'Backwards' federal budget: Morrison government never fails to disappoint on climate action

When it comes to action on climate change, Tuesday’s federal budget delivered by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was a real – though not unexpected – disappointment which favoured polluting technologies over a clean energy future.

It included money to upgrade a coal-fired power station in New South Wales, and confirmed A$50 million previously announced to develop carbon capture and storage. The government will also spend A$52.9 million expanding Australia’s gas industry.

But investment in renewable energy was largely shunned. Notably, the government allocated just A$5 million for electric vehicles. It confirmed funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for another decade, but the money is far less than what’s needed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen the Morrison government abandon long-held dogma on debt and deficits. However, the federal budget shows when it comes to climate and energy, the government is singing from the same old songbook.

A Techno-Fix

The budget doubled down on the Morrison government’s rhetoric of “technology, not taxes”, by choosing preferred technologies for investment.

This “picking winners” approach would have some chance of addressing climate change if it were based on a comprehensive analysis of the best path to zero emissions. But instead, the government has largely made offerings at the altars of technologies worshipped by the conservative side of politics.

The government will spend an as-yet undisclosed sum, possibly A$11 million, to refurbish the Vales Point coal-fired power station. The commitment to this coal infrastructure, co-owned by prominent Liberal party donor Trevor St Baker, is a disgraceful misuse of public money. It will also do little to halt the steady decline of coal-fired power generation.

Read more: ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’: here's the lowdown on Australia’s low-emissions roadmap

As previously announced, the government will spend A$52.9 million to support the gas industry, which Frydenberg says will lower prices and support more manufacturing jobs. It includes money for gas infrastructure planning and to open up five gas basins, starting with Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory.

The budget confirms A$50 million for carbon capture and storage (CCS) to fund projects to cut emissions from industry. But proving the viability of large-scale CCS projects is extremely difficult, as experience in the United States and Canada has shown. In this context, allocating just A$50 million to get the technology off the ground is simply laughable.

History suggests the spending offers little return on investment. Research by the Australia Institute in 2017 revealed federal governments have spent A$1.3 billion in taxpayers’ money on CCS projects, with very little to show for it.

Renewables Snubbed

Meanwhile, last night’s budget largely shunned investment in renewable energy.

The budget confirmed A$1.4 billion in ARENA funding for a further ten years, including a pretty paltry A$223.9 million over the next four years. Separately, the government will also seek to pass legislation to change ARENA’s investment mandate, enabling it to fund gas and carbon capture projects.

The government has allocated a tiny A$5 million towards electric vehicle development, including money towards a manufacturing facility in South Australia. It’s good to see electric vehicles on the government’s radar. But the commitment is dwarfed by investment overseas, including a reported US$300 billion set aside by global car makers over the next decade to bring electric vehicles to mass production.

Read more: Budget 2020 at a glance: the cuts, the spends, and that big deficit in 7 charts

The measly spending on clean energy technology does not make economic sense. The renewable energy sector is standing by to slash emissions and deliver lower energy prices – if only the right policy environment existed.

The budget was also an opportunity for the government to ditch its irrational opposition to carbon pricing. Recent research has comprehensively shown carbon pricing slows growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

Vehement carbon pricing critics, such as conservatives Tony Abbott, Craig Kelly and Barnaby Joyce, are now either discredited or out of parliament altogether. And scores of countries around the world have implemented some form of price on carbon.

A Global Outlier

Most obviously, the budget was an opportunity to commit to net-zero emissions by 2050, as many developed countries have done.

The Morrison government has already used dodgy accounting tricks to meet Australia’s Paris Agreement commitment – reducing emissions by 26% on 2005 levels. The absence of a net-zero target suggests the government intends to allow emissions to grow indefinitely after 2030.

This approach is out of step with many of Australia’s international peers. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, now the clear favourite to win the US election in November, is campaigning on what has been described as “the most aggressive climate platform” ever put forward by a presidential nominee.

Read more: South Korea's Green New Deal shows the world what a smart economic recovery looks like

Biden wants the US to produce net-zero emissions by 2050. His US$2 trillion plan includes huge investments in clean energy research and development, and low-emissions infrastructure such as public transport and energy-efficient buildings. He has also promised a border tax levied on imports from countries without a carbon price.

Europe is well on the way to phasing out coal, and forging ahead with new carbon-free technologies to produce steel, cement and ammonia. The European Union has also said any free trade deal with Australia is contingent on our commitment to deep emissions abatement.

And in China, President Xi Jinping recently announced his nation will reach net-zero emissions by 2060.

We Have No Choice

The budget was a chance to reset Australia’s failed climate policy – an opportunity enhanced by the stimulus spending brought on by COVID-19.

Instead, we got a string of backward-looking gestures including subsidies for coal, another go at the failed technology of carbon capture storage and a continued push for gas.

Sooner or later, Australia will have to join the rest of the world in ending our reliance on carbon-based energy. The catastrophic bushfires of last summer proved this. And if we refuse to move, the rest of the world will force our hand.

John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We estimate up to 14 million tonnes of microplastics lie on the seafloor. It's worse than we thought

Nowhere, it seems, is immune from plastic pollution: plastic has been reported in the high Arctic oceans, in the sea ice around Antarctica and even in the world’s deepest waters of the Mariana Trench.

But just how bad is the problem? Our new research provides the first global estimate of microplastics on the seafloor — our research suggests there’s a staggering 8-14 million tonnes of it.

This is up to 35 times more than the estimated weight of plastic pollution on the ocean’s surface.

What’s more, plastic production and pollution is expected to increase in coming years, despite increased media, government and scientific attention on how plastic pollution can harm marine ecosystems, wildlife and human health.

These findings are yet another wake-up call. When the plastic we use in our daily lives reaches even the deepest oceans, it’s more urgent than ever to find ways to clean up our mess before it reaches the ocean, or to stop making so much of it in the first place.

Breaking Down Larger Plastic

Our estimate of microplastics on the seafloor is huge, but it’s still a fraction of the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean. Between 4-8 million tonnes of plastic are thought to enter the sea each and every year.

Read more: Eight million tonnes of plastic are going into the ocean each year

Most of the plastic dumped into the ocean likely ends up on the coasts, not floating around the ocean’s surface or on the seafloor. In fact, three-quarters of the rubbish found along Australia’s coastlines is plastics.

The larger pieces of plastic that stay in the ocean can deteriorate and break down from weathering and mechanical forces, such as ocean waves. Eventually, this material turns into microplastics, pieces smaller than 5 millimetres in diameter.

Their tiny size means they can be eaten by a variety of marine wildlife, from plankton to crustaceans and fish. And when microplastics enter the marine food web at low levels, it can move up the food chain as bigger species eat smaller ones.

But the problem isn’t as well documented for microplastics on the seafloor. While plastics, including microplastics, have been found in deep-sea sediments in all ocean basins across the world, samples have been small and scarce. This is where our research comes in.

Collecting Samples In The Great Australian Bight

We collected samples using a robotic submarine in a range of sea depths, from 1,655 to 3,062 metres, in the Great Australian Bight, up to 380 kilometres offshore from South Australia. The submarine scooped up 51 samples of sand and sediment from the seafloor and we analysed them in a laboratory.

We dried the sediment samples, and found between zero and 13.6 plastic particles per gram. This is up to 25 times more microplastics than previous deep-sea studies. And it’s much higher than studies in other regions, including in the Arctic and Indian Oceans.

While our study looked at one general area, we can scale up to calculate a global estimate of microplastics on the seafloor.

Using the estimated size of the entire ocean — 361,132,000 square kilometres — and the average number and size of particles in our sediment samples, we determined the total, global weight as between 8.4 and 14.4 million tonnes. This range takes into account the possible weights of individual microplastics.

How Did The Plastic Get There?

It’s important to note that since our location was remote, far from any urban population centre, this is a conservative estimate. Yet, we were surprised at just how high the microplastic loads were there.

Few studies have conclusively identified how microplastics travel to their ultimate fate.

Larger pieces of plastic that get broken down to smaller pieces can sink to the seafloor, and ocean currents and the natural movement of sediment along continental shelves can transport them widely.

But not all plastic sinks. A 2016 study suggests interaction with marine organisms is another possible transport method.

Scientists in the US have shown microbial communities, such as bacteria, can inhabit this marine “plastisphere” — a term for the ecosystems that live in plastic environments. The microbes weigh the plastic down so it no longer floats. We also know mussels and other invertebrates may colonise floating plastics, adding weight to make them sink.

Read more: Plastic pollution creates new oceanic microbe ecosystem

The type of rubbish will also determine whether it gets washed up on the beach or sinks to the seafloor.

For example, in a previous study we found cigarette butts, plastic fragments, bottlecaps and food wrappers are common on land, though rare on the seabed. Meanwhile, we found entangling items such fishing line, ropes and plastic bags are common on the seafloor.

Interestingly, in our new study we also found the number of plastic fragments on the seafloor was generally higher in areas where there was floating rubbish on the ocean’s surface. This suggests surface “hotspots” may be reflected below.

It’s not clear why just yet, but it could be because of the geology and physical features of the seabed, or because local currents, winds and waves result in accumulating zones on the ocean’s surface and the seabed nearby.

Stop Using So Much Plastic

Knowing how much plastic sinks to the ocean floor is an important addition to our understanding of the plastic pollution crisis. But stemming the rising tide of plastic pollution starts with individuals, communities and governments – we all have a role to play.

Reusing, refusing and recycling are good places to start. Seek alternatives and support programs, such as Clean Up Australia Day, to stop plastic waste from entering our environment in the first place, ensuring it doesn’t then become embedded in our precious oceans.

Read more: The oceans are full of our plastic – here's what we can do about it 

Britta Denise Hardesty, Principal Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, CSIRO; Chris Wilcox, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO, and Justine Barrett, Research assistant, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How much the budget undervalued conservation: 16 World Heritage sites received less than Sydney Harbour

The proportion of Earth’s surface designated as “protected” has expanded over the past decade. But new findings show these areas have failed to improve the state of the environment, casting doubt on government commitments to biodiversity conservation.

Our global research published in Nature yesterday found between 2010 and 2019, protected areas expanded from covering 14.1% to 15.3% of global land and freshwater environments (excluding Antarctica), and from 2.9% to 7.5% of marine environments.

Read more: New research reveals how Australia and other nations play politics with World Heritage sites

However, 78% of known threatened species and more than half of all ecoregions on land and sea remain without adequate protection. In Australia, we found nearly half of land-based ecoregions and threatened species have inadequate protections.

“Adequate” protection is different for individual species, but typically requires 10-100% of a species’ geographic range to be under some form of protection.

The Coalition government’s federal budget allocated A$233.4 million to six Commonwealth-run national parks — but most will be spent on tourism infrastructure upgrades. What’s needed is more staff and equipment to restore, enrich and maintain natural ecosystems, and to secure our most iconic natural places.

The Best And Worst Performing Countries

Our global assessment examined how nations are tracking a decade after committing to UN targets for area-based conservation: at least 17% of land and 10% of ocean must be protected by 2020.

Best-performing countries include Botswana, Hungary and Thailand. Botswana’s protected area estate adequately covers 86% of its ecoregions and 83% of its threatened species.

The worst performing countries — such as Indonesia, Canada and Madagascar — have a long way to go to meet these targets. For example, only 3% of Canada’s ocean waters are under formal protection.

But there are alarming and consistent problems with management. Globally, as much as 90% of marine protected areas have inadequate or below optimum on-site staff capacity. On land, some 47% of protected areas suffer from inadequate staff and budget resources. And the global budget shortfall for protected areas likely exceeds the multi-billion dollar mark.

Threatened Species In Australia

Australia’s protected area estate is not immune to these management shortfalls. Between 1997 and 2014, there were more than 1,500 legal changes in Australia that eased restrictions, reduced boundaries or eliminated legal protections in protected areas.

Our research also showed less than 1% of the geographic ranges of the orange-bellied frog (Geocrinia vitellina), carpentarian dunnart (Sminthopsis butleri) and upriver orange mangrove (Bruguiera sexangula) — all threatened species — are protected.

Read more: Click through the tragic stories of 119 species still struggling after Black Summer in this interactive (and how to help)

Many of Australia’s savanna ecoregions also have poor levels of protection, including the Mitchell grass downs (less than 3% of its range is protected), Brigalow tropical savanna (less than 5% protected) and southeast Australian temperate savannas (less than 4% protected).

But it’s not all bad news. We found around 36% of Australia’s oceans are protected and 76% of our marine ecoregions have adequate protection.

Previous studies also suggest protected areas governed by Indigenous Australians and local communities effectively reduce deforestation pressure and support similar numbers of species to those inside nationally designated protected areas.

How Should Funds Be Used?

Protecting our wild places will not come cheap. One estimate suggests an effective global land-based protected area network would cost US$76 billion annually.

This level of investment would ensure each protected area has sufficient staff, resources and equipment to conserve local species and ecosystems. The spending is justified, given the direct value generated by visits to protected areas around the world is valued at US$600 billion per year.

Read more: 'Backwards' federal budget: Morrison government never fails to disappoint on climate action

In Australia, effective conservation typically requires mimicking land and sea use practices that were in place before Europeans arrived, which involves actively managing disturbances such as fire and invasive species.

Funds should also be used to track the biodiversity outcomes of protected areas to make sure they’re meeting their objectives.

Beyond budgets, national governments around the world must be more ambitious when negotiating the next round of international environmental targets, due in mid-2021. These negotiations will define national conservation agendas for the next decade.

Governments must adopt policies that make biodiversity conservation a greater part of broader land and sea management plans. They can, for example, embrace new models for land and sea stewardship that reward good behaviour by farmers, developers and miners.

Budget Breakdown

In Australia, most national parks are funded and run by state governments. The federal government, through Parks Australia, is responsible for Kakadu, Uluru-Kata Tjuta, Christmas Island, Pulu Keeling, Booderee and Norfolk Island.

The Commonwealth also plays a key role in funding and managing Australia’s 16 natural World Heritage sites, including K'gari and the Ningaloo Coast.

Of the A$329.2 million allocated in the budget to protect iconic places, A$233.4 million (71%) is set aside for tourism infrastructure in non-World Heritage national parks in Australia.

Read more: These historic grasslands are becoming a weed-choked waste. It could be one of the world's great parks

We calculate this provides about A$18,000 for every hectare of Booderee National Park and national parks on Christmas Island, Norfork Island and Pulu Keeling. Most of this will likely be spent on improving visitor amenities or ensuring nearby businesses can stay open, rather than directed to measures such as invasive species control or fire management.

Australia’s 16 natural World Heritage sites will receive just A$33.5 million — less than the $40.6 million promised to maintain and restore historical sites across Sydney Harbour.

A further $23.6 million was promised for compliance, enforcement and monitoring activities across Australia’s marine parks. Enforcing no-take marine protected areas improves species populations and biomass, but this funding boost is grossly inadequate. It equates to just 1 cent for every hectare of Commonwealth-run marine parks.

It’s hard to see how these measures will prevent further ecosystem degradation or species extinctions, when conservation of Australia’s biodiversity heavily relies on protected areas.

Read more: Invasive species threaten most protected areas across the world - new study

In response to this article, a spokesperson for federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said investment in protecting national parks went beyond infrastructure spending, however infrastructure did assist people to “access parks in a responsible manner”.

Ley’s spokesperson said protecting biodiversity was “a core aspect of park operations” and included eradicating invasive species, and interaction with the National Environmental Science Program and the office of the threatened species commissioner.

In addition to national parks, Australia “also has the world’s largest network of Indigenous protected areas, which the government is already in the process of expanding,” the spokesperson said.

Sean Maxwell, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland and James Watson, Professor, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids: what happens if you breathe pure oxygen?

What happens if you breathe pure oxygen and why? Stephen, age 9, Muntinlupa City, The Philippines

Hi Stephen!

That’s a great question. We can’t live without oxygen. But too much can harm us. Let’s find out why.

Our bodies make the energy we need to run around, play and do schoolwork, by burning the food we eat. Think of this a bit like a candle burning. To burn our food, we need oxygen, which we get from breathing in the air around us.

Oxygen isn’t the only gas in the air. In fact, air’s mostly made of nitrogen. This has a very important job. Nitrogen slows down the burning process so you get enough energy through the day, bit by bit.

If you breathed pure oxygen, the energy from your food would be released all at once. So forget candles. This is more like a firework exploding. Bang! If you breathed pure oxygen, you wouldn’t actually explode. But you would damage your body.

Read more: Curious Kids: when I swipe a matchstick how does it make fire?

Breathing pure oxygen sets off a series of runaway chemical reactions. That’s when some of that oxygen turns into its dangerous, unstable cousin called a “radical”. Oxygen radicals harm the fats, protein and DNA in your body. This damages your eyes so you can’t see properly, and your lungs, so you can’t breathe normally.

So breathing pure oxygen is quite dangerous.

But breathing pure oxygen can sometimes be necessary. Astronauts and deep-sea scuba divers sometimes breathe pure oxygen because they work in very dangerous places.

The length of time they breathe pure oxygen, and how much they breathe, is carefully controlled so they’re not harmed.

Sick people, including premature babies in hospital or people in hospital with the coronavirus, might also need some extra help breathing. They might be given a bit of extra oxygen on top of what’s in the air. It acts like a medicine to help calm and settle their breathing.

Again, too much oxygen can be dangerous. That’s why doctors and nurses keep a close eye to make sure people get just the right amount they need.

So we need oxygen to help us get energy from our food. We might also need a little extra if we’re sick in hospital, or if we’re an astronaut or deep-sea diver. But too much oxygen can harm us.

Hello, Curious Kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

Mark Lynch, Lecturer in Chemistry, University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids: what are cells made out of?

I know veins are made out of cells but what are cells made out of? It’s very tricky to answer that — Bea, 4 years old

That is a great question, Bea!

The human body is just like a big puzzle, but with billions of tiny pieces called cells. Our cells come in many different shapes and sizes. Together, they make up all of the parts of our body, from our veins to our brain.

Our cells are really, really small. For example, look at how thin a single strand of your hair is. Although it’s so thin, nearly 20 cells could fit across it. That’s how small they are.

Scientists have discovered cells are made from different building blocks we call molecules, such as water, plus other types like proteins, fats and DNA.

Just like our body, which has different parts that all work together, our cells also have different parts too. Let’s take a closer look.

Cells Have Skin

The outside skin of a cell is called the plasma membrane. It is made mainly of molecules called fats. This skin forms a bubble around the outside of the whole cell and holds it together.

Plants also have cells. But plant cells have an extra layer of skin called the cell wall which is strong and tough, not soft like a bubble, which explains why plants like trees can grow so tall.

Cells Have Skeletons

Like the bones inside our body, cells also have a kind of skeleton called the cytoskeleton (which means “cell skeleton”). It is made from molecules called proteins. The cell’s skeleton makes it strong, and also helps our cells move around the body.

Cells Have Brains (Sort Of)

One of the most important molecules in a cell is its DNA, made from a type of building block called nucleotides. DNA is like an instruction book for everything our cells have to do (including making more cells, moving, and fighting germs). As the nucleus stores most of our DNA, it’s just like the brain of the cell.

You might have heard of genes (not the ones you wear, but the ones inside you). They are just like a recipe your cells use to make you! They decide how tall you will grow, what colour your eyes or hair are, and more.

Our genes are made of DNA and we get this DNA from our mum and dad. For example, if a dad has brown eyes, he can pass on the recipe in his DNA to his child which tells their cells how to make brown eyes. This explains why we can look similar to our parents.

Cells Have Stomachs

When you’re hungry, you eat! Your stomach then breaks down your food, in a process called digestion. Just like this, your cells also have their own mini stomachs which are important to digest the food and waste from the cell and keep them happy.

Cells Make Energy

If you turn on a light switch, the room quickly lights up. This is because of electricity which is a type of energy, made in big powerhouses. We use electricity for so many things like lights but also TVs, phones, heating and cooling.

Nearly everything that happens inside a cell needs energy too. Therefore, cells have special sections in them called mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of the cell and make all the energy the cell needs to work.

Cells Can Talk To Each Other!

If our cells are so tiny and our body is so big, how can all of our cells work together? The answer is they can talk … well, kind of.

Instead of picking up the phone to talk to each other, our cells have to send messages. These messages are made of molecules that help cells communicate.

Here is a cool example. If you get stung by a bee (ouch!) your skin will start to go red and puffy. This may look scary but actually, it is your body helping you. The cells in this area are quickly sending out messages for help. Cells in other areas get these messages and then go in for the rescue.

As scientists, we know a lot about cells. But we still don’t know everything. That’s why we need young kids to stay curious and ask questions, like Bea!

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

Georgia Atkin-Smith, Research scientist, La Trobe University and Ivan Poon, Associate Professor, Biochemistry, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What are message sticks? Senator Lidia Thorpe continues a long and powerful diplomatic tradition

This week, newly appointed Greens senator Lidia Thorpe entered the chamber with one fist raised. In her other hand, she carried a large message stick with 441 carefully painted marks.

The lines represented each of the First Nations people who have died under police supervision since the 1991 Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody. The first Indigenous senator from Victoria, Thorpe is a Gunnai and Gunditjmara woman with a history of fighting for justice on behalf of Aboriginal people.

Last year, Alwyn Doolan, a Gooreng Gooreng and Wakka Wakka man (and co-author of this article) brought three message sticks to deliver to the Prime Minister representing Creation, Colonisation and Healing.

He carried them to Canberra all the way from Cape York, walking the long way round via Tasmania and Melbourne in a journey of over 8,500 kilometres. His intention was to submit a tribal law notice to the Australian government, to declare First Nations sovereignty, and open a new dialogue with the First Nations of this land.

These two events continue a powerful pre-Invasion tradition, when message sticks were sent between distant communities to maintain diplomatic relations.

Read more: Lidia Thorpe wants to shift course on Indigenous recognition. Here's why we must respect the Uluru Statement

Treacherous Journeys

Traditionally, the Nation sending the message would appoint an individual to serve as a messenger to travel vast distances across land or water to meet a recipient. The sticks were small enough to carry a long way. Many of the signs on the stick had fixed meanings while others were intended to be decorative.

Colours such as red ochre or white pipe-clay also added meaning, and even the type of timber had significance. Along with the message, they might also tell a story of where the messenger had come from, depicting the journey as a map.

When the messenger made contact with the intended recipient, they would deliver the message verbally, referring to the signs on the stick to both illustrate and emphasise a memorised oral statement.

Messengers were often men but in some regions women were known to take on this role. If you were a messenger you had a huge responsibility for your own people, and those from other nations were obliged to recognise you as an ambassador, to look after you and guarantee a safe passage.

Message sticks could be on any topic, but what they always had in common was the fact they demanded acknowledgement and mutual respect. They were often announcements about ceremonies, such as initiations or funerals. They could also be for establishing political partnerships, requesting emergency assistance, declaring war, organising hunting, or trading vital resources.

Read more: Friday essay: lessons from stone – Indigenous thinking and the Law

Messengers would set out on foot, sometimes journeying for days or weeks on end. The mission was dangerous. There are over 500 First Nations within Australia and crossing into a foreign territory without permission could be punishable by death. But envoys had diplomatic immunity and their message stick was a bit like a passport in the modern sense.

In order to show peaceful intentions, they displayed the message stick clearly from a safe distance. A common technique was to hang it from the tip of a spear or to tuck it into a headband. Body paint could also be used to signal a special status.

Some past anthropologists held that only “civilised” nations could be seen to possess writing, so downplayed the value of message sticks as communication. Others saw them as precursors to alphabetic script or letters.

Message sticks have even been sent through the mail service. During the second world war, an Indigenous soldier sent a message stick home to his family through the military post, once it had been approved by a mystified government censor.

Carrying Meaning

Australia’s First Nations have always been connected through shared kinship systems, histories, Dreamings, values and symbols. This is why the signs on message sticks frequently depict common points of reference with rich cultural associations — like landscapes, totemic animals, and ceremonial grounds — that wouldn’t require explanation.

As Indigenous people began to encounter new phenomena like ships, livestock and homesteads these were symbolised on message sticks. Individuals had signatures to guarantee the message came from them and would be addressed to the correct person.

Shared understandings helped ensure a message could be correctly interpreted, even when a messenger was not available to explain it.

In some places, white settlers learned from First Nations peoples how to make message sticks and used them to facilitate diplomatic communications with communities.

Read more: New coins celebrate Indigenous astronomy, the stars, and the dark spaces between them

Political Messages

During the period of colonial dispossession, First Nations people have introduced adaptations and innovations. They began to make use of non-native timbers and took advantage of iron tools.

Message sticks also began featuring Western symbols. Alphabet letters, playing card suits and police insignias have been used sparingly. And from the middle of the 20th century, Indigenous envoys began to bring message sticks to government leaders.

In 1951, Indigenous men sent a message stick to Robert Menzies to solidify an alliance between the Tiwi islands and Canberra. Gough Whitlam received one in 1974 demanding land rights, and Bob Hawke was given one in 1983.

Yolŋu leaders gave Prince Charles a message stick in 2018 during his visit to Yirrkala, asking him to intervene in Treaty negotiations.

When Alwyn Doolan brought his message sticks to Scott Morrison last year — after a gruelling journey — the Prime Minister defied precedent by declining to meet with him.

Piers Kelly, Linguistic anthropologist, University of New England and Wunyungar, Indigenous knowledge bearer, Indigenous Knowledge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cheese 'n' crackers! Concerns deepen for the future of Australian children's television

Today ABC, BBC Studios and Screen Australia announced series three of the award-winning animation series Bluey will commence production in Brisbane later this year.

But despite Bluey’s global success, policy changes announced yesterday mean that we may see fewer Australian-made children’s shows on broadcast TV in the future.

The federal government has scrapped quotas for minimum hours of local children’s content for commercial television networks. Foxtel’s obligation to Australian content has also been halved.

These changes represent a rapid unravelling of regulatory infrastructure established in the 1970s — and refined over decades — to support production and broadcast of quality Australian children’s content.

Responding to the policy changes, Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) CEO Jenny Buckland explained:

The argument about children’s content quotas has been going ever since they were introduced nearly 40 years ago. The broadcasters never wanted to do it and they didn’t treat the shows well.

Read more: Save our screens: 3 things government must do now to keep Australian content alive

Changes To TV Content Regulation

Under the existing system, commercial networks must abide by strict requirements to broadcast a certain amount of children’s content each year: 130 hours for pre-school children, and 260 hours for children under 14, including at least 25 hours of new drama.

From 2021, commercial networks will have no such obligation.

Children’s content quotas were suspended in April 2020, a decision Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts Paul Fletcher said was in response to COVID-19.

Now a decision initially described as “an emergency red tape reduction measure” has been enshrined into policy.

Read more: Coronavirus TV 'support' package leaves screen writers and directors even less certain than before

Strength In Numbers

The government’s decision to remove children’s quotas responds to intense lobbying from commercial networks. In February 2020, Seven declared it planned to halt the production of Australian children’s content, a decision that would likely have resulted in a breach of children’s content quotas in 2021 if the current system was sustained. Seven’s Chief Executive explained he wanted the government to take “immediate action” to remove the quotas.

In 2017, the chief executives of Seven, Nine and Ten advocated together at a parliamentary inquiry for the removal of children’s content quotas.

They argued children weren’t watching their children’s programming. Indeed, many children’s programs on commercial networks don’t rate well. This may relate to the cheaply produced, culturally non-specific animated programs made to meet the quotas.

ACTF CEO Jenny Buckland notes that over the past decade, commercial broadcasters have halved their spending on children’s drama. International co-productions also count towards the quotas, resulting in a surfeit of “co-produced animated series based on international concepts”.

The networks also argue the rising popularity of streaming services has made the quota system outdated. Indeed, an increasing number of Australian children are turning to streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube, however the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s research has found that children still watch broadcast TV programs made specifically for them.

Read more: TV has changed, so must the way we support local content

Where The ABC Fits In

Bluey is the most popular show in the history of the ABC’s streaming app ABC iView, demonstrating there is demand for quality local children’s content.

But rather than seeing this as an endorsement, commercial broadcasters claim the popularity of children’s content on the ABC diminishes the need for quotas.

However, public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, are not obligated to produce or broadcast a certain amount of local children’s content (rather than quotas, they have internal targets underpinned by their charters). This means the ABC can pull funding from the children’s television budget as it sees fit. Local content targets on children’s channel ABC ME were reduced to 25% (from 50%) in 2015.

Budget restrictions make the ABC’s track record of quality local children’s content difficult to sustain. Government analysis in 2017 raised concerns that the ABC may have “reduced its commitment to producing children’s content”.

Despite the ABC’s role in broadcasting quality Australian content, and even directly helping with remote education during the pandemic, the government has pressed pause on the indexation of ABC funding until July 2022. This means by end of the financial year (2020–21), the ABC’s operational funding base will have reduced by 10% since 2013.

Children’s content was a key target of a recent round of redundancies at the ABC. June saw the closure of Melbourne children’s division ME TV and the cancellation of kids’ show Definitely Not News. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance warns changes to production quotas could “mean the demise of children’s content on commercial TV, leaving a cash-strapped ABC to pick up the slack”.

Defending Local Children’s TV

The government has announced a welcome A$20 million in funding for the ACTF for children’s content, supplemented by $30 million in funding for Screen Australia.

Jenny Buckland notes,

we’ll be working very hard with producers to try and open those commissioning doors to new content, and tracking what happens to production over the 2-year period.

Perhaps this funding will stave off the end of local children’s content for now. Though the policy and budgetary ecosystem that supports a robust domestic children’s content sector is in flux, Buckland is still hopeful:

… there needs to be Australian children’s content on all the places that children go to watch content — that includes having well-resourced public broadcasters with a major commitment to kids, as well as content on commercial video-on-demand platforms and other destinations. We were hoping there would be Australian content expenditure requirements on these platforms, and the door might still be open for that.

Jessica Balanzategui, Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies, Swinburne University of Technology; Joanna McIntyre, Lecturer in Media Studies, Swinburne University of Technology, and Liam Burke, Associate Professor and Cinema and Screen Studies Discipline Leader, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Avicenna: the Persian polymath who shaped modern science, medicine and philosophy

Over a thousand years ago, Nuh ibn Mansur, the reigning prince of the medieval city of Bukhara, fell badly ill. The doctors, unable to do anything for him, were forced to send for a young man named Ibn Sina, who was already renowned, despite his very young age, for his vast knowledge. The ruler was healed.

Ibn Sina was an 11th century Persian philosopher, physician, pharmacologist, scientist and poet, who exerted a profound impact on philosophy and medicine in Europe and the Islamic world. He was known to the Latin West as Avicenna.

Avicenna’s Canon of medicine, first translated from Arabic into Latin during the 12th century, was the most important medical reference book in the West until the 17th century, introducing technical medical terminology used for centuries afterwards.

Avicenna’s Canon established a tradition of scientific experimentation in physiology without which modern medicine as we know it would be inconceivable.

For example, his use of scientific principles to test the safety and effectiveness of medications forms the basis of contemporary pharmacology and clinical trials.

Avicenna has been in the news recently due to his work on contagions. He produced an early version of the germ theory of disease in the Canon where he also advocated quarantine to control the transmission of contagious diseases.

Uniquely, Avicenna is the rare philosopher who became as influential on a foreign philosophical culture as his own. He is regarded by some as the greatest medieval thinker.

Read more: Explainer: what Western civilisation owes to Islamic cultures

Maverick And Prodigious

He was born Abdallāh ibn Sīnā in 980AD in Bukhara, (present day Uzbekistan, then part of the Iranian Samanid empire). Avicenna was prodigious from youth, claiming in his autobiography to have mastered all known philosophy by 18.

Avicenna’s output was extraordinarily prolific. One estimate of his body of work counts 132 texts. These cover logic, natural philosophy, cosmology, metaphysics, psychology, geology, and more. Some of these texts he wrote while on horseback, travelling from one city to another!

His work was a virtuosic kind of encylopedism, gathering the various traditions of Greek late antiquity, the early Islamic period and Iranian civilisation into one rational knowledge system covering all of reality.

Avicenna’s texts were forged out of the colossal Graeco-Arabic translation movement that took place in medieval Baghdad. They then played a key role in the Arabic to Latin translation movement that brought Aristotle’s philosophy back, in a highly enriched manner, into Western thought.

This was a chapter in the story of large-scale transmission of knowledge from the Islamic world to Europe.

From the 12th century on, Avicenna shaped the thought of major European medieval thinkers. Thomas Aquinas’s writings feature hundreds of quotations from Avicenna regarding issues such as God’s providence. Aquinas also sought to refute some of Avicenna’s positions such as that which argued the world was eternal.

Book Of Healing

Avicenna’s Kitāb al-shifā , The Book of Healing, was as influential in Latin as his medical Canon.

Divided into sections covering logic, science, mathematics and metaphysics, it produced highly influential theses on the distinction between essence and existence and the famous Flying Man thought experiment, which aims to establish how the soul is innately aware of itself.

Read more: Four centuries of trying to prove God’s existence

A Medical Pioneer

Avicenna’s Canon brilliantly synthesises Islamic medicine with that of Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC) and Galen (129 – 200 AD). There are also elements of ancient Persian, Mesopotamian and Indian medicine. This was supplemented by Avicenna’s extensive medical experiences.

In the Canon, Avicenna introduced diagnoses and treatments for illnesses unknown to the Greeks, being the first doctor to describe meningitis. He made new arguments for the use of anaesthetics, analgesics, and anti-inflammatory substances.

Read more: Forget folk remedies, Medieval Europe spawned a golden age of medical theory

Looking forward to modern notions of disease prevention, Avicenna proposed adjustments in diet and physical exercise could heal or prevent illnesses.

Avicenna was also vital to the development of cardiology, pulsology, and our understanding of cardiovascular diseases.

Avicenna’s detailed descriptions of capillary flow and arterial and ventricular contractions in the cardiovascular system (the blood and circulatory system) assisted the Arab-Syrian polymath Ibn al Nafis (1213-1288), who became the first physician to describe the blood’s pulmonary circulation, the movement of blood from the heart to the lungs and back again to the heart.

This happened in 1242, centuries before scientist William Harvey arrived at the same conclusion in 17th century England.

Holistic Medicine

Another innovative aspect of Avicenna’s Canon is its exploration of how our body’s well-being depends on the state of our mind, and the interaction between the heart’s health and our emotional life.

This connection has been seen in the last few months, with doctors describing increases in heart damage due to the psycho-emotional pressures of the pandemic.

Avicenna’s advocacy for an interrelated, organic and systems-based understanding of health gives his thought universal, ongoing relevance.

Darius Sepehri, Doctoral Candidate, Comparative Literature, Religion and History of Philosophy, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Happy birthday Instagram! 5 ways doing it for the 'gram has changed us

Tomorrow marks Instagram’s tenth birthday. Having amassed more than a billion active users worldwide, the app has changed radically in that decade. And it has changed us.

1. Instagram’s Evolution

When it was launched on October 6, 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram was an iPhone-only app. The user could take photos (and only take photos — the app could not load existing images from the phone’s gallery) within a square frame. These could be shared, with an enhancing filter if desired. Other users could comment or like the images. That was it.

As we chronicle in our book, the platform has grown rapidly and been at the forefront of an increasingly visual social media landscape.

In 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for a deal worth a $US1 billion (A$1.4 billion), which in retrospect probably seems cheap. Instagram is now one of the most profitable jewels in the Facebook crown.

Instagram has integrated new features over time, but it did not invent all of them.

Instagram Stories, with more than half a billion daily users, was shamelessly borrowed from Snapchat in 2016. It allowed users to post 10-second content bites which disappear after 24 hours. The rivers of casual and intimate content (later integrated into Facebook) are widely considered to have revitalised the app.

Similarly, IGTV is Instagram’s answer to YouTube’s longer-form video. And if the recently-released Reels isn’t a TikTok clone, we’re not sure what else it could be.

Read more: Facebook is merging Messenger and Instagram chat features. It's for Zuckerberg's benefit, not yours

2. Under The Influencers

Instagram is largely responsible for the rapid professionalisation of the influencer industry. Insiders estimated the influencer industry would grow to US$9.7 billion (A$13.5 billion) in 2020, though COVID-19 has since taken a toll on this as with other sectors.

As early as in 2011, professional lifestyle bloggers throughout Southeast Asia were moving to Instagram, turning it into a brimming marketplace. They sold ad space via post captions and monetised selfies through sponsored products. Such vernacular commerce pre-dates Instagram’s Paid Partnership feature, which launched in late-2017.

The use of images as a primary mode of communication, as opposed to the text-based modes of the blogging era, facilitated an explosion of aspiring influencers. The threshold for turning oneself into an online brand was dramatically lowered.

Instagrammers relied more on photography and their looks — enhanced by filters and editing built into the platform.

Soon, the “extremely professional and polished, the pretty, pristine, and picturesque” started to become boring. Finstagrams (“fake Instagram”) and secondary accounts proliferated and allowed influencers to display behind-the-scenes snippets and authenticity through calculated performances of amateurism.

3. Instabusiness As Usual

As influencers commercialised Instagram captions and photos, those who had owned online shops turned hashtag streams into advertorial campaigns. They relied on the labour of followers to publicise their wares and amplify their reach.

Bigger businesses followed suit and so did advice from marketing experts for how best to “optimise” engagement.

In mid-2016, Instagram belatedly launched business accounts and tools, allowing companies easy access to back-end analytics. The introduction of the “swipeable carousel” of story content in early 2017 further expanded commercial opportunities for businesses by multiplying ad space per Instagram post. This year, in the tradition of Instagram corporatising user innovations, it announced Instagram Shops would allow businesses to sell products directly via a digital storefront. Users had previously done this via links.

Read more: Friday essay: Twitter and the way of the hashtag

4. Sharenting

Instagram isn’t just where we tell the visual story of ourselves, but also where we co-create each other’s stories. Nowhere is this more evident than the way parents “sharent”, posting their children’s daily lives and milestones.

Many children’s Instagram presence begins before they are even born. Sharing ultrasound photos has become a standard way to announce a pregnancy. Over 1.5 million public Instagram posts are tagged #genderreveal.

Sharenting raises privacy questions: who owns a child’s image? Can children withdraw publishing permission later?

Sharenting entails handing over children’s data to Facebook as part of the larger realm of surveillance capitalism. A saying that emerged around the same time as Instagram was born still rings true: “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product”. We pay for Instagram’s “free” platform with our user data and our children’s data, too, when we share photos of them.

Read more: The real problem with posting about your kids online

5. Seeing Through The Frame

The apparent “Instagrammability” of a meal, a place, or an experience has seen the rise of numerous visual trends and tropes.

Short-lived Instagram Stories and disappearing Direct Messages add more spaces to express more things without the threat of permanence.

Read more: Friday essay: seeing the news up close, one devastating post at a time

The events of 2020 have shown our ways of seeing on Instagram reveal the possibilities and pitfalls of social media.

In June racial justice activism on #BlackoutTuesday, while extremely popular, also had the effect of swamping the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag with black squares.

Instagram is rife with disinformation and conspiracy theories which hijack the look and feel of authoritive content. The template of popular Instagram content can see familiar aesthetics weaponised to spread misinformation.

Ultimately, the last decade has seen Instagram become one of the main lenses through which we see the world, personally and politically. Users communicate and frame the lives they share with family, friends and the wider world.

Read more: #travelgram: live tourist snaps have turned solo adventures into social occasions 

Tama Leaver, Associate Professor in Internet Studies, Curtin University; Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow & ARC DECRA, Internet Studies, Curtin University, Curtin University, and Tim Highfield, Lecturer in Digital Media and Society, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With his signature guitar style, Eddie Van Halen changed rock music

The legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen has died aged 65. One of the most influential guitarists of the modern age, Van Halen was known for his mastery of the two-handed tapping technique and for bringing the virtuosic rock guitar solo back into the popular music mainstream in the late 70s and 1980s.

One of the great innovators, Van Halen formed a bridge between 1970s rock styles and heavy metal sounds of the 1980s. He delivered his best work with a nonchalance that belied the training and dedication driving him and his band to succeed.

Born in the Netherlands in 1955, Van Halen came from a musical family. His father played saxophone and clarinet professionally and ensured Van Halen and his older brother, Alex, started piano lessons from a young age.

The boys’ training in classical music and theory would influence Van Halen’s guitar playing, particularly the famous two-handed, finger tapping technique, where harmonic ideas derived from the keyboard found new expression on the electric guitar.

Read more: Redefining the rock god – the new breed of electric guitar heroes

Young Tour De Force

The family immigrated to the US in 1962 and the young Van Halen brothers later discovered rock music, with Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton as early heroes.

In his first Guitar Player magazine interview in 1978, Van Halen mentioned Clapton as a formative influence, having learnt his solos note for note.

In 1972, while still in high school, the brothers formed the band Mammoth, hiring a public address system from David Lee Roth. Van Halen originally sang as well as playing guitar, but he tired of combining duties so Roth (and his PA) joined the band.

Mammoth caught the attention of Kiss’s Gene Simmons, who financed an early demo tape, and then producer Ted Templeman who signed the group to a record deal. Their first album, Van Halen (1978), was recorded quickly, drawing on their live sound and set list.

It was the album’s second track, Eruption, that captured the attention of guitarists.

This tour de force shows Van Halen had already developed his signature style by his early 20s. Opening power chords signal a call to attention while licks based on blues and rock phrases are transformed through sheer speed and intensity. The tone has a power, presence and clarity rarely heard in rock guitar recordings of the time.

The climax of the piece is the famous two-handed tapping section. With a concluding dive bomb – a pitch descent courtesy of subtle manipulation of the whammy bar, Van Halen ushered in a new era in electric guitar playing.

True Innovation

The sounds and techniques used in Eruption seemed to be only possible on the electric guitar, exploiting the instrument’s responsiveness and tactile immediacy.

But Van Halen continued to seek new means of musical expression and on Van Halen II (1979), he gave us an example of what was possible when his virtuosic approach was adapted to the acoustic guitar.

Van Halen was always modifying his guitars. Early experiments led to him creating his “Frankenstein guitar” in 1974, fusing the neck and humbucker pickup from a Gibson guitar onto a Fender Stratocaster body. He added the stripes that became his signature.

He remained involved in designing new instruments throughout his career, collaborating with makers such as Music Man, Charvel and Fender.

‘The Brown Sound’

Van Halen’s sound was loud and distorted but also clear and focused. Often referred to as the “brown” sound for its feeling of organic warmth, this sound has gone on to inspire generations of guitarists.

The band’s biggest commercial success was the album 1984, where Van Halen turned to keyboards in both writing and recording.

On the single Jump, keyboard chords ground the song but an improvised, high energy electric guitar solo reminds the listener of Van Halen’s virtuosity as he leads the band into a Bach-inspired, keyboard fantasy.

From 1978 to 1998, the band released 11 studio albums, with their 12th and final album, A Different Kind of Truth (2012), appearing 13 years later. But it is the searing lead break on Michael Jackson’s Beat It (1983) that bought Van Halen to global attention.

Jammed into 32 seconds, Van Halen’s solo is a masterpiece of construction, featuring pitch manipulation with the whammy bar, squealing harmonics, rapid-fire two-handed tapping, scurrying scalar licks (or quick scales) and a final ascending tremolo line that soars to the upper reaches of the fretboard and makes you wonder what just happened.

It is one of the most famous rock guitar solos around.

Van Halen was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000, and declared cancer free in 2002. In 2019, it was first reported he had been battling throat cancer for five years.

In 2015, Rolling Stone named Van Halen as number eight on a list of the world’s greatest guitarists of all time. But as his career shows, his talent wasn’t simply in his musical virtuosity, but in his innovation: creating a brand new sound for rock music, but also in the design of the guitar itself.

Ken Murray, Associate Professor in Guitar, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.