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

On the day independent Kerryn Phelps was officially declared the winner in Wentworth, a shot was fired across Scott Morrison’s bows to remind him of the challenge of managing a now-hung parliament.

It came not from Phelps but from a longstanding crossbencher, the maverick Bob Katter, who holds the north Queensland seat of Kennedy.

Katter is a politician who creates a fuss in search of a reaction. And what better time than when Morrison is heading north, in his bus, on a campaign journey through Queensland, making announcements as he goes?

“Don’t think you have my vote,” Katter declared in the headline of Monday’s press release.

He said he would “not rule out” voting to refer Chris Crewther, Liberal member for the Melbourne seat of Dunkley, to the High Court to determine whether section 44 of the constitution catches him. Dunkley is a marginal Liberal seat that becomes notionally marginal Labor at next year’s election, under the redistribution.

Crewther’s issue is a shareholding in a biotech company, Gretals Australia, that is said to have received a benefit from the Commonwealth via grants. The now notorious section 44, which has caught a plethora of federal parliamentarians over citizenship issues, also says someone shall be incapable of being chosen for or sitting in parliament if they have “any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth …”

The eligibility of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has also been questioned under this provision, in relation to issues around a family trust.

Katter said he was “considering” his position, declaring he thought the Crewther situation was “a lot different” from that of Dutton.

But the giveaway was Katter’s segue. “I’m not impressed with the government in their three months in office running around pork barrelling”. In particular, the government was not dealing with North Queensland issues, he said.

“It seems that there is little point in working with a government that has had three months to do something for the north when all they are interested in is pork barrelling to secure votes. Clearly this indicates they have no interest in really helping North Queensland.”

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Katter is thinking less about the Crewther situation and more about what he might extract for North Queensland. After all, only on Friday he dismissed backing sending either Crewther or Dutton to the High Court, declaring “politics is not about this sort of rubbish.”

Phelps earlier on Monday told the ABC she was wanted to get more information of the Crewther and Dutton cases. On her own position Phelps, a doctor, said that she had “high level legal advice” that she didn’t have a problem in relation to Medicare, because the rebate went to the patient not the practice.

Labor says both Crewther and Dutton should go to the High Court. The opposition would need to round up the votes of all six crossbenchers to have the numbers for referrals.

But a referral doesn’t mean the person has to resign while the case is on.

Given the closeness to the election, even if there were a referral followed by an adverse decision, it would not trigger a byelection.

In any event, Sydney University constitutional expert Anne Twomey doubts Crewther has a problem.

Twomey says that, on what we know, it appears Gretals Australia doesn’t have an agreement with the Commonwealth – any connection appears relatively remote.

“While Gretals may be a participant in an Australian Research Council linkage grant, it is the University of Melbourne which has the agreement with the Commonwealth and receives the funding, not Gretals,” she says.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denise Fisher, Visiting Fellow, Australian National University

The November 4 referendum in New Caledonia was a breathtaking example of democracy in action, with new consequences for the French territory, France and our region.

The vote had been long-deferred, long-awaited and for some, long-feared. It took place peacefully, a major and poignant achievement that was unimaginable 30 years ago, before the Matignon/Noumea Accords were signed. They were designed to end civil war, promising the hand-over of a number of autonomies, to be followed by this referendum.

The result favoured staying with France by 56.4% to 43.6%. Key characteristics were the strong turnout, especially by young Kanaks, the relatively strong vote for independence, and bitter division between the two sides.

Read more: Explainer: New Caledonia’s independence referendum, and how it could impact the region

Voting queues were long, with many waiting two hours to vote. Voting is not compulsory in New Caledonia, and the turnout was an extraordinary 80.63% of those eligible to vote (all Indigenous Kanaks, and a large proportion of those from other communities with longstanding residence in New Caledonia). This is the highest in recent history, with levels at the last French national elections 37% (2017) and provincial elections 67% (2014).

As French President Emmanuel Macron noted hours after the polls closed, France has fulfilled its promise and delivered a transparent process, legitimised by the unprecedented high turnout, the attendance of 13 UN observers and a Pacific Islands Forum observer team.

What does it mean for New Caledonia?

This relatively close result is probably the best all round for stability. The campaign has been bitter, and even commentary between leaders in television coverage of the results saw strong denunciation, particularly by loyalists.

While potentially stoking fear among loyalists for the future, the sizeable independence vote nonetheless may give pause to their tendency to triumphalism, challenging opinion polls and their own belief that they would win at least 60% and possibly 70% of the vote.

In their confidence, just days before the vote, the loyalists declared that with a massive win, they would seek to reverse the Noumea Accord guarantee of a second and potentially third referendum, an inflammatory step for independence supporters.

For independence leaders, the result vindicates their careful strategy of negotiating under the Noumea Accord for potentially two more votes in 2020 and 2022 in the event of a “no” vote, automatic participation for all Indigenous Kanaks, and mobilising the young.

Young Kanaks voted in large numbers, peacefully, and apparently for independence. This was so even in mainly European Noumea, which returned a surprising 26.29% “yes” vote.

With natural population growth, their numbers will increase as 18-year-olds become eligible to vote in 2020 and 2022. In contrast, the number of voters from other long-standing communities will vary little during this time-frame.

Independence leaders can also work to improve the vote from Kanak island communities, whose turnout remained at traditional lower levels, and those who may have responded this time to one independence party’s call for a boycott.

What does it mean for France?

The relatively close result means both sides may be more likely to participate constructively in the ongoing dialogue process set up by France.

Macron has urged New Caledonians to overcome division and continue the 30-year process “in favour of peace”, emphasising dialogue. He referred to a future within France and the Indo-Pacific. Prime Minister Édouard Philippe visited the territory on November 5 to continue dialogue and urge calm.

The task of France remains delicate: to manage, impartially, a process respecting the positions of both sides. It’s complicated by the fact the 43.6% favouring independence are largely Indigenous Kanaks. They are not leaving, they have regional support, and their interests must be considered in any long-term future.

Read more: Rebel music: the protest songs of New Caledonia’s independence referendum

On the positive side, positions canvassed by independence and loyalist parties alike threw up areas of shared interest that can form the basis of future cooperation. Provincial elections in May 2019 will clarify their support, but risk being undermined by extremist parties on both sides.

What are the implications for the region?

The result guarantees continued regional and international interest in the next steps. Reports of the Pacific Islands Forum and UN observer teams will be considered by their organisations. New Caledonia continues to be represented by the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).

Separatists in Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), set for their own independence referendum next year, and West Papua, both the subject of MSG attention, will take heart.

Macron’s invocation of his Indo-Pacific vision engaging New Caledonia specifically to counter China gives a new edge to the interest in the referendum process by regional countries and partners.

Australia, meanwhile, will continue to retain a close interest in stability in our near neighbour, respecting the process while continuing cooperation with France.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michaela Pascoe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Exercise and Mental Health, Victoria University

Young people around Australia are currently undergoing end of secondary school exams, which can be a very stressful time. Nearly half (47%) of Australian students report they feel very tense when they study, and 67% report feeling very anxious even if they are well prepared for a test.

All this stress can have an impact on mental health and well-being as well as a negative impact on grades and motivation. It’s important to have some strategies to de-stress during this overwhelming time. Mindfulness-based practices have been shown to reduce stress, and make our negative thoughts seem less threatening. Here are some you can try.

Read more: Three reasons to get your stress levels in check in 2018

Meditation

When doing a meditation, it’s useful to make sure you’re in a conformable environment. Try sitting in a quiet and comfortable place, perhaps crossed legged, or any position comfortable enough to remain still for a few minutes. A meditation session can be a long or short as you like.

Some people like to meditate with their eyes closed, but this isn’t a requirement. If you want to keep your eyes open, try to maintain a relaxed gaze, and avoid moving your gaze around for the duration of the meditation.

Meditation apps

There are a number of free apps that can be used to guide you through a meditation including ones made by Reachout, Smiling Mind or Headspace.

Using the breath

Paying attention to the breath is a widely used and effective meditation method. This can be as simple as noticing the breath entering and exiting the body. It can be helpful to feel the belly rise and fall with the breath, or to pay attention to the sensation of the breath entering and exiting the nostrils.

It’s normal for your attention to wander. Every time you notice this happening, gently bring your attention back to the breath. Try to make your breath slow and steady. You might like to breathe out of the mouth for the first few breaths, and then continue by breathing both in and out of the nose.

Read more: I have an exam tomorrow but don’t feel prepared – what should I do?

If you want to add to this, you might try counting your breaths. See how many you can reach before your mind wanders and you lose track, and then simply bring your attention back and start again.

Don’t be hard on yourself if your attention wanders. Noticing your attention wander and bringing it back is part of meditation.

Another option might be to count the length of your breaths. Exhaling longer than you inhale can help you relax.

Four-seven-eight

This is a breathing technique that can help you to centre yourself and calm down when you feel stressed. It helps by focusing attention on the breath and also tricks the body into feeling more relaxed by reducing an accelerated heart rate. You can use this any time, anywhere:

1. exhale deeply through your mouth

2. take a deep breath through your nose for four counts

3. hold the breath for seven counts

4. exhale through your mouth for eight counts

5. repeat four to eight times.

Using mantras

Using a mantra, which is a phrase repeated over and over, can be helpful to quiet the chatter of the mind. You might try repeating a phrase such as “I am here,” “I am safe,” or “I can do this”. The phrase can be as long or short as you like and can be repeated aloud or in your head.

It can be very useful to pair the repetition of the phrase with the breath. For example, you could say “I am” on your in breath, and “here” on your out breath.

Mindfulness using the senses

Using the senses can be a helpful way to pull your attention to the present moment no matter where you are, centre yourself and engage with your environment. You can practise throughout the day, especially any time you find yourself getting caught up in your thoughts and feelings.

Here is an exercise you can do to play with paying attention to things you might not usually notice. Try to notice five things:

Mindfulness using the body

Going to a yoga class can be a great way to explore mindfulness of the body in a supported environment.

Studies from the US and India show mindfulness-based yoga programs in secondary schools can improve grades or mitigate decreases in grades across the school year, improve emotional regulation, improve memory, anger control and fatigue, improve mood and decrease anxiety. Many local studios will provide free or heavily discounted offers for introduction classes.

Read more: Why we should put yoga in the Australian school curriculum

Another option might be to try to some gentle mindful stretching on your own or with a friend. You can try any stretches you like, while paying attention to what is happening in your body as a result of the stretch.

Pay attention to how the muscles feel, both during and in the few seconds after the stretch. Be aware of how the stretch might affect your breathing. Try to maintain a steady, calm, breath throughout the practice. If you mind wanders, just bring it back to the sensations in your body.

You can practise these measures at home around exam time, while you’re lining up to enter your exam, or even in the middle of your exam if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed. Taking a moment to slow your heart rate and calm your thoughts will pay off in the long run.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders University

Review: Sutra, OzAsia Festival.

Sixteen boxes, open on one side and lined up on stage, start flipping toward the audience – the heart-stopping, thunderous crashing of giant wooden boxes larger than a coffin. A dancer pulls a Shaolin monk from one of the boxes with a long pole, the delicate tension and release between them animating the monk. Suddenly, robe-clad monks fling themselves out from a sea of prone boxes, two at a time.

Children in the audience squeal with delight. We are witnessing magic.

Sutra, presented in its Australian premiere as part of Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival, more than merits the critical acclaim heaped upon it. Touring in its tenth year, this spectacular work features 19 Shaolin monks flying, leaping and moving gracefully and purposefully across the stage along with giant boxes that become dramatic characters in the action.

Read more: Dancing Grandmothers offers a moment of communion

Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s fusion of the choreographic universe of contemporary dance with the kung fu techniques of the famed Shaolin monks is both masterful and unexpected. The 19 monks in Sutra are extraordinary acrobats, and we take great delight as they fly, spin, kick, leap, and somersault across the stage.

Many have seen the iconic, famous moves of these monks from China’s famed Shaolin Temple in action films. But here we see those moves — the rapid, virtuouso work with sticks, the fight between two monks with poles topped with shimmering blades, the high kicks and near misses of flying bodies in combat — in a new way.

The boxes are equally the stars of the show. Shifted about by the monks from inside and behind, the boxes walk, crawl, slide, fall, moving much like humans. They are repositioned in an endless number of variations, at times with the complexity of a gigantic Rubik’s Cube. Occasionally they border on the terrifying, as, for instance when they fall forward like dominoes, fanning out in two diagonal lines to the very lip of the stage.

Cherkaoui, with his fluid gestures and Gumby-like body, offers up a series of gentle, quirky choreographic intrusions into the sometimes frantic world of moving boxes and flying monks. Paired with him in a number of ingenious and occasionally lighthearted interventions was a boy monk, who possessed a cheekiness that clearly charmed the audience. While the boy skillfully imitated the movements of the older monks, he also played the part of a boy with his attention-seeking antics and sense of wonder. Indeed, Cherkaoui and the boy grounded what could have been a serious, technical performance in a world of play.

Symon Brzóska’s music, which accompanies much of the onstage action, also offers a different way of seeing. His spare and understated score, played by offstage musicians, at times supports a tension line between dancers with the single vibrating string of a violin or a cello. At other moments, the strings give way to a piano melody that ambles like Erik Satie’s so-called “furniture music,” in turn directing the action, responding delicately to movement.

Read more: While I Was Waiting captures the tragedy of the Syrian civil war in Damascus

In one such moment Cherkaoui and the boy dance together in the box, clinging to the sides, repositioning themselves in an impossibly small space, the boy coming to rest hanging down from the top of the box, bat-like, as Cherokaoui assumes a mediation position below.

Sutra is work of movement, sound, and light, not colour, and both the walls of Antony Gormley’s set and the functional costumes are in shades of grey, the only contrast being the golden hue of the wooden boxes. Directing our attention is his masterful lighting. This was a work with hundreds of moments when tight illumination is required not just on the stage, but well above it. At one such moment we see the interior of sixteen boxes, each in stacks of four, lined up like coffins along the back of the stage. And in each box is a prone monk, clearly and seemingly miraculously illuminated.

In Buddhism, the religious tradition that anchors the spiritual and kinesthetic practices of the Shaolin Monks, sutras are generally short, sacred texts that focus on a particular teaching. They are the collective threads of sacred knowledge.

Thus, this work can be seen as a choreographed sequence of threads, a segmented but seamlessly unified work in which every gesture is completed. We are taken in not just by the skills of these monks, but ultimately also their gracefulness. One does not have to be a Buddhist to feel that this collection of choreographed sutras collectively brought us into something that felt like a state of grace.

Sutra was staged as part of the OzAsia Festival, Adelaide.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Millane, Research Fellow and PhD Candidate, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

One of the key themes in politics this year has been that the political system isn’t delivering. In the economy, we are told we need big “reform”, like in the days when Keating floated the dollar, Hawke slashed tariffs and Howard taxed goods and services.

They were big, bold economic changes, so the story goes.

Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott is the latest of many to make the call.

We have become complacent, she said. “The longer we wait to regain our enthusiasm for reform, the fewer options we have left on the table.”

It has become the consensus at repeated conferences. While we need fresh rounds of reform, the days when our leaders simply got things done are behind us.

Yet not nearly enough time is spent considering the reasons why those reforms were successful, and what constituted success.

Big reforms are aberrations

It’s easy to bemoan that big reforms are not being repeated. There are things history teaches us about the nature of policy change. One is that big changes are aberrations.

Another is that change happens all the time, less perceptibly, over increments.

Read more: Eight charts on our growing tax problem: what abandoning tax reform means for taxpayers

As commentators Jessica Irvine and Ross Gittins each pointed out in recent columns, many of those who lament the lack of reform have barrows to push, often because of their own vested interests.

Nevertheless, there are good arguments for reform, and frustration that it seems to have been replaced by theatre, such as a debate over whether the goods and services tax should be applied to tampons, something Professor Miranda Stewart of the ANU and Melbourne University described as a “great example of how the big picture gets lost in a fight about narrow issues of marginal benefit”.

Yet only big reforms seem real

For a long time, the way political scientists, historians and public policymakers conceptualised change was to focus on big change.

Think of revolutions, the fall of regimes, the introduction of entirely new systems. These “critical junctures” were the examples we used to understand what constituted change.

But more recently there has emerged a growing body of thought that suggests incremental change can have similarly transformative effects.

Incremental change can take the form of new rules that are layered on top of existing systems, of policy being applied differently by different administrations, of the piecemeal displacement of existing rules, and of experiments.

Most reforms start with tinkering

Liberal backbencher Trevor Evans has been talking up experiments, small ones.

In a recent comment to journalists Evans said:

We can defeat the incrementalist paradigm by using incrementalism as a way of proving that things work.

Read more: Speaking with: Andrew Leigh on why we need more randomised trials in policy and law

Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh has written a book about the virtues of small scale experiments to determine what works entitled Randomistas.

Former Treasury and Reserve Bank head Bernie Fraser said last month that when faced with bad policies or programs that governments were unwilling to change the best course was usually “to hammer away at what are seen as the flaws and damaging consequences of particular approaches and hope that over time desirable changes will come”.

And keep growing

The transformative power of hammering away means we need to pay close attention to small changes and their implications for fairness and efficiency. Over time they might grow into big ones.

Medicare and the National Disability Insurance Scheme took years of campaigning, of building coalitions of support, of working out and re-working the detail. With Medicare, it involved reintroducing a system that had been abolished.

Read more: NDIS: a step out of the dark

The Hayne Royal Commission is considering the removal of all commission-based fees in financial services.

This is after two major investigations into financial services, the one that led to the Future of Financial Advice Act in 2012 and the Financial Services Inquiry in 2014, opened the door while permitting commission-based sales to continue in some parts of the industry.

Read more: Explainer: the new future of financial advice

Consider some of the big economic policies introduced in Australia in the last 30 years, such as the introduction of the goods and services tax in 1999 or compulsory superannuation in 1992.

Both took years of unsuccessful attempts to introduce them, by both sides of politics.

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

My own as yet unpublished research into the history of compulsory superannuation found it has roots that extend back much further than its introduction in 1992.

Labor’s shift to accepting the principles of a government-run compulsory scheme under Whitlam in the early 1970s made it easier for the party to pursue a shift to a union and private enterprise based scheme from the late 1970s onwards.

Which makes details matter

Since the decision to introduce superannuation under the Accords in 1985, new rules have been layered on top of the idea of superannuation, among them the decision to introduce a flat tax of 15% on contributions and earnings in 1988.

The structure of these tax arrangements has had implications for the fairness of the scheme and who it rewards.

They are examples of the sometimes-profound effect of incremental changes.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Don Weatherburn, Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research; Adjunct Professor, School of Social Science, UNSW

But sadly, under Daniel Andrews Victoria has won the unenviable title as the state with the country’s highest rate of crime.

– Leader of the Victorian Liberal Party Matthew Guy, speaking at the party’s election campaign launch, 28 October, 2018

The Victorian Liberal Party has promised to take a tough stance on crime if elected on November 24, with proposals including mandatory minimum sentencing for repeat offenders of serious crimes (including murder, rape, aggravated home invasions, aggravated burglaries and car-jackings) and an overhaul of the bail system.

At the party’s election campaign launch, Victorian Opposition leader Matthew Guy said Labor had presided over a “law and order crisis”, adding that under Premier Daniel Andrews, “Victoria has won the unenviable title as the state with the country’s highest rate of crime”.

Is that right?

Response from Matthew Guy’s office

The Conversation asked a spokesperson for Matthew Guy for sources and comment to support his statement, but did not receive a response before deadline.

Nevertheless, it is possible to check the statement against publicly available data.

Verdict

Leader of the Victorian Liberal Party Matthew Guy said that “under Daniel Andrews, Victoria has won the unenviable title as the state with the country’s highest rate of crime”. The assertion is incorrect.

The Andrews government was elected in November 2014. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Crime Victimisation Survey data, between July 2014 and June 2017 (the latest figures), Victoria did not top the nation in terms of crime rates for any but one of the 11 measured categories of personal and property crime.

Looking at the Crime Victimisation Survey results for three years up to and including 2016-17, Victoria showed the highest rate of sexual assault in two of those years. However, the ABS said the sexual assault data must be used with caution due to the small sample size.

For the other ten crime categories, the Victorian crime rate was lower than at least one other state or territory in each of the three years considered.

ABS Recorded Crime data show that between 2014 and 2017, Victoria did not have the highest rate of murder in the nation, nor did it have the highest rate of criminal offenders proceeded against by police at any time between November 2014 and June 2017.

Comparing crime rates between states and territories

Making comparisons between recorded crime rates in different states and territories is fraught with difficulty, due to the differences in police practices and counting methods across the nation.

The most reliable data set for this task is the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Crime Victimisation Survey. Published annually since 2008-09, the national survey collects data on people’s experience of violence and household crime.

The survey records both reported and unreported crimes. Given that not all crimes are reported to police, this provides us with a bigger picture.

The questions asked in the ABS Crime Victimisation Survey are the same for all states and territories. The victimisation rates represent the prevalence of selected crimes in Australia, expressed as a percentage of the total relevant population.

Personal crime statistics

This part of the survey records experiences of crime across: physical assault, face-to-face threatened physical assault, non-face-to-face threatened physical assault, sexual assault and robbery.

The Andrews government was sworn in on December 4, 2014, and the latest ABS Crime Victimisation Survey data are for 2016-17.

In the years 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17, Victoria did not have the highest rate in the nation for physical assault, face-to-face threatened physical assault, non-face-to-face threatened physical assault, or robbery.

Victoria did have the highest reported rate for sexual assault in 2015-16, and equal highest in 2014-15. However, the ABS warned that the data for Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia should be treated with caution due to the small sample size, and a relative standard error of 25% to 50%.

In addition, the data for Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory had a relative standard error greater than 50%, and was considered too unreliable for general use.

The most recent Crime Victimisation Survey data are presented below.

Property crimes statistics

The property crime element of the ABS survey covers home break-ins, attempted home break-ins, motor vehicle thefts, thefts from motor vehicles, malicious damage to property and other theft.

At no time in the years 2014-15, 2015-16 or 2016-17 did Victoria have the nation’s highest rate of victimisation on any of these measures.

The chart below shows the latest available data:

Murder and homicide

We can look to a different ABS data set – ABS Recorded Crime – Victims – to assess the murder rates across the states and territories for the calendar years from 2014 to 2017 (the latest year for which data are available).

However, there are missing data points in this record: no data were collected in the Northern Territory in 2016, Tasmania in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015, or the Australian Capital Territory in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016.

Even with the missing data points, we can see that Victoria did not have the highest recorded murder rate in any of the years from the election of the Andrews government to 2017.

The terms homicide and murder are sometimes used interchangeably, but in fact they mean different things. Homicide is a broader term that includes some counts of manslaughter, murder-suicides, and other incidents.

The Australian Institute of Criminology publishes data from its National Homicide Monitoring Program. The latest report, published in 2017, shows information between July 2012 and June 2014, before the Andrews government was elected.

But as you can see from the chart below, the Northern Territory had a higher homicide incident rate than Victoria (and all other states and the Australian Capital Territory) every year between 1999-2000 and 2013-14. You can explore an interactive version of the chart here.

The issues with recorded crime data

The ABS publishes “Recorded Crime” data on the number and rate of crime victims (with the latest data reporting on the 2017 calendar year), and offenders formally proceeded against by police (with the latest data reporting on the 2016-17 financial year).

These data sets aren’t ideal for comparing crime rates between states and territories, for a few reasons.

The data come from state and territory police administrative computer systems. Each state has subtly different recording methods and police practices, and this affects the comparability of data.

In addition, people’s willingness to report crime to police can differ across the states and territories. As such, the crime victims data are less reliable for measuring crime rates than the Crime Victimisation Survey.

The ABS introduced rules to guide the recording and counting of criminal incidents for statistical purposes, to enable consistency across the states and territories. But there remains some variability in the interpretation of the rules.

The offender data are considered to be a reliable indication of legal actions. But they’re not a direct indicator of crime rates, due to the issues outlined above. Different jurisdictions also have different crime “clear up rates” (the percentage of a category of crimes that are solved).

The number of people arrested and proceeded against, and the types of crimes they are arrested for, can have as much to do with changes in legislation, police policy and practices in different jurisdictions as the number of criminal incidents committed.

It’s very important to keep those caveats in mind when looking at the data in the following chart.

What’s the picture for Victoria?

The data in the chart below is published by the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency, and relates to crime in Victoria only.

The offences shown were chosen as their recorded incidence is generally considered to reflect their prevalence in the community, and the recorded rates are not overly impacted by law enforcement initiatives.

The recorded rates of drug offences and justice offences, by comparison, can be heavily affected by discretionary police decisions.

– Don Weatherburn, with Jackie Fitzgerald, director, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research

Blind review

This FactCheck is accurate and based on reliable data. The verdict is correct: Victoria does not have the highest rate of crime.

It it worth observing that the latest federal Report on Government Services (2018) does highlight a significant drop in perceptions of public safety in Victoria. Often the public’s perceptions do not match the reality.

It is also noteworthy that the number and rate of criminal incidents in Victoria have been at higher levels in recent years compared to before the Andrews government came to power. – Terry Goldsworthy

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruth Boyask, Director of Postgraduate Programmes in Education, Auckland University of Technology

New Zealand is facing a major teacher shortage. At least 850 new teaching staff are needed to guarantee that all primary and secondary school children have a teacher next year.

Teachers are poised to take rolling strike action next week over pay equity. School principals and teacher unions say low pay and lack of equity are significant contributors to the escalating teacher shortage. The sector claims realistic pay increases will address teacher recruitment and retention problems.

However, the New Zealand government has chosen to respond with an urgent drive to recruit teachers from overseas as part of a package of initiatives.

My research into the unintended consequences of policies for equity and diversity in schools suggests this strategy to import teachers from the UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Fiji risks creating a mismatch between the ethnic diversity among school children and the teaching workforce.

Read more: Fixing the shortage of specialist science and maths teachers will be hard, not impossible

A short-term fix

The government’s main initiative is to recruit teachers from overseas to New Zealand schools to ensure they are fully staffed. According to Secretary of Education Iona Holsted the short-term solution is to “buy ready-made teachers for 2019”.

Schools and unions are not so sure the government’s plan will ease the teacher shortage. They say the money going towards the recruitment campaign would be better spent by raising teacher pay for both recruitment and retention.

Changes in education policy can have unintended consequences, especially short-term initiatives brought in to solve immediate problems. Longer-term policy solutions for teacher recruitment and retention would consider the teacher workforce in context, including its demography and purpose.

Fundamentally, the question of how many teachers we need cannot be separated from the role we want them to perform, and who is best suited to this role.

The education ministry’s recruitment package has tried to mitigate unintended consequences by targeting teachers whose qualifications are similar to New Zealand, including in the UK, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Fiji.

The ministry states they are working with the Teaching Council on support for these overseas-trained teachers to induct them into the cultural context of New Zealand.

Diversity in New Zealand schools

Taking a longer-term view raises the question of whether the selected countries can deliver teachers who fit within the New Zealand context better than those in other countries.

For a decade, I have been monitoring data on student ethnicity, collected by the Ministry of Education from New Zealand schools. These data indicate that school rolls are getting steadily and consistently more ethnically diverse.

What the statistics in the following chart show is a consistent decline in the percentage of European/Pākehā students, and increase in Māori, Pasifika and particularly Asian students in New Zealand state schools since 2003.

In 2017, 74% of teaching staff were European/Pākehā, compared with 50.9% students. The total number of European teachers in primary and secondary schools increased from 45,198 in 2004 to 51,117 in 2017.

The greatest percentage increase in students is in the Asian category, yet teachers of Asian ethnicity represent only 4% of the teacher workforce.

In 2004, 9% of teachers were categorised as Māori. While it increased to 11% by 2017, this is still well short of the 24.4% in the student population.

The list of countries from which the New Zealand government is seeking new teachers is likely to further increase the number of teachers with a European background.

Even in the case of South Africa where Black Africans are significantly in the majority, most South African migrants to New Zealand are white. In 2013, just under half the graduates of initial teacher education programmes in South Africa were white, even though they represent only about 8% of the population.

Challenges for the long term

The strategy to import teachers from the UK, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Fiji will do little to improve representation for indigenous Māori in the teacher workforce. This should be a priority in keeping with the state’s commitment to the protection of Māori interests through the Treaty of Waitangi. It is also unlikely to provide better cultural recognition for New Zealand’s many Asian migrant communities.

There is a possibility that the campaign attracts teachers from Fiji who identify with Pacific ethnicities. Pasifika teachers presently represent only 3% of the workforce.

If the numbers of teachers brought in through this scheme follow general migration patterns in New Zealand, we are likely to see the majority come from the United Kingdom. Indeed, RNZ’s reporting of the teacher recruitment campaign has focused on British teachers.

While China and India rival the United Kingdom as the main sources of long-term arrivals and migrants, both countries have been excluded from the scheme. There may be grounds for excluding them from this particular scheme, but it is the scheme itself that should be questioned. There are long-term implications of making the teaching workforce more ethnically similar when the student population is diversifying, especially when the ethnicity in question is the group in decline in the student population.

Considering the ethnic and cultural make-up of 21st-century New Zealand, we should be asking why education policy continues to associate a good education with a Euro-centric, and especially British, education. Social justice for New Zealand children includes recognition and representation of their different cultures in public institutions, including schools.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Yerbury, Research Fellow in molecular genetics of Motor Neurone Disease, University of Wollongong

Many people living with the cruel and often rapidly progressing motor neurone disease (MND) are going underfunded during what is likely the most stressful time of their life.

An independent evaluation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) by researchers at Flinders University found the scheme is failing to take into account the progressive nature and short life expectancy of participants with degenerative diseases.

I’m a molecular biologist and study of the origins of motor neurone disease. I have also had the disease for a little over two years.

Read more: What we know, don’t know and suspect about what causes motor neuron disease

Many researchers around the globe are frantically searching for a cure, myself included. But the slow grind of lab-based medical research and the seemingly impossible task of translating this work to positive clinical trials is in stark contrast to the relentless and rapid progression of the disease.

Remind me again, what is MND?

MND is the name given to a group of neurological disorders in which the nerve cells that control the movement of voluntary muscles, known as motor neurons, selectively die.

A progressive paralysis ensues as the muscles of movement, speech, swallowing and breathing no longer have nerves to activate them.

MND affects each person differently, as do the initial symptoms, rate and pattern of progression, and the survival time. The average life expectancy is two to three years from diagnosis but some people with MND can live for up to ten years or longer.

There is currently only one drug approved for use in MND. Sadly, the benefits are modest: studies suggest it may extend life expectancy by three months.

While the hunt for new, more effective drugs goes on, research shows the quality of care a person receives can not only increase quality of life but also increase life span. Access to multidisciplinary care – involving medical, nursing and allied health professionals (physiotherapists, dieticians and occupational therapists) – has been reported to improve both quality of life and survival, by seven to 24 months.

The survival advantage experienced by patients attending a multidisciplinary clinic can be in part explained by access to non-invasive ventilation. Studies have shown that use of a Bi-PAP machine – a small ventilator that helps with breathing – can prolong life by up to 14 months.

But this is only part of the benefit. The increased survival also relates to the complex decision-making processes that occur within a multidisciplinary team and the focus on proactive intervention, and early, holistic care.

This might include, for example, addressing weight loss with dietary supplementation and managing saliva secretions with botox injections, while tracking lung function and neurological changes. Importantly, such care teams also have provisions for rapid access to care when symptoms quickly change.

Quick progression, slow access

The NDIS, for those who have been able to access it, is having a positive, life-changing impact. For me, access to a plan supported my return home from hospital to live with my family. It has allowed me once again to thrive at work.

But my road to approval was not straightforward and the process placed undue stress on my family at an already traumatic period of our lives.

Read more: The NDIS is delivering ‘reasonable and necessary’ supports for some, but others are missing out

Others with MND continue to experience a protracted planning process and struggle to receive NDIS plans that take their progressing and complex needs into account.

To understand one of the major problems we need to examine the juxtaposition of a slow, cumbersome NDIS approval process with the rapidly progressive nature of MND.

While NDIS plans are usually for 12 months, within a three to six month window of time, it is very possible that a person with MND may progress from being able to walk independently, to needing a powered electric wheelchair.

My rapidly changing needs meant that while waiting for approval for a ramp or lift to access my home, it became unsafe for me to leave the house. Rather than see me house-bound my father-in-law built a ramp from kindly donated materials.

Others are not so fortunate. Another person I know with MND, Mary, has to shower under a hose in the laundry as she continues to wait for approval for bathroom modifications, and Helen fell and broke her spine during her 12-month wait for an electric wheelchair. Sadly, Adrian died before his wheelchair was even delivered.

‘Value for money’

A problem at the core of all MND-related difficulties with the NDIS is that the projected short lifespan of those with MND makes the NDIS baulk at funding high-cost items and modifications.

We are not perceived as being “value for money”. Multiple times during my approval processes, I was asked to prove I was going to live long enough to make a purchase value for money. Other people with MND have had similar experiences.

Read more: Explainer: how much does the NDIS cost and where does this money come from?

Decision-making about costs must not come at the expense of the dignity or safety of people living with MND.

There is an urgent need for systemic changes to address the slow and stressful planning process for people with rapidly deteriorating conditions like MND in light of their complex and changing needs and limited life expectancy.

The Australian Story episode No Surrender featuring Justin Yerbury will be broadcast on ABC TV tonight, Monday 5 November, at 8pm or on iview.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Vinkhuyzen, Research Fellow, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

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: find out how to enter at the bottom. 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 grow in certain sizes? – Audrey, age 6, Brisbane.

About 150 years ago, there was a very curious English person who asked the same question. His name was Sir Francis Galton.

One day, Sir Francis Galton looked at his friends. He saw that most of his taller friends had taller parents and most of his shorter friends had shorter parents. Francis Galton was one of the first scientists to do some tests to work out why this was the case. He published his findings in a book. Not all of his ideas were correct, though. Some of his ideas were actually very wrong. But he made a start on what we now call “genetics” or the science of genes. I’ll explain what that means.

Children and parents

Children with brown hair often have parents with brown hair. Children who are good runners, often have parents who are very good runners. Children who are a bit shy often have parents who can be a bit shy.

Like parents and children, brothers are sisters are quite alike too.

Do you look like your brother or sister? Have you had grown-ups saying to you: “Oh, you look just like your mum (or dad)!”

The reason behind all this is a thing called DNA. That stands for “deoxyribonucleic acid”, but don’t worry, everyone just calls it DNA.

Humans have a special code, and it’s called DNA

Every human carries an instruction booklet with a very special code. Actually, we carry trillions of instruction booklets. In each booklet, the same special code is written. The code, called DNA, is made out of only four letters, A, C, T, and G. This looks simple, but it is very cleverly set up.

Our eyes can’t read the code, but our bodies can. The code tells our body what to do and how to look. For example, it tells our hair to grow curly or straight, or to make our eyes brown or blue. But also, how much to grow and when to stop growing. Some people have instruction booklets with a code that tells their bodies to grow tall. Other people have a code that tells their body to grow to a smaller size.

Did you know that DNA code is unique for every person? That means there is nobody in the entire world with the same code as you – unless you have an identical twin brother or sister.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do we get allergic to food?

Your code is very similar to your biological parents’ code. This is because they pass on their code to you. You share half of your DNA code with your mother and half of your code with your father. If you’re adopted – or your parents used a donor egg or donor sperm – then you share half your DNA code with the person whose egg and person whose sperm were used to make you.

So your code that tells your body what size to grow in is similar to your biological parents’ code on what size to grow in.

Even though our DNA code is very similar to our biological parents’ DNA code, we all still turn out a little bit different. This is because you have your own experiences.

Experiences are a part of being human

Every human being has experiences. An experience is something we do, or something that happens to us. Eating is an experience.

Some experiences we share, others we experience on our own.

For our body to follow the code in our instructions booklets, it needs energy. Energy comes from eating food, and more importantly, eating healthy food. If we don’t eat, we won’t grow. Even if the code in our instruction booklets is telling our body to grow tall. Some children get to eat lots of food that makes them grow. Other children may not get enough food or don’t eat healthy food.

Getting sick is also an experience. Some diseases may make you grow less. These days, we are getting sick less than humans did in the past and have more healthy food than the people who lived a long time ago. That’s why we are all a bit taller than the people who lived a long time ago.

So, both your DNA code and your experiences make you grow to a certain size.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do we have bones?

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

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney

Melbourne Cup is upon us and racegoers will dress in their finest, with prizes awarded for the smartest fashions on the field.

Just like the punters, the equine stars of the track may also be wearing a range of gear in the hope of gaining a winning edge.

Racing Australia’s list of approved gear covers more than 100 items that can be used in horse racing.

Read more: Why horse-racing in Australia needs a social licence to operate

We’d like to help you identify what any racehorse you see may be wearing, and to distinguish between winkers and blinkers, nose rolls and nose bands, ear plugs and ear muffs.

So, let’s take a look at some of these items available in thoroughbred racing.

From blinkers to bandages

Blinkers, visors and winkers are cups or padding attached to the head to limit a horse’s vision in various ways. With their extraordinary wraparound vision, horses can normally see across 320 degrees without moving their heads.

The use of this type of equipment is thought to minimise distractions from other horses in the race, enabling the horse to focus on running rather than on other runners (or indeed the crowd).

Pacifiers are mesh cups sewn onto a fabric bonnet to protect the eyes from debris kicked up by other runners, something that is believed to cause some horses to slow down.

Ear muffs are sock-like and encase the whole ear. They are worn in the mounting yard and throughout the race, reducing the effect of the noise from race crowds which can frighten some horses. Ear muffs can be used in combination with blinkers, pacifiers and winkers.

Ear plugs, which are inserted into the ear, must be removed once the horse enters the barrier.

A nose roll is a thick sheepskin sausage that is used to stop horses being distracted by objects in their immediate foreground such as shadows.

Nose bands are straps added to the bridle and encircle the upper and lower jaws. They can be used to prevent horses from opening their mouths, giving the jockey greater control.

Read more: Over 20% of Australian horses race with their tongues tied to their lower jaw

Tongue-ties involve looping a piece of elastic band, strap or nylon stocking around the tongue and securing it to the lower jaw. They are also thought to improve control as well as prevent displacement of the soft palate that can interfere with airflow to the lungs. A metal or rubber version called a tongue clip can also be used.

Germany has banned tongue-ties in racing and they are banned in most other horse sports around the globe.

RSPCA Australia is keen for tongue-ties to be banned in Australian racing due to concerns including the tightness with which they are applied.

Boots and bandages are used to prevent injuries to the legs, notably self-inflicted injuries in horses that can accidentally strike one of their legs with another, and also to protect recent skin wounds.

The bit

More than 60 different designs of bit are permitted in racing. The main purpose of a bit is to apply discomfort on the tongue and lower jaw of the horse to motivate it to change its speed or direction.

Many of the bits on the approved list are simple, ancient designs, whereas others are complex pieces of engineering with flanges, clips and jaw-encircling structures.

These are intended to address specific behavioural problems such as lugging (veering to one side) or over-galloping (galloping with a high head position while straining at the bit).

Relatively little is known about how bits function inside a horse’s mouth but radiographic studies back in the 1980s on live horses have shown that many bits do not work as believed.

The tail chain

The tail chain is a short length of metal chain secured to the top of the tail by a rubber band and then hangs between a horse’s buttocks.

Anecdotally, it is believed to dissuade the horse from taking air into its rectum as it gallops, thereby preventing abdominal pain and associated poor performance.

However, given the anatomy of the horse’s gastro-intestinal tract, it seems unlikely that such air intake could affect performance in this way, or alternatively that a tail chain could reduce any such effect.

It is possible that the chain hitting the soft tissues of the perineal area may motivate the horse to gallop harder, which could be seen as performance-enhancing.

Does the gear make a difference?

A fascinating study of the behaviour and apparatus that horses wear when racing revealed associations with horse performance on the day. It showed poor performance was associated with boots, bandages, jaw-encircling nose bands, nose rolls, and pacifiers.

But this study was published in 1997 and since then there has been little published independent research on the use of any racing gear and its effect on racehorse performance.

The potential for gear to affect performance is fundamental to the integrity of racing. The rules of racing state that permission to use any piece of approved gear other than basic snaffle bits has to be given by the stewards before the horse starts the race.

Once permission has been given, the horse must continue to race in that gear unless the stewards grant permission for it to be changed. Form guides and starters lists detail gear changes to enable punters to assess the potential effect on the horse’s performance.

Understandably, trainers will swear by particular items of gear for horses with certain tendencies, especially if that item was worn on the day of a horse’s best performance, even though there is no relevant empirical evidence.

More research needed

The scientific community has only recently begun to put ancient and modern theories on horse handling and training to the test in a bid to identify which techniques and devices work and why.

Read more: The Hendra vaccine has no effect on racehorse performance

This discipline of equitation science is disclosing in research (involving one of us, Paul) how many horses are asymmetrical when racing.

An example of asymmetry is when a horse preferentially gallops with either the right or left leg leading. This has implications for the direction of the track which, for example, is clockwise in New South Wales and anticlockwise in Victoria.

Other research (also involving Paul) has looked at whether whips actually work on tired horses and how we can maximise our safety when working with horses.

Given time and the right level of funding, equitation scientists will use evidence from the years of racing records to show what works best and what doesn’t. Until then, we must trust trainers to prioritise their horses’ welfare when making selections from the register of approved gear.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon O’Connor, Associate Professor in American Politics at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney

From afar, the US midterm elections might seem to be all about Donald Trump, and there is some truth to this. The man, as has been the case for some years now, is unavoidable.

More than 700 days after the host of The Apprentice was elected to lead the world’s largest military and economic power, this will be the first chance for Americans to express buyer’s remorse at the ballot box by potentially giving the Democrats control of the House (and less likely the Senate) in order to rein in the president.

Trump himself is not up for re-election, though. Voters will be making decisions about local and state representatives, so it would be a mistake to presume the outcome will be entirely dependent on questions of federal leadership.

Read more: Calculating the odds of a Trump impeachment: don’t bet the house on it

However, Democrat Tip O’Neill’s famous claim that “all politics is local” is not entirely true here; this election has local, national and international implications.

This is why, once again, non-Americans are taking such an interest in an American election. Many believe that Trump and his Republican Party represent much of what endangers the world.

Who is up for election?

Members of the US House of Representatives serve two-year terms, and senators six-year terms. This means that all 435 members of the House and 35 out of 100 senators (33 plus two empty seats due to resignations) are up for re-election on November 6.

Due to the Democrats’ success in the 2012 election, just nine of those 35 Senate seats are Republican-controlled. So the Democrats’ chance of taking the Senate is slim – around 1-in-7, according to FiveThirtyEight.com – despite the fact Republicans currently hold only a narrow 51-49 majority.

For those outside the US, this may seem remarkable, given the profoundly unethical decisions enacted by the Trump administration, and the parade of misogyny that surrounded Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s recent Senate confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court.

And yet, there are a number of plausible scenarios in which the minority party could actually lose ground.

Read more: When Trump comes to Australia, let’s hope protesters get more creative than the baby blimp

To forge a path to victory in the Senate, Democrats will need to retain seats in states that Trump won easily in 2016 – North Dakota, Montana and Missouri – as well as in Florida, where incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson faces a tough race against multimillionaire Republican Governor Rick Scott.

They’ll also need to pick up a seat or two in the traditionally Republican states of Arizona, Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi (listed in order of likelihood). The fact that Mississippi and Tennessee are even in play for the Democrats is noteworthy because Trump won both in 2016 by over 15 percentage points.

But given the circumstances, the Democrats remain unlikely to win a Senate majority.

A Democratic victory in the House is far more probable, with FiveThirtyEight.com giving the minority party a 6-in-7 chance to take back control.

Because all House seats are up for grabs, this is the contest that many will view as a national referendum on the Trump administration. And the results will be shaped by voter turnout.

Typically, turnout for midterm elections is older and whiter than it is for presidential elections, and this is a demographic that favours Republicans. The Republicans have maintained or taken control of the House in every midterm election since 1994, with the exception of 2006, when President George W. Bush’s popularity had plummeted to the mid-30s due to his mishandling of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina.

According to recent polling averages, Trump’s approval rating has been hovering at just over 40%.

Why is gerrymandering significant?

This election is consequential for far more than the future of the Trump administration. Republican victories in state legislatures and governors’ races, which occur alongside the national election, will provide another opportunity for the party to consolidate its power through gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is the underhanded process whereby elected politicians redraw federal and state electorate boundaries to group voters by demographics and improve their chances of success at the ballot box.

These lines are redrawn every 10 years, following a nationwide census. The next census is in 2020, so the lines will next be redrawn in 2021. This year’s midterm election is therefore crucial in determining which party will control each state during the upcoming redistricting process.

Gerrymandering tends to be a tactic of Republicans, who currently hold the majority of seats in 32 of America’s 50 state houses. Furthermore, the task of gerrymandering is more straightforward for Republicans, as Democratic voters are typically packed together in urban centres, while Republicans are usually spread out across states.

In a number of states, Republicans have engineered things so Democrats are sure to win just a few seats with massive majorities, while Republicans are favoured to capture far more by closer margins, for instance a 55% to 45% majority.

However, there is a catch. In a wave election, as this one may well be, those Republicans who would normally expect to get elected with 55% of the vote could be vulnerable. This may occur in this year’s House races in North Carolina.

What is the effect of voter suppression?

Further impeding the Democrats’ chances is the systematic and widespread strategy of voter suppression, which is typically utilised by Republicans to prevent likely Democrat voters, such as African Americans, from voting.

One particularly alarming example has been happening in Georgia, where Democrat Stacey Abrams is attempting to become the country’s first female African American governor.

Her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, also happens to be Georgia’s secretary of state. His office had been strictly enforcing a new law known as “exact match”, under which voter-registration applications are dismissed for absurdly minor discrepancies, such as missing hyphens or slightly mismatched signatures.

Read more: Six types of ugly American, and Donald Trump is all of them

A judge recently halted this practice, but over 53,000 registration applications have already been suspended. African Americans comprise 32% of the state’s population and nearly 70% of the rejected applications.

This kind of behaviour is not confined to a few rogue states. Other methods of voter suppression, such as felon disenfranchisement, voter ID laws and reductions in the number of polling booths in African American communities, are routinely used across the country to disproportionately target minority voters.

Even the fact that voting takes place on a Tuesday, rather than a weekend, marginalises people who cannot get off work. These people are likely to be poorer and less likely to be white.

Will Trump be impeached?

As was proven on the evening of November 8, 2016, while polls can show likelihoods, nothing is guaranteed. However, the polls currently suggest that the most likely outcome of these midterms is a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate.

What this would mean for Trump is more frustration. The Democrats would be able to investigate the president’s questionable financial deals, potential fraud related to Trump University and possible links to Russian interference in the 2016 election. They could also push for the release of Trump’s much sought-after tax returns.

It seems likely the House will find grounds to impeach Trump. But, hold your breath – that would be only step one of a lengthy process.

Dismissal of a president requires 67 of 100 Senate votes, a threshold that makes such an event unlikely. Given the president’s propensity for mendacity, it will be intriguing to see whether he is able to avoid any perjury charges that might arise from Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian election interference. But again, such charges are unlikely to lead to his removal from office.

Yet who can say? Whatever the outcome on November 6, there is much about the future of US politics – and the global ramifications – that remains entirely unpredictable.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Johanna Westbrook, Professor of Health Informatics and Patient Safety, Macquarie University

Bullying, harassment and other unprofessional behaviours are culturally ingrained in the Australian health-care system.

As we outline today in the Medical Journal of Australia, between one-quarter and half of doctors and nurses in Australia have been bullied, discriminated against or harassed at work.

This impacts on the way they do their work, and the quality and safety of the care they’re able to provide patients.

From doctor depression to medical errors

Workplace bullying in hospitals has been shown to cause depression, anxiety and fatigue among health workers. It can also reduce performance and levels of self-esteem.

These symptoms, along with stress and poor staff satisfaction at work, leads to higher staff absenteeism, impacting continuity of patient care and increasing the workload in already overstretched hospital clinics and wards.

Read more: You should care about your doctor’s health, because it matters to yours

While we don’t have data from Australia, a survey of staff from more than 100 United States’ hospitals give us some clues about the impact. More than two-thirds (71%) of respondents – mainly nurses and doctors – agreed unprofessional behaviour and poor communication contributed to medical errors.

Worryingly, one-quarter of respondents (27%) believed unprofessional behaviour had contributed to a patient’s premature death.

Communication is compromised

Good communication among clinical teams is central to safe care. When team members feel unable to speak up due to negative consequences, care will be compromised.

One study showed medical teams who were treated rudely by an “expert observer” performed significantly worse in a simulated situation where they had to manage a sick infant compared to teams who were treated respectfully.

The teams subjected to rudeness shared less information with each other, and didn’t seek help as often. This led to poorer clinical outcomes for the patients in the simulation.

We can draw parallels with the experience of junior doctors and medical students in Australia, who report being routinely “taught by humiliation” and mistreated during clinical training rotations.

Junior clinicians are regularly subjected to rudeness, hostility and aggressive questioning from their teachers. These are the “expert advisors” they’re also supposed to approach for help to manage the patients in their care.

Poor outcomes for patients

Serious bullying is just the tip of the iceberg of behaviours that pose a risk to patient safety. Even more subtle unprofessional behaviours – such as passive aggression, public criticism of colleagues, or telling offensive jokes – may interfere with teamwork and the quality of patient care.

Read more: Let’s stop the bullying of trainee doctors – for patients’ sake

A large US study across multiple hospitals found patients’ observations of negative behaviours among surgeons could predict poor patient outcomes.

Hospitals implemented the “patient advocacy reporting system”, where patients were able to report their observations of a clinician’s behaviour while in hospital. This could be dismissing a patient’s questions, rushing them out of consultations, or being rude to other staff members in the patient’s presence.

Among a sample of more than 32,000, those patients who were operated on by surgeons who received a high number of negative patient reports in the past two years had a 14% higher rate of complications than patients whose surgeons acted professionally.

The authors suggest surgeons who are disrespectful to patients probably also behave disrespectfully towards colleagues in the operating theatre. This makes it more difficult to work with others and increases the risk of errors and poor outcomes for the patient.

Where do we go from here?

The effects of unprofessional behaviour of health workers are too great to ignore. But pronouncements of a “zero tolerance” for such behaviours are unlikely to bring about change.

Instead, we need evidence-based interventions to reduce the prevalence of negative behaviour, minimise its impact on staff and patients, and normalise a culture of safety and respect.

Read more: We don’t know enough about mental health in Australian medical students

Culture change is incredibly hard. Unfortunately, there is very limited evidence about the types of interventions which work and bring about change. We’re currently evaluating a large-scale system intervention, called Ethos, at St Vincent’s Hospitals across Australia.

The program aims to enable and empower staff to speak up when they see a problem via a confidential electronic reporting system. Trained colleagues then relay the information back to individual staff involved to encourage self-reflection and correction. Our four-year evaluation will measure how effective this program is at creating real change in behaviours.

We need more system-wide interventions to address the complex problem of bullying and harassment in our health system. But it’s important these interventions are subject to rigorous evaluations which measure both their effects on unprofessional behaviours and clinical outcomes.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neal Hughes, Senior Economist, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

While drought policy raises many complex emotional, political and policy issues, it can be helpful to think of it as an insurance problem: how can we best help farmers manage climate risk?

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

Drought insurance has been a long-standing goal and it’s easy to understand why. If viable, drought insurance markets could help farmers manage climate risk without the costs and potential side effects of government drought support.

Unfortunately, technical problems have hampered the development of drought insurance markets in Australia to date. However, there is hope that with improvements in technology and better data these problems could be solved, paving the way for a new generation of weather-based insurance products.

The missing market for drought insurance

Australia has well-functioning but limited markets for crop insurance. If hail or fire destroys a paddock, for example, an insured farmer will receive a payout for the value of the crop.

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

But multi-peril crop insurance – which covers a wide range of adverse events including drought – has failed to thrive in Australia. The international experience has been similarly uninspiring.

Many reviews have attributed these failures to information and participation problems.

Firstly, only the riskiest or most drought-prone farms may sign up for insurance (the adverse selection problem). Second, farms with insurance may put less effort into preparing for and managing drought (the moral hazard problem). Both these problems make insurance more costly to provide, resulting in higher premiums and lower uptake.

Read more: Giving environmental water to drought-stricken farmers sounds straightforward, but it’s a bad idea

While these problems apply to all forms of insurance, they are particularly acute in agriculture, given the effects of drought will vary widely depending on farm-management decisions and detailed – and difficult to observe – farm characteristics such as the quality of land and livestock.

Subsidies are not the answer

Recently, farmers groups have called for tax breaks to promote multi-peril crop insurance.

Unfortunately, while tax incentives and other subsidies may increase uptake, there is no coherent case for providing more than normal tax deductibility. In fact, such subsidies could actually cause economic harm.

Insurance premiums provide important signals to farmers, promoting preparedness and adaptation. This includes promoting careful crop-planting decisions when drought risk is high. The inglorious record of farm crop insurance in the United States shows how things can go very wrong when insurance is subsidised.

Read more: Crop insurance is good for farmers, but not always for the environment

It is not surprising that previous reviews have consistently recommended against insurance subsidies, while just last year the New South Wales government rejected a similar proposal.

Index-based insurance could be a way forward

One alternative, which has been receiving increased attention in recent years, is index-based insurance. Here payouts are based on weather data rather than an assessment of actual farm damages. For example, a farmer might receive a payout if rainfall falls below an agreed threshold.

Index-based products are largely immune to the information problems that plague standard insurance: insurers don’t need to spend time and money assessing each application, or monitoring farmers’ behaviour. Instead, insurers must solve the technical problem of designing an accurate index.

Read more: Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated

This index needs to be sensitive to the complex effects of weather on farms. In practice, the effect of a drought depends on many things. The amount of rainfall, its timing, the temperature and many other factors all interplay. If these factors are not taken into account, drought insurance runs into a “basis risk” problem: payouts don’t align with the climate risks faced by individual farms.

This basis risk problem is largely why index-based weather insurance products have struggled in Australia to date.

Drought insurance could be public or private

In recent years, governments have focused on promoting private drought insurance markets. However, public schemes are also possible and exist in many other countries.

A well-designed public drought insurance scheme – with premiums to cover costs – might have some advantages over private insurance. For example, governments may be better placed to absorb losses in years of severe widespread drought (although re-insurance markets might provide a way for the private sector to manage such risks).

However, public drought insurance schemes could, depending on their design, reduce demand for private insurance. This problem also extends to other forms of government drought relief: farmers may be less likely to pay for insurance if they suspect ad hoc drought assistance will be available.

Better data is essential

Ultimately, public and private insurance schemes face similar technical challenges. Solving these technical issues requires detailed data both on weather and farm outcomes.

Numerous reviews have cited data limitations as a key constraint on the Australian farm insurance sector. A recent review by ABS and ABARES highlighted the patchy and fragmented nature of existing government and industry agricultural data.

There is a good case for government to support the supply of this data, similar to the National Flood Risk Information Project established following the Australian 2011 floods. Investments in data are likely to have many applications beyond insurance, including the development of improved tools to support farm decision-making.

While drought insurance schemes have had mixed success to date, there remains some hope for the future. The emergence of “big data” collected from satellites and internet-enabled devices promises to revolutionise both farm production and risk management. In time, smart products underpinned by better data might finally help us solve the challenge of drought policy.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dallas Rogers, Program Director, Master of Urbanism. School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney

This is the first article in our series, Australian Cities in the Asian Century. These articles draw on research, just published in a special issue of Geographical Research, into how Australian cities are being influenced by the rise of China and associated flows of people, ideas and capital between China and Australia.

China’s rise as a global power is driving new flows of people, ideas and capital between China and Australia. Australian cities need to adapt to this new geopolitical reality.

For some, these changes promise new opportunities to fulfil a “vision of being a land of increased opportunity, prosperity and fairness”. Others see Asian “invasion” and “takeover” as a threat to Australia’s white identity and political system.

Read more: Immigrant ambassadors open doors for Australia across Asia

A new collection of articles demonstrates that the impact of the Asian Century on Australian cities defies both dystopian claims of a “Chinese takeover” and utopian visions of a harmonious urban multiculturalism.

Changing settlement patterns

The profile of migrants who arrived from mainland China since 2000 is changing. They are more highly skilled, educated and investment-focused than earlier migrants.

Their settlement patterns in Australia are also changing. Sydney is still home to half of all China-born migrants in Australia. However, the proportion of migrants settling in other capital cities is increasing.

In Sydney in 2001, China-born residents represented over 10% of the population of only three suburbs. A decade later, the number of such suburbs had risen to 22.

Smaller increases were evident in Melbourne (from one suburb in 2001 to seven in 2011) and Brisbane (zero to four).

However, Hurstville was the only Australian suburb in 2011 where China-born residents represented over 25% of the population.

This suggests a pattern of settlement that is neither extreme residential segregation along ethnic lines nor full “spatial assimilation”. Rather, it is best understood in terms of multiple moderate concentrations.

Read more: Sydney’s Chinatown is much more of a modern bridge to Asia than a historic enclave

Changing homes

The choices Chinese migrants make about their homes in Australia are significant in shaping Australian cities.

The homes Chinese migrants make in Australia involve complex relations with both their past homes in China and their new lives as Australians.

Over time, many adopt Australian practices of housing consumption. This includes the preference for detached suburban houses rather than apartments.

One environmental implication of this is that the housing footprint of China-born migrants in Melbourne increased five-fold after migration.

Nevertheless, Chinese migrants are over-represented in apartment buildings. Nationally, only 7% of Australian-born people live in apartments, compared to 31% of those born in northeast Asia, including China.

Read more: Higher density and diversity: apartments are Australia at its most multicultural

Changing cultural relations

Despite the policy shift from White Australia to multiculturalism, racism remains prevalent in Australian cities. A narrative about white victimhood is often used to counter evidence of discrimination against non-whites.

One recent study found Asian Australians have experienced twice as many instances of racism and discrimination as have other Australians. Specifically, 58% of Asia-born participants experienced some measure of discrimination when renting or buying a house.

Apartment buildings have become a key site of intercultural encounter. Often this involves tensions over the management of common areas, washing hung on balconies, or even cooking smells in buildings .

Read more: Contested spaces: living next door to Alice (and Anh and Abdullah)

Consequently, strata or body-corporate committees have become important institutions for mediating intercultural relations in Australian cities.

In suburbs with increased concentrations of China-born residents, intercultural tensions are often expressed through local urban planning conflicts. In some suburbs, for example, white residents have blamed Chinese investors for driving residential densification and the loss of “neighbourhood character”.

At the same time, shared interests in relation to buildings, neighbourhoods and shared social class identities can help to bridge ethnic and racial difference.

Housing market

Chinese investment in residential and commercial real estate increased from A$2.4 billion in 2009-10 to A$24.3 billion in 2014-15. China was one of the largest sources of capital. Asian foreign investors accounted for 9.4% of purchases of new dwellings in New South Wales in the fourth quarter of 2015.

While much of this investment was channelled into new housing supply, public concern about the impact of foreign investment on housing affordability is rising.

One estimate suggests that if foreign investment had been held steady from 2004 to 2014, house prices in Sydney and Melbourne would have risen by about 50% compared with the actual growth of 67%. Therefore, most of the increase in house prices cannot be attributed to foreign investment.

By pointing to foreign investment as the main reason for Australia’s housing affordability woes, media coverage and government statements have often shifted attention away from the structural causes of housing unaffordability and the various drivers of foreign investment.

Read more: Australia’s foreign real estate investment boom looks to be over. Here are five things we learned

Changing Australian cities in the Asian Century

Australian cities in the early 21st century face major challenges relating to housing, transport, jobs and food security.

Racialised talk of “Asian invasion” blames Chinese migrants and investors for many problems. Yet the foundations of these problems run deep into Australia’s urban histories and our market-driven approach to city-making.

Debate about the impact of the so-called Asian Century on Australian cities must move beyond a discussion about utopian opportunities and dystopian threats. The reality on the ground in Australian cities is far more complex than this binary thinking.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rafal Chomik, Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), UNSW

How we fund retirement in an ageing century ought to worry all of us.

But one group of us should be much more worried than the rest.

In a new set of research briefs published by the Centre of Excellence of Population Ageing Research, we report that most people do well out of our retirement income system and that the living standard of retirees has improved over the past decade.

In international comparisons, our system ranks highly, for good reason.

Most retirees do well

About 60% of older Australians can afford a lifestyle better than that deemed to be “modest” by widely used standards.

Households headed by baby boomers reaching retirement age between 2006 and 2016 did so with incomes 45% higher than those who retired a decade earlier.

Typical boomer households aged in their late 60s earn almost as much as they did when they were still working – only 20% less, that is, with about 80% of their working income maintained.

And their needs are lower. Lower spending in retirement is common because older households need to pay less for transport, less for working clothes, and have more time to cook.

Many continue to save while in retirement.

Read more: Please, not another super scheme, Mr Keating. It’s what the pension is for

And they tend to spend less over time, rather than more over time as benchmarks publicised by the superannuation industry assume.

When we included the value of living rent-free for the 80% or more of retirees who own their own home (about A$10,000 per year on average), we found older Australians live in no more poverty than working age Australians.

But not renters

The living standards of those who rent in retirement are very different. Only about 15% of older renters can afford a lifestyle better than “modest”.

Single renters are particularly badly off.

Among all older people only about 10% fall below the poverty line set at half the median income.

Among older Australians who rent, 40% fall below.

Among older Australians who rent alone, it’s more than 60%.

If that relative poverty measure seems too abstract, an absolute dollar figure might help.

Alarming research aired on the ABC in September found that, on average, aged care homes were spending $6.08 per day on food per resident.

Our research finds that among pensioners who rent alone, one quarter spend even less than that per day.

And it’s getting worse

The pension has always favoured home owners.

On the one hand it is insufficient for renters and on the other it doesn’t cut pension payments to the owners of very valuable homes, because the value of any home – no matter how big – is excluded from the pension means test.

Read more: Let’s talk about the family home … and its exemption from the pension means test

Rental assistance, introduced to complement the pension in the 1980s, was meant to alleviate this, and to some extent it does.

But it climbs only in line with the consumer price index every six months, which usually fails to keep pace with rents.

Read more: Life as an older renter, and what it tells us about the urgent need for tenancy reform

Sydney rents have doubled over the past two decades. The consumer price index has climbed 68%.

As a result, rental assistance is less effective in reducing financial stress than it was when it was introduced, and is set to become even less effective if rents continue to climb more quickly than the price index.

And more of us look set to rent

Households headed by Australians aged 35 to 44 are now 10 percentage points less likely to own their own home than were households headed by people of the same age a generation earlier.

They might be merely postponing buying homes until they are older as more of what would have been their income is sequestered into super and they enter the workforce and retire later.

Read more: Explainer: what’s really keeping young and first home buyers out of the housing market

If so, they might end up owning and paying off homes by retirement at the same rate as boomer households did before them.

If not, more and more of them could end up in poverty in retirement.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney

What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance.

Most films represent the world as we know and perceive it. Even when portraying alien worlds or super heroes, there are certain rules of perception that films adhere to. Which is why, when I first experienced bullet-time during the opening scene of The Matrix, I had to turn to my partner and ask: “what was that?”.

Bullet-time broke the common rules of perception as I knew it. How can a film freeze-frame and move during the still image, where the entire visual frame rotates on an axis? It was stunning, bold and new. And it has become one of the most influential special effects in the history of cinema.

See also:

Hitchcock’s Vertigo
Antonioni’s The Passenger
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws
Hitchcock’s Psycho
The Godfather
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette
Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne

Few eucalypts are as versatile, varied and valuable as messmate stringybark. It was the first eucalypt to be scientifically named, and in fact gives us the name “Eucalyptus”.

Gum trees had been seen and collected on earlier expeditions, but a specimen collected on James Cook’s third expedition to Bruny Island off the Tasmanian coast was sent to the British Museum, where the French botanist Charles Louis L’Heritier de Brutelle named it and then published it in 1788.

Read more: Where the old things are: Australia’s most ancient trees

L’Heritier named the specimen Eucalyptus obliqua, and so messmate stringybark is the first named and now type specimen for all Eucalyptus species. Because of the little caps covering the buds of this specimen, the name eucalypt was derived from the Greek eu, meaning “well”, and calyptos, meaning “covered”. Meanwhile, the asymmetrical or oblique leaf base gave us the description obliqua.

The name stringybark comes from the fibrous stringy bark that grows on the trunk of the tree, but no one knows the origins of the name messmate, which is also applied to several other eucalypt species.

Humming with bees

The flowers are small and white and often go unnoticed – but not by bees, which are often attracted to the trees in such large numbers that the trees seem to be humming. The fruits, or gum nuts, are also small at about 8mm across and usually occur in clusters of three, four or five. The juvenile leaves are quite large, almost heart-shaped, and up to 70mm wide and 100mm long, but the adult leaves are about 50mm wide and up to 200mm long with a sharply acute base on one side.

E. obliqua is also commonly known as messmate, stringybark, browntop, Tasmanian or Tassie oak, or browntop stringybark. It is widely distributed through southeastern Australia, growing in Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and much of New South Wales, almost to the Queensland border.

It is usually a tall straight forest tree that can reach heights of 80m or more, and girths in excess of 10m. It grows in higher and wetter habitats and often grows around other eucalypts such as E. regnans, E. delegatensis, E. viminalis or E. radiata.

Read more: Mountain ash has a regal presence: the tallest flowering plant in the world

The specimens that Cook’s expedition encountered on Bruny Island were huge forest trees, and there are still such specimens growing on the island today. They are well worth a visit along easily accessible tracks. Such giant specimens can also be found on the mainland in places such as the Otway Ranges. However, you can also find examples of E. obliqua growing in the coastal heaths of Victoria that are no more than a metre high and will maintain their short stature regardless of where they are grown.

A tough customer

One of the great things about messmate stringybark is its environmental resilience. The species is renowned for its adaptations to stress, particularly fire. Its thick stringy bark protects the trunk during bushfires, and under the bark are dormant (or “epicormic”) buds that allow the rapid establishment of a leafy canopy after fire or other stresses such as grazing. These buds often sprout very soon after a fire and are the first sign the forest is beginning to regenerate.

Many of these new shoots will not last very long, but usually enough will survive to reconstitute the tree’s canopy. If all the shoots fail, most specimens have a lignotuber (like a mallee root) that allows new stems and trunks to develop after very severe stress. So E. obliqua is truly a tough customer.

During the most recent ice age, Tasmania and the mainland were connected by a land bridge that subsequently disappeared under Bass Strait. The populations of E. obliqua in Victoria and Tasmania were then connected but in the 10,000 years since they have been separated by the strait, the individual trees growing on the mainland have retained a lignotuber, while those in Tasmania did not. This reflects the better growing conditions in Tasmania for messmate stringybark, and less need or stress adaptations.

Read more: A fresh perspective on Tasmania, a terrible and beautiful place

Good wood

The timber of E. obliqua is highly prized. It was used by Indigenous communities, as scars on some surviving trees indicate, and its fibrous bark could be used for making fibre and in fires. Today, it is a fine quality hardwood that can be used for building house frames, furniture making or, of course, for wonderful Tassie oak wooden floors.

It is not the densest or hardest eucalypt timber, but is hard enough to make beautiful and durable flooring that polishes to a rich honey or golden colour. Properly installed and maintained, these floors can remain in good condition for well over a century and many Australians will have fond memories of dancing on them.

Read more: Unravelling the mystery of eucalypt scribbles

Messmate stringybark is one of the great trees of Australia for a variety of reasons. It has links to Captain Cook, is an economically important timber species, and is a great survivor in the harsh Australian environment. With its wide distribution and adaptations to fire and other stresses, it is a species likely to cope well with climate change. After all, it is as tough as boots.

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sant-Rayn Pasricha, Laboratory Head, Population Health and Immunity/ Infection and Immunity, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Ever since humans first evolved from our primitive ancestors, we have been locked in a battle with our greatest infectious foe – malaria. This life-threatening disease, caused by the Plasmodium parasite and transmitted through mosquito bites, kills one child every two minutes. There were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 91 countries (most in sub-Saharan Africa) in 2016, which is 5 million more than the previous year.

For most of history, humans lived without antimalarial drugs, bed nets or even the basic understanding of how malaria is caused. But still our bodies fought against it. In the intense human-malaria war, one way humans could survive would be to make ourselves less hospitable to the pathogen. And that’s exactly what happened.

Over thousands of years, randomly occurring differences in our genetic code that inadvertently reduced malarial risk and provided a survival advantage have been “selected” – meaning these genetic differences become more prominent in the population. Today, human populations in specific parts of the world carry heavy genetic marks from our ancient war with malaria. And it is the red blood cell (erythrocyte) that mostly bears the scars.

Read more: What 115 years of data tells us about Africa’s battle with malaria past and present

The red blood cell

The erythrocyte is a remarkable cell. It ships oxygen, bound to iron in the red haemoglobin molecule, from the lungs and heart to every tissue in the body. Its unique shape – a biconcave disc – allows it to deform and reshape itself. This helps it squeeze into the smallest of blood vessels to deliver its payload of oxygen.

But red cells can also be homes to malaria parasites. These parasites grow, replicate and then burst from the cells during an infection, damaging not just the infected red cell but also uninfected bystanders. Damaged red cells are removed from circulation and the reduction causes anaemia (low levels of haemoglobin), which makes people feel weak, tired and lethargic. In severe cases, it can kill.

Malaria has provoked humans to modify the red cell to protect itself from infection. Almost every part of the red cell – from its membrane to the globin genes that confer its role in oxygen transport – harbour common genetic changes in a desperate effort to help our species survive the onslaught of malaria.

Read more: Explainer: what’s actually in our blood?

Genetic changes and sickle cells

Perhaps the most important changes have happened to the haemoglobin molecule itself. Haemoglobin comprises two key components: haem, which contains iron and binds oxygen, and globin, which is a quartet of two copies each of two components – alpha and beta globin. In every part of the world where malaria is now or has previously been common, humans have evolved changes in the globin genes.

A single change in the beta globin sequence and hence protein structure causes what is known as sickle haemoglobin (HbS). Carriers of HbS (who have one mutant and one normal copy of the gene) have little difference in their blood counts and no symptoms. But they have about a 30% reduction in susceptibility to malaria – a pretty heavy protection.

This gives an enormous advantage for children living in an endemic malaria setting. All cases of HbS are caused by an identical genetic change occurring under high pressure of malaria infection. It appears to have arisen spontaneously at least five times over our evolution in different regions in Africa, India and the Middle East.

Proportions of populations in these places, or those descended from them, still commonly carry the mutant gene. About 10% of the African American population are carriers of the sickle cell trait. Individuals of Indian, Eastern Mediterranean, Caribbean and Middle Eastern descent can also be affected.

While those who carry a single copy of HbS don’t have symptoms, carriers of two copies of HbS (which means they have no normal copy of beta globin) can suffer a life-altering genetic condition known as sickle cell anaemia.

Their red blood cells become susceptible to changing to a rigid, sickle-like shape. This prevents blood from flowing and can result in frequent, unpredictable attacks of pain, organ damage and even stroke.

The severity of sickle cell disease is reduced for those fortunate to have increased levels of fetal haemoglobin persisting into adulthood. Amazingly, to help defend people with sickle cell disease from the severe consequences of this condition, an otherwise silent genetic condition – hereditary persistence of fetal haemoglobin – has arisen in populations where sickle cell disease is common.

Read more: Explainer: one day science may cure sickle cell anaemia

Thalassaemia

Other populations have evolved different changes in their globin genes to try to defend themselves against malaria. Deletions of part, or all, of the alpha or beta globin genes result in people carrying the blood disease alpha or beta thalassaemia.

Carriers are usually completely healthy, except for a symptomless anaemia detectable only when a blood test is performed. But these conditions are increasingly recognised as perhaps one of main causes of mild anaemia in parts of Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East.

Just like the sickle cell mutation, this protects against invasion by a malaria parasite. But people who carry two deleted copies of their beta globin gene suffer severe anaemia and may require lifelong blood transfusions to survive.

The consequences of deletions of alpha globin genes are more variable, but infants with deletion of all copies of their alpha globin genes usually have such severe anaemia in utero that they do not even survive to birth.

The red cell membrane

Then there are evolutionary changes to the Duffy protein. This is a receptor found on the red cell membrane, which is also the protein through which the parasite Plasmodium vivax – the second-most-common cause of malaria – enters the cell.

Almost all the populations in West Africa and well over half of all Africans have inactivated the expression of this gene in their red blood cells. This means they have red cells that are resistant to P. vivax invasion.

Other changes to the red cell membrane can also protect against malaria. People living in Papua New Guinea and other parts of the Pacific may have red blood cells that resemble Nutri-Grain breakfast cereal, with a horizontal stripe or two.

This often asymptomatic condition is called Southeast Asian ovalocytosis. It occurs due to a mutation of a red blood cell protein (which determines the structure of the cell), which makes the rest of the red cell scaffold more rigid than normal. This renders the individual resistant to malarial parasite invasion and protects them from infection.

New mechanisms evolved by our red cells to protect us from malaria are still being discovered. Iron deficiency anaemia, which affects hundreds of millions of (mainly) children and women around the world, has been thought to be mainly due to inadequate nutritional intake of iron.

But now it appears to protect red blood cells from malaria parasite invasion. Many studies show iron-deficient children have a reduced risk of developing malaria. This means improving iron status (for example, through iron supplementation) could predispose children to risk of infection.

Malaria is fighting back

In recent years, human evolution has been complemented by scientific breakthroughs. Effective antimalarial drugs, insecticide-treated bed nets that protect sleeping children from mosquitoes, and rapid tests that can diagnose a case of malaria in a few minutes without the need for a trained microscopist have all helped.

But there is evidence the parasite (and its mosquito host) are evolving to win back the advantage. For example, almost all of a strain of Plasmodium falciparum parasites are resistant to one of the first anti-malarials, Chloroquine.

Now, multi-drug-resistant parasites rule in parts of Southeast Asia, particularly near the Thai-Burma border. Here, resistance to important antimalarials such as mefloquine and, increasingly, artermisinin, which is the backbone of effective therapy, has emerged.

Read more: Weekly Dose: mefloquine, an antimalarial drug made to win wars

Even more ingeniously, parasites have started learning to hide from rapid diagnostic testing by deleting the HRP2 protein these tests rely on to detect them. In this way, they allow the parasite to continue to live (and spread) undetected in an untreated host.

And the malaria-spreading Anopheles mosquito, found throughout the world where malaria is endemic, is learning to bite humans for its blood meal earlier in the evening, rather than later at night when people are sleeping, to subvert the protection offered by bed nets.

So the battle isn’t over. Our oldest foe remains with us and continues to be a formidable opponent.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asher Warren, Lecturer, University of Tasmania

Of the many festivals dotted across the island state of Tasmania, The Uncomformity is particularly well named. It is an inherently unique event, responsive to the particularities of the western town of Queenstown’s unique geology, ecology and culture.

Queenstown is nestled in Tasmania’s mountainous West Coast Range, between Mt Owen and Mt Lyell, with an infamous reputation for inclement weather. And it is remote: at least three hours of winding drive from both Hobart and Launceston.

On a sunny day, the views are spectacular; some for their natural beauty, others for the demonstrable effects of over a century of mining, smelting and clearing. However, after three days of immersion in the town and the festival, I began to feel that Queenstown was somehow better evoked by the moments when the clouds hung low, only to occasionally break open, revealing unexpected and surprising views.

A central ethos of The Unconformity is the curatorial commitment to site-specific and locally engaged work. Many of the works are unique to the location and the people of Queenstown, and developed by artists through multiple visits to the town. Note must be made of the exceptional diversity of gallery-based works, including Lucy Bleach’s enigmatic Variations on an Energetic Field and the overwhelming scale of Raymond Arnold’s survey, 100 Etchings/35 Years in Tasmania. But I was particularly struck by the use of performance within this festival, as a model for engaging with the place that is “Queenie”.

The power of listening

The pedestrian bridge over the town’s Queen River became a makeshift stall for audiences wearing headphones for Tasdance’s Junjeiri Ballun – Gurul Gaureima (Shallow Water, Deep Stories). Using the banks and the river itself, the bodies of five dancers explored the Indigenous history of the area and this waterway, which mine tailings and effluent once turned silvery grey and which remains, despite the remedial work to date, stained a remarkable shade of orange.

Across the bridge, Prospect brought Dylan Sherridan’s deft and thoughtful engagement with sound together with Sam Routledge’s knack for engaging dramaturgical structures. Using hacked metal detectors, and again wearing headphones, prospectors walked through Passion Park, searching for sonic treasures. The dynamic score was a delight, and the uneven experience for participants (some struck it richer than others) an interesting counterpoint to the otherwise even distributions created by works for headphones.

Another work experienced with headphones, A Score to Scratch the Surface (Opening Scene) by momo doto (Tom Blake and Dominique Chen), offers a markedly different take on the roaming soundscape.

Beginning in the dress circle of the 1933 Paragon Theatre, looking out at the projection screen, we hear an assemblage of recordings taken in and around Queenstown. Curious sonic artefacts are woven with brief snippets of conversations with locals, which slip in and out. The audience of three is ushered out of the theatre, into a car, and driven on a meandering tour of the town by a local resident. These stories, like the sites on this particular tour, don’t cry out for attention, forcing the ear and the eye to search for details. It’s a subtle and meditative work, which engages deftly with diverse reflections on the value of Queenstown’s natural resources.

As artist Tom Blake explained to me, the work was built slowly, over a number of visits to the town: “We were fortunate to have a development period that provided an opportunity to visit and revisit places and people over an extended period. We wanted to avoid being a flash in the pan – dropping by to make a work, then disappearing into the night.”

A Score to Scratch the Surface gestures toward the surprising paradoxes of Queenstown. It’s a place of riches, of devastation and resilience. With the mines closed since a tragic accident in 2013, and uncertainty about their reopening, the town sits in an uneasy limbo and faces difficult decisions. The challenges of regeneration – economically, environmentally and culturally – loom large. There are no easy answers, but the festival offers an opportunity to listen, to share and to understand something of this complexity.

While not explicitly noted as a theme for the festival, the act of listening seemed to be a particular focus. This was most explicit in Jill Orr’s durational performance Listening (made in collaboration with sound artist Richie Cyngler), staged in an old limestone quarry on the edge of town. This work asked audience members to record three wishes, while Orr, with characteristically otherworldly endurance, stood still and listened as these wishes were broadcast by loudspeakers and echoed around the quarry.

In the Medical Union building, Babel, directed by Glen Murray, allowed audiences to roam freely, exploring a panoply of other languages. While a remarkably simple conceit, the experience of wandering and listening to the diverse cast of performers was surprisingly compelling.

Starting with a bang

On a grander scale, the festival opened on Friday with Tectonica, a collaboration between Ian Pidd, Martyn Coutts and Dylan Sheridan, which closed down the main intersection to host a nine-tonne rock and some “bloody big speaker stacks”. The tremendous, visceral soundscape condensed some 500 million-odd years of geological activity into an hour of epic, quadrophonic sound and, in the distance, an ominous red fissure opened up in the mountainside. Not content to lie dormant, the speakers rumbled sporadically throughout the weekend, felt and heard throughout the small town.

The Falls, by Halcyon Macleod and Finegan Kruckemeyer, tells a story of young love, separation and return. It is a moving work, quite literally, as the audience dons headphones and climbs aboard a bus. The narrative of the play unfolds from a series of perspectives while journeying from one end of the Queen River – the Horsetail Falls – to the other, its confluence with the King River. It’s an ambitious and expansive work – and neatly staged – but at times the poetry of the script seemed to overextend, attempting to translate the narrative and connection to this site perhaps beyond its specifics.

Local works

For all the innovative contemporary work in this festival, and the influx of city slickers who pour in from Hobart (vying for the title of Australia’s new centre of hip) and the mainland, it would be all too easy to alienate the locals. But the festival does a remarkable job of keeping the West Coasters not only in the frame, but at the centre. While there was a palpable but subtle sense of reservation on the Friday night, by the closing Sunday the town seemed to reach a comfortable equilibrium.

Around noon on Sunday, after the ute muster took off and before the marquee football match on Queenstown’s notorious gravel oval, the bloody big speaker stacks gave a last hurrah and belted out a locally curated playlist of AC/DC’s greatest hits. An homage to the band’s 1976 performance in the town, the music slowly drew a crowd. It grew, as more joined in and danced around, and on, the rock left in the centre of the intersection.

This festival, which began as the Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival, and more recently reimagined as The Unconformity, has carved out a unique position in Tasmania and in Australia’s cultural landscape. It will next run in 2020, and its growing esteem and success raise an important question about growth and sustainability. One of the key features of this festival is its scale, which allows it to balance the influx of visitors and locals; they meet, rather than being overwhelmed.

Under proud West Coaster Travis Tiddy’s direction, however, the festival will hopefully approach its growth with the same focus and thoughtful reflection on place that made the 2018 version such a memorable success.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Herbert, Associate Professor in Developmental Psychology, University of Wollongong

We often hear about the benefits of reading storybooks at bedtime for promoting vocabulary, early literacy skills, and a good relationship with your child. But the experts haven’t been in your home, and your child requests the same book every single night, sometimes multiple times a night. You both know all the words off by heart.

Given activities occurring just before sleep are particularly well-remembered by young children, you might wonder if all this repetition is beneficial. The answer is yes. Your child is showing they enjoy this story, but also that they are still learning from the pictures, words, and the interactions you have as you read this book together.

Read more: Six things you can do to get boys reading more

Kids want repetition

A preference for familiarity, rather than novelty, is commonly reported at young ages, and reflects an early stage in the learning process. For example, young infants prefer faces that are the same gender and ethnicity as their caregiver.

With age and experience, the child’s interests shift to novelty seeking. By four to five months, novel faces are more interesting than the now highly familiar caregiver face.

But even three-day olds prefer looking at a novel face if they’re repeatedly shown a picture of their mother’s face. So once infants have encoded enough information about an image, they’re ready to move on to new experiences.

Your child’s age affects the rate at which they will learn and remember information from your shared book-reading. Two key principles of memory development are that younger children require longer to encode information than older children, and they forget faster.

For example, one-year olds learn a sequence of new actions twice as fast as six-month olds. And while a 1.5-year old typically remembers a sequence of new actions for two weeks, two-year olds remember for three months.

Two dimensional information sources, like books and videos, are however harder to learn from than direct experiences. Repeated exposure helps children encode and remember from these sources.

How do kids learn from repetition?

Being read the same story four times rather than two times improved 1.5- and two-year olds’ accuracy in reproducing the actions needed to make a toy rattle. Similarly, doubling exposure to a video demonstration for 12- to 21-month olds improved their memory of the target actions.

Repeated readings of the same storybook also help children learn novel words, particularly for children aged three to five years.

Read more: Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens

Repetition aids learning complex information by increasing opportunities for the information to be encoded, allowing your child to focus on different elements of the experience, and providing opportunities to ask questions and connect concepts together through discussion.

You might not think storybooks are complicated, but they contain 50% more rare words than prime-time television and even college students’ conversations. When was the last time you used the word giraffe in a conversation with a colleague? Learning all this information takes time.

The established learning benefits of repetition mean this technique has become an integral feature in the design of some educational television programs. To reinforce its curriculum, the same episode of Blue’s Clues is repeated every day for a week, and a consistent structure is provided across episodes.

Five consecutive days of viewing the same Blue’s Clues episode increased three to five year olds’ comprehension of the content and increased interaction with the program, compared to viewing the program only once. Across repetitions, children were learning how to view television programs and to transfer knowledge to new episodes and series. The same process will likely occur with storybook repetition.

How parents can support repetitive learning

The next time that familiar book is requested again, remember this is an important step in your child’s learning journey. You can support further learning opportunities within this familiar context by focusing on something new with each retelling.

One day look more closely at the pictures, the next day focus on the text or have your child fill in words. Relate the story to real events in your child’s world. This type of broader context talk is more challenging and further promotes children’s cognitive skills.

You can also build on their interests by offering books from the same author or around a similar topic. If your child currently loves Where is the Green Sheep? look at other books by Mem Fox, maybe Bonnie and Ben rhyme again (there are sheep in there too). Offer a wide variety of books, including information books which give more insight into a particular topic but use quite different story structures and more complex words.

Remember, this phase will pass. One day there will be a new favourite and the current one, love it or loathe it, will be back on the bookshelf.

Read more: Reading teaching in schools can kill a love for books

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gilby Jepson, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide

This article is part of our occasional long read series Zoom Out, where authors explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.

Nestled deep in Central Asia, the Tianshan is a huge mountain range that stretches from Uzbekistan in the west, all the way through to China and Mongolia in the east. It is more than 2,500km in length and has numerous peaks that soar to over 7,000m in height.

Though you may not know it, the Tianshan mountain range probably changed the lives of your ancestors – and to this day, you.

Through defining and shaping ancient trading routes of the Silk Road and still now China’s Belt and Road initiative, the Tianshan has been key to the development and spread of human society and culture over thousands of years.

We’re now able to put together geological evidence to see how this incredible mountain range formed. When it all began more than 700 million years ago, the world was a very different place.

Like a string of pearls

The Tianshan mountain range created a stage for world-changing human activities.

Beginning in 138BCE, the Silk Road trading routes connecting Asia with Europe carried not just merchandise and precious commodities but also allowed movement and mixing of populations with their accompanying knowledge, ideas, cultures and beliefs.

Traders on the Silk Road weaved their way through the valleys of the Tianshan; their path focused by its broad east-west orientation. The ranges offered climatic stability and facilitated relatively easy cross-continent travel.

It was through this network that goods and technology such as paper, the compass, gunpowder, and (of course) silk, were transmitted across the continent to profound impact.

As a result, numerous wealthy societies and cultures bloomed along the length of the Tianshan, like pearls connected by a line of silk. Cities of the Silk Road such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Kashgar were important centres of learning and rich trade hubs, a history that is reflected in their gorgeous architecture.

Even today, the land routes of modern China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative – a distributed infrastructure system to facilitate trade – will be governed by the Tianshan geography.

Read more: The Belt and Road Initiative: China’s vision for globalisation, Beijing-style

How the Tianshan formed

Geologists look back to well before human existence to understand how the Tianshan came about.

The Earth looked completely different when the Tianshan first began to form 700 million years ago, or more.

There was no Eurasia at this time. Instead, the ancestral Tianshan began in the ocean, starting as volcanic magma and lava that formed island chains above subduction zones (the deep parts of the oceans where the sea bed plummets further down into the deep earth). These early island arcs most likely resembled modern Indonesia.

Over millions of years, these islands merged together to form a land bridge connecting the lands of what we now know as eastern Europe and Siberia.

As this proto-Eurasian continent came together, the land mass grew further due to rocks being scraped off the tectonic plate as it moved downwards. It’s a similar scenario to what’s still going on in the Andes today.

This Andes-style growth of the Tianshan continued until 250 million years ago, when a large continental plate, known as Tarim (today the Taklamakan Desert in far west China) collided with early Asia.

This ancient plate collision between Tarim and the nucleus of Asia created the first version of the Tianshan mountains.

Read more: A map that fills a 500-million year gap in Earth’s history

Scars from the past

Bands of smashed rock amid massive fault zones are preserved from these ancient plate collisions. Also referred to as sutures, these scars represent the sites of ancient oceans that used to separate these now-combined continents.

In the Tianshan, these sutures are mostly aligned east-west, and are typically weaker than the rock in between. As a result, when the entire region is placed under stress from the movement of the tectonic plates at the edge of Eurasia, these zones often break, forming faults and earthquakes.

The faults also push rock up on top of other layers and form mountains – giving the fundamental east-west alignment of valleys and mountains in the Tianshan region.

The positioning of these geographical features had a major impact on human history. The spread of domesticated animals and plants from their places of origin, whether wheat from the Fertile Crescent or horses from Central Asia, would not have progressed so smoothly without these structures. The similar climate along latitudinal valleys helped horses, pigs, cattle, wheat, barley, and all the other biological hallmarks of advanced agricultural societies spread.

Read more: A precarious geological bargain

When India collided with Asia

After the Tarim-Asia collision 250 million years ago, the Tianshan mountains underwent significant erosion. This process of wearing down took place over hundreds of millions of years, causing central Asia to look much like the arid, weathered hills of central Australia.

But then a new geological event forced the mountains back up again: the collision of India with Asia between 50 to 30 million years ago.

In addition to driving up the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau at the site of the collision, this collision reactivated ancient sutures in the Tianshan. The forces caused many of the low hills along the Tianshan to be thrust back up.

This is the modern topography of the Tianshan that we see today.

Mountains shape life

As well as providing structures for human activities, mountains like the Tianshan have played other roles in shaping non-human life on Earth.

One important way they do this is through influencing the climate of the planet. The formation of mountain ranges exposes vast areas of fresh rock. The weathering activity of rain and air in these rocks over time creates chemical reactions that locks up huge volumes of carbon dioxide and other molecules. This has the effect of reducing the greenhouse effect and cooling the planet on a timescale of millions of years.

Another effect of the erosion of rocks is that they release chemicals that were vital for the first life on Earth, and are still essential for our own existence today.

Read more: Phosphorus is vital for life on Earth – and we’re running low

Phosphorous, in particular, is thought to have been lacking in the early oceans, its supply limiting life as it is an essential component in DNA. The weathering of phosphorous-rich rocks could have been the driver for billion year old life to bloom.

The critical link between the deep earth, plate tectonic processes and the climate is one of considerable active research. It feeds into major questions. How did the Earth become habitable for complex life? Does the formation of mountains control ice ages?

Answering these questions, and others like them, is important if we are to properly understand our place in the world and the forces controlling the development of our dynamic Earth.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor in International History, Flinders University

German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week announced she would not stand for re-election again, after being a towering figure in European politics for more than a decade.

An enormously popular leader at her peak, in recent state elections it became all too clear that Merkel had become an electoral liability for her party. She had been safe when it was just the lunatic right wing of the so-called Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) that demanded her exit. But now that her once unassailable grip on centrist voters has loosened, she had no choice but to go. Her term will end in 2021.

What next for Germany?

Currently, the idea is that Merkel will allow the next generation in her party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to refashion its approach to Germany’s domestic problems while she continues to represent German and European interests abroad. Whether her successor, who must rebuild the electoral base of the party, will allow her to stay that long remains an open question.

Read more: How Angela Merkel has become – and remains – one of the world’s most successful political leaders

Who the CDU chooses will reveal just what the party’s preferred strategy for rebuilding will be. The AfD has admitted it will struggle for relevance if the CDU elects immigration critic and arch-conservative Jens Spahn as leader.

And the Greens will lose centrist voters if Merkel’s favourite, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, emerges as the next CDU leader. The only other current serious contender is serial corporate board member Friedrich Merz. He left politics in a fit of pique after being sidelined early in Merkel’s reign, but has now returned.

Merkel’s waning popularity has not only left a vacuum within the CDU but also in the other traditional governing party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The SPD was domesticated and ultimately rendered irrelevant by Merkel’s tactic of forming coalition governments with it.

The SPD is arguably now a minor centrist rump party rather than the social democratic juggernaut it was at its strongest. Its current death spiral is just as important a part of Merkel’s domestic political legacy as milestones such as marriage equality, the end of compulsory military service and an obstinate refusal to allow any national debt, even in good economic times, to pay for infrastructure.

Her influence abroad

Internationally, Merkel is seen in both European and global affairs as having been a stable, calming influence in the volatile age of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who in their own ways have approached the global status quo with dissatisfaction. Compared to them, her approach has certainly been cautious, indeed often deliberately reactive.

Yet there has been an overarching logic to her foreign policy. Merkel has used the existing structures of international power such as the United Nations and the G7 and G20 to coax reluctant nations towards international norms. Her assumption has always been that global order and stability best serve Germany’s international and economic interests.

Read more: We asked Germans what they really felt after Angela Merkel opened the borders to refugees in 2015

But she has rocked the boat herself on occasion. Her laudable (if reactive) 2015-16 intervention to allow more than a million war-ravaged refugees to enter Germany will be the one thing that will see her remembered in 100 years. Post-Assad statues of Merkel in the squares of Damascus and Aleppo are not hard to imagine.

But the move surprised and angered many neighbouring countries, particularly those that were subsequently leaned upon to both close their external borders on behalf of Germany and take in a share of “Merkel’s” refugees.

Certainly, no statues of Merkel will be erected in Athens. She will be less fondly remembered by Greeks for imposing Germany’s hard-line stance on debt refinancing. Many in southern Europe (and elsewhere) viewed this as exacerbating the debt crisis so as to assist northern European, and particularly German, banks.

Merkel’s almost evangelical stance on fiscal rectitude has not mellowed, nor has her cautious approach to furthering European Union economic integration. In a move seen as shoring up German economic sovereignty and interests, she famously rebuffed French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitious plans to further bind the EU together financially. Merkel insisted that EU finances remain the preserve of intergovernmental negotiations and not that of a supranational EU treasurer.

On the other hand, a desire to defend the European project has motivated Merkel’s approach to Brexit, which stunned her as much as every other German. Some British pundits confess amazement that she hasn’t yet fixed their self-imposed problems for them, but Merkel has shown no inclination to pull Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire for them.

Beyond Europe, she is seen as having worked reasonably well with Putin, probably because she has demonstrated an understanding of Russia’s concerns about an EU and NATO that comes right up to its borders. Merkel was one of the few leaders at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 who opposed US plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO immediately.

Certainly, it was Merkel who was seen as indispensable when Russia annexed Crimea. She maintained a fine line between condemning the annexation and convincing Putin to go no further against a weak and exposed Ukraine.

Although she was friendly with President Barack Obama, under Trump the US has become everything that the pro-order, pro-status-quo Merkel cannot abide. The feeling is famously mutual. Trump routinely points to German prosperity and stability as a dire warning of what might happen to the US if modest measures towards equality and humanitarianism were to be embraced. The contrast between the images of Merkel’s response to Syrian refugees and Trump’s virtual declaration of war against a modest band of Latin American refugees could not be greater.

As Trump continues to set fire to the organs of international diplomacy and the US races towards self-selected imperial decline, Merkel has continued to build new and often surprising international networks. When Trump began a trade war with China and threatened Iran with annihilation, Merkel not only visited Beijing but also very publicly sought Chinese assistance to counter American sabre-rattling in the Persian Gulf.

Merkel is also working with France’s Macron, Turkey’s Erdogan and Russia’s Putin on the question of peace in Syria. It’s a quartet that very pointedly does not include the once indispensable US (let alone post-Brexit UK).

Merkel has also leapt towards new opportunities in Africa. Whereas Trump might disparage African countries as “shitholes”, Merkel’s approach has been active engagement. This week she hosted 12 African leaders in Berlin to bolster Germany’s standing in Africa. Germany has also publicly atoned (if not paid compensation) for its colonial-era misrule in Africa.

Alongside this, German troops are quietly working away in Mali and Sudan (as well as other far-flung destinations such as Afghanistan, Kosovo and Lebanon).

Merkel’s courageous stance in favour of refugees will be remembered, as will her inflexible approach to European economics. But what will probably be forgotten is the extent to which she has taken economic engagement with Asia and Africa seriously.

As a technocrat rather than a conviction politician, she will leave the chancellorship believing that Germany’s best chances lie in engaging with the coming economic powers and avoiding injury from the decline of the US global order.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Review: Unfettered and Alive by Anne Summers (Allen and Unwin)

Years ago, when I was young, I lived in an apartment in Sydney’s Potts Point that looked straight down into Anne Summers’ house. Summers had recently published her “Letter to the Next Generation” – and it’s likely that any discomfort not arising from the strange proximity of our urban views was directly attributable to this.

In the “Letter”, Summers famously wrote that she was “horrified” and “mortified” by the antics of women like my younger self – the wayward daughters of the revolution who had failed to measure up on the long tough march to gender equality.

The “Letter” drew its inspiration from years Summers spent as editor of Ms. magazine. Oddly enough, Summers’ new autobiography, Unfettered and Alive, is also shot through with the upheaval of these years and the aftermath of her falling out with US feminists Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi.

Many harsh things are said in this book. It’s difficult to decide whether to praise its “breathtaking honesty” – as critics undoubtedly will – or draw back like a witness to some gruesome accident.

These are bitter struggles over the memory narratives of feminism.

Unfettered and Alive picks up where Summers’ earlier autobiography, Ducks on the Pond, leaves off. It’s the 1970s, a time when women’s choices are startlingly limited. Women earn just 65.2% of men’s salaries. The employment ads are divided into men’s and women’s jobs. Women are not allowed to drink in the front bar at pubs – they are banished to the ladies lounge.

Summers, age 30, is already a leading figure in the Women’s Liberation Movement that puts an end to all this. She is the author of one of the most significant early works of Australian feminist history, Damned Whores and God’s Police, and a co-founder of the inner-city women’s refuge, Elsie.

Later, she will be remembered as the head of the Office of the Status of Women, and a significant figure in the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act and the battles over affirmative action, though only a chapter of the book is devoted to this.

Read more: Damned Whores and God’s Police is still relevant to Australia 40 years on – more’s the pity

A writer at last

Summers starts her story in 1975, when she answers an advertisement for an “energetic self-starter” at The National Times, then under the “wily” editorship of Max Suich. Here, she quickly sets to work on the multi-feature series that gave fresh impetus to the royal commission into the state of NSW prisons, and wins her a Walkley.

Other more woman-focused stories follow. There’s the “gang bang” of a teenage girl at St Paul’s College, Sydney University. Another story, “How women are trained: if it’s not rape what is it?” reports on events in the Far North Queensland town of Ingham, where police openly acknowledge that 30 or 40 local women and children have been raped. “I reported it to police,” one girl told Summers, recollecting the first time she was gang-raped by five men at the age of 13. “But I didn’t have enough evidence. I wasn’t bruised enough.”

Working in Canberra as a political correspondent in the Fraser years, Summers is painfully honest about her fear of not doing the job well. “I can see the absolute terror in your eyes,” a reporter from a rival newspaper told her.

She reports walking out of a media conference held by Bill Hayden, in which the “alternative prime minister” decided to kick things off with a rape joke. “My colleagues didn’t seem bothered by such things,” Summers writes. Sexist behaviour went unchallenged and unnoticed because “it was the way things were back then”.

But Summers is also judgmental about other women in her memoir. In an atmosphere in which cabinet ministers chase female reporters around their desks, Summers recollects telling off a female reporter for wearing a “sexy outfit”. “I was very tough on a woman in my bureau who came to work one day with a dress that was slit practically to the waist.”

Confessions tumble across the pages: her breast-reduction surgery, the weight-loss regime that saw her drop 10kg and her pride in her “brand new body”. She talks about being brought up on a DUI charge when she took up her appointment at the Office of the Status of Women. She reveals her fondness for Robert Burton suits – it’s the era of the “femocrats” and big hair, shoulder pads and flats are in.

The 1980s are a time of epic change for women. New legislation and policy frameworks are put into place. Not everybody appreciated it. “One morning I found flung across the windscreen of my car a life-size plastic sex doll … ” Summers is alarmed, “not because this tawdry piece of plastic could hurt me but because whoever put it there could”.

The Ms. Years

Summers arrived at the “shambolic offices” of Ms. magazine, on West 40th Street, New York, following the unexpected purchase of the iconic feminist publication by Fairfax in 1987. Summers calls the magazine “chaotic”. It operated like a feminist collective, she writes, in which “everyone appeared to be equal” and everybody had to do their own “shitwork”.

According to Summers, this “might have been okay for the women’s movement” but it was “no way to run a magazine”. But Ms. did not understand itself as just another media outlet. It was the printed vanguard of US feminism. It was – and still is – synonymous with the name of US feminist Gloria Steinem.

Summers put the entire staff on 60 days’ probation and fired three. But later in the chapter she adds: “I … should have cleared out the whole place.”

Summers set about giving the magazine an “80s lift”. This included increasing the focus on fashion, makeup advertisements, and the inclusion of a gardening page. She also embarked on a total redesign, including a new logo, masthead and an advertising campaign with the tagline, “We’re not the Ms. we used to be”. The ad featured a string of photographs showing an old hippie morphing into a young woman with a “glamorous 1980s look”.

It can’t have been an easy time. Steinem lost editorial control over the magazine as part of the financial arrangement. But, according to Summers, the magazine remained “almost neurotically dependent on Steinem”.

The relationship between the two women quickly became strained. Summers says she constantly questioned “the gap between Steinem’s rhetoric and the way she conducted herself”. The contents of Steinem’s apartment are said to be “disturbing”, including the covers on Steinem’s loft bed, which was draped in “flimsy white fabric” and a “set of physician’s weighing scales” in her kitchen, all of which are said to be “strange stuff for a feminist”.

It was the Hedda Nussbaum case that brought matters at Ms. to breaking point. When Joel Nussbaum murdered his six-year-old daughter and bashed his wife Hedda, debates raged in feminist circles as to whether Hedda should have been treated as an accomplice to her daughter’s death. Summers and Steinem took up opposed positions. Summers argued it was time to “stop excusing the behaviour of all battered women”. Steinem argued that Hedda was a “total victim” and believed the coverage was a “betrayal of everything Ms. had ever stood for”.

The decision to pull a close-up image of the heavily beaten Hedda off Ms’s cover remains a matter of controversy today. Summers writes that the photo was removed on the advice of her head of advertising sales who said: “We’ve just cracked the beauty category. You can’t do this to me.”

There was a lot of pressure around revenue. Summers and Australian colleague Sandra Yates had recently engaged in an audacious management buyout, after Warwick Fairfax announced his untimely decision to sell. According to Summers, Ms. advertisers wanted their customers to be “happy” not “challenged or confronted”. “… our only chance of survival was to meet or, if possible, exceed our advertising budget.”

Fraught decisions followed. “I was stricken when Barbara Ehrenreich proposed her next column be a satire on fast cars,” writes Summers. “I explained to her how sensitive and demanding these advertisers were, how we could not afford to lose them. Would she be willing to change topics?”

Ehrenreich, the acerbic social critic, refused.

The first edition of Susan Faludi’s global bestseller Backlash: the Undeclared War Against Women carried several pages attacking the editorial direction of Ms. under Summer’s leadership. Back in Australia, following the forced sale of the publication, Summers was “stunned”. There was “a tone to the writing that made it sound almost malicious”. She initiated a “tough” exchange of lawyer’s letters, demanding a rewrite of all subsequent editions of the book.

The entry now stands at around one page, which Summers quotes. Faludi writes:

The magazine that had once investigated sexual harassment, domestic violence, the prescription drug industry and the treatment of women in third world countries now dashed off tributes to Hollywood stars, launched a fashion column, and delivered the real big news – pearls are back.

An air of anxiety

Women who do not conform to certain gender ideologies fare badly in Summers’ book. Stay-at-home mums are berated for pushing baby buggies, young women are berated for “baking and doing craftwork”.

An air of anxiety runs through the remaining chapters. The months on Paul Keating’s staff end with Summers “sobbing with humiliation and rage” at the notorious “True Believer’s Dinner” that wound up costing $35,000. She had wanted Bob McMullan to be minister for women, and he had refused. She also didn’t think the unions at Parliament House ought to be paid for working through the $100 per ticket event.

Her period as editor of The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine was also clouded when the MEAA took action to “protest my management style”, after Summers fired her deputy for “disloyalty” over a sexual harassment allegation. “I was not a mother, so I must be a whore,” writes Summers, explaining the ferocity of the attacks.

In 2013, Summers returned to address this same “widespread hostility towards women”, which had prominently manifested itself in the “woman-shaming” of the prime minister, Julia Gillard. In a new book, and a series of articles and interviews, she situated Gillard’s treatment as part of a continuing cultural pattern of “malicious and mendacious slurs” against high-achieving women.

Women are immeasurably better off for the achievements set out in Summers’ book, despite some frightening backwards steps since, not to mention a failure to gain ground on childcare policy and the gender wage gap. Feminism has also become more flexible, opening itself up to longstanding critiques around class and race.

But it remains difficult for women to have their voices heard. Women in Australia who have spoken up on #MeToo are almost immediately threatened with defamation action – and some of them are being sued. Women of all ages still name family and domestic violence, workplace sexual harassment and street violence and harassment close to the top of their list of concerns.

Next to this, “doing craftwork”, wearing a split skirt, or covering your bed in “flimsy white fabric” – as Gloria Steinem undoubtedly did – doesn’t seem like much to worry about.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arezou Soltani Panah, Postdoc Research Fellow (Social Data Scientist), Swinburne University of Technology

Data science has boomed over the past decade, following advances in mathematics, computing capability, and data storage. Australia’s Industry 4.0 taskforce is busy exploring ways to improve the Australian economy with tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics.

But while data science offers the potential to solve complex problems and drive innovation, it has often come under fire for unethical use of data or unintended negative consequences – particularly in commercial cases where people become data points in annual company reports.

We argue that the data science boom shouldn’t be limited to business insights and profit margins. When used ethically, big data can help solve some of society’s most difficult social and environmental problems.

Industry 4.0 should be underwritten by values that ensure these technologies are trained towards the social good (known as Society 4.0). That means using data ethically, involving citizens in the process, and building social values into the design.

Here are a five data science projects that are putting these principles into practice.

Read more: The future of data science looks spectacular

1. Finding humanitarian hot spots

Social and environmental problems are rarely easy to solve. Take the hardship and distress in rural areas due to the long-term struggle with drought. Australia’s size and the sheer number of people and communities involved make it difficult to pair those in need with support and resources.

Our team joined forces with the Australian Red Cross to figure out where the humanitarian hot spots are in Victoria. We used social media data to map everyday humanitarian activity to specific locations and found that the hot spots of volunteering and charity activity are located in and around Melbourne CBD and the eastern suburbs. These kinds of insights can help local aid organisations channel volunteering activity in times of acute need.

2. Improving fire safety in homes

Accessing data – the right data, in the right form – is a constant challenge for data science. We know that house fires are a serious threat, and that fire and smoke alarms save lives. Targeting houses without fire alarms can help mitigate that risk. But there is no single reliable source of information to draw on.

In the United States, Enigma Labs built open data tools to model and map risk at the level of individual neighbourhoods. To do this effectively, their model combines national census data with a geocoder tool (TIGER), as well as analytics based on local fire incident data, to provide a risk score.

3. Mapping police violence

Ordinary citizens can be involved in generating social data. There are many crowdsourced, open mapping projects, but often the value of data science lies in the work of joining the dots.

The Mapping Police Violence project in the US monitors, make sense of, and visualises police violence. It draws on three crowdsourced databases, but also fills in the gaps using a mix of social media, obituaries, criminal records databases, police reports and other sources of information. By drawing all this information together, the project quantifies the scale of the problem and makes it visible.

Read more: Data responsibility: a new social good for the information age

4. Optimising waste management

The Internet of Things is made up of a host of connected devices that collect data. When embedded in the ordinary objects all around us, and combined with cloud-based analysis and computing, these objects become smart – and can help solve problems or inefficiencies in the built environment.

If you live in Melbourne, you might have noticed BigBelly bins around the CBD. These smart bins have solar-powered trash compactors that regularly compress the garbage inside throughout the day. This eliminates waste overflow and reduces unnecessary carbon emissions, with an 80% reduction in waste collection.

Real-time data analysis and reporting is provided by a cloud-based data management portal, known as CLEAN. The tool identifies trends in waste overflow, which helps with bin placement and planning of collection services.

5. Identifying hotbeds of street harassment

A group of four women – and many volunteer supporters – in Egypt developed HarassMap to engage with, and inform, the community in an effort to reduce sexual harassment. The platform they built uses anonymised, crowdsourced data to map harassment incidents that occur in the street in order to alert its users of potentially unsafe areas.

The challenge for the group was to provide a means for generating data for a problem that was itself widely dismissed. Mapping and informing are essential data science techniques for addressing social problems.

Read more: Cambridge Analytica’s closure is a pyrrhic victory for data privacy

Building a better society

Turning the efforts of data science to social good isn’t easy. Those with the expertise have to be attuned to the social impact of data analytics. Meanwhile, access to data, or linking data across sources, is a major challenge – particularly as data privacy becomes an increasing concern.

While the mathematics and algorithms that drive data science appear objective, human factors often combine to embed biases, which can result in inaccurate modelling. Digital and data literacy, along with a lack of transparency in methodology, combine to raise mistrust in big data and analytics.

Nonetheless, when put to work for social good, data science can provide new sources of evidence to assist government and funding bodies with policy, budgeting and future planning. This can ultimately result in a better connected and more caring society.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denise Fisher, Visiting Fellow, Australian National University

A historic independence vote is to be held on 4 November in the French territory of New Caledonia, our closest neighbour to the east from Brisbane.

The vote begins the final stage of a negotiated process that ended a civil war in the 1980s and has ushered in 30 years of predictability, peace and economic growth on our doorstep.

While representing a promise kept, it also revives deep-seated sensitivities and creates new uncertainties for New Caledonia, as well as France, Australia and the greater Pacific region, in the coming years.

Why is New Caledonia having a vote?

In a 1958 constitutional referendum, the vast majority of New Caledonians (98%) voted to remain a territory of France, based largely on the French government’s promise to give more autonomy to its territories within a national community.

However, as locals sought to develop New Caledonia’s nickel resources through foreign investment in the 1960s and ‘70s, France reneged on many of its concessions. The government encouraged European migration from metropolitan France and other French territories to develop the industry and gradually outnumber the indigenous Kanak population to preserve French sovereignty over the islands.
By the 1980s, largely Kanak frustration led to violent protests, a boycotted independence vote in 1987 and eventually a brutal showdown with French police at a cave in 1988.

This watershed event, along with regional opposition to France’s policies in the South Pacific, caused Paris to reconsider its approach.

The French government negotiated the Matignon accords with the pro- and anti-independence groups. This established new local institutions, including three provinces, two of which were largely populated by Kanak. The accord also guaranteed an independence vote by 1998.

As that deadline approached, all sides agreed the risk of violence remained too high to hold the vote. So, another agreement was signed – the Noumea Accord – which deferred the vote for another 20 years after further handovers of responsibilities by France.

Read more: French classes in Australia need to acknowledge our Pacific neighbours too

Since then, much progress has been made in bringing peace to New Caledonia. Two new multi-billion dollar plants have been built and some of the territory’s nickel revenues have been redistributed to the local government.

All parties have also been working towards a “common destiny” that includes all longstanding communities in New Caledonia. And despite persistent calls for another deferral of the independence referendum given the risks of violence, all sides have agreed to proceed with the vote.

What will the outcome be?

The November 4 vote is the beginning of a potentially four-year-long process. In the referendum, all Indigenous Kanak and some other longstanding residents who qualify will vote on the question:

Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?

If the answer is “no”, a second vote may be held in 2020. If voters reject independence again, another vote may follow in 2022. If the answer is still “no” after that, France must initiate discussions about the future status of New Caledonia.

Some polls suggest at least 60% are likely to vote “no” this time, although the samples are small and there are large margins of error. There are also uncertainties about the Kanak vote. Since indigenous Kanaks have automatic voter registration in New Caledonia, pro-independence leaders believe a moderate increase in the Kanak population by 2022 may give them a chance at eventual success.

Read more: Anarchy in Kanaky? What the French elections mean for New Caledonia … and Australia

France has not wasted time in starting the dialogue process. It initiated two reports in 2013 and 2016 after extensive consultations with all political parties, and set up a Committee of Dialogue for the Future at the end of 2017. Prime Minister Édouard Philippe arrives in Noumea the day after the vote to oversee and continue discussions.

Politically, both the pro-France and pro-independence sides have become fragmented since 1998. Successive provincial elections have seen increasing support for independence parties, dinting the ongoing majority of the pro-France side. On each side, there is a “mainstream” group of parties, as well as a more extreme fringe element – one radically pro-independent, one uncompromisingly pro-France.

There is potential common ground between the mainstream parties on both sides to agree on a future with further autonomy in partnership with France. But the ongoing referendum and dialogue process is complicated by the timing of provincial elections in May 2019, which could alter the political balance in the wake of the independence vote.

As Noumea Accord founder Alain Christnacht recently said, the main risk is a return of violence to New Caledonia. This may not necessarily reach 1980s levels, but nonetheless could be disruptive to the territory’s stability and economic growth. He said any solution that excluded the interests of the sizeable Kanak minority was doomed to fail.

What do France, Australia and the Pacific nations say?

France, while professing its commitment to holding a fair and legitimate vote, nonetheless has strong strategic interests in retaining New Caledonia. New Caledonia is France’s Pacific jewel, and losing it would have knock-on effects in French Polynesia and elsewhere.

While visiting Noumea in May, President Emmanuel Macron said that France would be less beautiful without New Caledonia and described the referendum as creating a new sovereignty within a national sovereignty, that is within France.

He also spoke of the need for Australia, India, France and New Caledonia (providing it remains French) to form a new “strategic axis” in the Indo-Pacific to counter China’s rise.

For the Pacific nations, who successfully lobbied France to end its nuclear testing and change its handling of decolonisation demands in the region, the stakes remain high, though positions have shifted.

Island states recognise the importance of French resources and engagement to balance new regional players, such as China. They have also welcomed New Caledonia and other French Pacific territories into the Pacific Islands Forum fold. Nonetheless, they are closely watching the final implementation of the Noumea Accord and sending observers to monitor the referendum.

Australia has no official position on the outcome. But clearly the ongoing presence of France is a strategic asset in the region, particularly at a time of uncertainty with the rise of China. As a result, Australia would likely welcome France’s commitment to remain engaged in New Caledonia in the long-term, regardless of the outcome of the vote.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

This week we’re exploring the state of nine different policy areas across Australia’s states, as detailed in Grattan Institute’s State Orange Book 2018. Read the other articles in the series here.

When it comes to cleaning up Australian politics, some states are doing much better than others – and almost all are showing up the Commonwealth government.

Grattan Institute’s State Orange Book 2018, released this week, compares the states and territories on the strength of their political institutions and checks and balances (among other things). Queensland and NSW received an A grade from Grattan for political transparency and accountability. Both have stronger rules than other states on lobbying and political donations.

Western Australia, once a leader after introducing lobbying reforms in the mid-2000s, is now only middle of the pack. Tasmania and the Northern Territory are the poorest performers – both get an E for transparency of their political dealings. The Commonwealth government sits with them at the back of the pack.

Some states are highly transparent

Some states and territories have made political lobbying much more open to the public gaze. NSW, Queensland and the ACT now publish ministerial diaries, so voters can see who is trying to influence whom, and when. All jurisdictions except the Northern Territory have a lobbyists’ register, and Queensland and South Australia require lobbyists to publish details on which ministers and shadow ministers they meet with.

Most states have also introduced reforms to help voters “follow the money” in politics. NSW, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT require donations of $1,000 or more to be publicly declared. Only Tasmania has the same high threshold as the Commonwealth government ($13,800). Most states and territories require political parties to aggregate small donations from the same donor and declare them once the sum is more than the disclosure threshold. But Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Commonwealth have left this loophole gaping.

Read more: Influence in Australian politics needs an urgent overhaul – here’s how to do it

The disclosure threshold for donations should be no higher than $5,000 in all states and territories, and at the federal level. And donations should be disclosed quickly – preferably within seven days during election campaigns, as now happens in Queensland, South Australia and the ACT, or at least within 21 days, as in NSW and Victoria. Tasmania, and the Commonwealth, still leave us waiting up to 19 months to find out who donated to political parties during elections.

State governments are becoming more accountable

Almost all states have improved their level of accountability to voters in recent years. All states and territories now have a ministerial code of conduct, setting out standards of ethical behaviour, including rules on accepting gifts and hospitality. And all have introduced a similar code for other parliamentarians, or are close to adopting one. The Commonwealth has a code only for ministers.

But enforcement of the codes is typically weak, meaning the codes are more like guidelines than rules. In most states, the premier or the parliament ultimately determine sanctions for misconduct. Enforcement can easily become political.

NSW and Queensland have independent oversight of their codes of conduct. The other states and territories should follow. And there should be meaningful sanctions for misconduct and for breaching disclosure rules – such as large fines or jail time, as applies in NSW.

Read more: Australians think our politicians are corrupt, but where is the evidence?

The states have also made progress in exposing and tackling corruption. All states and the NT now have dedicated anti-corruption or integrity agencies that provide some reassurance to the public that serious issues will be confronted. There is one on the way in the ACT.

Only the Commonwealth lags in this area. It would be naïve to assume that corruption at the federal level is less prevalent or serious than at state level. Establishing an equivalent agency at the federal level should be a priority for the Commonwealth.

All states and the Commonwealth can do better

The appearance, and sometimes reality, of political decisions favouring special interests or politicians’ self-interest has contributed to voter disillusionment and falling trust in government. Voters want their governments – local, state, and federal – to clean up their act and put integrity reforms high on the agenda. Reforming political institutions is both good politics and good policy.

Every state and territory could do better by looking at best practice around the country. States and territories should fill the gaps we have identified in their transparency and accountability frameworks. They should also introduce a cap on political advertising expenditure during election campaigns, to help reduce the power of individual donors and free-up parliamentarians to do their jobs instead of chasing dollars.

Most of all, our laggard Commonwealth government needs to lift its game. Federal ministers should be required to publish their diaries. A list of all lobbyists with security passes to federal Parliament House should be made public and kept up-to-date. Big donations to federal political parties should be disclosed in close to “real time”. And voters should have confidence that misconduct by federal MPs will be independently investigated and punished.

Otherwise, the crisis of trust in Australian politics will only grow.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristine Macartney, Professor, Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Sydney

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has officially declared that Australia has eliminated rubella.

Rubella, also known as German measles, is a contagious viral disease. The symptoms in children are generally mild – fever, rash and sore throat – but infection during pregnancy can be devastating for unborn babies.

Infection in the first trimester of pregnancy results in an 80% chance of miscarriage or birth defects, known as congenital rubella syndrome (CRS), in the developing fetus.

Babies born with CRS can experience deafness, blindness, cataracts, intellectual disabilities and heart defects.

Read more: Vaccines to expect when you’re expecting, and why

An Australian discovery

In the 1940s, Australian ophthalmologist Sir Norman McAlister Gregg was the first to describe the connection between rubella infection in mothers, and cataracts and other birth defects in babies.

This led to development of the rubella vaccine in the 1960s and the exciting possibility of eliminating the disease.

Before the rollout of rubella vaccination, large outbreaks were recorded. In 1963-64 there were more than 3,000 documented cases of rubella.

Our first vaccination program, introduced in 1971, only targeted schoolgirls, with the aim of preventing infection during pregnancy and the subsequent risk of CRS.

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But because most infections occurred during childhood and males were not vaccinated, the rubella virus continued to circulate, causing outbreaks. By the early 1990s there were still an average of 4,000 cases a year.

Achieving rubella elimination

Elimination is defined as “reduction to zero of the incidence of infection caused by a specific agent in a defined geographical area”. This means there can be no ongoing (also known as endemic) circulation of the virus in that area.

Australia was verified as having eliminated measles in 2014. We were able to “piggyback” our rubella elimination efforts onto those for measles by switching from the schoolgirl rubella program to a single-dose childhood measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) vaccine for both 12-month-old girls and boys in 1989.

From 1993, a second dose was added to capture those who missed the first dose or who weren’t fully protected.

Australia made a concerted effort to boost its MMR vaccine coverage by conducting a mass school-based vaccination campaign in 1998.

Since then, coverage has continued to climb, with more than 94% of infants now vaccinated with MMR. A recent study estimated that about 92% of one- to 49-year-olds were immune to rubella.

The impact has been clear: in 2012-17 there were only four cases of CRS and fewer than 40 cases of rubella reported each year. This is a far cry from the thousands reported in the pre-vaccination era.

Read more: Want to boost vaccination? Don’t punish parents, build their trust

Verification of Australia’s rubella elimination status

As was required for measles, Australia had to submit a detailed report to the World Health Organisation, providing evidence that rubella had been eliminated. This included proof that most of the population is immune to rubella and that vaccine coverage is high. Showing low numbers of rubella and CRS cases was also important.

This evidence is backed up by a surveillance system that is sensitive enough to pick up and respond to cases when they occur and to test whether the rubella virus strain was circulating locally or imported from overseas. In the past three years, the cases of rubella identified were strains from overseas, rather than from a virus spreading within in Australia.

Elimination doesn’t mean eradication

Eradication only occurs when all countries in the world have achieved elimination of a disease. The only human disease to have been eradicated is smallpox in 1979.

The Americas region, and five countries within our region, have been verified as eliminating rubella and CRS. But it remains prevalent in many countries.

Not all countries have introduced rubella vaccination. As of December 2016, just 152 of 194 countries had introduced vaccination.

Even in some countries with vaccination programs, coverage is so low that large outbreaks are still occurring. In Japan, more than 1,100 cases have been reported this year.

Read more: Want to boost vaccination? Don’t punish parents, build their trust

No room for complacency

We need to maintain high coverage with our routine vaccination programs to ensure elimination is sustained, as rubella is still likely to be imported from other countries.

Travellers should have had two MMR vaccinations before going overseas. And every effort must be made to ensure new arrivals in Australia are up to date with their vaccinations, especially women of child-bearing age.

Finally, to eradicate rubella we need to support other countries in our region, and globally, to strengthen their control efforts.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oscar Serrano, Doctor of Global Change, Edith Cowan University

For more than 6,000 years, seagrass meadows in Australia’s coastal waters have been acting as security vaults for priceless cultural heritage.

They’ve locked away thousands of shipwrecks in conditions perfect for preserving the fragile, centuries-old timbers of early European and Asian explorers, and could even hold secrets of seafaring by Aboriginal Australians.

Seagrass meadows accumulate marine sediments beneath their leaves, slowly burying and safeguarding wrecks in conditions that museum curators can only dream of. It’s a process that takes centuries, as mats of seagrass and sediments cover the wrecks and all their buried treasure.

Seagrass sedimentary deposits also hold archives of wider environmental change over millennia and are important sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide, known as Blue Carbon.

But human development, climate change and storms are threatening fragile seagrass meadows around the world, and that risks the loss of the important cultural heritage they protect as well as some of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems.

Read more: Dugong and sea turtle poo sheds new light on the Great Barrier Reef’s seagrass meadows

Our research, carried out by an international team of scientists in Australia, Denmark, Saudi Arabia and Greece, shows that seagrass meadows, hidden beneath our oceans, gradually build up the seafloor over millennia by trapping sediments and particles and depositing those materials as they grow.

The organic and chemical structure of seagrass sedimentary deposits is key to its ability to protect shipwrecks and submerged prehistoric landscapes. These structures are extraordinarily resistant to decay, creating thick sediment deposits that seal oxygen away from archaeological sites, preventing ships’ timbers and other materials from rotting away.

Seagrass meadows are under environmental stress due to climate change, storms and human activity. Recent disturbances and losses have exposed shipwrecks and archaeological artefacts that were previously preserved beneath the sediment. Once the protective cover of seagrass is gone, the ships and other sites begin to break down. If you lose seagrass, you lose cultural heritage.

Seagrass meadow losses in the Mediterranean have exposed Phoenician, Greek and Roman ships and cargo, many of which are thousands of years old. Unless these effects can be stemmed, the frequency of exposures is likely to increase. This has already put European archaeologists and marine scientists in a race against the clock.

Around 7,000 shipwrecks are thought to lie in Australia’s coastal waters. Seagrass disturbance led to the unearthing in 1973 of the James Matthews, a former slave ship that sank in 1841 in Cockburn Sound, Western Australia, and the Sydney Cove, which ran aground off Tasmania’s Preservation Island in 1797, forcing survivors to walk 700km to Sydney.

Artefacts and pieces of the James Matthews’ hull have been recovered and studied at the WA Museum. Meanwhile, the recovery of beer bottles from the Sydney Cove has led, remarkably, to 220-year-old brewing yeast being cultivated and used to create a new beer – fittingly enough called The Wreck.

Revealing wrecks

We and our colleagues are aiming to match shipwreck data with seagrass meadow maps. From there, we hope new acoustic techniques for below-seabed imaging will allow exploration of underwater sites without disturbing the overlying seagrass meadows. Controlled archaeological excavation could then be undertaken to excavate, document and preserve sites and artefacts.

We also believe there’s significant potential to find archaeological heritage of early Indigenous Australians buried and preserved in seagrass meadows. Sea level around Australia rose around 6,000 years ago, potentialy submerging ancient indigenous settlements located in coastal areas, which may now be covered by seagrass.

The danger of not putting these protections in place is evidenced by treasure-hunters off the Florida coast, who have adopted a destructive technique called “mailboxing” to search for gold in Spanish galleons. This involves punching holes into sediment to find and then pillage wrecks, an action that damages seagrass meadows and archaeological remains.

Read more: We desperately need to store more carbon – seagrass could be the answer

The accumulated sediments in seagrass meadows could also help build a record of environmental conditions, including fingerprints of human culture. These archives can be used to reconstruct prehistoric changes in land use and agriculture, mining and metallurgical activities, impacts of human activities on coastal ecosystems, and changes associated with colonisation events by different cultures. Think of it as a coastal equivalent to polar ice cores. Seagrass records could even help us understand, predict and manage the effects of current environmental changes.

But to do all this, we first need to realise what a truly valuable resource seagrass is. Granted, it doesn’t look spectacular, but it can do some pretty spectacular things – from sucking carbon out of the skies, to underpinning entire ecosystems, and even guarding buried treasure.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rupert Legg, PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney

Around the world, new developments are increasingly framed as sustainable to both policymakers and prospective buyers. They are seen as a “win-win” for the environment and the economy. However, recent concerns suggest social inequality often results.

Barangaroo is one such green development on the harbourfront in Sydney, Australia. What was once a contaminated, dilapidated, post-industrial wharf is now home to a six-hectare park, three office towers and two residential complexes. More is to come, in the form of a 275-metre hotel-casino.

Beyond its immense scale, Barangaroo is significant for another reason: it has a commendable sustainability agenda.

Rooftop solar partially powers the buildings, which are constructed from carbon-neutral materials and even provide a supply of recycled water from a stormwater treatment plant underneath. Beyond the project’s economic advantages – an estimated $2 billion-a-year boost to the New South Wales economy – the environment benefits through increased green space and biodiversity, along with reduced carbon emissions and electricity and water use.

These are undeniably beneficial outcomes. Yet, worryingly, such developments may result in “green gentrification” as increases to environmental amenity in an area result in displacement and exclusion of the disadvantaged.

I examined this claim at Barangaroo, by breaking its outcomes into three parts:

• who has access to the spaces it creates
• what happens to the surrounding property market
• how governance enables the outcome.

My findings suggest there is an urgent need to prioritise social outcomes in future sustainable development.

The spaces

Barangaroo has created many new spaces, but will people from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds have access? Multiple hectares of public park and waterfront access, piers, laneways and bridges are accessible at the development. Retail spaces are scattered in between the office towers and residential complexes.

Around 900,000 people from the local Sydney region visited the public park in its first year alone. The commercial space, likewise, provides for 23,000 professionals.

To determine whether these statistics include the disadvantaged it is necessary to delve deeper. Who are those who live nearby? Who are employed in the offices? Who are the shops’ target market?

The price of floor space at Barangaroo is very high – around $20,000 per square metre for its apartments. Affordable housing has been moved offsite, so many will be priced out of living within Barangaroo.

Business giants, such as KPMG and Westpac, are among those that can afford to occupy the office space. Smaller, less professionally oriented businesses are unable to do so. The result is that retailers largely cater to office workers. David Jones, for instance, “has been carefully designed to appeal to Barangaroo’s big office community”.

Likewise, the new restaurants, owned by celebrity chefs and restaurateurs, appeal to those from high socio-economic backgrounds.

These trends provide little room for the disadvantaged to occupy the site’s residential, retail or commercial spaces. What about the public space, however? If those from low socio-economic backgrounds live around the development, they could enjoy these spaces.

The property market

Green gentrification studies suggest sustainable developments may raise the prices of property nearby. Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics between 2011 and 2016, I found the rent prices in areas northeast of Barangaroo increased drastically.

The main reason for this change was the selling of 214 public housing properties in Millers Point, Dawes Point and The Rocks in 2014. The NSW government announced the sales after Barangaroo’s effect on the surrounding areas began to take place, realising the increased profit to be made.

As a result, the development is not only exclusive on the inside, it has also contributed to the displacement of the disadvantaged from surrounding areas.

Read more: Last of the Millers Point and Sirius tenants hang on as the money now pours in

The governance

Could appropriate governance have prevented this? The political agenda that enabled this exclusion and displacement effectively ignored the disadvantaged. Counterclaims to the benefits of the development were ignored, as these did not match the win-win narrative of the development’s proponents.

For instance, the then NSW finance minister, Greg Pearce, dismissed the concerns of evicted residents by stating:

Millers Point is poorly suited for social housing … when considering its future, the government needs to consider it in the context of all of the surrounding areas, including the Barangaroo redevelopment area.

In a more extreme case, fast-tracked legislation made legally void a claim brought against the government for approving potentially unlawful elements of the development.

These actions minimise antagonistic voices, those that often act to promote social equality.

If future green developments are to minimise exclusion and displacement, they must allow participation from all sectors of society and recognise all the potential impacts in advance. The NSW government has not only enabled exclusion by failing to ensure affordable housing quotas, it has actively encouraged it by selling the nearby public housing.

Barangaroo is a missed opportunity: instead of promoting social equality, it has made inequality worse.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rose Michael, Lecturer, Writing & Publishing, RMIT University

I count myself lucky. Weird, I know, in this day and age when all around us the natural and political world is going to hell in a handbasket. But that, in fact, may be part of it.

Back when I started writing, realism had such a stranglehold on publishing that there was little room for speculative writers and readers. (I didn’t know that’s what I was until I read it in a reader’s report for my first novel. And even then I didn’t know what it was, until I realised that it was what I read, and had always been reading; what I wrote, and wanted to write.) Outside of the convention rooms, that is, which were packed with less-literary-leaning science-fiction and fantasy producers and consumers.

Realism was the rule, even for those writing non-realist stories, such as popular crime and commercial romance. Perhaps this dominance was because of a culture heavily influenced by an Anglo-Saxon heritage. Richard Lea has written in The Guardian of “non-fiction” as a construct of English literature, arguing other cultures do not distinguish so obsessively between stories on the basis of whether or not they are “real”.

Regardless of the reason, this conception of literary fiction has been widely accepted – leading self-described “weird fiction” novelist China Miéville to identify the Booker as a genre prize for specifically realist literary fiction; a category he calls “litfic”. The best writers Australia is famous for producing aren’t only a product of this environment, but also role models who perpetuate it: Tim Winton and Helen Garner write similarly realistically, albeit generally fiction for one and non-fiction for the other.

Today, realism remains the most popular literary mode. Our education system trains us to appreciate literatures of verisimilitude; or, rather, literature we identify as “real”, charting interior landscapes and emotional journeys that generally represent a quite particular version of middle-class life. It’s one that may not have much in common these days with many people’s experiences – middle-class, Anglo or otherwise – or even our exterior world(s).

Like other kinds of biases, realism has been normalised, but there is now a growing recognition – a re-evaluation – of different kinds of “un-real” storytelling: “speculative” fiction, so-called for its obviously invented and inventive aspects.

Feminist science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin has described this diversification as:

a much larger collective conviction about who’s entitled to tell stories, what stories are worth telling, and who among the storytellers gets taken seriously … not only in terms of race and gender, but in terms of what has long been labelled “genre” fiction.

Closer to home, author Jane Rawson – who has written short stories and novels and co-authored a non-fiction handbook on “surviving” climate change – has described the stranglehold realistic writing has on Australian stories in an article for Overland, yet her own work evidences a new appreciation for alternative, novel modes.

Rawson’s latest book, From the Wreck, intertwines the story of her ancestor George Hills, who was shipwrecked off the coast of South Australia and survived eight days at sea, with the tale of a shape-shifting alien seeking refuge on Earth. In an Australian first, it was long-listed for the Miles Franklin, our most prestigious literary award, after having won the niche Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction.

The Aurealis awards were established in 1995 by the publishers of Australia’s longest-running, small-press science-fiction and fantasy magazine of the same name. As well as recognising the achievements of Australian science-fiction, fantasy and horror writers, they were designed to distinguish between those speculative subgenres.

Last year, five of the six finalists for the Aurealis awards were published, promoted and shelved as literary fiction.

A broad church

Perhaps what counts as speculative fiction is also changing. The term is certainly not new; it was first used in an 1889 review, but came into more common usage after genre author Robert Heinlein’s 1947 essay On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.

Whereas science fiction generally engages with technological developments and their potential consequences, speculative fiction is a far broader, vaguer term. It can be seen as an offshoot of the popular science-fiction genre, or a more neutral umbrella category that simply describes all non-realist forms, including fantasy and fairytales – from the epic of Gilgamesh through to The Handmaid’s Tale.

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

While critic James Wood argues that “everything flows from the real … it is realism that allows surrealism, magic realism, fantasy, dream and so on”, others, such as author Doris Lessing, believe that everything flows from the fantastic; that all fiction has always been speculative. I am not as interested in which came first (or which has more cultural, or commercial, value) as I am in the fact that speculative fiction – “spec-fic” – seems to be gaining literary respectability. (Next step, surely, mainstream popularity! After all, millions of moviegoers and television viewers have binge-watched the rise of fantastic forms, and audiences are well versed in unreal onscreen worlds.)

One reason for this new interest in an old but evolving form has been well articulated by author and critic James Bradley: climate change. Writers, and publishers, are embracing speculative fiction as an apt form to interrogate what it means to be human, to be humane, in the current climate – and to engage with ideas of posthumanism too.

These are the sorts of existential questions that have historically driven realist literature.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2018 Living Planet Report, 60% of the world’s wildlife disappeared between 1970 and 2012. The year 2016 was declared the hottest on record, echoing the previous year and the one before that. People under 30 have never experienced a month in which average temperatures are below the long-term mean. Hurricanes register on the Richter scale and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has added a colour to temperature maps as the heat keeps on climbing.

Science fiction? Science fact.

What are we to do about this? Well, according to writer and geographer Samuel Miller-McDonald, “If you’re a writer, then you have to write about this.”

There is an infographic doing the rounds on Facebook that shows sister countries with comparable climates to (warming) regions of Australia. But it doesn’t reflect the real issue. Associate Professor Michael Kearney, Research Fellow in Biosciences at the University of Melbourne, points out that no-one anywhere in the world has any experience of our current CO₂ levels. The changed environment is, he says – using a word that is particularly appropriate for my argument – a “novel” situation.

Elsewhere, biologists are gathering evidence of algae that carbon dioxide has made carbohydrate-rich but less nutritious. So the plankton that rely on them to survive might eat more and more and yet still starve.

Fiction focused on the inner lives of a limited cross-section of people no longer seems the best literary form to reflect, or reflect on, our brave new outer world – if, indeed, it ever was.

Whether it’s a creative response to catastrophic climate change, or an empathic, philosophical attempt to express cultural, economic, neurological – or even species – diversification, the recognition works such as Rawson’s are receiving surely shows we have left Modernism behind and entered the era of Anthropocene literature.

And her book is not alone. Other wild titles achieving similar success include Krissy Kneen’s An Uncertain Grace, shortlisted for the Aurealis, the Stella prize and the Norma K. Hemming award – given to mark excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class or disability in a speculative fiction work.

Kneen’s book connects five stories spanning a century, navigating themes of sexuality – including erotic explorations of transgression and transmutation – against the backdrop of a changing ocean.

Earlier, more realist but still speculative titles (from 2015) include Mireille Juchau’s The World Without Us and Bradley’s Clade. These novels fit better with Miéville’s description of “litfic”, employing realistic literary techniques that would not be out of place in Winton’s books, but they have been called “cli-fi” for the way they put climate change squarely at the forefront of their stories (though their authors tend to resist such generic categorisation).

Both novels, told across time and from multiple points of view, are concerned with radically changed and catastrophically changing environments, and how the negative consequences of our one-world experiment might well – or, rather, ill – play out.

Catherine McKinnnon’s Storyland is a more recent example that similarly has a fantastic aspect. The author describes her different chapters set in different times, culminating – Cloud Atlas–like, in one futuristic episode – as “timeslips” or “time shifts” rather than time travel. Yet it has been received as speculative – and not in a pejorative way, despite how some “high-art” literary authors may feel about “low-brow” genre associations.

Kazuo Ishiguro, for instance, told The New York Times when The Buried Giant was released in 2015 that he was fearful readers would not “follow him” into Arthurian Britain. Le Guin was quick to call him out on his obvious attempt to distance himself from the fantasy category. Michel Faber, around the same time, told a Wheeler Centre audience that his Book of Strange New Things, where a missionary is sent to convert an alien race, was “not about aliens” but alienation. Of course it is the latter, but it is also about the other.

All these more-and-less-speculative fictions – these not-traditionally-realist literatures – analyse the world in a way that it is not usually analysed, to echo Tim Parks’s criterion for the best novels. Interestingly, this sounds suspiciously like science-fiction critic Darko Suvin’s famous conception of the genre as a literature of “cognitive estrangement”, which inspires readers to re-view their own world, think in new ways, and – most importantly – take appropriate action.

A new party

Perhaps better case studies of what local spec-fic is or does – when considering questions of diversity – are Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things and Claire Coleman’s Terra Nullius.

The first is a distinctly Aussie Handmaid’s Tale for our times, where “girls” guilty by association with some unspecified sexual scenario are drugged, abducted and held captive in a remote outback location.

The latter is another idea whose time has come: an apocalyptic act of colonisation. Not such an imagined scenario for Noongar woman Coleman. It’s a tricky plot to tell without giving away spoilers – the book opens on an alternative history, or is it a futuristic Australia? Again, the story is told through different points of view, which prioritises collective storytelling over the authority of a single voice.

Read more: Friday essay: science fiction’s women problem

“The entire purpose of writing Terra Nullius,” Coleman has said, “was to provoke empathy in people who had none.”

This connection of reading with empathy is a case Neil Gaiman made in a 2013 lecture when he told of how China’s first party-approved science-fiction and fantasy convention had come about five years earlier.

The Chinese had sent delegates to Apple and Google etc to try to work out why America was inventing the future, he said. And they had discovered that all the programmers, all the entrepreneurs, had read science fiction when they were children.

“Fiction can show you a different world,” said Gaiman. “It can take you somewhere you’ve never been.”

And when you come back, you see things differently. And you might decide to do something about that: you might change the future.

Perhaps the key to why speculative fiction is on the rise is the ways in which it is not “hard” science fiction. Rather than focusing on technology and world-building to the point of potential fetishism, as our “real” world seems to be doing, what we are reading today is a sophisticated literature engaging with contemporary cultural, social and political matters – through the lens of an “un-real” idea, which may be little more than a metaphor or errant speculation.

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

There’s a nice story about Arthur Fadden – the Country Party leader who became PM in the 1941 hung parliament amid conservative leadership turmoil – deciding not to move into the Lodge after a colleague told him he’d “scarcely have enough time to wear a track from the backdoor to the shithouse before you’ll be out”.

The warning was prophetic: Fadden was dispatched in little over a month, replaced in a House of Representatives vote by Labor’s John Curtin.

Scott Morrison, ensconced in Kirribilli, has already had a longer spell than Fadden, and his government appears safe in parliament, despite losing its majority. Regardless of these differences, Morrison’s likely trajectory seems as clear as that of “Artie” all those years ago.

The widespread feeling that the Morrison government is doomed will only be reinforced by this week’s outbreak of hostilities between the former and current prime ministers.

At one level, it’s hard to believe we’re seeing a rerun of this old script; at another, it confirms that disunity has become baked into a Liberal party probably unable to get beyond its dysfunction without a cleansing period in opposition.

For three years, Turnbull had to endure the sniping of Tony Abbott, the man he brought down. Now Turnbull is the sniper at the window, though Morrison didn’t cause his fall (unless you buy the conspiracy theory).

Turnbull’s mood is dark. That is understandable. It is also dangerous for the government, especially as many voters neither understood nor welcomed the leadership change.

This week’s fallout from Turnbull’s Indonesian excursion has undermined Morrison on foreign policy – about which he gave his first major address on Thursday – and cast doubt on his personal credibility.

As is now well known, Turnbull’s trip representing Australia at a conference about oceans included talks with President Joko Widodo, who was smarting from Morrison’s announcement that Australia would consider moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After the talks, Turnbull met the media and issued a strong warning against such a move.

On Thursday, an obviously frustrated Morrison told 2GB’s Alan Jones the former prime minister wouldn’t be sent on any more missions. “He was there to actually attend an oceans conference, the issues of trade and other things of course were not really part of the brief,” Morrison said, in what turned out to be an unfortunate gloss.

Turnbull immediately took to Twitter, to set out “a few facts”.

He said Morrison had “asked me to discuss trade and the embassy issue in Bali and we had a call before I left to confirm his messages which I duly relayed” to the President. “There was a detailed paper on the issue in my official brief as well”, Turnbull added.

That left Morrison with some explaining to do. In a statement he said he’d invited Turnbull to represent him at the oceans conference and to be “head of delegation”.

“He was briefed on appropriate responses on other issues that could be raised in any direct discussions with the President, in his role of head of delegation. Accordingly there were briefings dealing with the issues he [Turnbull] has referred to,” Morrison said, reiterating that “the purpose of his attendance was the Oceans conference”.

The different emphases in the two accounts stands out. Turnbull suggests he was asked to actively convey messages; Morrison’s version is that Turnbull was given “responses” to provide.

Obviously it was risky for Morrison to send Turnbull in the first place; equally, it was provocative of Turnbull to speak publicly about the content of his talks and, especially, to air his disagreement with government policy.

Read more: View from The Hill: When you’re not PM but behave like you are

The week has been another demonstration of those “transaction” costs of an ill-advised switch of leaders – costs also reflected in Monday’s Newspoll, showing the Coalition going backwards to trail Labor 46-54%.

After some initial favourable publicity Morrison is now widely referred to, often disparagingly, as coming from a “marketing” background. His political fixes are viewed, cynically but accurately, through that prism.

Read more: Poll wrap: Morrison’s ratings slump in Newspoll; Wentworth’s huge difference in on-the-day and early voting

Take for example the government’s plan to remove the remaining about 40 children from Nauru by Christmas.

It is responding to increasing public concern. But one can’t help thinking it probably calculates that if just the children (and their families) are taken off, the immediate public pressure will go away too. No need for it to feel much urgency about all those male refugees on Manus, because they don’t have the same political salience.

What it says about even the children is, however, grudging and misleading. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton insists they’ll not stay in Australia, but eventually end up elsewhere, whether the US, another third country or their home country.

In practice, from all we know from the past, many or most will remain here. But the government won’t admit that, supposedly because to do so might encourage the people smugglers. Does it really think they are so easily fooled? What actually deters them is the Australian flotilla ready to turn back their boats.

Dutton on Thursday also effectively ruled out sending people to New Zealand, even if Labor passed the legislation to close the “back door” to Australia.

“My judgment at the moment, based on all of the advice available to me is that New Zealand would be a pull factor at this point in time,” he told Sky.

The strategy seems clear. Fix the issue of the children, then paint Labor’s commitment to send people to New Zealand as one that would encourage the boats to restart.

Presumably Turnbull will be asked about refugees when he does Q&A next Thursday. With a full program to himself, he’ll be quizzed about a lot of matters, including energy and climate change policy, as well as the Jerusalem debate – which did not rate even a mention in Morrison’s Thursday speech.

There’s inevitable speculation about whether Turnbull will wear his leather jacket. The real question is what persona the man in the jacket, whether it’s leather or cloth, will choose to adopt. Morrison, for one, will be sweating on the answer.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Incoming Associate Professor at LaTrobe University. Former Lecturer, Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences; Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Today on Media Files, a podcast about the major themes and issues in the media, we’re looking at the future newsroom.

We often hear about the doom and gloom of established media companies as they shed staff and revenues, but is there hope for journalism and a new style of digital newsroom? We ask of the man with an ambitious mission to launch 100 media start-ups in three years: what does the future newsroom look like?

Our guest is co-founder and CEO of Splice Media, Alan Soon. Based in Singapore, Alan is a former journalist and producer at Yahoo, CNBC, Bloomberg and Kyodo News, and is promising a million dollars to give to start-ups to transform media in Asia.

We talked about:

• Challenges and opportunities for start-ups

• His pledge to launch 100 digital media start-ups in Asia over three years with a $1 million fund – and where the money comes from

• Why he thinks Asia lacks a robust ecosystem around media start-ups.

• How to build communities around membership and make a media start-up financially sustainable.

• Media trends and innovations that he expects we will see more of in the future.

• How limiting the different regulatory environments and political norms such as regard for freedom of expression may be in parts of Asia.

And much, much more.

Read more: Media Files: Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy and former MP David Feeney on the digital disruption of media and politics

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

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

You can find more podcast episodes from The Conversation here.

Read more: Media Files: ABC boss Michelle Guthrie sacked, but the board won’t say why

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

Additional audio

Theme music by Susie Wilkins.