Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Breen, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Melbourne

This week, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court made a dramatic intervention in the country’s deepening political crisis, a move that may prevent it from sliding further into democratic dysfunction and possible political violence.

The three-judge panel overturned the unilateral action by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena to illegally dissolve the parliament last week. The ruling means that parliament could reconvene as soon as Wednesday (November 14).

Jubilant supporters of sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe celebrated the decision outside the heavily guarded Supreme Court building in the nation’s capital, Colombo. It is being seen as one of the most significant rulings in Sri Lanka’s history.

How Sri Lanka got to this point

The Supreme Court ruling is the latest twist in a tense political drama that has engulfed the nation since late October, when Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe and installed civil war strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place. He then called for a snap election on January 5 – an election now in considerable doubt.

Sirisena cited a conspiracy to have him assassinated as a key reason for his actions. But he had no constitutional basis for either the dissolution of parliament or the removal of a sitting prime minister.

Read more: Sri Lanka: as constitutional crisis triggers fears of ‘bloodbath’, concern mounts for minorities

The president’s move to dissolve parliament came just days before it was scheduled to reconvene and vote on which of the two men claiming to be prime minister should be actually recognised as holding the job.

Sirisena and Rajapaksa had tried but failed to induce enough MPs to switch sides. Dissolving parliament, however unconstitutional, became their only path to self-preservation.

So… who is the prime minister?

Sri Lanka has a long democratic tradition dating back to British colonial times. It has seen many ups and downs, including a brutal 25-year civil war that ended in 2009 and the rise of an authoritarian-style leader in Rajapaksa (who served as president from 2005 to 2015).

But never before have Sri Lanka’s constitution and its democratic principles been so undermined.

Since his sacking, Wickremesinghe has continued to claim he is the legitimate prime minister with the support of the majority of parliament.

But Rajapaksa has thus far appeared to have the confidence of the president and key state institutions.

Why was Wickremesinghe sacked?

The possible return of Rajapaksa had ignited deep concerns within Sri Lanka and abroad.

It was only three years ago that his own party split and aligned with the major opposition parties to propose Sirisena as a consensus presidential candidate.

Ironically, Sirisena’s election heralded a new “Yahapalana” coalition government, a term meaning “good governance”. But things did not go according to plan.

Read more: Rajapaksa defeat signals the end of a dynasty in Sri Lanka

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe were unable to work together and none of their key promises were met. Meanwhile, the economy went backwards.

The coalition seemed doomed when local elections in February were dominated by a new party, established by the Rajapaksa family.

The final straw was the alleged assassination plot against Sirisena, apparently involving neighbouring India. The plot was raised in Cabinet, but Sirisena was unhappy with the response and acted by sacking Wickremesinghe, claiming his life was in danger.

It was the policy differences between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, however, that was really at the heart of the discontent. Sirisena declared that if Wickremesinghe returned, he would “not stay one hour longer”.

So what happens now?

Sirisena initially said he suspended parliament last week to allow his “new government” to appoint a Cabinet and present a budget.

Yet, it was allegedly done to provide enough time for the Rajapaksa camp to bribe MPs to his side. One MP claimed to have recorded Rajapaksa’s henchmen offering him US$2.8 million.

Meanwhile, crowds have taken to the streets in support of each side, while Wickremesinghe has remained holed up in the prime minister’s official residence, surrounded and protected by supporters and fellow parliamentarians. Two people have been killed.

History suggests that Rajapaksa would have succeeded in convincing enough of those who opposed him to switch sides. But this is no ordinary power struggle.

Why is Rajapaksa’s possible return so fraught?

Rajapaksa’s presidency was punctuated by his controversial response to the civil war and abhorrent end of the conflict, which saw tens of thousands of innocent people killed.

His rule was increasingly authoritarian, nepotistic and corrupt. At one point, his family controlled more than half of Sri Lanka’s budget, and he’d succeeded in amending the constitution to grant himself more powers and the prospect of a presidency for life.

And this is leaving aside the geopolitical implications of his presidency and possible return to government. Some commentators have portrayed the current crisis as a power struggle between India and China. And it is certainly true that India would prefer Wickremesinghe, and China, Rajapaksa.

Read more: War is over, but not Sri Lanka’s climate of violence and threats

During his time in office, Rajapaksa sought Chinese investment to build a major port in Sri Lanka, leaving the country in serious debt. Unable to pay back the Chinese loans, Sri Lanka was forced to hand over the port to China on a 99-year lease.

Given this history, it’s not surprising China was the first of only a few countries to recognise the Rajapaksa prime ministership.

But in the end, this is really about domestic politics. And whatever happens, a return to violence is a real possibility. The Supreme Court’s intervention has stopped Sri Lanka’s democracy going over the cliff for now. But it remains on the edge.

Rajapaksa’s strategy will be to delay a confidence vote in parliament for as long as possible, and to redouble efforts to convene a majority. But if he fails, he may be tempted to use force to get his way, and Sri Lanka’s democratic deficit will become a gaping chasm.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Adams, Professor of Corporate Law & Governance, School of Law, Western Sydney University

Very rarely does a judge tear up a multi million dollar penalty signed up to by both the regulator and the alleged perpetrator.

Yet that’s what Federal Court judge Nye Perram did on Tuesday, throwing out a $35 million settlement between Westpac and the the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over its alleged failure to properly assess whether borrowers could meet their repayments before signing them up to mortgages.

Agreed settlements are common

In commercial litigation, as in most litigation, there is an emphasis on trying to settle matters early before they are heard in court.

In criminal law matters the prosecutions encourage early guilty pleas in exchange for lower penalties.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has been increasingly resorting to early settlements as a means of achieving cheaper and quicker outcomes.

The quick win for ASIC, is an enforceable undertaking and a media release. The quick win for the other party is avoiding a drawn out court case and being able to get on with its business.

Courts usually rubber stamp them

Where the alleged breach of the law is serious, necessitating a large penalty, a judge has to formally approve the settlement, in a hearing until now regarded as something of a rubber stamping exercise.

As the Hayne Royal Commission into the Misconduct in Financial Services has pointed out, the downside of such quick settlements can be that the facts aren’t established in court and the law isn’t tested.

Where they are established and the law is tested, as Justice Yates did earlier this year in Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre versus Commonwealth Bank of Australia very big penalties can be handed down – $700 million for more than 50,000 breaches of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act.

Read more: Commonwealth Bank’s $700 million fine will end up punishing its customers

Along with it was landmark judgements that establish the scope of the law and tell firms what to avoid in the future.

This time the court said no

On Thursday Justice Perram, in the Federal Court sought the right to do the same.

He rejected the joint application for settlement between ASIC and Westpac Banking Corporation for a penalty of $35 million.

The problem, as he pointed out was that it was not clear from the agreed facts what actual contraventions of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 Westpac had been accused of.

He asked ASIC and the Westpac to re-draft the agreed settlement and return to court by 27 November 2018.

In order to establish the law and what happened

The case matters because the Financial Services Royal Commission has been examining the use of computer programs to determine the ability of borrowers to repay loans.

It is possible that many Westpac loans were approved to customers who would have been found to be unable to meet the repayments had their individual circumstances been examined, and it is possible that is in breach of the law.

Read more: Consumers need critical thinking to fend off banks’ bad behaviour

But without a clear judgement or a clear statement of facts for the court to examine, or a clear judgement from the court, it is impossible to tell.

That’s why Justice Perram said no, in order to estabish what the law requires and what Westpac did.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dylan Korczynskyj, Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame Australia

Curious Kids is a series for children in which we ask experts to answer questions from kids. You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

I am wondering: is dew the same as rain? What is dew? Thank you – Leo, age 3.

Great questions, Leo!

I am a plant ecologist, and rain and dew are things I need to understand. Plant ecology is all about learning how plants are affected by the world around them (their environment) in the same way that you are affected by your environment.

For example, if you go outside you might consider putting a hat on so you don’t get burnt by the hot sun. Or you might put a coat on so you don’t get cold or wet. Plants are greatly affected by water, whether it comes from dew or rain. So are rain and dew the same?

Read more: Curious Kids: How do you know that we aren’t in virtual reality right now?

Dew is the water droplets that we find in the morning on leaves and other things outside, and usually in spring or winter when the air is cold. It is similar to rain because it forms from condensing water vapour. I hear you asking, “…but what does condensing water vapour mean?”. I will try to explain.

Water can be a liquid (we drink liquid water), it can also be a solid (think of ice cubes), and it can be a gas, which we call water vapour. When water warms up enough it breaks into small, fast-moving parts, called molecules. It changes from being a liquid to a gas – water vapour – that floats about in the air.

Think about how the steam (which is water vapour) from your hot bath floats about your bathroom.

So, now you understand what water vapour is and how it is made, think about what will happen if the fast moving water vapour cools down: this will help you understand condensation.

As the vapour cools, it slows down. The small parts, the molecules, start to gather together, especially on cold things (like a cool leaf) or in cold areas (like high in the sky). Scientists would say the water condenses.

If enough water molecules gather together (like a little water molecule “meeting”) they form a droplet of liquid water.

This same process (condensation) occurs when the stream from your hot bath condenses on the cold bathroom mirror – have you ever drawn a face on it?

Whether the droplets that form are dew or rain depends on where they formed.

Rain forms from water vapour condensing high in the sky as clouds. If enough water molecules gather together, it will get too heavy to stay in the sky and fall down on your head as rain.

Dew forms from water vapour that condenses on cold surfaces on the ground, like grass or a car on a cool morning (it usually gets a bit cooler early in the morning).

All plants need water and so do we – it is very precious to all life! Most plants get their water from the soil, but this water originally fell as rain and then soaked into the soil.

Some plants and lichen (lichen are like plants) can absorb water from dew. It’s a little bit like they are “drinking” the dew.

I hope this helps.

Read more: Curious Kids: where do clouds come from and why do they have different shapes?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

Please tell us your name, age, and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jay Sanjayan, Professor, Swinburne University of Technology

Construction is one of the largest industries in the world economy – worth A$10 trillion globally (equivalent to 13% of GDP).

But construction has suffered for decades from remarkably poor productivity compared to other sectors. While agriculture and manufacturing have increased productivity 10-15 times since the 1950s, construction remains stuck at the same level as 80 years ago.

That’s because construction remains largely manual, while manufacturing and other industries have made significant progress in the use of digital, sensing and automation technologies.

We and other research groups see 3D-printed concrete as a possible solution to these problems. The technique will likely also give architects the freedom to inject more creativity into their designs for new structures.

Read more: How to print a building: the science behind 3D printing in construction

Problems facing construction

Our modern civil infrastructure is almost entirely built with concrete. We use more than 20 billion tons of concrete per year. The only material we use more than that is water.

The construction industry is facing a number of serious problems, including low labour efficiency and high accident rates at construction sites. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the construction industry has the highest rate of work-related injuries (59 per 1000 workers).

There are also difficulties in quality control at construction sites, high levels of waste and carbon emissions, cost blow-outs, and challenges in managing large worksites with a vanishing skilled workforce.

Disruptive technologies such as 3D concrete printing can offer solutions.

The benefits of 3D concrete printing

3D construction uses additive manufacturing techniques, which means objects are constructed by adding layers of material.

Conventional approaches to construction involve casting concrete into a mould (known as formwork). But additive construction combines digital technology and new insights from materials technology to allow free-form construction without the use of formwork.

Eliminating the cost of formwork is the major economic driver of 3D concrete printing. Built using materials such as timber, formwork accounts for about 60% of the total cost of concrete construction. It’s also a significant source of waste, given that it is discarded sooner or later. According to a 2011 study, the construction industry generates 80% of total worldwide waste.

Pouring concrete into formwork also limits the creativity of architects to build unique shapes, unless very high costs are paid for bespoke formwork. Free-form additive construction could enhance architectural expression. The cost of producing a structural component would not be tied to the shape, so construction could be freed from the rectangular designs that are so familiar in current building architecture.

Read more: Concrete jungle? We’ll have to do more than plant trees to bring wildlife back to our cities

What we could build

3D concrete printing is being explored for use in the construction of houses, bridges, buildings and even wind turbine towers.

Houses

This 3D-printed concrete house was built in 24 hours during a harsh Russian winter. It was the first such house to be built in a single location.

Bridges

An 8-metre 3D-printed concrete bridge for cyclists was unveiled in the Netherlands last year. The bridge, which was printed by Eindhoven University of Technology, has more than 800 layers and took three months to print.

Intricate structures

3D concrete printing has an advantage over conventional construction methods when it comes to building non-rectilinear shapes, such as curved shapes with intricate details.

It’s still early days

This field of research is still in its infancy.

The biggest hurdle in the development of concrete 3D printing is the concrete itself. Conventional concrete in its current form is not suitable for 3D printing, so new and innovative alternatives need to be developed.

Researchers are exploring various types of concrete. The concrete for 3D printing must not set when it’s inside the printer, but it needs to set and strengthen as soon after it is extruded as possible. This kind of concrete is called “set-on-demand”.

Read more: We could 3D print buildings using robots and drones – here’s how

When it comes to actually printing the concrete, special printers are needed. Typically, the size of the printer needs to be larger than the component being printed. However, researchers are exploring printers or robots that can “climb” on parts of the concrete that are already set in order to print other sections.

International researchers and industry experts will gather at the First International Conference on 3D Construction Printing at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne from November 25-28.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marianna Brungs, Director, Sydney Peace Foundation, University of Sydney

This is the final article in the Reclaiming the Fair Go series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network and the Sydney Peace Foundation to mark the awarding of the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and how we can break the cycle of power and greed to enable all peoples and the planet to flourish. The Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 15 (tickets here).

Forida says that if she were paid a little more money, she could one day send her son to school. She could live happily; her family could live a better life.

Forida, 22, lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with her infant son and husband. They live in a dark compound built mostly of tin and wood with six other families and just one toilet. It floods and leaks when it rains, and beside the compound is a polluted pond that attracts mosquitoes.

Forida makes clothes bound for Australia as part of the global fashion industry. She earns about 35 cents (AUD) an hour.

Read more: To tackle inequality, we must start in the labour market

Forida’s story is not rare.

Oxfam did a comparison earlier this year of the salaries of top CEOs of large Australian retail clothing brands and the earnings of the women, like Forida, who work in their supplier factories.

We found that the workers’ wages have increased at a snail’s pace, while the CEOs’ pay has shot up by millions. Annual pay for the workers who make their clothes remains appallingly low.

As a case in point, one CEO in a top fashion company in Australia earns up to $2,500 an hour, including returns from shares and bonuses. A garment worker in Bangladesh like Forida should earn at least the legal minimum wage of A$0.39 an hour. At this rate, garment workers earning the minimum wage in Bangladesh would have to work more than 10,000 years to earn what a highly paid CEO in Australia makes in a year.

In December, a new minimum wage – just over 60 cents AUD an hour – will apply to garment workers in Bangladesh. But even with this improvement, the women in these factories will still only earn about half of what they need to live a decent life – enough money for adequate housing and food, health and education for their families.

There is perhaps no starker example of global inequality.

Wealthy men – for it is mostly men – are at the top of global supply chains in which a mostly female workforce toils to bring in ever more revenue. The Australian fashion industry alone was worth about A$27 billion in 2016.

So when our leaders flatly deny the notion that inequality is growing – that it is a real and serious problem that demands action – it is hard not to find this perspective jarring.

It’s certainly not the case for the many women and men at the bottom of Australian-owned global supply chains.

Inequality is on the rise in Australia, too

The evidence is strong that inequality is also on the rise in Australia. If you read some accounts of the recent Productivity Commission report on inequality, you’d be forgiven for thinking inequality isn’t a problem Australia needs to tackle.

But that media coverage hasn’t focused on some of the key trends found in the report, which offers a rather more balanced view, as Peter Whiteford has clearly pointed out.

Read more: Don’t believe what they say about inequality. Some of us are worse off

The commission’s report shows, for example, that inequality is a problem for people in lower-income brackets. It explores how generational inequality is entrenched in Australia – while many people move between income brackets over time, the richest and the poorest Australians don’t do this nearly as much. Poorer Australians are more likely to stay trapped in the bottom bracket while, at the top, wealth begets wealth.

And, as Gary Barrett and Stephen Whelan have shown in the first article in this series, income inequality remains a problem in Australia. So does wealth inequality. Today the wealthiest 1% of Australians own more than the poorest 70% combined.

Read more: The fair go is a fading dream, but don’t write it off

The ACOSS Poverty in Australia 2018 report includes data showing that one in eight adults and more than one in six children are living in poverty today.

At the same time, at the global level, organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been having an entirely different discussion: they know inequality is continuing to increase. Instead of arguing the reality, they’ve invested in researching and discussing solutions. And, while its own loan program still requires some change to be better aligned with fighting inequality, over the past few years, the IMF and others have been calling on governments to act.

Read more: How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand

Inequality worsens poverty and marginalisation – especially for those who already have less power than others. What Oxfam has seen around the globe is that rising inequality disproportionately impacts women, people of colour, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and LGBTIQ communities – and others who already face challenges when it comes to access to power.

Forida is one of millions of women who are trapped in poverty. They fuel a global economy that lines others’ pockets while they are unable to escape hardship, no matter how hard or how long they work.

That Forida’s home lacks facilities like safe, internal running water and is built beside a polluted pond is linked to this global challenge of rising inequality. Governments in developing countries like Bangladesh are being starved of funds. Of course, these governments also need to make the right choices and invest in health, education and infrastructure – essential things their communities need.

At the same time, the global estimate of the money ripped out of poor countries due to the tax-avoiding practices of wealthy firms sits at more than US$170 billion a year.

This huge amount should rightfully be used to invest in safe water and sound infrastructure for women like Forida in developing countries around the world. These women bear the burden of the lack of investment. Forida looks after her family when they are sick from water-borne diseases and only eats watery rice so her son may eat better when they run out of money at the end of each month.

We must challenge the policies and practices that are fuelling inequality, or women like Forida will continue to be left behind.

We know how to reduce inequality

Engage with the ideas to tackle inequality: there are many. And they are good. Organisations at the forefront of combating inequality, both in Australia and globally, have proposed a whole range of powerful solutions. It is time the government listens and engages.

In Australia, the campaign to raise the rate of Newstart, led by ACOSS, is gaining steam. It has the support of both former Prime Minister John Howard and the Business Council of Australia.

The Close the Gap campaign, which Oxfam helped to launch over 10 years ago, has taken stock in 2018 and produced a range of recommendations for the government to close the Indigenous health gap. And a thorough, national consultation process has culminated in the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the legitimate call for an Indigenous voice to parliament.

Unions, NGOs and Australians from all walks of life are concerned about flat-lining wages. They want to see cuts to penalty rates reversed – along with a raft of other changes to our industrial system to make it fairer. The union movement’s Change the Rules campaign makes these calls resoundingly clear.

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

On a global level, Oxfam and civil society organisations have been calling on governments to act not only on rising inequality within their borders but also to help tackle it around the globe.

This means comprehensive action on business supply chains that skirt human rights – which includes paying poverty wages to women like Forida – through national action plans on business and human rights. It also means acting to ensure the tax affairs of large businesses are public – right across the globe – to help stop money being hidden in tax havens and ripped out of both Australia and the developing countries that need this revenue.

The ideas being put forward from across Australia are legitimate. They deserve greater attention. It is time for our dialogue to be about action, rather than arguing whether inequality is a problem at all.

This article was co-authored by Helen Szoke, chief executive of Oxfam Australia.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago

Museums are cathedrals of science, but they are under threat worldwide as part of a malaise of undervaluing museum collections and the field of taxonomy, the science of naming biodiversity.

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is the latest example. Te Papa confirmed a restructure in July, following leaked reports. Facing sustained backlash and disquiet in the science community, the museum announced an international review of its collections and has since scaled back its restructure plans.

But jobs remain on the line even though the review panel found the museum didn’t have enough staff to look after all of its collections.

Read more: From Joseph Banks to big data, herbaria bring centuries-old science into the digital age

Taxonomy a keystone of natural history

Taxonomy underpins everything from health to conservation, and biosecurity to the economy.

The international review shows Te Papa is doing a good job in most areas, but needs to improve on several aspects, including access to collections, cataloguing a backlog of specimens and digitisation.

These areas of concern were seriously exacerbated by the panel’s finding that Te Papa is understaffed.

The review panel was not asked to comment on the restructure. At that stage, the proposal was to cut 25 positions, 10 of which were in the collections team. This has now been scaled back to at least five jobs in the collections team.

Staff whose positions may be affected were told only a day before the review recommendations were made public.

Read more: Museum or not? The changing face of curated science, tech, art and culture

Museum collections more than sum of parts

Te Papa’s latest leaked restructure document remains a cause for concern. Curators are no longer in the firing line. However, the five natural history collections managers are gone, to be replaced by three assistant curators and two general technical positions. All of this would appear to fall at a lower pay scale.

I congratulate Te Papa on listening to internal and external feedback and increasing their curatorial expertise in neglected strengths, such as marine mammals and seaweeds. Ironically, in the case of marine mammals, this seems to rectify a mistake in making the previous marine mammal expert redundant in 2013.

A member of the international review panel, Tim White at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, told the public broadcaster RNZ:

Te Papa could use more professional collections staff. If they are going to promote the use of their collections … then they need to think creatively about how they could get more staff.

Taking into account the recently published Decadal Plan for Taxonomy and Biosystematics and the 2015 Royal Society Te Apārangi report on National Taxonomic Collections in New Zealand, this is a good opportunity to increase collections staff rather than, at best, approximate the status quo.

It is my hope that the filling of positions in the proposed structure will not result in a loss of areas of taxonomic expertise. Many of Te Papa’s scientists are leaders in their fields, including in areas where Te Papa leads the way internationally. One should not boost the curatorial team at the expense of collections management.

The bigger picture

As an isolated archipelago with unique flora and fauna, New Zealand needs diverse taxonomic expertise to appropriately handle biosecurity and conservation crises. If Te Papa, or museums in general, shed their taxonomic expertise like an unwanted sloughed-off snake skin, it will be up to other institutions to pick up the slack. If not, our biodiversity will suffer.

There has already been a 10% decline in the taxonomic workforce in Australia in the past 25 years, with declines of around 22% in New Zealand over a similar time period. In both countries, a steadily increasing proportion (currently around a quarter) of taxonomists are unpaid or retired. Let’s not make it any worse.

Undervaluing museum collections and taxonomic expertise is not just limited to New Zealand. The scientific world does not want to see another museum disaster, like the preventable fire that destroyed Brazil’s National Museum.

Whether it is collections under threat or museum libraries being lost in the digital age, or even false assumptions resulting in the closure of a museum, if chief executives and museum boards listen to their scientists and the scientific community, hope remains.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Harris Rimmer, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Griffith Law School, Griffith University

Attending a global leaders summit might look easy – all interesting shirts, family-style photos and unusual handshakes – but these occasions can prove extremely difficult for leaders who focus solely on domestic politics or brand new leaders with uncertain electoral prospects.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is both.

Morrison faces a busy week of foreign policy tests in his first big moment on the global stage. He first travels to Singapore for the ASEAN and East Asia Summit, then hosts Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s historic visit to Darwin before jetting off for the APEC Summit in Papua New Guinea on the weekend. This power week will be followed by the G20 Leaders Summit in Buenos Aires at the end of month.

This week, Morrison will have his first meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, US Vice President Mike Pence and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in addition to new (but not so new) Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

Read more: With Bishop gone, Morrison and Payne face significant challenges on foreign policy

So what can we expect from Morrison’s debut summit season and in particular his meetings with Xi?

Pundits have been speculating whether Morrison might try to use the August leadership spill and appointment of new Foreign Minister Marise Payne as a way of pressing the reset button on relations with China.

Payne’s recent visit to Beijing was viewed by both parties as a success, so Morrison should have a more pleasant meeting with Xi than former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull might have.

But Morrison’s first months in office show a leader who speaks without due care to the reactions of foreign governments – floating the idea of shifting the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is the most glaring example – and a leader with little political capital to spare.

He needs to stick to the script this week.

Danger signs

Morrison has already courted controversy on foreign policy in a short period of time. He skipped the UN General Assembly in September. He also missed the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru, forcing Payne to reassure Pacific neighbours that he wasn’t “snubbing” them.

Morrison did go straight to Jakarta in his first overseas trip as leader to meet with President Joko Widodo and sign the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Indonesia.

But he was then accused of playing “straight from Trump’s songbook” when he mused about moving Australia’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem without consulting diplomats or generals beforehand. It was widely seen as a crude attempt to win the Jewish vote in the Wentworth by-election.

One downfall of Australian leaders is they can sometimes look parochial and small-town while on the big stage. For example, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott made a cringeworthy speech to G20 leaders in Brisbane in 2014 about GP co-payments and stopping the boats. Opposition leader Bill Shorten described it as “weird and graceless”.

In his case, Morrison failed to realise the negative reception his embassy musings would receive in Indonesia. Now, his meetings with Widodo are likely to be frosty, with no plans to sign the free-trade agreement by the end of the year.

Morrison’s meetings with Xi, Putin and Modi

In his recent headland speech, Morrison seemed to adopt a Malcolm Turnbull-style line on taking a middle path with the US and China, noting that a confrontation between the two powers:

risks unimagined damage to economic growth and the global order. Damage where no-one benefits. Lose-lose.

Nevertheless, the speech was strong on values, many of which China does not share.

It is also not clear how Xi will view the recent Pacific push from Morrison, though he seemed to offer the possibility for partnership in the region.

Morrison’s meeting with Putin at the East Asia Summit will likewise be interesting to watch. This is Putin’s first time at the summit, but by no means his first rodeo. His presence is perhaps indicative of Russia’s intention to pivot more attention towards the Indo-Pacific region, taking advantage of Trump’s absence.

Read more: Russia is a rising military power in the Asia-Pacific, and Australia needs to take it seriously

In yet another foreign policy stumble, Abbott once famously vowed to “shirtfront” Putin over the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Putin enjoys such displays of toxic masculinity; hopefully, Morrison can restrain himself.

Australia wants to enhance its partnership with India, so we should see Morrison make a beeline for Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the ASEAN meeting, hoping for one of Modi’s signature hugs.

Before meeting Modi, Morrison will hopefully have carefully read the India Economic Strategy to 2035, authored by the former high commissioner to India and head of DFAT, Peter Varghese.

Our Pacific family

Last week, Morrison made perhaps his most important foreign policy speech – a major strategic announcement on the Pacific. He said Australia would open five new embassies and launch an infrastructure bank in the region to the tune of A$2 billion, and declared the Pacific “our patch”:

This is our part of the world. This is where we have special responsibilities. We always have, we always will. We have their back, and they have ours. We are more than partners by choice. We are connected as members of a Pacific family.

The announcement came after he signed a deal for a joint naval base in Papua New Guinea. Both this and the infrastructure bank were seen as ways of countering Chinese influence in the Pacific, but Morrison did refrain from using any anti-China rhetoric.

Read more: For Pacific Island nations, rising sea levels are a bigger security concern than rising Chinese influence

This is noteworthy. Tess Newton Cain has pointed out that Australia often misses the right tone of respect and partnership in its announcements to the region.

But despite this new push for Pacific engagement, Australia is still seen as weak on climate policy – a hugely important issue to Pacific leaders. This could result in difficult conversations for Morrison at APEC, as PNG has invited many Pacific nations to attend for the first time.

Sit down, be humble

Even if Morrison puts his best foot forward to overcome his poor start on foreign policy, he will still have difficulty standing out in the crowd.

Even leaders require some political capital to stand out in those big rooms.

The churn in Australian prime ministers means that some foreign leaders may not consider it worth the time or energy to build a relationship of personal trust with Morrison if they view him more like a caretaker. Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had spent 10 years building up this diplomatic trust and stability in her various roles, but that was severed abruptly.

My advice to Morrison? Stay humble and listen. Read the briefs, listen to the diplomats and do everything Payne and DFAT Secretary Frances Adamson say to do, to the letter.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor, Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

California is burning, again. Dozens of peoples have been killed and thousands of buildings destroyed in several fires, the most destructive in the state’s history.

The California fires are just the most recent in a series of major wildfires, including fires in Greece in July this year that killed 99 people, Portugal and Chile in 2017, and Australia.

Why do wildfires seem to be escalating? Despite president Donald Trump’s tweet that the California fires were caused by “gross mismanagement” of forests, the answer is more complex, nuanced, and alarming.

What caused the California fires?

The current California fires reflect a complex mix of climate, social, and ecological factors. Fuels across California are currently highly combustible due to a prolonged drought and associated low humidity and high air temperatures. Indeed, it is so dry fires burn freely through the night. Such extreme weather conditions have the fingerprints of climate change.

Read more: Wildfires in Mediterranean Europe will increase by 40% at 1.5°C warming, say scientists

Compounding the desiccated fuels are the seasonally predictable strong desert winds (the Diablo and Santa Ana) that help fires spread rapidly towards the coast.

Low density housing embedded in flammable vegetation has created an ideal fuel mix for these destructive fires. Having people scattered across the landscape ensures a steady source of ignitions, ranging from powerline faults to carelessness and arson, making fires a near certainty when dangerous weather conditions arise.

Decades of wildfire suppression have created fuel loads that sustain intense fires. That these fuels are burning in late autumn is even more alarming. Under severe fire weather forest fires can engulf entire communities, with fires spreading from house to house, and human communities turning into a unique wildfire “fuel”. Suburbs can burn at the rate of one house per minute .

The standard response to wildfires is to fight them aggressively, using a military-style approach involving small armies of fire fighters combined with aircraft that spread fire retardant and saturate fire-fronts with water. Such approaches are extraordinarily costly. Annual spending on fire fighting has been steadily rising. In the US, annual fire-fighting costs now exceed several billion dollars, with individual fire campaigns costing ten to over a hundred million dollars.

Read more: Spiraling wildfire fighting costs are largely beyond the Forest Service’s control

Although industrial fire-fighting approaches currently enjoy political and social support, the strategy is economically unsustainable. And they are impotent in the face of climate change driven fire disasters such as those currently occurring in California.

A human disaster

Across the fire science community there is growing recognition this “total war” on fire approach has failed. The key to sustainable co-existence with flammable landscapes is instead managing fuels around settlements, and stopping wildfires from starting in the first place.

Spain and Portugal are good examples of why this is so important. In these Mediterranean lands, humans have sustainably co-existed with flammable landscapes for thousands of year. However, the near ubiquitous depopulation of rural lands following the second world war has led to the proliferation of flammable vegetation that had previously been held in check by intensive small-scale subsistence agriculture.

With the loss of this traditional agriculture Mediterranean countries are now experiencing regular fire disasters (such as the 2018 Greek fires and the 2017 Portuguese and Spanish fires). These are equivalent to fires in more recently settled flammable landscapes in the Americas and Australia.

This seems to be the story in most flammable landscapes on earth: the removal of traditional landscape management by colonisation and globalisation has combined with climate change to turn these landscapes into tinderboxes.

But just as it is unrealistic for Australia to faithfully restore Indigenous fire management practices, expecting a return to historical practices in the Mediterranean is not realistic. There is little economic or social reason for people to return to traditional rural lifestyles, and the gravitational pull of the social and economic advantages in urban areas is too great to stem rural depopulation.

Living with fire

But we can adapt traditional practices to help us live with fire. In the Mediterranean, people are already experimenting with different ways to manage landscapes, such as managing forests for cork and bioenergy, combined with prescribed burning and grazing.

This can create picturesque landscapes that are fire-resistant and easy to defend. Similarly, in Australia, the Victorian government has created parkland-like green fire breaks that were used for back burning operations to protect communities during 2009 Black Saturday wildfires.

The Hobart City Council is planning to use similar fire breaks to protect its outer suburbs with dense bushland. Such management could be used on a larger scale to substantially reduce fire risk. The challenge for landscape fuel management is providing financial and regulatory incentives for citizens and local communities to reduce fuel.

Currently, no society is sustainably co-existing with wildfire. Globally, the situation will worsen under a rapidly-warming climate with ballooning firefighting costs, and huge loss of life and destruction of property. This is the bitter lesson of the Californian fires.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Rutherfurd, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Melbourne

On the eve of the recent National Drought Summit, prime minister Scott Morrison and deputy prime minister Michael McCormack visited Mulloon Creek near Canberra, shown recently on the ABC’s Australian Story. They were there to see a creek that was still flowing, and green with vegetation, despite seven months of drought.

Mulloon Creek was the legacy of a long collaboration between prominent agriculturalist Peter Andrews, and Tony Coote, the owner of the property who died in August. For decades they have implemented Andrews’ “natural sequence farming” system at Mulloon Creek.

Read more: Government to set up new multi-billion Future Drought Fund

Central to the system is slowing flow in the creek with “leaky weirs”. These force water back into the bed and banks of the creek, which rehydrates the floodplain. This rehydrated floodplain is then said to be more productive and sustainable.

McCormack, who is also the minister for agriculture, was impressed and declared the success of Mulloon as a “model for everyone … this needs to be replicated right around our nation”. The ABC program suggested this form of farming could reduce the impact of drought across Australia. So, what is the evidence?

The promise of natural sequence farming

There are plenty of anecdotes but little published science around the effectiveness of natural sequence farming. What there is describes some modest floodplain rehydration, little change to stream flows, some trapping of sediment and some improvements in soil condition. These results are encouraging but not miraculous.

How much each of the different components of natural sequence farming contributes is not always clear, and the economic arguments for widespread adoption are modest. At present, there is not the standard of evidence to support this farming method as a panacea for drought relief, as proposed by the deputy prime minister.

Read more: Helping farmers in distress doesn’t help them be the best: the drought relief dilemma

But if the evidence does emerge, why wouldn’t farmers simply adopt the methods as part of a sensible business model? Don’t all farmers want to do better in drought?

In the ABC show, and elsewhere, supporters of natural sequence farming argue that it is hard for farmers to adopt the methods because government regulations restrict use of willows, blackberries and other weeds, that they claim, are particularly effective in restoring streams.

Governments are correct to be wary of this call to use weeds, and some research suggests that native plants can do a similar job. This restriction on use of weeds might be galling for proponents of natural sequence farming but it should not be a fundamental impediment to adoption.

A more important frustration for natural sequence farming practitioners is how widely the approach can be applied. In Australian Story, John Ryan, a rural journalist, says:

I am sick of politicians, farmers groups, and government departments telling me that Peter Andrews only works where you’ve got little creeks in a mountain valley … I’ve seen it work on flat-lands, steep lands, anywhere.

Natural sequence farming arose in the attempt to restore upland valleys and creeks in southern NSW that were once environmentally valuable chains of ponds or swampy meadows. But these waterways have become deeply incised, degraded, and disconnected from their floodplains. Not only does this incision produce a great deal of sediment pollution, but it produces many agricultural problems.

Read more: Spring is coming, and there’s little drought relief in sight

In reality, small and medium-sized stream systems across much of Australia have deepened after European settlement. If the leaky weirs of natural sequence farming are effective, then they could be applied across many gullied and incised streams across the country.

We’ve already been doing it

The good news is that landholders and governments have already been using aspects of natural sequence farming in those very gullies for decades to control erosion.

Since the 1970s, across the world, one useful method for controlling erosion has been grade-control structures. They were once made of concrete but are now usually made of dumped rock (called rock-chutes), and also logs.

These structures reduce the speed of water flow, trap sediment, encourage vegetation, and stop gullies from deepening. These are all goals of natural sequence farming using leaky weirs.

There are thousands of such structures, supported by government initiatives, across the Australian landscape acting as an unrecognised experiment in rehydration and drought protection.

Read more: We must strengthen, not weaken, environmental protections during drought – or face irreversible loss

Perhaps governments should already have evaluated these structures, but the rehydration potential of these works has not been recognised in the past. It is time that this public investment was scientifically evaluated.

We may find that natural sequence farming and the routine government construction of grade-control structures have similar effects on farmland and the environment.

But whatever the outcome, gully management is not likely to mark the end of drought in the Australian landscape.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Wood, Associate Professor, School of Population and Global Health, University of Western Australia

Why treat people and send them back to the conditions that made them sick? – Michael Marmot, The Health Gap, 2015

“Homelessness is one of the most intractable and complex problems facing cities around the globe,” says my colleague Dr Jim O’Connell from the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP). It is somewhat sobering to hear that Boston is now into its third “ten-year plan” to end homelessness. Despite the success of Boston’s Housing First programs in housing many people who have lived on the streets for years, it has proven difficult to “turn off the homelessness tap”.

The reasons include the lack of affordable housing options and a systemic failure to break the cycle of people leaving the corrections system without somewhere to live. O’Connell has just spent a week in Perth as a Raine Medical Foundation Visiting Fellow at UWA. He recounts that around half the people entering Boston homeless shelters indicate that “a jail” was where they slept the previous night.

These are cautionary warnings for Australia, where concerted efforts to end homelessness are up against an affordable housing crisis and huge public housing wait lists. Alarming numbers of people are released from Australian prisons to homelessness each year.

Read more: A community fix for the affordable housing crisis

So while ending homelessness in Australia is a vital aspiration, which needs to be backed by a coordinated national strategy, multisectoral action and greater dedicated funding, our cities also need to be better equipped to deal with the health impacts and other consequences of homelessness until it can be eradicated.

Hospital and human costs are high

One of the most costly consequences of homelessness for any city is the burden on the health system. Although mental and physical health issues can contribute to homelessness, being homeless also increases the risk of many health problems. These include psychiatric illness, substance use and chronic and infectious diseases.

Across Australia, people who are homeless are among the most frequent presenters to emergency departments. Their rate of unplanned hospital admissions is high. The average stay is longer too.

All of this strains the resources of our public hospitals, as shown in our recent analysis of data for homeless patients seen at Royal Perth Hospital.

Globally and within Australia, pressure is mounting on hospitals to shorten stays in costly hospital beds. However, post-discharge care via less costly “hospital in the home” programs is not an option for patients with “no fixed address”.

As a result homeless patients face either longer inpatient admissions or are discharged when too unwell for the challenges of living on the street. And that in turn results in deteriorating health and many unplanned readmissions.

Respite centres offer a solution

An innovative solution to these problems is the medical respite model for homeless people. This originated in the United States in the mid-1980s.

A respite centre enables people who are homeless to recuperate after hospital in a more home-like environment. Here they can receive follow-up care, social support and be linked to community services and accommodation providers.

A more homely non-hospital environment is a critical ingredient, as hospitals can be traumatising for homeless people. Many of them have suffered violence, sexual abuse, neglect, incarceration or other forms of trauma, further compounded by the trauma of living on the streets. From the Boston experience, therapy dogs, social connection, recreational activities, art therapy and patient support groups are among the healing benefits that can be provided outside a hospital environment.

One of our reasons for bringing Jim O’Connell to Australia this month has been to draw on his experience as a founder of the first medical respite centre for homeless people in the US. It began as a 25-bed facility in Boston in 1985 and now has 124 beds. Sadly, the demand keeps growing – for every bed that becomes available, there are 20 calls from hospitals wanting a bed for homeless patients.

What facilities does Australia have?

The respite centre model has flourished in North America, with over 70 in cities across the US and a growing number in Canada. Australia at present has two small examples, in Melbourne and Sydney.

In Melbourne, The Cottage is literally a cottage next to St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. It has six patient beds, with an average stay of nine days.

Our evaluation of The Cottage, published just last week, shows it provides a valuable step-down alternative and period of stability for homeless people. This enables staff to build trusting relationships and increase patient capacity to manage their own health.

Tierney House is a 12-bed short-stay respite unit run by St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney. Support and care is provided for around $400 a day. This is far cheaper than the average Australian hospital bed cost of $2,003 a day in 2015-16.

Perth is seeking to establish Australia’s first 20-bed medical recovery centre for people who are homeless. It’s based on the US respite care model, but with a sharpened focus on connecting people to housing and long-term health and other support to remain housed. Linking people to a general practitioner through Homeless Healthcare will be a critical part of the model, as its GPs and nurses can provide primary care and follow-up in the community to avert future hospital admissions.

As Dr Andrew Davies, of Homeless Healthcare, and I stressed recently in the MJA, the absence of safe and secure housing lies at the core of the health disparities seen among people who are homeless. This is particularly apparent when they are discharged from hospital before they are well enough to return to the streets.

Just imagine trying to recover from a hospital admission without a safe place to rest and sleep, nowhere to wash, no secure storage for medications, not to mention poor access to nutritious food and difficulty maintaining hygienic wound care.

The need is growing

Australia is facing escalating and unsustainable health care costs, exacerbated by an ageing population and the rising burden of chronic disease. A medical recovery centre presents a cost-effective solution for government given the high rates of emergency department presentations and hospital re-admissions when people remain homeless.

Published evaluations of US respite centres show 24-36% reductions in emergency department presentations. Reductions in inpatient days were between 29% and 58%. The reduced health care use equates to millions of dollars in cost savings.

We need to do more than lament the revolving door between hospital and the street faced by people who are homeless across Australian cities. As Andrew Davies poignantly observes:

Acute hospitals treat acute medical problems. If we fail to address the underlying chronic disease and social determinants of the health of homeless people, we will continue to watch people slowly die on the streets.

The medical recovery centre model provides a critical and cost-effective circuit-breaker. By enabling “hospital in the home” care for people without a home, it reduces hospital readmissions.

Chronic rough sleepers are one of the most marginalised groups in our society. A medical recovery centre offers a safe period of respite where they can be connected to housing and other supports to break the cycle of homelessness.

Jim O’Connell is guest speaker at the National Health, Homelessness and the Vulnerably Housed Roundtable in Brisbane tomorrow, November 15, organised by the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Murray, Lecturer in Economics, The University of Queensland

To paraphrase former prime minister Paul Keating, walk into any pet shop in the country and you’ll find the resident galah saying we should swap stamp duty for a land value tax.

Just about every economic think tank in the land thinks it’s about the best value tax change there is, among them the Grattan Institute, Per Capita, the Australia Institute, and the Centre for Independent Studies as well as a swag of academics, the Treasury in its work on the draft white paper for tax reform and the Henry Tax Review.

Among the benefits of what I will call SD4LVT are said to be greater ease in upsizing and downsizing, a more mobile population (less reluctant to buy and sell houses) and a more reliable source of revenue for state governments.

Read more: Abolish stamp duty. The ACT shows the rest of us how to tax property

One state, the Australian Capital Territory, has already begun a 20-year phase out of stamp duty and a 20-year build up of land tax.

But beneath the near universal enthusiasm for SD4LVT are layers of bad economics.

It is extremely frustrating to me that the leading minds in Australian policy have put their heads together and decided that the best reform they can think of is to replace a good tax on property with another good one that would be even less popular.

The more thoughtful among them don’t even bother to claim that SD4LVT will make housing more affordable, yet still put it forward as the “holy grail” of tax reform.

It is bad economics because of four key points its proponents miss or overlook.

Price effects

Stamp duty comes out of what the buyer is prepared to pay. This means that if you remove it, all other things equal, prices will rise by exactly the amount of the duty removed.

If the average home price is A$500,000, and buyers pay a 5% stamp duty, taking the total to A$525,000, then when stamp duty is removed the price will immediately increase to $525,000 being what the buyer was prepared to pay.

If you replace the stamp duty revenue with revenue from land value taxes, the effects on price are less clear. The change could push them up (enriching sellers) or it could push them down.

Imagine an example economy with:

• 20 houses
• Turnover of one house each year (a turnover rate of 5%)
• An average home price of A$500,000
• Total stamp duty revenue of A$25,000 per year

Replacing the A$25,000 stamp duty revenue with a land value tax requires taxing all 20 homes at A$1,250 per year each.

Whether the market price of homes rises or falls depends on whether buyers think the cost to them of A$1,250 per year is lower or higher than the A$25,000 upfront stamp duty they avoided. If they thought it was about the same, SD4LVT wouldn’t much affect prices.

Read more: Killing off stamp duty: a good policy that no politician supports

But what if turnover was half that, say 2.5%, which in this example would be where one house was sold every two years? In that case, the total stamp duty to be replaced would be A$12,500, which would be only A$625 per house in land tax.

The new buyer could pay A$512,500 for the house plus A$625 per year in land tax and be equally as well off as paying A$500,000 for the house plus A$25,000 in stamp duty.

The net effect would be a price increase from A$250,000 to A$262,500.

If that happened nationally it would mean a transfer of almost A$200 billion to existing owners.

Whether or not that did happen would depend on the turnover and buyer’s views about the future value of money. In short, the price effects of a SD4LVT are ambiguous.

Mobility

While it is said that stamp duties deter Australians from changing addresses and switching jobs, there is little evidence that they are not changing enough.

Most people who relocate for work don’t buy and sell homes in order to do it.

They rent first, becoming both a renter and a landlord for a while, perhaps selling their first home later, but not quickly.

Read more: Why older Australians don’t downsize and the limits to what the government can do about it

When they do sell, often for a healthy profit, stamp duty ensures they pocket less than would have, grabbing back some of what might otherwise be an untaxed capital gain.

Lower housing turnover from stamp duties mainly falls on the nearly half of sales involving investors who buy speculatively to capitalise on short bursts of capital growth before selling, in the process fuelling the boom and bust price cycle.

To me, anything that slows down real estate turnover and captures capital gains seems like a good idea.

Revenue stability

It is claimed that stamp duty revenues are much more volatile than other taxes. During a boom, they climb more than proportionally to prices since they also depend on turnover. During a bust, they fall more quickly than prices.

If I was to think in the abstract about what sort of taxes are good for the economy, I would say it is those that are pro-cyclical, meaning they automatically increase takings during a boom, and wind them back during a bust.

On this measure, stamp duty is a good tax for stabilising the economy, something important given how much our economic cycles are tied to housing markets.

The land value tax that SD4LVT proponents would replace stamp duty with would make the tax system as a whole less stabilising.

Odd modelling

You might have seen a chart like the Treasury graph below, with stamp duties presented as having enormous flow-on economy-wide costs compared to other taxes. In this example, land tax which is presented as having an economic benefit.

The problem with the graph is that modelling used to prepare it (computational general equilibrium modelling) can’t directly account for transaction taxes because it doesn’t model transactions.

Instead of using a better tool for the job, the modellers assume that stamp duties increase cost of housing to all buyers and renters. It’s this assumption that drives a conclusion they describe as merely “illustrative”.

To sum up

Stamp duties don’t push up the cost of housing. The claim that they impede household mobility is overblown. They do reduce asset churn, and as a result they help maintain price stability.

Their “revenue instability” is actually a huge positive for the economy as a whole. And the modelling that has underpinned the talk of high economy-wide costs is as good as made up.

Yet SD4LVT remains the apparent holy grail of Australian tax policy.

Our best policy wonks continue to push our politicians to use up the precious capital to swap one very good property tax for another, for no obvious economic gain.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin University

Last year, the 50th anniversary remix of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band gained considerable respect from critics and fans alike. Now we have the 50th anniversary remix of The Beatles, universally known as The White Album thanks to its ultra-minimalist artwork.

Before asking whether this remix achieves the same revelatory listening experience of its predecessor, it’s important to note a difference between the two albums. The original stereo mix of Sgt Pepper’s was long seen as inferior, mixed as it was when a mono mix was considered to be the definitive version of an album. By late 1968 that mindset had changed, and The White Album was the first Beatles album conceived primarily as a stereo album.

Read more: Sgt Pepper’s at 50 – the greatest thing you ever heard or just another album?

So is a remix even necessary? In certain genres of popular music, such as R & B, remixing is commonplace. In others, such as rock, it remains an ambiguous practice, especially when applied to classic albums—works which through reputation and repetition seem set in stone. For some fans, remixing a Beatles album is both artistically redundant and cynically commercial.

But remixing the Beatles is not new. Remixed Beatles songs can be heard on the album Let It Be, which was released in 1970, but started life as Get Back in 1969. When Get Back was shelved at the last minute, the session tapes were handed over to the producer Phil Spector — famous for his “wall of sound” aesthetic and currently serving a life sentence for murder — who “re-produced” the work in part by remixing a number of songs, infamously adding intrusive orchestral and choral parts in the process. Let it Be was subsequently reworked and remixed again, appearing (sans Spector’s additions) as Let it Be … Naked in 2003.

The White Album itself was the source of a creative remix when Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) did a mashup called The Grey Album (2004) that combined vocal performances from Jay-Z’s The Black Album with instrumental elements from The White Album. The album became a beacon for supporters of “remix culture”, a movement that supports the use of others’ intellectual property to create new work. The Beatles, perhaps inevitably, did not authorise Danger Mouse’s remix project. As Charles Fairchild writes, though, this project was “a link in a long chain of musical practice that stretches back to the late 1960s”.

Read more: Why the Grey Album still matters – in black and white

The White Album — a sprawling, seemingly unfocused, 30-track double album — has had an odd reception. Long in the shadow of its predecessor, Sgt Pepper’s, its stocks have risen in the last two decades to the point where it is universally regarded as one of the Beatles’ greatest albums. So what does the 2018 remix — put together by producer Giles Martin (son of the album’s original producer, George Martin) and mix engineer Sam Okell — offer us?

The album has a more “modern” sound (wider frequency range, wider stereo field, and greater clarity and separation of parts), without losing its live feel, grit, or eccentricity. As the opener, Back in the USSR, shows, bass frequencies are considerably more present. (In the 1960s, mixing and mastering engineers had to be careful with low frequencies, as they could cause problems at the vinyl cutting stage.)

In addition to its more present low-end, and its (usually subtle) changes to the balance between instruments, the 2018 remix is most notable for adding detail and clarity. This last aspect is particularly welcome in the album’s closing track, John Lennon’s Good Night, with its shmaltzy strings-and-choir arrangement, a style that evoked (even then) an earlier cinematic era. Removing some of the heavy-handed reverb from the choir immediately makes the song clearer and more listenable.

The first postmodern album?

While some might see this remix as a marketing exercise, it undoubtedly allows us to experience the album in a new way. It also draws attention to the “remix” aesthetic found within it.

Revolution 9, a piece of avant garde sound collage made up of found audio samples, is a fine example of early remix culture (an irony that was not lost on a number of Danger Mouses’s supporters). But The White Album engaged in “remix thinking” in less obvious ways. In its wild variety and use of pastiche, it has long been seen as the first postmodern album. Ranging from the mock-1920s style of Honey Pie, to the nursery-rhyme style of Cry Baby Cry, the album could be said to remix popular music itself.

More than anything, though, The White Album — coming in the wake of the Beatles’ psychedelic outputs of 1967 — was a return to, and remixing of, rock’n’roll. (In this respect, it prefigures the Get Back sessions in which the “back-to-roots” aesthetic became programmatic.) Starting as it does with a parody (by way of the Beach Boys) of Chuck Berry’s Back in the USA, The White Album repeatedly revises classic rock’n’roll tropes.

The remix of I’m So Tired makes the evocation of Berry’s guitar style (heard in the choruses) all the more apparent. Helter Skelter, with its use of tape echo and Elvis-esque vocal stylings from McCartney, is a reworking of 1950s rock’n’roll as much as an invention of heavy metal. Meanwhile, Revolution 1 and Happiness is a Warm Gun heavily rely on doo-wop vocals, a key style in the development of rock’n’roll.

This remix of the White Album is a less radical intervention in the Beatles’ canon than Love (a 2006 album of mashups) or Let it Be… Naked. And while it is less technically “necessary” and revelatory than the 2017 remix of Sgt Pepper’s, it gives us a clearer sonic view of the Beatles’ most eccentric and eclectic album.

Indeed, the Martin-Okell remix may well have given The White Album something that early critics of the record said it lacked: a degree of coherence.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clarke Jones, Research Fellow, Research School of Psychology, Australian National University

Following another act of fatal violence in Melbourne’s CBD last Friday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison dismissed claims the perpetrator, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, had a mental illness. He said this was a “lame excuse”, saying he wanted imams and the Muslim community to pay greater attention to people at risk of radicalisation.

Media reports have stated Ali suffered delusions and substance abuse problems in the lead-up to his attack and believed he was being chased by “unseen people with spears”. Ali’s family and religious teacher have also attested to him being mentally ill.

To be sure, most Australians will find it hard to forget the horror of this incident where three people were stabbed. Regardless of our cultural and religious backgrounds, we stand united in grieving for restaurant owner Sisto Malaspina, who was killed in the attack. But we must also try to make sense of it by analysing the perpetrator’s actions and developing ways to prevent further acts of violence.

It is difficult to ignore similarities with an incident that occurred on the same street in 2017, when James Gargasoulas drove his car into a crowd of people, killing six and wounding 30. He too was said to be suffering delusions, though, interestingly this was not labelled as an excuse.

If we blame Muslim communities or cultural minorities as responsible for acts of terrorism, we are likely to continue to alienate at-risk individuals and the communities that support them. This can, in itself, lead to mental health problems. While this doesn’t mean the result will be violence, it can increase the chances of young people dropping out of the social support system, which can lead to criminality, anti-social behaviour, self-harm or suicide.

Read more: Morrison wants Muslim leaders to do more to prevent terrorism, but what more can they do?

Terrorism and mental illness

Research consistently shows there is no evidence people living with mental illness are more violent than anyone else. In fact, people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence that other people. They are also more at risk of homicide, suicide and self-harm.

It is too early to make firm conclusions about the role of mental health problems and terrorism as few studies have examined this relationship. But from these, we can establish not all terrorist incidents have mental illness as a causal factor.

Read more: Violence and mental illness: harsh reality demands sensitive answers

A 2017 study conducted by the Combating Terrorism Centre (which was set up to understand terrorism after the September 11 attacks), analysed media reports of attackers who allegedly had a mental illness.

It found that out of 55 attacks in the West, where 76 individuals involved where possibly influenced by Islamic State, 27.6% had a history of psychological instability. This percentage is comparable to that found in the general population.

Almost half (45.5%) of Australians experience a mental health disorder at some point in the lifetime. And a 2017 survey found one in five, or 20% of the Australian population aged 16-85 years, were found to have experienced mental disorders in the previous 12 months.

The study also notes its results are not conclusive. This is because media reports are often marred by a “tendency to treat all mental health disorders equally” and a fetished way of reporting on mental illness.

Mental illness is a general term that refers to a group of disorders including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. It can significantly affect how a person feels, thinks, behaves, and interacts with other people.

Whether or not mental illness contributes to violent behaviour is likely to differ from case to case depending on an individual’s diagnosis, prior experiences, co-existence of other stressors and vulnerabilities, and lack of protective factors.

Better support for marginalised communities

In the public perception, mental illness and violence often tend to be intertwined. And much of the stigma associated with mental illness may be due to a tendency to conflate mental illness with the concept of dangerousness.

This is further augmented by the media, which sensationalises violent crimes committed by people with mental illness, particularly mass shootings. The focus is often on mental illness in such reports and ignoring the fact most of the violence in society is caused by people without mental illness.

Read more: From act of terrorism to mental health symptom: we’re shifting blame but at what cost?

This bias contributes to the stigma faced by those with a psychiatric diagnosis, which in turn contributes to non-disclosure of the mental illness and decreased treatment seeking.

We also know that people who are unemployed, marginalised, isolated, homeless or who have been incarcerated, have significantly higher levels of mental illness than the general population. People living in socioeconomically less affluent areas have higher levels of mental illness, particularly depression.

We need culturally appropriate models of care to help with individual experiences of stigma, isolation, disengagement, and past experiences of torture and trauma.

It is not to diminish our grief and horror at last Friday’s incident to tread carefully in laying blame on culture, religion, or even mental health. We know there are many reasons for acts of terrorism or violent crime. But we can minimise them by ensuring communities of all backgrounds feel part of Australian society.

Sadly, my ongoing research shows there is currently limited capacity for culturally sensitive mental health services to respond to alerts from communities about impending or actual crises. Decreasing funding and support from governments means community services are not equipped to prevent incidents like the attacks in Melbourne or manage young people of concern.

Instead of pointing the finger, perhaps governments at both state and federal levels should ask how they themselves can better support communities in dealing with the causes of violent crime.