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

Malcolm Turnbull has struck back angrily at a report that he has been helping independent Kerryn Phelps, his successor in Wentworth, as chaos continues to fracture the Liberals.

Responding to a front page-lead story in The Australian headed “Turnbull plays invisible hand”, the former prime minister tweeted, “Attribution bias – blaming others for the consequences of your own actions is a common symptom of paranoia.

“Imagining “invisible” people are out to get you is also a classic symptom. Not often on the front page of course…“

The report said Turnbull had been in regular contact with Phelps and had had a former electorate office staffer work for the new member for three days to help in the transition.

It also said Phelps had counselled MP Julia Banks before the Victorian MP’s defection from the Liberal party to the crossbench this week.

The story was another manifestion of the deep bitterness still consuming the Liberals from the leadership coup, which has been reactivated by the Banks’ defection. Banks made a stinging attack on those who ousted Turnbull in her speech to parliament.

Phelps said on Thursday that Turnbull had had no contact with her during the Wentworth campaign. Afterwards he had offered assistance for a smooth transition. She said she and Turnbull had not discussed Banks.

She told Sky that “Mr Turnbull enabled a couple of his staff members to come in to instruct my staff members on the changeover.”

Phelps confirmed that Banks had approached her before defecting.

“Julia reached out to me for some consultation about what that process might look and feel like, and I indicated that I would be there to support her in that transition and the three female crossbenchers were there to support her when she gave her statement,” she said.

Meanwhile embattled right wing Liberal Craig Kelly, who faces losing preselection, has changed tactics in his fight to survive.

After earlier repeatedly refusing to rule out defecting to the crossbench, Kelly – wearing a T-shirt with the face of Robert Menzies on it – told the ABC he would not do so.

He said he had a contract with the people of his Hughes electorate to serve through the terms as a Liberal member.

He did not rule out running as an independent if he lost preselection, saying “I haven’t considered that”. He claimed to be confident of being re-endorsed – although the numbers are against him.

Posing with the T-shirt wearing Kelly, Tony Abbott tweeted, “Always good to be with a real Liberal!”.

The Senate on Thursday voted to alter the government’s sitting timetable for next year to ensure Senate estimates hearings will he held on the April 2 budget before the election is called. The timetable released earlier this week would not have had estimates hearing before the poll.

Labor is also introducing in the Senate its own bill to protect LGBTI students against discrimination, after negotiations between the government and the opposition on a bill reached an impasse.

– ref. Malcolm Turnbull accuses his critics of “paranoia” – http://theconversation.com/malcolm-turnbull-accuses-his-critics-of-paranoia-107891

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

Josh Frydenberg, who became treasurer and deputy Liberal leader in the tumultuous events of August, said the party has “big challenges”.

While the government is “disappointed” by this week’s defection of Julia Banks to the crossbench they “remain as a group focused on the challenges ahead. And we have big challenges, there’s no doubt about that.” He said he “absolutely” will be keeping in touch with Banks.

Frydenberg reiterates that the Liberal party is still a “broad church” and says he isn’t concerned about other MPs like Craig Kelly following Banks’ suit. “I know that Craig is a strong Liberal and that Craig will continue to put the government’s case.”

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Josh Frydenberg on Liberal troubles – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-josh-frydenberg-on-liberal-troubles-107887

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Senior Lecturer (Media and Culture), University of Wollongong

This piece is part of a series on race and racism in Australia. The series examines this complex and incendiary topic, and the role it plays in contemporary Australia. You can read the rest of the series here and here.

While giving a talk at a community arts organisation in Parramatta on why the stories of diverse areas like Western Sydney are not seen on mainstream screens, I was introduced to a screenwriter who had formerly worked for one of Australia’s longest-running soaps, Home and Away.

His take was that having studied post-colonial theory as a white person in the 1990s, he was hesitant to write stories based on experiences and cultures other than his own. Another prominent producer on the panel declared that he never thought about diversity when deciding what stories to invest in.

These perspectives – avoidance for fear of offending and a colour-blind disregard for diversity, respectively – are emblematic of our faltering progress on the issue of media diversity. Most recently, the issue has been in the spotlight due to reports that the controversial character of Apu is going to be written out of the iconic animated sitcom, The Simpsons.

Read more: Goodbye Apu — here’s what you meant to us

The problem with Apu

The fact that the Apu issue has made international headlines speaks to not only the wide appeal of The Simpsons, but also the grief this characterisation has caused viewers of South Asian origin over the years.

In his 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu, Indian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu explored how this prime-time stereotyping has been a source of racial micro-aggressions and slurs, even for Simpsons’ fans who appreciate the bent rules of comedy.

‘It’s funny because it’s racist,’ Kondabolu says of Apu’s characterisation.

The controversy surrounding Apu is not a case of taking offence at a benign joke. Research has shown that being exposed to certain comedic devices and conventions over the long term naturalises racial stereotypes and differences for audiences of all backgrounds.

The characterisation of Apu has real implications for the lives of people of colour who bear the brunt of bullying based on the character, and for actors of South Asian origin who are only seen as authentic if they sound and act like they run a Kwik-E-Mart.

Kondabolu’s documentary recognises Apu as a form of “brownface”, where a white actor dons the exaggerated characteristics of another racial group. Turning characters into caricatures, this practice perpetuates demeaning stereotypes and distances the viewer from the characters in question.

A non-Indian actor (Hank Azaria) voicing Apu in a thick, exaggerated accent may not have been out of place in 1990. However, a growing awareness of the potentially harmful repercussions of such characterisations means that it is no longer so.

Apu is characterised by an exaggerated Indian accent and his stories often draw on racial stereotypes.

So what are the alternatives for maintaining the essence of good comedy while portraying non-white communities in a substantive and ethical manner?

The need for stories created by people of colour

Since 2016, I have been working on an Australia Research Council-funded Linkage project that examines the parallel histories of migration and television in Australia. Through interviews with creators of “diverse” content, it has become evident that comedy is often a lightning rod for broader conversations about racial stereotyping. For people of colour, it can serve as a specific narrative tool to help them create their own authentic stories.

Read more: Shock horror: the big end of town has finally discovered Australia’s media is a whitewash

Part of comedy’s draw is its ability to comment on current cultural and social issues in an often more engaging way than the traditional news media. In the context of racial representation, comedy can be used as a hook to engage audiences who might not otherwise watch a show explicitly about race.

Ben Law, the writer of SBS’s The Family Law (a comedy centred around a Chinese-Australian family), addressed this in my interview with him:

We want to make a show that is as dramatically hefty as it is funny… We are writing it as a comedy to invite people in.

By drawing in people from a range of class and ethnic backgrounds, comedy can explore complex issues of difference with nuance and without reverting to stereotypes.

Besides audience engagement, comedy is a powerful medium for people of colour to tell their own stories on their own terms. Kondabolu has referred to stand-up routines as “direct to consumer, farm to table”. The genre allows those previously underrepresented and misrepresented to set their own agendas and create their own narratives, rather than waiting for mainstream institutions and their decision-makers to change.

However, we must be wary of letting comedy created by people of colour get shunted to the side as a subcategory of the genre. Rob Shehadie, who has a long career in “wog comedy” in Australia, told me these labels can make the stories seem less accessible to people who don’t identify with specific ethnic backgrounds.

It’s not like I don’t like doing ethnic comedy. I’m an ethnic and I do comedy. I try to water it down because people go, ‘Oh you’re doing an ethnic comedy, a multicultural comedy’, but really I’m telling my life or my experiences and I’m born in Australia, so really I’m an Australian doing Australian comedy.

Read more: Fresh Off the Boat and the rise of niche TV

This speaks to why media created by people of colour need to be seen as within the mainstream, in line with an evolving and multicultural Australian identity. Comedy is a touchstone for how immigrant nations creatively mediate belonging.

So what do we do about Apu?

An episode of The Simpsons earlier this year responded to Kondabolu’s documentary by simplistically implying that political correctness is antithetical to good storytelling.

The Simpsons’ response to the Apu controversy.

However, if the success of stories with diverse casts is anything to go by, good storytelling is also a matter of taking the pulse of the current socio-political context and creating content to match.

Comedy is often most incisive when it reflects the time and place it is situated in. Looking at The Simpsons’ declining ratings over the years, we may draw the conclusion that this has happened because other animated sitcoms are better keeping up with the times.

In response to The Simpsons episode above, producer Adi Shanker crowdsourced a solution to the problem of Apu by inviting scripts that re-imagined the character and challenge stereotypes.

Headed by people of colour, projects that critically engage with the complicated history of the character represent a potential way forward. A better way forward, in fact, than cutting off discussion by discarding the offensive subject in question altogether. The time now is ripe to re-write and re-voice Apu.

– ref. The problem with Apu: why we need better portrayals of people of colour on television – http://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-apu-why-we-need-better-portrayals-of-people-of-colour-on-television-106707

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Carey, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

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

When you pick up supplies at your local supermarket for tonight’s dinner, the produce will likely have come from many parts of Australia and from distant parts of the world. But some of the fresh produce may also have come from one of the highly productive foodbowls on the fringes of Australia’s state capitals.

The role that city fringe farmers play in feeding cities is sometimes overlooked in an era of sophisticated supply chains that enable food to be sourced from all over the world. But city foodbowls make a significant contribution to Australia’s fresh food supplies, and cities can do more to support them.

Areas outside Melbourne identified as ‘foodbowls’ for city-fringe farming. Foodprint Melbourne

Why being close to cities makes sense

Many cities now recognise the need to strengthen relationships with local farmers as a way to increase the resilience of their food supplies to climate change and make efficient use of scarce natural resources.

Retaining food production close to urban areas can reduce food shortages if transport routes into the city are cut off (for example, by a major storm or flood). Recycled water from city water treatment plants can also be used to grow food during a drought, and food waste can be processed into organic fertilisers for use on nearby farms.

Read more: To feed growing cities we need to stop urban sprawl eating up our food supply

Strengthening links between cities and farms on the fringe can improve farmer livelihoods and grow the local economy.

Farmers on the city fringe are caught in a tight “cost price squeeze” with very high land prices (and rates) and low farm-gate prices. Many are small-scale farmers who find it difficult to compete through economies of scale. But there are also advantages to being close to the city, such as the proximity to city markets and access to recycled water.

The Foodprint Melbourne project has just released an infographic that showcases the mutually beneficial relationships that can be developed between cities and the farmers on their fringes. These ideas were developed in workshops that brought Victorian stakeholders together from across sectors (farmers, industry, local government, state government and civil society) to explore how the viability of farming on Melbourne’s fringe could be strengthened.

How food can make its way from the city fringes to urban residents. Foodprint Melbourne

The infographic shows how strong links between cities and local farmers can create a two-way exchange. Farmers can capture a higher share of the food retail dollar by selling direct to local consumers (through farmers markets or community-supported agriculture) or local businesses (such as cafes and restaurants). City residents benefit from access to fresh, local produce and from opportunities to participate in agri-tourism activities on nearby farms (such as pick your own produce and farm-gate bike trails).

Food from Melbourne’s foodbowl can also be sold directly to local families, shops and restaurants in the city, in addition to being transported interstate and overseas via city airports. A new provenance brand could be introduced so consumers and businesses can easily recognise food from the area and support local farmers.

Read more: Urban sprawl is threatening Sydney’s foodbowl

State and local governments could introduce food procurement standards so that government services, such as hospitals, prisons and “meals on wheels” programs, are encouraged to buy food from Victorian farmers. Government food procurement standards like these are already used in other countries, such as the United States and Canada.

Farmer incubators could be established to help new farmers access land and begin farming on the city fringe, mentored by experienced growers. Farmer-owned food-processing co-operatives could enable these growers to add value to their produce and take greater control of the food supply chain.

Governments are slowly starting to realise the importance of city fringe farming and providing greater protections. Foodprint Melbourne

How to encourage city fringe farms to thrive

Cities around the world now recognise the importance of actively strengthening links with farmers on the city fringe. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has released a “city region food system toolkit” that supports cities in building closer links with nearby farmers to improve farmer livelihoods, grow local economies and increase access to healthy, sustainable food.

A key step is to provide certainty about the future of farming areas close to cities by introducing laws that protect them for the long term. The city of Portland, Oregon, for instance, has created rural reserves that protect important farming areas for at least 50 years.

Measures to promote the viability of farming are equally important. In Ontario, the provincial government funds the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation to promote farming, tourism and conservation in the agricultural area surrounding Toronto.

Read more: Farming the suburbs – why can’t we grow food wherever we want?

The links between cities and the farmers on their fringes have weakened as modern food supply chains have developed, but there is renewed interest among consumers in reconnecting with where their food comes from.

To improve access to locally grown food and increase the resilience of food systems to climate change, we need to build mutually supportive relationships between cities and the growers on their fringes, so that farms thrive as our cities grow.

– ref. Feeding cities in the 21st century: why urban-fringe farming is vital for food resilience – http://theconversation.com/feeding-cities-in-the-21st-century-why-urban-fringe-farming-is-vital-for-food-resilience-106162

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Beggs, Associate Professor and Environmental Health Scientist, Macquarie University

Extreme heat affects the mental health of Australians to the same degree as unemployment, yet Australia’s policy action on climate change lags behind other high-income countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom.

As Australia approaches another summer, we face the inevitability of deadly heatwaves. Our report published today in the Medical Journal of Australia concludes that policy inaction, particularly at the federal level, is putting Australian lives at risk.

The report, The MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: Australian policy inaction threatens lives, builds on an earlier publication in The Lancet medical journal, which concluded climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.

Read more: Climate mitigation – the greatest public health opportunity of our time

Australia is the first to prepare its own country-level report. Developed in partnership with the Lancet Countdown – which tracks the global connections between health and climate change – it adopts the structure and methods of the global assessment but with an Australian focus.

How Australians’ health suffers

Australians are already facing climate change-related exposures that come from increasing annual average temperatures, heatwaves and weather-related disasters. Australian deaths during the 2014 Adelaide heatwave and Melbourne’s 2016 thunderstorm asthma event are examples of the risk climate poses to our health.

Read more: Keeping one step ahead of pollen triggers for thunderstorm asthma

Our report was produced by a team of 19 experts from 13 universities and research institutes. We aimed to answer what we know about climate change and human health in Australia and how we are responding to this threat, if at all.

To do this, our team examined more than 40 indicators that enable us to track progress on the broad and complex climate change and human health issue. Health impact indicators included the health effects of temperature change and heatwaves, change in labour capacity, trends in climate-sensitive diseases, lethality of weather-related disasters and food insecurity and malnutrition.

We also developed an indicator for the impacts of climate change on mental health. This involved examining the association between mean annual maximum temperatures and suicide rates for all states and territories over the last ten years.

We found that, in most jurisdictions, the suicide rate increased with increasing maximum temperature. In Australia’s changing climate, we urgently need to seek ways to break the link between extreme temperature and suicide.

Adelaide’s 2014 heatwave had a significant effect on people’s health. Ben Searcy/AAP One

Across other indicators, we found workers’ compensation claims in Adelaide increased by 6.2% during heatwaves, mainly among outdoor male workers and tradespeople over 55 years.

And we found the length of heatwaves increased in 2016 and 2017 in Australia’s three largest cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Heatwave length varied from year to year, but between 2000 and 2017, the mean number of heatwave days increased by more than two days across the country.

Policy action we need

Australia’s slow transition to renewables and low-carbon electricity generation is problematic, and not only from a climate change perspective. Our report shows that pollutants from fossil fuel combustion cause thousands of premature deaths nationwide every year. We argue even one premature death is one too many when there is so much that we can do to address this.

Australia is one of the world’s wealthiest countries with the resources and technical expertise to act on climate change and health. Yet Australia’s carbon intensity is the highest among the countries we included in our comparison – Germany, United States, China, India and Brazil.

A carbon-intensive energy system is one of the main drivers behind climate change. Australia was once a leader in the uptake of renewables but other nations have since streaked ahead and are reaping the benefits for their economies, energy security and health.

Despite some progress increasing renewable generation, it’s time we truly pull our weight in the global effort to prevent acceleration towards dangerous climate change.

Policy leaders must take steps to protect human health and lives. These include strong political and financial commitments to accelerate transition to renewables and low-carbon electricity generation. The government lacks detailed planning for a clean future with a secure energy supply.

Read more: What would a fair energy transition look like?

Our MJA-Lancet Countdown report will be updated annually. Now that Australia has begun systematically tracking the effects of climate change on health – and given its poor performance compared with comparable economies globally – further inaction would be reckless.

– ref. Heatwaves threaten Australians’ health, and our politicians aren’t doing enough about it – http://theconversation.com/heatwaves-threaten-australians-health-and-our-politicians-arent-doing-enough-about-it-107793

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Stewart, John Bray Professor of Law, University of Adelaide

It’s been an extraordinary four years since wages grew by anything like the 3-5% per year they used to.

Ever since 2015, wage growth has been closer to 2% per year, moving only in a narrow band between 2.3% to 1.9% and back again. It’s the slowest sustained rate of wage growth since the 1930s great depression.

Opinion polls suggest it will be one of the hottest issues in the lead-up to next year’s election.

It concerns the government directly, because its budget forecasts are based on much higher wage growth, climbing to 2.75% by June next year and 3.25% by June 2020.

It also concerns it indirectly, because weak wage growth means weak growth in living standards and consumer spending.

Given this, it is not surprising that the stagnation of Australian wages has elicited concern from the Governor of the Reserve Bank, leading business executives, and traditionally conservative international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund.

Read more: This is what policymakers can and can’t do about low wage growth

Some, like Prime Minister Scott Morrison, counsel Australians to be patient, and wait for the forces of supply and demand in the labour market to solve the problem.

As this somewhat ugly graph prepared by the Commonwealth Bank demonstrates, wage growth has fallen instead of increased as forecast in nearly every budget this decade.

Budget forecasts versus reality, wage growth 2007 to 2020

Wage Price Index, annual growth. Commonwealth Bank

There’s no particular reason to think that wage growth will meet the budget forecast this time either.

In good news, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Wage Price Index rebounded slightly in the September quarter, climbing 2.3 percent year over year (up from 2.1 percent).

But the rebound was almost entirely due to two things that have nothing whatever to do with “market forces”.

Wages are better, but no thanks to market forces

One cause was the unusually large 3.5% increase in minimum wages for award-reliant workers delivered by the Fair Work Commission.

The other was an apparent acceleration of wage settlements in the more highly unionised public sector.

The lesson seems to be that if we want wages to grow, we may have to push them up.

Read more: Why are unions so unhappy? An economic explanation of the Change the Rules campaign

To investigate the wages crisis in more detail, we convened a workshop earlier this year featuring leading experts from universities, business, regulatory agencies, unions and community organisations.

Out of that event has come an edited collection of essays, The Wages Crisis in Australia, published today by the University of Adelaide Press and freely available online.

As it acknowledges, many things have been depressing wages, including the widespread underemployment, technological change, and global competition.

But there has also been a significant weakening of employee power, reflected in the continuing drop in union density and a marked recent dip in collective bargaining coverage.

The institutional framework established by the Fair Work Act has proved to be largely ineffective in countering these trends, and in some instances has perpetuated them.

Among other factors, growth in precarious forms of employment, migrant labour and “indirect” or ‘”fissured” work arrangements (such as sub-contracting, labour hire and franchising) have made workers less likely to join a union or take collective action.

Many of these workers are under pressure to accept sub-standard wages or even unlawful working arrangements.

Governments themselves have deliberately held down wage growth for their own workers and encouraged companies that sell to them to do the same.

The five not-so-easy steps

There is no one solution. But in our book, we advance a five-point plan that we think might work:

1. End active wage suppression by governments, both for their own workers and in sectors that rely on public funding or procurement. Governments must set a lead, not just in what they pay their own employees, but in the funding they provide for others, especially in growing sectors such as aged and disability care.

2. Revitalise collective bargaining, including by creating paths to industry-level agreements, at least in those sectors where enterprise bargaining is not currently working.

3. Strengthen minimum wage regulations, by enabling the Fair Work Commission to set a “living wage”, and encouraging it to lift award wages over time while dealing with the gender pay gap.

4. Address the “fissuring” of work, by expanding the definition of employment and holding businesses responsible for underpayments by the subsidiaries over which they exert influence or control.

5. Improve compliance with minimum wage laws, including by increasing funding to the Fair Work Ombudsman, making it harder for repeat offenders to stay in business, and creating faster and cheaper redress for underpayment claims.

Not everyone will agree with these proposals.

But as the research compiled in our book illustrates, something has to be done. Australia’s once-vaunted reputation as a fair and inclusive society depends on it.

Free digital copies of The Wages Crisis in Australia: What it is and what to do about it, published by can be downloaded from the publisher.

– ref. The five not-so-easy steps that would push wage growth higher – http://theconversation.com/the-five-not-so-easy-steps-that-would-push-wage-growth-higher-107510

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carlo Kopp, Lecturer in Computer Science, Monash University

Only a small amount of fake news is needed to disrupt any debate or discussion on an issue, according to research published today in PLOS ONE.

But there is a way to discourage those spreading fake news, and even to wipe it out altogether.

The research is experimental, based on modelling and simulations, but it does at least show that it is possible to counter the spread of misinformation.

The rise of fake news

The spread of mischievous and false information has plagued human societies for centuries.

Read more: What are tech companies doing about ethical use of data? Not much

In this era of instantaneous global digital connectivity, the current incarnation of “fake news” has become a scourge and is exploited for personal or political gain.

Social media, designed to encourage users to contribute and share content, has become the great enabler of the spread of fake news.

From nations meddling in the politics of democracies and political parties trying to manipulate public opinion, to a profit-centred “fake news” industry, all have exploited this spread for gain, sowing confusion and discord in the victim populations they target.

The simulation game

We did some experiments aiming to understand the more fundamental mechanisms determining the behaviour of fake news in populations.

We were especially interested in two questions:

1. how much impact fake news can have on consensus-forming in a population
2. the impact of the cost of distributing fake news on its ability to infest a population.

In the real world, costs can be external, such as fines, penalties, exclusions, expenditures in creating and distributing fakes; or they can be internal, such as feelings of loss or embarrassment due to being ridiculed or shamed.

The tool we used was an evolutionary simulation, in which simple software robots in a population interact, playing the well-known Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Basically, a prisoner who betrays another wins big, while the betrayed loses badly, while both only win modestly if they cooperate, and suffer equally if they betray one another.

Unlike previous work in this area, we made some of these software robots a little devious, by adding code that allowed them to deceive each other. The victim of such a deception is made to be confused about the opposing player’s intent, or convinced the opposing player is an unselfishly cooperative “good guy”.

Our code made use of our work in information-theoretic modelling of deceptions, allowing known deceptions to be mapped into game theory models. Every deceiver in the simulation incurred a cost when they deceived, which was then subtracted from the payoff they earned in the prisoner’s dilemma game.

How much fake news to disrupt consensus?

We found that even a very small percentage of deceiving players in the population – in our simulations less than 1% – could catastrophically disrupt cooperative behaviours in the simulated population.

In the extreme case of cost-free deceptions – where fake news producers are unhindered – cooperative behaviours vanished altogether. Only where the cost of deceptions was larger than zero, did cooperation survive. Where costs were very high, cooperation actually thrives.

We also found that for all simulations, the ability of deceiving players to survive depended very strongly on the cost of deceptions. If the cost was high enough, deceivers could not survive in the population.

Applying this to the spreading of fake news, very high costs will lead to its extinction.

From experiment to real world

What do these experimental results tell us about the real world of fake news distribution in social and mass media?

The first and arguably more important result is that very little fake news is required to create mayhem in a population, and prevent consensus forming that is critical to public debates. Whether victims are confused, or believe falsehoods, is immaterial. It’s their ability to reach consensus that is disrupted.

Our modelling focused on small groups of influencers who actively debate issues. Where influencers cannot agree, followers in turn cannot align to a consensus. This is one of the reasons why fake news is so destructive to democratic societies.

The second result of broader interest is that attaching a high cost to the production, but especially the distribution of fake news may prove to be the most effective tool we have to defeat its spread. A high societal investment in raising these costs is worthwhile, because the effects of fake news are so disruptive.

Breaking the chain

Information warfare research over a decade ago found that proxy delivery was a major multiplier in the distribution of toxic propaganda.

For example, mass media distributing violent imagery and footage produced by terrorists were acting as proxies for the terrorists producing the propaganda, whether they knew it or not.

Social media users who share fake news are likewise acting as proxies for the producers of fake news. Such users are typically cast as victims of fake news – which they usually are – but every time they share fake news they become participants in the fake news producer’s deception.

Attaching a cost to the distribution of fake news in social media is not straightforward. The informal outing of habitual posters of fake news is one option, which accords with the evolutionary psychology of cheater detection.

Social media organisations such as Facebook say they are trying to be more proactive in detecting fake news and false news either by machine learning technology or third-party fact checkers, and says it has had some recent successes.

But both of these ideas run into the stickier problem of determining exactly what is or is not fake news. Unpalatable facts are too often labelled as “fake news”.

Fact checkers’ reliability and objectivity can vary widely – ground truths are often obscured by bias, and limitations in understanding.

Read more: How Australia’s Mandarin speakers get their news

At this time, contrary to claims by some social media providers, AI is not up to the task of finding and weeding out fake news, which puts the onus back on us humans.

We can all help simply by thinking a little before we like, share or retweet any information on social media. Maybe do a few search checks to see if the information is known to be true or fake.

Pest control is an established practice in biological ecosystems, and is clearly overdue for the information ecosystem.

– ref. We made deceptive robots to see why fake news spreads, and found a weakness – http://theconversation.com/we-made-deceptive-robots-to-see-why-fake-news-spreads-and-found-a-weakness-104776

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

When US President Donald Trump meets his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the margins of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires between November 30 and December 1, nothing less than a reasonably healthy global trading system and continued economic growth will be on the table.

It is one of the most significant meetings between two global leaders in the modern era.

It carries the kind of tension and gravity of the high-wire diplomacy between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, which signalled the end of the Cold War and, as it happened, the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.

Or, before that, Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, which resulted in the signing of the Shanghai Communique and an end to decades of hostility between the United States and China.

Read more: The risks of a new Cold War between the US and China are real: here’s why

World markets unnerved by an evolving trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies will take their cues from this encounter between an unpredictable US president and a Chinese leader who will not want to be seen to yield ground. Or, to give it an oriental description, lose face.

This is a fractious moment in world economic history.

Billions of dollars in global equity markets will rest on a reasonable consensus in the Argentine capital. The two sides will reach for a compromise that will enable relative stability to be restored to an economic relationship that is threatening to unravel.

Since a ragged outcome, or even failure, is in no-one’s interests, it is hard to believe Washington and Beijing will not seek to calm legitimate concerns about the risks of a full-blown trade war and its impact on global growth.

US-China trade tremors are already having an impact on growth projections for 2018-2020.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund reports the world economy is plateauing, partly due to trade tensions and stresses in emerging markets.

The IMF has scaled back its global growth projections from its July Outlook forecast for 2019 to 3.7% from 3.9%. It has marked down US growth by 0.2 percentage point to 2.5%, and China by a similar margin to 6.2%.

However, if trade disruptions persist, fallout will become more serious in 2020 with global growth projected to be down by 0.8%, and with it US and China growth down significantly.

Trade wars have consequences, including risks of a global recession.

All this invests the Trump-Xi encounter with more-than-usual significance. A bad outcome will heighten risks of an accelerating global slowdown.

In the lead-up to the G20, American and Chinese officials have been preparing the ground, with the Chinese side anxious to reduce tensions following a November 1 phone call between the two presidents.

But it is less clear that Washington is willing to ease pressure on China to liberalise further a foreign investment environment, seek ways to reduce a trade gap and make more conspicuous efforts to tone down concerns about Chinese pilfering of its intellectual property.

In a media briefing in Beijing, Chinese officials underscored China’s desire for a reasonable outcome in Buenos Aires. Wang Shouwen, a vice commerce minister, said:

We hope China and the US are able to resolve their problems based on mutual respect, benefits and honesty.

However, Trump is continuing to threaten further increases in tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese imports now set at 10% but due to increase to 25% from January 1. He told The Wall Street Journal this week:

The only deal would be China has to open up their country to competition from the United States.

Trump also threatened to slap tariffs on an additional US$267 billion worth of Chinese imports if negotiations with Xi are unsuccessful:

If we don’t make a deal, then I’m going to put the US$267 billion additional on [at a tariff rate of either 10% or 25%].

This next batch of Chinese imports might include laptops and Apple iPhones, which are among China’s biggest exports to the US.

Further complicating the possibility of a satisfactory negotiation in Buenos Aires is a lingering dispute between the US and China over reforms to the World Trade Organisation to strengthen its dispute resolution and appeal mechanisms.

The US also objects to China’s continued description as a “developing country” under WTO rules. This includes provisions that are favourable to Chinese state-owned enterprises.

A collapse in efforts to reform the WTO would strike another blow at a multilateral trading system that is under more stress than at any time since globalisation gathered pace in the 1990s.

The US-China trade conflict, which is threatening to become a full-blown trade war with unpredictable consequences, cannot be separated from a more general deterioration in relations.

These were given expression last month by Vice President Mike Pence in a speech to the Hudson Institute, in which he lambasted China in a way that prompted talk of a new cold war.

Pence accused China of deploying:

… an arsenal of policies inconsistent with free and fair trade, including tariffs, quotas, currency manipulation, forced technology transfers, intellectual property theft and industrial subsidies handed out like candy. These policies have built Beijing’s manufacturing base, at the expense of its competitors – especially the United States.

The US trade deficit with China reached US$375 billion last year – nearly half the US global trade deficit.

None of this augurs well for a constructive resolution of US-China differences at the G20, although you might hope Trump’s approach would be tempered by concerns about the economic consequences of a conspicuous failure.

What seems most likely, given the stakes involved, is for officials from both countries to be tasked with responsibility for addressing a range of American concerns, with the aim of resetting the relationship.

This would seem to be a best-case scenario.

In the meantime, officials working on the draft of a final communique will be struggling to satisfy competing demands from G20 participants for clear-cut statements on protectionism and climate change.

These have been staples of such communiques since the G20 was formed ten years ago amid a global financial crisis.

Read more: In the economic power struggle for Asia, Trump and Xi Jinping are switching policies

Washington is reportedly resisting an explicit call to fight protectionism. It is also demanding a watering down of the G20’s commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Consensus on these issues is proving elusive, further undermining efforts to address global challenges.

This underscores a dramatic shift in the global geopolitical environment since Trump gained office.

At the 2016 G20 summit in Hangzhou, world leaders agreed on a “rules-based, transparent, non-discriminatory, open and inclusive multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation playing the central role in today’s global trade”.

On climate, the G20 committed itself “to complete our respective domestic procedures in order to join the Paris Agreement”.

Two years later, a “rules-based” trading system is being shredded and the Paris Agreement is at risk of unravelling. These are troubled times, not helped by an American pullback from the stabilising role in global affairs it has played since the second world war.

– ref. Much at stake as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet at G20 – http://theconversation.com/much-at-stake-as-donald-trump-and-xi-jinping-meet-at-g20-106774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Feeney, Adjunct Fellow, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland

A commonly held view is that changing planning rules could significantly increase housing supply and hence make housing more affordable. Recent commentary, including in The Conversation, repeats this. It’s a view that glosses over the special features of land, which allow property developers to control housing supply to a significant extent.

To understand what’s going on, we need to look at why land makes the housing market different from any other.

Read more: Affordable housing policy failure still being fuelled by flawed analysis

Economic theory and the special features of land

Land has special features that other goods don’t usually have. The most fundamental of these features is fixed location.

What’s more, land does not physically degrade over time. As a result, it doesn’t have to be sold but instead can be withheld from sale without financial cost.

These features are important when considering the application of standard supply-demand theory to housing markets.

Economic theory says increasing the supply of a good will lower the price for a given level of demand. Like a lot of economic theory, this is based on simplifying assumptions. The following assumptions are particularly relevant when considering land:

• the good is homogeneous
• all market participants have full information about the market
• no participant has an undue influence on the market
• there are no barriers for new market participants.

However, we know that land is not homogeneous. Location is particularly important.

And property developers generally have much more knowledge of the market than individual buyers, potentially giving developers undue influence.

The capacity of developers to withhold land from sale and the fact that new developers wanting to enter the market face significant barriers – importantly the financial capacity to hold back land when demand and sales are reduced – are also at odds with the assumptions of supply-demand theory.

UK economist Josh Ryan-Collins notes that current economic theory does not differentiate between land and capital (such as machinery). This may well be one of the main reasons the special features of land are often overlooked in discussions about housing supply.

Read more: Why rents, not property prices, are best to assess housing supply and need-driven demand

Governments don’t control housing supply

In the past, governments developed more housing directly, but over the past 20-30 years the role of government has been mainly to enable private developers to provide housing.

Governments may release enough land for the expected population, but private developers decide how much housing is offered for sale at any time. It’s no secret that, for larger residential estates in particular, demand dictates the rate at which lots are released to market. This is a logical business strategy, but much of the commentary on housing supply fails to acknowledge this.

Off-the-plan sales are one way developers ensure projects only go ahead when prices suit them. James Ross/AAP

In the Gold Coast region, for example, where a relatively small number of larger estates provide most of the new residential land, the median price of vacant residential land has remained remarkably stable since the GFC despite large fluctuations in the number of sales. This suggests something other than the standard supply-demand theory is operating.

As noted above, developers of new estates in outer areas can “drip-feed” the market to keep prices up.

For new apartments in established suburbs, off-the-plan sales allow developers to test the market before building. If interest in the apartments at prices set by the developer is insufficient, the project will not go ahead. Of course, there can still be an oversupply of apartments if future demand is overestimated.

Read more: Australia’s almost a world leader in home building, so that isn’t a fix for affordability

Planning rule changes won’t make much difference to supply

Markets for residential land are distorted by three main factors:

• location is very important
• land is a not a homogeneous good
• developers can influence supply.

This means that changing planning rules is unlikely to make much difference to housing supply or affordability. Housing supply can’t readily be increased without direct government construction. Even then developers will be likely to respond by restricting overall housing supply if they can.

With supply restricted, price is significantly influenced by demand factors. These include finance interest rates, tax concessions and buyers’ expectations of future capital gains.

Therefore, policy that focuses on managing demand factors offers much more hope of improving housing affordability than do changes to planning rules.

Read more: Facts sink glib housing supply mantra – the focus must be on affordable rental

– ref. Land makes the housing market different, so changing planning rules won’t fix affordability – http://theconversation.com/land-makes-the-housing-market-different-so-changing-planning-rules-wont-fix-affordability-107182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Mahady, Gastroenterologist & Clinical Epidemiologist, Senior Lecturer, Monash University

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common disorder that affects one in ten Australians, and twice as many women as men. Its symptoms include chronic abdominal pain, constipation or diarrhoea, and bloating. These have a significant impact on a person’s quality of life.

Many people use the term irritable bowel syndrome to describe general symptoms of gut and bowel dysfunction. But diagnosis requires meeting strict, diagnostic criteria. Known as the ROME criteria, these require a person to be experiencing abdominal pain, on average, at least one day per week. The pain must be associated with two or more of the following:

• defecation
• a change in the frequency of stool
• a change in the form (appearance) of stool
• having occurred over the last three months with symptom onset at least six months before diagnosis.

Tests aren’t always needed for a diagnosis if these symptoms are present. But an accurate diagnosis of IBS is important as some symptoms, such as pelvic pain, may overlap with other diseases such as endometriosis or inflammatory bowel disease. If other symptoms are present, a doctor may need to perform blood tests, pelvic ultrasound, endoscopy or stool tests to rule out similar disorders.

Read more: I have painful periods, could it be endometriosis?

Some symptoms are considered “red flag” symptoms and should prompt further testing and specialist referral. For example, if you have rectal bleeding, weight loss and are aged over 50 when symptoms start, it is not IBS.

What causes it?

A single cause for IBS has not been identified. IBS may run in families, but we still don’t know if this is due to shared genetics or environmental factors. An episode of gastroenteritis, an infection caused by viruses or bacteria, increases the risk of developing IBS. But this is usually temporary and symptoms gradually improve.

People with IBS often also have anxiety and depression. Research suggests early childhood trauma can predispose some people to IBS in later life. This is because the gut and brain talk to each other through nerve signals, the release of gut or stress hormones, and other pathways.

We have long known that emotions can directly alter gut function. But studies now show that gut function also affects emotions. One Australian study indicated that for some people gut symptoms occur first and the psychological symptoms occur as a result. But this is not true for all people with IBS.

Read more: Stomach and mood disorders: how your gut may be playing with your mind

What do I do?

Non-drug treatments should be considered initially, and more than one treatment strategy may be needed to help improve symptoms.

Good-quality evidence shows a low-FODMAP diet reduces IBS symptoms. FODMAPs are carbohydrates that produce excess gas when digested. They can be found in roots such as onions and garlic, and fruits (or seeds) like legumes, apples, pears and mangoes. For the best result, a person should start a low-FODMAP diet under the guidance of an experienced dietitian.

It’s a common misconception that people should keep to a low-FODMAP diet for life. Foods like onions, which are high in FODMAPs, are also good prebiotics and promote the growth of friendly gut bacteria. Restricting these can result in low gut bacterial diversity, which is linked to autoimmune diseases and obesity. That’s another reason a dietician should guide people through the diet over a few weeks and avoid unnecessary dietary restriction.

FODMAP foods include onions, but these also promote the growth of friendly gut bacteria. from shutterstock.com

Simple dietary measures include adding more soluble fibre to the diet. This can include psyllium, which can be bought as a powder from chemists and health food shops. Insoluble fibres like bran are generally unhelpful.

A trial of probiotics might help. These could be trialled for one month and then re-evaluated by the GP, but are unlikely to be useful if used indefinitely. Exercise has been shown in randomised trials to improve gut symptoms in people with IBS.

Managing stress and anxiety are key to improving symptoms for many people. Psychological therapies have been shown in trials to help symptoms more than placebo or other interventions. This is particularly so when the psychologist is interested in IBS.

Clinical trials have also shown that, for some people, hypnotherapy that is directed at the gut is just as effective as a low-FODMAP diet. The benefits are still seen at six months. Hypnotherapy is not for everyone, however, and multiple sessions are needed for symptoms to improve.

Peppermint oil can help reduce stomach cramps related to IBS. from shutterstock.com

What about medications?

IBS affects quality of life but it doesn’t change a person’s risk of early death or cancer. So, treatments should have few side effects to be acceptable. Clinical trials have shown that medications such as peppermint oil (usually given in capsules) can reduce troublesome abdominal cramps with minimal side effects.

Melatonin can improve symptoms through better sleep quality where sleep is disturbed.

The choice of drug should be tailored to each person’s symptoms. For instance, low-dose antidepressants can be helpful for some people, especially where significant depression or anxiety symptoms exist together with IBS. Medications that reduce inflammation are generally unhelpful, as consistent and clinically apparent inflammation is not part of the syndrome.

Read more: So you think you have IBS, coeliac disease or Crohn’s? Here’s what it might mean for you

A few new approaches are being trialled for IBS, including faecal transplants and new medications. But all of these need better long-term data before they appear on the market.

– ref. Explainer: what is irritable bowel syndrome and what can I do about it? – http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-irritable-bowel-syndrome-and-what-can-i-do-about-it-102579

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Triggs, Research fellow, Australian National University

“The secret to success is sincerity. Learn to fake that, and you’ve got it made.”

So goes an old gag. Many might be wondering something similar about this weekend’s G20 summit in Buenos Aires.

Each year the leaders of 20 of the world’s largest economies get together and make a lot of promises about working together to make the world a better place.

Are those promises kept? Are they just committing to do things they would have done anyway?

In short, does the G20 summit really make any difference?

Read more: What on earth is the G20 and why should I care?

To find out, I interviewed dozens of politicians and officials from every G20 country about the influence and importance of the annual gathering since its first meeting in 2008.

My analysis shows most G20 promises are kept, and the forum really does exert a positive influence on its member nations.

Cooperation or coincidence?

Before I started my research I had reasons to be sceptical.

For example, at the G20’s second meeting, in London in 2009, the assembled leaders committed to fiscal stimulus packages worth a combined US$5 trillion in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Central banks, like the Reserve Bank of Australia, also committed to aggressively cut interest rates.

US president Barack Obama at the G20 Summit in London, England 2 April 2009. Shawn Thew/EPA

The data shows they did what they promised. But didn’t countries have an incentive to do what they did anyway? What role did the G20 play?

Similarly in 2010, at the G20 meeting in Toronto, spooked by the European debt crisis, leaders promised to halve deficits by 2013 and stabilise debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016.

Many countries achieved this. But weren’t many countries, such as Australia, already on the “back to surplus” bandwagon? Did the G20 have any influence?

More than just a talkfest

Was the G20 a real influence, or were countries just promising to do what they would have done anyway?

To find out, I interviewed a total of 63 senior politicians and officials from every G20 country.

They included former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, former Australian treasurers Wayne Swan and Joe Hockey, US Federal Reserve chairperson Janet Yellen and her predecessor Ben Bernanke, former US Treasury secretary Jack Lew, Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda, and Bank of England governer Mark Carney.

I asked them whether they believed the G20 had influenced their and other countries’ policies.

The answer was yes – sometimes.

It depended on the country, the policy area and other things, like whether there was an international economic crisis. But the influence was definitely there.

According to Kevin Rudd, who oversaw the Australian government’s successful response to the global financial crisis:

The G20 played a positive role in the quantum of Australia’s fiscal stimulus.

Politicians from ten other countries said the same thing – verified with data, where possible.

Read more: FactCheck: did Kevin Rudd help create the G20?

Sharing experiences, shaping thinking

What about the G20’s influence on central banks?

These banks have domestic mandates. The Reserve Bank of Australia can’t refuse to change interest rates because it annoys New Zealand, for example. It must do what is best for the nation. What room is therefore left for G20 co-operation?

My research suggests the G20 does influence the thinking of central bankers and, through them, central bank policies.

“There is a lot of exchange of views in the G20 which I think is influential,” Ben Bernanke, who chaired the US Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, told me.

Mark Carney, who was governor of the Bank of Canada before heading the Bank of England, said the G20 was “a useful forum in which central banks can explain the reasons for their policy decisions”.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney at the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank heads in Buenos Aires in July, 2018. G20/EPA

What about those 1,000 structural reforms?

According to Joe Hockey, Australia’s treasurer from 2013 to 2015:

The G20 growth strategy process absolutely resulted in countries doing things differently, particularly by learning from one another.

US officials agreed, confirming they got the idea of an asset-recycling initiative – where governments lease existing infrastructure assets to private companies and invest the proceeds in new infrastructure projects – from Australia through the G20.

A place to learn

German officials said because of G20 commitments their government developed a financial literacy and education program to better equip Germany’s citizens, particularly young people, in their engagement with the financial system.

Russian officials said Vladimir Putin embraced their 2017-2020 reform agenda on female economic participation after learning about the benefits through the G20.

The G20 has also prevented nations embracing “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies that improve the country’s relative economic position by harming others. It has pressured members not to devalue their currencies in pursuit of competitive trade advantage. It has helped countries resist resorting to trade protectionism. It has defused tensions around controversial policies such as quantitative easing, and improved the communication of central banks on future policy changes.

Read more: The G20’s economic leadership deficit

Janet Yellen, former chair of the US Federal Reserve, said she “genuinely took to heart” concerns expressed at the G20 about aspects of US policy.

There are exceptions

The G20’s influence is not universal. Large countries are less influenced than smaller ones. Said a former senior US official:

Most Americans, and many in Congress, are proudly indifferent to what the rest of the world thinks.

Jacob Lew, US Treasury Secretary from 2013 to 2017, agreed:

There can be a backlash in the United States if you make the argument that you are doing something to comply with international rules.

The full results have been published by the Brookings Institution (available here).

So if commentators complain about the G20 being a pointless talkfest, just remember there is evidence to the contrary. It might not grab the headlines but the G20 plays an important role behind the scenes. We will be relying on it now, more than ever, to calm global tensions.

– ref. Does the G20 summit really make a difference? World leaders reckon it does – http://theconversation.com/does-the-g20-summit-really-make-a-difference-world-leaders-reckon-it-does-107505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ellie Chapple, Professor, QUT Business School and research leader Accounting for Social Change research team, Queensland University of Technology

The Financial Services Royal Commission last week challenged the chair of the Commonwealth Bank Catherine Livingstone about her claim that she confronted management during a 2016 board meeting, saying it wasn’t recorded in the minutes.

“Do you understand that a failure to comply with the requirements in relation to the keeping of minutes under section 251A of the Corporations Act is an offence?” Counsel Assisting asked.

“The explanation is the minutes don’t usually record verbatim what is discussed at the board meeting,” Ms Livingstone replied.

Minutes came into question again on Tuesday.

Read more: Here’s a tip that could make banks phenomenally successful: radical honesty

National Australia Bank chairman Ken Henry was invited to consider whether a board meeting had discussed a dispute between the bank and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over adviser service fees.

Then he was shown the minutes of that meeting and asked to agree that it had not.

“It’s very probably the case. I can’t say for sure obviously, but it’s very probably the case, yes,” he conceded.

So, ought the minutes of company board meetings to be a complete record of what’s discussed?

Ought company secretaries to be “shaking in their boots” as a result of the Royal Commission hearings, as the Financial Review has suggested they are?

What’s a secretary to do?

All the law requires is that the “proceedings and resolutions” of directors’ meetings be recorded within one month of the meeting.

It offers no guidance about how to do that, and offers no template for the format.

Although it is usually assumed that it is the company secretary who takes the minutes, there is no actual statutory requirement for the person who occupies that position to do so.

Read more: The way banks are organised makes it hard to hold directors and executives criminally responsible

And some smaller companies operate without a company secretary.

Where there is one, that person does much more than take minutes.

With QUT research student Robyn Trubshaw, we have conducted a series of interviews with high profile company secretaries and discovered that what they think matters most is “courage” – the courage to call out lapses of process.

They said it was their job to ensure reasons for decisions were documented, and also, according to some, to act as a “filter” for deciding what was recorded.

By determining what went into the minutes in concert with the board they acted as “shared conscience” of the company.

On their toes

Our interviews also revealed a heightened awareness about the importance of getting the right balance between reporting outcomes and recording discussion.

Company secretaries are already acutely aware that every set of minutes of every board meeting might one day end up as evidence.

Read more: Solving deep problems with corporate governance requires more than rearranging deck chairs

So this suggests the royal commission will not be the game changer for company secretaries that some think it will be.

They are already on their toes.

Whether it’s a chess club, a bowls club, a school board, a small or medium sized enterprise or one of Australia’s largest corporations, the role of the secretary matters.

The good ones already know how to get the balance right.

– ref. So what’s a secretary to do? Banking Royal Commission raises questions about what’s in minutes – http://theconversation.com/so-whats-a-secretary-to-do-banking-royal-commission-raises-questions-about-whats-in-minutes-107509

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Associate Director Student Experience, Monash University

Industry and educators are agreed: the world needs creativity. There is interest in the field, lots of urging but remarkably little action. Everyone is a bit scared of what to do next. On the question of creativity and imagination, they are mostly uncreative and unimaginative.

Some of the paralysis arises because you can’t easily define creativity. It resists the measurement and strategies that we’re familiar with. Indisposed by the simultaneous vagueness and sublimity of creative processes, educators seek artificial ways to channel imaginative activity into templates that end up compromising the very creativity they celebrate.

For example, creativity is often reduced to problem-solving. To be sure, you need imagination to solve many curly problems and creativity is arguably part of what it takes. But problem-solving is far from the whole of creativity; and if you focus creative thinking uniquely on problems and solutions, you encourage a mechanistic view – all about scoping and then pin-pointing the best fit among options.

It might be satisfying to create models for such analytical processes but they distort the natural, wayward flux of imaginative thinking. Often, it is not about solving a problem but seeing a problem that no one else has identified. Often, the point of departure is a personal wish for something to be true or worth arguing or capable of making a poetic splash, whereupon the mind goes into imaginative overdrive to develop a robust theory that has never been proposed before.

For teaching purposes, problems are an anxious place to cultivate creativity. If you think of anyone coming up with an idea — a new song, a witty way of denouncing a politician, a dance step, a joke — it isn’t necessarily about a problem but rather a blissful opportunity for the mind to exercise its autonomy, that magical power to concatenate images freely and to see within them a bristling expression of something intelligent.

New ideas are more about a blissful opportunity for the mind to exercise autonomy. shutterstock

That’s the motive behind what scholars now call “Big C Creativity”: i.e. your Bach or Darwin or Freud who comes up with a major original contribution to culture or science. But the same is true of everyday “small C creativity” that isn’t specifically problem-based.

Read more: Creativity is a human quality that exists in every single one of us

Relishing the independence of the mind is the basis for naturally imaginative activity, like humour, repartee, a gestural impulse or theatrical intuition, a satire that extrapolates someone’s behaviour or produces a poignant character insight.

A dull taming

Our way of democratising creativity is not to see it in inherently imaginative spontaneity but to identify it with instrumental strategising. We tame creativity by making it dull. Our way of honing the faculty is by making it goal-oriented and compliant to a purpose that can be managed and assessed.

Alas, when we make creativity artificially responsible to a goal, we collapse it with prudent decision-making, whereupon it no longer transcends familiar frameworks toward an unknown fertility.

We pin creativity to logical intelligence as opposed to fantasy, that somewhat messy generation of figments out of whose chaos the mind can see a brilliant rhyme, a metaphor, a hilarious skip or roll of the shoulders, an outrageous pun, a thought about why peacocks have such a long tail, a reason why bread goes stale or an astonishing pattern in numbers arising from a formula.

We pin creativity to logical intelligence as opposed to fantasy. Shutterstock

Because creativity in essence is somewhat irresponsible, it isn’t easy to locate in syllabus and impossible to teach in a culture of learning outcomes. Learning outcomes are statements of what the student will gain from the subject or unit that you’re teaching. Internationally and across the tertiary system, they take the form of: “On successful completion of this subject, you will be able to …” Everything that is taught should then support the outcomes and all assessment should allow the students to demonstrate that they have met them.

After a lengthy historical study, I have concluded that our contemporary education systematically trashes creativity and unwittingly punishes students for exercising their imagination. The structural basis for this passive hostility to the imagination is the grid of learning outcomes in alignment with delivery and assessment.

It might always be impossible to teach creativity but the least we can do for our students is make education a safe place for imagination. Our academies are a long way from that haven and I see little encouraging in the apologias for creativity that the literature now spawns.

My contention is that learning outcomes are only good for uncreative study. For education to cultivate creativity and imagination, we need to stop asking students anxiously to follow demonstrable proofs of learning for which imagination is a liability.

– ref. Why it is (almost) impossible to teach creativity – http://theconversation.com/why-it-is-almost-impossible-to-teach-creativity-105659

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merlin Crossley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic and Professor of Molecular Biology, UNSW

I am currently at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, where controversial CRIPSR scientist Jiankui He presented his research just a few hours ago. He also answered questions from gene experts Robin Lovell-Badge (Crick Institute) and Matt Porteus (Stanford), plus assembled audience members and the media.

It’s just two days since reports first aired that Jiankui He had used CRIPSR to edit human embryos, and that twin girls, Lulu and Nana, had been born.

Read more: Researcher claims CRISPR-edited twins are born. How will science respond?

The mood of the meeting is tense. Before these reports, there had been confidence among those in the field that the world was moving as one – cautiously inching forward with CRISPR gene editing technology.

But suddenly the forbidden fruit has been plucked, and some even worry that public confidence may falter.

Jiankui He arrives to speak at the 2nd International Summit on Genome Editing, Hong Kong November 28, 2018. Merlin Crossley, Author provided

Jiankui He focused on removing a gene called CCR5, critical for the HIV virus to enter cells. He aimed to mimic a natural mutation which confers resistance to HIV. This work is now on hold and an uncomfortable international discussion has begun.

The stories, and a video published by Jiankui He in which he explains the apparent work, have created widespread condemnation on scientific and ethical grounds.

If the claims are correct, and they are certainly plausible, this is the first time CRIPSR has been used to create permanent changes in human genomes – changes that would be passed on to future generations.

Jiankui He himself is experienced in using CRIPSR – he first carried out pilot experiments in mice, monkeys, and then non-viable human embryos. He also says he carried out a genomic analysis on the embryos before implantation, and that he had enrolled and worked with a further six couples in this trial before it was paused. One of the additional women may be in the very early stages of pregnancy.

Read more: World’s first gene-edited babies? Premature, dangerous and irresponsible

International consensus

China is a major scientific power. The capability of Chinese researchers is highly respected, but if the international consensus on being transparent and cautious about gene editing does not hold the future is difficult to predict.

Jiankui He’s host institution – the Southern University of Science and Technology – published a statement saying he had been on leave at the time of the trial and that it was not conducted at their institution.

Currently other Chinese researchers in attendance at the conference are among the strongest critics of this work. Several have indicated that it breaks the rules governing genetic research in China.

Robin Lovell-Badge (Crick Institute), Jiankui He and Matt Porteus (Stanford) prepare to talk on stage. Merlin Crossley, Author provided

Be that as it may, the results seem clear. Today’s presentation suggests this was a thoroughly planned and executed project, where Jiankui He carefully communicated his results, first by video, and then followed up with his conference talk to share his data. Details on the process, the specific mutations and analysis used to screen for potentially harmful “off-target” genomic changes were also presented today.

On the data shown, it does look like genome editing was achieved. Though the actual mutations did not end up mimicking naturally occurring mutations in CCR5, so we can’t tell – and indeed may never know – whether the twins are resistant to HIV.

He also indicated the work had been submitted for publication in a peer reviewed journal.

Many questions

Hosting panel members Robin Lovell-Badge and Matt Porteus asked questions of Jiankui He after he had finished presenting – the whole presentation and the Q&A is available for viewing here.

The Chair of the Summit, Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, spoke from the floor after the panel session. He expressed concerns that the work did not comply with the commitments made at the first Gene Editing Summit held three years ago, whereby:

it would be irresponsible to proceed with any clinical use of germ line editing unless and until the safety issues had been dealt with.

He added:

I don’t think it has been a transparent process. We only found out about it after it’s happened and after the children are born. I personally don’t think that it’s medically necessary.

And further:

I think there’s been a failure of self-regulation by the scientific community because of a lack of transparency.

He emphasised these comments came entirely from himself.

A statement from the organisers of the summit will be released tomorrow, and I expect it will re-iterate the need for caution, openness in planning and full transparency.

And, despite the shock, that’s what I hope we’ll get – ultimately CRISPR technology is slow, expensive and is used at the level of individuals not populations.

There won’t be a tsunami but there will be plenty to discuss. And we will have time, just as we did when other expensive medical landmarks occurred – heart transplants, test tube babies, and somatic gene therapy. This is bigger, but I believe we can still get back to a consensus and find the right path.

– ref. Tension as scientist at centre of CRIPSR outrage speaks at genome editing summit – http://theconversation.com/tension-as-scientist-at-centre-of-cripsr-outrage-speaks-at-genome-editing-summit-107807

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

When a prime minister has diminished authority, people don’t bother so much with the niceties.

Scott Morrison admitted on Wednesday that Julia Banks had not given him notice of her intention to announce in parliament at midday on Tuesday that she was jumping ship. Asked by Alan Jones, “Did she tell you?” Morrison said, “No she didn’t and of course that’s disappointing”.

This was surprising in itself – it would have been normal courtesy to inform the PM.

In other circumstances, however, it mightn’t have mattered – and Morrison has a thick skin.

But to have his 11:45am news conference – which was called to put out the date of next year’s budget – hijacked by word filtering through of Banks’ bombshell was highly embarrassing.

It said everything about a prime minister not in touch with what was going on in his own ranks.

Then on Wednesday it was revealed that Morrison does not have a bilateral meeting with President Trump scheduled when they’re at the G20, for which he departs on Thursday.

The official explanation from the Prime Minister’s Office was lame. A spokesman said: “The PM will no doubt have the opportunity to touch base [with Trump] during the G20 meetings. Given we have no pressing bilateral issues at the moment and the PM had an extensive opportunity with VP Pence at APEC, there is no pressing need for a formal bilateral at this stage. The relationship is being well managed.”

There is speculation of a so-called “pull aside” – an informal meeting on the fly, but the impression is that the Americans are treating the Morrison government somewhat dismissively. It seems rather galling after all the recent talk of the government’s pivot to the Pacific and co-operation with the US in the Manus naval base.

A meeting with the Vice-President is no substitute for one with the President.

The seeming brush off can be put down to what might be expected from a capricious president. But it was quickly seen by some as a judgement by the Americans that Morrison won’t be in office very long.

Meanwhile the Liberal party meltdown has caused Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is deputy Liberal leader, to drop plans to accompany Morrison to the G20. His place will be taken by Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.

Pressed in Parliament about his change of plans Frydenberg could only dodge.

When Frydenberg won the deputy leadership (by an overwhelming vote, defeating Greg Hunt and Steve Ciobo) in the August mayhem, he was regarded as a consensus figure who commands considerable respect across the party. He will need to draw on all that respect in the next few months.

As if he didn’t have a big enough job getting on top of his Treasury portfolio in the run up to the December budget update and then an early budget, Frydenberg is finding himself strongly tested in the deputy role, which becomes especially important in an unsettled and fractious party.

The Liberals this week are shell-shocked and unnerved after the Victorian rout and both the fact and implications of Banks’ desertion.

The parliamentary party is flakey on many fronts. Turnbull supporters seem to have become angrier as time has gone on. Continued talk about the Liberals’ “women’s problem” is undermining the government’s efforts to appeal to female voters. High profile former Liberal deputy Julie Bishop is off the leash, with provocative comments on subjects ranging from energy policy to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s parliamentary eligibility.

The Dutton issue hangs menacingly over the government. If the opposition can muster the numbers to have him referred to the High Court, it would be seriously destabilising.

Dutton would not have to resign from parliament while the case was heard but to have him remain on the frontbench (as Barnaby Joyce did) would see the government distracted by a fresh crisis.

Despite the Coalition falling further into minority government with the loss of Banks, the opposition hasn’t this week moved against Dutton.

He is absent from parliament after injuring his shoulder and Labor would prefer, for the sake of appearances, not to act in his absence. More to the point, however, it does not yet have the numbers locked in.

It needs six of the now seven crossbenchers, and whether they can be corralled appears to be a day-to-day proposition. Banks and Kerryn Phelps, sworn in on Monday, on Tuesday discussed Dutton’s eligibility in a meeting with Attorney-General Christian Porter.

The government has five more sitting days to struggle through before parliament finishes for the year. It has produced a parliamentary calendar for next year, with its April 2 budget, that provides for only some 10 sitting days before the election is called for May 11 or 18. There are no sittings at all in March.

The minimal sittings speak volumes about a government that lacks the numbers in the House – and its position could worsen, if rightwinger Craig Kelly, who faces losing preselection, defected to the crossbench – and usually is at its chaotic worst when parliament is in session.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison’s authority deficit on show at home and abroad – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrisons-authority-deficit-on-show-at-home-and-abroad-107813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Yeo, Supervising Meteorologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

A strong low-pressure system has meant severe thunderstorm and hail warnings are in effect for much of the New South Wales South Coast. At the same time, very dry conditions, strong winds and high temperatures are fuelling dozens of bushfires across Queensland.

The two events are actually influencing each other. As the low-pressure system moves over the Greater Sydney area, a connected wind change is pushing warm air (and stronger winds) to Queensland, worsening the fire conditions.

Read more: Drought, wind and heat: when fire seasons start earlier and last longer

These lows over NSW are the kind we might see a couple of times a year – they’re not just regular weather systems, but neither are they massively out of the ordinary.

However, when combined with the current record-breaking heat in Queensland, the extra wind is creating exceptionally dangerous fire conditions. Queensland’s emergency services minister, Craig Crawford, has warned Queenslanders:

We are expecting a firestorm. We are expecting it to be so severe that it won’t even be safe on the beach […] The only thing to do is to go now.

The Deepwater area bushfire has razed 16,000 hectares and destroyed at least two homes. Qld Fire & Emergency/AAP

Conditions in Queensland

At least 80 bushfires were burning in Queensland on Wednesday, with more than a dozen fire warnings issued to communities near the Deepwater blaze. Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Bob Gee said that “people will burn to death” unless they evacuate the area.

These fires have come during a record-breaking heatwave. On Tuesday Cooktown recorded 43.9℃, beating the previous November high set 70 years ago by more than two degrees. Cairns has broken its November heatwave record by five whole degrees.

Grasslands and forests are very dry after very little rain over the past two years. Adding to these conditions are strong winds, which make the fires hotter, faster and harder to predict. This is where the storm conditions in NSW come in: they are affecting air movements across both states.

NSW low is driving winds over Queensland

A large low-pressure system, currently over the Hunter Valley area, is causing the NSW storms. As it moves, it’s pushing a mass of warm air ahead of it, bringing both higher temperatures and stronger winds across the Queensland border.

Once the low-pressure system moves across the Hunter area to the Tasman Sea east of Sydney, it will drag what we call a “wind change” across Queensland. This will increase wind speeds through Queensland and temperatures, making the fire situation even worse.

This is why emergency services are keeping watch for “fire tornado” conditions. When very hot air from large fires rises rapidly into a turbulent atmosphere, it can create fire storms – thunderstorms containing lightning or burning embers. Strong wind changes can also mean fire tornadoes form, sucking up burning material. Both of these events spread fires quickly and unpredictably.

Read more: Turn and burn: the strange world of fire tornadoes

What does this mean for the drought

Unfortunately, it’s not likely the heavy rains over NSW will have a long-term effect on the drought gripping much of the state. While very heavy rains have fallen over 24 hours, the drought conditions have persisted for years.

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

The wet weather may bring some temporary relief, but NSW will need much more rain over a longer period to truly alleviate the drought.

In the meantime, the Bureau of Meteorology will be monitoring the Queensland situation closely. You can check weather warnings for your area on the bureau’s website.

– ref. Sydney storms could be making the Queensland fires worse – http://theconversation.com/sydney-storms-could-be-making-the-queensland-fires-worse-107789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daisy Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow, UNSW School of Physics, UNSW

There’s little doubt the information technology revolution has improved our lives. But unless we find a new form of electronic technology that uses less energy, computing will become limited by an “energy crunch” within decades.

Even the most common events in our daily life – making a phone call, sending a text message or checking an email – use computing power. Some tasks, such as watching videos, require a lot of processing, and so consume a lot of energy.

Because of the energy required to power the massive, factory-sized data centres and networks that connect the internet, computing already consumes 5% of global electricity. And that electricity load is doubling every decade.

Fortunately, there are new areas of physics that offer promise for massively reduced energy use.

Read more: Bitcoin’s high energy consumption is a concern – but it may be a price worth paying

The end of Moore’s Law

Humans have an insatiable demand for computing power.

Smartphones, for example, have become one of the most important devices of our lives. We use them to access weather forecasts, plot the best route through traffic, and watch the latest season of our favourite series.

And we expect our smartphones to become even more powerful in the future. We want them to translate language in real time, transport us to new locations via virtual reality, and connect us to the “Internet of Things”.

The computing required to make these features a reality doesn’t actually happen in our phones. Rather it’s enabled by a huge network of mobile phone towers, Wi-Fi networks and massive, factory-sized data centres known as “server farms”.

For the past five decades, our increasing need for computing was largely satisfied by incremental improvements in conventional, silicon-based computing technology: ever-smaller, ever-faster, ever-more efficient chips. We refer to this constant shrinking of silicon components as “Moore’s Law”.

Moore’s law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who observed that:

the number of transistors on a chip doubles every year while the costs are halved.

But as we hit limits of basic physics and economy, Moore’s law is winding down. We could see the end of efficiency gains using current, silicon-based technology as soon as 2020.

Our growing demand for computing capacity must be met with gains in computing efficiency, otherwise the information revolution will slow down from power hunger.

Achieving this sustainably means finding a new technology that uses less energy in computation. This is referred to as a “beyond CMOS” solution, in that it requires a radical shift from the silicon-based CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) technology that has been the backbone of computing for the last five decades.

Read more: Moore’s Law is 50 years old but will it continue?

Why does computing consume energy at all?

Processing of information takes energy. When using an electronic device to watch TV, listen to music, model the weather or any other task that requires information to be processed, there are millions and millions of binary calculations going on in the background. There are zeros and ones being flipped, added, multiplied and divided at incredible speeds.

The fact that a microprocessor can perform these calculations billions of times a second is exactly why computers have revolutionised our lives.

But information processing doesn’t come for free. Physics tells us that every time we perform an operation – for example, adding two numbers together – we must pay an energy cost.

And the cost of doing calculations isn’t the only energy cost of running a computer. In fact, anyone who has ever used a laptop balanced on their legs will attest that most of the energy gets converted to heat. This heat comes from the resistance that electricity meets when it flows through a material.

It is this wasted energy due to electrical resistance that researchers are hoping to minimise.

Recent advances point to solutions

Running a computer will always consume some energy, but we are a long way (several orders of magnitude) away from computers that are as efficient as the laws of physics allow. Several recent advances give us hope for entirely new solutions to this problem via new materials and new concepts.

Very thin materials

One recent step forward in physics and materials science is being able to build and control materials that are only one or a few atoms thick. When a material forms such a thin layer, and the movement of electrons is confined to this sheet, it is possible for electricity to flow without resistance.

There are a range of different materials that show this property (or might show it). Our research at the ARC Centre for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) is focused on studying these materials.

The study of shapes

There is also an exciting conceptual leap that helps us understand this property of electricity flow without resistance.

This idea comes from a branch of mathematics called “topology”. Topology tells us how to compare shapes: what makes them the same and what makes them different.

Image a coffee cup made from soft clay. You could slowly squish and squeeze this shape until it looks like a donut. The hole in the handle of the cup becomes the hole in the donut, and the rest of the cup gets squished to form part of the donut.

Topology tells us that donuts and coffee cups are equivalent because we can deform one into the other without cutting it, poking holes in it, or joining pieces together.

It turns out that the strange rules that govern how electricity flows in thin layers can be understood in terms of topology. This insight was the focus of the 2016 Nobel Prize, and it’s driving an enormous amount of current research in physics and engineering.

Read more: Physicists explore exotic states of matter inspired by Nobel-winning research

We want to take advantage of these new materials and insights to develop the next generation of low-energy electronics devices, which will be based on topological science to allow electricity to flow with minimal resistance.

This work creates the possibility of a sustainable continuation of the IT revolution – without the huge energy cost.

– ref. Computing faces an energy crunch unless new technologies are found – http://theconversation.com/computing-faces-an-energy-crunch-unless-new-technologies-are-found-106060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW

I first met Tony Tuckson when I was interviewed for a curatorial position at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He was the panellist who asked pointed questions on the specifics of the artists I had researched in my honours year. All went well until I mentioned that I had just accepted a Teachers College scholarship. I was abruptly told by the Public Service Board representative that I was therefore not eligible for any public service position. I burst into tears and left. Weeks later a telegram arrived to tell me I had the job. The person who had engineered this reversal of sclerotic regulation was Tony Tuckson.

Tony Tuckson, 1972. Art Gallery of New South Wales Archive Photo: Margaret Tuckson

Until just before his death at the end of 1973, Tuckson was both the enabler and enforcer at the gallery. He was the client who worked with the architect Andrew Andersons to make the 1972 building one of the most delightful of all small art museums. He was the enforcer of professional ethics and took no excuses, including train strikes, for work not being completed on time.

He was as tough on himself as he was on others. Tuckson was passionate about the collection of Aboriginal art, working closely with Yolngu and Tiwi people, respecting their knowledge. The Trustees did not share his enthusiasm. In 1973, the year Sydney’s Opera House was opened, the Gallery was given extra funding for an exhibition of Aboriginal art, which according to the Trustees’ minutes, was supposed to last three months.

Unknown photographer. Tony Tuckson getting the story of Mungarrawuy’s hunting painting with Wandjuk (right) translating 1959

A space was allocated to give it the appearance of permanence. Tuckson knew he was ill, but did not stop working on the exhibition. His face became so deeply etched with pain that, framed by his whitening hair, he began to look like one of the New Guinea masks that he had brought into the collection. Four weeks before he died, Tony Tuckson was diagnosed with cancer of the spine.

One of his last conscious acts was to give Margaret, his wife, folders with the caption information for the exhibition. The death of the curator was less important than the art. The exhibition of Aboriginal Art stayed on view for the next five years and was generally assumed to be permanent.

Tuckson did not talk about his art at the Gallery. After his first solo exhibition at Watters in 1970, the Trustees had bought one painting as a part of the practice of purchasing art made by staff members. But it remained in storage. In 1973 shortly before his second exhibition, I saw drawings on the floor of his office – stark lines on white paper, breathtaking in their simplicity.

Tony Tuckson,‘White lines (vertical) on. ultramarine’ [TP73] 1970–73, diptych: styrene-based house paint, polyvinyl acetate and pigments on hardboard 213.5 x 244.6 cm (overall) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, gift of Annette Dupree 1976 © The estate of the artist

He no longer had any curatorial responsibility for Australian art, so was free to show the artist he had become. Daniel Thomas, as senior curator, insisted that one of Tuckson’s large paintings be shown in Recent Australian Art, the survey of contemporary art that was on view at the gallery when Tuckson died. A memorial exhibition, curated by Thomas, aided and abetted by close colleagues, was held at the AGNSW in 1976.

Painting in private

Now, 45 years after his death, Denise Mimmocchi, a curator from a generation that has only ever known Tuckson as a major Australian artist, has created a generous but dispassionate examination of the pathways of his art. It all leads to abstraction.

Early studies in colour and thick line show his fascination with the paintings by Soulages and Hartung, shown in the 1953 travelling exhibition, French Art Today. Tuckson’s work at the gallery surrounded him with art, and he was active in installing travelling exhibitions as well as bureaucratic tasks.

In addition, the small library subscribed to major international art journals so that the small professional team of Hal Missingham, Tuckson and later Daniel Thomas, could keep abreast of events outside Australia. In 1958, the Seattle Art Museum initiated a travelling exhibition, 8 American Artists, which came to Sydney. This was Australia’s introduction to the Abstract Expressionist artist, Mark Tobey. While it is impossible to precisely date Tuckson’s work, the delicate, scribbly lines of some of his paintings made about 1960, appear to indicate an interest in Tobey’s use of paint.

Tony Tuckson. ‘White on black, with paper’ [TP87] 1970– 73 synthetic polymer paint and paper collage on hardboard 244 x 122 cm Art Gallery of Ballarat, purchased 1974 © The estate of the artist

In 1967-68 Tuckson visited the USA on a study tour, where he saw Abstract Expressionist paintings while researching possible directions for the new gallery building. But even more importantly, in 1967, New York’s Museum of Modern Art sent Two Decades of American Painting to Australia.

While it is most commonly remembered as Australia’s introduction to Andy Warhol and its impact on the next generation of colour field painters, Two Decades included paintings by Cy Twomby, Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman – artists whose work is very much in sympathy with Tuckson.

Until 1962, Tuckson occasionally exhibited with local art societies, but then he stopped until 1970. While he made this decision because of a potential conflict of interest, it was also the case that the very conservative AGNSW Trustees would not have appreciated knowing that a very reliable staff member was one of Australia’s most radical artists.

By painting in private, Tuckson was freed from the opinion of others. He was able to experiment, to succeed or fail, taking only his own judgement into account.

The red, black and white series of the early to mid-1960s, are both passionate in their intensity and rigorous in their limited palette and control. Because he did not exhibit, and did not keep a detailed catalogue of his work, dating Tuckson’s output can be difficult – with the exception of one group of paintings.

Tony Tuckson. ‘Four uprights, red and black’, c1965 polyvinyl acetate and pigment on hardboard 122 x 183 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, gift of Frank Watters 2018, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program © The estate of the artist

It is reasonable to assume that the works made on the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald’s classified advertisements were made within months of the paper being printed. His choice of medium was purely aesthetic, as fine type of the newspaper contrasts with the bold strokes and wild swirls of paint.

Shortly after his 1970 solo exhibition, Tuckson’s style changed, The drawn lines became longer and looser, the brush strokes larger and more painterly. Some of these great, achingly beautiful paintings comprise of a single, wandering line tracking meditatively down the surface, while others have the fierceness of a broad brush wielded across the picture plane.

It was as though, having at last come out publicly as an artist rather than as an administrator, Tony Tuckson gave himself permission to be wild and free, to become as one with the paint.

Tuckson: the abstract sublime is at the Arts Gallery of NSW until 17 Feb 2019.

– ref. Passion and beauty: the paintings of Tony Tuckson – http://theconversation.com/passion-and-beauty-the-paintings-of-tony-tuckson-107591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Saunders, Associate professor, UNSW

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Why do people get cancer? – Sascha, age 8, Hurstbridge, Victoria.

This is a really tough question, Sascha. Lots of very clever people are working hard to try to answer it. I have worked on this problem for many years, and to be honest it still blows my mind to really think about just how complex it is.

Before we talk about why we get cancer, it helps to understand how we get cancer.

Read more: Interactive body map: what really gives you cancer?

All living things are made of tiny building blocks called cells. In humans there are hundreds of different kinds of cells, all with special jobs to do. They build our various organs like our skin, brain and bones. Some cells (such as brain and bone) can live for many years, while others (like red blood cells) live only a few weeks.

A human body is made up of trillions of individual cells, many more than all the stars you can see in the night sky.

As we grow, our body needs to make new cells. And as cells get old or damaged, they die and need to be replaced. That helps to keep us healthy.

The simplest way to think of a cancer is that sometimes, one of those trillions of cells starts to grow out of control and refuses to die. This out-of-control cell then divides and makes millions of copies of itself. It can grow to form a tumour – or, in some cases such as leukaemia, spreads through our blood.

An out-of-control cell can divide and make millions of copies of itself, and can grow to form a tumour. Shutterstock

Cancer cells can also spread to other parts of our body where they would not normally be found. This can cause important organs to stop doing their job and make us very unwell, or die.

Copying the code – and making mistakes

The really incredible thing about cells is that they contain the instructions for making copies of themselves. These instructions are stored in a code called the genome, made of a quite beautiful chemical called DNA.

And if you took the DNA from all the cells in a human and lined it all up, it would stretch around the Moon and back six or seven times.

The alphabet cells use to write this DNA code is made of just four different chemical “letters”: A,C,T, and G. And the instructions in each cell are made of about 6 billion of these chemical letters, which need to be copied exactly every time a cell divides to make a copy of itself.

To help you understand this amazing feat of biology, imagine trying to copy the entire Harry Potter book series in handwriting a thousand times over. That’s what a cell needs to do every time it divides, and it’s happening millions of times every day in our bodies.

You can watch an animation of the incredible, tiny machine cells use to copy DNA here:

With all that DNA to copy, cells are bound to make the occasional spelling mistake – we call these mistakes “mutations”. Sometimes, those mutations change the meaning of a cell’s instruction book, causing it to grow out of control and form a tumour.

This is what we call cancer.

But why?

Now, back to the question of why we get cancer.

Different scientists are having a bit of an argument over this question, but it seems to come down to a combination of bad luck and various experiences you might have in life. Things like too much sunshine, certain chemicals (such as tobacco smoke), alcohol, some foods and even some viruses can increase our chances of getting mutations in our DNA.

Because those mutations in DNA take time to build up, cancer is most commonly seen in older adults. Children do sometimes get cancer but thankfully it is relatively rare. Usually, evolution would mean not many people would get such a horrible disease like cancer. But because most people get cancer after they have had kids, evolution is almost blind to cancer. People who might have a higher cancer risk because of their genes live long enough to pass those genes onto their kids.

You can reduce your chance of cancer by making healthy, sensible lifestyle decisions but it is not possible to completely prevent it. Unfortunately, as I said before, it’s at least partly down to bad luck.

Importantly, we can almost never say for sure why an individual person has cancer.

Read more: Curious Kids: Is there anything hotter than the Sun?

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

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

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Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: Why do people get cancer? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-people-get-cancer-106069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yee-Fui Ng, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Monash University

After months of protracted negotiations between the political parties, the foreign donations bill has passed both houses of parliament and is set to be signed into law by the governor-general.

The bill bans donations of more than A$100 from foreign governments and state-owned enterprises to all “political actors” – including parties, individual candidates and significant political campaigners.

The bill was passed in the house of representatives late yesterday. It was passed by the senate earlier this month.

Following amendments sought by Labor and the Greens, the disclosure threshold for donations will also be reduced from $13,000 to $1,000, adding to transparency.

Why ban foreign donations?

The rationale for banning foreign donations is to stop the threat of foreign interests undermining Australian democracy. The concern is that foreign entities could exercise an unduly large influence on our politicians through generous donations.

Read more: Banning foreign political donations won’t fix all that ails our system

With this change, Australia joins the two-thirds of countries internationally that ban foreign political donations, including comparable liberal democracies such as the UK, US and Canada. New Zealand caps them at NZ$1,500.

Banning foreign donations will certainly reduce the ability of foreign entities to influence Australian policy and decision-making. In turn, this will reduce both actual corruption and the perception of corruption in politics. Ultimately, this may improve public confidence in the Australian political system.

Why did it take so long?

There were a number of concerns about the bill as it was initially drafted.

As it was first conceived, in addition to banning donations from political parties and their associated entities, the bill banned foreign donations to third parties (such as GetUp! and other campaign groups). This was consistent with the recommendations of a Senate committee majority.

However, Labor and the Greens objected to extending the bill to campaign groups. The proposal also created an outcry from the charities sector, who called it a “charities gag bill” in disguise. They argued that such a ban would restrict their capacity to draw attention to their causes, and endanger robust public discourse by civil society.

Read more: Ban on foreign political donations is both too broad and too narrow, and won’t fix our system

The government backed down on this, and the bill as passed excludes general issue-based advocacy. This means that third-party campaigners such as charities will not be prevented from receiving foreign gifts. Charities won’t be prevented from using foreign donations to advocate for non-partisan issues, but they cannot use foreign money for political spending.

The government then sought to amend the bill to encroach on state donations laws by giving Commonwealth donors an immunity from state laws.

Former foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr was called a master sycophant of China in a recent Australian Financial Review article. Jeremy Ng/AAP

But the regulation of federal donations is far weaker than the laws in states like NSW and Victoria. The proposed amendment would have thus watered down the overall national regulation of political finance. Labor and the Greens objected to this proposal on that basis.

Following this, the bill was amended to clarify that where donations are ultimately spent on state campaigns, the state law would apply. This largely addresses the issue.

However, the Greens have expressed concern that, even with this amendment, it is still possible for a Queensland property developer to make a gift to a political party, provided it is not used for state electoral purposes, although this is normally banned in Queensland.

So, does the bill fix the system?

The Greens have argued, correctly, that there remain loopholes in the bill. Foreign companies will still be able to channel their donations through Australian subsidiaries.

The bill does not cover the two prominent Chinese donors who were central the foreign donations debate: Chau Chak Wing and Huang Xiangmo. Chau is an Australian citizen, while Huang is an Australian permanent resident. Thus, one donor is legally an Australian and therefore not a foreigner, while the other is a long-term Australian resident who is legally allowed to remain in Australia permanently.

This is not a loophole in the bill – simply a reflection that the foreign donations debate was disproportionately focused on these individuals in the first place.

Chau Chak Wing photographed in June during defamation proceedings he ulimately won. Fairfax is appealing against the ruling. Chris Pavlich

More significantly, this bill is the tip of the iceberg. In the past seven years, foreign donations have only amounted to between 0.03% and 6.13% of all donations. This means that many Australian individuals and businesses can still exploit the opportunity to influence government decision-making by donating large sums of money.

The Grattan Institute has shown that highly regulated industries such as property development, transport and mining that benefit greatly from favourable government decisions donate disproportionately large sums compared to other industries. Their data also show that those who donate have a greater access to politicians and are more successful in securing meetings with ministers. This suggests that it is possible to “buy” political access, if not influence.

As noted above, the Commonwealth’s regulation of political donations remains weak compared to states such as NSW and Victoria.

Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten holds a picture of then foreign minister Julie Bishop with major donor Huang Xiangmo in June 2017. Mike Tsikas/AAP

New South Wales has caps on political donations of $5,800 per party and $2,500 for candidates. The state also bans donations from property developers and those in the tobacco, liquor and gambling industries.

Victoria has just banned foreign donations and implemented a cap on donations by individuals, unions and corporations of $4,000 over a four-year parliamentary term.

Caps on donations are commendable as they promote political equality. Such caps prevent rich donors from exerting a disproportionate level of influence through extravagantly large donations. It is thus unfortunate that the Greens’ proposal to cap donations at the federal level to $1,000 annually was voted down.

In short, the foreign donations bill is but a small first step towards a comprehensive reform of our system of political finance. It is time to regulate all donations that might corrupt our political system, not just foreign ones.

– ref. The foreign donations bill will soon be law – what will it do, and why is it needed? – http://theconversation.com/the-foreign-donations-bill-will-soon-be-law-what-will-it-do-and-why-is-it-needed-107095

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney

Review: André Rieu, Sydney

The phenomenon that is André Rieu was in Sydney last week, an event which gave rise to strong feelings pro and contra. Among musicians, his slick entertainments are at best grudgingly recognised as savvy market-orientated products, at worst despised as shameless pandering to a low common denominator.

Among the general public, his name-recognition is sufficiently high to pack out the 8,000-seater hall at the International Convention Centre for two consecutive nights. There was an atmosphere of palpable pleasure on Wednesday evening as the crowd laughed and applauded for over two and a half hours.

Are these two views at all reconcilable? As a classical-music reviewer who only knew of Rieu as the butt of snooty dismissals, I thought it worth seeing for myself what all the fuss was about.

For the benefit of anyone who has lived under a rock in recent decades, Rieu is a Dutch violinist who founded the Johann Strauss Orchestra 31 years ago (as he mentioned several times during the concert). This group has produced a vast discography of audio and video recordings and regularly tours the world, with both concerts and recordings meeting with enormous commercial success.

One could not ignore the intense marketing both before and during the event. His website does not merely offer tickets and DVDs, it sells entire tour-packages, and a similar range of products was advertised on the screens in the interval. Outside in the foyer, sales of recordings were doing brisk business before the event, and there were several patrons in the hall sporting “André Rieu” scarves and other memorabilia. For some, Rieu is not just for an evening: he is for life, or until the scarf shrinks in the wash.

Rieu is a violinist who founded the Johann Strauss Orchestra. Andre Rieu Productions

The polarity of opinions about Rieu is not in itself surprising: the idea of “classical” music (itself a 19th-century invention) carries with it the notions of timeless merit and elevated artistic achievement. To this is opposed the category of the “popular”, with its implications of widespread but possibly more ephemeral appeal.

Classical musicians from Liberace to Vanessa Mae who cross this boundary risk their reputations as serious musicians. A rare instance of someone whose reputation survived was Placido Domingo, a bona fide opera star before and after becoming a world-wide sensation as part of the original Three Tenors.

But like many binaries, this classical/popular distinction is in reality very porous. Certain classical works or excerpts have become enormously popular, and favourites such as Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, Orff’s O fortuna from Carmina Burana, and Verdi’s drinking song Libiamo from La Traviata all featured on Wednesday’s program. Each was arranged to suit the forces available – three solo tenors, up to five solo sopranos and a backing female chorus.

The absence of basses in these choral numbers might have been queried by purists; the presence of the Fazioli grand piano and tuba in the Hallelujah chorus would have had rendered them apoplectic (not that a purist would have ventured within a mile of the gig anyway).

The rest of the program included a mixture of light classics, pop arrangements, folk tunes and Christmas-themed numbers. The Johann Strausses, father and son, were represented by the Radetzky March and the Blue Danube Waltz respectively. A second Hallelujah (Cohen) and Little Richard’s Tutti frutti softened the classical focus, while the likes of Anderson’s Sleigh Ride and O Holy Night provided the aural counterpart to the snowy fir trees and tinsel-decorated music stands. As is apparently typical, one song was included as tribute to the land in which they were performing, in this case the anthemic I am Australian by The Seekers.

Rieu’s concerts are always accompanied by spectacle.

More than music

At Rieu’s gigs, it’s clearly about more than the music. The visual plays an important element, from the sight of Rieu and his musicians prancing through the crowd and up on to the stage at the start, to the costumes and the vast screen behind the orchestra displaying imagery appropriate to each song. At the start of the second half, the women of the orchestra temporarily exchanged their prismatic ball-gowns for Dutch costumes and performed a clog dance.

For White Christmas, fake snow fell on to some of those sitting in rows near the stage. And always the immaculately coiffed Dutchman with his antique shirt-front took centre stage, charming the crowd with his accented English as he introduced the next piece or provided his reflections on world peace and what he would do were he prime minister of Australia, neither of which have lingered in the memory.

One constantly finds references in publicity material to Rieu “playing his world-famous Stradivarius violin”. Consequently, I was expecting to hear a few solo numbers such as he has recorded in the past. In fact, whenever he played on Wednesday, he merely doubled the orchestral violins. More often, instrument and bow were tucked in his left hand as he conducted his band.

My sharp-eyed concert companion spotted that, alone among the orchestra, his instrument didn’t have a pick-up mic, leading one to wonder whether he would be at all audible beyond the front rows. Clearly it does not matter to his public that they get to see Rieu the impresario rather than the virtuoso. His general charisma and not his playing seems to be what counts. The choreography reinforces the maestro myth, with all the sopranos curtseying to him after acknowledging the audience.

One could not fault the professionalism of the orchestra, who had clearly played the program so many times that they barely needed to look at the scores. What was more surprising is how few of them seemed jaded or cynical. Perhaps it’s not a bad gig: rumour has it that it’s certainly a well-paid one.

One gets to play before adoring crowds all over the world, giving pleasure to millions. The polite applause of the typical concert-hall audience must seem tepid when you’ve seen couples waltz to your music and crowds scramble for Polaroid photos of Rieu.

Andre Rieu Productions

At times, one encounters the argument that Rieu and other crossover acts can act as a gateway for people to get into classical music. While this may have happened in individual cases, I doubt whether even a sizeable minority of his listeners would be incentivised by what he offers into making a deeper dive into this world.

The experience of attending a symphonic concert or a full opera is, to begin with, a relatively demanding one: not every part will instantly appeal, and one has often to work to understand what makes Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony hang together, or why Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde sing at each other for such an inordinate length.

Excerpts and short numbers, the sort of thing Rieu exclusively provides, don’t make any comparable demands. In fact, since he stuck mostly to extremely well-known music, there wasn’t even the challenge of the unknown-but-accessible, let alone the difficult. As such, what he offers is easy entertainment.

This is not to be despised in itself; indeed, entertainment should always be a facet of classical music-making (though devotees of new music might well disagree). However, by sparing us the need to make any real effort, Rieu does not open the doorway to what I would argue is the deeper pleasure that comes after engaging mind as well as body and senses.

Dessert and bonbons are all very well, but I hungered for something a bit more nourishing. Clearly, though, in this crowd I was in a tiny minority: the world-conquering showman gave his listeners exactly what they wanted and was cheered and encored to the rafters.

– ref. André Rieu gives his audience exactly what they want: entertainment – http://theconversation.com/andre-rieu-gives-his-audience-exactly-what-they-want-entertainment-107694

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Calum Cunningham, PhD candidate, University of Tasmania, University of Tasmania

The decline of Tasmanian devils is having an unusual knock-on effect: animal carcasses would once have been gobbled up in short order by devils are now taking many days longer to disappear.

We made the discovery, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by placing carcasses in a range of locations and watching what happened. We found that reduced scavenging by devils results in extra food for less efficient scavengers, such as feral cats.

Tasmanian devils have struggled for two decades against a typically fatal transmissible cancer, called devil facial tumour disease. The disease has caused devil populations to plummet by about 80% on average, and by up to 95% in some areas.

DFTD has spread across most of Tasmania over a 20-year period. Dashed lines show the estimated disease front. Calum Cunningham/Menna Jones

Scavengers are carnivores that feed on dead animals (carrion). Almost all carnivores scavenge to a greater or lesser degree, but the devil is Tasmania’s dominant scavenger. Since the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger, it is also the island’s top predator.

A scavenging experiment

In our study, we put out carcasses of the Tasmanian pademelon (a small wallaby weighing roughly 5kg) in a variety of places, ranging from disease-free areas with large devil populations, to long-diseased areas where devil numbers are very low. We then used motion-sensor cameras to record all scavenger species that fed on the carcasses.

The Carnivores of Tasmania: a Scavenging Experiment.

Unsurprisingly, much less carrion was consumed by devils in areas where devil populations have declined. This has increased the availability of carrion for other species, such as the invasive feral cat, spotted-tailed quoll, and forest raven. All of these species significantly increased their scavenging in places with fewer devils.

Consumption of experimentally placed carcasses. Proceedings of the Royal Society B

The responses of native scavengers (quolls and ravens) were subtly different to those of feral cats. The amount of feeding by quolls and ravens depended simply on how much of each carcass had already been consumed by devils. Ravens and quolls are smaller and less efficient than devils at consuming carcasses, so they get the chance to feed only when devils have not already monopolised a carcass.

Read more: Tasmanian devils reared in captivity show they can thrive in the wild

In contrast, feral cats tended to scavenge only at sites where devils were at very low abundance. This suggests that healthy devil populations create a “landscape of fear” that causes cats to avoid carcasses altogether in areas where they are likely to encounter a devil. It seems that the life of a feral cat is now less scary in the absence of devils.

Predator prevalence

By looking at 20 years of bird surveys from BirdLife Australia, we also found that the odds of encountering a raven in Tasmania have more than doubled from 1998 to 2017. However, we were unable to directly link this with devil declines. It is likely the raven population is growing in response to a range of factors that includes land-use change and agricultural intensification, as well as reduced competition with devils.

Other studies have shown that cats have also become more abundant in areas where devils have declined. This highlights the potential for devils to act as a natural biological control on cats. Cats are a major threat to small native animals and are implicated in most Australian mammal extinctions.

Carcass concerns

Although smaller scavengers consumed more carrion as devils declined, they were unable to consume them as rapidly as devils. This has resulted in the accumulation of carcasses that would previously have been quickly and completely eaten by devils.

In places with plenty of devils, carcasses were completely eaten within an average of five days, compared with 13 days in places where devil facial tumour disease is rife. That means carcasses last much longer where devils are rare.

DFTD has spread across most of Tasmania over a 20-year period. Dashed lines show the estimated disease front. Calum Cunningham/Menna Jones

Around 2 million medium-sized animals are killed by vehicles or culled in Tasmania each year, and most are simply left to decompose where they fall. With devils consuming much less carrion, it is likely that carcasses are accumulating across Tasmania. It is unclear how much of a disease risk they pose to wildlife and livestock.

Conserving carnivores

Large carnivores are declining throughout the world, with knock-on effects such as increasing abundance of smaller predators. In recent years, some large carnivores have begun returning to their former ranges, bringing hope that their lost ecological roles may be restored.

Carnivores are declining for many reasons, but an underlying cause is that humans do not necessarily appreciate their pivotal role in the health of entire ecosystems. One way to change this is to recognise the beneficial services they provide.

Read more: Tasmanian devils are evolving rapidly to fight their deadly cancer

Our research highlights one of these benefits. It supports arguments that we should help the devil population recover, not just for their own sake but for other species too, including those threatened by feral cats.

The devil seems to be solving the disease problem itself, rapidly evolving resistance to facial tumours. Any management plan will need to help this process, and not hinder it. Potentially, returning devils to mainland Australia could provide similar benefit to wildlife threatened by feral predators.

– ref. Tassie devils’ decline has left a feast of carrion for feral cats – http://theconversation.com/tassie-devils-decline-has-left-a-feast-of-carrion-for-feral-cats-106859

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Arvanitakis, Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University

Our relationship with tech companies has changed significantly over the past 18 months. Ongoing data breaches, and the revelations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal, have raised concerns about who owns our data, and how it is being used and shared.

Tech companies have vowed to do better. Following his grilling by both the US Congress and the EU Parliament, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said Facebook will change the way it shares data with third party suppliers. There is some evidence that this is occurring, particularly with advertisers.

But have tech companies really changed their ways? After all, data is now a primary asset in the modern economy.

To find whether there’s been a significant realignment between community expectations and corporate behaviour, we analysed the data ethics principles and initiatives that various global organisations have committed since the various scandals broke.

What we found is concerning. Some of the largest organisations have not demonstrably altered practices, instead signing up to ethics initiatives that are neither enforced nor enforceable.

Read more: Big Data is useful, but we need to protect your privacy too

How we tracked this information

Before discussing our findings, some points of clarification.

Firstly, the issues of data, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and algorithms are difficult to draw apart, and their scope is contested. In fact, for most of these organisations, the concepts are lumped together, while for researchers and policy makers they present distinctly different challenges.

For example, machine learning, while a branch of AI, is about building machines to learn on their own without supervision. As such, policy makers must ensure that the machine learning algorithms are free from bias and take into consideration various social and economic issues, rather than treating everyone the same.

Secondly, the policies, statements and guidelines of the companies we looked at are not centrally located, consistently presented or simple to decipher.

Accounting for the lack of consistent approach to data ethics taken by technology companies, our method was to survey visible steps undertaken, and to look at the broad ethical principles embraced.

Five broad categories of data ethics

Some companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google, have published their own AI ethical principles.

More companies, including Facebook and Amazon, have opted to keep an arm’s length approach to ethics by joining consortiums, such as Partnership on AI (PAI) and the Information and Technology Industry Council (ITI). These two consortiums have published statements containing ethical principles. The principles are voluntary, and have no reporting requirements, objective standards or oversight.

Read more: Big Data is useful, but we need to protect your privacy too

We examined the content of the published ethical guidelines of these companies and consortiums, and found the principles fell into five broad categories.

1. Privacy: privacy is widely acknowledged as an area of importance, highlighting that the focus for most of these organisations is a traditional consumer/supplier relationship. That is, the data provided by the consumers is now owned by the company, who will use this data, but respect confidentiality

2. governance: these principles are about accountability in data management, ensuring quality and accuracy of data, and the ethical application of algorithms. The focus here is on the internal processes that should be followed

3. fairness: fairness means using data and algorithms in a way that respects the person behind the data. That means taking safety into consideration, and recognising the impact the use of data can have on people’s lives. This includes a recognition of how algorithms relying on historical data or flawed programming can discriminate against marginalised communities

4. shared benefit: this refers to the idea that data is owned by those that produce it and, as such, there should be joint control of the data, as well as shared benefits. We noted a lack of consensus or intention to adhere to this category

5. transparency: it is here that a more nuanced understanding of data ownership begins to emerge. Transparency essentially refers to being open about the way data is collected and used, as well as eschewing unnecessary data collection. Given the commercial imperative of companies to protect confidential research and development, it’s not surprising this principle is only acknowledged by a handful of players.

Initiatives big tech companies have signed up to in particular categories of data ethics. Author provided

Fairness and transparency is important

Our research suggests conversations about data ethics are largely focused on privacy and governance. But these principles are the minimum expected in a legal framework. If anything, the scandals of the past have shown us this is not enough.

Facebook is notable as company keeping an arm’s length approach to ethics. It’s a member of Partnership on AI and Information and Technology Industry Council, but has eschewed publication of its own data ethics principles. And while there have been rumblings about a so-called “Fairness Flow” machine learning bias detector, and rumours of an ethics team at Facebook, details for either of these developments are sketchy.

Meanwhile, the extent to which Partnership on AI and Information and Technology Industry Council influence the behaviour of member companies is highly questionable. The Partnership on AI, which has more than 70 members, was formed in 2016, but it has yet to demonstrate any tangible outcomes beyond the publication of key tenets.

Read more: We need to talk about the data we give freely of ourselves online and why it’s useful

Better regulation is required

For tech companies, there may be a trade-off between treating data ethically and how much money they can make from that data. There is also a lack of consensus between companies about what the correct ethical approach looks like. So, in order to protect the public, external guidance and oversight is needed.

Unfortunately, the government has currently kept its focus in the new Australian Government Data Sharing and Release Legislation on privacy – a principle that’s covered in legislation elsewhere.

The data related events of the last few years have confirmed we need a greater focus on data as a citizen right, not just a consumer right. As such, we need greater focus on fairness, transparency and shared benefit – all areas which are currently being neglected by companies and government alike.

The author would like to acknowledge the significant contribution made to this article by Laura Hill, a student in the Western Sydney University Bachelor of Law graduate entry program.

– ref. What are tech companies doing about ethical use of data? Not much – http://theconversation.com/what-are-tech-companies-doing-about-ethical-use-of-data-not-much-104845

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emil Jeyaratnam, Data + Interactives Editor, The Conversation

Australia’s population is growing fast, ticking over 25 million in August 2018. And as the population increases, it is also becoming more diverse.

At the time of the 2016 Census, Australia’s population comprised people from more than 250 countries and 300 different ancestries. Almost half the population were either first- or second-generation Australian, and more than 300 different languages were spoken in homes.

But we are still predominantly an Anglo society, reflected in the number of people who identity as English, Scottish or Irish. Collectively, Anglo ancestries made up more than 50% of the population (excluding people who identified as Australian).

Not surprisingly, the majority of the population are born here — about two out of three people (or about 67%) were born in Australia.

But this is changing. The number of overseas-born residents has steadily increased since the second world war.

The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has also increased in recent years, with 2.8% of the population identifying as Indigenous in 2016.

Prior to the war, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, commonly referred to as the White Australia policy, resulted in a rapid decrease in the proportion of overseas-born residents, from almost 30% in 1894 to around 17% in 1911, reaching a low of 9.8% in 1947.

Read more: Australian politics explainer: the White Australia policy

After the second world war, the then immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, relaxed the policy to allow refugees from Europe to settle in Australia. The White Australia policy was completely removed by the mid-1970s.

People from the United Kingdom continue to be the largest migrant group – more than 1 million people living in Australia were born in the UK. But the proportion of UK-born residents has decreased significantly, from about 12% of Australia’s population in 1921 to just under 5% in 2016.

Of the overseas-born population, nearly one in five (18%) people arrived since the start of 2012.

And nearly as many people had at least one parent born overseas (45%) as had both parents born in Australia (47%).

Though we tend of think of Australia as being multicultural, we actually rank relatively low in terms of diversity. But the above charts show that this is changing. And Australians generally seem to support diversity.

A survey done by the Challenging Racism Project (Western Sydney University) found that 80% of survey respondents felt positive about cultural diversity.

The report also found that people’s views about different cultures and ethnic groups are complex, and sometimes contradictory.

Despite the positive views about diversity, people were not as supportive of non-discriminatory immigration policies, with only about 53% supporting that view and 23% opposed.

Almost 50% of Australians thought that overseas arrivals should assimilate into Australian culture.

Most troublingly, the report found that 32% of survey respondents have “negative” feelings towards Muslim Australians, and 22% said they have “negative” feelings towards Australians of Middle-Eastern heritage.

The Australian Human Rights Commission received 409 complaints under the Racial Discrimination Act in 2016-17.

About 40% of these complaints were made by someone born outside Australia. And of those made by Australian-born complainants, about 25% were made by Indigenous Australians.

The grounds for the complaints are shown below, listed by the number of complaints:

But modern Australia’s most strained relationship is its oldest. Aboriginal and Torres Trait Islander people have suffered greatly under European rule. On many measures, Indigenous Australians are still worse off than the non-Indigenous population.

For example, life expectancy is about ten years lower, unemployment is higher, and Indigenous students are considerably behind their non-Indigenous peers.

And 27 years since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in Custody, more than 400 Aboriginal and Torres Trait Islander people have died in custody, and Indigenous Australians are still massively over-representated in our prison system.

The over-representation of Indigenous people in the justice system is not confined to adults. Unfortunately, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people are also over-represented in the juvenile justice system.

About 53% of all young people in detention in 2017 were Indigenous (on an average night during the June quarter). Indigenous young people aged 10–17 were 24 times as likely as non-Indigenous young people to be in juvenile detention on an average night.

– ref. Twelve charts on race and racism in Australia – http://theconversation.com/twelve-charts-on-race-and-racism-in-australia-105961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alana Lentin, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University

Today, what can be defined as racism and what cannot has become a matter for debate. Every racist caught in the act, whether it be wrongly accusing a black child of sexual assault or running over and killing a mosque-goer, claims not to be racist.

Eric Kaufmann, a prominent professor at a London university, has claimed that “racial self-interest is not racism”. He is joined by others who see talking about race as “unhelpful”, be that from a left-wing perspective that privileges class, or from a conservative one that ridicules “identity politics”.

Black people, Indigenous people, people of colour, Muslims and Jews regularly report being lectured to on racism – and what constitutes racism – by people who have never experienced it.

How did we get here?

As Cheryl Harris explained in her landmark 1993 article, “Whiteness as Property”, white people in settler colonial countries such as the US and Australia have benefited directly from being white. This has endowed them with the birthright of neither being owned (as in the case of enslaved people) nor “in the way” (as in the case of Indigenous peoples whose lands were coveted).

Many denials of racism come from feelings of discomfort over this fact, a state referred to as “white fragility”. When attention is drawn to white people’s racial privilege, or the assumptions and structures that prop up racist beliefs are challenged, white people tend to respond with anger and a refusal to engage in the discussion.

Read more: Explainer: what is casual racism?

LeRon Barton has written that viral videos of police shootings of black people are the “new lynching postcard” – a reference to postcards that were handed out to white people who attended a lynching – and that white people in the US choose not to know the depth of America’s problem of institutionalised racist violence.

Likewise, many Australians are only now becoming aware of the plight of detainees in Australia’s offshore detention camps, after more than five years.

Not seeing racism is integral to what the philosopher Charles Mills has called “white ignorance.” This is not real ignorance, but a wilful one that allows those unaffected by racism to maintain their “innocence” and ultimately protects their privilege, as the academic Gloria Wekker has powerfully argued.

Cheryl Harris discusses the underlying causes of racial disadvantage in America.

This refusal to acknowledge or engage in discussions about racism creates a dangerous situation of racial illiteracy. Not only does it mean that racialised people are expected to bear the belittling of their experiences, but ultimately that we are all worse off in the face of open white supremacy in Australia and across the Global North.

Neither our schooling nor our media equip us to understand what race and racism are. We have only been told that racism is wrong. And when people feel accused of wrongdoing, they go into denial mode.

But this is unproductive. We need to move away from a moral understanding of racism, which sees it as a problem of “bad” individuals, and towards a systemic one, which grounds our understanding in the history of European colonialism. And to do that, we need to examine what race is.

Or rather, what race does.

So what does race do?

Charles Mills describes how race continues to exist today in a social-political context.

As the late academic Jose Munoz argues, because it is impossible to adequately theorise race as any one thing, we are better served by looking at what race does. What functions does race perform? How does it continue to reproduce the idea of a natural social hierarchy?

The main problem we face in understanding race is the fixation on the biological. In fact, as Stuart Hall explains, race – a modern phenomenon that developed within the context of European colonial domination – unfurls in three stages: the religious, the cultural and the biological.

Ideas of inherent racial difference between human beings took shape during the Spanish inquisition when the notion of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) was used to justify the mass expulsion or forced conversion of Jews and Muslims to Catholicism.

This idea then influenced Spanish invaders’ attitudes to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, whose very humanity they questioned on the basis of their different spiritual beliefs.

It was mainly religious men such as Sepulveda and De Las Casas who were concerned with the question of Indigenous peoples’ humanity. However, race became tethered to culture in the context of European anti-Semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries and the “civilising mission” enacted by colonisers to bring “progress” to Indigenous peoples in Africa, the Americas and Asia.

The biological understanding of race, or the idea that, as Hall puts it, a people’s intellectual abilities, character or temperament is linked to their “genetic code”, came last.

The inference of race in human biology solidified the taxonomical systems devised and used by European anthropologists since the early 18th century. If race was indeed written into the body, the organisation of the world’s people, which previously had used geography as its primary means of hierarchical demarcation, could no longer be denied.

This idea enabled such policies as the forced assimilation of Aboriginal peoples through “breeding” and sterilisation – practices that, as Dorothy Roberts notes, are still used in the US against poor black, Latina and First Nations women.

Read more: How do you talk to kids about racism?

In contemporary times, the focus has turned to debunking the idea of race as a biological category. However, this narrow focus has led us to ignore the myriad other ways race takes effect.

It is important to note that biological ideas of race continue to frame the work of many geneticists and medical practitioners, and that assumptions of links between intelligence and race have not faded away and have an impact on policy-making. However, we do not need to believe in biological differences between human groups for race to still have an impact.

Indeed, the notion that race is purely about biology is at the core of the strident claim that Islamophobia cannot be racism because, as it is said, “Islam is not a race”.

At the same time, commentators such as the British journalist David Aaronovitch, have claimed that anti-Semitism is racism because Jews can be qualified as a racial group. This demonstrates the confusion and ideological grandstanding at play when discussing race.

In fact, though distinct, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia take very similar forms. Each is based on associating all members of the religion and often the religion itself with negative assumptions about the degree of control they have in society. Clearly, then, both are forms of racism.

What does this mean for racism?

Race is not singular. Rather, it weaves together ideas from biology, culture, nationalism and religion to make inferences about whole populations. It is first and foremost a technique for the management of human difference that has been used by states, governments and institutions, such as the police, education, healthcare and welfare, to organise and demarcate between people.

Race can be in play even when it is disavowed because, over the course of modernity, it came to structure the relationship between Europeanness and non-Europeanness, which is often, but not always, equatable to whiteness and non-whiteness.

Racism cannot be “anti-white” because it is does not describe feelings of animosity or hostility; it is not a synonym for prejudice. Ideas of race gave rise to racist ideologies, such as the idea that Europe is the pinnacle of progress and civilisation. This legitimated the invasion and domination of the majority of the world’s peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the theft of land, the assimilation and appropriation of Indigenous cultures and the erasure of local knowledges.

Read more: The Herald Sun’s Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature

Racism is systemic. While it manifests in individual attitudes and behaviours, it is not produced by them. That is the primary reason it is so difficult to eradicate. The other is its ability to constantly adapt to changing circumstances.

For example, the removal of Aboriginal children from their families at unprecedented rates today does not require the openly racist language of blood quantum and improvement. Nevertheless, both the motivations for their removal – a systemic belief in the inherent inferiority of Aboriginal family structures – and the effects on children and families are the same.

Race is mobile and ever-changing. But ultimately, it serves to maintain white supremacy, at both a local and global level.

– ref. Why racism is so hard to define and even harder to understand – http://theconversation.com/why-racism-is-so-hard-to-define-and-even-harder-to-understand-106236

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elaine Jefford, Research Lead in Midwifery, Southern Cross University

Birth is a natural process, and for many women, it goes according to plan. But when a baby is overdue or complications arise for mother or baby, the woman may need to consider being induced, which means having the birth sped up with medical intervention.

Time limit on labour

In 1973, an Irish doctor called Kieran O’Driscoll introduced an “active management of labour” policy in an Irish hospital that went on to change the global face of maternity care.

O’Driscoll’s aim was to ensure every woman having her first baby would be delivered within 12 hours of going into labour, to avoid the physical and emotional exhaustion of prolonged labour (defined as more than 12 hours for first-time mothers).

Under the active management policy, intervention occurred if the woman’s cervix did not dilate by one centimetre per hour. Intervention would occur by breaking the water sac (known as the membranes) and, one hour later, starting an artificial hormone via intravenous drip to stimulate contractions of the womb.

The intravenous drip was increased at 30 minute intervals until contractions occurred two to three minutes apart, or the maximum dose was given.

Today, an induction of labour is a similar process but it begins with one or two extra steps to help with cervical “ripening”. This essentially means softening the cervix so it can dilate.

The first is a “stretch and sweep” of the membranes. This involves a health professional, via vaginal examination, pushing their finger through the cervix and rubbing the base of the water sac encasing the baby.

The second is the insertion of hormonal gel or a balloon catheter into the cervical canal to help it open.

Read more: Common method of preventing early births may be causing more

When is labour induced?

Labour is often induced when a woman’s pregnancy lasts for 40 weeks or more, or when her waters break before 34 weeks and there are concerns for the baby or mother’s health.

A baby can also be induced: after 34 weeks if there is a risk of infection to mother or baby; when a baby is thought to be growing “too large”; when pregnancy complications are affecting the mother or baby; or when a baby dies in the womb (stillbirth).

Women at greater than 39-40 weeks gestation may also request induction for social reasons, such as to plan the date of birth around important family commitments such as a partner being imminently posted overseas. Though this is not recommended.

A good birth goes beyond having a healthy baby. Julie Johnson/Unsplash

There remains great controversy around when to induce labour, especially for overdue women.

Post-date inductions (for women who are overdue) aim to counter the increased risk of stillbirth. Doctors’ argue after a certain time the placenta can no longer provide adequate levels of nutrition to the baby, which increases the risk of stillbirth.

Induction for overdue pregnancies also aims to reduce the odds of having a large (macrosomic) baby, which could be difficult to deliver. But practitioners’ “guesstimates” of fetal weight, even using an ultrasound scan, are often inaccurate.

It’s always difficult to make decisions about medical care. And these are inevitably influenced by personal, cultural, social and organisational factors. But an added complexity in maternity care is the mother-baby dyad. Any decision made ultimately impacts not only the childbearing woman, but also her (unborn) baby.

Nevertheless, women must be central to decision-making. And no induction should occur until the potential benefits, risks and implications are clarified. The woman must also understand induction is a package of intervention, and thus make an informed decision.

Read more: Why we should be concerned with the rise and rise of early planned births

Not all women should be induced

A recent study from American obstetrics researcher William Grobman suggests routine induction at 39 weeks reduces the rates of caesarean birth for women with no identified pregnancy complications.

But the results must be interpreted with caution.

First, it’s not best practice to routinely induce a low-risk woman solely to lower the risk of a caesarean.

Second, existing research shows less medicalised approaches to birth – such as receiving care by a known midwife in a continuity of care model throughout pregnancy and birth – are less likely to result in medical intervention, and more likely to result in women feeling more satisfied and in control of their birthing experience.

Third, induction often leads to women being more likely to request an epidural (surgical pain relief) due to the artificially induced, painful, sudden and intense contractions. In a labour that has not been induced, contractions build over a period of time, giving the woman’s body a chance for its natural pain relief process to begin.

Epidurals restrict the woman’s instinctive movement in labour because she is unable to move her legs. As a result, women aren’t able to get into an optimal birthing position or feel when a contraction occurs, which increases the risk of instrumental birth (using vacuum or forceps – which look like large salad tongs – to guide the baby out of the birth canal) and subsequent tears.

Read more: What we know about perineal tearing, and how to reduce it during childbirth

While intervention is sometimes required, we need to remember that a “good birth” goes beyond having a healthy baby. Women need to be able to lead decision-making during their birthing journey. They deserve to feel respected in their choices, to achieve not only the best possible physical, emotional and psychological outcomes.

– ref. What happens when labour is induced and when is it necessary? – http://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-labour-is-induced-and-when-is-it-necessary-102482

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Franziska Mey, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announced last week that a federal Labor government would create a Just Transition Authority to overseee Australia’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This echoes community calls for a “fast and fair” energy transition to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Read more: Labor’s policy can smooth the energy transition, but much more will be needed to tackle emissions

But disruptive change is already here for Australia’s energy sector. 2018 has been a record year for large-scale solar and wind developments and rooftop solar. Renewable energy is now cheaper than new-build coal power generation – and some are saying renewables are now or soon will be cheaper than existing coal-fired power.

Based purely on the technical lifetime of existing power stations, the Australian market operator predicts that 70% of coal-fired generation capacity will be retired in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria by 2040. If renewables continue to fall in price, it could be much sooner.

We must now urgently decide what a “just” and “fair” transition looks like. There are many Australians currently working in the energy sector – particularly in coal mining – who risk being left behind by the clean energy revolution.

Coal communities face real challenges

The history of coal and industrial transitions shows that abrupt change brings a heavy price for workers and communities. Typically, responses only occur after major retrenchments, when it is already too late for regional economies and labour markets to cope.

Coal communities often have little economic diversity and the flow-on effects to local economies and businesses are substantial. It is easy to find past caseswhere as many as one third of workers do not find alternative employment.

Read more: Energy transitions are nothing new but the one underway is unprecedented and urgent

We often hear about power stations, but there are almost 10 times as many workers in coal mining, where there is a much higher concentration of low and semi-skilled workers. The 2016 Census found almost half of coal workers are machinery operators and drivers.

The demographics of coal mining workers in Australia suggest natural attrition through early retirements will not be sufficient: 60% are younger than 45.

Mining jobs are well paid and jobs in other sectors are very unlikely to provide a similar income, so even under the best scenarios many will take a large pay cut.

Another factor is the long tradition of coal mining that shapes the local culture and identity for these communities. Communities are particularly opposed to change when they experience it as a loss of history and character without a vision for the future.

Lastly, the local environmental impacts of coal mining can’t be neglected. The pollution of land, water and air due to mining operations and mining waste have created brownfields and degraded land that needs remediation.

What is a ‘just’ transition?

A just transition to a clean energy economy has many facets. Unions first used the term in the 1980s to describe a program to support workers who lost their jobs. Just transition was recognised in the Paris Agreement as “a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs”.

However, using the concept of energy justice, there are three main aspects which have to be considered for workers, communities and disadvantaged groups:

• distributing benefits and costs equally,

• a participatory process that engages all stakeholders in the decision making, and

• recognising multiple perspectives rooted in social, cultural, ethical and gender differences.

A framework developed at the Institute for Sustainable Futures maps these dimensions.

Institute for Sustainable Futures

A just transition requires a holistic approach that encompasses economic diversification, support for workers to transition to new jobs, environmental remediation and inclusive processes that also address equity impacts for marginalised groups.

The politics of mining regions

If there is not significant investment in transition plans ahead of coal closures, there will be wider ramifications for energy transition and Australian politics.

In Australia, electricity prices have been at the centre of the “climate wars” over the past decade. Even with the steep price rises in recent years, the average household still only pays around A$35 a week. But with the closure of coal power plants at Hazelwood and Liddell, Australia is really only just getting to the sharp end of the energy transition where workers lose jobs.

There are some grounds for optimism. In the La Trobe Valley, an industry wide worker redeployment scheme, investment in community projects and economic incentives appears to be paying dividends with a new electric vehicle facility setting up.

AGL is taking a proactive approach to the closure of Liddelland networks are forming to diversify the local economy. But a wider transition plan and investment coordinated by different levels of government will be needed.

Read more: What types of people will lead our great energy transition?

We know what is coming: just transition investment is a precondition for the rapid energy transition we need to make, and to minimise the economic and social impacts on these communities.

– ref. What would a fair energy transition look like? – http://theconversation.com/what-would-a-fair-energy-transition-look-like-107366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Finkel, Australia’s Chief Scientist, Office of the Chief Scientist

This is a long read. Enjoy!

Today I want to set out my case for the enduring relevance of the disciplines. I want to advocate for a content-rich curriculum. And I want to focus in particular on the importance of teaching maths, in sequence, through a structured program, and at the level of a student’s real ability.

But I want to get there by way of a parable.

The Light in the Cave

A few years ago, I travelled with my family to New Zealand. We decided to spend a few hours at the Te Anau caves, near the south-western tip of the South Island.

Every year, people flock there in their tens of thousands not so much for the caves – although they’re stunning – but for the glow-worms. Like a scene from The Phantom of the Opera, you step into a barge that glides silently through the water, shrouded by the subterranean darkness. Then you look up, and you’re in a grotto, and all you can see are thousands upon thousands of tiny blue pin-points of light.

Now I’m an engineer – and the author of the Finkel Review of the National Electricity Market. It’s hard to take off your hats when you’re on holiday. So when I looked at those lights, I thought to myself: what a brilliant mechanism for the efficient conversion of chemical energy into light energy!

It works like this: glow-worms live on mosquitoes and midges. To catch them, they dangle an invisible web of silken threads and switch on their lights. The light confounds the prey, then the silk entangles the victims. And the victims provide the energy to keep the lights on. Genius. So that’s what I saw in the cave: engineering inspiration.

Then there’s my wife, a life scientist. She can tell you that glow-worms are found only in Australia and New Zealand. And she’s also the very recently retired editor of Cosmos magazine. So she knows a lot about the natural phenomenon of bioluminescence.

The light in the cave in New Zealand comes from glow-worms. from www.shutterstock.com

Today, we can isolate the luminescent and fluorescent proteins in creatures like glow-worms and jellyfish. And we use gene editing techniques to modify – for example – the neurons in a fruit fly, so they flash in different colours depending on the level of electrical activity.

That means we can take images of complex structures like the brain in glorious technicolour. We move ever closer to answers to the cruellest conditions: dementia, motor neuron disease, schizophrenia. So that’s my wife’s perspective: great science, great pictures, and great material for Cosmos.

Then there’s my older son, Victor. He’s a management consultant. He deeply respects the Kiwi capacity to monetise what is, when you think about it, colonies of fungus gnats living on mosquitoes in a cave. And my younger son, Alex. He’s a software engineer who appreciates the way the tour operator keeps iterating and improving the experience.

And as I stepped off the barge I wondered, would an astronomer look up and see a living galaxy of stars? Would an airline pilot be reminded of the view from the cockpit, flying over a city at night? Would a historian be intrigued by all the myths and legends we’ve used to explain this phenomenon over the centuries?

I wish I’d had more time to ask. But just from my sample group of four, it was clear: every one of us, with a grounding in a discipline, stepped off that boat with something distinctive to say. We’d seen the world in different patterns. And we’d imagined its possibilities in many forms.

That’s the parable of the Light in the Cave.

The importance of specialising in something

When I was a student the importance of actually specialising in something – mastering a discipline – was more or less assumed. We thought about the skills mix of our future society in the same way we imagined an orchestra. You want a broad mix of people who excel in a range of speciality fields.

Yes, we do want those people to be able to play together. And we want them to sound like an orchestra, not several dozen simultaneous solos.

That means – if you’ll excuse the pun – that every one of those musicians needs to have at least two strings to their bow: a primary discipline – the instrument, and a secondary discipline – orchestral performance. But they can’t master the secondary discipline without reaching a level of proficiency in their instruments first.

If you think you can, I challenge you to give a clarinet to a ten year old and enrol her on the same day into the school band. Now, that student could have a genuine passion and talent for music – but until she can manage her fingers, and the breathing, and read music, and produce a noise that isn’t a brain-splitting shriek – she’s got to knuckle down and practice. Solo. Focus on your discipline – then you’ll see your options expand.

An orchestra shouldn’t sound like several dozen simultaneous solos. Paul Miller/AAP

And I internalised that logic. I now understand that a discipline is like a ladder. You have to put in the effort to climb it, step by step, with structure and sequence, accepting the guidance of your teachers. Learn the principle. Do the practice. Apply the skills. Repeat.

In particular, that’s the approach my parents and teachers took to my mathematical education. They didn’t leave it to me to decide. Of course, they didn’t know what I might one day want to do at university. I didn’t know what I wanted to do at university!

But right from the beginning, they knew maths was likely to be extremely important, and mastering it would maximise my choices. So they made sure I worked at it until I didn’t have to work at it – starting with the times table.

At first, I had to stop and think – all the time. It was tedious. But I wanted to do well. That made me determined. And soon enough I could see “11 times 12” or “nine squared” and the answer just sprang up in my mind unbidden, so that I wasn’t even conscious my brain was doing any work.

By the time I got to university I had reached a level of proficiency that allowed me to devote all my mental energy to mastering engineering. Again, I worked at it. I became an incurable engineer just like I’d become a human calculator: rung by rung, climbing the ladder.

The next step for me was setting up a company to commercialise a medical research tool I’d developed in the course of my study. I was uncertain of many things in my life at that time, including my bank balance, because there were many days when I was too nervous to look at it. But at least when it came to hiring, I knew exactly what was required. Discipline experts who could work together – not generalists who thought the same.

Since that time, I’ve seen a lot of teams, in business and in research, and I’ve sat on a lot of boards. I would still build my company exactly the same way.

Learn the principle. Practice. Apply the skills. Repeat. from www.shutterstock.com

I now have the life experience to confirm the wider application of the golden rule: yes, you will go badly astray if you pick ten people who collectively specialise in nothing at all. And I worry that we, as a nation, will go the same way, if we take away from the next generation of workers the disciplinary ladders that we climbed ourselves. In short: if we raise a generation who come out of the glow-worm cave perhaps ready to talk – but with nothing distinctive to say.

The future is uncertain

Why would we take that route? There are any number of rationales presented, and usually, by thoughtful people with the very best of intentions.

Don’t encourage students to limit themselves to a discipline, they say. Encourage everyone to be a capable generalist instead. Teamwork! Emotional intelligence! Public speaking! Creative thinking! That’s what will make them adaptable, so that’s what we ought to teach. And let students acquire those generic skill sets by following their passions.

Maximising choice

What does that look like in practice? It means putting the expectation on teenagers to pick from over a hundred different courses available to them in years 11 and 12. At the same time, training their minds on the importance of graduating with the highest possible ATAR, on the understanding the higher the number, the wider the choice. And giving them minimal guidance on the discipline-specific knowledge they might actually need to do well in a particular degree.

Yes, I am thinking in particular here about the removal of prerequisites from university course guides. And most of all, I am thinking of the messages we give to students about the importance of focus and mastery in maths.

Why do I focus on mathematics? Partly, because it’s a skill set that’s fundamental to science, to commerce, to economics, to medicine, to engineering, to geography, to architecture, to IT. And partly, because it’s the textbook example of why you need to learn things in sequence through hard work, with the guidance of an expert teacher – and the very clear message from schools that it’s a priority.

You can’t just trust your passions to help you meander through it. So it’s particularly vulnerable when we shift the focus from hard content to soft skills.

We have the year 11 and 12 course enrolment data to confirm it. These show a 20 year decline in the proportion of students taking intermediate and advanced maths at year 12. And it’s worse for girls. In 2016, just 7% of female year 12 students took advanced maths compared with 12% of male students.

Even the Chief Scientist had to practice times tables until proficient. from www.shutterstock.com

We also have a recent study from Western Australia. The heads of the maths departments in 50 high schools were surveyed on the reasons why students were turning away in droves from their more advanced maths classes.

And the three stand-out reasons were exactly what I’ve heard, and I’m sure you’ve heard, from teachers all over the country:

1. it’s not required for entry to university

2. other courses are easier

3. everyone says you can maximise your ATAR – and thereby, your choices – if you just drop down a level in maths.

The logic is beguiling – especially when it’s coupled with the message that the future is all about the soft skills.

The value of prerequisites

But we also know that the logic is false – because we know what happens to those students who opt for easier courses with more soft skill components in school. They arrive at university and discover they’re in the same unprepared position as the ten-year-old holding a clarinet in her hand for the first time the same day she was enrolled in the school band. They’ve got to grapple with a discipline like science, commerce, or architecture while simultaneously trying to fill the maths gap.

And at that stage, what choice do they have? They can drop out of university. They can find another course – after drawing a cross through all the courses involving maths. Or they can struggle through and find themselves at the end of the degree, competing for a job with students who were better prepared and thriving from day one.

Consider the data compiled by the University of Sydney, and presented this year. Students who took only elementary maths for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) were twice as likely to fail both first year biology and first year chemistry, compared to those who opted for intermediate or advanced maths.

Another study conducted at Western Sydney University in 2009 looked at first year university mathematics. Every one of the students who entered with advanced maths passed. 77% of those with only elementary maths failed. That’s four out of five, failed.

And yet cohort after cohort of school leavers keeps repeating the pattern, and we continue to allow it – even encourage it. Where is the duty of care?

We have another paper from the University of Sydney, published in 2013. Even at an institution with high ATAR requirements, 9% of students in science degrees had no mathematics study in senior secondary years, and 17% had only elementary mathematics, with no calculus. Fewer than half of the students in science degrees met the “assumed knowledge” of advanced maths to enrol in the first year differential calculus unit.

And the same study confirmed, once again, that higher levels of mathematics taken for the HSC are strong predictors of success in first year science, as well as first year maths.

Removing prerequisite courses for entry to university does students a disservice – they’re more likely to drop out of or fail first year university maths. QUT/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Now if you were a teenager in the UK, and you wanted to study at one of the elite universities – called the Russell Group – you would open up the group’s annual guide. There you would see, very clearly stated, what subjects are essential for entry into every university course, and which are useful. For example, students thinking of engineering would learn that advanced level maths is essential.

Discipline-based courses like maths, English, physics, biology, chemistry, geography and history are identified as “facilitating subjects” – the subjects most likely to be required or preferred for entry. Generic courses like critical thinking and general studies are less important and, quote, “usually better taken only as an extra”. So the message is very clear: generic courses cut your choices.

For some Australian universities, and some courses, intermediate or advanced mathematics might still be explicitly required – but the number of those institutions and courses has dwindled. Some have replaced “prerequisite” with “assumed knowledge”.

They are not the same. The word “prerequisite” means the subject is compulsory. The phrase “assumed knowledge” means the subject is nice to have. There is no possible way in English to interpret them to mean the same. It’s not clear to me why the universities even mention “assumed knowledge” if there is no formal requirement for students to have done the preparatory courses.

On the evidence from the University of Sydney, perhaps it might be more accurate to replace the phrase “assumed knowledge” with a longer phrase, “you will not comprehend or pass this course unless you take this subject but the choice is yours”.

We can do better

I believe we can do better. We have to do better than mixed signals. We have to get across the message maximising your choices is not the same as maximising your ATAR. And we have to ensure that the ladders to opportunity – the disciplines – are strong.

Mastering a discipline is mastering your destiny. So let’s ensure all our students come out of the glow-worm cave with something distinctive to say.

This article is an edited extract of a keynote speech delivered at the 5th International STEM in Education Conference on Wednesday 21 November 2018.

– ref. Finkel: students, focus on your discipline then you’ll see your options expand – http://theconversation.com/finkel-students-focus-on-your-discipline-then-youll-see-your-options-expand-107440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tan Yigitcanlar, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Development, Queensland University of Technology

Many places around the world claim to be a “smart city”, but what that means is often unclear. A smart city is widely seen as an urban area that uses technology to enhance performance and the quality of its services. In other words, it’s a happy marriage of technology and the city.

Before we look at what is being planned in Australia and what is being done overseas, an important question is: How smart are our cities now? The answer enables our cities to benchmark where we are now and then track progress over time. We recently conducted a study to evaluate the smartness of all local government areas in Queensland.

Queensland and Australian cities are responding to a global trend, with the Australian government releasing a Smart Cities Plan in 2016.

Read more: Smart Cities Plan offers signs of hope, but are Turnbull and Taylor just dreamin’?

A snapshot of Australian initiatives in 2017 revealed over a dozen local governments had strongly embraced the smart city agenda. A couple of dozen are finalising strategies. More than 100 are considering undertaking a smart city journey.

Smart city has become a global city planning movement and received enormous policy and media attention. Well over 250 smart city projects are under way in 178 cities around the world.

India alone hosts 100 of those initiatives. Songdo in South Korea is recognised as the most advanced smart city in the making.

Read more: Early experiments show a smart city plan should start with people first

Read more: Smart or dumb? The real impact of India’s proposal to build 100 smart cities

The focus of smart city projects is to increase their city’s “smartness” through advanced technologies such as sensors, internet of things, data analytics, and networks. However, technology adoption alone does not make an urban area smart. A city needs a healthy mix of human, social, infrastructural, cultural, environmental, financial, knowledge, symbolic and relational assets or capital to be smart.

Taking a holistic view of smart cities helps us understand what is sustainable over time and what is not. An example of a holistic smart city framework is shown below.

Sustainable smart city conceptual framework. Authors’ own work

Measuring urban smartness performance

Local governments across the country have started to develop, or search for ways to develop, smart city strategies and solutions. Our research in Queensland based its analysis on four smart city indicator categories and 16 smartness indicators. The table below shows these.

Indicators of the assessment framework. Authors’ own work

We then categorised the smartness levels of the 78 local government areas in the three performance clusters: leading, following, and developing.

The study results revealed a mixed performance across Queensland. The figure below shows this, with higher smart city performance in metropolitan Southeast Queensland and some major regional urban centres.

Of 78 local government areas, only ten stood out as high performing. These are: Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Logan, Ipswich, Townsville, Moreton Bay, Gold Coast, Noosa and Scenic Rim.

Performance of local government areas, with the ten leading areas shown in green. Authors’ own work

The performances of these cities differ significantly in the four dimensional measures considered. These are:

• productivity and innovation
• liveability and well-being
• sustainability and accessibility
• governance and planning.

In general, Queensland local government areas perform more strongly in liveability and well-being, and governance and planning. Performance is rather weak across the state in productivity and innovation, and sustainability and accessibility.

Where is Queensland doing well, and why?

We can draw some insights from the findings. For example, good performances on liveability and well-being might be a result of relatively positive health, safety, housing and social conditions. A cost-of-living study found that Queensland is the most affordable Australian state when it comes to everyday expenses including rent, fuel, groceries, transport, utilities and education.

Similarly, the performance on governance and planning is relatively high across the state. This is most likely due to effective strategic development planning practice.

In some local governments, the policy focus includes smart city strategies. For example, about 15 cities in Queensland have recently developed their smart city strategies. Some have already incorporated these in their planning and development mechanisms. Brisbane, Ipswich, Sunshine Coast and Townsville are among those.

And why the struggle on other measures?

The study identified barriers to achieving urban smartness in Queensland.

The poor performance on productivity and innovation indicators may be a result of the state not being a notable contributor to the global knowledge and innovation economy. Fostering, attracting and retaining innovation industries and talented knowledge workers has been a major challenge for all urban localities in Queensland. State government efforts to advance Queensland in the global knowledge and innovation economy need sustained reinforcement to achieve this goal.

The weaker performance on sustainability and accessibility indicators relates to the lower level of adoption of sustainable solutions in energy, buildings, commuting and vehicles. While investing in technology is one approach to these challenges, societal behavioural change is also required.

Recent studies of Australian and UK cities revealed that technology uptake by citizens and cities does not necessarily lead to sustainable commuting patterns and urban outcomes. Hence, searching for solutions beyond technology adoption is critical for cities — particularly when the evident risks of climate change in Queensland are considered.

Ways to improve urban smartness

We found major regional disparities in Queensland. Along with much-needed state government investment and support, perhaps an expansion of Commonwealth funding and programs, particularly to regional cities, could help narrow the gap. The diagram below illustrates the current gap in the four performance categories.

Comparison of performance categories. Authors’ own work

The Commonwealth City Deals and Smart Cities and Suburbs programs might be an opportunity to consolidate existing smart city efforts in Queensland’s top-performing cities.

We argue that a smart city should be seen as more than a marriage of technology and the city. Firstly, the technocentric approach takes its toll on the environment.

Read more: Technology is making cities ‘smart’, but it’s also costing the environment

Secondly, it prioritises technology-based quick fixes, while neglecting deeper solutions that have nothing to do with the technology.

We advocate a smart city to be seen as:

an urban locality functioning as a healthy system of systems with sustainable and balanced practices of economic, societal, environmental and governance activities generating desired outcomes and futures for all humans and non-humans.

There is a demonstrated need for smart city projects to generate a range of desired outcomes – economic, societal, environmental and governance – in a sustainable, balanced and inclusive manner. An integrated, holistic approach is the way forward in Queensland and across Australia.

Read more: How does a city get to be ‘smart’? This is how Tel Aviv did it

– ref. Just how ‘city smart’ are local governments in Queensland? – http://theconversation.com/just-how-city-smart-are-local-governments-in-queensland-106601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Veen, Lecturer (Academic Fellow) in Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney

Had Foodora’s Australian operations not already gone into voluntary administration, the November 16 decision of the Fair Work Commission might well have finished the food-delivery company off.

The commission upheld former courier Josh Klooger’s unfair dismissal complaint against Foodora. In doing so, it found Foodora had incorrectly classified him as an independent contractor, rather than an employee.

By treating workers as independent contractors, “gig economy” companies such as Foodora have avoided the cost of paying employee entitlements such as annual leave, sick leave and superannuation. The commission’s ruling made Foodora liable for paying such entitlements.

So does the ruling put other gig-economy companies on notice that they too will have to pay for employee entitlements? The short answer is no. It’s complicated because the decision reflects a range of reasons specific to Foodora’s operations.

Foodora-branded uniforms and equipment indicated a level of control akin to that of an employer over an employee. Andrea Delbo/Shutterstock.com

But the Foodora case still might have some significant ramifications for the future of the gig economy – based on a not-yet-public ruling by the Australian Tax Office.

Context matters

The Fair Work Commission’s decision about Klooger’s relationship with Foodora can be contrasted to its decision that Uber drivers are contractors not employees.

Labour law experts have pointed to the exceptional circumstances of the Foodora case. These include the control the company exercised over Klooger. Foodora determined, for example, when he had to start and finish his shifts. It also required all couriers to wear a uniform and use Foodora-branded equipment.

Because these factors were specific to Foodora, there is no certainty the commission would rule that other gig-economy workers classified as independent contractors should be treated as employees.

Read more: Finance drives everything — including your insecurity at work

As we have previously suggested, this may even result in other platforms creating greater arm’s-length relationships with workers – both contractually and by reducing work-related support.

Taxation and the gig economy

Although the direct implications of the Fair Work decision for other platform companies are limited, Foodora’s demise is significant.

Its voluntary administration process has revealed the outcome of an Australian Taxation Office determination that could be relevant to other gig companies.

We know this because of Foodora’s administrator’s report to creditors. The report notes ongoing warnings from the tax office to Foodora. Chief among the tax office’s concerns was that Foodora should have been collecting PAYG income tax and making superannuation contributions. It was on this basis that the administrator agreed Foodora had probably wrongly classified its riders as independent contractors.

It is the tax office’s determination that could have the most far-reaching consequences for other platforms operating in Australia.

The determination and reasons for it are not yet in the public domain – due to “obligations of confidentiality”. We can only speculate about the underlying rationale. However, based on existing case law and tax compliance priorities, we suggest two critical aspects potentially expose other platforms’ operational models to the tax office’s compliance regime.

The first relates to the platform setting rates of pay and creating invoices on behalf of workers, which the platform then pays. Prior tax office actions suggest recipient-created tax invoices lead to questions about the true nature of the contracting relationship. Foodora had such a mechanism. Deliveroo and Uber Eats have something similar.

The second is the demand that workers provide an Australian Business Number (ABN) and what this means for the contracting relationship. The tax office is quite clear the ABN does not change the fundamental employment relationship.

This means the ATO is likely to scrutinise the particular arrangements a platform uses to classify workers as contractors.

Platforms and profitability

That Foodora went into administration before the ATO and Fair Work rulings could bite tells its own story about the platform economy.

Despite the mushrooming of different platforms across a range of sectors – from ride sharing to food delivery, hospitality and care work – serious questions remain about the viability and sustainability of platform companies. Uber, for example, lost US$4.5 billion globally in 2017.

In an environment where platforms ruthlessly compete for market share, profitability remains a key challenge.

Read more: How to stop workers being exploited in the gig economy

Author Nick Srnicek in his book Platform Economy warns that the ‘network effects’ associated with platform capitalism may lead to monopolies. This is the result of users flocking to the most used platforms while others fail.

Foodora may just be one of the first victims of increased market concentration in the food-delivery industry. Its demise reflects the evolving nature of the platform economy in Australia.

Given the continued popularity of the platform economy with consumers it is unlikely the above developments will spell the end of work organised and facilitated by online apps. However, this space remains fluid. There will be rulings on other platforms. There is talk of potential legal and regulatory reforms to better protect workers in the gig economy. The issues of employment status and rights will not be settled any time soon.

In the meantime platforms are incentivised to do whatever they can to avoid the costs of employment relationships as that increases their chances of benefiting from, rather than falling victim to, the drift towards monopolisation.

– ref. Redefining workers in the platform economy: lessons from the Foodora bunfight – http://theconversation.com/redefining-workers-in-the-platform-economy-lessons-from-the-foodora-bunfight-107369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Pont, Senior lecturer, Deakin University

Kahlil Gibran (original spelling at birth “Khalil”) is a strange phenomenon of 20th Century letters and publishing. After Shakespeare and the Chinese poet Laozi, Gibran’s work from 1923, The Prophet, has made him the third most-sold poet of all time.

This slim volume of 26 prose poems has been translated into over 50 languages; its US edition alone has sold over 9 million copies. Its first printing sold out in a month, and later, during the 1960s, it was selling up to 5,000 copies a week.

Kahlil Gibran. Gibran Museum

It has seemingly been able to speak to various generations: from those experiencing the Depression, to the 1960s counter culture, into the 21st century. It continues to sell well today.

What is fascinating about the Gibran/Prophet phenomenon is the bile of critics in the West in relation to the work. Outside of English-speaking countries, the Lebanese-born Gibran attracts far less disdain. Professor Juan Cole, from the University of Michigan, has noted that Gibran’s writings in Arabic are in a very sophisticated style.

The midwife of the New Age

The Prophet is interesting for a number of reasons, not only for its ability to sell. It is written in an archaic style, recalling certain translations of the Bible (Gibran was intimate with both the Arabic and King James versions) and has an aphoristic quality that lends itself to citation — for weddings, funerals, courtships — and accessibility. There are at least two high schools named after its author and it was quoted in a eulogy given at Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

The Prophet declares no clear religious affiliation, while at the same time operating in a quasi-spiritual or inspirational register. Many might even class it in that category of writing known as “wisdom texts”.

Image of the The Prophet by Kahill Gibran. Allen Clive Patrick Duval/flickr

Gibran has been referred to as the midwife of the New Age, due to the role The Prophet played in opening a space for spiritual or personal counsel outside organised religion and its official texts. The Prophet appears to embrace all or any spiritual tradition (or at least to exclude none explicitly), and this vagueness or openness (depending on one’s reading) may account for part of its widespread appeal.

The book, which presents advice on a number of core aspects of being human — such as love, parenting, friendship, Good and Evil, and so on — employs a simple narrative device.

An exiled man, Almustafa, who has been living abroad for 12 years, sees the ship that will carry him back “to the isle of his birth” approaching. Filled with grief at his imminent departure, the townspeople gather and beseech him to give them words of wisdom to ease their sorrow:

In your aloneness you have watched with our days, and in your wakefulness you have listened to the weeping and laughter of our sleep.
Now therefore disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.

Gibran himself had been in the US for 12 years at the time of writing and, it could be argued, was in a kind of exile from Lebanon, the country of his own birth.

The Prophet offers contemplations on marriage:

… stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

On children:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts
for they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

And pain:

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart must stand in the sun, so we must know your pain.

The woman behind the poet

Biographers have emphasised Gibran’s tendency to pretension, to self-aggrandising, to fictionalising his own history, and his relations with women such as his sister, Marianna (who supported him with menial work), and especially his patron and confidante, Mary Haskell.

The latter remained devoted to him her entire life and also financed much of his lifestyle, enabling his artistic projects up until and beyond his success with The Prophet. Haskell had a penchant for enabling the less fortunate (although she herself was not wealthy), and Gibran was not her first project of this kind.

She continued to edit his work discreetly well into her own marriage, to which she had resigned herself after their engagement stalled. Gibran had a tendency to get involved, as Joan Acocella writes in her detailed New Yorker piece, with older women who could be useful to him.

Kahlil Gibran, Nude Figures Lying at the Foot of a Mountain by a Lake, (1923-1931), Watercolour. © Gibran Museum

He was a beautiful “oriental” young man, who survived, after a childhood in the ghettos of Boston’s South End from age 12, by hoisting himself, or finding himself flung, into more privileged circles thanks to his looks, his talent (he could paint and write) and his “mysterious” appeal of being the “other”.

Anglo-Americans could, in other words, accessorise with him. And they did. He was “discovered” by Fred Holland Day, a teacher, who dabbled in the worlds of Blavatsky and the occultism that was de jour, and who liked to photograph young men, both in exotic garments and out.

In Gibran’s case, since evidence suggests that he evaded a sexual relation with Haskell, he at least did not leave her with the financial burden of children (not uncommon in his time). He ended his life primarily close to his sole-remaining sibling, Marianna and his secretary, and later biographer, Barbara Young.

Due to the extensive number of edits that Haskell offered on most of Gibran’s works across his career (including his first publication, a short poem), it is almost certain that “his” output — like many artistic achievements — might be more accurately deemed a collaboration. The enduring convention of signing works with a singular name has tended to result in the eclipsing of efforts of crucial contributors, often women.

Kahlil Gibran, Pain (1923), Illustration for The Prophet, Watercolour. © Gibran Museum

Death and dualism

Despite the indifference of Western critics to Gibran’s work, Gibran’s credentials were not shoddy; he was a trained artist (at the Académie Julian) had his first exhibition at 21, and produced over 700 works in his lifetime, including portraits of Yeats, Jung and Rodin.

Gibran died young, at age 48, from cirrhosis of the liver, due to a propensity for large quantities of arak, supplied to him by his sister, Marianna. One wonders whether Gibran was able to find any solace in his own words in his final days of frailty.

In The Prophet, he (and, we could speculate, Haskell) write(s):

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity … For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

Gibran has been criticised for his style of playing confoundingly but reassuringly on opposites, which, some argue, can mean anything. (One must note, however, that this unsettling of binary structures is a feature of enduring wisdom texts such as the Tao Te Ching, as well as recalling writings of Sufism and other traditions.)

Furthermore, for the son of destitute immigrants, who rose to fame via his beauty, talent and a blind conviction of his own specialness (which he nourished along with a small obsession with Jesus Christ, the subject of a later, and arguably better work), perhaps life had presented to him its own stark dualities: abjection/acclaim; poverty/wealth; indifference/desire; disdain/popularity; exoticism/racism.

Momentary respite

Kahlil Gibran, The Face of Almustafa (1923) (Frontispiece for The Prophet), Charcoal. © Gibran Museum

For someone who undoubtedly “made it” (according to the grim criteria of the New World), Gibran may well have had more than a kernel of wisdom and know-how for those trying to survive its heartless, capricious climes. The fact is that millions of people have found momentary respite in his shifting, evocative words.

In a century where authority figures – whether political or representing various spiritual traditions – have seemed not only to fail their flocks, but to have actively betrayed them, Gibran’s perhaps fuzzy but lyrical advice has come to fill a vacuum of integrity and leadership. We need not badger readers of this work (who included, incidentally, the likes of John Lennon and David Bowie) who might use it to express their love, notate their grief, or ease their existential terrors.

The Prophet has worked as a widespread balm, as effectively as anything quick and concise can. Cheaper than an ongoing tithe to pharmaceutical companies, at $8.55, the going rate at Book Depository, it neither incites hatred, nor violence, nor religious divisiveness.

It says the kinds of things that we sometimes wish a trusted other might say to us, to calm us down. In these aggravated times, perhaps we can appreciate its sheer benignity and leave its boggling success be.

The exhibition, Kahlil Gibran: The Garden of the Prophet, opens at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, on November 28.

– ref. Guide To The Classics: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran – http://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-prophet-by-kahlil-gibran-107274

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Webb, Clinical Lecturer and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney

A range of shirts, pants, socks and accessories sold in specialist camping and fishing retailers claim to protect against mosquito bites for various periods.

In regions experiencing a high risk of mosquito-borne disease, insecticide treated school uniforms have been used to help provide extra protection for students.

During the 2016 outbreak of Zika virus in South America, some countries issued insecticide-treated uniforms to athletes travelling to the Olympic Games.

Some academics have even suggested fashion designers be encouraged to design attractive and innovative “mosquito-proof” clothing.

Read more: The best (and worst) ways to beat mosquito bites

But while the technology has promise, commercially available mosquito-repellent clothing isn’t the answer to all our mozzie problems.

Some items of clothing might offer some protection from mosquito bites, but it’s unclear if they offer enough protection to reduce the risk of disease. And you’ll still need to use repellent on those uncovered body parts.

First came mosquito-proof beds

Bed nets have been used to create a barrier between people and biting mosquitoes for centuries. This was long before we discovered mosquitoes transmitted pathogens that cause fatal and debilitating diseases such as malaria. Preventing nuisance-biting and buzzing was reason alone to sleep under netting.

Bed nets have turned out to be a valuable tool in reducing malaria in many parts of the world. And they offer better protection if you add insecticides.

The insecticide of choice is usually permethrin. This and other closely related synthetic pyrethroids are commonly used for pest control and have been assessed as safe for use by the United States Environmental Protection Authority, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and other regulatory bodies.

Read more: A vaccine that could block mosquitoes from transmitting malaria

New technologies have also allowed for the development of long-lasting insecticidal bed nets, offering extended protection against mosquito bites, perhaps up to three years, even with repeated washing.

Mosquito repellent clothing

Innovations in clothing that prevent insect bites have primarily come from the United States military. Mosquito-borne disease is a major concern for military around the globe. Much research funding has been invested in strategies to provide the best protection for personnel.

Traditional insect repellents, such as DEET or picaridin, are applied to the skin to prevent mosquitoes from landing and biting.

While permethrin will repel some mosquitoes, treated clothing most effectively works by killing the mosquitoes landing and trying to bite through the fabric.

Clothing treated with permethrin has been shown to protect against mosquitoes and ticks, as well as other biting insects and mites. For these studies, clothing was generally soaked in solutions or sprayed with insecticides to ensure adequate protection.

Clothing made from insecticide impregnated fabrics may help reduce mosquito bites. Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology)

Fabrics factory-treated with insecticides, as used by many military forces, are purported to provide more effective protection. But while some studies suggest clothing made from these fabrics provide protection even after multiple washes, others suggest the “factory-treated” fabrics don’t provide greater levels of protection than “do it yourself” versions.

Overall, the current evidence suggests insecticide-treated clothing may reduce the number of mosquito bites you get, but it doesn’t offer full protection.

More research is needed to determine if insecticide-treated clothing can prevent or reduce rates of mosquito-borne disease.

Better labelling and regulation

All products that claim to provide protection from insect bites must be registered with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. This includes sprays, creams and roll-on formulations of repellents.

Anything labelled as “insect repelling”, including insecticide treated clothing, requires registration. Clothing marketed as simply “protective” (such as hats with netting) doesn’t. This approach reflects the requirements of the US EPA.

Read more: Curious Kids: When we get bitten by a mosquito, why does it itch so much?

If you’re shopping for insect-repellent clothing, check the label to see if it states that it is registered by the APVMA. You should see a registration number and the insecticide used in the fabric clearly displayed on the clothing’s tag.

While some products will be registered, there are still some concerns about how the efficacy of mosquito bite protection is assessed.

There is likely to be growing demand for these types of products and experts are calling for internationally accepted guidelines to test these products. Similar guidelines exist for topical repellents.

Finally, keep in mind that while various forms of insecticide-treated clothing will help reduce the number of mosquito bites, they won’t provide a halo of bite-free protection around your whole body.

Remember to apply a topical insect repellent to exposed areas of skin, such as hands and face, to ensure you’re adequately protected from mosquito bites.

– ref. Mozzie repellent clothing might stop some bites but you’ll still need a cream or spray – http://theconversation.com/mozzie-repellent-clothing-might-stop-some-bites-but-youll-still-need-a-cream-or-spray-107266

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Terrorism and crime played a huge part in the Victorian state election campaign leading up to polling day on November 24.

The Liberal-National opposition has been campaigning on it all year, helped along by its colleagues in the federal government. At one point, federal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said people in Melbourne were so terrified of the crime wave that they were frightened to go out to dinner.

His targets were gangs of young men, singled out as African.

Read more: Australian media are playing a dangerous game using racism as currency

Then three events occurred during the election campaign itself that gave impetus to the law and order issue.

On November 9, a widely loved café owner, Sisto Malaspina, was stabbed to death in Bourke Street and two other men received serious knife injuries before police shot their assailant, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali.

On November 13, James Gargasoulas was convicted on six counts of murder arising from his running down pedestrians by driving a stolen car along the footpath in Bourke Street in January 2017.

And on November 20, three men were arrested and later charged with planning a terrorist attack in Melbourne, after widely publicised police raids across the city’s northern and western suburbs.

Media reporting on all these incidents raises a difficult question: in what circumstances is it ethically justifiable to include information about a perpetrator’s ethnicity or religion?

Australia’s only national code of ethics for journalists is that promulgated by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Clause 2 of that code says:

Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.

The key word, of course, is “unnecessary”. This raises the question: What constitutes necessity?

The standard ethical answer is based on a test of relevance: How relevant to the story is someone’s personal characteristics?

The rationale is that unnecessary references to these personal attributes can incite unjustified prejudice against whole groups of people, as well as individuals.

In the three high-profile cases mentioned here, much was made of Shire Ali’s ethnicity and religion, and of the ethnicity of the three men arrested on terrorism charges. By contrast, very little was made of the ethnicity or religion of Gargasoulas.

Yet all committed – or were alleged to be preparing for – acts of extreme violence against innocent people. Material on the ethnicity of all of them was available to the media. So were the proclaimed religious beliefs of Shire Ali and Gargasoulas.

Gargasoulas had claimed to be “the saviour” and in one of his early court hearings spoke about the Bible and the Koran, yelling that Aboriginal law was identical to Muslim law.

It was reported that he had posted on Facebook a series of rantings about God, Satan, heaven and hell, and claimed to be “Greek Islamic Kurdish”.

Yet media characterisations of him centred on his history of drug abuse, violence and psychological instability.

By contrast, the characterisation of Shire Ali centred on his religion and ethnicity. For example, The Weekend Australian’s report of the Bourke Street attacks stated that police would investigate whether Shire Ali had links to Islamic extremism and radicalised members of the Somali community.

Without waiting for the outcome of that investigation, however, the newspaper put a headline on the story saying it was an attack by “violent Islam”.

A week later, The Weekend Australian also carried an interview with Shire Ali’s father-in-law, who said he would never have allowed his daughter to marry a jihadist. He was quoted as saying:

We hate extremists. Islam is not about terrorism and killing people.

Other reports described Shire Ali as Somalia-born. On what we know about his family’s history, he would have arrived in Australia somewhere between the ages of two and 11, and he was an Australian citizen.

Further reports referred to his “delusional” mental state and the fact that his wife had recently left him. Yet the characterisation of him remained fixed on his ethnicity and religion.

The three men arrested on November 20 were reported to be Australians of Turkish descent whose passports had been cancelled earlier this year. Hanifi Halis and brothers Samed and Ertunc Eriklioglu are alleged to have been engaged in a terrorism plot inspired, but not directed, by Islamic State.

What the media report about major crimes is almost entirely dependent on the information provided by the authorities – mainly police and intelligence services.

How the media frame these events tends to follow closely the way that authorities frame those events.

Read more: Manchester and the media: what coverage of the terrorist attack tells us about ourselves

The pattern that emerges from the three cases described here is that where the authorities frame an atrocity as a crime, ethnicity and religion play little, if any, part in the way the perpetrator is characterised.

But where the atrocity is framed as terrorism, ethnicity and religion play a large part in the way the perpetrator is characterised.

Yet the relevance of ethnicity and religion to a story about terrorism is not always obvious.

There was strong evidence that Shire Ali was severely mentally ill and that whatever his record suggested about terrorism being his motive – including an abortive attempt to go to Syria in 2015 – it may well have been a consequence of his disordered mind.

In the case of the three men arrested on November 20, it is not clear yet what the relevance of their Turkish ethnicity might be.

It is unfair to blame the media for reporting what the authorities say in the immediate aftermath of big breaking news stories. At that point, who knows what is relevant and what is not?

At the same time, the media have an ethical obligation to at least question the authorities about the relevance of statements about ethnicity, religion or other personal attributes.

It might elicit more newsworthy information, and it would certainly help the media make fairer decisions about how to characterise perpetrators.

Fairer decisions would not only ensure that the public was better informed, but would also reduce the risk of inciting prejudice, provide an antidote to the political exploitation that often follows a shocking crime and, where mental illness is clearly implicated, shift political attention to that issue.

– ref. In crime reporting, we should ask better questions about the relevance of religion and ethnicity – http://theconversation.com/in-crime-reporting-we-should-ask-better-questions-about-the-relevance-of-religion-and-ethnicity-107421