read more: Turnbull’s right: we need cheap, clean and reliable power – here’s how

But our research finds, emphatically, that renewable electricity generation brought prices down from what they otherwise would have been – and is likely to continue to do so. In electricity there is no dilemma between decarbonisation and lower wholesale prices.

System reliability and security must be prioritised in the transition to cleaner sources of power. But whether there is a dilemma between reliability and a cleaner power system remains to be seen.

The “tri-lemma” concept is already past its prime. Policy makers of all persuasions need to reflect this in their thinking.

– ref. The verdict is in: renewables reduce energy prices (yes, even in South Australia) – http://theconversation.com/the-verdict-is-in-renewables-reduce-energy-prices-yes-even-in-south-australia-108251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jesse Adams Stein, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building, University of Technology Sydney

With the re-election of the Andrews government in Victoria, the Free TAFE for Priority Courses policy will be rolled out in 2019. This is a positive step towards repairing the TAFE system, which has been damaged by years of funding cuts and competition with an unregulated private training sector.

One question moving forward is whether or not free TAFE will support manufacturing. Although Australian manufacturing now carries a stigma of decline, since 2016 productivity and employment in manufacturing has actually increased. But if we want to continue this upward trend, we must avoid being held back by a lack of skilled workers to supply this expansion.

Read more: TAFE helps skills shortage more than private providers

It’s often assumed digital technologies have replaced traditional trades, and so we must focus our energies on STEM training. To some extent this is true, but right now Australia’s manufacturing skills shortage isn’t only about STEM. We also need skilled workers on the industrial craft side of the spectrum. That is, trades sometimes considered to be dying such as boilermaking, fitting and turning, moulding, toolmaking, and engineering patternmaking.

The skills shortage in Australian foundries

The skills shortage in the foundry sector is a clear example of this problem. Australian foundries make a wide variety of cast metal objects, including mining and agricultural equipment and railway parts. Secretary of the Australian Foundry Institute, Joe Vecchio told me:

Everyone keeps saying foundries are a dinosaur industry, they’re dying. But every foundry is busy right now, and they want new apprentices.

For many years, foundries have experienced difficulty finding qualified tradespeople and apprentices in engineering patternmaking and moulding. Many have resorted to using unskilled labour and providing in-house training.

These shortages haven’t been fully acknowledged on the National Skills Needs List. Although Victoria’s free TAFE program includes hints of manufacturing support, there are some notable gaps.

What is engineering patternmaking and why does it matter?

Engineering patternmakers use technical drawings to construct a 3D pattern (like a model), which is used to produce a mould for metal casting or plastics production. Patternmakers make patterns for objects as large as the buckets on the end of diggers and bulldozers, and as small as the moulds for glucose jube lollies.

A pattern for bear-shaped jubes, made by W.G. Kay & Co. Jesse Adams Stein, Author provided

While traditionally trained as woodworkers, patternmakers today are trained to use a range of materials and technologies, including computer aided design (digital drafting software known as CAD) and CNC machines (computer-numerically-controlled machine tools that use digital data to direct a machine on multiple axes).

Two things make patternmakers valuable for a thriving manufacturing sector: versatility and precision. Patternmakers aren’t tied to a single industry, and they are sticklers for dimensional accuracy. Patternmakers’ materials and production knowledge means their advice to designers and manufacturers can result in a far more successful final product.

Right now, only seven apprentices are undertaking a patternmaking apprenticeship in Australia. To give you some idea of this disparity, Australia has approximately 4,200 qualified patternmakers and toolmakers currently working in a variety of industries associated with metals and plastics production. The situation is similar for moulders.

Read more: To fix higher education funding, we also need to fix vocational education

The only remaining apprentice training location for patternmakers and moulders is TAFE SkillsTech, in Brisbane. One of the barriers for employers taking on new apprentices is sending them to Queensland for block training. If you run a foundry in Tasmania, for instance, it costs a lot to send an apprentice to Queensland if you factor in travel, accommodation and meals. Added to this is the challenge of sending 16-year-olds – almost exclusively boys – on their own.

The patternmaking process. Tim Wighton, Author provided

For foundry and patternmaking employers outside Brisbane, taking on new apprentices often isn’t worth the expense or the stress.

Patternmaking business owner Paul Kay, after a failed attempt to send an apprentice to Queensland said he had just started getting used to the idea of working by himself.

Another patternmaking business owner, Peter Phipps said he might have to look overseas to employ someone, which he feels is too much hassle.

Presently some foundries are resorting to informally upskilling carpenters and cabinetmakers in patternmaking. But this approach carries risks. Other people from other trades may be very good at Computer Aided Design, but don’t necessarily understand patternmaking concepts like metal shrinkage and other intricacies of moulding and casting processes.

What can be done?

The decline of foundry trades isn’t a natural result of market economics or automation. The market demand is there. It was a political choice to ignore these skills, and it can be a political choice to revive them. It’s encouraging to see the free TAFE program supports a Certificate II in Engineering Pathways, for instance, but this is a baby step.

A pattern and casting made using the pattern. Peter White, Dolman Pattern & Model Makers, Author provided

In the immediate term, apprenticeships in the foundry sector must be made more attractive by providing adequate government funding for apprentices to attend training in Queensland. This would support their travel and safe housing on campus, and be customised to meet the unique educational and social needs of teenage apprentices.

Moving into the future, the survival of engineering patternmaking – among other trades – must be taken seriously, rather than written off as already redundant. If funded and prepared adequately, apprentice training could be revived at a state-based TAFE level, with an emphasis on merging digital fabrication skills with traditional craft knowledge.

Read more: Australia needs to do more to arrest the decline in apprenticeships

If we let industrial craft disappear, the ramifications will abound in the products themselves. High quality manufacturing requires high quality workmanship – without those skills, production will be wasteful and full of rejects. Australian manufacturing will gain a reputation for unreliable production.

To learn more about engineering patternmaking and the craft shadows of manufacturing, listen to the newly released HistoryLab podcast episode, Invisible Hands.

– ref. Don’t be too quick to dismiss ‘dying trades’, those skills are still in demand – http://theconversation.com/dont-be-too-quick-to-dismiss-dying-trades-those-skills-are-still-in-demand-107894

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yale Zhuxiao Wong, Doctoral Candidate and Research Analyst, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney

The optically guided bus is the latest in a long line of initiatives to repackage the bus as premium rail-derived technology. The name “trackless trams”, the vehicle design, and the modest deployment costs all have broad appeal. The concept has gained traction in Australia, with prominent advocates including Professor Peter Newman.

Read more: Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail

Recognition of the role of upgraded buses and bus rapid transit is welcome. However, a certain level of dogma, fuelled by inflated claims about the technology and its potential, has taken hold.

This article aims to debunk some misconceptions.

Myth 1: It’s revolutionary technology

Optical guidance systems date back to the late 1980s and have had limited commercial success since the early 2000s. We count just three applications: in the French city Rouen, Castellón in Spain, and Las Vegas in the United States.

Rouen’s TEOR optically guided bus transit system.

The mechanically guided bus remains the most popular — including Adelaide’s O-Bahn-style kerb-guided bus — and, to a more limited extent, rail guidance systems. Magnetic and wire guidance technologies have also been trialled to deliver the same benefits — including precision docking, lane assist, reduced road footprint and better ride quality — but at lower cost than physically guided systems due to the absence of continuous guidance infrastructure.

The systems in Rouen, Castellón and Las Vegas all use the French-developed Visée (later renamed Optiguide) “self-steering” optical guidance system.

This technology uses a roof-mounted camera to detect a “virtual rail” — twin dashed lines painted on a darker road surface. An on-board computer combines the image with the speed, yaw and wheel angle of the bus to determine the path to be followed and steers the vehicle.

In partnership with Renault, the Civis guided bus concept was developed into a transport system using Irisbus Agora articulated buses fitted with the optical guidance system.

The Irisbus Civis using Optiguide technology in Castellon.

The present incarnation is admittedly a more advanced deployment of optical guidance technology. Chinese company CRRC has used high-speed rail technology to develop what it calls autonomous rail rapid transit, or ART.

The system is more like light rail than its predecessors. The vehicles are larger (2.65m wide by 3.4m high) and can be made longer or shorter by adding or removing sections.

The electric vehicles use supercapacitor batteries mounted on the roof and charged at stations via an electric “umbrella”. Supercapacitor technology is not new, having been used in Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Ningbo over the past decade.

CRRT unveiled its hybrid rapid transit vehicle in the Chinese city of Zhuzhou in June 2017.

A major advantage of the CRRC system is its multi-axle hydraulic steering technology and bogie-like wheel arrangement, which has less overhang and thus requires less swept path clearance in turns. Each section of the 32m vehicle is around 10.5m long and the minimum turning radius is 15m.

According to CRRC, the cost of deployment is between US$7 million and US$15 million per kilometre. That’s much less than the US$20 million to US$30 million for light rail, and US$70 million to US$150 million for metro. Each vehicle has a capital cost of about US$2.2 million.

CRRC optically guided bus in Zhuzhou, China, a 3.2km system inaugurated in May 2018.

Myth 2: Optically guided buses have better ride quality

This is true up to a point. It has as much to do with traction technology, route alignment and driver behaviour as with optical guidance. Ride quality is a direct result of rubber versus steel traction. The track gauge and axle loads also determine ride quality on a railway.

Another important factor is the alignment geometry. Light rail can handle only 4-6% gradients. Rubber-tyred traction can manage up to 9%. A higher-quality bus corridor with smoother gradients and curves will offer better ride quality.

Pavement quality is also important. We see an example of this in Melbourne’s Albert Park, where roads are built with high-specification concrete for the Australian Grand Prix.

The optically guided bus offers a much smoother ride, but this is mainly due to its advanced automation.

Existing buses can be “jerky”. This has a lot to do with buses getting more powerful (and lighter) over the years. An average bus engine generated 230 horsepower 20 years ago. Today this can be up to 330hp — that’s good for uphill climbs but also allows the driver to accelerate faster.

One suggestion is to apply an acceleration limiter. The need for harsh braking is also an issue, but this is related to the level of priority given to buses in traffic — such as at signals and in congested lanes — as well as driver training.

Myth 3: Optically guided buses are game-changing

The potential success of the technology is not related to whether the buses are optically guided or not, nor to any of the characteristics described above.

The sleek, rail-like appearance of these vehicles is certainly part of their appeal. Optically guided buses could challenge the idea that “buses are boring, and trains are sexy” and what we at ITLS describe as choice versus blind commitment in the bus and rail debate. Rather than being emotionally fixated on technology, we should choose the mode best suited to a particular transport requirement.

Operating on the road, right of way remains the critical factor. What good is a “trackless tram” if it gets stuck in traffic? In car-dominated Australia, governments have struggled to reallocate road space away from inefficient private cars (which average just 1.1 people per vehicle for work commutes) to spatially efficient mass transit.

Bus priority typically arises from road widening, rather than any redesignation of road space. As long as this mentality holds, we will struggle to improve travel time by bus compared with car — which is the most important element for attracting users onto public transport.

If “trackless trams” can radically alter the political paradigm and garner community support for the sensible reallocation of road space and signal priority, that creates a huge opportunity for cost-effective deployment of high-quality mass transit.

ITLS research has shown there is huge latent demand for public transport in the middle and outer suburbs of Australian capitals. The latest bus technology can be readily deployed along cross-town and orbital corridors now serviced by, for example, Metrobus in Sydney and SmartBus in Melbourne.

Time will tell whether “trackless trams” can shift the conversation from the idea of permanent, fixed infrastructure synonymous with rail to the pressing issues of right-of-way quality and public transport priority.

The author thanks Graham Currie (ITS Monash), David Hensher (ITLS), Michael Apps (BIC), Lauran Huefner (BusSA), Stephen Rowe (Busways) and Darryl Mellish (BusNSW) for constructive feedback on an earlier version of this article.

– ref. Looking past the hype about ‘trackless trams’ – http://theconversation.com/looking-past-the-hype-about-trackless-trams-107092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessamy Gleeson, Research Officer, School of Global, Urban & Social Studies, RMIT University

Shortlisted for the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2018 word of the year, “gaslighting” has well and truly found its way into contemporary thought and vernacular.

The term has recently been employed to explain the behaviour of contestants on The Bachelor Australia, Monica Lewinksy’s experiences with the media post-Bill Clinton, and the words of US President Donald Trump.

Monica Lewinsky: in a recent essay she wrote of emerging from ‘the House of Gaslight’. Sheri Determan/WENN.com

But what, exactly, does it mean? Where did it come from? And why is it experiencing a resurgence today?

Gaslighting takes its name from the 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer (itself based on the 1938 play Gas Light). In the film, Paula (Bergman) is deliberately and gradually manipulated by her husband, Gregory (Boyer), into believing she is insane. Paula’s late aunt’s priceless jewels are hidden in their house: if Paula is declared insane and committed to an asylum, Gregory can search for the jewels in peace.

One of his main tactics in convincing Paula she is losing her mind is his manipulation of the gaslights in their home. Whenever he sneaks off to the attic to search for the jewels, he switches on the lights in that part of the house: this leads all other lights to flicker and dim. Upon returning to Paula, he denies all knowledge of this, leading her to question her sanity.

In the film’s final scenes, Paula allows a policeman to enter the house while Gregory is preoccupied with his search. The policeman confirms that the lights are flickering, demonstrating that Paula is not insane.

What does gaslighting look like?

Gaslighting is a new term for a relatively old set of behaviours. If you’ve read the ancient Greek myth of Cassandra (about a woman cursed to foresee true prophecies that others disbelieve due to her perceived mental instability), watched The Truman Show, or listened to Shaggy’s hit song, It Wasn’t Me (in which a man tells his girlfriend it wasn’t him she saw having sex with another woman), you’ve seen gaslighting in action.

Although it can cover various behaviours, the central tenet of gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a person in order to erode their sense of self and sanity.

The behaviour itself is not always deliberate, in that the perpetrator may not have consciously set out to distort another person’s experience of reality. But gaslighting is often used as a method of power and control.

Common gaslighting tactics can include denial of the gaslightee’s experience (“That wasn’t what happened!”), escalation (“Why would you question this? I wouldn’t lie to you!”), trivialisation (“You’re too sensitive, this is nothing”), and countering (“That wasn’t what happened, this was”).

Why now?

Gaslighting’s re-emergence in our day-to-day vernacular is in part due to a wider societal focus on violence against women. As we move towards a broader understanding of what constitutes abuse, there is growing recognition that psychologically abusive techniques such as gaslighting are often used to unnerve and demoralise others.

Gaslighting is increasingly being recognised as a technique of abuse by groups such as the Domestic Violence Resource Centre of Victoria and Safe Steps.

The term also rebuts a common set of stereotypes: the “crazy ex-girlfriend”, the “bitches be crazy” or “psycho bitch” refrain and the “hysterical woman”. Gaslighting reframes these cliches: instead of asking whether women are indeed crazy, it questions the motivations of the accuser.

Unfortunately, gaslighting has also been used to dismiss those who have employed #MeToo to speak out about their abuse. Comments directed to survivors that they must have “misread the situation” or “imagined the abuse” can in turn point to wider questions about a person’s sanity.

Gaslighting’s application in the public lexicon has become quite broad. For instance, many news articles have been written about Donald Trump’s so-called gaslighting behaviour towards the American public, in which he has tried to manipulate people into “doubting their reality”.

Donald Trump: various pundits have described his statements as a form of ‘gaslighting’. Shawn Thew/EPA

In a recent speech, for example, Trump criticised the media for its reaction to his trade tariffs policy, accusing it of broadcasting “fake news” and telling people, “what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening”.

But in describing Trump’s behaviour as gaslighting, we lose some of the word’s context: it was developed to describe behaviour altogether more intimate and controlling in nature, and difficult to escape.

Still, aside from the latter example, the growing usage of “gaslighting” as a term is broadly a good thing. It signifies a deeper understanding of what abuse looks like and the many forms it can take.

– ref. Explainer: what does ‘gaslighting’ mean? – http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-gaslighting-mean-107888

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Uhlmann, Director, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

I first came to Border Districts through a brief description of it given to me by Gerald Murnane when I first met him three years ago. I thought he had told me that he did not think it was as complex as another work he wrote around the same time, A Million Windows.

I clearly misunderstood the insight Murnane was offering into this book, which he also claimed would be his last. The more I read and reflect on Border Districts, the more profound and difficult it becomes.

Murnane, who has long been recognised as one of Australia’s finest writers, has also long been neglected. The Prime Minister’s Literary Award is the first major award a book of his has received. The recognition is long overdue and just in time. It shows that there is still a place in Australian life for works of art that challenge us to think; that unapologetically ask us to think about what things, the things we live among and perceive, mean.

The novel is situated within a framing setting much like present day Goroke in the border districts of Victoria and South Australia where Murnane now lives. Within this frame, the narrator moves between scenes of a remembered life, using motifs and images to draw these fragments together.

In Border Districts, the narrator claims that the work he is writing is not a work of fiction; rather it is “a report of actual events and no sort of work of fiction”.

He continues:

As I understand the matter, a writer of fiction reports events that he or she considers imaginary. The reader of fiction considers, or pretends to consider, the events actual. This piece of writing is a report of actual events only, even though many of the reported events may seem to an undiscerning reader fictional.

What comprise actual events, however, are the images that occur within the mind of the writer. In the passage just cited the narrator is imagining what it might be like to be within the mind of a long dead maiden “aunt” or cousin of a friend at whose house he stays when visiting the capital city of his state.

He imagines he might be sleeping in the room she slept in. He knows certain things about her, most tellingly, that she was being courted by a young man who went to fight in world war one and never returned. He pictures her associating images that concern a narrative of a possible life she might have led if her suitor had not died, if she had instead married him and moved with him to a farming district to work for a landowner.

The story he imagines would, in anyone else’s terminology, be called a fictional story, and yet the narrator insists that all of these image-events are actual. The heart of the matter is the feeling of understanding, or meaning, that is given to the reader. The narrator questions whether “feeling” is adequate to this process, and so uses the word “essence”.

Fragments into patterns

The narrator of Border Districts speaks of the images with which meaning is created as fragments that are drawn together as a kaleidoscope draws together its fragments of colour.

The narrator sees his mind as drawing together these fragments into patterns, which then become meaningful to him, and this includes beliefs that once gave his life meaning, which he no longer believes in:

He might have begun to understand that even the images that he claimed no longer to believe in — even these were necessary for his salvation, even if they were not more than evidence of his need for saving imagery.

“Saving imagery” might mean “imagery that relates to salvation” or it might mean “imagery that is preserved”.

While unfashionable to do so, then, Murnane charges fiction with a heavy responsibility and claims immense value for it. Fiction needs to preserve or guard images that give our lives a sense of meaning.

– ref. Gerald Murnane’s Prime Minister’s Literary award is long overdue – http://theconversation.com/gerald-murnanes-prime-ministers-literary-award-is-long-overdue-108261

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

While it is possible that two seats could change, Labor appears to have won 56 of the 88 seats in the Victorian lower house, up nine seats since the 2014 election. the Coalition won 26 seats (down 12), the Greens three seats (up one) and independents three seats (up two).

These results reflect changes since the 2014 election, and do not account for Labor’s loss of Northcote to the Greens at a byelection, which Labor regained at the general. Party defections are also ignored.

Labor’s unexpectedly crushing victory was capped by triumphs in Hawthorn (50.4-49.6) and Nepean (50.9-49.1). Labor had not won Hawthorn since 1952, and Nepean (formerly known as Dromana) since 1982. It also came close to winning Caulfield (a 50.3-49.7 loss), which has never been Labor-held since its creation in 1927.

The 8-10 point swings to Labor in Hawthorn, Nepean and other affluent Liberal heartland seats such as Brighton and Malvern appear to demonstrate well-educated voters’ anger with the Liberals’ law and order campaign, and the federal Liberals’ ousting of Malcolm Turnbull.

Read more: Labor has landslide win in Victoria

Labor was assisted in Victoria by a strong state economy, and an unpopular federal Coalition government. The national economy is currently good, and this could assist the federal government if they could stop fighting among themselves.

While Labor had massive wins in Melbourne and its outskirts, and increased its margins in regional cities, it did not perform well by comparison in country areas. Labor only gained one country seat, Ripon, and that was by just 31 votes on a swing under 1%; there could be a recount in Ripon.

The Greens held Melbourne and Prahran, and gained Brunswick from Labor. In Prahran, Green Sam Hibbins was third on primaries, trailing Labor by 0.8%. On preferences of left-wing micros, he overtook Labor by 0.7%, and easily defeated the Liberals on Labor preferences. This is the second consecutive election in which Hibbins has come from third on primary votes to win Prahran.

Russell Northe, who defected from the Nationals in the last parliament, retained Morwell as an independent. Ali Cupper, who had contested Mildura in 2010 as a Labor candidate, gained it as an independent from the Nationals. Independent Suzanna Sheed retained Shepparton, a seat she gained from the Nationals in 2014.

Near-final statewide primary votes were 42.8% Labor (up 4.7% since the 2014 election), 35.2% Coalition (down 6.7%) and 10.7% Greens (down 0.8%). It is unlikely we will have an official Labor vs Coalition statewide two party count until next week, but The Poll Bludger estimates Labor won this count by 57.4-42.6, a 5.5% swing to Labor.

Final pre-election polls greatly overstated the Coalition and understated Labor, as shown by the table below. The only poll that came close to the result was a ReachTEL poll for a left-wing organisation, taken 11 days before the election, that gave Labor a 56-44 lead.

Victorian election’s poor polls.

Bold numbers in the table indicate a poll estimate that was within 1% of the results. All polls had the Greens right, but missed on Labor and the Coalition.

Micro parties still likely to win ten upper house seats

The ABC calculator currently gives Labor 18 of the 40 upper house seats, the Coalition 11, the Greens just one, and ten for all others. Others include four Derryn Hinch Justice, two Transport Matters, one Animal Justice, one Liberal Democrat, one Aussie Battler and one Sustainable Australia.

Read more: Coalition pares back losses in late counting, as predicted chaos eventuates in upper house

The upper house has eight regions that each elect five members. The three country regions are very close to completion of their counts, while the city regions lag. In Northern Victoria, Labor will win two seats, the Coalition one, Hinch Justice one and Liberal Democrats one. In Western Victoria, Labor will win two, the Coalition one, Animal Justice one and Hinch Justice one.

In Eastern Victoria, the calculator has Labor and the Coalition each winning two seats with one for Aussie Battler. However, Kevin Bonham says that Aussie Battler is ahead of Hinch Justice at a critical point by just 0.11%, and this lead will be overturned with below-the-line votes. The Shooters will win the final Eastern Victoria seat.

In Eastern Metro, with the count at 87.2%, there will be two Labor, two Liberals and Transport Matters wins the final seat from just 0.6% (0.04 quotas). In Southern Metro, two Labor and two Liberals win. The Greens, with 0.79 of a quota, are easily beaten to the last seat by Sustainable Australia, with just 1.3% or 0.08 quotas.

While the figure used by the ABC is the rechecked percentage counted, the electoral commission has been providing actual primary counts in Word files, which are ahead of the rechecked count in Metro regions.

In South-Eastern Metro, Labor will win three seats and the Liberals one. Bonham says Transport Matters could be excluded at a critical point, and fail to take the final seat, in which case it goes to the Liberal Democrats, who had an even lower vote than Transport Matters in that region (1.2% vs 0.8%).

In Western Metro, Labor will win three seats and the Liberals one. The last seat is likely to go to Hinch Justice, which won 6.9% in that region. However, the Shooters, with just 1.9%, could win the final seat.

In Northern Metro, two Labor and one Green are certain winners. In Bonham’s more up-to-date figures, the Liberals win one seat, and the final seat is probably a contest between Hinch Justice and Fiona Patten.

Labor and the Coalition are likely to win the 18 and 11 seats respectively that the calculator currently gives them. The ten micros could be a little different from the ABC’s current projection.

The group voting tickets are excessively complex, and it would be far easier to call these seats with a more sensible system.

NSW Galaxy: 52-48 to Labor, ReachTEL: 51-49

The New South Wales election will be held on March 23, 2019. A YouGov Galaxy poll for The Daily Telegraph, conducted November 29-30 from a sample of 903, gave Labor a 52-48 lead; this is the first NSW Galaxy poll since the 2015 election. A ReachTEL poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted November 29 from a sample of 1,560, gave Labor a 51-49 lead, a one-point gain for Labor since a September ReachTEL poll.

Primary votes in the Galaxy poll were 39% Labor, 37% Coalition, 9% Greens and 8% One Nation. In ReachTEL, primary votes, after excluding 3.1% undecided, were 37.7% Coalition, 35.2% Labor, 9.9% Greens and 7.7% One Nation. Labor’s primary vote is four points lower in ReachTEL than Galaxy.

After replacing Luke Foley as Labor leader, Michael Daley appears to be benefiting from a honeymoon. He trails incumbent Gladys Berejiklian 33-31 in Galaxy, and leads her 54.2-45.8 in ReachTEL as better Premier. ReachTEL’s forced choice better PM/Premier questions usually benefit opposition leaders.

State parties tend to do better when the opposite party is in power federally, and the current federal government is unpopular. It appears that the federal election will be held in May 2019, and this is bad news for the NSW Coalition, which has to face voters first. In ReachTEL, voters said by 50-36 that federal politics would play a role in their state election decision.

By 58-36, voters in ReachTEL opposed the NSW government’s stadium policy, which includes knocking down and rebuilding stadiums.

Newspoll: 55-45 to federal Labor, but Morrison’s ratings recover

Last week’s federal Newspoll, conducted November 22-25 – the same weekend as the Victorian election – from a sample of 1,720, gave Labor a 55-45 lead, unchanged since three weeks ago. Primary votes were 40% Labor (steady), 34% Coalition (down one), 9% Greens (steady) and 8% One Nation (up two).

43% were satisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance (up four), and 42% were dissatisfied (down five), for a net approval of +1, up nine points. Bill Shorten’s net approval was up two points to -13. Morrison led Shorten by 46-34 as better PM (42-36 three weeks ago).

By 40-34, voters opposed moving the Australian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. After being told that Indonesia and Malaysia had raised concerns about the embassy move, voters thought by 46-34 that Morrison should announce the move will not take place, rather than ignore those countries’ concerns.

Newspoll was three points better for Labor than two polls last fortnight, which both had Labor leading by just 52-48. The PM’s ratings are usually a good guide to voting intentions, so the hope for the Coalition is that Morrison’s lift could soon lift the Coalition. This poll was taken before last week’s parliamentary session.

UK Brexit deal vote on December 11

The UK House of Commons will decide whether to reject or approve PM Theresa May’s Brexit deal with the European Union on December 11.

Indications are that the deal will be rejected by a large margin, with about 100 Conservative MPs set to vote against the deal. You can read my article on the probable consequences of a “no-deal” Brexit on my personal website.

– ref. Historical fall of Liberal seats in Victoria; micros likely to win ten seats in upper house; Labor leads in NSW – http://theconversation.com/historical-fall-of-liberal-seats-in-victoria-micros-likely-to-win-ten-seats-in-upper-house-labor-leads-in-nsw-108047

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex McBratney, Professor of Digital Agriculture & Soil Science; Director, Sydney Institute of Agriculture, University of Sydney

It takes a lot to make a room of soil scientists gasp.

Last month, I presented at the National Soils Conference in Canberra, and asked 400 colleagues a simple question: do you think soil will play as significant a role in food production in 100 years as it does today?

A sea of hands went up: the consensus was clearly “yes”. I demurred, saying I’m not so sure.

Gasps rippled across the room. Why say that? You’re a soil scientist! Are you crazy?

Read more: Eyes down: how setting our sights on soil could help save the climate

A century is a long time. Most of our scientific horizons seem no more than a decade or two away. But how we manage food and our environments needs very long-term, inspired thinking.

Within my concern about whether the future of food production is on terra firma, there is also a hope.

That hope rests in the desire that there will be adequate, quality food for all of the 10 billion, 15 billion or 20 billion people in the future. To achieve that, perhaps we don’t need to rely on the our planet’s thin skin of soil after all.

Future farming

We already see the advance of vertical and hydroponic farming, and the potential for growing meat-like protein in the lab. Synthetic biology is one way forward.

We have seen the advances of hydroponic farming. www.shutterstock.com, CC BY

So will we have the technological know-how, and will we be able to afford the infrastructural investment to produce all our food away from natural soil within a century?

Technologically we would like to think this is possible. But will we have the need? Do we have the will?

There are two predominant modern movements in relation to food. The first is the ethical and environmental movement, which holds that food should be produced without harm to the environment or perhaps even to animals. Soil is an important – and non-renewable – part of the environment. This raises the crucial question of whether it can continue to sustain the world’s growing population.

Alongside this is the slow food movement, with its concern for the production of high-quality food of known provenance. It’s sometimes called “paddock to plate” or “field to fork”.

Already, modern food production techniques to manage energy and water use can potentially give 10 times the yield per unit area that normal field conditions provide. This could be transferred to vertical growing spaces, 100 units high.

Read more: Feeding cities in the 21st century: why urban-fringe farming is vital for food resilience

That alone means we would need just 0.1% of the land area we use now for food production. This could free up huge tracts of land to allow soil to recover from degradation, restoring ecosystems across the planet. It would represent a high-tech answer to the question of environmental ethics.

Returning areas of soil currently used for food production back to native vegetation could help us conserve wildlife, defend against floods, and provide natural buffer areas that can filter water and cycle nutrients. Locations may include soils in rainforests with copious biodiversity and voluminous water-cycling capability, or wetlands upstream of cities prone to flooding.

In Australia, the decline of carbon in cropping lands, soil erosion and nutrient imbalances continue largely unchecked and unabated. www.shutterstock.com, CC BY

This approach is not necessarily incompatible with the slow food movement. Indeed, it could actually help the movement achieve its goals, because it would take the pressure off the world’s soils, thus ensuring there is enough high-quality soil left to pursue high-quality ethical production.

More food for more people

The United Nations Food & Agricultural Organisation predicts a need to double agricultural production by 2050 to meet the demand of an estimated population of 9.5 billion. This must be done while simultaneously maintaining functioning ecosystems; therefore securing soils and their life-supporting functions have never been more crucial.

In Australia, while soil care has improved, it is not yet sustainable. Widespread soil acidification and the decline of carbon in cropping lands, soil erosion and nutrient imbalances continue largely unchecked and unabated. With the new approach the appropriate soil and terroir could be dedicated to high-quality sustainable bespoke food and wine production.

The great loessial soils of North America, Russia and Ukraine are often regarded as the best in the world – they could be managed sustainably for the production of cereals for centuries to come. Even some of these most food-productive soils could be returned to their former pre-agricultural state. In Australia our famous red-brown earths might be more useful for forestry than being pressed into service for cereal production.

Read more: Climate change is making soils saltier, forcing many farmers to find new livelihoods

That said, the infrastructural costs of producing food entirely without soil will be enormous. It’s more likely we will land on a blended solution that combines highly engineered growing spaces and “under the sky” soil-based agriculture.

Over the coming century, our challenge will be to move away from our almost total reliance on soil – that mutable and vital thin skin of the earth – to allow large tracts of our most vulnerable soils to repair. Healing our wounded soils will be an important step on the road to global sustainability.

– ref. In 100 years’ time, maybe our food won’t be grown in soil – http://theconversation.com/in-100-years-time-maybe-our-food-wont-be-grown-in-soil-108049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University

One of Australia’s most successful youth basketball organisations, the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association, was forced to cancel their 16th annual Summer Slam tournament last week after being unable to find a venue in Melbourne willing to host them.

Players were distraught when the association called off the event. This is the second cancellation of one of the association’s basketball tournaments in Victoria over the past two years.

Read more: Sudanese heritage youth in Australia are frequently maligned by fear-mongering and racism

The Association issued a statement in response:

We have struggled to get stadiums to host the tournaments. When we got a stadium, unrealistic barriers were put in the way so that the event was not held. Stadium managers are afraid to host our event because of the African gang stories they see in the news. Some of our partner organisations have also had concerns towards our event because of the fear that has been created. The actions of a few teenagers in the community are being unfairly used to stereotype the vast majority that are doing the right thing.

Australia’s Thon Maker, playing for the Milwaukee Bucks, is at full reach in a National Basketball Association (NBA) match in the United States. Tannen Maury/EPA

The cancellation of the tournament has national implications. Last year, the Victorian Basketball Association called the South Sudanese Summer Slam “a boon for hoops”.

Australia’s national team, the Boomers, frequently calls up naturalised immigrants, especially those from South Sudan, who have had notable successes in the NBA and in universities across the US.

Current national level players of South Sudanese descent include Thon Maker, power forward for the Milwaukee Bucks; Deng Adel, who plays in the NBA’s development league; Mangok Mathiang; Ater Majok; and Mathiang Muo.

Many of these players competed in the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association’s Summer Slam tournament. The cancellation has been reported in the New York Times under the headline “In Australia, a Sudanese basketball league finds itself sidelined by racist fears”.

National political implications

The South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association blamed the media for their coverage of “African youth issues”. Over the past year, liberal politicians in Victoria and nationally have used the threat of gang violence in Melbourne to stoke support before last month’s election in Victoria.

In July, liberal politicians faced criticism for a poster that promised “only the liberals will stop gangs hunting in packs”. From Canberra, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton echoed this extreme rhetoric when he claimed in January that Melburnians were afraid to eat out because “they’re being followed home by these gangs”.

Read more: Dutton’s demonisation of refugees is the latest play in a zero-sum game

Past South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association tournaments have been linked to property destruction and violence. A group of teenage girls trashed an Airbnb apartment and bombarded responding police with projectiles. In 2015, a fan was stabbed in the car park of the Warribee Stadium.

However, there is no evidence that South Sudanese sporting events are more violent than similar competitions and the Victoria Police have had to correct false claims made by politicianscorrect false claims made by politicians about Sudanese immigrant criminality.

Moreover, unlike recent AFL and NRL scandals, there are no allegations that the Sudanese basketball players have engaged in anti-social or violent behaviour, although South Sudanese sporting associations are frequently mistaken for gangs both in Melbourne and in Sydney.

Sports as crime prevention

Ironically, sports have been successful anti-crime and anti-gang deterrents. The cancellation of the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association’s tournament might drive vulnerable young men into the arms of the very gangs that the councils want to combat.

In 2007, the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth published a study on Anti-Gang Strategies and Interventions. They concluded that community-based programs, including sports, helped to drive community attachment and improve economic deprivation. Both factors are linked to crime and gangs.

Read more: Three charts on: representation of Australian, New Zealand and Sudan born people in Victorian crime statistics

In 2015, the British Home Office largely concurred, recognising that sports help young people:

engage in supervised prosocial activities, learn new skills, build their self-esteem, and develop trust between youth, schools, police, and communities.

In Chicago, a city familiar with gang violence, organisations such as the YMCA, the Peace Games, and the Resurrection project use sports to draw vulnerable young men away from street violence. The Chicago Police coach potential gang members as part of the Englewood Police/Youth Baseball league. Englewood is one of the most crime-ridden neighbourhoods in the city, but instead of donning gang colours, hundreds of young men will wear the baseball uniforms.

Under the aegis of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, similar programs are finding success in community across globe, but especially in the favelas of Brazil.

Financial consequences

Following the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association’s statement, a number of Australian sporting institutions have reached out to offer to help, including Basketball Geelong and Bendigo Stadium.

The association still needs to secure a space for the Summer Slam and it is unclear whether the Sudanese association will have the time to organise a tournament before the end of the year.

Read more: Why the media are to blame for racialising Melbourne’s ‘African gang’ problem

A Victoria Basketball official noted that the requirements imposed on the Sudanese association are:

scarcely demanded for other Victorian basketball tournaments and rarely required throughout the entirety of the sporting community.

For the past few years, Eagle Stadium in Wyndham welcomed the Summer Slam, but this year the council declined the association’s business because of capacity issues.

Australia’s Thon Maker, originally from South Sudan, shakes hands with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver after the Milwaukee Bucks selected him as the number ten pick in the first round of the 2016 NBA draft. Jason Szenes/EPA

Without a stadium to compete in, the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association faces the loss of revenue, which could potentially harm the long-term feasibility of the group.

The cancellation of the Summer Slam raises questions about who has the right to use public accommodations and also about how committed Victorians are to using sports as an avenue for social integration.

Sudanese stars are Australian enough when they play for the Boomers, but perhaps not enough when they play in the public parks and council stadiums of Victoria.

– ref. How a race scare left South Sudanese star basketballers with nowhere to play – http://theconversation.com/how-a-race-scare-left-south-sudanese-star-basketballers-with-nowhere-to-play-107940

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sutton, Lecturer in Accounting, University of Technology Sydney

One of Australia’s biggest banks, currently under scrutiny at the royal commission, has a long history.

The Bank of New South Wales, which later became Westpac, was established in 1817 under a charter of incorporation signed by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. It was Australia’s first bank and first public company.

But there’s something brushed over in the official history. Its first depositor, Sergeant Jeremiah Murphy, put in an unusually large sum of money (far more than his official salary) three days before the bank opened.

Just as the banking royal commission has been using ledgers, transaction accounts, remuneration reports and meeting minutes to try to get inside the behaviour of today’s banks, I and my colleagues Jason L’Ecuyer, Tom Allinson and Tamson Pietsch examined kangaroo-leather-bound ledgers and microfilm of military paymaster reports to understand how the bank started and how some people were making money in early colonial Australia.

The results can be heard on the latest 2SER History Lab podcast. To many listeners, the findings will be unsettling.

Our investigation

Just like Antarctic ice core samples or ancient tree rings, financial documents capture and preserve events over time. Through them, we can grasp glimpses of the period in which they were created.

The bank’s ledgers show the growing wealth of early entrepreneurs, such as Mary Reiby, the convict-turned-merchant who appears on the Australian $20 bill.

In colonial accounts, we can also see the sale of liquor licences to Sydney’s first establishments, and infrastructure spending on bridges, wharves and hospitals.

There is even a schedule of prices for Australia’s first toll road out to Parramatta.

Nicole Sutton, examining Westpac’s fragile early ledger books. Jason L’Ecuyer, Author provided (No reuse)

But the records also contain sobering evidence of darker aspects of Australia’s past.

Disturbingly, we can see financial payments to settlers and the military for punitive expeditions against Aboriginal Australians.

Why trust the accounts?

Financial records can shed light on what happened because of the meticulous manner in which they were prepared.

Military payslips were cross-referenced against muster sheets. Colonial payments were reviewed by committees.

Customer withdrawals were matched against signatures. Ledgers were periodically balanced. The bank’s own clerks ran the risk of having their pay docked for errors or poor penmanship.

One fo the first banknotes issued by the Bank of New South Wales. April 8, 1817. © Australian Museum

These records also make for compelling sources because, ironically, most were never intended for outsider eyes.

They lack the vague, self-conscious or euphemistic language often found in public proclamations.

Instead, they were working documents.

They served particular functions, such as keeping track of a bank’s funds, maintaining fiscal control over regiments spread across an empire or managing the revenue and expenditure of an emerging colony.

To be effective they had to be accurate, comprehensive, and complete.

Holding to account

In the year before his mysterious deposit Sergeant Jeremiah Murphy was sent out by Governor Macquarie “in pursuit of natives”.

It is highly doubtful that Jeremiah Murphy ever anticipated that some 200 years later, a team of researchers and radio producers would pore over his financial dealings to piece together an account of his movements and decisions.

Yet since his time, there has been an enormous expansion in both the legal and regulatory compliance requirements to maintain and preserve internal records, as well as avenues for public scrutiny, media attention and inquiry.

Read more: So what’s a secretary to do? Banking Royal Commission raises questions about what’s in minutes

Bankers, like all of those who work in organisations and colonial institutions, should be mindful of the traces their actions leave behind in mere administrative records.

Sooner or later someone might look at their books.

The Bank, The Sargent and His Bonus is a collaboration between 2SER 107.3, the Australian Centre for Public History and the UTS Business School. It is available for download through the Think Business Futures and History Lab podcasts.

– ref. Who made Australia’s first ever bank deposit? Here’s our unsettling discovery – http://theconversation.com/who-made-australias-first-ever-bank-deposit-heres-our-unsettling-discovery-107809

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Moya Costello, Adjunct Lecturer, Southern Cross University

While we can tell the most about wine by drinking it, the door into this experience for bottled wine is the label. Clearly important from a marketing perspective, most Australian labels also communicate much more about a company, a grape variety or blends and the drop’s place of origin.

The labels of French wines are a cryptic introduction to French geography and that elusive quality, terroir – now considered to mean not only nature but its complex relationship with human intervention.

But our local labels too – those small, focused narratives attached to bottles – can tell us much about Australian history, geography, identity and indeed, terroir.

Some labels have not aged well. In the late 19th century, a Yalumba wine promotion juxtaposed images of Indigenous life with those of settler/invader wine-making.

Early Yalumba label. Author provided

More recently, a contemporary Australian wine was marketed in North America in 2007 under the labels of Hot Bikini and Lost Bikini. These labels echo 1950s’ holiday postcard images of beachside sauciness — without giving a grape variety or zone/region more specific than “Australia”.

Both these labels have an awkward sense of place. But what of some more successful examples?

Jamsheed

Gary Mills, in the Yarra Valley Region, has named his boutique label Jamsheed. It acknowledges the ancient and mythic history of winemaking, and resonates with a globalised, multicultural Australia.

Jamsheed label. Author provided

Jamsheed was a Persian king whose fondness for fresh grapes led him to store them in jars where they spontaneously fermented, making wine. Mills’ Jamsheed label has a continuous Middle Eastern-type pattern, reminiscent of the architectural flourishes of the Alhambra, coloured for the wine inside.

Ashton Hills

Is winemaking an art? The Australian wine critic James Halliday has concluded “most would say so”. We see wine labels, as well as winemaking, as creative, and labels often acknowledge art works in their design.

Ashton Hills, for instance, has a hand-rendered watercolour, implying that the Adelaide hills are cooler and more lush than its hot, dry plains, making for a differing wine style.

Ashton Hills label. Author provided

Schild

The photography on Schild labels, the Barossa Valley Region, represents different family members and farm detail. Everyday humility is indicated by a rusted car body (Merlot) and the lower legs of a tired worker (Cabernet). Delight in specific detail is indicated by the seemingly random sight of the feet of a chicken standing on a barrel (Chardonnay) and then, most powerfully, in the elderly worker’s hands trying to enclose the rich soil (Shiraz).

Black Squid Studio’s designs express labour, age, and honest earthiness. Schild emphasises that all this work is done in one region as “estate grown”.

Schild’s labels emphasise everyday humility. Author provided

Cassegrain

Cassegrain: elegant minimalism.

When Cassegrain’s dominating silver circle is taken into the border of the label, it becomes the “C” of Cassegrain, in the Hastings Rivers Region, but also, in full circle, the company’s sub-label, Stone Circle.

Cassegrain’s elegant minimalism is rendered in white, black, and silver. The circle is presented in full on the top of the cap, making the bottle immediately recognisable when laid down. Cassegrain’s label also names its selection of grape-growing sites across NSW: Orange, Rylstone, Tumbarumba, New England, Cowra and the Hunter Valley.​

Richfield Estate

Richfield Estate chooses to mark out its singular grape-growing area in the New England region of NSW with labels that feature an abstraction of a map’s aerial view. They perhaps also attempt to reference a famous European painter: say, Piet Mondrian or Fernand Léger.

The vineyard’s location is delineated by a small gold rectangle. The crossroads are angled differently for each of the varieties.

Richfield’s asbtract labels. Author provided

Topper’s Mountain

Topper’s Mountain labels are the result of the designer’s encounter with New England’s red soil. The soil dust seemingly seeps into vineyard tools and clothing, a bucket and a boot.

By implication, the soil has seeped into the wine, expressing an earth-based terroir. The red is reinforced in part of the text. The owner of Topper’s Mountain is the vigneron Mark Kirkby. And the wine is made by Mike Hayes of Symphony Hill, in the Granite Belt Region. Here the relationship of nature and culture is acknowledged.

Topper’s labels are steeped in soil dust. Author provided

Jilly Wine

Jared Dixon has used hessian or denim-like labels to signify vineyard labour for his artisan label Jilly Wine.

Without a vineyard of his own, he uses what is at hand on Kirkby’s New England vineyard, making eclectic mixtures, often with more than three varieties listed in hand-writing on labels. His reds can be a combination of Nebbiolo, Shiraz, Tempranillo, Tannat, Pinotage, Tinta Cao, Touriga, Barbera, and the whites Gewürztraminer, Chardonnay, Viognier and Petit Manseng​

Jilly’s denim and hessian-style labels. Author provided

These labels show how the growing place of wine in Australian life – its land, stories, and imagination – is accompanied by an emerging Australian terroir.

This article was written with the assistance of Leonie Lane, Graphic Designer, Booyong Design.

– ref. A taste for terroir: the evolution of the Australian wine label – http://theconversation.com/a-taste-for-terroir-the-evolution-of-the-australian-wine-label-102262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sutton, Lecturer in Accounting, University of Technology Sydney

One of Australia’s biggest banks, currently under scrutiny at the royal commission, has a long history.

The Bank of New South Wales, which later became Westpac, was established in 1817 under a charter of incorporation signed by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. It was Australia’s first bank and first public company.

But there’s something brushed over in the official history. Its first depositor, Sergeant Jeremiah Murphy, put in an unusually large sum of money (far more than his official salary) three days before the bank opened.

Just as the banking royal commission has been using ledgers, transaction accounts, remuneration reports and meeting minutes to try to get inside the behaviour of today’s banks, I and my colleagues Jason L’Ecuyer, Tom Allinson and Tamson Pietsch examined kangaroo-leather-bound ledgers and microfilm of military paymaster reports to understand how the bank started and how some people were making money in early colonial Australia.

The results can be heard on the latest 2SER History Lab podcast. To many listeners, the findings will be unsettling.

Our investigation

Just like Antarctic ice core samples or ancient tree rings, financial documents capture and preserve events over time. Through them, we can grasp glimpses of the period in which they were created.

The bank’s ledgers show the growing wealth of early entrepreneurs, such as Mary Reiby, the convict-turned-merchant who appears on the Australian $20 bill.

In colonial accounts, we can also see the sale of liquor licences to Sydney’s first establishments, and infrastructure spending on bridges, wharves and hospitals.

There is even a schedule of prices for Australia’s first toll road out to Parramatta.

Nicole Sutton, examining Westpac’s fragile early ledger books. Jason L’Ecuyer, Author provided (No reuse)

But the records also contain sobering evidence of darker aspects of Australia’s past.

Disturbingly, we can see financial payments to settlers and the military for punitive expeditions against Aboriginal Australians.

Why trust the accounts?

Financial records can shed light on what happened because of the meticulous manner in which they were prepared.

Military payslips were cross-referenced against muster sheets. Colonial payments were reviewed by committees.

Customer withdrawals were matched against signatures. Ledgers were periodically balanced. The bank’s own clerks ran the risk of having their pay docked for errors or poor penmanship.

One fo the first banknotes issued by the Bank of New South Wales. April 8, 1817. © Australian Museum

These records also make for compelling sources because, ironically, most were never intended for outsider eyes.

They lack the vague, self-conscious or euphemistic language often found in public proclamations.

Instead, they were working documents.

They served particular functions, such as keeping track of a bank’s funds, maintaining fiscal control over regiments spread across an empire or managing the revenue and expenditure of an emerging colony.

To be effective they had to be accurate, comprehensive, and complete.

Holding to account

In the year before his mysterious deposit Sergeant Jeremiah Murphy was sent out by Governor Macquarie “in pursuit of natives”.

It is highly doubtful that Jeremiah Murphy ever anticipated that some 200 years later, a team of researchers and radio producers would pore over his financial dealings to piece together an account of his movements and decisions.

Yet since his time, there has been an enormous expansion in both the legal and regulatory compliance requirements to maintain and preserve internal records, as well as avenues for public scrutiny, media attention and inquiry.

Read more: So what’s a secretary to do? Banking Royal Commission raises questions about what’s in minutes

Bankers, like all of those who work in organisations and colonial institutions, should be mindful of the traces their actions leave behind in mere administrative records.

Sooner or later someone might look at their books.

The Bank, The Sargent and His Bonus is a collaboration between 2SER 107.3, the Australian Centre for Public History and the UTS Business School. It is available for download through the Think Business Futures and History Lab podcasts.

– ref. Who made Australia’s first ever bank deposit? Here’s our unsettling answer – http://theconversation.com/who-made-australias-first-ever-bank-deposit-heres-our-unsettling-answer-107809

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernardo Figueiredo, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, RMIT University

Older people are often portrayed in the media as being technically challenged. Jokes are often shared on social media about older people taking photos on their phones with their thumb covering the lens, or accidentally installing viruses on computers.

Some of these damaging stereotypes impact upon how ordinary Australians interact with older age cohorts. A study published by the Australian Human Rights commission found 20% of Australians avoid conversations about technology with older people as they feel explanations will take a long time and a lot of effort.

But older people can and do use technology – and younger generations could learn a thing or two from them about how to have a healthier relationship with digital technologies like social media.

Read more: Online dating could have been made for older adults – they love it

How older Australians use social media

The 2018 YellowSocial Media Report confirms that around two thirds of Australians over 65 (67%) use social media, and almost a quarter (24%) use it at least once a day. While this is much less than the overall population (where 88% use social media, and 62% are daily users), it shows that seniors are engaged.

Older Australians also use social media differently compared to others. Australians aged over 65 are much less likely to check their accounts when commuting, during lunch time, at breaks and before going to bed, compared to younger users who tend to take advantage of any opportunity to engage with social media.

So, older people are social, but on their own terms rather than those dictated by the capabilities of the technology or the device.

Older Australians also prefer to access social media at home more than younger generations, and access it less outside the home. They have the highest preference for desktop access (51%) and the lowest preference for smartphone access to social media.

In the home, they prefer to use a study more than any other generation, and they never access social media in the bathroom or on the toilet (which almost 40% of 18-29 year olds do).

Multitasking isn’t popular among older Australians. Compared with the rest of the population, only 25% of Australians over 65 years of age use social media while watching TV. They are also much less likely to use social media on their commute, when working, during breaks, at lunchtime, in the evening or before bed.

Read more: Connecting online can help prevent social isolation in older people

Developing healthier habits

These behaviours may have health benefits. For example, research has shown that the blue light on our mobile phone screens suppresses production of brain chemicals that make us sleepy, so reducing phone use before bed could lead to a better sleep.

The way older Australians use social media may have other positive attributes. They upload less content, consume less news and video content, and follow fewer brands and celebrities than the rest of the population.

This may explain why they are less anxious about being unable to check social media, and less worried their activities on social media will come back to haunt them. In younger cohorts, “fear of missing out” drives social media addiction.

Australians over 65 feel their social media usage is “about right”, and they are the least likely age group to feel they spend too much time on social media.

Technology as a means to an end

Older people apply workarounds that fit tech into their lives, rather than adapting their lives to suit the latest tech trends. These are patterns found in digital immigrants – those who had to adjust to technology at some point later in their lives. This is markedly different from younger digital natives, who grew up with social media and smartphones.

Seniors tend to use technology for a narrower range of purposes than others. Only 36% of older Australians use phones to access social media. This is a sharp contrast to the national average of 74%. They also prefer traditional ways of listening to music and watching videos over online entertainment.

Digital natives have created their social networks through technology and therefore have more “friends” on social media than digital immigrants. Studies show the average Australian has 239 friends on Facebook, compared with 68 for those above 65 years.

For digital natives, online contacts are as real to them as their face-to-face ones. But for the goal-oriented digital immigrants, technology may merely be a means to reach their existing networks, rather than a place to hang out. Seniors normally report higher levels of satisfaction with their social relationships than younger adults. Their relationships are intimate, supportive, rewarding, even if facilitated by technology.

Read more: The digital divide: small, social programs can help get seniors online

Ensuring learning goes both ways

Older people have something to teach younger generations about the healthy and safe use of social technologies.

Retroactive socialisation, which happens when younger generations transfer knowledge acquired in the marketplace to older generations, may be how older people learn, but we should recognise that older consumers are solving their problems in innovative and unexpected ways.

In an environment where primary socialisation about technology is being driven by the tech industry, there may be space for learning from older people about social participation that is driven by deep and meaningful personal relationships facilitated by technology and devices.

– ref. What younger people can learn from older people about using technology – http://theconversation.com/what-younger-people-can-learn-from-older-people-about-using-technology-107607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lawrie Zion, Professor of Journalism, La Trobe University

As many as 3,000 journalism jobs are estimated to have been lost in Australia this decade, the vast majority of which have come from newspaper newsrooms. The consequences for the information needs of the public are profound. But what of the lives and careers of those who left what were typically very stable careers?

Over the past four years, our New Beats research team has conducted annual surveys of a cohort of more than 200 journalists who experienced redundancy. As we have previously reported, many found the redundancy process and its immediate aftermath traumatic. But findings from our newly released report, which focuses on the final survey in 2017, suggest that journalists have shown considerable resilience in rebuilding their careers and, in some cases, their lives.

Read more: Life after redundancy: what happens next for journalists when they leave newsrooms

That said, the most striking finding from our 2017 survey is how unstable employment patterns have been since leaving the newsroom. Prior to redundancy, our 2014 cohort of 225 participants came mostly from newspapers. Just over 80% had worked at either Fairfax Media or News Limited (now News Corp Australia).

More than half were over the age of 50 at the time of the 2014 survey and they had spent an average of a quarter of a century in the companies they have left behind. But since their initial redundancy only around 10% said they had been employed in the one organisation or role. More than two-thirds of respondents told us they had had multiple jobs, either simultaneously or sequentially. The following response exemplifies the trend:

Attempted to set up my own media business based on writing and editing. Couldn’t sustain a full-time living from it so have taken a number of casual and part-time jobs and my own business as a sole trader supplements that. Mainly work for a public relations company that hires out my services. Have been back in newspapers for two years, two days a week, as a subeditor.

With relative consistency across all four surveys, participants bunched into three main categories of post-redundancy employment: working in journalism (including freelancing), working in a mix of journalism and other work, and working outside of journalism. In the 2017 survey, these categories were roughly equal: 27.5% were in journalism, 25.0% did some journalism and 32.5% had left journalism. Across all surveys, an average of only 10% were working in full-time journalism roles.

The one-quarter who mix journalism with other work are an indication that post-redundancy working life hasn’t been simply a matter of staying or leaving. Yet such vocational shape-shifting doesn’t suit everyone who has come out of what were once secure and – for the most part – better-paid careers. So one surprise finding is that 73% of those surveyed in 2017 who were working in any capacity said they were satisfied with their current working arrangements, with 16% neutral and just 11% dissatisfied.

How might this be explained? Certainly, post-redundancy working life has been challenging for many. Perceptions of ageism and sexism, and the fact that flexible work often means precarious income, are common concerns. And as we found in responses to earlier surveys, professional identities were challenged. As one respondent put it:

I had always been proud to say that I was a journalist and I loved my job, but suddenly, at age 55, I was out on my ear and having to reinvent myself.

But the skills and decades of professionalism that journalists took with them out of the newsrooms has meant that the challenges of precarity have been counterbalanced by new opportunities, even in unrelated forms of work. Very few respondents told us they can’t find work at all.

In our 2017 survey, nearly three-quarters of those who’d moved into different kinds of work said their journalism skills remained useful. This response illustrates the point:

My new career is totally different to journalism, so it doesn’t really compare. I don’t feel connected to my former industry anymore, however, I have found the communications skills of journalism are an advantage in my new industry when establishing client relationships.

A related finding is that around two-thirds of respondents say that, on balance, their personal sense of well-being is better now than prior to leaving their jobs. As one pointed out in our 2014 survey:

I work a lot from home, I make my own rules and decisions, and I don’t have a third of the stress I had in my last job.

In some cases it’s a re-evaluation of work-life balance that has informed subjective senses of well-being. To quote one response:

Overall, despite the hell I’ve been through, life is better … I don’t feel as secure with work and I don’t have the same earning potential that I had while working in journalism, but one of the lessons I learnt was the old cliche that money doesn’t buy happiness.

For others, navigating precarious work remains challenging:

I feel like I am better able to cope with change – if the rug was pulled out from underneath me and I was forced to switch gears again, I guess I know that I would be able to deal with it. But it’s tiring not really having any real job security sometimes.

In other words, life after redundancy continues to involve adapting to changing work opportunities and how work connects to other life priorities.

Read more: New beats: where do redundant journalists go?

In a significant extension of this research, colleagues in other countries have adapted our New Beats approach to survey laid-off reporters internationally. While some of this research is still emergent, it appears that much of what we’ve chronicled in the Australian context has been experienced across the US, Canada, Finland, The Netherlands, Indonesia, South Africa and elsewhere. The similarities highlight how the digital transformations we’ve seen in Australian journalism have been disruptive around the world and have had profound effects on the lives of those concerned.

– ref. New research reveals how Australian journalists are faring four years after redundancy – http://theconversation.com/new-research-reveals-how-australian-journalists-are-faring-four-years-after-redundancy-107520

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abu Sina, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Researchers have developed a test that could be used to diagnose all cancers. It is based on a unique DNA signature that appears to be common across cancer types.

The test has yet to be conducted on humans, and clinical trials are needed before we know for sure if it can be used in the clinic.

Each cancer type, whether it be breast or bowel cancer, has different genetic and other features. A test that detects one cancer may not work on another. Researchers have long been looking for a commonality among cancers to develop a diagnostic tool that could apply across all types.

Our research, published in the journal Nature Communications, has found that cancer DNA forms a unique structure when placed in water. The structure is the same in DNA from samples of breast, prostate and bowel cancers, as well as lymphoma. We used this discovery to develop a test that can identify the cancerous DNA in less than ten minutes.

How our test works

Current detection of cancer requires a tissue biopsy – a surgical procedure to collect tissue from the patient’s tumour. Researchers have been looking for a less invasive diagnostic test that can detect cancers at an earlier stage. One possibility, still in development, is a liquid biopsy, testing for circulating cancer DNA in the blood.

Read more: A new blood test can detect eight different cancers in their early stages

Our test also uses circulating cancer DNA but involves a different detection method.

Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA, but studies have found that cancer’s progression causes this DNA to undergo considerable reprogramming.

This change is particularly evident in the distribution pattern of a tiny molecule called a methyl group, which decorates the DNA.

A normal cell DNA’s distinct methyl pattern is crucial to regulating its machinery and maintaining its functions. It is also responsible for turning genes on and off. Altering this pattern is one of the ways cancer cells regulate their own proliferation.

This methyl patterning has been studied before. However, its effect in a solution (such as water) has never been explored. Using transmission electron microscopy (a high-resolution microscope), we saw that cancerous DNA fragments folded into three-dimensional structures in water. These were different to what we saw with normal tissue DNA in the water.

Gold particles are often used in the lab to help detect biological molecules. from shutterstock.com

In the lab, gold particles are commonly used to help detect biological molecules (such as DNA). This is because gold can affect molecular behaviour in a way that causes visible colour changes. We discovered that cancerous DNA has a strong affinity towards gold, which means it strongly binds to the gold particles.

This finding directed us to develop a test that can detect cancerous DNA in blood and tissue. This requires a tiny amount of purified DNA to be mixed with some drops of gold particle solution. By simply observing the colour change, it is possible to identify the cancerous DNA with the naked eye within five minutes.

Read more: Destroying tumors with gold nanoparticles

The test also works for electrochemical detection – when the DNA is attached onto flat gold electrodes. Since cancer DNA has higher affinity to gold, it provides a higher relative electrochemical current signal in comparison to normal DNA. This electrochemical method is highly sensitive and could also eventually be used as a diagnostic tool.

Why this matters

For this test to work properly the DNA must be pure. So far we have tested more than 200 tissue and blood samples, with 90% accuracy. Accuracy is important to ensure there are fewer false positives – wrongly detecting cancer when there is none.

The types of cancers we tested included breast, prostate, bowel and lymphoma. We have not yet tested other cancers, but because the methylation pattern is similar across all cancers it is likely the DNA will respond in the same way.

It is a promising start, though further analysis with more samples is needed to prove its clinical use.

The next step is to do a large clinical study to understand how early a cancer can be detected based on this novel DNA signature. We are assessing the possibility to detect different cancer types from different body fluids from early to later stages of cancer.

We are also considering whether the test could help monitor treatment responses based on the abundance of DNA signatures in body fluid during treatment.

Read more: New blood test could spare cancer patients from needless chemotherapy after surgery

– ref. One test to diagnose them all: researchers exploit cancers’ unique DNA signature – http://theconversation.com/one-test-to-diagnose-them-all-researchers-exploit-cancers-unique-dna-signature-108078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Dargaville, Senior lecturer, Monash University

Politicians around Australia are proposing ambitious plans to export renewable energy from Australia, using high-voltage power lines laid under the oceans.

But will this work? Our research is investigating the economic and environmental case for Australia to become an Asian energy superpower.

Our recent study, which will be presented on December 11 at the UN Climate Change Conference, models electricity generation and demand – as well as the cost of augmenting and extending transmission infrastructure. We found a transmission network connecting Australia to Indonesia could help both nations achieve 100% renewable electricity by 2050.

This is in line with a UN push for more global power connections. Exporting clean power from countries with strong infrastructure to burgeoning global populations may be key to reaching the Paris Agreement climate targets.

Indonesia’s rapid growth

Indonesia’s energy system is grappling with increasing demand, rising costs and carbon constraints. Official figures estimate demand in the Java-Bali system alone will rise by at least 6.8% per annum by 2030. Based on this trend, total demand will increase tenfold by 2050.

Read more: Australia tries to unlock the benefits of proximity with Indonesia

Our modelling found that, in the absence of a climate policy in Indonesia, the cheapest option is to meet all demand with domestic fossil fuel, primarily coal and natural gas.

However, if Indonesia wishes to achieve a carbon-neutral power system, it will be extremely difficult to meet the extraordinary growth in demand with domestic renewables alone.

Indonesia would need to build a huge amount of renewable capacity to meet peak demand, which would then go to waste most of the time. The lack of high-quality wind and solar resources, and a broad geographic area make this route very costly.

Schematic showing the existing grid (black), the grid extensions considered in this study (red) and potential future augmentations (grey), and the current generation mix in Indonesia. Author provided

Australia can help

Australia’s northwest desert region has some of the world’s best solar and wind resources. An underwater high-voltage Direct Current (HVDC) link connecting Indonesia’s Java-Bali power grid to the Australian National Electricity Market grid through the Northern Territory would help both nations to achieve a 100% renewable power system by 2050.

An interconnector would change the Java-Bali decarbonisation pathway dramatically. In this scenario, power generation in Java-Bali is greatly reduced due to imports; energy wasted from local wind and solar PV becomes negligible. A large amount of electricity is imported into Java-Bali from Australia, especially in the evening after the sun has set and the PV in Java-Bali stops generating.

We could also take the opportunity to connect the Northern Territory to the rest of Australia’s energy market through an above-ground transmission line. Any wind and solar energy not used by Indonesia could then be fed to the national grid.

Wind farms could be an essential part of the National Electricity Market to achieve a carbon-neutral power system. Lukas Coch/AAP

Australia could then meet the bulk of its energy needs through wind power, since strategic placement of wind farms would minimise variability in generation. Our models also favoured coupling wide-scale solar power with pumped hydro facilities. Pumped hydro can store solar power during the day and send it into the grid during the evening, and thus stabilise the entire operation.

Despite the high cost of building this infrastructure, our research found a 100% renewable Australasia power system could reduce wholesale electricity costs by more than 16%. Our estimates may be on the conservative side, as we assumed a constant cost for the HVDC technology but it’s likely to become cheaper in the coming decades.

The model finds that the optimal configuration of the international connector from NT to Indonesia is a staggering capacity of 43.8GW with construction starting from 2030. The optimal regional transmission from NT to the east coast would have a capacity of 5.5GW.

Read more: The renewable energy train is unstoppable. The NEG needs to get on board

Incentives moving forward

Australia is one of the most vulnerable developed countries in terms of risk from climate change. It is in our interest to promote a strong global response. Australia has inherent advantages in terms of our abundant renewable resources and geographical location in the Asia Pacific. (Of course, there are political complications to overcome.)

Future research will expand the geographical scope of the current study by considering more domestic and international interconnection options to assess the economic viability of a larger Australasian super grid. The recent suggestion for electrification of Papua New Guinea and meeting the energy demands of Pacific island nations are two examples. Comparison with hydrogen exports, which might involve conversion of renewable energy into hydrogen or ammonia to allow export by ship, will also be studied.

Our ultimate goal is to build a coalition of nation builders to make Australia a renewable energy exporting superpower.

The authors are presenting their research at COP24 in partnership with GEIDCO, IEA, UN Climate Change and UN DESA.

– ref. Making Australia a renewable energy exporting superpower – http://theconversation.com/making-australia-a-renewable-energy-exporting-superpower-107285

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Mills, Associate Professor at The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney

Some 80% of young people will experience a traumatic event by the time they become an adult. Rates of exposure to trauma peak during adolescence. The stress from traumatic events can result in a loss of interest in school, friends, hobbies, and life in general.

The types of traumatic events include a wide range of terrifying and life-threatening experiences such as physical or sexual assault, witnessing violence, motor vehicle and other serious accidents, and natural disasters. They may be one-off events like car accidents, or prolonged as is often the case with childhood abuse and domestic violence.

Read more: Children with severe trauma can be fostered, and recover with the right treatment and care

Many young people keep their feelings hidden and try to cope with it themselves, sometimes by self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs. These young people often experience a range of difficulties at home and school. Without identification and treatment of the underlying issues, developmental and educational trajectories can be severely disrupted and these problems may persist into adulthood. It’s estimated between 30-50% of adolescents with PTSD also abuse or are dependent on alcohol.

There are several signs parents and teachers can look for to identify young people at risk and treatment options are available.

How does trauma impact young people?

Traumatic stress and alcohol or other drug use during adolescence have been linked to a range of physical and psychological health problems, poorer performance at school and work, family and social problems, aggression, and criminal behaviour.

Adolescence is a critical developmental window where a person experiences profound social, biological, and neurological changes. During this period, a person is particularly vulnerable to the impact of trauma. Trauma during adolescence has been associated with significant changes in the structure and functioning of the brain.

Adolescents who have experienced trauma have also been found to have higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation, be in poorer physical health, and have difficulties with relationships with family, friends or classmates. Increases in aggression and risk-taking behaviours are also common. Of concern, these problems are linked with increased risk for illness and premature death in adulthood.

Young people may isolate themselves to avoid talking about traumatic events they have experienced. from www.shutterstock.com

It’s common for a young person to experience changes in their thoughts, feelings and behaviour after a traumatic event, but everyone responds differently. Some of the most common reactions to trauma are increases in feelings of fear and anxiety.

Many young people will try to avoid thinking and talking about what happened, and stay away from people, places and things that remind them of what happened. They may be constantly on-edge and on the look-out for danger. Trouble sleeping and concentrating are also common. These feelings are a normal response to an abnormal event.

Many adolescents will feel much better within a few months after the event, but symptoms will persist for approximately one in seven adolescents, developing into post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some reactions may also be delayed, appearing months or even years after the event.

Read more: Explainer: what is post-traumatic stress disorder?

Regardless of whether a person does develop PTSD, traumatic events are often life-changing and can redefine a person’s views of themselves. This includes feeling weak, bad, worthless, or to blame for what happened, the world around them is not safe, or that people cannot be trusted. These beliefs can become particularly well-entrenched in those who have experienced childhood trauma.

Why do young people self-medicate?

Because many young people keep the event (and/or their feelings and reactions to it) a secret, the extent of child and adolescent trauma has been referred to as a “silent” or “hidden” epidemic. Because many adolescents who have experienced trauma may not be inclined to talk openly about these experiences, it’s not always obvious to parents and teachers that post-traumatic stress may be a key reason these young people struggle at school.

In the absence of support from family, teachers and peers (either because these resources are not available to the young person, or they choose not to access them), young people try to cope with what has happened them, sometimes by self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs.

One warning sign is if a young person starts or increases their drug or alcohol intake. from www.shutterstock.com

As with trauma, the adolescent brain is particularly susceptible to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol and other drugs. Adolescents who are self-medicating can find themselves in a vicious cycle where they need increasingly large amounts of alcohol or other drugs to try and combat increasing symptoms of traumatic stress.

Read more: How childhood trauma changes our hormones, and thus our mental health, into adulthood

Once established, both problems maintain and exacerbate the other.

How can parents and teachers help?

The Australian National University Trauma and Grief Network and Victorian government have developed a detailed list of signs of trauma in children and adolescents. This may help parents and teachers identify young people who may be at risk. These signs include:

• strong emotions such as sadness, anger, fear, anxiety and guilt
• repetitively thinking about the traumatic event and talking about it often
• disturbed sleeping patterns and/or nightmares
• emotional, behavioural and personality changes
• withdrawing from family and friends and wanting to spend more time alone
• self-absorption
• being very protective of family and friends
• returning to younger ways of behaving
• increased need for independence
• increased risk-taking behaviour
• initiation or increased use of alcohol or other drugs
• loss of interest in school, friends, hobbies, and life in general
• deterioration in school performance
• pessimistic outlook on life, being cynical and distrusting of others
• depression and feelings of hopelessness
• difficulties with short-term memory, concentration and problem solving.

Evidence-based psychological therapies are available for traumatic stress among adolescents. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy is the recommended first line treatment.

A good starting point for accessing these services is through a GP. After first talking to a young person about how they feel after experiencing a trauma themselves, parents and teachers can arrange an appointment and encourage the young person to speak to a GP about what may be bothering them. The GP can then refer the young person to a psychologist or other mental health professional who is experienced in working with children and adolescents who have experienced trauma.

The Centre of Research Excellence in Mental Health and Substance Use in Sydney is conducting a world-first trial of integrated psychological therapy for traumatic stress and substance use among adolescents aged 12-18 years. We hope the findings from this study will improve our understanding of how best to treat adolescents experiencing traumatic stress and substance use and prevent the chronic health problems associated with these conditions.

– ref. How parents and teachers can identify and help young people self-medicating trauma with drugs and alcohol – http://theconversation.com/how-parents-and-teachers-can-identify-and-help-young-people-self-medicating-trauma-with-drugs-and-alcohol-104482

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elisa Palazzo, Senior Lecturer in Urban and Landscape Design, UNSW

Science is clearly showing that the world is shifting towards a more unstable climate. Weather events like the flash floods in Sydney last week will be more frequent and extreme, while the intervals between them will become shorter. With rising sea levels and frequent floods, water landscapes will become part of our urban routine.

Most Australian cities are already located along coastlines or within river catchments. Whether or not we are able to keep global warming below 1.5°C, the majority of the Australian population will soon live in a flood zone.

Read more: Trust Me, I’m An Expert: Australia’s extreme weather

This means we will have to start planning and designing our cities for a new normal. We will become used to redesigned parks and gardens, for instance, that help us co-exist with water.

Change of perspective: rainwater is a resource, not waste

Understanding the water cycle is an opportunity to generate a positive relationship between natural processes, plants and people. We can learn to look at flooding as a regenerative element to improve life in urban areas.

For a long time, however, urban design has overlooked the opportunity rainwater provides within the urban system. A conceptual leap forward is needed to shift the common perception of rain as waste to be disposed of. It can instead be seen as a non-renewable resource to be protected and reused.

This change is already visible in front-line urban experimentation. Cities like New York, New Orleans and Copenhagen are reorganising themselves following catastrophic floods in recent years. Here, urban design is changing radically the ways to use, experience and perceive cities’ space.

Enghaveparken, a park in the Danish capital Copenhagen, before and after rain. Courtesy of Tredjenatur, Copenhagen

Innovative strategies understand flood as a natural process to work with, rather than resist. Non-structural, soft and nature-based solutions to flood adaptation are replacing centralised and engineered technologies.

These projects use climate change positively to provide multiple added benefits. The benefits include spaces for recreation, ecological functions, environmental recovery, increased urban biodiversity and economic regeneration.

Read more: Lessons in resilience: what city planners can learn from Hobart’s floods

Make room for the water

The idea to work with water through flood-mitigation measures based on natural processes has been explored in different ways. These can be summarised in four main strategies.

Sponge spaces and safe failure: a network of small-to-medium-sized green areas absorbs and stores excess water. Almost every urban open space, including rooftops, can be part of a decentralised off-grid system.

In Copenhagen, the Climate-Resilient Neighbourhood program aims to transform at least 20% of public ground to work as a sponge to reduce flash flooding in dense inner-urban areas. When needed, controlled flooding of one part of the system will avoid problems elsewhere – such as roads. These “safe to fail” spaces can have multiple functions and be used for public recreation when they are not flooded.

Design for variability: as water processes are seasonal, design should reflect variability and periodic flood change. A more comprehensive understanding of nature’s processes in cities is emerging as a source of design inspiration, leading to a new spatial expression, besides ecological benefits.

This is an interesting advancement in urban design, with evolving layouts replacing fixed forms. A focused selection of plant varieties and soil substrata supports spatial variability. A good example is Billancourt Park in France, where water defines the constantly changing spaces of the gardens.

The renatured Billancourt Park in Paris is designed to manage dramatic changes in water levels. Courtesy of Agence Ter, Paris

Parc de Billancourt, water levels diagram: 1) Permanent water, 2) Normal rain, 3) Important rain, 4) Annual flood, 5) 10 years flood, 6) 50 years flood. Courtesy of AgenceTer, Paris

Don’t let it go: rainwater is a precious resource and should be retained and used on the spot. Impermeable ground and roof surfaces should be harnessed to capture rainwater, harvest it and store it for further uses, such as irrigation, washing and flashing toilets. The process is particularly simple and does not require specific technology, especially for rooftop water, which is clean enough to be reused as it falls.

Let it seep through: paving should let water infiltrate to the underground and feed the aquifers. Permeable grounds restore the natural water cycle, allowing humidity exchange between air and the soil. An additional benefit is that this cools urban spaces, reducing heat in summer and creating a more comfortable habitat.

To limit the number of impervious surfaces, roads and parking should be reduced, with grass or porous tiles replacing asphalt. When paving is necessary, it should be designed to provide a moderate filtering function to reduce rain impurities.

The climate tile project in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. Courtesy of Tredjenatur, Copenhagen

Read more: How your garden could help stop your city flooding

A broad, collective effort is needed

Broad implementation of the strategies needed to reduce flooding across public and private domains is complex. It calls for a collective effort.

Research on urban climate adaptation suggests that planning for flood management is often a top-down process. Post-flood recovery programs have rarely been opportunities for central governments to consider the needs of local communities.

Shared decisions on water management are needed to develop resilient communities and help them adapt to rapidly changing climate. New challenges can become opportunities if environmental goals can be twinned with sustainability and social equity objectives.

Moreover, the implementation of flood adaptation measures is still too sporadic. It’s often limited to centralised wetlands in large parks and gardens. A capillary-type network is needed, which infiltrates the dense urban fabric with small to medium nature-based measures.

There is no evidence yet, however, that the cumulative benefits from these systems will be effective to avoid massive flash flooding. Therefore, the need to start systematically testing and monitoring these measures at the urban scale is urgent. We need to start asking questions such as: what if every roof had a vegetated surface, if every sidewalk had retaining capacity, if every park was a rain garden?

Looking at how cities are designed and performing in Australia, there is plenty to learn from the international experience. We have a lot to do to adjust this knowledge to the local context.

And we urgently need to apply this knowledge, because if we don’t quickly learn how to work with water in cities, water will hit them even harder in the future.

Read more: Higher density in a flood zone? Here’s a way to do it and reduce the risks

– ref. Design for flooding: how cities can make room for water – http://theconversation.com/design-for-flooding-how-cities-can-make-room-for-water-105844

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hari Bapuji, Associate professor, University of Melbourne

Twitter chief Jack Dorsey’s first visit to India had been going so well. He got to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi (an avid Tweeter with 44.5 million followers), “King of Bollywood” Shah Rukh Khan (36.8 million followers), and the Dalai Lama (18.8 million followers).

Then a single tweet had him being accused of hate mongering. There was talk of an Indian boycott of Twitter, and even of developing a rival Indian platform like China’s Weibo. A senior parliamentary official saw a case to prosecute Dorsey for attempting “to destabilise the nation”. A court in the northern state of Rajasthan ordered a police investigation.

Dorsey’s offence: holding a poster that proclaimed “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy”.

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey with the ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’ poster that has him accused of hate-mongering.

The poster was given to Dorsey by Sanghapali Aruna, an activist for the rights of Dalits, the bottom most group in the Indian caste system. The controversy resulting demonstrates just how potent caste remains, and how blind to it are the multinational corporations eyeing off the Indian market.

A short guide to caste …

To understand what the fuss is about, we need to understand the age-old caste system in the Indian subcontinent, and its complexities.

Caste is similar to a social class, but mobility is impossible and discrimination can occur among those of the same economic class. It is similar to the idea of race, but can be perpetuated by those within the same ethnic group. It originated in Hinduism, but has been absorbed by Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.

Read more: Racial and caste oppression have many similarities

The system can be traced to the Manusmriti code of Hindu laws, which suggests Brahma, the Hindu god of creation, created four categories of people from his own body: Brahmins from his head, Kshatriyas from his arms, Vysyas from his thighs, and Shudras from his feet.

This origin ordained an occupational hierarchy. You inherited your caste from your father, and that determined your future. The Brahmins were the priests and advisers – and primary enforcers of the caste system. The Kshatriyas were warriors and soldiers. Then Vysyas farmers and traders. The Shudras workers and tradespeople.

Beneath the Shudras were the Dalits – the “untouchables” – tasked with all menial jobs, including cleaning and disposing of the dead.

Lower caste jobs include ‘manual scavenging’ – emptying certain types of dry toilet by hand. Though the practice was formally prohibited in India in 1993, it continues to occur. Donald Yip / Shutterstock.com

The system imposed codes of conduct and rules for interaction between castes. Mixed marriages, for example, were forbidden. So too was physical contact with all Dalits, who were condemned to live away from the village and had no right to public places, such as temples.

Although discrimination against Dalits was outlawed by India’s constitution in 1950, caste-based prejudices live on, and are even inflamed by Dalits asserting the right to equality.

Read more: Why are there so few Dalit entrepreneurs? The problem of India’s casted capitalism

The constitution also enshrined affirmative-action programs for Dalits and other marginalised groups in the public sector, but across the Indian economy they continue to occupy the lowest rungs. Centuries of caste-based discrimination has enabled deep economic inequalities that still influence the opportunities and rewards given to individuals.

… and to patriarchy

Dalit women have the worst of it. They face discrimination from other castes, as well as from men within their own caste. They are more likely to be trafficked and subjected to contemporary slavery. They are still forced into temple prostitution known as Devdasi or Jogini systems.

Traditional ideas about gender roles still affect what is considered appropriate for women to do, what they can wear and who they can interact with. Women resisting such patriarchal notions can face reprisal, from abuse to violence, rape, and even murder.

Read more: India’s caste system extends to uneven access to cooking fuel and electricity

The interrelationship between caste hierarchy and gender hierarchy in traditional Indian culture is known as the “Brahmanical social order”. That Aruna’s poster referred to “Brahminical patriarchy” has offended some as a more direct attack on Brahmins, not just the caste system. This may be reading too much into it. Others have reacted to the poster as an attack Hinduism. Yet others have been offended by a foreigner seemingly lecturing Indians on something he knows little about.

Women sort through piles of rubbish in Calcutta. JeremyRichards / Shutterstock.com

Twitter’s ecosystem challenge

It is into this landscape that Twitter’s chief lumbered.

India is Twitter’s most important developing market. Its population will soon overtake that of China, where the government blocks Twitter. Though the eight million Indians who actively use Twitter is still less than a quarter of the Americans who do, US user numbers have plateaued while the Indian market is growing at five times the global average.

Twitter is also arguably important to India. It has given Dalit women and other marginalised people a platform to voice their concerns. But it has also facilitated trolling and abuse. In mid-November Shehla Rashid, a student leader with more than 500,000 followers, quit the platform as an “SOS call to Twitter”. Describing the platform as an ecosystem of “toxicity and negativity”, she said: “It is not freedom of expression but an attack on freedom of expression.”

Listening, not hearing

This is the reason Dorsey met with Aruna and other women at the end of his India trip: to hear firsthand their concerns about the way Twitter facilitates abuse and threats.

Read more: The Dalits of India are finding new ways to fight the caste system

The company’s reaction to the aftermath would not have persuaded the women they had been heard. Twitter quickly declared Dorsey was merely holding the poster because he had been given it as a gift, and that the poster’s sentiments were not Twitter’s official position. Twitter’s chief legal advisor, Indian-born Vijaya Gadde, apologised for failing to be “an impartial platform for all”.

Such a response was “hypocritical”, declared journalist Sidharth Bhatia, because Twitter “apologised to those very people whom the poster was calling out, only because they are noisier and better organised”.

Multinational blind spots

How could Twitter be blindsided by caste?

One reason may be a problem shared by most multinational companies operating in India. They might promote gender and ethnic diversity in their home countries, but caste is less obvious to them. Unconsciously they might even be perpetuating the caste system.

When multinationals hire, they prefer people with a certain type of family background and cosmopolitan profile. Those from upper castes – beneficiaries of accumulated advantage over centuries – tend to fit that bill. As a result they are more likely to get hired and promoted to positions of power. Thus, the caste system is unconsciously replicated.

Multinationals – and indeed all companies in India interested in its future prosperity – need to think about the ways in which caste inequalities operate. They must work to improve caste diversity in their ranks, such as through including caste in audits and educating their workforce.

Twitter has an additional challenge. It needs to ensure its platform is not a tool of caste and other forms of discrimination. Taking responsibility and cleaning up trolling, bullying and harassment on its platform would be a major public service to Indian society – and to democratic conversations everywhere.

– ref. How Twitter got blindsided by India’s still-toxic caste system – http://theconversation.com/how-twitter-got-blindsided-by-indias-still-toxic-caste-system-107792

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jill Vaughan, Research Fellow in Linguistics, University of Melbourne

On Australia’s remote north-central coast, the small community of Maningrida is remarkable for many reasons. It boasts dramatic coastal scenery, world-renowned bark and sculptural artists, skilled weavers and textile printers, and unique local wildlife. But Maningrida is extraordinary for another reason: it is one of the most linguistically diverse communities in the world, with 15 languages spoken or signed every day among only a couple of thousand people.

Northern Australia is a “hotspot” for language diversity. But of the more than 250 different Australian languages spoken at the time of colonisation, now only 15-18 are being passed on to new generations of speakers. Perhaps 100 more are still spoken by a handful of elderly speakers. Understanding how the multilingualism of this region works may help us maintain and revitalise other languages.

Abigail Carter, a Language and Culture worker at Maningrida College, has lived in Maningrida for most of her life, and also spends time at Wurdeja, a small outstation community her family calls home east of Arnhem Land’s Blyth River. Like most of her friends and family, Abigail is highly multilingual. Her main language is the Martay dialect of the Burarra language, and she is a fluent speaker of English.

Through the multilingualism of her family members, she can also understand Djinang, Yan-nhaŋu and Yolŋu Matha from eastern Arnhem Land. As Abigail told us in Burarra:

Minypa Djinang ng-galiyarra ngu-workiya, ngardawa an-ngaypa jaminya gu-nika wengga. Rrapa an-ngaypa ninya rrapa bapapa, jungurda apula yerrcha gun-ngayburrpa wengga Yan-nhaŋu.
(I hear and understand Djinang, because that’s my mother’s father’s language. And my father and auntie, my father’s father, our language is Yan-nhaŋu.)

As a Maningrida local, she has also learned to speak Ndjébbana, the language of the Kunibídji land where Maningrida lies, as well as Kuninjku, a dialect of the larger Bininj Kunwok language of western Arnhem Land.

The size of Abigail’s linguistic repertoire is fairly typical of Maningrida, but every individual has a unique constellation of language competences due to differing family networks and life experiences.

Recordings made in the 1970s show that a shopkeeper at the local supermarket used five different languages across his various encounters with customers throughout the day.

Recent recordings around the community demonstrate similar levels of multilingualism: at the Maningrida football Grand Final in 2015, commentary from the announcers and among the crowd was recorded in nine languages.

Arnhem Land, including Maningrida, has many diverse languages. MICK TSIKAS

Why so many languages?

One reason there are so many languages in Maningrida is that it was founded in the late 1950s as a welfare settlement. Later, speakers of many languages moved to access work and resources.

And, unlike other communities where English, Kriol or a single traditional language has been promoted – such as those which began as missions – Maningrida has no lingua franca between all the language groups.

Read more: Some Australian Indigenous languages you should know

Arnhem Land is a particular “hotspot” for language diversity, and researchers have described similar levels of multilingualism elsewhere in the region.

Multilingualism among Aboriginal people serves many purposes besides just facilitating ordinary day-to-day conversation.

It may also be used to fulfil social and cultural etiquette, to signal status as a friendly guest on country, to ensure safety from dangerous spirits, or to enhance storytelling and song.

Language matters

Indigenous Australia is characterised by strong connections between language and land. Through these connections, language is tied to clan groups, dreamings and cultural practice. These come together in origin stories, such as the Warramurrungunji story of north-west Arnhem Land.

Footy games are spoken about in many different languages. Jill Vaughan

There are beliefs about how language should be used too. One of these is the priority to use one’s father’s language. An individual is understood to “own” this language, even though sometimes they may not actually be able to speak it. As Maningrida resident George Pascoe said:

The person feels very important when you speak your own language. It also identifies your father. In our culture you inherit from your father […] everything the father owns, you inherit that. And that’s the law. That’s based on the Magna Carta, the Indigenous people of this country and even Arnhem Land, they have their own Magna Carta. It’s invisible to the foreign law […] Laws given to us by the creator, languages given to us by the creator.

This pressure can even be strong enough to create conversations where each speaker uses a different language, but is still understood. Beliefs and practices like these, along with high levels of multilingualism, support the viability and ongoing co-existence of many languages, even very small ones of just a few dozen speakers.

Multilingualism has been the norm throughout human history, but we still know very little about how people use it around the world. The multilingualism of northern Australia is mirrored in other Indigenous language hotspots across the world.

A new collection of research looks at examples in the US, Peru, northern Amazonia, Senegal, and the Arctic, as well as in the Kimberley and Arnhem Land. The UN has declared 2019 the “International Year of Indigenous Languages”, highlighting issues facing these communities around the world.

The threat of language loss poses a serious risk to our nation’s cultural inheritance, and to the wellbeing of many Indigenous Australians. Embracing and better understanding multilingualism is one way we can help maintain traditional languages and support Australia’s linguistic diversity.

– ref. Meet the remote Indigenous community where a few thousand people use 15 different languages – http://theconversation.com/meet-the-remote-indigenous-community-where-a-few-thousand-people-use-15-different-languages-107716

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

If anyone needs further evidence of the self-defeating weird places the Liberals seem to find themselves in, consider what happened on Tuesday.

Malcolm Turnbull made another intervention in the political debate, this time talking about the National Energy Guarantee, when he spoke at an energy conference on Tuesday morning.

“I’ve strongly encouraged my colleagues to work together to revive the National Energy Guarantee. It was a vital piece of economic policy and had strong support, and none stronger I might say, than that of the current Prime Minister and the current Treasurer,” he said.

This and the rest of Turnbull’s observations on energy policy provided abundant material for a question time attack by a Labor party bloated from dining on the unending manna that’s been flowing its way from some political heaven.

As Morrison sought to counter this latest attack by concentrating on Labor’s substantial emissions reduction target (45% on 2005 levels by 2030), suddenly a tweet appeared from Turnbull.

“I have not endorsed “Labor’s energy policy”. They have adopted the NEG mechanism,“ Turnbull said – adding a tick of approval – “but have not demonstrated that their 45% emissions reduction target will not push up prices. I encouraged all parties to stick with Coalition’s NEG which retains wide community support.”

Here was the former PM effectively inserting himself into Question Time – in real time.

Morrison quickly quoted from the tweet, but it couldn’t repair the damage done by Turnbull’s earlier comments.

All round, it was another difficult day for the government on the energy front.

The Coalition parties meeting discussed its controversial plan providing for divestiture when energy companies misuse market power, with conduct that is “fraudulent, dishonest or in bad faith” in the wholesale market.

The government has put more constraints on its plan than originally envisaged. Notably, rather than a divestiture decision resting with the treasurer, it would lie with the federal court (although precisely what this would mean is somewhat unclear).

Frydenberg told a news conference: “This power will be on the advice of the ACCC [the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] to the Treasurer, and then the Treasurer will make a referral to the Federal Court. The Federal Court will then be empowered to make that judicial order.”

There had already been backbench criticisms expressed to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg last week; the changes dealt with some of these.

But the plan is still leaving some in Coalition ranks uneasy.

According to the official government version, in the party room 18 speakers had a say, with 14 supporting (though a couple of them were concerned about the interventionism involved) and four expressing varying degrees of reservation. No one threatened to cross the floor.

Backbench sources said the strongest critics were Jason Falinski, Russell Broadbent, Tim Wilson and former deputy leader Julie Bishop, while milder criticisms came from Craig Laundy, Scott Ryan and Jane Prentice.

There were two main worries about the measure – the potential negative impact on business investment and its inconsistency with Liberal party free market principles.

Bishop – who, it might be recalled, was recently saying there should be a bipartisan deal with Labor on the NEG – highlighted the investment implications and the issue of sovereign risk.

She said: “This is not orthodox Liberal policy. We need to do more consultation with the industry and we need to be cautious of unintended consequences of forced divestiture”.

Addressing the concerns, Morrison told the party room that a variety of principles were at play.

The energy sector was not “a free market nirvana” but rather “a bastardised market,” he said. The law was targeted at situations where sweetheart deals came at the expense of consumers.

Energy minister Angus Taylor said governments of the centre-right, including the Menzies and the Thatcher governments, had acted to ensure markets operated for consumers.

Taylor invoked an example of the beer drinkers against the brewers, when Thatcher had been on the side of the beers drinkers.

Frydenberg produced a quote from Menzies’ “Forgotten People” broadcasts about the need to balance the requirements of industry with social responsibilities.

The legislation, which is opposed by Labor even with the changes, is being introduced this week. But there is no guarantee that it can be passed by the time of the election – not least because there are so few sitting days next year.

So the most controversial part of the government’s “big stick”, which has caused so much angst with business, may never become a reality.

– ref. View from The Hill: Malcolm Turnbull and his NEG continue to haunt the government – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-malcolm-turnbull-and-his-neg-continue-to-haunt-the-government-108200

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Palmer, Associate professor, Deakin University

Victoria is finally getting a royal commission into policing following yesterday’s decisions of the High Court and earlier, the Victorian Supreme Court of Appeal, to release court rulings that outline an extraordinary episode in the use of a police informant.

The informant – referred to in court documents only as EF – was a barrister of the court who was also purporting to defend some of the alleged high profile criminals she was informing upon. This is a shocking breach of the barrister’s duty as an officer of the court to uphold legal professional privilege – that is, the confidentiality of what passes between barrister and client.

The royal commission is an effort to fully document not only what occurred in the specific instances of the high-profile convictions, but also broader questions concerning the administration of justice in Victoria and associated police practices.

It will be the first broad-based inquiry into policing in Victoria in 35 years.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews after announcing a Royal Commission into the conduct of a criminal defence barrister turned police informant – on her own clients. Ellen Smith/AAP

The findings cleared by the High Court for release outline a dispute between Victoria Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions over the release of documents that disclose the police use of the informer in several high-profile convictions. One decision given in the Supreme Court of Victoria as this dispute played out is given here .

In its ruling yesterday, the High Court used unusually scathing language:

EF’s actions in purporting to act as counsel for the convicted persons while covertly informing against them were fundamental and appalling breaches of EF’s obligations as counsel to her clients and of EF’s duties to the court. Likewise, Victoria Police were guilty of reprehensible conduct in knowingly encouraging EF to do as she did and were involved in sanctioning atrocious breaches of the sworn duty of every police officer to discharge all duties imposed on them faithfully and according to law without favour or affection, malice or ill-will.

I first called for such an inquiry in 2004 and again in 2011 – the circumstances were somewhat different, but were concerned with the extent to which Victorian policing practices were of high ethical standards at both operational and managerial levels.

The reason the government of Premier Daniel Andrews called a Royal Commission goes to the heart of the administration of justice: have people convicted of crimes been given a fair trial, and is there any possibility of miscarriages of justice?

A number of court cases have unfolded over in this dispute, centring on the question of whether the DPP should release information that documents the use of police informer EF, also known as “3838”. The argument against release was that EF’s life would be in danger if her actions became publicly known.

The cases are not findings of fact but rather whether this information should be made available outside the confines of Victoria Police and the DPP. This involves consideration of “public interest immunity”. At its simplest, the police argued that there was an “extreme” risk of death to EF if the information is released, and there was a need to protect the “informer system” that police rely on in many serious crimes.

The DPP has been robust in pushing back against the police desire for secrecy. In submissions at the various court hearings, it has argued that a balanced approach is needed to consider these issues as well as the serious misconduct of EF and the potential to:

seriously damage public confidence in legal professional privilege and the administration of justice more generally.

Further, considerations concerning disclosure includes allowing the full investigation of possible serious misconduct by police, ensuring public confidence in criminal justice administration and enhancing public deliberation of the legitimacy of police using a lawyer-informer.

The Supreme Court sided with the DPP that the disclosures are not subject to public interest immunity against disclosure.

The June 19 case provides significant detail about the use of EF and how a lawyer-turned-informer represents a threat to the integrity of criminal justice administration. Lawyers are “officers of the court” who have a “duty of loyalty” to their clients alongside a “duty of confidentiality”. Criminal justice administration demands legal professional privilege is protected as it is “critical to the functioning of the law”.

Or as Justice William Deane stated in the High Court in 1986 case in more dramatic terms, it is “a bulwark against tyranny and oppression … not to be sacrificed even to promoted the search for justice or truth in an individual case”.

Finally, a key issue regarding legal professional privilege is the widely held understanding that the “privilege belongs to the client, not the lawyer” so should only be breached on the client’s approval.

Yet this breach of privilege is precisely what has occurred and Victoria Police have been involved in detailed reviews identifying such concerns. For instance, the IBAC confidential review referred to as the Kellam Report was released in February 2015. This report, or parts of it, has been at the centre of the dispute between the police and the DPP.

Read more: Book extract: All Fall Down

Here is where we might draw on examples from elsewhere. First, Victoria has not had a broad-based inquiry into policing for 35 years (the Neesham Inquiry 1982-84 was the last broad inquiry), despite major commissions of inquiry and royal commissions into policing across Australia including the landmark Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland (1987-89) and the Wood Royal Commission in New South Wales (1995-97).

The Fitzgerald and Wood inquiries debunked the idea that police corruption and malpractice was only to be found in a few individuals. This is the “rotten apple” approach to police malpractice and these inquiries highlighted the paucity of such an approach. Instead, both found systemic corruption and malpractice from the bottom to the top of the respective organisatons.

Whether or not this will be found to be the case will of course be determined by the royal commission, whose terms of reference have not yet been announced, nor a commissioner appointed.

Three other aspects of these inquiries might be important to the forthcoming Victorian royal commission. First, both started with narrow terms of reference, as it seems will be the case in Victoria.

Second, in both instances the lead commissioner determined that the terms of reference needed to be broadened, which was accepted by the relevant governments.

Third, both found that to understand police malpractice, you must examine other aspects of criminal justice administration: police are one part of the “system”, and to understand what is occurring you need to inquire into the broader “ecological context” of police work. We can already see that this royal commission has to examine the police-DDP relationship, but my guess is far more besides.

The Andrews government is to be commended for acting swiftly in establishing the royal commission. But let’s hope the terms of reference are either broad enough in the first instance or that the commissioner appointed will, if necessary, ensure they are broadened appropriately.

– ref. Victorian royal commission into policing needs to take a broad approach: here’s why – http://theconversation.com/victorian-royal-commission-into-policing-needs-to-take-a-broad-approach-heres-why-108164

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glyn Davis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This is an edited version of a speech given at a summit to explore issues of academic freedom and autonomy hosted by the Australian National University. It’s a longer read, at just over 4,000 words. Enjoy!

The student stood, a little nervously, at the office door. Could he discuss his assessment for the semester? He laid out all his recent assignments, sadly none of them very well argued.

“I’ve read your comments very carefully”, he said.

“And while I do not disagree with any of the particular marks, I just think as a body of work this deserves a higher grade.”

This is special pleading. It means offering an argument though evidence is lacking or even contrary.

We special plead because we want something to be true even when we cannot prove the case. We rely on only those facts which suit our argument, claims of widespread support for our point of view, and the use of memorable examples, even when these diverge from verified broader trends.

Claims of a free speech crisis at Australian public universities are special pleading. We hear ministers, senators and think tanks speak about an imminent danger to free speech.

This concerns everyone who cares about higher education – free speech is essential to our shared notion of university life, and voices claiming a crisis on campus have been loud and widely heard.

Crisis talk has encouraged the Minister for Education to announce a review of free speech provisions, and to speculate about penalties for universities which fail some unspecified test.

Current Minister for Education, Dan Tehan. Lukas Coch/AAP

Yet it is sobering to read carefully the evidence offered in support of a free speech crisis.

This turns out to be a small number of anecdotes repeatedly retold, warnings about trends in the US, implausible readings of university policies, and unsourced claims that staff and student feel oppressed.

We are offered scraps of unrelated incidents. Tenuous and sometimes tendentious claims. Occasional concerning incidents. Some poorly framed policies. As though these sum to a higher mark.

But to date those asserting a crisis have provided no systematic evidence of a meaningful, sustained and growing threat to free speech on campus.

So what drives this sudden anxiety? To answer the question we must do what academics value: ask what is at stake and why it is being debated, consider ways free speech might be measured, test the evidence and assess whether the claim of a free speech crisis is reasonably stated and valid.

It can be slow and tedious to apply a scholarly logic to a free-flowing public debate. Politics move on while we ponder. Yet when people assert free speech on campus is under threat the stakes are important. Free speech goes to the very mission of a university, so it is worth taking time to consider the threat.

The context

The free speech controversy relies heavily on American examples, with the implication that Australia is, or will, travel down the same path.

The dependence on US material is striking. The 2017 Audit of Free Speech on Australian Campuses by the Institute of Public Affairs opens its discussion of “substantial hostility to free speech” not with Australian content but with American cases – Middlebury College, Evergreen State College, and widely reported clashes at the University of California Berkeley over an appearance by “conservative provocateur” Milo Yiannopoulous.

Likewise, a speech by the NSW Minister for Education, Rob Stokes, to the Centre for Independent Studies paid much attention to safe spaces, trigger warnings, and no-platforming.

NSW Education Minister Robert Stokes (left): has expressed concern about trigger warnings and no-platforming. Brendan Esposito/AAP

These are American trends, infrequently seen on an Australian campus. Yet the Minister concludes Australian university life is now a “monoculture” that has “narrowed robust debate to the point of non-existence.”

The free speech debate arises in the distinctive American context of campus politics. Overtly conservative organisations in the US seek to confront, and change, a university culture they see as hostile. Online publications such as Campus Reform and The Campus Fix hire student activists to report on the “liberal bias” of their professors, in articles fed to conservative news outlets.

A key message of such campaigns is that conservative students, uniquely, are the victims of constraints on free speech, denied a voice by administrators and fellow students.

Cohort data confirms university students are more likely to lean left than right, as indeed are all young people.

It does not follow that students with different views are oppressed. Cohort studies of young people in the US, reported by political scientist Jeffrey Sachs for the Niskanen Center, show no generational shift in attitudes to free speech.

Conservative commentators believe otherwise. They publicise incidents to foster the impression of a widespread problem and growing alarm.

Likewise, American conservative organisations invite contentious speakers onto campus to test the patience of university management.

This was once a standard tactic of the radical left, seeking to prove the operation of “repressive tolerance”. Now provocation on campus is the tactic of right leaning organisations.

American practice draws on two different threads of thinking.

Some avowedly American conservative organisations are keen to assert traditional values. The modern university, says Morton C. Blackwell, President of the Leadership Institute, is a “left-wing indoctrination centre”.

This view is widely shared among conservatives. A 2018 PEW poll found 79% of Republican-leaning Americans worry professors bring their political and social views into the classroom.

The second strand is libertarian in outlook, critical of anything that might constrain free expression.

Here the issue is less content than process – free speech as an overriding value, which must never be compromised for institutional reasons.

So for a traditional conservative, the worry is curriculum, for a libertarian, the concern is anything that constrains open expression.

Both strands of thinking influence Australian material on campus free speech.

The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) adopts American conservative campaign techniques. It has created “Generation Liberty” in which current students serve as campus organisers at seven Australian universities.

Former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, speaking to the Institute of Public Affairs in 2012. Mick Tsikas/AAP

Yet policy proposals offered by the IPA and the Centre for Independent Studies depart from traditional conservative caution about the role of the state and the risks of regulation.

They promote a libertarian definition of free speech, heavily influenced by American first amendment thinking, and demand more government regulation of universities.

Finding an accurate label for this mix of conservative and libertarian impulses is not easy. Here we call them “right leaning”.

Whatever the term, importing American analysis and campaign techniques only makes sense if there is significant overlap between ferment on American campuses and practice in Australia. To test this, we turn from context to evidence.

Assessing the evidence

Those who claim a free speech crisis on campus must establish their case – to them falls the burden of proof.

So what follows is an examination of the most widely quoted evidence for suppression of free speech on campus. The case is neatly summarised in an opinion editorial published by The Australian, in which Matthew Lesh from the IPA cites as evidence of free speech suppression the sacking of a geophysist at James Cook University, complaints from Chinese students about maps in a classroom presentation, concerns about a film screening at Sydney University, and a decision by the University of Western Australia to reject funding for a research centre associated with Bjorn Lomberg.

The list is said to be representative rather than complete – for these, says Mr Lesh, “are not isolated incidents”:

Academics have voiced concerns about the progressive monoculture at our universities jeopardising research and teaching. Students with a different perspective are too scared to express their contrary opinion.

Meanwhile, risk-averse universities bureaucracies succumb to censorious demands. Universities also maintain policies that chill free speech by preventing insulting or unwelcome comments, offensive language or, in some cases, sarcasm and hurt feelings.

Activist students are couching their demands for censorship in the language of safety – the absurd claim that merely hearing an idea can make people unsafe.

The result, says Mr Leach, is a “free speech crisis”, a judgement echoed by some Coalition senators. Not everyone is persuaded. When Shadow Minister for Universities, Louise Pratt, expressed doubt – “I don’t think there is a problem on campuses in relation to free speech” – she was critiqued by Mr Leach for ignoring “mounting evidence to the contrary”. So what is the case, and by what criteria should it be assessed?

Tests for free speech

“Mounting evidence” of suppression requires a threshold definition.

Debate in the US and now Australia has produced eloquent statements about the nature and argument for free speech, nowhere more finely expressed then by Chancellor Carol Christ at the University of California Berkeley.

As she observes, “the public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university.”

Inviting uncomfortable speakers on to campus may clash with campus expectations of “tolerance and inclusion, reason and diversity,” but universities must live with that tension.

These themes have been explored by several thoughtful Australian texts on the role and responsibilities around free speech on campus. We draw on two in particular – a speech by retired Chief Justice Robert French, who is also Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, and a paper by eminent legal academics Professor Adrienne Stone and Ms Jade Roberts.

Former High Court Chief Justice Robert French being sworn in, in October 2008. Alan Porritt/AAP

These experts on free speech stress the complexity of issues at play. Chancellor French has noted there is no legal requirement for universities to provide a forum for all speakers, though there should be a high threshold for denying an invitation.

Stone and Roberts draw an important distinction between academic freedom and free speech.

Academic freedom is the right to carry out research, teaching and public comment without intrusion. It requires a degree of institutional autonomy to protect that right.

Free speech on campus, by contrast, has no special standing. It is the same right as free speech elsewhere in Australia – the right to self-expression, to question and criticise institutions and ideas. There are no protections at a university from laws that constrain free speech elsewhere in society, such as prohibitions on vilification and defamation.

Academic freedom and free speech require different tests.

Academic freedom is articulated in university rules, which can be examined through application and challenge.

By contrast, freedom of speech may require no university statutes at all, since it is regulated by general law.

Yet as Stone and Roberts detail, universities are complex places. They are built on a commitment to truth and free expression, but also require procedures to manage conflict, assess the work of students and staff, regulate employment conditions, encourage civility and discipline unacceptable behaviour.

What does complexity imply? It introduces judgement into any assessment. Academic freedom and free speech should be thought about in context, examined against circumstances. They are nowhere an unfettered right, but a question of appropriateness.

Still, in thinking about free speech in this complex, organic structure, Stone and Roberts provide some guidance.

Not everything that happens on campus is under the control of management. Universities should accept a high tolerance for student protests but no right to disrupt events. A university can reasonably require speakers to respect scholarly standards.

Even with threshold definitions established, any assessment still needs data. Claims of “mounting evidence” imply accelerating activity.

Here the available material is thin.

A survey of Australian print media reports finds no evidence of change in volume or intensity for clashes on campus with free speech implications. The IPA 2017 audit identifies just five confrontations with speakers at Australian campuses, and one withdrawn invitation, in a survey that spans several years. These seem modest numbers for a crisis.

Still, the IPA claims that public universities cannot be trusted to honour free speech. Is this a defensible conclusion?

Speakers and events

The IPA rollcall of threats to free speech on campus begins with the cancellation of controversial speakers, censorship of academics and “special security” fees for conservative speakers. It cites noisy protests against psychologist Bettina Arndt, speaking at the invitation of Liberal clubs at La Trobe and Sydney universities.

Protests produce dramatic images.

Nonetheless, Ms Arndt spoke at both Sydney and La Trobe because university security staff ensured campus venues remained open. Her comments, challenging an alleged rape culture on campus, were duly reported in the media.

The Arndt example highlights tensions in free speech decisions on campus. Arndt was a guest of a student club. Her campus tour was designed to challenge students campaigning against sexual violence. The universities incurred significant costs protecting Ms Arndt’s right to speak – and in ensuring the equal right of students to protest against her message.

Despite demonstrations – and an unimpressive refusal by protestors to engage in dialogue when offered – Ms Arndt exercised her right to address an interested audience. This seems a success for free speech on campus, rather than evidence of intolerance.

The controversy that followed focused on whether the Liberal Club that issued the invitation should contribute $500 towards security costs. Reasonable people might argue about who should share the costs, including the responsibility of protestors. At the Australian National University, university leadership has agreed to pay such costs rather than compromise the principle of free speech.

In historical context, the 2010s are among the quietest periods for protest in memory on the Australian campus – just ask the people who studied at universities in the 1970s and early 1980s.

University students gather to protest as part of a National Day of Action at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Wednesday, May 17, 2017. Paul Miller/AAP

In my 18 years as a Vice-Chancellor, at two institutions, I can only recall two incidents on my watch where protesters prevented a speaker. Over the same years, tens of thousands of public events, academic conferences and seminars proceeded without concern.

Exaggerating the number or significance of no platforming events is special pleading. Protests against speakers on an Australian campus remain memorable but rare events.

Academic freedom

The IPA case for a free speech crisis then turns to questions of academic freedom.

Academic freedom is the right of academic staff to speak out as members of the university community. It is jealously guarded by academic boards and professional associations – perceived breaches become matters of public controversy, with the risk of significant reputational damage.

Academic freedom is also protected in federal law, research rules and registration standards.

Universities have policies that express and enforce those legal strictures.

Without more public information it is difficult to offer comment on the sole case cited by the IPA, involving a professor at James Cook University. We should note the independent processes available to test any claim of improper treatment, including the courts.

A crisis, though, implies regular and growing incidents. Again, there is no evidence offered to support such a conclusion. More than 50,000 academics work in Australian universities, yet cases of scholars said to be disciplined or dismissed in violation of academic freedom remain infrequent, and fiercely debated when they occur.

From staff, the IPA turns to questions of curriculum. This raises a different aspect of academic freedom, who decides what can be taught.

The IPA notes that Chinese students have complained about maps used in class, and challenge textbooks with derogatory comments about Chinese officials.

A complaint about classroom content is free speech in action. The issue is not the question but the response – do universities react in robust and independent ways? Does an institution stay true to scholarly values?

When challenged about naming Taiwan as a separate country, an academic at the University of Newcastle held his ground, quoting as his source a report from Transparency International.

On the other hand, a lecturer from Sydney University apologised when students complained, correctly, that a map used in class inaccurately showed established borders.

Likewise Monash University investigated a complaint about a bank of questions used in a subject exam, and acknowledged the complaint expressed was reasonable.

In each case cited, universities used an internal review process to adjudicate the complaint. Such responses seem appropriate.

Concerns about Chinese influence and academic freedom extend to the roles of Confucius Institutes and significant donations to centres at UTS and Sydney University.

Read more: The Australia-China Relations Institute doesn’t belong at UTS

Similar questions of institutional autonomy come into play over the University of Western Australia declining a proffered Consensus Centre, and ANU ending negotiations with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

The outcomes vary, but each decision involves public debate about the risk of donors compromising institutional autonomy. Colleagues express opinions, weigh the merits, consider advantages of funding against potential risks.

When funding is declined, this is no affront to free speech. In the memorable words of ANU Chancellor Gareth Evans, an institution offered a donation must “look this gift horse in the mouth”.

Freedom of association – the right to choose one’s company without compulsion – is also a fundamental right.

It is hard to sustain claims of a crisis for academic freedom. The pace and intensity of controversies appear little changed. Arguments about curriculum are part of normal university business, and no example offered by the IPA suggests a retreat from scholarly standards.

Institutions sometimes make poor choices, and deserve censure, but the vigilance of the academic community on questions of academic freedom appears undiminished.

Censorship

Finally, the IPA turns to claims of censorship on campus.

Here, the IPA looks for any statement that will constrain unfettered expression on campus. The ambit is wide – student guides, social media rules, anti-racism statements and university human resources policy.

The 2017 IPA audit is the most substantial survey of university practice offered in the free speech debate. It samples some 165 policy statements from across the sector and scores these against a “hostility index”, a ranking of universities by perceived censorship of free expression. Most universities are found wanting.

Such reports impose hard numbers on matters of judgement. Policies are presented as binary choices – yes or not to suppressing free speech – and marked accordingly.
This leads to some implausible judgements.

For example, an audit list of an unacceptable speech code opens with a Murdoch University by-law that prescribes a A$50 fine for “insulting language” or “offensive behaviour”.

This sounds concerning – but some delving into the Murdoch rules and procedures suggests background considerations missing from the IPA assessment.

Graffiti in Newtown, NSW. JAM Project/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

A Murdoch student concerned about the behaviour of others would likely consult the university website. This defines insulting or offensive behaviour as a category of bullying, and offers numerous resources, including definitions from Western Australian law, a list of frequently asked questions on the topic, and advice on how to handle bullying. If concerns persist, the website list contacts within the university.

And the A$50 fine?

It is found in by-law seven, a short provision dealing with assault and abuse, indecent or improper acts. When proved, removal from university land is the first sanction, the second a possible fine.

The IPA audit does not offer a view on a reasonable way to manage offensive and insulting behaviour on campus. Murdoch choses to do so through graduated steps – first advice, then procedures and, finally, penalties that may include a fine.

This policy is condemned by the IPA through reference only to the ultimate penalty, and proclaimed an example of chilling free speech. The audit goes on to count Murdoch among the top third of offending Australian institutions.

This is special pleading, since it ignores context and policy intention. No link to free speech is established. It seems unlikely any Murdoch student feels constrained by by-law seven. Few if any may know it exists. A step approach is a sensible way to address difficult issues on campus. To describe such policy as a threat to free expression is a schoolboy’s debating triumph.

There are unnecessary and possibly even harmful university regulations. These are worth examination. An audit that looked at regulations in context, and suggested improvements, might be a helpful contribution.

But it is likely such an audit would likely not conclude, as does the IPA, that a majority of Australian universities “limit the diversity of ideas on campus”. On the evidence provided in the IPA 2017 audit this is overreach, a pronouncement with little visible means of support.

The policy proposal

Since evidence of systematic constraint on speech and events, academic freedom and censorship is tenuous, why proclaim a crisis at all?

Because a crisis justifies intervention hard to argue in more peaceful times. And for the IPA and CIS, the “free speech crisis” requires new federal controls.

Once again, this is a response inspired by American tactics.

The Goldwater Institute, a US think tank, issued a Model Bill in January 2017 as a template so American states can regulate free speech on campus.

The bill requires universities to be “neutral” in the face of public controversies. That is, public universities cannot support any action deemed as unacceptable by some on campus, such as ending university endowment investment in fossil fuel companies.

Statutes drawing on the Goldwater Institute Model Bill have been adopted by Republican legislatures in Colorado, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia, and remain before other state legislatures.

The version proposed in Georgia imposes penalties on any student who “interferes with the free expression of others.” The Minnesota draft cautions professors against expressing personal views in the classroom, introducing controversial material with no relation to the subject taught, or making statements on subjects in which they have no expertise.

A sign on campus at the University of Slippery Rock in Pennsylvania, US. Brian Turner/flickr, CC BY

The American Association of University Professors has labelled campus free speech laws as “false friends”, because they base bad policy on good principles.

The Association sees a political agenda masquerading behind free speech, a conservative recasting of universities to stop them being a voice for progressive causes. This legislation, concludes the Association, introduces new controls under the cover of grossly exaggerated threats to free speech on campus.

In proposing free speech legislation for Australia, local advocates argue regulation will end a “worrying culture of censorship” on campus.

So Jeremy Sammut, from the Centre for Independent Studies, wants compulsory “university freedom charters” as a condition of public funding. Such measures, he argues, are necessary because of the “complacent attitudes of Australian higher education leaders.”

Indeed, he says, “university administrators…are unwilling to even acknowledge free speech problems.” Hence, “it is difficult to trust them to self-regulate free speech solutions”.

Perhaps university administrators don’t acknowledge such claims because Mr Sammut provides no evidence of disruption on campus to support his contention; he simply asserts what must be demonstrated.

There is much that puzzles about the legislative proposal advanced by both the IPA and CIS. Once right leaning groups were wary of the coercive power of the state. They argued laws should be used sparingly and framed cautiously to avoid unintended consequences. A Burkean logic resisted needless change to established social relations.

In 2018, though, right-leaning think tanks champion federal regulation and demand state sanctions.

IPA Director John Roskam is quite explicit – since universities rely on public money, government has the right to make decisions about how that money is spent. If takes “heavy-handed government regulation” to “ensure freedom of speech and freedom of academic inquiry at Australia’s universities then so be it.”

On the other hand, Mr Roskam strongly opposes government regulation of private entities.

This year alone he has ridiculed proposals for mandated compliance mechanisms on Australia’s banks, called the banking royal commission a “show trial”, and opposed mandatory diversity quotas for private companies.

Here is the heart of the agenda. As in the US, this is a campaign to open public universities to more conservative voices, and to punish institutions perceived to take progressive stances on issues.

If Australian outrages to justify such intervention prove few and far between, there are always American examples to cite.

Hence the special pleading – new legislation to regulate universities is not a reasoned response to circumstances, but a solution looking for a problem.

The need for a sense of proportion

The free speech critique relies on an assumption that American campus issues are relevant to Australian experience. The evidence for this is slight.

As Nick Haslam argues convincingly, concerns about relativist professors, political correctness and the perceived decline of western civilisation reflect US preoccupations.

Australia has no tradition of violent campus protests. No statues have been pulled down.

Identity politics has not captured local campus politics. On the contrary, recent student campaigns focus on long-standing concerns about sexual harassment, environmental issues and student fees.

The demand for Chicago-style free speech codes – to address imaginary challenges – reflects the gravitational pull of American conservative thinking.

In 2008, and again in 2018, Australia’s university leaders issued unequivocal statements setting out the founding principle of their institutions:

Australian universities restate our enduring commitment to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry. We also restate our enduring commitment to freedom of expression on our campuses and among our staff and students.

They do not welcome the importation of legislative responses and codes of conduct written in the United States against the constitution and laws of that nation. Australians can craft their own words – if required.

For “freedom does not require a positive law to explain or justify its existence”, as Chancellor French has observed.

Confucius said: when words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom. from www.shutterstock.com

Claims of a crisis require evidence. A crisis means trends that can be measured, frequent examples that demonstrate consistent worrying behaviour, proof of an organised assault on an underpinning principle of public universities.

All are conspicuously absent.

You cannot take isolated events and inconsequential statements and argue that somehow they sum to a case.

Around the globe there are real threats to academic freedom – oppressive new laws in Hungary and Turkey, tightening party control in China, the arrest of scholars in the Middle East, violent clashes between left and right on American campuses.

And there are issues closer to home:

• funding policies that make universities dependent on international students and donors.

• new security laws that circumscribe areas of research.

• overriding safeguards designed to make research funding decisions transparent and non-political.

These are the challenges to institutional autonomy and campus freedoms we should discuss, not some confected calamity.

Trivialising a fundamental principle by tying it to meaningless “hostility” tests is dangerous.

If requesting civility in a student code is an assault on free speech, what will we say when real dangers arrive?

For as Confucius noted, when words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom.

– ref. Special pleading: free speech and Australian universities – http://theconversation.com/special-pleading-free-speech-and-australian-universities-108170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Farmery, Research Fellow, University of Wollongong

Many Australians are concerned with the sustainability of their seafood. While definitions of sustainability vary, according to government assessments, over 85% of seafood caught in Australia is sustainable.

However, just because a fish is sustainably caught, it doesn’t make it the most nutritious and healty option – and vice versa. For the first time, research has investigated the seafood Australians eat in terms of what’s best for us and the planet.

Read more: How to reduce slavery in seafood supply chains

Our study, published today in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, found that Australians consume a lot of large oceanic fish, like shark and tuna, as well as farmed salmon and prawns, but there are other, healthier options available like mackerel, sardines and blue grenadier.

Shutterstock, unless otherwise noted

What Australians eat

The word seafood is used to describe thousands of different species, both marine and freshwater, and from the wild or farmed. Because of these differences, the environmental footprint of “seafood” can vary greatly, as can their nutritional profile.

Our research used data from the Australian Health Survey to investigate the nutritional quality and sustainability of seafood consumption in Australia.

We measured nutrition by the estimated contribution of 100g of a given seafood to the average requirement of protein, omega 3, calcium, iodine, selenium and zinc. Sustainability was assessed on the basis of stock status, resource use, habitat and ecosystem impacts, and health and disease management.

The majority of respondents (83%) did not consume any seafood on the day of the survey, and we found that there were large discrepancies in consumption patterns between different sociodemographic groups.

Of those who did consume seafood, the proportion was lowest among adults who were unemployed, had the least education and those who were most socio-economically disadvantaged.

Crustaceans and low-omega 3 fish, such as basa and tilapia, which were identified as some of the least nutritious and least sustainable types of seafood, constituted a substantial amount of total seafood intake for the lowest socio-economic consumers.

In contrast, consumers in the highest socio-demographic group consumed mainly high trophic level fish, such as tuna and shark, and farmed fish with high omega-3 content, such as salmon and trout, which were considered the more nutritious types of seafood with a moderate sustainability. Less than 1% of adults reported eating sardines and mackerel which were considered some of the most nutritious and sustainable varieties.

What is sustainability?

Sustainability in seafood is complex and difficult to quantify. Greenhouse gas emissions are not currently covered by the major assessment groups, despite the contribution of the fishing industry to global emissions and the variation between different seafood types.

For example, growing demand for crustaceans like prawns or shrimp, is resulting in higher emissions from the global fishing fleet, as these fisheries are fuel intensive. In contrast, small pelagic fisheries, such as sardines, have very low emissions – although they are a lot less popular.

Farmed seafoods also vary considerably in their environmental footprint. In the past, large farmed species of fish have been fed with much smaller wild fish. This practice is in decline, with small feed fish replaced by crops and animal by-products.

However, it’s not clear this substitution is environmentally friendly. At the same time, the nutritional value of farmed fish has decreased.

Making better choices

Detailed nutrition information is not readily available at the point of purchase for fresh seafood. It can be tricky making an informed decision on the spot.

However, Food Standards Australia and New Zealand have created nutrient profiles for a range of food, including seafood. The National Heart Foundation of Australia provides information on the amount of marine-sourced omega-3s in fish and seafood commonly available, with species such as Atlantic salmon and sardines listed as highest sources, while prawns and crabs are much lower.

To check the sustainability of your seafood choice, you can consult the AMCS guide or look for certifications such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for wild capture fisheries or the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) or Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) logos. WWF have also developed a canned tuna guide (changeyourtuna.org.au).

Eating new seafood species can be tricky if you are not familiar with them. There are many resources available to help you pick and prepare seafood, such as FRDC fish files, Sydney Fish Market recipes and an SBS section on sustainable seafood recipes.

In WA, the Western Australian Fishing Industry Council have produced guides on local seafood, including information on underultised species, cooking and storage. South Australians can now pick up local fish from the new Community Supported Fishery each week, or have it delivered.

Read more: The sustainable vegetables that thrive on a diet of fish poo

All food production has an impact, but making an informed choice can be beneficial for health and the environment. So, get adventurous with your seafood selections by experimenting with choices that are both nutritious and meet your sustainability criteria. As you become more familiar with different species and ways to prepare them, you won’t have to juggle different guides at the fish counter and decide it’s all too hard.

– ref. Here’s the seafood Australians eat (and what we should be eating) – http://theconversation.com/heres-the-seafood-australians-eat-and-what-we-should-be-eating-108046