The Conversation

Culture shock: mending Australia's fractured relationship with India

2012-05-24T04:28:48Z

On my last visit to India in April this year, I found the nation in the grip of Indian Premier League (IPL) fever, or so the umpteen news channels had me believe.

With Katy Perry in a kitsch Indian costume, a South African percussion band, and the usual Bollywood ensemble performing at the opening ceremony, it appeared to be turning into a transnational celebration of cricket, as well as a tangible expression of India’s ascendancy).

Despite the coming together of previously sworn enemies on the cricket field, such as India’s Harbhajan Singh and Australia’s Andrew Symonds during the IPL series, I wondered if the two nations could really talk to one another – a shared language and a similar understanding of parliamentary democracy notwithstanding.

The first step

This question was first posed at the height of the student attack crisis in 2009-2010. At this time, Age journalist Sushi Das exclaimed that both sides were engaging in a dialogue of the deaf).

It was during then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s visit to India to help abate the situation that another example of the communication malaise arose. In a press release that was later withdrawn, Rudd suggested barbecues hosted by Australian families as a gesture of inclusion towards Indian students. While a clever idea from a community-building perspective, it displayed the oblivion of the PM and his advisers on obvious matters of India’s cultural reality. A large percentage of India’s population does not eat meat.

In an egalitarian world, I would have called for both nations meeting half way. But given India’s increasing political and cultural might, the sheer size of its (consuming) population, and its perception of Australia as prejudiced, Australian authorities, cultural organisations and individuals may just have to extend their hands first.

Interviewing journalists at a leading news channel in Delhi last year, I was told (under the condition of anonymity) that most middle class Indians do not regard Australia as racist in the colonial sense, but do perceive it as lacking cultural astuteness. In their eyes, a nation that fails to fully acknowledge India’s economic and cultural emergence, but continues to highlight its poverty, exoticism and third-world chaos, is insignificant and even worthy of being sledged.

Building bridges

Australia is home to a mighty and very enterprising South Asian diaspora which must be drawn upon to improve, and update our knowledge of modern India.

Australians need to be comfortable with the India that exists within their national borders before they can embark on a journey across the Pacific for strategic or other purposes.

Australia’s federal and state governments, and its universities, have the most crucial role to play in ensuring that the nation’s engagement with India is genuine. I am not discounting the importance of the economic/trade motivation that underlies a large portion of our current efforts, but this needs to be accompanied by cultural openness.

Any engagement with India must be preceded by a conscious dismantling of our Eurocentrism, which must then be replaced with a willingness to engage with the subcontinent’s paradoxes on its own terms. This in turn will ensure hospitality, and reciprocity.

I had a serendipitous experience of such engagement when waiting at Singapore’s Changi airport to board a flight to Delhi. There I met an Australian businessman travelling in the opposite direction, who spoke at great length not just about the cost effectiveness of sourcing glass bottles for his beverage company from India, but also of the sheer pleasure of exploring Mumbai on an auto-rickshaw.

On reaching Delhi, I got in touch with an old friend who, after having undertaken music studies in Adelaide, had returned to India and was trying to facilitate a cultural exchange program between his two beloved countries. These ambassadors, along with the official ones, must be aided and applauded.

Sukhmani Khorana does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Explainer: climate modes and drought

2012-05-24T04:22:57Z

While most people now understand that the enhanced greenhouse effect means a much warmer planet, communicating regional shifts in weather remains a significant challenge.

As with most complex science, nuance is everything. But how do you communicate complexity and nuance in a world increasingly geared to a 140-character limit? This is part three of a series looking at the relationship between climate change and rainfall. Part two is here.

Greenhouse climate change is forced by the buildup of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. The climate system responds to this forcing by inexorable increases in temperature and by changing rainfall and circulation patterns. That response is superimposed on the natural fluctuations of climate, and is expressed through the natural modes of the system.

By “mode” here we mean a preferred circulation pattern. A crude metaphor for a related set of modes might be a bicycle with several gears. Each gear is a preferred mode, whereas the spaces between gears are not preferred. The bicycle is mostly in one of the gears/modes, with occasional transitions between the gears. The climate system has a range of different “bicycles” describing different types of modes that operate on different time and space scales.

Greenhouse climate change does not present a brand new way for the climate system to operate. The system still has the same ways of expressing variability through atmosphere and ocean circulation modes. The system in which those modes occur is warming. That does not make the modes go away, but it may change their behaviour, perhaps by making some modes more active and others less so.

In the metaphor of our bicycle, if we ride out of the flats and into the hills, we still have all the same gears, but we would use the gears differently in the hills. We might prefer to spend more time in the lower gears for example.

Climate favours different gears, depending on the circumstances, but will still generally use each of the gears. Rob J Brooks

Stewarts Franks' contribution to The Conversation on the recent floods implies that we are not undergoing greenhouse climate change, just interannual and decadal variability as manifest by La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation respectively.

Franks points to natural modes of rainfall variability, as if the existence of these modes ruled out any role for greenhouse climate change. La Niña and decadal variability are intrinsic modes and expressions of the climate system, but that fact does not constitute evidence against greenhouse climate change.

We continue to have La Niña and El Niño events in a changing climate. Indeed, greenhouse climate change would express itself through the natural modes of the system such as La Niña and El Niño in the tropics and blocking (the tendency for persistent high pressure systems to form) in mid-latitudes. The climate system might change the frequency, length, position, or intensity of these natural modes in a warmer climate, but the modes themselves will persist.

Similarly, the climate system generates multi-decadal variation in circulation patterns because high frequency weather can generate a low frequency response in the ocean-atmosphere system. To point to such variability is not evidence against greenhouse climate change. A warmer climate system still has multi-decadal variability.

Such variability simply makes it a bit harder to extract and identify the climate change signal. Wet runs of years and dry runs of years will both continue, though the baseline about which these occur may change. If the rainfall baseline drops to lower averages (as seems plausible for southern Australia, based on the research), the dry runs will have larger impacts on the environment.

Multi-decadal variability is a feature of all aspects of the climate system and is not just a property of rainfall. Regional and global temperatures also undergo multi-decadal fluctations, which is why we don’t expect each year, or even decade, to set a new record for warming.

Droughts raise local temperatures, but from a higher point thanks to climate change. Surain Rajadurai

Some climate change critics have tried to have natural variability both ways to suit themselves. They are arguing that rainfall changes must be assessed over multiple decades on the one hand, but claiming inconsistently (and incorrectly) that any brief interruption in the upward march of temperature is evidence against greenhouse climate change. Global surface temperature is always going to bounce around on top of the warming trend.

We do have high confidence that temperatures will continue to rise under greenhouse forcing. The impact of those rising temperatures on the water balance during dry runs is disputed by Franks and he implies that increasing temperatures have no impact on the severity of drought.

Franks makes his argument by noting that temperatures are higher during droughts than wet periods due to the drying of soils, which changes the way energy is partitioned between evaporation and heating. This is true, is not in dispute, and has no bearing on the greenhouse role.

The temperature changes we are concerned about are not the natural increases that always occur during drought periods. Rather, we are concerned about the inexorable greenhouse-induced rise in global and regional temperature that raises temperature everywhere. Droughts will continue to raise local temperatures, but that rise will occur on top of a warmer baseline. The relevant question is whether droughts are exacerbated when they occur in a warmer climate due to the greenhouse-induced rise in temperature baseline.

If temperature were the only thing to change, then the atmospheric demand for water (termed the potential or Priestley-Taylor evaporation) would increase during droughts in warmed climates. That result is a consequence of the dependence of potential evaporation on temperature. Increases in potential evaporation increase aridity and reduce the amount of available water during droughts. Changes to other variables may oppose or support these changes, but the role of temperature increases will be to increase potential evaporation.

Wet and dry runs sit on a warmer baseline. Len Matthews

Rainfall is set to undergo a variety of different changes across Australia, and this issue is reviewed by Karl Braganza in this series. While the net impact of greenhouse-induced rainfall changes on drought depends on the precise regional changes in rainfall and on a better quantification of water loss processes, it is very likely that the contribution from greenhouse temperature increases will be to make each drought more stressful than it would otherwise have been.

Greenhouse climate change will generally be expressed through changes in the statistics of the preferred climate modes, but not by the extinction of those modes per se. The occurrence of a given mode or event such as a run of wet years doesn’t constitute evidence against greenhouse climate change. It is just an expression of a mode that is always present.

On the other hand, the spatial and temporal fingerprint of the century long changes in temperature is evidence of greenhouse forced climate change, and that in turn is changing the system in which the modes operate. We can expect changes in the statistics of wet runs (floods) and dry runs (droughts), superimposed on a warming baseline that tends to exacerbate both extremes of the hydrological cycle.

James Risbey receives funding from CSIRO and a range of government research funding agencies.

Time is running out to close the gender wage gap

2012-05-24T04:22:03Z

Equal pay was, and still is, one of the key demands of feminists. Basic to any idea of gender equity should be that paid work is fairly rewarded, whether it’s undertaken by a male or female.

In early Australian industrial relations, this wasn’t so: the 1908 legislation set the basic wage to cover a man’s financial responsibilities for a family – and women’s work was only worth two-thirds of men’s. This legal discrimination was removed by 1974, but 38 years later, we’ve barely moved past four-fifths, and sometimes the gap increases.

The latest facts sheet from the Commonwealth government’s Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) states:

In the quarter ended February 2012, the gender pay gap stood at 17.4 %*. The average weekly ordinary time earnings of females working full time were $1,186.90 per week, or $250.50 per week less than men, who earned an average weekly wage of $1,437.40 per week. The figures show that the gap has reduced 0.2 percentage points (pp) from the previous quarter and has not changed from a year ago (17.4 % in February 2011).

The gender pay gap rises and falls. In 1996, it was just under 16%; in 2004 it had dropped to 14.9%; and now it’s above 17% again. These figures are based on average ordinary time earnings, so they don’t reflect part-time workers or overtime. Similar comparisons of hourly rates show similar gender gaps.

Interestingly, the finance and health care sectors have the gender wage biggest gaps, of more than 30%. And the latter is one of the key job growth areas. Education and training has one of the smaller gaps (10%).

Women are now better educated than men; more of us are in the workforce and, in many cases, work full time. Yet even graduate salaries, pre-child rearing, show gender differences that mostly favour men.

So why is the gap so intransigent, despite policy commitments to equal pay?

The answers are complex and cumulative, but most are ascribable to some form of gender prejudice. Some of this is external and even institutionalised, some internalised. The basic reasons for the gaps can be summed up as:

Skill-related prejudices undervaluing activities seen as soft and more likely to be owned by women. This includes bed making, child care and human relationships.
Job and industry-based awards and rates of pay formally undervalue personal care and services. Think of nursing verses medicine; typing versus building.
Australia has a very gender differentiated workforce: men tend not to take on lower-level jobs in traditionally female areas and women tend to stay out of jobs involving “male” competencies. Compare finance versus health care; men as chief financial officers, women as human resources directors.
Gender prejudices abound. Men are expected to proclaim their ambition and desire for control; women are often punished for being pushy and ambitious, but ignored if they’re not.
Women expect, and are expected, to take time out for family but men aren’t. Both may be penalised for failures to breach or fulfil stereotypes.
Women are less likely to ask for higher pay or apply for promotions, so they tend to be better qualified but lower paid than their male peers.

Closing the gender gap

There are obvious difficulties in remedying such gender-based prejudices. But one option is an industry wide approach, which the Australian Services Union used to win its recent equal pay case. Rather than trying to compare a category of skills – librarian versus geologist, for instance – the ASU’s claim was based the comparative undervaluing of a range of jobs in a sector because that industry grouping was seen as feminised. Even men in the areas were badly paid.

This formal recognition of institutionalised discrimination opens up other comparisons, but not in a hurry: this case takes a slow nine years to reach parity.

Women are less likely than men to ask for pay rises or promotions. Flickr/htlcto

A comparison of gender gaps between the states and territories suggests the most likely “improvement” to equal pay could come from reducing male wages.

The ACT and Tasmania have differences as low as 12%. The ACT gap is presumably smaller because public service salaries tend to be more gender equitable; the Tasmanians are probably suffering from the loss of higher paid (male) jobs as tourism grows and forestry declines.

The wage disparity in Western Australia is high (at nearly 26%), reflecting high mining boom pay rates. The possible end of the mining boom and growth in low paid service industries would reduce the gaps considerably, but this would come with reduced some household incomes.

But there are strong arguments for active changes based on both efficiency and equity. Underpaid feminised occupations, such as aged and child cares, which are similar to the services covered in the ASU case, should be revalued because the current low pay is neither fair nor effective. As well as increasing turnover, it creates resentment and lowers productivity and quality of care.

As these jobs are expanding, and are often publicly subsidised, we need to set the Productivity Commission up to re-value skills and reduce or eliminate gender based prejudices.

Taking on discrimination

The big issue remains how to reduce gender-based workplace prejudices. Legal shifts, we have seen, can only do some of the heavy lifting. Sex discrimination is illegal but it survives in workplace cultures. Women, and the men they work with, will have to push changes to gendered assumptions about modes of working and skills.

We need to recognise and name the different perceptions of skills and behaviours that limit women’s options. They are often punished for being pushy but are ignored if they are not, as Mara Olekalns discussed recently on The Conversation.

Internalising these views may be logical to avoid being punished for atypical behaviours, but it results in women missing out on higher pay and jobs. From a productivity view, it also means the community misses out on the most effective use of their skills.

Eva Cox does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Why petrol bowsers deserve the same treatment as cigarette packs

2012-05-24T04:20:37Z

Every time smokers pull a cigarette pack out of their pocket, they’re reminded of the harms their habit is likely to cause. In much the same way, Australian petrol stations should display health warnings next to every pump. Not to warn of the immediate dangers of fires, but of the later dangers of pollution.

Petrol stations currently have large-lettered warnings on the dangers of refuelling while smoking or using a mobile phone. But there’s no evidence that mobile phones start petrol station fires. There is, however, a wealth of scientific evidence on the negative health effects of traffic pollution, ranging from an impaired sense of smell to death.

Warning: traffic pollution is toxic

Petrol and diesel exhaust fumes contain multiple toxins, the most harmful of which are carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.

Carbon monoxide enters the blood via the lungs and impairs oxygen supply causing suffocation at high doses. At low doses, it causes fatigue and headaches, and can impair the circulatory system, in which case you’re likely to wind up in hospital.

Nitrogen dioxide inflames the lining of the lungs leading to wheezing and coughing. Both short- and long-term exposure have been associated with hospitalisation and death.

Particulate matter is a broad term incorporating anything from coarse dust particles to microscopic specks of heavy metals. The particles in traffic pollution have been associated with impaired cognitive function and preterm birth.

Just because Australia's pollution rates are lower than other cities', doesn't mean we should ignore the issue. Irargerich

Cigarette-style warnings

Tobacco smoke and traffic pollution produce similar toxins (carbon monoxide and fine particles), have a similar route of exposure, and cause similar health problems, including increased risk of premature birth and low birth-weight babies.

Cigarette packet warnings have raised the public’s knowledge of the health risks of smoking. In much the same way, petrol station warnings have the potential to increase the public’s awareness of traffic pollution and prompt a positive change in behaviour.

The warnings would be simple statements such as those used on cigarette packets. They could warn of specific health issues: “Warning: traffic pollution triggers heart attacks”, or about vulnerable groups: “Warning: traffic pollution harms unborn babies” or “Warning: keep children away from traffic pollution”.

Only a small change in behaviour is needed to make the warnings worthwhile. Printing and sending eight stickers to each of the 8,000 petrol stations in Australia would cost around A$15,000. Given that health economists value a year of life at around A$40,000, if this initiative prevented even one of the estimated 1,400 deaths due per year to traffic pollution, the warnings would easily be cost-effective.

Cleaner air

Traffic pollution is not seen as a big issue in Australia, partly because it can’t be seen. One commonly used argument to dismiss its effect is to compare pollution levels in our cities with levels in London or Beijing, and declare that, by comparison, we don’t have a problem. But this same flawed argument is often used by “social smokers”: rationalising their own smoking by comparing themselves to 40-a-day smokers.

ShovellingSon

A warning would act as a persistent reminder to car drivers of their individual contribution to air quality, and of the health effects of what they are about to burn. It may nudge people to drive less, or even to buy a hybrid or electric car.

School pick-ups, where rows of children wait next to idling engines, seem perversely designed to expose a highly vulnerable group to as much traffic pollution as possible. If parents were more aware of the health effects of their idling engines they would be more likely to turn them off, or even switch to an active transport pick-up.

How would it work?

The ideal scenario would be for petrol stations to voluntarily post warning signs. Although this may seem unlikely, petrol companies have a duty to inform their customers of their products’ health effects, and potentially open themselves to legal action by ignoring the issue.

The warnings would hit the profit margins of petrol companies if there was a reduced demand for petrol and diesel. But I expect this would be favoured over pricier options, such as increasing the costs of petrol to cover the health burden of premature births, asthma attacks and hospitalisations. Avoiding these health-care costs is a smarter option.

Public health organisations should pursue this legislation at state and federal levels, but it’s likely to be a slow process. The health effects of leaded petrol were well known in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t until 2002 that leaded petrol was finally phased out in Australia. Let’s hope that this simple reform happens faster.

Should petrol stations display cigarette-style warnings on the health harms of pollution? Share your thoughts below.

Adrian Barnett does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Out of sight, but still in mind: the mysteries of peripheral vision

2012-05-24T03:16:15Z

As you read this article your eyes will move so the words fall on the central part of your vision. This region is called the fovea and it has excellent resolution when compared to your peripheral vision.

Vision in the periphery is much better at detecting moving objects and subtle differences in luminance. These factors can be beneficial if a rock is hurtling in your direction, say, or if you’re playing football.

So why does the fovea have a higher resolving power than our peripheral vision? Well, it’s all about the number of neurons – cells in the brain that process and transmit information through electrical and chemical signalling. There are many more neurons in the visual part of the brain dedicated to processing each visual degree of space at the centre of our vision, compared to periphery.

Our primary visual cortex – the part of the brain that receives visual information from the eyes – has a “map” of space, where adjoining neurons represent adjacent regions of space (this is known as a “retinotopic map” – see image below). This map has greater representation at the centre of our vision compared with the periphery.

In 2008, my colleagues and I published research in Nature Neuroscience based on tests we’d done with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a form of brain imaging.

When doing a difficult discrimination task in the periphery (“Are these two objects the same or different?”) we found information about these objects is also present at the foveal region of primary visual cortex.

That is, information about objects in the periphery is being sent to the part of the brain responsible for processing the centre of your vision.

This was a very surprising finding, as the retinotopic mapping of the visual cortex means this region should only receive input from the fovea or central vision.

Our finding also suggested that, in addition to direct input from the world, our foveal cortex also receives information from the periphery via other visual neurons (“feedback”).

Neuroimaging studies have the notorious disadvantage of being correlational – that is, a causal relationship cannot be established. So we needed to look to another technique to support our findings.

After lengthy discussions with a colleague at Cardiff University, Dr Chris Chambers, and thanks to the financial support of the Cardiff University International Collaboration Fund, I visited “sunny” Cardiff in 2008 to begin a three-year Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) study.

Retinotopic mapping shows the correlation between regions of our vision and the parts of the brain responsible. PLoS ONE

TMS uses a very strong magnet to induce an electrical current in a small region of the cortex. When a pulse is given from the TMS, it transiently disrupts the brain under the magnet. This allows us to look at whether an area of the brain is critical in a particular task.

When we disrupted the foveal visual cortex early – 100 milliseconds (ms) – after the peripheral objects appeared on a black computer screen, people’s ability to compare them was unaffected. This is what we’d expect if the fovea responds only to incoming information from central vision.

But if we gave the TMS later, specifically 350-400ms after the stimuli appeared, then TMS affected performance. A timecourse of less than half a second might sound like a rapid pace, but for the brain, this is very slow – akin to a stroll in the park rather than a sprint.

The sprint happens for the “feedforward” visual processing (i.e. the first sweep of information that travels through the brain), which is completed by about 100ms. So this timecourse for the involvement of foveal cortex in discriminating peripheral objects pointed clearly to a feedback mechanism. That is, information about objects in the periphery being fed back to the portion of the visual cortex that processes central vision.

How might such a feedback mechanism work?

One take on it is that information from higher regions of the brain (areas involved in cognitive or semantic processes) feeds back a sort-of first guess or estimate of what might be out there in the periphery. But all previous theories of feedback suggest the information should go back to the same region of the cortex as the original input – not to the foveal cortex.

A second theory invokes the idea of a visual scratch-pad or high resolution buffer at the foveal region of visual cortex. The many neurons dedicated to processing visual information at the foveal region could provide extra power to process the information – a sort of supercomputer for vision.

The third major theory comes from the area of “saccadic updating”. Quite simply, a saccade is a movement of the eyes (or other body part) to a new location. When our eyes saccade, our visual system basically shuts down so the image we see doesn’t look blurred.

During this period (the length of which is still unknown) the brain updates the visual information to reflect the new scene that will fall on our eyes.

Our data may be evidence that even before you move your eyes, information in the periphery is transferred to the foveal region of the visual cortex in anticipation. When your eyes land on the new scene, a “guess” about what you’re going to see is already there.

It’s not yet clear which of these theories is correct. What is clear is that the foveal region of the primary visual cortex is involved in much more than simply processing what we are currently looking at. Indeed, it may support a whole other facet of our conscious vision.

Mark Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Formal recognition of PMDD will lift stigma for women

2012-05-23T23:31:13Z

A decision to recognise premenstrual dysphoric disorder as a genuine psychiatric condition will finally provide “validation for this awful and poorly understood” syndrome and alleviate the stigma attached to it, an Australian authority on the subject said.

The disorder is included among a range of controversial proposals by The American Psychiatric Association panel in charge of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), sometimes referred to as “the therapist’s Bible”.

The diagnosis has never been formalised – some psychiatrists consider it too vague and argue that it will increase the use of drugs in adolescents for what is normal behaviour.

But the near-final draft of DSM-5 has officially recognised the condition as a mood disorder for the first time.

To qualify for the diagnosis, a woman must show five of 11 potential symptoms in the week before menses. They include severe mood swings, irritability and increased interpersonal conflicts, depression, lethargy, and anxiety. The symptoms should cause “clinically significant distress or interferences with work, school, usual social activities or relationships with others”, the draft says.

Jayashri Kulkarni, director of the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, said the diagnosis was a “good thing because it provides a validation of this awful and poorly understood condition. I have been asking my patients who have the condition and their universal response is that they are in favour.

“I see this as a positive for the area of women’s mental health – that is, let’s recognise that women have special mental health needs, and let’s have better diagnoses leading to better treatments. A ‘gender- blind’ approach is too prevalent in psychiatry and does not allow high quality, tailored treatment approaches for women. This DSM-5 diagnostic category helps to carve out special areas of need for women.”

The diagnosis would lead to new treatments and would reduce the stigma attached to the disorder, Professor Kulkarni said. Women who suffered from the symptoms could legitimately seek treatment without being branded “whingers”.

“Having a separate diagnosis like this might also decrease the use of antidepressants for this group, which in fact can make the condition worse in some cases,” she said. “It also helps that this diagnosis has an aetiology in its title, so a hormone treatment path is obvious.

“The stigma is if we think that all women (or a majority) have this condition and are dysfunctional for one week out of every four – but I think we have moved beyond the pejorative comments about PMD.”

The latest edition of the DSM will go to the printers in December for release early next year. Many of the changes have been the subject of controversy in recent months. In a rare step, the panel overseeing the revision process dumped two proposed diagnoses – “attenuated psychosis syndrome", for people at risk of developing psychosis, and “mixed anxiety depressive disorder”, for people with a mixed state of both illnesses – amid claims that the updated manual would continue the relentless push to pathologise normal behaviour.

So far more than 13,500 people have signed an online petition against the changes. The petition says that the proposal to lower “diagnostic thresholds is scientifically premature and holds numerous risks. Diagnostic sensitivity is particularly important given the established limitations and side-effects of popular antipsychotic medications. Increasing the number of people who qualify for a diagnosis may lead to excessive medicalisation and stigmatisation of transitive, even normative distress.”

Fair trade: Indonesians want justice for jailed teens if Schapelle Corby goes free

2012-05-23T20:40:51Z

Schapelle Corby’s fate may be the centre of public attention in Australia, but not here in Indonesia where I currently live and work. The hot topic here for the past few days has been whether or not Lady Gaga will be permitted to perform at a concert in Jakarta next month.

Corby’s case simply does not have the resonance in Indonesia that it does in Australia. I suspect few Indonesians believe she is innocent; she is commonly referred to in the media as the “Marijuana Queen”.

The current interest in the case – to the extent that there has been one – is on suggestions that a deal had been done with the Australian government, linking Corby’s remission with the freeing of Indonesians currently held in Australian jails.

The Minister for Justice and Human Rights, Amir Syamsuddin, is quoted as saying he hoped Australia would reciprocate Indonesia’s actions in the Corby case, particularly in terms of Indonesian children in Australian prisons. “The Australian government has not promised anything”, he said, “but we hope there will be a positive response from the Australian government.”

Australian government denials of any such deal, made by both Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Attorney General Nicola Roxon, have also been reported, though to what extent they are believed is anyone’s guess.

Whether this presidential decision means anything for other Australians in Indonesian jails on drugs charges is unclear. If there is little public sympathy evident for Corby, there is virtually none for those convicted of more serious drug offences.

Decisions on remissions or pardons in such cases are essentially political ones. And while public opinion is clearly not the final arbiter, it is an important contributing factor.

Indonesia holds national presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) cannot himself stand for another term as president, having reached the constitutional limit of two terms. But he will want to try to ensure his successor will be someone sympathetic to his own aims and interests.

He will also want to try to boost the parliamentary representation of his party, Partai Demokrat).

But this will be a tough task. All the current indications are that both Yudhoyono personally and Partai Demokrat in general are in trouble with the electorate. Socially and probably politically, the electorate is becoming more conservative, led in particular by groups presenting themselves as defending traditional Islamic values against the allegedly “liberal” values promoted by SBY and his government.

In the past, Yudhoyono has shown no inclination to take on such groups, even on issues of direct significance to Indonesians, such as violence against religious minorities. He is hardly likely to take the political risk of doing so on an issue where the beneficiaries are foreigners – and drug traffickers at that.

Already he has been criticised for even considering Corby’s clemency appeal.

A senior member of parliament from the Islamist Prosperity and Justice Party (PKS), Nasir Djamil, said last month – when the possibility of a remission was being discussed – that he hoped the government would not grant a remission. Such an action, he said, would do nothing dissuade “other Australians who wanted to distribute narcotics in Indonesia”.

Further, as Hikmahanto Juwana from the University of Indonesia observed today, the president cannot afford to be seen to be weak in the eyes of the Indonesian public, given it is well-known that Australia has been exerting pressure on Jakarta on the Corby issue for quite some time.

So politically, SBY’s hands may well be tied.

But there is another important issue underlying this case, which affects the relationship between Australia and Indonesia: human rights.

In Indonesia, Australia’s reputation on human rights issues is a decidedly mixed one.

We are seen to protest loudly when our citizens are jailed in Indonesia, following due Indonesian legal process.

However as most Indonesians now know, for years Indonesian children were held in adult prisons in Australia, in clear violation of Australian law as well as Australia’s international obligations.

Were it not for the agitation of a few Australians, notably Ross Taylor and Colin Singer from Perth, these children would probably still be in jail, their causes unheard. Only after the issue began attracting media attention did the government act – and then only grudgingly.

This is in stark contrast to the government’s reactions to the holding of an Australian boy in Bali last year on a charge of possession of marijuana: both the then Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister involved themselves personally – and very publicly – in the case.

We urge the commutation of death sentences on Australians convicted of drug smuggling in Indonesia. But we call for the execution of those convicted of terrorism offences.

We cannot have it both ways. If we are not consistent in our application of human rights principles in Australia, we can hardly criticise Indonesia if it is not consistent either.

Colin Brown does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Latest animal export exposé reminds us to steer clear of factory farming

2012-05-23T20:40:24Z

It has once again been left to an advocacy group, Animals Australia, to highlight the cruel practices involved in cattle slaughter in Indonesia. Under new rules put in place by the Federal Department of Agriculture following last year’s exposé, exporters must employ auditors to monitor the slaughter. However, recently released footage shows that some of these auditors either did not detect the clear mistreatment of cattle or they failed to act.

Now that the issues have been highlighted by the advocacy group, the department has recommended disciplinary action for the two exporting companies involved. This has prompted claims by the live exporters that the system is working.

It is correct that the new system has allowed the suppliers to be identified and disciplined once the abuse was revealed, which was not possible before the new regulations. However, the failure to detect problems is concerning. It brings into question whether auditors paid for by exporters can be impartial.

My research group has recently identified that scientists reporting of animal welfare research is influenced by the funding of the research (see page 25). So if scientists, why not auditors?

This recent episode demonstrates that the effectiveness of the auditors in ensuring the welfare of the animals depends not only on their willingness to report incidents, but also on the standards they are given to implement. The World Health Organisation standards do not mandate some practices – such as stunning – that are essential for good welfare, so it is unlikely that they will satisfy Australian consumers.

The welfare of live export animals can be inadequate at many different stages in the export process, not only at slaughter. Mustering cattle, trucking them long distances, loading them onto a ship, rough sea journeys, high temperatures and accumulation of ammonia on ship are just some of the hazardous components of the journey.

Export exposes animals to several different stresses, and they may accumulate. AAP

The animal’s resistance to stress can become weakened after a long period of transport, and the new and strange experiences that they have. However, it is the cumulative effect of multiple stresses that is often forgotten. Evaluated individually each one may be acceptable, but together they may represent hardship that the cattle are unable to bear.

Australian meat consumers generally have a good impression of cattle production systems here. The freedom to roam and a natural system of feeding on pasture are just two of the advantages that are important for welfare. Intensifying the system by feedlotting and prolonged transport to slaughter could damage that image. Live export cattle are shipped in large numbers in unnatural conditions, ending up in feedlots or an abattoir, all far from the community perspective of cattle happily grazing in paddocks.

Over the nine thousand years that we have managed cattle, they have become docile animals. They have developed a willingness to accept a range of conditions, even if they are not conducive to good welfare.

Our willingness to accept poor welfare standards is largely driven by how much we can afford to spend on our animals. When one of the richest countries in the world, Australia, exports animals alive to one of the poorest, Indonesia, it is likely that the change in standards will cause issues with the Australian community. We must safeguard the natural image that Australians have of cattle production in this country, because if it becomes tarnished with the factory farming brush consumers will turn away from the products.

Intensification of cattle farming systems is progressing rapidly overseas. Having just returned from looking at new housing systems for cattle in Estonia, it is clear that the globally increasing demand for milk and beef is encouraging an unprecedented growth in the scale of individual enterprises that is often at the expense of the animal’s welfare.

Maintaining the integrity of Australian cattle farming is important for producers too - consumers demand good conditions. AAP

Eastern European countries became accustomed to industrial scale farms during the Communist era. Now new dairies are being established, each with several thousand cows. There is no support for small farming systems, like those common in Western Europe. Cows are never allowed onto pasture and are loose housed in barns, where they used to be tethered. They are milked by robots and live on wet concrete covered in excreta. This, together with being offered only small concrete cubicles with little bedding to lie down in, increases lameness and mastitis, which are two of the biggest causes of wastage of dairy cows.

Diets that promote high milk yields take their toll all too quickly. On average cows only last 2.5 years in the milking herd, which together with the two year rearing period offers cows a pitifully short lifespan compared with their natural lifespan of 20-25 years.

Some Western European countries are attempting to control the intensification of cattle production systems, knowing that they have consumer support. In Sweden and Finland cows have to be out at pasture during summer. If cows are given a choice, farmers find that in all but the most inclement of weather they opt to spend their time outside.

The treatment of cattle solely as a means to make money, whether by exporting them to Indonesia or keeping them in milk producing factories, ignores the fact that they are sentient beings. They are capable of all of the major emotions that we experience: fear, anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, love, hatred. The caring relationship of the cattle producer for the animals in his herd can be diminished by intensive systems, because there is little contact with the animals.

Industrialisation of cattle production systems to generate wealth is likely to ultimately lead to their failure. Competition from alternatives has never been stronger, and the ethical and environmental implications of industrialisation of cattle production are considerable. Tasmania, and many other states and countries worldwide, have realised that consumers will not support industrial scale agriculture that does not afford high welfare to animals, as they outlaw the battery farming of chickens and keeping of sows in stalls. Surely we should treat cattle with the dignity that they deserve, which is more than just being a means of making money?

Clive Phillips sits on the Live Exports Standards Accreditation Group, a federal government subsidiary. Since 2000 he has received funding from: University Federation for Animal Welfare, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Meat and Livestock Australia Livecorp, the Australian Veterinary Association, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Wombat Recovery Programme, the RSPCA, ARC Linkage, Morris Animal Foundation. He has honorary positions with Voiceless (Scientific Council), Vets Against Live Export (advisory), Animal Welfare Advisory Council (Qld), Live Export Standards Advisory Group.

Girls on film: could new regulations stop the sexualisation of children?

2012-05-23T20:39:49Z

Soft porn music videos on television. Girls mini-mags featuring fashion and celebrity gossip at the supermarket checkout. Porn at eye-level in the petrol station. Billboards on the trips in between.

As a parent in 2012, how was your weekend? If you’re fed up and you’d like to see a healthy media environment for children as a higher political priority, you’re not alone.

In 2008, a Senate Inquiry into the sexualisation of children in contemporary media concluded that “preventing the premature sexualisation of children is a significant cultural challenge”. It went on to say that the “onus is on broadcasters, publishers, advertisers, retailers and manufacturers to take account of these community concerns.”

But have those industries profiting from media that contribute to sexualisation changed anything in the past four years? Not enough to make a difference for the average parent and child, that’s for sure – so politicians taking a stronger stand is now well overdue.

More decisive action by government has been practically difficult so far, because media regulation has been scattered over a range of different bodies originally created for distinct media industries (print, television, radio). This multiplied the level of both political and administrative effort needed to implement regulatory changes putting the brakes on industry-led sexualisation.

This practical barrier may be starting to shift, however, because historically patchwork media regulation doesn’t reflect the reality of the digital era. Now, the same media content can be accessed via a range of different technologies (print, television and radio are at least partially available via any internet-enabled device).

This merging of previously distinct media industries is known as “convergence”, and regulating it appropriately is the topic of the recently released Convergence Review.

The Convergence Review recommended a new content-across-platforms regulator, which, in principle, would enable consistent regulation of media content across different technological platforms; that is, regardless of the device used to access the content. If this recommendation were to be implemented, the task of acting to reduce sexualising media content would become significantly simpler for government.

Although the underlying and major issue of industry opposition to change would remain, the place where government could begin to confront it would be centralised. So far, so good. But to what degree does the Review specifically address sexualisation?

In media regulation, classification is normally used to restrict access to harmful or offensive material. The G, PG, M, MA, and AV ratings for television are examples of classifications, and are used in conjunction with time periods during television programming in order to restrict children’s access to material unsuitable for them.

On matters relating to classification, the Convergence Review largely defers to a report released earlier this year by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC). The focus of the ALRC report is on restricting children’s access to sexually explicit material.

Important as this is, it leaves an awful lot out. In terms of the definitions used by regulators, much material that concerns both parents and experts in child health and development is not “sexually explicit” but “sexually suggestive” (four examples were given at the start of this article).

Musicians such as Lady Gaga have been criticised for their overt sexuality as role models for children Flickr/Alfred Hermida

As any parent knows, children face a tsunami of heavily sexually suggestive media content in the course of their normal interactions within the broader community.

Limiting children’s access to now widespread “pornified” media will require serious political will. Fortunately, there’s strong and consistently expressed community concern about the impacts of sexualisation on children.

Experts are also concerned about its contribution to body and self-image issues, now common in primary school children. Such issues are associated with low self-esteem and self-worth, and risk developing further into depression, anxiety and disordered eating behaviours.

Barely a month ago, the Australian Medical Association – concerned at the risks sexualisation poses for child health – called for a new inquiry into the issue.

It is as yet unclear to what degree the Convergence Review will be implemented. But if it is, new, stricter standards to support the rights of children to a healthy media environment should be included in a streamlined content regulation system stretching across all media modes.

The battle to ensure that such standards are enforced would remain. But creating a media regulation framework that acknowledges the rights of children to participate in general community life without risks to their health would be a good start.

Emma Rush does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Enough rope: Why allowing room to move could liberate the Fair Work Act

2012-05-23T20:39:31Z

“The object of [the Fair Work] Act is to provide a balanced framework for cooperative and productive workplace relations that promotes national economic prosperity and social inclusion for all Australians …” Fair Work Act, 2009

Many rail against the strictures of the laws governing the workplace. But what would they do if the Fair Work Act authorised them to craft their own framework, subject to but one key condition: that they must negotiate and agree that outcome with the rest of their workplace stakeholders? Could they rise to the challenge?

There is no general consensus in Australian society on what our model of workplace relations should be. Anyone who doubts this need simply look at the divergent views of employers, unions and others that have been posted recently on the Fair Work Act Review Panel website.

Perhaps the most insistent claim of employers is that the law should allow them to relate to their employees as they see fit and with minimal interference from trade unions. Unions generally want the law to gift them more scope and influence across workplaces.

The key parties do, though, seem to agree on one thing: their interests are substantially at odds with one another. And so they argue the rightness of their competing positions and appeal to the political process to nudge or shove the legislative pendulum in their favoured direction. But this arm wrestle is only about the resting point of a pendulum that describes an inferior arc.

Defying the parties’ analysis, the Fair Work Act asserts that its object is to promote “cooperative and productive workplace relations” – very similar language to its forerunner, Work Choices. However, our current Act, again like its immediate predecessor, has 21st century objects serviced by 20th century machinery.

It does very little to provide structures, processes and remedies to foster collaborative and fruitful workplace engagements. It is designed and operates to set basic terms and conditions of employment and then to institutionalise conflict. Both worthy and necessary goals, but a far cry from the recipe for great workplaces.

The high profile conflict between Qantas management and its unions have epitomised the entrenched positions taken in the workplace.

The features of the great workplace are well-known: mutual trust and respect, good communications, fairness, the right skills, a strong business plan, and some more. In the Australian and Anglosphere context, the explanation for the failure to go for greatness can be attributed in large measure to the fact that the workplace parties are the captives of their antagonistic histories.

That ingrained antipathy looks increasingly small-minded with each passing decade. Given the character of contemporary Australia, perhaps the most scathing thing that can be said about the state of much of current industrial relations is that it is unnecessary. Australian society, while not without its serious flaws, is broadly consensual, congenial, accommodating and successful.

If its workplace relations reflected the broader societal picture, it would be more Nordic than Anglo-Saxon – better still, Australian – in character. Enabling labour legislation that can help steer the workplace parties in a more constructive direction is what is needed.

It is unlikely that that the current statutory review process will trigger sweeping changes favouring one or other of the major social players. There is, however, an option for reform – a threat-free invitation brimming with possibilities – that should excite everything but consternation.

Open-minded workplace parties should be given this empowering offer: assume mutual responsibility for developing productive workplaces and the statute will support you. An astutely revised Fair Work Act should provide a pliable alternative to its default scheme.

Willing workplace parties should be given the latitude to negotiate comprehensive, customised frameworks for the regulation of their relationships. They would need to demonstrate that their creations promoted the achievement of a cooperative and productive workplace as envisaged by the object of the Act.

A necessary starting point is that employers not only acknowledge but comprehend that employees’ interests are promoted by association, matched by an understanding on the part of employees and their representatives that an abiding commitment to improving organisational performance must be part of the bargain.

Unions have traditionally represented employees, but for non-unionised workplaces a formula is needed for elected representatives whose standing is sourced in a charter that ensures their independence and viability. Thereafter, the scope for bespoke arrangements should be extensive.

The parties should be able to agree to engage with one another on all matters of mutual interest between them, and the forms of engagement should range beyond bargaining to consultation and other varieties of dialogue.

They should commit to capacity building in respect of business education and continuous process improvement and, if indicated, to training in appropriate negotiation, consultation, problem-solving, dispute prevention and dispute resolution skills.

They should be able to draw on independent resources (FWA with an expanded brief or some other agreed and independent agency). They would need to decide how best to conciliate and finally resolve any disputes of right or interest that may arise between them. And their agreed deals should be legally enforceable.

Those open to exploring, developing and settling such flexible alternatives to the otherwise prescribed formula should be assisted with access to federal funding and other capacity-building resources.

Any approved framework could dispense with and indeed displace all the statutory provisions dealing with bargaining representatives, bargaining procedures, good faith bargaining requirements, bargaining scope provisions, individual flexibility agreements, job security provisions, consultation requirements, the better-off-overall test, formal agreement approval requirements and industrial action regulations, amongst others.

Basic statutory rights such as the National Employment Standards would need to be respected. The provisions of modern awards, though, could be substituted.

Self-evidently, employers and employee representatives would only agree to supplant the default system if they shared the belief that their jointly negotiated alternatives served their combined interests better. And they should do better, because the dated design features of the current statute do not of themselves assist with the making of great contemporary workplaces.

BHP chairman Jac Nasser has suggested Australia's Fair Work Act is an obstacle to running a productive workplace.

Any provisionally agreed framework for the promotion of cooperative and productive workplaces that displaced the default provisions on bargaining, consultation, industrial action and dispute resolution provided for by the statute would need to be submitted to Fair Work Australia for examination and approval.

Before endorsing any such arrangements, FWA would need to be satisfied that they met the prime objects of the statute, were not for any reason contrary to the public interest and that a convincing majority of the affected employees supported them.

It is suggested, though, that Fair Work Australia should show a proper margin of appreciation to the bargaining and consultation outcomes of endorsed engagement frameworks. Explicit provision for that margin would serve as a further incentive for the workplace parties to opt for (more) autonomous and tailored bargaining and consultation arrangements.

No one would be compelled to enter into any such arrangements; they could only be the product of coercion-free, voluntary negotiations. They would be available only to those parties who showed sufficient imagination, collaboration and resolve to get them up.

Were such arrangements to be provided for, a telling boost would be given to prescient parties to cut through all the regulatory requirements of the statute and to arrive at simplified, expeditious and functional engagement frameworks that meet both their particular needs and the needs of a get-ahead 21st century society and economy.

Nor would the negotiated arrangements be uniform or static. It is reasonable to assume that workplace parties operating in different sectors would fashion quite different frameworks to meet their particular needs and circumstances. And that these solutions would evolve continuously, adapting to the dynamics of the domestic and global economy.

The international and local research and experience suggest very strongly that parties who took up the cooperative proposition would gain a significant competitive advantage over those whose apparently implacable differences obliged them to soldier on under the ancient regime. Amongst other things, they could escape many of the constraints of our conflict-premised legislation, with its cramped conversations and prescribed bargaining cycles, opting instead for alternatives such as continuous consultation.

Today only a minority of Australian workplace parties, acting in combination, would have the imagination and then the dexterity to actually negotiate their own futures. Most are still caught up in the zone of industrial indignation and finger-pointing. There is something quite fitting, though, about the fortunes of the quarrelling mass being tied to the vagaries of the political pendulum.

If Australia is serious about innovation, then the law should enable the social parties to innovate. There can be little policy hazard in providing legislative space for cooperative pioneers. Consent is their platform, and they need venture only so far and as fast as their combined intent takes them. And should their ingenuity overshoot the public interest, the independent umpire can rein them in.

Could our legislators contemplate moving from brown to green to rainbow fields?

The author provides services in negotiating training and the facilitation of bargaining – activities commented on in this article.

Shift to shore: new model shows off extinct tetrapod's land moves

2012-05-23T20:39:13Z

Palaeontology has gone high-tech: no more wax and plaster-cast models. Instead, 3D data from computed tomography (CT) scans is overturning long-held views of how the earliest land animals moved.

Research published today in Nature reveals how a famous extinct animal, the early four-legged vertebrate (tetrapod) called Ichthyostega, moved on land 360m years ago.

One major problem in putting together fossil skeletons is actually getting the fossil out of the rock, but now palaeontologists don’t have to! Instead, the CT scans allow the virtual preparation of the fossil so delicate bones can be fully isolated and then fitted together so the anatomy can be better understood.

It was this process that has allowed scientists (Stephanie E. Pierce and Professor John R. Hutchinson from the UK’s Royal Veterinary College and Professor Jennifer A. Clack from the University of Cambridge) to overturn long held assumptions on how one of the earliest tetrapods moved from the water on to land.

Ichthyostega was first discovered in East Greenland in 1932 and is mostly figured as the first four-legged fish. But this new work shows that Ichthyostega could not walk using all four limbs because the limbs were not able to rotate in a manner that would allow terrestrial locomotion.

Instead Ichthyostega used the front limbs to haul itself along the surface.

A 3D skeletal reconstruction of Ichthyostega. Stephanie Pierce

The next step is to achieve what many palaeontologists dream of – to reconstruct the soft anatomy. This study shows how the latest imaging technology combined with a strong knowledge in comparative anatomy can enhance our understanding of how these ancient animals moved.

Importantly, the new work provides a clearer picture of how our early ancestors made it out of the aquatic environment and on to land.

Kate Trinajstic does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Why has ASIC's turn on the global stage been ignored?

2012-05-23T20:38:47Z

The election of Australia’s top corporate regulator Greg Medcraft to the chairmanship of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions has received nowhere near the prominence it deserves.

Aside from a short report in the Australian Financial Review (‘Medcraft aims high with IOSCO,’ 18 May 2012), the pivotal role now accorded to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in framing the global market conduct agenda has not been deemed worthy of mainstream media or political comment.

In a remarkable slight, neither the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, nor the normally assured Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Bill Shorten, commented publicly on the honour. The oversight, while perhaps rendered understandable by the hothouse environment of managing a hung parliament, is even more remarkable given the fact that a piecemeal increase in ASIC’s operating budget was trumpeted just weeks earlier as a vote of confidence in its standing as a world-class regulator. It is symptomatic of the myopic nature of policy discourse in contemporary Australia that the Opposition did not even notice such a glaring oversight.

This myopia is a tactical and strategic error for both the political establishment and the financial services industry, which is coming to terms with a very changed global operating environment.

It is a tactical mistake given that ASIC is clearly well-regarded internationally. It is a strategic mistake given that Australia has now been given a unique opportunity to shape global discourse. Mr Medcraft and by extension ASIC have just become much more powerful actors on the domestic as well as the international stage. In effect, it is taking this position without overt political guidance at a time when Australia could have set an integrated agenda.

As a result, it is setting out and driving an agenda without explicit political oversight, a danger in the medium term for both the regulator and the regulatory regime. For a regulator without the explicit mandate to set rules this is an exceptionally dangerous position, notwithstanding the commitment of Mr Medcraft to inculcate higher standards of accountability.

For a former investment banker, with no prior experience in regulatory design or oversight before becoming an ASIC commissioner in 2009, his rise has been meteoric. The IOSCO election is a personal and professional validation of the much more pro-active approach to regulatory purpose taken by ASIC since his elevation to chair in 2011. This is now as much a threat as an opportunity.

The unresolved question is what Mr Medcraft (and Australia) intends to do with this enhanced framing power?

He will take over the chairmanship of IOSCO in March of next year at a global meeting of regulators here in Sydney. His stated ambition is for the organisation to become “the key global reference body for securities regulation,” a rapidly expanding domain informed by what he sees are conflating dynamics: “the continuing globalisation of financial markets and products; and the migration of savings from the banking regulatory perimeter to the securities perimeter and with it the increased significance of securities regulation.”

The emphasis on the migration of capital calls into question what should be the appropriate domains of the market conduct regulator and its prudential counterpart. Should the market regulator rely solely on the efficacy of disclosure or intervene much earlier in the product design process? If so, should the search for greater accountability be limited to those directly involved in product manufacture and distribution or expand to the professions, which provide the legal and accounting advice on which the market relies?

ASIC has taken an exceptionally expansive stance in relation to these questions to date. It has signalled repeatedly (and without political dissension) that the professions play a critical gatekeeping role in protecting the integrity of the market. It has used the Future of Financial Advice program as a Trojan Horse to redefine the parameters of responsibility across the value chain.

Behind the velvet glove of advancing co-regulatory solutions, lies the possible application of the strengthened misleading deceptive and unconscionable conduct provision of the ASIC Act. The IOSCO position adds significantly to the leveraging capacity of ASIC’s approach to regulatory design and purpose at both national and international levels. Its definition of what constitutes a gatekeeper and specific differentiated responsibilities remains, however, under theorised in conceptual terms and uncertain in practical implementation (as highlighted in The Oxford Project debate on these pages).

Whether they like it or not the professions have just been conscripted to engage in a regulatory experiment with significant domestic and global application. It is in our national interest that such a pivotal appointment is given the attention it deserves. Mr Medcraft, the recipient of such an honour on behalf of the Australian people deserves no less. So do we.

Justin writes a column for The Conversation, The ethical deal and is director of the UNSW Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation portal, where this story also appears.

Justin O'Brien receives funding from the Australian Research Council for three grants related to corporate governance, financial regulation and accountable governance. This opinion is simultaneously published on an online portal that maps and tracks regulatory reform in the aftermath of the GFC - www.clmr.unsw.edu.au

Long waits for refugee status lead to new mental health syndrome

2012-05-23T05:02:09Z

There’s a common misconception within the Australian community that asylum seekers arrive by boat. In fact, most asylum seekers arrive here by aeroplane with valid travel documents and reside in the community. This invisible population has largely been ignored by the media and politicians, and is marginalised from social and health services.

It’s hard to know exactly how many asylum seekers currently live in the community because official sources are difficult to obtain. But we know from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship that 11,491 applications for asylum in Australia were lodged in 2010-11. And 6,316 of these were not from people arriving by boat.

This number doesn’t include people who arrived earlier but are still waiting for their application to be processed. Overall in the same period, 2,101 of these asylum seekers were granted protection visas, equating to a considerable number of asylum seekers still waiting for a determination of their refugee status.

Causes of mental ill health

Most asylum seekers living in the community are on bridging visas while their applications for protection are processed. Few have been in detention. Nevertheless, this group suffers significant social stressors such as poverty, unemployment, social dislocation, isolation from family and issues related to life in a new and strange community, such as language and cultural differences.

This is often on top of a history of experiencing and/or witnessing torture, persecution and severe trauma. As a consequence of all these factors, asylum seekers are extremely vulnerable to developing mental health problems.

Australia’s protracted refugee determination process is often difficult and distressing for asylum seekers. And we now have evidence to show this process contributes directly to post-traumatic stress disorder in those who have repeatedly had their claim for asylum rejected.

We’ve also found that because of the protracted refugee determination process, some asylum seekers develop a clinical syndrome which is distinct from other trauma-related mental disorders. We’ve labelled this disorder “protracted asylum seeker syndrome”.

Protracted asylum seeker syndrome

The characteristics of the syndrome share many features of current mental disorders such as major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and adjustment disorders. These include:

fluctuating mood,
poor concentration and attention,
irritability, and
recurrent intrusive thoughts about the refugee determination process and
overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness.

Image from community art workshop with asylum seekers. postscriptum

Some people may also develop dissociative and psychotic symptoms.

Other symptoms found in those with protracted asylum seeker syndrome aren’t usually associated with the disorders above. These include becoming obsessed with the asylum application and not being able to think about anything else outside of this process.

Accessing help

Despite the prevalence of mental health disorders and other social issues, services for asylum seekers in the community are limited and have, until recently, been delivered only by charitable, non-governmental and religious organisations such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne, Hotham Mission and the Red Cross.

Recent changes to bridging visa regulations have expanded access to work and study rights and Medicare, but there still remain significant resource and knowledge constraints on the services available to asylum seekers. As such, many asylum seekers with significant mental health issues are either not aware or are unable to access the services they require for treatment.

There are two mechanisms by which to address these mental health issues. The first is to change current policy and legislation for processing asylum seekers' protection claims. The process could be expedited if officials from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Refugee Review Tribunal were given the power to make determinations for asylum based on physical and mental health issues. These decisions are currently restricted to the minister.

Better mental health services

The second solution is to develop specialist mental health services for asylum seekers. Assessing and managing protracted asylum seeker syndrome requires specialist mental health services to provide a combination of psychotherapy and medications.

To ensure those in need can access such assistance, we need a dedicated asylum seeker mental health service. Such a service would bring together expert mental health clinicians and interpreters, using a limited out-reach and case management model of care.

It’s only with investment in tailored services that we’ll be able to appropriately treat the asylum seekers living in the community who suffer from severe mental health disorders. I hope Australia’s state and territory health ministers are listening.

Suresh Sundram is affiliated with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre where he does pro bono medical consultations.

Samantha Loi is affiliated with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre where she does pro bono medical consultations.

Droughts & flooding rains: what is due to climate change?

2012-05-23T04:21:28Z

While most people now understand that the enhanced greenhouse effect means a much warmer planet, communicating regional shifts in weather remains a significant challenge.

As with most complex science, nuance is everything. But how do you communicate complexity and nuance in a world increasingly geared to a 140-character limit? This is part two of a series looking at the relationship between climate change and rainfall. Part one is here.

I thought the drought was due to climate change?

The issue of recent rainfall trends, what caused them, and future rainfall projections has become very conflated in the public discourse.

Perhaps the first place to start to untangle this is to isolate the recent rainfall trends that are the most significant.

The most notable trends are the reduction in rainfall during the cooler months of the year across southern Australia; and increases in summer, monsoon rainfall across northern Australia.

These two changes have happened concurrently. Increases in tropical northern rainfall have more than offset winter decreases across southern regions, such that rainfall averaged over the whole continent is increasing. It has also been dry, on average, over Eastern Australia during the last few decades — particularly south-east Queensland and the southern Murray Darling Basin – the last two years of heavy rainfall notwithstanding.

The high, natural rainfall variability in Australia makes determining any rainfall trends a difficult job. In fact, the apparent trends in rainfall over most parts of the continent, including the recent heavier summer monsoon, are not statistically distinguishable from the background of highly variable, decade-to-decade and year-to-year rainfall changes.

However one important rainfall trend does stand out. The reduction in winter rainfall over southwest Western Australia is a clear trend in the observational data. Similarly, the loss of late autumn and early winter rainfall over the southeast of the continent is also notable, but less statistically significant than the reduction in the west.

And it is here that we can zero in on the changes that the scientists have been mostly concerned with, and have mostly been talking about.

Reduction in winter rainfall in southwest WA has been most notable. Phillip Capper

Changes to autumn and winter rainfall in the Mediterranean climate regions of Australia can have large impacts. Typically, these regions receive the largest chunk of their annual rainfall during this period. This is delivered by cold fronts and storms that sweep across the coast from the Southern Ocean from April through to November.

The massive temperate forests and open woodlands found in both the southwest and southeast corners of the Australian mainland are evidence that cool season rainfall in these regions has been historically high and relatively reliable, over a very long period of time. Over the last 200 years, the rainfall has also supported some of our most significant agricultural areas. The natural water supplies of Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne are also highly dependent on rainfall during autumn, winter and spring.

However something significant happened to rainfall in the southwest of Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. The observational data shows a sustained 10-20% drop in winter time rainfall, starting in the late 1960s. Two decades later, a similar sustained reduction in rainfall occurred during autumn and winter in the southeast. This represents a significant change in the seasonality of southern Australian rainfall. Drying during the regular growing season is now apparent across large tracts of the southern agricultural zones.

The causes of this reduction in autumn and winter rainfall are an area of active research. Nonetheless, there is certainly evidence that the long-term drying is not just natural variability. Research conducted to date has shown that certain aspects of the rainfall changes are consistent with an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Research at the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has shown that the rainfall reductions are due to changes in atmospheric circulation during the winter half of the year. In southwest Western Australia, the drying has been associated with reduced rainfall from storm systems and fewer storm systems in general.

These changes are consistent with higher atmospheric pressure that has been measured over the region. Studies have shown that aspects of these changes are, in turn, consistent with greenhouse gas increases, and decreases in stratospheric ozone in the Southern Hemisphere.

You could think of the effects of climate change on Australia, as regions 'migrating' from one climate zone to another. dwdyer/Flickr

A simple lay person explanation is that global warming pushes storms that track across southern Australia even further south — towards the poles — as the planet heats up. It’s a bit more complicated than that, the temperature gradient between the warm equatorial and cool polar regions ‘fuels’ mid-latitude storm systems. Global warming changes the strength and position of this gradient, which leads to a change in the mean position of the storms. The rain is still falling, but its falling out over the Southern Ocean. It is reasonable to think of this as the tropics expanding and temperate regions moving poleward.

If this is the mechanism at play, then you might expect the changes to have occurred in the southwest earlier than the southeast. Since it lies further to the north, a southward shift of the storm systems should affect Western Australia before the southeast — and this is indeed what we observe.

We have now had 40 years of lower winter rainfall in the southwest. During 2010, with the rest of the country awash with water, southwest Western Australia experienced its driest year on record. The last decent wet year in the southwest was in 1965, and such years were fairly common in the preceding six-and-a-half decades of rainfall observations.

It is important to note here that even in the southeast, the heavy rainfall of the last two years has fallen outside of the autumn and winter period. The rainfall was tropical in origin, and generally associated with La Niña – in fact the 2010-11 event was one of the strongest La Niña’s of the past century. The bulk of what fell was out-of-season rainfall, and not the typical southeast rainfall delivered by winter-time cold fronts and storms.

Indeed, between the La Niña event of 2010 and the weaker event of 2011, late autumn and early winter rainfall returned to below average, continuing a trend that has lasted for more than 15 years. It is this trend that climatologists have been following, and it continued through the last two La Niña years.

It is inevitable that a wetter-than-average autumn or winter will occur again in future, but a single wet season is unlikely to have climate scientists revising their conclusions. It’s the long-term trend that is important.

The reduction of rainfall during autumn and early winter has significant hydrological and agricultural impacts. Heavy rainfall in spring and summer might help recharge reservoirs, but it is not necessarily helpful to grain growers. In addition, we can’t rely on these Mediterranean climates getting consistent heavy rainfall over the summer months without the help of La Niña.

Was the recent heavy rainfall due to climate change?

Attributing recent extreme events to climate change is a difficult, but emerging, part of the science. It’s also an emerging piece of evidence: extreme climate events are increasing all over the world.

Rainfall over 2010 and 2011 was the highest on record for Australia, beating the previous record for a two-year stretch in 1973 and 1974. A double La Niña event has been associated with both records, highlighting the role of natural variability in driving the heavy rainfall.

However, climate scientists have noted that some of the background conditions for the recent rainfall were consistent with expectations in a warmer world. Most notably, sea surface temperatures around Australia have been the warmest on record over the past two years. We know from the science behind seasonal rainfall prediction that elevated local sea surface temperatures are a key driver of above average rainfall for Australia, not just through the increased atmospheric moisture that they provide, but also — most importantly — due to the way they change local atmospheric circulation.

Rainfall over 2010 and 2011 was the highest on record for Australia. Brian Yap

Scientists over the next decade, will explore the role of elevated ocean temperatures on the record rainfall of 2010 and 2011 in closer detail.

So what on Earth (or twin Earth) are we to make of all this?

Recent rainfall trends observed across Australia are, in many ways, consistent with a warming world; that is, decreases in southern Australian winter season rainfall, and increases in the tropical monsoon.

The severity of the drought, followed by the record breaking summer rainfall, is also consistent with projections for a warmer world.

In saying that, the big proviso here is that scientists have been careful not to overstate this case, and in releases such as the recent State of the Climate report, BoM and CSIRO highlight that we are still researching these issues.

The most consistent feature of modelling studies shows a likely future drying over southern and parts of eastern Australia, and less conclusive projections elsewhere. It is important to remember that these are projections for 2030 and 2050, and we should not necessarily expect to see such changes clearly right now, unless climate change is progressing more rapidly than the climate models have shown.

Scientists are still researching how a warming climate will affect flooding. daisy.r/Flickr

However we can use recent events as a heuristic for future climate change in a sensible and reasoned manner. We know that warming due to increasing greenhouse gases will change future rainfall patterns. We know that there is uncertainty in that, but that this uncertainty – coupled with the speed of changes to the climate system – serves to increase the risk in many regions.

Hence we can legitimately ask questions as to what we might do if recent, long-term rainfall changes turn out to be permanent.

Within this context, climate scientists have pointed out that the rainfall declines across the south have some consistency with what we would expect due to global warming. We also point out that the changes in the southwest have been very long lived. It is pertinent to draw the link between more recent rainfall reductions across the southeast, and the longer-term declines in the southwest.

It’s too early to make a definitive call on all of those issues, and another ten years of data will provide more concrete evidence. But the scientists’ job is to brief people, including the primary industry sector, water managers and ecologists, on what the best available current data and science is showing.

The experience of the Bureau of Meteorology has been that these science stakeholders are coming to understand the complex nature of the challenges that they are planning for, and are increasingly sophisticated users of climate information. That’s good news.

Tomorrow James Risbey from CSIRO explains how greenhouse climate change expresses itself through the natural modes of the climate system and what that implies in assessing the evidence of runs of wet and dry years.

Karl Braganza is Manager of Climate Monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology. The Bureau presently operates under the authority of the Meteorology Act 1955, which requires it to report on the state of the atmosphere and oceans in support of Australia's social, economic, cultural and environmental goals. His salary is not funded from any external sources or dependent on specially funded government climate change projects. Karl Braganza does not consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Australian science: healthy but starting to splutter

2012-05-23T02:48:55Z

Australian science is “generally in good health”, but faces major challenges in the form of falling science participation and literacy in high schools, mostly stagnant enrolments at universities, and diminishing focus on the “enabling sciences” – mathematics, physics and chemistry, a comprehensive review has found.

The Health of Australian Science report, by Australia’s Chief Scientist Ian Chubb, is broadly positive about the state of science, technology, engineering and mathematics across the country. It notes that Australian school students compare well on the international stage; university enrolments have experienced slight growth in recent years; researchers produce more per capita than their counterparts in most other nations and “have impacts at or above world standard in most discipline areas”.

But Professor Chubb said there were immediate concerns as well as challenges in the short to medium term. Although the rate of decline of high school science had slowed, participation rates had not stabilised, he said. In the past decade, Australia had fallen behind several other nations in high school science literacy. And despite a recent increase in science enrolments at university, the trend had been flat for most of the past decade and had not recovered to the levels achieved in the early 1990s. Funding for research had also come under increasing pressure as a result of rising demand by researchers.

“As a developed nation, Australia must be a contributor to the solutions or advances as they are made,” Professor Chubb wrote in the report. “We cannot leave it to others, and sit outside the tent waiting for the investments of other nations to seep in our direction.”

For students enrolled in a bachelor of science degree, study of the enabling sciences – “which form the basis of education and research in all science” – was concentrated largely in their first year, the report found. Just 13% of teaching beyond the first year was in mathematics, 10% in chemistry, and 2.5% physics.

Enrolments in these subjects were generally flat from 2002 to 2007, but grew by 29% between 2008 and 2010. Undergraduate enrolments for students beginning in agriculture and environment decreased by 4% between 2002 and 2010, and for information technology they fell by 50%.

“Both political parties have made it clear that managing flora is a crucial part of our move to capture carbon – and yet we’ve got 53 students in the whole of Australia studying forestry,” Professor Chubb said. “We’ve got 60-odd students doing PhDs in statistics. Are we going to be able to replace the staff we’ve got in those disciplines, who are producing some very high-quality research, when they go if there are so few PhD students?

“We’ve tended to accept the argument that the government puts in the money in and you let student choices go wherever they may,” he said. “Of course, we all think that’s not a bad idea. But there does come a time when you think is the market going to work in the national interest, or in the personal interest. I think agriculture, for example, is in the national interest.

“We need to identify which scientific disciplines are critically important and which ones we need to do something about. You could quarantine some PhD scholarships, and maybe even at a higher value, in particular areas where we’re not producing enough PhD graduates to replace the staff who are likely to leave universities in the next five to 10 years. That’s one option.”

Although research funding through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) more than doubled in real terms between 2002 and 2010, and funding through the Australian Research Council (ARC) nearly doubled, there was increased pressure on those funds: success rates for applications dropped from 32% to 23% for the ARC and remained relatively steady for the NHMRC.

At school level, it was not clear whether the main goal of science teaching in the later years was to boost science literacy or prepare students for entry to university courses. Either way, a long-term decline in participation “showed that neither goal is being achieved”.

Between 1992 and 2010 the percentage of Year 12 students enrolled in biology fell from 35.3% to 24%. For chemistry the decline was from 22.9% to 17.2%; and for physics, 20.8% to 14.2%. Mathematics participation declined from 76.6% to 72.0% between 2002 and 2010, and there was a continuing shift from take-up of intermediate and advanced levels of mathematics to the elementary level.

Although Australian students still performed well in comparison with other nations, in recent rankings they had fallen behind other countries in the Asian region, Professor Chubb said.

In the Programme for International Student Assessment in 2000, only Korea and Japan outperformed Australia. In 2009, Australia fell behind a further four participants: Singapore, Finland and China (represented separately by Hong Kong and Shanghai).

Vaille Dawson, a Professor at the Science and Mathematics Education Centre at Curtin University, said that “five of the countries that beat us are our Asian neighbours, which is interesting. They all have a Confucian heritage. Education is valued highly. Working hard is valued highly. Written tests and exams are very common all the way through high school, so they are very well prepared.

“If you take China and Korea – both of those countries made decisions about 15 years ago to put huge sums of money into science and maths education, starting from primary school and especially into secondary school.”

By contrast, in Australia and other developed countries there had been a slowly declining attitude to science, she said.

“When you unpick the results for Australian schools, you find that we have a long tail. The tail is comprised of kids who live in remote areas. If you look at kids in metropolitan NSW, they do a lot better than kids in remote parts of the Northern Territory.

“We need to have good teachers in all of our schools, not just in the cities. We have the tyranny of distance in Australia, which is not such an issue in Singapore or Japan, for example.”

Professor Chubb said science “probably should be taught a bit more like it’s practised, not through some didactic approach. Teaching through tests is not what we should be doing. We should be encouraging our best and brightest to interested in science in ways we haven’t done before.”

At research level, Australia had a relatively high scholarly output in science, producing more than 3% of world scientific publications yet accounting for only about 0.3% of the world’s population, Professor Chubb said. Australian published scholarly outputs, including fields other than science, grew at a rate of about 5% per year between 1999 and 2008. This was considerably higher than the global growth rate of 2.6%.

But there were vulnerabilities in the “educational foundations, staffing levels and funding structures that are needed to sustain and build on the historical successes of Australian science”, he said.

“The question is a simple one, then: do we have the capacity presently and are we sustaining the capacity to contribute our science, our talents, our knowledge and skills to the betterment of Australia and the world we share?”

Australia had to become “an anticipator nation and not a follower — a nation which gives as it receives; a nation engaged in a two way flow of know-how through which we learn as we contribute to the solutions we will all desperately need”.

A prescription for healthy science? Chief Scientist's report points the way

2012-05-23T02:40:40Z

Chief Scientist Ian Chubb’s Health of Australian Science report, launched today at the National Press Club, starts on an optimistic note. Australian science is generally in good health: school students’ performance compares well internationally; university enrolments in science programmes are on the up; and Australian researchers tend to punch above their weight.

However, the report warns against becoming complacent. Senior school participation in science has declined in recent years; overall university science enrolments are up, but have not returned to their position in the late 1980s; and increasing demands are being imposed on available research funding. In particular, some disciplines have been declining for several years, including agriculture, and the so-called “enabling sciences” of chemistry, mathematics and physics.

Science examination

The report’s aim is to provide “a comprehensive assessment of the available data in order to develop a profile of the strengths and vulnerabilities of Australia’s current science capability” including within science education in secondary schools and universities and scientific research.

This is a big ask, some might say, but one that is achieved by the report.

The Health of Australian Science report has been built on the work of staff from the Chief Scientist’s office and from other government departments. It also incorporates the results of three pieces of commissioned work.

The first of these considered the attitudes of first year university science students. The second was an examination of senior secondary school staff and student opinion on learning factors that affected students’ choice to study science. Finally, a comprehensive data analysis of university science learning, teaching and course completions in the first decade of the 21st century.

I can claim responsibility for the third: it was an extension of work I first did for the Australian Council of Deans of Science between 1997 and 2007.

It is difficult to quantify the size of the science system, with functional elements being education (schools and universities), research and development (R&D), and the workforce. Educational and R&D outcomes are disseminated to all sectors of the economy. In terms of R&D outputs, Australia produces 3% of outputs with about 0.3% of the world’s population. Seventy-five science-related policy programmes were supported by government funding for science, research and innovation.

Problems in schools

Attention to school science has been driven by concerns about declining proportions of students studying the enabling sciences and advanced mathematics. These concerns are not limited to Australia, and are part of a larger international trend.

The report shows that teachers saw time constraints as the main problem, including preparation, and time to cover the syllabus. Students could be encouraged to involve themselves in science to improve science uptake at school, and science teachers were seen by students as an important source of inspiration.

From some perspectives, enrolment numbers in senior school mathematics and science seem to be holding up, but as the report notes, there are difficulties of comparison in mathematics, for example, because of differences between jurisdictions and changes in mathematics curricula.

The report also mentions the difficulties in recruitment of senior science teachers, particularly their inclusion on the Skills Shortage List and the academic background science teachers have in science disciplines. For example, only about 54% of physics teachers have at least three years of university physics, although two-thirds have at least five years’ experience as physics teachers.

University blues

When it comes to university science, the report has more detailed information on enrolments, including in science, health, information technology and engineering.

The report importantly draws the distinction between domestic and international students. An uncertain proportion of international students pay for an Australian university education in order to enhance their chances of gaining permanent residency.

This explains the popularity of accountancy programmes, for example, a profession that is on the Skills Shortage List. However, in other cases, contemporary overseas students behave like the Colombo Plan students of the 1950s and 1960s. Their aim is to acquire qualifications unavailable to them in their home countries, and their goal is to return to countries of origin once the qualification has been gained.

The report notes that commencements in science bachelor’s degrees were steady between 2002 and 2008 (about 17,000 per year), but there was a surge between 2009 and 2010.

Publicly funded research grew during the past decade, but this has been more than matched by increased competition for grants and decreased success rates. This situation is noted by the report as a potential source of vulnerability.

Australia is also doing well in international comparison in terms of research outputs. Australia has a global impact higher than the global average in most fields of research, and the main source of growth has been in internationally collaborative publications. The report also notes the changing patterns of collaboration, with faster growth now occurring with emerging scientific areas in Asia.

Positive start

The Health of Australian Science report is the start rather than the end of improving science learning and research in Australia. It identifies the need for further investigation, particularly into the possible impact of the decline in the skills base in agriculture and the enabling science disciplines on Australia’s food security and innovation.

It also points to the need for research into the alignment of student choices with the national interest, the match between Australia’s areas of research excellence and the areas necessary for sustaining its position in global science, and finding the right balance between basic and applied research.

The report’s finding that most fields in the natural and physical sciences demonstrate research performance at or above international standards is a positive one. But this is offset by declining participation in the enabling sciences and the ageing of the scientific research profile.

The report tells us a lot about where Australian science has succeeded and where we need work. But it also shows that complacency is not a viable option.

Further reading:

Health of Australian Science: time to call in the doctors (of physics) – Peter Ellerton

My research contributed to chapter 4 of the Health of Australian Science report.

Health of Australian Science: time to call in the doctors (of physics)

2012-05-23T02:39:29Z

The Office of the Chief Scientist today releases the Health of Australian Science report and it’s an intriguing read.

The report was compiled to help the office and the public understand the current state of Australian science. A large team of authors, led by Dr Michael Hughes, has done an admirable job of bringing together information from a variety of sources to form a coherent picture of much that is happening in science nationwide.

Understandably, there’s a considerable emphasis on the situation in our schools and universities.

There is much to digest – the report is over 200 pages long – and I recommend a thorough read as soon as you get the chance. I’ve gone through and picked out some of the salient points here, focusing, in particular, on the report’s findings about science education.

Research

The report bears good news about the success of Australian scientists in publishing, in both quantity and quality. Australian scientists produce more than 3% of the world’s scientific publications, despite Australia only making up 0.3% of the world’s population. Australian research also accounted for 4% of overall citations.

Strong international collaborations are maintained with Europe and the US, but Asia is increasingly a focus. In fields such as mathematics, engineering and chemistry, China is now the nation’s dominant partner.

Funding and R&D

In 2008-09 gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) was 2.2% of GDP at A$24.6bn. This puts Australia 14th among OECD countries (see graph below).

Office of the Chief Scientist

Of the A$24.6bn of GERD, business contributed 66% of the total, with other contributions from higher education, Commonwealth and state and territory governments. It’s interesting to note that countries recognised for their innovation, such as Sweden and Finland, have three times the R&D personnel in industry and commerce than does Australia.

While research funding through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC) doubled between 2002 and 2010, success rates for funding applicants decreased from 32% to 23% for the ARC and remained constant for the NHMRC.

As is noted in the report, this has an effect on postdoctoral and early-career researchers – researchers that are subject to increasingly strong competition for grants.

‘Basic’ vs ‘applied’ research

To quote from the report:

“Basic research adds to the bank of intellectual capital on which society draws in order to progress and transform. Applied research develops this intellectual capital into new technologies and innovative processes that directly improve the health, productivity and prosperity of Australia.”

The proportion of higher education funding allocated to basic research has decreased steadily from 1992-2009. At the same time, funding for applied and experimental research has increased, keeping higher education’s contribution to research funding relatively constant.

While it’s unclear what the optimal ratio of basic to applied and experimental research is, the report’s authors have expressed concern about the future of basic research in Australia if this trend continues.

Office of the Chief Scientist

Universities

It’s a matter of concern that some areas of study that may be vital to Australian interests are experiencing diminishing university enrolments. These include agriculture, mathematics, physics and chemistry.

While enrolments in health-related courses increased by 73% from 2002 to 2010, enrolments in agriculture declined by 31%. Only 13% of university teaching of students continuing past first-year courses is in mathematics, with 10% in chemistry and 2.5% in physics.

Office of the Chief Scientist

Also concerning is the constant attrition rate of undergraduates after their commencement year, with 30-50% of students failing to complete or return to study in science.

The report suggests that the current model of funding areas as a function of student popularity (the most popular course get funded the most; the least popular get the least) may not be the best model to address the nation’s long-term needs.

Sure, international students may help fill shortfalls in enrolments, but there are problems if the sector becomes overly reliant on this solution.

It is noteworthy that there seems to be a peak in the relative numbers of level-E researchers (the highest ranking i.e. professors) associated with the older demographics. This would seem to indicate that a large percentage of these researchers may retire in the near future, without sufficient replacement numbers at lower levels to take leadership roles.

There is also a continuing and significant gender imbalance in senior academic levels. Apart from the clear loss of talent this produces, it also exacerbates the effect of decreasing enrolments in the enabling sciences. Increasing the number of women in these and other positions would go some way to addressing a shortfall in undergraduate intake.

Secondary Schools

Secondary science students maintain a high performance on tests of scientific literacy, but literacy rates are in decline. Also in decline are enrolments in the traditional science subjects: biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics.

Office of the Chief Scientist

The report has identified a number of potential causes and areas of concern in terms of science enrolments in secondary schools, including:

Expanded curriculum choices (more choice, fewer choosing science)
Skewed science-teacher demographics (17% of science teachers are between 51-55 and 36% are over 50)
A pedagogical approach which emphasises content rather than scientific thinking
Less than half of teachers in years 7-10 having relevant science qualifications

This last point is particularly disturbing as nearly half of students taking senior science said they first became interested in the subject in junior secondary school. The most common reason given for not taking science was that students either did not like it or found it boring (68%).

There is a significant focus in the report on the need to seriously consider the structure and pedagogical approach to science curricula. The report’s authors identify a “tension” between the attractors of teaching science to produce scientifically literate citizens and satisfying the needs of preparing students for university.

It is more than a little surprising that these aims are not better aligned. It also notes that a content-driven curriculum serves to promote and entrench traditional “chalk and talk” modes of teaching and an overly constrained assessment model.

In summary: we do well in research productivity and in international collaboration, achieving and maintaining an enviable reputation worldwide. There are, however, concerns with regard to student enrolment in science at all levels, even with an expanding education sector.

The need for qualified science teachers, particularly in physics, is severe.

Considering a career change?

Further reading:

A prescription for healthy science? Chief Scientist’s report points the way

Peter Ellerton does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Context is king: there's nothing progressive about 'fat porn'

2012-05-23T01:53:31Z

It is time we recognised pornography as part of popular culture. Millions of people watch the content the porn industry produces. And make no mistake, it produces a lot of content.

According to prominent film studies scholar Linda Williams, the US porn industry alone produces more than 11,000 films annually. In comparison, Hollywood churns out only a paltry 400 films per year.

Add to that the open references to pornography in mainstream TV and film, and the fragmenting and blurring of pornographic imagery into a variety of other cultural forms, like fashion and music videos, and you have serious social change. Scholars have been documenting and analysing this “pornification” of culture for more than a decade.

Content in context

Yet, despite the increasing recognition of how mainstream porn has become, many academics and commentators persist in peddling the idea that the multi-billion dollar pornography industry makes products that are somehow avant-garde or revolutionary.

The most recent contribution to this revolutionary porn perspective in Australia was a piece from Lauren Rosewarne on how porn breaks taboos, in particular, through the representations of sex found in “fat porn” and “old porn”.

Like many arguments raised about the progressive nature of pornography, it tends to take the content out of context. The discussion becomes narrowly focused only on consumers and their potential interpretations of porn, rather than taking into account the production and marketing of pornography, or the understanding that pornography is a fundamentally capitalist, profit-driven enterprise.

Half the picture

This is indicative of the shift that has taken place in the academic study of pornography over the past 15 years. After more than a decade of domination by the sexual politics of the so-called “sex wars” – between various branches of feminism in the 1980s and 1990s – porn has become a staple of film and cultural studies.

There has been a subsequent shift from researching “pornography” to “pornographies”, often in order to better capture a perceived diversity of content and an even greater diversity of possible consumer reactions and interpretations.

There is undoubtedly merit in studying pornography consumption. In isolation, however, understood outside the context of production, it can never provide the whole picture.

Reaffirming the mainstream

Take, for example, the “fat porn” Rosewarne highlights. She speculates that this may be a reflection of “our desires”; a common theme in revolutionary porn arguments. But we need, at the very least, to be more specific about whose desires the industry believes itself to be reflecting.

The production of pornography is not best understood as a sort of bottom-up social movement where gender-less people demand particular pornographic imagery and this is delivered as requested. What is needed is a more thorough understanding of power, of how certain people’s desires are given preference over others. This requires a recognition that pornography is still made, by and large, for a male audience with a central objective being men’s sexual arousal.

“Fat porn” is no different. It is produced, almost exclusively, for an imagined male consumer. It is also not simply the representation of “fat people having sex” as Rosewarne suggests. It isn’t “fat porn” because all parties shown are overweight, but rather because the women in the pornography are, in industry lingo, “chunks” or “fatties” having sex with ordinary blokes.

Who is “fat porn” for?

The titles and blurbs on the box covers of “fat porn” further illustrate how the industry understands itself to be pitching this content to the consumer. Titles such as “First Time Fatties”, “Thick-N-Chunky Fat Freakz” or “Feed Her, Fuck Her”, all refer to the women shown in the pornography. The tag line for “Fuck a Fatty Funtime 8” is indicative of many others, it reads: “Porkers crave sex and food”.

Rather than breaking taboos, the industry is quite forthright about recycling derogatory slang and playing on broader pop-culture stereotypes. In this instance, of larger women having monstrous sexual appetites related to an uncontrollable need for food.

An excerpt from the box cover of “Fuck a Fatty Funtime 8” is even more revealing: “Fat girls are like mopeds. They’re fun to ride, but you don’t want your friends to see you on them!” This will surely sound all too familiar to anyone who has had to sit through mainstream films like “The Hangover” or “The Inbetweeners”. Or even to those who’ve had the misfortune of hearing men trade misogynist banter about “fat women” at a pub.

In rare instances of role reversal, where overweight men are shown having sex with smaller women, the tone is markedly different. The porn industry magazine Adult Video News explains the appeal of one title – “Fat Boys Need Love Too” – thus: “Fat men will enjoy seeing their mirror image getting laid.”

Opting out

This is why talking about pornography production, and how the industry markets its own content, offers a useful corrective to the seemingly endless theorising about the liberatory potential of porn. As Susanne Kappeler so aptly noted in The Pornography of Representation, “the pornographer himself is more honest and more astute about pornography than are the cultural experts engaged in defending it."

Yes, pornography tends to push boundaries. But the push isn’t always a progressive one. In order to make a profit, the pornography industry frequently plays on harmful stereotypes of everything from race and gender to obesity.

In an increasingly pornified world, where the porn industry rivals Hollywood for cultural influence, and its profits rival the GDP of several small nations, a truly revolutionary act would be opting out of porn consumption altogether.

Meagan Tyler does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Working out the face value of Facebook

2012-05-23T01:24:50Z

What do you get when you buy 900 million user experiences, mostly from smart devices?

Facebook’s float has been dogged with controversy: on Monday, its shares plummeted 11% and dropped another 8.9% to close at $31 per share, off it’s Friday launch price of $38 per share.

But while the performance of Facebook shares might have fallen short of expectations, there was still plenty of interest in the social networking company, despite the difficulty of determining the real face value of the new company.

Social networking design involves understanding groups and how people behave in groups. It also involves having a good understanding of ICT and networking technology and how aspects of that technology affect a user’s experience.

In Facebook, it’s main value in my opinion is that user experience and its contribution to sustainability. The user experience can vary from the simple but popular ability to reconnect to family and old friends that attracts many users or the latest experience offered by the Timeline profile feature.

Regular Facebook messages to members, promotions, Facebook apps and events have all helped to develop relationships. These rituals are often of a tribal nature and have all helped develop a mature online culture. Now it’s large community size can also sustain many viable sub-groups.

Facebook’s listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Friday with more than 570 million shares traded set a new record for a US stock debut. This “Faceboom” was hardly surprising after all the hype surrounding the initial public offer.

The face value of Facebook for a new shareholder is rather esoteric as the value of such a volatile business model may be only understood by so few of all the investors or company directors.

Everybody knows Facebook for one reason or another and investors are always looking to get in early on the next big thing. Social media is a huge marketplace that uses networks of friends or associates – a network of people networks. News Limited, Microsoft and Google have all tried to work their way into the social media economy.

Its all about the timing, but these days no time is ever perfect with the Euro crisis and US car manufacturer General Motors showing disappointment in the company’s Facebook profile in not leading to improved car sales.

One of the lingering issues for Facebook is it own reputation which at times has been like a roller coaster ride.

The ability to take an event, product or service and make it go “viral” in the social media marketplace is a double-edged sword, affecting not only business pages but Facebook itself. So far it has survived some potentially damaging issues, but will it remain as resilient as a company which will expose Facebook to a set of commercial law restrictions?

The fact it has 900 million users is too big to ignore, but Facebook has a fluid dynamic unlike most successful IT companies. In the field of social informatics, any successful social network like Facebook has to offer something special and renew itself regularly.

Nurturing its members with its interface and range of ways to interact, communicate and share files and applications is all part of its overall value or usability to the members. All of Facebook’s services support sociability and a resolve to build and maintain the lead over rivals by reputation and trust. Facebook’s sociability is a result of its social policies and plans for fostering future social interactions.

The estimated value of Facebook at $18 billion is modest compared to other IT companies. It’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges but perhaps Google and Yahoo are a loose benchmark for comparison. Google is valued at about $203 billion at $623 per share – that’s less than half the value of Apple at $495 billion and even the struggling Yahoo comes in at an $18.2 billion.

The early volatility of trading days was expected by many and may continue to fluctuate in the short term as some of the members may not want to be part of the company and so part ways, while others may be attracted buy shares.

But Facebook has evolved as an environment of self-ownership and group empowerment. Now it will mutate, as being a company listed in the stock market will alter its roles, governance and the rules of engagement for members.

Facebook has developed as an “environment of self-owners” which may be in conflict with the newly corporatised Facebook company.

One of the new roles for some Facebook members is that now they will act as both a member and investor. That in itself, will change how the social network operates.

Ken Eustace is an academic from the School of Computing & Mathematics at Charles Sturt University.

The NBN, service providers and you ... what could go wrong?

2012-05-22T20:25:18Z

Unless you’ve been boycotting all forms of media in the past five years, you’ll be aware that the National Broadband Network (NBN) is well and truly on its way.

For some of us the NBN is already here, and for others it will hopefully arrive in a year or two. But for most Australians, the NBN will not arrive for five to ten years.

The NBN rollout map (see below) provides an estimated guide to where and when the NBN will be rolled out.

The coming of the NBN provides significant opportunities to address consumers' concerns about the conduct of internet and phone providers but it also presents a range of significant challenges.

Click for full functionality. NBN Co

Let me start by discussing what happens if there’s a change in government during the NBN rollout – not unlikely given recent polls suggesting this will happen in the next 18 months.

The Coalition has been scathing of the Fibre to the Home (FTTH) solution for the cabled portion of the NBN.

In his recent Budget reply speech the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, said: “Why spend A$50bn on a National Broadband Network so customers can subsequently spend almost three times their current monthly fee for speeds they might not need?”.

He gave a clear indication of the preferred Coalition option when he stated: “Why dig up every street when fibre to the node (FTTN) could more swiftly and more affordably deliver 21st century broadband?”.

Simply put, a fibre to the node approach would see fibre optic cable routed to “neighbourhood cabinets” with the final stretch, from neighbourhood cabinets to homes and businesses, being covered by existing copper cable.

If the Coalition forms a government at the next election (late next year) and changes direction with the NBN rollout, it’s possible that built-up areas, already delayed into the later stage of the current NBN rollout plans, will not be serviced by FTTH.

It’s possible the current goal of providing FTTH to 93% of Australians will change to include a mix of FTTH and FTTN for about 80% of Australians and the other 13% will be moved on to the NBN wireless network.

NBNCO

One of the potential opportunities provided by the NBN rollout will be a chance to improve consumer experience of phone and internet providers.

In 2009/10 167,955 complaints were made to the telecommunications ombudsman and 197,682 complaints in 2010/11.

A complaint I hear during discussions about service providers is the lack of transparency that customers find for nearly every aspect of their interaction with service providers, their use of services and network performance.

Transparency related to the network performance and the customer’s interaction with service providers can be introduced using technology available today.

The status of individual network connections including all backhaul links) (the connections from the exchanges or points where customers enter the network to the carrier core networks) should be made available in real-time through the internet.

This would allow internet users to check whether their service provider’s networks are down or whether they’ve encountered a localised problem or other performance issue.

Also, the capacity of all aggregation (the bundling of customer traffic onto larger capacity links) and backhaul links should be made available so that customers can see in real-time what the performance is.

Included in this need for transparency is the real-time performance of the international links through which most of Australia’s online content is delivered.

NBNCO

Customer service requests, including adding services, moving services and changing services, should be possible online and with greater transparency and tracking capability.

After a customer service request has been made the customer should be able to use the service provider reference number to see the service request on the internet and to track the steps taken to satisfy the service request. This is not done currently.

Why is this important? This gem by Fairfax writer, Adam Turner, might give you a bit of an idea. His piece highlights the frustration of dealing with the Telstras and Optuses of this world.

Thousands of similar stories are available online and chances are you or someone close to you has had a similar experience.

Recently I moved home and tried to move my Telstra landline and Business ADSL on the day of the move.

I have services on the ADSL that must remain online 24/7 so this was a critical part of my move to a new home and I thought it was all ready to go.

Unfortunately, when I first spoke with Telstra about the move, I was told that it would take up to 10 days to move the ADSL after the Telstra landline was moved.

I explained how important it was for the phone and ADSL to move at the same time, and was told that it could be done within four hours if a technician was available at the exchange.

Several days later, after initially accepting this explanation and putting in the service request, I had second thoughts and arranged for a new landline service to be connected at my new home so that the old landline could remain connected until the ADSL was moved to the new home.

Sure enough, on the night before the move my landline at the old place was disconnected thus also disconnecting the Telstra Business ADSL.

I called Telstra immediately (at midnight) to see if the landline had been connected at my new home and that the ADSL would be moved that morning and was prompty told it would take up to ten days for the ADSL to be connected, even though it was a business service and that no guarantees should have been given.

I explained that the old landline should not have been disconnected until the ADSL had been moved and that an earlier service request to move the landline and ADSL from the old home to the new home had been processed.

When I mentioned this service request had been cancelled and I had placed a new service request for a new landline at the new home and for the ADSL to be moved whilst both landlines were to remain operational the Telstra representative looked at the records and said: “it appears a mistake has occurred at our end”.

Panic set in and I then spent about eight hours on my mobile to Telstra, talking to about 20 different people while they worked out what went wrong.

After this, I finally got connected to a very kind and helpful Telstra Business ADSL service representative who reconnected the landline and ADSL at my old home.

I was a nervous and tired wreck by the end of the day.

My Telstra Business ADSL was moved to my new home about seven days later.

Customers currently make service requests on the phone and many service providers do not provide written confirmation of the service request. Instead the customer is give a reference number, leaving them in the dark about what the service provider is actually going to do.

A clear issue is the lead times for service requests to occur. Most service providers only commit to carrying out a service request at some point in the future – say five to ten days – or at some time in the future dependent on a wholesale service provider, such as Telstra Wholesale.

A wholesale provider owns the infrastructure (e.g. the copper cable from exchanges to your home) and service providers lease access to the infrastructure to provide services such as fixed telephony or ADSL.

Service providers have recently made moves to reduce the time taken for consumers to get access to their services.

Peter Mathew/AAP

A major step forward with the NBN will be the capability to gain access to more than one service provider at the same time.

Initially customers will be able to access one data service provider and two voice service providers (though one is required to be the same as the data service provider).

If the customer utilises a service wholesaler then it will be possible to get access to services from more than one service provider.

You might ask: “How will I ever get the service providers to move their services on the same day if I move to a new home?”

Chaos right?

This upcoming multi-service-provider feature of the NBN needs to be explained and a new industry code of practice needs to be introduced to ensure service providers improve service management practices.

Failure to address how service providers offering services over the NBN are coordinated will see complaints to the ombudsman grow to new heights.

The NBN will provide Australians with a raft of exciting new opportunities. For services providers, it will provide a much-needed chance to improve their customer relations and procedures.

And who wouldn’t welcome that?

Mark Gregory does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Teaching kids to think critically about climate

2012-05-22T20:24:47Z

Two recently published books suggest that the public – and school children in particular – are being fed lies about environmental issues such as climate change. The books – “How to Get Expelled from School: A guide to climate change for pupils, parents & punters” by Ian Plimer and “Little Green Lies: An expose of twelve environmental myths” by Jeff Bennett – clearly demonstrate how important it is to have a scientifically literate Australia. The distorted and selectively reported science in these books highlights some of the challenges that Australian teachers face in teaching science, and how important it is that they are supported in this task.

The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) has condemned Plimer’s book as misleading and inaccurate. However the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is apparently sending copies of Plimer’s misleading fringe book to Australian schools. The Executive Director of the IPA John Roskam is, incidentally, on the editorial board of the publishing house of these two books.

Plimer’s book tells school students that they are being “conned” and “fed propaganda” if their teacher “waffles” on about issues such as human-induced global warming, sea level rise and the IPCC. He deplores this as “environmental activism”. This is despite the overwhelming evidence for human induced climate change accepted by a vast range of climate scientists and scientific organisations.

Climate change in science classrooms

The NSW Year 7-10 science syllabus reflects the accepted scientific view: “students will learn about waste from resource use and identify excessive use of fossil fuels as a contributing factor to a greenhouse effect”. The new Australian Curriculum: Science includes similar content: “explaining the causes and effects of the greenhouse effect” and “investigating the effect of climate change on sea levels and biodiversity”.

It's ridiculous to suggest a student would be hit or expelled for asking questions. RiAus

Arguably worse than the disinformation in Plimer’s book is the disdain and disrespect for teachers that he advocates. After a few chapters of strenuous denial of human-induced climate change, Plimer lists 101 questions that students (and parents and punters) should ask teachers to catch them out at their propaganda spreading. Fair enough – questions are good. However this section includes helpful advice to students along the lines of: “This question will get you smacked around the head, turfed out of class or expelled …”. There is another gem relating to the question of whether the sun is responsible for the past 150 years of warming of the Earth: “if the answer from your teacher is no, then you should complain to the head teacher that your teacher is a buffoon”.

The insulting suggestion that teachers hit or expel students for asking questions is compounded by the disrespect to teachers that comments such as these (and there are plenty more) explicitly incite. Secondary science teachers have a hard enough job contending with the challenges that a class of 30 adolescents can generate without this.

However the questions that he asks show how demanding a secondary science teacher’s job is. Students should (and do) ask questions; it is the job of science teachers to encourage questions, yet impossible to know the answers to them all. In one sense this doesn’t matter: teachers and students together can do a bit of research and find out the answer.

But whose answer? Where do they look? Do they read Plimer’s outlier book or do they go to the most authoritative and mainstream sources they can think of? Do they do both? If so, how do they adjudicate between alternative views?

Evaluating ideas and testing them against evidence is core to the process of science – the NSW secondary science syllabus explicitly states that students learn to seek evidence to support claims and evaluate evidence for reliability and validity.

So let’s try.

Answering tricky questions takes time and resources

In answer to his own question Plimer says Mars and other planets (including the Earth) show global warming because of the sun. He uses this as an argument against human induced global warming on Earth. The DCCEE (in its “Accurate Answers to Professor Plimer’s 101 questions”) says there is no real evidence for Plimer’s position. Neither of these answers gives us sources to verify their claims.

So teachers (and their students) might do a bit of further research. They might start with the IPCC reports: but these are so voluminous and detailed that it is difficult to find what you are looking for. They certainly don’t support Plimer’s contention though.

Teachers must find time to sift through a lot of information. Selena NBH/Flickr

For more specific detail on the Mars question teachers might go to that incredibly useful standby, the Skeptical Science site. This points out several flaws with the “It’s the sun, like on Mars” claim.

Teachers could then look for the original paper to evaluate it themselves, finding and reading the abstract. They’ll note the authors make no mention of their Martian observations having anything at all to do with climate change on Earth, but might decide that they don’t know enough about albedo and dust storms on Mars to really assess the results. They will probably baulk at paying $US32 to buy the full text of the article (after all this was only one of many questions they received that day).

So the teacher might dig further, and find a paper in National Geographic that reports on a Russian scientist’s claims that the Sun is in fact responsible for recent warming of both Mars and Earth, but that states that his argument is also flawed on several grounds. Despite an hour of searching, the teacher might not be able to find any peer reviewed original source for the Russian’s claim: the closest they can get is an interview reported by the Russian International News Agency. And then they’ll find that evaluating the science of this dubious claim means knowing again about astrophysics, planetary imaging and the climate and atmosphere of Mars.

After hours of all this, the teacher looks at their watch and finds they still have 100 Plimer questions to go, dinner is burnt, tomorrow’s chemistry lesson for Year 9 is not prepared and they run the risk of being called a buffoon.

Yes, Professor Plimer, critical thinking is vital

Of course, testing claims by examining their underlying science is an essential way of examining their reliability and validity. But this is sometimes very difficult and time consuming to do. Most science teachers are generalists rather than climate science specialists, and there is a huge breadth of very complex different scientific sub-disciplines contributing information to climate science.

Moreover this work has already been done: by some of the hundreds of appropriately qualified scientists contributing research and analysis to organisations such as the IPCC, CSIRO, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Australian Academy of Science and so on (this could become a very long list indeed).

So clearly, evaluating the science behind many similar claims about climate change requires a high level of scientific literacy and demands that this be taught and developed in schools. However, broader critical thinking is also required – the same science syllabus requires that student use critical thinking skills in evaluating information and drawing conclusions.

Students learn to think critically, evaluate information and reach their own conclusions. University of Salford

Critical thinking would explore the reliability of the claimant as well as the claims. For example, what might it mean that Plimer’s views are rejected outright by 97-98% of climate scientists and major scientific organisations across the world? Might his extreme and nastily expressed views have something to do with vested interests – given that he is the interim chairman of one mining company and director of at least one other – in the context of a looming carbon tax?

Teaching critical thinking in this context would also look at the concept and role of peer review and relevant credentials when deciding on the worth of conflicting statements.

Professor Bennett is on to something: teachers need economics as well as science

Bennett’s 12 “Little Green Lies” (not to be confused with the 10 “Little Green Lies” published by Jonathan Adler 20 years ago – we are now two lies worse off) raises similar issues and more. In his chapter on climate change, Bennett cites discredited climate change deniers such as Christopher Monkton and Ian Plimer, and conferences organised by the extremist right wing Heartland Institute to shore up his contention that the science of climate change is not settled.

Bennett’s book contends that we should consider economic factors in relation to environmental issues – not a novel argument. One of the organising ideas for the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority of the new Australian Curriculum spells it out for teachers: “Sustainable patterns of living rely on the interdependence of healthy social, economic and ecological systems”.

This is the second challenge for science teachers. Teaching kids about this interdependence of systems requires, well, a cross-curricular perspective that marries accurate science with socio-political and economic considerations. But secondary education is traditionally conducted in subject silos, with the science teachers busy beavering away at Plimer’s 101 questions, and knowing very little about things that Bennett knows about such as “individually tradable quotas”.

Secondary teachers are going to need a lot of support and resources for the cross-curricular priorities of the Australian Curriculum to really be implemented.

Plimer and Bennett have starkly illustrated the need for a genuinely cross-curricular approach to sustainability in the Australian Curriculum, and for support to help science teachers enhance the scientific literacy of Australia’s children.

A recent report by Australia’s Chief Scientist and the 54 million-dollar science and mathematics Budget package both signpost the need for more good science teachers in Australian schools. This is to ensure we have appropriately skilled workers in the future and to improve the scientific literacy of the next generation of Australians.

It’s hard enough helping kids understand the main ideas of science without having to deal with diversionary and scientifically invalid materials exemplified by these two books. It is also too terrible to contemplate the consequences of a generation not able to critically engage with and disentangle the science from the spin. So yes please – the support and resources for science teachers are very welcome.

Frances Quinn does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. The Conversation provides independent analysis and commentary from academics and researchers. Founding and Strategic Partners are CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS and UWA. Members are Deakin, Flinders, Murdoch, QUT, Swinburne, UniSA, UTAS, and VU.

Sheikhs and generals face off in a battle for Egypt's soul

2012-05-22T20:24:19Z

In the face of the largest mobilisation Egypt has ever witnessed, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 12, 2011. Facing an unlikely coalition of disaffected youth, labour workers, Islamists and army generals thinking of their own survival, Mubarak was forced out of power after a 30-year rule.

18 months on, the jubilation and euphoria of Egyptians celebrating in Tahrir Square has turned to despair, as the revolution has become caught between the military and the Islamists.

Over the next two days, Egyptians will vote for a new President to lead the country into its next era.

A shaky transition

Egypt’s ruling military junta, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has mismanaged the country’s transition to democracy, suggesting either incompetence or complacence. SCAF consists of 20 generals, all of whom were Mubarak’s comrades in arms.

It is led by Field Marshal Mohammad Tantawi, Mubarak’s Minister of Defence for 15 years. During the Egyptian uprising, SCAF claimed it was siding with the revolution, but evidence suggests SCAF has merely maintained its own interests.

Another force has seen a rise to prominence since the uprising. The Islamist sweep of the Egyptian parliament has caused fear within the secular-minded segment of the population, that the revolution will produce an Iranian model.

On the other hand, Islamists, emboldened by their electoral victory, have argued that they now enjoy legitimacy and carry a mandate from the electorate.

The secularists

The presidential candidate field highlights the dichotomy between Islam and secularism in Egypt. There are 13 candidates on the presidential ballot. While opinion polls have been notoriously inaccurate, only five of those 13 stand any true chance.

On the secular side, most notable is Amr Moussa, ex-Foreign Minister and ex-Arab League Secretary General, who enjoys genuine popularity, primarily due to populist stances during his time as Foreign Minister. However, he is seen by some in the revolutionary youth camp as too close to the old regime. His public positions regarding the military indicates that he will seek accord with the generals.

Ahmad Shafik, ex-aviation minister and close friend and confidant of Mubarak is audaciously running. Seen by some as the military’s preferred candidate, Shafik will be aiming to capture the vote of Egyptians unhappy by the economic and security situation that the revolution has created. Shafik is considered a key part of the old regime.

Hamdeen Sabahy is considered popular by some, but does not have the necessary name recognition to carry such a historic election. However, he remains popular with some of the youth of the revolution, where he is seen as progressive on social and economic issues, as well as his nationalistic rhetoric inspired by iconic 20th century President, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Islamists

On the Islamist side, there are two powerful contenders.

Ex-Muslim Brotherhood Abdel Monem Aboul Fotouh enjoys genuine popularity from Islamists and also from the secular forces, due to his progressive stance on various policy issues. However, his membership of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership for decades has caused suspicion that he is a mere Trojan horse for the Brotherhood. Also, the ultra-conservative Salafis have endorsed him as their preferred candidate, casting further doubt on his “progressiveness”.

Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, will of course directly benefit from its well oiled and financed political machine. He will be able to leverage on the strong support the Brotherhood enjoys in accessible remote areas, far away from the metropolises of Cairo and Alexandria.

The Brotherhood and the military: history runs deep

Since the 2011 uprising, there have been moments of accord and discord between the military and the Brotherhood, effectively the two most powerful organisations in Egypt.

The Egyptian political arena now is not dissimilar to the 1950s, when the Free Officers, some of whom had connections with the Brotherhood, overthrew King Farouk and assumed power. The Brotherhood and the Free Officers initially cooperated, but fell out in 1954 after Gamal Abdel Nasser consolidated his authority.

Following an alleged assassination attempt, Nasser moved to swiftly eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood within Egyptian politics, imprisoning and executing many Brotherhood figures and decimating its leadership.

The Brotherhood was able to stage a comeback after the rise to power of Anwar Sadat, when Sadat briefly eased the pressure on the Islamist political stream, hoping to have them act as a bulwark to the Nasserites and leftists. Sadat subsequently cracked down on the Islamists, leading to his assassination by the radical Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya in 1981.

During Mubarak’s era, though still formally banned and subjected to repressive measures, the Brotherhood maintained its renunciation of the use of violence and was able to operate cautiously, especially in the professional syndicates, eventually making unprecedented gains in the Egyptian parliamentary round of elections in 2005.

The revolutionary youth: where to from here?

The Muslim Brotherhood’s sweep of parliament has unsettled the revolutionary forces, personified by the youth of Tahrir Square and progressive left and secular liberal groups. They find themselves the weakest link in a power struggle between the generals and the sheikhs, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists.

This is proof of the weakness of the youth of Tahrir, who were not able to consolidate their success in forcing Mubarak out of power in 2011 into solid political gains in 2012. They find themselves fighting on two fronts: against the military and the Islamists.

This failure is no more apparent than in the coming presidential elections where most of the leading candidates are remnants of the former regime facing off with the Islamists, with no single credible contender representing the youth of the revolution.

It is now up to the revolutionary forces to regroup and unite to face the generals and the sheikhs, before they are able to manufacture a new order that might look eerily similar to the one Mubarak presided over.

This is partially based on an article that will appear in the Bulletin of the Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies (CAIS) at the Australian National University.

Adel Abdel Ghafar does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

No need for alarm about birth defects after assisted conception

2012-05-22T20:23:47Z

Some people may be wondering whether it’s wise to undergo assisted reproduction after recent media headlines about these technologies increasing the risk of birth defects. In fact, millions of babies have now been born worldwide after use of assisted reproductive technologies, and nothing has gone wrong with the vast majority.

The technologies used to help people conceive are mainly in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). In IVF, the woman’s eggs are collected, as is sperm from the male partner or donor. Both are left in a culture dish in a laboratory to allow the egg to be fertilized by the sperm.

ICSI involves use of a single sperm to inseminate the egg, not millions of sperm as are used in conventional IVF. This procedure is often used when the male produces small numbers of sperm or when conventional IVF has not worked for unknown reasons.

There have been many studies in Australia and overseas designed to assess the safety of these technologies. It’s generally found that about one in 20 babies conceived naturally will have a birth defect. And, if IVF or ICSI is used to conceive, the risk of defects goes up – but by not very much.

In a recent Victorian study of 3,312 IVF and 3,634 ICSI pregnancies with a single baby rather than twins, we found the risk of birth defects was slightly higher for ICSI (one in 15) than for IVF (one in 16). So for every 100 babies conceived with use of either IVF or ICSI, 93 or 94 will not have a birth defect.

We didn’t find the difference between outcomes for IVF and ICSI that the South Australian study responsible for recent headlines did. Neither have many other people who have done research in this area.

In fact, the SA study’s finding of an increased risk after ICSI (but not IVF) is unexpected and difficult to explain. Their numbers were not as large as ours for IVF and ICSI and they lumped together many minor defects with the more severe ones.

Ekem/Wikimedia Commons

Unlike the SA study, other researchers have concluded that the micro-injection procedure used in ICSI to mix a single sperm with an egg, didn’t add to the risk of the fetus having a birth defect over and above that associated with IVF.

The Victorian study was large enough to allow for examination of specific types of birth defects after IVF and ICSI. We found that there was a particular group of birth defects occurring and they were ones that formed during the first four weeks of pregnancy, before organs start developing. These are called blastogenesis defects and can affect the formation and fusion of the spine, the gastrointestinal tract (gut) and other parts of the body.

The frequency with which these specific defects usually occur is very low, but can be as high as one in 110 babies after assisted reproduction. What seems to reduce this risk and the risk of other birth defects is the timing of the embryo transfer from the laboratory to the woman’s uterus.

Our study showed very clearly that a fresh embryo transfer (usually occurring within days of the egg pick-up for IVF or ICSI) carried a far greater risk of birth defects than an embryo that had been frozen and thawed prior to transfer. Thawed embryo transfer usually occurs in a natural menstrual cycle, months after the egg-pick up – well beyond the time when all the hormones required to retrieve the eggs for IVF or ICSI have disappeared from a woman’s body.

The frequency of blastogenesis defects with a fresh embryo transfer was one in 100 but if a thawed transfer was used, only one in 250 births was affected.

People seeking treatment to improve their chance of having a baby need to be aware of the slightly increased risk of birth defects. Australian data are providing strong evidence for the use of embryos that have been frozen after IVF and then thawed before their transfer to the womb. At the moment, there’s not very convincing evidence to suggest that IVF is safer than ICSI, so expect to hear more.

Jane Halliday is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow.

Reducing the heartbreak and burden of stillbirth

2012-05-22T20:23:21Z

Stillbirth is a major but under-researched public health problem affecting three million families each year. Following the 2011 Lancet Stillbirth Series, it has been receiving more attention, and a recent review of its causes and possible preventive strategies is very welcome.

The vast majority (98%) of stillbirths happen in low-income countries and over half of these occur during labour or delivery. But most of the research about stillbirth has been done in high-income countries.

Infections are important causes of stillbirths in poorer countries. The list includes syphilis, malaria, ascending bacterial infection and chorioamnionitis, toxoplasmosis and viruses including HIV, rubella, measles, chickenpox, parvovirus and influenza H1N1 (seasonal flu).

In high-income settings, non-communicable conditions, such as fetal growth restriction (poor growth of the baby while in the womb), diabetes, obesity, smoking and high or low maternal age, are linked with greater risk of stillbirth.

But these risk factors are increasingly important in poorer countries, where gestational diabetes is also becoming more common. Fetal growth restriction is made worse in such settings by poor nutrition and may explain over a quarter of all stillbirths. Smoking may explain around one in five.

Lifestyle factors

The authors of the review say although rates of stillbirth have fallen in high-income countries, they have now reached a plateau. They think that this may reflect increasing rates of gestational diabetes, smoking, obesity (30% to 40% of all pregnant women are now obese) hypertensive disease and increasing numbers of high-risk pregnancies in women with co-morbidities such as heart disease, renal transplants and autoimmune disease.

The authors note the most cost-effective method of screening for fetal growth restriction remains unknown. The UK National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends fetal size be screened for at each antenatal visit from 24 weeks by measuring from the top of the pubic bone to the top of the uterus – the symphysis-fundal height. This height is then plotted on a standard growth chart derived from all pregnancies in the population.

NICE calls for research to find out if it is more cost-effective to screen for poor growth in the womb by using (a) symphysis-fundal height or routine ultrasound and (b) standard population growth charts or customised growth charts. These calls are echoed by two Cochrane reviews, which can be found here and here.

Customised fetal growth charts

Customised charts plot estimated fetal weight on ultrasound or fundal height against percentiles calculated for each individual woman, taking into account routine data on her height, weight, number of previous pregnancies and ethnic origin. The authors report that customised growth charts already show promise in detecting fetal growth restriction.

This approach identifies a third of the small-for-gestational age population, a proportion greater than that recognised by conventional population-based percentile charts. But the authors endorse calls for more research, including cost-effectiveness studies, because of the major economic implications of more ultrasound examinations in screening for fetal growth restriction.

The majority of stillbirths occur in low-income countries. flickr/Gates Foundation

In low-income countries, the authors recommend more birth attendants and better care before birth and during labour. In high-income countries, they highlight the need for better education to combat late booking by socially disadvantaged women, and to promote a healthier lifestyle relating to age at pregnancy, weight and smoking.

Other possible interventions?

The review does not mention two promising recent research findings. The first shows that providing written uniform instructions to women about counting the kicks of their babies may be of help. Norwegian researchers found that this, in combination with a uniform approach to management of decreased fetal movements, was associated with a 50% reduction in stillbirths in an observational, “before-after” study in over 65,000 pregnant women.

Other researchers have shown, in an observational case-control study in 465 pregnant women, that maternal sleep practices, such as lying on the right side or on the back when going to sleep, were associated with increased risk of stillbirth.

Whether stillbirth is reduced by a healthier lifestyle, counting kicks or sleeping practices merits further research. As both these last research teams have emphasised, the most reliable evidence will come from large randomised studies.

If they are eventually confirmed as effective, counting kicks and changed sleeping practices offer simple, low-cost strategies for reducing stillbirth that might be feasible in both high- and low-income settings.

William Tarnow-Mordi is affiliated with the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney and is currently Clinical Trials Adviser to the Australian and New Zealand Neonatal Network. He is a member of the IMPACT (Interdisciplinary Maternal Perinatal Australasian Clinical Trials) Network of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand.He is principal and chief investigator on a number of National Health and Medical Research Council funded multicentre clinical trials of interventions to improve outcomes in high risk newborn infants. He is Chair of the Organising Committee of the annual Westmead International Update on Advances in Perinatal Care.

The G8's cautious new direction away from an old enemy

2012-05-22T20:22:45Z

The G8 leaders' cautious embrace of “growth and jobs” on the weekend has momentarily buoyed international markets, but significantly, altered a 30-year focus on inflation.

For more than three decades, inflation has been economic “public enemy number one”, often justifying calls for austerity.

This status emerged at the London G7 summit meeting in 1977: acceding to pressure from the Germans – whose fear of inflation may be innate. The G7 leaders at the time affirmed that “Inflation does not reduce unemployment. On the contrary, it is one of its major causes.” This shift was a dramatic one, breaking with three decades of policy directed at unemployment.

Indeed, only a few months earlier, German Prime Minister Helmut Schmidt had dismissed US President Jimmy Carter’s appeals for a stimulus, urging that US officials “please better shut their mouths.”

In contrast, this weekend, at the Camp David G8 Summit, a new “wanted poster” went up. The long-vanquished bogeyman of inflation finally yielded to a more pressing public enemy: unemployment.

The first line of the G8 communiqué was clear: “Our imperative is to promote growth and jobs.” Taking a more ambiguous line than her predecessor Schmidt, Angela Merkel was reserved, suggesting that there existed alternatives to fiscal stimulus as a means to growth – and that such measures might include new public investment. In contrast, US President Barack Obama affirmed: “There’s now an emerging consensus that more must be done to promote growth and job creation right now.”

Is this a turning point? Particularly given fears of global recession, one might wonder why this step took so long. To be sure, where inflation assumes a life of its own, it is a potentially serious “enemy.”

But inflation is not only a macroeconomic phenomenon, and the link between fiscal deficits and inflation is wildly overrated. Consider that the US ran deficits all through the 1980s – when inflation rates persistently fell. Inflation in this light is not, as Milton Friedman more broadly argued, “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

Instead, inflation also requires institutional and psychological supports – and these are currently lacking. First, the institutional foundations of self-reinforcing wage-price spirals – in a strong labour movement – were dismantled in the context of the prolonged global slowdown over the early 1980s. Unions across the developed world could once lay claim to double-digit increase in real wages. No longer.

Secondly, the psychological bases of inflation have eroded. No longer do workers expect substantial annual real wage increases. The past three decades have instead seen the labour movement place concerns for job security first. In this light, even the record low unemployment of the late 1990s produced nary an uptick in prices. The victory is so complete that when I lecture on inflation, my students have no intuitive understanding of how a wage-price spiral even works – which actually makes sense, as the unions that once drove accelerating wage trends have been so thoroughly humbled. Young adults today literally have no living memory of inflation, and are instead fixated on job security – a social psychological shift that itself makes inflation less likely.

Finally, it is also worth noting that a little bit of inflation is not necessarily a bad thing. Inflation reduces real interest rates and the value of existing debts. In a European context marked by profound generational tensions, it would work to redistribute wealth from the young to the old.

In this light, the G8 declaration may speak to an evolving trend. Moreover, such rhetoric matters as it shapes ensuing debate. When the Carter administration accepted the G7’s hard line against inflation in the late 1970s, this set the stage for Carter’s eventual appointment of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. As Fed chairman, Volcker – with moral support from Schmidt – set out to defeat inflation, despite the costs for employment.

In this light, having shifted attention from the old public enemy of inflation, the G8 has made it easier to put more resources into promoting employment and growth.

Wesley Widmaier receives funding from the Australian Research Council.